Table of Contents

The Psalms

______

_______

______

______

_______

_______

_______

_______

______

______

_________

The Psalms

_______

________

Psalm 1

Psalm 2

Psalms 3-7

Psalm 3

Psalm 4

Psalm 5

Psalm 7

Psalm 8

Psalm 9

Psalm 10

Psalm 12

Psalm 14

Psalm 15

Psalm 16

Psalm 17

Psalm 18

Psalm 19

The Psalms

Psalm 22

Psalm 23

Psalm 25

Psalm 26

Psalm 29

Psalm 30

Psalm 32

Psalm 36

Psalm 38

Psalm 40

Psalm 42

Psalm 44

Psalm 45

The Psalms

Psalm 46

Psalm 48

Psalm 50

Psalm 51

Psalm 52

Psalm 53

Psalm 55

Psalm 56

Psalm 57

Psalm 58

Psalm 59

Psalm 60

Psalm 61

Psalm 62

Psalm 65

Psalm 66

Psalm 68

________

_______

Psalm 71

Psalm 73

Psalm 74

The Psalms

Psalm 75

Psalm 76

Psalm 77

Psalm 79

Psalm 80

Psalm 85

Psalm 87

Psalm 88

Psalm 89

Psalm 90

Psalm 91

Psalm 93

Psalm 94

Psalm 99

Psalm 100

Psalm 101

Psalm 102

The Psalms

Psalm 103

Psalm 104

Psalms 105 - 108

Psalm 105

Psalm 106

Psalm 107

Psalm 108

Psalm 109

Psalm 112

Psalm 113

Psalm 114

Psalm 115

Psalm 116

Psalm 118

_________

Psalm 121

Psalm 122

Psalm 123

Psalm 124

Psalm 125

Psalm 126

The Psalms

Psalm 127

Psalm 129

Psalm 130

Psalm 131

Psalm 134

Psalm 138

Psalm 140

Psalm 141

Psalm 142

Psalm 143

Psalm 144

Psalm 145

Psalm 146

Psalm 147

Psalm 148

Psalm 150

The Gospel of John

John  1

________

__________

______

________

________

______

_______

The Gospel of John

John 2

_______

The Gospel of John

John 3

________

_______

______

The Gospel of John

John 4

________

The Gospel of John

John 5

The Gospel of John

John 6

_______

________

_______

_______

_______

The Gospel of John

John 7

The Gospel of John

John 8

_______

The Gospel of John

John 9

_______

_______

The Gospel of John

John 10

The Gospel of John

John 11

The Gospel of John

John 12

_______

The Gospel of John

John 13

_______

The Gospel of John

John 14

_______

________

________

________

_________

The Gospel of John

John 15

________

_______

________

_________

_________

_______

The Gospel of John

John 16

_________

_______

_________

________

The Gospel of John

John 17

________

_____

_______

________

________

_________

__________

_______

__________

_________

_________

___________

_________

________

The Gospel of John

John 18

The Gospel of John

John 19

The Gospel of John

John 20

________

The Gospel of John

John 21

________

_______

_______

_________

END OF VOLUME 7

Genesis

Genesis 1

__________

Genesis 4

Genesis

Genesis 5

Genesis 6

Genesis 9

Genesis 10

Genesis 11

Genesis 12

Genesis 13

Genesis

Genesis 16

Genesis 17

Genesis 19

Genesis 20

Genesis 22

Genesis 23

Genesis 24

Genesis 25

Genesis 26

Genesis 28

Genesis 29

Genesis 30

Genesis 31

Genesis 32

Genesis 33

Genesis 35

Genesis 39

Genesis 41

Genesis 42-45

Genesis 46

Genesis 49

Genesis 50

Notes and Comments Vol. 1, Section 4.

Conscience

Innocence

Civilisation

Genesis, Typically Considered

Genesis 1

CREATION AND FORMING

Genesis 2

RUIN

Genesis 4

Genesis 5

Genesis 7

Genesis 8

Genesis 9

Genesis 10

Genesis 12.

Genesis 13

Genesis 14

Genesis 15

Genesis, Typically Considered

Genesis 16

Genesis 17

Genesis 18

Genesis 19

Genesis 20, 21

Genesis 22

Genesis 24

Genesis 25

Genesis 28

Genesis 29-31

Genesis 32

Genesis 33 - 34

Genesis 35

Genesis 37

Genesis 38

Genesis 41

Genesis 43

Genesis 44

Genesis 45

Genesis 46

Genesis 50

Will

Holiness

___________

_________

Image and Likeness

FURTHER NOTE

God's Questions to Man

________

Promise

Prayer

Life

Realism

Forgiveness

Feelings

Exodus

Exodus 1

Exodus 6

Exodus 7

Exodus 8

Exodus 12

Exodus 13

Exodus 14

Exodus 15

Exodus 19

Exodus 23

Exodus 25

Exodus 26

Exodus 29

Exodus 30

Exodus 33

Exodus 34

Exodus 36

Exodus 39

Exodus 40

Notes and Comments Vol. 1, Section 1.

Preface

Fragments

________

________

________

_________

_________

_________

________

________

________

________

________

________

Evolution

Angels

The Wilderness

Symbols

Inspiration

Freewill as to Inclination and Choice

Dependence

Miracles

Law

Annihilation

Worship

Revelation

Love and Holiness

END OF VOLUME 1

Fragments

_______

________

________

________

________

________

________

________

________

The Cross

Power in the Midst of Evil

Leviticus

_________

Leviticus

Leviticus 10

Leviticus 14

Leviticus 16

_______

_________

Leviticus 17

Leviticus 18

Leviticus 19

Leviticus 23

Leviticus 24

Atonement

Smiting

Cleansing

Faith not Sight

The Person of the Lord

The Old Testament

The Sabbath of the Old Testament

Numbers

Numbers 3

Numbers 4

Numbers 6

Numbers 8

Numbers 9

Numbers 12

Numbers 14

Numbers 15

Numbers 16

Numbers 18

Numbers 21

Numbers 24

Numbers 26

Numbers 32

Numbers 33

The Mystery

1 CORINTHIANS 15: 51

1 CORINTHIANS 2: 6, 7

ROMANS 11: 25

109 ROMANS 16: 25

110 EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS

EPHESIANS 1: 7 - 12

111 EPHESIANS 3: 3, 4, 9

EPHESIANS 6: 19

COLOSSIANS 1: 26, 27

112 COLOSSIANS 2: 2

COLOSSIANS 4: 3

1 TIMOTHY 3: 14-16

113 REVELATION 10: 7

Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 2

Deuteronomy 3

Deuteronomy 4

Deuteronomy 8

Deuteronomy 9

Deuteronomy 10

Deuteronomy 12

Deuteronomy 14

Deuteronomy 16

Deuteronomy 27

Deuteronomy 27, 28

Deuteronomy 31

Deuteronomy 32

The Red Sea and Jordan

Joshua

Joshua 1

Joshua 3

Joshua 4

Joshua 14

Joshua 24

Baptism

The Table of the Lord

The Joys of Christ

_________

Ministry

Promise and Grace

Fragments

________

________

__________

_________

_________

_________

________

_________

_________

_________

________

_________

_______

_________

_______

The Humiliation of Christ

Judges

Judges 10

Judges 13

Judges 17, 18

Ruth

Notice of Lange's "Life of Christ "

Prophetic Map

1 Samuel

1 Samuel 2

1 Samuel 6

1 Samuel 7

1 Samuel 9

1 Samuel 10

1 Samuel 13

1 Samuel 21

1 Samuel 23

2 Samuel

2 Samuel 7

2 Samuel 21

2 Samuel 22

2 Samuel 23

1 Kings

1 Kings 6

1 Kings 8

1 Kings 9

1 Kings 15

1 Kings 18

2 Kings

2 Kings 9

2 Kings 17

2 Kings 18

2 Kings 20

1 Chronicles

1 Chronicles 2

1 Chronicles 3

1 Chronicles 9

1 Chronicles 11

1 Chronicles 12

1 Chronicles 16

2 Chronicles

2 Chronicles 6

2 Chronicles 7

2 Chronicles 15

2 Chronicles 16

2 Chronicles 22

2 Chronicles 35

Ezra

Ezra 2

Ezra 9

Nehemiah

Nehemiah 5

Nehemiah 11

Nehemiah 12

Job

Job 1

Job 2

Job 5

Job 7

Job 27

Job 28

Job 33, Job 36

Job 38

Job 40

Life and Eternal Life

The Ways of God

The World

_______

The Wisdom of God

______

Fragments

________

_______

________

________

_______

________

______

_______

________

_______

_______

_______

_______

_______

Testimony

The Kingdom of the Father

The Christian Position

Death to Nature

Review of Leckey's Rationalism

Life in John 3

Repentance

The Lord's Coming and the Church

Reply to Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen

The Son of Man

Righteousness and Intercession

The Government of God

Peace

______

Walking Worthy

Memory

Consciousness

The Headship of Christ

_______

END OF VOLUME 2

Atonement

Smiting

Cleansing

Faith not Sight

The Person of the Lord

The Old Testament

The Sabbath of the Old Testament

Numbers

Numbers 3

Numbers 4

Numbers 6

Numbers 8

Numbers 9

Numbers 12

Numbers 14

Numbers 15

Numbers 16

Numbers 18

Numbers 21

Numbers 24

Numbers 26

Numbers 32

Numbers 33

The Mystery

1 CORINTHIANS 15: 51

1 CORINTHIANS 2: 6, 7

ROMANS 11: 25

109 ROMANS 16: 25

110 EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS

EPHESIANS 1: 7 - 12

111 EPHESIANS 3: 3, 4, 9

EPHESIANS 6: 19

COLOSSIANS 1: 26, 27

112 COLOSSIANS 2: 2

COLOSSIANS 4: 3

1 TIMOTHY 3: 14-16

113 REVELATION 10: 7

The Humiliation of Christ

Judges

Judges 10

Judges 13

Judges 17, 18

Ruth

Notice of Lange's "Life of Christ "

Prophetic Map

1 Samuel

1 Samuel 2

1 Samuel 6

1 Samuel 7

1 Samuel 9

1 Samuel 10

1 Samuel 13

1 Samuel 21

1 Samuel 23

2 Samuel

2 Samuel 7

2 Samuel 21

2 Samuel 22

2 Samuel 23

The Last Days

______

The New Songs

A Summary of Psalms

The Proverbs

Proverbs 1

Proverbs 2

Proverbs 3

Proverbs 4

Proverbs 5

Proverbs 8

Proverbs 9

Proverbs 18

Proverbs 21

Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes3

Ecclesiastes7

The Song of Solomon

Canticles 1

Canticles 2

Canticles 3

Canticles 5

Canticles 6

Canticles 7

The Books of Moses

Fragments

_______

________

________

_______

________

Fragments

________

________

________

________

_______

_________

________

_________

_________

________

________

________

__________

________

Prophecy

Isaiah

Edom

Notes on Isaiah

Isaiah 1

Isaiah 2

Isaiah 5

Isaiah 7

Isaiah 8

Isaiah 10

Isaiah 11

Isaiah 14

Isaiah 17

Isaiah 18

Isaiah 19

Isaiah 21

Isaiah 22

Isaiah 23

Isaiah 24

Isaiah 25

Isaiah 26

Isaiah 27

Isaiah 28, 29

Isaiah 30

Isaiah 33 - 35

Isaiah 40

Isaiah 41

Isaiah 43

Isaiah 44

Isaiah 46

Isaiah 48

Isaiah 49

Isaiah 52

Isaiah 53

Isaiah 54

Isaiah 55

Isaiah 56

Isaiah 58

Isaiah 62

Isaiah 64

The Assyrian

________

_________

Born of God

A New State

Fragments

_______

_______

________

________

________

________

Further Note on Isaiah

The Father's Name

The Throne of Grace

Jeremiah

Jeremiah 23

Jeremiah 25

Jeremiah 31

Jeremiah 36

Jeremiah 50

Jeremiah 51

Remarks on the "Antiquity of Man"

Lamentations

Lamentations 2

Ezekiel

Ezekiel 10

CHAPTER 16

Ezekiel 18

Ezekiel 22

Ezekiel 28

Ezekiel 31

Ezekiel 34

Ezekiel 35

Ezekiel 37

Ezekiel 40

Ezekiel 43

Ezekiel 45

Appearing, Manifestation, and Presence

The Shaking of the Heavens

_____

_______

Morality

Daniel

Daniel 1

Daniel 2

Daniel 3

Daniel 4

Daniel 5

Daniel 7

Daniel 8

Daniel 9

Daniel 10

Hosea

Hosea 10

Hosea 14

Joel

Joel 1

Amos

Amos 4

Micah

Micah 5

Micah 7

Nahum

Nahum 1

Nahum 2

Habakkuk

Habakkuk 1

Habakkuk 3

Zephaniah

Zephaniah 3

Zechariah

Zechariah 2

Zechariah 4

Zechariah 7

Zechariah 9

Zechariah 12

Zechariah 13

Zechariah 14

Malachi

Malachi 3

Gethsemane and the Cross

Love and Light

The Gospels

Fragments

_______

______

______

________

________

_______

________

________

_______

______

______

________

_______

________

_______

Review of Aryan Mythology

VOLUME 2

1 Peter, Ephesians, Colossians

Remarks on "The Origin of Religious Belief"

Time

Remarks on "The Doctrine of Inspiration"

______

_______

The Titles in the Epistles

Notes on Matthew

Matthew 1

Matthew 2

Matthew 4

Matthew 5

Matthew 6

Matthew 7

Matthew 8

Matthew 9

Matthew 10

Matthew 11

Matthew 13

Matthew 14

Matthew 15

Matthew 16

Matthew 17

Matthew 18

Matthew 20

Matthew 22

Matthew 23

Matthew 24

Matthew 26

Matthew 27

Matthew 28

The Prayers in Ephesians 1 and 3

[END OF VOLUME 4]

Review of "The Revelation of Law in Scripture"

Review of "The Revelation of Law in Scripture"

The Sermon on the Mount and the Kingdom

The Spirit's Work

Fragments

________

_______

_______

__________

________

_______

_______

________

The Soul

Sacraments

_______

Remarks on an "Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent"

Corinthians and Philippians

Matthew

Matthew 2

Matthew 6

Matthew 7

Matthew 8

Matthew 9

Matthew 10

Matthew 11

Matthew 12

Matthew 13

Matthew

Matthew 17

Matthew 18

Matthew 19

Matthew 22

Matthew 24

Matthew 25

______

_______

Thoughts on the Gospel, and Epistles of John

Mark

Mark 2

Mark 4

Mark

Mark 6

22: 35, 36.

Mark 7

Mark 9

END OF VOLUME 5

Mark

Mark 12

Mark 16

Remarks on the First Epistle of John

Man

Notes and Comments Vol. 6, Final Section.

_______

Summary of Luke

_________

_________

Comparison of Luke and Matthew

_________

__________

The Lord's Relations

MARY

JAMES

The Cry of Christ

Thoughts on Hebrews

________

The Book of Enoch

NOTE THE FOLLOWING PASSAGES:

END OF VOLUME 6

JND - Notes and Comments

J. N. Darby

This document may be found online at www.stempublishing.com

You are welcome to freely access and use this material for personal study or sending to other Bible students, compiling extracts for notes etc, but please do not republish without permission.

With the prayerful desire that the Lord Jesus Christ will use this God-given ministry in this form for His glory and the blessing of many in these last days before His coming. © Les Hodgett (contact@stempublishing.com) (2011)

Luke

J. N. Darby.

<46004E> 66

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Luke 1

The character of Son of God as Man, as we in the new Man may be, is especially the subject of the revelation of Christ in this Gospel; first among Jews, but then brought out into its full character.

The Gentile character and style of this Gospel is manifest from the outset, but conversant with Jewish things; verse 5, et seq, is thus Jewish in character, which continues, at any rate, to the end of chapter 3: 20.

We have already remarked the general scope of Luke's amongst the Gospels. I would remark also that this Gospel affords abundant information by the way in which the Spirit of our God has brought things together in it; thereby giving us opportunity of observing the true intent and purpose of this introduction, and being modelled not so much according to the order of time, when that was not of their substance, but according to the mind of the spiritual instruction they were meant to convey; thus affording its own commentary, and throwing infinite light, to those who seek it in simplicity, of the judgment of Christ on the workings of the human heart, and what the true way of one walking in His Spirit is. It is a sort of moral commentary on the circumstances related by the method of their juxtaposition.

Mary first has the promises revealed to her, i.e., their accomplishment. But as that is in Jesus, her question brings out more than that - the divine fact of the incarnation, and Son of God in manhood here. Mary has a more blessed position and tone than Zacharias. He fully speaks by the Holy Ghost of the accomplishment of promise, and all of course is true and blessed, and so they would be before God in righteousness - Mary, only of mercy, God's present favour, herself having the sense of grace. It is not said that she was filled with the Holy Ghost and prophesied; she spake from the fulness of grace in her heart, that by the Holy Ghost surely, but it was grace and not gift. It is what God is, and His power, and goes forth indeed to Israel, but her own heart is with God. One is blessed in the Lord God of Israel - quite right too, inspired; but Mary is: "My soul doth magnify the Lord." Note, too, as to Zacharias, how what objectively received is all delight, and ought to be, is in application a test and sorrow. Though John has celebrated, truly mourned, and they would not lament, truth that delights the Church, as Christ's coming, tests the soul when applied, for His coming takes away from and judges all that is on earth.

67 Note again in the angels, with the shepherds - first promises, read "the" people; but verse 14 necessarily comes out. Mary again is pondering things in her heart; so chapter 2: 51. How all is in littleness, and a hidden people, but God come in. It is all behind the passing greatness of the world which only accomplishes it. For the beast shows his universal power to bring Jesus' birth to Bethlehem, but all are small and insignificant ones - Jesus, Mary, the shepherds. But we do not find God anywhere so near in all the history of Israel as in this most dark time of the people. Blessed truth! Nowhere such intimate communications of His grace - only it was in a hidden, but deeper and truer way, i.e., more of personal heart in it.

Simeon and Anna were old ones, passing away when the Christ comes in; the others vessels, nothing in themselves as even to bring in power, then passing away when He is brought in. Again, in Simeon we see that the light to reveal the Gentiles, and the glory of Israel, objectively looked at, is, in application, a sword through the soul. The revelation of God in Christ is necessarily a test to those who receive it, and of all in them, specially the hope of His coming to take them up by power. Simeon rests in what Christ is, Anna tells of Him to others.

It appears to me that, although their dependence upon the Spirit might have been perfect, yet in detail the evangelists wrote under a perfect direction of the Holy Spirit in the minutest details of meaning and purpose, though it might have operated, in a certain sense, imperceptibly to themselves, so as to leave them to, or determine them by actuating their ordinary judgment and feelings, as far as consistent with His holiness. And this seems to me the case with all the evangelists, and this seems to leave us the highest possible wisdom and testimony of the Spirit.

- 2. "They delivered them to us." It is generally considered that this makes Luke draw his information from others who were eye-witnesses. I do not see that this is proved by this. "To us" is quite distinct from "to me also," and corresponds with "among us." As many had taken in hand to set in order the account of what was surely believed amongst them according to the relation of them to them by those who were eye-witnesses, etc., it seemed to him too, and then he states his qualification. Luke is included in "to us," as a Christian, not specified as a writer; on the contrary, he also thought fit to do what others had done, according to the relation of eye-witnesses amongst the believers.

68  - 3. Compare 2 Timothy 3: 10. "Thoroughly acquainted," "followed up," the same word as here translated "fully acquainted."

The term kathexes (in order) is used only and frequently in Luke; it signifies properly, 'in a regular series, one after another,' and sometimes simply 'following,' or 'next in order.' Liddell and Scott say that the more usual word is ephexes (in order [one] on the next) and on that word they remark it is less usually employed of time than of regular order of arrangement. On the whole, I see no sign whatever that Luke uses it for chronological order, nor has the word in itself that meaning, save as chronological order is one sort of order. The passages in Luke are, this verse; chapter 8: 1; Acts 3: 24; chapter 11: 4; and chapter 18: 23. Luke alone, as may be seen in the dictionary, uses hexes (next), see chapter 7: 11 (morrow); chapter 9: 37; Acts 21: 1 (next day); chapter 25: 17, the same; so chapter 27: 18.

- 4. The general value of the Scriptures - by them we know the certainty of what we have been taught perhaps by other means.

Note the order and character of the Spirit's prophetic or other testimony in the beginning of Luke, which seems to me very remarkable. Before the Spirit enters on the revelation of Messiah, properly speaking, as born and taking the place of the second Adam - first, the angel's testimony to the child John (for all is Jewish in the part I refer to) he is presented in a Nazaritish character according to the spirit of Elias, full of the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb, not a prophet called, and used as a vessel at a given time, but separated to God, a Nazarite from the womb. He was to turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. Next, we have the Son of the Highest to whom the Lord God shall give the throne of His father David, born of the favoured one - He was to be as Man the Son of God withal. Elizabeth, as full of the Holy Ghost, answers to his mission who was in her womb, and bears testimony to Another. She owns the Lord in Mary's Child, and wonders His mother should come to her. Mary takes the great ground of grace to the lowly one in her own person, but as accomplishing of the mercy promised to Abraham, the unconditional promise in the help afforded to Israel.

69  - 5. How much more personal, and how much more personal communication with beings of another world all this is! This gives it a peculiar charm. It is the lovely closing scene of the Remnant of Israel. Christ must now gather round Himself, whatever His position.

- 6. The light of the promises under the law was the instrument of the Spirit in forming the faith of men, and their obedience of faith was ordered by the law; and, according to this light, there were saints and holy men of old, and such manifestation of God to the world as gave occasion to those, who by nature were strangers to the covenant, to acknowledge and serve the one true God. To them were these "glad tidings" as well as to us - persons who feared God, and wrought righteousness, and were accepted of Him, whom the Lord beheld with His countenance, and to whom the Gospel of salvation came as a blessing on their faithfulness to grace received in that system which yet made nothing perfect, and could not especially make the comers thereto perfect as concerning their conscience. We may compare Paul in Philippians 3. It shows that it was not a righteousness of debt, of acceptance in the sight of God, but that which is contrary to hypocrisy - righteousness in his walk in life in sincerity of purpose before God, integrity of conscience as Paul: "I know nothing by myself," "yet," he adds, "am I not hereby justified." But this is by faith, through grace, in a previous revelation, rather by faith in that promised then, now revealed.

- 9, 10. Is there not something significant in the place where this communication to Zacharias was made? He stood as the priestly remnant, but fruitless according to Jewish hopes, in the holy place; it was not like a prophecy put forth by an inspired man to the world. "Entering into the temple of the Lord," i.e., the holy place, answering to "the house," in Solomon's building or temple proper, which in other places is material; the rest, where the altar of burnt sacrifice even was, is called "without." The expression, particularly taking the circumstances into account, is distinct and illustrative.

- 13. This, we may suppose, was a long entertained supplication; but the Lord had a better purpose for Zacharias than his own, though it was indeed an answer to it.

70  - 14. Sometimes we are apt to think there are none, but there are many who rejoice to be changed, and hear of the new kingdom, though it be humbling, and something bitter in the way; and there is joy and gladness in this.

- 15. Some have said that "even" (eti) should be joined to "He shall drink no wine nor strong drink"; but this is simple nonsense, and merely unbelief in what is said. Tou kuriou (of the Lord) might be, but tou (of the) is better away; the whole being characteristic of John.

- 16. Note here again, not merely "Shall many rejoice," which some may be willing to do for a season, who are not turned, but many are actually turned; compare, too, Jeremiah 4: I. Note also genuine conversion may be by preaching repentance, and the declaration of the kingdom prior to the Gospel, preparatory to the preaching of the Gospel; and, though the Gospel be the more powerful instrument generally, where the one the other will be received.

- 17. "And he shall go before him." It seems, though I am not fully prepared to exhibit the meaning, to have a very peculiar force, and, I think, declares the moral character of John's mission. It was not merely a preparatory declaration, though it was such, but it was one which had much of the manifestation of the presence of the Lord. It was not merely that the King was coming, but here is the King. He was identified with the presence of the King, and accordingly his ministry partook, not as regards the world, but as regards personal righteousness, fully of the truth and character of the Lord's Kingdom. He is the God that maketh men to be of one mind in an house; the glory of Christ might raise opposition in the world, but "the fruit of righteousness is peace," and the conversion of heart is the power of John's ministry. The immediate object of this is doubtless personal conversion, but it is a principle of universal truth and operation, because conversion restores all to subjection to God, and sets all the dispositions of the heart in order - so restores all things, whether as to the one God over all, or our conversation one with another in our respective relations prepared for the Lord, i.e., for the manifestation of His glory. Such was the conception, so to speak, of the Lord's first coming; we are told its suspension in Romans 11. Such will be the preparation and power of His second coming. It was only to His people that He showed Himself in power, and it is only by the Spirit any now call Jesus Lord; then He will appear as Lord. Hence too, I think, we must conclude definitely that they err who confine conversion or repentance to the manifestation of the Gospel. I believe, indeed, that there is no repentance without hope and a drawing of divine favour, but this is short of receiving the reconciliation, or atonement; but we may remark much more decidedly than above, that where it is genuine it is ever in truth connected necessarily with the Gospel, and the difference flows from the difference of dispensation in its testimony, the one being ancillary to the other, and of its genuineness, further, this reception of Christ is the only definite test - the publicans and sinners believed, "being baptised with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptised of him," though they were "willing for a season to rejoice in his light" - and, indeed, its nature, when considered this is the necessary consequence. The Spirit of God works upon the judgment and purpose of the mind, though there are many convictions apparently similar, at least to persons not experienced in spiritual things, which may lead to nothing - a respect to the general privileges of the kingdom without any conversion of mind to conformity to its nature. We learn also what conversion is - a turning us from our own will of disobedience to the mind and purpose of the righteous.

71 As to the sentence itself, further we may remark that the Septuagint translation of Malachi particularly bears out the view taken above. The language of Luke seems rather to imply the turning the hearts of those who rested in the old ways, and were loth to give them up, to the new ways into which the children had freely received as not prejudiced by their own long-treasured, and self-appropriating systems. "Except ye be converted, and become as little children," says the Lord, "ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven," and it is peculiarly and justly expressed by converting the old men to the children, while it was natural that the children should derive their knowledge and judgment from the matured wisdom of their fathers, not so now - it was a new call of God who was about to make all things new, and knowledge after the flesh was contrary to this; the child, therefore, was him of whom it could be said: "Of such." The latter portion of the verse of Malachi is therefore not introduced, as not bearing upon the present revelation by the angel. The word "to" sufficiently represents the text, but acquaintance, I think, with the usage of Scripture will give us very appropriate force in epi (to). The Septuagint (Malachi 4: 6), for "turning," has the same word translated "restore" all things, and has patros pros huion (of the father to the son) and anthropou pros ton plesion autou (of man to his neighbour); here the word is, 'to turn' in the way of conversion, "return to the Lord," "when thou art converted," and the like. Also, "to the wisdom" (en phronesei, to the thoughts) is as much as "by" as "to," though the sense is pretty adequate. It seems to give the character of the change, not its object or instrument. On the whole I still seek for information as to the force of this passage.

72 It seems to me contrast with John Baptist's ministry and Elias', as in its full sense, as in the latter day; compare the passages. The land was smitten now.

It seems clearly properly Jewish in application, as far as it goes. But while it takes up the promise as in grace, takes it up only in grace as in Abraham; compare Genesis 18: 19; Deuteronomy 4: 9, 10 and 6: 7; Psalm 78: 5, 6. But while it thus, from the circumstances of its dispensation, takes up what may be called Jewish grace, yet it adds what leaves room for a wider scene - "the disobedient to the wisdom of the just," applied to the ordinary condition of the Jew. But disobedience could be found elsewhere, though not so formally; but this holds the place of the expression in Malachi, "the children to the fathers" - this was a blessing connected with their holding the land, and their days being long in it in blessing - "the first commandment with promise," and that of continuance in the land. For this we have, substituted here by the Holy Ghost, a moral benefit and blessing; en phronesei dikaion (to the thoughts of the just) is the instrument and character of the conversion of the disobedient.

- 18. Zacharias' mind was fixed on his having a son, not exactly on the Lord's dealings; herein is much symptom of want of faith. Note, too, what he asked for was given him, though so as to mark and reprove the unbelief of the question. The Lord often makes the want of faith, and even the evil of individuals instrumental to our instruction, though we know not what blessing might have followed on the other.

73  - 19. Here "of God" (theou) has the article (tou, of the) properly. It was the actual place of Gabriel, not the character of His mission.

"To bring glad tidings" (euangelisasthai) does not scripturally mean the matter of the Gospel, but its character; so in Hebrews 4: 2, a sentence, I think, often used to an extent which is not borne out by its language - it is "to us as well as to them," not "to them as well as to us," and in that is the force of his argument.

- 20. This savours strongly of a sentence on the Jewish people, even on the Remnant in that character; "in their time," "in their own season." John did not, as to dispensation, go at all out of Jewish position"; he, i.e., his office assumed the restorableness of the Jewish system - reputing its outward Pharisaism as righteousness, but there was a hint in it they were to be restored. So Elias in Malachi, and there, as what it is more definitely in the latter day, it is "Remember ye the law." It is not resurrection and a heavenly life, but repentance and a blessing. The birth of Christ stood on its own ground though He might come to the Jews.

Gabriel was one so employed in service in Daniel - a blessed service, yet now of toil. How deep and wonderful the occupation of these heavenly beings! What objects in service they were made privy to! But we as heirs of salvation! Service in righteousness has however its own proper joy.

A great deal of this has aspect to the latter days, but covertly, because in divine knowledge grace was to have another scope in heavenly things first. Note, as to this, it was Herod's time (Herod was an Edomite).

- 24. Elizabeth "hid herself." All this is characteristic of the circumstances in which she was placed. It was to take away her shame, and yet she was ashamed. But the Lord had so dealt with her, yet it was in circumstances calculated to humble where His hand alone could remedy.

- 27. Joseph was of the house of David.

- 28. This salutation seems to be peculiarly destructive of the honours paid by many to the Virgin Mary; so verse 30.

- 32. This character and title of Christ was Jewish clearly; even "Son of the Highest" is especially so.

- 33. This is plainer looked at in its accomplishment in a time yet future.

- 34. "How shall this be," admits the fact, and simply and humbly enquires the manner. This was not, as Zacharias, seeking sign by which he might believe the truth of the message, but a humble enquiry as to the Lord's ways, and so accordingly was the answer, exhibiting the liberty of heart too which simplicity gives. And it was made the instrument of our instruction in the mystery of the Incarnation. Note, Luke gives a fuller account of all this, or the Spirit by him, as being that in which the world was concerned. Although it was not to be passed over that the throne of David was His, it was more fully to be declared how He was, even in His conception into the world, the Son of God. Although other grounds of claim to that title might be revealed, yet that, in His entrance into the world, He should appear such as He was in truth, other grounds having aspect to other necessities of human infirmity.

74  - 35. This is still all Jewish, not the Christian aspect of the title "Son of God."

- 37. "Her that was called barren"; note this.

- 38. See verse 45.

- 42. The reality of these things is deeply to be weighed. I look upon Elizabeth as the mother, not of the Remnant returned with Zerubbabel from Babylon, but as the prophetic mother of Israel, as the Priest's wife. She brought the prophet who summons to blessing on the principle of priest and prophet of present restoration and repentant return in blessing to God. Mary is the mother of the mighty Man from God, which had its source in blessing to, but was not the power of the return of Israel; compare the case of Naomi and Ruth, not the same, for they merge in one, but closely connected with this subject. Elizabeth was not a virgin Remnant as Mary - a "favoured one" (kecharitomene) taken out by anticipation, as it were, from the hands of her husband - but was barren, though to rejoice after her long and unfruitful sorrow. Elizabeth believed nothing; it came by purpose, but in the ordinary channel, and that in spite of much unbelief. Here (v. 45) it is: "Blessed is she that has believed, for there shall be a fulfilment of the things spoken to her from the Lord." Elizabeth therefore again prophesies and blesses here, and she rejoices as one delivered, and in salvation, and the wonderful dealings of the Lord with her, Mary. The thanksgiving therefore of Mary is all of things accomplished and done. It is the proper celebration of Israel's joy in the gift of Christ, the Blessed One, as a fresh gift. She had known herself lowly (not righteous) and received it in unexpected grace, not in reply to long-sought blessing after a Jewish form. Still, as the exhibition of faithful mercy, mercy which endured for ever, but of mercy, not under law, as Zacharias and Elizabeth, but of promises to Abraham, it is power acting in grace to Israel, raising the lowly.

75  - 51-53. This is strongly characterised with the matter and truths exhibited in the Word as the Object of faith, and connects itself with the prophetic Word. It is anticipative, I conceive, of the deliverance of Israel out of the low estate in which he was under the proud; compare verse 54, which applies it, as often in prophecy. It was the old looked-for mercy she now thought come - "We thought that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel"; so Acts 1: 6, 7, which is the answer. The counsels of God with their wonderful order had no place as to the simple truth which her faith by the Spirit laid hold upon, that it was He who should redeem Israel.

- 55. "To Abraham," certainly seems to hang upon "to remember mercy," which the "for ever" appears to confirm, though the whole sentence hangs together in unity of idea, for His mercy was much in the promise.

- 63. Note, the immediate occasion of his recovering his speech was the exercise of his faith and obedience, and acting upon this faith in the divine appointment and message of goodness, of the possibility of whose accomplishment he had before doubted. It was also highly calculated (though we should bear in mind the remark in verse 18) to promote the purpose for which John was sent, and to designate him as one in whom God had a special public purpose.

- 65. This feeling of fear is worthy of great observation; we do not now refer to its source, but as the way in which any signal interventions of God affect the mind until it be brought to see in peace His counsels and way in them. Though perhaps they are indeed mercy, it is the ignorance of unbelief which toes not yet know God as a Friend; see 1 Thessalonians 5, and so in other portions of those two Epistles. He meets it in chapter 5: 9, by showing that it was the act of God's love towards them, and how they should feel about it. But if we do not see revealed love in it, we, as we are, must be troubled at any coming in of God, as it were. "And in the whole hill country." This is very like the truth - nothing forced.

76  - 68, et seq. "Blessed be the Lord" (Jehovah) "the God of Israel."

The character of the Song is entirely and peculiarly Jewish. It displays, with wonderful enlargement and accuracy the promised mercies, and celebrates their fulfilment. This, says he (rather the Spirit testifies by him), is the horn of salvation in the house of David, the answer of all the hopes raised by the declarations of the prophets - the salvation, the looked-for "deliverance from enemies" and "those that hate us." The performance of the "mercy spoken of to the fathers" in God's mindfulness of "His holy covenant," and "the oath to Abraham our Father, to give us," I conceive expresses the general result as looked for in a pious mind. This is the salvation. Then, as to John himself, a separate subject - "And thou, child," etc., this is what is testified about him. The result in office, "To give the knowledge" of this in its true character, and as ministering to Him that should come after.

- 72. It is not merely mercy promised to, but mercy made their portion, but not fulfilled to them.

There is nothing in this Song, nor in that of Mary (if inspired) which leads us out of the ground of the hope of the Jews; on the contrary, it is manifest that thus far we are presented with the faith of these holy persons in Jesus (for upon Him mainly, after all, is the mind of Zacharias set, though not before him) as the dayspring that was arisen upon the ancient people and their depressed hopes as the promised deliverance of their God. So even the angel (as to John Baptist), "Many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God." In a word, the Spirit of God as yet (before the birth of Jesus, observe), leads the mind of the evangelist to exhibit the Saviour in His primary character as to dispensation and personal mission, according to the hope of the promises made to the fathers, and this by the faith of those who were looking to them as Jews, and to whom Jesus was not yet presented in the flesh, and therefore not the subject of the Spirit's direct testimony as come for a Ransom for all, "The testimony [to be rendered] in its own times," but "to his people," all through.

It is to be much noticed how mercy is laid as the ground of Israel here. We, acquainted with the Psalms, will have been familiar with it; so Paul leaves them on this, "In order that they also may be objects of mercy." All this is the true and full ground of Israel's restoration in the latter day, and casts great light on it. It is altogether Abraham, not Sinai nor even Jacob nor Israel, but a present fulfilment of promise and covenant to Abraham by mercy, and that mercy from on high.

77  - 77. Note this verse, and compare Isaiah 53, which, I think, has primary reference to this point, i.e., the taking away the iniquities of the Jews, by which they were hindered from the glory of the kingdom. And so, when they look on Him whom they have pierced, will it be fulfilled in its direct and glorious meaning, for they above all were of the travail of His soul. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem," etc. "He came unto his own," etc. So Peter in his first address. It does indeed fully, in offering of atonement apply to the Gentile, as Paul was commissioned specially to declare, i.e., the power of it, but in specialty of promise it belonged to the Jew, whose (see Romans) "the promises" were, and the "oracles of God," and "of whom, as concerning the flesh; Christ came," as here particularly set forth. Nor is this ever departed from in Scripture; "It was necessary that the Word of God should have been first preached unto you, but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so," etc., which was his special office; so here, where the general truth of Christ's mission, and the principles of divine truth exhibited in Christ, and to the Gentiles - in a word, what we are wont to call the Gospel - was to be set forth for the Church, as applicable to men, the larger scope of these promises, "a light to lighten the Gentiles, the glory of God's people Israel" was not forgotten. But this gospel, specially written to exhibit Him as a light to the Gentiles peculiarly, begins with setting Him forth as the fulfilment to the Jewish Remnant of their faith and hopes, and with this view, as this song of Zacharias directly testifies, is so distinct an account given of the birth of John the forerunner of the Messiah, and so expected among them. We may remark even John's words, when declaring our Lord's mission in the flesh, whose gospel rises peculiarly into the abstract consideration of the Person of Christ: "He was in the world," etc. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not."

- 79. He treads on the verge of general evangelism yet keeps strictly within it; see note previously. Here the prophetic and mere Jewish character closes, and Christ, though born among the Jews, at once introduces joy from heaven on the earth; this does not come forth till verses 13, 14 of chapter 2.

78 This portion is then justly comprised in this preliminary chapter, for such it is according to the mind of the Spirit.

Luke  2

- 2. I am inclined to construe it: "The taxing itself" (haute) "first took place"; but at any rate I do not see that it is Greek for "This first taxing," it would certainly be he prote. How this accords with history, I do not bear in mind, nor do I determine the force of prote egeneto (first took place). It might perhaps be this taxing was the first in Cyrenius' government, but the natural construing of the Greek is the first above. The verb egeneto (took place) may perhaps destroy the article, but it must, I think, have it if construed with apographe (taxing). I should not wonder if it were a marginal note.

If we read the phrase thus: "The taxing itself first took place when Cyrenius had the government of Syria" (haute he apographe prote egeneto hegemoneuontos tes Surias Kureniou), it cannot be: 'This first census,' for clearly it would be he prote apographe or he apographe he prote. It cannot be 'of Cyrenius, governor,' not because the participle does not bear it - Lardner has given clear cases of such use - but because, as others have observed, there ought to be tou before hegemoneuontos. As it stands, it must be read: "This census first took effect when Cyrenius was governor," or "The census itself first was made when," etc., which I should certainly rather be disposed to believe the mind of the writer, the census not having been given effect to at the time Mary and Joseph went up. They went "to be registered," but it does not appear they ever were. Perhaps they took the oath to be well-disposed to Augustus and the interest of Herod, mentioned in Josephus, and nothing more was done, i.e., not only no tax levied, but the regular census not taken, for Luke does not say it was. The decree went forth, and they went to their cities, but it is very possible and probable it was interrupted in its execution in Herod's territories.

It is to be noted that Cod: Vat: 1209, as also one or two others, reads haute apographe prote egeneto (the taxing itself first took place). Without egeneto (took place) this would be: 'This was the first taxing'; with egeneto, it is hardly genuine, but it would be: 'This first taxing was while,' etc. But I do not see that we should receive this against other testimony which admits the he (the). As to oikoumenen (the habitable world) I see no proof at all it is ever used for Palestine, in spite of learned men; they only give wrong interpretations of Luke. I believe it to be the Roman world. Perhaps the Septuagint has so used it, Isaiah 10: 23, and chap. 24: 1; but in general it is the whole world there, not only when it is used for tevel (the fruitful, habitable earth) but also when it is used for eretz (the earth, contrasted with the heavens).

79  - 6. This is not in Matthew.

- 7. In this verse is complete Jewish rejection. Here too note chapter 2: 13. Such was the Saviour's place in the world; see verse 12, "This is the sign."

- 8. "Keeping watch by night"; night watchers.

- 9. "Was there by them" (epeste); it is always a present thing as a circumstance to us. "Came upon them," is well; compare 2 Thessalonians 2: 2, "Is present."

- 10. "To all the people." Is not this the Jewish people? There cannot be a doubt of it. "I am not sent," said the Lord Himself, "but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel": compare here Matthew 11, from verse 20 and onwards, and indeed from verse 16 with Isaiah 49: 4-6.

The salutation is heavenly, and then afterwards (vv. 25, 38), a Jewish Remnant own Him for the fall and rising in Isaiah 8, and "to them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem." In Matthew, Gentiles come to own the King of the Jews. But the secret of their whole condition is shown. "The king" (for man had set one up) "and all Jerusalem with him." Moreover it was news, by the Gentiles to the Jews, that a Son was born to them.

- 11. This was wonderful news: "A Saviour who is Christ the Lord."

- 14. "Good pleasure in man" is stronger than "Good will towards men"; it is "good pleasure" in them - the interest of His affection was placed there. It is the same word as "In whom I am well pleased" applied to Christ. It is a very important verse. This was proper heavenly joy. It was not the announcement that had been made, but true joy announces often a great deal. This was angelic joy, goodwill with men, or to men, or in men; peace on the earth, and above; glory to God in the highest place of His essential blessedness. They had no sorrow that grace flowed forth. It was new to them. The Lord alone shall be exalted in that day, and this, and peace and good pleasure necessarily go together. There can be no rest to the believer's soul till indeed it be so. Note eudokia is not merely purpose but "goodwill," "pleasure," "delight," as in chapter 3: 22, "I have found my delight."

80 This seems to go into the general power of Christ's mission. It was a song which became angels deeply interested in the glory of God, the reconciliation, and peace of the earth, for the fulness of the restitution of all things depended on it, and the good pleasure of God fully restored to men. Perhaps "peace on earth" may rather mean what properly belongs to itself in itself, as "Glory in the highest" does to God, as it is said: 'Peace shall flourish out of the earth'; the effect of righteousness is peace, so too James. "Good pleasure in man," the words are few, but they evidently contain a distinct statement of all this truth contained in the counsel of God in its several parts, and are a distinct heavenly enunciation of it in its full results and purpose. The message of the single angel was the special grace; the heavenly choir rejoice in, and celebrate the universal purpose. The order and enunciation of this to us by the Spirit is matter of much instruction. Still we find, while the excellency and fulness of the universal purpose, as that in which heaven's joy and universal song was engaged, is fully exhibited, the faithfulness to His despised and disobedient people holds its constant and primary place, and, as the exhibition of it was preliminary to the general setting Him forth to the Gentile world in the gospel, so, in this heavenly announcement and song at His birth, the same order is preserved. Luke seems to have been directed as evangelist of the Gentiles, and with whom therefore the lines of dispensation, as with Paul, were to be distinctly kept, lest they should be high-minded and wise in their own conceits, and count Jews but as a dry tree, as bearing what was indeed the root, to very clear record of what should stand forth in full and unsuspected weight, in the others not so necessary. So I read: "Just and Justifier," i.e., faithful to His promise, and yet the Justifier of everyone that believed, "the Jew first, and also the Greek," which need not here be further gone into.

These words indeed contain the expression of the perfected work, and we are to look for this, not in the hindrance of human unbelief, but evidently in the final super-eminence after victory over evil. The expression, "good pleasure in men," is very full of peace and glory, for once indeed, "It repented the Lord that he had made him, and it grieved him at his heart." And after indeed He placed His name in a too unworthy people of His holiness, whether of the Jew or of the Gentile, yet there, while they would suffer Him would He dwell, for He had a delight therein. But now all the evil which made a Remnant necessary is passed away, and God's delight has free scope amongst men. "The tabernacle," says the voice, "of God is with men . . . and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them," and then be "their God." But this is only the prophetic announcement of the act which should accomplish, for own encouragement, what is here displayed in forethought, in holy exercise and display. These things are ever true in Christ, but now hindered, obstructed, opposed, so as indeed He sendeth not "peace on the earth but a sword"; nevertheless they are true, in the power of grace and the energy of hope, to the believer, and all that is now overcome by them will be so put away as to give the perfect liberty of holiness and peace. It is beyond perfect reconciliation.

81 These sentences cannot be too much weighed, as the heavenly statement of what is in Christ in power and prophetically, and when the prophetic word shall have passed away. We may weigh too, as to its prophetic import, the force of that expression: "Think ye that I have come to give peace in the earth? I tell you nay, but rather division," or as otherwhere, "not peace but a sword." We look then surely to some other revelation of Christ yet in the earth, and by Him, yet not of His first coming, for that brought division, yet flowing from it, for His birth was celebrated as the dayspring of it. The end, as to this, of His coming was peace; the fruit of His first coming was, by virtue of it, division. But this rests only in dispensation, and, though we may be exercised in that, we cannot dwell too much on the simple weight of these words which are beyond the fruit of all dispensation, and imbibe the Spirit of them, that we may be ourselves of that day, when the restitution of all things shall be; yea, of that day now, in the spirit of our minds, already restored to God. We shall find doubtless, practically, its present place on earth, but blessed are we if we find it. We may measure our portion in eternity by our apprehension of these words. Oh! who can tell what the praising presence of God will be? We may say: "It is good for us to be here." Why, this is already effected! If peace were not wrought, why should the angels of God be celebrating it here on earth? So here we are with angels celebrating peace and reconciliation We say: "What hath God wrought?" O wondrous and surpassing love! Enlarging itself on every side, beyond our thought, yet ever carrying it on through infinitude, so that we can only be silent before it!

82 The first angel clearly announced the Jewish blessing, and humiliation of Jesus. The moment this was given as the sign, heaven takes it up. Here was "A Saviour, Christ the Lord, in David's city," and the sign was a Babe in a manger - no room for Him in the inn. This may seem a strange association, but if this were the order, then infinite grace, heaven, and heavenly glory at once came in, if the Saviour, Christ the Lord, was in a manger, in the city of David. It at once forced out the heavenly praise. This great, wide principle of blessing, of which indeed the gospel is the witness, began with heaven. From this out, we shall see therefore Gentiles and man introduced. The grace which brought Him down was "Glory to God in the highest" - not merely glory to Him in the temple, or any earthly people in their righteousness. This grace of His coming in this character, and His personal presence in grace, was peace on earth; and "Good pleasure," not merely in Jews or any special ones, but "in men." When Jesus comes in as King, then it is from earth by the disciples: "Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest"; for then it was not the simple flowing down of grace accomplishing blessing, but the results of full victory. Heaven was at peace - the result of this great controversy with evil, and glory effectually resulting (as wrought and obtained) in the highest. It was not mere character and grace. But the commencement in heaven, and the result consequently taking in the Gentiles is specially to be noted. "Good pleasure in men" is very blessed and distinct. If there was peace on earth, the Prince of peace must necessarily reign in His own city of choice - Jerusalem, the vision of peace. But here it is taken up in its heavenly character, not in its manner of accomplishment. We may remark, from being thus abstract about objects, affirmations of the effects of a fact; there is no article in the whole sentence. This coming of Christ is, etc. - this is its meaning. But this was but a gleam; and when the angels went from them into heaven after this first intercourse with men upon the yet unrejected though humbled Saviour, the men, the shepherds, went to see it in its way of accomplishment here below, and to own Him who was the Object and power of it. There it was Mary and Joseph and the Infant, and this we have to follow now.

83  - 15. We may remark the contrast of "the angels" and "the men, the shepherds," as presenting the reality of the scene.

I think too we ought to remark the coming in of the angels; first, as bringing in the First-begotten into the world; secondly, as interested in the reconciliation which, it is to be observed, is peculiarly the office of Luke's gospel. The first angel was a messenger - these celebrate the glorious consequences of the bringing in the First-begotten into the world; and as being thus brought into the world also is Luke's peculiar evangelical office, as we have observed. The whole of this is full of glory, the glorious gospel of the blessed God, whereby He reconciles "all things to himself, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens."

The shepherds' interest was in the message. We carry but little in our minds the amazing extent of evidence this people had of the glory of Jesus. The shepherds' praise was upon finding, with thankful hearts, the accomplishment of the word.

- 24. Certainly the simple poverty of the Lord is not to be forgotten, nor the calm subjection to the law by the parents.

- 25. This was the bringing out (all that could be in this gospel; compare John's testimony) of a Remnant in Israel.

The righteous and pious man, and waiting the consolation of Israel - to him by divine grace, while the common hope was the same, the present accomplishment of this hope was revealed. The Daystar was risen in his heart.

In all this the law is distinctly kept in sight - prophecy might then carry Him into a further position - but there He was as a Child under it.

- 31. "Of all the people," i.e., all the ammim, the peoples brought into association by the coming of Shiloh. The glory of Israel, to whom and of whom Christ was, as concerning the flesh, "a light for revelation of the Gentiles," had no limit on the earth. It found nothing associate, but brought them out to light on earth. This all shall be by the personal presence of Christ. This was the great purpose; the present effect of the revelation of men's hearts is in verse 34. Verses 29-32 are his thoughts before God as to His purpose and thoughts. Mary stood as His mother in nature; all that fell, even if it rose again

84  - 33. "Joseph" or "father," is in this so far immaterial, because He was legally looked at as his Heir under the law - very likely therefore "father"; compare verse 41.

There is something exquisitely beautiful and holy in this certainly. How far can we enter into this righteous man's spirit, "waiting for the consolation of Israel"? We wait in patience, according to our assurance; so he - it was revealed to him that "he should not see death before he should see the Lord's Christ." He waited in holiness, and found it in peace. Note also, his perfect satisfaction arose from the full accomplishment of his faith, and to this faith he lived, but his faith was ordered by the revealed promises of God as to its Object. The peculiar accomplishment was specially to himself. So it may be now. It was kept to himself, had no previous operation on the mass, at least as a testimony. It might influence his manner of conversation amongst them. Yet was it not without purpose; see note on chapter 1: 6. The general hope was the same; it was no hope but the common one of the Remnant.

- 34. The "rising again" is not of those who had fallen. It would suffice to say: "The fall and rising of."

How fully Luke brings forward the testimonies to the appearing of Christ, as exhibited to Jew, and indeed to Gentile, as indeed come into the world! This song of Simeon takes very high ground, and is very full of the Spirit of glory; I mean as to the office of Christ in the world. It is to be observed that he makes both one in universal salvation, prepared (ordered) before the face of all people, though the glory be of Israel as God's people. It was prepared, to wit salvation in Christ, before all people, "A light for the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory" (depending also upon eis (for) perhaps) "of thy people Israel." Christ was a Light (phos) for these two purposes. "Taking thee," or "choosing thee," or "bringing thee," "out from among the people, and the nations, to whom," i.e., to the Gentiles, "now I send thee, to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive remission of sins and inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith in me." This was the revelation of the Gentiles, their discovery in darkness by the Light come in, and admission to an inheritance among them that are sanctified, to wit, by faith in Christ. "What God has cleansed, do not thou make common." This was the revelation of the Gentiles. "Then hath God also granted to the nations repentance unto life." This was the revelation of the Gentiles; compare Isaiah 49. Such is the uniform sense of apokalupsin (revelation; in A.V., "to lighten") as far as I find it.

85 But neither parts of this song are as yet fulfilled; nay, when we compare it with Isaiah 49, we shall see, I think, that this glory must be after, and indeed yet to come. He is not as yet salvation to the ends of the earth, neither does Israel yet know, except the Remnant, as their glory; compare Paul, Romans 9-11, particularly the latter, where I would note that though "the fulness" (pleroma) of the Gentiles is spoken of as to come in before the removal of the blindness of Israel, it by no means follows, nor does it mean, that the earth shall be universally a redeemed people, but until the complete Gentile Church had been gathered. The thorough understanding of Isaiah 49 seems to be necessary for this, which see; and compare the language with this.

- 34, 35. The searching of hearts, which the proposal of Christ in His genuine character would produce, is very fully described here. I suppose "the fall" (ptosin) is consequent upon His character. They were identified with Him in His humiliation, so to lose all place and station. In the professing Church it would be to have their names cast out as vile, men separating them from their company, but so also in His glory: "The glory which thou hast given me I have given them" - glory in the mediatorial kingdom set up after His death, much more in the regeneration. Even she could not receive it without the same moral change and humiliation; she must be born again, be humbled in all her hopes, and die to all her natural, her mental thoughts about it, before she saw or had any share in the glory; yea, see her Son die. Alas! we have too much discussion, too little simple apprehension of the glory of Christ. The general character, as it must have been practically, is of Jewish hope, though there be a declaration by the angels, and the Spirit through Simeon, of the great purpose and the full operation of dispensation.

86 I am inclined to think that in these two verses, I have been unduly led by the authorised English translation, as though "rising again" and "fall," applied to the same individuals; but I take it they are spoken absolutely. It would be a savour of death unto death, and a savour of life unto life. It operates separatively, being, though in the perfect manifestation of the holiness and excellency of God, yet manifested in humiliation as to all the expectations and glory of man. It is therefore "A Stone, A tried Stone, A precious Corner-stone," "A corner-stone, elect, precious," so as that many should rise into the glory of the Kingdom by it, but for "a Stone of stumbling and Rock of offence," and for "a sign to be spoken against," so that "for" with this "that" connects.

- 35. Whatever the reading in verse 33 may be, whether "Joseph" or "father" - very probably, as corrected - the address to Mary alone in this verse is so marked, and yet with so little purpose, or apparent evidence to be drawn from it, that it is very much stronger than any change of "Joseph" or "father."

- 36. "Of the tribe of Asher." We are still quite in Jewish associations as to facts.

- 38. "She coming up" (epistasa). There is a time of patience in God's kingdom, when "the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint," and from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot there is no whole part in it, when it is the part of the Remnant to hope and patiently wait for the salvation of God; redemption is all, though faithful, they now can look for, and the coming of their God; compare Isaiah.

- 40. We still walk with Christ as in Jewish hopes, i.e., as a Man the grace or favour of God was upon Him. It is the Holy Thing, the Child born of the Virgin Mary which is spoken of, and it is in that character, in this gospel, He is spoken of as Son of God - His generation by the Holy Ghost, not His being Son with the Father before the world was. He is a Man, and in such sort spoken of; and they walk within the limits of His manhood, and therefore as a Jew, according to their place. It is: "His parents," and "According to the law," and "The custom of the feast."

87  - 43, 44. The evidence of something further begins to discover itself, and this is just the character of this gospel. In their hands it was "law" and "custom"; He speaks of and supposes they should wist He was about His Father's business.

- 48 et seq. She still said: "Thy father"; but He, as a matter of plain understanding in His soul, "My Father's," with far different purport. Still, He bows as yet, for the full time was not come. It is His mother, however, who is presented by the Holy Ghost as holding this place of intercourse with Him. She would treat Him as Joseph's son, and indeed their thoughts ran in an accustomed and habitual worldly channel; still she kept these things in her heart. But even in this claim Jesus is fully looked at as a Man, and specially presented as such, body and mind; He grew in wisdom, and stature, and in favour with God (for God took complacency in His perfection as Man), and with man, for the grace of God was on Him in all personally attractive grace, for testimony against the world was not in question yet here. Indeed these passages singularly instruct us in the consciousness of a principle of action entirely beyond ordinary claims, the most cogent, but the orderly and gracious subjection to those claims which cannot recognise that principle when it does not call out in responsibility of service to Him to whom it refers. Jesus is subject to Joseph as His father, though He had a ground of conduct altogether out of reach of this, but never as a matter of feeling, when the claim was in exercise for His service as sent and come into the world in grace. It could not be so in fact with us now. Grace will always clearly make the distinction rightly; Christ made it on either side - subjection to, and rejection of the claim in its right place. Indeed, Joseph disappears before He comes out into action. In this respect this passage, which almost alone touches on this part of the subject is of vast importance. Christ is a Man here distinctly, and therefore to the flesh a Jew, and so always, for indeed Jewish principles are the perfection of the flesh as it can be in the hands of man, and many things thus enforced, but Christ called and sent, takes out of the sphere altogether when so called.

His mother would speak to Him upon the common principle of the appearance of things - but she pondered it. Thus it was His own distinct consciousness, showing His Person, in which He was acting; nevertheless, as yet He was obedient as His place of service, to her and Joseph.

88  - 49. I think it is evident our Lord spoke this in the unconsciousness of the Spirit. These various circumstances of the manifestation of our Lord in the flesh Luke is full of. They are very important, as presenting Him to us in His Person as Son of God, which, be it observed, He calls Himself, at least says, "My Father's business" here. It is evident the Spirit of God meant to exhibit the Lord to us here as passing through all the preliminary advances to perfection, which relatively man would go through, not as to Person for that is distinctly ascertained previously, but as to exhibition of faculty, so that we might fully see Him as Man; and note the manner of expression, and bringing it in.

Indeed we may remark that it is a primary exhibition of Him in contrast with His supposed place. His mother says to Him: "Why hast thou dealt thus with us? Behold, Thy father and I have sought thee distressed." His answer is: "Why is it that ye have sought me? Did ye not know that I ought to be about my Father's business?" putting His true character in contrast with her question, and the error theirs in contrast with the supposed owing. Yet, note, the energies of the Spirit are subjected to direct apparent claims when it is not a call of the Spirit from those claims. We may also remark how little the occupation of present circumstances applies, or really entertains in its mind, the knowledge which even it has, so that the assertion is unintelligible, because it does not connect itself with present circumstances, as to which ordinary associations fill the mind.

Although in the fullest sense Jesus speaks here of His Father, yet still, I apprehend, we are introduced into apprehension of what He was as a Man in this world in this character, and thus it is He is presented in this gospel - the Fulfiller of Jewish hopes, and divine glory brought into the position of a Man, a Child, and so showing the Son of God in human nature, as walking in the Holy Ghost. "That Holy Thing . . . born of thee, shall be called Son of God." This was through the operation of the Holy Ghost; united with Him in resurrection this new nature is to be manifested in us. He is the form and pattern of it here below.

Luke

J. N. Darby.

<46004E>89

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Luke  3

- 1. Unless Trachonitidos (of Trachonitis) be used adjectively, choras (the region) applies to Itouraias (of Ituraea) also, as indeed I judge.

- 3. It was not a testimony here at all "Ye must be born again," but "fruits meet for repentance," addressing them as they were.

- 3-6. "Repentance for the remission of sins" is not Christianity, though both truths be in Christian teaching. John's doctrine supposed their return as Jews, so that God should forgive them; it was not at all a baptism of death and resurrection. To whomsoever he was personally sent, in the doctrine of his mission as a restorer of all things, he was a messenger to all flesh; so he is here introduced by Luke. It was to introduce to "all flesh" "the salvation of God"; quod nota, for Zacharias' word, "Thou, child, shalt," etc., "for thou shalt go before . . . to give knowledge of deliverance" (or "salvation" - same word as in verse 69), "to his people through the remission of their sins." The consistency of this is remarkable, for as he was sent, and gave this knowledge only to the Jews, as in verse 3, yet by the power of his mission, and by its very nature it ministered to His coming in whom "All flesh shall see." "Pharisees and Sadducees," says Matthew; they were the leaders whom it particularly concerned Matthew to mention from the nature of his gospel. But here, when the nature and moral power of the doctrine to all was concerned, he applies himself to the general principle on which the people came out - the assumptive, unrepenting hope, of which the Pharisees and Sadducees were the peculiar promoters. It is an important statement, because though Matthew, writing to Jews, might designate specially the sources of evil there, and the leaders looked at as from without and above, this involved the whole principle and condition of the people. Individuals might come out humbled, but the multitudes, as the Pharisees, the leaders and the led both came on the desire of owning proposed blessing, as humbling themselves in compliment, yet, as privileged, willing to have Israel's light, but not laid low in the sense of individual and national sin. Personal change was the point.

- 7. This is complete Jewish rejection.

90  - 11. The spirit of selfishness, covetousness and grandeur, and disregard of others - that, in a word, which is contrary to the word: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," is that out of which especially we pass in repentance, as to its practical operation, the "fruits worthy," quod nota. This is what is marked in Dives in the parable (chap. 16), as exhibitory of character of selfishness; so, "You have received your consolation." "Wherefore, O king," says Daniel, "let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity" - a passage terribly perverted, but which is fully explained by this. Indeed it is the special nature of that corruption to place a satisfying, redeeming conduct for the fruits of a change of spirit, and, by copying the outward effects, preclude and get rid of the inward power which produced the things of which they are a bad imitation. But the moral instruction is important, and it throws light on the spirit we are by nature of, for repentance, when genuine, produces especially a contrast to the habitually furiously reigning evil. Then we see the way selfishness is marked as the general spirit to be repented of, and thus the sinner is left, without escape, to conscience. Every mere religious habit almost can be put on but that which breaks through the habit of sin, and a man may be moral in everything, and offend in one point, so as to show the reign of sin, whatever his character may be. But repentance reaches all; it reaches the spring of all evil; it is not an outward following which fails somewhere, but an inward introduction of a new life, which therefore shows itself in all, and especially in that where it has found its conscience most clearly needing purging, and there the faithful steward of the word presses. And note, we may do it in act, for the unconverted man kicks as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke, when that in which his own will is is touched; he will assent to all but this. And here I say therefore is faithfulness on John's part the reaching the conscience by the habit to which persons are respectively attached or under subjection, generally selfishness to all. "What shall we do" is the common and easy word; its spiritual sincerity will be discovered by the application of a direction to do that which breaks through the habitual will. If the will of God be really sought, it will be acquiesced in as soon as anything else.

How much more moral John the baptist's testimony is in Luke! Only the Person of Christ, judgment and the Holy Ghost for those that believe.

91 Luke gives the moral testimony of John in detail. All give the baptising with the Holy Ghost as characteristic, and supplanting, I may say, the judged floor. In Matthew we get the moral judgment of Pharisees and Sadducees, besides the prophetic judgment (this in Luke is said of all the people). The sovereignty of God overrides national election. But baptising with water to repentance is John's Israelitish mission before coming judgments. His testimony of Christ is a different thing, but he knew prophetically there was One coming who was to be preferred before him - indeed was sent to prepare His way. But Matthew 3: 11 distinguishes even here the two missions, repentance to the remission of sins, and then testimony to Him who came after him, who would purge His floor. This last connects itself with the Holy Ghost and judgment. So, even more distinctly in Mark 1: 7, 8. Indeed, this gives it most definitely and clearly, though indeed Luke 3: 16, 17, is distinct enough from the moral part of the mission, and gives the two points - the Holy Ghost, and the floor purged. So that the mission to separate the remnant is definite enough; and then the gift of the Holy Ghost, and judgment. Matthew 3: 10 and 12 differ in the first being individual judgment dependent on the fruit borne, the second dispensational, as is the baptism of the Holy Ghost. In John the testimony is different. It is first to Christ as Light, that all might believe - suited to the first division of the chapter. Next, verse 15, His eternal Person, coming after him, is preferred (gegonen) before him, for He was (en) before him, i.e., in connection with verse 14, the second division, and is John Baptist's testimony that He of verse 14 was the One he had spoken of; verse 16 connects with verse 14. Only in verse 26 is there allusion to his primary mission of baptising with water. This (v. 19) testimony comes as an historical fact by itself, his account of his testimony, not the testimony itself; probably after Christ's baptism, indeed it is certain, because "the next day" is clearly after it. And here the testimony is clearly different. He is the Son of God, but this witness was after He was anointed and sealed with the Holy Ghost. He verifies as to that particular Person borne witness to. "This is he," what he had prophetically said, that there was such a Person. Indeed, all from verse 15, is a separate witness (person) as from verse 29, to His work. Save the fact in verse 26, we have nothing of his actual mission. As to this testimony John did not know Him at all. It was founded on the descent of the Holy Ghost. But this only definitely marked him out as the baptiser, but led to far wider testimony. But Luke 3: 16, Mark 1: 7, and Matthew 3: 11, are all prophetic persons saying there was after him a Baptiser with the Holy Ghost, far mightier than he; he knew Him not yet. But, when Jesus came to be baptised, he knew by the Holy Ghost that He was that mightier One; but not even then what came out by what happened after His baptism. John 1: 32-34 has no specific date, save that it was after the end of Matthew 3. It merely records the fact that John so testified. In general, the time is not the object, but what he testified of the Lord. Three times the "He who comes after me" is referred to, but always historically as a past thing, verses 15, 27 and 30.

92  - 16. John and his austerities are more acceptable to a carnal mind than the gospel. The very scribes, etc., were willing for a season to rejoice in his light; it does not hurt pride as much.

"Baptise you" - how he thus takes the general application! Fire is judgment.

- 17. His testimony to Christ, as regards Israel, was as severe as his own. He preached repentance. Christ comes in judgment to discern and vindicate the righteousness declared in the testimony. To the world He is the Lamb of God, though that may bring in more judgment. It is remarkable how the Lord effected this. He shall effect it undoubtedly in actual judgment, but He first met it (the nation) in grace (and therefore was rejected. How blind is man!). Yet this in effect was for judgment. But He came sowing seed really, though seeking fruit. Had He come in glory, it must have been judgment; but the want of conscience of sin made them not see this process which had its form in blessing in the Church, and that in heaven.

- 20. This seems to be a common end to faithful ministry; it necessarily makes a man conspicuous, though he go into the wilderness, and he is brought into reproof with kings, nor can he change his word.

The direct account of John ends here, though he may be introduced in connection with our Lord.

93  - 21. "Praying." We have still Christ as Man distinctly before us here. Here, as constantly in Luke, it is when Jesus is praying the heaven is opened.

- 22. Jesus as Man was born of the Holy Ghost, and Jesus as Man was anointed of the Holy Ghost; both these have their corresponding truth in us.

The simple sentence is of the utmost power and manifestation, for whom should the Lord God call thus His Son absolutely, saying: "In thee I am well pleased," but the Only-begotten? In whom could He be well pleased, and thus personally address in complacency and satisfaction, except Him by whom He created all things, who was the brightness of His own glory, to whom it was no robbery to be equal with God? I can conceive no higher demonstration of our Lord's nature - no possibility of the admission of weak man into the knowledge of the ineffable complacency of the Father in the Son, than this communication. And such indeed its purpose. Nor to any one else did the Father ever thus display Himself, or make His Person known, except in and by Christ - "he to whom the Son reveals him." To the Son He reveals Himself in full complacency. Note what is said here, "In thee" (en soi) is declared to be "in men" (en anthropois) by the angels; suitably, of course, to their nature. It is a word much to be dwelt upon. "No man knoweth who the Son is but the Father." How could this be if He were not God? Or how should the Father be the sole exception, if it were an object less worthy of His only knowledge? How plain a testimony indeed, in that verse, to a nature alike inscrutable to human knowledge, co-equal Godhead, alike equally above us, and One alone able to know Him who alone can know that One in return, alike unknown to all else, alike within the cognisance of either respectively. We would not go beyond what is written, but we see not how any can know God in Himself but Himself, or in what He can find pleasure worthy of announcement by Himself to another in this familiarity, so to speak, of communication but in One not Himself in Person, but Himself withal.

- 23. "As was supposed" (hos enomizeto) is very marked in its meaning. "Thirty years old." Still as the Man here presented. Jesus did nothing till thirty. What patience there is in divine obedience. At twelve He was conscious of His power, and Person, and mission, avowedly. But here He acts in the order of divine direction in the land. It is not a question of divinely sent impulse, as, after His ascension, in the ministry of those called by grace, as Paul, Silas, and the like. "Which was," is better left out all through.

94  - 24. The genealogy here presented is not traced to Solomon as royal heir, but simply lineally, to connect by a better title Man with God as such. Son of Adam, Jesus was lineally Son of God so, but then bringing in a better and higher power of life, so as to give the moral character of Man from God, not merely responsible innocence coming first in Creation, and a natural living soul from God, but bringing the life of God into human nature, and without sin, in God's life in Man, to us by resurrection, because the sin is there already. The genealogies present no question to me, because passing to a grandfather would make all the difference - one is traced royally, and then to promise lineally, the other lineally by mere natural descent. A similar difference would occur even in English law. The genealogy of title to an estate would not necessarily be the direct lineal descendant or next of kin of any given person, if the children failed in one step, or even the males.

- 38. Jesus is proved to be the Son of Adam, and, in truer sense than he (to wit as Second Adam) Son of God, as in Matthew of David and Abraham; see note beginning of Matthew.

We then see Jesus filling up, and more, the measure, frustrated in the natural man by the sin of Adam, in the grace of God.

Luke  4

Although the fact has been noticed, it is worthy of note how completely we pass in this chapter from the state of the pious Jewish remnant, of which we have so lovely a picture here under the providential authority of the Roman Empire, to Christ as Centre of all human hope. Christ Himself first overcoming the enemy who held man captive, and then presenting Himself as the introduction of good, of delivering good, and in truth the Centre of all, though here in the way of introduced good in power, but thereby the Centre though rejected. But it is the Man in whom the Spirit is, and who therefore goes at once beyond Israel; verses 18, 24-30; and is engaged in the service of good. Verse 21 gives the characterising presentation of Christ (I say "Centre," because Christ completely replaces, by His own Person, all the scene we had before). The sphere is in verses 24, 25 et seq.: His gathering, and the moral character of it, comes in the following chapters.

95 The subject of chapters 4-6 is evidently the unfolding of grace in deliverance in this world, in the Son of man, only it is shown that this cannot enter into the narrow system of Judaism. It is the power of the Spirit in the Son of man. It is intimated meanwhile that He is there as the Bridegroom of Israel, so that the disciples who received Him must accompany Him in that character. His founding of a gathering system, and its character, is distinctly found only from chapter 6: 13. Even in the call of the disciples we see the moral power displayed. Still, though the principles of grace are unfolded, the Lord, up to the end of chapter 6, is working within Israel. He works on principles which surely go beyond it, and show, as Naaman and Elijah, that they do, yet still work as belonging to it though in a separate way, and separating a remnant. So the Lord sends the leper to the priests, and forgiveness of the paralytic is the forgiveness of Psalm 103. In the audience of the people He separates the remnant, and unfolds to them the principles of the kingdom.

In chapter 7, I apprehend, the word goes further. The Gentiles have a faith not known in Israel (which owns indeed Israel, but is blessed for itself) which owns Christ Lord of all. This is connected with the power of resurrection from the dead (yet He was a Prophet in fact in Israel). The least in the kingdom are greater than John Baptist, and the remnant are distinctly separated for it; the nation obdurate. Hence we get a forgiveness, not governmental as to the earth, in mercy, however real it may be, but the simple forgiveness of a morally renewed poor sinner - a forgiveness which lets go in peace, the soul being saved by faith. This, though all happens in Israel, and owns Israel, is a progress, and on other grounds from chapter 5.

Chapter 7 closes, I think, this direct part of the gospel - the presenting of Christ in the power in which He was come into the world.

The actings here are still of Jesus the Man. It is a very remarkable contrast - Moses, the man for the Law, and for the people to receive it from God, is separated to God for the forty days, and "did neither eat nor drink." But Jesus, perfect in holiness, perfect in grace, the Man of God's acceptance, in whom the life of God was, and filled with the Spirit from on high (not the mediator, however faithful and in certain sense perfect, of the flesh with the Holy God, but presenting the life of God in Man) is separated to Satan's trials and temptations, the forty days thoroughly, and He neither eats nor drinks. And this was grace, meeting withal the case of the temptation of the first Adam. This, in its nature, is a vast advance upon Moses. It was not one at all seeking direction and ordinance for man in the flesh from God as sent, even in any covenant connection, and so separated to God that he might justly receive it; but it was the perfection of the Second Adam coming, in the energy of divine life and the Holy Ghost, to present this, and God's ways to man, and serve God really as well as in pattern in the power of this life. Therefore is He presented in the energy of the Spirit to him who deceived us as to the old Adam, and hinders as to the new, to show the path of faith to the new man, as obedience in that energy. I do not see that it is necessary that our blessed Lord was tempted continuously, as to manifest temptations, for the forty days, but that He was separated in Spirit to this exigency, in the power of the Spirit brought into this place. The positive temptations clearly come after, as the two tables of stone were given at the end of the Lord's communing with Moses. He was led in the Spirit into the wilderness, forty days tempted of the devil.

96  - 1. To separate Himself in power from the deceit and need of Israel, instead of obeying - in fasting of spirit and suffering. The world (His righteous glory), the Messiahship, the glory of Israel in the temple - all were put before Him, but in vain. Jesus answered these temptations not merely wisely, but righteously, and this is our wisdom.

Better simply "in the Spirit," or "in Spirit," as "David in Spirit," etc. On all this compare Matthew. The sense, however, is plain. Nor is it altogether unimportant what in Scripture is, for it is a commentary on Matthew where we have, "By the Spirit" (hupo tou Pneumatos) and we learn the way the Spirit leads; it behoves us, of course, not to deceive ourselves, but I am sure His witnesses are sadly neglected. We may compare it hereafter, as belonging to the two evangelists.

- 2. The length of the period added doubtless greatly to the trial; its correspondency with others is obvious. It was evidently supernatural energy which made Him forget even His necessary food. When that was withdrawn, i.e., when the special occupation of Spirit ceased, He felt the need; and, note, then we come to the specific temptations in His ordinary state. But the other doubtless was the greatest trial; these were only moral trials such as scriptural judgment could meet, but although given the other as that it might not surprise us, nor we count ourselves where Jesus has not been as to trial, the others only are given in detail, the wisdom of which seems evident. It is, as we have said, that ordinary moral trial which all have to go through, such as Paul speaks, "as is common to man," so that we are not to count it a strange thing that is happened to us, seeing, etc. Therefore the Lord's wisdom exhibiting the way of faith, and divine testimony, to escape is set before us. Let us recollect that these are the things which the Lord really passed through. I feel almost ashamed to speak about Him as a sort of subject-matter set forth for our instruction. They were the real trials, as one of us, of the Lord that bought us, of Him whom none knoweth save the Father, the Lord of glory, in that both He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of One, for our sakes. Compare the note on tote (then) in Matthew 4: 1. Luke does not say tote (then), quod nota.

97  - 4. The Lord having gone through the temptation, "If thou art the Son of God," comes upon the result of it in Adam. It was immediate, Jesus had been announced such, as born here in the world. There was no command, and He came to obey, and He could do nothing. Man was not to "live by bread alone, but by every word of God." God's dealings with Israel, note, taught us about man.

The exercise of gift or power is always rightly subject to or ministered in furtherance of the great objects of faith, not in self-display - that is Satan's suggestion - nor in supply of our own need, in that we wait upon God. The glory of God in the gospel is the end of the believers', the sons' of God's, intention and rule of conversation. This, therefore, as it is the end, so it is the reason of miracles, and to be looked for in them; in truth, it could not possibly be otherwise - it enters into the very idea of a miracle, seeing the Father has centred all His glory in the Son, and the Lord Jesus is the Centre and End of all the counsels of God.

It is to be observed, too, that in the denial the Lord does give that glory to God by faith (perfectly sanctify God as amongst men - He indeed not by measure - yet in the same way as we ought to do it in) which is the sole office of a miracle, and which the working it in this case would have been directly contrary to. We may see the craft of Satan, and the wisdom of Jesus. And, note, simple faith in the Scripture supplied it. So faith, by the simplicity of its own exercise and reliance in obedience in fact, proves in result to shine in the wisdom of God who directed by His supreme counsel. Note, it is a glory exercised in goodness. Faith, though it uses in obedience and wisdom, looks to God above and beyond instruments, and is absolutely independent, i.e., in its judgment about the power of God in producing effects, and dependence on His word, of means, yea, of life, and thus only God is sanctified as God. This is shown by acting on the word of God, independent of our judgment of human necessity, or the consequences of our not doing so, for God is the God of consequences, and His will is absolutely right, i.e., all things are of His will, and have dependence on it; He knows the end from the beginning.

98 Our Lord's making the stones bread would have been not depending upon God, but in truth looking in independence to the supply of means, and in fact using (as Man) His gift to unsanctify God as the Object of faith, instead of the contrary. This seems to have been precisely the failure of Moses, and in the same way, and by a trial the same in nature, though there necessarily unput, here only frustrating the intent, if it had been possible, of His coming. Besides, it would have been taking Him precisely out of that office which He came to fulfil, the right place of Man with God, that He might be their Mediator. If He had merely acted as Son of God, as Satan would have had Him do, and as He might have justly done, He would have failed, not subjecting Himself to the necessities, in so putting Himself in the place of man, so as to be such before God according to that, "Behold, I and the children which God has given me," for "I will put my trust in him." He could not have restored us as His brethren (declaring God's Name to us, if He had kept that Name concealed in Himself, instead of showing it forth in His own conduct, and that) as of one nature with us, as having taken hold upon us, undertaken our cause, put Himself as our Substitute to make it good for us, yet ours for He made Himself one of us, identifying Himself with us in interest, as He speaks: "It became him, of whom are all things, and to whom are all things," etc., God could never have been set in this character, unless Christ had thoroughly humbled Himself as one of us, even unto death, as our reconciliation, and, so identifying Himself with us, restored us to God. Having passed through suffering in the perfection of faith, now, in that He liveth, He liveth unto God, and so if we be dead with Him, we believe that we shall also live with Him. We cannot fully open this in words, for while He stands in our stead in His own perfection, yet He does so as one of us, the Head, and as made lower than the angels, and in all points tempted like as we are, He is the Second Adam, and so not only as one of us, but as He in whom, and as of whom, we all stand before God, as the Heir of our infirmities, yet without sin, and looks from among us towards God in the personal interest, in love, in our infirmities, as He looks from God towards us in the power of eternal life, and authority, in a word, as God. This is a great mystery, such as angels indeed desire to look into, even the Incarnation of the Son of God, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, declaring the name of God to man, and the cause of man to God (and the glory of God and our salvation are identified in Christ Jesus the Lord) alike Himself God towards man, and Man towards God, through the glorious mystery of the Incarnation, full of exalting consolation towards us, but indeed, as the apostle speaks, if all its glory could be written, the world itself, I suppose, could not contain the books that should be written. Yet enough is written to make it the full object of faith to us.

99  - 6. In one sense this is true, i.e., as to the power of deceit, as Revelation 13: 2, yet indeed it is of the father of lies, and such accordingly in ungodliness, but only as deceiving men, while it is altogether subject, and so indeed Satan knows, as the Book of Job shows, to the authority of God, and ministers whatever he may design against God's children in the way of perplexity, trial, and great tribulation, to their exaltation according to the good pleasure of their God, though they may give their Father a needs-be to chasten them for their profit (of which he is the willing instrument, as by it he would often deny the character of their Father to them) that they may be partakers of His holiness. And so the Lord here fulfilled all righteousness, "It became him" (God) "for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, to make the Captain of our salvation perfect through sufferings." But as to that very authority which is spoken of in Revelation, Paul declares, and it is the faith of believers that there is no power but of God, "The powers that be are ordained of God." Satan may deceive by the earthly grandeur, but "promotion cometh not from the east nor the west, nor yet from the south"; for why? God is the Judge. He putteth down one, and setteth up another. Believers can separate therefore with judgment where the world sees contradiction.

100 Note also Satan's power on the imagination.

I have observed elsewhere the moral reasons of the order of the temptations in Luke. There was a mixture of truth and falsehood in the second by the passions of men, i.e., as to the old man, it was true, though God overruled it as to the new man. It is here shown it avails nothing, this power; they are not yet taken out of Satan's hand, but the new man accepts nothing from him. The Lord's answer was entirely as Man as to the duty, nothing at all as to His title. It was not yet His place, and grace brought Him into this place, and He was not to assert titles there; it were going off the blessed glory and incomparable dignity of His place in grace. One little act would have done; it had been and had detected sin. The third temptation was much more subtle; it was not mere human, it was not Gentile or worldly temptation. The Lord, while subjecting man in the first, and exalting God in the second, had answered not only as Man, but in the place where God had set obedient men, sovereignly, as a Jew, identifying Himself with the obedient remnant in their place of patience, not of claim. Satan takes Jesus up here on this Jewish ground, on the plea of trusting God's promise in the midst of Jerusalem. But it was all pride, and questioning His promise. He would not go up nor try, as doubting was the Lord amongst us, which was just unbelief. Accordingly, Scripture was adduced here for this use of the promises. It was a temptation connected with spiritual privileges. Jesus' answer is still simply and entirely as a Man: "The Lord thy God."

Certainly, of all the distinctions, that of worship and service is the greatest folly, for in truth it makes our Lord say, if He mean anything, that He might do all that Satan asked Him to do.

We may observe that our Lord in these replies to Satan affords us the divine principle of life, on which He relies, as applicable to the snare by which Satan would have seduced Him, if possible, i.e., we have not merely the principle in se, but we have it, enlightened as to its power and application, rather the snares, of which we might not exactly know the moral solution, brought fully into the light of that divine truth which shows them exactly as they are, and thus we have not merely a direction of conduct, supposing us walking aright, but in such a way as detects and sets before us everything which might entangle our judgment by engaging our affections, and thus keep us from the path of uprightness, as He says: "All things having their true character exposed by the light are made manifest." And we see the self-destroying character of temptation when the light of faith is applied to it. It ought to be matter of our prayer that our daily conversation might, through the accompanying light of God's truth, be made the instrument, for it is all temptation, of thus clearing and enlarging our judgment as to the walk of holiness, that it might give us, in a word, experience, not of evil, but, as the word implies, refine our apprehensions and judgment, that we might have that which was truly good more separated and purged in our minds, the path of Christ more experienced by, realised to, us. Such is the fruit of temptations, and such may be the fruit under grace, if we hold fast the patience of faith of our daily conversation in the world. Thus we shall be able more to answer every man; charity will have more scope, and have more wisdom of action. We shall walk more with God, and according to the mind and purpose of Christ in this world, knowing no man after the flesh, but increasing in the fellowship of the Father and the Son. What I would press is that all our conversation is a scene of temptation, and that if we walk in the Spirit of faith (through the divine teaching) which will realise, more or less, by patience the mind of Christ in it, not at the time perhaps, apparently, or it would not be patience, the whole is instrumental in rapidly enlarging our minds into a real knowledge of the divine life, by the Spirit of God dwelling in us.

101 Our Lord's answers, we may further remark, are merely such as become a Man living the life of faith, in a word, the commandment of faith, of which the Book from which they are taken, is so distinctively the organ in the Scriptures. Though the temptations were suited to the Person of Him tempted, and the place which He held, in their character, Satan (v. 5) offers in sin, where only its temporary deceit is found, what belongs to the children of God in their own inheritance, that he may be set up as their god in it, but which God alone can give the reality of. Note also, he proposes it to us when our own inheritance in it is quite out of sight, and we have the very contrary to all appearance, nor sign of having anything else, when we must walk by faith and not by sight. "The meek shall inherit the earth," and that in Christ. But Satan would have Him hold it of him, tempting Him as Man - Man in His humiliation - which was indeed to be His in glory. Here is overcoming - "To him that overcometh will I," etc. - so "Ye are they," etc. That which is true of Christ, is true of Christ's. Nay! it was for their sakes He sanctified Himself. But such proposals of Satan always militate against some duty, and this indeed is his end in them; they are therefore met by the duty; so the Lord here. The comparison of the whole of Psalm 91 will show how contrary to its spirit the proposal of Satan was; nor do I see why we should disregard the omission of "In all thy ways," for to a believer it would reveal the snare.

102 We find, I think, then suited to the Lord's Person and place these temptations. First, the will of the flesh listening to appetite as such, God not being in our thoughts. Next, the will of man, dominion. Thirdly, carnal security or presumption; it is indeed unbelief, it shows itself in doubting the Lord's promise, showing itself often in the requisition of His interposition in proof to unbelief. Satan seeks to make us act upon our privileges independently of the life of faith. On the whole, a presumptuous claim, on our part, of the interpositions of God, due in promise to His people, as of that which belongs to our will, and related here according to this moral order by Luke; Matthew giving them to us according to the accuracy of their historical occurrence, as I suppose. Compare also the omission at verse 8, of "Get thee behind me Satan, for." To the two former the Lord gives an answer verbally, applying itself to the act - here one detecting its moral character. Observe too that the point of guilt in it is peculiarly brought out by the rebuke, for indeed it were impossible that the children of God, as such, could so deal with the Lord their God, especially looking at Him as such, which, as children of God, they necessarily do. The deceit, as we have observed before, is the relinquishment of the character on the assumption of the privileges of God's people - a destroying of His name.

- 13. There is an end, so "be patient," for the Lord is over all, all the while. If He tarry, wait for Him, for He will surely come, He will not tarry. This was Saul's error, yet He came, only to mark his unbelief. Therefore the practical word under trial: "Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord," for there is always a way to escape under each temptation, and the end will be deliverance when its due work is done; so Job. Nay! let us not frustrate the work which is, be sure, of God's goodness, by seeking deliverance independent of full trial. "Let patience have its perfect work." Rather say, knowing it is in mercy: Search, Lord, try the ground of my heart. Look well, etc., and note the confidence, Lead me in the way, for it yields peaceable fruit of righteousness - O happy consequence! in them that are exercised, note, thereby.

103  - 14. This characterises all the testimony here.

Note, the power of the Spirit is not withdrawn - far from it - while we are under trial. It is manifested in integrity of conversation, and the same power which supports one through the temptation which tries, and represses it, when that is under the divine wisdom removed, breaks forth in manifestation to the holy necessities of the Church and testimony of God in unhindered, nay, in sanctified energy of action. He was perfected through suffering for service, as in office - so we, for this therefore let us wait. The Spirit which leads us into service, first leads us into qualifying suffering. Thus, at least, the Lord is shown to us. He, because perfectly for all; we according to the love of that God who makes all things work together for good for His children.

The above, note, is the strongest confirmation of the method of Luke. He overlooks here a long interval, as in John 2 and 3; see note on Matthew 4: 12 and 17, and John 3: 24, during which much passed, but our Lord had not entered on His public ministry, i.e., to propose Himself as the Object of faith; this, i.e., His public ministry, Luke passes to at once; see note on verse 16, the "according to his custom" (kata to aothos auto) evincing the passing at once to the moral matter proposed. The leaving all to follow Jesus (chap. 5: 11) does not imply it was the first time he knew anything of Him as a hearer. Indeed we know it was not, but, as we learn from Matthew, when He entered on public ministry He called them to be with Him throughout it, "beginning from Galilee." A comparison of these observations and the passages will give them their force, though they are unduly scattered, and the subject of deep interest, as concerning our Lord's conduct on earth. Verse 14 takes Him up, that is, from His public ministry, which was subsequent to John's being cast into prison, upon which He returned into Galilee; see Matthew 4: 12, but between verses 11 and 12 there, and 13 and 14 here, a long interval, and much that was interesting from the first, for example, to the end of John 3.

104  - 14-44. We have the whole sum of the mission of Christ. The grace first (vv. 14-30), and then the power confirming the word. Still, no way seeking His own glory, His service is to announce the Kingdom of God. But note the difference of the way in which Christ presents Himself, to the simple fact of the kingdom at hand.

- 16. Perhaps He taught before this, but this is noticed, if not the first, yet as one affording His personal announcement of Himself, and therefore recorded by the Spirit.

- 17 et seq. The Lord here is presented as coming in grace to Israel, not as seeking fruit, and Nazareth, representing Israel where He was brought up, selected, and the intermediate service passed by because now presented in this character. "He found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me." In this character, the anointed Man born of the Holy Ghost, we have still seen Luke present our blessed Lord; and this unfolded in the most blessed, and condescending, and tender grace, its fulfilment presented to them. "And they wondered at the words of grace which proceeded out of his mouth." It was not faith, but it was new to them, and they were astonished. But they turned to His supposed family circumstances, and saw not, not only His divine nature, but even the power of the Holy Ghost speaking by His mouth. The Lord then shuts up this scene of His position in Israel by showing that a prophet is not received in his own country, thereon asserting the sovereignty of grace shown in prophetic ministry in Elijah and Elisha ministering under the apostasy of Israel. This in grace was a solemn testimony to the whole state of things, but grace or goodness in God they would not have, claiming their own righteousness and privilege. This was a most terrible blow to Israel in pride; but it was really blessed grace. Without sovereignty there can be no grace, righteous grace. Note, Moses had not this principle revealed to him till after the apostasy under the Law, and there was then manifestly no hope without it, unless evil were sanctioned. Here the Lord begins with it, because He comes amongst, and identifies Himself with Israel as already ruined, but then He must take up this principle. Their anger at this knew no bounds but God's restraining hand. Thus passed His presentation to fallen, yet loved though rebellious Israel!

105  - 20. How very strongly Luke gives us the whole scene before our eyes! There was something in our Lord's demeanour which came home as something not ordinary to their minds, and identified Him in attention and enquiry with the passage He was reading. The power of the Spirit was on Him.

I think it is evident that in Luke from the temptation to the Sermon on the Mount it is more the character from the Sermon on the Mount, more the activity of the gospel. It goes out into the new sphere, Gentiles, resurrection, or at least, setting aside death, peace to the soul, not merely governmental forgiveness. Then the particular present relationship with Israel, passing over to the future in power. Chapter 9 then closes in the mission of the disciples, the Lord Jehovah in the midst of Israel according to the power of millennial blessings - the kingdom, but the Father's house with it, His going to Jerusalem to suffer, and the heart tested in all respects as to service. Then follow, as is known, various teachings and principles, up to chapter 18: 34. Chapter 10: 1-24, is the active final display of His dealings with Israel, Law and Gospel taking their place, or Law and Grace, rather in verses 24-37.

Something more especially as to part of Luke. After the temptation in its moral order (chap. 4: 16-30) gives the thesis of what characterises His ministry in this gospel - divine grace manifested by the power of the Spirit in a Man, but as such rejected; the new wine not being possible to put in old bottles. Verses 16-22 suffice to give the whole; verses 23-30 His comment on it; then, to the end, power as regards Satan's direct actings on the state into which man had fallen in physical evil through him and sin. He seeks not Himself but serves. Chapter 5 is grace calling round Himself, through conviction of sin, to be with Him - cleansing, forgiving, calling not the righteous but sinners - not power, though it was divinely there (v. 17) as He showed, but grace dealing with sin. Verses 16, 17, 21, show Jehovah's power present, but in and as a Man; verse 33 begins the incompatibility between this power and grace with the old Jewish ordinances, on to chapter 6: 11, drawing out hatred. Verse 12, He formally gathers out His disciples apart from the nation, then comes down and, continuing to exercise His power in blessing, shows the blessedness and true character and condition of those thus separated out of all to Him, but in their (the then) order of calling, i.e., not as after His resurrection, ascension, and the giving of the Holy Ghost.

106 Note here how the preceptual direction of the saints completely follows, and refers to the revelation of God in Christ. When He reveals Himself in law-giving, law, of course, is the form of duty; when in grace on the earth, what Christ was there is reproduced in His precepts, as in the Sermon on the Mount, and here as may be easily seen by comparing the precepts with Christ's character, as thus manifested. So, in sum, he that is perfect shall be as his Master. They were to follow Him in that path, giving up all as He did. When exalted on high, it is the same thing, not: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," but: "Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your intelligent service" - "As Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind" - "Hereby know we love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" - "Be ye imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love as Christ has loved us, and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice, to God for a sweet-smelling savour." "For us," note, but "to God"; that is perfection. So, as God is Light, "Ye are light in the Lord: walk as children of light" - "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." We are to walk "worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing"; compare Colossians 3. It looks on too: "He that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure."

Then this grace goes wholly out of the limits of Judaism to the Gentiles, and shows its power over death itself; but this gives it evidently a new character, and the rejection of both John and Christ is fully brought out, John appearing not as a precursor, but as coming into to believe in Jesus, who does not deliver in Israel, and is received on His own testimony. Christ is Son of man. We have then the bright and blessed example of wisdom being justified by one of her children, the wisdom of sovereign grace, a soul convinced of sin answering completely to God's intention and God's delight in Christ, to God's manifestation of Himself in Him, producing the full answer of the soul to it in confidence, forgiveness and peace then made known, while the Pharisee saw no one trait or discern in God Himself in grace present in his house, but was discerned and judged. But, how perfect! And what dignity in Christ's not paying the slightest attention to their remarks, but occupying Himself with the poor woman! Thereafter, the whole state of the case is brought out. He is sowing, not seeking fruit - they are to be witnesses, tossed on the waves of this troublesome world, but all discouragement is wrong - Christ is with them in the ship. He may allow the storm, but has power over it. Then the whole progress of the scene is unfolded, Satan's power destroyed by a word, but therefore the world will not have Jesus, because God's presence and power is manifested. That cannot be borne amongst men. The Remnant desire to be with Jesus where He goes, but must go back to the world for a testimony - the mass of Israel rush to destruction.

107 Then we find Jesus come to sanctify, when individual faith, in Israel, touches Him; one is healed, but as to Israel it is really dead and to be brought to life. He sends out the twelve as a final testimony, shows He is Jehovah according to Psalm 132. The question arises who He is. Peter, the remnant, owns Him as the Christ, and they are formally forbidden to announce Him as such - the Son of man is going to suffer, be rejected, raised, and they must take (we) their cross - the soul is more than ease in the world, and Christ will appear in His glories. Then the kingdom is revealed, and the heavenly glory, or the Father's house, and man's entering into it. He still continues to answer faith here below, but that does not alter the fact that the cross is the settled thing - the unbelief of the disciples shows it must be. Then the various forms of self that hinder our taking it up, hinder our following Jesus, are gone through, which make us unfit for the kingdom of God.

The Lord then, in sovereign and persevering grace, which is above circumstances, sends out an urgent but final testimony, but, while thus dealing with Israel, brings in heaven as the true portion of His messengers - an evident change; unfolds this in the true, full character of His mission, the revelation of the Father by the Son in sovereign grace (yet in fitness) to babes, but shows the disciples happy in their seeing what prophets had desired, the true Messiah in Israel. The obligation of law which measures duty by a neighbour, is changed to a neighbour by grace in the heart towards need, as Christ was to ruined man. We then get the word and prayer as the way of blessing, but as in the then time, the Holy Ghost being to be looked for. The Lord then shows, what is ever present to His Spirit here, the entire rejection of the Jews as then subsisting as against Him when the finger of God was there. He rejects His natural association, and accepts those who hear the word of God. This rejection of the word and Person of Christ brings up Nineveh and the Queen of the South in judgment against Israel. We then have the way of Light in us, purity of motive, and thus light is, as to everything, to be seen, and outshines also. Moral truths and reasons are thus ever mixed up here, principles ever true with the pending judgment of the people. But this judgment as to the nation is the accumulation of all the blood of the slain prophets from Abel to that day; they would be tested by the point they insisted on.

108 In chapter 12, the motives which keep and direct the testifying remnant are shown; everything manifested, God to be feared, God to be trusted, the coming of the Son of man to be looked to, the presence of the Holy Ghost to be relied on. He refuses present judicial maintaining of righteousness and turns to motive in the world, then to the ground of confidence for His disciples in passing through it; verses 22-34. Then His coming is applied to the state, watching, blessing from Himself - service, the inheritance; verse 49, the effect of His coming already produced. It draws out the very worst evil of man in a hopeless way, but the cross opens the door to love, warns the people of the signs of the times, morally too they ought to judge, Israel was on its way to the judge. Chapter 13, all would finish in judgment if they did not repent. But God was filling His house with guests in grace, Israel would not, and so should not come, but the poor and Gentiles fill it. Men must take up the cross, and better to count the cost first. If the Church lost this devotedness and Christ being all, it could not be restored even as Israel (for whom sovereign grace and a new covenant might be) but cast out as hopelessly bad.

Then after all this discussion of the ways of God, the whole heart of God itself comes out, founding the system of grace itself in grace as in His heart, in its fruit in heavenly prospects; the light of heaven being brought to bear on the present conduct with earthly things, and showing how they set aside the Jewish administration of them, as even of God in the land. Man was a steward out of place. But if Moses and the prophets had not taken effect, Christ's resurrection would not change them. In chapter 17, it is remarkable to see how the moral grace brought in in testimony by Him, and the change of outward order dispensation go together in this gospel, care for the little ones, forgiveness seven times a day on turning to the offended one, the power of faith, and, if all be done, we nothing. Then, Jerusalem set aside in grace, faith in a Samaritan finds the power of God in Christ. He need no longer toil up to Jerusalem; the kingdom of God was among them then. But days were coming when the disciples would desire one of the days of the Son of man. Now these days were such, but in the evil day (in Israel) they would, promising when He was not there, but the Son of man would come as lightning in His day. That is unfolded - men ought always to pray; there is the universal moral grace, but the avenging the elect is, for faith, in Israel when the Son of man comes. They cry day and night to God for vengeance. He will avenge them speedily, but what faith will be so found expecting Him when He comes? Always true, the coming of the Son of man will show how much of it remains. The moral ground is then returned to. The confessing sinner more righteous than the self-approving Pharisee, and if all the law were kept to have eternal life, the heart's alienation searched out, and made manifest; but herein present Judaism judged. The apostles who followed Him would have the kingdom, but the Son of man must suffer.

109 Then the final history begins with the blind man, and Jesus presents Himself finally as Son of David to Jerusalem. Still, even here, the great moral principles and grace are brought out in Zacchaeus. Salvation came to a publican then; his previous, well-intentioned efforts find no place in that. Then the course of dealing, often referred to, is gone through. I only note here the strong expression of the difference of Luke 21 and Matthew 24. The enquiry (v. 7) is only, "When shall these things be?" And in opposition to "Immediately after the tribulation," you have "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until"; then the then suited warnings come. In chapter 22, note how many moral questions connected with the facts arise, as verses 23-28, and how the subsequent setting up of the kingdom is avoided in verse 13, etc. Other things more briefly and generally, as Peter's denial, the visit of the women to the sepulchre, Herod brought in, Jesus definitely and briefly condemned on His own testimony only (chap. 23: 24). It is the Jews' act. Full details of the cross, and the thief, as of the character of Gethsemane, and of Joseph and Nicodemus, and full details on the way to Emmaus, in contrast with the then kingdom, and in the history of the new heavenly character, Christ to suffer, and then Jew first, and then Gentile, but all needing salvation. The Scriptures get a distinct place, and a true, risen man, the same as one they had known. Other points largely noticed elsewhere.

110  - 21. What a word was this! Not a general exposition of sense. It demanded instant faith, or produced the anger of unbelief. But though all bare Him witness, and saw the power of grace shining forth in Him, they were unchanged to know the voice - He was the Son of Joseph, one of them.

The greatest grace of all, the most distinct manifestation of the Saviour, passes as the wind by ordinary associations until the Lord call by His spirit. But it is worthy of remark how these people felt and acted under the irresistible testimony which accompanied Jesus. It is one peculiar exhibition of unbelief - "They bore witness . . . they wondered . . . they said." They expected the same manifestation, above all places at home, of that of which they had heard in places where He was a Stranger, but they were unconscious that the manifestation of divine power was dependent morally on faith, and when He was known as "The Son of Joseph" they could not receive Him in the power of His coming, and "He could not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief." It is upon this principle He reasons, showing it was their fault, and that often thus assumed privilege put farther from grace which made them so angry, and that it was thus really often confined to the despised and reprobate stranger. The whole, duly weighed, is a very interesting and instructive picture of unbelief thus working. And, note, He presented Himself here to them not in general miraculous testimony, but in Person, offering Himself to them in gracious personality, suitable and graciously adapted to their situation, but "No prophet," etc. It is interesting too to observe our Lord's mind turning upon itself in testimony against them, "But of a truth I say to you."

Then the Lord exercises His manifested power, as so come as Man, first against Satan's immediate possession of a power over man; then the effects of evil in a violent disease; then as against all manner of sickness, and devils going out of many, as it is expressed by the apostle in the record of this evangelist: "How God anointed" . . . "Jesus of Nazareth" . . . "with the Holy Ghost and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were under the power of the devil, because God was with him." The devils said: "Thou art the Son of God," for they knew that He was the Anointed. They had no divine knowledge that He was the Son of God. It was conclusion from His work and way as the Anointed, as full of the Holy Ghost, the Holy One of God.

111  - 37. But the rumour, though just, is not belief in His Person, nor in His word. I do not know anything more sad or afflicting than to see the Son of God in a lost and alienated world, admiring, testifying to the grace which showed itself in Him, His fame spread abroad on every side so that multitudes were ever waiting on Him, but ignorant of His Person, and unconverted by His word, nay, at last getting rid of Him that they might have it their own way. How much we sometimes see of this! He, however, knew wherefore He had come, and patiently did His Father's will, while it was called "To-day."

Note, our Lord's fame in public made Him nothing the less humble, and attentive to the merest human necessity. In Him, indeed it could not, for human honour was nothing, but it affords an example to us, and the unchanging attention of His kindness, interesting itself in the necessity of each, is strongly exhibited in what follows. It were as easy to Him to have spoken a word, healed, and dismissed them all - a greater apparent display of His power, but God's power to us is Love. "And now, I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou hast spoken."

- 40, 41. "And having laid his hands on every one of them, he healed them." Satan, when he could not oppose, and constrained to recognise the actual power as of the Son of God and His Kingdom, would have share, nay, take the lead in recognising it, that it might be accredited by him, and so he retain his paramount influence as far as possible over the minds of men, and credit, and station in the world, and make God, as it were, a debtor to him for his sanction in it. So with Paul at Philippi, but not so the Spirit of God; He works His own holy purpose, and separates, by the reception or rejection of His own testimony, those who love or hate the light. And it is only in presenting Christ in this moral character of trial that His work is truly wrought. The spirits knew it, and the master spirit would have made use of this knowledge to minister subtle hindrance to the Lord's kingdom, and maintain, as we have seen, his influence over the blinded heart of man, but the Lord "suffered them not to speak."

112 We may also remark, as regards ourselves, how the Lord was never drawn aside to His own glory, though He indeed might. Note also, Satan appears to know, though with undistracted power of apprehension, as we know, merely as a creature, though a more exalted one by evidence.

But, though the testimony afforded to His glory was thus very great, Jesus, thus led of the Spirit, was seeking the good of poor sinners, showing mercy in power for that, not using it for His glory, nor waiting to enjoy its effects for Himself, but went on to the testimony of God's kingdom which it verified and proved in mercy amongst men, thus connecting man's blessing and the kingdom of God. His main object to testify of the other threw its light on this - in man's poor withered heart. Nothing can be more beautiful than the perfection of this. Lord, give us of this heavenly Spirit, the Spirit of thy blessed Son here below! If, when the effect of these mercies was fresh and strong on the hearts of men, the Lord says: "I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also; for therefore am I sent," it identified the blessings not with favour to Him, but with the kingdom of God and Him who sent Him. It was love to poor men, drawing their hearts from the pit, where they were lying, to the coming of mercy, and delivering power in the kingdom of God. Here this part of the testimony therefore closes.

- 43. Still the same stedfastness of purpose, quod nota, here, for there was much to detain Him humanly in this request. This is of great importance in labour, both as to our own mind and the fulfilment of the work. Nothing would have been added here really to the work, indeed it was the result of what was passed; they wished to keep Him because He had - not an awakened desire as to what was to come. It is a spirit of diligent service. The petition for the Lord to stay, looking at the Lord Jesus here as our Pattern in service, was evidence that He might go away.

- 44. "He preached in their synagogues," also to the multitude when they came to hear the word of God.

I think there is something very affecting to go through the various patience of our Lord's perfect ministry. I love to bring Him before my mind thus, as well as in His supreme glory and exaltation. And we know Him better by it, as Luke vividly presents Him to us in subjection to all the ordinary infirmities of our fallen nature - the same circumstances in which we are conversant, the same resources putting His trust in God while His soul knew all, even as God, the necessities which surrounded, and was filled with the thoughts, and bore the weight of all that sin had introduced and love would remove - knew it indeed perfectly as God, but knew it also Himself as Man. I cannot sufficiently contemplate the Lord thus humbling Himself, and ministering the very glory of God, and yet the Servant of all men. Oh, for a heart to follow His steps! I see the Lord, His glory and Person, shining in everything, in the midst of unbelief which surrounded and understood nothing of it, yet is given to His people.

Luke

J. N. Darby.

<46004E>113

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Luke  5

In this chapter we have gathering by the display of Himself, and man's sinfulness, fear being taken away by grace. Then Jehovah, goodness in Man. Jehovah alone healed the lepers, but here He touched the leper - which would have defiled another. This is God, manifest, too, in grace in life. In the paralytic, He takes up Psalm 103, but here it is not goodness but forgiveness brought down to earth as a present thing in Man, and proved by power. The two great parts of Christ's coming - what He was in life, and what He obtained for us by death - but here according to the place He was then in. In what follows He shows He calls sinners, but the new wine cannot be put into old bottles. As far as it went, it was so in what preceded. It was grace, but grace must form its own framework. Withal He is the consciously dependent Man, verse 16. In chapter 4, after binding the strong man, He visits His people in grace, but to be rejected, but shows His power over Satan, and the disease, and misery of man; not coming to have a following but to serve. In chapter 6, the Sabbath question is raised. The whole is a very distinct picture of what the Lord was on earth, but still within the precincts of Judaism, but showing it could not be so, as chapter 4: 24-28, and chapter 5: 36-39. Divine power in Man in goodness could not be restricted to it. That, and what the divine power was, is the main point here. The Sabbath, or seal of the old covenant, could not stand in the way of it, i.e., of God in goodness towards man; the Son of man was Lord of it. God judged of things, and must as manifest in flesh, according to goodness. The whole portion of chapters 4, 5 and beginning of 6, is very instructive in this point of view.

114 The instructions that follow connect themselves with this position of His disciples, i.e., with the position made for them by these principles, i.e., in the end of chapter 6, He gathers disciples in contrast with the nation. The first two chapters show the lovely picture of the Remnant, and how God could visit and keep them for Himself, when Satan ruled on high, but it was not yet Himself. The Holy Ghost was working in them, and in divine affections, but from chapter 4 it is Himself. We find indeed the Lord Himself wonderfully revealed to man in chapter 2, but it is simply as an Object, not as Himself acting and presenting Himself in the power of the Spirit to men. His mission is spoken of by others and His Person revealed, and knowing that His relationship with the Father was not for Himself from the Spirit given to Him, but in His Person, though He acted by the Spirit that we as men might have all the benefit of it. He is ministerially in the midst of Israel to chapter 6, though in a character which cannot be confined to it. Chapter 7 takes Him to other ground - a Gentile with more faith than in Israel, so that faith is blessed wherever it may be. He and John Baptist are rejected, and the vilest sinner goes saved and in peace through faith. Then the Sower. Remark here how differently this is introduced in Matthew. Here, it is Christ acting in grace, but justified only by the children of wisdom, and acting on a principle which must go beyond Jews, though "To the Jews first." He is Son of man in grace. This, which the nation cannot own, but He sows and will reap. In Matthew, where He presents Himself formally to Israel as Jehovah the Fulfiller of promise, it is the full rejection and condemnation of Israel (chap. 12: 41, to the end) which gives occasion to the Sower. Here it is grace which Israel indeed will not have, but which then widens out to any sinners, and which, even in Israel was of a character which could not be confined to it.

- 5. We may observe the mixture of unbelief and faith shown in this answer of Peter's, and how truly real it is "the Lord accepts such." Obedience of action leads to apprehension of glory, apprehension of glory to the full mind of repentance. This is met by gracious assurance, and forms the introduction into the Lord's service.

115 It is a wonderful thing to consider the Lord's unknown passage through the world, considering who He was, all the multitudes being drawn to Him by the miracles which He did.

"At thy word." This was long after Peter had known the Lord, but antecedent to his being called to follow Him separately as a disciple. He "abode with him that day" was all when they followed Him from John; John was now cast into prison.

- 8. This also gives a vivid picture of the effect of the revelation of the Lord's glory, the conviction of the impropriety of the Lord's having anything to say to us, of the incompatibility of our state with His presence, and yet attracted to Him. Note, too, as to circumstance, this was after the attraction of Peter to the Lord; it was the effect of the revelation of glory on the conscience.

Grace acting sovereignly in the deep to gather where man could toil all night and find none - the ground on which a sinner, confessedly so, was called to be a fisherman, is very distinctly marked in this passage. It was not merely what Jesus was, and presented Himself as, and did, but choice, work on conscience, and mission. His own Person, as filled with the Spirit, and the principles of God's dealings in grace, had been brought forward hitherto; now, His acting, the full time being come, and this proposed, on these principles. That had been to Israel, but still what Israel really needed as sinners - sovereign grace. This also includes the power and competency of the present operations and effectual workings of grace in Him. Yet, however, Jesus might present Himself as a Man, glorifying His Father, when He acted with sovereign tide and competency as Jehovah really, He hides it and Himself, for this was not the point He sought as Man, but His glory that sent Him. "See thou tell no man," and He was retiring in the deserts and praying. The testimony was really the greater. It is beautiful to see the divine nature thus breaking through the Manhood when grace demanded it, and, we may add, faith, for He was without honour as in His own country as a Prophet, but individual faith called out all His divine grace and power. I will (thelo) is righteously only Jehovah's power, yet clearly a word of pure graciousness, willingness, as well as His goodwill. It was the doubtful point; power was manifest, but was the powerful One, God the Almighty (for so really it was) willing to have to do with the unclean? The answer was, He was - to make clean.

116  - 8-11. We may note here the operation of the breaking in of light upon an ardent and now awakened mind. The fact does not lead merely to itself but to Jesus, and judgment of one's self thereby. We may note its particular characters, immediate recurrence to Jesus in confession, with the sense of the impossibility of having a part with Him, from the new apprehension of our own sinfulness brought by the shining in of the only true criterion of divine glory, but primarily rather in the power of divine glory than in the plenitude of divine grace. Yet was it not peace nor rest as to Himself, nay, left there it would have been misery, or sunk back into carelessness. Astonishment (thambos) had taken hold on him and them. The peace was a further revelation of Christ, yet the other was such a manifestation of Christ in glory in contrast with his own state as led him to Him where he found peace.

Such then is the first ministration. Christ is a Saviour. The revelation of the divine glory in Him is the great instrument of awakening souls to come to Him. The suitableness of the method must be obvious; the way in which it operates may be here learned, but need not be commented on. But note the operation is by grace, different on Peter and the rest, and so distinguished by the Lord. Note also the necessary result is leaving all, and following Jesus thus known, quod nota; no difference in this. The peculiar operation on Peter, and what it was as distinguished from others, as connected with special place and suitableness for service in the Church, may be adverted to, and the Lord's address to him holds out a light to us as to this. We may note special apprehension of the glory, peculiarly deep convictions of sin, and a peculiar testimony, and moral designation by the Lord thereupon, and arising out of it as to occasion of its manifestation. For, indeed, it is upon this we preach, and only according to this in power, i.e., conviction and belief, for thus the testimony operates, i.e., upon us as subjects. It is not in power in man a mere abstract apprehension, but something in which he is himself vitally concerned - as to its general moral character and operation, it is as to all alike - no man follows Jesus rightly who does not leave all, nor, in the nature of things, can any leave all, though he may one for another, except for the Lord Jesus, and by His constraining power.

117 Thus the Lord knows those whom He has chosen.

The circumstances of this account, compared with John 21, and Peter, are that there are moral truths and mysteries or prophetic revelations contained in them; particularly the account in John 21 is to be weighed in all its bearings. There seems to be, in some particulars, a careful opposition between them, while many of the ulterior circumstances in John, I am led to think, are of vast importance. That this relates typically to ministry is certain; that there was in it the exercise of a much more obscure faith is also plain. The total failure without the Lord is also here strongly marked; the results also are accordant; both the net brake and the ships were sinking. Note also, they, having filled their ships with them, left the ships with no further to say to the fishes; both their ships were filled, they having called the assistance of their partners.

- 12. Our Lord now begins to show in detail the effectual operation of grace (in Him as come of God, being indeed God manifest in the flesh) as to the necessities of repudiated man. Grace had been shown. This had drawn out the exercise of hope in those whom the law of righteousness had righteously cast out. "A man full of leprosy" was clear as to the power of Jesus; he had seen its efficacy and believed it. The point was grace, i.e., in this case, willingness to do it on his need and request. Divine power we know alone did this; the priest was merely witness. Grace, however, was the great point, and this brought near in man - manifest in the flesh, for grace is God's prerogative, divine prerogative clearly, let it be in man or where it may, for "Who can forgive?" But this was shown in the effectual word: "I will, be thou clean." He came to exercise power, to save. That was what God was, for in Him He was to be learnt in way and character, and yet in all the grace and nearness of Man bringing the comfort of restoring sympathising love - sympathy with him in his evil though not partaking of it. "He touched him, saying, I will"; these two words convey all. It was that which drew nigh and touched the evil in others, did not the least shrink (as in law men were bound to do) from it, but touch it to dispel, not receive its sorrow and defilement. It was in Man, and as Man he did this properly and wholly, and yet He could say: "I will," for He ever answers the faith of man, though He may hide His glory, and reveal His Father's. But here it was human grace and divine power unfolding itself, in the efficacy of the Person of Jesus, to the hopeless need and sorrow of man. Still, as we have seen, He was not propagating but hiding His own glory, though indeed it could not be hid, for there was a boundless heart in Him to do good, and power to help: "The report concerning him was spread abroad still more." It was a glorious testimony to divine intervention and supremacy, that God was come in humbleness to help, for touching was a supreme act of love. But He desires him to go and offer, hiding Himself, but thereby showing it divine and He had done it, and He was a Man. Many were attracted, but He retired into the wilderness and was praying, casting Himself as Man upon God, i.e., the Father, quod nota, for He never departs from this character here, let what would of divine power be disclosed. And this was just the blessed and unspeakable mystery.

118  - 13, 14. His divine nature, and its acknowledgment by implicit faith is, I think, strongly manifested here. It is sad to the believer to speak of proofs, yet the Lord has condescended to give them, and at least to condemn men by them, that they might have no cloak for their sin. We are too accustomed to read of these things.

So ever as unknown and yet well known, the manifestations of divine power in us in works done in secret (I am not speaking here merely of individual grace) are often the most effectual testimonies to that glory in the world, and it is marked perhaps by the same unwillingness to be the objects of it ourselves. We speak, even here, of Jesus as a Pattern to us. Nay! I am persuaded there is more opportunity for a full display of the divine glory in us thus privately, where our souls may find vent through the faith of a humble and seeking soul than in other cases, according to the faith and grace that is in us. It supposes too, observe, a disposition to yield oneself in love to the despised necessities of the outcast poor, and to value that more than a manifestation of anything that is in us. Of such Spirit was the Lord of all glory, power and might. The circumstances have been often observed upon. The conduct and word is of Him who said: "I will; be thou clean." Who was this? How does the divine Lord shine through every action of His life! We shall do well also to compare this and the preceding account. Note also much His conduct when the rumour of Him did spread.

119  - 16. "And he withdrew himself, and was about in the desert [places] a praying." Oh, for this Spirit of holy purpose in every measure! Man would say He ought to come forward, but He indeed kept thus close to His work in perfectness of purpose, and, while intent upon the necessities of men, indifferent at their interest in Him, as to the purpose of His own soul. This separation in purpose is very singularly marked all through our Lord's life, as is its calmness. It was indeed suitable to His present work that He should rest it distinctly upon moral discovery, and not otherwise make Himself known.

- 17. "I say, Have they not heard?" For the Jews would have made Him a king upon their own grounds, but He must be received as the Son of man or not at all. We have in this verse evidence how in this gospel events are morally brought together. As before we had cleansing grace drawn near to defilement, so here we have complete forgiveness demonstrated to power. "The power of the Lord was present to heal." Both these circumstances were Jewish in form and referred to the presence of the Son of man upon earth, the incarnate Jehovah, but showing that the power had drawn near in Man. This refers to Psalm 103, Jehovah's dealings praised by Messiah. The former to the law of leprosy. They were strict teachers of the law, but power was present, the power of the Lord; still He presents Himself as Son of man.

- 20. Faith sometimes shows itself in disregard of circumstances, not being turned aside by their apparent necessity, because the mind is fuller of the necessity of the other. The forgiveness is brought now, to wit, to His people, and by faith, for the body and the world are not yet manifested to be redeemed, though known to be so by the believer. Accordingly herein the supremacy of God is known, to wit, His necessary dominion, namely by the forgiveness of sins on the earth (epi tes ges) through faith by grace. And herein, too, observe, acknowledged; therefore he says to obedience of faith, and the like, and that in Christ Jesus.

Note also it brings the remedy where the ruin was overreaching it, by the supremacy of God through faith, and prevailing against the enemy where he had prevailed, and casting him out, quod nota.

- 21. Note also the strange foolishness of man.

- 22. Does "knowing" (epignous) imply divine perception of, or when He knew, i.e., in this instance? "In your hearts" seems to imply the former, and that in asking the question He gave the most convincing proof of the divinity they were questioning.

120 God's forgiveness on earth is precisely what is made known in Christ, and is applied to everyone on his reception into His Body the Church by faith. As to the ministrations of this grace (whether baptism or the prayer of faith mentioned by James and John) I would observe on the nature and purpose of the Christian ordinances. It is to keep the doctrine of forgiveness by faith distinct and unimpeachable - it is not only given but made known in Christ, "To declare, I say," and again, "Be it known unto you," and is the ministration of effectual and possessed peace. It is of present power and ministration. "The Son of man hath power on earth." God has it in that He is God. If we know there is God, we know that He has power to forgive sins, but the other is matter of faith and revelation, and "That ye may know," and declaration, as we have seen, and in which the point of the gospel and Christian faith, as to dispensation, begins; compare Acts 13: 38, 39. Apparently, and in se according to the inductive right judgment of men, as Son of man He has no such power. It is a thing which rests either on the knowledge of His office as revealed in His Person as connected with the prominent facts of the gospel, or else evidenced by an adequate exhibition of power which, by the word of truth, we can recognise as of God, connected with the exercise of the assumed power, and this is indeed but testimonial of the other unknown in an external way to the thoughts of men, and rightly commanding his inductive judgment: "Believe me that I am, or else believe me," etc. Is there then any exercise of this power? We say: Always in the Name of the Son of God preached according to faith, and the calling of God to minister that word as Acts 13: 38, 39, and this is the primary article of faith in the dispensation of the grace of the gospel or Christianity in testifying to the Son of man as to personal power, merely dependent on the power of discriminating absolutely them that believe on Him, that manifest themselves to be sanctified out of the world by faith that is in Him, according to the gift of God in anyone, and exercisable only when Church order is practicable. And inasmuch as we judge justly that it is not of man, and none have it by eternal mediation as Christ had witnessed, only by testimony suitable to the claim, as Christ Himself afforded it as justly necessary, i.e., given to the weakness of man, who could not see the brightness of His Person, and conclusive against mistake on so important a point: "If I had not done among them" (although they ought to have known His Person) "the works which none other man did, they had not had sin, but now have they," etc., "sin because they believe not on me." But inasmuch as it rests by (in that He is indeed the Heir of the world) office in Him, those who may be entrusted with this power for the purposes of gathering souls out of the world, have it only to the ministration of His glory, and can only minister it to faith in His Name, and in His Name, and the doing it otherwise at once evidences that it is false, and the highest of all sins against God, resulting in denial of forgiveness at all, and thus upsetting the very instrument by which souls are gathered out of this world to the Father. Accordingly the apostles were entrusted with this as not an intrinsic, as in Him, but a deposited power, exercisable according to the measure given to them, to wit, of an apostle: "As my Father sent me, even so send I you." We say that the doctrine they taught they could select faithful men to minister in, but the apostles themselves could have no power of sending others with the same authority, for it must flow from One who had it intrinsically or by office. They had it by gift as deputed; they could pray, and lay hands on believers that they might receive, but they could not breathe and say, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." God may give it afresh to whomsoever He will but in order to its exercise he must approve himself possessed of it as Christ Himself did, and His apostles, and he must receive it immediately from God as they did. So the ground of peace lessened not at all, for the testimony of Christ is unchangeable, which, i.e., on the footing of which and faith in it, they themselves exercised it, and it is merely evidence of the truth of that doctrine when sent. On the whole, it rests in faith in the Person of the Son of man, being founded absolutely in the Person of the Son of God communicated solely in Him, and therefore communicable only by and to faith in His name; and unbelief in this barred an apostle, nay, Christ Himself in the flesh (Matt. 13: 58) from the exercise of His office. And that Name it turns about as its centre, and all the ministration of it is ordered accordingly, and that which is otherwise is but vain delusion, for this is the connecting ordinance of God to Himself, to wit, forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus And here one main deceit of falsehood lies. God, by forgiveness, wins the soul to guilelessness and confession, and towards Him who alone can reach and satisfy the conscience, and try the reins and the heart so as to convert them to holiness, for He is the only end of holiness, and, through forgiveness, brought very near to us in Jesus Christ, God becomes the Object of the soul in a way a sinner can receive Him with his whole heart, and love Him with his whole heart because he is a sinner. In a word, in Christ Jesus, God is manifested to the sinner as the absorbing Object of his soul in the way of grace and holiness now favourable towards him. On this hinge of forgiveness in Christ turns the whole restoration of the soul to God, even the God of love, who is Love, and so only can be justly known, or could the sinner receive as such; see Psalms 32 and 139. But in any other forgiveness, other than in Christ's Name, the conscience is not searched to the bottom, the heart is not consequently restored to God, nor purged, nor purified, but the sinner left precisely where he was or worse, by the supposed healing of his conscience.

122 The doctrine of the restoration of the soul to God by absolute personal forgiveness, the covenant of infinite grace applied to sin, and making God known to the sinner in Jesus Christ is indeed the great all-important truth. The sinner cannot know God otherwise, for there is a breach between him and God, and while sin remains, one and all, upon his conscience he cannot know love, nor have communion with Him; he needs reconciliation, and this is given so as to set up God in holy love again to his soul by grace when it comes from Himself. Therefore, "How much more shall the blood of Christ who," etc., "purge your conscience . . . to serve," etc. But it is not in philosophical views of these things that their power rests, but in the plain truths of it. In conclusion, that which is here is the evidence of the Person of Jesus Christ, and this is the hinge on which the whole force of the passage rests, and the more its force, bearings and consequences be examined, the more will the truth of this appear, and its weight be found. This testified of it, and all ministrations of forgiveness are but of this, and when this is known as revealed, the other is possessed as declared in that. "Forgiveness of sins" was to "be preached in his name," so the commission runs, "beginning," etc. The seal of it was by discriminating ministration; and, note, this keeps the soul of the minister of it also in its right place of dependence.

123 There is another point of great interest which I had not before noticed in Luke. After His baptism and temptation taking His place as Man (second Adam) and victory over Satan, instead of failing like the first, Christ begins by presenting Himself as the Fulfiller or Fulfilment of promise in grace, but looks for rejection as Joseph's Son (grace went beyond Israel and brought out their enmity) and proves His power, so that the demons own Him to be that One promised to Israel, as in Psalm 89, of the chasadim (mercies) of the Lord. "Thou spakest in vision of thy Holy One (chasid). I have laid help on Him that is mighty. I have exalted One chosen out of the people." So all the evils Satan has inflicted on man disappear before His word, and hereon He is recognised in two other parts of His Jewish titles and name - Son of God and the Christ, as in Psalm 2, and He preaches the Kingdom of God. But He must preach the word of God, not remain for mere earthly comfort of man, nor His own. In chapter 5, He convicts of sin by revealing Himself to the conscience as the Lord, but removes fear, and gathers round Himself. We have not the fulfilment of promise and the Holy One, but a divine Person, and One revealing Himself as such and bringing in new things in grace. He acts as Jehovah to the leper, yet comes nearer than man could by right - He touched him; others were defiled thus. He came touching man in sin, but driving away the defilement. So He forgives sins, and proves His Jehovah title to do so, according to Psalm 103.

Here then He is not the Holy One of God, but a divine Person. So He calls in grace Himself, does not merely recite the history of Naaman and the woman of Sarepta. They are offended at divine grace, and the question is raised as to the old way. They could not mourn with the Bridegroom there; He would be taken away before the wedding, then they would. But there was more than this - new wine could not be put in old bottles, and no one having drank old straightway desires new. He announces that the divine display of grace could not be put into the old Jewish system; and they would not have it Before they reject when He is there as Man, only, by divine protection and as a divine Person, He passes through them; here when He has acted as a divine Person, He tells what must take place. Then follows the Sabbath, the seal of their covenant, but He Lord of it, and that as Son of man and according to grace.

124 Thus chapter 4 is the Holy One, fulfilment of promises (He who is the Man-overcomer of Satan). In chapter 5 He is Jehovah, but present in grace as Man, and, because Jehovah, untouched by defilement, touching in grace the defilement of man, i.e., in others; but shows then His dependence as Man - He withdrew Himself into the wilderness and prayed. Hence what was simply Jehovah convincing of sin, and cleansing, now comes out as the power of the Son of man, for from verse 17 it is forgiveness and grace to sinners in the hands of the Son of man. Thus we have had the Prophets and Psalms fulfilled, Jehovah present in grace, the Son of man with power on earth to forgive sins - all in this divine Person, Jehovah present in Manhood, the Word made flesh, the Son of God.

The notice of the Sabbath connects itself with the last part. It was the seal of the covenant, the very mark of God's people. What place would it hold in respect of this Person, now thus coming in? There seem to me three principles introduced connected with it. At the time the Jews were allowed to eat the corn, the first fruits having been offered, the disciples, the very first Sabbath day, I apprehend, after it was allowed, rub the corn and eat it owning the new blessing. The Lord's answer is, I apprehend, this, The rejected Son of David is as free as the rejected David. He whom God owns is cast out, and grace is free. Next, He declares the Son of man, His full and larger title when rejected, to be the Lord of the Sabbath - an immensely important point. Thirdly, God is free, grace is free to do good on the Sabbath or any day; His nature is above His imposed rest. This He asserts, in spite of Pharisees. Blessed be God, it is so!

What follows shows the disciples separated out to Himself from the nation, so that really all is settled. It does not give principles merely, showing what kind of persons can have the kingdom, but addresses the disciples as those to whom it belongs. It was, however, the time of sorrow as to it, for as fulfilling the promises He was rejected, the tribulation and patience of the kingdom, but woe to those at ease, for judgment was coming. This as to promises and the kingdom. But further as to those who heard, they were to imitate God in His ways of grace, they were to be children of the Highest. The Jewish leaders were only the blind leading the blind into the ditch, and personal purification, not moralising for others, was alone truth of heart, and hearing Christ, even among them indeed, was only delusion without obedience. This, therefore, was more an epoch than the Sermon on the Mount, not that I count it different, but what the Holy Ghost there presents to the nation as principles, is here spoken of as actually distinguishing the disciples, and the double character of promise, and the manifestation of God in grace is distinctly brought out. The Remnant are called. Hence we have not "Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way," though that was yet true. But the distinction is morally made.

125 A little more precision as to chapters 4-6. He comes as fulfilling prophecy in grace, is rejected by man, the devils own Him as the Holy One of God (the chasid of Psalm 89), the Christ, the Son of God, of Psalm 2, but He does not receive their testimony. He reveals God in reaching conscience, cleansing the leper, forgiving sins, calling sinners in grace. But this new wine cannot be put into old bottles. Of these old bottles of Judaism, the Sabbath was the keystone, i.e., rest connected with law in creation. He meets the accusation of breaking it by the liberty of the seed of promise whom God owned when rejected (David and the shewbread) He was the rejected Christ. Being such, He takes the place of the Son of man, as everywhere, but as such He is Lord of the Sabbath. Thirdly, divine goodness would act for itself in grace in the midst of misery, and not be confined by legal hindrance, and a yoke of bondage. Thus all the characters of Christ as here revealed are brought into the question. But then note that the rejection by man through self-will, when the devils owned Him, does not hinder His developing, in chapter 5, His divine title of doing good. He goes on to this, only He shows this new wine must be put into new bottles, but this does not hinder His carrying it out, only it cannot be, from the nature of things, in Judaism; nor do the strongest sanctions of law, as a system of ordinances, bar grace.

No circumstance or situation in which the Lord speaking ministerially does not detect and call out grace, i.e., call out His own more strictly! So the gospel in the power of the Spirit.

- 26. Here was the great basis laid of Jehovah-power come in in grace, and that in Man. "They glorified God," but it is not said they owned Him; they had seen paradoxes in such assertion of forgiveness and title in a Man, and power proving it, and this was to be developed. Jews not learned, and Galileans the Lord had already called to be His companions. Having proved the divine authority of grace in Man so come amongst them, He was now to call and become the Companion of publicans. The two points noticed were of great importance, as the supreme exercise of Jehovah-power in Man - thus prerogatively in real manifestation of His Person, rising over Israel's ruin, because the leprosy was cleansed, and the sins forgiven, and the man healed. One showing the supreme power of Jehovah in mercy as to evil amongst them, and the other the accomplishment of latter day, Jehovah-forgiving, blessings, as in Psalm 103, restoring the full blessing of the nation after their sinful state. This was clearly prerogative mercy, but amongst Jews, and applying to them. It was mercy come amongst them as Man feeling all the evil but in power. Thence it reaches on to those who did not come within what a Jew would recognise of prerogative to a Jew; it might go to a Gentile. Having asserted these two great prerogative mercies which, identifying the Lord with the Jehovah of Israel, whatever His humiliation and service, as Man, might be - mercies connected with grace to Israel in its helpless defilement which Jehovah alone could remove, and the spotless Saviour alone approach to, and approach, too, undefilable and forgiving all - He passes on to the power of this in receiving rejected outcasts according to the graciousness of His own prerogative. He called Levi, and sat down to eat with a multitude of publicans and others. It was bad company - company for Messiah, and one who had a character - the Scribes and Pharisees murmured; this not to Jesus in enquiry, but to His disciples as slurring Him. Why did He eat with publicans and sinners? But the Lord's eye caught their complaints. What does His eye slight, or not see for His disciples? The answer was the answer of simple grace: "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. I am not come to call the righteous but sinners." The Lord then added the joy of the disciples by His being there. The Bridegroom was with them. Faith could not act on the ignorance, no more than grace on the dark selfish self-righteousness of the Pharisee. But a change was further about to take place. They could not then act on the Jews' darkness, but soon the Bridegroom would be gone, and then they would have occasion to feel thus the form of the dispensation which would be altered. The power of the new life, and the Spirit of Christ flowing from His resurrection, and manifesting His exaltation in glory could not be put in the old bottles of Jewish forms. It was not then merely that supreme grace had been manifested amongst Jews, but that this grace, coming forth in the power of the exalted Saviour, was incompatible with the character and contractedness of old Jewish forms and habits. These were the two things - supreme grace, and then the vessel that was to contain it. The latter was a parable as yet, the time was not yet full come. It was not expected that those accustomed to the old would like the new. Still power, the new wine and the new cloth were in it. Thus far, from the case of the leper, the operation of the principles of grace for man and in the dispensation, are brought out, but the last part necessarily brought out the signs of covenant associations, and into this then in this gospel the Spirit next conducts us. The whole of this is a touching development of the position in which all these parties stood.

127  - 32. Note also our Lord was just now entering on His ministry, or however we have Him thus exhibited by Luke, and the observations of the people on it, for He had now begun to have disciples of whom He was looked upon, as here, as a sort of leader.

Note then accordingly, in chapter 4: 14, we are given the full announcement of His Person and mission, with the accompanying exhibition of its acceptance in the world, and the declaration of the election of grace as against the presumptuous claim of men, together with the judgment and supremacy of God, and the anger of man at it, showing only his wicked opposition to God. I think also there are other typical hints in that place on which we need not enter here. Chapter 4: 31-44, the general manifestation of His power over Satan; chapter 5 to verse 11, His connecting glory, and receiving disciples thereby. In the account of the leper we have Him who could touch sin so as to put it away, being undefiled and separate from sinners, His healing sinners, and more largely His authoritative power in forgiveness, against all question, in what follows. Then here, we have opened to them that have understanding, the moral character and ministration of His mission; I mean down to verse 39. These are but hints which may be opened in reading the passages, and doubtless much more.

128 Luke  6

- 1. "On the second first Sabbath" (sabbato deuteroproto), i.e., just after the beginning of first-fruits, i.e., of corn, to wit, first day of unleavened bread.

If the above statement be correct, there would be, I think, allusion in the particular Sabbath; at any rate it was the corn freshly ripe. It was in them a passing act, no labour of gathering, but the Lord's reply has, in the reference to David, a great deal of bearing on the circumstances. David was the king raised up in grace, but hidden and an outcast, and grace acts on the will of God in mercy to it; if the king be reduced to such a condition, the shewbread, and order of God's house is, in a manner, common. The Lord accordingly asserts in that His title over the Sabbath. "The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath." This was an important point. The Son of man forgave sins, and touched the leper, and by His will cleansed him. Thus grace was introduced. If, on the now avowed impossibility of putting new cloth on an old garment, Pharisees found fault with liberty, while Israel's rejection of its King made its own restoration privileges common, the Son of man must declare His title as such as paramount to the obligation in its original force. Their failure and His title as Son of man concurred in opening the door for grace, and breaking down the restriction that had confined privilege to themselves. Such the double force, in its principle put, of this passage. If the twelve loaves of shewbread were the expression of the Lord's association with Israel, the force of the allusion would be stronger still. At any rate, David was king in grace, on the failure of Israel; see Psalm 78, and was then outcast, as Jesus was. The second point takes even a higher ground; the "those with him," beautifully brings in grace, associating them with Him. The next case, as the healing the man whose forgiveness He had pronounced, introduces the grand evidence of divine beneficent power proving His title, and forcing them, if they would not own it, to oppose God's working in grace. God had not a Sabbath while sin and where sin and sorrow were, nor did He come to this earth to find or to have a Sabbath here, nor to make one, but by the redemption which gave it in another life. Here it was giving power where withered, not finding rest where there was ruin. This grace, as they could not gainsay (and it mortified their pride, proving their impotency) they opposed, and were mad at. This was the result of grace in divine power passing over every obstacle, manifested before them, and this closed this immediate division of the account.

129  - 4. A saint is not an instance of laxity of conduct in breaking through principles, but his conduct being of faith may show a principle which may have been covered, under any given rite, from circumstances.

- 6. Illustrative of the way in which Luke brings things together by subjects, showing what was the main subject matter. Note this subject of the Sabbath was circumstantially worthy of a distinct place, for it had become a pledge of the separating covenant; it is manifest to me that the Lord dissolves its obligation, not its object. If a man be not under grace, I do not say but he may be obliged by the Sabbath, but so also by the whole law, and should be circumcised. But the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath, and it is lawful to do good on it, and I do not know what else it is lawful for a Christian to do at any time. Indeed, it seems to me to weaken the results of Christ's resurrection, to suppose that the Gentile Church is subject to the Jewish Sabbath; however, let a man be fully persuaded in his own mind, and consider him who might be led into sin by it. It is of the old things, and men like them, and they are connected here in consequence, however excellent the object.

- 10. The Lord gave them no occasion of cavilling, for He neither did anything Himself, nor did the other but stretch forth his hand, and showing His power and mission to save, without giving them even handle to accuse. They were filled with distraction of mind. And it was done very publicly, and drawing expressly the attention of all, and He looking around on them all so as to fix their attention on Himself.

- 12, et seq. The Lord having taken this place and had disciples with Him in His manifestation of it, now associates others with Him in the testimony of it. But here again we see the Lord setting about it, whatever His authority, as an independent Man as to men - a dependent Man as to God. He was all night in prayer to God, so I take it, and afterwards, when the day came, called His disciples, and having chosen, etc. How blessed and most gracious is this expression in the Lord, of dependence, and reference to His Father! It is most lovely. There is nothing puts the Lord in such a place of gracious leading to us, for I speak not of atonement here.

130 The principles of our Lord's own mission having been exhibited, we find others then chosen to be witnesses of it. I speak of course of the gospel. Christ named them "apostles." Their character was definitely assigned them, as sent out from Him; they had been companions with Him.

Are not "having chosen" (eklexamenos) and "descending" (katabas) dependent on "He stood" (este) as the only verb of the sentence? We have now not Jesus teaching in the synagogue and grace, and the setting aside of the old covenant system alluded to, but the multitudes coming to Jesus when He has assumed the prerogative, still as Man, but the Lord of sending out missionaries from Himself as the Centre-Power shown towards them all so coming, and then the principles in which He viewed the world, morally communicated to His disciples in the audience of the people.

There is difference in Matthew 5, etc., and this discourse, that Matthew is the introduction of the Father's Name, and the principles, regenerate principles of Christ's kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, into the Jewish state and circumstances, showing who, and on what principle they would be accepted. Here, on the contrary, Christ is become the Centre, grace having been spoken of, forgiveness and cleansing, from which He sends out witnesses for testimony. Consequently, we have His estimate of things contrasted with the world's thoughts, into which they were really going (even if Judaea was the momentary name it had) and what became a disciple so going out. They are looked at either as apostles of Christ, His judgment and will being declared before the people, or connected with the principles on which He was sending them out, not the mere introducing a new principle into the presence of the Jewish nation, as that which morally connected them with the Father, and with the kingdom of heaven, when it should come, in the principles of the children in Messiah's kingdom. In this we have contrast with the world - not a contrast with sayings (dicta) to those of old time.

- 16. It seems to be marked as characteristic.

- 17, et seq. I am disposed to think the same as Matthew 5. "On a level place," is not the plain, but a meaning expressly distinct from it. The place from which the multitudes came is, in fact, in both cases, the land of Israel from one end to the other. Such parts of the discourse as peculiarly affected their place in the world, are by the Spirit put forward here, such as showed conformity to Christ, the Second Adam, and nonconformity to the world which crucified Him. In Matthew we are presented with it in its bearings on the old system, and them as elected amongst it, and the principles of the new dispensation of which He appeared as the Founder, but it has thus a narrower character of manifestation, though of the same root, though there is enough the same to lead us into this instructive comparison. Thus the "Now" (nun) is of characteristic force in this passage of Luke, and the whole will be found a detection of, or pronouncing on worldly principles - the present and that which is to come, brought into juxtaposition. And in this view compare the note on Matthew 5: 25, and the place which it holds in Luke, confirming that much. But all Matthew is addressed to them as members of the new system - this, as children of God, and so Christians in the world. So compare verse 22 here with Matthew 5: 11, etc., as there too it is introduced on His first collecting disciples, and public preaching, exhibiting the character of the new dispensation. So here, after the historical introduction as to the acknowledgment of Him in childhood, and the exhibition of His Person ministerially, as we have seen, we have here the moral character of the hope of the everlasting gospel contrasted with "this age" - generally, we may say, its moral character. The time of the history points it out as the same discourse.

131 They are general principles. "I say to you which hear" comes afterwards. His disciples were, however, "the poor." Note they were not blessed because they were poor, but because theirs was the kingdom of God. Therefore the Lord says "When" (hotan). And whereas we may rejoice in that day, 'tis in that day we may rejoice, not beforehand, thinking highly of ourselves above that which we ought to think.

All the moral characters of this are very strong, and their personal application gives them great force.

- 27. "To you that hear" is a peculiar character - those who are His followers indeed. And note, therefore, in wisdom while we may desire the increase of faith for others, it is to those "that hear," to whom it is of any avail to say these things, not to despise the rest (for there is no difference) but it is not for profit. Yet this is the Spirit of Christ.

132  - 30. "What is thine" (ta sa) that of which you can say: "It is mine."

- 35. The reason, it is of faith, for all perfectness is of faith, and faith only perfects. "And your reward shall be great, and ye shall be sons of the Highest"; a reason which is its own reason, and which a man must have in order to be of any weight, for the conduct and the result here mentioned are apprehended together, for the apprehension of it in God is its power in us.

- 37. I think here general principles are resumed as, in one sense, they run through it.

- 38. "Shall be given" is a generic expression with Luke. "And shall men give" misleads from the sense.

These two verses pursue the analogy of the divine character in this dispensation. Then comes the human relation and sense of the thing. There is moral blindness. Then judging after the flesh, and they cannot lead the blind. The flesh cannot guide the flesh; it cannot see its own evil. But the tree is known by its own fruits, not by its judgment of the fruits of others; see Romans 2. This is traced to the root. What comes forth from the man is the plain evidence of the root from which it springs. Thus, in the new man, the old nature is judged, i.e., so far as that, oneself. The plain power of practice is then adverted to. Thus, having laid grace, cleansing forgiving grace as the basis, and the old bottles worthless, the principles of the kingdom, as contrasted with the world, and of the children, are stated, and thereon the grace to, and recognition of Gentiles in faith openly brought in.

There is another blessed point brought in here, the flesh cannot lead the flesh, and make it better; they would both fall into the ditch. The taught cannot be above his master (and the Jew was a teacher in the flesh), but then comes the revelation that every one that is perfected shall be as His master. The disciple is to be conformed to Christ. This is indeed a leading principle of this, if I may so call it, missionary discourse, i.e., on which the blessed Lord sent His disciples forth, not every Christian here, but every disciple that is perfected (katertismenos). The instruction of the Master was of His own principles and standard. It was not salvation, but discipleship was in question here. It was what He expressed was to be learnt, and the blessed privilege of the disciple was, to be conformed to his Master. The teaching was the expression of the truth of His character. For our sakes He has sanctified Himself. The Lord then goes on to show it was not judgment, but the evidence of what was within by their acts, which showed the stability of their assumed condition, for indeed then there was a new nature.

133  - 39. "Both" is an anxious word. God may give gifts, but when he who ought to be a disciple is the master, there is no teaching at all, and the blind lead the blind. But discipular place is according to the gift of knowledge. A man who is wiser than his teacher, through the knowledge of God's law, cannot be the disciple of such in truth. On the other hand, he who really apprehends in principle all that his master teaches is as his master - one with him. There may be other principles connected with this, not to be passed over, but these things are true. Note, too, it is "shall be" (estai), but a disciple cannot learn or have more than his master has to teach. But what were stated above are the principles of Christ's teaching. The blind cannot lead the blind, but those to whom it is given are to manifest that which they have, that others may, having it also, be so far as themselves, and they that have ears to hear shall hear and understand and be as the teacher.

- 40. A form we have to note here is pas (every one) with a participle; pas katertismenos (every one that is perfected), here it is in that character, en tant que (in so far as). This use of it is common in other cases. Romans 12: 1. Thusian zosan (living sacrifice), as a living sacrifice; and so in many places. So 1 Timothy 2: 6, ho dous heauton antilutron (who gave Himself a ransom); to marturion (the testimony), where note the difference - He did not give Himself as a witness, the witness was for its own times. As to participles again, 1 Corinthians 11: 4, 5; on the other hand Luke 6: 47, pas ho erchomenos (every one that comes). Here the individual; so Matthew 5: 22, pas ho orgizomenos (every one that is angry), and elsewhere - the individual fact, not the characteristic case. As to the case of some nouns; without the article, they are clearly characteristic. All nouns are by themselves - "table" answers to what is that object. Only we do not so speak in English; so Matthew 5: 14, polis keimene (a city situated), such a thing, not that thing. Exceptions are nothing; "gone to town," in England would be to London or some very large city in the thoughts.

134 There is also a promise in this word "perfected, shall be," etc.

- 41. This verse needs little comment. It is a moral defect, and truth itself will always be wandering without grace.

- 42. "To thy brother." There is not the spirit of love in it. One cannot say "brother" sincerely in doing it, for indeed there is pleasure in seeing the fault, a spirit of comparison. The Christian spirit of teaching is delight of soul in the holy things of God there, and in spirit communicating them to others in love, and so even in finding fault. No man ought to find fault until he be able to say "Brother," in the spirit of, and because he loves him; see accordingly, the directions if a brother trespass against us. As to others, we resist not evil, but bear all things. Men may rebuke sin if they have authority. "Perceivest not"; it may be forgetfulness, but surely there is the very moral fault in this - we see our neighbour's and not our own. Not so the repentant man, he is full, until cleared, of his own sins, and then can speak in the spirit of love which knows forgiveness. Therefore He says elsewhere: "Thou hypocrite," for it shows our mind is not changed as to the thing, yet we find fault with it in another; therefore evidently not of love, nor indeed have we right in this to say: "Brother"; so Psalm 51, which see - you are bad enough yourself, and therefore it is impossible you can have a right moral judgment to direct others.

- 46. This is a reproach, yet instruction is treasured up in it.

- 48. The rock which was under the surface. The power of eternal life is not in the audience of the words, pleasant as they may be, and seemly in profession, but in a fruit-producing change of mind, which no floods can affect, for it is within, it unites us to God which the great waterfloods cannot come nigh as to its stability.

- 49. And the higher and nobler, the greater the ruin.

Luke

J. N. Darby.

<46004E>134

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Luke  7

The case of the centurion is a very full one in principle. It is not merely an act of grace. It is grace to a Gentile, nor is that all. The great principle on which the apostle rests this question is brought out. It was of faith, that it might be by grace, that the promise might be sure to all the seed. Faith, as the great principle, is introduced next. There is the recognition of the honour God had put upon His people; though despised and failing exceedingly, still he loved His nation, and had built them a synagogue. Unfeigned humility, for his faith was far beyond those he honoured, consequently a very high apprehension of the power and glory of Christ's Person as divine, reaching beyond Jewish thoughts altogether, and yet, as yet Jews, quite kept in their place all through, even by the Lord, for He says: "No, not in Israel." He went with them, and yet looking at faith out of Israel. The effect was certain of this. Thus the whole order and opening of the house was brought out. Faith always makes humble, because it exalts the object of faith. His faith too, note, was by report, by hearing. "He built the synagogue for us."

135  - 1. Christ does not conceal the principles of his faith, though He may address them as obligatory on those who are really His people; see verses 6 and 17.

- 3. Upon this occasion, it would seem, on his concern for his sick servant, he was told of this Jesus who was so famous, and He in Capernaum. But he was a stranger, and the Jews knew God, and were God's people, and they must be the fittest to bring this wonderful Person, but he believed that He was a man of mercy as well as power, and his servant needed Him.

There was surely sense of the deepest personal respect and affection - a strong apprehension, though perhaps untaught, of the excellency of His Person. I need scarcely add wonderful humility ever correspondent to the measure of the apprehension of that, and this not only showing itself towards Jesus Himself, but also towards others, the connection of which note, for it is very instructive. This message of his friends very strongly depicts his character and feeling. He was one far more morally changed and turned to God than the people whom he looked to as God's people. So often where the light of the gospel has not shone fully so as to form men on its principles. He told nothing to Jesus of his service to them, nor spoke to Him of anything but his unworthiness, and this so decidedly and consistently that he begged Him not to come, as unworthy to have Him in his house, not as if he did Christ an honour by believing on Him - no pretence of receiving Him to set himself up. His sense of himself spoke his own grave and real apprehension of what his friends told of the fruits of it.

136 The Lord reaches all Gentiles on this principle.

There is great simplicity of heart along with his very strong and simple faith. Yet it would not perhaps have become our Lord to have gone to a Gentile, though there is exhibited here that "In every nation," etc.; Acts 10: 34, 35.

- 9. He addressed the multitude with this remark; they learned grace to the stranger by it, but they yet knew it in one who loved Israel. The Lord, for God was thus manifested, we may say of course removed the evil faith thus truly brought to Him, for He came to do it.

Our Lord had baptised many disciples more than John, express disciples, i.e., His disciples had, I suppose unto repentance, and that He was the Christ - rather in the hope of the coming kingdom in profession by repentance. This seems to have been before His public preaching or His apostles', etc., which note, for I doubt that our Lord baptised any after, but that He called upon all men then to believe on Him as the Christ come, when He had sufficiently won individuals by His private ministry, and even then He avoided human publicity. The character of the ministration is, we know, changed by the coming of the Holy Ghost, but I query if there be not a wisdom which, in the midst of evil, savours of this spirit - and the just use of this holy zeal for the hidden ones of the Lord, and holy boldness for His Name's sake in power give the character of a full and perfect minister. He did not in the nature of His ministry go beyond John; see chapter 4: 14, where the assumption of His ministry is noted.

- 12. Along with grace to the (poor dead) Gentiles, came the evidence of power to raise the dead, but manifested here in human compassion, and in witness that God had visited His people.

Multitudes everywhere, but, alas! where is their end?

- 13. Our Lord, as Man, did it upon the spur of the occasion, but doubtless He was led to Nain of the Spirit which dwelt in Him in all fulness, that His glory might be shown forth as it is at this day by it; so often, and thus it ought to be, for the Person of Christ is eminently shown forth in it, His humanity being touched with our infirmities, and His perfect power to save. So, in their place, in measure, His Spirit in His servants; I mean as to the infirmity of the vessel, and the energy of the Spirit guided by a supreme power, not, of course, as to the person.

137  - 16. This was the common word while it was a favour to themselves and till the trial of confession came.

We have now, I take it, the complete hinge of the dispensation brought out. The Lord receives, and bears witness to John the baptist, not John to the Lord, and John receives Christ's testimony of Himself, and by report too. It was no longer preparing a people for the Lord, but receiving sinners, and raising the dead. Yet the fullest testimony is borne to John, and his work in baptism owned. They who had bowed to it among the Jews received the Lord's testimony concerning him. The Pharisees and Scribes rejected the counsel of God towards them, being not baptised of him. Thus again, while the Jewish work was owned it was owned from a higher ground, where the Lord in grace and living power, resurrection power, had placed Himself. This was based on entire rejection in and by the world, so that though He was doing all good, still it was: "Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me"; see the end then of verse 28, as marking the change now taking place. But even John had advocated repentance, which was more than law, for law allows nothing of repentance nor grace, for admission of repentance is grace. Law, with God, recognises equivalent atonement. Elias was testimony, not to those under the law properly, but to apostate Israel having left the place of covenant. We find, in addition, the recognition of a class who did understand these things - wisdom as to John, or the Lord's ways. Wisdom is justified of her children - the wisdom of God's ways, all of them apparently quite different, but understood in grace, but it is wisdom's children, those who are identified with her, and take her view of grace from above, and God glorified in His dealings, dealings towards man ruined, not man's judgment of God as if he was, as a sinner, a competent judge. It is more than they are saved, justified. It is the children of wisdom justifying wisdom.

- 20. It was a turning over in fact of the disciples of John to the Lord, but that John sent for the satisfaction of his own mind, as to its ultimate expectations, is to me evident, as I have taken notice elsewhere at large. Some men reason from what could be, but the way in Scripture is to weigh the force of the testimony itself. It would be hard to say it were a sort of dramatic interlude to satisfy the disciples, and it destroys very deep and valuable instruction, namely, the paramount testimony of our Lord to Himself by His works, notwithstanding His humiliation, by which and His own testimony was the exercise of saving faith in seeing His glory - His glory as the Mediator, God manifest in the flesh. His Saviour glory, the glory which he who has seen is saved, and has, knowing, seeing the Son, seen the Father also, who can fathom the mystery of the Person of the Son of God. Upon this, His Church is built, and shall endure; and in the knowledge of this it consists as the Scriptures manifest, the Spirit testifying thereto.

138  - 24. People do not go in crowds into the wilderness for nothing. It is a strong appeal to their own former thoughts pressed home upon them, drawing them to the recollection of John's peculiar character.

It is exceedingly lovely this testimony to John, thus honouring His faithful servant, though he might have gladly decreased before the Light. But the kingdom of heaven was now introduced, and the least in it was greater than he that was connected with the Jews and before it, than John the baptist even himself. Our Lord testifies to John, not John to the Lord. Indeed he could point Him out by a revealed sign, but give Him no authenticating testimony; this was the Lord's to him.

- 30. Note, too, He authenticated John in his real character; and this was always indeed a separating medium, as our Lord expressly used it afterwards when they enquired His authority. We see here the force of that question. It was a trial of their own unconversion by what they dared not deny. Note, the danger of having rejected grace or the testimony, for it hangs together, and the next testimony always bears witness to the importance of the former, so that we cannot receive this without really acknowledging that they hang together; but the rejection of the former hardens the heart against the latter, and the receiving this condemns us for the rejection of that. Note also God always begins at the right end - confession of sin and turning to Him without assumption of grace. We shall recognise with simplicity as a doctrine what we have received in grace ourselves. But the rejection of it as that paves the way for rejection of all the promises of God. Yet both have in themselves the ground of suitable proposal to the heart and state of man primarily, and especially the gospel, the reception of which produces that of which the other is the testimony and claim.

- 13-31. In Matthew and Mark, in the narrative, "Lord" is not found, but "Jesus." Here and in chapters 10: 1, 11: 39, 12: 42, 13: 15, 17: 6, and 22: 31, and in John 4: 1 and chapter 6: 23. In John, after His resurrection it becomes a constant word as to Him. It is certainly, which bears on Luke's gospel, more constantly used in Acts, and Paul's epistles than anywhere if it be not Jude. In Peter's second epistle it is also very frequent; in John never, save in the third. It is very often used in James, and 1 Peter, of God as Jehovah.

139  - 35. On the whole we have some extremely important moral facts with our Lord's statement of the case, and the divine judgment as to the result of the whole. Simply let us say to justify Him in all His ways and works, and indeed "Wisdom is justified of all her children."

Some of the points are weakly noticed in the former note, but they deserve much study. Note, man's business here is to justify God, not himself against God. To justify God in God's way of justifying him - this begins by repentance, to wit, in ourselves; then we begin to justify God, and that too against ourselves, for this is the trying point. Thus we have to do it. But it is righteous to justify His ways, and suitable, and holy (for they are just) and in this God delights, for he that honoureth Him He will honour. Yet it is a counsel of grace to themselves, i.e., in contrast, and, as it were, in scorn of the wisdom of this world which rejected every evidence of God's mind, whereas they who were despised, and indeed held accursed, were indeed the children of wisdom, and every one of them comprehended, were possessed of, and acknowledged the whole wisdom of God, the only true wisdom which, etc., see 1 Cor. 2. Compare verse 29 here, and its connection with verse 28. There was also perverseness, for in any character they rejected it, and yet every child of God perceived His wisdom in both cases. It is, however, a solemn assertion on the Lord's part.

- 36. Notwithstanding, however, this perverseness, our Lord did not stop manifesting Himself, the truth in Himself, to them, rather to the world. Note also the perfect simplicity and readiness with which the Lord went. No common civility was offered to Him. He was a poor Preacher, and it was an honour to be with the Pharisee. But He was the Lord of glory, and the Pharisee did not know that. So of His children and theirs. Doubtless our Lord was sensible of it, but His deportment it did not affect; He was used to it; indeed He sought it not. His mind was on saving souls, finishing the work His Father gave Him to do.

140 From this verse to the end, we have three hearts fully revealed - light and grace come by Jesus Christ being there, in the blessed Lord. The Pharisee's - God in grace in his house, and he never found it out. The woman - all in the light, and having learned to trust in grace, knowing in this the Person of the blessed Lord; she loved much. God's own heart - perfect light, revealed the others therefore, but His own, God's grace to the sinner. Grace that had won, grace that had inspired confidence, in full acknowledgment of sin, grace that thought of her, and while so meeting did not further trouble Himself about man's judgment. How should God, and God in grace, but have thought of the woman, pronounced forgiveness, pronounced peace, assured of salvation, and denied its source in man's heart - by grace the revelation to it, faith in the blessed Person of the Son of God? And how was that faith showed?

- 39. Here we find too the force of hamartolos (a sinner), valuable as regards John's words. What if He were a Saviour of any poor lost sinners? Ah! God was unknown - that was the secret. We often reason justly as to that part of a question which is within human reason; so here. But God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor His ways our ways; our conclusions therefore go all wrong, there is something assumed, founded in our own thoughts which are not His.

Note the close of this chapter is evidently the beautiful comment on verse 35, "Wisdom is justified of her children." This poor woman was a child of wisdom, and she justified it. Justifying God is the grand point of true subjective righteousness or restoration to it. It is lost in us utterly, we have only to own it (as sinners, too) in Another - first in John Baptist, or repentance ministry, that we are justly condemned or condemnable, and next in grace in His ways to us as sinners, dealing with us as such in grace (and righteousness) in Christ. The Pharisee Simon ought as towards the woman; but then he must have counted himself a sinner, and come in as such. It is impossible (ought not to be done morally) to justify grace towards the chief of sinners, and all without difference, unless we put ourselves in that place; the poor woman did, and justified God in His ways in Christ. If difference is to be made, i.e., if righteousness is to be sought for or recognised in man, then grace to a sinner destroys that difference. But if the Holy God cannot sanction the decency, poor external decency of man - a good character - then it is only in the place ourselves of the objects of grace that we can justify that grace, for anywhere else we should claim a difference to be made, and condemn the grace, as self-righteous Pharisees did. They separated themselves, made a difference. But the comment is most lovely.

141 The state of this Pharisee's mind I think deeply interesting. I think it has been treated superciliously. But he failed entirely in the essential point, perceiving the glory of Christ. In this the Lord meets him, and shows, in contrast with the woman, the point where he was exercising judgment to be precisely the point where he failed. The converted and convinced mind sees the glory of the Lord as grace towards itself; the unconverted, unconvinced, however interested in the enquiry, as a man judges, and therefore judges according to its own thoughts, and therefore necessarily fails in seeing the glory which is not according to those thoughts. If it were on any ground, it need not have been manifested, our judgment of the gospel must be wrong therefore, our reception of it as grace alone right, and alone the way of coming to the knowledge of it, for it is grace. When informed by it we may see its excellence. Note also, there are generally, as moralists, two great points before us - our perception of the state of sin, and God's thoughts upon it. The one we may, in measure, perceive, i.e., in their legal character, but the other we know nothing of, and therefore in truth fail in all our results upon the former. We are, however, warranted in the direct application of gospel truth to it. This mind and these thoughts of God were fully in Christ, and He exhibited them. They ought to be in the Church, and are, according to the measure of the Spirit by the gospel, and I think it all hangs on these words.

This was not the Son of man proving that, come here below, He had power to forgive sins on earth, by removing the Jewish and earthly consequences, but the direct and distinct revelation of the ways of God. It was not now righteousness presented to Him, or chastenings even removed in mercy, but a forgiving of sins in grace put sovereignly and freely to any poor sinner, manifesting and producing love in the forgiven, and thus reconciling to God, producing peace. It was properly grace, the ground upon which any poor sinner (a Gentile) could be received, and God manifested, not in requirement from man, and making man of importance (in the flesh) but making God and His character in sovereign grace all, so bringing in blessing, and its blessed effect upon the heart in developing the fruits of grace there in a heart restored to confidence in God in the sense of goodness. What a blessed picture! A goodness known in its blessedness through that which has introduced us to it, not only in the act but in Him who did it.

142 The discernment of guilt, judged of by man in its gross and heinous forms was one thing, but the grace of God which could blot out and forgive all was quite another. This was quite a new thing, not righteousness from a sinner to God, and Christ come only to sanction Pharisees and discern guilt, but love to a sinner (manifesting God in this new character) producing thankful, holy love to God, a new and blessed relationship, sovereign and beyond, and out of the reach of all others. But how has God always to prove Himself right in His goodness to Man! So hard is man's heart!

- 44. This is a moral explanation of the blessed results of this dealing and principle. Grace and love in Jesus had produced more lovely effects really, and in the sight of God who did judge all things, than were found in Simon. She discerned what he could not - the blessed perfectness of divine grace, and the loveliness of Jesus; she judged as God did. What a place does grace put a poor sinner in! The full peace is a positive announcement; attractive goodness in God may be felt previous to this, but not certainty of conscience through Christ before Him. This was the announcement of this truth, that souls so restored were forgiven; that they were attracted, and fruits produced was evident. The Lord appealed to it The forgiveness was the new, blessed, and full announcement of the real character and extent of this grace to the conscience and need of the sinner. "Her many sins are forgiven her." As we said, God knew all about it; our comfort is He does. But Simon had no sort of idea what God was to such, hence no love; he was curious as to Christ as a Preacher. What a rebuke to the whole principle he stood on! His ignorance, the state of his heart, for Christ had known this too, and proved Himself a Prophet! As Simon would not have had the love that forgives, produces the effect on the heart, the announcement of the authoritative forgiveness may remain to purge, and send away in peace the conscience. But the Spirit, and operative attraction of forgiveness is in the Person, quod nota. "Go in peace" was the sentence. Her faith had seen the Person and attractive grace of Jesus, God manifest in the flesh, and had therefore really known, understood, and delighted in God, and she was saved; for surely one that does is actually saved, for that is to be saved. She loved well, then she knew God, and was born of God. Where had she found Him? In Jesus! A blessed knowledge of the highest perfection which scribes and learned men knew nothing about, for it was moral knowledge eternal and essential though given knowledge - a knowledge connected with the state of the heart and nature, and therefore acting on conscience, and forming the affections. She shone out in this. The other was peace pronounced, a very important thing, but the work was done; but she now knew that faith had saved her. It is both mercy and grace to put it on faith, for it reaches other poor sinners, and honours, and comforts the heart of the humbled one on God's part restoring the soul to confidence.

143 If He could not forgive sins, what good to sinners? But grace exercised and made known by the Son of man was blasphemy to man's heart (who needed it?) - what a state! And but for sovereign grace it was. But God was this. There the only answer.

- 47. Note it is not said: "For which cause they are forgiven," but "For which cause I say." It formed a ground of reasoning and observation, not the ultimate cause which is absolutely impossible. The Lord, as it were, identifies Himself with, and vindicates against the haughty world, the believing sinner, and then gives assurance and peace perfectly regardless of the comments of their minds. He applies Himself then, not to their unbelief, which were useless, but to the other's faith, and having communicated forgiveness as an Interpreter, One among a thousand, He shows unto the believing sinner his uprightness, to wit, his faith, for that is uprightness, it has right thoughts of God, right thoughts, in some measure at least, of oneself, as it is written: "Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered: blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile." For "When I kept silence," etc. And, which indeed is the root and spring of this matter, right thoughts about Christ, His work, His coming. The work is of grace, but the work is recognised, but as of grace; compare Hosea 14. The whole question is, in this answer, settled: "Hath saved thee; go in peace." It is discharged from the conscience, while the soul finds itself infinitely and everlastingly a debtor to the continual fountain of all grace.

144 On the whole, there cannot be a more deeply interesting display of the whole relation in which man stands with God - its method, its order, and its results developed in Christ, all in all, than in this passage, which may be followed in the minutest detail, and so the more known of it, for some passages of Scripture afford a general principle, and do not affect detail, some exhibit explicit characters, and follow the workings of moral circumstances in the fullest and deepest measure, and the more they are investigated the more do their closeness and depth appear, and we see the secret springs of conduct and character, as here, from the God of heaven, through various ignorances and error, to the poor sinner, opened out in their true nature and character by the presence and word of Him who revealed the one, and came to judge and restore the other, who brought both into each other's presence that He might show the mercy and fulness of God, and make it good to His people. And this is to be looked for in Luke. So in the parable of the prodigal son, and that whole chapter, etc., for this is its object.

- 50. "Go in peace." Not merely, I conceive, peace as to the particular act passed, but fully and in state, as if He should say to the waves: Be at peace - in peace generally and finally - a concluded state of reconciliation.

Luke  8

We have then a brief picture of the Lord's life (as ensuing) not controversy with priests or learned scribes, but its proper character, though the other may have been by enforced occasion. He was preaching, certain women, a few women supporting Him - a humble place in, and because in a Lord denying race; alas! for them. But they had been subjects of His grace, and so their love drawn out towards Him, the expressions thus of His grace, grace as we have seen it just before in the poor woman. Evil spirits, sicknesses, and many devils had been the characteristics of these poor women. Where worthy of notice, one was connected with the palace; that was as remarkable. But these are the noticeable things in the ministers to the wants of, and companions of Christ. The noticing the women thus, as thus attracted, is every way worthy of attention. It is a distinct trait in the Lord's history, clear grace, and bearing with, and condescension to weakness, in its gentlest, and what would have been in this case its most despised forms.

145  - 1. This is an interesting little episode - the manner of our Saviour's life, and His attendants, and much is contained in it. What follows is a commentary or sermon on this.

We have then the next great character of grace - the ministry of the word; see 2 Cor. 5: 19. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them," and committing "unto us the ministry of reconciliation." There its committing to His servants the ministry is mentioned, here the Lord of course ministers Himself, but it is the same principle. It is no question of efficacy here, but of gracious service, for indeed much fell on profitless ground. It was not seeking fruit in His vineyard, but scattering seed wheresoever it might fall - a general act of grace. Note, as taking up the general principle, the Sower is left unexplained. We have only this parable therefore here as instructing us in the principle of grace, not in the prophetic history of the kingdom. There is, however, the distinct setting aside of His associations and relationships in the flesh, and of Jewish principles. They (a Remnant) were spoken to "in parables, that seeing they might not see"; that dispensation on its folly in disowning Him, and to open now the door to all the seed, was judicially shut up. And it was at once said: "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," and to them in parables that hearing they might not understand. It was not Jewish privileges, but the scattered Word of God, wherever (through grace) there was an ear and a heart to receive it. Accordingly we have this announced at the close when the Lord's mother and brethren after the flesh are not recognised, and it is announced that he that hears the Word of God, and does it, the same is His mother and brethren.

Then another principle is introduced, responsibility for the communication of that we have received, for being in grace, and testimony of love, wherever really received it must, in the power of that, be in honour to the grace, and so desire of blessing to others. This was the evidence of really having - for the testimony now was of and in grace, and so going forth supremely to Gentiles and sinners known to be such. God did enter prerogatively and blessedly to light a candle not to put it under a bushel (the Lord make us faithful) but on a candlestick, and all was for manifestation. This was the very principle of what was now working. It was no conventional veiled system, but the going forth and coming into the world, of light; evil fear to communicate every secret principle that hindered would come to light, but especially, and above all, the light was given to come to light - everything indeed would, but this was for it, given for manifestation as the light, as Paul therefore: "Hath shined in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." "Take heed therefore how ye hear," i.e., as responsible for the possession of all the advantages set before them by the Lord and His word, that it be possessed in the living power of grace as testified of by grace. The goodness of the seed would be test of the character of the soil. Happy for those in whose consciences grace planted a deep and divinely-rooted conviction, for conscience it is that the root abidingly strikes in, and so the heart of grace - and it is more than the natural man - for what is of God abides. But here the ordinary moral apparent effects are spoken of, for the Lord is not spoken of as working efficaciously as in divine power, but ministerially as sowing the seed, and to this therefore the parable applies, and rests on the detection of man, and responsibility on grace exercises in service and sowing the word, not in internal secret and saving power but ministry and fruit. It is an instructive portion of the word.

146  - 5. The servant is not above his master; it is enough for the servant if he be as his master.

- 7. It is not that there was nothing else. Nominally they were "sprung up" (sumphueisai) that was all, but it was enough to choke the word and ruin the man.

- 8. It was "into" (eis) not "upon" (epi). It is good and profitable to know the manner of the work as well as to declare the things which constitute the work itself. This I have sometimes enquired within myself as to, reasoning with others, but then it is: "He that hath ears to hear." There are those to whom it is given in parables.

- 12. "Are those who hear." There is all they are; the rest the devil has, but they are hearers.

- 13. "Who believe for a time, and in time of trial fall away." So ever, and such there must be.

147  - 14. It is "who having heard" (akousantes) not "who hear" (akouontes).

- 15. Fruit is always brought forth in patience.

God in communicating the knowledge of the things of the kingdom, does it to set up a light. "God who caused" (commanded) "the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." In speaking therefore to men, He seeks a manifestation proportionate to that which is spoken; failure in this displays fault in the hearer, which will appear in the light he gives forth (for indeed there is nothing hid - for indeed this was an unperceived fault - which shall not become manifest, or secret which shall not be known and come to light) "therefore take heed how ye hear." For indeed the word received in proportion to its full development within is the spring of abundant exercise in the word, and not only will it produce manifold more in fruit, but thus, as seed, give occasion to renewed enlargements in the power and fruit of the kingdom. The manner of reception may be unperceived, but when it grows up into the light it will sadly appear in the manifested crop. "Take heed therefore"; who can tell the consequences of right reception of the word? And if there be not this solid fruitful rest, all apparent enjoyment of the light of the word and exercise of it will vanish into nothing. "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples"; for God is a God of love, and works by this assimilation of others to Himself, though here it is enforced by warning considerations; so often.

The use of this passage in Luke very much manifests his style of application of principles laid down, I mean of course as entrusted to him. What follows is an instance of incidents brought in in their moral connection, without reference to their historical consequence. With this, accordingly, the immediate paragraph or subject ends.

- 19, et seq. It is exceeding solemn this. How little of this entire purpose of heart is there! This divine separatedness to one thing!

Such was the conduct of the Lord, and such the duty of His people! He disregards the claim when it was of another nature. It was not ministry, it was not a claim within the kingdom and its labour and patience, but out of it. The reason of their wish was not enquired into. If we see them we acknowledge their claim as such, and therefore are bound to fulfil the relation. The ground on which we stand is, there is a paramount claim upon one, which makes one not know them as such who are merely naturally related; if we are in the place, the duty follows, and it is sin to neglect it in se, but there may be a claim by Him who made the relation, and the duty coming from the source of that duty, takes us provisionally out of the place. The believer reckons those his kin who hear the word of God and keep it.

148  - 22. We have then the condition of the disciples as launched forth and their trial - and that through unbelief as though He were asleep, quod nota. How truly we feel this! But it is unbelief; i.e., the fear. The Lord, however, permits the trial for the exercise of faith, and permits to be in danger, and He apparently to be quite neglectful, because it is the trial of faith, in His interest in them which is their strength, and the identity of their cause with Him, and He is in the same ship with them; and surely we may say, with us. And yet He has perfect power to allay the storm, and does in mercy when called to take notice of it, for though the Lord may have purpose of it, the mischief is of Satan's will as with Job we see.

This then was the history of Christ and the Remnant's history, or Christ and the Remnant identified with Him. Its primary application is to the Remnant of the Jews actually brought out.

Note the storm is "on" the sea, but the ship is "in" the sea, and Christ is "in" the ship.

I cannot doubt the general intention of this fact - Christ leaves us and the Church, as though He were asleep, though: "He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." Still the danger is apparent; the presence of Christ's power is not to man's thoughts. But then we may note the characters of unbelief, here selfishness. All fear, properly so called, is selfish - merely "We perish." It ceases to regard the Church as the vase of Christ's glory, in which He is interested, we are permitted to say, for His own sake. Was not Christ in the ship? What would have become of Him? Faith, on the contrary, resting in the apprehension of Christ's own interest in the Church, is calm, and not only has the fruit of peace in Himself, but in fact lives out of that selfishness which the other generates, honours Christ, and is able to serve his neighbour according to His glory, and the very injurious moral influence of the power of circumstances is avoided. Circumstances, when they thus by unbelief gain power over our mind, separate us from God, discharge our mind from all sanctifying influences, and make us pro tanto atheists; when, on the contrary, passed through in faith, they enlarge our acquaintance with God, deprive circumstances of their separating power, and work in us living communion, that inward life which is eternal. But Christ alone is the power of this to us. Nevertheless the Lord will rebuke, and show His power to us, though we be weak. This is mercy.

149  - 25. Here we have the general testimony (explained to His own) and their identification with Him in the tossings of apparent danger.

- 27. Then from this verse we have the effect historically of Christ's coming into this. The power of Satan set aside by a word, but the world wishing and sending Him away, the Jews rushing down to ruin, the saved man desiring to be with Him, but sent back to testify of his deliverance. Then the ways of grace (v. 40) to faith which characterises this part of the chapter.

We then get the general picture of the operation of grace in deliverance from the power of Satan, of the chiefest under it for a witness of Christ's power over it, and the witness of his mischief in the headlong destruction of those given up to him - swine, these unclean ones. The full effect of the Lord's first coming in testimony, mercy sent, on His departure, by the healed one, Satan not shut up yet into the bottomless pit, but hurrying others to destruction.

The healed Legion seems to me then the Remnant as delivered from Satan and brought to its right mind, then desirous to be with Christ, but sent back in testimony. The swine seem to me specially to represent the Jews given up; the Gadarenes the world. Such a picture, too, will be more especially in the latter day. Here the previous state of the man, Legion, describes the then present state of the ungodly Gentiles, and the swine, as we have said, the ruin of Judaism. But in the latter day Gentiles will be in this headlong swinish state, too, under the evil influence of the enemy, and Legion then is the Remnant of the Jews who are messengers to the world. This double application flows from the preliminary destruction of the then disobedient Jews, as hereafter more largely, and, with swinish apostate Gentiles, filled with the power of the evil one. The world's reception of Jesus is shown in the conduct of the Gadarenes even upon the evidence of blessing. The instruction is given on great moral principles withal, so that it has application to individuals. No human power or arrangement binds or arrests the prevailing power of Satan in the world. The limit of the work of the Lord is very plain, verse 31, for, for the next dispensation, the enemy will be sent into the bottomless pit. But this shows, on the contrary, what is previous, more particularly accomplished mercy and so full witness. We have the destroyed, the saved and right-minded subject of grace in Legion, and then the indifferent and repelling world. The moral instruction is very strong.

150 The word of Jesus delivers, has perfect power over but does not send Satan into the abyss. The result of Satan's work (permitted perhaps in witness) is charged upon the Lord Jesus. Verse 40, I apprehend, presents Jesus' return to the Jewish people as on earth whence He had left on the ship. They are now waiting for Him; it is a remarkable interval. The first, i.e., the voyage, showing the condition, feebleness, trial, and support of the disciples embarked with Jesus in the same ship; the case on landing, the active seeking operation of Jesus in deliverance and testimony towards the world. "Go and tell," was an unusual thing, not Christ's Jewish but His gospel character. Then He had not striven, nor cried, nor lifted up, for He came as to His own, they would not receive Him, but here message was sent, yet primarily by the Jewish Remnant. His own house, was therefore the first commission. It is manifest that the character of the deliverance and the question brought out was Satan's power and influence, which in violence in Legion, in sober gentleness and rejection of Christ in the Gadarenes, or headlong destruction in the swine, was the same power, and this, in the world in all its parts, was exhibited in the history, and Christ's power over it. But his quiet influence, by fear of Christ's disturbing their quiet and ordinary worldly matters, was as ruinous as all, and worse in moral exhibition, for it stood the exhibition of Christ's almighty grace. And this is very evil. They were told how it all was, and they besought Him to depart out of their coasts. This is the world. Legion, I apprehend, we must account as an expression of the concentration of all the various evil, various power of Satan which besets the human part, i.e., of the evil spirits as governing by it, and possessing that which by His power Christ delivers. Seven devils were in Mary Magdalene by various lusts. Satan governs and tyrannises over the faculties of the believer when not yet delivered, and is possessed of these faculties in power as well - quietly guides by lusts and worldliness. The latter is the real evil as shutting out God. The power of Satan, when He comes to deliver, never can, nor control us when we have His Spirit, when by it resisted and the flesh kept down, though there may be consequences suffered for that, where need was. Christ suffered, but He for us, we as consequences, still as occasions of His power, and proofs of capacity of a greater deliverance. How are we fallen!

151 The details of this passage are most instructive to us. How completely Satan identified himself with the man's mind, so that the man spoke as speaking his own interest and wishes under the influence of Satan, though there was the sense of superior power present, and so now with the word: "What have I to do with thee?" "I beseech thee torment me not." Note the use, too, of the unclean spirit and the demons. The manifestation of Satan's power is a real help to deliverance, but not unless in the exercise of power to deliver, but it marks what is there, and the might that can show, and force them to show their true character, however man's evil heart may give place to them. I suspect it is: "he besought" not "they besought" - parekalei not parekaloun, verse 31.

The account judges the power of Satan as prince of this world, and shows the character of the believer's (Remnant's) deliverance from it - formerly a prey to all its lusts, and driven about, though never, through the preserving love of God, able to do the very first thing they did with the swine. The believer (Remnant) would have shut out Jesus from tormenting it, as it accounted it in a state of nature. The world does send Him away, however quietly, not liking the manifestation of God's presence to disturb its peace, and He sends back the delivered as witnesses of the delivering power, of which they are subjects, to the world. First it was to their own home; so, beginning at Jerusalem. We have three parties or classes here - the delivered, the given up as swine, and the quiet, careless world annoyed and distressed at the Lord's presence, and begging Him to go away. It was all that poor Legion had done.

- 31. In English abusson sounds as though it were the sea, but it is the same word as the "bottomless pit" in Revelation 20, "the abyss."

152  - 36. This is evidently inserted with purpose, the manifestation of the Lord's power. Though in the way of mercy to others, when His grace is not personally felt leaves the soul still in its hardness, they had the same circumstances before them precisely as the man healed, the effect was totally opposite. We may observe too the character of this short visit. It is on the whole a deeply instructive statement.

I think too we ought to note that the supreme directing mind evidently disposed the incidents of our Lord's life, though He may have walked through them as Man.

- 40. This, I think, marks generally the return of Jesus to the Jewish people.

- 41. Then in the visit to Jairus, there is the character of His dealing with that people - desires awakened for His interference; but before ever He really reaches the scene of mercy, the object of mercy is really dead, and, to all man's thoughts, hopeless, and the deliverance is really and altogether in the power of resurrection, and the deliverance in that day shall be altogether so. And such is the mind and journey of the Lord - the deliverance of the virgin, the daughter of His people (the Remnant of) those He visited in His mercy.

But then another principle came in in the way - to do this He must come full of grace and truth. He must come in that fulness of God's character with grace and love in His heart which, wherever discerned, must flow forth and answer to the need which drew on it, for it was love in power to save. To understand it was to enjoy, and have its saving influence. In a word, faith always got a blessing, and must. It was this principle that, while it might now save those that believed among the Jews, let in the Gentiles. It was "by faith," and therefore "upon all those who believe." "Through their faith"; see the previous account. It was the manifestation of the active power of Christ's divine purpose of love, which went in the mind of that love out of its way, and when the subject of it was entirely out of its mind, as sin makes us for all real things of the soul, meets in its own supreme will and power, the power of Satan which holds us there, and casts by His word the unclean spirit and power out, and the man restored loves to be with Him whose presence once he abhorred and could not bear as under Satan's power. Now it is the other side of the picture, the desires and need of faith, knowing its misery, meeting necessarily the full supply of love and power in which He came, in touching if it was (in the shame and sorrow, yet secret faith) of its need, but the hem of His garment, and finding healing. The one was the deliverance of supreme purpose and power, keeping even when Satan seemed to have his own way, hindered, and no restraint or fetter of man was of any avail, yet never allowed to do what would have hindered the meeting Jesus - the first thing done with the swine. The other, the manner of it in faith when discerning need made one seek, or hidden shame met Him in the crowd by the way, and found in the throng means to be nigh and find resource in Him.

153 The incurable disease and death of sin was entirely met by the grace and word of Jesus, as well as the power of Satan, in the mighty and irresistible triumph of His purpose and will. Let Satan have what permitted power he might, he could do nothing against that will, nor an instant withstand the power. The deliverance from it only became witness to the world of what had come in to deliver in Jesus, of the saving power of God.

It is very lovely, in the case of this poor woman, seeing faith breaking through the difficulties, and having, through a touched heart, this perfect confidence in the power that resided in Him. How faith makes its way! What discoveries it makes of His Person and blessedness! The hem of His garment is enough to satisfy its desires, because filled with the power of His presence, because it has so deep an apprehension of the excellence and value, the power and grace of His Person. The heart is filled with that, and all about Him is clothed to it with that; but this is faith operating by need. I do not say that there is not withal a power of communion more fully and peacefully acquainted with His blessedness through the Holy Ghost given when the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by that given. Still need finds its resource in grace, and the blessedness of His Person here. Let the theory of the world too be ever so great, how so weak a one to find her way to Him? Why, He was in the way (the sorrowful, heartless, easy way of this world) for it drew this weakness to it by the secret power of this very grace. To be near Him was the point. It had its power in as well as on faith, and drew it near Him, while the rest but thronged Him, as the loadstone to itself, separating from all around, not by power in what is drawn but by attractive efficacy on it. Faith, in a word, is exhibited here, as we have said, as the manner, as power and purpose against Satan's dominion.

154  - 46. There was intention in it - that is faith. The Lord cannot but give when His character is known and drawn upon.

It cannot be overlooked that there is not a single sentence recorded by Luke which is not of the strongest moral character. This is so familiarly, so that it needs no comment, though worthy of the closest attention.

- 47. Healed sin may be manifested. Though in itself it be of shame and sorrow, but indeed it is the manifestation of faith and the Lord's acceptance. It is the clothing of the Lord's glory thrown around the poor sinner, and in this he appears before men, and testimony to men, that he that was separated is fully restored, reinstated. He is "immediately healed," and is no longer the object of separation as unclean, and this the Lord shows, though conscience and the memory of man might, per se, otherwise not recognise the change or estimate it. But the Lord restores wholly; it is His pregorative, for He heals wholly, and clears the conscience. Of this we have many testimonies in this book, as we shall see in the prodigal son. The testimony is here, as in the woman, in the Pharisee's house.

- 50. Fear and faith do not run well together; but see Mark on this verse.

- 51. There is great simplicity and evidence of truth in this. There are certain undue, unbelieving feelings of others with which we must not get entangled, or it will be impossible for us to exercise faith towards God; and our love towards those who really need it claims this. The truest charity and holiest faith sometimes assume a very harsh appearance to the false feelings of man, and a very foolish one too, but faith acts upon its own resources. The result will show where truth and power and goodness was. He cast them all out. We must act decisively at times towards men, if we would act faithfully towards God. The enquiry for us is: Is this really done in love? Note, too, they all seemed on the same errand of kindness and condolence, but one was selfish in fact, and habitual, the other intelligent from God. One could not see beyond itself, the other came with power. They were indeed in contrast and opposition one to the other. Yet first observe it would show itself even to them. The Lord would see if they would entertain His faith, not in any assumption of power so as to claim subjection to Him, but in proposal of a common object if they could enter into it, which He saw but they could not. If indeed their hearts had been really affected or open, they would have leapt at the thoughts, though it seemed impossible, and indeed it was true. But instead they mocked at the Proposer as foolish, and for His faith. Unbelief is ever right in its premises but wrong in its conclusions, because it is unbelief as far as it goes, and because it leaves out the power of God overruling these premises. But it is the most foolish of all things, it forgives itself on its ignorance of the greatest and most certain thing in the universe - the power of God. The Lord grant His people the practical spirit of faith!

155  - 56. He charged them to tell no man what was done. This was the character of His Jewish service on His rejection; publicity became necessary to vindicate His Name in what was rejected, but He did not now strive nor cry. The testimony of the Holy Ghost to His exaltation, and therefore Gentile ministry was quite of another character, though Gentile ministry brought into another truth - union.

Our Lord did not omit the least little attention in His mercies. Not occupied with the greatness of His own work or the obligation of others to Him, His mind goes forth on the least occasions of one who had received the greatest of mercies. He perfects His work because all selfishness was absent from His mind. All comprehensive love flowed from perfect love, for there was no distracting medium of perception: "Tell it, said he, to no one." But He could not be hid. This is the spirit, so far above us, to seek. It is to us through faith. It works not merely not for a return, though it delights in it, but not from results, but from communion with Him who is love. It works by faith, and springs ever from Him who is above selfishness ever, in many shapes finding its way into our heart while it gives the real joy of love in the good done as to the blessing of another, but rests in Him from whom it flows. Nor will anything else make us workers together with Him, for our objects will always sink us in principle and communion, if we work for them. It is evidence of the reality of the work.

We get then in this chapter His reception, but the character of His coming as a Sower in connection with the responsibility of man, and then the history of the Jews in respect of it, given in descriptive or suggestive circumstances. The word of God characterised Him and His work or service in the world.

156 The whole order of God's ways in regard to His reception in Israel is unfolded in this chapter. He is surrounded by the Remnant devoted to Himself. He sows, as often remarked, does not seek fruit; only verses 16-18 add the idea of its moral universality, and the responsibility of man. His disciples, not natural relations are all that He owns on earth. In all the difficulties in the scene into which they launch forth, He, though He seems asleep and indifferent, has absolute power. Israel, when the Remnant are delivered and attached to Him, rush into destruction as the unclean; the Remnant would leave with Him, but they are sent back in testimony of the deliverance which they have received themselves. The special application to Israel is then brought out. He is on His way to heal the daughter of His people; he who in the crowd on the way touches Him by faith is healed. The deliverance is really giving life to the dead, yet treated but as asleep. Several of these points have been noted apart, but the assembly of the whole is the key here. It is not dispensational, as in Matthew 13, but the moral ways of God, and their results. In the following chapter it is more immediately and narrowly His position according to promise in Israel, enlarging itself into His place as Son of man, and then the Spirit that became them as passing through, with the knowledge of this. It is more historical, though showing that He takes the place provisionally and rejected, and this appears ever clearer in reading the gospels.

Luke

J. N. Darby.

<46004E>156

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Luke  9

Having thus largely exhibited His own mission, exercised His disciples in acquaintance with it, and shown the source from which it flowed, the Lord sent others (the twelve) to exercise a similar one as to work through the country. It was necessary for both reasons, specially as to the latter, that it should be first exhibited in His Person, they appearing as His disciples. Then He sent them out. As to their manner of carrying it on, it was founded in the soundest principles of holy wisdom, and is therefore applicable at all times as to their conduct. As to reception, it is to be remembered it was an express mission.

It was evidently the mission of God manifest in the flesh. There is in it power over all created things high and low, the thoughts and ways of men. There is nothing like it in anyone else. Indeed there is no instance of mission other than of the Lord directly. There may have been committal of received truth to faithful men within their own sphere, but this by the bye.

157 Note also when the Lord called, as endowed with special gifts, any whom it seemed good to Him to call and endow, He afforded objects on which the faith of these persons should work and find support in the trials into which faith would necessarily call them, and feed their own souls in the statements they should make. It required sinews of strength, as it were in their own mind, when they were claiming the attention of others to their moral statements, things not exactly the matter of their statements, or the proof of their arguments, for it was confined to themselves, but which should animate and strongly determine their own minds as they went on. Thus we find here and at the Transfiguration, and some other occasions. Thus, too, we find Peter using it in his first epistle, chapter 1: 16. And we may add the case of Paul; see the circumstances of those transactions.

This mission of this chapter seems to me to have been a mission also within the Jewish sphere of our Lord's service. It was power in mercy come in, then dependent on His presence. They lacked nothing; they healed diseases; they preached the kingdom of God. The prohibition to go is not mentioned, the character of this gospel not being contracted to this, but the nature of the ministry was this. It was not exactly here amid, as in Nazareth, but then sent to declare the kingdom, and authoritative denouncement if rejected. This was mercy to rescue.

The rumour had reached even the apostate king of the Jewish people, for so he was though his dominion was now partial, but where Christ's ministry chiefly was - the prince of the Land, the last and farthest from hearing ordinarily of any, for the Lord left them without excuse. We have, in this sending, a most important exercise of divine authority, and competency to communicate divine power.

- 6. "Everywhere" (pantachou). It was general - a testimony, no witness to them as objects but to their mission, i.e., the Lord. Is it not, "They went through from village to village"? Preaching and healing, as we have seen, is quite of proper Jewish blessing, because the blessing was here no disease of Egypt was to be on them, and "Who forgiveth all thy sins, and healeth all thine infirmities," was the promised blessing. Verses 7-9 marked how far the rumour of Him had reached.

158  - 7. We have in Herod, all through, the anxiety of a natural convinced mind about the manifestation of the things or power of God, no affection for the things themselves, that acts when no power is manifested, no witness of them present. It is full of doubts and enquiries, occupied with them when this power is manifested, with itself and its pleasures at all other times. It follows exciting causes not gracious affections - the outward, not the inward, power of God. To others this may be instrumental, but in no way final. The abiding power of divine goodness occupies the chambers of their heart and thoughts, and they act by it, or according to it.

- 10. This was natural; they were but missionaries. Note, here is the place of report, the subject matter "Whatsoever they had done." And indeed the only safe one. It is a different thing to report one's doings to a holy Judge, who has committed work to us, and to an indolent neighbour. Fruits of grace we may report, to the joy of the Church. From work into the wilderness is a good transition, and not to the midst of men. Among them work retires to Christ, if it may be alone, as far as reference goes. Then you will, if it be for you, work well again. If you follow the Lord in it His work will soon be upon you again, be wholly it. Know when your work is ended, or you will do something besides your work, and miss that which will fit you for the next work that is to come. You can only do God's work, and that is what is given you to do. Seek the Lord's guidance in this, for in ourselves we have anything but sufficiency for these things. But the multitudes soon came. It is not pleasant to have crowds always about one claiming attention, but He came to do the will of Him that sent Him, and to finish His work. He received them, spoke to them, healed them. Note even here may we say, though with the Lord it was deliberate, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." He gave Himself every way to their need.

The Lord having taken them into retirement, the people still follow Him, and He occupies Himself with that in mercy and grace, of which the disciples were merely representative instruments, but they were quite unconscious of its resources now to be developed according to another Jewish promise, "He shall satisfy the poor with bread." "We are here in a desert place," was their consciousness, i.e., we have no resources. The Lord expects the recognition of present power in them: "Give ye them to eat." They reckon, as ever alas! unbelief, upon their present actual resources, showing their state of darkness as to who was there. But it did not hinder Jehovah's love, nor Jesus' power as such. They are witnesses instead of agents, for indeed it must be His work, but faith participated in this. But we may remark that, although acting with Jehovah's power, He still acts with the most blessed expression of a Servant's but a Son's confiding dependence - the consciousness that blessing was in heaven, and grace in His Father, He knew that well, though He were the witness and agent of it on earth, the medium and witness of it.

159  - 12. Unbelief is often too wisely considerate; but love outpasses it, for love often suggests faith.

- 13. This assumes and therefore tries their faith in Him present and caring for Israel, and so competency to meet Israel's need, as the consciousness and expression of that power in Him, still holding and using it, however, as a Servant. Certainly if the Lord had not been there, it had been strange and inconceivable.

- 16. "Looking up to heaven, he blessed," serves as the full expression of the blessed Lord's position.

The answer was abundance and over. Not as Moses in the wilderness: "He that gathered much had nothing over," where the diligence of man came in, checking the assumption of his competency, and withal showing mercy to the feeble suited in application to what we had; here it was now the multiplying and multiplied abundance of the Lord present Himself, greater in His humility and fuller in blessing than man in his acquired blessing in the fullest human favour, for the weakness of God is stronger than men. But we are to observe it bore the character of grace. But however rich the manifestation of grace, the Lord entering into the secret place of God, in His humiliation knew and found, that, let His benefits be what they would, man in his pride, man in all that man had, would reject them. As He was praying alone, His disciples with Him - for His ministry and the grace of Jehovah in it had been fully publicly shown to the people - He began to unfold this to them.

160  - 18, et seq. The position the Lord takes is very clear and full. He is praying as Son of man - forbids the disciples to say any more He is the Christ, saying the Son of man must suffer. Here it is all Jewish rejection, death and resurrection. Then He is seen in the glory of the kingdom, and owned as Son of God. He speaks of His own glory in connection with this manifestation of the kingdom (and revelation of the Father's house, the excellent glory), i.e., Son of man; His Father's, i.e., Son of God; of the holy angels, i.e., Jehovah glory. Then He tells them the Son of man will be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles. His love abides, He heals, and was the Son of man come to save men's lives.

First, however, the Lord brings out the position of the nation and that of the disciples, not resting here in contrast, as in Matthew, on the subject matter of the faith as changing the dispensation and founding the Church, but on the contrast of their and the nation's state as to their faith in what was proper to themselves as actually presented unto them. It was not a question of the enmity of chief priests, but the current notion among the multitude to whom full evidence had been afforded. But among them were merely the speculations which wonder had created. But Peter, ever the spokesman of the disciples, expresses in the certainty, the instruction of faith - the Christ of God - He was the Anointed of God. This man therefore was born of God, as we know from John. But this glory of Judaism, and truth of God, this appropriate, divine, and Jewish dignity, this office to the nation they were now no longer to tell. Having been refused on the merits of His glory and truth, He was not to be presented for the excitement and satisfaction of their passions. They were to tell no man that He was the Christ. He had presented Himself as the Fulfilment of the Prophets to them, and now as Son of man, a larger more humble Name but with glory reaching much farther, He was to suffer. He was to be owned by no fascinating and locally honoured title, but to accomplish a much larger and more important work by means of this very rejection. This was the counsel now to be fulfilled. He was to suffer, and all that was respectable by age, office, and learning was to be arrayed against Him, death to be the consequence, and He to rise again. This was opening quite a new and another scene, but the entire rejection and suffering here was to be His portion, and this would be in principle true of them.

This was not what we saw before - a trial of the Jews by ministry amongst them, but the results of their rejecting Him, in the sorrow, utter humiliation, and death of Jesus, and the accomplishment of the Father's counsels, of a better and righteous, in the fullest sense righteous, glory thereby. The Lord announces to all the plain consequence. If anyone will follow after Him (He was not going to have the present glory of Messiah) he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Him, and He was going a sorrowful journey quite to the end, even to death. And this was the daily character of the service, for sin and Satan's power had come in on the world's condition, and so now proved. And whosoever would save his life would lose it. "I protest by your rejoicing," says the apostle, "I die daily," for this too is a matter of detail. Whosoever should lose his life for Christ's sake should find it really.

161 "For whosoever shall desire to save his life shall lose it," etc. Have we faith for this?

Our Lord was interested to know this (v. 18), and justly asked, speaking of Him as a Prophet. There is always a floating enquiry, to an unknown degree, prevalent in such a case. Though His part was simple consistency with His own character if He were a Prophet, yet His whole work hung on the influence which that consistency had on the minds of others. Whatever He might have been Himself, His work would have wholly failed if it had not been so. He asks accordingly, regarding the multitudes (hoi ochloi). Subsequently the power of the Spirit might bring home His glory to individual consciences, but the question now was of Him as One conscious perhaps of His own place, but whose influence on the thoughts of others, as an Object, was the turning point of divine influence.

Our Lord too, Himself, had, observe, to go through, for it is thus brought before us, the various rumours of man's uninstructed judgment, while He knew the remedy if they had but known Him, while He felt their wanderings because they did not know Him, while He saw Himself unknown the while. Yet faithful consistent testimony was all, ever His instrument in ministering amongst shepherdless man; indeed so it must be, but this calls for wonderful constancy and faithfulness. And there are those that know the Lord - indeed so much so that to spread the testimony that He was Christ, save by the witness of His work and character, i.e., by morally converting means, was a direct hindrance to His work, and He corrects any such tendency in the minds of His disciples by telling them He must suffer. His glory cannot be let out but in the Lord's way. And, note, it was necessary that it should be brought into direct collision with those who assumed the glory, that it might stand on its own true ground, even of God, and this by their growing opposition to the character, influence, and moral power of Him who was sent, and to this end as righteous against them, for God is always, always righteous. It must have grown in secret, i.e., separate from other influences, by the simple influence of His character and true glory. This was what they proved themselves opposed to. It was evident that the Lord's only part, speaking of Him as exercising a ministry, was consistency with this character, the growing influence of which He knew indeed was to lead Him only to rejection and to death, by all that was commonly looked up to. "And he said to them all: If any one will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

162  - 25. First, on the great and broad principle, what would a person give in exchange for his soul, gain the whole world and be lost himself, the case is clear in se. Secondly, as to dispensation, the rejection of Christ was not for ever. The time of His righteous glory would come. Those who were ashamed of Him and His words, He would be ashamed of when He came in His glory and His Father's, and the holy angels'. This would turn all things to their true account and glory. But the righteousness and truth of this glory (at least the manifestation of the kingdom of God) would be shown before some then present tasted death at all. This was accomplished, as we see, by 2 Peter 1, in the scene of the transfiguration which follows.

Indeed it is a question between the world and Christ, and indeed a short, even the present, time will manifest, by the glory of the everlasting kingdom, where wisdom, where truth was. Christ and Christ's words are the immutable and stedfast guides, and confession of them is faithfulness, and "What shall it profit if a man gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or be cast away?" For there is a time in which God will show Himself in His power. What say we to this nearness? It is welcome to the Christian. Rest, and answerable rest too, is welcome to the tried.

163  - 29. One cannot doubt that this was the form of His glorified humanity.

We have to remark here again, how this gospel places the Lord in the place of dependence. It is not noted in the other gospels He went up into the mountain to pray. It was the privacy into which He was cast by the mighty change which was now developing, and the dependence on His Father, with disciples called into this intimacy as the school and birthplace of service, which induced the unfolding of the glory, accustomed in one sense to Him, but blessed in such an epoch, and formed as peculiar to His suffering, so new to them, but introducing them to the service and the suffering of which it was to be the result. He was praying when it took place. And then Moses and Elias, the great messengers of that economy, and so harbingers of His glory, and the failure of all before, speak of this great and marvellous event, His leaving the world, His decease which was to happen at Jerusalem - the centre of the blessing of God upon the earth, and David's royal line, but in man's hand the place of the rejection of that blessing, and the death of the Son of David the blessed. Moses and Elias appeared in glory - the condition and exhibition anticipatively of the kingdom of God. But in all this the wondrous centre of the hope, the manifestation of every goodness and wonderfulness in God, of evil in man, and yet blessing by grace to him when every principle from every side, and from every agent came into play, and when the blessed Jesus bound Himself that all might be accomplished, giving Himself up for this glory of God (His Father), and the display of all this, the departure of Christ out of a world of sin by man's will in madness, Satan's power, and yet the Lord's love, to begin a new scene of moral beauty and glory yet unknown, formed the subject of these chosen witnesses, and in glory anticipative associates of Christ. The topic of the kingdom of God, and so worthily and rightly, as the glory was the display of it, Moses the establisher, and Elias the witness of failure returning in despair to Horeb, but the signally faithful witness in the failure under the law, for Elisha savoured of resurrection, were the just witnesses to His death, and instruments of the display of His glory as the close of that, and as the faithful Remnant themselves rejected, partakers of the glory. The poor disciples, pictures of human nature in this solemn scene, have fallen asleep, not wilful wickedness but the thorough good-for-nothingness of the flesh.

So on other ground it was in Gethsemane. But, being awake, they saw His glory. They were no present associates in the counsels, i.e., their minds did not enter into them; it required what was heavenly to do that. The portion of the heavenly glory, not the actual glory, they saw, that their faith might be strengthened and their testimony fortified thereby, as we see in 2 Peter 1. They were standing with the Lord, we may observe, on the earth. He was in this scene transfigured, but not elevated. They were all on earth, though this may not be all, but it remains true thus far, as the kingdom of God upon earth. The disciples show that until they had the heavenly teaching of the Spirit, though struck with the glory, and so benefited, they had no understanding of the counsels of God, or purport of it, and zeal but displayed the ignorance, and their real unconsciousness in any abiding faith of the true heavenly glory and authority of the Lord - no sense of His being really the Son of God.

164 But in the meantime this signal of the glory had passed away, and they all entered into the cloud. In fact, though great things are simple and gracious when Jesus is near, as much the revelation and immediate authoritative instruction dispensed from God, as Sinai, they entered into the cloud, and God talked to them there out of the cloud. It was "without law," but witnessed by the Law and the prophets. Peter was permitted to propose the erection of three places of recurrence to divine wisdom and instruction, but they are brought into the cloud with God Himself, not now to reveal the glory to them - that was not the path required, nor were they capable, that was to be the Holy Ghost - but the revelation was to set up the Person of the Lord Jesus as the One who, as the Son of God, could have no associate as the source of direction and wisdom, and, by the authority of the voice of God the Father, point His Son out as the only One who was to be heard. In the revelation of glory to come Moses and Elias are with Him. In the designation of who is to be heard the blessed Jesus is alone. This is what is given parallel to Moses receiving the law in the mountain of Sinai; not a new law, not words pronounced by Jesus even, but reference to Jesus Himself whom they were to hear. A much more blessed thing! A Person to look to who was Son of God! Much more largeness of apprehension and liberty! We have the mind of Christ, and yet constraining in conduct, yet more fully, deeply, and perfectly the words and mind of the Lord are to guide us in everything, even in thoughts, and to form ourselves instead of merely presenting rules of conduct, however suitable they might be, or holy, just, and good.

165 The effect of this, however, was to be revealed afterwards. It was for them now, for their use hereafter, not the subject of their revelation but the strengthening their souls, and the additional authentication of it; and they kept it close, the Lord so ordering it, till the time of their testimony publicly to His glory came. Still this is, in a certain sense, Jewish glory - the kingdom, but not the manifested union of the Church with Christ. This glory, which Peter saw and quotes, was different from what Paul saw and acted on; this, the confirmation of what prophets might have stated - that, the revelation of a mystery hidden from ages, and then revealed. Moses and Elias in glory on earth with Jesus was not Jesus as the Lord declaring the unity of the (suffering) Church with Himself. The power and coming as manifested on earth was here, but the union of the Church with Him in glory was revealed there, and on this the Church properly rests now. The gift of the Holy Ghost is connected with both these points (touched on elsewhere) in Peter's testimony the witness of the exaltation of Jesus, in Paul's the seal of the Church's union with her exalted Head. Thus the rejection of the nation conducted Jesus, and His disciples with Him, up to this scene of glory. But the Lord returns to His exercises of mercy, but with "How long shall I be with you?"

It is not that the Church does not share the glory manifested simply as glory, for when He who is our Life shall appear, we also shall appear with Him in glory. But still there is that which is properly prophetic, and that which is of the Father's house, unrevealed till He who could alone reveal that Name came, and, by the Holy Ghost given, introduced the disciples into the power of it. The power is what the ancient saints specially desired to see, and they will see and enjoy it, and be perfected in it. But there was this better thing reserved for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. They as "just men made perfect," we as the "Assembly" or "Church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven." They rejoiced to see Christ's day, they saw it and were glad; but our joy is to dwell now in the Father's house where Christ is hid, meanwhile partakers of the Spirit, and the promise to us is "We shall see him as he is." It is not only as the glorious Christ, but as the Son of God and our life now hid with Him in God, we sons with Him, and He shall come in His Father's glory. And I take it the Day-star arising in our hearts, for so, after all, I still take it, is to us connected with this, and a distinct thing from the word of prophecy however sure, and which it confirms, the present revelation by the Spirit of our portion in that day, though how that may be connected with its nearness, I do not now or here say. But this vision confirmed the word of prophecy, and was not the Church's enjoyment of the Father's house, nor, consequently, the fulness of our present joy, nor the revelation of our portion there when the marriage of the Lamb comes, and we are where He is. Though it be the glory of that day, and He is manifested with us in glory, John 17: 22, compared with 2 Peter 1: 17, created difficulty in my mind when I first opened the subject above, and the blessedness came on my soul, but it was forgetfulness of verse 24 which just adds the thought I have sought to express, for the close of that verse evidently introduces us into a still higher region of blessedness, a place, however, where we by grace participate, as is evident from the close of verse 23. Hence too, as to the counsels of it; 2 Tim. 1: 9. The grace has been given us "before the ages of time," 2 Tim. 1: 9. Now this very glory of the kingdom, though it display more, for it does, is one of the "ages," or "ages of time." So Titus 1: 2, and compare the place of the Church in Ephesians 3: 21, where this love is spoken of in its present dispensation in power to us, on the title "Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," as contrasted with glory merely (chap. 1), founded on the title "God of our Lord Jesus Christ"; both of them, however, take it up for the Church and its portion in this, not merely the day of earthly glory, "the power and appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ," though that be involved in it. Our being with Christ, so as to see in His glory the witness of the Father's own love to Him, is distinct from our manifestation in it that the world may know that we have been so loved. The accomplishment of prophetic promises, so as to show the faithfulness of Jehovah to all His saints of old, is yet another thing, though all these things may be assembled in one blessed time and scene, and Creation itself be involved in the blessing for the glory of Him who formed and redeemed it, the happy and blessed witness of His power who is the Second Adam, though the time beyond ages may be behind all this. And indeed our place is before and beyond ages, for it is the Father's love to the Son, "before the foundation of the world." But this was the confirmation to Jews, disciples, of the prophetic glory, and a clearing up of it. His day, His power and coming, not the Church's portion in the Father's house, though the relationship, on which that was founded, was declared by the Father's voice carrying them thus on from this into the groundwork and basis of their intermediate, and true, and lasting service.

167  - 31. A strange time to talk of His decease! Yet so it must be with the Lord. It was His way of glory, there it all had its root. That must be passed through; Heb. 2: 9.

Moses was the original gatherer, Elias the characteristic restorer of the people of God. They were as fountains from which the Church flowed, but it here appeared but secondary instruments but appointed cisterns of refreshment; ministers to Him in whose house they had indeed been faithful in their generation.

We have remarked on the force of this elsewhere, but there is something very simple and very grand in the whole transaction. God, i.e., the Father where Christ is, shows Himself in no awful and alarming phenomenon. His presence is always the presence of God, but it is in calm and sanctified peace, as One, so to speak, on holy and familiar terms. Christ has clothed His majesty in favour, and He now points to the Son, if we may be permitted so to speak, as a Supreme common Object here. He rests in His love, as will be manifested hereafter. Therefore now "Hear him," i.e., Him come in flesh, for it is thus He has revealed the Father.

It is evident that this is presented to us as associated with prayer, as a place where, in ministry, the revelations and communications of God are specially made. The Lord went up there for that purpose, doubtless led of the Spirit with the divine purpose to this effect, but in His own mind not so much looking for it, as led to pray. But we do not go further as to this at present here.

- 34. There is in the intervention of God in the scene, the glory of God and the communion of the Father. Remark too this, that there is a separation between the intercourse of Moses and Elias with Christ, and the cloud. These speak of Jesus and His sufferings, Moses and Elias being then in the heavenly glory; Peter, James, and John form the earthly part of this millennial picture. But the cloud comes, and Moses and Elias are gone. Now the cloud was the glory above Israel, but the disciples enter into it. The Church is placed in what was above, and protected, and guided Israel, and being there the communion of the Father takes place, and Jesus alone is their Companion there. This makes the Church's place more distinct, and with the whole scene more remarkable. The word ekeinous (they, those) must be noticed; not that I question the above - the "who" is important in another way.

168 Note in connection with ekeinous, and the force of it here, the use of it in 2 Corinthians 8: 9, "Through his" (ekeinou) "poverty." 'Such a one as He,' is the force of it. Query, if it be not thus emphatic here in Luke.

I am quite disposed to think that "they" (ekeinous) in "as they entered into the cloud," refers to the disciples. It is the rhetorical or emphatic use of it. The cloud was the excellent glory, and they were afraid when they entered into it. It intimates the place of the Church. Moses and Elias disappear as witnesses, in the presence of the Son. Their testimony was of the earth earthy, though they would have their place in the glory and kingdom. The Church they could not testify of. Now Christ was to be rejected as far as they had testified of Him - who had believed their report? But that just laid a ground for the Church's entrance into the heavenly glory. I do not mean that Moses and Elias will not be there; they will in their place. But they could not testify of it, and as such did not at all bring men into it. Christ's death does those who have part with Him. The de (and) I think connects the ekeinous (they) with the autous (them) in "overshadowed them"; autous (them) merely states the persons (ekeinous). How wonderful that they should! God might be there, yea, Jesus, but that they should was unlooked for, and beyond all their thoughts. It is in contrast with God and Christ. If this be not so, it must be taken that He spoke at the moment of their departing, and that the same cloud that overshadowed them the others entered into, and that the overshadowing of the cloud did not make them afraid. The question much hangs on the force of epeskiasen (overshadowed). And I think Exodus 40: 34, shows that it is the cloud descending and environing them. I cannot doubt a moment that the cloud represents that.

169 Ekeinos has the force, I judge, of something mentally marked out as distant from the present subject or natural condition of the mind, and hence notes what is elevated, or degraded, or terrible, or strongly marked and characterised to the mind. "That" answers to it pretty nearly in English. Only when definite character is expressed can it refer to the first person, and then it has ceased to be the normal I, as if I gave a horrible character of myself, and then said: Can you walk with that man - really a man of that character? So that the principle is unchanged. Hence contrast does come in, but it is one 'there' (ekez) not 'here' (hode). In the now in English vulgar, but still in German commonly employed, "there" we have the original force. 'That man there,' 'That there table.' But it seems to me that to say the cloud came and overshadowed the disciples, and they feared when the others entered into the cloud does not give any very strong or lucid sense. The departing seems to have been before the overshadowing of the cloud. Only it was while they were being separated from them that Peter spoke, and as he was speaking the cloud came, so that all was rapid. Still the separation was antecedent to the cloud, and if I am right as to epeskiasen, there cannot, I think, be a doubt that ekeinous refers to the disciples. In Matthew, the expression of "a bright cloud" seems to confirm the thought that it was not a shadow over them. So even Luke 1: 35, "shall overshadow thee."

- 36. "And as the voice was heard, Jesus was found alone." The Law and the prophets can give testimony to Jesus, but never with Jesus - that was Peter's wistless thought, to meet God through the three. Moses and Elias can also be in the glory with Him in the kingdom, but when the Father comes forth to bear testimony, all is displaced but Jesus. His testimony, too, stands alone. He only can say "My" - "This is my beloved Son." But here indeed the Church is brought into special relationship of blessing and union, as the Father says, in His excellency as Father, "My beloved Son" - who totally different, though to the same truth, from all other testimony, so the Church, as blessed as united to Jesus, says, "My," and enters through grace, though lowly, as the Father is supreme in blessing, on the same ground with the Father, and says: "My," in union and in the love which knows it; this, through the Spirit, by whom we are one with Jesus. It is a great thing to say "My" in such a union.

170 Nothing can more perfectly present, or bring us present to the scenes he speaks of than Luke's descriptions. Our Lord, various and exercising as that in which He was exercised was, and apparently absorbing in its character, never was taken by surprise, always did that which was just fit to be done in the circumstances which presented themselves. His heart was always in its centre, i.e., perfect with God, in His exercises towards others, not forcedly but in truth. Though trials might be passing as deep clouds over His inward man, and though pressed downward by the relentless wind, His way was ever held onward, yea, furthered by it, for His course was set right. So the saint.

- 37. We see the Lord here, whatever the revelation of the glory which intimated their rejection of Him, pursuing the course of timely mercy expressing the sense of their condition and His own thought of leaving them, yet in sorrowful though judicial testimony still fulfilling as a hireling His day of faithful mercy, His disciples being under the same cloud of unbelief though loving Him, and no way engaged in opposition. The Son of man did not find faith on the earth to rescue the then scene, though He might have disciples whom grace could carry into another. But "How long" ("until when") carried the sense of the dignity which belonged to Him, for in measure as His lowliness in grace was rejected, the dignity of His Person rises over it and breaks forth, and that magnificently. But while Jesus pursued His work of mercy for them, and all wondered at Him, He was in no sort diverted from pressing the condition in which He stood in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation; and this He presses on His disciples. "These words" (v. 44) were verse 23, and confirmed by what went before and followed, for these were His thoughts and instructions unbroken by any circumstance. The assistance afforded belonged properly to that scene - the deliverance of human nature - but proved their insensibility to that power, divine power which His direction brought into display, and which they ought to have recognised, and recognising, for it was divine and therefore communicable, enjoyed the fruits of. For whatever power in God we are enabled really to recognise, we are enabled to enjoy the fruits of. They wondered at the mighty power of God, but did not see Him in Jesus, nor link the divine power really with Him. Jesus returns, as we have seen, to His humiliation and rejection as Son of man.

171  - 41. A strange remedy for their perverseness, but one of mercy. Note that the ground on which the Lord speaks of leaving the generation, i.e., putting an end to that manner of dealing with those with whom He was in relationship, was the disciples who had acknowledged Him in that position being unable to avail themselves of the power which the Lord exercised in it. It was not that evil was in the world, but that the testimony against the evil was unavailing according to the power which was available for its being rendered. The failure of the testimony in those who own the Lord brings the judgment. I see the same thing in Elias at Mount Horeb. It was the failure of the testimony; he returns to God, as unable to do any more. This is a very serious point. The Lord expects us to act by the power which is thus at our disposition. Why continue it any longer if it is of no avail? However, He maintains His grace in full exercise, until judgment actually comes in.

- 43. How many passages are simple, if we would take them simply! But we take them compared with previous thoughts, or affixing these thoughts to them, and all is obscure. Simple faith does not wonder, for wonder is at that which is not expected. It was a matter of course with Him to do mercy and show divine power, and He was unmoved by it or their wonder. But though they were astonished at His doings, having fulfilled the mercy, His mind occupied with that which was before Him, the application of what the apostles witnessed to their minds, it was addressed perhaps to all His disciples, and they could not see its bearings. It might, without being specifically understood, have more deeply affixed in the minds of the then apostles the things which they had seen and connected them, though as yet they were ignorant about it, with the delivery of the Son of man into the hands of men. His death, it is to be remembered, had been the subject of His discourse in His Transfiguration - a wondrous scene! Enough to have made heaven astonished, yet bringing heaven and earth wonderfully near, indeed they are one in Him - they touch and they are one, if we did but know it.

- 47. The rebuke was simple, deep and touching, and went to the very highest principles.

Practical directions often flow from deeper thoughts than are communicated; this is so when we are able to love perfectly others, not ourselves.

172 Observe the perfect calmness with which our Lord pursued the course of His mind in useful application of facts in ministry, when that had occurred which drew out the wonder of all around Him, though that occurrence claimed none less than Himself, and He had done it. The testimony of the glory and the sufferings should occupy us, though other things may interrupt, and we have to turn to them.

The Lord proceeds to apply the whole truth of the human rejection, but real exaltation of Messiah, to a great but simple moral principle of the kingdom. They, resting still on their previous thoughts of Messiah, were reasoning who should be greatest in the kingdom, the principle of death not being the least understood - Jesus, again evincing His divine knowledge, turns it to human humbleness, for what is divine is in grace in being humbled here, and what is human is right if it be humble before God, so proving its exaltation, i.e., that it has entered into the divine presence, and so proving what was really intelligent in it, and found its place there when the glory came.

There is no relation between the greatness of God and the greatness of man. The greatness of God is shown towards man in grace, and this in His humbling Himself to behold and receive. Thus this grace and humbleness, and real value for Christ is shown in receiving a child in His Name - the test of everything here, and while the world goes on all is inverted. The glory of God has found its place upon the Cross, and the gracious valuing the most despised and insignificant for Christ's sake is really receiving Him, and in receiving Him His Father's delight, receives Him that sent Him, has this blessing and glory of showing attention to, so to speak, Christ in His rejection, and so fully satisfying the Father's heart and receiving Him. But this is now self-humiliation, and, while all things are thus inverted, he that is least, so humbled, and feeblest, in grace is really greatest. But there was a subtler form of self-exaltation, the association of the Name of Christ itself with us. "We saw one casting out devils in thy name," and Christ's Name therefore was glorified clearly, "but he followeth not with us." Now in one sense that was wrong, for certainly following Christ was the right and best place. Still the mind and ways of God are greater than ours, the very feebleness of the disciples' faith who were right in being with Him, gave occasion, imposed a sort of necessity upon God of manifesting the glory of His Son by extraneous means, and this man, thus forbidden by them, had de facto in these circumstances (for the order and power of the Holy Ghost was not yet come) glorified the Name of Christ in a way they who did follow Him had entirely failed in doing, as we have just seen, for it is seldom, nay only when the full power of the Holy Ghost is at work, that the exigency of Christ's glory is met; hence the evil of narrowness. Satan tries to avail himself of the weakness of those who are right by presenting the semblance of power which properly should be found in them, and operations of spiritual energy are found in irregular spheres of operation, and thus confusion and difficulty arise in judgment. The only remedy is the concentration of energy, such as we have seen it in the beginning of Acts, or the coming of the Lord to take the power Himself. But then God is faithful to His own little ones to keep them. Blessed be His Name! It is more remarkable here, because the disciples of Jesus had just failed in this. His Name be praised, in whom all power, and goodness, and grace is! The great point is that God must and will ever vindicate the glory of Jesus. If we are by the Holy Ghost in the way of that glory, we walk clearly and in power; if not, in uneasiness and confusion, though safe. I speak of the whole Body of Christ.

173 Here the judgment of Christ is founded on this, which occupies the whole of this part - His entire rejection and humiliation. He that was not against Him was for Him. Let us learn this, and keep ourselves in this lowliness; being in the place of it, the recognition of it is our strength. Patience in this humiliation next presents itself, for while our voluntary humiliation is the evidence of love, when in this, and subject to the trying consequences of it, the patient endurance of it is the test of the endurance and strength of the love, and the spirit in which it is done how far the flesh is in it in us, for the flesh may imitate the humiliation of Christ. Thus Christ accomplishing the blessed purpose of His love, the time of His receiving up being come, steadfastly sets His face to go to Jerusalem, and pass through the necessity (for us) of death, to heaven above, seeing where love carried Him. If He had anything to say to us according to the order of God, He openly pursues His course; these wretched Samaritans, because He does so, refuse Him entrance into their village. But, His soul being fixed on His purpose of love, not on Himself, He passes on, in the execution of it, elsewhere, leaving the testimony that, whatever His power, He came to save (see critical note) "not to destroy men's lives." How perverse is the prejudice too of man! Because He was going in the full purpose of love, they would not receive Him. He set His face to go to Jerusalem and because His face was so they would not receive Him. But, I repeat, the thing the Lord is pressing all through here is rejection and humiliation here, and that to instruct us. Blessed be His Name! But He did so by passing through it Himself. See, moreover, how James and John instantly assume power when it is to gratify self-importance. The Saviour exercises it when it is to show mercy. How treacherous is the human heart! Again making the name of Christ's glory serve to the security of self-exaltation. "Wilt thou that we command?" I like the omission of the reason, though the other be true, for the Lord is dwelling, as habitually here, on the moral character of their walk before God. Elias came in judgment, or testimony of it righteously. They sought just to gratify their own importance and anger which self felt at the injury withal. Easy to affix Elias' name to this! And what ignorance of Christ's mission! He was not now clearing His floor by judgment but by suffering, and allowing others to sift, having the good grain through death for better blessing.

174  - 48. "In my name" was in fact the point of the answer of our Lord. They were seeking their own name. This is the real secret trial of one's acts, and ought to be applied. Their error here was precisely the same. "He is great" in the sight of God, gave unlooked-for instruction.

- 49. The moral connection of this is evident. It is a supplemental lesson detecting, as that individual so this corporate, pride - both equally remote from the Spirit of grace. It was in Christ's Name he was casting them out; it was simply: "He follows not with us." It was their folly as well as error against Christ and their neighbour, for they had enemies enough, and all this bore witness to them, and helped them. But he who makes Christ the minister of his own pride above all mars his own prosperity, for the very energy, which would sustain him if he did seek Christ, he restrains by the name of that which, if he let it alone, it would support. Besides, he must recollect he sins against his neighbour who would have him relieved.

The drawing near of a day dissolves surrounding engagements of mind, and makes the heart beat towards it; this, I mean, is human nature. The Lord set His face firmly towards His suffering, for "for this cause" came He to this hour. It was suffering, but He set about to suffer. When His time came He set His face towards it not of His own will, not to suffer but to the place where He was to suffer - for He was to accomplish it at Jerusalem.

175  - 53. O, strange, ignorant, misguided man! What a reason for rejecting Him! He was rejected for that which He had to set His face firm to do, and that to save the world, for they knew nothing of what He was about. So the saint - if our eye be not to Him, we shall be explaining, and think it hard. We must keep our very faithfulness to ourselves - nothing more important in ministry and conduct; if we act on high principles (and he who acts by faith does) few can understand them. The less is said, except for the Lord, the better - rather let nothing; yet openness with the saints is good.

This certainly is a wonderful sentence and to be much thought of. Meanwhile what should the saint do? Pursue his object, go to another object. Purpose, fixed purpose, and the mind occupied with it causes calmness, besides the direct duty of it. When the need of others claimed, He turned to it though it were an interruption, and then resumed His own needful task. When these rejected Him in His path towards it, He pursued His object in another way. His messengers might think of the village and the insult - He of the purpose of His heart. Also fixedness of purpose gives great room for the development of grace and patience, and grace sets one much towards one's purpose, and leaves the heart open to and undistracted from its higher motives, producing manifested consistency with those higher motives. His to mercy - was to save in purpose and result; they would have had Him destroy by the way. This is a rebukeable offence. Though we think we honour Christ, and mean to, let us take heed it is not ourselves. It was the same: "And he follows not with us," or akin to it at least. But dwell on the former part of this paragraph - reject the Saviour in the hour of His devotedness for us, for a prejudice - What a scene! And then see His, HIS way! Who shall honour Him rightly save One?

Note, the ground of the rebuke was the Spirit they were of in praesenti, for the frame of God's Spirit is always suitable to the end which God proposes. An unsuitable spirit is always unsuitable to the end. We are always in the way of the end when we are really in the way of the Spirit. Is it not so? It was not for their forgetfulness of the end, but ignorance of the Spirit they were of, though he who was wise might understand it was inconsistent with the end.

176 The Lord proceeds to apply the consciousness of this principle of rejection to the circumstances of His disciples as associated with Him. His rejection and strangership was complete, and He had to bear it, and they must enter into company with Him on this principle. If one would say: "I will follow thee wherever thou goest," He could only say: I have nowhere to go to: you must take Me as a Stranger with no home at all; Israel has rejected Me. He assumes this title of Son of man distinctively here. It is One who has entered, on the part of God, into this place in which God sees man, the sons of men to be, as in this place, as of man before Him. The following instances press and enforce the entire and utter separation from all that could link or tie here, and the constancy of one who was quite dead to them in the course which another principle had introduced him into. The world was dead and ruined, it was finished. There was no more real relation between God and man livingly but in Christ. All was gone that sanctioned nature when Christ, the Head of blessing to it, was rejected. In the closest and most imperative claim it was only: "Let the dead bury their dead." That was all about it, and having begun on this principle there must be no relenting. It was evidence we were alive in their sense of it. The world was to be acted on by a principle which was not in it, but which was by the death of Christ through the power of life in Him powerful to act on it.

- 57 to end. This may be looked on as a sort of title to what follows. But I observe strong moral distinction. The first offered himself generally, without distinction: "Whithersoever thou goest." The Lord puts before Him the giving up everything, and leaves it there. The Lord "said to another, Follow me"; he made difficulties, but the Lord did not put him but the hindrances off his mind, for Christ was supreme in it, so the Lord sees through weakness and strengthens by His command in it. He felt that Christ had claim, and so said: "Suffer me." He only needed the direction for himself, and he was sent. In the third we have a more mixed case. It was an offer to follow, but with that simplicity which recognised the remaining ties on itself. It was so far true, if not devoted, and said: "Suffer me." Nor was it merely, however, a supposed duty though not a real one. There was the lingering "my house" which showed the remaining hold; he was, so far, mindful of the country whence he came out. This could not be.

177 Thus verse 51 begins a distinctly new head or division - the state of ministry and service of believership as sent into the world; thence to verse 62, the spirit of patience, and separation or cutting of worldly ties belonging to ministry, i.e., the personal spirit and inward object or character.

I have of old remarked that in this chapter we are already at the last journey to Jerusalem. But it seems, as has been suggested to me, that that is kept in view on through to chapter 17, although subjects are introduced without reference to chronological order. It is the web into which the rest is woven. The evidence is thus: chapters 9: 51, 10: 1 (chapter 10: 38 does not follow in order of time, but in chapter 11 we are at the close), 13: 22, we are again on the road. The Lord seems to have gone slowly up; at the end of chapter 13 He was not yet at Jerusalem. In chapter 17: 11, He is again on His way up. In chapter 18: 31, He is still on His way up; in verse 35, He has got to Jericho, where in all the Synoptics the last scenes of His life begin. It is evident many things are introduced without its being at the time, but it seems it is all connected in recital with this last journey up.

Indeed, we have the whole Christian life in this chapter. First, He prays, then is in heavenly communion and glory, and then comes down in power into the midst of this crowded world and Satan's power. Such is ours.

Remark we have here the divine power of Christ, the divine Person, Jehovah, He gives power to work miracles, over all devils, sends out to preach, and, according to Psalm 132, satisfies the poor with bread. Then forbids to be announced any more as the Christ of God (with men, only the subject of opinion) and then takes the name of Son of man to suffer, and enter into His glory. He is praying, and then transfigured, and reveals both the kingdom and the Father's house. For the present, He manifests divine power and grace, but is the rejected Son of man. Our place is the cross, and self-judged in every respect. Compare this chapter and John 12; only the last much more the blessed Lord's part in it personally, Luke much more probing our hearts and all that the Cross judged in us, so that there should be no self but a new life. Even in our taking up our cross there is more of following Christ in John, more its practical moral bearing in Luke.

178 There are three things in this chapter - the fellowship in the glory, the kingdom in its heavenly and earthly part, together with the personal relationship of the Son to the Father; secondly, the perfect grace of Christ on earth, and that however faith may fail in us, He is ever in the power of grace for need; thirdly, the searching out of self all that hindered true association with the glory as regards relationship to Christ, and then service.

In this way too the end of the chapter has a very powerful application, beginning with verse 43 (compare verse 23, et seq.) as the groundwork of all, and then self-judged in all forms, and what death-to-it service implies.

The chapter taken, as a whole, has a very complete character. In verse 12, He shows Himself the Jehovah of Psalm 139. Then alone as the dependent Man, all manner of opinions in the people, His disciples own Him as the Christ. They are not to tell it, for He is going to suffer as Son of man; they must take up their cross consequently, if they follow Him. Man's soul and life or gain here contrasted, and their being owned by Himself when He came in Son of man's glory, Son of God's, and with His angels as Jehovah. Then the kingdom is shown them. The saints seen in glory on earth like Him, with Him, conversing with Him according to the mind and affections of God. But, as to His Person, all disappear, and He is alone Son of the Father. That is the visible kingdom and glory, but there is more here - they enter into the cloud the excellent glory (the Shekinah, the cloud of Israel). This is the heavenly saints' own place, not the kingdom; incredible to a Jew that men should enter that cloud! But then Christ comes down to the crowd of the world, and Satan's power, finds unbelief in His own disciples so that they could not avail themselves of the present power (so now). This leads to closing the whole scene (as noticed elsewhere) but Christ, whatever the unbelief of His own, leading to closing the dealing they could not use the power of, is infallibly there in power and grace wherever there is faith enough to express a want. God's power is wondered at, if Satan's is pretty much borne with as an accustomed and hopeless affair. The Lord brings them back to the Cross, and then applies it to self in all its shapes of self-seeking or hindrance of service, as also noted elsewhere. So that we have the Cross, kingdom, and heavenly state, glory, then Christ's grace sure, whatever unbelief is aroused, but every part of self tested and judged in every shape it assumes; and so it must be.

179 The historical progress of Luke is Luke 9: 51, Luke 17: 11, Luke 18: 31, Luke 19: 1. Luke 18: 35 is merely "When he came into the neighbourhood of Jericho" contrastive, but not specifying the moment.

From this chapter begins, not the simple setting forth of certain characters and qualities in Christ, as previously, but the application or address of these to Israel, so as to test them, only in grace and testimony, the dealing with Israel on the footing of them.

To return for a moment; in Luke 7, we have blessing to Gentiles through the faith of one who owns His divine power over all creation, and next His power over death. This was a kind of power which clearly took it out of all dispensational connection with Israel. This display of divine presence and necessary superiority to the bounds of Israel and over death is brought to the ears of John, and leads to a distinct declaration of the whole state of things. John individually must receive Him, like others, by the testimony given, and Jesus gives testimony to John instead of receiving it from him. He is His own Witness, and to John too, and then Israel's state is shown, and the moral condition, and submission to God's ways which led to receiving Jesus. But the state of the men of the generation is brought clearly out, but the children of Wisdom justify Wisdom (justify God). The picture of each is given in the history that follows. He whom the generation could see nothing in, wisely settling He was no prophet, gives peace to the sinner as He detects all that was in the Pharisee's heart. And which was lovely and in good estate - the poor woman or the Pharisee?

Chapter 8 singularly unfolds the consequent state of things. The Lord gathers round Himself these children of Wisdom out of the nation, in devotedness to Him (the woman) and service the twelve. He shows He was the Sower, i.e., came by the word, not for fruit in the nation. The mysteries of the kingdom of God belong to His disciples; the nation (others) are only blinded by the utterance of them. But then the enlightening the disciples was to give light by them, and they must take heed how they hear; they would be judged accordingly, and everything would be brought out to light. If it were only hearing, it would be taken away from them. Thereon He rejects His birth-ties with Israel, and owns only the fruit of the Word. Cast into storms by their accompanying Him, they should trust simply. They were with Him. Was He and His work to perish? Then what He was doing in Israel was gathering to a right mind, to sit at His feet. The unclean would hurry themselves under Satan's power to destruction, and so Israel did. It was not the time to shut up Satan in the abyss; that will come. Nor yet the time to take away the Remnant who had been blessed; they were to return to the place whence Christ had been rejected, to be witnesses of the power which had delivered themselves. As to delivering Israel, further, the order was this. He comes into the crowd when called to heal, but on the way blessing is had only by faith. In fact the daughter of Israel was dead. Still He was blessing in the power of resurrection, and He would raise her to life again. This closes this special presentation of His Person. In chapter 9, and on to verse 24 of chapter 10, He is dealing with Israel in view of His rejection, and afterwards, in various parables and discourses, urges it on the people and disciples, and shows the path of faith, and grace towards and in man.

180 It is interesting to see how the change of dispensation connects itself with the state of souls. John comes as prophet with the testimony of fulfilment of prophecy. But now Christ, having given His own witness of Himself in grace to Gentiles and in power over death itself, does not receive testimony from John but gives it to him, and John comes in, in personal faith, as others do. But further, to meet man's need in grace, and detect man's false pride and glory, to put down flesh, He comes in utter humiliation. John's testimony is left behind; divine goodness and power gives witness to itself (chap. 7: 22), but in such a state that flesh could not brook it, "Blessed be he whosoever shall not be offended in me." This manifestation of God reaches conscience on one side, and on the other gives perfect confidence in love. Conscience made, by grace, children of Wisdom. They owned God was right in His judgment of fruitless trees, and where flesh saw a devil they saw the true testimony of God as to themselves. When perfect love came down to their low estate, it was just what they wanted. They justified God, in that Wisdom was justified of her children. So the poor woman; and the stupid Pharisee who could not discover a Prophet when God was there and just because He was there. But it led farther to forgiveness, salvation by faith, and peace from the Lord Himself. John had come to the highest place of those who could be connected with Christ after the flesh, but the least in the kingdom, when the work would be accomplished and men in relationship with God by Christ, was greater. The promise fulfilling passed away - Israel would not have it - John who announced it had to believe on other ground - but it was only to make way for divine manifestation of grace to sinners which would triumph over death itself. The confidence of the sinner's heart won to God by the manifestation and exercise of perfect love towards it. It was not Christ with Israel, but sinners with divine love leading to the answer of peace.

181 God can never accommodate Himself to the sin or to the righteousness of man. But the perfection, revelation of Himself in grace, detects the falseness of the one and meets the extremest evil of the other. But in order to this detection, and to this perfect grace, He humbles Himself. Man avoids gross evil, perhaps, and then gratifies his selfishness as much as he can. God comes with perfect grace as the Friend of publicans and sinners, but in such grace that man must give up his pride, his self-importance, his greatness, his vanity, all the glorying of flesh, but gets what is blessed in God. This tests him. All grace and power are shown, as in chapter 7: 22. God gives witness of Himself, but verse 23: "Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me." Where conscience is reached the soul justifies God as to oneself, in His utter judgment of man, of evil, and Him gladly in grace in Christ. It really is the perception of the full evil of sin by the attractive perception of the full blessedness of Christ, of the manifestation of God in Him. The result, as an answer, is in verses 48, 50.

My impression is that in Luke 9 the disciples are invested with the testimony and power of the kingdom (the powers of the world to come, in testimony) but that they do not enter into the full character of Christ. Though entrusted with the power, and so, as deputed, exercising it, they cannot by their own faith, showing what man is. Christ does, and shows Jehovah power. Peter owns Him, when the nation were speculating, as the Christ; but this testimony was over, they were to tell it to no man. But here we have nothing of the Church built on earth, but the Son of man suffering, and the saving the soul of all importance; hence, as to this world, the cross is to be taken up. Then the glory of the kingdom is shown, and Christ is to be heard, not Moses or Elias. But again, even the disciples could not by their own faith work Christ's work. Hence His staying was over. In the previous part it was: "Give ye them to eat"; they counted the loaves. So here, they could not cast out the evil spirit. Christ did, still in grace, but He presses His rejection and leaving them He is Son of man. They would be great; they must be little as a child. In all that follows, while self-seeking in flesh is detected, the Lord is also bringing out the rejected character in which He and the kingdom must be taken up, while He is really come to save men's lives, and the urgency therefore of the work, love finding in the state which rejected it an additional motive; see verses 50, 56, 58, 60, 62. The mission of the seventy bears the stamp of this stronger than that of the twelve, and more urgent; chapter 10: 11-16. Yet it is beautiful to see how divine love can see much to do in such a sphere, though few are possessed with it so as to labour accordingly. Yet (chap. 10: 21), the Lord fully recognises divine grace revealing the blessing come to babes, and hiding it from the wise and prudent. Another thing we see, that in the midst of the display of the power of the kingdom, the better thing was not that, but that their names were written in heaven. But the Lord goes yet farther here, beyond the present power of the kingdom, and shows what was the key to His rejection, and the special blessing of the disciples. The Son has all things delivered to Him of the Father, and no one knows Him but the Father Himself, nor the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son reveals Him. This leaves all the Church revelation, however true, behind, and this was what was really going on. The Christ was no more to be told of, the Son of man was to suffer, but the Father was revealed by the Son whom no one knew. How we see the consciousness the Lord had, here in His rejection, of the blessing He carried with Him (vv. 23, 24)! Doubtless this must have been deep joy to Him. I do not think this was any particular part of what is before, but His own estimate of what they had received, for had they received Him as Christ they had received all, for He was so presented. So was the Son revealing the Father, that if that was a hindrance they would not have received Him at all, even as the Christ (see remarks on chapter 7). What follows with the lawyer is an evident testimony to the change from law to grace, and the way this looks at everything. The law gives the full rule how to have life. Man is willing to justify himself, conscious he has not fulfilled it. Christ shows that we are to be neighbour in grace to those who need it, not ask who is it according to law, so that its exigencies apply; we are to act from grace. Verse 38 begins a new subject; what we have been speaking of closes here.

183 Note, not only the association of the saints with the Lord, but, above that, His association with, and owning by the Father. He was here up in the Mount - Himself in glory - and in the conscious owning above, glory by the Father alone, His Son in this way. It was a refreshing entrance, to the recognition of others, into this glory, and title, and joy. In verse 37, He descends, down again into the crowd where He had assented to walk. He walks in the power of the glory He was to enjoy, even when not in the present sensible display of it. Alas! We do not. And the disciples get classed as to this with the generation, at least are hidden by it. But grace flows unhindered; at power everybody wonders, but He teaches the disciples the Cross; and the residue of the chapter is the judgment of the various phases of selfishness and nature, which flow from not seeing the glory and applying it. Jesus being therefore all, and this glory in hope, and so using, and walking according to it in the denial of self by the Cross - individual greatness, common aggrandisement as Christ in a carnal way, we are entitled to be of one spirit with Him. Then separatedness of heart, and self-deception as to it a hindrance when Christ calls.

Luke  10

The mind of the Lord carries altogether here the impression of a closing scene, and Christianity is come into the world with this, and has never lost it. It received it in the world by the death of Christ. Yet, while the purpose of it was in His mind, only inducing the energy of action on the mass around Him, so for His followers He felt too how few with the energy the emergency called for were the labourers in such a field. What a lesson from the Lord thus going away! All this part of this book is deeply interesting in its practical power as resting on the rejection of Jesus, and His consciousness of this, and the character this stamped on His lot, and those with Him. No hanging of hands, no flagging of love - blessed be His Name! The evil around Him but drew forth the energy of His love by its need. He came to work in love. The sorrowful state around Him, shown in His rejection, was occasion of more earnest service. His record was on high, and, indeed, how fruitful was the harvest though it was not to Him here! May we, I scarce dare to say may I, so walk! How blessedly high is the Saviour above us, yet how near to us! And everything in this our joy, even when we are so short of it surely! At least it is my food and my solace thus to hold communion with Him, to know His ways, to follow His steps, to know Himself and hold communion with Himself in them all. Most blessed Lord! Still, though a closing message of mercy, it was a closing message. The character too of the service is marked in connection with His now manifest rejection. It is not sending to His loved Israel, but: "Go ye, behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves." Nothing could be more marked than this. There was conscious rejection, but asserted and maintained authority with judgment on those who refused it in those sent by Him.

184 In this chapter both the present service of Christ, conclusive as to Israel as then before God, and the entirely new thing, both morally and in the Person of Christ, and in grace, is very distinctly brought out. The seventy are sent out with definite judgment resting on those who reject them. It was rejecting Christ, and rejecting Him who sent Him; and He pronounces final woe on the cities where He had wrought. But the seventy were to rejoice, not in the power they had even from Christ then, which prevailed over the power of Satan there - a power which marked to Christ's foreseeing eye the total destruction of his power, and which would be conferred on them even then, so that all his power, while it did exist, could not hurt them. It was not in this they were to rejoice, but that their own names were written in heaven. It was their heavenly portion which was their true joy; in verse 21, this is referred to the good pleasure and sovereign grace of the Father, but connected with the given glory of Christ associated with the unfathomable and divine glory of His Person, and the revelation of the Father by Him to others. Yet they were then enjoying what prophets and kings had desired to see and had not seen, and, indeed, though the full heavenly blessing was not come, there was the revelation of the Father by the Son. Finally, the essence of the Law in man, as regards God and man, is brought out in answer to the lawyer, as the way of life if man kept it, but on the shrinking of the conscience from the test by a subterfuge, another principle is brought out - our acting in grace according to the pattern of Christ who has manifested that grace on earth to be, not to have, a neighbour.

185 In this and the following chapter we are still on the rejection of Israel, but it takes not a dispensational but a moral and individual character - the word of God valued and received, prayer, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. This moral operation is as yet viewed as within Israel in the Remnant, the disciples, but as not to be confined to it. The light thus lighted up was to shine up. First, Mary has the good part, the word - not the world even to receive Christ. Next, prayer as then taught, but the millennial parts left out, and its general moral demands retained, further the value and power of it, and the promise of the Spirit as a result. Then the chapter turns to the kingdom being come and blasphemously rejected, but the question was finally at issue in the Person of Christ, and the state of the Jews depicted, but left in its moral application to man. But there was more blessing in hearing His word than in any natural nearness to Him. Jonas himself is then given as a sign not of death and resurrection, but by his preaching in Nineveh. The light set up in Christ was for all that came in to see, but then the moral state of the individual was tested by it - the eye might be single or evil. On the one hand, as with the Pharisees and many now, the light was darkness, but where the light was received it was absolute light, not only light was there, but, received, it lightened everything, no part was dark. Then the Pharisees, cleaners of the outside not the in, and covetous are denounced as are the lawyers. There is a present application of the great principles spoken of. Chapter 12 continues the same subject, only showing the principles which are to govern the discipular Remnant in the testimony they are to give, and the result on Christ's return, and then from verse 49 to the end, the present state of the case as to Himself, and between Himself and Israel, and their judgment.

- 1-16. This gives the character of the ministry itself, and its consequences; but, verses 17-42, there is something higher than the ministry of, i.e., the glory, character, and spirit of reception of the kingdom of which it was the harbinger; this introduced in verses 17 to 21, on the consideration of the object of the work on the return of the seventy. The real truth of its glory, and the as yet hidden mystery of godliness (yet not to faith altogether) and the manner of its revelation, verses 22-24. But in truth being such, its life flowed down from and reflected that which revealed it, or which it was, God manifest in the flesh, and thus we find its moral character drawn out (vv. 25-37) the title which it gave, being a supreme revelation of God restoring all things, to absolute and soul-claiming attention, and that God recognised and approved this attention to it. 'Ye are idle,' having no claim upon faith, but that God in Christ claimed all, and that it was a good choice, because the old world, and all its formal duties had lost their power and were, in truth, of unbelief and rejected, not of that world to come whereof it spake, verses 38-42.

186  - 3. I suppose the "I" (ego) has force here. At any rate "I send you" is the great basis. The Lord knew what He was doing when He was sending them; He knew it was "As sheep in the midst of wolves." Their knowing He knew this disarmed it if they felt the force of that "I." It was not merely: Ye will be, but "I send you as," etc. It was a supreme commission.

- 7. Experience assures me that there are the deepest laid principles of abstraction from the world in all this, which nothing but the fulness of the former part would carry through, or the gift of grace suited to such office.

- 9, et seq. These are displays of judicial and providential dealing, but the whole course of events is not a present display, nor are the circumstances of the display the ultimate result. The moral trial of individuals is quite distinct from display of character in judicial conduct in dispensations. If Tyre had such it would have repented, but Tyre had not; such were given to those who never repented by them at all. This is a question of judgment and display, not of individual salvation. Still the Lord asserts His supremacy in them. But responsibility for ultimate judgment is connected with the presentation of the means, or their absence, which are the occasion of judgment inflicted for instruction of others (see verse 14), i.e., had Tyre repented it would have been as Nineveh, spared in judicial government as a city, not the souls saved necessarily thereby. But this was not the suitable order of the divine government. But when the miracles and testimony of the Lord were presented, it became personal sin, their rejection, and thus the responsibility to be met "in that day" incomparably greater, though Tyre and Sidon may be under condemnation as sinners. Thus, while perfection of righteous wisdom will be displayed at the end, the all-important principle of supremacy, divine supremacy, is maintained by the way, and yet signal instances, as He sees fit, given of the just righteousness and indignation against evil, of the character of Him who is supreme, so as to instruct and act morally on men. This is a most important instruction. The mind of man is narrow and knows not how to bring these things together, but supremacy in wisdom does. Man must act finally in justice, if he acts at all, but God has reserved "that day" for the display of His judgment on individual conduct against Himself, and individual righteousness. But He has exercised a providential government, and given multiplied displays here of a patience marvellous to behold, and a righteousness never acted against with impunity, though the time of judgment be His own. The Church can apply within its sphere, partially without it as knowing all things, the ground and ordering of this judgment - without, it assumes to man the form of providence by no means without witness in conscience, when that is not hardened, but having no settled rule to them because of the blindness of their hearts. Of either within or without Satan serves himself to assume the dispensation of it to the one, and to cloud the love of God to the other, alike false in his ways in both. Judgment may come both here and hereafter, and one be significative of the other; so Capernaum is denounced. The whole is a high scene of the supreme judgment of God, and dignity of Christ breaking forth in it, though in the form of a Servant, for, note, though able He never exercised it here, but told those who would: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of," for He came in the Spirit of loving gracious service and Himself never went out of it. But He, as we have said, could not be hid. And note, Christ in His glory and rejection bringing in the whole moral display of God's nature, and the grounds of judgment, enables the Church taught and fully apprehensive of this by the Holy Ghost, to apprehend the whole of this. The Lord thus instructing them, for it is interested in all His glory, whether a full moral test of the heart as a sign spoken against, or judging Tyre and exercising providential government because of its pride, Christ is the Interpreter as the Centre of it all, and we have the mind of Christ; our attainments in this are another question. The nations too are all guilty, so that He can exercise judgment on them all. The specialties of His government, His giving them times of humbling so as to spare, and enable Him righteously to exercise it are all matters of grace. His own nation is the great example and public centre of this government. The Lord give such humiliation to foolish nations for their mercy and good, for He is gracious! And it may be He has a people among them, wherefore they should be spared a little.

188 We are to observe here He extends His government, on Israel's rejection of Him, over the heathen nations, and those of the land even before Israel. It so happens here that they are within the bounds, but it is a matter of principle, and Tyre and Sodom just represent the commercial human pride and natural wickedness of man. But all was centred now in: "He that rejects me." This was the point of evil, all hinged on owning or rejecting Jesus in His messengers, for all manifest authority and divine beauty was in Him, in Man.

We may remark as to the whole of this commission that it is one clothed with the authority of the Lawgiver and Prophet of the Jewish people, to whom whosoever should not hearken was to be cut off from among His people. He sends them out with a final claim (in mercy) on the attention and acceptance of His people, secures authoritatively their provision, sanctions their message by the works He enables them to do, and announces that whoever receives them receives Him, they preceding Him as heralds making plain the way for Him, He following, for if He went up to suffer it was to be received up into glory really. He went up with divine will, divine glory and divinely exercised power, power which as divine He could commit authoritatively to others, and evince the riches of the grace in which He gave Himself. By the glory and dignity which was in Him so going up to give Himself up the divine glory proved, as we have often seen, in proportion as He was rejected in His mission as Messiah, the glory and dignity of His Person. His divine glory broke forth, content to be received as Messiah in a certain sense, rejected in that, "He could not be hid." The whole of this savours of authority - a final message - if you will not receive it "We shake off the dust of our feet," but, nothing less "be sure of this, the kingdom of God is come nigh to you." It was the present manifestation and acting in the kingdom of God as a final witness in mercy, in the dignity of mission as a last thing, not merely the patience of service. Hence moreover it was a separating work. It was who receives it - well; woe to him who does not. It would practically separate the sons of peace.

189 There is something very peculiar in the character of this mission, and altogether most blessedly suited to the dignity, grace and authority of the blessed Lord. How far in vindication of that authority it may be used in principle is clearly a matter of special judgment, and it is only in special cases that it has its application at all where for the securing of Christ's glory and authority we may be found (and vindicating it for the preservation of the feeble against the rejection of the hostile) to act on a principle of, in testimony, judicial separation. The judgment on cities is clearly Israelitish, and of the character of divine government, not ministerial service, and this characterises the whole. He acts en roi (like a King) with His people, though patient grace may have characterised the action, and what brought Him there. On some, the scene of His labours which He was now leaving, He pronounces sentence Himself, thus showing His title, power and righteous judgment now in declaring the distinctive judgment of these different places. Divine knowledge, competency, and title, the announcement of the judgment of God, of His knowledge before the time arrives, and yet all this done as a Servant! It is wonderful to see the divine Person of the Lord thus brought into the place of humanity, and yet seen in it. It stands alone, the one great Object for eternity when God even is all in all. Note, too, it is not at the beginning of His course the Lord says: "Woe" ever; it is the result of rejecting evil. The Lord also authoritatively closes the door on them in saying (a strong encouragement to them among "the wolves") "He that despiseth you despiseth me, and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me."

It is, as I have said, a supreme commission; would this in any sort apply to the Gentiles? "When I sent you forth," etc. "But now I say unto you." "While I was with them in the world," in this Christ was not indeed outwardly showing or using the power which He had as Lord over all, though He left them to go "As lambs in the midst of wolves." It was a partial exercise of it. He had not put Himself into the trial of the crucifying in weakness yet, where He could indeed have prayed, but "How then," etc. Therefore also it was among Jews, not in the world. But the Spirit witnessing in the world is a Witness and not a Governor, i.e., Christ, as in Spirit in the world. He may control providences to the end, and make "All things work together," etc., but it is a different thing from the presence of His Person in the world - this the world has turned out, and the Spirit is a Witness of the Saviour in heaven. Therefore all things, save grace in the heart of His, are as though there were no Christ save to him; he must be "All things to all men" in the activity and independence of the Spirit, if by any means he might save some, and "Know how to be full and to be hungry," to carry a purse and be without one, and do all things through Christ strengthening him. I have noticed that I do not think miracles so properly belong to Gentiles, i.e., to the system; they are the witness of God upon earth. But this was not the cause of rejoicing, but that in which the (Gentile) Church fully participated, their names written in heaven.

190 The exercise of this power fully verified the position of authority and grace from which it emanated; the devils were subject to the disciples through His Name. The Lord recognised, with the clearest sense of joyful power, the principle of power thus exercised by them. He saw prospectively - not His reception as Messiah simply now, but the secret cause of all His rejection broken, and man's deliverance wrought - Satan fall from heaven like lightning, the consequence of rejected power and mercy breaking forth in its higher sphere of exercise in the power in which He, Jesus the Lord, could delegate it to these simple ones. He sees the whole perspective display of this power; he who in heaven wrought the mischief, and rejection on the earth, fell before the display of power and the exercise of the dignity of that place into which He, Jesus, was cast by that rejection. The Lord breaks forth, as it were, for the comfort of the disciples, in the consciousness of this - comforting them, we may say, with the comfort wherewith He Himself was comforted of God - still here emptied in that the display of the power was through others, strengthening them in their faith on His rejection in the lower or Messiah sphere of His power and glory, in which He was to be rejected and crucified. He tells them strengthened by this experience that He will give them authority over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall wrong them. How completely we see here Jesus the Source of full power over, and setting aside all the power of Satan over the world, as in the heavens! This was true and blessed. It will be just the full blessing of the millennium, the full ample display of this, for he will be bound in the bottomless pit, and the world blessed by his exclusion from the heavens - they not to be regained. And this would be, in title and comfort to them, displayed in the disciples. But He carries their minds higher to where His heart - Blessed be His Name! - was above it all, and where He would carry in His rest of love theirs with Him, a place of rest and of holiness, a place of acceptance and favour, where it was not question of superiority over evil but enjoyment of good - the place of His Father's delight, where holiness and joy unhindered and unsullied had their dwelling place, their fulness and their home. There His heart was, whatever His service, and there He would carry theirs. And surely the Church's greatest joy and delight is not even dominion over a world restored from Satan's destructive and corrupting dominion, and being the instrument of blessing to it - most blessed as that is, for it is being given to participate in the exercise and administration of Christ's love, still less in the exercise of power over evil which is here the point - but in the delight in the Father's love, infinitely blessed as to Jesus Himself, and in Jesus' love full of the devoted tenderness in which He has brought us to Himself, for we are of God, in the highest heavenly sense partakers of the divine nature, children of the Father, the spouse of Christ, our communion even now with the Father and with Him. And all this higher than, as indeed the blessed source of our participation in the dominion of blessedness which He the holy, just, and mighty One exercises over the world. This is the display to others of the certainty of what we enjoy there; see John 17, "That the world may know." Holiness and love any way, and the Father's delight in us are more than the exercise of power. But note the unalterable perfection of Christ our blessed Lord.

191 The power was in the title of Christ's Person. The full display of it was before Him in that word: "I beheld Satan like lightning fall"; but there was a joy in eternal favour more than in the exercise of power. The Lord then proceeds to His own joy in the righteous economy of grace, righteous because the vindication and the justification of the divine glory. While He pointed them to that higher and better joy which in divine grace is theirs, He rejoices in Spirit that these things, even the full exercise of beneficent power in His Person, from the Lord of heaven and earth, are hidden from the pride and haughtiness of human reason and understanding, and revealed in grace to babes, the witness of sovereign grace to them, the source and subject of joy and boundless thankfulness. So it seemed good in His sight. We still remark here the blessed Lord maintaining the place of Servant, but the revelation therein, and that He might effectuate sovereign beneficence, He addresses: "Father" as "Lord of heaven and earth." Thus withal extending the sphere of this blessing to be accomplished in the casting down of Satan, He thanking the Father for what seemed good in His sight, while the blessed character of the way of it was felt and enjoyed by Jesus as the blessing and joy of His little ones, as well as the sovereign pleasure of Him who sent Him, the double joy of the Son a Servant in His house. But in very deed the glory of His Person was just maintained by this. Was He rejected by the Jews, guilty as they were in it - yet the truth was, - it was that the glory of His Person as the divine Son was such that none could understand Him but the Father. And by virtue of His union with the Father, still the glory of His Person, none but He could know the Father, and he to whom He, the Son, should reveal Him; and this last was just His gracious, blessed service with the disciples. Messiah they ought to have received, but indeed the Son none knew, and the Son He really was. Then looking at this second sphere, the revelation of the Father, who they said was their God, none knew Him but He, and He alone thereon could, as He did, reveal Him to the little ones. The passing of the heart of Christ, on His rejection, over the whole scene of His portion with the little ones and with the Father, to His glory as to the place Christ took, but really revealing the excellency and glory of His Person and place, is of the deepest and, to us, most blessed interest. How are we let by this infinite grace of the Holy Spirit into the workings of His heart! And what a place to be admitted to towards His little ones before the Father, and Himself the humbled Centre of the whole display! It is most blessed. Who is like or can be compared with Him who is our Joy, and Excellency, and Crown?

192 The Lord having passed from the exercise of power to their place in heaven as the more blessed part, and His Spirit having gone through the whole scene of what formed the basis of the gospel revelation - future blessedness, the breaking forth of His Person and glory on the Jewish rejection - returns in quiet care for His little ones, the poor of the flock. "Turning to his disciples privately he said, Blessed are the eyes that see the things that ye see," i.e., the intelligent perception of Messiah's power thus revealed, for indeed it involved all the rest over which His Spirit had passed in prospect; but He brings them back in joy to the present object of their faith (whatever the result in His mind) for this actual manifestation of Messiah had been the object of longing desire to many a prophet and king who had passed from the scene below without the accomplishment of their ardent wish, blessed, honoured, as they were, but not as these. Such is the effect on the soul on well-understood rejection! It is but the breaking down of what hinders the full development of the glory of the counsel of God, and in us would hinder the enjoyment of it, the tearful entrance into the spirit and glory of another world.

193  - 21. "In spirit" (to pneumati) as a Man. In all this Christ is speaking in His prophetic spirit as a Man, rather as the Son subject than Christ governing, and accordingly immediately afterwards He says: "All things are delivered to me," etc. Is not therefore as a witness to man of principle Christ more excellent in this subjection, though the glory be due? It is in this the perfection of righteousness, and moral truth of the great principles of eternal life and relationship were shown.

- 23, 24. "Those things"; what things? Is it not evident that the hope of Christ upon earth was the first object of prophets and kings? What more could they look for? It is hardly necessary to remark that this is no question of how a man is to be saved.

- 25. This is the state and condition suitable to the direct kingdom and administration of Christ; one of principle, too, not of party, as under Him. Meanwhile it is exercised on principle in respect of evil, in mercy. The Lord well knew how to draw the conduct suited to His kingdom and ministry.

So, connected with verse 24, the connection is thus: the great character in which Christ was manifested as Christ, "All things are delivered to me of my Father" (it was not seeing the miracles, but the Person, the power from which the miracles flowed, for the miracles they did, and were bid not to rejoice in that, and the world saw - it was this taken in all together, the conference of power in Christ and the saving of the people - it was indeed to man singular, but rejoicing to Christ that the revelation of it was to the poor and simple, it was well pleasing to the Father) and this as connected with the revelation of the Father - and of this He says: "Blessed are the eyes," etc.; compare John 1: 14, and Matthew 13: 11, et seq., and observe the places they come from. Then compare the case of Thomas and 1 Peter 1: 8. Then come the great principles of the state which Christ dispensatorily establishes - the restitution of all things, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," etc. The everlasting principles of God's character, as exhibited in relationship to Him now, as we have seen, the joy and what was our portion meanwhile while we wait for it, so as these are their principles on the perfectness of God's character, so is it manifested in the midst of evil by showing mercy on them that hate us, as John 1: 16.

194 The Lord returns on the circumstances, as we have seen, denoting the breaking up of the dispensation and passage into another, into the moral principles and relationship which the law contained, and, sanctioning the great eternal principles contained in it, as the form and unchangeable character of eternal life in its perfection and nature, the love of God and one's neighbour - on the self-justifying enquiry of a bad conscience, breaks down the whole narrowness of fleshly exaltation by the law, and introduces the principle and display of sovereign goodness manifested in Man on the evident failure of all that was right and gracious in those who had the privileges the law externally attached as a form or dispensation, and presents a Samaritan as an example unanswerably to a lawyer. In a word, while sanctioning the eternal principle of truth between God and the creature in righteousness - the kernel hidden in the law - breaks down the form which ministered to human pride by the exhibition of what was, beyond controversy, intrinsically goodness in a stranger in contrast with the heartlessness of formal privilege. Nothing could be more clear, more definite in its purpose, or more conclusive than this of the Lord, and yet it broke up (with the sanction of its contained righteousness) the whole form and principle of the law, but by bringing in God in goodness where man had failed in righteousness, bringing in Substance instead of form. So the power of the Holy Ghost always does. "The kingdom of God is not in word but in power," and the Spirit of love characterises its ways, for God who is Love is revealed in it, and He does not wait for goodness on the pride of men's forms. How blessed when God is thus brought in! And how perfect in His ordering of all things! The way of righteousness fully preserved, the pride of distinctive circumstance completely laid low before the true goodness of God!

195  - 27. Some are apt to take the second member of the great commandment as though it was a measure of the extent to which love to our neighbour was to go, and that we need not love him better, but if we thus weigh the obligation we shall be apt to lose the very principle wholly, and in essence, which we seek thus to limit to make self-love the judge of how far we are to go in kindness to our neighbour, instead of a holy urgency by which another is identified (not contrasted in obligation) in interest with oneself in unity of love. But it seems to me, though it be a simple practical direction, yet it teaches us the moral measure of love towards man or our neighbour, while it gives a regulating principle when we love God. It is unlimited in its nature. The object is infinite, the debt is infinite. It is an entire devotedness fluent in obligation, which in duty takes its measure from the nature and essential supremacy of God, and His claim over us from His being our God and all in all, which none can express, but the believer alone can apprehend. Whereas thus to love man would be so far from excellent that it would be idolatry. Man is to be loved as man, yet with a perfect love according to its nature, such as every man must bear to himself, and when love exists it identifies our neighbour not in necessity but in unity of interest with ourselves, and we seek his good with a perfect heart. But it is in its nature essentially different from love to God, in that God is so from man, and every affection follows the nature, and, if a holy affection, is perfectly and precisely suitable to the nature and character of the object of it. We may remark the facility of our Lord's transition from the summit, as it were, and fulness of contemplation and, so to speak, divine philosophical enunciation of truth, to the practical dealing with the lawyer's reluctant conscience. It was one thing to Him.

- 38. That these are the general moral instructions of Jesus is manifest. The general division begins when the seventy returned.

- 38-42. The different reception of Christ by one given to choose Him and the word by Him as their part, and one who receives Him indeed to the saving of their soul, being renewed as to evil and alienation from God, but not as to be lost to the world and brought away into the new kingdom (in a measure everlasting kingdom) from self, is here strongly marked. And how deeply, and how perfectly shown! Yet Martha was a believer, and loved the Lord.

196 We have here the distinctive privilege of the saint. Jesus, separated from all here into which, in gracious fulfilment of the ancient promises of God, He had thrown Himself, leads the way in sanction to undivided attention to the interests of the heavenly kingdom; no attention to Himself in the flesh could replace this. There was the necessity of death and life, and life cheered with the blessedness of the favour of grace into which it passed, but with the urgency of a rejection to death, and therefore sentence of death passed on all that was of man, and that by His death who should have been the power of it. And the whole of man was now to give attention to His words which flowed from life and source of life which was beyond all that death could touch, and above all, and yet now in His Person guided through all. The hearing of Jesus' words was everything. What unselfish disregard of self in the accomplishment of blessing is manifested in the Lord! The one thing needful is to hear Jesus. All these many "things" ended in death. It was care and trouble, not what led into life eternal, for so Jesus' words did - words issuing from a heart broken that it might let forth the stream of eternal life.

We have the word of Christ as the way of blessing. Mary acted according to the exhortation to the disciples: "Hear him." In chapter 11: 1-13, the Holy Spirit to be given, and the power of prayer. That is, we have the Word, prayer, and the Holy Ghost, our ear open to God and assurance that God's ear is open to us. Earnest importunity on one side, and sure goodness on the other; both as to hearing and prayer earnest purpose of heart. After verse 13, it is His pleading with the Jews as to their state, ending in judgment, to the end of the chapter; only the moral state, and the doctrine which has influence within, settles the question of our reception of the truth. In chapter 12: 1-12, the grounds of service for the disciples in the midst of the wickedness and opposition around them. In what follows, the same subject as regards the temporal part of it, and their waiting for Him; thus the Church's losing her true character by saying: "My Lord delayeth his corning," to verse 48. Then the then present state of things, though division and opposition would not cease with that, only that with Christ's death the straitening of the outflowing of His love would pass away. On the whole, all is a pleading in respect of His rejection, with the path of His disciples in it, and the result for Israel. In chapter 13, Israel and flesh in Israel is rejected for ever - is a barren fig tree. The unrepentant in Israel would be violently destroyed. He convicts them of hypocrisy, justifying the workings of His own grace, shows the nature of the coming kingdom through His rejection. Soon the door would be shut, though He should walk to-day and to-morrow, all the due time. Then Jerusalem should do its accustomed work of rejecting prophets, and its house, with the mourning voice of Christ the Jehovah that would have gathered her children, is left desolate. Chapter 14 carries on the same subject, the moral ground of breach with Israel, and the introduction of the new order of things by grace.

197 A little more detail here as to Luke. After introducing the word and prayer as the standing ground of His own then (and ever) we get the utter rejection by ascribing His power to Beelzebub, whereas God's kingdom was come amongst them. The strong man and Stronger were there. He not with Christ was against Him. Hearing the word of God took the place of connection of Christ with Israel after the flesh. He pronounces His judgment on them. But the light was lighted up not to be hid; the moral state, singleness of eye, however, was the way of receiving - the fruit complete light. Then the Pharisees and lawyers judged, and specially by their treatment of prophets and apostles who would test their willingness to receive the word. This leads to urgent pressing testimony on His disciples; they were to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. All would come out to light. They must be faithful. The next motive was, if they found hostility they were to fear not those who could kill the body and do no more, but Him who could after death cast into hell. Next, they were precious to God, their hairs counted. Next, him that confessed Christ before men He would confess before the angels. Next, they would have the Holy Ghost, so that he that treated that with outrage would be worse than he who outraged the Son of man. But it was He who would speak in them. In what follows the Lord shows indeed the folly of having a portion in this world, and disclaims its government or ordering, but mainly expatiates on the spirit in which His disciples should walk through it. First, God would have care of them, they could not take care of themselves. The nations who do not know God seek after them; their heavenly Father knew they had need of them. They were to seek the kingdom of God, and these would be added. Far more than that was in the Father's thoughts - they were to have the Kingdom. They were to have their treasure in heaven, and their heart would be there. Next, they were to wait for Christ with loins girded and lights burning; in heaven they would sit down and be at ease. They were to be ready for His return, the faithful servant would be ruler over all God's goods. The mark of faithfulness would be always expecting Him, and not go on with assumption and worldliness while He was away. The Church position is shown, and greater judgment on it than on heathen. Christ was come to send fire on the earth by that testimony, and His very presence, though in peace and grace, had kindled it. But till His death was accomplished, love, perfect in Him, was shut up as it were, could not freely flow forth to a sinful world. Though His presence kindled a fire, He must die to let out love abroad. Still from that out divisions through Him would come. Yet the Jews ought to have discerned the signs of the times, and even morally of themselves seen what was right. The aphorism of the man with his adversary going to the judge is used as to their state. They must all repent or perish by a present destruction. Israel was on its last trial, digged about and dunged, and, if it did not bear fruit, would be cut down. Such is the end of human nature!

Luke

J. N. Darby.

<46004E>198

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Luke  11

The next thing to undividedly hearing the word of Jesus is supplication directed by Him. Further, we have the Lord Himself in the position of prayer, and the expression, I apprehend, of His dependence and desire while walking in humiliation here below, rejected as we have seen Him been. The coming of His Father's kingdom - how full must His heart have been of it! The place of repose and power in blessing for all, for a world that knew not blessing, and joy for them that suffered in it! How continually we find Him here the humbled One! Hearing His word, and prayer are the two great instruments of His kingdom.

199  - 1. We have noticed the order to end of chapter 10. Then comes that by which we exercise the power of the kingdom here, and the instruction concerning it, its objects, as to man's perseverance, and God's character, and dependence, as Father. Its Gentile character, which is full of instruction and interest, may be observed in the note following.

- 2. I am afraid, without adequate research, of trusting to the rejection of the passages as here given, though their insertion for correspondence sake by ignorant persons is much more likely than their omission, if adequate careful testimony be afforded. If they be just they will afford much insight into the character of the desires of the (Gentile) Church as compared with the Jewish portion or character of the promises; for example, the omission of "Thy will be done," would be very marked. "Who art in heaven," I take to be Jewish, as contrasting His dwelling place with theirs. Thus: "Hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place." He "is in heaven and thou upon earth, therefore let thy words be few." "The heaven, and heaven of heavens," etc. "The earth hath he given to the children of men"; see 2 Chr. 6: 18. Psalm 115, however, from which the former quotation is taken, seems most strongly to mark it. Indeed I should perhaps say that the expression "But our God is in heaven" (veloheynu vash-shamayim) is taken from it. It was the point of faith with the Jews, and so expressed in that psalm in the trial of the latter day, when they were reproached by those who to all appearance had possessed themselves of the earth, having relinquished all heavenly hopes. With us really it is a matter of faith to believe there is a God of the earth; "They stand before the God of the earth," therefore He says. Not but that the prophetic Spirit went higher, as Isaiah 65. So remark the omission of me battologesete (use not vain repetitions; Matt. 6: 7). We do not say: "Who art in the heavens," because we have been made to sit there, etc. And again: "Ye are come," etc. It is there we know God and, as we have said, it is that His power is on earth is the matter of our faith, and where it is tried on evil's account because it is as though there were no God. And it is against the ungodly heathen, infidels, apostates from the Father and the Son that Psalm 58 has its force; so in the end of Psalm 9. Perhaps too the position of "Thy" is emphatic dispensatorily. The Lord God was the Jews' Father in righteousness, the Gentile believers' in adoption of election. Till His kingdom came they had no portion, but when we say: "Who art in the heavens," it assumes that we have a portion and place upon earth. The "Father who from heaven" (v. 13) is characteristic, not local, as we have noted of "from" (ex) specially, and without the article. We may note also the subject of the gift there "Holy Spirit"; compare Matthew 7: 11, "The Father." The Father is to both in Christ, the Father of the age to come, but especially according to their respective characters. There is something more exalted in the desire of the Gentile, more special in that of the Jew in faith. "To-day" (semeron) is also in my opinion Jewish, the subject of present petition. I suspect there will be great force put into the mouth of a Remnant, or believing Jew in the latter day, and deep interest in: "Forgive us our debts," etc. The petition here, though full of substance as to the soul in its moral character, and even more so, i.e., more definitely, it is sins it speaks of, and so "To every one" (panti) has not such specific force. Perhaps Zechariah 3 may explain the "Save us" (rhusai) of Matthew 6: 13.

200 Also the Father and the Son come and make their abode with us, and this would seem excluded if we said distinctively "Who art in the heavens." The passage in Matthew is clearly Jewish as being in the Sermon on the Mount, exposition, and holds Jewish ground of entrance into the kingdom, although in all its moral characteristics and hopes, its spirit, it reaches out into the kingdom of heaven. It is a Jew of the then times entering into the kingdom of heaven, and looking out therefore for the Father's kingdom.

I would note the character here of the prayer proposed. It is the revelation of the Name of Father to His little flock, the men given Him out of the world. Then the revelation of the first desire of His own heart at all cost to Himself - "hallowed be thy name." This must be the first desire of holiness, and the true position of dependence on the Father of glory. Next, the knowledge of blessing in His glory - "thy kingdom come." The sense of evil quickens this when the relation of Father in love is fully known and felt, as in Jesus. It comes in here justly as to time too, for the Messiah in present blessing having been rejected, He, always submissive and dependent, but full of holiness and love, looks up for the Father's blessing. The rejection of Messiah made the Father's kingdom the only and perfect hope of blessing. It was now no longer too the full display of temporal blessing in assured abundance, future supplies, but the meeting of a stranger's necessities - strangers now, Messiah being rejected, passing onward to another kingdom, and made utterly strangers here, never to be settled or rested here - "Give us our needed bread for each day." It refers then to grace in the way, from the recognition of and dependence on grace: "Forgive us our sins, for we forgive those who are indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation," i.e., as a chastisement or trial in the midst of a world of evil.

201 It was not the security of righteousness when a righteous God by His government attached necessary blessing to righteous, but the spirit of meekness to others in the sense of evil in itself, looking for mercy, and the consciousness of danger and temptation casting on our Father that He should not try us by it. It is not at all the knowledge of the gospel, nor the demand of the Holy Ghost, but the expression of the holy desires of a Remnant who had stepped by higher thoughts, or rather into necessarily higher thoughts by the rejection of the chief of all the lower blessings by man, but beloved and Son of the Father, and thus morally brought into thoughts suited to the position, but not having received the answer of the accomplishment of another dispensation of blessing, nor knowledge of the power by which it was to be conducted. Still the great moral principles of it were laid in the desires of the Father's Name being sanctified, the consciousness of the need of mercy and that He could be applied to for it, the spirit of love or mercy to others, and this expressed by strangers who were passing on to hopes founded on known relationship of love, but of yet unaccomplished glory and blessing - the result of the revelation of the Father's Name to disciples for whom the work was not yet actually accomplished by a rejected Messiah, which should place them on entirely new ground, but who were taught and made to taste in this its moral sweetness and dependence. It is exceedingly lovely in connection especially with its place in this gospel.

In confirmation of the way in which, however deep the moral principles of the objects, the form of the Lord's prayer applies to these circumstances of the apostles economically, i.e., to the dispensation in which He then exercised His ministry, we find the prayer for the Holy Ghost added here as a distinct thing (v. 13) and not in the prayer at all. The prayer is not here as definitely Jewish as in Matthew. There it was given at the beginning of His course in instructions designating the moral principles of His kingdom which would reveal the Father, here at the close of it on His rejection, when what was definitely earthly and Jewish is not stated, as passing for them and for a season into higher scenes. The giving of the Spirit in reply to prayer is given as a fresh instruction, an answer to the importunity of the asker, and an expression of the goodness of the Father.

202 I find two great principles of prayer here, the latter specially relative to the Holy Spirit. First, that whose efficacy is described as lying in importunity. This is not spoken of the Father; in Him liberality is spoken of, and sure kindness, from the very relationship. Here it is "Because of his shamelessness" (anaideian). It may be a friend that seeks it, but it is rendered to the importunity. Here God acts supremely, and according to His own thoughts, in a supremacy which maintains righteousness while it brings forth glory according to His purpose, a glory in which His fulness shall be displayed, as His love indeed accomplished - but as to which, if I may so speak, He expects to and must be glorified, in which faith must be exercised acting on the holy and amazing consciousness of His power, and bearing in its bosom the reproaches of the mighty, and the dealings of God with evil. We read of Christ Himself; He "Was heard because of his piety," and at that time "Being in an agony he prayed more earnestly." I do not say this is the only case, but it is ever a meeting of the demands of the Lord in faith. It is connected with the hindrances evil puts in the way of God's blessing, and the holy and jealous God, righteously jealous of His own character, must deal with the evil in dealing with the supplication. "It became him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." Thus, if there be evil in the Church, and the introduction of the working of the wicked one and I pray for blessing, I cannot have the blessing but in bearing in spirit (for efficaciously Christ has done it, and therefore I can so pray) but bearing in spirit the evil so that, the Lord's character in grace being fully honoured, He can give the blessing and restore from the power of the evil. I do not believe there was a case the Lord wrought in which His Spirit did not undergo the sorrow of the evil, so as to draw forth the complacency of His Father in union with whom He put forth the power of the cure. In intercession the Church and the saint has share in this work of Christ. It is not atonement but (which is true also in atonement) a full moral honour done to God. Hence, too, "Labouring earnestly in prayer for you all." In a word, the spirit and heart must go through the full results of the moral character of God as exercising supremacy in holiness on the case, that the blessing may flow forth on the soul. Hence it is there are cases unto death which cannot be prayed for, because they are such that, though not exercising the judgment, the Church is forced by the evil to take part, as it were, with God against the evil, unable to separate it from the evil doer as a failure and weakness, and thus is silenced. It is not its part to judge, and cannot intercede. There is some difference between the Church and the individual, because the Church is looked at as possessing and even administering the charity of God, whereas the individual acts in individual faith, and so bears the burden. Cases of sin in the whole body may arise, which are however analogous. The difference was like the sin of the whole congregation, and an individual when the congregation was at peace. This importunity first then, and primarily, secures the vindication of the holy supremacy of God; but dependence in respect of our weakness and nothingness, and His supremacy, are taught too - subjection and humbleness. Besides, faith is exercised, and intimacy with God wrought in the soul thereby, intimacy connected with dependence. Often, as we have seen, it is connected with God's moral government of others, and Satan's claim thereby, whence the suffering in intercession noticed above; and see Daniel.

203 Then there is instruction in the deep need which the thing prayed for supplies, and hence faith wrought in entire dependence as gift where there was only weakness, or even evil in the use of the answer. The great thing presented here is the exercise of faith, and the sense of necessity. We see the character of the hindrance in the case of the widow and her adversary. There is also in this intercession instruction in all the ways and counsels of God concerning His Church, and the things prayed for. Conscience in the light of the Spirit being brought near to God, the hindrances, the difficulties, the counsels of God in allowing them, His righteous judgment in it, in overcoming them in some holy place of wisdom, are given in communion with our God, and thus intimacy of service is wrought with Him, and, though beginning in sorrow, it ends in blessing and the sense of that special honour and blessing, "God's fellow-workmen," while dependence and humbleness, the only state in which this can be, is specially maintained. But in principle faith and dependence are that which are brought into exercise, and negligence of heart is effectually corrected. The Lord also uses this to encourage in the certainty of receiving: "And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one," etc. These different forms are put purposely to meet every case in which desire, need, or spiritual difficulty and energy might be called out, so that the heart might have no excuse in its negligence. Also the idea is presented of a God who gives, who opens to those without, who acts not on the previous privileges but upon existing faith and need, on the moral position of those to whom the answer is afforded. And hence it is: "Every one that asks." Hence any Gentile, whose heart is so touched, can come in, whose heart seeks aid and supply from God. And thus the character of this part of the gospel is fully also maintained. In this first part grace, or giving to whomsoever, is stated, but it is gift to need coming in the exercise of faith. God is accessible in affluent grace, but, as He is to be approached, the whole condition of him who approaches is brought into question, or of that in respect of which the petition is presented. Next, we have the subject of gift properly needed in the case to which they and the whole work of God was now brought, and founded in full grace on the character and relationship in which grace had now placed them, placed them not perhaps yet in the consciousness of their own position but in the revelation of the Father to them, as One too who was heavenly, and the deduction of the consequences flowing from the necessity of that character. In a word, it was not now merely God in holiness accessible to whosoever asked and sought, but a Father, in the kindness and perfection of His heavenly character, dealing in the love and consistency with such a relationship as viewed above with those who by this relationship could enter into the enjoyment of, and by it too would soon have the need of that which could realise to them, and assure the joy, and fortify, and direct them in the need according to the character of which it was the witness. It is a blessed argument from the imperfection of man to the perfection of God in man's favour.

205 Doubt might be cast upon the condition of the soon to be deserted disciples, upon the portion they might reckon on as by the death of Christ separated from earthly hope, and cast out with Him from all possible human dependence, on principles which broke them off from all that could sustain in the world, and in fact left them in the position of adversaries with it, as a hostile strength, really the enemy's. In answer to this, they are cast at once on the heavenly Father, and the endowment of the Spirit as their strength - really accomplished to them, but here only abstractedly stated, that it might rest not on a fact proved but on the certain constancy of God's character. Here then we have a Father's love giving, and giving freely according to need, and according to the feeling and willingness of a Father's heart, as before God accessible in the palace of His testimonies of holiness to those who sought Him. Still here we have to remark that the case presented is not desires, the consequences of the endowment, and therefore it is not said: Your Father, as by the Spirit knowing the relationship, but the endowment itself in answer to the desire, as that on which they could reckon from the character of a heavenly Father (not merely Jehovah Elohim) for this met the then need of the disciples as separated. It was introducing them into that which met them where they were, and would be the seal of the certainty of the grace which had met them, and their strength in the position into which they were introduced. In what follows, there is the evidence of the presence of the power of the Spirit in Jesus anointed as Man, and hence speaking in the consciousness of the certainty and power of the truth He announced to others, and the controversies into which it brought, and through which it sustained by the consciousness and power of its presence. It may be remembered that in this gospel Jesus is presented as receiving the Holy Ghost on praying.

- 9. "And I say unto you." I believe I have noticed this as a form in which the Lord applies the results of a parable, when the principles of the conduct stated in it are not in accordance with the operations of the divine mind. I am not aware that the expression is recorded by other evangelists than Luke.

- 13. "The Holy Spirit," this is the only gift of the (Gentile) Church; the rest it has only in earnest. As for earthly gifts, they are in no wise its position; care we may cast upon God, He provides the things we have need of for those seeking the kingdom.

206  - 14-26. We have the power in this ministry manifested, the power against which it was manifested, and the consequences to the world.

But the presence and power of the Holy Ghost had been manifested in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and, while the disciples had yet to seek for the power of the Holy Ghost to be present with themselves, the Jewish nation were thus accomplishing their guilt in denying and blaspheming His power And indeed the possessed man was just a type of the operation of grace in power on the Remnant of the people. Others in the midst of 10,000 miracles seek a sign. The Lord in principle morally judges the nation on these two grounds, but the point of moral condemnation is, they did not hear His word. He shows, as to the first, the discernment of the thoughts of their heart, then shows the perfect absurdity and therefore pure malice of the charge. Their own sons cast them out, and they should judge their wickedness. But, for the fact was admitted, it was by the finger of God that the devils were cast out, then the kingdom of God was come among them. They would give the credit to Satan rather than admit that God had visited them in goodness. They proved themselves therein the children of Satan. The real truth was then - a great conflict was manifested between Christ by the power and finger of God, and Satan. It was not merely a question of Jewish reception, it went deeper. And this conflict really existing, they must take one side or the other. He was casting out Satan, and spoiling his goods. They must side with Satan or with God. Christ was the only Centre. No Jewish nation, nay, nor no Church could now hold this ground. It might be in blessing gathered, but could not be the One gathered to, though all the saved might be brought there. But Jewish centrality was gone indeed then. The Person of Christ under the law as giving it was the Centre, but now in flesh and in the manifestation of power. He was the only Centre. Whoever gathered not with Him scattered. By progressive rejection, the Lord becomes the necessary and manifested Centre of His own rights. It gradually ceased to have the character of benefits on rejecting Israel, and became the manifestation of His glory against those that rejected Him. And thus all was centred in Him; whoever was not with Him, etc., for they must take the one side or the other. And whoever did not gather with Him scattered.

207 The Holy Ghost was the great Manifester and energy of power. Where this was not, the unclean spirit might leave a man, and the form of piety be there, but the Holy Ghost is not, and the unclean spirit returns with abundance more, and the last state is worse than the first. This is a solemn revelation of the dispensations of God's house: "Out of a man." But there is no fellowship or dwelling of God there. It is thus his house. The restless spirit of evil, removed it may be in the dispensations of God by the outward effects of mercy, has, though long wandering, not lost his remembrance of his house. Providence, the dealings of God have long kept him at a distance, but though empty it has not ceased to be his house. On his return, there is nothing to impede his entrance, no power of the Lord there. It is still, however swept and ornamented, the empty house of Satan; he comes there with his friends, and it is worse than before. The interferences of providences prolonging the time and celebrating mercy, blessed to many, in that blessing dispel Satan; but many houses are left thereby untenanted - the Holy Ghost, the presence of Christ is not there. By degrees Satan, restless ever, finds occasion to return and, as we have said, there is nothing to impede his entrance, and finding this with renewed energy, conscious of the absence and desertion of the interfering power which expelled him once, he takes possession of the house where he knows there is none to disturb him; for when he was gone none other came. There was form while power acted close by, but no presence of power, and in its proved emptiness he takes possession, and the case is hopelessly worse than before. Before, Satan was there in a deceived heart, whence he had not been expelled even by the sense of power near and its effect on the heart; now, that effect is shown to be no presence of divine power there, and he takes possession on the evidence of it.

This is a dispensation of divine government much to study. There is much force rested here on "my house whence I came out" - the marauding power of Satan so distinctly pointed out, and there being no security against it but the presence of the Spirit of God, the house being filled. It was a very solemn judgment, or here rather relation, of which the application is left. This is supreme providence and government permitting evil as the punishment of evil, leaving, the most solemn of judgments, evil to itself. The Lord actually judges them on plain simple ground, cognisable by conscience.

208  - 15. I may remark here we have everything peculiar to the Jews left out, as in Matthew "So shall it be to this wicked generation," and here tines (some). It is given not for the facts, but for the general principles, for all God's facts are general principles.

- 29. Then that in which the essence of its power and responsibility consists, not any human feelings or associations with the Lord, not signs nor miracles but the hearing, testimony, and power of the word, the preaching and wisdom of the Son of man. The point of this passage is to show the responsibility on the preaching of Christ. Jonas was a sign, as here instanced, not as in the whale's belly but as preaching without miracle to the Ninevites who, though unlettered heathens, repented. So the heathen Queen of Sheba was so desirous of wisdom she came, with no miracle or sign for witness, to Solomon for what she should hear, and a greater than Solomon was there. The first point is, who are blessed, and then the responsibility, and the reason of its rejection and darkness. It is an important passage; we may compare Hebrews 4 and 1 Corinthians 14.

Having spoken of the Holy Ghost and the necessity of His presence and power, otherwise entire liability to the power of Satan, of those merely under the effect of some externally expulsive power, the Lord turns to contrast - for all this is the introduction of new thoughts and a new dispensation - all natural affection to Him, all that could associate with Him after the flesh, and which in fact identified Him with Judaism in the flesh, with the reception and keeping of the word. It was in contrast of course therefore with any effect on the mere natural feelings, though true as such. In a word, the reception of the word is now brought forward as now the source and characteristic of true blessing. Natural associations with Messiah were doubtless blessing, but the divine word and its reception were clearly on a higher and far more exalted and full ground. He disowns that now, for the other was now coming in. Messiah would have been the Crown of natural blessing, had there been any good in nature, but there was none, and the divine word was the source or instrument of a life and blessing which carried beyond nature to God by the communicating the divine nature. The word of God heard and kept is the apparent form of this to the conscience; they really are the form and character of divine life and power. We have thus the Holy Ghost, present power of the kingdom of God, and the word brought in contrast with the iniquity of the nation and its fairest natural associations, the birth of Messiah, and also with the worst iniquity of Satan in the human mind and its fairest and most touching affections. All must be new, for the old is all condemned as evil or profitless, and was now ready to vanish away. How apt in spirit to return to it! And how is the Church fallen by doing so!

209  - 32. The testimony then of the truth seems the great practical power of the ministry. Activity, simplicity of object in this scene characteristic of its intended and reception power. They are made for a witness, and this as it enters so to be given out, that it may be the witness of what is received.

It is clear that this by introducing a moral principle (and that in contrast with the natural associations and birth of Messiah) introduced on moral ground the Gentile. The Lord turned to realities with God from a rebellious and proud rejecting form. But He proceeds to pronounce the judgment actually on the generation publicly. He uses no longer any restraints nor precautions with the nation now fully manifested. "This generation is evil; it seeketh a sign." And while the previous word is introduced by the Spirit to show the transfer to moral blessing in the judgment of the old, the Lord returns to the word of temptation presented of general unbelief, as He had replied to the blasphemy of apostate and diabolical rejection; here to unbelief, and this He addresses to the multitude generally as before "to them" (autois) for those who are saved must be separated from the generation. Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, and Messiah the Lord was to be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and thus to the Jews Jonas was a sign. But here the Lord speaks of Jonas as a sign to the Ninevites, a sign of merciful testimony, and so was He to the entire nation - a sign of approaching judgment to that generation, if they did not repent, and thus were the Jews condemned in comparison with them, for they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and a greater than Jonas was there. The presence of Jesus in testimony was the sign given to the Jewish nation, as Jonas to the Ninevites, for this presence was mercy. Thus the Queen of the South would rise up in judgment with this generation and condemn it, still contrasting realities with the guilt of formal privileges. She came to hear Solomon and a greater was there. It is evidently the word and its power by His Person is in question, not the miracle of Jonas. The men of Nineveh should do so, they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and a greater was there. It was also a national repentance, though the refusal was positive guilt. In either case the Lord shows a moral effect among Gentiles. The Lord then proceeds to discuss its presentation as light not privilege, the principle of its rejection, and the source and character of its rejection, and the judgment connected with it, and that in bold denunciation of it to the proudest of the self-righteous amongst them. The whole principle of God's dealing as to His mission, for that was now just what was in discussion, viewed in His rejection, but applicable to all their conduct.

210 Christ our Lord had come in the character of Light. It was not to be hid, nor was it in them. The rejection was the consequence, because of their darkness. It was not merely for enjoyment, for royalty, but for light. The Lord had come, this would disturb the haunts of darkness, but being come as Light, He had come to make manifest, and to manifest. "No one having lighted a candle puts it under a bushel, or in secret, but on a candlestick, that all who enter in may see the light." This was the Lord's place at present, to make things morally manifest by Himself, the Light.

But there was another point connected with this - the motives. This Light, when really received, became the motives of conduct and way. The truth presented tried the motives; if objects other than following God were in the mind, it became an instant stumbling block. The light of the body was the eye; there might be plenty of light in the world, but the light of the body was the eye. If there was simplicity of intention, if the heart was simply directed to God Himself thus manifested, the whole body was light. It was not each part having light for itself. This it was as the light of the whole. But if what our mind was directed to, the object in our eye, was not simple and consequently necessarily evil, the whole body was full of darkness; all went wrong. This governed and characterised all, was the moral character of the whole, whatever its form or appearance might be, were it truth and purity itself. Motives, i.e., God Himself thus revealed, formed the whole principle of understanding, judgment and light. It is a completely new broad moral principle of all possible importance - no question of Jewish ordinances and privileges, but of light come in, and singleness of purpose which received the light because (through grace) Light was its object - light not abstractedly previously, but light by grace loved when light came. For here is a mistake. Little light may be received candidly, but often candour and readiness to receive the truth is boasted of previous to any light being there. This supposes light in se in the man, and good, and is only the pride of the supremacy of mind. It is willing subjection to light produced by the Lord which is here spoken of, not abstract goodness and sincerity which would not, in fact, need light. There is an object, a candle lighted, something shining and receiving, i.e., singleness, and sincerity of heart, for God's truth and authority are in it. There may be other objects, other light, and so the light in me be darkness, false instruction, passions and affections determined on an object which distracts and ends in self and Satan, but there is no abstract singleness of eye without an object, for where is the simplicity where there is nothing at all? This however it is, or evil. But we have to take heed not merely that our passions or personal objects do not hinder the light, for these are not called light, but that the very instruction, religious system be not formed for the sanctioning of these evil objects by Satan. The eye is then evil, but it is evil, having the authority of light by the system we are in, supposed light. But if indeed the eye be single, then the whole body is full of light, and if the whole body be full of light - blessed consequence! no part is dark. This may seem tautology to man, but the Lord knew the value of His words. When the Spirit stamps them to us, no darkness shall be there, it is a complete deliverance - the whole shall be light, positive light. It may seem tautology to say: Heaven is heavenly. But to those to whom what is heavenly is known, it conveys everything. Those who know the light, and God is in the light, will know what it is to say: It shall be all light, actively, actually light, and everything enlightened as when the bright shining of a candle gives light.

211  - 33. Note, this marks the continuance of the testimony, though He was rejected, and what was needed to be a true testimony.

212  - 35. This is a warning taken from the Jew's case. We must remark it is "The light that is in thee." It is not anything presented, but the condition of the mind, and hence, whatever the instrument of obscurity, it is therein the motives of the heart which govern. A false religion, for example even, puts the soul in the light, but it leaves in the darkness of our own malicious or covetous motives. This was the case with the Jews, and the false religion does but harden in this as nominally the light. Judaism, as taken up by the corrupt motives of men, could make them ready to kill the Saviour, and forms replaced righteousness and opinions and authority renewal before God. In these cases the direction of religion rests in a caste that it may not rest in the conscience and the Lord, and so the single eye is set aside. The divine ordering of all things gave the occasion of the application of these principles, and the Lord was now plain in His judgment of the individuals - for it was judgment, and it was mercy to be plain as to them for others.

The reception of testimony is the light of the soul. If it enters in the pure power in which it leaves God, it shall give perfectness of principle which shall give light upon all the ways of conduct and spirit. But if the reception be mixed in its motive or oblique in its spirit it, the very testimony, will be a minister of darkness; see the case of Simon Magus, and the statement of Paul in 2 Corinthian 4, inclusive, and 1 Thessalonians 2. It is not then truth, for everything will taste of the vessel it is in. If by grace it enters and is itself, it is itself there, and the whole body is light; if by human will, or the outward manifestation of power it is recognised as true as a general act in the world - human will is human will still, and as dark as ever. When it does thus enlighten every part of the judgment, it is not merely that it is right, but there is a bright light of truth shines, and effulgent in and with and on every step, and the whole soul itself is enlightened with the light shed on every part of its ways, and the circumstances it is placed in. The power of testimony making the singleness of Object (by the revelation of Christ as all and in all) is the light, and renewal of heart unto God, for the truth is the moral reflection of the glory of God in truth and in character, and received in its truth, and so as occupying and constituting renewingly in power the mind, is conversion and renewing into His image in righteousness and true holiness, and the whole soul is formed into the reflection of the truth, and therefore answers, as an image, to God.

213  - 37, et seq. How little turns a man of ceremonies, whose soul is not opened, from the objects about which it was curious or concerned in the things of God! And how does the Master mind of truth, formed on and occupied with it, find even in the circumstances which occupy the mind of one engaged with them, the occasion of drawing out the full principles of truth and divine righteousness!

The dissection of false principles is needful where the form of religion so easily assumes a garb of sanctity, hateful indeed in character but imposing on many whom ignorance which it sustains or rather cultivates by the imposition of this cloak, and moral error in the root of things, subject to its influence. The Lord detects an utterly unclean inside with much pretence and pride withal. Purity within gives humility, for it is connected with conscience, and the holy and cheerful sense of God's presence, and being in us and with us, which indeed is the root and stay of purity of mind. It is recklessness of spirit within which gives pride which, for its own objects, may put on any form without, but therein also easily detects and shows itself to the eye experienced in moral good and evil, and single-eyed so as to be full of light, for this is our wisdom. For what is impure easily shows on what is pure, however dressed or concealed. So in our hearts, and this is the wisdom of the simple, and is perfect. ~o judge of character, not himself purified, can know another as the simple purified man, if the acts or expressions of another be once before him. "That which doth make manifest is light," but Christ is here the full detecting Light. But we cannot know them but so far as we are brought into His image, for that is light in us, and as far as we have it we are judges.

From this verse (v. 37) and on, we have the sure and unmitigated judgment of the Lord on the various forms which the lifeless religion of the conductors of the people took, expressed in many ways, but constant and unmingled judgment, and thereon the necessary sacrifice of all in a condemned world, and the largeness, voluntariness, and activity of grace on the part of God the Saviour. The world withal is condemned as to its principles, as the Jews for their state. The first ground of condemnation is the substitution of forms, and outward cleansings, and services which the flesh can render, for cleanness of heart and the Spirit of love. If that be there, all external things are clean. Money continually occupies the heart when there is only a form of religion, for it represents the world. Respect and pre-eminence is another form of this, though white without they were all unclean within. Next, the lawyers are condemned, and with this character, imposing religion strictly on others, and saving the conscience thus from the trouble of observing it. The Lord is fearless now, as we have observed, in unmitigated judgment.

214  - 39. This is not merely personal hypocrisy in a true system, but hypocrisy of system. The principles are the same, but here it is contrasted, as systematised, with the principles of the divine kingdom which reflects in principle the image and character of God - not merely evil, but the principle of evil in the form of falsehood systematically imposing itself on the fears and thoughts of men. But it is folly as well as deceit, deceived as well as deceiving, for a man cannot deceive without being deceived, and, not having communion with God, must (to have power over man) put that which is without instead of that which is within. Strictness in minute matters of ceremony, failure in principle in obvious cases of rectitude and mercy (for the senses become stupefied) this detects it. These are the broad general principles, and therewith the evidence of an unchanged heart - covetousness. Its formal character and judgment follows.

- 43. The Lord gives their character while He detects their principles. An unsuspecting mind goes on often not seeing the character of certain acts, but stating the act according to its truth exhibits the motive which the truth of, i.e., of the facts exhibiting it, is well known. Hypocrisy of outward religion, and the pride of place in religion, ever go together; for indeed there is no other reason for the hypocrisy save folly.

- 46. We have another mark of false religion. Being turned into a law it is imposed, according to the will of those who take advantage of it, on its unsuspecting votaries, and thus their character and authority kept up, while they subject themselves to no such ways. It is one of the marks of the wilfulness and hopelessness of the evil, to whom God says: "Woe."

- 47. Another mark is attaching sanctity to themselves by much honour paid to those who have suffered for the truth - saints and martyrs of old - while indeed they have the principles of and are descendants in character and truth of those who killed them. A notable mark! Yea, in this very honour their principles are developed.

215 It might not appear at first why building the sepulchres showed approbation of those who killed them, but they took up their place, as it were. They sought in it their own honour instead of receiving the testimony of the prophets which would have humbled them in the very dust, for the moral and utter ruin of the nation, instead of adorning, as if it was all well, the tombs of all that was good in it. Holy fear at the prophets' rebuke would never have adorned the prophets' sepulchres. It was the spirit of this world. The assurance of continuance, or at least perseverance in present things, notwithstanding sin which the prophets had denounced, the form of piety to the dead, for credit to themselves which rejected the testimony of the living - it was all self-approbation in evil, and so reckoning on continuance. They really carried on the works of their fathers. But a plainer and clearer evidence of this would be given in the wisdom of God. Prophets and apostles (messengers) would be sent to them, and it would be proved what spirit they were of As to the testimony of God, they would kill and crucify. Note, the doctors of the law, the expositors of the law, took the lead, or specially were in the principle of this; as nearer to the law in pride they rejected the testimony sent. The Pharisees were hypocrites, and so judged, but these perverted their nearness to the word in their carnal hatred to any real testimony to their own conscience. As they honoured the testimony that they might have the honour of it when once it was not found on their conscience, building its repentance and perfecting the work of those who rejected it, so, when occasion was offered, they would show the identity of their principle. Having the credit of the law and knowledge, they could least of all bear a testimony to themselves as evil. Hence, in pride and fear, they take to themselves all the springs of knowledge. They do not enter in, for they must do that as learners needy and ruined, and give up their character as doctors to be poor sinners as the rest, and consequently those that are entering in they hinder. And they would condemn themselves, and, besides all, their character and honour go for nothing. This is a great dishonour to God as sending knowledge in grace, having judged the forms of piety and knowledge. Where personal responsibility and conscience was not, their resource, as ever, was to press Him with all manner of questions, not seeking, and incapable of, truth, and convicted of evil themselves, if at least they could make void and neutralise the truth and goodness of God in convicting Him of error. This we must ever attend to.

216  - 50. This judicial word of our Lord's is worthy of all attention. This was the counsel of God's plan, thus solemnly pronounced by the Lord, that, as they thus inherited the spirit and sonship of their fathers, they should, as the end and climax of their schemes and rebellion, fill up and bring to its head the spirit and fulness of their wickedness, that all might be sought at their hands. Such is the method of God! Detected hypocrisy rages against the Author of its detection, and having lost its value, as hypocrisy or breaking through in its real hatred of the truth, that thorough debasement of heart and principle which is involved in the deliberate use of what is good for our own ends, breaks through when its selfishness seems in danger. And then comes judgment by its iniquity against those who loved the truth, because they were a light which showed their darkness. This pretence of good then is the worst moral state possible, for the open wickedness which follows is, as it were, preparation for judgment. Thus God says: I will accomplish their wickedness - I will send them what is good that they may show their enmity against it. God goes on warning while wickedness is increasing, then leaves it to itself and it grows confident, and well-pleased with itself, because it is separated from God, and has set up for itself, as it were; then delighting itself in very wickedness in hypocrisy, for God's leaving it gives opportunity for this. It was an accomplishment of the spirit of wickedness, with the sin of the others before them. The Lord closing the system sends to find the fruits of warning and patience - fruit suited to their pretence of their exclusive character of "The people" - for when men have lost the sense and value of moral truth, they set up for being something special, as, e.g., the Church. Then, the instant God appears, their state and enmity to Him is discovered, and shows itself in the darkest colours. Everything on which they had prided and distinguished themselves, being void of truth, when the truth came, was detected, and their madness showing itself in deliberate enmity, what was shown only in fruits before, now shows itself as the form and substance and essence of their system, and they are justly punished as for all. For the tree which bore it, and whose suckers were shooting up then, has now grown out into manifestation and corporate identity to be acted on.

217  - 52. The next point of hypocritical systematic religion is the depriving, under the pretence of expounding and being the persons to apply to others the truth and force of the Law, those who were the objects of it of the direct application of the convincing knowledge-giving word to their hearts and consciences, taking away the key of knowledge so that they could not go in for themselves without their leave and opening the door; and in result not going in themselves, and only using their title to instruct as a right to hinder their entering into the knowledge of what God has set before men in this word by which He reveals His grace, and makes men responsible.

- 53, 54. Such is ever the conduct of the hypocritical professors of false religion. Having nothing of moral truth to bring forward nor to answer to the evidence of deceit and fraud, which their acts when stated exhibit, their endeavour is to puzzle and perplex those who state it, that, by the want of clearness and evidence in their charge, or by committing themselves by being unable to answer some irrelevant, or unguardedly answering some captious and cunning, question they may lay hold on what they say, so as to accuse them as bearing against admitted principles, and so throw the charge and burden and conviction off their own consciences where the truth and light of truth had fixed it. Here, the Spirit in conclusion has shown their act itself in its true light as part of their system.

Luke  12

This chapter, partially noted, is very full. It is all founded on the continuance of testimony, the setting up of light consequent on and connected with His rejection. First, satanic deceit and murder contrasted with the light according to which they were to walk, present light and judgment. This is the first principle. Then goodness or love, and confidence in it. Next confession or denial of Son of man; then, blaspheming or speaking by the Holy Ghost. This closes that contrast. Then Christ, not setting the world right, but dealing with the individual's heart and soul for another world. This is bringing another world's light in. Next, love as regards the disciples, and their path as to worldly things. They were to get out of the snare the world was in, in this respect. Then (vv. 35, 36) His coming for saints waiting for Him (vv. 42, 43) for servants serving Him - blessing and rule; but the giving out of this light would make Christendom more responsible than the heathen. This closes verse 48. But His full rejection which was to bring all this was really through the light which shone in Him producing its certain fruits. Yet His work of love was, as it were, shut up till His death for all that. The state is the worst imaginable; Micah 7. But the unconverted should have discovered the times, and natural conscience would have decided between Him and His adversaries. But He was in the way with them, and if they did not bow and agree they would go to prison. The general resulting judgment of Jerusalem goes on to the end of chapter 13.

218 Observe how very strongly responsibility and divine care and power are brought out in the beginning of this chapter. First, verses 2-7, all to be in the light and fear of Him who can cast into hell after death, but the very hairs of their head numbered - they were not to fear, they were of value to God. They were to confess Christ, own Him publicly and actively, or they would be denied. But then he who blasphemed their service was worse than those who spoke against the Son of man. And if persecuted and brought before magistrates, the Holy Ghost would speak in them. They were not to be anxious and prepare what they had to say, i.e., integrity and truth in them before God - providential care - confession of Christ, and the power of the Holy Ghost to carry them through it.

Next, the Lord refuses government in righteousness which hereafter He will have (as He had then the right) but turns to the state of the heart as regards the world, and the path of faith as regards His disciples. Their heavenly Father knew they needed food and raiment. What they were to seek was the kingdom, and that He would give them. The mixture of responsibility and assured grace still continues. Next, they were to have done with earthly treasure and wait for Christ, their loins girded and their lights burning. In this part the Lord though addressing the Jewish Remnant, and speaking of His return as Son of man, yet makes their portion with Himself. It is the known disciples separated to Himself while on earth, and though of universal application, and figuratively placing them in heaven, yet looks at them as the Remnant on earth. It is not a revelation of the rapture - that is special. What follows goes definitely forth to all, and the professing Church is looked at as in the world, whether faithful or unfaithful. It is Christ's servant and minister in the world which is spoken of. Still even verses 41-48 refer to earth; government of all things, or judgment of the professing Church, and all on earth. The former part though referring to servants gives the higher blessing; verses 49-53 gives the effect of His coming on earth, showing His own suffering as needed to let out into liberty the love with which He was animated; verses 54-59, puts definitely the case of Israel as in the way with Jehovah to judgment, how they ought to have discerned that time, and even without signs have discerned what was right. In chapter 13, we have the positive warnings, the judgment going on, grace instead of law with hypocrisy, the character of the kingdom with the need of earnestness - for otherwise they would be outside, and strangers owned their place - mere rejoicing in present blessings would not do. Jerusalem must be the grave of witness, but Christ would continue His service, which nothing could hinder, till His time was come. Chapter 14 pursues the same subject, only with larger moral development. The rising of grace over the law and covenant proving the hypocrisy of those who held to the latter, is repeated, and these principles are developed, founded on the circumstances which were before the Lord's eyes. Self-abasement contrasted with self-exaltation, grace-conduct contrasted with the spirit of the world, to be blessed at the resurrection of the just. Then the parabolic illustration of what was taking place (in grace, though grace rejected by Israel) in Israel and the world. The witness that men, if they would follow Christ, must take up the cross wholly, the cost of following Christ was to be counted. If the salt lost its savour, it was good for nothing. What follows (chaps. 15, 16) brings out the whole system of grace, and the revelation of another world or rather heaven, forming the judgment of things in this, and so clearing all. What preceded was dispensationally and morally preparatory; here the principles of the new system itself are fully brought out.

219 The Lord pursues His testimony to the strong and explicit bringing of all things into the light, and the breaking down of all formality, of all that could be presented to man, and the certain bringing of all things into the light. But as this breaking down of all formalism and bringing of all things now into the light of glory, had its operation and present effect by the death of Messiah, the Lord Jesus, the power of Satan not being yet set aside, the most complete rejection, even to death, was the result, very probably, of bringing in the light, during the period of Satan's power, into a dark world. The Lord had led the way in this Himself, teaching us not only by divine knowledge, but by sympathy and experience of what was here. We have to refer to Him who searcheth the hearts and judges the soul as the body in the day when the secrets of men's hearts shall be revealed, and to seek a purity suited to that day. But the introduction by grace of light which condemns the impurity and evil of the world, produces the enmity and malice of the world; verse 4 here shows it, and the Lord is now plainly exposing as suffering these things. "I have given them" (therefore it is written) "Thy word, and the world hath hated them." O Lord, make us faithful, for in truth we are very weak, and in Thy grace bring in the light, walking in the light! These are the principles stated of the Lord. First, God's necessary determination to bring everything to light. This applied to all that was secret among the disciples. It would all be brought out, and that humanly even; which note well. But then as to the danger of walking in the light, they were not to fear those who could kill the body, but God who could kill the soul - yea, they were to fear Him. Jesus perfectly feared God, and was of quick understanding in it, and suffered the death of those who could kill the body. Further, even here not a hair of their head but was counted by Him who cared for the sparrows, and they, precious word! were of much more value. For our God has made it of faith to believe that He cares much for us, very much. This is great grace.

220 But, further, besides the providence of perfect divine goodness and care for His own now, there was the result in relation with the Son of man thus humbled in God's behalf. For whosoever confessed Him before men should be confessed before the Angels of God. There would be a return and answer of glory before the Angels of God, for shame before men, and he who denied Him before men would be denied by Him before the Angels of God, for Christ had taken His shame here below, but all before God would melt, and therefore own Him. He was content with shame, though He felt it far more deeply than any, because His sensibilities and His love were perfect. No entrance of evil or sin had ever hardened His heart; but that God might be fully glorified here, and for the glory that was His there in the presence of God, He bore all. He came to suffer. He had hidden His glory to effect grace. He had come amongst evil and sin, expecting to find it, and to give a subject to divine glory in His humiliation. This was the patience of God. But He was to be glorified, and as He came to do and to bear in a sort of concealment in love, claiming nothing, so the Holy Ghost would come in the title and asserting the glory of God, and in the glory of God, and claiming subjection to this glory, and bearing witness to the grace demonstrating the glory in power. A word spoken against Him would not be forgiven. But here in grace this is attached to the disciples to console and comfort them in their weakness. He might be slighted, but if He by whom they would speak was slighted, it would be unpardonable. Such were the principles, the warnings, the motives, and the encouragements attached to a mission founded on death, and perhaps conducting to it, but which was the bringing in of light by grace into a world of darkness. Accordingly, in verse 11, the Lord applies the presence of the Spirit to their circumstances of trial. If the Spirit was spoken against, it was unpardonable, but when they were brought by the hostility of the world before magistrates and rulers, the Holy Ghost would aid them, or rather speak by them.

221 The Lord thereon proceeds to adjudge the position of the world. Jewish blessing had lost its place, the true light now shining. He declines accordingly to judge any judgment now, and only warns against the folly of the love of the things which gave occasion to this judgment. The soul in its position before God was what was now in question. Further, as regards the disciples, this took away the occasion of carefulness. The life (which was now understood) was much more than this, and the body than raiment. It had to say to the Lord - His life and glory. The Lord having stated this principle enforces it by this, that they could not effect anything, and that the Lord's care did, even for the ravens and lilies. Further, all the heathen of this world sought these things, they were the desires of the natural heart, and their heavenly Father, in whose Name they stood, knew they had need of these things, and actually, if they sought the kingdom of God and His righteousness, these things will be added. The whole ground of the disciples' position in the world, consequent on the rejection of Christ, is thus set. This is carried on to the kingdom, first viewed in a purely heavenly character (v. 33) and then waiting for the Lord (v. 34 et seq.). Their position, we have seen, was one of trial of faith, of opposition by the world, and the power of Satan. But the little flock were not to fear. He whose light and Name brought them into trial, the Father of the rejected Jesus, would give them the kingdom. Verse 32 comes at the same time as a sweet and blessed answer to verse 31. The principle of comfort indeed - but devotedness is called for, urging them to seek the kingdom of God, to give themselves up to Him, seek His kingdom not themselves, and with the promise that the needed temporal things would be given them. But the Lord's heart breaks out here over them, in the manifestation of the fulness of grace. It was not merely providential care while they were labouring. The kingdom itself was theirs. It was the Father's good pleasure to give them the kingdom. His thoughts and delight were much more than to supply need. It was just this kingdom.

222 From verse 1 to end of verse 13, we have the Spirit, principle, and actual direction in which they were to carry on the ministry of the truth in the midst of the hypocrisy, trial and violence He had just been alluding to, and of which, as far as related to conscience, He had just been detailing the principle. Here He directs and warns them as to the results, as actually in the world. It is addressed to His disciples, but it was no fearful compromise by which He inculcated His principles. But, while He addressed it to those whom it was expedient and concerned to know it, He did it in the presence of an immense multitude, as one willing to act on that of which He spake, that what He spoke in the ear should be proclaimed on the housetops. There is a great lesson in the manner of this.

- 1. Coming from God they had no need to be concealed, nor did it suit their mission (compare our Lord's answer to the High Priest), compare also Romans 1: 16, and 2 Corinthians 4. Your doctrine is the light, act suitably, beware of any want of openness, as if it were a selfish system you were following, or any want of sincerity as though cunning could gain your end. Besides, it is useless, for all shall come out. I did not send it not to come to light, and to light it shall come. This is universally true by the judicial bringing forth of all things by God; I say: All things. But in fact it shall be true. I tell you judicially, in your ministry, God will exercise the spirit of judgment on your ministry, and all that you are and have said shall be brought to light, for I have set you in the world as detecting, as light. Satan knows it, and will bring all out to light he can, if there be anything inconsistent with light, and in this he will act by right of the purpose which I have appointed you to, for I have set it to be made known, and your official character will be acted upon. However, our Lord states the broad principle of the system, warning them accordingly to beware of the spirit of hypocrisy in anything, for Light was the name and characteristic of His ministry in the midst of evil.

223  - 4. This, however, would necessarily bring them into conflict with a world that hated the light, and felt one that brought it an enemy for detecting it, and showing it to itself. The Lord meets this fear therefore with encouragement very graciously, "To you, my friends," with very strong and important truth, to set it straight in point of wisdom and duty. They can kill the body, assuming this, for humanly speaking they can, for that is the place of adversity and the devil's power (as to this) but no more. Fear therefore rather Him who has power over body and soul to cast into hell, yea, "Fear him." But farther, not a sparrow could fall to the ground without their Father (or as here more generically and not specifically) without God. But such was His care over them, the very hairs of their head were numbered. "Fear not therefore" - adding (vv. 8, 9) as principle, warning, and promise, as immediately connected with the actual confession of Himself in the world, as the moral point of faithfulness, the consequences of that confession or the contrary.

- 6, 7. These verses give the counter motive in the way of encouragement; verse 8, counter-motive as to the result; verse 10, from the presence of the Holy Ghost. Note, you have "God" (their "Father," Matt. 10: 29) Himself as Son of man (Matt. 10: 33, as Son) and the Holy Ghost, not in Matthew in this place but in another connection as mere encouragement, verses 19, 20; that of the whole chapter, compare Matthew 12: 31.

- 12. But there was another principle and Agent to be introduced, connected with this subject - the Holy Spirit sent by the Son and, in office, the Witness of the Son. Denying the Son implied knowing Him, not really knowing what a person was about, but that which was wilful. Speaking evil of Him in ignorance, it was ignorant in unbelief, God took no account of, would not charge it. It was indeed sin, but would be forgiven, looked at in mercy rather as matter of compassion through love. But one blaspheming against the Holy Ghost, who was Light and Witness of His glory, was opposing light and witness, and would not be forgiven. It was opposing the very Witness of His glory. That that was spoken against Him in ignorance of and denying His glory, was forgiven, and forgave itself, i.e., it denied and did not refuse witness of, and therefore showed itself ignorance. It was an act done while ignorant, and not against the witness of the Spirit, for that is the point. It is not the ignorance arising from shutting one's eyes, and opposing the light of the Spirit, but ignorance as contrasted with that as such. Such was the danger and warning; on the other hand, the blessing contained within this principle of the presence of the Spirit, that it would teach them in their emergencies of mind, in fulfilment of the duty imposed, confessing Him (as they were not to fear as to their body) what they were to say and what they were to speak when, and at the time they needed, so that all was provided for for them. Observe now the order which is very perfect and very practical. The great subject is the witness and confession of Christ, of that which they have within.

224 It runs thus: Beware of hypocrisy - for the great general principle God acts upon bringing everything to light - then meeting the fear generated by this: You had much better fear God - the principle having been stated. Besides God will, in point of fact, take care of you - then, having stated what was to be avoided, and discussed the wisdom of the principle, and its supports against fear, the service in which it was to be exercised, with its actual and just or retributive results, the confessing Him before men. But the peculiar manner in which this was to be done, and its special responsibility, and what was to be their special support as to their competency, is then stated. Were we to indulge ourselves, we might see that this instruction flowed from a deeper source, and was a development of the offices of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in the work of redemption, or rather bringing into restoration the principles of light out of evil in the manifestation of the Son by the Spirit, as a tangible instrument by which it was developed, and man's part in it, and how brought out to light, good or evil, with the perfect and certain plan of the invisible God in and through it all, and in this is extremely interesting; compare, which runs deeply to the abstract principles of this through the manifestation, 1 John 1.

225  - 13. Here the special malicious action of Satan is closed, and his general influence as the spirit of the world is entered on; see verses 2 and 4. Now men to verse 21, then disciples to verse 48; all founded on breach with Israel, founded on chapter 11: 15. Verse 49 takes up the question of Israel again (compare verses 58, 59 and beginning of chapter 13) and refers to His death.

From verse 13 to chapter 13: 9, seems to me to be substantially one discourse or section. It embraces indeed a great many associated subjects dependent on it, but it all hangs on the character in which Christ now entered His ministry, and the footing on which He placed, or on which the kingdom was placed, as expressed in verse 14 in reply to the question in verse 13. It may be divided at these points, verses 31, 49, 59, and chapter 13: 9. It was an important point, after the consideration of the place in which the believing witness was placed, to have the ground generally declared of what character generally, as to the kingdom, our Lord appeared. This was supplied by the question of someone who wished our Lord to take this place, the place of regulating distributive justice, and producing righteousness on earth. Such He disclaimed in fact then, and proceeds thereupon to show the principles of the kingdom, the inward principles, as then manifested, in which it was contrasted with the world, its present object which would not be answered by the introduction of general righteousness outwardly in the world, which neither was practicable according to the dispensations of God; for that which was manifested during the interval of our Lord's presence was of equal importance, though not of the same rest or glory as that in which He should take the glory of the power. It was the Enos state of the Church, in which its faithfulness, grace, and separation from the world were manifested, as in Him, save as perfect in Himself at His first coming. In this it was a witness of that through the power received at His resurrection, as He in His own faithfulness, and by the presence of the Father as understood in faith by Him through the Spirit dwelling in Him without measure. So the Church, save that it is sanctified in Him as in the glory, save that it is still His. In this accordingly our Lord in His gracious condescension instructs us. The first is the broad general principle that our life is not in them; see note on verse 15. It is this question of God with the soul (for there God has His question now) on which it all hangs. Life (zoe) does not consist. "I will say to my soul" (psuche); he thought his soul was in this, but he was a fool (aphron). "This night thy soul shall be required of thee; and whose shall be what thou hast prepared?" Leave every thing a man must. The only question is between grace for Christ and necessity for nothing. On the whole this is the case and condition of a man, "Who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God"; here characteristic, without article - "rich" (plouton).

226  - 15. He says as a principle of life to the multitude: "Keep yourselves from all covetousness," for your life is not in this. But He draws from the consideration of this subject this guide to His disciples: "Be not anxious about what is necessary," adding many considerations why they should not, for God recognises the necessity of food and clothing, and will therefore provide for them that trust in Him, so as that they need not be anxious. But He warns all to keep from covetousness as an evil in itself. It is common with our Lord in His discourses to address Himself to the multitude on the principles of good and evil, life and death, and to His disciples on principles on the same subjects flowing from their state of grace and faith.

- 22. This begins another branch of this part of the subject: "To his disciples." If these be the general principles, if it be thus with the world, do you who have a Father, even the Father, not be anxious or take thought for your soul or body, "What ye shall eat . . . nor what ye shall put on." I had customarily thought that this contained merely an a fortiori argument, that if God had given the greater He would surely give the less. But there is more - to you, believers, the soul or life must be more than merely meat. It is not that which it will occasion to you the care of; and the body worth more than raiment, as if that were the only thing it should give occasion to you for thought about, when indeed it was to put on and be the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. This, however, was not yet revealed. It was, however, more than clothing, there was something more in it than that, and Christ spoke from, though He did not declare that knowledge, and so justly, for His subject, as it was comparative teaching, He was occupied with, and not express revelation of promise. Well then! if they be so, your thoughts should be in another channel, rising above such a view of the soul and body. Yet there is more in this. This is the natural care of it, for the natural man cannot go beyond it; "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Do not therefore take thought for the body or life, for taking thought for them, as in the world, is always natural and of the natural man. The life concerned service for God - eternal life, all He had to give that was life. But He proceeds to assign positive grounds operative upon them as believers in this world, to wit, instead of making these things the end of their thoughts as to soul and body, and their god as unbelievers must - to know God, and therein that these were subsidiary things which He provided when He was owned as God, for these things were His and under His ordering, and that He cared for them, and for much less even than they.

227  - 24. As to food, "Consider the ravens," etc., and God nourisheth them, and ye are better than birds. Neither can ye do the least thing in providing for yourselves as to this body of yours.

- 28. I observe it is "God," not "Your Father," as the characteristic style here. This is an additional argument. The first was as believers, the soul and body have quite different objects and privileges, but even as to these exercise faith in God. As to food, "Consider the ravens" - for God's actual providing care and your own weakness. As to clothing, "Consider the lilies." "If . . . the grass," etc. And generally (v. 29) "seek not what ye shall eat or drink," nor be making consultations in your mind. This may (in an evil sense) become those that do not know God, but your Father knows you want these things. What is not your life ye are foolish to seek, and to you, believers, your soul and body is worth a great deal more than these things. These things, which your life and body do need, your Father knows it does, and indeed provides that which is of much less value. Such are the principles on which believers are to act, as associated with the world.

- 32. But the Lord stretches up, as it were, upon higher ground. Believers there is a special object about; you take higher ground. "Fear not, little flock, it has been the Father's" mind and "good pleasure to give you the kingdom." The kingdom! Sit loose to, get rid of the things that you have, and rest in, and provide things such as the Father gives to the heirs of His kingdom; act the part of kings, as persons called to and having a higher inheritance, and give alms. And there is a reason - it is a separating principle - let your treasure be there, your heart will be there also, you will be formed for God. It is not, observe, the value of the gifts meritoriously, but the effect internally. Such is the position, the suitable position of believers in the kingdom of the Lord; hereunto are they called. God is not ashamed to be called their God.

228 But further, as to their position, and character, and establishing motives: Be not only loose, and living with your hearts upon what is yours, in fellowship with God, be as men looking for the positive subversion of the present state of things, not as desirable in itself, but as waiting for their Lord, as thereby indeed responsible for His absence. It forms especially their character (they are always expecting) their loins girded and their lights burning. All is as if Christ was then come, or on His way actually. It is also as "For their Lord." And "He that shall come will come." We may remark the perfectness of the principles, here set forward, of the kingdom, and the intervening dispensation as here set forward - perfect assurance which is the root of all godly service and familiarity of holiness: "Fear not, it is your Father's good pleasure to give," founded on the holy, influencing favour of the Father, "Your Father." For the assurance of the Christian, as we have often said, is not the assurance of safety merely, but the assurance of love, of a child.

We have here the place and relationship of Christ beautifully. "It is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Christ then even in heavenly places in the cloud beyond the kingdom takes, as He has taken for ever, for us the place of Servant, girds Himself, and comes forth and serves us. This is beautiful. Yet afterwards we have in the inheritance Christ Lord, and we are servants though He makes the faithful one ruler over all that He has. All this is beautifully in its place.

- 33-37. This paragraph is worthy of all study as exhibiting the high and holy confidence, motives (and therefore character) and watchfulness of the Christian, crowned with that which is its glory and crown. He will gird Himself, and make them sit down to meat, and will go forth and serve them.

- 35. This is the state for blessing; verse 42, the service for inheritance.

229  - 36. Observe the introduction of this paragraph, and consider whether it be merely of the type or the thing spoken of; if so, it throws large light on the passage.

- 37. I suspect this has a special primary Jewish reference; if so, the return from the marriage would be manifest. It shows, I think, not only that we shall be happy in the blessed enjoyment of what is heavenly, but that the Lord Jesus - blessed thought! - will still minister to us of His own fulness of blessing. He makes them sit down to meat, and comes forth, and serves them. It is not the thought of communicating of His own fulness in Himself, but it is of causing them to feast where He places them in rest, and ministering to their happiness - an infinite source of joy! Verse 44 is the conferred inheritance; so that we have both parts of the heavenly joy. The condition of the world, Jews, and saints is fully drawn out here.

- 38. It is remarkable that men have turned that uncertainty, which was ordered to keep men always expecting, though the time was not by and bye, and that it should be used by men as a reason for not expecting at all.

I do not know if I have clearly noticed the full character of verse 35 and following. After the gracious encouragement of verse 32, we have the treasure and affections and the heart directed to the Lord's coming, the constant expectation of whom was to characterise the Christian. The result of this is perfect blessedness in the house, rest and the finest of the wheat, and Christ occupied with serving us for our joy. What follows is service, and here it is not the joy within, but ruling over all His goods. Both these are the portion of the saints. But on earth we must find the opposition of the world of man's flesh marring our nearest affections.

Besides what is noted, in heaven we do not want lights burning. The glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is its lamp. In this dark world we have to shine as lights - open profession. But this is, whatever the blessing, a strain on faith, as having our loins girded. It is not rest but diligence of heart. Affections tucked up, and confession made. Lights in a dark world. When He comes we sit and enjoy the best of heaven, He Himself ministering to us. According to gift we take in this world this service of love - we minister Christ to His household in the service of love; only here it is measured and suited - there it is full and the fulness of Christ.

230 Note too, further, the fire was already kindled, persecution and rejection - what man was - drove back Christ's love so that He was straitened till the baptism of death was accomplished, but when this very rejection rose (the time being come) to its height, it took the character of that baptism, and only opened the floodgates of full unmingled love. Such is the wisdom of God. We must have the fire, but we enjoy the flow of love infinitely more blessedly than if sin had not been there, for it is love above all hindrances, properly divine, superior to evil, redeeming love, and none of the fire can separate us from it.

- 39. Here end the general principles as applied to believers, and, acting upon them, the general concluding statement is more abstract, and leads to the question of Peter, which is the occasion of most important prophetic statement relative, morally relative, to the (Gentile) Church.

- 41. This is a question by which the statement is specifically made available to the ultimate history of the (Gentile) Church. For though it ought not to have been so, I see distinctly that the fulness of the manifestation of grace here rested in and was confined to the Jewish incorporation in which the Church was founded. The root bore it, and all its vigour here was therein shown, yet it ought not as to us to be so. And so the Lord leaves it, "Who then is?" The fact is that though partially true, yet a posteriori it will appear that none were found save he who therefore took the power to himself. But it is put as a responsible uncertainty, and those who are faithful even though unavailingly so, for it may be so, shall be recognised in that day - unavailingly as to apparent public result to man in the world, but they ought not to despair nor faint, and more faith would do more work. Yet how much more excellent is the uncertainty in which the Lord has left it i.e., the responsibility of the Church to feed, yet withal supposing the case, and showing the consequences of neglect. The case put is the Church assuming authority instead of acting as the responsible servant of an absent Master, in the spirit in which such would, with all the wisdom which one who had communion with Him would, and the carefulness of service towards others as valuable to Him, yet therein and thereby keeping them in order towards Him, and doing the work of substitute-authority, not by authority but by service. Let us observe then the assumption of authority, as though the waiting One was not just going to return, and had left the reins in the hand merely to hold in care and not in will, is the spirit of evil and unfaithfulness, and in fact apostasy in the Church. I say the spirit of it, for it is assuming it in lieu of Christ, arising from putting out of remembrance for our own sake, i.e., in atheism. Observe this assumes the flock.

231 They were attached to now, and associated with the heavenly character of the kingdom. This world was nought. But what they had of this world they could turn into the heavenly privilege of doing good, and have their treasure in the heavens, where there would be no losing it, and so their heart would be kept there. Thus their character would be heavenly. In the meantime they were to be there as waiting for their Lord, the return of their Lord from the wedding, that when He came and knocked, they might open to Him immediately. The Lord will return from the wedding when He visits His disciples here below, so that there would be applicability to them; but the general aim of the heavenly effect of the calling is here in question. They were to be here, separate from earthly things and waiting for Christ. Their then position, it is true, was of the earthly disciples, but He was calling them to heavenly hopes, into which He enters more fully a few verses further on. Here only they were to be on the watch. It is not prophecy but character and position. There are no signs; they were to be heavenly, separate and waiting for Christ. In chapters 17 and 21 we have historical signs and circumstances for people upon earth; here separation in spirit from it. For those who thus wait, Jesus is still a Servant. He will make them sit down to meat, and come forth and serve them. Girded to serve as Man, His ear has been bored in death, and in joy He comes forth delighting in disciples so walking. It is His joy to release them from their endurance, and watching, and service. Their faithfulness is His delight, and He sets them to the feast, and honours their faithfulness in honouring them with delight. Thus they were left therefore in uncertainty, and so the Church is left; it has no time. It is always to wait, because it has no time. Every moment is its time in desire and duty, as the world's for negligence and carelessness. The Jews have a time, days and years and earthly computations belong to them, and therefore signs; to us it may be second watch or third watch. Blessed only, if we are found watching. It is an hour we take pleasure in. This is a very important point.

232 In that which follows, Peter putting the question of the application of the passage, we have the portion of those who serve faithfully in the Church distinctly and positively given. It is not merely waiting faithfully. They will be set down to the feast, but serving faithfully they will be set over all His goods - an encouraging thought, though not the highest in the patience of labour in hope. He who distributes faithfully to the need of the household - our present service - shall be set over all the Lord's goods, and He is Heir of all things and Lord of all, when He returns to take possession of all He made and will inherit. On the other hand, the principle and character of the Church's apostasy is putting off in heart the Lord's coming. This is the great economic stay of heavenly-mindedness, and by which the Church preserves its own peculiar calling and character. The expectation of the Lord kept the servant on the watch, and detached from the world, and faithful in the service to be rendered to the Lord's household. On the other hand, the putting it off left him to his own will. The servant says not: My Lord will not come. It is not a doctrinal denial, but: "My Lord delayeth his coming." Next, He acts with authority and violence towards the servants, not as serving them for his Lord's sake, and as done to Him. Further, he mixes with the world; he eats and drinks with the drunken. Well! the Lord of that servant, for that servant has a Lord though he has acted so independently, will come when he does not expect it, make good His authority, and though long in the house, set there in a certain sense, his portion is appointed with the unbelievers in judgment. Such is the portion of the apostate Church, as of the nation which preceded it, and failed like it.

Further, there would be in detail a righteous adjudgment to the servant - he who knew, and did it not, many stripes, and he who knew it not, and did it not, few stripes. All was in ruin, all guilty; sin and neglect had produced ignorance. But the righteous distinction would be made. Note, they would be treated in the responsibility of the place they held, though they might not serve nor have spiritual right there. And so to whom much was given, of him much would be required, and if much has been afforded, more will be demanded. Thus the Lord unfolds the place and principles of service, as before of position, through His rejection and its consequences, and sole force. Further, we have to note here a manifest distinction between the called Church, called to wait for its Lord, and the ignorance of heathenism and the like, and the far more terrible portion of the Church. That servant, alluding specially to the one of whom He had just spoken, who knew his Lord's will and prepared not himself, i.e., for his Lord that was coming, and did not do according to His will, shall be beaten with many stripes - but he who - it is not said: Did not prepare himself, for he was not at all in that position, but "Committed things worthy of stripes," acted evilly according to his natural heart, as a heathen might do, shall be beaten with few stripes. The distinction is clear, and the judgment of the Lord as righteous, so is it solemn thereon, exceeding solemn, for the professing Church.

233 And again (v. 43) "That servant," i.e., who was put in the place to feed. Faithfulness in the stewardship in absence is the warrant for placing over much, even over "All his goods." It is the conservative power of the Church, faithfulness in which would constitute it over all the Lord's possessions; yet shall it be true of the Remnant, though, that it might be even here of grace, this was a manifest failure. But as to the corporate body it is (v. 45) "If that servant should say," etc. So ever has been the way. The condition as a body has failed, but the Lord has had a people who have lived by His faithfulness, on the principle in faithfulness, who have had the privileges in His faithfulness and mercy in Christ, which the body have forfeited, and which indeed was altogether forfeited in their formal proposal, and their feelings will be accordingly. The apostle opened this as to the times of old fully, and spoke of this to come on its moral responsibility as here, which was the only way it could be so effectually spoken of as regarded that responsibility. And when the condition came in which was the healthfully trying subject of moral discernment, then it became appropriately applicable prophetically. But the whole moral estate of the Church in the latter days is most fully and strongly depicted in this passage. I suspect verse 47 means the Church, and verse 48 those who ought to have been converted, but the unconverted heathen world. I have thought it was Protestantism, and the religions of ignorance. The principle is broadly stated in general, and thus indeed we may always learn and apply. But the Lord's reflections on these subjects, drawn from the full sources of the whole scenes, present to His mind in the Spirit-taught purpose of their realities rests, and then under the guidance of God (for as the Spirit was not given in measure, yet it is only, as it were, the heads given to us - certain eyelet holes, small in the light and but as isolated in itself, but looked at close in the same Spirit in measure giving inlet to see and scan much, and the general purpose of what is within) give us the affecting consideration of the result; for these heads give all the moral force when seen, they shine with the light that is within, and distinctively, for we could not simply bear the blaze.

234  - 45. There are two points mark this state of the rulers of the Church - self-indulgence, and the assumption of authority as such founded on their assuming to be in the Lord's place, and putting away the idea of His coming again, so as to lose the sense of their own tenure. Wherever therefore this thought began to work in the Church, i.e., where they were not presently looking for His coming, this spirit found scope and began to work. The right thought of it is THE ground of service.

- 48. This closes the exhortation. Then the fruit of His rejection, but even before it the effect was produced. Still His death must come in for the outflowing of the counsel of God in love.

- 49. The Lord pursues the effect of the gospel of a rejected Saviour. He was come to send a fire on the earth, not the crown of natural creation earthly blessing among His people. Messiah - the Head and Crown, but cast out and rejected by the will of man and the rejection of His people - He stands in the place, not of the Head and Bond of Creation, but of the occasion of ill-will, division, and animosity and judgment. "I am come to send a fire on the earth." This would be by the testimony to Him rejected but accepted of God. But what could He now seek or think of, if before the time, as it were, even then in His lifetime, the living Messiah who, in form at least, came as the Head of blessing and the Bringer of peace, was the Kindler of this fire? He could wish now for nothing. His natural mission was turned (and necessarily) into the opposite. His other glory was not come. Nothing could come of the first, and the second was yet with the Father. But the truth was there was something needful before Him; He had a baptism to be baptised with. He had His own portion to go through in this, and all the results must be deferred till then. The blessing, and the title of blessing and peace, and over creation depended on the accomplishment of that which set Him in redemption power through suffering in that; see Hebrews 2. Thence, as became God the Sovereign, for whom and by whom are all things, He could assert His title to bless, and bless in spite of the power of evil; here, creation being ruined, He could not. Hence, how was He straitened till it was accomplished! He could neither bless in the ruin (now fully discovered in His rejection, for He came to bless, or to present blessing, while because so come it was proved irreparably bad, and actually rejected it by its will, in the nearest point to Himself, the favoured Jews) nor in spite of the ruin from a new source, for His baptism of this, to wit, of death and consequent resurrection, was not yet accomplished. But, though He could not bless yet in spite of the evil (though He might heal a few sick folk) at any rate the evil and opposition was fully manifested in the race He came amongst, so that He could say: "From henceforth" (v. 52), for we have seen all this discourse was on His rejection. In the sense of this His rejection, the discovery of the state of things by it, the Lord says: "Suppose ye that I am come to send peace on earth?" Though peace on earth was the nature and essence here of His coming, if received, and shall be when in power, and therefore producing effect, and not seeking it - "I tell you, Nay, but rather division." This opposition of effect and principle opens a vast field of view on the judgment of the condition of the world into which He came, and its entire state of ruin and alienation, and the presentation of the good only making this active.

235 The introduction of a new principle would break up the closest ties, and strongest bonds of nature. But this was proved in what was nearest to God, nearest to the Lord (and hence whose opposition was the strongest and most prominent) being evil, as if blessing had been then it would have been, as it shall be in the new world, chief in blessing. It took place, and here is applied to the Jews - there the principle had its force and application, for there the Lord came. It is one which carries its truth with it; it was signalised there, as the law was withal. This application, essentially to them, of the great truth, application founded on the fact that He came to them, follows hereon.

The Lord having thus in pressure of Spirit explained His position, turns to the multitude and explains theirs connected with it, for judgment hung by it on the whole nation. They discerned the signs of earth and heaven, but the dealings of God with themselves they saw nothing of. They had the form of the Lord's people, but conscience was not at work; they were hypocrites. This time when the Lord was in the way with them, and presented to them they could not discern. How did not they discern? For there is something astonishing to the power and simplicity of truth in the utter obscurity of error and want of integrity, for when the eye is single the whole body is full of light. It is daylight, and nothing seen or understood! "Yea, why of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" Conscience ought to have judged the Lord; and the evidence of His glory not being there, they ought, oppressed by their own consciences of the state of things, and how matters stood in Jerusalem before God, for it was written with a sunbeam. For, continues the Lord, in human affairs you would well have the prudence to make up the matter with your adversary, knowing you were wrong and anticipating the judgment. For indeed, as the Lord thus plainly declares as the result of all this discourse (i.e., as to them) the Lord was in the way with them, and did they not submit and reconcile themselves to the Lord now, approaching judgment in the way, they would soon be delivered to the judicial dealings of the Lord, and not come out till they had "received of the Lord double of all their sins." The actual state of His beloved but rejecting, and rebellious, and therefore necessarily judged and chastened people, but being His they will come out, for by this shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and they shall be restored by the faithfulness and supreme mercy of the Lord's love, when the chastening is accomplished.

236 "I am come to send fire upon earth," i.e., I am come, drawing from the forethought of the result of the preceding statement, I am come to bring judgment upon the earth, but judgment which has its operation in the mutual destruction and devouring of the world within itself. It is sent down from heaven, cast upon earth, but it finds its fuel there. This was to be the full result of the manifestation of Christ, for the course of the Lord's mind previously in judging of the final state of the Church had led Him to this, i.e., of Christ witnessed of as glorified, quod nota. But what even if now My very manifestation in humiliation, before the glory appears, cause this spirit of destruction? The Lord speaks of it as certain, as surely coming - "I am come to send," as a fact, but with reference of horror at its necessity - His nature averted from judgment, His Spirit not. However He Himself, the Lord observes, must go through the fiery baptism and passage point of His death before this could be fully brought out. Still He was straitened till He should have passed through it, for that was the great crisis of triumph in which the power of darkness should make its critical effort against the light of the Redeeming Man who then should appear in the glory of salvation. But, as it were, the sensitive murmurings of their exposed enmity were then even accumulating, on one hand a pregnant witness of the fire to be kindled, and on the other pressing upon the Spirit of the Lord as of that which He had to go through and overcome, for evil is turned into judgment when Christ has triumphed, and the devil is always his own executioner, and so indeed man.

237 This point, this crisis, even His own death, in which all the question was settled as to power, the Lord came to. Hitherto, upon the basis of the result in the Church, the Lord's mind had been working in Spirit all through, as it were, upon His part in the awful conflict in light and darkness, with immersion and emergence of His glory. As to His trial in it, it had been brought, through the results of the Christ and the purpose of His mission, to the "Shall have been accomplished" of this crisis, and baptism of His soul in the power, the horribleness, the death-whelming power of evil, which was till He said: "It is finished," John 19: 30. Then it was gone through in mind, in Spirit. Then He breaks out into the strength of practical results: "Think ye that I have come to give peace in the earth? Nay, I say unto you." It is very beautiful and most striking - what shall I say more justly? thus to see the Lord emerging in practical warning from the deep, affecting, infinitely deep thoughts which His own mind had been going through, with that strength of confidence of thought which the deep inward view of things gave, as though others were to be undeceived in what nothing but seeing things as He saw them could fully set their minds free and right upon. It is the breaking out from this present perception of truth, where His soul had been in actual feeling, prospective feeling, seeing through it all, yea, in it all: "Think ye that I have come to give peace on earth? Nay, I say to you, but rather division," for from "Henceforth" (for "Already it has been kindled") "there shall be five in one house divided." Remark the force of the expression as looking back upon all that had been in His mind truth. The prophets spoke of that day as to the second coming. The prophets, and Spirit of prophecy in Christ, and throughout also speak of "In that day." But there is a "From henceforth" as to the conflict, the manifestation of an accomplished salvation, a rejected Son of God, a desolate (just now approximating) house of God's people, a tried world, a people sown in the Spirit - all the great mystery of godliness in its moral power and separating energy. This arose from a strength of principle absorbing into itself more powerfully than all existing associations, and indeed also producing the positive hatred of the claim, first from its authority, secondly from its character. The circumstances of the division will show the complete dislocation of ordinary ties. It is not a party formed, but individual principle throwing people into conjunction.

238  - 54. This verse is addressed not to the prophetic character which He was able to use with His disciples as those interested in it, but to the multitude on the principles of personal responsibility, arising out of the thought of the very manifestations of which He was the occasion in the world which gave, in another point of view, occasion to the prophetic declaration. Their responsibility first upon the evident signs of God's dealings with the world. Secondly, their responsibility of judging in their own consciences what was right, and the righteous consequences of the conduct of the Jews. The conclusion derived to them was this - God is in the way with the Jewish Remnant - Come to agreement with Him, that He turn not, yea, that thou turn not Him into a Judge; then He will deal with thee accordingly. He will deliver thee up to the consequences of judgment, and thou shalt not escape till thou hast paid everything, yea, received double of all thy sins. Prophecy is always to the Church, the "Whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you." "Shall I hide from Abraham the thing that I do?" Responsibility to the world and so justly. How long will the Church deny itself its privileges, and say that God ought to treat it, or treat itself as a stepmother, its children as the world? When this was the measure of national judgment, and God dealt with it in measure, then there was a coming out, yet so as by mercy, and as to individuals. And sin - God in His nature was absolutely averse from it, and, the moment He becomes a Judge, must put it out of His sight for ever. The moment He becomes a Judge all is over, but this is not so when it is merely the dealings against Himself in a relative character to which He could adjudge punishment (chastisement) as seemed righteous and good. And it is this restoration of which the prophets are so full. And here the sense of "Against thee only," etc. And when the enemies, the instruments are come to their height of wickedness, they, put out of the way in judgment, will learn the boon of peace to forgiven Israel; see note on verse 58. From verse 54 to end of chapter 13, is the time for the people, as chapter 12: 1-53 is the portion of believers on His and their rejection. In chapter 12: 54 to end of chapter 13, the state and result of it for the nation is fully brought out. The two passages are, so to speak, the counterpart for the two classes; only in the former passage He rejects setting right order and justice in the nation.

239  - 56, 57. These verses afford the two great principles of the whole question, and make the responsibility of the Church, for it ought to know the signs, and it ought, if a Church, if walking in fellowship with God, to know His mind morally - what could and could not agree with Him. "Can two walk together except they be agreed?"

- 58. The "For" probably marks connection. It follows on verse 57, as to the "For," I suppose, though that of course on the general sense. It applies here to our Lord's proximate coming. God was now in the way with them; surely it was time to agree. "Discern" the signs; "judge" what is right. Why do you not without signs even judge of what is morally due to this people? Why do you not, when God has manifested Himself morally to be in the way with you, see in your own minds the time to come forward for reconciliation, lest you should be destroyed? Verses 58, 59 follow. And with this connects itself the parallel passage in Matthew. God accepts no offering but of a renewed mind, the person acceptable in the way of grace before any offering can be made. Therefore agree whiles thou art in the way quickly. Seek reconciliation. It was so important and so urgent a truth that our Lord brings it in when the moral subject gave occasion for its introduction. And this gives peculiar strength to the connection of the following verses. The main subject ends here at chapter 13: 9, inclusive.

The connection, as we have said, is quite manifest, and bears the stamp of the principles we have before adverted to. A special case of judgment (as they supposed) was mentioned to the Lord as He talked on these subjects, falling in, as it were, with the subject. He immediately applies it generally to a broad principle and sure, therefore universal fact. There are two points to be noticed, that which God looked for and must have for His agreement with them, repentance or they would perish. The former was national, this personal. Two could not walk together except they were agreed. This was the one only way of agreement with God. The general result to them, the explication and application is too obvious to need comment. It is a simple and a noble testimony.

Luke

J. N. Darby.

<46004E>240

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Luke  13

- 1. This verse marks the connection, as indeed is plain, of this instruction of repentance with what goes before in its moral application. The Spirit of God takes occasion through another circumstance, occurring about the same time, to give further of the Lord's testimony directly on the same subject. A like judgment would come on the whole nation as on the victims of Pilate's wrath, or the judgment of God in the tower of Siloam. Unless they repented, they should "All perish in like manner." He adds the parable of the fig-tree. It seems to me that this includes the work of the Holy Ghost by the twelve apostles up to Stephen, as well as the Lord's, it was the ministry of the blessed Spirit, the "This year also" afforded by the intercession of Jesus. The Lord looked for fruit three years, and there was none. It only cumbered the ground, rendered the ground useless, and unprofitable, and inactive. God could do nothing with it, nor man, for so is a fruitless, nominal people of God, unjudged. It turns to nothing neither the accomplishment of providence, nor the manifestation of grace. Judgment was pronounced upon: "Why does it also render the ground useless?" But the Vinedresser, the Lord Jesus, intercedes that He may use all means. If these failed: "After that." It is not merely "Then." It was given up to judgment as the Lord: "Let there be never more fruit of thee for ever." For it was by a new covenant, and a new name that Israel is introduced to blossom, and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. Now it was to be cut down. Such was the judgment of God, the issue of His patient long suffering and mercy.

241  - 10. The Sabbath was the sign of the old covenant. But hypocrisy, which always takes form instead of holiness and power, had taken possession of the nation and its rulers, and the Lord pursues His way of power in mercy despite their forms, putting forward, though righteously always as in mercy and asserting the reality of the privileges in grace, the breaking down these signs, and impliedly their existing relationship with God, while He confirmed the basis which really they despised; they loosed their ox and their ass. Satan had bound a daughter of Abraham; should not He loose her? Note here with what condemnatory authority in the matter the Lord now speaks. He introduces power in deliverance in favour of Abraham's children, but He slights the form in which it stood, and denouncingly condemns those who now held it in that shape. In that sense this is very important. It had a strong active transition character.

- 11. Christ shows the hypocrisy of their maintenance of the old covenant, and thereon shows the new character of the kingdom, the King not being there, as a great power and dissemination of doctrine. On the question if the Remnant was numerous, shows the cross-character of the path - people must count the cost of building and overcoming; the multitudes who had taken up with Him He would not own when Abraham and Gentiles from all parts would be in the kingdom. He was in the hands of God till His time came, but a prophet could not perish out of Jerusalem; the guilt was all found there; her house was desolate, and she would not see Him till she repented in the last day, according to Psalm 118. But the Jehovah who had loved her bewailed her self-earned doom.

Evidently equally the setting aside Israel all would perish, the fig-tree be removed after every effort - hypocrisy in ceremonial observances contrasted with the power of God. The kingdom not now in power but as a mustard seed and leaven. The Remnant marked by earnest effort to enter at the strait gate, workers of iniquity rejected (no peace to the wicked) and the Gentiles let into the kingdom. But it was not in Galilee by man's power and wickedness, but in judgment on Jerusalem that the Lord would now be perfected, nor see Him again who had visited it in love until they through grace repented, and were ready to receive Him coming in the name of Jehovah - till Psalm 118.

- 20. My impression is that when the dative is used for time it is always as one whole, point, or object, when the accusative it is a space during which. Thus, taking the common reading, Judges characterised the period of 450 years; He nourished them during forty years - He was going on doing it all the time. So "For a long time" (hikano chrono, Acts 8: 11); so Romans 16: 25. Thus trite hemera ("the third day," dative) and triten hemeran ("the third day," accusative) would not have the same force, though in result the sense would be the same. In the first I should think of that one day. so characterised; with triten I think of two days elapsed before. In a word, the accusative is duration, the dative epoch, though in sense they often run into one another. Thus according to the common reading, the statement would not be "during 450 years," but 'up to,' 'as far as,' i.e., counting from the end of Desert. So that Joshua, Elders, and Cushanrishathaim, would have to be deducted, say some 45 years. I have supposed in computing, 48 and 402 to Saul. So that the chronology is in no way changed. I hold clearly that the building the temple dates from the settlement in the land, as if I said: 'In England from the time the Saxons came from Germany, they have had elective kings.' This would certainly mean as to since the settlement in England. 402 supposes each period given to be a whole year, which is surely not to be so taken, and to make up the 480, there are 84 - Saul 40, David 40, Solomon 4. So that the ten years allowed to Elders in the 45 may well be cut down to next to nothing. But I suspect the 25 given by Josephus to Joshua is too short.

242  - 17. "And all the crowd." How remarkable and uniform a circumstance this is.

- 18-21. These two paragraphs are, as it were, supplemental paragraphs to the long paragraph which we have been considering.

This appears to me our Lord's instructions as to the place the Sabbath bore in His kingdom as manifested. But there is another point in it, the way in which love overlooks circumstances which superstition and unbelief looks to take its credit from. Therefore our Lord shows the reality of the thing by showing that they did the same things, or worse, as to the day when selfishness was concerned, and the only difference was He did it out of love. In verse 16 the contrast in moral rectitude and their own principles is perfectly strongly put. There is then the contrast between false and true religion in this - with their formal character and detected character - true needs no detection, it stands before the world such as it is, and has no object to act for but to show its principles by using them. This action of truth the people will generally receive. The moral estimate of things is a great criterion of true and false religion. False religion can have nothing but what is competent to those who have none. True consists in what none but those who have it can have, for it is of God. The rest is acquiesced in as occasion requires. Wherever forms have the place of mercy, there we may be assured there is no true religion. The importance of that which has not moral communion with God, and seeks its own importance, is lost when form is lost of which it is the head, and things are estimated as they affect God and man. The real character of the gospel is developed then in this. The character of its progress is next marked.

243  - 19. I suspect myself that it is stated under two characters, as planted amongst the Jews, and yet the very heathen kings finding their repose under its influence, no matter how; and this as a tree. Secondly, in its general pervasion of that, into which it was put, as a system according to the purpose of God, as the leaven leavens all, but all is not leaven, or indeed then there is none at all; but here merely its pervading the limits assigned to it by God, i.e., filling generally the (Gentile) Church in its ordinary sense.

Thereon the Lord pursues what the dispensation and His labour results into. It is not a kingdom set up in power in the midst of the people who were children of the kingdom, but a seed Sower. Still the Jewish people were God's own garden; He has His own right whatever men may have done there. It was "Like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and cast into his own garden," and it increased so that other powers and strangers came and lodged in the branches. Such its formal character. Sown, then it became a great tree, a public power of influence in the world. Next, it was a doctrinal influence not having any relation to Israel, but which, by the ministration of the service of the Church, would spread itself in the given measure of God's assigned providence. Such would the dispensation be. The internal character and judgment was not in question here, but the replacing of the old economy by this - and how? Not by the Son of man in power then.

244 The Lord, in what follows, still pursues this subject in this change. If this be true in Israel, are the Remnant to be saved few? He was on His way to the final catastrophe of the nation in the rejection of Him at Jerusalem. The question therefore came to be important, perhaps put in curiosity not with intelligence, but on the vague traditions drawn, without application, from the prophets. But the Lord, as so timely ordered, answers it in its full power, still His rejection in view, for He was naturally in the way then.

- 24. "Strive to enter in at the strait gate, for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in" (not at the strait gate) "and shall not be able"; but so it will be. "When once" (and now He proceeds to give it direct application) "the Master is risen up and shut to the door." Then from verse 26, the Lord gives it its full and direct application to them and their circumstances, and the judgment of the nation, and the introduction of the Gentiles in general terms, and full accomplishment yet of all the promises to the saints. They should come from East, and West, and North, and South, and sit down in the kingdom of God. But it was on new principles, and under order of supreme righteousness - there would be last first, and first last. Meanwhile those who claimed local association with Him lost all title: "I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, workers of iniquity." It was moral association now, and the power of the kingdom new and heavenly. As this was grace, the Lord says here: "There are last who shall be first." The rejected Remnant, cast out as evil and rebellious, became followers of the mind of God and of Jesus the despised and rejected of men from whom the nation hid their face.

- 31, et seq. But Jerusalem must accomplish her iniquity though judgment was to be passed on all. For the Lord now speaks in plain terms as to what they were. It is not the gentleness which conciliates the most opposed, but the plain denouncement of the ungodly. As He had denounced those who held the form of power in the synagogue, and declared the ruler hypocrite before the congregation, so now the Lord speaks equally plain as to him who, not as son of David nor according to God, possessed the throne of Israel nominally. The Lord now went to His death, and had only to give it its full character and form. He denounces this false shepherd who held the flock, but it is not he who is to kill Him. He was perfectly safe, for the full accomplishment of the counsels of God, and of the guilt of His beloved Jerusalem. When it was the iniquity of another, the Pharisees could easily use the form of interest and kindness, but the Lord passes it by as He judges Herod, and rests in the sureness of divine counsels. He feared not the one, the other was needless. They might return and communicate to Herod the real course and mind of God. It was the full expression of the now ripened counsel of God. If wickedness was on this side, and rejection had now reached its height, it was merely that the counsels of God had now come to the full, and in blessed assurance and calmness of Spirit Jesus pursued His course till they were accomplished, till He was "perfected" (teleioumai). It was not Herod's enmity nor the Pharisees' care which could destroy or preserve him. He was safe in the centre of divine purposes to be perfected for the centre of fuller glory than fallen Israel could afford, even the perfect glory of all the divine counsels. He entered into these now. The mind of God rested not on Herod; he was nought in the question - a fox pursuing his own interests in the flock of God; nor on the hypocritical pretences and favour of reckless Pharisees. His mind, and heart, and eye were on Jerusalem, the beloved city, now to accomplish her unfaithfulness. Till this moment came Jesus walked in the security of the divine counsels. Blessed calmness! He who feels deeply is always calm, as viewing things in the Lord. It is not the eager obtrusion of circumstances which affect his mind; he sees deeper, he is more deeply occupied with things as they are before the Lord. What depth in the expression: "But I must needs walk to-day!" My course of mercy will proceed without the Lord's regarding Herod, till beloved Jerusalem, beloved in spite of all, have accomplished her guilt. Then the scene is closed; all is closed here below, no more room for this work on the earth where her guilt is to the full. "I shall be perfected," for other counsels, and for deeper joys, joys which in persevering mercy and purpose shall rise upon Jerusalem, beloved Jerusalem herself, in spite of and in pardon of the sins - What a heart had the Lord! How divine then for us! Indeed we have God's heart and ways, and brought into all our circumstances and sins.

245 The great object of this passage is the distinctive judgment of Jerusalem. In this the Lord reveals Himself as Jehovah, her of old time Protector and Cherisher - her whom He had now at last visited in this extraordinary care and condescension of grace, trying all things but in vain. It was man, and man favoured, and therefore man rebellious and scornful. She would now be left to the effects of her ways till they owned Him, saying, as in Psalm 118, in the latter day: "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord." Their house was left to them till then, as they would not have Him. The whole of this chapter 13 is a distinct and definite comment, and application to Jerusalem of the question raised on His rejection in chapter 12, and the parabolic exposition of their circumstances at the close of it. The Lord here resumes, in the general train of circumstances, one or two great principles connected with His rejection, and the moral principles involved therein, of which this gospel is so full, and then passes on to the gospel as contrasted with their state and principles. Repeating, under another parabolic form, the rejection of the nation, not here under the form of seeking fruit but of rejected grace which was a further step, the refusal of invited guests. Israel sinned in this double character - she bore no fruit to Him by whom she was dressed, and they refused the invitation to the kingdom of God.

246 Luke  14

This chapter pursues some details as to the principles involved in the break-up of Judaism. We have Sabbath-breaking, and their hypocrisy proved, and they reduced to silence. Entire self-abasement the way of being exalted; Christ the blessed Witness of it. Grace to mark our spirit, the result in another world in resurrection - a resurrection which belonged to the just only. The remark of one then brings out what was going on as to the kingdom. A supper made, Jews would not come, the wretched ones of them called, and then the Gentiles, and the Jews as such excluded. Multitudes might follow Him then, but to do so really there must be breaking with all, the Cross. The cost had better be counted, and, if all cannot be given up, not to pretend to follow Him. Salt must be salt, or it is nothing and good for nothing. Then in chapters 15 and 16 the dealings and effects of grace, and the opening of another world with the curtain drawn, are fully given.

- 1, et seq. Again, the Lord before the Pharisees, judging the hypocrisy of their conduct, substitutes grace for law in that which formed not the moral requirement but the sign of the covenant connecting them by the law with the rest of God. They watched Him then on this point because, as we have seen, an observance which cost them no lust and hindered them from no sin in this unregenerate state ministered to pride and not to holiness. Here the Lord does not await their judgment, but circumstances, as He now was in view of the crisis of Jerusalem's lot, and His own leaving them. He puts Himself forward, for now He was seeking nothing of them, but showing them the truth, and asks them: "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?" They would not commit themselves, and they understood not grace. They were silent, and He wanted not their approval, and again silences them by an appeal to their own conduct where their own interest was concerned. He would not be hindered in grace by the judgment of hypocrisy, nor take a form of piety at the expense of grace. He then proposes two great principles of the new man, exactly opposite to Pharisaism and formal self-righteousness - true, unfeigned self-abasement as the only means of real exaltation, and the principle and way of charity which looks only to the resurrection of the just as the time when its principles and objects are recognised, and recognised of the Most High. He does it, moreover, not in abstract principles but in plain intelligible application to facts, not addressed in nubibus as an exalted doctrine, but in present judgment on those amongst whom He was, and by whom He was invited, for true and full morality always judges the world. But consequent on the grace which sets aside the mere legal ceremonial sign, or shows it passing away as under law, entire humiliation and humbleness in it, and separation from the world in the exercises of charity, and relinquishing the habits of owning the world to be owned, are distinctly set forth as cardinal principles now in the kingdom of God. The mention of the moment, the resurrection of the just, when the result of these principles display themselves, gave occasion to a sort of suitable remark for the character of Jesus by one of the other guests: "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God." The Lord takes occasion to show that they had rejected the invitation of God, the leaders, and instructors, and guides, and that God would seek, and fill His house from the poor of the flock, and from among the Gentiles - shows the door of grace (associated as grace must be with a much higher standard of morality, for it is nearer to God and the display of His character) opened, on the rejection of favour and kindness first shown to them.

248 It seems to me that chapter 13 attaches itself much more to law, i.e., to what Christ had title to expect and find among them, and to existing privilege and their state under this, and chapter 14 to grace and favour shown to them in His coming. And He indeed had humbled Himself and sought the poor and needy for the feast of His Father's house, though He teaches others therein, for He is the perfection of His own teaching, the Light Himself, for indeed in Him was life. They were dead and bore no fruit if He sought it from them; but He the life shown in the darkness, "The life was the light of men."

- 15. From this verse the Lord depicts the result of His invitations in grace, as before on seeking fruit, for there He was Intercessor for the fig-tree He had dressed when fruit was required, here He invites in grace, and on rejection of grace allows none to come in. As we have said, it was a further step. That which is marked accordingly here is not evil or sin but indifference to grace. The common (lawful, if you please) things of life were preferred to the invitation, and this, above all things, marked the insensibility and evil of the human heart, and of this nation in particular, treated thus as the friends of the Most High and of His Son. He came to seek fruit - there was none; He prolonged mercy in intercession. He invites in grace to His Kingdom, and they ALL make excuse; their farm, merchandise, natural inclinations, all preferred to the favour and invitation of the Lord.

- 18. We have the value of "I must" here. It means simply: I prefer all to God - my inclination and every thing of which I am the centre to that of which He is. This was the answer to the topical remark on the blessedness of eating bread in the kingdom, which negligently assumed, as usual, that somebody or other would be there, and nobody was to be judged. All were, by the Lord. Awful word! Both in righteousness, and proffered grace. But this provokes the Lord to abounding mercy, manifesting even in their rejection the riches of the grace they had despised, and, if passing by the despisers, all that had apparent claim as friends, using it as the occasion to open the door wider to the worst, worthless and claimless, because the most needy that could be found, that grace might be displayed fully even in judgment, for He wrought and came in grace, and was not to be stayed in it.

249  - 24. This is the full judgment on the Jews properly so called, i.e., the Jewish leaders of the nation who stood as chief in the way of God, and represented them. The streets and lanes need hardly be said to be the despised of the Jews, Galileans, the poor of the flock, and the like. In the highways and hedges doubtless the Gentiles are included, but it is the great principle which is proposed, the active, mystic, and laborious (and it was needful) exercise of grace to fill the house of God - scattered Israel, not unmanifested Gentiles. Hence glorifying itself the more, and active because rejected, that the refusal of man might exalt instead of disappoint it. "Compel them to come in that my house may be filled." This was the consequence of Jewish rejection. Such the sovereignty of God (in exercise)! It is a blessed picture. But the power, riches of grace did not alter the necessity of entering in at the strait gate - renunciation of all of self, and of devotedness.

- 25. But, as we have seen, the abounding and activity of grace, so this induces necessarily conflict; as the rejection of Jesus involved rejection, the activity of goodness involved the sacrifice of all in a world in possession of the enemy - the cost of all that tied us to it, and the opposition of the prince of it. If one made inroads in his kingdom one could not keep its outward blessing if one made war upon him. Of this Jesus warns the multitudes. They followed Him as an easy thing, interested and attracted, but not knowing whither He went or whither it led them. He tells them plainly: You cannot follow Me without sacrificing all, life and all. There is the principle of the new dispensation and its grace; the world is all gone wrong. It is the introduction of an extraordinary power into it, this very grace. The world is adverse. These things are links to it by which Satan will hinder in the war - the heart's hostages in his hands; there must be entire and simple devotedness in the war. So it was in Jesus in the exercise of grace. Such was discipleship to Him, for discipleship, though every Christian is a disciple, and every disciple is a Christian, is more than a Christian. It takes up the Christian in his learning from and following of Jesus in His life and service. "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples," for He had borne much fruit. So far as His disciples in this service and following Him, this would be the result or the necessity, and at the commencement that His work and its efficacy might be presented in power and force, it actually involved all this. It always does in the service to which this applies. So far as that service goes the warfare always involves the same consequences, "So then," says the apostle, "death worketh in us but life in you." He was carrying about in his body the dying (nekrosin) of the Lord Jesus, that His life might be manifest in his mortal body; he could not follow Jesus in his service otherwise. Such was his advice to Timothy. No man goeth a warfare at any time, etc.; and whoever did not carry his cross, set out on a constant course of humiliation, shame, and self-denial, cannot be His disciple.

250 Another case is supposed in Mark - a hundredfold here in consequence, even the things here, lands, houses, etc., all, as we have noted there, unless wife, with persecution. It is the second stage of the Church, the consequence of labour when a new state of things is arisen, a society formed by it apart from, and to which the world is adverse. It has its joys infinitely greater even in its social intercourse within, but it suffers persecution from without, God's remedy against their effect, their necessary consequence, when held in opposition to the world. Thus far God's providence provides. Alas! the next step is sinking into them, and not receiving from God, and the heart being estranged, corrupt doctrine and practice, and Satan's power, as over those who mix with the world and are far from the Master, comes in. But here the Lord contrasts with rejected Judaism and grace the great master principle. He would have none but faithful followers, and, as Messiah, His followers would have enjoyed the fat of the land, and abundance of corn and wine. He puts the new dispensation fully on its right footing. It was not to inherit the earth, but to be the salt of it, fulfil a moral service, having a separate, distinct savour from a power not of it or in it as such at all. They were at war, on adverse terms, they must count the cost, and the cost was unmingled, unhesitating devotedness - quit all and follow, or not follow at all. They had a distinct and special service. They were to be not of the world, but to bring a new thing, a new power and positive principle into the world. That was their one distinctive and only reason for existence as such. Salt was good, but good only because it was salt, and for its saltness. No man would put salt to anything but for its saltness. Moreover if salt was unsavoury, what should salt it? There was nothing salt but salt, and this not being so was good for nothing. So with Christians, with those who profess His Name - it is addressed to us. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." So the Lord says, "They cast it out"; that is all that comes of it. Here the Lord closes this part of His comparison, and enters at once, as the Holy Ghost thus presents it in order to us, on the character and principle of the grace of the new dispensation in its application to the gospel, and consequently to the Gentiles, and sinners in general.

Luke

J. N. Darby.

<46004E>251

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Luke  15

In this chapter even we have the blessed witness that there is One who can perfectly tell the temper and spirit of heaven. What a privilege this is!

The graciousness of the Lord which attracted the despised and miserable ones of the earth, was the full form and character which now presented itself, and excited cavils of those who thought and called themselves righteous, the learned and righteous of the Jewish people. It was not only that He taught them or told them on due repentance they might return, but He received them and ate with them. The Lord has to justify His kindness and grace towards sinners, for man, wretched, infatuated man would condemn the Lord for being a Saviour and gracious to sinners - pride and self-righteousness despising ever goodness. The great point which the blessed Lord insists on so gloriously and triumphantly here is that it became God to be happy in receiving a poor sinner, that it was His joy, that it became Him as natural to Him, so to speak. This was the character and way of heaven. But in doing this He unfolds the whole order and operation of the economy of grace accomplishing and communicating as flowing from this love - the efficient love of Christ - the operation of the Holy Ghost in the Church by the word, and the reception of the new-hearted sinner by the Father of grace. But in all signalises this principle, that it was the joy of God Himself to show grace to and receive the poor sinner; and in all this, the fullest appeal to the want and to the ways, the affections and the principles of the human heart. For while the wickedness of the human heart rejects the gospel, the Lord has perfectly adapted it to all the springs and chambers of need that are in it. It is the unfolding the whole heart of God under the form of the need, and otherwise hopeless affections and wants of ruined man; proud wilful man may reject it, and does but for grace. But this is the reason why mere nature can easily receive it in its affections, when the will is not hurt by it, and yet there be no root. Therefore the Lord can appeal, even in a Pharisee, to what passes in his heart, not when it is in collision with God in pride, for then it is pure wickedness, but when it acts in the mere natural expression of its feelings, and justify God in their own hearts. "What man among you?" He appeals to their own way of acting in a like case. Here is the difference. Pride is not concerned in submission and return in confession. For, note, this blessed exercise of mercy supposes a great principle, and one of all importance and blessing too, exactly what the natural heart will not admit, saying: Our river is our own, our tongues are our own; who is Lord over us? The sheep belonged to the Shepherd, the money to the woman. This is not the point urged here. I notice it because in the rebellion of man's will it shows why, in a gospel suited in the very perfection of God to man's heart and need, man left to himself or under the influence of Satan invariably rejects it. Independence, the principle of all evil and misery, is what he loves; the spring and character of restless pride leads him captive. An evil conscience, and unsatisfied will under its governance still carry him further from God.

252 But here Jesus shows the part and character of supreme grace in God. Hence also the sure character of love thus in exercise, and applied to its object, the perseverance of love until it finds and secures blessing to its object. There is a concentration and care when its object is in need, which shuts out the relationship with what is at ease at the time, it does not sympathise with it, for it is not at ease till it has restored its object to peace, and the comfort of the love it is wandered from. The heart thus in exercise is itself necessarily concerned in the happiness of that it loves. It is its joy, pain, toil, labour for it, till it be, is its food, its only consolation. Thus the Lord presents God to us. He has lost His sheep, always His, but lost in its folly. He compares the numbers to make the principle come out in all its force. Having lost one sheep, He leaves the ninety-nine in the desert, and goes after the lost one (cost what it will - shame, reproach, scorn, toil, labour, self-denial and loneliness, as accounted hopeless, or ill-judged, He has His known object at heart, they were not the Pharisees' sheep; blessed Jesus Master!) until He find it - the perfect perseverance of love which could not rest without its object. And Jesus (for He would lay down His life even to have it, for He loved the sheep, and better than Himself, i.e., His life in this scene) could not fail to find it, for what cloak, or screen, or craft of Satan could hide it from His search who brought death, the uttermost power of the enemy to the search? The darkness of the power of death, where indeed the sheep were hid, He entered into - aye! the enemy in this sense, He willing, forced Him into. Nowhere else could He find them; they were dead in trespasses and sins, there He found them, for He entered and was willing to do it, and thence delivered, for who could hold love so strong? Hatred and enmity, Satan's power, were weak, nay! opened the door, and forced on the love of Jesus into the place of need and ruin - in the power of a life which was beyond the power of all this darkness, and brought right out of it all His helpless, terrified, and ruined sheep. He laid them on His own shoulders, bore all the burden, not a foot had the poor sheep to put to ground, already weary and worn out; He carried on His own shoulders rejoicing; for it is not the means but the character and way of the love towards the sheep, ever so miserable as it might be, which is here in question. Returning home - the sure sign of joy, a heart overflowing with joy, He calls others to partake with Him in it, counting, as it were, all must be as happy as He in it, and, as ever when very happy oneself, desirous that others should partake of it too, of our joy. Thus the Lord describes Himself, for in the midst of sorrow His heart could depict what it knew, His love always rising above the evil which surrounded and pressed upon it, only bursting forth more bright and in evidence of greater power.

253 It seems to me there is a very clear allusion in these parables to the three Persons in the Trinity, in their several work, their several plans, if I may so speak, in the economy of grace. In the first two we have the pure supremacy, work, and power of grace, the sheep does nothing, but is brought home. The drachma does nothing, but is found for the joy of the housekeeper. In the last we have the internal action and effect as manifested in his ways, the once wanderer's ways, and his reception by the Father. Besides, it seems to me that the work of Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, is clearly marked in the first parable, who recovers, and Himself brings home His sheep - the woman is as the Holy Ghost acting (instrumentally) and while in pure grace using the means, lights the candle, sweeps the house, and searches diligently till she finds, as by the light of the Word set up, and the pains of continual labour, the Holy Ghost searches the world for that which is lost till it be found. Thus the love of God in the same divine Spirit, the Holy Ghost working in love by these means of light or truth and labour, external instrumentality, works to the same end, finding what is lost. The woman's money was lost, it was precious to her, she sought till she found it because her heart was in it. This, says the Lord, is the Spirit of heaven. Angels, the angels of God, pure as they are, better than Pharisees surely, enter into its nature and its joy, for they dwell in the presence of God, breathe the atmosphere of His presence, and have, by continual association with Him, the nature of His joys, what His nature and character is, and love is large, does not require great stimulants of excitement, but exercises itself in its own fulness, draws its resources from itself on sinners repentant, awakes the chord, for the blessed sound and harmony is in love itself, in the presence of God, awakened it is true by the exercise of divine blessing, but not produced by the result, but joyful because of it. Love is happy, because it loves when another is happy, especially that it loves or that needs. One sinner repentant awakes (Blessed God! what Thy full compassions, and the blessedness of Thy nature, communicated to us) the joy of all heaven, because love reigns there, for God is it. How poor, how meagre, how wretched in the flesh are we! The height of nature makes only higher joy, does not generate pride where this reigns. Yet the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us, so that we are privileged to enjoy with the Lord thus, and by the Holy Ghost, co-operate, infinite blessedness in (and through) Christ the Lord. The Lord first speaks of the comparative joy to make it sensible, as of Christ who calls, and then of the positive joy, the thing itself, when the Holy Ghost associates us with it. It is actually (a step so higher) the joy in the presence of the angels of God, if not amongst proud men.

254 In the third parable we have this great principle of grace, joy in God, that it became God to be happy, and that He was so in the conversion of a sinner, applied to the detail of a sinner's return, and his reception by the Father. This grace contrasted with the spirit of Pharisaism in general, or the return of sinners of the Gentiles, with the position of the self-righteous Jews in general - I merely notice the traits which explain, not exactly which apply all this. It is that which is natural which is communicated, for even what the Jews held they held on the principle of creation blessing. The Gentile sinner was in the far country before he spent his goods, and as much so when all was gone. But then he spent what he had of nature, in Satan's country, the far country. There all nature gave gone, for the life of nature spends itself and gains nothing, he began to be in want, to feel the practical effects of nature's spendthrift life. This only attached him more to Satan, for the Lord presents the full effect of evil, and he becomes the slave of a citizen of that country, wretched, ruined, and abandoned, to share with the lowest what might meet the cravings of a wasted by insatiable appetite; "He would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, and no man gave unto him." For, while all may be spent in Satan's country, there is no giving there. The sense of want, according to nature, only drives to the wretched resources of nature, it may be the lowest, for supply. Utter degradation is the consequence, and no love is found there. It is the contrast of God's house and God's mercy. This describes the way in which the natural man, in feeling his want, turns to everything rather than to God, and thus becomes the slave of Satan in the lowest and most degraded lusts. Thus the way of the natural man, and the character of Satan's country - no man gave unto him - are brought fully out, not merely for Pharisees but for all.

255 Note, the life of nature spends itself, while the divine life, having all fulness in the Lord, enriches itself in all and every its action.

The Lord then pursues all that characterises his return; he came to himself; he saw things as they really were. And what does this? Not merely a sense of misery, that may drive us to sin, but the introduction of the thought of God, of a true idea of God - God really known, and the whole state of misery consequent on departure from Him. There is always in the conversion and return of the soul, a thought not of the application of goodness to us, not of a salvation which assures our approach, not a knowledge of redemption, but of goodness in God, consequent blessing of all in His presence, and the folly of being absent. It is not the thought of mercy which can sanction evil, not the thought of possibility of, so to speak, negligent entry, not the Spirit of adoption on the other hand, but a necessity, whatever our place, of being with Him, and at the same time an entire confession of our unworthiness of being so. An attractive sense of goodness in Him, and humbling but not deterring sense of unworthiness in us, for it is associated with the sense of, imperative sense of need which has no resource but in that goodness. "I perish." So Peter, struck with the Lord's power, draws near and falls at His feet, but it is to say: "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." "How many hired servants of my father abound in bread and I perish here with hunger!"

256 Note also here, what a glorious inconsistency this produces - a consciousness of the abounding faithfulness of the Father to a child, and use really of the language which belongs to a child - "The servants of my Father, and I!" A real, though not realised consciousness that he was a child, but not an idea, when he rendered reason to himself of his condition, of presenting himself as such, or owning himself, or claiming a title of which he was utterly unworthy. A result of knowledge, true knowledge of, and honouring what God was, his Father was, but a sense of what he was in respect of that which implied the responsibility of a child, and knowledge of a child, and consequently the secret consciousness of being one, but not of one received by the manifested action of what the Father was and did towards him. But the ground of action is had, "I will arise and go" - impossible, with this knowledge, to remain there, for good was now known, not merely misery. Evil was now seen, not merely by the force of natural conscience even. It was sin against heaven and before his Father. It was sin viewed in relation with the position in which he viewed himself placed, being renewed in understanding and will. He was no more worthy to be called His son - true humiliation and intelligence as to that, but mixed with the thought that there was question of his worthiness to be it. No clear understanding of grace, and of its ways; consequently he demands that which was not in God's thoughts at all, to go halfway, and receive him, and make him a servant "as one of thy hired servants." Much more was due in justice strictly, and it in no way answered on the other hand to grace, for it did not satisfy, nor manifest it. But such is the ignorant heart of man, who confuses all, and ever is ready to act on its own thoughts, and make the Lord act on them, when it is drawn even into a (in some not a clear) sense of its misery. There is much instruction in this.

257 But the proposal in the heart of the young man was distinct. He felt he had forfeited all title to be son, wasted it wickedly, did not really see the extent of his guilt, nor the extent and riches of divine grace, though drawn by it, and, therefore, he proposes to be made as a hired servant. This is always the case. There is in this state a profound principle of moral rectitude, but entire ignorance of the ways and grace of the Father. But he rises and goes, for there is a principle of living activity. What follows is not the call of the sinner, but the reception by the Father, and His view of the matter - just compassion and tenderness - His heart was in the matter while the poor prodigal was far away yet occupied with his own thoughts, proposing to be servant, determined in grace, but humbled, perplexed, and degraded in his own eyes, though the thought of his Father's house and goodness, and his own need predominated. But, if there was doubt as to his reception in his heart, there was none in the Father's. A great way off He saw. Whose eye so quick as a Father's in love? And had compassion. No question here of dignity, of severity of judgment. He must relieve His own heart, full at the thought of His son returned, in showing him love. He ran and fell on his neck. First, love to him in his wretched and ruined state, far from the servants, from all. He must encourage and restore a child's heart in showing a Father's; thence it must flow. It became Him to be the Source and first in grace. Without reproach or enquiry, He, the Father, expresses what was in His heart - the more terribly he was lost, the greater the joy of the Father to receive him back. This passed entirely between the Father and the child. Then the affection can flow forth unhindered for restoring the soul. The son's mouth was opened for confession, but opened with a word which now had infinite power, for the expression of the Father's love came first, before a word of confession - was not caused by it, but the expression of what was in His heart finding its joyful occasion in returning sorrow. "Father, I have sinned." The love made the confession much more, infinitely more profound, yet withal much more easy and sweet. It was no expression, remark farther, of suffering or of consequences, not concern for character, no excuse nor explanation. "Father, I have sinned": not before men - they were forgotten in the sense of the Father, for the sense of the sin brought into relationship with the Father, and that possessed his thought - "against heaven and before thee." Far from the Father, the poor prodigal had well arranged his purpose to say: "Make me as one of thy hired servants," content to be in a lower place, as those under the law. But, come to the Father, these thoughts were impossible. It would have been to dishonour the expression of his Father's love; his tongue hung there suspended by the sense of a Father's love which embraced him. Could he say to a Father so loving: 'Set me far from you, do not make me a son in your love'? Impossible! It was not the time for such thoughts. Far from the Father we can reason so in our minds, but not when thus received and met by Him. Nor did the Father give him time, but, in lieu of setting him among mercenaries, all the servants of the house are called out to wait upon him.

258 The Father pursues the thoughts of his own heart, and stamps the character of its feeling on the thoughts and manners of all the house but one - the self-righteous Pharisee; his heart only felt no joy. For God, in His ways with the sinner, follows the ways and thoughts of His heart in grace and joy of love, not of the sinner's, even repentant, for he has not reached, under the consciousness of his deserts, the thoughts and ways of God's heart in grace. The servants whom he would have been among were the servants and instruments of God's grace, and goodness, and bounty; he could not place himself among them as a mercenary. They are made to wait on this good pleasure of God's goodness. This presents, not the grace which seeks and supports, nor the diligence of the same love which sweeps and takes pains till it finds, but the reception of the sinner, not according to the thoughts even awakened in his heart when he comes to himself, but to those of the Father founded on His own joy. Next, we remark, this stamps its character and honour on the son. His shame and separation was not a matter unknown, but known as the occasion of the Father's joy on his return, and the Father goes out, first attaches all the honour of His acceptance and joy to him, and then brings him into the house, there to be esteemed according to the thoughts of Him whose favour was the glory and life of all in it. What grace in this way of procedure! First, we have between the Father and son himself these manifestations of affection and delight, which claim for themselves an interest which he alone who is the object of them can enter into. A stranger intermeddles not with the joy. This is the first way of God's love, and the heart restored to its place, and to the possibility of honour before others, because to Him whom it honours, but afterwards the full honour of a publicly honoured son is put upon him, every trace of the far country removed, in robes and signs of adoption which are found only in the Father's house. We know where that is found; he who knows it could be content with no other. Thus introduced, clothed in the acceptance of Christ, festivity and joy filled the whole house (all but one heart) for He who led its joys, and gave tone to its pleasures, said: "This my son was dead, and is alive again, was lost and is found." Thus the joy of this principle of grace filled and characterised the house - the Father's grace.

259 "And they began to be merry." The sound of joy reached the elder son's ears. The natural conclusion would have been that in the Father's joy he should partake, and that if his Father was joyful some blessed thing must have happened. But there was NO real union or sympathy between his Father's heart and his. A selfish mind is not made for joy. The workings of grace are unintelligible to it. He enquires of a servant boy (pais) what made his Father's house happy, and he was informed - informed in terms which ought to have awakened every sympathy and every feeling. A double motive is presented - what he should have felt himself, and the Father's mind if that were his. "Thy brother is come, and thy Father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound." For the servant boy had caught, and in some measure entered into the joy of the house. "But he was angry and would not go in." A loss to himself only! The persevering grace of the Father is yet manifested. He goes out, and beseeches him. Wondrous and persevering mercy thus to reason with those condemning God's goodness, condemning for being good, and towards his brother! But in vain. All his reply is that the Father had never indulged his selfishness and inclination for having always served Him. He pleads his righteousness as a claim for God's honouring his selfishness, for indulgence of selfishness is his sense of joy, and that in envious grudging at joy for his lost brother's return. But the Father, gracious as He was, did not relinquish His purpose of grace, nor His heart of love for the jealous ill-will of the elder brother's heart. He declares that all His life and house had been an exercise of abundant kindness towards the elder brother, and that it became, it was fitting. What grace in itself! What grace so to reason with such an one! But all is grace here. "It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this thy brother," thus showing the motive for himself to be glad, and condemning his thoughts, "was dead and has come to life again, was lost and has been found." Such is the sentence of God upon the case. The application of the case of the elder brother to the Jews (as under the law) is evident. Hence all things were theirs, and they ever with Him.

260 Luke  16

This parable addresses itself to the Lord's disciples. In the former, the Lord spoke to the Pharisees and Scribes. There, the reception of the sinner or Gentile in contrast with the Jew or self-righteous is stated, as dependent on the character and blessedness of God, for the gospel rests on and always puts forward God. It is the great principle of it, whether as to character or dispensation. Here, the Lord explains to His disciples the position of man, and consequently Israel, man entrusted before God as such, or who held, in responsibility laid on him, this place. Man who really had ceased entirely to be the steward of God, and who wasted rather the substance once entrusted to him so blessedly and confidentially, below all put in his hands as lord, as if it was his own, was again as on trial, and specifically for the manifestation of these things, set in this place in the Jews, the earthly blessings and privileges freely and fully conferred upon him on the responsibility of being faithful. And now it was reported of them (and oh, how true the report! Jesus would not willingly have borne it against beloved Jerusalem) that they had been unfaithful, that they had wasted the Lord's goods, and after the fullest trial man must be treated after the kindest and now repeated, repeated with the utmost care to instruct him in his duty, as a steward through proved unfaithfulness out of place. The goods of nature are in his hand, but he has lost his title really to distribute them. But they are in his hand, and the Lord instructs, the Christian may use them so as to turn them to real account. The steward made friends of his Lord's debtors with the goods, and authority de facto that he possessed. We also, the goods being thus left, though our authority is gone, have to use them to make friends that we may be received into everlasting habitations. It is the lowest transition point of service; the things are of the old man; the principle of using them of the new, and of the Lord. The men of this world are wise in their generation. The Lord gives us - it is a great grace - permission to turn this mammon of unrighteousness to good service according to His will - this, which has the stamp of evil and of the world upon it, to a purpose in which His favour is manifested, those He loves even consoled, excellent affections exercised, and thus His name honoured, and acceptable service done, and we make gain through that which is acceptable to Him, friends according to Him with this evil thing. It is indeed a great grace to introduce such a thing into His kingdom, and turn the evil, or what represented it, round to good; but so the Lord has ordered it.

261 Our use of present things is always unrighteous, for we have lost our title. These riches represent now the alienation of the world from God, and the setting up, and realisation of self and its enjoyments instead of God. But the Lord turns it round to good. Our natural character is unrighteous stewards of unrighteous mammon. But it becomes thus a matter of faithfulness so to use it, for spent on self it resumes its natural character of the expression and representation of selfishness. On the other hand, this use is a test of faithfulness, and he who is faithful in the least is faithful also in much; and he who has used or given this according to the mind of God, thus setting up God, and down self, God will entrust him on the same principle with more important, even the true riches, for there has been faithfulness to God and forgetfulness of self, which is the principle on which God can give, and on which alone we can use these true riches, our own proper riches as new creatures. On the one hand it is righteousness, on the other a real test of what hold the authority and excellency of God has on our mind. Besides, this object really becomes our master; in truth Satan governs by it. What governs our heart, our object, is our master, and the love of money thus rules, and God is not sound according to our natural character. This will manifest itself in loving one and hating the other, or at least cleaving to one and despising the other. These two forms of attachment are given, because the subtle and deceitful heart might plead against one form. But so it is - we cannot in effect serve God and mammon.

262  - 14. The Pharisees, in rejecting the Lord's doctrine, proved its truth. They cleaved to money and despised the Lord; they could not serve both. The Lord declares the judgment of God upon them, which indeed is needful where there is much influence, and that unholy. They justified themselves before men - easy when they suited to themselves, really to the same principles, and gave the credit of religion withal. But God knew their hearts, for what is exalted among men is nothing but an idolatrous abomination before God.

The Lord then pursues the instruction as to the change of economy, or however the passing away of all they rested in, and the enforcement doubly of what they violated, and the coming in withal of the energy of faith. This change, in general, the Lord states in verse 16; a terrible word for the Pharisees! They were left altogether out, and behind. The Law and the prophets were until John. A Law given to a people already such, and the prophets recalling a people, owned as such, back to the Law. John closed this scene, and now a kingdom was set up whereinto entry was to be made by the energy of individual faith, and thus the door opened to all who of God had it. This changed all. It was not Law nor prophets, but God's kingdom announced to all who had faith to enter in, those who clung to the flesh and self were left behind, acceptable perhaps to men, but left and deserted by the Lord in His kingdom. The testimony of Malachi, which shall have its full force before the second coming of the Lord, is evidently distinct from this. The great and terrible day of the Lord was not in question in the gracious presence of Christ in the flesh, except as the result of His rejection. But now the kingdom of God is preached, even on His rejection, for every man to press into it. The difference is manifest. It was not, however, to set aside or enfeeble the Law that the Lord Jesus came. The Law, and the prophets which recalled to it, were until John. But while He enforced its holiness, He suffered its malediction, or accomplished its ceremonies, did anything but set it aside. In its moral power it became (through our sin) a curse to us; He bore it. In its prefigurative ceremonies its value was purely what Jesus was, and He accomplished it; and even what was admitted in it, because of the hardness of their hearts, was now to revert to its original character. In the purpose and mind of God, "In the beginning it was not so." And the Lord hated putting away; now, it was condemned as sin. Further its supposed benedictions, as the flesh enjoyed them, were all set on their true footing, and judged by the revelation of another state, and world. But while the passage following judges entirely the view the flesh took of the earthly blessings, really attached to the old covenant and Israelitish faithfulness, and threw the light of another world (always true) on the circumstances of this, and in doing so necessarily changes the sanctions and principles, so as to bring in a kingdom which admits all who believe, and are renewed in Spirit to receive heavenly things, and thus lift up the kingdom into heaven, it yet justifies the whole mind and goodness of God, all His part and way in the economy, the Law and the prophets, so much so that if Israel did not receive and be converted by them, it was useless to present to them a risen Messiah. The Lord might at once pass into the heavenly kingdom, and grace to all through faith. The circumstances of the history show evidently its bearing on the elements of the Jewish position, and also their fallen state on which the word did not act.

263  - 20. Lazarus is probably named to mark the interest which the Lord took. Poor and utterly despised, he was known by name before God. The rich man, known and waited on, was known only by his character; he was rich, and what was that before God? Luxurious, and that showed a heart alienated from Him. He had his "good things" in his life here below, and thus he was characterised. In the same manner angels wait upon the poor man. The rich man is buried far from Abraham; and here the circumstances are purely Jewish. He lifts up his eyes in Hades in torments. Lazarus is in the bosom of Abraham, the highest place of honour for a Jew. Hence it is also that the rich man says: "Father Abraham." It is addressed to Jews and covetous Pharisees, to explain the judgment of their evil, and the entire change which took place on their judgment, introducing the results of another world. The rich man had had his "good things" in this. The portion in the other world was a final one; they could not there change their position, or find assuagement. And, moreover, the resurrection (even of Christ) from the dead would not change when there was incredulity as to the Law and the prophets. They, the Pharisees, were condemned by the word of their own Law and prophets; they repented not at their call, and Jesus risen would not be sent to them. Nationally they were condemned on their own ground, the ground too they chose in pride - ground of God's righteousness withal. The prophets spake in grace, for it was to recall the wandering. Thus, while every principle of external sanction (so long abused as a system addressed to the flesh, and abused by the flesh) was changed, all that was passed as a testimony was validated in the highest degree, and given the fullest authority to. The house of His Father was in fact the Jewish people in their carnal glory, and on these the passage pronounces a full judgment.

Luke

J. N. Darby.

<46004E>264

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Luke  17

The great principle which now set aside the Jewish economy which had not recognised its Messiah, the Son of God, and introduced eternal life, was plain enough, but in the breaking down of what sustained the flesh, and was adapted to the flesh, and the introduction of what rested on the Spirit, and on a faith which never recognised the flesh, and which knows no present support, but rests on God only, and the flesh of course in a position such as this feels all to be against it - it which needs support - offences would come. This was for the disciples. The world to come was let in upon the conduct and faith of the disciples in this, and no man could serve two masters. But among those who made profession to follow Christ and His glory, on the principles of faith, alas! there would be many scandals. It is not in a reign of power when He will gather out of His kingdom all scandals, and them which do iniquity. Satan's power is permitted. The exercise of faith is permitted - a time of trial, and of the proving, by the prevalence of evil, of what lasts because of God. As the apostle, speaking of the full dispensation of the Spirit: "There must needs be heresies that they which are approved may be made manifest." Offences must come. Grace and truth present the perfect simplicity of the service and walk which belongs to the kingdom, which grace and truth have revealed, and into which grace and truth introduce us. But they have introduced it as truth into a world of evil where the flesh, its race, and its reasonings, and its falsehood are in the scene of their natural development, and where Satan is prince to introduce the evil with a subtlety of which the flesh suspects nothing at all, and into which, when not walking in the Spirit, we fall without hindrance, when the Lord of the vineyard permits this exercise. Thus the Lord permits and uses it for a chastening. They are, however, stumbling-blocks of the enemy, and "Woe unto him by whom they come"; he is really an instrument of Satan. And the Lord loves His little ones. "It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones," despised of men but treasured of God. The Church has to be guarded from these things in the midst of all.

265 The Saviour proceeds to apply the principle, or to show how the saints should act, seeing that the flesh in them may give occasion to these things, they not being really slaves of Satan in their will, but the flesh is always slave of Satan, and acts in his sense. "Take heed," therefore adds the Lord, "to yourselves," both as to not giving occasion of stumbling (see Romans 14, especially verse 13, but the whole chapter) and besides not to stumble when the occasion is presented, keeping his soul in patience and in communion. "Take heed to yourselves" is the great command as to the danger, and the offences in the liability of which we all stand in Satan's kingdom of this world as regards others' forgiveness, "Take heed to yourselves," jealous and judging yourselves. But, on the other hand, "If he trespass against thee, rebuke him; tell him his fault, and if he repent forgive him" ever so often. Keep the body sound in the presence of the enemy. It is the energy of the unity and holiness of the body which is the realisation of the energy of the Spirit, unbroken in the land of faith. Watch incessantly yourselves, and that the Spirit of love, the power of unity, and the bond of perfectness be not broken, so that the enemy can enter, nor of holiness so that the peace may not be false, nor any grudge or ill-feeling remain in your own heart, but that all may be unfeignedly smooth and in energy. Tell your neighbour his fault; do not keep it for his sake and for yours; and if he confess, if he turn and repent of it, the heart is gained, the enemy driven out. He honours the Lord and the truth. That will be your object in charity, acting according to the love of God into which you have been introduced in this new kingdom by the rejection of the Son of man, and forgive him, and so will be unassailable by the enemy either in conscience or in grace, Blessed path! What condescension to the weakness and evil in the introduction of the perfectness of what is good!

266 On the other hand, in such a position there would be need of faith and great energy. The disciples, under the direction of God, in their minds led perhaps by a petty part of the difficulty as of always forgiving, and a confused sense of the new position the Lord was placing them in, pray for an increase of faith. The Lord replies as to the fulness of its energy, because faith realises a power which is not in the person when it is realised, and thus acts without limit. The Lord applies it also, though in general terms, to the removing of the obstacle of a system which presented the form of good but was fruitless. When God is honoured, He displays, in a certain sense necessarily, His power - they sent into the position in which the exercise of that power glorifies Him. This is the principle of it all, indeed to act otherwise was what Satan tempted in vain the Lord to. Yet the great principle remains true, that in all need we may draw upon God. All consists in looking simply to Him. All things are possible to him that believeth, for it is God accomplishing His will, and He has willed to accomplish it by Man, and to honour Man, and Himself in Man, where He by and in man has been dishonoured by Satan. But this in faith according to His will till the Lord Jesus returns in power. Thus all the energy for the glorifying of the Lord was given them. If they had not the faith to place them in the position in which power would be glorified, they were not in the need which called forth the exercise of the power, and it could not be in exercise on God by the Holy Ghost, for this is the Holy Ghost's mind in the circumstances where the Church is placed. It is all-powerful and yet perfectly measured here, for faith puts all in its place (morally and) in power, for it brings God in according to the energy which has let in the world to come, the world of His truth and power into this, in the midst of those who are of Him, through the rejection of Him through whom the world is judged here, and we are admitted into it there. God acts in this, but in us in the midst of the weakness. Faith thus is mighty and perfect always, but never carries, nor can, beyond duty, and therefore never exalts nor displaces the relationship of responsibility and obedience. How blessed, perfect, ordered, and powerful are God's ways! What energy it gives to man in making God so much to him as to make nothing of him, so that he has no need of others, though servant by it of all in God's behalf! The Lord make us thus wait on Him in simplicity, because as seeing Him. It is of energy to remove everything by which Satan can deceive man, and thus withal only enter into the simple-hearted happy position, loving position of unhindered obedience. Lord, make us thus to realise His grace, and presence, and power, in mercy in the secret of Thy will!

267 We have, in the history which follows, a singular concatenation of facts - a faith, operating of God, or rather operated of God in the heart, sets free from all the subsidiary forces which God had thrown round His will in the economy part, and the principle, which recognised God in Jesus, carries us by this recognition beyond the law of a carnal commandment, associating us with Him in whom is the power of an endless life, which occupying us with His Person who is above, and the power of all these things, plants us not in dishonour of the law past, but in the liberty of the Saviour present. In this sense, by virtue of His presence, who once gave, and then fulfilled it, and bore its curse against us, in forgetfulness of it sealed by this word to him who recognised God in this: "Go thy way, thy faith hath saved thee." The word of Jesus was a word of divine power. He who healed lepers under the Law (and it was a remarkable type) was He who gave the Law. But here Jesus came as a Servant, and submits Himself entirely to the subsisting ordinances, and to their obligation to them in the act which expressed the divine power towards them: "Go, shew thyself to the priest" was a word which at once recognised the law, and manifested the Jehovah that gave it. The ten received the benefit; they acted on the word of Jesus, and so, thus far, in faith. The one perceived and recognised the glory of God in it. Less preoccupied with the form and power of institutions, he returns to the Source instead of merely enjoying the benefit, for the flesh uses institutions to hide God. Evil had levelled the Jew and the Samaritan, alike cast out of the presence of divine communion by the leprosy, the evil which afflicted them. They had a common lot by sin. Misery and equal exclusion had merged the difference, and made them fellows. The Lord here below, however, recognises the authority of the divine ordinances, makes Himself a Servant, yet therein to faith really, as we have seen, presents Himself as Jehovah. But the gratitude of faith was a readier reasoner than the instruction of the Law, and the blessing afforded by the presence and work of Jesus was, to one the aliment of Jewish distinction, to the other the evidence and comfort of divine presence and goodness. To him, therefore, there was complete deliverance, for he was by faith arrived in grace at the Source from which the Law itself proceeded, and was let go in peace, saved by faith, simply, blessedly, and freely, having liberty from God and with God, and in the presence of God Himself with thanksgiving. It is a sad stupidity of the flesh to be put by mercy under the Law.

268 Note, as the Lord had not yet declared and manifested His glory outwardly, and put an end to the economy, but that it only broke through, in the power in blessing of His acts, He sends the Samaritan, obedient and subject to God, instead of in pride of rebellion as the Samaritans were really, to the priests, so that indeed there was a ready and holy obedience here to the will of Jesus, to God; for the conviction of sin produces obedience, and is the root of it. The Lord sustains this, for it was yet God's way; salvation was of the Jews. The Samaritan, united, as we have seen, by his evil state with the outcasts by the Law, is ready at Jesus' word, of which they claimed help, to go and submit to the priests, God's ordinance therefore, but which supposed entire conviction of the power of His word, for it was the clean who had to present themselves. Thus full subjection is produced. But finding himself cleansed, he returns back to the Source, glorifying God and thanking Jesus. He was a Samaritan, by the knowledge of the Lord above and beyond the Law, cleansed, comforted, and free, by the knowledge of Jesus. He was not sent to the priests then. Faith had transpierced the veil, and rested on Jesus. One word stated his case: "Thy faith hath saved thee." He was a stranger in the house of God, admitted, as knowing the Master, with Jesus Himself. He was beyond the temple, and with One greater than it - no need to send him back to it. The rest went their way, cleansed, to be under the Law, and left, in their stupidity, the Jesus that had blessed them. They did not return to glorify God, their heart was stupefied by Judaism. This, at the point where we are now arrived of this Evangel, is an instruction full of importance and clearness. It was another light thrown on the passing away of the Law and that dispensation. The power was amongst them, though unrecognised, on which hung all, and which, being rejected, removed them from their place in recognising the sanctity withal of all that itself had instituted, and that too in faithful obedience as a Servant. This question was actually raised, i.e., of the presence of the kingdom of God, and the Spirit of God presents it to us here in this question of the Pharisees. And there is a remarkable instance of the distinction of responsibility, and the revelation of the secret of His will and power, before the accomplishment of which suffering goes necessarily, the world having rejected Jesus who was in it, the ground of this responsibility.

269 How many reasons might have been pleaded for going on! How might the nicer Jews have said: 'You are ordered to go to the priest.' But faith goes right to the heart of God. The sense of grace, producing thankfulness, goes at once to the source and fountain of grace, and there finds all grace, and a dismissal in the perfect liberty of grace, because there is nothing else than that, returning to Jesus with thanks. The Law and all was left behind, for Jesus must be what Jesus was. He had found the power of God. He glorified God, and was passed into another system by faith, as ever where God was in grace, faith having in its simplicity recognised goodness in the Source and Author of it. But it was really He who had given the Law, but now stood to faith in quite another and separate relation - that of grace, and there he was necessarily placed, for thanks to the Author carried him to Jesus, and that was what He was - He could not deny Himself, He was come, on the contrary, for this, despise Him how might the Jews. He recognised God as God really was - good, and was necessarily placed on this footing, and to eternity would have found Him nothing else. "Go in peace," says the Saviour, "thy faith hath saved." No question of going to priests now, and this bondage. He was come to Jesus, glorified God in principle, understood God, and God was that to him. So the poor Syro-phoenician woman; dog she might be, but God was good - good to dogs, they eat the crumbs. Humbleness which bows as worthless to all His ways, and therefore finds all His goodness. It is a great point always to be kept in this littleness, that we may always enjoy this fulness of love, and understand it, for grace, and knowledge, and all outward experience, and action in the Church, even faithful service by the Spirit externally, all but communion destroy, i.e., tend to destroy it. Communion and the presence of Jesus always keep us little, and happy in the fulness of God. Blessed for ever be His Name and glory!

270 Remark too that this man glorified God. It is this way alone that glorifies God, though men may plead in form the commandments of the Law, and the precepts of Jesus. He who owns His goodness most fully, necessarily does, and finds liberty and the joy of God. "Not only so, but we joy in God through Jesus, by whom we have received" (not the Law, but) "the reconciliation." And they who believe are reconciled. The great secret is to present Jesus, and we have all - Him and all that God is in Him, and the Father to Him for us.

- 20. The Pharisees asked the Lord when the kingdom of God should come. The Lord places them on their then plain responsibility. "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation." It is not the coming of a magnificent ceremony to you His people owned and accepted, honoured as those who are to be the subjects (objects) of it. Neither shall they say, "Lo here, or Lo there" (the enemy would well say it, when the King was far, to deceive, when they had rejected Him, or, on the other hand, to dazzle and bewilder them, so that they should fall into the hands of Antichrist), but it should not be so said of the kingdom really as presented to the nation. It WAS presented, for the kingdom of God was then there amongst them. Jesus the King was speaking to them. Ought they not to have known Him? Because He came in grace, was that a reason for not knowing Him - for nothing in the heart of man? Because He had humbled Himself that He might know their sorrows, was that a reason for not discerning His greatness manifested in ten thousand ways, and above all in His infinite condescension, the perfection of His moral ways? His holy grace to the poor and guilty proved plain enough who was there, if the heart of man had not been opposed to all that was worth the delight of God in the kingdom, if it had not been blind and incapable to all that was lovely and of good report, and that in power in what He did. For the lowlier He was, the more wonderful His works. To His disciples He had other things to tell. They had received Him. He was rejected; leaving them, suffering and temptation would beset them, through the violence and the pretences of Satan, when they were thus left. Trying as their position was then, and rejected as He might be, the days would come when they would long for one of the days of the Son of man, and would not see it. He speaks of Himself to them as Son of man, not as one who brought in the kingdom, for the secret of that glory was not yet brought out, as for them, but such as they had had with Him, blessed and sweet intercourse in His walks through the world that knew Him not, with these, the companions (ignorant it might be) of His pilgrimage, but on whom He poured forth all His love, all He could of His heart, using them as His friends, telling them what He had in communion with His Father, as they were able in a world He loved, and had created, ignorant as it was of Him, in which He, even He, had so clothed the grass, sustained, consoled, if rejected of the world, the companions of the thoughts, and the kindness, which shut up by the rejection of the world, found its vent in a deeper love, marked and softened by sorrow, but which came therefore more sweet and touching to those on whom it could find vent. "Ye are they," said the weary but perfect Saviour, "Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint you a kingdom." Poor companions, yet comfort to the Saviour in this, that He could vent His holy sorrow, not indeed as though they were wise to receive it, but according to the estimate of His love towards them, and the place in which that love, the divine knowledge of that love placed them (most sweet it was surely) does He now do this, trust us with his sorrow, yea, much more now that He is exalted, giving us by the Spirit a part in the sorrow and activity of His love. But as to all present circumstances, He now kept them in His Father's name. They would, as Jews in the kingdom and in the land, feel the difference. Then, though the Lord would not say it to the nation, and had not said it of the true Messiah, but had presented what He was, the Son of God and Son of man to conscience, Satan would say to the disciples to allure and deceive them in that evil day: "Lo here, and Lo there." They were not to go after, nor follow them. Israel was judged; there was no hope for the nation, and as the lightning flashed from heaven to heaven, so would the Son of man be in His day. But first He was to suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation as Son of man. That was a casualty, and necessary as Messiah. It was the total ruin of the whole nation as in themselves. When I say 'casualty,' I mean that He was nothing less Son of man, though in another form, just accomplishing His work as such, but as to the link between Him as their Messiah in the flesh, it was broken and gone.

272 It is evident that while the Lord takes this name of Son of man to His disciples, as revealing of this higher and wider truth, the whole of this is Jewish, and shall find its accomplishment properly in Jewish disciples in the latter day. The generation are left there, and will take their place in the land again in the latter day, where alone they can properly be reckoned as such, and these circumstances arrive.

There are three great points presented. Jesus was to come in His day, and the subject here evidently is the Jews, the day of judgment of the dead. There is no question of "Lo here, and Lo there," and not to go after them. It is an earthly judgment acting on the circumstances in which they were placed, and Jewish distress, when the disciples would be in Jewish distress, and desire one of the days of the Son of man. The Son of man would be revealed in an unexpected moment, as the lightning, but first be rejected of the Jews and suffer. Verse 31 shows its clearly Jewish and local character. The unbelieving people would continue in a state of carnal security, resting on the continuance of things as they were, i.e., acting on it, for man does in the midst of many miseries. In the cases the Lord refers to, the judgment came on the earth, and those left were the spared ones. Thus should it be when the Son of man was revealed.

Note, the judgment would fall specially on the city, for they were not to return into the house, and if in the field not to turn back. Yet the great object of the Lord is the character of the judgment, so as to separate the hearts of His disciples. When they ask therefore when, He replies, "Where the carcase is the eagles will be." Where the dead object of judgment is, there the judgment will be, swift, terrible, unlooked-for, and certain. But there are some points here to be remarked. Suddenness of judgment is its general character. Israel, awful thought! would be in the case of Sodom, or of the world before the flood. It is evident that they are temporal judgments on a temporal people, something which, though sudden and unexpected, gave opportunity to turn back from the field to the house. With the end of the world it has nothing to do. With the apparition of the Son of man it has to do, but yet so associated with Jerusalem and the land as to raise these questions dependent on wars, human attack or premonition. For the Lord Himself once come as lightning, if that were it, returning from the field would be ill in place. There are also human circumstances capable of acting on and leaving room for human motives and conduct, though the Lord be so there as to warn them against them. It was a case where no human motive was of avail, for the Lord was interfering in it. No time for concession, no time to spare the life in fruitless concession to evil because judgment was as there. Faithfulness to the Lord and His testimony, who was at hand, was the real wisdom. He who saved his life would lose it, and he who lost it would really gain it. The Lord does not give the reason farther here than that His day was immediately in question in judgment, and that deceivers, and exceeding distress were then among a people, a generation who had rejected Him, and made Him suffer, and He was coming to judge. Besides, in the judgment, though man awake to the danger was to act with entire separation from the thought of this world, for human thoughts were vain when the Lord was judging like the suddenness of the lightning, there would be a perfect separation by the judgment. Their efforts to save life would be vain. How save it by joining or acquiescing in evil, when the Lord was coming to judge the evil? That was the thought which should possess them. But the Lord Himself, with discerning perfectness which knows all things, would spare in the same bed the faithful when the unfaithful was seized by the inevitable and sure judgment of God Himself. Although the testimony should act upon the conscience of man, the discernment of God was sure - in a bed, at the mill, one taken the other left, as we have said, where the corpse for judgment was, the judgment would be sure to come. Thus guarding against seductive spirits, a sudden station of the Lord in judgment was revealed to the disciples - a judgment which, like that of Noe and Sodom, would take the wicked and leave the just, would be a judgment on man here below, who looked no way for it. The righteous would be preserved. It would be sudden and terrible. The Son of man in His day.

273 Luke  18

It is evident to me that the parable which follows applies itself to the faithful Remnant of the Jews in the latter day. The widow in that city in the presence of her adversary appears to have no refuge or answer in God Himself, for indeed waters of a full cup have to be wrung out to them. The cry of faith is forced from them by distress, long silent in them, in the patience and long-suffering of God. But in the midst of the trial and distress preceding the Lord's coming - of that day under the adversary, the Antichrist, when the throne of iniquity and oppression of God's name and people seems established for a law, this shall be the resource and character of the elect - they cry day and night. This is addressed to the disciples, even at this period viewed (i.e., before the resurrection) as Jews, Jewish disciples on the rejection of the Son of man, liable to the consequences of Jewish infidelity till the Lord Himself appeared to take up the Remnant, and glorify Himself in His own strength. It is not "men ought always" (pros to dein anthropous). I do not say that we cannot apply a principle of God's conduct, but the subject is put as a principle "ought" (pros to dein). The direct application here is to the circumstances of the Jews in the latter day - that poor widow and desolate. As the mammon of unrighteousness before, so the judge of unrighteousness now. Further, the elect among them are noticed. Surely God will do as much for His own elect, as the unjust judge for the helpless. As the Lord taught the disciples to give their life, sooner than save it, in such times (for indeed provision is made for that), so here He encourages them with the certainty of the answer of God to the cry of His in that day of distress in speedy deliverance. Further, we have in fact their character and circumstances. They are in deep distress, entirely helpless, with an adversary who wrongs them sore. They cry day and night, though not in circumstances so accomplished. In spirit this should be our position, and the blessing would come for need and deliverance, for God, the God of faithfulness and grace, and of His people, is always the same. There is an adversary, but there is a cry He hears, and will certainly avenge. Thus shall it be with His beloved, and because beloved disciplined Remnant in that day; see Isaiah 65 and 66. "Night and day" the distress was urgent, and but One to help after all. Blessed position, though humbling!

274 But the Son of man, when He comes, will He find faith on the earth? Alas! but little. But this passage applies to those days, to the time spoken of, and the expectation and confidence in His power who shall come when this evil and distress prevails. God will avenge speedily, but will man be found in faith? Will He find faith in the earth? It is a dark one, of the darkest shade, because applied to the elect cast on this time of trouble, and on man's heart. It is His coming to the earth, not to fetch the Church. All this shows clearly the application of the parable to the Jewish Remnant in the latter days. The faith here spoken of is a faith which attends deliverance, which reckons knowing the Eternal's love for Israel, on the deliverance of Messiah according to His word, and so by faith brings Him in, for the cry of faith is always heard. But the fidelity of the Lord is better than our faith, and thus the full needful exercise and purging process is carried on, and He comes to bless when blessing comes aright, always perfect and good. "By this, therefore, shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin"; when the Lord shall have purged all the filth of the daughters of Zion with the Spirit of judgment, and the Spirit of burning; see also Isaiah 64: 7. The first part of the chapter is connected with the preceding. The Remnant would have to cry to God to deliver them from their adversary; perseverance in spite of all being against them, because they counted on God, showing knowledge of Himself, and that He was the ground of their confidence. This real knowledge of God was the whole matter in such case, but would Christ find such faith when He came? i.e., faith reckoning on deliverance, whatever the condition. Still it is a general principle; men ought always to pray and not to faint.

275 The Lord having thus closed what related to the kingdom at His coming, and on principles universally applicable, speaks of the spirit suited to the kingdom now in connection with His rejection. The new thing morally as to what suited man's introduction to it, such as he was, the renewal of relationship between God and man. The humility connected with the sense of sin, and reference of heart to God. The humility connected with the sense of one's own nothingness, and confidence in God, not man pretending to be just with God, which was ignorance and pride, but God merciful (not indifferent) to man a sinner - the spirit of a child. The first Adam exalts, the Second humbles Himself. But there the root is reached. All human advantages are only hindrances, they nourish the old Adam. Who then can be saved? Impossible with man, but all things are possible with God. Then the advantages of the kingdom now and hereafter. And then the doctrine of the cross closes and crowns the whole, the resurrection leading into the new scene and world.

276  - 9. The Lord returns to the present character of the kingdom, and in three points shows man's point of entrance in nothingness, emptiness of everything, a sinner to receive justification, a child to receive instruction, empty and poor to receive true heavenly and eternal riches, and that mere human righteousness, human wisdom or man's thoughts, human position and riches were just so many hindrances to the kingdom of God. One must be despoiled of all really to enter there also may we say, though in a certain sense these things may be sanctified, as we have seen, chapter 16. Yet so far as even in the Christian these things operate, they are so much that spoil the power and character of the kingdom in us, and therefore of the Church also in the world. All these things partake of or lead to this character "trusted in themselves" (pepoithotas eph' heautous), and therefore set aside the Holy Spirit, and by consequence the detection of the flesh, and all contrary to the power of the kingdom in us. There is another effect or trait of this state, despising others - a state of sin most thoroughly sinful and opposed to all that God is in Himself, and all that we ought to be either by the Law or in grace before Him, for God is mighty, and despiseth not any. And He is love, and therefore regards specially the poor and needy, for He wants not anything, but loves others. But pride is always necessitous. What a contrast between this Pharisee, and Paul before Festus and Agrippa, even in the confidence that he has. There we find the poor prisoner full of confidence, but what says he? "Would to God that all that hear me were altogether such as I am." It is not: "I thank Thee I am not as other men are" - the pride which results from comparison with man, and is proud of the external difference, but which, having tasted the perfect grace of God towards himself, and being perfectly satisfied, and resting, and joying in, and blessing God for it, his soul filled therewith, with grace necessarily, by the abounding of this grace and love shed abroad in his soul by the Holy Ghost, can desire, in the unfeigned love of his heart, that all were only like himself possessed of the same knowledge and consciousness of the grace of God, the same riches of Christ as he the chief of sinners had and tasted. A sufferer and a prisoner, he longs for all to be with him, save his bonds, instead of standing alone, glad he is not as they. What a contrast! Contrast with the grace of God in man, in Jesus, in His servants, and with the God of grace. We find both in Jesus. He made Himself as others, as to their need, entering into their sorrows, sharing the effect of their sins. If He was separate from all sin in Himself, and the Holy One, He was the Holy One in love to sinners. Such is our position as co-workers with God.

277 In detail there is this to remark in the Pharisee, that he by no means in form attributed the good to himself. He recognised nominally God and God's goodness in it. His first thought apparently was God, and that with thanks, "God, I thank thee." But then it is, "God, I thank thee that I," not "O God, I thank thee that thou," etc. He compared himself with the rest of men, not with God. Avoiding outward crimes, and fulfilling outward ceremonies, he substituted for crimes pride, and hatred, and contempt, the principles most opposed to God in Christ, and rested on a character before men instead of humbleness and conscience before God. The publican, on the contrary, knew God, imperfectly perhaps, but he knew Him and himself - a knowledge (which is everything) of which the Pharisee had nothing. It is the knowledge of God which really humbles. He who humbles himself shall be exalted, and he who exalts himself shall be abased. And how attractive this lowliness really is! It savours of the presence of God known and felt. The spirit of simplicity, docility, and nothingness, next the Lord notices as characterising the kingdom; he who does not receive it as a little child cannot enter therein. It is essential. Wisdom, learning, exalted circumstances, reputation, authority, all must bow and be absolutely laid low; none of them are in a little child. Of such is the kingdom, and on no other ground can one enter.

- 14. Note, righteousness by faith, or justification before God is not spoken of but by Paul, if we except the publican in this passage which is not really an exception. Then we get the counterpart, as is known, in James. We have often just, righteous practically or in character, and righteousness too.

- 18. There must be renunciation of self in righteousness, of self in the powers, and faculties, and acquisitions of man, self characteristically, and of the world, self in our external relations, to enter the kingdom. This is the case now put with everything naturally amiable and upright, but which only ministered to self, and hid the heart from itself, from the conscience, these screens that are between. For the effect of the operation of the Spirit of God, quoad hoc, is to put everything that is in the heart into the conscience. The young man rested on the goodness of human nature. The Lord proves it bad, really bad and miserable, whatever the outward form of amiableness might be, and He lets the whole of this fully appear, as far as it could be under the Law, that the root of bitterness which this left there untouched, might be manifested notwithstanding. For we must stand in the truth before God. If grace came by Jesus Christ, so did truth. It might have been some Paul, if indeed it were not one yet more amiable and attractive in his natural character. These worldly advantages draw the most emphatic declaration of difficulty from the Saviour. The young man was attracted by the Saviour's character of wisdom, goodness, and power, specially goodness, for he seems to be singularly amiable, and says to Him: "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" One would say, good desires seeking in the best direction for direction in conduct which should be approved. But, alas! there was no link between God and the heart; it was entirely unbroken before Him, untouched, no light whatever. Approved conduct he desired, good authority to direct him in it, but though nominally according to God, the sanction and approbation of man and of self was at the bottom, though perhaps his state of ignorance hindered also this from resting on his conscience, though it is never really ignorant of what we do seek though quite of Him we ought. "There is none that understandeth." The principle of the young man's approach was very clear. Good disposition. Goodness in man capable on direction of doing that which led to eternal life. There all the fairest form of man's religion, when even the Word of God is admitted as direction, begins, for by habit and education Christ's words are admitted as direction. But there is a principle essentially false, that there is any goodness in man at all. All religion begins with God in the discovery of man's state, that there is no good in him at all, but there is in God. Here the Lord meets him at once, as Nicodemus on a similar occasion. "Why dost thou call me good?" For He ranked Himself as in the mind of the young man here, to meet him where he was, under the Law, not as a Saviour but as a true Teacher. "There is none good but One, that is God." Blessed and perfect word! "Thou knowest the commandments," for they were hypothetically the rule of life to man in the flesh.

278 The Lord having given him credit for what he had, now proceeds to let in, as we have seen in another case, the light of the kingdom of heaven upon his heart, the relinquishment, total relinquishment of this world as a good, which had now rejected Christ, and thus showed itself incapable of moral good, the goodness of God. It was a different principle and line of goodness, not man but God. Not however till, by the presenting of Christ in every form, the goodness of God, they had proved there was no goodness, and no capacity for goodness in man. In this case, the possession of much that attached to this world was evidently a great hindrance, a vast, and, to man, insuperable impediment, for his heart was there. But if he reasoned, the heart of those who heard, who had so much opportunity of doing good, the disciples indeed, as to judgment (not by grace) they were where the young ruler was, could hardly enter into the kingdom of God. Who is to be saved? No one upon this ground. But what was impossible with men was possible with God. He only was good. Man's heart was elsewhere, but He who was good could save, and give new life. The hearers use the word "save," for there is always a vague consciousness of something wrong when we seek eternal life, but the natural heart always confounds it all together, and begins its religion from itself where God is not, and therefore ends it with itself also, using it to exclude God more effectually by pride and self-complacency.

279 Grace was the only resource, and divine power. It was well proved in the presenting of Jesus. Then, on the other hand, the question arose of the consequence of acting on this word. Abstractedly, perhaps, man might say the love of Christ is the sufficient motive. It is the only motive. It constrains. It divinely constrained Christ to come down and seek us here. But this love plunges us in not only sacrifices, but trials and difficulties, dangers and opposition, and, when we have left all, the Lord proposes a glorious reward to encourage, support, and animate us. It was the same with Him. Love, love to us, miserable sinners, and the accomplishment of the divine good pleasure brought Him down, but for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame. Moses also endured, having respect to the recompense of the reward. If I say: 'I will go there for the reward,' there is no grace, no love of God working in us, no participation in divine nature, but He who knows us and was one of us, gives the exceeding great recompense of reward, and assures the heart of him who sees the sacrifice in his way of self-denial. It is: "We have left all," which is the ground of the enquiry. They had left all through love to Jesus, and in obedience to His call, and now, when all was smitten from under them in the world, when enquired of thus, all, and all dignity, and all honour in the world entirely swept away, then the Lord presents another and a surer hope, a portion with Him, indeed here in rejection, but a portion with Him also in the glory which was His. Second Adam in another world in the age to come - the great hope into which the rejection of Jesus by the counsels of God set those who had a portion with Him. They are left on account of the kingdom of God. The Lord enlarges the thought in His humble and holy grace. It was everything to leave all for Him, but the Spring, and Centre, and Source of the whole kingdom of God was there, and puts this in grace before the disciples in truth; though the spring and seed of life was in them, it was mixed with many carnal thoughts, affection for Him, very little enlightened. Peter casts it as a sort of responsibility on Christ. "We have left all for thee, what shall we have?" There was an ugly spirit mixed with the question. They had done a great deal for Him; what were they to get? The Lord's answer enlarges infinitely the sphere of grace in them, and corrects the carnality that attached itself to it by the same word. It was not for an individual who held out great hopes, not for personal affection, or excitement disguised under the name of Messiah, but the moral power of truth in the soul. They had left it for the kingdom of God. This gave the real scope for what was true (Jesus hiding Himself) and corrected and made naught what was carnal. At the same time this expression makes it good for all who, in thankfulness of heart, leave all for the kingdom of God. In their after times it was not following Jesus in Person, though that was clearly the proof of it then, but leaving all for the kingdom of God, which the Lord owns. That can be done now through grace. Having thus presented the blessed and glorious consequences of giving up all for Christ, so that they should understand the end of these things, the Lord presents to them the extent of the position in which they were placed in following Him, what should happen to Himself, and how the introduction into this new world of blessing had its accomplishment by (death and) resurrection. But they understood it not, and the saying was hid from them.

281 Now the Lord, going up to Jerusalem, follows His career as Messiah, Son of David, presenting Himself as such to the people of the Jews. He was nigh Jericho, that ancient place of Israel's entry, but sign also of Israel's sin. There sat a blind man begging. Hearing the multitude, who tell him it is Jesus of Nazareth, he founds his cry on the title "Son of David," recognises His Jewish royal title. Jesus stood, as he persevered when rebuked, thus exercised in faith, and commanded him to be brought. Owning His title thus going up to the royal city, He will do all demanded of Him in this title. For from this out He presents Himself such, but it is, however, the LORD Himself who presents Himself as Son of David here. And in all these latter interviews I see these two characters united. In truth, the whole power of the counsel of God, and the wondrous blessedness of the presentation of Jesus by Himself to the Jews, which yet occasioned the scandal, was that, that it was the Jehovah of the Old Testament, He who had led them by Moses, He who had guided and conducted them all the way with His glorious arm, who now presented Himself as their lowly because Saviour King - their king in grace. For at verse 35, there is a very formal division of the subject of the gospel.

- 35. Chapter 19 should begin here. This is His present presentation to Jerusalem, in view of the kingdom; He is going up there. The character and ways of the kingdom morally, the principles for men, sinners, Jews viewed in their need as sinners, or Gentiles, of service above economy because flowing from the character of God, accomplished in Christ - this rejected by the world, and indeed the opposition of the world to the revelation of the character of God morally in Christ. These great and fundamental truths had been presented, and the Lord now returns to His actual personal mission, the great result of which was to be accomplished economically by the relation in which He stood with the Jews. Here, therefore, with the cortège of Israel, the multitude, He begins His entry by Jericho to visit His royal city, the city of His love, where He had placed His name of old, and that He visited now. He deals now with Israel, but with Israel according to His own character in judgment and in grace respectively. Here the blind in their necessity have more intelligence than the guides of Israel, and cry out, herald through their need of His power, "Son of David have mercy upon me." Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of David to him, for He was come that they which see not might see, and that they which see might be made blind. Need, personal need made him persevering, and the Son of David was come for the need of Israel. And though a troublesome interruption to the crowd, to this poor beggar, and little assorted to their ideas of the Son of David, the Son of David in mercy gave all heed, as indeed it was in His heart and His blessed glory to do - the Jehovah, Saviour and Companion of the distress of His people; for our poverty also is the herald of His grace, and seizes it through grace in its true character, for thus it was at this moment with this poor man. Thus announced, the Lord stops, and while the Servant of his poverty and distress which, through faith, found its resource in the riches of Christ, He, who was owned as David's Son, shows Himself the Jehovah-Saviour of Israel to do what the poor man would. It was in His power to do it, and willing to answer even the need of faith. Picture of Israel! his need was to see; he saw and glorified God, as all the people, when they saw it, "gave praise unto God."

Luke

J. N. Darby.

<46004E>282

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Luke  19

Thus introduced in His character (the Lord that healed and gave sight to Israel in its need) the Son of David, Jesus pursues His way. This was a herald act; it therefore precedes Jericho here, it being said merely: "When he drew near" to it. And He entered and passed through Jericho to have the facts according to their moral order, as we have seen universally in Luke, not their chronological.

- 1, 2. These are not historically subsequent, but having given a fact morally antecedent in character, the gospel proceeds with the succession of events consequent on this character of Jesus. From this out, He acts royally, explains that He was to go, and receive the kingdom, leaving His servants to trade, but in a dignity which might command indeed, but which did not require the reception or the acceptance of man. Zacchaeus stood in circumstances most unfavourable - a publican and rich. But the Lord, as King, chooses where He will go, whom He will favour, always indeed as the moral Servant of the Father, but as King in Israel who brings salvation by His royal presence, and honours in His house, as the true Restorer, a publican if He sees good, being a son of Abraham. All was in disorder, but His good pleasure set in its perfection, acting from itself, all things right. In Jericho the accursed, but the entry of Israel, He chooses a publican, to go and dine there uninvited. He acts as King, and brings salvation to the house, but Israel was all in disorder. Zacchaeus pleads his full action on the righteous principle of Israel - he restored fourfold, gave the half of his goods to the poor. It was all well, in a sense, a good feeling that is, he desired the approbation of Jesus, and Jesus having gone there, Zacchaeus, really good and just in his conduct, would cover his shameful position as a Jew in society by his ways. It was a great mixture, but the Lord puts it all out of place, the bad and the good together, saying: "This day is salvation come to this house." The grace of God brings salvation. Conscience was awake, many fruits followed; he desired to see Jesus, what and who He was. But he was placed all wrong. Neither were of importance. When salvation comes, it brings its wealth, and its all, and sets aside the goodness and the wrong position alike, by the one word of what it is. It brings, and not finds what it seeks. Zacchaeus was despised of the Jews, and the readier therefore to receive Jesus. It is always good for us to be despised humanly. The Lord knew him, His poor wandering sheep, by name, goes to him in this despised state, a publican and a sinner, and brings him salvation. The multitude thought a prophet ought to preserve his character. But the Son of David, the Lord, had no need of character from the world; He had His own, and He showed it in this, for He acts in perfect grace and condescension, but as the Lord in royalty. Still as in reference to Jews, he was a son of Abraham, owning, clinging to, they were His gift to His Beloved, their privileges, but never losing this character of grace (but His life, because He held fast these two things together) the Son of man is come to seek and to save what was lost. Royal grace and human service found their place together. And as the blind man had heralded Him Son of David, He makes Himself a Servant, but in the lordship and power of grace. But grace thus presented, or the highest privilege presented in grace, puts under the extremest responsibility to it in grace, a last resource; and this was Israel's case now. But the Lord fully knew all the result, and before presenting Himself as Messiah, Son of David, come in the Name of the Lord, gives an account of how in a higher way that it might be heavenly, and of the Father, He would receive the kingdom, and what would be the lot, whether of the servants to whom He trusted His goods in His absence, or His enemies who refused to have Him for their King. And, having thus let in the scene of His rejection, shown it was in no uncertain spirit, but the spirit of knowledge as of grace, and of full warning to them to whom He went, He proceeds to make His royal entry into Jerusalem, that the unhappy city might come under the full guilt of having rejected their King.

284  - 7, 8. I cannot help considering this as presenting the Lord's view and judgment of one esteemed by the world evil, and presenting an example on the highest authority of one who in secret and in unfavourable circumstances was under holy influences, and seeking right, without gospel revelation, who came to the light that his deeds might be made manifest that they were wrought in God, who, seeking to walk acceptably, was rejoiced to receive One whom he supposed and who appeared to be of God, and the Light of the world, and opened out all his ways to him, desirous to approve himself to Him, and have His judgment. A holy purpose! He was, however, as is manifest, short of salvation. Observe then that our Lord, without reproving his account of himself, for it was not cold self-righteousness, and it was before others, gives him the true consolation and comfort, declaring that salvation was come to his house that day, putting him therefore on the only true ground of acceptance. He is silent as to what he had done, but gives him full assurance, and declares the acceptance of his person as a son of Abraham, and so manifested and acknowledged by Him to them all. And hence the change of autos (he). When speaking of salvation, He addresses Himself to Zacchaeus, and in speaking to him is silent as to claim or worth, stating salvation to be come to him then, and indeed to one lost. In addressing them, He owns him fully in the character of highest worth in their eyes, and his genuine excellence. The same was our Lord's way with the woman in Simon's house. He draws out the features of internal excellence in the sinner - there, no doubt, by grace - to the shame of the self-righteous, and throwing the robe of His comforting favour and acceptance in the presence of others over the shame of their nakedness, as it were, of character, while not concealing that they are lost and sinful, He does it, but as the sphere of exercise of His own inimitable, considerate love.

285 Here we have an interesting and new exhibition of character, and our Lord's judgment on it. That He knew what was in Zacchaeus is evident, and called him from this knowledge, for the showing forth the divine glory, wisdom, and compassion, for our instruction and knowledge of His ways, as for the blessing of poor Zacchaeus, cannot be doubted. How calculated too was His conduct to meet the anxieties, and draw out the confidence of Zacchaeus! How full of grace in itself! How prompt to the secret workings of his mind, known better as to what they were than by himself, and calculated to put down with authority the pride of the others, and to exhibit the work of God in himself in its true and genuine character. The expression "stood" (statheis) shows the anxiety of Zacchaeus, and his absorption into his own enquiries, and his full idea that Jesus could solve them, which He did with the perfect wisdom we have seen, as if He had said: 'Be at peace, see here salvation.' Perhaps "stood" means "standing up." I think if it had been a new resolve it would have been unbecoming, and the Lord's answer seems to be a sort of return for it.

- 11. Their thoughts were fixed on an earthly and present kingdom. The Lord reveals it heavenly as flowing from the Father, and an interval of responsibility of service, meanwhile, until He returned in the power of it. For the expectation was rife of this kingdom, and the Lord had acted on this thought, increasing its force and weight. In the thoughts, evidently there was something extraordinary in His presence, and power, and ways. Jerusalem was the centre to them of this thought naturally, and justly in a certain sense. It was the city of the great King. The Lord therefore explains the heavenly nature and character of His kingdom, for, in the rejection of Messiah, the Lord had provided for the introduction of better, higher, and heavenly things, holy things which presented His divine nature, and communion with it directly. For the veil thereof was to be rent, but at the same time not as though He took the kingdom, i.e., exercised it while far off. He was to receive it and return. Also the kingdom which Jesus takes, and thus exercises, He does as Servant, at least as received as Man, however divine glory may be discovered by the Father having given all things into His hand, and His coming from God, and going to God. In the fulness of the character of these things, in itself revealed by the admission of man, the veil rent within, yet qua kingdom He receives it and exercises it as God and King, as having it as Man under Him, that God may rule by Him. Jehovah has put all things under His feet. Yet God has provided in the intermediate dispensation by the cross, for the full revelation of what He is, that we may go to the Source, and morally enjoy it.

286  - 13. Here we have the disciples then sent of Jesus after His death.

- 14. Evidently here the Jews, His countrymen. It is said that they sent a message after Him, because He had not taken the kingdom here. But He having gone, and sent the Holy Ghost, who proposed His return, on their owning Him, in the kingdom and glory, they refuse this message of the Spirit, and after His departure declare that they will not have Him, send, as it were, a message to insult God in the rejection of His Son. These therefore were gone all wrong. But the servants also were placed under responsibility; they were set to serve. And here it is specially responsibility and fidelity. It is not, as in Matthew, difference of gifts, and that according to the vessel too, prepared, showing the administration of God, and the grace of His wisdom. A grace which, understood, was the cause (source) of action, but a common responsibility. And that suffers in the smallest thing which may concern the Lord, and a reward proportioned to the faithfulness, I say not 'merited by,' for the faithfulness itself even is by grace, and the reward is of grace beyond all possible proportion with the work.

- 17. En elachisto (in the least). But the rewards proportioned inter se to the fidelity, not each individually to the fruit produced. "Ten cities" bore no proportion to being faithful with a mina*. It was evidently favour, but ten to him who had gained ten, five to him who had gained five, had a mutual proportion to the fidelity and labour. The great point here is grace valuing the favour of the Lord, and introducing, in grace and by grace, the sense of responsibility, and the desire to be well-pleasing to Him, and so to labour with what is confided to us for Him. The mina* was the Lord's also, not theirs. That which was theirs, through grace, was service with the mina* through living fidelity to Him who had given it, and was absent. The third did not waste, did not make away with, nor prove unfaithful to the trust of the money, but he was not faithful to the confidence which the trust implied. Why give him money to put in a napkin? Want of confidence in the Lord always deprives of spiritual intelligence, as confidence in Him is the source of it. But we are so close in relationship and responsibility to God, that if we have not a gracious and good character of Him, we always form a wicked and a false one. The responsibility, however, exists whether or no, and if He returns in the glory of His power, and if we have formed a strong idea of His severity and exaction, why have we not laboured, or at least acted accordingly? In a false character formed of God, there is always the grossest inconsequence of conduct, for it is false in the heart, and responsibility is neglected, self coming in. Where grace is not understood, all the conduct flows from a deceitful lie in the heart.

{*Mina, translated 'pound.'}

287  - 21. "For I feared thee" (ephoboumen) is the word of a naughty and unfaithful heart, of a bad conscience. The Lord judges on the conduct due, on the estimate formed by the heart itself. On its own showing, the responsibility existed, the talent was there; where was the consequent conduct? All the acquisition of spiritual competency remains, and even is added to in those that have been faithful. In the unfaithful, the boon bestowed is taken away. They had it not in relation with God whence all its power and force flowed. Having judged first His servants, as is the case with the Lord towards us, He then judges the Jews, His energies, who would not have Him reign over them.

- 27. "Before me," for it is on His return, and the sentence of His indignation in His presence. Thus having said, He drew near to Jerusalem, still going on towards the devoted city.

- 31. Jesus still acts on His supreme and holy Lordship, knowing, directing and having all things at His command; the wills - for His people shall be willing in the day of His power, and this was a brief demonstration of what He was and His rights - of men. "The Lord hath need of it." All the wills of the people, by this divine influence, burst forth on this occasion, every demonstration of their joyful recognition. It was a wonderful scene, the meek and lowly Jesus, still meek and lowly, no forced pomp to demand honour from the careless, but a divine influence pervading all hearts. Himself in wonted meekness and lowliness, the object of universal recognition and praise, for He had done all things well. Divine influence which wakes, and gives memory, the stubborn and forgetful heart, gives it spring in taking off the load of selfishness. Gratitude in mindfulness of innumerable benefits, sense of divine presence in the Messiah, which awakens the sense of the Source of it all, concur to give life, to raise, and to sound loud the chord of praise thus struck by the presence of Jesus. For what incidents in His life, and how far deeper the truth than all these incidents, they were but as the tops of the rocks which. reaching to the everlasting depths of the sea, were the occasion of the expression of its force in awakened majesty on the surface. Man saw it then, and feared and honoured; but thought taught of God pursues it into the infinitude of what it, as hidden though, thus revealed. But for a moment all was awakened in joy and recognition, the gleam of divine Jewish truth ere the sunset, and the sad night-storm came on. All was calm, but prognostic of far other things. Over against long loved Jerusalem, thus in mercy visited, the sound of praise awoke - awoke to the city plunged in the deepest slumber of unbelief. What a work was here too of Jesus! As far as man's mere heart, that gained; but there must be a new life, and divine power to rescue it from the power and dominion of Satan. Yet it was an evident divine influence at the time, thus distinguishing clearly between a divine influence on the natural man, which may exist to any, the greatest possible extent, and the giving of life from above. This is eternal. But I know of no limit to the extent of the other except life that is not there at all, but to the action of the Holy Spirit, of divine agency, on what is there. It was not properly the Holy Spirit here, i.e., according to the force of the New Testament, and therefore was a reparable departure, quoad hoc. It operated in a Jewish form, recognised Him with Jewish though divine joy as a Jewish Messiah, because of the mighty deeds which He had done. It was the King who came in the name of the Lord. God was the object of their praise. Messiah was the presentation of His power in their favour.

288  - 38. The King coming in the name of the Lord inspires this principle, for they spoke under the enthusiasm of divine influence, that they on earth no longer subject to the consequence of wrath and malediction above, to the malice of Satan who had title of accusation against them. Peace was in heaven, for the King could appear. It was not a temporary peace of patience on repentance, but all was at peace above, for the King, the full testimony of favour and divine complacence, the accusation of evil removed, all peace in the divine thoughts towards them was actually here. It was not peace produced by grace acting towards us here, peace on earth, but a Jewish thought that God was at peace with them fully. A rest of peace above, and therefore they had the Messiah, for God was at peace with them. Heaven, no longer tormented with the witness of evil, Satan cast down and incapable, no cloud there, the odour of rest before Jehovah, before God. The odour of (hannikhoakh, rest) had been presented, met the thought of their minds as to its effect; "And I will no more curse" the consequence. Therefore I say 'the enthusiasm of divine influence,' for it was not the new man taught by the Holy Spirit in full holy, calm knowledge. How many sighs, and how much sorrow of heart over Jerusalem had been the effect of that! But the conclusions of joy and delight, which flowed from the impression of the fact of Messiah being there by divine influence, conclusions true abstractedly, but which showed no divinely taught knowledge of the real state of things. Yet the praise most right, for it was not the moment for that knowledge in them. And in the divine counsel and will it was so, for the just glorifying of the Son of God, and the judgment on the blind and wilful of His rebellious and obstinate people follow. Christ represented this full and perfect love, and the calm perfection of a knowledge full of sorrow. Was their joy then wrong? No! It would not be realised. It was ignorant, for they knew not what the rebellion of the heart of man was, but righteous, in this sense God owned it. The stones would have cried out to honour Jesus, if these had not. Yes, the stones, for honoured He must be even then, the Son of God in the midst of despite could not pass without receiving honour, seeing what He had suffered, done, was. It could not be otherwise. There would have been a claim of righteous honour crying out, which must be answered. It was not to be accomplished, it is true, but owned, and in this righteous dignity the Lord proceeds now. He does not lose His lowliness personally the least, but He was not hiding to be able to serve, and as a Servant that God only might be honoured, and His full moral character produced, but Himself presenting Himself in the dignity of His Person, Jehovah, King, acting on the hearts of His disciples and the people, the sign of divine presence, however blind the rest, and in this relation presenting Himself to Jerusalem and the governors among the people, to the nation. It was a marvellous scene, remembering who and where it was.

290 But to Pharisee all God's glory was wrong, and he alone right, and the orderer and watch of what was right. The stones would have had more sense than he, for they would not have resisted God. But if joy and praise were among the multitude, under this influence, which were with Him, tears were His portion. What a singular contrast! The only righteous, and rightly influenced, shouting for joy, and yet Jesus weeping! How is this? Alas! it is continually so. The intelligence of divine things will ever give sorrow while man is before us, till divine accomplishment is come, and the time of deepest sorrow when those who rest on the impression of the moment are fullest of joy, for it is the impression of what might abstractedly be of the true blessing of the moment, and the very thought of this gives force to the consciousness, which needs yet no contrast that it cannot be because man is. Was it a false joy? Oh, no! The stones would have cried out, but it was joy for that which the nation and city would spue out, and reject, and hate. It added to sympathy and love, bitterness on reflection; when Jerusalem presented it to Jesus, tears. So when the conversion of the world is announced, and hearts rejoice in it, is it a false joy? By no means. Far from it. It should be so abstractedly. It is due to Christ's love. The power of God is there. The Lord rouses and influences His disciples, but the more one is convinced that power is in the Spirit, that it is the debt of this dispensation, that we must look to the Spirit for it, the more, if we understand the real state of things where the Church is, the more shall we be plunged in sorrow and humiliation. The Lord direct our hearts, in faithful testimony, to the end in energy and love, yet with all depth of intelligence of the real case of the rejection and neglect, that the Church has not persevered in the goodness of God, and will be cast off, yea, spued out of Christ's mouth, the righteous Judge in the Churches in indignation and offended grace, and follow His heart who went on with all the means, though in the certainty from the beginning, where all would end. For harvest of joy according to the perfection of God, there will be, but man will not have it now. Better to sow in tears and reap in joy, when Jesus shall joyfully, and in measure according to His joy, for He had it in that which the Lord gave Him by the way, than to sow with apparent joy, and the harvest be a heap in the day of sorrow. He did drink of the brook, but it was in humiliation. It was just that secret joy received in humiliation to continue His labour, dependence on, refreshing thankfulness for refreshing received in entire humiliation of will. He drank of it in the way. Later He will lift up the head. Oh, for a spirit to follow Him!

291 What interest the Lord takes too in all the particulars of her sorrow! If indeed the righteous indignation of the Lord was upon her, He is afflicted in all her affliction. He counts and treasures up her tears. He thinks, as His servants touched by His Spirit after, upon her stones, and it pitieth Him to see her in the dust. Oh, "If thou hadst known, at least," all would have been pardoned then - "in this thy day" - what a day for Israel! For if all her sin was accumulated, all grace was accumulated too by virtue even of that, and the divine tenderness, but, alas! to sum up, Jesus', if not Jerusalem's, His beloved's sorrows. Now they were hid from their eyes. No! the joy and acclamation, just joy and acclamation of His disciples gave occasion to, rather than wiped the tear of Jesus. He justified it indeed. It was righteous, but He knew the truth. A Mary Magdalene, or a thief on the cross carried Him farther, beyond what was to fail, and ministered comfort and joy to a dying Saviour, for it was grace. Owning His royalty was right, but led to tears; but preparations for His burial in love, and the confession of a brigand, carried Him on into a paradise where sin and man in ruin were not, into the depth of divine grace. All as to Jerusalem hung on this: "Thou knewest not the time of thy visitation."

The next thing the Lord does is, with just indignation, to purge the temple, indeed He went out to Bethany, and returned, and did this on the morrow. But here it was the morally consequent act, the judgment pronounced of the King entered. God's house was a house of prayer; that was its moral character, not of sacrifice. It was not thus God designated His house, though that were done there, but in grace to need of those that had need. Where His presence and ear was was a house of prayer, where all wants were told to God, and He was there the Depositary of all grief and all need; and they had made it a den of thieves. Note it is the sin against the gracious character of God that the Lord notes as the sin against the temple of God. His charge is very general: "Ye have made it." For all evil thus permitted, and gone along with, is really common guilt on all, for the heart allows and concurs in it. But the spirit which lusts to envy soon showed itself. The people, who were nobody, gladly heard; they had no reputation, and externally they sought the good, but the chief priests, scribes, and principals of the people, the chiefs of religion, learning, specially religious learning, and of place or power, sought to get rid of Him. It was natural they should, for He was true, and all their state and place was false, and they traitors to what was of God in it, using the divine honour of it to their own glory. To the people, good was good, because they needed good; to the rulers, and priests and scribes not, because it displaced their pretensions, detected their hypocrisy, and wounded their pride. Yet Satan had power over all this, one and the other, for it needs an absolute and real deliverance to be out of his power, an actual deliverance of God. God working in us to set us free, by making Himself the only Object. Otherwise, the habits of religion and pre-eminence rest in force over the mind, and, though convinced in conscience that Jesus is true and the Lord, there is no power to resist what has power over the flesh, for the life which emerges from out of it all, strengthened in the Holy Ghost, is not there. The time was not yet come for Him to be offered up, and He was there in the dignity of His untouched Person till the full time of divine counsel was come, that the people might have the full witness and testimony of grace and perfectness, and the iniquity of the rulers and great men ripen to its conclusion and accomplishment. The position, and total want of conscience, and selfishness, in His rejection, of their rulers and religious authorities, is brought out in what follows.

292 Luke  20

In truth, what profound iniquity marks their conduct! They had been occupied with their particular interests which Jesus thwarted, but the testimony of John, which they dared not disown, was plainly before them. And how perfectly opposed was their interest with that of the people! Alas! it is ever so. With the interest of souls, of God's people as a mass professedly, always are they the instrument and power of evil, and hindrance of good. They sought nothing but their own credit. But there was One who put them to a loss in their shame. Indeed the question was one of confusion and helplessness. No discernment, no power of judging, nor, if evil as they alleged it, power to hinder it. They come to demand from Him. They condemned what was the source of His power and authority. It assumed indeed authority on their part, but demonstrated total want of power. It also demonstrated their want of interest in, and insensibility to good. A conscience toward God would have honoured the righteous zeal of God's house, love of truth received His teaching, as bowed their hearts too before the testimony of His miracles. But the jealous question: "Who gave thee this authority," marks where all their interest was. Authority ill placed cannot bear power if accompanied by ever so much goodness and truth. But this is the ecclesiastical spirit always, when the spirit of mere service is gone. The Lord appeals at once to their conscience, when they dared not own or disown, and thus rested self-condemned, for this authority is, after all, dependence. It is also of mercy to us that the Lord's appeal puts all question of miracles aside, for John did no miracles, but all he said was true, and wrought in the power and testimony of the Spirit. There was no principle in them confessing their incapacity to judge a matter which concerned the whole nation from God, which all the people bore witness to (because it bore to Him really). The Lord declined to recognise their authority. But in all this there is a much more open taking of a place by the Lord. He does not hide Himself, and go out of the temple; the ministry was ended, the crisis come, and full testimony must be borne. He sits there publicly in the temple teaching, and owns and silences the chief priests and elders when they come to Him, yet never assuming anything, nor giving up His place of meekness, but knowing how to deprive them of all power to act by revealing their real place and nothingness to themselves by themselves, for He had the key of conscience. This is more or less ours according to our measure in the Spirit, so that all our adversaries should be ashamed.

293  - 9. The Lord by presenting a case, in which through want of integrity they had to avow their utter want of capacity to direct the people of God, having entirely set aside these rulers, yet by themselves, assuming nothing to Himself, and refusing nothing in them of which they had the form, but having their own avowal of incapacity, yet as we have seen in a far higher tone than of old, for the time for judgment, the judgment of truth, was come, proceeds to announce to the people the real state of the case, and instruct them, for He could, of the result, and of their conduct, God's judgment of their conduct. Silencing the rulers did not set aside the power of evil, though it might prove the evil, for it was not the time now to vindicate the right, nor execute judgment, though the case was clear. If they did not render the good, nor discern the good, they would seek to get rid of all testimony and claim to it, and make good their security in evil, if they altogether rejected, as they failed to produce, good and righteousness. Their responsibility was thus doubly complete in evil, failure to render, and violent rejection of all claim of God.

294  - 13. What affecting patience! God is, as it were, at a loss how to act, and get at the conscience and heart of those He had so favoured, and by one immense act tries if anything can recall them to a sense of their position, but it did but bring out the evil. "My beloved Son" - the Lord presents what was in God's mind. How He acted from it, and from His estimate, as it were, of such ways, not from the wretched selfishness and rebellion in which the heart of men, of His favoured people, was plunged, in such love to them that He will venture all on the hope to reclaim them, for He loved His people! It was not here question of purpose in the act, though God's character and purpose really go together. He reveals one by the accomplishment of the other. But here it was responsibility flowing (as it ever flows) from the fullest revelation of God's character, acting generously, shall I say, after the manner of men, on the generous expectation or hope of sensibility, capacity to feel in others if not good. "I will send my beloved Son." How should One, perfectly good, estimate the deep malignity of impotent but pure evil and malice? As Judge surely He will and does, but God acts so as to produce, by the real demonstration of His character, the fullest responsibility in that which He presents to man. The life-giving power of His grace is another thing, and is in His hand, and He accomplishes, as He has fully provided for it, in Jesus, His death, His life. But He lays the ground of responsibility acting in love, and that by what has withal the highest claim on our obedience, subjection, affection, and respect - He sends His Son, under this character, His heart going forth in doing it. "What shall I do? I will send my beloved Son." So did God to this unhappy and self-destroying people, whom He had taken from the iron furnace, and now dealt with in the last and highest sources of His patient love. But all in vain; for what is the heart of man? That well of corruption and selfishness, the slave of Satan, and wilful only, in its enmity to God.

295  - 14. "That the inheritance may be ours," characterises the whole principle. It is the source of their ways and action, and so of the world. They reject Him, just as having no right or business in the vineyard, and then kill Him. Necessary judgment follows. They felt the force of this, and, involuntarily, as it were, cry out: "God forbid." Such were none of their thoughts. Poor people! However involved in the ruin and sin, they were far from wishing the results. No! Israel was not thus to suffer, and be set aside. Their heart could look for no such thing; it dung, in fond though untrue associations, round the name of their glory. "The vineyard given to others" rung upon the heart of a Jew. The Lord felt this, entered into this awakened feeling, this involuntary "God forbid." His heart echoed this in a sense, and He fixed His regard upon them. "Looking upon them," He said, "What is this then that is written, The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner?" Is it not prophesied that the builders will do thus? They had not denied the justice of the conclusion, but its character had produced, when presented to them, the shock expressed in the exclamation. The Lord from the word, they thus now susceptible, proves the fact on which that judgment hung. He adds on the authority of His own, now judging, word, for He plainly declares things to them at this period; it was faithfulness, needed faithfulness at such a period. "Everyone falling on that stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall it shall grind him to powder." A general and full statement abstractedly accomplished in more than one instance. The Lord in the plainest terms declares the judgment now on His rejection, for everywhere He appears as the Superior. He who fell on the Stone, this Stone of stumbling, would be broken, as many did then, the nation did then. They stumbled at the stumbling Stone. On the individuals who rejected, the Stone fell. And so at the end, wherein also the apostate Gentiles will have part, and a chief part. It was a general principle, destruction, judgment, breaking to pieces as to their actual condition, if they stumbled at it, as the nation did in their ignorance. But when Christ fell in judgment as on that race, as on the anti-Christian confederacy, and specially anti-Christ himself, and the false prophet, it should be utter confusion and ruin. Thus presented as Messiah, the Lord, the King, Satan would seek to entangle the Saviour in questions of the supremacy of Caesar. All wickedness was in the question, for he used the extent and effect of their guilt (which they resisted in pride) to entangle and destroy the righteous. The subjection of God's people to Gentiles was indeed an evil, but who had brought them there? But at least they thought He should offend against Caesar, or lose His reputation with the people. They saw clearly the parable was against them, while the people only cared for the sorrowful announcement, in a certain sense with a just, at least natural feeling. We see their object, the object of these wicked men. They could not take hold of His words before the people. May grace give holy and just influence over the people! It is the only holy resource against the authority and subtlety of the leaders of a system opposed to God. It was this in service to God, and not attacking them which distinguished the Lord, and the apostles too. Satan humbles himself, that the bands of the poor may fall into the hands of his captains (Psalm 10: 10), and the Lord's servants may at least do the same in grace, that they may be delivered. The wisdom of the Lord's answer is too obvious to need comment. He was not come then to deliver the nation from Caesar. He could not, for they rejected Him. In adding: "The things of God to God," they were condemned in all their ways, while in saying: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's," He left them in the position into which their guilt and sin had brought them, and where their guilt kept them; for how delivered from Caesar, when they rejected Messiah, the Son of the Most High, their God, come in mercy and lowliness to enter into their sorrows? Was He to deliver, according to their mind, rebels, to sanction them in their rebellion? That were not mercy, for it was rebellion against God their Lord and Saviour. He leaves, therefore, the nation, and leaders in their condition, only fully warning the people.

296 It is interesting to observe the constant use of this term: "The Stone" relative to the Lord; it is consecrated to this purpose. In Isaiah 28 we have Him declared to be the Stone laid in Zion, foundation and judgment against the evil Jews who made their alliance with Antichrist and evil. In chapter 8: 14, He is the Sanctuary, but a Stone of stumbling and rock of offence. In Psalm 118, as here cited, His rejection by the builders of the Jews, and exaltation. In Zechariah, He is the Foundation of the Lord's house in the all-discerning purity and vigilance of the Spirit. Trace also there "eyes of the Lord," which here form part of the foundation, for otherwise, if the perfect discernment of evil and righteousness were not there, how should He maintain the foundation of Jehovah's house, and receive Jehovah's blessing? Here, because He had this, He is rejected by the builders, for they were judged, for indeed it tried all things. In Zechariah 4: 7, 9, 10, as Headstone, we find the house by the same finished. In Daniel 2, as we have seen it, a Stone of judgment, as of stumbling for Israel, and also of foundation and blessing. It is ever as the Stone of judgment on the whole Gentile power. Here, in Luke, it falls on Jews at least; it is put generally "On whomsoever" as on Gentile. In Peter, though writing to Jews indeed, yet in them, familiar with this type or symbol of Christ, we find it the Foundation in them of the Church, and we withal however living stones built on it, for there is always this difference.

297  - 20, et seq. We have in these passages, not, as in Matthew, a successive judgment of the different classes of Israel, but a clear transition from the Jewish system and estate to the heavenly economy and privileges. Having pronounced the judgment on the husbandmen, and declared what the power of the rejected Stone would - they, understanding the application, for judgment reaches the conscience of the wicked, send instruments to entangle Him in His speech before the people. His answer, which left them silent, was however of the last importance. It left the subjection of Israel to the Gentiles entirely where it was; a fact of the greatest possible importance, allied to the rejection of the King Messiah. But in few and simple words, they are left there. They had rejected Him, and He broke His staff, and the poor of the flock would understand that it was the word of the Lord. And it rescued the things of God entirely from the question of Caesar's power over the Jews. This was a fatal judgment for them, for all their relation and association with Messiah, their Jewish hopes, did hang on this deliverance, and the things of God, on Jewish principles, demanded nationally national deliverance. But the staff was really broken, and He owned them not at all. They, in their madness, loathed Him, and His soul abhorred them. In the bitterness of their need and darkness, they, unhappy people, had, with more truth than they were aware of, to cry out: "We have no king but Caesar," and they pronounced therein their own judgment. It was an awful thing for a Jew to say.

298 After the setting aside thus of the Jewish economy, there is the introduction of the resurrection economy of fellowship with the Lord, or the state of that world and the resurrection - children of God and children of resurrection. And then, after some of the scribes owning the power of the truth in His word, at least with their understanding, and all being now hushed by the wisdom of Him who spake as never man spake, surely it was so, the Lord takes up, in an allusion to one of their own scriptures, not merely the state of the raised faithful, but the nature of the intervening economy as to its basis, before the judgment of the Jewish people, Jehovah saying to David's Son and David's Lord: "Sit on my right hand till I make thy foes thy footstool," revealing the state of the risen, and intimating the position of Messiah, and the ground of the delay of judgment: "Sit on my right hand till." He proceeds then, notwithstanding the applause of the scribes, to the separate instruction of His disciples, beginning with warning against them, though perhaps there might even be a remnant there also.

- 27. It is evident that the Sadducees connected the resurrection with the letter of the Jewish economy. When the pain of its introduction is over, man's heart which loves a large self, and that which attaches itself to his position, attaches all to the economy in which his glory is. It is not the Word, or the revelation of God to the conscience, but the lazy honour of circumstances, in which we are, which requires no faith. The Lord transplants it at once into another economy and dispensation, and the difference between the two is distinctly marked. There was a great general principle; "this world," and the introduction of the resurrection kingdom and glory (by the rejection of Jesus by the Jews) threw necessarily all the Jewish system, as the Gentiles, into a common "that world." It belonged to this life, this nature, this world and its principles. But there was "that world" to which the resurrection from amongst the dead belonged, which stood in the power and nature of a quite other life. Those who had title to it were children of God, being born by the power of resurrection, the energy of the divine life communicated through Him in whom was life, whom death could not hold, but who had power to lay down and to take up. Both demanded the same power of the Life of God.

299 There was a world for the fallen Adam, heir of death, and interests, and principles which belonged to it. There was a world for the Second Adam according to the principles, and objects, and character of that power of life which was manifested in His resurrection, and in which what was suited to One that had passed into it by the condemnation of His death, the annihilating by His death of all that flesh was heir to, and in a new life which had no association with the springs of joy of fallen Adam - suited to the risen Lord, and His co-heirs through grace would be found. They also are children of resurrection. Fallen man cannot be child of God. Innocent man there is none. All must be begun afresh by that which justified all of God in the condemnation of the old, told the truth of its state, and yet produced those who were subject to it, according to the energy of Him who had removed every defilement in the power of a life which necessarily had its own character and its own desires. A new world, and a Second Adam were needed to accomplish the glory of God in a benevolence and excelling worthy of Him, and that Adam must be His Son, for who else could it be? And that world, and that Adam were in resurrection, and children of God in a higher, better, infallible shape.

The only question which arises on it at all is what room it leaves in its testimony for the existence of men in the flesh during the period of "that world," and it does not seem to me to touch that question. On the other hand, the state of the departed as the final state of the believer is entirely negatived by this passage. The existence of man is adduced as proof of the necessity of his resurrection, and while this continued existence is asserted as life not to man visibly indeed, but to God, the idea of that state as a recognised state of continuance is not even supposed. Moses intimated the resurrection in saying God was the God of Abraham, when Abraham was, according to man's thought, dead. A Sadducee saw nothing beyond this life. The word of the Lord revealed another, but it was a resurrection one, not a vague, uncertain continuance of something which continued already, but of which the continued existence of those who were dead before God was the pledge and proof. And this was owned in the word of the Lord: "I am the God of Abraham." Further, the Lord intimates that this was no extraordinary revelation of the prophets, no peculiar effect of a dispensation now introduced, though this might be avowedly based on the truth now revealed. It was not only a truth, but the economy was based on this truth, for man in his state of nature was treated as lost. It rested on the primary revelation given to the people of God, when the relation in which He stood towards those first called out from the world was revealed. Moses intimated it. It lay at the root of all Israel's real hopes, for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob could not participate with Israel in the hopes of Israel, unless they were raised from the dead. In sending Moses to call Israel out of Egypt, God declares that He is the God of Abraham, etc., thus indicating that the promises of God rested for accomplishment for a future dispensation, in which these fathers would have part, and consequently there would be resurrection of the dead. The manner and order are not intimated. They might be raised to have part here below, not the same part, but part, or else in the heavenly places, or all might be raised. But this is not entered into here, but the great fact of a relationship with God which stood in a life in the power of resurrection, and this in the very earliest bases of Jewish promise and Jewish hope, the name of God, on which all their hope was based, for indeed they are beloved for the Fathers' sakes. The Law is but entered in by the bye.

300 All heresies touch the foundation when judged by the Spirit of God. That God was the God of Abraham, was the foundation of Jewish hope and Jewish promise. That God was the God of a dead man that did not exist, was folly. If all lived to Him, which was true, yet if it was merely his spirit in heaven, he as a man was under the power of death, and there could be no association whatever with Israel or the promises, and hopes of man thus put separated for God's earthly people. The patriarchs must rise again. It stood, as we have said, as the link of the Name God took, and Israel's hopes. When these hopes were centred in David, the sure mercies of David convey to the mind of the apostle, by the Spirit, the same necessary conviction in its accomplishment in the resurrection of Jesus, in whom these promises were to be fulfilled. Here the necessity of resurrection, and the continuous life which proves and assures it, are mentioned in the same sentence. It is exactly the principle of the apostle in 2 Corinthians 5, though the order be inverse, for here it is the revelation from what God was - there the consequence of what man was heir to and assured of, the nature and ground of his inheritance, and the conclusion drawn to the intermediate life, here from God's nature, and promise, and the intermediate life revealed.

301 Having thus based the promises of God, and that even in their expression to Abraham, or at least as in relation with Abraham when making Himself the God even of earthly hope and earthly promise, the Lord proceeds to lay the foundation of it all in the glory of His Person, which, necessary when searched into, set the glory above the earth, and introduced principles, which were not Jewish, and which in fact had their accomplishment in the rejection of Christ by Israel, accomplishment founded on the plain manifestation of the incapacity of man to be blessed here below in relationship with God, but which had its source and firmness in the divine glory of the Person of the Messiah, making Him capable of sitting on the right hand of God, His perfect accomplishment of His Father's will, and of all the counsel of God in obedience, having glorified God fully on earth, which rendered Him qualified in strict and necessary righteousness to take His place there, and thus while righteously owned meanwhile, prove the case and position of those who had rejected Him who came in the fulfilment of their own hopes and prophecies here below, and by abundant mercies should have attracted the heart of man, let his hope or his ignorance be what it might. But learning, not ignorance, formed the barrier, for Christ made His way to the heart of the ignorant; learning made its difficulties for vanity's sake. To these learned it was that the Lord presented a question which, while it rested on the most important question of their religion, really condemned, or had its accomplishment in their entire condemnation. The Lord cites not this till they are in this state of condemnation, and signalises this state by the citation. It placed Messiah in a heavenly state, the Jews in the place of enemies. While the Lord however proves the entire incapacity of the scribes to instruct the people, by their ignorance of the most important point of the whole system of Jewish truth, He condemns them, as is ever the case, before the people on the plainest points of hypocritical conduct.

302  - 35. This is exceedingly plain. Note also the life of the righteous is evidence of their resurrection, quod nota; therefore their resurrection of their life. This utterly destroys the notion (unbelieving, I think) of those who feign that the souls of the just are not properly alive till the resurrection, and the appearing of Jesus. They are indeed confounding the whole specialty of revelation in this matter, as well as unbelievingly denying the believer's hope, to wit, to be with Christ alive on leaving the body. Also it is expressly affirmed here in the statement of the blessed Lord, "For for him all live," in a distinct and revealing way, in which the "for him" has great force, for indeed they are not manifested. And here we may compare John's discovery in due time of "the souls of those beheaded," Rev. 20: 4. Note also, though there we have only those under the Gentile dispensation, here we have both, nay the conclusion drawn from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then laid upon its general necessity, for indeed they deprive the Lord of half His kingdom, or else make Him a God of the dead, who disbelieve that those who are dead are asleep till the resurrection. Nay! but let us rather believe that, whether we die we die unto the Lord, so that whether we live or die we are the Lord's. For indeed the thing could not be, for if we did not live to Him we should never live again, nor be the same persons. And the idea of the soul's sleeping is nonsense. But we believe that them that sleep in Jesus shall God bring with Him. In a word it is mere unbelief.

Luke

J. N. Darby.

<46004E>302

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Luke  21

All the wealth which sustained the outward service of God passed for nothing. The Lord looked at the real devoted love of the heart there was to Him, and to His service. There is much to be learned yet from this passage. There may be a very evil system, a system now judged, and a sincere soul minister to it most acceptably, but then the Lord judges not the least according to the system, but according to the principles of that righteousness and grace which distinguish it from the system, and by which the system was even judged and condemned. He knows how to separate the intention of the individual and own it, while by that itself He judges the whole state of that with which the individual is associated. The difference of giving one's living, and one's superfluity, is evident. One may, when self is satisfied, compliment God with presents, and make it minister to self. But she who gives her living gives herself, devoted all to God, and depends on God; the whole is in action towards God, in devotion and in faith. The two mites were the most perfect expression of it, for need and everything to hinder it was there, and the applause of men, and the pride of the donor could find no place here. It was true love to God, and confidence in Him; for Jewish splendour it had little worth.

303 The account which the Lord gives in this gospel of the sorrows of Jerusalem is also much more allied to the simple fact of the judgment on the nation, and the change of economy; consequently, although there be clear reference to what arrives at the end in the latter day, much more to the then present time, and setting aside of Jerusalem than in the other gospels. Certain remarked the beauty and riches of the deposits of the temple. The Lord declared that all these things should be destroyed. This declares the judgment to fall on all the outward wealth of the temple, and the whole outward relationship of God with it, as the smallest act of grace was preferred to it all in what preceded. The question in reply also, here observe, extends itself only to the fact of the destruction, and consequently, in what follows, we have the judgment on the nation taken as a whole from the time of its then destruction till the times of the Gentiles (with whom, or the economy of whom at least, this gospel so much occupies itself) be fulfilled. All is taken together. Jerusalem trodden under foot till then. And indeed otherwise it would have been imperfect, for though to the Jews the existence of Jerusalem and a temple, whatever their infidelity, evidently made the greatest difference, and this will have existed at the two periods of national judgment by the Gentiles, and national judgment with the antichristian Gentiles by the Lord Himself - for so great as that is the difference - yet to the Gentiles all was one long scene in relationship to the Jews. Jerusalem was, is, and will be, then trodden down of the Gentiles till their times are fulfilled, and that by the judgment of the Lord.

We may remark, if the Lord have cast away His delight and desire in the earth, and broke the band, then it is not great marvel if to us it must be broken which nature and habit have formed for our ease, pleasure, or aggrandisement. The manner of the Lord's address is also much more general here - certain said - and though much applies to those that were faithful, the distinction is more between Jews and Gentiles than disciples and Jews. The scribes are denounced as evil, but the nation, the people are addressed as (men) listening. The sign given here is in no wise "the abomination of desolation," a prophetic sign of evil, but an historical fact - Jerusalem encompassed with armies. Its desolation was then nigh. The days of vengeance then had place, and the time of testimony was closed, for there is a difference in the character of tribulation, the trials of the faithful, and the judgment of the evil, and evil-doers - both may be by means of men. With this, though the distinction may require the watchfulness of spirituality, the saints have nothing to do, as is evident. If they eat and drink with the drunken, no marvel if the evil overtake them, even if they be saved so as by fire.

304 The progress towards Jerusalem would be gradual. It would at last be the centre of these operations, but many tumultuous waves would toss in flux and reflux before that, but the end was not immediately. It is not in this gospel said when the end should be, because the precision of the latter days is not entered on, but there was another subject apart. Nation should indeed rise against nation. There would be signs, frightful sights from heaven. But before all these things, there would be hostility against them before Satan would raise up the tumultuous waves of the nations to overwhelm the once-beloved, and by him therefore hated city, left to judgment. He would seek to destroy the testimony which the Lord would certainly send in the devoted country first. But the disciples were to continue notwithstanding all this, or their sufferings, to render their testimony, untroubled by rumours, undismayed even by death, while the unhappy devoted city, where the testimony yet was, filled up the measure of its iniquity; see Matthew 23: 32. But the Lord's eye was ever on them; He would permit the trial, but He had counted the hairs of their head, not one of them would be lost. It was a time of appointed trial and testimony. There must be suffering, for they were evil and rebellious. There must be testimony, for He was good. But this from the very nature of it, for it was a final effort of goodness, could not last, and the sign to the disciples that judgment, the time of judgment was now come on His people was, Jerusalem the beloved city now encompassed with armies. Its desolation now approached; they were then to flee, not to return. They were days then of vengeance. All that was written was to be fulfilled. They have not ceased yet, but will have indeed a much more signal fulfilment.

305  - 18. The Lord's mind must have been in a very different world, to say: "They shall kill some of you, but there shall not a hair of your head perish."

I see four instructions very distinctly here, in two distinct parts on two distinct grounds. The first general - the danger of the effect of what passed in seducing or bewildering them. The second, the actual trials or difficulties they would find themselves in; the trials the Remnant were in by their faithfulness, and the trials the nation were in by their unfaithfulness. First, "See that ye be not led astray, for many shall come," etc.; verse 8. Secondly, "When ye shall hear . . . be not terrified," for "the end is not immediately." "Then he said to them," such and such things will come, but before all these things you yourselves will be in trial and affliction, judged, put to death, but I will assist you. "By your patient endurance possess your souls." Fourthly, "Let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains," etc. "For these are days of avenging," etc. Then the Lord proceeds to pronounce and describe the time of judgment and vengeance. But besides, it was not merely a judgment on the Jews, but on the Gentiles also, for the powers of the heavens, the sources of authority were shaken as in Haggai and Hebrews 12. "The habitable earth" (oikoumene) here is the scene in question, the responsible organisation of the earth before God (the Lord). And then they would see the Son of man coming with power and great glory. Consequently, when these things, terrible to the children of men, began, they should lift up their heads for their redemption drew nigh. For the judgment of the world is the deliverance of the Remnant. When the grounded staff (decreed rod) falls, it is with tabrets and harps.

These things, it seems to me, are in general, i.e., when the signs which marked Jerusalem's judgment, and man's confusion, and efforts, and terror, began to show themselves, they knew the end, and discerned their character. Men were astounded and amazed because they did not see the end, and trembled as they were dragged along to some awful and unknown conclusion. For principles were at work which dragged them, they knew not how, along whether or no. The Lord's coming disclosed all the scene to the believer, the disciple. Redemption here shows clearly earthly disciples, for earthly deliverance by judgment here, not the Church. The Lord in mercy turns the terror of man into a sign of the deliverance of the disciple, for it is terrible to man, to flesh, to see all things breaking down from under it, all props going. The Lord's coming met all, while it separated entirely from all.

306 We have further here a remarkable evidence that the kingdom of God is not the gospel of grace, for when they see all these things, they are to conclude that the kingdom of God is nigh. Whether it be the first destruction of Jerusalem, or that of the latter days, it is evident that the power of the gospel was extended far and wide before either in fact. The manifestation of its influence declined rather from that time, as we see in the later epistles, and in the addresses to the Churches in the Apocalypse. But the things which they saw here were signs like the budding of the trees, and the kingdom of God evidently at the coming of the King, when God Almighty takes His great power and reigns. That there was a partial analogous judgment in the destruction of Jerusalem is true, which introduced the sorrows of the Jews in the time of vengeance, and the treading down of Jerusalem, but it is evident from verses 25-28, that the signs introduce the Son of man in His kingdom. If it be asked, What then is "this generation shall not pass" until all take place? If the whole scene be viewed as one which the Lord does - Jerusalem trodden down of the Gentiles till in fact it was so - as a period, but viewed as one, the generation is viewed as one also, as in Deuteronomy 32, "I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end." The long suspense before their end alters not the position of the generation. It passes in few words in its great character - Jerusalem trodden down - the Lord's face hidden. The Lord has provided for His then disciples in what was needful, but in the written word also for the like times to come. Still, though the principle be always true, it is evident that verse 34 applies to a day coming on the earth - those dwelling on the face of all the land or earth. The privilege is to escape the judgments and stand before the Son of man. This is purely Jewish - before the Son of man coming here below - though the character of the address be more general and discipular, as in Matthew more addressed to Jews, here rather to disciples, though about what should happen to Jews, there to Jewish disciples.

307  - 33. There is much solemnity in this expression. It is evident that deeper interests than a casual change as to Jerusalem, or its capture were in question. But Jerusalem was the beloved city, the city of the Eternal, hedged in by a thousand privileges, sustained by a confidence which rested on these privileges, on ancient hopes, and present prosperity. But what had made it so? The word of the Lord. And His word now judged it with all this fortification of hope to rest in. All passed before the word of the Lord; they were no better than the scoffers in 2 Peter 3. They might be shut up in darker bondage by a carnal confidence in forfeited privileges, for the effect of faith is to discover the sin against privilege, not in sin to reckon on its constancy, but to seek its enjoyment in repentance. But now, in the day of their visitation, they would not, and their prosperity, and their continuance, in which they rested, passed as the cloud of the morning, and found no place, nothing to sustain it. Yet, as Apostle of mercy, the Lord yet returned to give testimony, walking in the day, but His resting-place was as where He was ready to depart, the point whence He went, and where His feet shall stand in that day - patient in service, at night separate from the judged and devoted city.

Thus also with greater ease, now devoted Himself, Judas accomplished the service to which he had given himself up to the chief priests. Thus also by His continual teaching in the temple, His position was forced upon the chief priests and scribes, who became null by the power and authority of His word and presence. It was not a movement for applause, but authority on the conscience. Jesus had not thus put Himself forward before; He had taught when He came up, but had retired and gone to Galilee, to Ephraim, etc., but His time was now come to be delivered up. He stands prominent before Israel, and yet separated from it. The attention of the people was remarkably drawn to His teaching, for everything was evidently drawing to a crisis, and the priests must get rid of Him, if He were not to lead all the people after Him. But the Lord was not to reap His harvest; it had been too poor here. Here this grain was to abide alone, however fully ripe and perfect. But, withal, vast preparation had been made for the manifestation of a people by the Holy Ghost; we are apt to forget this sometimes. But God does all things in their season. But if the influence on man was such as to at once increase the desire and the difficulty to get rid of Jesus, Satan, the hour being now come in which this was permitted, takes his part that the cup of wickedness may be full, and sorrow on either side at the moment of the memorial of God's great deliverance of the people, and this Victim must be offered, which should fulfil and replace for ever that of which the other was but type.

308 Luke  22

- 3. We have here another example of the generality with which Luke speaks as to the dates of circumstances. Satan entered into Judas. This was what was morally necessary here to present; the particularities of it were not so here. Satan put it into Judas' heart at this time, and entered strictly into Judas after he received the sop. The general fact in its full bearing was all that was important here. All this was Satan's own work, whoever the unhappy instrument - one of the twelve - one nearest to Jesus. And then the rulers of the people, under Satan's guidance, agree in the awful crime of this terrible accomplishment of iniquity - it needs not to say anything.

I find yet in the midst of the most perfect abstraction from all worldly acceptance and honour, the Lord, passing into the perfection of His suffering, is enabled, as it were, by being entirely absorbed into those that owned Him from the effect of His patience and lowliness on the people, for they rejected Him, into the counsels of the Lord and God's thoughts concerning Him, to act naturally with the authority and manifested dignity which belonged to His Person, and was the subject of those counsels. The more He is rejected of men, the more He is thrown into God's thoughts respecting Him. It is always the path of faith, sometimes painful but always glorious in result. It depends on what is, for indeed if what is in us is too excellent for that through which we move, it will be rejected and even hated by the spirit which lusteth to envy.

But then God (of whom it is) will give it its place, and so manifest His justice, His righteousness. Grace does this in us; in Christ it was what He really was in Himself. This was also necessary at the end, to vindicate His true glory, and their evil, and make us feel where we are in this scene - this scene which stands utterly alone in heaven and earth, in all ages, and that the light of His true glory, even here below, might be cast upon and give their true colour to the darkness into which He was now entering for sin, but of grace. And what calm and peaceful dignity! It is no effort, nothing to display a character. All yields before the unwitnessed authority of this rejected and despised of men, all but that to which it had been most manifested and revealed, the unrenewed heart of man. How little does the Lord leave His simplicity! And yet in what heavenly and divine dignity is all He needed led to form itself around His will, to manifest His divine knowledge of all things. To this householder there was One, "The Teacher," honoured in his obedience, though unknown; to every eye it seems but One. We have withal these traits at the close of a wider work than was manifested, wrought by the Saviour on earth. It was not His part to reap it here below - the corn of wheat must die - but others did where He had sowed. It is the part of the Holy Ghost to manifest. Christ laid the foundation, and the Lord, by the Holy Ghost, added to the Church. Yet withal it was the Hellenists who first were called in; the dwellers of Jerusalem thereon addressed by Peter.

309  - 14. But now we come to the expression of all the Lord's mind on this scene on His now position, deeply to be weighed. "The hour was come." How the Lord's mind must have been bent upon the subject of His departure, and have felt the weight, and all the importance of it!

- 15, etc. The Lord, it seems to me, distinguishes here between the Paschal lamb and the wine, and both from the institution of the memorial of His deliverance of His people by death. First, He desired to eat the Passover, and He did not partake of the wine. In partaking of the Passover, it was the last and deep testimony of God's faithful love to Israel as His people delivered from Egypt, and the Saviour's entering, in the fullest individual way, into all the feelings of a ransomed Jew before God, the feelings and interests of the people as such. He felt for and with Israel, and that as one of themselves, too, until by His rejection they stood on other ground, and divine favour passed into another scene by the resurrection, and He became the Substitute, Himself the true Paschal Lamb. They rejecting their own mercies, their history, as so received, ended in His death.

310 But He never failed to the end, and that we may add even to the Cross, His enemies had to send a message after Him to countervail the effect of the intercession: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." But His disciples held the foremost rank on this ground of fellowship. They were happy, they His friends among Israel His people, as we have Hushai the king's friend. With them specially He had desired this last testimony of parting affection and love. He had desired it with desire. For while this was blessedly human, yet was it God manifest in the flesh, and it is good ever to remember that there is more desire in Jesus for the communion or expression of His love, for fellowship with us, than in us for it with Him. His heart was with His disciples, and He longed for this last expression here of His affection, His human but real and, in perfection and eternity, divine affection for them He wished to be with, and, as affection ever does, find this occasion of its expression towards them. While He thus expressed His thoughts and feelings in affection to them, He was ever really the Nazarite among His people, and now, externally and painfully yet in the fulness of perfect love, took this character upon Him. Blessings were to be upon the head of Him that was separated from His brethren.

- 18. This verse seems to present distinctly this Nazarite character of Christ, and it seems to me to imply that indeed this was always His character. He, in assuming manifestly this separatedness from sinners, gives us to understand that in truth it was always so. "I will not drink of this fruit of the vine" - 'I cannot have it in joy with you - take the blessedness of that which maketh glad the heart of God and man, here with man in his present state; God's kingdom must come first.' In a certain sense, as to dispensation with the Jews, the kingdom of God had come among them, but in the mind and counsel of God the kingdom of God was not come. Thus, He who was always the Nazarite in spirit and life, becomes avowedly and openly the Nazarite as to the joy of God in this world. It could not be - Oh! how true! as the world was. He had taken His farewell of Jewish sympathies and recollections with His disciples, with the deepest and truest feelings, in this last earthly Passover (He was to be the Passover now). The earthly joy could not be then, and He passes openly into the character of the heavenly Nazarite till the kingdom of God comes. If it be asked: 'Is not the kingdom of God come?' I answer: 'In a certain sense, yes, in Spirit.' And in this sense Jesus dwells with His disciples, and the Father also, and has communion and joy with them, and they, though they see Him not, with Him. They sit in heavenly places in Him. But for the earthly actuality of it, it is evident it is not come, and the joy therefore is not actually fulfilled. This principle of the Nazarite, and the separation from sinners and the earth, is found also in the Hebrews. "For such a High Priest became us, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens." The Lord is manifestly and openly separate from sinners, as He will return the second time: "Without sin." Still in Spirit we know Him perfectly, and as perfectly, and therefore more proved in nature separate from sinners when here below; and hence man and sin in the flesh condemned alike, while those one with Him are eternally and blessedly redeemed for brighter and better scenes, far brighter, better scenes, our hope and joy below. Thus also is the Lord declared "Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" - an expression of vast import!

311 The life of God in Man ever before Him, doubly proved by the resurrection, in Him in the power of it, by the Father in the acceptance of Him and all He was, by and in the resurrection, for the life of God is holiness, and power over death. He submitted to it, but it was not possible that He could be holden to it, nor derivatively, as united to Him, may it be for His now. But then the power is in Him, but a power by union; compare 2 Peter : 3, 4, in Greek. And this likewise should be and is in principle true in us now as manifestly in the resurrection; only in us as Christ is in us in power over a body of death, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus making us free from the law of sin and death, for God has condemned sin in the flesh by Jesus, but by Him also sacrifice for us because of it. We have it in sorrow because of our union with a condemned world by the flesh, as Jesus was in sorrow because of the state of the world around Him, whose sorrows He partook of in love. So the new man in us, and that as in an unredeemed body, proved so, and not changed by Jesus' resurrection, and united by this body to the fallen creation. Minister too of its woes, as He, only in feebleness, in love and intercession, at least in presenting its sorrows in the expression of the Spirit to God; see Romans 8. What a place of weakness but of glory, by grace, to be in! What a place for the drawing forth every possible sentiment towards God, and occasion of the unfolding all the riches of His grace, of His heart towards us! Christ perfect sustains us in all this above; and there is our power, and therein the capacity of feeling the sorrow for God, in love not in selfishness.

312 Thus then the Lord postponed His joy till the kingdom of God should come, which would take away and remove the evil, i.e., His joy with them as in the blessing of common enjoyment in the kingdom, for love could not do so then, and that was true really even as to them. The Lord having thus, in deep affection, joined in the last memorial with His disciples of Israel's redemption of old - having declared the impossibility of present earthly communion with them, with men and their joy, and separated Himself to God for them in love, till the kingdom of God should come, proceeds to institute for them the memorial of His better and surer redemption, of His dying, self-denying love which did all - the memorial of Himself, for He desired, and desires to live in the memory of those He has thus loved. It was not the Lord's Passover, but: "My body given for you." If He separated Himself now to God in His joy, it was not want of love to His people, to His disciples, for it was in the act of giving Himself for them He did so. Thus in death to all the former system, to the world in the condemnation of the world, and the breaking up of earthly Judaism, He founded in the evidence of perfect love, and accomplished redemption for those who were one with Him, the ground of a memorial of this better and eternal deliverance. This was the food of their souls. They were to eat it, as Israel the Paschal lamb, as the priests at their consecration those things wherewith the atonement was made.

- 19. With what touching simplicity and care for them does the Lord give them these symbols of His deep and infinite sufferings! He thought of them here entirely. As to the blood, the Lord gives not merely the fact of suffering, but an immense new principle. The new covenant is established in His blood - the blood of the everlasting covenant, through (in) which the Great Shepherd of the sheep is brought again from the dead. Here they are looked at, as to both parts, as disciples. It is not: "You and many," i.e., Jewish disciples and Gentiles. Old things were passed away in what was said in the previous part, and the Church was now viewed. His blood here is viewed as shed for His disciples, after the supper, for it was not in the light of intercourse here, or communion, but of the establishment of the covenant, of the new covenant for His disciples - the old things being passed, the expression of His love for them, though one of them was to betray Him. The passing away of the old made place for a better. When the Lord said: "New," that one word, as the apostle reasons, decided all on the old. It was sentenced, and for ever, and Israel, as in the flesh, with it, for it was the ground of their relationship with God. But then also was there a great principle of distinction. The blood of the old covenant sealed the undertaking of obedience by Israel in the flesh under the Law, the blood of the new the accomplishment of grace for the people who believed in Jesus by the Spirit: "In my blood which is shed for you." In fact this last principle of "Shed for you," is of all possible importance. It is the divine accomplishment of grace brought to light beyond all question with man or thoughts of man, the accomplishment of the counsels of God entirely proceeding from Him. The Jewish economy had been disposed of, enjoyment of visible communion postponed, and now the gift and efficacy of the blood of the Son of man, according to the counsels of God, for the disciples is laid as the one great basis of all dealing of the Lord with man. As to man's part in it, it was treachery and wickedness. "The Son of man indeed goes as it is determined, but woe unto that man by whom he is delivered up." It was given to them; He took it with them. This was just the difference. It was the memorial then of the basis of the new covenant in His blood shed for them that believed in Him. It was not a mere question of Judah and Israel, for the blood-shedding of the new covenant, while it received its accomplishment, admitted thus to peace all those who trusted in it. Further, how little of legal institution is in this revelation as to the Lord's supper. Its sense, import, and value is given, and there it is left to the faith, and love, and grace of the disciples to profit by it.

313 I return to remark that the Lord, in chapter 20, not only judges all classes among the Jews, but all the great subjects connected with God's relationship with Israel. First, their present state in competency to judge what testimony it was - of God or not; so that He had no reason to make them the judges of the credentials of His. They were superseded entirely. Then He judges. First, their own relationship with God as His vineyard, as established by Moses. They had rejected the prophets seeking fruit, and lastly the Son, to have the inheritance for themselves; the Lord would destroy them. In a word, we have Israel judged in its own relationship with God, and the Stone they reject set up; first stumbling on it the judgment passed already, then it falling on them, and whomsoever else, and grinding them to powder in the judgment to come. Next, we have their relationship with Caesar. Sin had placed them there, but they could, though authority was lost under Nebuchadnezzar, have given to God the things that were God's, and, humbled for their sins, to Caesar the things that were Caesar's, till God in grace interfered to deliver them by Messiah. The Lord puts them on the true ground, but leaves them where their sin had placed them, without deliverance. After the glory, He will judge the nations.

314 Next, He shows the resurrection, and, in its true character, the resurrection of the saints to be the key and power of the new position - God's thought and purpose from the first. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had their place in the kingdom thus. Lastly, He introduces that which laid the basis of it all, setting David's Son as David's Lord at the right hand of Jehovah on high, when rejected on earth. The word of God without power was the test at first which doctors could not judge, which the poor knew and owned as of God without a question, because they received it in their conscience by grace, as judged divinely by it - not judging it - for so man knows the Word. The power of the rejected Messiah, at the right hand of God as Lord, settles and gives its character to all at last.

Note in the rejection of Christ, and David's Son becoming David's Lord, we get what brings out the position of the two Adams. He does not take the place of David's Son in Israel according to promise, nor is it simply His divine title as Jehovah, for it is Jehovah who speaks to Him as rejected as Son of David down here. There He sits till His enemies be made His footstool, but He is Lord as set there by Jehovah. He will rule among His enemies, and He has drunk of the brook in the way, i.e., been humbled to dependent faith on God His Father

The first man would be as God, exalting himself, and is abased, and, in the full development of man as Antichrist, he opposes, and exalts himself above all that is called God, or worshipped, so that he sits in the temple of God showing himself that he is God, and pretends to mount yet higher, and set his throne above the stars of God, and be like the Most High ascending up to heaven, but he will be brought down to the pit. The Second Adam thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself and came down to the form of man - then was obedient unto death (as Adam was disobedient) even the death of the Cross; and God has highly exalted Him. It is not the man of creation but the Man of God's counsels, the Heavenly Man, exalted by God, Heir of all that God in His counsels has given to man, i.e., all things which indeed this Man has created as God, and inherits as Son. And now all flows out merely from God, as of course it does, but from thus Heavenly Man. Life has this character and place, righteousness also. The kingdom hereafter - He is gone there to receive it - the inheritance of all things according to Psalm 8. That is the source and centre of the whole condition of all God's ways in Man - His place with Himself, on which all else depends, for He has put all things under His feet. The Church is united to Him there by the Holy Ghost which He has sent down, and the Father in His Name. This is the keystone of all God's ways, His purpose as to all things; and our moral relationship has its character from this. It has the character, standing, and perfection of what God has wrought. It is the Second Man set on God's right hand, the self-humbled One, as the first or creation man was the self-exalter, tried in responsibility till Christ's death, and even after, to see if he would own the exalted One. Then adversary, shown in principle in the Jews, thereon set aside (and specially in Paul, pattern of Israel's mercy, and the witness of sovereign grace and the Church) and finally as Gentiles, and as man in the Antichrist, when the man of the earth will give place to the Heavenly Man now exalted, with God known by faith, then displayed to man, and setting aside all that opposes. Such are the first and Second Man or Adam - the self-exalting One, and self-humbled One.

315 Note, too, in the consideration or execution of the most terrible judgments, and to our mind on the largest scale, the Lord never fails to see the smallest proof and fruit of grace. In the midst of the change of the whole scene, and the establishment of the heavenly place and glory of the Son of man, and the pressure of all that was Jewish, He takes notice in grace of the two mites of the poor widow's simple hearted and devoted offering to her God. It is a blessed consideration.

316 Note, too, in chapter 21: 19, ktesasthe (possess) is something more than "possess," i.e., it is not possess what I have simply, but obtain, or, as here, keep, have, when you are in danger of not keeping, as, 1 Thessalonians 4: 4. Cod. R. has ktesasthai. Though we have little of it, it is a great lesson.

It is worthy too of remark that in Luke where the histories of the siege of Jerusalem and of the end are separated, the saying that: "This generation shall not pass till all be fulfilled," is applied not to the siege of Titus, but to the end, using the word "all." Note thus the use of "this generation" in chapter 21: 32. If, as is clear, coming after the times of the Gentiles proves that it is not the man's life-long period, successively, but the race in that moral state, it includes the whole time of the Gentiles.

Note, we have here the full wickedness of man in chief priests and Judas, and the worthlessness of man, even when right, in the disciples. And, in opposition to this, the divine and perfect grace of Christ, in answer to the wickedness, in giving Himself - His personal grace rising above all, however felt, in tender comfort and instruction to the disciples - and then the full owning of the fruit of grace recompensing it according to the largeness of His own heart, and the Father's counsels, in answer to the worthlessness. Besides that, we have, as regards the worthlessness, sifting, that we may know it, and, where self-confidence, this going far in utter failure, met, when judged, by perfect grace which healed.

- 20. Syr. and Cod: Verc. put verse 19 before 17, and leave out verse 20. "Which is poured out for you," it is to ekchunomenon, not to ekchunomeno. It gives the character.

- 28. A striking expression of the difference of the Lord's condition during His ministry and at the end may be seen, besides all already remarked, in this verse. "Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations," closing in verse 30. Then comes, prophetically, what was coming on, and the change, on to verse 37. Afterwards, as the Lord had foretold them, "they all forsook him" (not the subject of Luke) "and fled." This is in Matthew, and in connection with His service in Israel. The Shepherd was to be smitten and the sheep scattered. It is repeated in Mark. In Luke, as Son of man, He is "reckoned with the transgressors." The sifting of Satan is there - the question of the state of a soul and its preservation.

317  - 30. I do not think eating and drinking refers to any physical eating in the kingdom on earth, but their being with Christ in the glory in which He rules over the earth, and seated at His table as the King's accepted ones, and then, as such would naturally do, ruling over His subjects, and here in the most favoured position. The thought starts from verse 27. The eating and drinking after His resurrection has another object - to prove He was a real Man; compare Acts 10: 41. So Luke 24: 39, et seq.

The Lord then distinctly characterises the dispensation in which they were now to be placed. He being humbled, and that even to death, they were to walk now in the same lowliness, and not be at all as the world. No Jew, or Jewish grandeur was now recognised, for earthly grandeur was recognised among the Jews, but now it had passed, as it really was, as the rudiments of the world; so all their system, see Gal. 4: 9, 10. Therefore now the Lord speaks of Gentiles: "The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship," but you, my disciples, are not to be so. All this is not the part of God's peoples. Jewish recognition, as we have said, there is none. It is now "You," disciples, or the world, Gentiles. For the Jews were lost in the world, and He, who resumed the privileges and title of the people of God in His Person, was despised and rejected of men. The people had abhorred, and were about to crucify Him. Enmity and treachery would meet its reward. It were good for him who had delivered up the Son of man that he had not been born; his iniquity was not altered, nevertheless the Son of man went as it was written. Thus was needful morally, and in the counsel of God. His disciples must take the place where this set them. Uncertain of their own state on the one hand, as entirely feeble in the faith, and looking to themselves, but, as looking to themselves, justly distrusting themselves, desiring glory with Christ, as they ought, yet, as yet carnal, desiring it carnally and after the manner of the world, the Lord (the Holy Ghost not yet come to set them on wholly other ground) rectifies them in all this. First, greatness in the present position of His kingdom was to be the lowliest and the nearest to the despised and rejected Son of man. That was real greatness, considering how things stood morally before God, and that in the world which had manifested its enmity, and the true character of the heart which sought greatness in it by crucifying the Son of God. He in the world, for His whole life had been self-renunciation, He had humbled Himself. It was not only rejection by the world as if one was to wait for providence; in love He had done it for men, for them. He had humbled Himself, He had been among them as one that serveth. This was the answer, as to their position here below, to the question of their poor earthly and yet carnal hearts: "Who should be the greatest." And what a time to reason on it! What a thing is the human heart! Yet what blessed and gracious patience in the Lord! He was surely greatest, for He was, and He alone could, going alone, and lowest of all, into death. That was the character of their greatness. All other greatness, though under the form of being benefactors, was of this world. Further, as they knew not their own hearts in this, so neither on the other side, and the Lord comforts and blesses them in owning their fidelity in the highest fullest degree, miserable as it had been, adding the other part of the economical dispensation of God. They were to be low, and nothing, like Him, He being crucified and absent.

318 But the Lord owns their faithful continuance with Him while in His temptations. We know what this was in them when the dark hour really came - asleep, or fugitive, or denying Him - so were they sifted. Yet by grace they had continued with Him in the time of His humiliation and temptations, to which He had subjected Himself in His life here below, for man's sake. He owns and recognises this in them, who, with gracious ill-informed anxiety, thought one of themselves might betray Him. They believed His word, distrusted themselves, but knew not yet by the Holy Ghost the fidelity and safeguard of God. Further, though to be proved and suffer here as companions of Christ here below, they were to have a kingdom.

Here, in this dispensation, introduced by His death, conformity to His death and fellowship of His sufferings, but they who had been the companions of rejected Messiah would be the companions of glorified Messiah, and as His Father had appointed Him a kingdom and recompense of His humiliation and faithfulness, so He to them, and that with Himself. Then the joy and dominion and power would have place - the conviviality of the kingdom of the Lord, when all would be to His honour, and according to His holy will, His will "done on earth as it is in heaven." He appointed it to them, for they were His servants; they would be at His table in His kingdom. But the kingdom withal would be theirs. They would have special relationship with Him as Head of the earthly people, having been with Him in His rejection among the earthly people. The time was not yet come for this. He humbly, and full of grace, ate the Passover with them before He suffered, and passed from recognising the Jewish goodness of the Lord, into the suffering which became Him who should glorify God. He could not take the joy of the kingdom. They were to take what would have been the sign of it now as the symbol and memorial of His death - that was the basis of all true joy, the need which the state of things, of men, of God's people occasioned - then suffer with Him, but afterwards they would find again their place with Messiah as Head of God's people, the twelve tribes of Israel. Analogous blessing - gracious, and full of blessing is He who has called, and saved, and suffered for, and loves us - is in store for us. We shall have our cities for our poor, and miserable, yet highly-honoured service; but this was Jewish, for they were with Him in His Jewish humiliation as Messiah - that of which the Psalms are full. Thus God's part in the Jews, and in Messiah, would be owned, and they as in their ways will in the flesh set aside entirely, for both are here accepted and glorified in God, and rejected in man. They who have suffered with Christ, in Gentile service, will have their analogous glory, but they will never forget the blessing and ways of God to Israel His people, not cast away though stumbled and chastened for a season, and understand in Christ the reason and the riches of grace in it, the provoking of them to jealousy, and the reconciling of the world. What perfection of all gracious love in this trying hour! In truth the more the Lord is oppressed, and His heart, and inward feelings forced to expression, the more we find the sweet and tender, yet unfailing grace which was in Him, and the more proved and tried, the more known and tasted. To Him be all the praise of this great grace!

319 But other instruction as to the character of the flesh, ourselves, and the Lord, is to be drawn for us, as brought out of these circumstances. These disciples were the little Remnant of Israel, and Messiah the Lord (the only support of Israel) was rejected. Satan had his hour here against all that was owned of the Lord, against the Head of His people, all that was owned of God. So fared in measure the sheep, attached now ever fully to their Head not yet in power, but therefore the rather sifted though guarded. If the Shepherd was smitten, it was clear the sheep were to be scattered. Here if the Lord smote the Shepherd, Satan would take his occasion against the sheep; he had desired to have them to sift them as wheat; he would have his way, for the Lord knew His end in it, and its result and effect through grace, which Satan can never measure nor grapple with. So that all his efforts turn against him as to God's children. Power in them by the Holy Ghost was not yet manifested, nor they endued with it, for the Lord was not yet risen, nor glorified and His work accepted. Thus, further, as regards the flesh, i.e., their state, not natural, but as not yet having received the Holy Ghost, the effect of this sifting time of Satan's power would be shown, and what the flesh was in trial, for they were passing out of the guardianship of the flesh, i.e., the guardianship of Christ, the good Shepherd of them in their then state, just as they were, into conflict with Satan in His absence, by the energy of the Holy Ghost. And now, what the flesh was, and what this condition was into which they were entering, in contrast with His present care, was brought out to their knowledge and so conscience. Hence also he that had most energy in the flesh, forward, devoted and active, full of zealous affection, but confident, he stands foremost to the Lord's eye in the trial. Also the Lord loved him, "Simon, Simon," for He knew what Simon was, "Satan hath desired to have you, to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee." And here is deep instruction. All were sifted, scandalised at Christ that night, and fled, deserting Him. But he in whom the flesh was strongest, most earnest, and that withal in true affection, was sifted, and what the flesh was most fully proved, and hence the profoundest humiliation of all, and so source of strength to aid and strengthen others, for His strength is made perfect in weakness.

320  - 32. "When once thou hast returned back" (epistrepsas); see Psalms 19: 7 and 22: 3, Septuagint.

This the discovery of the flesh, the Holy Ghost not yet given, but in one truly loving the Lord, in Peter at Antioch, and Paul descended from the third heaven - we have it in those who had received the Holy Ghost, and that unchanged. But thus the Lord deals with it when there is confidence in the flesh; He lets it be sifted, and that, if need be, so as to produce a fall, that we may know what it is. But this is not His way but in extreme cases where the seal of the Spirit is given, but in the meantime He intercedes that our faith fail not. He does not take out of the trial which sifts, but He sustains in it that we may thoroughly know what the flesh is, where our force is, and that His strength is made perfect in weakness. But then there are two ways in which Satan is employed for our good in this respect. First, to prevent the evil, as in Paul, where there is an energetic nature, and the Lord for service has placed us where, by reason of the flesh, this nature is in danger, He counterbalances this by putting weakness and dishonour on the flesh, even externally if need be, i.e., letting Satan do it, who loves to torment if he cannot injure the children of God. Thus the flesh is made painful, when it would have been the seat of the action of what was enticing, and danger avoided. It was the case of the thorn in the flesh of Paul.

321 Also when it is simply the confidence and heady reliance on self, and the gift of the Lord has not been the occasion of stumbling, then Satan, naturally desirous of sifting the servants of the Lord, and dishonouring Christ's Name in them, presents an occasion of stumbling, and the Lord for the good of His creature does not hinder this, and His servant falls, i.e., the weakness of what he thought strong is made manifest to his conscience, and he acquires a painful but lastingly profitable experience. Had he heeded the Lord's counsel, it had not been necessary, but if they do not learn of Him they must learn what they are so as to be made distrustful of themselves, and feel the need of learning of and leaning upon Him. Yet, in the yet more patient exercise of His love, for even when His admonitions are despised, as here, He who knows the danger prays for His foolish disciple, and restores him to the consciousness of a love which he had been ashamed to own, but which therefore surpassed his thoughts, and to which he returned with immensely increased sentiment of its force, tenderness and constancy, and with fruitful shame of reliance on so base a self. Here Satan was not a rod, as in the other case, but as a tempter his work allowed for good. Thus by this deep, and deep-wrought, for it was terrible knowledge of self, and by consequence of our sole resource in God, he who stumbled thus and who knew the weakness and worthlessness of the flesh best, and the grace of God best, was capable by weakness felt and grace, best to strengthen his brethren. Thus the position of the flesh in the conflict with Satan, and Christ withal meanwhile interceding, was brought to light, not here noticing the Holy Ghost, because this did not change the nature of things, but was strength superinduced.

322 And how was this manifested in leaning wholly on God, as in Jesus, and in us by a clear and full discovery of the perfect evil and ruin of the flesh! "I know that in me." What is the just and due effect of the presence of the Holy Ghost? We are kept in the presence of God. Therein there is a distinct and full discovery by His presence of all that is in our heart, of all that is not of the light. The nature is judged in the presence of God, and by, and in understanding, and so receiving the grace that is in Him, and so we go before men in the grace which has displaced the evil in humbling us because of it. And thus we are humbled and fortified at the same time, and fortified in being humbled we judge ourselves because spiritual; and thus this external humiliation has neither occasion nor necessity, as when the flesh is not humbled it has. So that the effect of the presence of the Holy Ghost is not to falsify this state of things, but to render the manifestation of it unnecessary. But the nature which would have produced it is judged in its roots, judged in the heart because God is manifested. Thus there is no need that it should be externally manifested to the conscience, so that one has to appeal to divine knowledge to assert the good or divine life in us, for the divine presence and knowledge has been applied to the old man. Thus much for the judgment and manifestation, the contrast of the old man in the hour of the power of darkness. The details show all the contrast of the flesh in Peter with the blessed Lord, with the life of the Spirit. This gives us then the flesh left to the assaults of Satan, not introducing the Holy Ghost which governs, but does not change the realities of this state. It is given us here without that power that we may know what it is. Peter repeats his confidence, and the Lord predicts his fall - warning of no avail when the flesh has confidence in itself.

Then the Lord gives us the effect of this change from the companions of Messiah here, and His servants, witnesses in His absence; as to the circumstances, His earthly temporal guardianship which kept them for this world would be lost. For the preservation of the disciples and then, and the saints now is quite other. Then they were kept for earth - now for heaven. He kept them according to the place and system in which He exercised His power. Then "When I sent you without purse and scrip and sandals, lacked ye anything? And they said, Nothing." He provided according to His right and power for them here, though not for Himself, but now they were to be left to the difficulties and trials of a world where, the Lord absent, Satan governed and would raise opposition and alienation of heart around them. They would learn in the world, as regards men, as we say, to shift for themselves. They were left in face of Satan, the Lord absent in heaven, to partake of the suffering occasioned by the power to which He Himself was subjected, for it was to spring up as though He knew not how. They were not now the followers of Messiah among the Jews, and He yet not actually displaced by evil from His right, but the servants of the Lord in a world where the Lord was not, over which He had not yet assumed His power in governance, and where He was not known, though He had made it. They were left to its principles, i.e., to the effect of them in their walk. "For," saith the Lord, "this that is written must yet be accomplished in me." "He was reckoned with the transgressors," "for the things concerning me have an end"; they are not even in suspense - the will of God must be accomplished in them, and all have its end, for indeed here He was on ground which, though presented to man was impossible with God, man being a sinner. But thus all had an end. Their minds still rest on man's strength, not on Messiah crucified in weakness, and say: "Lord, here are two swords." I do not conceive that in saying, "It is enough," the Lord alluded to the number of the swords, more or less, but to their words, implying that they did not enter into His mind. They said enough to show that the Lord had no need to say anything more to them about it, and He closes His discourse, for indeed, for the whole Church, He had said all needed, for the time was come for Him to pass through all these things in Spirit first, and then indeed.

323 The Lord, possessing His soul in patience, goes as He was wont, acting on the ordinary motives of a life devoted already to God, and, come evil or come good, He could not walk better than to walk always with Him; He was wont to do that. The knowledge of the trouble and sorrow, however deep, changed nothing in this. He walked in the day and did not stumble - not insensible, not unaffected in heart and feeling, on the contrary deeply moved before God, and even before His poor disciples, for at the least there was truth there, but in the simple constancy of One who sought not Himself at all, but to do the will of and glorify Him who sent Him, whose Servant He was, and had made Himself, and the more high and perfect, the more completely and entirely Servant. He passes on His way in holy simplicity; what else had He to do here but to go on in this way? What a blessed example the Lord is here! In vain to say: "Of late the Jews sought to stone thee." A man, as we have said, that walks in the day, does not stumble, and His path and He was the day. His disciples followed Him, ignorant mainly of what was to come, but led by Him and thus far happy, not led intelligently for they were not yet strong enough for that, but led by Him, blessed in being His companions. But it was different from a guidance of the Holy Ghost, because it was not in the intelligence of His ways, but affection through grace and the operation of the Spirit in their hearts, and so led. Being there, His heart, full of instruction from the circumstances He was in, overflows in instruction to His disciples whom He loved. "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation." Then, though the Lord was to have witnesses and companions of His sorrow according to His love to them, He was to be alone with God. He withdraws to commune with, for there alone all could be said and told to Him, for it was between Him and His Father. The Lord does not say: "Enter not into sin," for it was not here the question. Satan presents a certain thing to act upon the flesh; we walk in the Spirit, all effect is lost. Is it by insensibility? No! but by superiority. Christ, in the discernment which watching, and so a life run with God gave (in Himself perfectly even as Man) knows by His communion with the Father, "All things that should come upon him," passes through all these things in communion with the Father. He had thoroughly gone through it in communion with Him, seen His will in it, and therefore when the evil came by man, it was not of man at all to Him; man and his doings was an accident in it, which was all that the flesh in us would see (save to murmur against the Lord), He was accomplishing in patience and in peace, a known will of His Father. Thus instead of entering into a temptation, He was in the highest exercise of spirituality, accomplishing the will of God in the most difficult circumstances, and the most perfect submission when it cost everything. In the presence of the opposition of Satan, of his terrifying from the path of obedience, the danger, meeting it in the strength of the flesh, not in the seductions of what is pleasant in life - then it is that watchfulness which realises our position before God, and prayer which communicates its whole operation on our nature to God, introduces us into the will of God in it; and the force of His known will, in obedience to which we are sustained by communion with Him, saves us from entering into temptation. This separating power of Satan from God, the sifting of the enemy, because the circumstances to us then are the simple occasion of accomplishing a will already known, and so much the more glorious as penible, and not a sifting and discovery of what is in us by the circumstances, for that has already in communion been done before God our Father. Besides, the strength of the Lord is then actually with us. And this is the force to me of: "Lead us not into temptation." It is not: "Lead us not into sin" - nothing so impossible as that our Father which is in heaven should do that; but He can lead us into temptation, i.e., to be sifted by the enemy, into the place where the flesh shall be exposed and crucified, when this is needful, because hardness, or lightness, or inattention to His patient warnings has supervened. He can lead us into temptation as the last and forced necessary means of self-knowledge and discipline, and it is great grace that the Lord will take this pains with us, but yet, seeing our weakness and the terribleness of the conflict with the enemy, and the holy fear, which becomes us, of falling, it well becomes us to pray that we may not be cast into this furnace, that the Lord may have no need with His thus humbled child. Satan is ever active, and he has, as it were, certain rights, and vast power now that sin is entered, if the children of God are not watchful to prevent his having occasion (for in the times of sifting a bad conscience tends to drive to despair) and do not walk in communion and dependence.

325 The flesh in its carelessness and undiscerning blindness meets the trial in distress and uncertainty, or carnal opposition, and falls, and Satan so far has gained his point, though the Lord may restore. If, on the other hand, trial be there, we have this model of our position before God - not proud heroism which despised the sorrow, the pain, and the danger, but entreaty to be spared the evil, casting itself on God for that, and spreading out its desire before Him in blessed and childlike confidence, which does not fear to tell all its sorrow and its feeling, but perfect submission and a desire that the Father's will, and not his, be done.

326 The Lord here was thoroughly Man, the Son of man. Angels, or an angel from heaven, appeared to Him, waiting on Messiah, strengthening Him. But the conflict of His soul was great. He felt all this, but it urged Him in the sense of what the trial, and terrible moment was, the relinquishment of Israel, of life, of all earthly and living accomplishment of the promises, of the sentence of death upon Him, of being brought into the dust of death, seeing what death was in His eyes before God, for He knew the truth - but all this urged yet more to expose all before God, to wrestle with the Father as to all this death, and "He was heard in that he feared." The effect of this communion with God is to see more clearly the power of evil, and the sorrow. It is felt and realised in the soul in the clearness of divine light, but in the presence of God this urges to more earnest prayer and supplication with God. And this so as to act on the very body, the human system, for here we see the Lord Jesus in all the distress of a soul pressed and in anguish, the power and darkness of death making its way in, the waters coming in into His soul. He was not merely sorrowful in sympathy, and pressed by the contradiction of sinners, but in anguish Himself; His soul was under the anguish of the pressure of death. Ever Man in this, He was externally and providentially succoured and fortified by an angel. But while this strengthened and sustained Him in and for the combat, it did not take Him out of the combat; rather, His human nature being sustained enabled Him to enter more deeply and thoroughly into the combat. In all this, however, He prays, "Father." He is in His relation as Son, and speaks in it. It is not the Victim yet before God, but the Sufferer, in Spirit feeling all the depths of the waters He is passing through, but crying out of the depths to His Father. In these circumstances the flesh shrinks from the suffering, and overpowered, and weak, and seeks in stupid and after all heartless (yet from incapability) forgetfulness, refuge from the sense and oppression of the evil. But Christ is here as Man, sustained but feeling as Man - though, as we have said, in the full light of God, to see the evil.

We may remark again here, how Luke omits the detail of circumstances, to present the full moral features of what happened. How near the circumstances often which try to us, to our carelessness, while He said, "Pray," etc. "Behold the multitude," it was not now the time for praying but for acting in the Spirit realised through prayer, obtained from on high, and acting in us the operation of the presence of God. What calmness and perfection in Jesus as Man! The Holy Ghost does not give us here what the dignity of the Son of God, the Good Shepherd guarding and putting Himself in front of His sheep produced, the divine nature which had shut the bounds at Sinai, breaking forth to show that it was His will, not theirs, which allowed, ordered, or bore with all that was done, and let the sheep go in peace. It is the Man in agony before His Father, in calmness and peace before man, sensible to the full as Man of all the circumstances, but calm in them all. Force and treachery here united to overwhelm the soul of Jesus, but He had passed through it already in much deeper reality with His Father, and He calmly and touchingly notices the act of treachery, unparalleled and wily, and hardness ("Good for that man, had he never been born") with which the unhappy man kissed Him with whom he had walked, and whom now in sacrilegious hardness he betrayed. He betrays the Son of man, his Companion, and his familiar Friend, for so, i.e., Son of man, the Lord calls Himself here.

327 The human zeal and feeling of His disciples awoke here, and they demand if they should contend, and one of them strikes the servant of the High Priest, and smote off his ear in hasty zeal. This, permitted of the Lord to show that it was no want of power in Jesus, gives occasion to His answer, and the manifestation of the same calmness in grace as in patience. Divine in all things, He possessed His soul, perfectly submitted, but the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. "Suffer," says the Lord, "thus far," and then He healed the servant, for, come in blessing, the wickedness, nor the hatred of man did not change His grace. He was not to contend as Man; peradventure, afterwards, grace brought this poor servant to know Him whom he had helped to take in his blindness. However that might be, the Lord went on in His course of patience and grace. His power and His mercy unshortened, but His walk, obedience and submission in grace. The Lord then, in reply to the violence of the chief priests, and officers, and elders, states the real case as to that also. "Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves? I was daily with you in the temple, and ye laid no hands upon me." Why not then? What position of conscience were they in? Was He more, as a Man, in their power now? "But this is your hour and the power of darkness." In full knowledge of what it was, the Lord, explaining their awful position, submits to the will of God by their hardened heart and relentless purpose of evil. But "they took him and led him away." It was the hour - so ordained - of darkness, and therefore they were in power. Awful truth! And the Lord as a Lamb for the slaughter, submits because it was His Father's will. He, not the Jews, had given Him the cup; it might be judgment on the hand that brought it to be the instrument of such, but otherwise that made no difference. If it was the hour of darkness, He was the Light and walked as the Light. Though to suffer all things, Himself in conduct shone only brighter, but it was perfect darkness all around, not the shining of the light actively on others, but the perfect walking in it when all was the essence of darkness (even His disciples under its influence or terror) proving who He was. It was in Himself, not in others.

328 Then we come to the conduct of Peter, for all now are left to themselves below, though not deserted of God, but left to the effect of circumstances on their way and thoughts, for Jesus, shut up into His own obedience and pure suffering, is not here a leader of others by light, and power, and keeping, but a Sufferer Himself, perfect in all. We have still to observe in Jesus this perfect calmness and self-possessedness. No trial produced that dismay of spirit which disables the perfect and simple action of grace, and what each moment requires. When the cock crows the Lord looks on Peter. As the flesh had hurried Peter there, so the Lord recalls his position to his conscience, in thus looking at him, and, poor Simon, his boasted strength now tried, but, after all, his heart right with God, goes out and weeps bitterly. There the blessed Lord then spent the night; not before His judges - they took their ease till morning, to judge the Lord, the Creator, the Lord of Glory; and Jesus was the object of the insults and injuries of the men whom they employed. But: "As a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers," He was dumb and opened not His mouth. This was the reckless amusement of the human heart. The plans of Satan came after, though doubtless this also was his malice. The Lord had finished His testimony. He had already, after His communion with the Father, declared what this hour was. He was, and was content, yea, His joy in obedience, to suffer and obey in it. In what perfect grace!

329  - 40-46. Note the warning of the Lord bears the stamp of what He was passing through faithfully. He urges to watch and pray; He was doing it. And so afterwards, with the increased sense of it. "Why sleep ye? Rise up and pray." But further, I would note the faithful watching and praying of the saint keeps him safe from the temptation, i.e., the power of God in answer to it. We know not what is coming, though some temptations may be anticipated. The last thing we thought of, Peter never would have supposed the question of a little maid where all seemed easy and a friend had brought him in, was the danger to be apprehended in that night of violence. But with God temptation has not this character. The quiet path of obedience is before us. Who so calm as Jesus when Judas came? Our prayer, through grace, is to produce this, but if not, Christ's prayer for us meets the truth, and need of our case exactly. Satan, though there are special moments of trial, is an ever active enemy: "Satan hath desired." Had Peter been less confident, and looked to the Lord, Satan would not have had him at all. We are always the subjects of this mighty spiritual conflict, and when flesh is not put down and God present, Satan can touch us; the temptation is felt, we fall into it. Watching and prayer, before the temptation, keep us clear. Christ's intercession fits itself to our actual state. Satan would sift; He does not pray he might not. Peter wanted it; so do we often, all. If I am with God about it all goes well; at the utmost, the chaff is sifted away, the bands burned in the fire, but the smell of fire does not pass on our clothes. The devil's fire, in God's hands, burns the devil's bands. So with Job. But He prayed that, when failure had come through Satan's sifting, and Peter's want of prayer, faith, confidence in the heart of Christ and of God might not fail. Thus he learned weakness and incapacity of standing, and that Christ's grace met all, and, the worst of cases, he could strengthen his brethren. There is an active desire and purpose of Satan; he was to sift the Lord - he had nothing in Him; the flesh is in us. If we are with God by the Spirit actively watching and praying, it is, when needed, judged there, and the wicked touches us not as born of God. We do not so, we are sifted, nor does, where needed, Christ ask we should not be, but in His intercession demands the exactly fitted process, and the maintenance of a conscious link with Himself. He looks at the right moment, then it is with Him we have to say, and He goes on with divine wisdom to deal with the root that bore the outward sin, and to which some other inward one had exposed us, which was not judged before. Warning, watching and prayer is the path of security - but, if humbled, it is a blessed thing to know that Christ's prayer for us, though not sparing the needed humiliation, is put up when we have not prayed ourselves. Had Christ been their only Object, they would have watched, and been led to pray in that dark hour. Feeling their own sorrow, they cannot bear it, and are overpowered, and sleep is their resource; the rest fly. Sorrowful enough! But boasting Peter must learn a sadder tale of the self he too much trusted. The place of our prayer is thus learnt. It is previous watchfulness with Christ when the temptation is not there; its fruit, the temptation, is not at all entered into when it is, and the extreme goodness and mercy of Christ which suits itself to the exact circumstances of the case.

330  - 41, et seq. It is striking that Luke gives more conflict and anguish in Gethsemane than Matthew and Mark, but less, indeed none, on the Cross. It is not, as John, the peaceful dignity and majesty of the Son of God, the divine Person, in contrast with the suffering Son of man. That is not Luke. He is more simply Man, in Luke, in Gethsemane, and, on the Cross, the introduction of the new estate of things; hence its efficacy. In Matthew and Mark, He prays the cup may pass, sorrowful unto death, and bows to His Father's will. In Luke He is in conflict, praying more earnestly, and there is seen an angel from heaven strengthening Him. His sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling on the ground. But on the Cross He is as Man, by faith on the other hand above the sufferings, and enters into the present going of His Spirit to heaven. He comforts the thief with this, not to wait for the kingdom; He cries with a loud voice, but the utterance is not, as in Matthew and Mark, recorded, and commends His own Spirit to His Father. It is not "He gave up" (paredoke), it is simply human "He expired" (exepneuse), but in perfect faith, in death He commends His Spirit, to His Father. In Matthew and Mark we have the cup as sorrow and suffering; He prays it may pass, which is more fully given than in Luke where we have merely the fact, and praying more earnestly, and we see that cup drunk on the Cross in the utterance there. This was to be, and must be; and so it is shown us. It was His work of which He felt all the weightiness anticipatively in Gethsemane, actually on the Cross. In Luke He is the perfect Man feeling, as such, in Gethsemane "in conflict"; praying earnestly, and strengthened, feeling, as we ought to, beforehand with God, the sorrows and sufferings which are before us, and, in them, exercising perfect faith with God.

331 He is subject to God's hand in Matthew and Mark. He is the perfect Man in Luke, the divine Person in John. How blessed it is to have all His characters, though our feeble hearts have to trace them apart thus! The whole path of Christ, from the time of Pilate's condemnation of Him, will be found to have this character in Luke. It is there He tells the daughters of Jerusalem not to weep for Him, there He says: "Father, forgive them." Note, we have not in Luke the first examination of the Lord when He was brought in.

I return for a moment to Luke, in Gethsemane and on the Cross. We see Him truly a Man in Gethsemane, in Luke, perfectly a Man anticipating what was coming on Him, and bowing to His Father's will in it, looking wholly to Him in the anticipation of the sorrow. It was perfectness as a Man, the cup fully felt anticipatively, i.e., in His mind (and we know how this works in us) but, in that sense of it, looking to God, as we ought, and submission to His will. On the Cross, in the suffering, He looks out of it. He had passed through it in Spirit with God, and His perfectness as Man is here displayed in so looking out of it, and, having the mind of God, free to possess and express it to others. This does not touch the fact of His feeling the drinking the cup of wrath as such, but the expression of His sense of that is not inserted by Luke. And as a human Sufferer His faith is perfect. It is not "He gave up" (paredoke) but: "Into thy hands I commit my spirit." Sonship, but Man trusting in God. Perfect, He did not enter into the temptation, but obeyed His Father, knowing it was His will. And, perfect in the suffering, in His faith (I do not speak of atonement) He looks out of it, and the time of His death being come, commends His Spirit to God.

I do not think that the angels in Matthew 4 are quite the same thought as the angel, in Luke, in Gethsemane. After His victory in the wilderness, angels (ascending and descending on the Son of man) come as attesting indeed His manhood, but as attesting also His claim to their service. He had been tried, faithful, in that left to Himself as far as such ministry went. Victorious, they come and render to Him the just tribute of their service. In Luke, One comes, in the time of His trial, to strengthen Him. The fact of angel service, now to man (according to John 1) is the same; but here He is the weak, distressed Man, strengthened by an angel when the trial pressed so terribly upon Him. But how wonderful the truth! How perfect the grace of His being so! Of the Lord's humanity! What scenes are the wilderness and Gethsemane for the Son of God! How truly He is become a Man! See, in Mark too, how "The angels ministered to him," comes in as a title contrasted with trial.

332 I think too in Luke, I have justly thought the temptations are arranged in a spiritual order, mere flesh (hunger) the world, and promises, Satan changing himself into an angel of light. In Matthew there is more than historical order, as heretofore noticed. It is, in a certain sense, dispensational, or refers to the place He takes. First, simply Man, hunger, His refusal, as Man, to take a step, or have a thought or a will without God. Man lives by every word out of His mouth, dependence and obedience. The next is Israel, promise to the Remnant, and in fact the Messiah. The Lord answers, not by what is said of man but of Israel: "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." In all He carefully keeps the place of Man in obedience, but in Israelite - was not to try if God would be as good as His word. So Deuteronomy 6. In the last He is Son of man, to reign over the nations. Here Satan is obliged to show himself. Was the Son of man to be as unfaithful to God as the first Adam, or keep His place as Man owning God? Was He to take the world as Man by the passions and lusts on which Satan acts, and avoid the Cross? - in a word, under Satan, where man and, as a present scene of lusts, the powers of the world, were? But still "It is written" suffices, only Satan is detected, rejected, and dismissed. Born of a woman, Son of man in nature and derivation, though miraculously, a Man, born under the law, as Messiah, and Son of man with the title to all things in a new position, only now in tested obedience, and so the place to be won, though His as Son of God, ever perfect, though here to prove it in trial, only not here going beyond the earth. All the Lord's answers are from Deuteronomy; and this is quite suited.

Up to the end of Numbers, we have, speaking of Israel, the patterns of things in the heavens, and though we have surely a divinely given history of what occurred to Israel, yet the accounts of the tabernacle are shadows of good things to come, not history. Sacrifices were "to be offered," so and so - not "were offered." Priests "to do" so and so - not "they did." I am not aware of the statement of a single sacrifice after Sinai, unless one Passover, and that indeed was at Sinai, and where even it is history, as specially in Exodus at the beginning, and Numbers. They happened unto them for types, and were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come. Deuteronomy, on the contrary, gives the conditional, historical possession of the land, and directions for Israel's conduct in it, and, even after the warnings, the secret things of faith. It was the actual directory in the land, in the state in which Israel found themselves when they entered. It was the actual, responsible, and conditional terms of possession of the land, given indeed when they were not in it, and which do not suppose their final possession in purpose, but looking to obedience in order to their keeping it, and referring to their conduct in the desert as warning (see Deut. 6) given just at the point when they had passed through the wilderness, and were going into the land, stating the turning point of blessing and cursing. And so with Jesus, it was the testing time personally, till He came to take the curse of a broken law, which was another thing. Then He was a Propitiation for Israel's sins, and also for the whole world. Here tempted as Man, and also as Messiah. In the last temptation, the whole question of allegiance as Head of the world was brought out. Satan takes power used in will as Man if Son of God, and promise in Israel, and the world of glory over the nations. Christ takes ever the lowly place of obedience in the place He was in, as in Israel, for God had set Him there. This is blessedly perfect. The authority of the Word over us as to our walk precedes promises, and glory to us, for that sets God in His place, i.e., the first with us.

333 What deep pain Peter's denial must have been here to the Lord! It was not only treacherous and well-known Judas, but beloved Peter. Here too remark the difference. All were, as it were, left to themselves. It was not, as Judas, the direct power of Satan in them. Satan entered into him, and thus acted by him; here, not being directly kept of God, they were left to the natural fruits of their own heart, when the circumstances directed of Satan, so allowed of God, presented the temptation to their corrupt or feeble nature.

334  - 66. As it stands: "To their own council." When the convenience of their hour suited them, they assembled in their own council, i.e. (if so to be read, apart from the Romans, and so probably, certainly in sense, for the guilt was to be their own) in the chief priest's house, and by their own council, apart, Jesus, Messiah, the Lord was to be delivered up by the nation. We have still to remark how Luke seizes the great moral circumstances, for there is abundance of detail in all this part entirely omitted, but all the moral and Jewish, in contrast with Gentile characteristics are thereby brought out more to light. But the Lord knew it was the time to be delivered up, that it was their hour, not the time of testimony, and He left them to their own wickedness. "If I tell you, ye will not believe." In the time of testimony to conscience, testimony was ample. Now they were the accomplishers of a plot to destroy Him through jealousy. "If I should ask, ye will not answer me at all, nor let me go." The Lord in truth judges their state.

- 69. "Henceforth," not "Hereafter."

- 70. The presenting of Messiah to the Jews (blinded by their leaders) was finished. From this the Son of man was to be seated at the right hand of God. The whole Jewish Sanhedrim: "They all said," identified "the Son of man" as declared to be henceforth "sitting on the right hand of the power of God" with "the Son of God." "Thou then art the Son of God?"

The Lord gives them the great general revelation of the counsel of God, which in fact rendered answer unnecessary, and judged their position. All was settled with God. They could go on. Here the Sanhedrim thought they had found an opportunity, though the testimony was very general, of making Him commit Himself, for they judged after man, and they say: "Thou then art the Son of God?" Truth it was, and the other, true also of Jesus, implied it, though He had merely stated the counsel of God without applying it to itself. The Lord had nothing to conceal, nay, He must be condemned for the truth because He was the Truth, and they be guilty of rejecting the Son of God because He was such, and spake the truth, and they were of him who was the father of a lie. They must be guilty, not of mistake but of condemning Him because He was the Son of God and bore witness, as He should do, before God of the truth. Yet here it was no testimony offered them on His part, but He conceals nothing. "Ye say that I am." This was enough; the full truth had only to be told for them to reject it. They themselves (and as judges they condemn themselves utterly) had heard the truth, the glory of His Person from the mouth of Truth (so they say) "We ourselves have heard from his own mouth," and they reject it. It was complete, final - they could not go further - they, judges, reject Messiah, the Son of God bearing witness (as they said, though He had but assented to their demand) to the truth because He did so. They had now only to complete their iniquity in leading, as religious iniquity ever does, the world to finish the wickedness, to accomplish its guilt. The civil power must give in to the perfect and wilful moral evil of an apostate people, of professed servants of God. This is the history of the world, for religious iniquity is always nearest to Satan.

335 The Lord answers nothing at all to the question as to Messiah, for the mission as such was ended, and would have been to them in the flesh, not to His danger. Perhaps they might have been content to get Him on their side, as such, on His own avowal; and the testimony would have been wholly misplaced, for Israel was incapable utterly of her Messiah. But to His personal glory He could not refuse confession, for that claimed, and necessarily the truth and their recognition, though it was base condemnation. It was not a relative office, but the sure, necessary, and everlasting dignity of His Person in relation with the Father - this He must own, or not tell the truth. But when they could not condemn Him for saying He was Messiah, of which Israel was incapable under the Gentiles, and in sin so as to continue, they could equally accuse Him on this ground to the Gentile power, and seek its favour, and secure their object by this double accomplishment of their apostasy.

Luke

J. N. Darby.

<46004E> 335

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Luke 23

- 4. It was needful He should suffer under Pilate for many reasons, but it was needful He should suffer not by his but their rejection and condemnation.

- 5. The change from to ethnos (the nation, in verse 2) to ton laon (the people, here) opens to us the spirit and mind of their conduct.

336 What a continued picture of all that is in man's heart, and all his ways as brought out in this wondrous scene, and the moral force of all his relationship with God, is given us in this gospel! The iniquity of the chief priests was manifest in their accusation, calculated to arouse the jealousy of the governor, and charging on Christ what was entirely contrary to the truth as to the tribute, but mixed up with a ground work which they knew, reckoning on His truth, Jesus could not deny, but which thus proved their consummate and hardened wickedness. The evangelist then gives us, by the Spirit, His good confession before Pontius Pilate; and Pontius Pilate, that the guilt of the Jews might be complete, and that also of the civil power among the Gentiles, declares that he finds no fault in Him - testimony rendered in spite of themselves by the authority appointed of God. Thus briefly, the great points of principle are given by the evangelist. The Jews persist in their iniquity, saying: "He stirreth up the people," acting on the jealousy of a known government of a known people.

But there was another form of evil and authority to be introduced - the apostate king of apostate Israel, and in this rejection of Jesus all are friends, however jealous and divided. Here Christ answers nothing, for He recognises not Herod though He had done nothing in derogation of his authority. Being yet in confession and testimony He had specially to do with the Gentile authority ordained of God as head of the fourth beast, and the high priests head of the nation to which He came, and while authorities are agreed and recognise each other, and make compliments of man in delivering up Jesus, yet the providence of God provides that the act should entirely lie between Rome and the Jewish people, the terrible union between the fourth beast and God's external people here below. The question as to the Christ lay really on them as responsible, He not yet assuming the power because of the glory of the Father, and the work He had to do (accomplish). Yet though the guilt of authority, failure in protecting the innocent, and unrighteous judgment rested with the Gentiles, yet the activity of an evil will was with the religious part of the Jews. Pilate and Herod please one another, and Pilate the Jews. Both agree, as the Jews knew that He was entirely innocent. Pilate even attempts, by taking advantage of a customary favour done to please the Jews, to get rid of the question, satisfying their malice by scourging Him, but never persevered in righteousness. The sincerity of the Jews was manifested by the choice they made of the prisoner to be delivered - evil under the eyes even of the governor. The evangelist, yea, the Holy Ghost is careful to mark that the voices of the people and of the chief priests, who had "stirred them up," prevailed, and he delivered Jesus to their demand. Nothing can be clearer and more plain than the judgment of the Jews here, the judgment of this unhappy people. Three times the opportunity of a relenting voice was given, and while the evil of the governor was plain. But the Lord thus righteously put them in the place of judgment; every time their cry increased in ardour and fierceness for the rejection, the death of Messiah. It was a terrible moment in the eyes of God, "the power of darkness"; but what a saying of God's people "their hour"! Pilate therefore released the guilty Barabbas, whom they desired, to appease and please the people, and delivered Jesus "to their will." Iniquity enough as judge, but still we hear "to their will."

337 It is remarkable how the evangelist insists here on the guilt of the people. Peter, in his preaching to the people, insists on the same point, taking only, by the Holy Ghost, infinite grace, the intercession of Jesus on the Cross, as the ground of God's yet relationship with the people. Also Luke omits all mention of Gentile violence of the soldiers or others, and, though guilty, presents Mate at least as not doing it of perverse will. Yet it is the moral evil which is most put forward here, for their position as to dispensation is much more strongly marked in John; see chapter 19.

- 26. I suppose that Jesus, that, to man, "root out of a dry ground," "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," was ill-calculated to carry His cross - a weightier cross lay upon Him - and those who led Him away (for it was a moment of all violence) could lay hold on any one they met to help them in their iniquity. The great blow of man's hideous iniquity was now struck, and Jews and Gentiles fell into the same mass of rejection, and insulters of Messiah; only the Jews were so with more knowledge, but they all fell into the same mass in judgment. Privileges, or at least the forms of them, became sorrows and terror, for they must be broken down and laid low, for all was untrue now. If they did these things in the green tree, what must be done in the dry? Natural affection, the natural feelings touched by affecting circumstances, changed nothing of this. They wept with a conscience unaffected; they understood not the ruin which awaited them. The Lord, in calm and holy concern for them, at least not stranger to their position as daughters of Jerusalem, says to them: "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep over me, but weep over yourselves and your children." One may be affected with compassion, as if one was superior to Christ, and fall under the judgment consequent on His rejection, and such the case if not subjected to Him in His glory, and really companion of His humiliation, as dependent on His grace. No humiliation of the Lord put Him out of His place of perfect capability of dealing with others, all others, from God. Then Israel, or the Jews who had rejected Him should cry in vain for something to hide them, for if He, the living and true Vine, who indeed bore fruit to God, was thus dealt with, what the lot of the fruitless and unprofitable, whose end was to be burned, for so they were as branches?

338  - 31. Luke's use of the third person plural for existence of the fact I apprehend. "Shall be done" is not in Greek opposed as passive; it is genetai (may take place).

- 33. It appears to me that all occupied here are confounded, Jews and Gentiles. Yet the expression is rather what presents to us Jesus Himself than the others. These poor Gentile soldiers, utterly ignorant of what they were doing, were the object of the compassion of Him who, as we have seen, never lost His thought for others in the midst of the deep waters which overwhelmed Himself. For man, in his awful ignorance, Jesus and the malefactors were all together; but the heart of Jesus turned in grace over those who put them there, and separated, by the revelation of Himself in grace, between them with whom He was thus undistinguishedly associated by man - by man whom He had made. Here certainly the Gentiles hold the primary place. "The world was made by him and the world knew him not."

- 35. We have "The people stood beholding, and the rulers with them sneered." These not only do the same, but had pleasure in them that did it - could use the ignorance of the Gentile to accomplish the advised iniquity of their hearts. With what grace does the Holy Ghost by Peter, yet in mercy, address them, saying, "I wot that through ignorance ye did it," etc.! And not till Israel resisted the Holy Ghost, as well as betrayed and rejected the Son of man, is the judgment finally pronounced upon them. They were guilty in the ten thousand talents by the death of Jesus, but this was passed by until they refused the testimony and principle of grace, "Forbidding to preach to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway," and so wrath came upon them to the uttermost. Now they mock the Saviour for His perfect obedience and perfect all-submissive love. For this the Saviour should undergo, have no approbation, but simply do the will of God, and find His reward elsewhere; terrible for man, and just the trial of perfect, abstractedly perfect obedience, also of love. The more He loved, the less He was loved. But He obeyed and loved, not for the acceptance or approval of man, but to please God, and because His love was perfect, according to and of God. Thus, in the darkness, the perfect darkness, His perfection shown.

339 "He saved others" is a dark trait of deepest malignity and condemnation. It was pure malice, for even here they owned His works. They did not care to deny them now for the moment, but only to show the perfect evil of their hearts. They could say, "Ah, so would we have it," not in evil that the Lord had done but in evil that they had accomplished, for they loved evil - sad slavery and bondage to Satan the father of all this! They were entirely under his power, the expression of his will and ways. Yet blinded in their malice, for, owning the fact "He saved others," they do not recognise Him as the Christ, the Chosen of God, for then they should have expressly condemned themselves, and been humbled, having crucified their Messiah, their own Glory, and Hope, and Triumph, as they will own yet, hereafter. But the malice of the heart, of Satan, is always entirely blind. The soldiers joining the Jews in fact in their insults, and looking merely on the question of secular power, say: "If thou be the King of the Jews, save thyself." They are merely on the outside of the evil, and witness publicly the fall of the people (lo chesed) the now ungodly people. The Jews, their own destroyers, they were entirely without force, because without the Lord, for indeed the King of the Jews (but through His grace, for no man could take it from Him - He laid it down of Himself) was there rejected, crucified, and for death, entirely so as regarded the people of Israel, as then before God who judged His people in the world. Such is the folly of man! This accordingly was the inscription written, so as to be read by all, "This is the King of the Jews." The nation was judged in this; they had brought it about. But while the counsel of God was fulfilled, He was King of the Jews, and what was the nation when their King (the green tree among them) was hung as a slave? The pith and force of the expression is not that "This is Jesus," but "This is the King of the Jews." Unhappy nation! They were gone for ever, but by grace.

340 It is remarkable how this taunt, bitter and trying, but indeed revealing the perfect egoism of the human heart, is repeated by all, "Save thyself." To have power, and not use it to save oneself was inconceivable to man's mind; selfishness in the thief could add "and us" to the taunt. But the Jews, "If he be the Christ, let him save himself": in insult to the Jews as to Him, "If thou art King of the Jews, save thyself," and the thief, as the Jews, all unite in this - but the love of Jesus above, unabated - He did not come to save Himself. He could have saved Himself, but then not others, not have accomplished the perfect and adorable will of His blessed Father. What an interest the Spirit of God takes in all these circumstances, as in Psalms 69 and 22! Though thus oppressed and smitten, His adversaries were all before Jehovah. But God had prepared, even here, the consolations of grace for Jesus, in a poor sinner who found the balm of his soul just in this sorrow, that Jesus was there with him on the accursed tree. He was there to own, honour, and, we may say, pour balm into the heart where alone he found it, for the joy of the operation of grace in the heart is balm to Him who suffers that it may be so. And indeed Jesus, to convey full truth and comfort to the poor thief, must also speak comfort to Himself, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Thus did this poor sinner minister comfort to the Lord.

Also we have another example how the Lord, whatever His circumstances, whatever His trial, was always perfectly centred in divine patience before God, and was in the calmness of love according to the need of those who were before Him. In these two thieves we have an extraordinary example of the heart of man without, and under the operation of grace. No sorrow, no shame, no disgrace, no suffering brings the heart too low to scorn Jesus, or touches the hardness which rejects and despises Him. He is the off-scouring of all things, a gibbetted thief can despise Him, and He has no word to reply. On the other hand, we have the evidence how in the midst of manifested iniquity, the grace of God produces fruits and manifestation of faith to His glory, which shine through the very darkest circumstances when even the known companions of Jesus were all sunk in their shade. The scene around was all dark, but on the Cross itself there was a scene apart and one more intimate where God's ways, man's heart, and Jesus as the great Object in which these were manifested, were all, and now in their first fruits, fully brought out. For in this poor thief - first fruits of the Cross - we see a good for an honest conscience fully in the light, and which therefore, in the full confession of, can fully rebuke sin, and that because of the fear of God. For such is the case when the thought of the presence of God - as where it exists it does and must - predominates entirely, the conscience is astonished at the possibility of sin there, i.e., anywhere, because it has realised the truth in the fear of God, and looks at circumstances as judged by a conscience in His presence. "Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?" Can you mock at your own position in another (the human heart can do anything) and when we indeed are here justly? For the judgment of sin in another, in righteousness, is by the sense of the evil of sin in our own conscience, and, therefore is humble though firm. It is as to both the conscience which is in activity in the presence of God.

341 Further there was the spiritual intelligence, on the other hand, with the full honest confession of sin and guilt, of the perfectness and sinlessness of Christ as Man. He knew Jesus. This is an immense fact in the state and confession of this man's heart; further, contrary to all possible appearance to the flesh. When all denied Him, he only sees, owns, and confesses Him "Lord." At the same time his whole concern and anxiety, in the certainty that Christ would come in His kingdom, confiding in His love, was that this despised Malefactor would remember him. Present sufferings, shame, Jesus' reproach, all gave way before this desire to be owned then of One whom he only now knew, save the Father who would glorify Him with a yet better glory. To this hope of future excellence and glory, the Lord replies by the certainty of present salvation. Jesus, honoured and sustained, comforted by his confession, rejoices in this companion into the peace before Him, and reassures his heart with better things than even he anticipated. Thus this scene, which let in the light which was beyond, through the portal of this poor sinner's heart, whose need touched of grace, opened necessarily the resources and counsels of divine love. Cloud, and the darkness proper to the hour resumed, and even by the providence of God outwardly, its wonted and now suited and recognised course. But this, it seems to me, hung specially over Israel when the earth was in relation with the Lord there. Its utter darkness, and the entire hiding of His face from it was manifested - the sun being darkened - but then it was that, judgment and darkness hanging over the earth, the way into the holiest, by the act which had its place in this darkness, was fully opened, and God, in the grace of Christ's sacrifice and supreme love, shone forth upon the world. At least, all that hid Him was broken through. It was the darkness of judgment to one, but it was the breaking through of light, and access opened to the holiest by the death of Christ to those without. The companions of Jesus had the way into the holiest opened by the rending of His flesh, the veil. All was thus now finished, and the Lord with no infirm or hesitating language which failed of its point, but crying with a loud voice, "Father" (for His soul was now returned into its communion, all being accomplished) "Into thy hands I commend my spirit." And having said this He expired.

342  - 46. We have a remarkable case of the article in the blessed Lord's words here, "Into thy hands I commit my spirit" (eis cheiras sou paratithemai to pneuma mou). It is very unusual Greek to have the possessive pronoun without the article. It may, no doubt, be from the Hebrew which has none in such case, b'yad-kha (into Thy hand); but in Greek we must take pater eis cheiras, as one word, so to speak. To commit to these, it would be right as only characteristic; sou (Thy) comes in by the bye, not necessarily, through "hands" (cheiras) being there; but this is all right for the sense. "Hands" (cheiras) has no individuality, here is no object before the mind. He commits Himself to Another, His Father's hands, so to speak. It is far more significant than "My spirit" (to pneuma mou); here we have the article, because, while the regular form, His spirit was the positive object He was so committing to His Father's safe keeping.

Note, Luke does not give the cup of wrath on the Cross - that is specially Matthew - Luke more the circumstances, and the faithful path of the Son of man, the Saviour. He is above the circumstances in faith, truly Man; see chapters 22: 43, 44; 23: 46. In John He is above them in Person. In Matthew, God's sword has awoken against His Fellow.

343 We find in the gospels, not the comment of the Holy Spirit on the counsels of God in the death of Jesus, but the circumstances and relations in which He, as a Man, found Himself on earth. In Matthew, we find the Sufferer of Psalm 22, and also of Psalm 69. He should have been King of Israel, and owned as such, is despised of Gentiles who cast lots for His garments, and abandoned of God, and declares it. Here the circumstances are, in a sense, less marked but perhaps more important. It is the Man rejected. The Jews, and all that concerned them, set aside in their relationship with God (in the Person of their King, the Just One) and He, the veil being rent which enclosed the holiest of all, to become the Head and Recipient of power for a new family of blessing, heavenly blessing as risen and glorified. All that is marked therefore is "darkness over all the land." The creation, and the Jewish polity creation under the trial (possibility) of blessing by law cast into darkness, and the veil of the temple, the centre of their polity, and the exclusive concealment of God amongst them, rent in the midst. Then Jesus, this being so, marks its power in His death, and gives His Spirit into His Father's hand. This was not Jewish blessing, for "The living, the living, they shall praise thee." But it was much higher; it was Sonship, death overcome, and the occasion merely of presenting the Spirit, happy, safe, confident notwithstanding death, into the Father's care and presence. This was an immense triumph, and struck a blow at death, in the Person of Him who must have been blessed in it, which death could never recover. Having laid hold of Him, it necessarily therein lost its power, for in death His Spirit necessarily went to the Father. In truth this word, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" is (short of resurrection) of the highest possible importance, for indeed it is identified with death, but with death in the hands of Jesus. What a word! And what a fact! What a centre of all truth, of the mystery of good and evil, of the centre of its power, and divine power, yet in perfect submission, or, at least, divine life introduced into the midst of it! But then the resurrection passes clean beyond it, and is divine power producing its effect beyond, and leaving death, and its region and effects, entirely behind. As it is written: "Determined Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead"; and surely we should be victorious, in the power of this life, over mortified evil, reckoning ourselves dead.

344 But the divine life in Man passes here scatheless through the power of evil and death, because free from all evil, because it had never been sullied by defilement, because the prince of this world had nothing in Him. Hence also, in speaking of the resurrection, as to the Lord Jesus, He says: "According to the Spirit of holiness." "He that is born of God sinneth not, but keepeth himself . . . and the wicked one toucheth him not." But the flesh is ever evil; it is of the old man, and perishes, or is changed, but the life of Christ can make it silent, as hereafter change it altogether. How few are really engaged in active evil, but how little virtue to resist!

"The people looked on, and the rulers with them mocked"; and here a large mass, for the crowds were ever distinct from the Jews. Nothing is ever so wicked as fallen, and therefore proud religion. What scenes will be disclosed in the latter day! "The crowds, seeing what took place, beating their breasts, return." They were come to that sight, were astonished, amazed, and returned - "These crowds who had come together" - for indeed this is a marvellous scene. The effect of this great event (how things are perverted! for what is man unsustained?) the centurion, there in the course of duty, struck by divine mercy, at least in the conviction of his natural conscience, "Glorified God, saying: In very deed this Man was just." What happened acted on his natural conscience. The masses are troubled (they had no part in the affair, and augur no good) and go away. Those that knew Him more humanly, personally interested, but more intimidated therefore, stood afar off, and the women, that had followed Him from Galilee, were there looking on.

But this: "I commit my spirit" was a supreme act of faith in the Lord Jesus. It took its power from, and gave its character to death to us, for, while in all cases it passed the sentence of ruin on whatever stood in the place of the first Adam and all his living irremediable ruin, to which Jesus in infinite grace to us, and that His Father might be perfectly glorified in the full manifestation of this ruin, in righteous judgment, yet in His righteousness, obedience, and perfect expiation for us, and perfectness in faith in God His Father whatever weight and terror of death lay upon Him, and He entered into all the depths of it, and though this blow came from above, and to Him with the full sense that it came from above: "Thou hast brought me into the dust of death," yet He commends His Spirit in death to Him, to His Father, although death, the judgment of God, still rested on Him as to the fact externally. But, the expiation made, its natural horror was gone to faith, because the conscience unburdened, and Jesus bearing sin was more than that, the Father in love could be trusted in not to hinder, and to restore, but notwithstanding in the certainty of His love, for communion was restored, to guard and deal with that which was separated and dissolved - what had suffered, but which had perfectly glorified Him. As Jesus commended His Spirit to His Father leaving His body, part of a world He left behind Him condemned and rejected, for He placed Himself in all its circumstances (only His Spirit went on to His Father beyond it) yet indeed the providence and operation of God provided for this also, and as He was sinless, even as to the flesh, God, the righteous Judge, would not suffer His Holy One to see corruption. Also, now the suffering and expiation being made, He is to be with the rich in His death.

345 That the lesson of our condition may be complete, the most faithful are sometimes set aside, and others feeble in faith, scarce owned, or even putting themselves forward as Christians, are found active and faithful in the post of danger, confession, and attachment to the Lord. And often too it is the difficulties, which frighten others, which force them forward. I have already noticed that then also (while perfect disgrace as trial) honour was to be put on the Lord, God having prepared this little Remnant of the honourable among the people for this, even He who orders all things, the end from the beginning. There is a moral righteousness in awaiting the kingdom of God, a righteous, humbled sense of evil around, and dependence at least on God. There may be fulness of faith for the present accomplishment of service, or realisation of His power here below, but there is moral rectitude which the Lord can and does own, though man can scarce perhaps perceive it. It is not all. It is not power. It is not the manifestation which the Holy Ghost operates. It does not consent to the evil, and is bold as respected, even more than the others with the authority where need is, by the divine help for good. Were they more right than the disciples who discovered their weakness? Far from it. These became the witnesses and apostles of the Lord by the Holy Ghost, who had been with Him from the beginning But the Holy Ghost has been willing to give us the example and sample even of these. At least the Saviour was honoured, for His time of trial was perfected and closed, and that was all that was needed, for honour was, and was now specially, His due. The women, in true but ignorant affection, make useless preparation, awaiting the just Jewish time, for a risen Lord who had passed far beyond their faith; and the Jewish commandments which restrained them, restrained them that the will of God might be accomplished. Yet here, with ignorance and measure of unbelief, for they had heard Him reveal His death and resurrection, it was their true faith acting in the affections which rejected and left aside every conviction of fear, danger, impossibility or what not, respected the law, which was dead in Christ, and death, so to speak, which was put to death and overcome in Him, ruled though in love to Jesus, under the influence, as to obedience and the power of death, of a system which His death had closed, but attached to Him. For, up to verse 56, i.e., the end of the chapter, we have all according to the form and subsistence of Jewish order and dispensation - honoured of Jewish rulers, death in its power the preparation and Sabbath observed. The resurrection had not yet broken the seal which was put upon the profitless flesh, though death indeed closed its character, and was its true seal and result, sin being entered. The honour and evening light which closed around the head of Him who had bowed to the storm of that hour, and the dishonour which had fallen upon Him, the affection and the desertion which marked the scene, all alike were stamped with a Jewish character - Messiah outraged, and Messiah at least in death with the rich. Beloved, betrayed, and deserted, He was still known after the flesh.

346 Luke  24

The morning of the Lord's power dissipated all this in fact, for indeed our minds are often slow of understanding, "slow of heart" to understand this new power and truth of the rising of Christ above all the principle of natural life, or rather death, and its result in testimony is what occupies Luke now. It is the risen Man again with His disciples, and the testimony founded on it to the world, beginning at Jerusalem. The women, however, preoccupied with their own thoughts and affections, come with their spices to anoint the dead body of Jesus, while He was indeed living in all the perfume of His work and offering before God, having effected all which placed man anew before God the Father - the Second Adam in living acceptance. Then they were thrown into an unlooked-for difficulty at first, for they did not find Jesus nor His body. It was not there. But soon the question which cleared all up was put: "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" Still, all this was short of the Church. It based all on the resurrection, not on the flesh, but thus far ministered by angels not by the Holy Ghost. It might be but the sure mercies of David. But the terms in which it was communicated opened a wider sphere, though only by their generality. He was risen, but He had predicted when in Galilee, before He came up even to Jerusalem, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men. He who concentred in Himself all the rights of man in righteousness according to the counsel of God, yet, as coming associated in responsibility with the evil, must suffer as Messiah, be delivered by blinded Jews to sinners, and seal the guilt of sinful man by their denial, total denial and rejection of what God accepted in Man. He who was the Heir of glory (see Daniel 7) according to the counsels of God, was to be delivered into the hands of men wilfully though recklessly acting after their own will - slaves to Satan. He would be crucified, but the third day rise again. This was the counsel of God: "They remembered his words." They went and reported what had been said: "To the eleven and to all the rest."

347 There was not faith properly in the resurrection, but there was enough to occupy their heart to tell to the disciples of what they had seen and heard. These faithful women, faithful if ignorant, were not forgotten of the Lord, and if eclipsed by the service of those whom the Lord sent, He, whose ways are grace, has preserved their memorial, and their early seeking of the Lord. If in ignorance, there to be instructed, and to bear the message to the apostles themselves. But to these they were "as idle tales, and they believed them not." They were the tales of their imagination. But Peter's heart, if broken and sunk within, was the more affected by what he heard, and he runs "to the sepulchre: and, stooping down, he sees the "wrappings laid aside there, and he went away, apart, wondering.

Thus far it was astonishment, and confusion of spirit. Surely it was a marvellous event which baffled, and rose above all human thought.

348  - 13, et seq. The touchingness of this interview of the Lord in the journey to Emmaus need not be spoken of How the Lord draws out all their thoughts! But He is here, I remark, altogether as a Man, and presenting the truth. They speak Jewishly, and how naturally their thoughts rested always in the same circle. He was a Prophet, and they hoped might redeem Israel. The fact of the resurrection occupied their attention, but had no link with the counsels of God. They were astonished; there they rested. Christ takes up a quite other ground; not yet power, but understanding. He says: "Fools and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken." This He expounds, and opens their understandings to understand. For, though presenting Himself completely as Man, yet He operates divinely and spiritually on their minds. The Lord takes this ground: "Ought not?" Was it not the counsel of God plainly revealed in His word? It was not presenting Himself, and the fact of the resurrection, but the mind of God relative to the Christ. This was an immense step. It took them out of their egoism, and the egoistical part of their Judaism. Having done this, and revealed the Scriptures as to the Christ (not the Son of God) their eyes are opened to know Him. Their hearts were opened by what encouraged them in connecting the truth of God with all that had happened to Jesus - their force in what was the cause of their despair, and that by the counsels of God in it. But His actual revelation was by the touching circumstance of personal affection and association in the breaking of bread. It was Himself did that. There could be no mistaking. Oh! may He be so revealed to our souls!

Filled with the great and concentrating event which began a new world, they hastened back to Jerusalem, where the eleven and others were themselves occupied. The holding of the eyes of the disciples was of evident importance. To have recognised Jesus would have been to have satisfied their thoughts, to have received Him again according to their thoughts. The Lord, on the other hand, engaging all their affections to what God said of Him, furnished their souls with the scriptural knowledge of God's mind concerning Him, and then, in the act of personal friendship which, in intimacy of kindness, recalled the great truth signified and brought to mind in the breaking of bread - another Passover by death - another deliverance and career of faith. The Lord provided thus that there should be independent witnesses.

349  - 38. Thus their hearts were prepared. Yet in the fact of a risen Man on earth, this new thing, beginning of a new world, there was that to which earthly hearts could ill assort themselves. The Lord presents Himself as the very same Man. All through here Jesus presents Himself as Man, in every way, in His intercourse with the two disciples. All was human, though what no man ever was, what none but God could be, shone through it all. Here also His hands, His feet, all that marked His manhood, His previous wounds are presented. He eats. There were two sentiments which had possession of the disciples - overpowering joy to see Him Himself again, and then, as to their understanding, for it was no doctrine of truth, astonishment. The Lord presents it most familiarly to them. He eats and drinks before them - vast condescension! But reality and truth, and what restored their souls, and made them know Him as yet a Man, risen indeed, but a Man, properly and truly and really.

- 44. But the Lord, having thus revealed Himself and satisfied them as to His real humanity, returns to the other great point we have seen noticed in Luke, i.e., in this account of the resurrection. The fulfilment of testimony and purpose of God in the Word. It was but that which He had always told them when with them, that all things must be fulfilled which were written concerning Him. Man's hand but God's purpose was in all that occurred - purpose already revealed and declared in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Then (for this was not done yet, though they were attached to His Person) He opened their understanding to understand the Scriptures, and then recurs to this so important expression: "Thus it behoved" (houtos edei) opening the door thereon to the activity of God's grace founded on this great truth of the suffering of Messiah (Christ) and His resurrection, the word thus reaching the Gentiles. For it is evident a Christ not received by the Jews, but crucified, was not a mere Jewish Christ, but, on the contrary, carried out the plan of God much farther in preaching peace to the sinner afar off by the sacrifice - repentance and remission of sins to all the Gentiles, though, dispensatorily, that began at Jerusalem.

350 The death of Christ broke the link with the Jews as a Jewish Messiah, but opened the door of grace to the Gentiles in going forth to them in grace, for it was no question of coming in to the Jews, for they had lost their link with the good and blessing in rejecting Messiah. It was God going forth in grace, by virtue of Christ's death, to the sinners that needed it, though He might begin with those that were nigh. As the Scriptures had declared the thoughts and ways of God as to these things, and thus to be accomplished, the disciples were to be witnesses of these things; that was their place. The word explained: "Thus it behoved," and gave the mind of God in all these things; they were to be witnesses of them. And here came in the word of power distinct from the counsels of the Word, and the gift of understanding of it. To be witnesses they needed power. Already the Lord opened their understanding (on this Peter acted in explaining the case of Judas before Pentecost, but that was not power nor nomination by the Holy Ghost; it was lot and Jewish, but yet with understanding of the purpose and prophetic meaning of the word) to understand the Scriptures. It was want of this which had marred and rendered nugatory the recognition of the fact that Jesus was risen ("they saw," we read, "and believed, and went home," "for as yet they understood not the Scriptures") but there was no intelligence of the mind and purpose of God in it. But then further, they were to be witnesses, and here the occasion of power came in. This efficiently would carry them forth, whether at Jerusalem, or Samaria, or among the Gentiles. It was power, wherever it came, so as to ingather anew to a new Centre. The association, though broken passively, so to speak, could not be actively in testimony, till the power came which could verify the new thing - the heavenly position and glory of Christ, for He must be, if witnessed or received, at Jerusalem or on high, though they who had received Him could (their understandings opened) receive and know Him risen, and the mind of God in His resurrection. But now power was to come from on high. Christ would receive and send the promise of the Father on them, and they were to abide at Jerusalem till this all important index of the exaltation of Christ to heaven came from on high. Thus also it was ordered they should begin at Jerusalem.

This presence of the Spirit is the great promise of the Father, for it is power on earth notwithstanding and paramount to all evil, and introductive of heavenly good and relationship. Hence it introduces the Gentiles, and passes necessarily by Judaism, so in Galatians (rising above Jew, Gentile, and all, in the power of a new Centre, Christ glorified) "that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. This, however, could only be obtained for men by the Man Jesus being presented as the new Man in the power of an accomplished sacrifice, the Head of blessing before God in this sense. Though the Holy Ghost had acted as a divine Person from the beginning, whether in creation or prophecy, or in all good, He had never been given. This hung on the glory of Jesus; to that the Holy Ghost could become a Servant in man, for it was the divine counsel, and the perfection of divine love. He hath ascended up on high, He hath received gifts (baadam, in Man) Himself, and so for men. Hence the presence of the Spirit here below, while it ministers supreme love to, condemns necessarily man and the world which has its centre in him, and gathers round the new Man, Christ Jesus, and therefore also is heavenly. So the Holy Ghost does not speak of Himself as One here below, but what He hears He speaks, brings what is above and declares it by man. Hence also is it that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, for, in these gifts confided, they are the servants of Jesus, and, in communion with Jesus, employ them according to the wisdom of the Lord for good, and to this the Spirit as a Spirit of power is subject. It is a deposit of power to be used by the intelligence of the Holy Ghost of the mind of Christ in us, not indeed man's prudence but the Lord's wisdom. For the Holy Ghost, as One giving the mind of Christ, guides the exercise of particular gifts to the purposes of this mind.

351  - 50. We have here an evidence how completely Luke puts the events in order according to the moral force, and not according to chronology, from what happened in verse 43 to this verse. Forty days elapsed, the Lord went into Galilee from verse 44 to 49. Though it commences apparently with what happened the day of the resurrection itself, in continuation we have nothing but the moral position of the disciples; and what is said at the end was most probably said before He led them out for His ascension.

Bethany had been the Lord's resort as Man; there He sat with Lazarus; there He found a sort of home who had "not where to lay his head." There before He went on high, He gave His parting blessing; divine in its efficacy, it was human in its form, and order, and affection. Moreover, this must not be in Jerusalem; He could not bless there now. It could not be written, it had not been: "We have blessed thee out of the house of the Lord." He, the Lord who had loved it, must leave Jerusalem to bless. From the house of fellowship on the mount of corruption He gives His blessing, and takes His departure. There His savour remains; with that He is united. His affection, His interest remains, abides there. He was taken up into heaven. They worshipping Him according to His word, and themselves not yet affranchised, or endued with power? return to Jerusalem though He had left it. They returned with great joy filled with the new thought that their Master was victorious, glorified, exalted. When filled with the Spirit many other things would occupy them. Hence we see the character often of joy.

352 It is not necessarily here the highest part of religion, nor connected with all truth. When entirely in the presence of God, a certain character of joy will be the accompaniment of our central blessing, but not this lively joy of circumstance exactly. Joy may be from the occupation of the natural affections without any real change, and the heart remain stony, as in the seed sown on stony ground. It may be from deliverance in a point where we have been anxious and distressed, from the obtaining some great point in which our hearts are interested at the moment. Whereas sympathy with Christ, while producing joy in Him, will give us the fellowship of His sufferings, labour, toil, anxieties. This was not yet come. They were left to the full influence of this great fact which acted now on their hearts. It was to have its weight and strengthen their souls. Messiah was risen and ascended. They were to be filled with this, and the Holy Ghost vivify, and act on this deposit. And so we find it was, for this was Peter's testimony, that the Man, the Messiah, rejected, God had exalted. Hence to them it was associated with Jewish thoughts and associations. Messiah was exalted: "And they were continually in the temple praising and blessing God." But they were prepared by the thought of Christ exalted, vivified in power by the Holy Ghost, for wider and more concentrating witness and labours. But these two elements reproduce themselves evidently in the Acts - testimony to the exaltation of Messiah always viewed as Man. This continues even to the call of Cornelius, and the Jewish link of the temple. It was their Messiah that was exalted. This gave room to the Lords dealing in grace to Israel. It changes in the death of Stephen in Paul. Christ owns in glory the persecuted Remnant as Himself. But in all this the Gentiles come in by the bye. They were the children of Jerusalem desolate, i.e., without a husband. Paul typifies the Remnant of Jews re-accepted; he who had been enemy as regards the gospel. The comparison of Acts 2: 32, 33, is very distinct in identifying the new presented of the Holy Ghost, and the testimony with this gospel.

353 Note the difference between the end of Luke and John 20. The history of the ascension presents to us the blessed picture of Christ blessing them, and in the act of it taken up to heaven; but in John there is both, according to this character of the gospel - a rejection of even restored Judaism as a present thing. Mary Magdalene, who had loved His Person as a Man revealed on earth, must not touch Him - He could not now be revealed as corporately taking the kingdom. But He goes, she is to tell His brethren, to His Father and theirs, His God and theirs. That is He puts them into the same relationship with Himself as Son and Man in heaven - as all through this part He associates them with Himself. But here in yet hidden relationship with God, whereas in Luke the blessing goes forth to them on earth. It is not relationship, immutable relationship in heaven - God was that to them - but expressed blessing on them as left down here, and He therein or therewith gone up to heaven, parted from them. He is not parted from them in John, but they associated with Him in heaven.

Note too, although Thomas's is a most blessed and remarkable testimony, prefiguring the Remnant of Israel's in the latter day, yet it is evidently on a lower ground than what the Lord says to Mary Magdalene. Thomas looks, as previously unbelieving, not having been with the disciples, at Christ owning Him now appearing to him as his Lord and his God, but in Mary's message they are taught to look with Christ as Son and as the accepted Man with God in glory and perfectness, at the Father and God to whom Christ was going. This is another thing.

The whole scene in Luke 24 has this character of meeting men in their weakness, not taking them up to the higher place in glory. It is not "Peace be to you as my Father sent me forth, I also send you," but "they were terrified and affrighted, and thought they saw a spirit." And the Lord: "Why do thoughts arise in your hearts . . . handle me and see . . . it is I myself." How gracious! And the rest! It is blessed to see the sure heavenly place of Christ employed to show that we have the same with Him in heaven, and that He ministers perfect blessing to our feebleness on earth out of it. And note this awakens the desires and affections more. I do not say it sanctifies more, but in John 20, as in Ephesians, we have standing and consequent conduct showing out the life and grace of Christ, but where Christ has left us; we long to go after Him; compare 1 Peter 1: 1-9. It is before us in hope. We are not risen with Him here, but in hope, through His resurrection we are not in heaven but kept on earth, and the incorruptible inheritance kept for us. This engages our affections in it, as Colossians 3. So we are "kept through faith." We have not seen Him but love Him. He is precious to us. We are tried in heaviness, but greatly rejoice - yea "rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." We must not weaken Ephesian truth, but we must not loose hold of this in Peter. We shall find most souls in it, and admired as being there. This is false ground - I mean, to set it up against the other - but real souls are in it, and Christ is there for it, and most graciously and truly so. It does not produce divine life on earth in the same way, but it cultivates heavenly affections in those who are walking there. God is full of grace, and towards us.

_______

The Psalms

, part 1.

J. N. Darby.

<43002E> 3

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

{It may perhaps be noticed that some of these notes on the Psalms are very similar to those given in a paper entitled "Heads of Psalms." The footnote to that paper sufficiently explains the reason for passing it over as not really representing the author's thoughts. The present notes are taken chiefly from his Hebrew Bible, and are consecutive, and evidently in one special line of thought. To these have been added some notes found in his English Bible, and in one or two notebooks only. There is nothing that is not manifestly in Mr. Darby's own handwriting, and the MS. bears no trace whatever of additions by another hand. In the present "Notes" therefore nothing has been omitted, and nothing interpolated.}

It is a very important point indeed as to the understanding the application of the Psalms, that, in the Psalms, as remarked elsewhere, when sufferings from men are spoken of vengeance is always called for by the speaker. In Christ's life historically there never was a trace of this but the contrary - on the Cross He prays they may be forgiven - in His lifetime rebukes the disciples for thinking of it, as not knowing what spirit they were of. It is evident that this is of the greatest weight in our judgment of the manner of application to Christ.

______

There is another very important point I notice. In every way the first Book is characterised by Christ's position when on earth. The first two Psalms no doubt take up the Remnant, and the purpose of God as to Christ, Son of God and King in Zion, but He is seen as rejected in fact, and all the Psalms go on from this point - in that part closing with His place as Son of Man, Jehovah having set His glory above the heavens. But, all through, Jehovah is looked to in the celebration of what takes place, not King Messiah on earth. The only allusion to it is in Psalm 18, where all the history is gone through, but the subject is His humiliation, and the latter part is prophetic of His David victorious character. But Christ's glory is heavenly (as Psalm 21) as a thing celebrated, and Jehovah the Deliverer.

In the second Book we have Him as the King, forming the centre of the first part of it in Psalm 45, and then Jerusalem is delivered. Psalm 51 starts afresh, not with confession of sins against Jehovah, but with blood-guiltiness, i.e., Christ's being put to death, and thence all is "God" not "Jehovah." Psalm 68, Christ has been exalted, and the Lord God is to dwell among them, and the summons of Numbers is used for the dispersion of all enemies. In Psalm 69 we have Christ's sorrows down here in connection with Israel - Israel grown old (David) is not to be forgotten, and the King's son, Solomon, is set up in the millennium. It is Messiah, Son of David, and Jewish deliverance, not Christ's heavenly exaltation on His rejection - that had taken place, and was, for Jah, Elohim dwelling among the rebellious.

4 The first Book is the gospel view of Christ's position on earth and on high - such as Peter might preach.

The second Book is prophetic, and the cast out Jews, with whom He has had sympathy, looking for restoration.

The third Book, as often noticed, is the general expectation of Israel (as well as Judah) where blood-guiltiness indeed was not. They are in the land, as in Isaiah 18, but suffering under the Gentiles and the judgment of God, but conscious that God has interfered in their favour, judging "among the gods," the lofty ones "set in slippery places," and they going up to the tabernacle of God, or at least looking to it with desire - Zion, the centre of all their hopes, His foundation. In the last two Psalms of the Book we have the distress of the soul, though looking to Jehovah for salvation, under the terrors of the Law, and the sure promises of David in grace, and faithfulness in Christ as remarked. "Holy One" (verse 19, Psalm 89) is the singular of the word translated "mercies" in verse 1.

In the fourth Book we have Jehovah, Israel's dwelling place always. But now they have been long afflicted, and they look for present mercy in a short life from Him with whom time is nothing. In Psalm 91, "Most High" being the supreme and millennial name of God, the question is "Which is the Most High?" He who can tell will have the blessing of Abraham's God. The godly man, Messiah especially, takes Jehovah; and Israel, and Jehovah Himself own the secret of faith, and blessing is found. This introduces, in the well-known secret which follows, millennial blessing and glory. But it is "Jehovah" who comes, "Jehovah" all through; Psalms 101 and 102 bring in Messiah as Man, but owned at the end of Psalm 102 as Jehovah Himself. All this is remarkable. As in Daniel 7, so everywhere, this wonderful truth of Christ being Jehovah shines out more and more in Old and New Testaments. In 1 John, for example, there as God; Psalms 103, 104, 105, 106, the ways of Jehovah - first grace and mercy with Israel, then Creation glory, and judgment to deliver them - His faithful mercy from Abraham - His mercy to them after failure, and looking to Him for restoration - Psalm 101, and partly 102; it is Jehovah, not His anointed.

_______

5 I think we shall find, all through the Psalms, two classes - one, the faith which looks to God, and trusts Him, and pleads for an answer in righteousness - and the second, the cry out of distress, and in distress of heart under it, though the principle of faith be in the cry. I remember attributing the former more to Christ, the latter to the Remnant. Now in the spirit and character of these this is true, but the exclusive distinction of them to one or the other is wrong. They are all the Remnant, only in two different aspects - only one more fully and directly the Spirit of Christ; though in Gethsemane He did cry in distress to God.

______

The connection with the Jewish Remnant is ever more clear, and more important to me in the Psalms - Christ identifying Himself with that Remnant, important because it is His character as Christ with Jehovah, which is necessarily modified in the Gospels, never indeed directly presented, because He is Son of Man and Son of God there, and Emmanuel if He is in the midst of the Jews, and Jesus. (The only place He directly declares Himself "the Christ," is in John 4, to the woman of Samaria.) Hence the difference, as often remarked, of the desire of judgment, and the grace which is in the Gospel.

______

The clue indeed to the Psalms is to see the Remnant in the presence of the day of the Lord. God will then execute His judgment in order to set His Son King in Zion. Thus also we learn how far Christ has taken a place amongst them, or at least has one.

_______

It is clear that the Psalms address themselves naturally to a people in relationship with God, to a people under the law, though they may be driven out; only keepers of it are distinguished. They present the godly Remnant, and the heathen raging against Jehovah and His anointed. But there is no morning Star in Psalm 2, naturally. Note how very clear the character and resulting position of the Remnant, and Jesus rejected, exalted as Adonai (Lord) and finally reigning, is in Psalms 1 and 2. The Christian place left out, but what a place it does give us! Compare Psalm 110 as to Adonai's place, and then Isaiah 6.

6 Thus the Psalms not only suppose a godly Remnant, distinct from the mass of the nation, but suppose the deliberate hostility of the ungodly, Satan-led party against Messiah, and the godly who follow Him, so as not only to give the latter-day state, but also that of the time of Christ, and hence so much, besides direct prophecy, applies to Him as to the moral state - not as to Him personally perhaps, but as to that in which He was, and the Spirit which animated Him in it, for indeed His Spirit had provided for them, and He came and put Himself in their place. This arranged opposition is important to remark in the Psalms.

_______

The Psalms - so Hannah's song, etc., are the first introduction of the Remnant, on the failure of judicial and priestly economy, under Jehovah as their King - the only right thing short of Christ, and therefore introducing, in the hope and joy of the Remnant, at once the King, the Anointed (for prophecy was but a ministration of testimony) - Samuel when weaned from his mother, to be "before the Lord for ever."

So all the Psalms are testimonies not of the Spirit from Jehovah to the people, but the Spirit of Christ in the Remnant towards Jehovah. You may sometimes see it speaking in the prophets as in Christ and them, but it is always prophetically - "I fed the poor of the flock," "I and the children which God hath given me are for signs and wonders, etc." - so that it is still the same prophetic testimony; they knew that it was the Word of the Lord, but here it is the effect in the believing Remnant, and therefore in its highest character in Christ, which place, that He might be in them by His Spirit - take His place among them and lead them in Spirit, He expressly takes in Psalm 16, which is just its force.

This gives a special and interesting character to these Psalms; it amounts to prophecy when it is the actual expression of Christ's Spirit in the circumstances in which He was to be placed; still it was what He felt, and not what was declared about Him. "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption" - we are not aware how. It is taking Jehovah as God that is so marked in the Psalms; i.e., the God of the Jews as the true God, "Who is God save Jehovah?" The Lord quite merges this. There are also often, I should add, answers by the Spirit to Messiah, so placed as in the Psalms, and expressing His mind holily therein; and also identification of Him with Jehovah, as in the New Testament with the Father.

_______

7 The more we seize the idea that it is the Jewish Remnant with which Christ, entirely Man yet shown to be Jehovah, identifies Himself, the more we shall seize the meaning of the Psalms, and understand the path of Christ Himself. Thus even in Psalm 16, where we have the life of Christ in its divine principles so distinctly and blessedly brought forth, still He is among Jews and fidelity to Jehovah characterises Him, see verse 4. Note the characteristics of this life. First He takes His place as Man, properly Man, and trusts in God, counting Jehovah as His Lord, and taking His place among the saints. Jehovah is the portion of His inheritance and His cup - Jehovah counsels Him, He blesses Him for it - He sets Jehovah before His face, and trusts His help, whatever come, even through death which did not affect this life nor Jehovah's power - He looks up the path of life to Jehovah's presence.

_______

In the first Book Christ is presented in His title of righteousness, and, according to the counsels of God, association with the Remnant pointed out, and its state, and then the full result in the counsels of God, Psalm 8 - then Christ in the place He took, Psalms 16, 17 and 18 - the thoughts, feelings, judgment of the saint, and, at the end, how Christ came down into the place He did, setting aside the Jewish figures, and laying the ground of righteousness Himself. The result and holy wisdom of owning Him is in Psalm 12.

8 The second Book is somewhat different, though there is an analogy. It begins not with Christ but with the condition of the Remnant, and hence has more for its subject the facts of the latter day, Israel being driven out. The change takes place by the introduction of a triumphant Messiah, and the Remnant thereupon in renewed relationship with the God of Jacob. Psalm 49 is a commentary or improvement founded on it. But then the great public meaning of all the great scene of God's dealings is brought in - God judges His people and the world - He gathers those who come to His covenant by sacrifice, the Jewish ones being set aside as of any avail - the Remnant come in on the confession of their guilt in the death of Christ, and then sacrifices of righteousness are offered. The internal state is thus gone into - the outward oppression and inward state of the Jews, as judged by Christ and displayed in Judas and Antichrist, see Psalms 55, 56, 57 and 58; but God comes in in answer to all this, and the state of things is judged, and blessing comes from Him who is power.

But then another truth is brought out - the exaltation of Christ, His ascension, and thus the full blessing and triumph of Israel is brought in; but for this (Psalm 69) the humiliation of Christ, and the conduct of the Jews is brought out. The appeal of Christ, and His connection with Israel, deprived of strength, is presented to us in Psalms 70 and 71, and His Solomon reign in Psalm 72. The details will come hereafter. In Psalms 62 and 63 Christ is against introduced - He waits on God, and desires God when there is nought else, and no access to the Sanctuary.

In the third Book, God, good to Israel, to such as are of a clean heart, is the theme. The public attacks of the outward enemies in the latter day, the judgment of God, and Christ's taking part in the sorrow and in the burden and curse, are brought out in order to complete deliverance in Psalm 89. He (Psalm 87) being reckoned to Sion as her Son, who then does not shrink from comparison with all the world's glory.

But the third Book requires some further remarks. There can be nothing without Christ. But Christ is not the subject of this as in the two first, neither as the direct object as in Book 1, nor as the answer to need, as in Book 2. Christ was among the Jews, and here we get back to Israel, who can have nothing without Him, and all whose hope is founded on Him. But Christ was among the Jews, not in Israel, properly speaking. Here then we have not David, save in Psalm 86 and perhaps two others. But Asaph, and the spirit, and subjects of the psalms are different - not the sorrows and sufferings of a sympathising Messiah, and a Remnant associated with Him, but grace giving to Israel what they had forfeited, and hence the former deliverances of God referred to - the account of the loss of all by their conduct - the calling of David - still His throne cast down too. Hence the inroad of outward enemies, against even restored Israel, is narrated. But great principles of God's dealings and government are brought out, "Truly God is good to Israel" - there is favour and grace. But the distinction of those clean in heart is made. Faith is tried by the prosperity of the wicked, which the sanctuary alone explains. God's judgment explains all, Psalms 75 and 76; in the latter, Christ also will take the seat of judgment.

9 Meanwhile ancient deliverances are referred to, which were of grace, and of all Israel, as Psalm 77 and the whole of Psalm 80. Psalm 78 explains how and why they had been judged, and the rejection of the natural Heir, and God's electing grace the means of bringing in blessing. In Psalm 81, the new moon of Israel's restoration appears - it recalls again deliverance from Egypt, and again we have judgment of the judges, and the last inroads. In Psalm 86, where we find David, and Christ identifying Himself with Israel and its sorrows, it is as God's witness against false gods, "All nations . . . shall come and worship." In Psalm 87, He is reckoned to Zion; in Psalm 88, He bears the whole wrath against the people; and in Psalm 89, He centres all Jehovah's mercies for them in Himself, on which the appeal for the intervention of Jehovah, according to His promise to David's seed, is founded.

The fourth Book rests, for the full blessing of Israel, on the unchangeable and eternal character of Jehovah their God. In eternity God, He had been in all generations their dwelling place. Upon man's changingness, and vanity of life, and the stability of the being of Him, with whom a thousand years is but as yesterday when it is passed, the Spirit of Christ in the believing Remnant turns to look for His redemption who had always been their dwelling place. He had set their secret sins in the light of His countenance - His anger consumed them - they look for mercy. It is the introductory cry founded on the faith which looked quite back, and to Jehovah as always their dwelling place.

10 Then comes the return to the names in which God revealed Himself to Abraham, and the enquiry where the secret place of Abraham's God was - where faith found Him. Messiah declares He takes Jehovah, i.e., God's relationship to Israel, as that place. From these two Psalms the Book closes - only (Psalm 102) the rejected Messiah is found to be this very same enduring Jehovah, the same Eternal God in whom was Israel's trust.

______

I have no doubt that in the Psalms we find a full setting forth of the condition of the Remnant in the last day, and so in principle in all times, and then Christ taking part in this position (for in all their affliction He was afflicted) but without therefore excluding them or their part in it. It is His entering into theirs, sometimes rising up to historical facts, sometimes entering merely in Spirit into their sorrows, but when even it rises up into historical facts, not therefore proving that all the Psalm is historically or personally referable to Him. It still is His place with the Remnant of Israel who are the direct proper object, though He may enter into their circumstances, and even the details, in which He did that, be brought out. It is always directly, and per se the Remnant. The Remnant had to come and be baptised by John the Baptist - Christ came too where they had all thus come, takes His part and place with them, but it was with them, not His place. Then we have the fact as to Himself, and many important historical circumstances - the heavens opened - the descent of the Holy Ghost etc. - but we have the divine comment, in this case, that it was in no way His place, but He fully entered into it with them in grace. It was, in Him, fulfilling all righteousness, perfect obedience and perfect grace. Of course He took on His heart and spirit all that they were under, feeling it as He alone could - but He took it. Now, as regards the Psalms, this comes out with clearer light, and interesting details thus.

The two first Psalms we have long seen to be a kind of preface, but this bearing, I think, is yet to be more clearly brought out. We have, I think, the two parts of the subject of the whole Book of Psalms - a righteous Remnant in the midst of sinners, and the counsels of Jehovah as regards His King in Zion, the Son, on the earth. In general this I have noticed, but I mark here that they are given as two distinct subjects; "the righteous" (Psa. 1: 6) is plural - there is a way that belongs to them in contrast with "the ungodly." Psalm 2 brings out Messiah in the proper dignity of His earthly Person without any other connection with men, only that He is born of Jehovah on the earth - He is Adonai - the Son - the Anointed of Jehovah - King in Zion (the heathen, His inheritance, to be broken in pieces as a potter's vessel) - to be trusted in (which is due only to Jehovah) - associated with Jehovah when He is raged against. No doubt men will rage against Him, but so they will against Jehovah, and that in the same time and spirit, and He as sitting in heaven laughs at them.

11 Then we have the righteous in the midst of sinners in Israel, but these last will not stand in the judgment, nor in the congregation of the righteous when gathered, i.e., the character and position of the righteous, and, in Psalm 2, Adonai Messiah.

But in fact He, who should be King in Zion, was to suffer, because the righteous were suffering, and He entered into their sorrows, but as the righteous One, for it is into the sorrows of the righteous He entered. The baptism of John is important as characterising this as His position at Psalm 10. Psalm 11 shows His own proper position from the beginning. What we have to seek in the Psalms, and find is the position of the righteous, because it is into that Christ entered. This is the whole that is presented at the beginning, but another question does arise when the Remnant comes before God - the sins of the people were there, not sin in purpose, or will, but in guilt, and that arising from an evil nature. This sorrow and guilt Christ had to take - but to take. This is not brought out in the commencement, we will notice it in its place.

The great basis is laid in the outset - the righteous in heart and Messiah - and then Messiah's entrance in fact into the sorrows of the righteous, and righteous sorrow. David naturally furnished the evident occasion for this in his history, though not alone. Psalms 3-7 present this position of the righteous man into which Christ is entered, i.e., its trials. In Psalm 3, He looks to God in Zion, the hill of His holiness - to Jehovah in the midst of the many that rise up against Him; Jehovah is His help, and He will bless His people. In Psalm 4 the God of His righteousness, Jehovah, has chosen the godly man - the light of His countenance suffices; Psalm 3 is trust, Psalm 4 is righteousness. In Psalm 5 in this spirit He views His enemies, but God, such as He is, will bless the righteous, and faith looks that those that trust in Him shall rejoice God's character is distinctively applied to the ungodly on the ground of the two last.

12 In Psalm 6, the Remnant, the godly man, pressed by the wicked, pleads with God that His anger, due to the people, should not rest on him; in the midst of enemies he has the consciousness of what is due to the people, and looks at God's anger as bringing down to death - then the wicked would triumph, but the Lord hears him and he is delivered from his enemies. Into this sorrow too of the righteous man in Israel, pressed by the power of enemies, Christ fully entered. He was minded and obedient to be born into the midst of it, but not in the midst of it. This Psalm is still the condition of the godly man - the Remnant - into which Christ enters with perfect sympathy. He who sympathises with sorrow has not the sorrow, but has a nature and a place in which He is capable of entering into it.

In Psalm 7 the righteous man on the ground of his righteousness, i.e., as integrity and grace, not self-righteousness, but in respect of God's government, and such there is, calls for judgment. Psalm 6 was the governmental judgment of Jehovah, thus bringing death - Psalm 7 is its application, after chastening, to the setting aside the wicked. Thus the assembly of peoples would surround Him. He calls on God therefore to take His just exaltation to Himself. It is here Christ is properly seen, i.e., as Jehovah. In Psalm 6, the people put themselves, intercessionally, under the judgment of Jehovah in presence of enemies - in Psalm 7, they claim it against their enemies, see verses 8, 9. The last days are in view here, but it is rather the great principle than the circumstances. The righteous, in general, will be delivered from death in that day. Death has no way the character of atonement here, but the result of divine government, as to which God's intervention, in favour of the righteous, but on the ground of mercy (chesed) is claimed. Further on we shall see that Christ had to go through death as the real Sinbearer. But here death is pleaded against in connection with the government of God.

It may be remarked that it is not a personal confession of sin here, but the soul, oppressed by enemies, and looking at Jehovah's anger and displeasure, cries to Him for deliverance, that the oppression of the wicked may not take this character. The righteous man is suffering from man, and he pleads against death from the hand of Jehovah. He looks to God to be for him, and not against him in his trouble. It is the cry of distress, not of confession, though where one was liable to meet with anger and displeasure. In result Psalm 6 is the righteous man, or one of the Remnant in the height of his distress before God.

13 Psalm 8 closes this series, as the two first had laid the foundation of it in principle - closes it by the result in divine counsel; but here also it is the godly Remnant who celebrate deliverance on the earth, in which the name of Jehovah is displayed. He is their Lord, His name excellent in all the earth, and He has set His glory above the heavens. This is surely Christ; compare 1 Timothy 3: 16. He had shown His divine, though hidden, power in using the mouth of babes to proclaim it in presence of all the power of the enemy. This, as He was Man, brings on the question, What is this provocation? - that you pay attention to Him; hence we have the way of the exaltation of Christ, as Son of Man, answering to Psalms 7: 7, and 8: 1. The Creation is subject to Him - all things. The blessed Remnant who have trusted Him, see Psalm 2: 12, which none should do in any but Jehovah.

Now turn to His actual present earthly glory, fruit of but bearing out the heavenly, which had been already unfolded just before. It is remarkably full, as regards the Person of Christ, in Jewish connection. Thus the whole scene of the groundwork of relationships, as to the government of God, is brought out in these Psalms. The need, and the redemption that met it, is not touched on. It is, so to speak, the historical and personal condition in its great elements. Mercy is looked for in God - righteousness is laid, as ground in man, as against enemies - the righteousness of God is looked to - the upright in heart He saves - He judges the righteous. The wicked are objects simply of judgment, to faith - they are workers of iniquity. In the close, the Jehovah - Christ, Son of Man, is the sole object of thought.

In Psalms 9 and 10, the details of the latter day are entered into, and the judgment of the wicked, and the heathen who perish out of Jehovah's land. It is the positive, historical bringing out of detail. These form, like Psalms 1 and 2, an anticipative preface for the Psalms on to the end of Psalm 18. In Psalms 11, 12 and 13, we have the expressions of the faith, and feelings of the godly in these circumstances. Psalms 14 and 15 are rather the expression of a spiritual judgment on the wicked, and the character suited to those who, in the end, will abide in God's tabernacle.

14 Note here in passing, that Elihu does not speak of Satan, nor of anything he has to say, to Job, but of God's ways in the suffering of His saints. So it is indeed God who begins the matter as to Job. So Christ goes through the whole power of Satan, of which He had to be sensible, for our sakes, right up to God, instead of complaining and speaking against God, like Job, and takes the cup only at God's hand; but thus it became properly judgment from Him. Job goes through the process as it meets him, i.e., as he is when he meets it; and this is always our case, therefore indeed it is God sends it. So indeed did Christ, but then He was perfect.

Psalm 16 is the first in which Christ takes directly and personally a place amongst men - I need not say Psalms 2 and 8 both refer to Him, but here He takes the place. Psalms 2 and 8 have presented Christ - the others the circumstances and sorrows of the Remnant, entered into by the Spirit of Christ, and the general principles on which their relationship with God is founded, and the feelings connected with it in those wrought in by the Spirit of God - the position as such, and the feelings connected with it. But in Psalm 16 the Lord personally puts Himself in this place; so the Apostle indeed quotes it in Hebrews 2: 14. The children partook of flesh and blood, so likewise He.

Hence the Psalm gives formally, and definitely, the true character of the Lord's association with men in the flesh. He takes the place of, and expresses human dependence - He is a man trusting in God. In this position what place does He take? He looks to the God of Jacob, to Jehovah, and owns Him as His Adon or Lord. His goodness does not reach up to Jehovah, as He said to the young man, "Why callest thou me good? None is good but One, that is God." He takes this place - He has, "being in the form of God, emptied himself" - who could indeed have reason to say it, but one who might have claimed it in Himself, for it is goodness? He says to the saints on the earth, "the excellent, in them is all my delight." This place He takes too - He takes one, that is, with the saints on the earth, the godly in Israel. This, as we have seen, was publicly shown in His baptism by John. The poor of the flock going there, was the first movement of so acting on God's appeal, and then He associates Himself with them, but then He shows Himself wholly dependent on Jehovah. He will not hear of any other than Jehovah, nor name their names. He is a Man dependent on God - a godly, faithful Jew, associated with the godly - the lines are fallen unto Him in pleasant places, He has a goodly heritage. He has set Jehovah always before Him - He is at His right hand, He will not be moved - even His flesh would rest in hope, for He trusted to Jehovah for His resurrection - He is His chesed, His pious, godly One, and as Man He could go up to His presence where is fulness of joy.

15 I have entered on this Psalm because it is that in which Christ takes, and unfolds His place amongst the Jews.

In Psalm 17, I have no doubt we find the Lord again, but here He is in presence of enemies, and we find (v. 2, "us") that it is more His position in connection with the saints, and as it will be in the last day. He pleads for a sentence from God's presence, as hearing righteousness. There is dependence - God's word also is His guide - but it is more one who finds Himself in the midst of circumstances by reason of what He is, than one taking a definite place. The enemies are fully in view, and He pleads His practical righteousness. Hence the result is seeing God's face in righteousness. Christ is surely found here, but it is not so much Christ taking His place definitely in the midst of the people.

Psalms 9 and 10 having given us the latter day state of things, and Psalms 11-15, the thoughts and feelings of the godly Remnant in respect of that state of things; the fact that Christ had taken this place among the godly, and thus identified Himself, the perfect One, with their interests in the difficulties and trials they had to go through with their enemies, is evidently of the last importance. This introduces Psalm 18 - a most remarkable Psalm, in which the subjection of Christ to the full sorrow of death, while trusting in Jehovah the God of Israel, is the ground of the deliverance of the people from Egypt, till Messiah's final victories and dominion over the heathen. The Psalm is directly David's, and professedly so, but takes in the history of the people, and with, and as centre of it, a Messiah suffering to death, and finally triumphant over all.

This closes this second division, commencing with Psalm 9. In what follows, we have an enlarged view of God's ways and testimonies - Christ's sufferings - His condition of dependence and glory, in which He is owned as Jehovah of hosts. After the complete series of testimonies, and their effects and results, in Psalms 19-22, we have the full character of dependence in going through all on earth, when the earth, as to present power, is not the Lord's; and, when the earth is the Lord's, what the glory is of Him who was thus dependent. Then again come the various sentiments, founded on these two great principles, as to Christ, Psalms 22, 23.

16 Psalm 16 is then Christ personally, perhaps beyond all others unless Psalm 2, and alone so, as regards His taking His own place among the Remnant on the earth. Psalm 22 gives us Christ I need not say, but here His place is already taken, and He is bearing the consequences of it for others. But in Psalm 16 He has His own place with God, not that of others in grace. In Psalm 17 we have the consequent association with others in the path of righteousness, in which He has entered, in the midst of the power of evil. Psalm 16 is what He is with God - Psalm 17 is His place consequent on His taking that amongst men. He would not have the world, but would be satisfied with God's likeness - but this is equally true of us as awaking in His. Psalm 16 can apply to none else but Himself - it is, as I said, His own place; being in that, He can enter into every sorrow.

The order I apprehend of these Psalms is thus: the two first form an introductory theme. Then to the end of Psalm 7, the thoughts and feelings of one of the righteous Remnant the effect of the position into which Christ entered - the result is Psalm 8, where He shines as the heavenly Centre. Then the details of the latter-day circumstances are given as a preface; Psalms 9, 10. Then we have the expression of the faithful Remnant's thoughts, and this closes with the distinct revelation of the way in which Christ took His place amongst them - His own personal place.

In Psalm 17 it is His pleading, in righteousness, as connected with them in His life. It is Israel - the Remnant in sorrow - but Christ having taken His place with them. This is sympathy. But in Psalm 18 the Lord takes the place of the Remnant, upright as an Israelite, and goes down into the sorrows of death, not as expressing the expiatory pain, i.e., as under divine wrath, but as crying to Jehovah under its power on His soul - "the sorrows of death," "the sorrows of hell." His place is amongst the Jews. He is heard out of the temple. In truth, actual death is not spoken of, but its sorrows - Christ having come in when all the power of evil unto death could wage its war against Him, as the Remnant will be in the last day. Gethsemane represents it in time, more than the Cross. It is consequently applicable in its effect to the deliverance of the Remnant from going down to the grave. Indeed this deliverance by Jehovah is looked at all through - He walks in integrity - wrath for forgiveness we shall find further on.

17 Faith and uprightness for deliverance in the full power of evil in man, and from Satan who has the power of death, we find here. Christ is recompensed according to His righteousness, not according to His death here - He is not heard from the horns of the unicorns here, but He enters into the full power of death - not wrath for the deliverance of others from that which He went through - the power of Satan, and man under his power.

The only expression difficult in the Psalm is "mine iniquity," v. 23. Clearly Christ had none, so that the force of it is what we have to seek. His position still applies here - all that others had failed in, He keeps Himself from, calling it His as that about which He was come, by which He was tried, thoroughly tried - the iniquity of the nature and position, i.e., of man and Jew, but without having the least taint of it in Him, but tempted in all points He never let in, He was pure where all else failed. His calling it His is not, I think, vicariously here, as it most certainly is not personally, but His keeping from, as not letting in, anything through which He passed, and which belonged to the position He had taken. Hence, when He took it, the sorrows of death compassed Him. The prince of this world, having nothing in Him, only showed, as an instrument, His love to His Father and His obedience, and was the unwitting instrument of Christ's passing through what, by its excellency, and His own spotless title to liberty from it, made available to others; and this was in the purpose of God. And the whole of the blessings in the history of Israel, from the deliverance out of Egypt to the final victories of Messiah, rest on this as its tide, and this is what this Psalm shows. It is just what Psalms 9 and 10 made necessary.

Note, this connects itself with the government of God, in and through Israel, not on redemption, properly so called, which goes much deeper, though this comes in many principles to the border of it. It will be found consequently that judgments and power are the consequence of this, not blessings and fruits of grace - in Psalm 22 there is, on the other hand, nothing else than these last. David's history, and deep sorrows, and triumph gave the admirably adapted occasion to the prophetic entering into this, not only as history, but as in spirit entering into it Himself, and in sympathy with the people. The connection of this with the government of God, and the power of the prince of this world is of the last importance in itself, and to understand the Psalm. This completes, I apprehend, this chapter, so to speak, of the Psalms.

18 There are many expressions in the Psalms which are true of the writer, or of anyone in like sorrow, but which yet have their accomplishment in the highest degree in the case of Christ - these Christ has applied without making the Psalm a prophecy of Himself.

Psalms 19, 20, 21 and 22, as we have often remarked, is a complete subject in itself - the testimonies of God; the first - Creation and the Law; the two next - Messiah seen by the Remnant in His human sufferings, and then, seen glorified, He is great in the deliverance of Jacob's God, Jehovah. He has "length of days for ever and ever," in reply to the life He asked, and He is made most blessed for ever, exceeding glad with Jehovah's countenance.

This is very much Peter's preaching. Note, not only in Peter's preaching does he not preach Christ as the Son of God, but the exalted, rejected One, but in the first Epistle he never calls Him Son of God, indeed in the second only in recalling the transfiguration, and hence Christ viewed as on earth, as James also does not, nor the Sacrifice either. The suffering Messiah as Man could be, and, in the suffering, is exalted. Now Psalm 22 gives not Christ suffering from man, though that is there in full, but from God - forsaken when in His sufferings, and His heart melted like wax in the midst of His bowels - forsaken of God. Hence, as Psalm 21 was judgment on His enemies, this is grace for all - it speaks of the Remnant, all Israel, the ends of the earth. Here we get the immense and infinite moral truth of suffering from God. He, who knew no sin, is made sin, and drinks the cup of God's wrath - makes His soul an offering for sin. There is a complete glorifying of God in respect of the question of good and evil, in the whole universe, in respect of the nature of God Himself. The enemy does his worst, and man (in Christ) suffers his worst - in grace - and God's wrath against sin is poured out. Hence love unhindered can flow out - God's being what He is, have its full sway and blessing.

19 It is not righteous judgment, against unrighteous man, executed against human despisers in governmental power. It is the question of good and evil settled in man, and God glorified. But it is not here bearing iniquities, nor substitution in the sense of its application to individuals - that also was accomplished here - but it is another aspect of this one great act, on which all hangs and in which God is glorified. It is Christ solving the whole question of sin between Himself and God. It is not the mere sorrows of death, as in Gethsemane, but the wrath of God. But it was Christ Himself dealt with as to sin, or the question of sin dealt with in Him - I mean as contrasted with bearing individual's sins.

Before the consequences, in the experience of the Remnant, and their relationship to God are entered on, another doubly-connected character of Christ is brought out. But this such that the spared Remnant are concerned in it. Still it is Christ, and has its accomplishment only fully in Him, and it is a passage which shows that though earthly glory and blessing are looked to, still resurrection must come in, so that to the dying believer it has a higher signification, but it takes the great principle viz: neither death nor sparing, but the security of faith through all. Jehovah is the Shepherd of faith. Hence, come what will, there is confidence. The only effect of passing through everything is to know it better. It is not what the sorrows are, but what God is for faith in them, which is presented; restoring the soul does not hinder its application to Christ, because it was from sorrow and trouble not necessarily from sin, as John 12.

Dwelling "in the house of the Lord for ever" is, though true for us in heaven, His title on earth in Psalm 23 - Jehovah is Shepherd when evil is there. In Psalm 24 the earth itself is His, and then He, who was in faithful dependence and obedience, enters into the house of the Lord as King of glory, Jehovah of hosts, i.e., that the lowly, dependent, obedient but perfect Christ of Psalm 23 is the Jehovah of glory entering into the house in Psalm 24.

Then the Remnant is brought in in this double character - integrity in the midst of evil, and guilt before God. Here we find what a ground the offering of Christ lays for their return to God. Here first, remark, the important fact after Psalm 22, we get the confession of sins, and that in the first Psalm of those which again enter on experience; Psalm 25. A soul waiting on God in the presence of His enemies who have a right, so to speak, to bring shame on him because of his sins, but would do it in malice oppressing God's people, but a soul trusting in what the Lord is as good, ready to teach sinners in the way, and a Friend to the meek, helping them into His way - these paths which are mercy and truth to them that keep His covenants and testimonies. A soul who as to its present purpose, could plead its integrity - a soul who was bound up with Israel's blessing, and looked for Jehovah's redemption of them from all his troubles. I do not think mercy and truth are thus brought together previously either - we have mercy in Psalm 6, otherwise it is pleas of righteousness. This Psalm states the whole ground, experimental ground, on which the faithful Israelite is in the latter day. It is, in this respect, a very important Psalm.

20 As Psalm 25 acknowledges the sin, so Psalm 26 pleads the unfeigned integrity, and seeks not to be shut up with the ungodly of that day. This Psalm is important as forming the other part of the ground on which the residue rest, alluded to, in the preceding, to complete the picture of the sentiment there developed, but not its subject. Here thorough integrity, appealing to Him who searches the reins, is the subject of the Psalm. Hence counting, according to Psalm 1, to stand in the congregation - "I will walk in mine integrity," he says, but it is in the time of trial and trouble, for he adds, "redeem me and be merciful unto me." These two Psalms form a preface as to the state of the residue - confession of sins, and the plea of integrity - in the presence of enemies. We have got now, historically, into the condition of the Remnant - their position we had already - the principles and groundwork of their experience are here laid.

Now, having confessed his sin, and placed himself on the ground of integrity before the Lord (and the confession of his sin comes first) he can look the enemies in the face. Jehovah is his light and salvation. A camp of enemies would not make his heart afraid - it will just be the means of lifting up his head above them - in the hour of trouble, Jehovah would hide him in His pavilion. The secret of this was, looking to Jehovah, and the earnest desire to dwell in His house - see His beauty, and enquire there. This he could do - it was founded on the invitation from the Lord to seek His face - surely then that face would not be turned away - on Him he waited. This is a supplementary, introductory Psalm to the other two.

21 In Psalm 28 he cries in distress - if Jehovah does not interfere he will be like one going down to the pit. He prays not to be drawn away with the wicked - his heart rejoices in the Lord's hearing. Here we find the Spirit of Christ entirely, leading the cry of the Remnant. "The Lord is my strength," "The Lord is their strength" - "The saving strength of his Christ" - "Save thy people," it closes. It is not that Christ is personally with them, but He was, and has fully, identified Himself with the sorrow and position of the Remnant, and they are to count for deliverance on Jehovah's interest in Him, just as Martha did at the tomb of Lazarus. Then He showed a further present thing, but in a way that went on to the time we are here speaking of. I apprehend that this connection is taught in Psalm 27: 8, "My heart" (Jehovah's) "said unto thee: Seek ye my face - thy face, Jehovah, will I seek."

Psalm 29 summons the mighty, in the confidence of faith, to acknowledge Jehovah, and to own Him in His temple - Him who, supreme over all, gives strength to His people.

Psalm 30 celebrates the deliverance, and entire dependence on Jehovah; life here is preserved to the Remnant.

Psalm 31 turns back into the depths of trouble, when, but for Jehovah, life is despaired of (v. 22) but Jehovah is trusted in. Integrity is pleaded, but the depth of sorrow is entered into, so that in articulo mortis Christ could use the words of faith of this Psalm, only saying "Father." The Spirit of God gives the experience of the faithful as the ground of encouragement. Yet compare here the difference of Paul in 2 Corinthians 1 - he, coming after Christ's death, and knowing the power of resurrection, says, "I had the sentence of death in myself, that I should not trust in myself but in God who raises the dead: who delivered us," etc. Thus, when despairing of life, it was not counting on Jehovah to spare it in crying to Him, but counting himself already dead, and reckoning on resurrection. We see the difference of the Christian place, but Christ had to go through this first, and hence He could enter into the position itself, and did, which was yet on the other side of the Cross, i.e., before passing through it, when man looked at it as coming up to it. Alas! how many souls rest there! Indeed He alone, of course, fully went through it, though others may pass through the shadow of it.

22 We now come to another, and all important, turning point of the condition of the living man looking for deliverance - Psalm 32 - the blessing of the forgiven man, of the one who has opened his heart fully before Jehovah - made his full confession - no self-justifying - no silence which made his bones wax old. All was brought out - Jehovah's only object was to bring to integrity of heart, and truth; when this is wrought in confession, all is forgiven. The ground has been fully laid in Christ; Ps. 22. Then God guides in the way. Hence, because of this mercy and forgiveness, the godly come in an acceptable time - they are preserved in the great waterfloods - only they should not be like horse and mule, to be forced and held from falling. In fine, mercy shall compass the righteous. This Psalm is a turning point of the state of the Remnant. It is furnished here to them, not that they may have all reached it, but to show them the path, and produce the confession. It forms the very ground on which they can go on in integrity - where sin is, confession must be, to have integrity; but where no forgiveness is, confession cannot be but for judgment. Hence all hangs here on this, as to the state of the soul.

Psalm 33 takes it up in joy, and celebrates Jehovah, and unfolds His character in favour of the righteous Remnant.

Psalm 34 in a softened and more confiding spirit, seeing that Christ had been heard, will bless at all times, even though in sorrow; verse 20 has had a literal fulfilment in Christ. It must be remembered that all these sentiments are divinely furnished here to the Remnant - the sense in which individuals may use them is another question.

Psalm 35. Here we have full and true sense of the power, and wickedness of evil, and he looks for judgment against the oppressive wicked. Here Christ enters into all, with sympathy with the Remnant - these are looked at, and even tested by their sympathy with Him. Christ pleads in Spirit for judgment, which will be the deliverance of the Remnant; one of these would easily see that Another than himself pleaded, but that it was his own deliverance that was the result of its being heard. This Psalm takes up the ways of the wicked.

Psalm 36. Here we have the extent and character of it, in contrast with the righteous. "No fear of God" was the secret of the wicked's ways - nothing could be hoped for. But this cast on Jehovah Himself - there, there was no end to mercy, no limit to power. Sweet surely it is, to trust in Him!

23 Psalm 37 takes the character of an exhortation for these times, as indeed for all. It shows the just path of the righteous in the day of trial. What is to stay his heart in passing through it? Nothing can be more distinct than the promises of the land to the faithful Remnant, on the cutting off of the wicked, in this Psalm; it shows, most distinctly, what the proper application of these Psalms is to the Remnant in the latter day.

In Psalm 38, the question of God's anger coming on the Remnant for the sins of the people is brought in, when they are in the depth of their distress. Still the hope of faith is in God - confessing the sin and bowed down with it, but therefore appealing to God as the only resource; on Christ this burden did come for the nation's sins.

In Psalm 39, he is nearer God - quieter - and sees the sorrow, and consuming that is upon him, as God's hand, but in chastening. All man, and the world, is vanity.

Psalm 40. Christ here celebrates His own deliverance - but in connection with Israel and the earth - "Praise be to our God." He had been faithful in testifying what God was in the midst of Israel - He desires their blessing, Himself poor and needy - He has indeed taken the iniquities of all the Remnant on Himself, and calls them His, and appeals, in the trial that then comes on Him, against His bitter enemies. The application of this Psalm to the incarnation is known, but it is in connection with Israel, and He appeals to God's righteousness to show mercy, and deliver on the ground of His faithfulness. It is after this faithfulness that He speaks of the iniquities taking hold on Him. He looks, through it all, to the driving back of the wicked, and blessing of the just Remnant who look to Jehovah.

Psalm 41. I have no doubt that in this Psalm also Christ speaks. He is above all the poor whom one is blessed in considering. He applies it in the Gospels, we know, to the poor of the flock also. Of course He considered them, but He was the poor One above all - the heartlessness of all against Him, even His familiar friend, is brought out. In both He waits for the Lord. These two Psalms, closing the Book, show Christ entering into the Remnant's sorrow, perfect in His ways, and then coming under iniquity, though it is for the people and their blessing on earth here, but He had a body prepared to come and take their sorrows, and in fine their sins. He is in the midst of the wicked in Israel, but righteous there, and the desire of the Remnant is, not to be drawn away with them. This is His whole connection with the people, and in Jerusalem.

24 The second Book has a different character - Christ is seen outside the nation, and the Gentiles are there, in evil power, mocking at Jehovah's relationship with the Jews, and their hoped-for protection. I suspect that the occasion was much as Absalom and Adonijah. But then necessarily Christ, risen and ascended, because the deliverance by judgment in power, makes part of the whole scene, not merely an appeal to come in as the only hope. It begins with the outcast Remnant, the evil being in power, but the throne is to be set up by judgment.

The fact of the ungodly Gentile power having cast Him out is brought distinctly out as a basis in Psalm 42.

In Psalm 43 the state of the Jews themselves is declared. This lays the ground of the whole. Remark that there is more confidence, more simple, holy desires here than before. The extreme of evil, in separating the Remnant from itself, has freed it from the distressing effect of the presence of evil, and they can look straight to God in desire, without the intervening cloud of what man is, around. In Christ this evil only proved the more His patience, but the difference of position remains true, and how true it is even for us, though the process may be painful. The sorrow connected with it is expressed by the Remnant in Psalm 44, such was their condition, cast out - as regards this world, it is ours, with Christ as a starting point, see verse 22, and Paul's application of it. Then the result of the intervention of Messiah in judgment is stated in Psalm 45.

In Psalm 46, God is then found to be with them - the Remnant are the people.

In Psalm 47, Jehovah takes His place in and over the earth.

In Psalm 48, Glory is established in Zion - what they had heard (Psa. 44), they have now seen. This closes the historical presentation of this period. Psalm 49 is the moral commentary on it all.

In Psalm 50 we have the judgment on Israel for their moral condition.

Psalm 51 is their confession of Christ's death - for return to God, the old sacrifices are useless.

25 Psalms 52-54 are the spiritual judgment of the situation, when evil is there. In Psalm 52, the strength of man is judged; in Psalm 53, the state of Israel as apostate from God; Psalm 54, the source of the believer's hope.

Having the whole scene before us, in the Psalms which follow, the feelings of the Remnant, and how Christ takes His place in the midst of this scene, are unfolded, resulting, when the old age of Israel (David) seemed to make hope pass away through the last evils, in the setting up the throne of Solomon - of the son of David in peace and in glory.

Remark how, in Psalm 63, God Himself becomes the object of the soul by its being thus cast out.

Psalms 65-67 give the feelings, not as under the evil, as the previous ones, but the hope, anticipation, and celebration of the deliverance. The former will be the comfort - these the encouragement of the Remnant in the latter day.

Psalms 68 and 69 evidently bring out the great foundation, both of the glorious deliverance, and cruel sorrows of Israel, leading, on God's part, to the former in the exaltation and sufferings of Christ.

Psalms 66 and 67, having spoken of the restoration of Israel by judgment, and then the outgoing of the blessing to the nations, on the establishment of it in Zion, Psalm 68, in a very remarkable manner, shows how the heavenly exaltation of Christ is the cause and way of it; but it is the blessing, at the same time, of Israel's God of old. The Psalm begins with the words with which the camp of Israel anciently set forward, God going at the head of His people. It was His journey, as with Amalek His war - hence the wicked perish before Him, and the captives are delivered, and the righteous rejoice - He blesses the solitary and multiplies them. This is then directly referred to what God was in the desert. The pride of the Gentiles, "ye high hills," is apostrophised, the angelic glory displayed - Jehovah among them - but, how this? He has gone up on high! Here we find at once Christ exalted as Man, though He be the same Jehovah. But this is not all - He has led captive the power of the enemy who ruined all - conferred blessing, and as Man, and in His human nature, He has received gifts - even for rebellious Israel, that Jehovah Elohim might dwell among them. This restores Jehovah to Israel, i.e., He can bless, and dwell among them, or indeed Israel to Jehovah. This is the result then celebrated, and which the earth is called to own. The Strength of Israel is in the clouds, but it is the Jehovah who rode in the heavens of old.

26 The whole of Psalm 69 shows the righteous One in presence of human evil and wrong. The position contemplated is, Israel under the rebuke of God. They are driven out, and the enemy triumphs at Jerusalem, yet the righteous had their sorrows, as being Israel at heart. The moral position is the one we have always seen of the Remnant - confession of sin, and assertion of integrity at the same time; into this Christ surely entered as bearing their sorrows, and so far can speak of their sins, but the position is that of the Remnant. On the other hand, the expressions of integrity and sorrow, though general, have found their fullest, and in some parts literal, accomplishment in Christ, for He entered, in the most perfect way, into the sorrows of the Remnant, whether as walking amongst the people as He long did, or cast out as He was at the close; and hence, from His last journey, when He walked no more openly among them, takes up the sorrows of the cast out state. This went on to the close of all, but is not Atonement nor divine wrath, but sorrow in which He takes part - verse 26 is not, I am well assured, atonement but chastisement on Israel, governmental punishment in which Israel will be in the latter day, as we have seen in Psalms 20 and 21 (compared with Psalm 22). It is not grace, but judgment demanded. God had smitten Israel - the wicked triumph over him; Christ in grace enters into this place, and they triumph over him. But it is the people's wrong which is the great subject here, leading to the exaltation of Psalm 68.

The atonement on the Cross brings grace - the blood speaks better things than that of Abel, while, in government, it is on the Jews and on their children; we must always make this distinction. Yet Christ's entering into their sorrows (expiation being made) is the cause and way of their deliverance, through His exaltation as the Poor among the people, see here verse 32; so also Psalm 34: 6; compare Peter's preaching to Israel, Acts 3 - with Christ's intercession, "they know not what they do."

It would be impossible to maintain confidence with the consciousness of sin, if the Lord had not afforded these Psalms. The Remnant, by the same action of the Spirit, enter into the sorrow come on Israel for their sins, and own their desert of God's chastisement - and there is so far the eulabeia (fearing, godly fear), Hebrews 5: 7 and 12: 28, and which Christ was heard in - and have the consciousness of their integrity, and the earnest desire to keep God's law, and to glorify Him. The more faithful they are, the more opposition they find from men, the more consequently they feel the awful state of the people, and feel it as theirs for they are of the people. So Christ, perfect in His integrity, takes in grace this place of distress for the people's sin. This Psalm is a striking example. It is the voice of Israel - Christ entering into it - David no doubt as instrument, but attuning the melody for the Remnant, which Christ alone could sing in its perfectness, and which He could, because He atoned for the wickedness for them, and between them and God, and had no association with it in His own Person or individual place. The following Psalms bring out Israel in this condition of sorrow at the close of their history. The glory of Messiah's reign in Psalm 72 is evident.

27 Psalm 69 however brings out another element - that though there is perfect sympathy and entering into the condition, yet He takes it on His heart alone. He takes the sorrow on Himself - no one enters into His feelings about it, though He for all. This is the true spirit of grace - to bear alone for others what others do not even know we are bearing, for their good - the credit of it all with God alone; see verses 4 and 5.

I think we may easily see when the Lord entered into the present realisation of His position as rejected - no doubt He really always was. This, as a great truth morally, John begins with, but we read, "From that time Jesus began to teach his disciples, the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation," etc. He then began to tell them what He surely knew, but He lived, so to speak, at first, in the presentation of Himself to Israel, saying "Blessed are the eyes," etc. (Luke 10: 23, 24), at the close in His rejection by Israel He was forced to say "Woe, woe." The transfiguration was a turning point - it was the new glory in answer to the sufferings. And so the return of the twelve from their mission - He then desired the twelve to say no more that He was the Christ.

However note in all this, though no doubt it included all, yet the suffering is looked at as from "this generation." The atonement part, therein accomplished, was between Him and God. It required the Holy Ghost to make that clear to the disciples, though indeed He told them it was so. It is well to note this - that the great mass of Christ's sufferings were human sufferings - the perfection of them, but human which try, form, or prove perfectness, but are not in themselves atonement. This, as we have seen in Psalms 20-22, the Remnant, as such, did not enter into, yet Christ suffered the governmental consequences of sin, and in heart, taking them on His heart for Israel; but here it is suffering with them, i.e., as they will suffer - leading their thoughts in this for them. It is only after, when they see Jesus, that they see the real atoning power of His work. "They look on him whom they pierced" - till then they cried to Jehovah under the pressure of governmental discipline of sin, suffering at the same time because of their integrity. It is this place that the Lord constantly takes in the Psalms - identifying Himself perfectly with Israel, i.e., the godly Remnant. His atonement, as we have said, must be between Him and God alone - hence we have so seen it in Psalm 22, where He speaks Himself, and the result is all grace, not merely governmental. Here the indignation and wrath comes in without an atoning character - "In all their affliction he was afflicted, the Angel of his presence succoured them." Atonement comes by substitution, a different thing from being afflicted in their affliction, and succouring them. So when we read of "rebuking in wrath," "chastening in sore displeasure" we have governmental. The very sense which Christ had of the favour of God, even in connection with His people, made this terrible to Him; hence it runs on even into His death, and the ungodly nation are the instruments of it as well as the heathen - it is in every way His "own familiar friend."

28 Now the circumstances of Christ's life were so ordered, that they were a personal realisation of all this, and here the Psalms become, when the Spirit reaches this point, personally prophetic, but do not leave therefore the position of Israel, because it is "in their affliction" He is afflicted. Atonement is quite another work. Wicked men are the instruments of the former sufferings, yet, in the way of government, they are wrath and indignation from God, or may be for me - I may suffer for righteousness. This we find at the beginning of Christ's life, independent of chastening on Israel, but into this Christ entered in Spirit, because He identified Himself with Israel. He came, apart from the sin, as a "Holy thing" born, and as holy was capable, in love and grace, to enter into it in the power of that love and grace, but then He came as a Man so as to feel it Himself, but with the Remnant who felt the sorrow of it, and owned the cause - the sins of Israel; for the confession of sin is the spirit of righteousness. We have already seen this displayed in John's baptism, to which Christ thus came as a witness that it did not concern him, but that He fulfilled righteousness in coming to it. This gives its full character to this position.

29 Hence there are three characters of suffering - for righteousness, from man - chastening where every human sorrow can find its place as an instrument, and when faithful zeal for God therefore brings the Remnant into the sense of the condition of Israel, makes the sin and sorrow sensible - and thirdly, suffering for sin - atonement - in which the human malice had so far a place that it was complete - having no resource but in God, which brought up the soul to the consciousness that it was forsaken, then the just wrath of God against sin as such having to be borne; but here Christ was alone, and got outwardly into this loneliness, because none could pursue the path of faithfulness, in sorrow, up to the point where this was met. "They all forsook him and fled" - He "looked for some to take pity, but there were none"; it was denial, or betrayal if it went further. Thus these two characters of suffering run into one another, as wrath against sin - governmental, or other, is always against sin - but they are essentially, and completely, and most importantly distinct. Substitution comes in here, not sympathy, and suffering with, in grace, but suffering for. The latter is solely divine work. In the former we can have part, and, on the other hand, suffering under it for our good. This Psalm does not rise up into atonement, but into the circumstances of it.

Indeed this is one of those Psalms which show how impossible it is to separate the Jewish Remnant of the latter day and Christ Himself, and how, besides atonement, He has given a ground for hope to them in their sorrows, by passing through and out of them (though for us, this is more by death in His case) yet out of them, being "heard in that he feared."

First in verse 26 we read, "They persecute him whom thou hast smitten, and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded." Next, "God will save Zion, and will build the cities of Judah," so that it looks directly to the deliverance of the latter days. Yet it speaks of the death of Christ, as is clear - yet it speaks not of God's judgment against sin, as divine wrath. It looks for deliverance from death as the Remnant will do, see verse 31, verse 32 also. He is coming to the verge of, and into that which was bringing death upon Him - on man's part, the human circumstances of it. When He refers to life, it was zeal for God (v. 9) and suffering the reproaches which fell on God, and sorrow for man's state, which brought mockery. Christ enters into all the governmental chastisement of man for sin, and in which Israel will be, i.e., the Remnant, and while, looking at it as coming from God's hand, He had got into this, His life was suffering for God's name's sake; and He is coming into this dark place as Israel will in the last day; but this is still from man's hand, and God is appealed to to save Him from death. It was not at all His forsaking - He looks to be delivered, and so will praise. His having separated from the wickedness of Israel has brought Him into deep waters, and He does so because He feels that wickedness, and owns it in view of God's government, verse 5.

30 But His cry was in the "acceptable time" - His adversaries are all before God - He looks to Him not to hide His face. The adding of "Those whom thou hast wounded," makes it evident that it is not divine wrath, as borne vicariously, but the sorrows which Israel will bear, viewed as faithful and yet under the rod. It is chapter 50, not 53, of Isaiah. He interprets what He suffers from man as the rod of God, and so as to Israel it was. So, according to Psalm 94: 12, 13, when the hour of Satan's power came, the Lord entered into this. He must take His place here. It was the cup His Father was giving Him to drink - He takes it from none - He takes all this smiting of people, and enemies, as Jehovah's. He was taking this place for the sins of Israel, and they exult over Him. It is not the cup, but He has taken the place of drinking it, and they rejoice to profit by His bowing His head to it (they seeing but the outside - that He was no longer preserved) to heap every injury upon Him. This is what the Lord feels in this Psalm. But this is entirely a different thing from divine wrath against sin - Psalm 94 could not apply to that, and say "Blessed." Hence, as we have seen elsewhere, He looks for judgment as the consequence of it.

It has been remarked to me, and I believe it is true, that there is never in the Psalms any sentiment such as is expressed in the Lord's words, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." The first word of the sentence would perhaps explain it. It is not a title of the Psalms, and Christ was there consequently in His own relation of grace. This opens a wide field of instruction.

31 Note also Psalm 94: 12, where we have the view which faith takes of the class of trials through which the residue pass at the close, as suffering from the wicked, yet because of their own wickedness, yet at the same time upright in heart. They are chastened, and instructed out of the law. He is suffering under the triumph of the wicked, but looks through this as God's hand and chastening. Into this Christ fully entered in Gethsemane, and all His last sorrows, though there was much more there. And we learn there what His entering in was. The wicked did outwardly triumph over Him - they said "Aha! Aha! So would we have it." He trusted in God - perfect in integrity to God meanwhile - so that the reproaches of them that reproached Elohim fell upon Him. Yet for that reason, suffering in the midst of the wicked, yet entering into the sorrow of the place in which Israel was, because of their sins. Only Christ entered voluntarily, in love, into this place; and all that the sorrow effected, while yet "He learned obedience by the things which he suffered," was to bring out His perfectness. Yet He did get there "the tongue of the learned," having His "ear wakened morning by morning." Israel must go through this to be purified and taught - Christ glorified God in it. Still He went through the sorrow - His voluntariness, and obedience in it, set Him at the head of the people. Psalm 94 is faith's view of the position, not sorrow, and distress's cry under it.

But I return. The Third Book of the Psalms is the unfolding, for faith, of the whole state of Israel in the latter day. I say "Israel," because here the people, as a whole, are looked at as historically viewed before God, the result in deliverance being brought out. Psalm 73 states, as it were, the whole case - the condition for faith of the people in the latter day. "The sanctuary of God" explains the whole case to the heart. The enemy enters destroyingly into the very sanctuary - terrible thought for those that loved Israel, and trusted Jehovah, disowned; Psalm 74. But then, Psalm 75, God is the Judge, and the horns of the wicked will be cut off. And this will take place (Psalm 76) in Judah - Israel - Salem - Zion; there God will make Himself known.

32 Psalm 77, if the heart of the poor believer thought they were forgotten for ever, this was his own infirmity - he should turn to the past days of the Lord. But, Psalm 78, there had indeed been ways, in judgment, to maintain His truth and righteousness amongst the people; they had wholly failed in this, and God had raised up David in sovereign grace. The series of Psalms then returns to the sorrows of the time. Psalm 74 seems more the enemies in the land - Psalm 79 is now the outward open attack of the heathen who have taken Jerusalem, but the deliverance of God would bring praise forth in the people.

Psalm 80, God, as known in His throne on the ark of the Covenant, behind the cherubim, is entreated to visit the vine He had planted, but which is now torn down, rooted up. In this, the "Son of Man," "the Man of God's right hand" is looked for. This is a very remarkable passage. Thus they look to be turned again, and God's face to shine upon them.

In Psalm 81, the new moon of Israel has appeared, but then God shows He has dealt with them according to His own character. They had only to open their mouth wide and He would have filled it. Had they hearkened, they would have been always blest, but that they had not done. God only mourned over the sorrow they had brought upon themselves.

Now He stands, Psalm 82, among the mighty, and judges among the judges, and faith can say, "Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations."

Next, in Psalm 83, the final confederacy of external enemies of the neighbourhood of the latter day - by their destruction Jehovah is known as "Most High over all the earth"; Asshur is there.

In Psalm 84, they can go up to Jerusalem, and find their joy in the temple of the Lord, as a sparrow to the nest.

In Psalm 85, Israel is brought back, but they have much yet to seek from the Lord. But at least the perfect ground of reconciliation and blessing is laid - "Mercy and truth are met together" - God's grace can fulfil the promises - truth springs out of the earth, for there they are filled, but not in connection with the law or human righteousness. This looks down from heaven - blessing is in Israel, guided in their steps by the Lord.

In Psalm 86 we have the poor in spirit looking to the Lord.

In Psalm 87 Zion, fully owned by the Lord, is distinguished, in presence of the cities of all worldly greatness, by the registry as her born-citizen of the righteous Man there. It is the place of glory and blessing.

33 In Psalms 88 and 89 we have Israel's governmental state under law, and, as to the promise, in David. Wrath is felt (Psalm 88) according to the position of Israel (God full of mercy, and yet not holding the guilty for innocent) as placed under the mediation of Moses, after the golden calf but under law. In the end mercy and truth will meet, we have seen, and righteousness look down from heaven. Under the effect of wrath, as under God's government (for it is not a question of personal salvation) Israel finds itself, and justly, at the close. This the Remnant feel, and this Christ entered into fully in Spirit. The sentiment of this, His Spirit here expresses for Israel. It is, I repeat, the governmental condition of Israel under the law.

Then Psalm 89 gives us the mercies and faithfulness of Jehovah in connection with the promise made to David, and David's Son, to David's throne, to be chastened if needed and not forsaken. But now it was overthrown and laid waste. Verse 19 points out, in perspective, Christ - read "Of thy Holy One" (chesed) He who resumes in His own Person the mercies (chasdim) of verse 1. Under law there was no hope, but here there was an assured promise, though all was, at the time, laid low, but it was just this, through grace, which drew out the appeal to promise, see verses 49, 50. Hence mercy and faithfulness are sung of. I apprehend verses 50, 51 are just the voice of the Remnant who cling to the hope of the promise to the throne and Son of David, and bore the reproach which was heaped upon it by all the mighty of the earth. It is needless to say that Christ entered into this, for it was because He went so low, that this reproach came upon those who identified themselves with the hope of the house of David.

We see too, in this Psalm, how He entered into the sorrow of the Remnant, and how they have to feel the sorrow He passed through, only that it rises up sometimes to literal accomplishment in Him. I suppose verses 3 and 4 present that to which the Lord was to be faithful; verse 5 brings in the heavens as interested in, and praising Jehovah for His works for Israel down here, and so it will be.

The fourth Book of Psalms, 90-106, does not call for very much remark, because the contents have been noticed elsewhere already, and the unity and order result so evidently from the contents, that a more particular examination of them is hardly necessary. I only notice, generally, the order, to complete the survey of the whole.

34 In Psalm 90, Jehovah has been the refuge of Israel at all times, and Israel now looks, at the close, for His work to appear, and His beauty to be upon them, and the works of their hands to be established. Man's days pass away - they look then for the speedy intervention of the Lord. Such is the preface. The whole Book, as heretofore noticed, is the bringing in the First-begotten into the world.

In Psalm 91 Christ takes His place in Israel in this way. The "Most High" and "Almighty" are the two names of God; the first, millennial glory in connection with Melchisedek - the second, of connection with Abraham, and Almighty power to protect, and fulfil, and secure. He who had the secret of the former would enjoy the benefit of the latter, whose was the secret place of that Most High before His manifestation as such, so that all that God was for Abraham should be accomplished. Messiah says: "I will take Jehovah," i.e., Israel's God, "for my refuge and my fortress: my God." This was the secret. In verse 9 the Remnant celebrate this. In verse 14, Jehovah puts His seal to it.

In Psalm 92 the contrast of the apparently triumphant wicked and the righteous, when Jehovah comes in, is declared.

Psalm 93 celebrates the Lord's reign after the raging of the floods, and then, as we have seen, the progress of the First-begotten, who is Jehovah, upon the cry of the people to Him to whom "vengeance belongeth" till, judgment accomplished, He sits between the cherubim, and the nations are summoned to come up and adore; Psalms 94-101.

In Psalms 101 and 102 we have Christ's place in connection with Israel - Psalm 101 taking the government, and Psalm 102 how it was possible; though once cut off in the midst of His days, He could - He was the Eternal Jehovah. In all this Book this point is signally brought out - the Son of man, but the Ancient of days, comes.

Psalm 103 is the application of divine mercy in Christ to Israel. In Psalm 101, remark, He celebrates not simply needed grace and mercy as in Psalm 89, but mercy and judgment, which are just that on which Israel's blessing is built, though mercy be the source of all.

35 Psalms 104 and 105 give the blessing of Creation and Israel, through God's ways as good.

Psalm 106 brings out the waywardness of Israel, and the repeated, and even aggravated forgetfulness, and rebellion which had brought all their misery upon them. Yet He remembered them when He heard their cry, remembered His covenant, and repented according to the multitude of His mercies, and gave them favour in the sight of those who carried them captive. To this mercy Israel now looks, and blesses Jehovah's name. Thus the whole course of God's ways in connection with Israel, and the bringing in of the Jehovah Messiah into the earth, is remarkably brought out here.

______

I know not whether I have clearly brought out the early Psalms, in what I have said above. Psalms 1-8. The godly Remnant among the wicked - the purpose of God as to Messiah resisted in Israel, and by the world - the condition of the Remnant consequent on this, into which Christ enters in Spirit - His glory as Son of Man.

Psalms 9-15. Of these, Psalms 9 and 10 give the details in Canaan, Jehovah's land, in the latter day. The feelings of the Remnant, and who shall enter into God's holy hill, when all is not right. Psalm 16, Christ personally now enters into His own place among the excellent of the earth, and, trusting in Jehovah, treads the path of life, across death, into the fulness of joy in Jehovah's presence.

Psalm 17. He, and the Remnant with Him in principle, receives the reward of righteousness. Psalm 19 has "God" for Creation, and "Jehovah" for law.

Psalm 16 evidently begins quite afresh, associating Christ with the Remnant as walking down here; Psalm 18 gives a larger association with His death, reaching from Egypt to Christ's millennial glory as Son of David.

Psalm 23 I do not judge is Christ; only when He put forth His own sheep, He must go before them. It is the effect of Psalm 22, for the Remnant in faith.

Psalm 24 the smitten One of Psalm 22 comes into Israel (the temple) in glory.

It cannot be too distinctly noted that Psalms 1 and 2 are in immediate presence of the day of the Lord, because then righteousness, and the claims of Christ will be made good by governmental judgment. It is a great key to the Psalms. The first coming of Christ was, as regards Israel, a government merely provisional. As the Lord speaks of John the Baptist, so in Matthew 10 - the whole present time is unknown to this view - a Christ no longer presented to be King, and a Son of Man suffering (as that provisional Elias) and not set over all things. Hence it is said in Matthew 26: 64, "Henceforth" (ap' arti) "you shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." In Luke, who always looks to present, general, result, it is merely "sitting at the right hand of power," chap. 23: 69. It was in either case immediate (apo tou nun). But, for the Psalms, "the day of the Lord," as a thing in present prospect, is the great point. Christ's entering into the sorrows, while most gracious, and sweet, and necessary, is a thing by the bye, and done apart, because they would have to go through sorrow. He died also for the nation (the gathering together of the children of God was intermediate) but for that the whole present time has to be passed over. It shall be made available when all Israel shall be saved.

36 It seems to me with increased evidence that the character of the two first Psalms shows the tone and subject of the whole Book - the government of Jehovah, first morally in respect of the law, and righteousness as contrasted with the ungodly. They that fear Jehovah, and delight in His law are known of God. Judgment is looked for - there the ungodly cannot stand. Here are no excuses of soul as to intermediate trial, but God's government in righteousness, which judgment will show.

The second point, and Psalm, is the Anointed and the decree - authoritative purpose of Jehovah; and here the kings rise up as well as Jewish rulers - take counsel against Jehovah and His Anointed. The pride of pretension in power, and the plotting of their rulers to cast off their restraint - but this is not simply moral government, but the decree of God setting up His King in Zion - His Son, owned as begotten in time, and this is made good by His executing judgment. They are called to serve Jehovah, and kiss, or do homage to the Son. Both suppose the sure result of divine judgment, but both suppose the prevalence of evil, and (the latter) opposition to Christ's authority when revealed.

Note that in these two Psalms there is, as yet, no connection between the godly Remnant and the Messiah - no Messiah in Psalm 1, no Remnant in Psalm 2 - each subject is distinctly treated of in the respective Psalms. Only the rulers are identified with the goyim and the Leummim, or rather with the Malkey-erets (kings of the earth).

37 Psalm 1 is the judgment of Jehovah in respect of His law - Psalm 2 His decree in respect of His Anointed and its effects; Psalm 1 is only Israel - Psalm 2 refers to Gentiles, only identifying Jewish rulers with them.

After these two, in the first instance, we have the godly man pressed by the multitude of enemies, but, in the first instance, of the people. He is identified with the cause of his God - the ten thousands are of the people. They are adversaries; oyvim (enemies) tsor (adversary) is used, "oppressors" or "troublers," first as to the speaker in Psalm 3, and then singularly as to Jehovah, Psalm 8: 3 (2). But these seem in the people, the enemy (o-yev) would be Satan. I do not see Gentiles, save that we have seen the Jews connected with them, as in Isaiah 66. But "enemy" (o-yev) is any hostile person.

It seems, I think, plain that Psalms 3 to 8 take up the Jewish part of the question, following Psalm 1, but showing, though without any revelation of divine intervention, the time when divine government has not returned to deliver the Remnant in judgment, and passes, as often noticed, to the wider sphere of the Son of Man's glory and title, but expressed by the Remnant's recognition of the exalting Jehovah's name on the earth. Psalm 2 made it impossible for the first to be fulfilled till judgment - a rejected Christ being brought in - rebellion by a confederation of Jews and Gentiles, against Jehovah and His Christ. But then this leaves the Remnant in distress, and these Psalms apply to the godly Jews.

When the ungodly have the upper hand - the godly man, though chosen, has enemies (oyvim) and adversaries (tsor-rim) but looks for the judgment of Psalm 50. But this within; He says in Psalm 8, "thine adversaries" (tsor-reyka) to Jehovah - a remarkable expression. Christ, as Christ in Israel, being rejected, is not directly mentioned in them. It is the godly man. But they confirm in the deepest way, in reading them, to my mind, the way in which Christ entered into the godly's sorrows - in which personally, for faith, in the most blessed way He took His place with them, as the Gospels show Him beginning with the baptism of John. Psalm 8 distinctly brings Him in, but as exalted Son of Man, and, as a result, Jehovah's name having become excellent in all the earth. Psalm 2 is purpose when men are rebelling against it - declares His exaltation over all the earth. In what follows we have victory over the heathen in connection with the land - Psalm 8, though that be accomplished, is above all that. But Psalms 9 and 10 take up Psalm 2, and the heathen are dealt with in the land, have perished out of it - and Jehovah takes the name of Most High (Elion) - but the wicked also, for wicked Jews and heathen are associated. Psalm 9 is more the heathen, Psalm 10 the evil Jews, but, in both, both are judged and the expectation of the poor is not forgotten. In Psalm 10 it is specially the wicked (ra-sha).

38 The spirit of the godly Remnant (Christ being rejected) is evident - confidence in Jehovah - godly fear - evil having the upper hand, looking for judgment - sense of being exposed to divine displeasure. In Psalm 3: 7 (6) it is "multitude of the people" (am), in Psalm 7: 8 (7) it is "families of nations" (l'ummim) tribes, in verse 9 (8) it is am-mim (peoples) as under God's government in the millennium. Remark also that in Psalm 7: 18 (17) we have Jehovah Elion as consequent on judgment, and so in Psalm 9: 3, Jehovah addressed as Elion. The main point in Psalms 9 and 10 is the judgment of the nations in the land, its clearance from them; but we know, from elsewhere, this is where they are to be judged and subjugated, and they are seen here as associated with the wicked, as we have seen everywhere. It is not directly their subjugation to Messiah according to the demand of Psalm 2, that is more Psalm 18. It is here Israel's deliverance from the heathen, and the wicked, not their submission to Messiah. Jehovah has rebuked them - Jehovah is King - the heathen are perished out of His land. We may know that it is Christ who comes, but it is from other passages.

In the first eight Psalms we have the inner circle - the divine elements of the whole case - a divine view of the government of this world, and men in it. A godly Remnant first, with a judgment to come; then Messiah in God's counsels, but rejected of men, but Adonai (Lord) at God's right hand, Son of God, Jehovah's King in Zion; let the Kings of the earth be wise, the nations will be given Him for His inheritance, the earth for His possession. Then the sorrows of the godly, in which, as the rejected One, He takes part, then His place of Son of Man; when Jehovah, as Lord of the Jews, has His name excellent in all the earth, the rejected One takes His place of headship over everything created of Jehovah, in fact by Him as such. Then in Psalm 9 we come to the direct historical dealings down here, in connection with the establishment of this power on earth, "Jehovah is known by the judgment which he executeth" - Psalm 10 being the state and cry of the Remnant which brings God's judgment down, God avenges "His own elect which cry day and night unto him."

39 Psalms 9 and 10, having given deliverance and the state of things in the land in the latter day, Psalms 11-15 give the various feelings of the Remnant as formed by the Spirit, as elsewhere noticed. Psalms 16 and 17 give the way Christ enters into it in Spirit, and even literally in part. Psalm 18 is Israel's deliverance by Jehovah, first in Egypt, and then by Messiah at the end, and that in virtue of Christ's entering into their sorrows, and that even unto death.

There is a difference between the Psalms from 11 to 18, and 25 to 39. The former are more the great principles of the Remnant in the condition of Psalm 10 though expressed in the experiences of the Remnant, "In the Lord put I my trust" - "The wicked bend their bow" - "Jehovah tries the righteous" - "The godly man ceaseth" - "How long wilt thou forget me?" - "The fool hath said in his heart" - "Who shall abide in thy tabernacle?" - and then Psalms 16 and 17, the perfection of the Spirit of Christ, and its result in resurrection and a higher glory. From Psalms 25 to 39 it is more the various exercises of soul connected with their circumstances - what are called "experiences."

I see this difference in the Psalms after 10 - before it, Psalms 3-7, the godly man is in the midst of evil, but passing through it in life. There is a moral judgment, and an actual judgment looked for, and there is still exhortation though evil is apparent, and opposition to godliness still holds its way. From Psalm 11 there is, so to speak, only Jehovah - the godly man looked up there, and if Jehovah looked down and found all gone out of the way, the desire is deliverance; Psa. 14: 7. Still in result two things are brought out - Who shall have a place with God on the earth? (Psalm 15) - And the resurrection of Him who should be cut off. One who takes His place of delight with the saints, whose goodness does not rise up to Jehovah (a thing, note, monstrous to say, in its full sense, for one to whom it was not natural, though we have to learn it relatively) but who, trusting to Jehovah, finds the path of life into His presence through death and resurrection, which is fulness of joy - literally, as we know, fulfilled in Christ; and secondly, hearing the right, which in the rejected One is deliverance from the man of the world (which is a condemned one here), and awakening up after Jehovah's likeness. This is most clear and blessed too, and the placing of it too in the ways of God. We get it in and through Christ, as far as His own can - "at thy right hand" for instance, is only fully, literally true of Him, though He sits there now for us, and in virtue of what He has done for us (but of His own Person too), and we are in Him; but in general it is ours through Him, but it is the highest place of joy for man - a wondrous place, yet there Christ is, as Man, as having finished the work.

40 Psalm 15, only "abides in the tabernacle, and in the holy hill." "Trust in Jehovah" and His being the godly one's portion (Psalm 16) characterises all, and righteousness, "loving righteousness and hating iniquity," for that is God's character as knowing good and evil, and Christ's as Man.

Psalms 3 to 7 are more circumstances and purpose, Christ taking the character of Son of man, and moral judgment, looking forward, as I said, to Jehovah's judgment; Psalms 11-17 results, evil and good, being brought out in final definite contrast. In Psalm 16 His mind rests on Jehovah, and the saints, taking a place as to goodness below, and looking up to One (though Himself such), and with the other in delight - the place of a Man with Jehovah objectively, perfectly His trust (whatever came) and His delight. Psalm 17 is relationship with the world and Satan, i.e., perfect righteousness where the power of evil was. But both, as in Christ, are the Christian's part; for the second, see 1 John 4: 19.

How completely Psalm 18 is David and the seed of David "for evermore," is evident - sufferings and royal triumph. Its general sense I have noted heretofore. I add here, it completes this early part of the Psalms. It is in Israel, but adds dominion over the heathen, carrying out Psalm 2, and showing the sorrows of Christ. Verse 44 is the contentions of Israel (am, people). So that Psalms 16 and 17 give us Christ personally, Psalm 18 Christ Messianically. Note the "us" in Psalm 17: 11 is only kri.* All the rest of the Psalm is "me." I know not why the Magna reads "us" here, and I have not here with me the means of ascertaining.

{*It is "me" in the text, and "us" in the Rabbinical reading (kri).}

41 So that passing backward, we have Psalms 11-15, the state of parties, at the end, in the land, Psalms 9, 10, what passes judicially in the land, Psalms 3-8, the Remnant as true but living in the midst of the evil, Messiah not being received, and the glory of the Son of Man, and in Psalms 1 and 2 the Remnant, and Jehovah's purposes about Christ in spite of rebellion of people and Gentiles.

The Psalms after 24 to 39 are the exercises and experience of the godly, in every respect, of which the general principles are stated in Psalms 31.

In Psalm 24 we have had the result of all, including the position, contrast of godly and wicked, and Christ's own death, besides the testimony of creation, law, and a suffering Messiah, as in Psalms 11-15 - the contrasted godly and evil man, Psalms 16, 17, 18, Christ, as we have seen. Then in Psalms 40, 41, the real mystery of Christ's part in it in the counsels of God, and the blessing of Him who understood, as down here, the place of the poor and needy one; that, as we know, closes the Book. After Psalm 32, the full, characteristic results are more brought out. In Psalms 42 and 43 we find the godly cast out - the latter one specially referring to ungodly Israel - for the former, compare Joel 2; then Psalm 44, the appeal to God on the ground of their integrity - "Jehovah" coming in at the end, i.e., being called upon, as such, to arise; then, Psalm 45, Messiah is revealed, and judgment goes on to the end of Psalm 49. Psalm 50 begins another subject - the confession of sins and of the death of Christ, and their various exercises, of which more hereafter.

On the coming in of Messiah and judgment of Jehovah, El Elohim summons all the heavens and the earth to judge His people, and then pleads with them on the ground of right and wrong - not looking for sacrifices, but righteousness.

In Psalm 51, the godly Remnant speak - own their sinful nature - do not look to sacrifices to remedy their case, but own their blood-guiltiness, their sin as to Christ - acknowledge ill their past transgressions, but own their sinful nature and go on to their sin against Christ. They look for cleansing from God in mercy. One thing is clear, though transgressions are owned - inward sin presses on the spirit of the penitent, sin in his own heart as against God; mere Jewish sacrifices could not meet it - it goes far deeper (compare 1 Sam. 2: 25). I doubt ha-ra (the evil) is "this evil" - done evil. Hence he is cast on grace. The godly are cast outside, and we have all their thoughts and exercises - their thirsting after God and withal Christ, as ascended on high, to be a blessing to Israel, and His sorrows too. It closes with the Solomon reign.

42 From Psalm 73 to 89 we have the general condition; and relationship of Israel with God; Jehovah is not addressed as the object of the Psalm until Psalm 84, and Christ is not directly brought in. We are in Israel; only in the last we have the promise to the family of David, whose throne is now cast down.

But then from Psalm go, we have Jehovah's interference prophetically brought in, and in this way - in Psalm go faith recognises Jehovah as the refuge and dwelling place of Israel in all generations - in Psalm 91, Messiah, or the man of faith recognises Israel's God, Jehovah, as the Most High, God over all - and is owned; Psalm 92, Jehovah's, the Most High's work is owned as delivering and making glad the righteous, and though by the man of faith, by Messiah as such. Then Psalms 93-100, the "Jehovah" comes and takes His place in power, i.e., Christ, and reigns, as we have often seen. In Psalms 101, 102, we return personally to Messiah, prophetically again, as come in the flesh - Psalm 101, how He will rule His house and kingdom - a kind of sermon on the Mount. Psalm 102, His utter rejection as alone in Israel when faithful. How then, in the latter days when Jehovah restored Zion, could He have a part, having been cut off? He was the Jehovah, and the same yesterday, to-day and for ever! Psalm 103 is consequent blessing upon forgiven Israel (see the paralytic in the Gospel). Psalms 104, 105, the blessing of Creation and of His people - Psalm 106 pleads mercy, and walking in uprightness, confesses sin, judgment but mercy in it, and looks for full deliverance.

This gives, I think, a distinct character to the two first Books, which are more Christ personally amongst the Jews, and all the three last more national and historical, and so Psalm 72 closes with the Solomon reign. Hence, up to that, it is more personal to Christ, only He is recognised as the same in Psalm 102. From Psalm 107 onwards, it is the bringing back of Israel with all the various exercises connected with it, and so returns back to their history with God, their unfaithfulness - God's taking up the land - the apostate rejection of Christ (Judas) - His session at God's right hand till He had His people of free-will in the day of His power. From this, onwards, we get "Jehovah," His ways, character, trustworthiness, dealings. But the Book begins with this, Jehovah whose mercy endures for ever, having brought back His people, though to various exercises of heart before final Hallelujahs could be sung - and then, while faith declares what He is, and what they are and have been, these are what are recounted here.

43 In Psalm 119 we have the law written in the heart of the once straying sheep. Full integrity in that, yet impossibility to stand in God's presence or escape Him is owned, but, as created by Him, the soul looks to be searched out; Psalm 139.

In Psalm 118, the principle of God's dealings is fully stated, leading to Hosanna "Save I pray thee," and the answer to it quoted, as that which referred to the last days, by the Lord (Matt. 21) as is the rejected stone (v. 22) in His discussion with the Scribes at the same time. Both external, historical dealings, and internal state are found here, and not confounded. The Psalms 135-138 are ways and dealings - Psalm 139, responsibility and God's work are contrasted - Psalms 140-144 are an appeal. Then laudatory celebration of God's character, and anticipation of millennial blessings - but, unless in Psalm 72, closing the first two Books, no description of it.

From Psalm 111 to 118 is anticipative confidence in Jehovah - what He is for Israel - referring in Psalm 114, beautifully, back to Israel's going out of Egypt. In all, Israel and the heathen are here, though in the faithful Remnant, not the Jews and Christ, save as necessarily coming as Jehovah to deliver.

_________

The Psalms

, part 2.

J. N. Darby.

<43002E>

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

In considering Books 1 and 2 of the Psalms, it is well to take in John 11: 53, 54. In the first Book, after the laying down the ground in Psalms 1 to 8, and the general state of feeling in the residue founded on Psalms 9 and 10, on to Psalm 17, after the testimonies and death of the Lord, there is infinitely more development of exercise of soul, beginning with the first confession of sin in Psalm 25.

44 The two first Psalms are, as it were, introductory - Psalm 1 of the great general truths, Psalm 2 of the circumstances in which, according to the ordained glory of Christ, they are brought out to light. Yet Christ in the midst of the Jews is, in the first, the matter of it. The first is His characteristics, the second is His power as set by the Father, King; and so the circumstances of the Psalms suitably.

The two first Psalms give thus very distinctly the great points of the whole Book. The godly man, and the title of Christ, but the former along with ungodliness, and the latter resisted, and then, in the rest, the consequences of power not being put forth to secure their position. Hence the sorrows and heart exercise of the godly meek in the midst of the evil, looking to the Lord and the ruin of the throne, though less frequent, and from time to time the position of Christ Himself, who must have entered into the sorrow and made atonement too, in order that there might be either hope or deliverance, but not the knowledge of it before deliverance. The Spirit of Christ enters into it all though, as leading the exercises of the godly - the Spring of them; but then in a Jewish way, looking for the destruction of enemies for deliverance, and the hope founded on the Spirit's work, leading to promises and assured blessings to Israel, for which Jehovah was trusted, though all seemed against - not a known atonement giving peace with God in heaven, as risen, in the sanctuary. Atonement must be the basis of blessing, but besides that, there is position, ours is in Christ in heavenly places; Christ's on earth was the perfect pattern of theirs. Only this involved material differences, as known union by the Holy Ghost.

To the end of Psalm 8 it gives an idea of this; the five following (i.e., Psalms 3 to 7) giving the moral condition of the Remnant, power not having yet come in; and Psalm 8 giving the larger extent of Son of Man glory, consequent on Messiah's rejection - these, and also the election of Zion, which is material in the historical course of dealings, for Zion is the holy hill. Hence David so importantly brings out all the course of them; he was the godly man and rejected king, though anointed in the midst of the ungodly, and in a certain sense, subdued the heathen, when delivered from the strivings of the people. (Compare Isaiah 50, noting the end, and then Psalms 51 and 52.)

45 It is clear that the first Psalm brings in an entirely new element into the Jewish question, namely the distinction of the godly man within the people, and that distinction made good in the judgment, in contrast with the national government as a whole. Note also the beginning of Isaiah 49, and the already noted use of "servant" there.

In the first and second Psalms we have nothing of the Son of David. No doubt David was anointed and Solomon his son, but Christ is not prophetically presented, in this leading introductory part, as the Son of God, and this, in a measure Nathanael's, and fully Peter's confession.

This throws great light on what passed in the Gospels. The Son of Man of Psalm 8 is added there, but, though He were Son of David, that is not the subject brought forward in the Gospel, at any rate till the blind man of Jericho. You have in Luke, where He is specially Son of Man in grace, the Jewish character in full, and exclusively for them, as they thus were in the two first chapters - as the song of the Angels, Son of David according to the flesh, and according to promise. But the general history of all the Gospels is what He personally was - the Son of God according to the Spirit of holiness, to be discerned by faith. And personally coming according to the Word, and fulfilling these Psalms, Christ was necessarily this - the expression of it even when it did not, as in John, go farther.

Note, the first two Psalms are God's mind and consequently the result "the end of the Lord"; Psalm 3, etc., is the experience of the godly man. These two introductory Psalms are of the greatest importance in this respect. And note, in these Psalms there is no experience nor sentiment of any kind; they hold a distinct place of revelation and exhortation - an introduction quite distinct from what follows. The Holy Ghost Himself tells us what the mind of the Lord is. Nor, in any case, is there a Psalm of the Son of David, not even Psalm 72, that is prophetic of his time; we find the same elsewhere as in Psalm 145, but not the experience of the time expressed by one in it.

We first get the great general effect of God's government when the two, godly and ungodly, are in the earth, and that of course among Jews - His delight is in the law of Jehovah. The ungodly are not so, but when looked at (as applied in fact) it contemplates the judgment, i.e., the close there is a judgment on the earth - they cannot stand in it; there will be, in result, a congregation of the righteous - they are not found there. In a word, in application it is the closing history of God's dealings with the Jews.

46 The principles of God's government are first stated, but they are never made good as against the wicked till judgment be executed; hence the application to the latter days. The second Psalm brings this out more fully, because the Christ, the Anointed is brought in. Here all is definitely at the close and the kings of the earth and the rulers rise up against Jehovah, and against His Anointed, to hinder His exercising His authority on the earth; but, as in heaven, He mocks their efforts, and He will speak to them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure. In spite of this raging He sets His King in Zion. It is not merely a judgment of right and wrong, godly and ungodly, but the establishing the authority of a Person in Zion. But the Psalm then goes back to Christ's birth upon the earth - He is the begotten Son there of Jehovah, who makes the decree - not only will He sit in Zion King, but the heathen are called upon to submit, for He is about, as placed there, to smite the kings of the earth, and take in possession its uttermost parts.

Thus in fact these two Psalms place us, at the close, in presence of the judgment. This is of all importance in understanding the Psalms; we are with the godly Remnant in the latter day, owning the law first of all - then in presence of the purpose of God to put Him, who has been born His Son on the earth, in possession of Messiah's place and Messiah's power and rights. It explains, too, much in the Gospels, and especially in Matthew, "Till the Son of Man come," says the Lord, yet He was there - "Elias cometh," but in spirit he had been there. Christ had entered into the position and sorrow of the godly Remnant, and made that atonement too which enables the Remnant to go through the sorrow and be accepted, though it is only at the close of it they learn its value.

There are only two subjects objectively put before us - the godly man under the government of God, the ungodly being rejected - and the establishment of the Anointed in power in Zion in spite of and over all. If Messiah takes a part in grace with the godly, and that de facto they go through the trial, that is a matter of experience - the revealed place is favour to godliness, and final full victory. Christ is in the world - the begotten Son of God.

47 The heavenly position of Christ is not the subject here, but Jehovah and the Anointed, and His being set King in Zion. But I cannot doubt that verses 4 and 5 present us Christ Himself in heaven; verses 6 and 7 declare, as a new matter, Jehovah's purpose, and the human birth of Christ upon earth, but as characterising the Anointed set as King in Zion. But this Son is Jehovah in whom men have to trust - and there is a curse on those who trust in mere man; the Son will be angry, and execute the wrath of verse 5.

Hence the subject of the Psalms is the latter days, but, in as much as "in all their afflictions he was afflicted," and in the latter days He is coming from heaven in wrath, He has come and entered into all their sorrows as born of God in the earth, as "this day begotten" - as Son, but learning obedience by the things which He suffered; but this from man, compare Isaiah 50.

Although directly applicable doubtless to David, Psalms 3 and 4 seem to me to be more directly applicable to Christ. Psalms 5 and 6 more directly to the Remnant, even as to these they are deprecatory, chastening in displeasure. It is only in Psalm 25 that sins are acknowledged. In Psalm 16 Christ formally takes His place with the godly Remnant. In Psalms 3 and 4, viewed as applicable to Messiah, they are in the full consciousness of His glory and title. The godly man is set apart for Jehovah. These two Psalms are surely the state of the people in the latter day, but Messiah enters into it in Spirit so as to associate His title and confidence with them, just as David might for Israel, compare Psalm 3: 8. They cannot be separated from Him, nor will He from them. The body of the people are against the godly man - but he is set apart for God.

In Psalm 3, verse 7, Messiah and the godly are all looked at as having a common interest, the ungodly being busy and in power - Messiah in title of power, but the ungodly as yet rejecting His title, and the Remnant oppressed and suffering. In Psalm 8 He is recognised as Son of Man, and gone up on high and set over all things. This is quite a new place and character of Christ, not in Psalms 1 and 2, nor in any previous Psalms. So we find it brought out in the Gospels.

Thus in Psalms 3 to 7 we have the general principles in which Messiah necessarily is as taking part with the people - the rejected King's position, and the Remnant's too. After the circumstances are stated in Psalms 9 and 10, we have the proper condition of the Remnant in their feelings, Psalms 11-15. In Psalm 16, as we have said, Christ takes formally His place - there He alone takes His place; in Psalm 17 He associates the Remnant with Himself in what He expresses. In Psalm 18, His suffering is made the centre of Israel's history, from Egypt to His own glorious dominion.

The following Psalms are spoken of elsewhere, in their places.

_______

48 Psalms 1 to 8 offer a partial whole, of exceeding interest to the soul, as regards the Lord Jesus.

The first presents the righteous Man, and the natural result of His righteousness, under the government of God. Christ alone was that righteous Man.

The second gives the title of Christ in the counsels of God, in spite of the raging of kings and rulers, as King in God's hill of Zion, according to the decree which owned Him Son, i.e., as born in the earth (or risen), but down here in time. But then we find, instead of that, those increased that trouble Him; and these features of sorrow being gone through, through His identification with the godly Remnant, for they were their sorrows, it follows in these sorrows that, in the exaltation of Jehovah, His place becomes a far larger one - that of the Son of man, Heir of all things put under man by God's counsels, i.e., of all things, as shown in Hebrews 2; compare Ephesians 1, and 1 Corinthians 15. The Remnant speak, "O Jehovah, our Adon, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!" But then meanwhile He had set His glory above the heavens - taken babes and sucklings to praise Him to still the enemy, and then comes the exaltation of the Son of man, and His dominion over all, as explained in Hebrews 2 (Ephesians 1 adds the Church and other points afterwards) and Jehovah great in all the earth. We see this transition, from "Christ" to the "Son of man," throughout Matthew - though also the title "Son of the living God," for the building of the Church; and in Luke 9, He straitly charges them not to say He was the Christ, and turns to His position of Son of man in suffering and glory, insisting on the suffering, as such, from Jews and Gentiles down here - first Jews, as not taking Messiah's place, and then Man - as taking a new place by Himself.

49 It is interesting also to compare Psalm 1, the righteous Man - Psalm 2, consecrated King in Zion, Son of God as on earth, "This day have I begotten thee" - Psalm 8, Son of man, a far larger place and scene of glory than Messiah who was rejected - Psalm 110, Adon, sitting on the right hand of Jehovah, then Melchizedek in Zion - and Psalm 102, the Lord, the Creator, always the same though cut off in the midst of His days. Psalms 20 to 24 are more the circumstances in which He was placed, from distress and trials, up to that glory in which He is recognised as Lord of Hosts, the King of glory.

________

Psalm 1

This Psalm is Christ's separation from the ungodly among the Jews, so the Gentiles are not the prominent objects; in Psalm 2 they are joined. This Psalm therefore is first Christ among the Jews, and secondly Christianity in the world.

The godly Man is isolated, or individualised here; the ungodly looked at in the mass, yet we see it is all of them characteristically, verses 5 and 6.

The Psalm is Jewish blessing in God's righteousness. It also supposes the general influence of the ungodly, and One who has kept aloof from it in the midst of Israel, though there be a general principle. The state of Israel claimed the distinction.

Besides the general truth of the government of God, always essentially the same, we have Jesus, the godly Man, in this Psalm, and His character, viewed of God, being such; for He is seen as responsible Man, who therefore takes the law of Jehovah as His guide; that established - though circumstances may be incomprehensible, the Lord knows and owns His way.

Psalm 2

This Psalm is the controversy in divine power; verse 12 is blessing in dependence, to wit, in the Son.

Note that Psalm 2 does not take up the sufferings of Christ in themselves, though we know He suffered - it is the counsel of God in presence of the thoughts of the people and kings to cast His cords away, and Jehovah's counsel stands in power.

- 2. The heathen rage, and the kings of the earth.

- 4. Yo-shev bash-sha-ma-yim (He that dwelleth in the heavens) Adonai.

50 Dark as the way of the righteous may seem, i.e., unowned by the world, the Lord owns it; the wicked have a way of their own - the Lord destroys this. This is all Jewish, with hope however before it. Standing up to judgment when God shall arise to judgment, they will stand up with Him - "Blessed be he." There then comes another question - the heathen, and the anointing, not merely the righteous, for now He is planted in the glory - then the righteous Man, here sitting in heaven.

The Psalmist has the glory of the Lord, His Christ, in His mind, and therefore asks, as from the perception of this, "Why do the heathen rage, and the peoples imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against his anointed." Note also the wickedness of their will is previously exhibited; compare Psalm 149: 7-9. They propose the utter rejection of their authority. Then comes the great truth of the identity of Jesus' and Jehovah's power - "He that sitteth in the heavens . . . Adonai shall have them in derision." This last is, I doubt not, Christ in governing power - the revelation of Jehovah in power; compare Psalm 110: 5  -  the great truth, revealed in the New Testament, of Him, even Jesus, at the right hand of the Majesty on high, the right hand of power. But the time is distinctly descriptive; we have bash-sha-mayim (in the heavens), and compare this in Revelation. Now although "In the heavens" is a point of faith, in a Jew, specially after the ceasing of manifest presence on the earth, this is brought out here in a special manner; nor am I aware of the expression yo-shev bash-sha-ma-yim (He that sitteth in the heavens) elsewhere, save in Psalm 123 the cry of the Remnant for help at this very time when God does this. Verses 4 and are the thoughts and acts of Adonai, of God from the heavens. Then compare again, Hebrews 8: 1, and Psalm 110: 5, for yo-shev bash-sha-ma-yim (He that sitteth in the heavens) and Adonai (the Lord) is the great point here; Christianity has revealed it, i.e., how and who.

Then comes the other part of Messiah's exaltation. The former was moral - this, constituted or rightful glory; He is set King in Zion, the holy mountain. This, I think, is Jehovah's word concerning Messiah - it is the mountain of God's holiness, and He is God's King. He has already spoken of His heavenly glory as Adonai. But "I have anointed my King in Zion, my holy mountain" here is the royalty on earth of Messiah in Zion. But the resurrection must come in, and it must not be supposed that it was without special glory of Person, this royalty in Zion could be, and the decree therefore is declared - Jehovah saith to Jesus "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee." The Sonship of Jesus, with the Father, is therefore declared and revealed. This is declared in the resurrection, with power, in holiness. So we know now, here is the decree; it is spoken of the Lord, being a Jew, as of Jehovah, but, being to the Son, the Father is revealed. But then follows the inheritance of the heathen, given to Messiah - His request is the plea at once. Blessed is He that asks everything for us! All things are ours, and we Christ's.

51 Note, Psalms 1 and 2 are the thesis about Messiah, and Psalm 3 etc. give the condition of Messiah as bringing out the character of God.

In this Psalm we have then, Jehovah and His Christ - the counsels of Jehovah as to Him. The kings of the earth, and peoples would cast off their bands, yet Adonai speaks in wrath to them. The decree then is declared - Jehovah says to Christ: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." He is set up in this position - the King set up in Zion is first set up as Son. So Acts 13; in general it is true, but He is actually set in His place on resurrection, but according to the Spirit of holiness - He was Son, Luke 1: 35, Romans 1, here below, Acts 13. It seems to me, in the general sense, Acts 3: 26 and chap. 13: 33 (take away "again"), though, as to the moment of application, He was risen now, the Psalms in general present either rejection when manifested according to the Spirit of holiness, or the subsequent presentation of, and insistence upon this claim before the execution of judgment.

The Lord was set up "Son," according to decree - not yet in manifest power - but really such, when born here below; declared such in power, to faith, by resurrection - rejected, but will, in due time, demand the inheritance. The kings of the earth are counselled to submit, and serve the Lord, and to own the Son thus set up by decree. That a certain general blessing would attend this, although I doubt not, yet it is not the subject of the present position, and demand of Jesus to the Father. The Son in this Psalm is manifested, or testified to, as having been raised up by God.

52 In John 17 He asks about those who are the Father's, because He is going to the glory which He had with the Father, with whom (chap. 10) He is one before the world was; and all that is the Father's is His, and His the Father's. He has quite done with the world - leaves it as it is, and His disciples in it only that, through grace, it may believe this. But the disciples, and those who believe through their word, are identified with His position in it and the Father, to have His joy perfected in them. He is before the Father, and not set up by the decree - a higher and more glorious place, for it flowed from what He was. And this is what He is always throughout John, and man being a sinner, this is what men reject - Him as entitled by the decree, because He could not but be what He was as manifesting the Father - light and life - and the Son one with Him. This ought to have attracted them, but they saw and hated both Him and His Father. Further, it is evident that, even in the general sense of owning the Son risen and glorified, Jerusalem, or Zion, should have been the centre. There God will set Him King, though in view of that He may call for the submission of the nations to the Son set up by decree, Jerusalem having rejected the testimony of the risen and exalted Son.

The testimony to the Gentiles took quite a new form in the ministry of Paul, which, not as to salvation but ministry, may almost be called a dispensation apart (Eph. 3: 2; Col. 1: 25); the unity of the Body of Christ being the grand basis of the calling which was of heaven, above the Jews, and levelling all, because not Adonai claiming the earth and Zion, but uniting with Himself as speaking from heaven, the saints receiving this testimony. Hence the suspension as to the letter (not as to the Spirit in blessing) of the commission; Matthew 28. And this is why the testimony could be, in general, all mingled together, i.e., of the Apostles at Jerusalem in the latter day, because, while salvation was in the Son at all times, the summons to submit to the Son could be identified with the proofs of His resurrection, or rather afforded by it, distinct from the union with Him which placed the Church in the Son, who was in the Father, and the kingdom altogether in mystery. All this will be never seen clear till the administration of the kingdom be seen clear - the keys of this were given to Peter; Paul had another service.

Psalms 3-7

53 I have the general fact of trust in Jehovah when enemies and trouble have multiplied; next, the enmity of the wicked against the Spirit of Christ. But Jehovah has set apart the godly man for Himself. Psalm 5 rests on the sense, in him that is righteous, of the character of God, which must be opposed to the wicked and own him who in righteousness cries to Him. Psalm 6, on the other hand, gives the sense, when Jehovah is looked at for oneself, of having merited rebuke and blame. It looks to being saved from what weighs on it. Psalm 7 looks to being saved from the outward persecutor, on whom judgment will come. But note that Psalm 5 shows how the Spirit of Christ looks, beyond present circumstances, on prophetically; for in David's time there was no house nor temple. Circumstances may have given occasion to the expressions in the Psalms, etc., but they go far beyond them.

In these Psalms then, we get the Spirit in which the state of things is met. In Psalm 9, after the exaltation of Christ, we get the historical results as to all Israel, or at any rate Judah. But then this is Jehovah's intervention, and the judgment of the world. Moreover all the above Psalms are taken up save Psalm 6 which, on the favourable intervention of God, could hot be referred to, for the question raised in it was then necessarily over. It was the inward exercise of soul connected with the outward pressure. The contrast is seen in Psalm 9: 13, and Psalm 6: 5.

Now Psalms 15-17 answer to Psalms 1 and 2 in this respect, that one gives the character of the Remnant, the two others the purpose and power of God. In Psalm 15 we have clearly the character of those who will be kept for God's dwelling, and holy hill. Psalms 16 and 17 give the portion of the slain "in the Lord" and "in his likeness," and Psalm 16, as we know, is directly applicable to Christ. But it is beyond all question that these Psalms apply to the Remnant in trial in the last days; Psalms 9 and 10, indeed all of these Psalms, show it as clearly as possible. But then the use of Psalm 16 by Peter, shows how Christ entered into and took part in these sorrows, and, as looking to Jehovah as in that position indeed, verse 3 shows His gracious association with them. And note as in verse 11, the Remnant are noticed, and though the Speaker in the Psalm is satisfied, as awaking with God's likeness, yet salvation from death is supposed and looked for. Psalm 16 takes up clearly His own reference in faith to Jehovah, in view of death, as a faithful One, but as a Man, "My goodness extendeth not to thee," and says to the saints "In them is my delight." But it is confidence not sorrow and distress here - John, not Matthew. In Psalm 17 we have the pressure of men; in Psalm 18 the distress of soul from death, though leading to triumph and glory, and that in Israel closes that part

54 Psalm 19 begins another teaching, and goes wider - testimony into all the world with that of the law, as heretofore noted, and then Messiah in trouble and exalted of God, beyond death, in life and glory for ever. Then are testimonies - what is before the hearts and eyes of men, each in his own character - Messiah only before those who had eyes to see. Psalm 20, I think, supposes temporal deliverance for the Remnant though Psalm 21 supposes heavenly glory for the Messiah bringing judgment hereafter on His rejectors; Psalm 22 is then, and it stands thus alone, the foundation of universal blessing, in the proper expiatory sufferings of Christ, in His own abandonment by God, yet heard (once He had wrought expiation) from the horns of the unicorns, when He had finished the work. And here is what is essential to its character - He is quite alone. It is evidently totally different. Even in Psalms 20 and 21, though alone, yet He is seen and contemplated by others. It was a sorrow and a hope into which they could more or less enter. It was for their thoughts and feelings; but here He is alone with God, and the expression His own.

Psalm 3

This Psalm is faith in Jehovah. It and the following Psalm are much more Christ, and up to Psalm 7, open out before us The principle seems to me, more than ever, the full entering of Christ into the condition of the Remnant of Israel, as displaying the great principles and facts of God's government.

It is much more introductory, and general certain principles It is Messiah who first speaks, because He has first fully taken - nay, in Him has first fully brought out, He alone could rightly take apart, the place of the Remnant as apart from, and in contrast with the people. Others had felt it, as having His Spirit, and, as prophets, had portrayed it in Him, but He alone could take it in intrinsic righteousness, yet in Him it was as forced to it, i.e., this righteousness forced out the wickedness in the others, and He wept over Jerusalem when it was done; but then He entered into all that concerned Israel to the purpose, love, and revelation of God. The Psalms are the perfect display of all that a divinely perfect heart, in the circumstances, could feel of and as to the relationship of God with Israel, only Israel with God.

55 Thus in this Psalm we have, in the discovery of its state, the confidence of faith. Another great principle in the midst of no hope, if the state of the people be looked at - "Salvation belongeth unto the Lord," and His blessing is upon His people; compare Dan in Jacob's blessing.

- 4. "Out of his holy hill."

- 5. "People" (am) in the singular.

- 7. "Enemies" (o-y'vai). "Save me" - "Thou hast" - so verse 8, and then "blessing is upon thy people."

We have here the voice of Christ in the Jewish Remnant in its last distress; but the same is true of God's people everywhere since. Also note the testimony concerning the last trouble of the Jews; and the Remnant finds its reception or treatment, and own Him Lord on His appearance amongst them for it, and accordingly the Jews, as such, become identified, through the Remnant, with the ungodly enemy in the last days. This is an interesting and important point - Absalom is typical.

I have no doubt we have Christ in both this Psalm, and the following one, but only as identifying Himself with the Remnant of the Jews, and so in Spirit. We have in them the confidence His Spirit inspires - in Psalms 6 and 7 the feelings circumstances inspire, but aided by His Spirit. Compare, for us, Romans 8: 15-17, 18-27. Psalm 5 is the moral reasoning of faith, compare 2 Thessalonians 1. Hence Psalms 3 and 4 are more directly the expression of the Spirit of Christ but all these Psalms are abstract position before, and looking to, judgment. In Psalm 8 the glory is accomplished; Psalm 16, bringing in Christ at His first coming, shows how He took a place with the Remnant, the excellent of the earth.

Psalm 4

56 This Psalm gives us dependence on Jehovah, shown in calling upon Him, and thus the spirit in which the godly Jew is to walk, in the midst of Israel, when Messiah's glory is still despised. God has set apart the godly one for Himself - the gracious Lord first of all - the spiritual sense of the renewed sees it.

- 1. "O God of my righteousness!"

- 2. B'ney Ish (sons of men) - great and haughty ones of the earth.

- 3. Kha-sid (godly).

- 4-5. Are His directions as to the Spirit in which they are to walk.

- 5. "Sacrifices of righteousness"; compare Psalm 51: 17.

- 6. He mingles Himself with them. Compare Psalm 3: 2.

- 7. He rejoices more in this position of faith, than when all outward blessings were showered on Israel.

This Psalm then is the supplicatory confidence of the beloved, i.e., of the Remnant in the face of the enemies, and in the midst of them, in God - thus principles of righteousness, even His righteousness; this point is material.

Psalm 5

In this Psalm He directs His voice to God in the midst of this state of things, conscious of the spirit and ways of the wicked, and looking for judgment, for, if the godly love godliness, surely God does, and they know this character of God, i.e., of Jehovah - the Lord will abhor them - the Lord will bless the righteous. This Psalm and the following give us the Remnant. It is the anxious enquiry of the beloved under the circumstances of trial; but Psalm 4 includes, and addresses itself indeed, to the Gentiles, who have no portion in His covenant with the nation, the Jews rather.

- 6. The Antichrist.

- 7. Khas 'd 'ka - "Thy mercy."

- 8. "Thy righteousness."

- 9-11. The contrast of the Jews, joined to Antichrist, and the just.

- 10. "Rebelled."

- 11. "Trust." The faith of the Spirit of Christ pierces through the circumstances.

57 Psalm 6

This Psalm, in this view, needs no comment, save that it speaks of the faith of the Spirit in the Remnant, humbling itself under the sense of what is generally due.

But then the Remnant had share (not in will now, or they would not be the Remnant) in this evil, and above all with Israel. Hence they have to say to God as to it, not merely the sense of the love of righteousness against the wicked, but of their own position before God in the sense of His chastenings on His people. Still this makes them increasedly separate from the wicked, while mercy is looked for for deliverance. Into this position Christ fully entered in grace. Thus, while John Baptist declared it was he had need to be baptised of Christ, not Christ of Him, still, as fulfilling righteousness, Christ goes to the baptism of repentance, i.e., the Spirit, and the spirit of grace brought Christ in the way of righteousness where it brought others in the sense of sin. The place then is the place of the Remnant in the sense of their condition before God, but Christ enters perfectly into it, and by His Spirit here sets it out. Taking the true place before God - is always, and especially as God's people, what we have to do. He soon makes their enemies ashamed, and He hears their cry.

The Psalm is clearly Jewish, and intercession according to the mind of the Spirit kata theon as in their condition, and the deliverance Jewish as from death and the grave, not in resurrection, as said in Matthew 24.

It is not a declaration that such is the suffering, but a deprecation of it, that what is suffered from verse 7, may not have this character to his soul. It is the godly man in distress; see it explained in Psalm 94: 12, 13; compare also Psalm 38.

- 5. When the Old Testament Scriptures speak of "no remembrance," etc. "in the grave" - this itself recognises the existence of what does not remember. But it is no revelation by God, but the expression of ignorance in man, or knowledge that present ways of relationship and activity are over, for that was all they knew of.

Psalm 7

This Psalm, of which the title shows the occasion, exhibits the confidence of the beloved in His righteousness, as in the presence of the enemy and the blasphemer, though in anxiety to deliver the congregation, compare John 17, last part especially In the circumstances of the history, this Psalm is the latter end of 1 Peter 4.

58 If Psalm 6 was the humiliation of the soul in the sin of the people, and thus moral separation from it - just the place Christ had to take - this Psalm looks at them in conscious integrity, for that was Christ's actual place, and the Remnant's as renewed through grace. Hence, not deliverance, nor mercy saving, and putting the enemies to shame in goodness, but righteousness is looked for, "The Lord shall judge the peoples" - He will arise in His anger - He judges the righteous establishes the just, whets His sword against the wicked if he do not turn. In a word, the Lord is praised according to His righteousness, and as taking the name of "Most High." The Remnant can take this ground, as founded on the character of God, only through the consciousness of personal integrity, but based on the absolute integrity of Christ Himself. If Christ did not speak this for them, their utmost point would be Psalm 6, even as renewed, but Christ, having in grace entered into that for them, brings in the intrinsic righteousness with Him; compare, though it may go farther, the owning of Christ after John's baptism. After the rest of the humiliation and confession of Psalm 6, the soul, through grace and Christ can take the place of this Psalm, but here, as among the Jews, because it looks for judgment on the wicked, still it is ever true as to the government of God.

The latter days come clearly out in this Psalm, closed by the glory of the Son of man in the following Psalm.

The Psalm seems a special plea against Antichrist. If the godly were like him (Absalom and Saul are here united, which Shimei's words did), let the enemies externally prevail. But he calls on Jehovah to arise; verses 6, 7 and 8, show the result.

- 7. Of the peoples l'um-mim (nations).

- 8. People, Am-mim (peoples).

Psalm 8

This Psalm is the celebration, by the Jews, of the glory of their Lord Jehovah - His name excellent in all the earth, and His glory now set above the heavens. Of the application of this, there can be no question.

59  - 3. I do not think the omission of the sun immaterial; it is man in his humiliation and as the son of Adam that is considered.

- 5. I am at present disposed to think this verse right.

- 9. Observe, this verse expresses the sense of the Jews as to their own portion of the glory - His name, etc. - not the Church's. His glory set above the heavens. Also observe thus is the dominion of men, properly the Jewish portion, not the fulness which is the Church's. He, this Man, is "Head over all things to the Church." Observe also, as Christ is identified with the Remnant of believing Jews in the latter day trial, when this Psalm has its fulfilment, so Christ was the only faithful Jew in the days of His humiliation in the flesh, and held that character as a Remnant, ever alone in the midst of the opposition and hatred of unbelieving Jews, and the kings of the earth rising up against the Lord and against His anointed. This mystery opens out much in the giving and sacrifice of Christ for the people, and, by the power of the resurrection, it also let in the Gentiles to the blessing of the same testimony. Hence see the application of verse 2.

We have here the full exaltation of Christ on the destruction of Antichrist, Jehovah being here addressed as One who has set His glory above the heavens. Enemies, persecutors within - Israel's character as redeemed by God's grace among the babes, so that He, Jehovah, can righteously put down the external enemy, and avenger of their general fault. When Jehovah sets His glory above the heavens - the heavens being considered; "What is man?" Yet herein set above all the works, the highest - God's heavens, and all they contain (to wit, in Christ), yet owned here by Jewish faith, and therefore while previously stated now dropped, and Jehovah as their Adon (Lord) owned, as making His name excellent in all the earth. It is a most beautiful expression of the economy of glory; the whole economy, now that we know Christ, the very Person being revealed, who is both Jehovah and Man - Enosh ben-Adam (Man, the Son of Man). Nothing, moreover, however low, is out of the reach of His dominion.

It is the full result in Christ displayed as Son of Man, but to the glory of Jehovah, as the Adon, or Lord of Israel. Yet I doubt not, Christ is owned as such here.

Thus the universal Adamic, and the Jehovah government in Israel are united, while it reaches far wider still, because they are established in the Person of the Lord, the Son of God.

60 This Psalm has rather a mysterious position. Its general purport is evident; but Psalms 9 and 10 introduce the earthly part of all that follows, and this sets up Messiah on a higher ground. It is spoken from Israel's point of view, "O Jehovah our Adon," but recognising the exaltation of Christ as Son of Man, and consequent on His rejection. But it stands, I think, by itself - the thoughts of God, like the two first Psalms; it stands between the seventh and ninth, i.e., the sense etc. supposes rejection on the footing of the other two. It is counsels outside all that; while Psalm 9 descends to earth and takes up, historically in Israel, what follows really on Psalm 7. Psalm 9 follows on Psalm 8, in that Christ had to take the place of Psalm 8 for the accomplishment of Psalm 9, but then Psalm 8 is far away beyond the scope of Psalm 9, and in itself only looks at the general exaltation of Christ consequent on His humiliation; the result of Psalm 8 is, we know, not accomplished, nor does Psalm 9 reach out to it at all. It returns to the previous Psalms, but Christ's title in Psalm 2 is maintained in Psalm 9, and the humble ones of Psalms 3 and 7 not forgotten. It is the Remnant, Zion, and the world. Psalm 8 is everything except God Himself - the Father. In Psalm 10 we have the parties on earth; but Psalm 9 etc. could not be without Psalm 8. The other remarks in previous statements remain. All this gives an immense importance to this Psalm.

It seems to me that this Psalm finishes, in a certain sense, the subject, after the two first introductory Psalms. The complaint of the Messiah - His confidence in apparent abandonment (Psalm 4), the certainty that the Almighty had chosen a Well-beloved, and that the light of His countenance was all that He desired. In both Psalms Messiah takes the place of crying to the Lord, especially in Psalm 4, and then He takes the ground, not of the number of His enemies, but of His righteousness and glory. In Psalm 5 He puts Himself in contrast with the wicked - appealing to the character of God; in Psalm 6 He takes His sorrow up as between Him and God, as chastening coming from Him; Psalm 7 is an open appeal to judgment - the rage of His enemies rising up against Him, He demands the Lord to awake to the judgment that He has commanded; then in Psalm 8 the humiliation and glory is explained in connection with the Jews.

In Psalms 9 and 10, He places Himself specially in presence of the difficulties and oppressions of Antichrist and the nations. In Psalm 9 He celebrates deliverance as the ground of confidence in the distress occasioned by the wicked one. The Lord judges all - that some have been put to death, but deliverance is sought as placing them with songs in Zion. The nations are judged also; in Psalm 10 it is rather the other side of the picture - what the wicked one is, and his character and doings, but closes with the royalty of Jehovah who has cleared His land from the nations, and comforts the meek. It is evident that, while the previous Psalms gave the rights (Psalms 1 and 2) and then the sorrow of Messiah, closing in the now extended position of second Adam, which indeed serves for introduction to the following, these Psalms give much more historically the source of affliction of the latter day in the nations, and specially the wicked one - objects of the just judgment of God, who delivers the meek, though He has had patience while some have been put to death even; and this, specially in Psalm 10, in reference to the land.

61 These Psalms make it evident that, whatever the progress or the knowledge of those who suffer, or the consequence in glory if they are put to death, the Remnant are considered, and dealt with here in their Jewish associations with Christ, and with Jehovah.

Psalms 8 and 9 add the name of "Most High"; but Psalm 8 gives His supremacy over all things; Psalms 9 and 10, special relationship with the Jews. This throws a good deal of light over this part of the Psalms. Thus Psalm 9 celebrates what will introduce the millennium, but prophetically, not historically; verses 17, 18 take it up in the way of calm commentary, while verses 19, 20, look for its execution; verse 18 is the needy poor.

Thus the "Son of Man" and "Most High" are both introduced in contrast with the Jewish "Son of God" and "King of Israel," though the same Person, and the Remnant in trouble meanwhile. I say "in contrast," but though Psalms 1 and 2 are the general thesis, and Psalm 1 gives the Remnant simply in character, and owned of God in the judgment, yet in the characters of Psalm 2 Christ would be rejected as implied, as in Psalm 8 He could not be. It was purpose, only He must die (John 12), consequent on His rejection, to take it up. In Psalm 9 it is Jehovah's power and judgment, actually, which of course cannot be resisted, "He is known by the judgment which he executeth." Psalm 10 begins historically with the tribulation of the Remnant, the lawless (anomos) one is spoken of; verses 16-18 prophetically declare the result, and then come, as heretofore seen, the feelings of the Remnant.

62 Psalms 11-14 contemplate the wicked one. In Psalms 15-17 we have the character of the Remnant, and Christ, more in view, though in Psalm 17 in contrast with the wicked. Hence death comes in; but in the position of Christ with the Remnant trusting Jehovah.

Psalm 18 begins afresh, and connects Christ's distress with the history of God's people - Christ connecting Himself with them, and standing for them to the end. Psalm 22 does not speak directly of atonement, but of the sufferings of Christ when He was making it. Psalm 18 stands by itself. Then comes Jehovah's dealing with Messiah (and the people's) only first the testimony of Creation and the law; and of Messiah first with men - His enemies, and then, when in the work of atonement, forsaken of God in His soul.

Psalm 23 is the care of the sheep during the time of trial; Psalm 24 is Jehovah taking His place in the temple as Lord of the earth - both really fulfilled in Christ, though of course He was not really a sheep, but He went before them in the path in which they had to walk. Psalm 25 starts afresh, introducing an entirely new element - the confession of sins, looking for forgiveness and mercy (while persecuting enemies, and troubles are there) to Jehovah. Thus the actual state of the Remnant comes in. Psalm 26 gives the sense of integrity, and separates the heart of the Remnant from the wicked, while Jehovah's house is loved.

Psalm 27 looks to Jehovah according to promise, the desire of the godly one being to Him; Psalm 28 looks for judgment on the wicked and not to be counted with them, but that, as Jehovah's people, they should be saved. The Anointed is also brought in. This Psalm goes further than the previous ones, and looks more definitely to the effects of Jehovah's intervention.

Psalm 29 celebrates Jehovah's might as above all the swellings of evil, so as to give strength to His people and bless them with peace. So we have confession of sins with troubles and enemies - integrity - trust in Jehovah - separation from evil-doers, and judgment on them - the Anointed brought in - Jehovah's might in favour of His people; Psalm 30 is deliverance celebrated, out of the trouble; Psalm 31, the Lord's dealings with the soul, and Himself a resource in the midst of it all; then Psalm 32, forgiveness on confession, preservation and guidance.

63 Psalms 33 to 39 are a kind of reflective commentary on all this; Psalm 33 is what Jehovah is - Psalm 34, what His chastening is, what the wicked are, His ways, and man's ways, true hearted or the opposite in all these circumstances, and the suggested working of the heart under them - Psalm 37 is the trust of the righteous in the Lord, as in presence of the wicked - Psalms 38 and 39 are Jehovah's discipline in the circumstances for transgression.

Psalm 40 evidently brings Christ, the faithful One, into the midst of the sorrows of the Remnant, and also bearing their sins, and glorifying God in obedience there; in Psalm 41 the Remnant are viewed as owning Him in His humiliation - though true of those owning the position, it is really "Blessed are the poor in spirit," "Ye poor."

I note in the second Book, Psalms 42-44, that there is not the mixing up, or the deprecating it, which there was when nominally connected with Jehovah in Jerusalem. It is only open enemies, and, though cast out, joy in God. Also there is a great deal more praise in this Book; but this is after Psalm 45 has brought in Messiah, at least God's thoughts about Him. Psalm 40 is Christ, perfect but in humiliation - Psalm 45, in triumph; Psalm 44 begins a new subject.

In a certain sense Psalms 42-53 go together, but there is a distinct break at the end of Psalm 48; Psalm 45 (Messiah) brings in praise to Jehovah up to the end of Psalm 48. In Psalms 42 and 43 the power of the enemy is in and around the city, and the godly are separated and cast out; Psalm 44, they declare their integrity, though their soul is bowed down in the dust - it was even for God's sake they were suffering; Psalm 45, Messiah is brought in; then Psalm 46, the Lord of Hosts is with them; Psalm 47, He is King over all the earth; Psalm 48, He is great in Zion, and the kings are seized there with fear; Psalm 49 comments on it, and there it is essentially God not Jehovah, for every soul, save that, in Psalm 50, God judges from Zion as Jehovah, but even there it is essentially God, also Most High; the saints are gathered - the true character of the wicked shown.

In Psalm 51 the Remnant confess their sin against God in the rejection of Christ; Psalm 52, the wicked man is portrayed in contrast with the delivered just who trusted in God; Psalm 53 the fool, who went on as if there were no God - but the salvation of Israel is looked for. Psalm 51 indeed closes the direct appeal to God. To the end of Psalm 59 the enemies are specially in view as noted, then God is more looked to in the same circumstances, and the King is brought in from Psalms 55 to 68; deliverance is now immediately anticipated and celebrated. Psalms 69-72, Christ is specially brought in, and as entering into these sorrows, and then as Solomon.

64 Psalm 73 begins God's connection with Israel as such, the general troubles and sorrows of the last day, and the Remnant and wicked separated.

But note, to the end of Psalm 58 from 52, though Jehovah be looked to in hope, it is again essentially God; in Psalm 59 Jehovah comes in again. Then God comes in - they are still outside, only praise is ready; Psalms 64, 65. In Psalm 68 God is summoned, as it were, as when the ark started - "Jah" is introduced; Christ's ascension, and then, in verse 18, is "Jah" again. Psalm 63, though outside, the soul is fully brought into its right state; Psalm 64 the righteous and wicked are clearly distinguished - Jehovah will be the joy of the upright. Then Psalm 65 etc. as below, only He must first be despised and rejected but heard (Psalm 69). Psalms 70 and 71 are the closing cry when all is finally closing in. Jehovah is looked to with faith, but this Book is the time of casting out. In Psalm 10, Christ is looked to in Jewish triumph - David in humiliation, and reigning in millennial peace. It is more wholly Jewish than Book 1, though it thence reaches out farther; the ascension of Christ being sung and so triumph.

I return again to notice in some detail the Psalms.

Psalm 9

The force and application of this beautiful Psalm are too obvious to need much explanation. It is a learning, from the dealings of the Lord on behalf of the confiding Remnant of the Jews, the faithfulness, and goodness, and full name of the Lord. He has in these actings manifested all the principles of His throne, so as to give the place and ground of confidence for all that "know thy name" (seek the right); see also Jeremiah 33: 9.

65 We have here the victory of a risen Saviour, amongst the Jews in Zion, over the heathen - note ra-sha (the wicked one). It is consequent upon "above the heavens," and the destruction of Antichrist in verses 7, 8.

- 2. "Most High" is introduced here as characterising Jehovah. See Genesis 14, and Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel.

- 5. Ra-sha (wicked), the wicked one, the Antichrist, is in the singular; so in verse 16 - in verse 17, it is plural.

- 6. Observe, "the heathen rebuked," "the wicked destroyed."

- 8. "He shall judge the world in righteousness" - Acts 17: 31 is a quotation from this - it is verbal in the Septuagint. This Psalm, and Psalm 10 are supplementary Psalms on the closing with the universal exaltation of the Son of man - as to the judgment (Psalm 9) of both heathen and wicked, and (Psalm 10) the ways of the wicked.

- 9. The oppressed.

- 12. The humble.

- 18. Needy - poor.

From this Psalm onward we have the development of faith in Christ, and the Remnant as associated during the time of trial - but before the last half-week, therefore Psalms 3-10 go on through to the end, as to general preface.

Psalm 10

This Psalm seems more general; more generally characteristic. The trouble includes all. They are e-nosh min ha-aretz (the man of the earth) and so on to verse 15 inclusive, Jew, heathen, Antichristian, of those not humble and godly - verses 12 and 14 and its use by the Apostle, plainly show this. It is evidently Antichrist, compare Titus 1: 16.

- 2. Ra-sha (wicked one) in the singular; so in verses 3,4, 13.

This Psalm shows that the extremity and helplessness of the or Remnant, that put their trust in God, is the occasion of God's arising, so as to put out this wickedness for ever. It expresses their cry, which is one of fear but of dependence, at the manifestation of the enemy, and his grievousness; but this confidence and wrongness of object which make him forget God (v. 4) draws out there the cry of the Remnant - out to God to aim against, and put his name out of remembrance, so that destructions come to a perpetual end. Verses 16, 17, 18, give the full development of the result, and the manner of them.

66  - 18. Notice the expression "The man of the earth" - "The God of the earth," and "of the whole earth," is a name we are familiar with; compare the history of Nebuchadnezzar, and indeed the account of Babel, for the first development of this principle of iniquity on earth. But read the Psalm with attention, for its consummation of wickedness of heart - the infidel heart - the lawlessness of the lawless - as the verses give us the acts by which it is brought into exhibition.

The character of the wicked one is especially brought out, and the way he acts in the land. But God will not forget the humble; He sees the wicked's doings. He has prepared the heart of the humble in order to bless them. But God, having broken the arm of the wicked, the heathen also have perished out of His land by His judgment; He is King for ever and ever, "The man of the earth" will no more oppress.

There is a point in Psalms 9 and 10 which I think I have not noticed. Psalm 9 is the aspect or relationship of Jehovah towards the humble, Psalm 10 that towards the wicked. Hence, though the general subject be the same, the joy is much greater in Psalm 9. It is constantly repeated, and this characterises it morally and blessedly; He does not turn away from the poor, does not forget the humble that seek Him. Every reading of the Psalm brings out the import and value of this term and gives its force to Matthew 5, and Luke, and Psalm 41, "Understandeth the poor." "Then this poor man cried." It is full of instruction to us. Oh! may we know the poor and lowly place in every way - Christ's place!

From Psalms 9 and 10 onwards, we enter much more into the actual historical circumstances of the latter days, and the condition of the Remnant or of the poor (the godly who trust in the Lord) in them. It is not simply the condition in principle, and relationship with God, abstractedly, so as to guide them, and set out their state under a rejected Christ, and thus apply immediately to the condition in which they were when Christ was upon earth (though it often may, because in principle it is the same), but the positive historical elements of the latter day, and the actual judgment of the Lord which closes them. He maintains the right, and the cause of Christ, and so of the Remnant because of Him - the heathen are rebuked, and the wicked is destroyed, Jehovah judges the world, and He who is the refuge of the oppressed endures for ever. Praises are sung to Him who dwelleth in Zion, who has remembered His poor ones - He has lifted them up from the gates of death - they that know His name will put their trust in Him.

67 I have already remarked that in Psalm 9 the heathen and the wicked, the two characters of the oppressors, and evil as against Israel in the latter day, are judged.

The following Psalms discuss the state, feelings, and position of the poor in spirit in the midst of this - the character of the wicked being fully brought out.

Note, we have not the driving out until Psalm 42 - then the historical condition of the people, and Sion, and the Lord's throne there are brought out in detail. Hence, having had the final judgment of the wicked in Palestine, and of the world in Psalms 9 and 10, the general condition is looked at, not the historical driving out. It was needful for the encouragement of the upright to give Psalms 9 and 10, but by this prefatial book, before the Antichristian driving out, we can have the connection of the Lord Himself with the people, as He was in this world - the godly One in the midst of evil - and that while they remain in this and have to possess their souls in patience. Some of them may reach on in their application to the end, but the condition of the godly is piety in the midst of evil.

In Psalm 45, the triumph of Christ is the answer to the driving out - not His sympathies with them in the sorrow. But then in order to this coming in in power, His exaltation (Psalm 68), and sorrowful humiliation in His faithfulness in Israel (Psalm 69) are brought out. He takes part there also, For indeed it goes on to the Cross, in the sins of Israel, being identified with them, and bringing out their case in Psalms 70 and 71, until He is established as Solomon (Psalm 72).

The historical part of the second Book is Psalms 42-48. Psalm 49 is exhortation; Psalms 50-67 give the moral exercises up to deliverance, and as in Psalms 16-18, Messiah's part (Psalms 68-72).

68 Psalm 11

We have here the general principles on which the godly stand.

It gives the believer's trust in God - the principles of His dealings - with the result as in man, all "the foundations are destroyed," and the righteous, though righteous, have in themselves no defence. But there is a God that sitteth above, where the workings of the ungodly do not touch the foundations of His throne, and that trieth thence the children of men - therefore trieth indeed the righteous. But it is judgment, and the destruction on the ungodly; it flows from His very character, in which the righteous trust.

This Psalm shows the confidence of the truth of Christ's Spirit (wheresoever) in Jehovah, contrasting itself with the unrighteousness of that around Him, which apparently (and actually as to the nation so) prevented the interference of Jehovah, and which, therefore, called for Jehovah's help in righteousness - and against, as itself in this place of righteousness and therefore pleading with His, the external enemies who took advantage of, and were the rod of, the nation's unrighteousness. Come what would, the point of known faith (known to faith) was that Jehovah was "in his holy temple: . . . his eyes behold," etc.

NOTE. - Would it not seem from this Psalm and Psalm 34, that those who seek security and blessing on the earth, draw their confidence from the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, as a Man delivered? Compare also Acts 13: 33, 34, and Isaiah 50, already cited, and also 55.

Psalm 12

We have here the discovery of the wickedness of man among the Jews, when righteousness was looked for - see Ecclesiastes 3: 16; Romans, and Isaiah 5. It seems here to have risen to pride and oppression, and left poverty of spirit even there; therefore "Blessed are the poor in spirit"; there was a tribe for this, in Jesus - Matthew 5, the beatitudes are Himself, and thus open these Psalms.

- 6. The word of God is presented as a resting-place.

This Psalm, I think, applies to, or specially includes the professors within - the nominal associates in the same hope, but who were really not of God's children. It is the complaint of the godly man as to the state of things around him in Zion itself; he would not have wondered at there being no godly ones amongst those who were without.

69 Psalm 13

This Psalm is with the outward enemies; it is the expression of Isaiah 8: 17, i.e., of Christ's Spirit in the temporary rejection of the Jewish people, but it is the supplication when there seems, ultimately perhaps, a bringing in the deliverance. "How long" is the prayer of faith - "for ever"? For now it appears, as though there were no deliverance and thus victory of men, as the heathen, and the ungodly.

- 5. Khas'd'ka (thy mercy). His trust was in His knowledge of this, for He was it - hence derivatively our assimilation to the character of God, only first towards us; still "he that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love."

He is seemingly forgotten of God.

Psalm 14

This gives the character of the wicked. It is the full contrast of the children of men and Jehovah. So the Apostle uses it. How according to its full meaning (as necessarily) is the Holy Ghost's use of this, its testimony - the testimony of the Spirit of Christ as knowing it! Israel was the scene of its most painful and nearest; not its least proof "If I had not," etc., John 15. Therefore "what the law saith, it saith to them under the law; that every mouth" etc., and then it was too "of many sins" (pollon hamartematon).

The Psalm states the implication of the Jews, as a body, in the common principles of the ungodly. The fears of the godly drive them to God - of the hypocrite, to alliance with evil. We are warranted, by the Apostle, in applying this Psalm to the Jews, and indeed it flows from the discovery that so had they corrupted their way, that there were none that understood; compare Isaiah 33: 14, 15. The captivity is not reckoned to be brought back by the Lord, till the full blessing apparently. Note also, the children of Lo-ruhamah, i.e., of Israel, ought not, it would seem, to have part in the special trials of Jerusalem and Judah in the last day; nor is "the day of Jezreel" to be till after that, when both should be brought together.

Psalm 15

70 This Psalm seems the character of those who remain really in Zion, in the communion and union with those then on the holy hill of righteousness, when righteousness had been manifested, and what the characteristics are of relative righteousness from a pure heart. The righteousness is in relation to another, flowing from personal faithfulness to it, and integrity - moral uprightness.

- 3. "Taketh up," is well, it means "adopts" it to propagate it.

The Psalm gives the character of the preserved Remnant, and this closes this part. The three which follow are most beautiful expressions of Christ's place.

Psalm 16

Christ comes in to give its full character and hope to faith. In this He trusts in Jehovah, and identifies Himself with the excellent of the earth, sets Jehovah before His face.

Here first Christ formally takes His place in the midst of Israel, and then, note, it is distinctly and definitely with the godly Remnant. Thus He enters into every sorrow they can go through, even to death. He enters into them, but it is to their state in general that the Psalms refer, though many things have had a literal fulfilment in Him as so entering into their sorrows. There was integrity in them, and this was put there by His Spirit (and so all feeling according to it) provided by His Spirit here, but they were guilty, and that there might be peace through deliverance, He charges Himself with it - but this in death. Compare Isaiah 49 and John 15, and see the connection with Israel in Psalm 22: 4. Here we have the path of life. Psalm 32 the forgiven one; Psalm 22 the forsaken One.

This Psalm (16) places Christ fully (though perfect) amongst men - His walk of righteousness in owning Jehovah. The living God takes up His cause, so that death is not to have dominion over Him.

The Lord assumes fellowship with the saints, a most blessed truth; i.e., with the Jewish Remnant (we know it on higher ground, see John 17). Though commencing here in exhibition, stated for us in John 17, because to us consequent de facto on resurrection, and by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and on the ground "I am no more in the world" - here, though the principle of fellowship be the same, He is in the world; yet He comes in this marvellous self-abasing, yet exalted purpose. In Psalm 17 it is in contrast with the world, but illustrated in resurrection, and in consequence, in Psalm 18, the resurrection is applied to all the history of the Jews from beginning to end.

71 The expression of His place conjointly with the Jews (where we see its carrying on into the Church) as reasoned on in Hebrews 2 is seen in verse 1 of this Psalm. The prominence of "Jehovah" is not sufficiently noticed here - Jehovah, God over all, was the personal God of the Jews, in covenant trust as of a known character, and relationship name, as Father to us more fully.

- 2. I should, from the Hebrew, translate this: "Thou hast said unto the Lord" (Jehovah) "Thou art my Lord; my goodness reacheth not up to thee; to the saints that are in the earth, and the excellent, in them is all my delight"; compare Matthew 19: 17, and Luke 18: 19, given in both as identified with Jew and Gentile, with the suitable differences, and the first associate promises in direct connection with the matter of this Psalm. We may also compare John 17. I do not think it means morally excellent; compare the Septuagint.

"Thou hast said unto Jehovah" compare Psalm 91, where the recognition of this by Messiah, i.e., His identification with Jewish sorrows and interests, as the secret place of the Most High, puts Him under the shadow of the Almighty - the two Abrahamic names of God. So here "Preserve me, O God." "Thou hast said unto Jehovah," the Jewish Lord, "Thou art, my Lord."

Compare verses 1 and 3, indeed verses 1, 2 and 3, with John 17: 11, and also verses 1 and 5 with verse 21.

- 3. The translation is quite wrong; it should be as above. "[Thou hast said] unto the saints that are in the earth."

- 4. "The sorrows of those that hasten after another" not Jehovah; "Jehovah is the portion of mine inheritance."

He has a heritage, receives counsel of the Lord, and is instructed in the secret watches of the night, by thoughts as a man learning obedience, so He sets Jehovah before Him as a righteous Jew, and He will not be moved, being perfect in all this. Resurrection is His hope, and His right hand where are pleasures for evermore.

72 The close of the Psalm shows that having taken the portion of the afflicted, nothing was His hope here but God, but this portion goes on here to death - presence with Him in resurrection is His joy and crown. So ours with Him!

John 17 compared with this Psalm and Zechariah 6: 12, 13, show the difference of the Church's and Jewish communion. Compare Hebrews 2.

- 10. Is it quite certain that "Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol," refers to the resurrection? It is not quoted in Acts 13. In this case, Paradise would not be Sheol at all. Christ went where we go on dying, like the thief. The word is Lo-taazov (Thou will not forsake); this may surely mean, He went there, and left it directly, but it might mean He would not, if others had, have His place there. The resurrection is quite sufficient to meet the expression; the only question is if it be the true explanation. I do not know that Acts 2: 27 affects the question, unless verse 31, that seems to decide; but I am not quite certain.

That Christ went down fully into the place of death is quite certain, only did His soul go up thereon immediately to Paradise? - Paradise not being Hades.

As far as I see, always in the New Testament, and generally, it may be always in the Old, it is the expression of the power of death, the place of the departed where death still reigns over them. Capernaum goes down "to Hades." The rich man in torment is in Hades. Hades delivered up its dead in the second resurrection; Revelation 1: 18 and 6: 8 would not alter this idea.

In Job 14, he clearly does not go beyond this present world of sight, and in the bitterness of his spirit has no sense of resurrection. The tree sprouts now and visibly in this present world - man does not, and in fact never will, unless miraculously as Lazarus; death has wholly passed upon him as an inhabitant of this world - a child of Adam. Such life he never recovers. Job was right, only he did not see beyond, nor here know Him who is the resurrection and the life. But Christ never rose according to His previous life in this world, though according to the divine power of it. Psalm 19 may go farther, and I think there is, by the Spirit, a mysterious looking out to Christ's resurrection as victory over dust, but not without hope of present deliverance, in Job. Proverbs 14: 32 is very remarkable as to their state in those days - vague but showing the effect of grace, when life and incorruptibility were not brought to light.

73 It is to be remarked that in the judgment on Adam, only his present temporal condition is formally announced; "He drove the man," etc., may give far more to a spiritual mind, but the judgment on all three even is limited to this earth. Sheol itself was a proof that something more was seen, though all was dark there, for it supposed living souls after death. Kore and his company go to Sheol.

There is a note in Delitsch, p. 412, which treats this point all falsely, as is the text he quotes, but he seems to say that Bengel and two moderns take it as I have said above, but all is discussed here on the ground of 1 Peter 3: 18, not on Acts 2: 27. Of 1 Peter 3: 18, I reject the whole interpretation, save that I am satisfied zoopoietheis (made alive, quickened) is resurrection.

Ephesians 4 contrasts His being in the lower parts of the earth (compare Matthew 12: 40) with ascension, compare also Romans 10: 7. But these, I apprehend, contemplate Christ as whole Person - the last only as a supposition of ignorance. There was no witness of overcoming, nor recognition on God's part till resurrection. But the images of the Old Testament bore witness to the looming of resurrection on their vision, as Isaiah 26: 19, Daniel 12: 2, and the last verse which is direct; Hosea 6: 2.

Thus the condition of Messiah in the midst of the Jews is entered into, as we have seen, but the great secret of resurrection, which is the centre of all economy, is not brought out till this Psalm. Psalm 8, to us, supposes it, but it is facts as regards inheritance, not the passage as regards means and principles. Here, i.e., in Psalm 16 the resurrection is introduced, but this and the two following Psalms contain the general history of what conducted to, and the history and effects of resurrection. One with the godly Jews (Psalm 16), He is brought there, then (Psalm 17) what is the world; Psalm 18 what the history of the Jews founded on this, from the beginning and at the end. Psalm 19 gives the two great general principles of judgment, because of testimony - Creation and the Law. Psalm 20 gives the speciality of Christ's position viewed by the Spirit in the Remnant's piety. It embraces, with Psalm 21, all the relation produced between Jehovah and the people by Christ in what He did or is. Psalm 22 gives the details of suffering necessary to this end. Blessed be He!

74 This Psalm then is the Beloved's placing Himself in association with His people, and His hope as connected with them. It is His word in His human nature as Christ, and then the Spirit's address as in Him - the divine Spirit - the word of the Son, as a divine Person, by the Spirit to Christ, i.e., the communication to His human nature, giving it the ground of its assurance when taking all the circumstances of the Beloved; and hence Peter says "Because it was not possible that he should be holden of it." We shall see the developments of it in the following Psalm, and His supplication, on this ground, is fully exhibited in Psalm 22, as see verse 20.

This is the answer of the human nature, under the trial of His soul that is, to the very truth contained in this; the results are then fully stated.

Psalm 17

Consequently here He can take up the interest, in His own Person, of the Remnant, the righteous Remnant, yet in this holy dependence on, and reference to Jehovah. "Hear the right" - attend to My cry - My sentence - His heart proved. As to the works of men, kept by the Word, His goings in dependence.

- 9. He called against his enemies.

- 11. The rest of the Remnant are introduced.

- 14. As giving up this present world.

- 15. His portion in resurrection, and beholding His - Jehovah's - presence. In its full display then, the Image of the Invisible God. This is our portion (1 John 3) in Him.

B'ha-kits t'm'u-na-theka (in the wakening up of Thy likeness). Does not sa-ba (to be satisfied) govern the b' (in)? "I shall be satisfied in the awakening up of thy, etc."

He is here in presence of the wicked - He has no portion in this world, and is satisfied with that which He has in resurrection. He appeals to God's righteousness to judge and hear the right, and hence presents the wickedness of the wicked. This gives a most interesting character to these two Psalms (16 and 17), because in Psalm 16 we have His own joy in God. Jehovah shows Him the path of life, and at His right hand are pleasures for evermore. In presence of the wicked and the prosperity of the men of this world, He beholds God's presence in righteousness, and is satisfied in waking up after His image, i.e., He looks to the partaking of manifested glory; so that we have just as analogously in the Church the taking-up for its own joy, and the display in glory as the reward of righteousness.

75 Note, Psalms 16 and 17 both speak of Jesus taking the place of humble, dependent obedience in this world, and waiting upon God, but the first is between Him and God - He takes His place with the excellent of the earth, and His joy too is what is found at God's right hand and in His presence. In Psalm 17 He is with the wicked who oppress; hence His comfort, though in God's presence, is in His own glory, but still as with God and bearing His image. The examination of this, in the spirit and detail of it, is full of interest. It applies to the Remnant in the spirit of it, and to us in many things.

Psalm 16 is much more inwardly with God; Psalm 17 is much more outwardly with men, and the hope is suited to this.

This Psalm is the supplication of the Enos as having kept, i.e., Christ as Enos, the way of God, by the words of His lips, as concerned in the works of men and therein kept Himself from the paths of the destroyer - having leaned upon God so as to be kept in His paths. His full sense of the power of the enemy, the wicked compassing Him about, then the perfect identification with the portion of the Jews in the latter day, in view of the apparent success and temporary prosperity of the wicked (as in the hand of God), and, at the same time, His satisfaction at the resurrection portion, "Who for the joy that was set before him," etc. This Psalm is a very remarkable association of the personal state and hope of Christ, as such, and the circumstances of His people, and also His identity with the resurrection hope of the rest of His people, the Remnant.

NOTE. - It is interesting to remark that the hope for the saints in the Epistle of John is conformed to this Psalm, 1 John 3: 2; and that in the Gospel, John 14: 2, 3, to Psalm 16.

Psalm 18

This Psalm is founded on resurrection. He takes up the whole case of Israel.

- 16. He took me, he drew me out of many waters." Compare Moses (Exodus 2: 10).

- 23. I judge that the true sense of these words is "the iniquity which lay before me in this path in which I had to walk." Meavone (from my iniquity) is never, I think, what we call "indwelling sin," but sin before God, iniquity, a relative state to Him, guilt. "I kept myself from what would have put me in this relation." So Rosenmuller takes it, after Vogel. Hence its application directly to Christ Himself even is very simple, as "By the words of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer."

76  - 20-27. Show the Jewish character of the Psalm in grace. It is as the sermon on the mount in principle. This could only be said by Christ as a Jew, save that the character of God at the close of them, would have been destruction to all else.

43. The people Am, not Am'ka (thy people) though, then go-im (the heathen) and then Am a people again, showing the plural force of this word Am (people), the heathen brought into recognition and relationship under Messiah with the Jews in the earth and not till then - now it is only said, and therefore individual sons of the living God.

We have in this Psalm the historical glory in which death and resurrection, and the power of it in Christ, is associated with the Egyptian deliverance in the beginning, and the latter-day deliverance in the end - associated with them though Jehovah, but showing that the principle of interest in which He as a man, a Jew, was associated with them, was true in sympathy then - "in all their affliction he was afflicted, etc," verse 16. "He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters" (compare Moses, Exodus 2: 10); and afterwards in strength verses 38-42 - as David, God girding him with strength. Nothing can be more beautiful, more perfect or complete than these three Psalms.

- 45. I should translate "shall waste away." See Psalm 68: 2.

We have, at the close, His royal power and victories upon earth, so that Psalms 16, 17 and 18 give us the joy of Christ in going to His Father (compare John 14). His joy in His manifestation in glory in resurrection as the display of the image of God, and His expectation of royal earthly glory in which He shall be manifested. The reference to His death, and His association with Israel from the beginning remains untouched.

This Psalm, the occasion of which is marked by its being presented in 2 Samuel 20, is one of deep interest and large extent. It plainly reaches to Him who was greater than David, and is the prophetic glance at all that He has been interested in from the Jewish covenant; interest as their God ("In all their afflictions he was afflicted, and the Angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them: and he bore them, and carried them all the days of old," see the end of the chapter) to the end of His and their deliverance. It was the application of His righteousness to them, for He bare them, to verse 23; and therefore it declares the Lord's deliverances all through, that the enemy was against Him, i.e., God's deliverance and presentation of Him from that to the end, His final triumph, and therefore the deliverance of His people - His own sitting therefore on high, and becoming Head over all. It is the David, however, all through; in the last word, sitting in the anointed way through Him. But it is, withal, the place of the Beloved before God, Jehovah, even after all His deliverances, and therefore celebrates all His deliverances of Him.

77 The comparison of this Psalm with Matthew 25 raises the question as to the destruction of all the wicked when Christ comes. I think we must distinguish between the outward submission in the conquests of Messiah, as in Psalm 45, and divine sessional judgment. It is certain what is left of Israel will be all righteous - it is said so, and many passages show it; this is just judicial and not warlike triumph. As to the Gentiles, there are both, because He takes up Judah and makes him His goodly horse in the day of battle. Thus in the war there will be submission which may be feigned through fear. The judicial process when individuals are judged is another thing; then they are finally separated when brought under it. This last is clearly the character of Matthew 25.

Psalm 19

This Psalm seems to me to show the Lord in the two great parts of His glory in the heavens, far above all principality, while the present estate shows indeed the glory of the Son, though not the sun, and withal the wisdom of God the Ordainer, and His actual righteousness (as under the law) or Judaical righteousness and glory. All the world were guilty of the great offence - Christ, in the same act, was not; He was born under the law, and fulfilled, and did not come short of the glory of God in it. But He speaks of them in His state of liability - excellent in themselves - His delight is in them. But also, as in the world, Thy Servant is warned (v. 11), see also Psalm 17: 4. Observe further, for there is much depth in this Psalm, the heavens do not declare the glory of Jehovah - that is His covenant name - but of God. The law of Jehovah converteth the soul - it is perfect; compare Psalms 1 and 40, so also John 8: 29. The Gentiles are His natural glory, for it is as risen to be the "Sun of righteousness," He is Head of them, they being let in, receiving life, through His rising - the Jews, His legal glory, for it is only as fulfilling that He came the Head of the Jews, having the promises as the Seed, and as in and by them He reigns in the world, where righteousness has its sphere of fulfilment. But this is too large a subject to do more than notice in this heading of this bright and shining Psalm.

78 But I note a word in passing on Psalms 19-21. In the first we have the Creation for Gentiles, leaving them without excuse - the perfection of the law for the Jew. In Psalm 20 the godly Jew - the Spirit of Christ views Christ on earth - desires deliverance in and of Zion; in verse 6 the deliverance comes not thence, but from the heavens - His resurrection. Then these godly Jews see Him already glorified (where we are one with Him), persecuted before He returns to take the glory and fulfil then His good designs for Israel. But He is now, to Israel, King - they see thus the witness and consequence of resurrection. In the end He is King against His enemies. Thus all His history is brought out with a Jewish eye, i.e., the Spirit of Christ in the Jews.

We have then the testimony of Creation and the Law.

The workmanship of God and the law of Jehovah are very manifestly, I will not say contrasted but distinguished - a tacit testimony by which we may say "Have they not heard?" The declaration of God's glory, not the law, declaring His righteousness. The Spirit only may recognise, but they declare the glory without any reference to the character and condition of those to whom they are displayed. Thus they are referred to in Romans 10. They become emblems of grace in Matthew 5: 45 to the end, and Christ as the Sun of it as set in the heavens, for grace is from the heavens. The law looks for righteousness from the earth, therefore even in reference to "He maketh his sun to rise upon the evil and upon the good, and sendeth rain upon the just and unjust" when grace is the subject, loving those who do not love us, loving our enemies, the very character of grace. This, i.e., the natural testimony of benevolent goodness to sinners was among the Gentiles (He left not Himself without witness) as the law was amongst the Jews, and so pleaded in Romans, that every mouth might be stopped, and so grace from heaven from the Sun of righteousness, and the rain of His Spirit was on Gentile as well as Jew - here however it is only the sun, not the rain, because of universality. The heavens spread over all, and the sun going about from one end to the other. Now this symbolically shows the character of grace, its scope and working in light, and fulfilledly when the Sun of righteousness arises indeed in Person. The spiritual estimate of the law in godly acknowledgment is then beautifully stated, but not, it appears to me, in connection with heavenly hopes or heavenly righteousness - grace has established that in the heavens. It is rather a godly Jew on the coming in of the millennium, the other symbolically stating what was (to him) "in the heavens," Jehovah being owned as the Rock and God of the Spirit-taught Remnant.

79 It seems to me that there is a certain connection between this Psalm and those following, up to Psalm 24 inclusive. Having Creation and the Law, we have then Israel considering the suffering Messiah - an enigma, no doubt, but here explained, Psalms 20 and 21. In Psalm 22, we have His own blessed expression of this suffering, as abandoned of God in it, which He alone could feel and express; and in this He identifies Himself with Israel, and therein with the Remnant, for it is remarkable, while the basis of all its hopes, how the Church is excluded from all these Psalms. In Psalms 23 and 24 we have the dealings and leadings of the Lord on the earth, as an Object of care, until He be fully recognised as the Lord Himself "mighty in battle," in the great scene (in Israel) which is in view in all these Psalms, and must be, in speaking of earthly judgments. It is not His moral trial, as put to the test, as identified with others - with Israel - but how actually He was led, as faith recognised it, till He took His place in His due glory. Psalms 11 and 18 also have their connection, though Psalms 18 and 19 have a substantial, special place, each of its own. To the end of Psalm 17, the resurrection is the answer to the difficulties in which the righteous man finds himself, and the folly of iniquity; Psalm 18 is the intervention in judgment and against.

80 We clearly get, in Psalm 19, Creation a testimony, and the Law a testimony - just an epitome of this ground of the Romans; only there it is in conviction of sin. But Psalm 20 brings in the godly Jew understanding another point - Messiah in the day of trouble - Jehovah's help looked for for Him. To see Messiah in trouble, crying, was exceeding much, and to see it, as such, in faith. He had said "Strengthen thee out of Zion," but He hears Him from His holy heaven. But this is thoroughly Jewish. "Now" (v. 6) seems faith, but founded on some deliverance (v. 8), deliverance to themselves. Psalm 21 goes farther, entering into the answer, or rather the counsels of God concerning Him, before He gets the Jewish blessings; it rather exercises judgment on His enemies then. He is prevented with the blessings of goodness, crowned, and length of days for ever, glory, honour, majesty, blessing for ever, Jehovah's countenance. Then He finds His enemies, who had imagined mischief against Him. In a word, Psalm 20 sees Him in, or rather out of, Jewish sorrows, still knows He deliverance and faith; Psalm 21 sees Him the other side of resurrection, and in glory, explaining the conduct and result of unbelief. Then He finds His enemies who had imagined mischief against Him.

Hence in Psalm 22 we find Him in the trouble which takes Him out of the regular answer to Jewish faith - God does not hear, whereas it had been said "The Lord hear thee"; but in verse 21 we have the hearing of Psalm 21, only He does not rise up here, at all, to the heavenly glory. But we have an elect Remnant gathered, so that it is distinguished from Judaism and becomes the Church, i.e., an assembly owned apart; then all Israel as the great congregation, and the blessing of the meek, and the Lord's dominion. Before Psalm 19 they were the general dealings with Messiah, or the Remnant in the midst of Israel, wickedness prevailing; Psalm 18 taking the whole account from Moses. But in Psalm 20 they look on at Him in suffering as before Jehovah. The matter between Him and Jehovah, in the day of His distress, begins another subject, Psalm 22.

This series of Psalms is exceedingly remarkable, as referred to here. It is evident that in Psalms 19, 20 and 21 we may see the Spirit as working in a godly Jew - Creation a testimony - the Law, or testimony of God, delighted in. Psalm 20 sees Messiah entering into their trouble, when the name of the God of Jacob was to avail Him. So Simeon owns Him as the salvation, but sees Him too, a sign to be spoken against, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed, but His heart is looked at as the full vessel of divine desires - the Object which creates the affections of the godly Jew. The Anointed is saved - a wonderful thing to say!

81 Psalm 21 goes further, and sees that His heart's desire has been met, but views Him as the heavenly Man, I take it - still as the answer, but more than expected answer to Psalm 20. He is "made most blessed for ever," and "glad with Jehovah's countenance," honour and great majesty being set before Him, the crown of pure gold being put upon His head. Afterwards, those enemies, who would not that He should reign over them, who imagined a device they were not able to perform, to cast Him down whom God would exalt, who would not say "Let the king hear when we call," "Jehovah fulfil all thy petitions," are brought before Him. Here then we have the heavenly associations of the Jewish people, godly ones - the Church position not being entered into. Messiah, who entered into Jacob's trouble, is known as the heavenly Man whom God has exalted - the King. This we get, I take it, in Daniel 7 - the saints of the heavenlies, not yet the Church, though the Church were that. And, note, this is the first Book, where we have seen resurrection-hope much more full. Perhaps those who do not die, nor are cut off, are therefore able to learn the song sung in heaven, and go with the Lamb "whithersoever he goeth," being redeemed from the earth.

Then in Psalm 22 we have not the looking on of the godly man, but what Christ alone can express - His not being heard of God Himself, and what He suffered in that time itself; the forsaking of God not being in Israel's, His sheep's, trouble, and they identifying themselves with Him, and waiting His deliverance - but what He felt while He was not heard, as between Him and God only, the vessel now of wrath, and who, when men closed Him in, looked to God and found Him not. Then the answer of God is into that depth - He was on the horns of the unicorns to be heard, and this name which met Him there, that love of God which, satisfied and glorified in Jesus, the Lord being brought ("Thou hast brought me"), and brought by His righteous judgment into "the dust of death" - awful word! - reaches down there into that place, and takes up the vicarious, yet personal, sufferer out of it, and becomes redemption - God's love going down there, He raised by the glory of the Father! This name of God His Father, so known there, He makes known to His brethren, and so forms, of the Remnant of Israel, the Church; though the ingrafting of the Gentiles, so as to be one Body, is not of course touched on here. Here however the Gentiles can come in, the middle wall is down, as the Apostle argues at large, into which we need not enter. He has destroyed, in His flesh, the enmity. Here however it is pursued on from the Remnant congregation, as in Romans 11 (which introduces, besides, the provoking to jealousy of the Gentiles), to the great congregation of Israel. The whole nation in that day, and all the ends of the earth remember themselves, and turn to the Lord.

82 A few more words on Psalms 19-24. In general the order is given rightly previously, i.e., Psalms 3-6, great general principles connected with the rejection of Messiah in Psalm 2, as regards the state of the Remnant - Psalm 8 being the result as to Christ. Then, founded on Psalms 9 and 10, the actual latter day history in the land - the experience of the Remnant, looking to Jehovah in that state when all is evil, ripening to judgment - this goes on to Psalm 15. Psalms 16 and 17 are trust and integrity in its effect in the slain One, Psalm 18, Messiah suffering the pains of death - the Centre of the whole history from Egypt to the Millennium. Psalm 19 then takes up the testimonies of God - Creation - the Law - Christ or His Spirit were the glories of the heavens (for the earth is corrupt) and is subject to the law and discerns its perfectness. Then He is a suffering Messiah (the Faithful Witness) where the faithful see Him in the spirit of prophecy; the result being His endless life and glory from Jehovah as Man, and the judgment of His enemies - His hand shall find them all out. But then as Centre, and necessary Centre of all, and alone, embraced in all the rest and so itself bringing it forward, stands by itself in His own lips the prophecy of atonement and the Cross - the forsaking of His God - with its effect in gathering the Remnant, and in the world, both the great congregation (of Israel) and to the ends of the earth, and the seed that is to follow. Then comes the sure confidence and future result of this in Israel, and for the present faith and confidence of the individual, Jehovah is the trusted Shepherd, and all passed through in security, and so security, as to all before one, reckoned on. Jehovah takes care of the saint - that for the time of weakness, death, and enemies. Then finally the earth is the Lord's and its fulness, the godly Remnant will abide in His holy hill, and the glory - the glory of Jehovah - takes its abode in the house - Jehovah of hosts is there. Then follows the various experiences of the trusting and exercised soul, as usual, to the end of Psalm 39.

The Psalms

, part 3.

J. N. Darby.

<43002E>

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

83 Psalm 20

This Psalm begins a new subject. Just as after Psalms 1 and 2 Israel sees Christ passing through the time of His distress - His sacrifice to God sets Him as her Head before Jehovah, and she owns Him as King. Here we have the Spirit in the Jewish Remnant seeing Christ standing in their trouble and in their priesthood. The speciality of Christ's position viewed by the Spirit in the Jewish Remnant. Thus they look first for help out of the sanctuary, and strength out of Zion - the resurrection proves more to them, when understood. He will hear Him from His holy heaven. In a word, this Psalm and Psalm 21 go through the whole history of Christ, in a Jewish point of view, from His entering into the trouble of Jacob (which they have in the latter day) until they know the Lord alone exalted in that day. It is not till after the lifting up that they know that it was He.

This Psalm is the recognition by the Jehovah-taught Jews, of the latter day as in the time of their distress, of Jesus, even the crucified One, as their Saviour. Their thoughts towards Him - "Now know I." The last verse singularly depicts its force - "Jehovah, save" (the root of "Jesus") "the king hear in the day of our calling" - the recognition of Jesus, and in Jesus their own security, for God heareth Him.

It is Christ in royalty, rising and receiving glory, but all Jewish in this Psalm and in Psalm 20. "Jehovah hear thee, fulfil all thy petitions in the day of trouble." The name of the God of Jacob, so not "Hear us, thou!" but "Let the king hear us." Now it is just in connection and contrast with this that the Lord says, "In that day ye shall ask me nothing; I say not that I will pray the Father for you, for etc . . . . whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you," associating them with Him as sons. They look at Messias, wondrous sight, as in the trouble, but Himself only as entering into it, and seek the desires of His heart to be granted Him. Therefore we have the King joying with Jehovah's strength, not the Son one with the Father; we have them looking at Jehovah's dealings with the King, not we in Him, and in His name asking of the Father, He being withal in us. It is "Jehovah saveth his Messiah," i.e., known in resurrection. They know the acts, we the Person. He is the Son of God with power, we say, according to the Spirit of holiness, prevented with the blessings of goodness before He reigns as King, His glory being in this salvation and answer, honour and majesty set upon Him; see Hebrews 2. Still it is "the king trusteth in Jehovah"; He is a Jew - verses 8-12, the King is addressed The strength of Jehovah they look for.

84 In this Psalm, Israel, through all, sees the glory set on, even preventing Him. This is, as it were, to faith the key to the following Psalm, in that it gives that viewed as a whole. There He is in the day of trouble and suffering.

This Psalm is the Jewish Remnant's joy in the position of Christ with God. They perceive His acceptance, and exaltation, and are now of one mind with it, and see how He did save Him, though they had esteemed Him stricken of God and afflicted, though this be not here adverted to, but the acceptance of the King. In a word, they come to understand the resurrection and ascension of Christ, by knowing His Person, as we shall see more of hereafter. But it is as the Man, the Christ, the King (v. 7), and therefore knowing their own security, i.e., His power, as believing people, and trusting in Him as the Deliverer also of them in the latter day, for they see Him as a Jew, and in faith destroying His enemies; for them to faith, over unbelief, its own difficulties, faith its sins as the enemies of Christ, and triumph in His victory, not seeing them as associated with itself. So the Jews in the latter day - by faith in Him they see Him all through as He is; it was "against thee." We may compare the last verse with Isaiah 2: 11, 17.

- 9 (8). Note the use of E'lyon (Most High) here.

Psalm 22

The first verse declares the great burthen of this Psalm - Messiah's great burthen - even one to which the assembly of the wicked would have been as nothing; but that He should feel Himself separated from God! His God! Therein was the deep burthen - insufferable to all save Him. Yet worse, infinitely worse, to Him as a trial, than to anyone else. Is He not therefore precious to His people, yea, even as to God? For it is God in them who loves and delights therein. For herein His people have a common mystery with Christ, to feel as God, yet about themselves as men, yea, as the very people interested and needing - He for their sakes, they as in themselves, see such language as verses 14, 15; and that this was the deep trial, see verses 11 and 19, comparing verse 1. The evidence as to the Jewish personality of our Lord, as suffering, is remarkable in verses 4,5, adding verse 6. Observe too the distinction of the Person in Christ from the liable and suffering soul, i.e., human nature, yet union with all, so as Man prays for Himself, by virtue of the Spirit in Him, so yet otherwise because it was the power of the sin resting on Him by the Spirit. Christ prays for y'khidhathi (my only one); that this is Christ, we have absolute certainty, not only from verse 1, but also verse 22. Christ praying that He might be "saved from," etc., and "heard in that he feared"; so in us of necessity. Observe also "O my strength" is the same word, inserting vav (u) as the title, and "the morning" means dusk, or dark ushering in of morning on, or concerning the Beloved. This whole Psalm is concerning Jews, and as relates to Jews (save verse 18) and that which He was amongst them, rejected by them.

85 Then further it is Christ as heard, Christ as Man who speaks, "For he hath not" etc. (v. 24), and as a Jew. Then we have His first ministry in the congregation - that I apply to the saints gathered out among Jews, the Gentile saints being added thereto. "Ye that fear the Lord, praise him," we know from John 20: 7, the Lord's application of this. Then all the congregation, as under Solomon, compared with David, the kahal rav (the great congregation) is His Solomon state. The rest of the Psalm follows this. I am not so ascertained of verses 30, 31, as to their application. I see that it rests on the resurrection glory of Christ as delivered, and delivering as Man. I should incline to think it the elect Remnant; if not, it would be the latter-day Jews, witnesses of His acts, witnessing who He was, and how He had delivered them, for He bore, as a Jew, their iniquities. And this was what was to be explained, for it was the strength of the dark morning that was wanting. I am not sure verses 30 and 31 apply to the same thing; verse 30 seems clearly the Remnant out of the Jewish people, "to Adon," not "Jehovah" - the Hebrew confirms the supposition. I am inclined to think verse 30, "the congregation," and verse 31, "the great congregation," or the first Remnant of it who are witnesses to Christ's righteousness all through; compare Romans 3: 25, 26.

86 This Psalm exhibits the blessed Lord in the trouble when it must be borne, and His view of it, and His ways toward them - its real character is known here. It takes up this very question of trusting Jehovah - and the seed of Jacob, not the name of the God of Jacob, is now in question. It shows what entering into this trouble cost, because sin was the occasion of it. As the generation of unbelievers was not to pass away, so the Remnant shall be counted for a generation, and their posterity shall receive their character and instruction from them.

The Lord enters on it as a Jew - He was such, but there was nothing that a righteous Jew might expect. He was alone here in saying "My, etc.," and so He had anticipated, but then He was saying, "My Father is with me." Scorn, enmity, perfect depression (He was crucified in weakness, see verse 14) and Jehovah's face hidden from Him, these marked His state really there but faithful, saying "Thou art holy."

Y'khidhathi (my only one) translated "darling" in verse 20, we have noticed elsewhere.

- 22. Note, if we remark what the force of this verse is, we shall see what the character of our praise, in worship especially, ought to be; for what, since Christ leads it, must His sense be of the nature and completeness of this deliverance before God, and His new position?

Note, Christ does not declare God's name as known to the great congregation, nor call them brethren - it is the same God He praises, no doubt - nor does He say "in the midst of the congregation." In truth, His praise of Him "in the great congregation" etc. sets His rather alone, though as publishing His name, leading them to praise Him. So also He pays His vows "before those that fear" God. It is evidently more Jewish for the deliverances than the revelation of the Name, founded on verse 24, which refers to the act but not to the Name which He revealed when delivered. See Psalm 145, and then John 17, where Psalm 22 is fully brought out.

Verse 22 gives thus in Jewish sort "Thy name," but as Christians we have more. This was on resurrection, "My God and your God." But then He had more for His disciples which He had been afresh, or as a new thing, revealing to them all His life - the Father; now this was fully declared in John 17. Not only did He own Jehovah as His God and walk accordingly, but being One, the Father was seen in Him. This is quite a new thing by virtue of the divine union of the Persons, and yet He is not ashamed to call them brethren. Therefore He says too: "My Father and your Father." This was not merely Jewish, see John 4, where this begins to be opened out. Therefore this time is not mentioned in the Epistle to the Hebrews, nor introduced in force - but God, being of all the children, as such, by faith. But then this address to them in the name of brethren introduces them into the place of children as in John 1, "to them gave he authority to become the sons of God," because He was to praise for redemption in the midst of the congregation. The difference of the relationship to the Jews of Christ in the flesh, being concealed and smothered, is the root of the error of Irvingism. It is the devil's abuse of His relationship in the flesh to them, as of His mother linked with them on earth, though holy. This rejected One "Who is my mother?" is of His Father (heavenly), and so the children, and not knowing the earth save as subject, and therefore if knowing Christ after the flesh, knowing Him no more, and therefore kaine ktisis (a new creation). All their good and special knowledge is just what Christ has set aside, and they even held that unholily and it is evil; just as in Galatians, the Jewish ceremonies to a Gentile, united to Christ in resurrection, was the same thing as going back again to his own idols - quod nôta - have their natural headships, not God's family and the like. Verse 22 however, being in resurrection necessarily involves sonship, for He therein was declared Son of God with power, and it is only after resurrection He says "Go tell my brethren" but thence it is addressed to be the means of calling Kol-Israel (the whole of Israel) that they that feared should praise.

87  - 24. The reason.

The Church is always lost in Christ in these cases, as in Isaiah 50 elsewhere.

- 25. Praise in all Israel.

- 27. Gathering of Gentiles thereon.

- 28. The Kingdom.

- 29. Imbecility of Man.

88  - 30 (Heb. 31). Kôl-Israel (the whole of Israel) was a Remnant, a seed of God, see Isaiah 65; their posterity will have it from them.

I see another difference between this Psalm and Psalm 69. In the latter it is looking as a Man for something from man - Man is not presented as fully proved, but as being so. He looks for someone to have compassion, for comforters, and finds none. In Psalm 22 He does not - they are only bulls of Bashan and dogs - they part His garments and cast lots for His vesture, and He looks only to God, and finds the wondrous forsaking of wrath.

Psalm 23

Notice in this, and also in the two following Psalms, Messiah having Jehovah for His Shepherd; compare John 10.

I have nothing particular to remark on this Psalm. "Jehovah" is the point; still there is the portion - restoration - security in the shadow of death, in the presence - in spite of enemies, security, and blessing constantly, and to dwell in the house of Jehovah for ever. This is personal association with and care of Jehovah in intimacy with Him as a Protector.

This Psalm, then, passing through the trouble, introduces Messiah, as a Man, to the Lord's house - His Father's house. In the following Psalm we have "the earth the Lord's," and the King of Glory in His coming forth. Thus in these two Psalms, Israel's Shepherd in the Person of Christ, i.e., Christ, as the Man united to Israel, owns Jehovah, in its behalf, as in righteousness One with it, as His Shepherd. So He would be baptised - come out of Egypt - obey - though a Son, learn obedience by the things which He suffered. Then also "the earth is Jehovah's, the world and they that dwell therein." This introduces all to Jacob and the hill of the Lord as a centre, and who is to sit there? Christ, the King of Glory! And who is He? He is Jehovah - Jehovah of Hosts, mighty in battle, thus identified, in these two Psalms, with the sheep of His pasture - Jehovah, His Shepherd, and manifested as Jehovah in the midst of the assembled world at Zion. What a place, and compass of glory to hold! To us it is the Cross for sin, and death the door, laying down His life for the sheep, and One with the Father; so we may compare our relative positions.

This Psalm is plainly the Lord Jesus Christ, as Man, expressing His faith as Enos. Verse 3 might seem difficult to some, but besides His resurrection, the enquiry into the way in which He entered into the suffering and sorrows of His people will, I suppose, show the force of this, and abundantly fill the hearts of them that know it. The comparison of verses 27 and 32, John 12 and the garden of Gethsemane in John 18: 4, will illustrate this.

89 Psalm 24

This Psalm seems the introduction of Jehovah into the great scene of Christ's sufferings, trial, and humiliation. It is a transition Psalm - His manifestation as, and to be, Jehovah. The title of the Psalm, if correct, is remarkable; it would rather seem that something was left out, or that it was elliptical. It is not "a Psalm of, or on, David," but "On David, a Psalm on, or of Jehovah," though "Jehovah" seems also to join itself to the following words - L' David miz'mor l' Jehovah haaretz (of David, a Psalm on Jehovah, the earth is Jehovah's).

The Septuagint has the singular addition of tes mias sabbatou (on the first day of the week) which is indeed he kuriake hemera (the Lord's day). But this Psalm specially includes His dominion over the Gentiles, i.e., Christ's supreme glory - "The earth," etc., "For he hath founded it." But, being the Lord - Who shall ascend into His presence? He that walks in righteousness; that is therefore Gentile saints as well as Jews. Still, Jacob having the pre-eminence, they seek Jacob's face, or Him as the God of Jacob, for there His name is. The latter part of the Psalm is too plain to need comment. Christ here enters the gates of glory as the victorious Deliverer-Himself Jehovah of hosts.

This Psalm embraces, as the state things, that "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." Yet His house and the seat of His present glory is in Jacob - who are those who shall ascend there? And though those, more immediately concerned, may be of the fountain of Israel, still the door is open to every one coming up with clean hands and a pure heart. Hence it is not principles on which the crowd of ungodly is avoided, but the personal state of the person who comes - not the character descriptively but the state.

We have in this Psalm the universality of power, and the character of Jehovah, and those, who have this character, will then have the blessing of Jehovah, Israel's Shepherd. He is this then to the world, by virtue of what He is necessarily in power and character. Yet herein Jacob is still held in his place, see verse 6, and compare John 6: 20, 24, which, so compared with verse 23, and verse 20 compared with verse 22, much open the relative position of Christians with Jews under Jehovah, through the revelation of the Father's name.

90 The recognition of Christ as Jehovah closes it - His exaltation to the full glory of universal dominion as Jehovah, after His identification with them in sorrow, and leading them, and being over them in battle. "The Lord . . . shall fight, as when he fought in the day of battle" - it is consequent upon these battles, for and with Israel, that He sits upon the throne of the kingdom. The saints are with Him previously; but He is united as David with the Jews, and takes with them David's humiliation, as well as, intermediately, Aaron's place and David's victories moreover, but this is not sitting on the throne of the kingdom as King of Glory, as thereon and after He shall do. He will have come in His glory, as regards us indeed, "When he shall come in his glory . . . then shall he sit on the throne of his glory."

Psalm 25

This Psalm applies the deliverance, in His Person, to Israel. Here we have the voice of the Remnant according to the Spirit of Christ in the latter day.

It seems to me that not only, as heretofore remarked, sins are not confessed, till this Psalm, after Psalm 22, but, what is perhaps the secret of this, the tone of the Psalms changes from what preceded. It is far more personal and experimental, the outgoings of the heart itself to God; previously more dispensational. There is the same general condition of the Remnant, but before that Psalm it looks at that condition and what belongs to the righteous Remnant - the place they were in, in its various aspects, and what they needed from, and God met them in; and they were the faithful ones who thus cried to Him and whom He regarded, and then largely Christ entering into these sorrows and making atonement, closing with His entering into the Temple in glory, with the character of those who should have a part with Him. It is the whole scene, which involves the personal feelings, and Christ Himself, but from this Psalm we have the individual opening out his heart to God as to himself. Christ had done this, but that is another thing and belongs to the ground of their position. Previously the appeal, though to mercy, is always on account of integrity; this, note, is much more intimate, and this is the effect of personal confession which brings, for ourselves, to God. After this Psalm, to the end of the Book, we have only Psalm 40 which speaks of Christ. Psalm 41 is the poor man's place, which He pronounced blessed and entered into, but here looked at as that of the godly, repentant Remnant whom He went before, though in Him the baptism of repentance was only fulfilling righteousness, still taking His place with them. In Psalm 40 though in the place of trial, He is simply perfectly accomplishing God's will, Himself individually a witness in the great congregation, and taking the place, as we know, of the former sacrifices.

91 In Psalms 1 to 24, we have Christ constantly - a whole series of dispensational relationships. First, God's counsels in Psalm 2 as introductory - Son of God, king in Zion to whom the kings of the earth are to be subject; Psalm 8, as Son of Man over all things; Psalms 16 and 17 trusting, even to death, and righteous, and their respective consequences in glory and joy; Psalm 18, a suffering Christ - the Centre of all God's ways with Israel from Egypt to the millennium. After Psalm 19, the witness of Creation and Law, the suffering Messiah on earth exalted and judging His adversaries, Psalms 20 and 21; atonement the ground of blessing, from the first Remnant to those born in the millennium, Psalm 22; Psalm 23 is so far Christ as that, though not a sheep, He had this path, going before them in it. But the Remnant is here - it is in Psalm 14 also, verses 3-5 - but here He is at their head as the Ring of Glory, the Lord of Hosts entering into His temple. Psalms 1-8 are a general preface - the Remnant, and Christ rejected and taking the place of Son of Man; Psalm 9 enters on latter-day Jewish ground, and the experience of the Remnant in it; Christ, Psalms 16 and 17, having a resurrection place, and at God's right hand in hope - "the joy set before him"; Psalm 18 His sufferings, the groundwork of God's dealings with Israel. Then the testimony and atonement, as we have seen, and finally the especial care of Jehovah over the sheep, in the path in which Christ trod, and then His taking His place in glory in the Temple. Psalms 23 and 24 are supplementary, shewing what is to happen in the last day, and are consequent on atonement.

92 But there is more - Psalms 25-28 give this experience, and as in Psalms 16 and 17, besides the confession of sin, we have trust and righteousness or integrity; then confidence, and the demand not to be shut up in one class with the wicked; but from Psalm 24 we have Jehovah Himself distinctly brought before us, and the acknowledgment of what He is as a resource. With this comes forgiveness, promise, and warning. This character of the Psalms goes on to the end of Psalm 37; in Psalms 38 and 39 we have governmental wrath; Psalm 40 the Spirit of Christ entering into it, but going much farther, coming to accomplish all the counsels of God. But evils "encompass" Him, as well as iniquities "are upon" Him. He is the poor and needy One as well as Substitute for all Jewish sacrifices, and (Psalm 41) blessed is He who understands the poor. But this returns to confidence in Jehovah. But we have clearly Christ both in the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, and in the sorrows and sufferings of the Remnant.

In this Psalm we have Christ as Aaron, as intercessional Priest, confessing Israel's sins in that day of trouble, that tenth day of atonement, as His sins, when they are in their trouble with their enemies.

- 7. Here first we have the confession of sin; before, it is the suffering, godly Remnant in their various exercises of heart, or Christ. This makes this Psalm, after the full glorifying of Psalm 24, of a very marked character. It begins a new series of thought.

Psalm 26

This Psalm is the special portion of Christ in the Remnant.

In this and the two next Psalms, Messiah, and His Spirit in the residue, does not merely, as up to Psalm 16, judge the character of the wicked, contemplating it in spirit, and God's judgments, but, mixed up with the wicked in His life outwardly, He insists on His separation from them and their judgment. We have here the perfectness of Christ, in the midst of haughty Israel, by virtue of which He will accept this intercession.

NOTE. - In Psalms 25 and 26 we have the spirit of the converted man in Israel in that day; in Psalms 27 and 28 we have his appeal to Jehovah, as taught to seek His face, and separation from the ungodly.

93 Psalm 27

This Psalm is the word of Christ as in the tried Remnant of the latter day, as identifying Himself with their feelings, founded on His expressed experience of the Lord's faithfulness when He stood alone.

Observe, the time of trouble is the time of God's deliverance; compare Psalm 32. Mercy acted on is the foundation of fuller prayer. It is needless to observe the moral principle which gives confidence.

Here the Lord's pavilion, from all that surrounds His life outwardly here, is specially in His mind.

Christ here takes up the question, in their conflict, consequent upon the intercession and integrity uniting itself to them, so that, with His foot in an even place in the congregations, He should bless the Lord. The result is plain - His enemies and foes stumbled and fell. "Jehovah is my light and my salvation" is its thesis; "enemies" and "foes" are the words. Love of the temple for delight in His beauty, and enquiry, makes a pavilion in trouble; and meeting enemies is only to lift His head above them. The character, in such a place, is "Hear when I cry" - next is the answer of Jehovah, I conceive, "My heart said unto thee" (Messiah) "seek ye" (His people) "My face." Then the answer of Messiah for them, or on their behalf, as their given representative of Jehovah; if He said to Him "Seek ye" - wait on Jehovah is the result from Messiah to the body. Such is the position of Israel in Him.

- 1. I-ra (shall I fear) and pa-khad (he feared) are nearly the same, but it seems to me that pa-khad is more "terror," even if used of Jehovah; ya-re (he feared) more "fear" in a godly sense, as in Proverbs 1: 7. Still, as in verse 3 here, it means simply "fear."

- 8. Query, is amar libbi (my heart said) something like amar b'libbo (he said in his heart) and lil 'vavam (in their hearts) employed in the sense of "as to," "about"? So that the sense would be "I recalled" or "thought upon," "in my heart that thou saidst - seek ye my face."

- 12. "Enemies." Oppressing enemies within are worse than without - not open; nor is integrity of avail here in the same way.

94 Psalm 28

This Psalm is the voice of Christ in the Remnant in the latter-day trial; but I take the wicked to be properly the unrenewed and unyielding Jews, whose portion is told in verse 5. But the Lord has heard Christ for the Remnant. He is not only His strength, but theirs.

The last verse is the intercessional blessing of Him that intervenes, introducing, or the door into, the millennial glory under Him as the Lord, for then the Lord properly lays aside His humiliation as Mediator, i.e., in His people. We have seen this celebrated in Psalm 24.

The Spirit of Christ speaks in this Psalm (having this power of intercession) in the Remnant, or Him as the Head of the Remnant, expressing the trial of their connection with the wicked in Jerusalem, etc. But they look to Jehovah - they cry, and beg Him not to be silent. The reference is to "the Oracle" - the cry is the consequence, the expression of their unwilling connection with the wicked - praying Jehovah they may not be as in their train, being separate in spirit, and avowing this, and the benediction because the Lord has heard this (v. 7). Messiah recognises, in the midst of it all, Jehovah is His strength.

- 8. Seems to be the discovery of this by the Spirit in the Remnant receiving and acknowledging Messiah.

- 9. Then He becomes the benedictory Intercessor of this people understanding Messiah in faith.

Psalm 29

This Psalm is manifestly the coming forth in power of David the king; compare Isaiah 66: 6

The voice of the Lord settles all question of power. The Psalms which follow, up to Psalm 41 inclusive, give the full exercise of the soul of the Remnant in adversity - in integrity - forgiveness known, specially of Christ, the true Remnant - the wicked being in power, chastening, treachery, and certainty of security in Jehovah - faithfulness also in declaring His righteousness. Thus it is the Spirit of Christ, sometimes expressing what passed in His own heart, sometimes sympathising with the Remnant in the latter day, and urging on them the same constancy in Jehovah, as, for example, Psalms 34 and 37; returning then to the consciousness of His own sorrows, out of which He was called to apply the faithfulness of the Lord to the sorrows of His poor afflicted, and, alas! too unfaithful, but cherished and beloved Remnant - He also in the same position of dependence as in Psalm 35 at the end; see also the end of Psalm 40.

95 The Lord is not silent. He not only saves His people, but strangers, even the mighty of the earth, must come and submit themselves. His temple now is where all have His glory for their theme! Jehovah is above all motion of the people! Jehovah is King! Jehovah not only saves but gives strength to His people, for they are connected with Him! Yet victory, being complete, gives them the blessing of peace. Jehovah must be victorious and blessed, but this people are connected with Jehovah. It is still Jehovah, and His glorious sanctuary (see margin, verse 2), the mighty are to own. It is the universal assumption, within its power, by the Voice of the Lord of all things.

Psalm 30

This Psalm is an important one, and embraces a broad general truth - true in power in Christ either way, and in truth in the Church. And by "Church" I mean here not the Church properly so-called, but the whole portion brought under Christ in the day in which He comes, whose right it is, and all things are gathered together in one in Him. The House was, in one sense, dedicated therefore when the Lord rose again and ascended, but it was properly fully so when the fruits of His resurrection, even the Jews, and of His ascension, even the glorified saints, are brought in - ever the saints in either case. Now the portion of all was with Him - was, to be brought into unity with Him, in that which was manifested in Him on their part, which thing, as we have said, not in full power but in truth, is love in Him and in us, as He says.

It is the assurance of triumph, then, in all, after death, whether the Jews as a body (or the Body of Christ properly) as in Isaiah 26 - the necessity of passing through death, but death overcome - that His holiness now secures them - that their previous glory cannot stand, however they may have seemed to have had it in God's strength, for it was not their glory. But the resurrection glory is that which can be properly only called "Glory"; we may compare, for the expressions, Isaiah 65: 14, et seq. Indeed, I am inclined to think the Psalm more properly applies to the Jews standing, as themselves raised out of the death of the former generation, in the strength of Christ's resurrection. However some expressions seem to include the Church, but more especially Christ, the congregation, and the great congregation - the false confidence contrasted with the real confidence of the Jewish Remnant.

96 The Psalm shows the value of the resurrection to the believing Remnant; verses 6 and 7 are confidence in Jehovah, and His favour, short of death, as establishing anything short of death. This could not be, because there was no stability in creature blessing. There was still the liability, and in fact the need, seeing Jehovah was holy and the people sinners by nature, if the matter were fully probed, that Jehovah should hide His face from them - yea! though they were externally righteous. This case Christ, the Son, alone could undertake standing in the righteousness of God, responsible (in both before Him for the evil), and this He undertook, and therefore expresses the endurance, undertaking the creature liability that they might enjoy, in and under Him, the stability and immutability of resurrection blessing, which was beyond all questions, because the result of favour which took up and passed beyond all liabilities of sin, and was of purpose to bring them beyond all which regarded Him, short of this question - the exercise of power, on the results of sin viewed in their worst form, in grace. "Thou hast lifted me up," "Thou hast brought up my soul" - true personally in Christ - "Thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down into the pit" - true of those of the Jews for whom He had undertaken it. Again we see the difference of our condition, for we are "quickened together with him," although the power of the victory is shown in those who are changed and die not at all; so in John 11.

The holiness of God, thus known, becomes security. His anger - how well we know it! - as under the law, endures but for a moment, the sentence indeed of death is passed - it must be, but then it is past and gone; "weeping may endure for a night, but joy," blessed truth! with every shadow gone, and all of God, "cometh in the morning." What an Interpreter is Jesus, as on the Cross, and risen from the Cross and death of, all the thoughts, and ways, and principles of God, as to and in man's estate! "Sing unto the Lord" He says, and may well say, thus knowing it. "Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of his" - His glory shall sing, and not be silent, for Jehovah has not been silent. His glory is the tongue of redeeming praise, and how loud it speaks! Glory now is redemption witnessed, and His word is "Magnify the Lord with me, let us exalt his Name together!" Always together!

97  - 12 (13). Glory (ka-vod) seems to be rather the Man Himself in the image which He presents to Himself of Himself, as the object of hope, or the expression of the attainment of hope, and this is a man's glory; only here it is more abstract. We shall find that the heart of man always surrounds itself with something in which it delights, and in which it stands before others - this is its glory (ka-vod). So it is with Jehovah; He surrounds Himself, in manifestation to men or angels, with glory - whatever that may be, He expresses what He is. In the Son, He is glorified in the Son. The presence of Jehovah in favour, is the glory and the hope of Israel - Messiah is its expression. They would not then own Him to be this, because, for a deeper glory, He had laid aside the expression of it, such as mere nature and sense could take. This however is always glory, and this it is to understand glory - the glory in the Cross. We expect to be glorified with Him - this is the thing we shall be clothed with - the expression of it. Messiah takes this, not only in the expression of it from Himself, but in the reception of it from Jehovah - the Father - in testimony of the perfect acceptableness of all He has done. Resurrection is the point of this personally, as in Psalm 16, and here to us "glorified together with," because of ascension, and return, and union. Hence we see how far we can speak of glory. As to the Spirit, He glorifies Christ, because the expression of it is in Christ. Though the Spirit, as ministering in the servants, may clothe Itself with glory, yet the glory of the Spirit shall be shown in that day when its fruits shall be turned into glory - blessedly glorified. Now He is content to be, in a certain sense, a Servant, i.e., to minister in the servants, in their sorrows, trials, difficulties, their joys too in Christ. Blessed mystery, and blessed love! Man's glory is, in the energy of the Spirit, to embrace the glory of Christ. "I will extol thee, O Lord," for so He is, according to the mind of God in the Spirit. He, incarnate, glorified the Father - we, in Him and with Him, are in the mystery of God, fellowship (koinonia) of the Father, and of His Son Jesus Christ, by the Spirit (as the power) in John 17. The Spirit takes His place amongst the brethren now, and to suffer is our portion, that the glory may be the pure glory of God - our hope, our ka-vod, and that for ever. To His name be all the praise for ever and ever!

98 Psalm 31

This Psalm needs not much comment to those that are instructed in Christ. It is the confidence, and supplication of the Lord Christ, in His Enos state, as regards the enmity, particularly in its various parts, which did not slacken even to His life. We may compare, according to forementioned principles, Job 19. The reader of the Gospels, especially John, will trace some following of this Psalm, in the language of faith, in the Lord's words I think, too. It is a deeply interesting Psalm.

- 22. "I said in my haste"; note the same words in Psalm 116: 11, applicable clearly, in use, to Christ, and leading to the force of the words. Here its use is clear, compare verse 5.

In the previous Psalm, the resurrection is the stable confidence of glory. In this Psalm, the resurrection is the sure answer to distress; so compare the energy of the Spirit in Romans 8, the "witness with our spirit, that we are sons," "helps our infirmities," but this, from the knowledge of glory, on the resurrection here in lieu of Jewish prosperity which would not bear trial, and Jewish sorrow to death, which was the depth of trial. "In my prosperity, I said" (Psalm 30: 6), "In my haste, I said" (Psalm 31: 22), it is rather "in my oppression" or "distress."

What has been said, gives the substance of this Psalm. I add, however, that Psalm 30 is more a question between God - the hand and judgment of God - and the sufferer, and therefore an appeal specially to Him. Here it is more of circumstances - God is more with Him. It is not "What profit in my blood," but "Into thy hand," there was no other, "I commend my Spirit, for" etc. - here was the Author and Finisher of faith - "Thou art my strength." Iniquity, reproachful oppressors within, enemies without - such were the sorrows of Israel, the sorrows of Christ, and the sorrows of the Remnant as owning the nation's sins, as David theirs; so, ever, the Spirit of Christ - It cannot escape from the Body. But, while casting Himself on mercies - the place of the Remnant - His times being in Jehovah's hands, we find good laid up for the righteous, hidden from pride of man without, and from the strife of reproachful tongues within. Then the blessing for the kindness in protecting strength - a strong city. Verse 22 I read as "In the pressure of my Spirit" - the thing was perfectly true, but the utterance of an oppressed Spirit, not the assertion or demand of convicting energy. So "I said in my haste," in the trouble and shrinking of my Spirit from the evil, "all men are liars" (Psalm 116: 11); the sense is the same, and the assertion also true, but the utterance, the effect of pressure of Spirit. To this also Jesus submitted, compare Matthew 11, and also John 12, "Then began he," and "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say?" Nevertheless - though on the Cross He added this, and the Remnant in their trouble shall have the thoughts as thoughts not true in them, because it was true in Him - He said "I am cut off." Yet Jehovah heard His cry, His cry against His enemies, His cry for life. The end for them is in verses 23, 24. Ani amar'ti b'shal'vi (I said in my tranquillity) Psalm 30: 6 (7) and ani amar'ti b'khoph'zi (I said in my haste), Psalm 31: 22 (23), answer to one another; va ani (and I) making it true in Christ, as taking their place - righteously true in Him in both cases. Not to be cast down if dealt with in se - as righteous, cast out, if viewed as made sin in se, though as to His Person, it was impossible He could be holden, but true in the spirit of unbelief, still working in Israel, because, first, they had not the righteousness; secondly because they had the mercy and faithfulness thereon, in and through Him. This made it bitterness to Him, i.e., His righteousness, but therefore more abundantly proved His fidelity to God, i.e., His perfect knowledge of, and ascription of fidelity to, God - "I trust in thee"; while confidence, i.e., perfection, is so, because it is the ascription of perfection, the ground of that confidence, to God.

99 I am not so sure of the signs of the word emeth (truth), verse 5 (6), but, if correct, "before the sons of men" is the separate part of the sentence by itself. God does it for the Jews, i.e., for the Remnant before the "sons of men."

Psalm 32

In my opinion this Psalm applies to the Jews who receive the benefit of forgiveness in the latter day. That it is abstractedly true, as all these "blessings" are and must be, is certain, and Paul proves otherwise comes also on the Gentiles. But these Psalms concern the manifestation of these things on the earth, as to which it is in the Jews, as a body, they are prophetically accomplished of course. The energy of the Spirit, by whom they were spoken, is the witness of these things now, even in the earth, as it is written, "That ye may know that the Son of Man," etc.

100 I repeat, how completely all this Psalm is a provision for Israel in the last days! The Spirit giving all their hearts need, not merely of feeling, but of divine answer to that feeling, so that their faith can rest upon it, and get into the path of it before it comes. We can anticipate the best of it, no doubt, by pretrusting.

As to this Psalm, while the Apostle, as is well known, fully concludes that this blessedness comes on all that believe, yet his argument shows its original, natural application to the Jews, and it is entirely a new principle, i.e., to Israel - mercy in lieu of, or rather for the accomplishment, in grace, of promise. Psalm 1 gives the original blessedness of the man who has not, but here, in Psalms 30 and 31, all their hopes are dashed to the ground, and a new blessedness comes in in transgression forgiven. Verses 1 and 2 are different things. Where no law is there is no transgression. Ash'rey-Adam (O the blessings of the man) lets in anyone, and this difference is all through Romans, as noted - transgression forgiven to Jews - sin not imputed to Gentiles - righteousness to both - though this may pass practically in any soul. From verse 3, onwards, is also properly Jewish, till they bow and confess their sin. But we know how constantly it is true individually; but they are introduced there on this principle, not speaking now of individual application, verses 1-4 give the two estates learnt.

- 5, is the principle then of Jewish righteousness, i.e., not His own, but guileless acknowledging sin, and it forgiven; then the timely turning to Him, and, when the outward difficulties come upon them as a nation, i.e., after Antichrist is destroyed, they do not come nigh the faithful Remnant - it is preserved under Antichrist, and delivered from sin.

- 8. From this verse, onwards, comes the Lord's subsequent part. They that have trusted in Jehovah shall find mercy - still they are the righteous and the upright.

- 10. Harasha (the wicked); note this.

This Psalm is the question between Jehovah and the people, answering to Psalm 30. Psalm 33 is the people and circumstances answering to Christ's passing through Psalm 31. The result to the Jews respectively delivered, of what Jesus was for them in Psalms 30 and 31, but Psalm 33 also thereon celebrates the Lord's glorious title over all His works, the countries of the heathen, and all things created - such, His supremacy - such, the Lord. Then, "blessed are the people who have Jehovah for their God," for all things are His. As for all strength that man has, or has appropriated, it goes for nothing - they trust not in it - "hope in his mercy" is their place and state (Psalm 33: 18-22). The earth's blessing in Israel's joy, but the glory of Israel, to have Him who is the Creator, and Head of all these things, their God - Head creatively, also in power, making man's counsels naught, and accomplishing His own, of which Israel is the object.

101 Psalm 33

This Psalm is the result - the heart's comment on what has passed, when all is set right by Psalm 32.

It is not L'David (to the Beloved). It is an interesting new view of the millennial glory - the God of Providence therein shown as the Lord, and identified in the same power and glory as the Creator, while the counsels of men come to naught, and His counsels stand in the blessing also of those who celebrate it - even His people. It takes it up also in His moral character, on which the security of His people depends. Israel being the result of the earthly system, the God of Creation and Providence is here exhibited in the result of both, as to the present world, as the Lord and towards them. Its connection with the providences by which it is brought about is plainly declared from verse 10, onward, but it is not David identified with his people, but the broad general principles, the converse, or other part of the truth, from the special election privileges, though true in them, to wit, the God and His character from which they flowed.

This Psalm should be considered with Psalm 24. There David, the Beloved, is shown to be the Lord. Here He is viewed higher up, as it were, in the same truths, for the moral character of God is before His purposes, as we view them, for those manifest Him to us, as 1 John 1. David is the beginning of His purposes, but the brightness and image of His glory and Person.

102 Psalm 34

This is the address of the Beloved to the afflicted Jews, of the latter day, from His own experience, confirmed by the testimony of the Spirit embracing prophetically the deliverance of these Jews themselves. It is a pressing upon the Jews, of the latter day, who had ears to hear, to receive and to act upon the principles which He had found the blessings of and faithfulness of God in, when He was the One Remnant. The thesis is in the two first verses. It was as by David amongst the Philistines. The prophetic declaration is in verse 5. Then the Spirit takes up from verse 6, I think, to verse 10; in verse 11, David resumes as in person. I am not sure where I should close this, for the residue seems more of a chorus-like testimony, but, withal, verse 20 leads us directly, it should seem, to its source.

This Psalm is the beautiful reunion of Christ and the Remnant, in chorus, on the deliverance - Christ leading the song as ever, "In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee," as well as graciously, in Himself, presenting our prayers. The occasion, if right in the title, was one of deep distress. The moral force of the Psalm is in "at all times." The application of the deliverance of Christ to the joy of the righteous, the humble, is most clear beyond doubt, and nothing more beautiful - "This poor man."

It begins with Christ's praise, the ground of, and attracting the united praise of faithful sufferers - they hear thereof. It is the evidence of the faithfulness of Jehovah to the cry of humble, faithful men.

- 5, 6, are the answer of the Spirit for, and in the people, taking up this deliverance of the patient, humble, rescued Jesus.

- 8. "Trust," as fleeing for refuge - to confide.

- 11. Christ takes the word again - His soul filled, as it were, with the truth of this, He can teach how to walk so as to have it; well He could, and plead the consequence!

- 19. The fidelity and truth, to a tittle, in any misery.

- 20. We know the full accomplishment and truth of this. How sweet the confidence! How sweet to have this gracious and well-experienced Jesus in our sorrows! Thus instructing us in the experience of His own love, and as taking our place. Jehovah's faithfulness - He can tell us this, so that we need not fear. Most sweet!

103 Psalm 35

This Psalm is the appeal of Messiah, on behalf of the oppressed Remnant of the Jews, in His own Person. It is not the cry merely of the Remnant at the ungodliness that surrounded them amongst the Jews, nor for help against the Gentiles, but the critical intervention of Messiah, in respect of the whole purpose of God concerning them. It regards especially the triumph of the ungodly Jews at the apparent oppression of those, of whom they had been long weary, the saints amongst them, and their deliverance from them, they having joined the Gentiles; verse 18 marks the result. Psalm 22 applies itself personally to Messiah - this, to the Remnant exclusively in the latter day, identifying Him with them, and spoken, as on His behalf; see verse 27, as showing the manner of the identification.

From this Psalm to the end of Psalm 40 Christ is viewed more as in the midst of the unrighteous, and trying evil within, hindered in the practicability of making (by following His ways) the cause of the nation the cause of God. He - the cause of the servant of God - is in the presence of enemies, but while the enemies without hate it, the whole name of the people of God on account of this, the body of the people within hate it because of righteousness, and are in fact one with the enemy. Thus it was with the chief priests and Pilate - thus shall it be at the close, which in these Psalms is prophetically taken up in Israel in Jerusalem. The righteous cause of Christ, hated by those within, as evil by their evil state, and the enemies coming from without - Christ and His cause, and those who favour it being the only real stay of the people. In the meanwhile the religious leaders of the Jewish people, trusting in the flesh, hate the sentence on their state by the Spirit - so with the Lord - so with Jeremiah who was, as it were, a representant of this; a trying case when He, who can trust Jehovah, knows Jehovah is hated by those He would defend, because of that which can alone be their defence. In the midst of this Christ, the Spirit of Christ found Himself - He was faithful - He trusts, and He alone in Jehovah alone - the righteousness which Jehovah can defend. The chief pressure here is the evil and hostility connected with evil within (v. 8). This Psalm notices a leader of this wickedness and evil - first Judas, then Antichrist.

104  - 17. Notices first the Person, the humanity of Christ as a Jew, as in Psalm 22, then the Remnant which shall be, as in Isaiah 26: 19.

- 18. This verse takes in the Remnant as the nation, the great congregation (kahal rav).

Compare these two verses, which omit the brethren, and praise in the congregation, with Psalm 22: 20-25. This Psalm may perhaps, give the example of how the Lord speaks in His own name, identifying Himself with the Remnant who walk with Him and in His Spirit in the latter day; see also verse 27, and indeed all through. Note this well.

- 19. This first speaks of enemies - Christ being thus distinguished with the Remnant. They are now "mine enemies" (o-y'vay). This verse is a sort of hinge to the difference between Christ in Person and the Remnant. The hope of the just is in Jehovah, for there is no refuge in the heart of man, for the fear of God is not there. But the exaltation of Jehovah against the pride and wickedness of man (the wicked) makes way for the outflowing of His goodness - for what He is as God - towards the sons of Adam. Verse 10 is the application of this to the present circumstances of Israel, by the Spirit of Christ. There is something large and magnificent, beautiful and sweet in this Psalm. It leads one forth from the sufferings which affect, into the wide scene, the garden of goodness, through which the streams of the fountain of life flow, through the means of those blessed and loving sufferings.

Psalm 36

This is a very interesting Psalm, but there is not much to comment on in it. It is explained in the expression of L'evedh-Jehovah (to the servant of Jehovah). It is Christ in that character, as proposing to meet the wickedness of ungodly men, as to whom He felt that there was no restraint upon them, because the fear of God was not before their eyes, and His conferring with Jehovah, so to speak, as to this case. Unrestrained will is their character here, which is the greatest trial a man can be subject to, as the Lord says: "They have done unto him whatsoever they listed" - "Likewise also must the Son of Man suffer" etc.; nor would He have suffered fully without this. The security of God's people, in such case then, is not in the restraint of the will of the enemies, but on our dependence on the divine care under their unrestrained will. This is a most important principle; verse 1 is the thesis of this. The description is perfect and complete to our faith. In the meanwhile we are servants of the Lord (av'dey-Jehovah) (compare John 11: 7, etc.), and so to act, and therein the Lord's will is exercised continually, compare Psalm 91; verse 9 is our joy meanwhile, verse 12 is deliverance. Note this Psalm.

105 Psalm 37

The application of this Psalm to the Jews, as of faith, i.e., the Remnant, but manifested by their acting on this Psalm, is obvious, and its direct application to the land as the inheritance of blessing; see verses 3, 9, 11, 22, 27 and 34. The subject is plainly set forth in the three first verses, but there is more detail of direction as well as of promise. "Fret not thyself" - "Trust" - "Delight thyself" - "Commit thy way" - "Rest in"; then again, "Cease from anger." The reason in the general result to verse 20. Then there is a contrast of the principles, of their character also, i.e., of the wicked and good. Verse 24 resumes the instruction or thesis, and promise directly. The crisis of this Psalm particularly arises at the time that those that forsake the Lord, the unconverted Jews and their friends the Gentiles, seem to have the world with them. The Lord as a God of faith and hope is put in present contrast in verses 3, 4, 5 and 7, then again in verse 34.

The connection of this Psalm with the Remnant of the latter day, is as plain as possible; then connect Matthew 5 with its modifications.

- 3. "And delight in faithfulness," literally "feed on."

- 20. Gesenius under ya-kar, makes it "preciousness* of pastures," instead of taking "karim" lambs; this seems more natural on account of (bea-shan) "into smoke."

{*Rather "beauty."}

Well then, "Fret not thyself," "The Lord knows" all this matter, and the way He leads the just - His people. The full and spiritually instructive answer of the Spirit of Christ as viewing these things, and answering on the part of Jehovah, where and what the part and path of the saint should be. It is, as addressed to the circumstances, purely Jewish, but the spirit of it contains the most abundant and full instruction. If one would lead the principle of life in it further on, into the course and circumstances of the people and kingdom of God, one should go to the Sermon on the Mount, our blessed Lord's then interpretation and application of this, introducing therein withal, as His service, the name of Father and applying it to the existing condition where His disciples were. May we be guided by the Spirit in the wisdom of the application of them to present circumstances, according to the eternal truth of God, and principle contained in them! "Fret not," "Trust," "Delight," "Commit," "Rest," "Cease from anger," "Fret not thyself"!

106  - 28. "Saints" are khe-sed (gracious), the righteous, Jewish Remnant in patience - meek; verse 11 gives their character in the midst of the power of evil - verse 29 their intrinsic character before men as, on the part of God, owning God. Perfectness (tom), uprightness (ya-sher) the principle of His life; compare specially verses 37 and 33. The operation of this principle in grace is, in Romans 6, by resurrection; for the circumstances are not the same. Now we are in, and to be partakers of, the death of Christ, by starting from the power of the resurrection, having it all in Him - their portion, deliverance here, still of the Lord in grace. "I have been young, and now am old," though true of David doubtless, is the Spirit of Christ speaking as conversant with the ways of Jehovah from Israel's youth, their birth in Egypt, till their then old age under Christ, or Antichrist, if then found. Mercy is not the proper subject of this Psalm, though mercy it be, but righteousness.

This Psalm, as noted before, is the looking to God to take up the despised Messiah's cause, against insulting and rebellious Israel seeking His downfall in the details of life; not the cry to God about His forsaking Him. Hence the deliverance of His darling (ya-khid) brings thanks in the great congregation before all Israel, as delivered there. It is within the limits of Israel, where He was dishonoured. There is no declaration of a name to gather a Remnant in a peculiar way as in Psalm 22.

- 26, 27 give the two classes in Israel, in respect of Messiah's cause, very clearly.

Psalm 38

- 1. "Indignation" (ke-tzeph) - from breaking out into anger. Both words are of discipline, but I suppose khe-mah (heat of anger) rather stronger.

- 11. Ne-ga, "stroke," not "sore," see margin.

107 This is wonderful; but the comparison of it with Job (taking both as expressive of character) is full of interest and instruction. Every expression of Job's suffering seems concentrated, with less loquacity, with this remarkable difference - there seems the sense of sin with the confidence of help, and that all His desire was before God. Job's heart was pride, which he wished was before God, and it was to bring to remembrance. What Christ was bearing is manifest, but He bore it in Himself. We may wonder indeed, and be astonished at Christ, when there was none to take pity on Him. The reproaches of them that reproached God fell on Him, because He was faithful unto Him, and of Him, and the bruisings of God's wrath fell upon Him because He was to pour out His soul unto death for these very sinners, and at once; for when all men deserted Him, and even His lovers and kinsmen stood afar off, His enemies surrounding Him, then it was also that, as to suffering, God also forsook Him and wrath had its course. It was this, as we have seen indeed, He deprecated in Psalm 22, and this was felt as in verse 3, though the very opposite to being charged as unrighteousness, as in Job. The comparison of this with Job is very full of instruction, see verse 6; he thought to stand in his strength with God, but see the Spirit of Christ in us, verses 9 and 2. Compare also verses 18 and 15, with Psalm 23: 1.

Note these confessions are individual; Christ's entering into them in grace is another thing, which He surely did, in the whole depth of them, and for the Remnant.

Messiah, on the arrows of Jehovah piercing the people, makes confession of sin in their behalf, as being His. Then they are arrows of correction, yea, as Christ taking them in Himself. All is done - they stick fast in Him, not the people. Jehovah bruises Him - His soul is the butt for the arrows of wrath - Jehovah must deliver. It is quite another thing now - He must by virtue of this cry, deliver - He cannot smite again, but as smiting Christ, and this cry being the testimony that He in love has borne it, is the necessary witness of sufficiency. It is His cry as smitten. The thundercloud spent, must roll away - it could do no more afterwards - and be discharged in blessings on those for whose sake the stroke was borne, which spent, as it were, its power. The cry raised which drew forth the love, the recognition of righteousness in Him who placed it to the account of those for whom He bore the stroke willingly, drawn out against their evil - He felt what the stroke of God was. In none else could it have been so honoured. As for earthly enemies, they were little matter here, but He would be open, as though the sinner before Jehovah, and declare this the Lord's perfection - not conceal but bear the stroke and justify; compare verses 18 and 20. The position and character under the imputation of, and making the sin His, in the midst of enemies, of reproach, is most deeply instructive as to the position and character of Christ. In Psalm 39 it is therefore viewed as correction by the Spirit of Christ in the nation or Remnant.

108 Psalm 39

This Psalm is the turning of the soul inward, on rebukes without, arresting all service of God. It is the Supreme God whom the rebuke affects, turning to the profit of man, in his Enos state, his helplessness as such, before the wickedness of men of will, and, though He gives power, it is His power, and when He gives not and subdues not the adversary, man can do nothing in His service. But then, under grace, it turns to the profitable testimony of the true state of things.

Psalm 40

This is the song of Enos, as heard and delivered in that He feared, but revealing withal the Son as entering into that state, as explaining and able now to speak of His humiliation into it, according to its wisdom, and the counsel of God in it, as being (having triumphed) in the glory which He had before. Yet is it too a voice remarkably, and decidedly, in the Jewish Remnant; and note, His resurrection belongs to the Jews, i.e., as on earth, actually as His state. It would be too large a field to follow this here; suffice it to say, it includes His reign, not as sitting in heavenly places - but it is an assurance of this unto all men. If we seek argument, let us see not only our Lord's, after the resurrection, but Peter's and Paul's in the Acts. The great congregation is the Jewish people at large - Christ had not failed in testifying to them. The three first verses are a statement of the results of which Christ is the Witness as heretofore; the rest, the principles on which it went, and circumstances which thereon necessarily accompanied it. It is a sort of comment, so to speak, by Christ on the whole transaction. Note, His Enos state was in connection with the Jewish Remnant, and includes His whole manifestation as to its actual associations and development, i.e., His Enos state was exhibited while a Jew, for it was also under the law, which was one of its grand trials, according to the very estate and subjection of man, quod nôta, before God's holiness, or He would not be put to full trial, and Christ accordingly was so placed - born under the whole argument sub modo of Paul in the Epistle to the Romans.

109 This Psalm is the whole conduct of Christ throughout, and the explanation of it, on deeper principles, from its source, in the will and character and law of God - He becoming a Servant. Of this, there can be no need of comment, for we have the Apostle's - only note - and it is quoted in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as other like passages.

- 5. The way in which Christ in this Psalm takes part with Israel, though His eternal undertakings to do so are brought out in it, is very remarkable; compare this verse with verse 3.

- 6. Rather "Thou hast dug ears for me," i.e., as the Apostle translates it, giving the sense from the Septuagint, "prepared a body," the place of obedience and servitude, where commands are received. It is different from Isaiah 50, that is the exhibition of the patient consequence - here it is "digged" (ka-rah), there "opened" (pa-thakh). Christ's service among the Jews, glorifying the Father at all cost in verse 9 is very affecting. Verses 1 and 2 are the resurrection or waiting for it, instead of seeking present deliverance. Therefore in verse 3, "My mouth," "our God," for then He could join them to Himself. But the body of the Psalm is still His condition amongst them, and, as we have said, the real interpretation, meaning and power of it - His expression of His mind, meaning, and conduct, and thoughts in it. This is most exquisite - His thoughts and acts, not His feelings merely, as oppressed - His perfectness.

- 10, 11. These also are very affecting. The appeal of Christ, our Lord, on the faithfulness He had shown in declaring the character of God, Jehovah, in spite of all that the congregation (Kahal rav) was. The characters of integrity and sin, mixed all through here, are very definite and remarkable, they leave a truth in the soul of every believer - they are true efficiently only in Christ, however.

110 The Psalm is the interpretation in the wisdom of God, the expression of the meaning of all these circumstances. Consequently Christ is identifying the Remnant with Him, accomplishing the will of God - faithful in all circumstances, and bearing iniquities, interceding thereon for the full peace of the people; the Remnant thus preserving Him given - Himself their Substitute for anger, and He entirely dependent upon God as poor and needy, and waiting His deliverance under the stroke, as Paul says by the Spirit of Christ, as "poor yet making many rich," and again "so then death worketh in us and life in you," for he filled up that which was left of the sufferings of Christ for His "Body's sake, which is the Church."

I do not know that it is more than suitability, but it is striking how in this Psalm the Zevach (offering) and min'chah (meal-offering) are connected with incarnation, having ears (preparing a body) for the Lord, and the cha-ta-ah (sin-offering) and o-lah (burnt-offering) with His doing Jehovah's will (compare Hebrews 10). I am aware fire was applied to all, and blood sprinkling with the peace-offerings, and in Hebrews they are all thrown together the second time they are mentioned. Still I cannot help thinking there is suitableness, marking the o-lah and cha-ta-ah as that offering of the body once for all, which could not be disconnected from the life, as the purity and perfection of the Victim was needed and proved in obedience, and trial too, but was yet distinct. The rejection is general I admit fully, and all go on to or are founded on, if not expression of, Christ's death, but the two are specifically expressive of it. The "once for all" would not apply to the other two, because the peace-offering went on to our feeding on it, and the min'chah depicted His Person, though that was offered.

In this Psalm, though it be not the principal subject, yet the desire for confounding the enemies is found; the fourfold offerings are found too, to all which the incarnation and obedience of Christ are substituted. But while this gives the scope and purport of the obedience, the obedience of Messiah, His willingly undertaking the place of obedience, and Jehovah's will and service being His delight, is the object of the Psalm, not expiatory work. Observe, it is mutual - "Thou hast prepared," "Lo! I come." In Christ's part there are two things, besides faithful accomplishment. "It is written" - "in the Volume of the Book" - it was in the divine counsels; His own willingness - "Lo! I come." Then comes also, to fulfil it, His state - "I delight to do thy will, thy law is within my heart," faithfulness in the face of the fuller congregation. This also, I think, twofold; first, moral righteousness - "I have preached righteousness," but besides this, Jehovah's righteousness and faithfulness, and salvation and loving-kindness. This was different from simply preaching righteousness. He was faithful between right and man, and preached righteousness. But He pleaded also Jehovah's cause, His character and ways and faithfulness. Thus grace (chesed) and truth (emeth) came by Jesus Christ, but this was, as Peter says, "by the righteousness of God their Saviour." But then He feels the sins of the people.

111 Psalm 41

This Psalm is the estimation of Christ, in His humiliation, as showing the real spirit a man is of, but as holding a certain character and therefore not exclusively applicable to Him. So the Lord, "Blessed are ye poor for" etc., and so Matthew "Blessed are the poor in spirit." It also describes the mind of the poor man under this humiliation, connected with the despite of the world - the proved under it.

I think it may be very distinctly remarked that, though oppression may incidentally accompany it, the distress in the first Book arises from the wickedness of the wicked within, deceit, guile, absence of all conscience, hatred of the good carried recklessly out. The second Book is different.

This Psalm is the consequence of the recognition of Christ in His depression. This consequence being that, in the day of evil, that time of trouble which shall come, the Lord will deliver such an one - "keep him alive," so that "he shall be blessed upon the earth"; compare here the remarks on the Lord's prayer as to "Deliver us from evil" in Matthew; not in Luke in most MSS. The Jewish character of the Psalm is here very plain also. This closes, i.e., the account of the recognition of Christ, thus utterly depressed - the beatitudes, so to speak, and in Jehovah's estimation of Christ thus depressed (v. 12), "The Lord God of Israel is blessed for ever." "Blessed is the man that walketh," etc. - " Blessed is the man whose sin is forgiven, is covered" - "Blessed is the man who recogniseth," or "owneth," "considereth," "pays attention to," Christ, that poor Man, in His utter, utter, humiliation!

112  - 4. We have again this specification of Christ and His mind, as in Psalm 31; and note, I observe, the same in Christ in the Gospel, "And I say unto you" as in the parable of the unjust steward, the Sermon on the Mount, and the like. The full sense of humiliation will be recognised in verse 9.

- 9. This is another example of the way in which a general expression is applied to the Lord Himself, without being a proper prophecy of Him. These moral prophecies, so to speak, have as much to be fulfilled as the circumstantial ones - so in the Epistles to the Churches.

Nothing can be more affecting than this Psalm, and the thought that it is Jesus, the Lord, that is there. How true of the wickedness! And He to be in it! Alas! we have not fathomed the depth of this unwearied, this infinite, all-suited love, suiting itself to all our need in it, searching it out in suffering, "learning obedience by the things which he suffered" - His enemies and His friends almost alike, but He perfect, and therefore the rather shown so in His trust in One, v'ani amar'ti (and I said).

It is distinguished as a blessed thing, to understand this poor Man. "Enemy" is o-yev. I have the same remark here as Psalm 35: 19, the exhibition of Christ, or the Remnant united with Him in His affliction, puts the people, within now, into the character of enemies (oy 'vim). Here, as we have said, this Book, containing these things, closes.

Psalm 42

This seems to me to be a complaint of the Gentiles, and therefore specially referable to the latter days. The Remnant are driven out.

- 8. Here alone "Jehovah" is introduced till Messiah is brought in. And here it is confidence looking out of present circumstances. After Psalm 45 "Jehovah" is used.

The second Book of the Psalms is far more Jewish, properly speaking, treating not of exercises of soul in the midst of enemies in general and before God, but of enemies against Jewish people. There is no mention of resurrection, that I am aware of, at all. Christ may suffer rejection, but it is rejection with His people as a Jew. I recognise what I before remarked, that it is those who have left the city, and are without, and look for Jewish blessing as being without - those previously, it would seem to me, suppose the possibility of being with Christ in resurrection - these would not - the others have a special place, even as preserved on earth. All the ideas are, in this second part, as deprived of Jewish privileges, and then the God of Jacob is with them - praise waits in Zion - it is the judgment of the people, not, as I said, an exercise of the soul with Christ before God. Psalms 42-49 give the historical scope of this, and Psalm 50 its judicial conclusion; afterwards come the sentiments and circumstances of exercise through which they pass, and Christ withal sympathising in suffering with them. Compare Psalms 14 and 53, which are the link, at the same time, as to the position, of the same wickedness which has been against them; Psalm 51 is the repentance, it would seem, after the manifestation of Jesus, when the Spirit of grace and supplication is poured on the people; so Psalm 50, God has called the people to judgment.

113 Note all this Book is, though of the Remnant driven out, yet still of the people with whom Jesus had been associated in His life here below. He knows what it is to be outside the Camp - the Holy City - and, though Himself crying to God from the ends of the earth (land), to interest Himself in that which was within the city, for, however wicked in their hands, to Him it was the City of God. Hence so much that is still personal though Jewish. They are cast out of Jerusalem when Antichrist is there, but He is with them cast out, and it is still to Him Jerusalem, known in His heart's desire. Hence in Psalm 69 He looks at the condition of His enemies as acting, when God had smitten Him (and the residue), as adding to His affliction. It was not deliverance from Jehovah, when they surrounded Him as in Psalm 22, but, as taking the place of guilt, and smitten of God, He presents the iniquity which oppressed Him, and counts on God saving Zion, not on praising amidst His brethren. The servants of Elohim will inherit it.

In this Book we have evidently the time of the great tribulation, with those features of the sorrows of Christ which have specially this character, so that He went through it, and applies the exercises of His soul to intercession for His people, the residue in that day.

114 In the first two Books we find the Remnant, and so Christ, driven out, no longer enjoying the public service of God The second Book, particularly, marks the Jews as concerned in this, the nation lo chasid (not mercied). Psalm 42 is more general, and applies to other enemies and the great oppressor. Psalms 44 to 48 give the pleading of the Lord, on to full restoration. Psalm 49 is the publicly announced moral on it. In Psalm 50 we have the public summons, of God from on high, to judgment, which is apart, not the progress seen and followed by the Remnant on earth. God issues and enters into the scene, and the heavens declare His righteousness - He calls to heaven above as well as to the earth beneath. Psalm 51 gives the moral estate of the Remnant, humbled and contrite, owning its sin, not merely feeling the oppression, so that there is moral separation. After that we have the state in which things are in that day, and in the city also, so that the Remnant of the woman's seed have their portion also here.

In the Psalms which follow, we have the strongest expression of the deep and terrible sorrow in which they will be, but at the same time we find Christ Himself as having passed, as to the distress of it, there, and thus entering into it with them. The tribulation of that day is part of the grand conspiracy against His authority, of which He felt all the force in the acutest way. We have the power of the antichristian tyrant, and the malice of the rebellious Jews; Psalms 55: 13, 14; 59: 11; 62: 3, 4; 63 (all); 52; 50 and 55: 9, 11. In Psalm 53 we have the character of the wickedness, in extent, which the Apostle applies to the Jews. From Psalm 60 the light breaks in more clearly, and in Psalm 65 praise is ready; God has only to give the occasion in fact - a beautiful and touching thought, furnished by the Spirit! In Psalm 66 the deliverance is celebrated, and in Psalm 67 the blessing on Jacob - the means of making known God's way, and bringing blessing to all the earth. In Psalm 68 God's blessing in Israel and on Israel, as rising up for them, as ever with the ark, is celebrated and, while applied (v. 6), to the establishment of the residue and judgment of the wicked, it is traced to the exaltation of Jesus on high (the Lord who had erst conducted them through the desert) that He might dwell among the rebellious in grace. The full triumph of blessing, through judgment, is then celebrated by the sorrows of Christ, even to death, from the hands of these wicked Jews. Psalm 70, also, is the effusion of a rejected Saviour, but in love to the Remnant.

115 I have not a very clear idea of the mind of God in Psalm 71. It is clear that the Spirit looks to the setting aside the power of the unrighteous and cruel man. It is the language of Christ, but as taking up the position of Israel and speaking on their behalf, i.e., of the Remnant according to the position of Israel - this I suppose to be the application of "old age." They look for deliverance because God had always been their help, and they counted He would not reject them now at the close of their career. He had always instructed them, and they look to be vessels of His knowledge now to those to come. The Spirit looks for the definite setting aside of the power of the usurper. The result is judgment given to the King's Son - a Psalm which needs no comment, and closes the Book.

The occasion of Psalm 71 may have been perhaps Adonijah's rebellion in the extreme old age of David, introducing Solomon; at any rate, we have the seed of David, and, as to the people, no strength, none shut up nor left.

From Psalm 42 to 49 we have a distinct subject - the local circumstances and state of Christ and the Remnant, when Antichrist possesses, and after he is turned out of and they are again in Jerusalem. It is not now Christ or the Remnant in Jerusalem, but driven out, separate - separate from the wickedness - triumphed over by it, and now thirsting after God - thus in separation.

Up to Psalm 42, except Psalm 16, in which Christ takes His place with the saints as Man, all the Psalms have been as in Israel, i.e., addressed to Jehovah as such. Psalm 16 is specifically Christ taking His humanity, His place as it were as a Saint, amongst His brethren, there at once addressing Jehovah. Now we come to a Remnant cast out - out of the place of promises - their faith (the evidence of life) being in God at any rate; see also Galatians 3 and 4. They are of Korah, not David - poor, shorn, and cast off Israel.

Briefly then Psalm 42 is complaint of the Gentiles.

Note there is the same mixture of enemies without and within, in Psalms 42 and 43, as observed before. In Psalm 42, the Remnant are driven out; God, in the loss of all present portion with Jehovah, is their Hope. Their acquaintance with Him therefore more deep - so indeed necessary. "I had gone with the multitude"; it was a different thing now. Jehovah is matter of hope only. The progress in verses 3-11 has been observed heretofore - "Thy," "my," and "Thy God" added. The nation in Psalm 43 is lo chasid (not mercied), nominally it was chesed (mercy).

116 From this Psalm then to the end of Psalm 49, we have a collection of Psalms, as noticed heretofore; Psalms 42, 43 and 44, showing the position of Israel as driven out, whether by Gentiles or Jews - the recollection of God's power of old, and the faithfulness of the Remnant in the midst of the suffering; Psalm 45 Messiah introduced, then the God of Jacob owning the Remnant - the Remnant exalted of God in presence of the earth; Psalm 48, God in Zion, and what they had heard of, now fulfilled; Psalm 49, all this is the judgment of man as such - such is the moral of it. From Psalm 50 we have the details of relationship between God and Israel in all this matter.

Note the deep and blessed instruction from a comparison of this Psalm with Psalms 63 and 84. In all they are "athirst" before God, but see the difference. In this Psalm they had been driven out, accustomed to go with the multitude, with a voice of joy and praise, with them that kept holyday. His desire was the need of what he had not got, he was panting like a thirsty hart after the water-brooks. He was taunted as to the public enjoyment of Him - "where was his God?" He had lost the outward manifestation, the common joy. The soul may lean upon that, and in our case unconsciously depend much on it, drink at the streams and pools. He wanted to appear before God; when he remembers these things, he pours out his soul in him. His soul was cast down, still he hoped in God for that which was to come.

In Psalm 63 he is quite in the wilderness, but it is another thing. He also is athirst for God, but it is for Himself, as he had known Him in the sanctuary. He was in a dry and thirsty land where no water was, but his soul was dealing with a known God, and with Himself, not with the joy that surrounded Him, or even appearing before Him, desirable as it was.

He begins with God then, asking God - "Early will I seek thee." It was a longing for Himself. Hence, bitter as outwardly his life was, he could bless while he lived, because Elohim's loving-kindness was better than life; nay, his soul would be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and his mouth praise Him with joyful lips, when he remembered Him on his bed. In all loneliness, he had this ineffable joy of feeding on and delighting in God. It was not: "When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me" but "My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness . . . when I remember thee," having none else. Thus taught to be satisfied with, and to lean on God, to find his all in Him.

117 In Psalm 84, he is returning, perhaps through the valley of tears, to fuller communion, and from his knowing God Himself - not only the joy of going with the multitude - he can say "How amiable are thy tabernacles" but it is the desire from delight, not from loss, learned in Psalm 63. "My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of Jehovah; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God." The sparrow had a nest - surely God's own saint would not want one, even the altar of God, where he could adore Him that was the home and resting place of his soul - his nest.

Hence the house became a sure place of joy, but it was from the knowledge of God. Such was his sense of what God was, that he knew that they that were dwelling in His house would be, could not but be always praising Him. Hence the way there, through the desert, through the valley of tears, had itself its character of joy. God was fully confided in, known - the soul's strength was not in the multitude, but in Him; the valley of Baca is turned into a well, rain from above fills the pools, if there is none from beneath. Such will go from strength to strength, till they appear before God in Zion; that was his desire in Psalm 42. But what a difference, now that he knows, and draws his joy immediately from God! It is good to be deprived of all, in such sort that God may be so necessary, that we may find an infallible spring of joy and strength in Him, and so be able to enjoy His goodness with others.

And note too the difference of Psalms 42 and 63. In the former, the saint was cast out, and was thirsting after God, and to appear before Him. Men were saying in the oppression of the godly: "Where is his God?" i.e., circumstances seem to say it was all no use. Faith then thirsts after, and looks to Him, pleads with the soul, and the soul says to itself: "Well, you have lost all, but hope in God. The health of His countenance will be there, and yours lightened up." It ends with "the health of my countenance and my God." It is by being weaned from circumstances, cast on God directly, and on God as his portion too. Psalm 63 begins here: "O God, thou art my God." And here it is a settled thing, not that the soul has lost anything here, nor even the fellowship of the saints, true loss as that is in its way. It knows itself to be in a "dry and thirsty land, where no water is." The divine nature, as such, has nothing in this world; there is no water for it there, but it is earnestly and with energy directed to what is its necessary and one object - God. So Christ, who came down from heaven, could not (save His own grace) find anything in this world, but He had seen God the Father's glory in the sanctuary. There all His thoughts centred; even as Man, through divine union all His desires were there. So we, for we have known God in Him. It is the proper, diligent search of the soul from its own desires, and this is very blessed - a true divine association with God. We joy in God, and He has been, as an Object of delight, perfectly revealed. It is settled that God is its God, no question or cloud there - it is a known relationship in which it is at home. Then there is the unhindered, earnest longing of the divine nature in us after its true and one Object. He is, besides, our Safeguard, "The shadow of his wings," and help and upholding in the way.

118 Thus, athirst for God, i.e., directly, because of what He is as our delight, as partakers of His nature, our soul will be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, so that, while we live where there is no water, we shall praise with joyful lips, for while He is enough to awake and draw earnest and longing desires after Himself in His own blessedness, yet this leaves the feeling in the soul at the present, "His loving-kindness is better than life," and therefore he who is "of all men most miserable," can "rejoice always." Psalm 87 also speaks of the same longing, but is also somewhat different.

Psalms 42, 84, 63 and the end of Psalm 16 may be taken in this succession, as showing the relationship of the heart with God. The first, distress and longing after Him; then circumstances of joy and blessing which surround Him where He dwells, towards which we are going. Then intrinsic delight in Him; and lastly, the fulness of joy to which one arrives in His presence, in which intrinsic delight in Him is satisfied, and there only. The last is personally Christ, as we know - but through Him, ours too.

119 Psalm 43

This seems a complaint of the Jews; that it is the complaint of the godly in the latter days, I cannot doubt, compare Joel 2: 17. But we must always remember that Christ fulfilled these sufferings in His own Person (especially as far as the elect are concerned in them) and therefore was, on the one hand Witness in them of the faithfulness of God for others to act on, and thus able to help (Heb. 2), and therefore can speak them in His own Person. This, however, is of the Remnant, more especially of themselves; it is not, observe, l'David (of David). It is complaint of Israel.

Psalm 44

This is the voice of the Remnant arguing, from the faithfulness of faith, that it was the Lord and not their own arm which had delivered them - that the same Arm could deliver through any circumstances. It is spoken under the apparent utter dereliction of the latter day, i.e., the time between their outward prosperity, in which the wickedness of the Jews had grown up in the Land, and the full blessing of Immanuel's deliverance, when the latter day enemies should then come up on the Land, and the Remnant should, between them and the ungodly Jews, seem to be deserted. Paul quotes it as evidence of the portion of the Remnant. And as the Holy Ghost recognises it as the portion of the accepted Remnant, and the voice of the Spirit in their mouth, it was evidence of anything but their rejection, and thus the testimony of evil becomes the evidence of acceptance, to secure their faith, of those on whom the evil falls when it comes; so the Lord, "These things I tell you before it come," etc. This is a gracious arrangement of God. The written sufferings are evidence of the acceptance of those on whom they fall, when their faith might be taken, so that "Out of the eater comes forth sweetness," and "We are more than conquerors," etc.; and so I have found it in beginning my course in these Psalms in sorrow.

This Psalm is on the inroad of Gog, I apprehend, which drives the unbelieving Jews into collusion with Antichrist. It is the display of their condition in comparison with former enemies, but now a separated, faithful Remnant, not mixed with the national sin, though smitten "in the place of dragons" - the happy effect of judgments there, better than with sinners united to them.

120 I remark, in this Psalm, God only is acknowledged King; Psalm 45 brings in Messiah, Christ revealed - faithfulness to God only is pleaded before - known as Man, all blessing comes in. Psalm 44 itself is a positive point of progress, for God is owned. As separated to Him as the only Power, the character of Christ then is clearly shown. The queen is Jerusalem. The discovery of who God is then comes forth in declared and promised covenant mercies, but as mercies, see verse 26, and therefore Jehovah of Hosts is now known; and, though God be spoken of, Jehovah, Most High, in covenant and special relation in His own place, is fully known (Psalm 47), and thus Psalm 48 praises Him as such. The establishment of Zion, in her own place, is very remarkable.

Psalm 45

The subject of this Psalm is the triumph, reign and union of Christ with the Jewish Remnant. It seems to me the Spirit as in the Remnant. It is Christ as the Head of the Jewish Remnant, as King - the full spiritual recognition of Him. Verse 10 manifestly turns from the celebration of Christ the King, to address just admonition to the Jewish Queen, or Remnant, at His right hand. This is, manifestly to me, the Jewish Remnant in its perfect state, but it is as received in the way of grace, and therefore a daughter, and to forget her father's house. The whole question once argued between Christ and the professors of that company - the people who are to praise her thus restored, are the nations (ammim), the gathered converted Gentiles of the latter day, or new day rather. Having these points determined, the Psalm is manifest in its contents, and full of the richest matter. It is the union of Christ with the Jewish Remnant, in its proper character, with the glory of both celebrated by the Spirit. Righteousness is the character of Christ as a Jew, so therefore "God, thy God," etc. It is prophetic, and the voice, as of the Remnant who did not see His glory as a present thing, to the Jewish company as called to Him in the latter day, and recognising His glory in Spirit when so coming, and consolation for Christ as the real mind of the Spirit in His humiliation, for thus spake "the groanings which could not be uttered" of Simeon and Anna, and all those who looked for, etc., and were so interpreted by God.

121  - 7. "Lovedst" - "hatedst." Note here it is not "Jehovah," covenant title, but the essential nature and character of God, as such. It is God's righteous judgment of the path of the Messiah; compare Psalm 22, "My God, my God." There was relationship, but as God Himself, and according to faith in what He was. When personal relationship was spoken of, it was "Father," not "Jehovah" the covenant name with Israel. Here God righteously meets what He was.

- 13-16. Mark the character of consequent grace instead of successional title. I am more inclined to think "the virgins her fellows" to be the cities of Judah than anything else. Psalm 49 is the action of this, on a great principle of what God is, on the world - the resurrection of Christ the only power over it, for us. Psalm 50 unites the two, and judges the case of Israel, not for ceremonial but moral faults; compare Isaiah 43. Psalm 51 is the full confession of Israel on these grounds including the guilt of Christ's death - confession upon the deep principles of truth of God's character - a new birth needed, and even desired with understanding in its fruits, as in John 3; compare Ezekiel 36 "at large" being the hinge of it, and the desire of the presence of the Holy Ghost consequently, though when Zion is restored He may well offer sacrifices of praise, purging is desired before comfort. Psalm 52 is the triumph of the Spirit of Christ in the goodness of God against Antichrist - the mighty man in his own will and strength. The contrast with Antichrist is remarkable.

- 16. This is characteristic of Christ and spiritual energy come in; compare verse 10, the past of nature as of tradition are alike left. If we look back, it is only at a suffering and rejected Christ, and at the grace that gave Him, see Philippians 3: 13, 14 - this is not nature.

The King is introduced, revealed, as it were, to them in an instruction when the Spirit has put this into the heart of the "ready writer" - the spirit of revelation in knowledge of Him. Immediately thereon (Psalm 46) comes deliverance - the Remnant being thereon the nation, the Lord of Hosts with them; the triumphant consequence in summons to the world (Psalm 47) and (Psalm 48) the praise, in the city, of their joy; compare Psalms 42: 6; 48: 9; 44: 1; 48: 8, and I may add 48: 2, with Psalm 45: 14, with Psalm 46: 10, et seq, with Psalm 47 more generally.

122 Psalm 45 is remarkable in another sense - the special introduction of the Person of Messiah - the Jews, Jerusalem was the Lord's wife, see Isaiah 50 (the Church is not that yet - she will be the Lamb's wife) and He was her King. But He came and was rejected - came suitably and lovingly, in most loving condescension to her state, and they were proud and wicked, and were divorced, divorced themselves; so spoken of Psalm 44, but then in righteousness they are there cast off, smitten into "the place of dragons," hence, in the Remnant, repentance towards God, hence receiving the Spirit, i.e., listening to the Spirit - of Christ as a Spirit of prophecy. Then Christ revealing Himself to them as their King, and therefore it could be in grace. Hence the recognition of the Person of Christ is the great thing - that that Man, come in grace and therefore known in grace, is the Lord. So we find in Zechariah, "They shall look on him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn." The previous work is seen in Isaiah 50 at the end, and at the beginning of Isaiah 51. "Fearing the Lord, and obeying the voice of his Servant." But this shows, i.e., these Psalms, how the Spirit of Christ, as He who had suffered, was in all their griefs, in all their afflictions, afflicted as afterwards they will find, knowing their path, and putting Himself in their sorrow, leading the blind by a way that they knew not - the process of misery, under God's hand, leading to moral profit and truth - the discovery of where they were, and then the discovery of Christ, producing joy and triumph, and results themselves to be celebrated as the accomplishment and more (in grace) of all old promises. This was the wonder also of Paul. In fact such a process passes in every converted soul; compare Galatians 4: 27.

The Psalms

, part 4.

J. N. Darby.

<43002E>

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

Psalm 46

This Psalm is the song of the Remnant, in the turning point of the circumstances of the latter day, that the God of Israel was, and had proved Himself to be their God - that He was true to them as His chosen - the exercise of faith, on the deliverance and interposition of the latter day, recognising God, and so putting themselves into the position of His people.

123 Psalm 47

This Psalm - the triumph of the Remnant - is quite plain and calls to "all people." Verse 9 is the only one which calls for enquiry, and the expression is a very interesting one, though, in the first instance, the construction is difficult. "People" is ammim, a word we have often noticed - Gentiles, brought in, having the name of a people. Now, on re-forming the Jews, or ever He was aware, His soul set Him in the chariots, "Thy people willing" (ammi nadiv), so here the willing people (n'divi ammim, the princes of the peoples) are gathered together, for "To him shall the gathering of the people" (ammim) "be." The difficulty is the apparent disconnection of "people" (am), but it is, I suspect, as ever, in the Hebrew, the strength of the sense - they are gathered into unity with the people of the God, of him who received as his name "The father of many nations." It is the exaltation of the people (am) of the God of Abraham - the people of the Jews; that they are brought in, under the then pressure of God's calling power, into blessing and gathering, so that He should be God of the whole earth (Elohey kol-haarets) Isaiah 54: 5. "Gathering" is one of the names of Christ - "gathering into one the sons of God" (B'ney Elohim) that were scattered, and then of all, as here, or "earth" in Israel, for the shields of the earth belong or are, in fact, now to God, who is greatly exalted, for "the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day." God is the "Shield" of Abraham also, therefore gathering in heaven and earth all into one. It is a very interesting Psalm; kol-haaerets (the whole earth) is its title, along with being sung by them, l'mal'kenu (to our king).

Psalm 48

This Psalm also is manifest; it is the destruction, or disappointment of the Antichristian confederacy, and enjoyment by the believing Remnant of their former, but renewed mercies - "As we have heard, so have we seen." Nothing can be more touching than verse 9. Verse 10 is worthy of notice; His name is what indeed God is to His people, as revealed to their faith, but it is, and has been matter of their faith and reliance upon Him, but now He had accomplished that which His name declared.

124 Psalm 49

This Psalm seems to me an address of the Spirit, in the mouth of the Remnant, in the latter day, I think flowing from the state of the Jews who have taken, unbelievingly, the promises in a merely earthly way, and therefore not of God, i.e., who are living at ease in Palestine, but also as to the ungodly Gentiles who think to have the world in possession. It is however the security of the world che-led (this age - transitory character of time) which passes away as a moth pilling a garment. It is the security of the people of God, being redeemed from the power of the grave which would gnaw upon and destroy the hope and security of those who are not God's. It is enabling faith to say what the Lord said of the Remnant, "Blessed are ye poor" - it is the instruction qualifying our faith to unite in that expression of the Son of man. The mas'chil (causing to understand) the contrast between the world's attempt to build itself, selfishly and individually, a house, and the redemption of the Jews and rejected godly ones is simple and manifest. The redemption from the power of the grave does not affirm resurrection, but deliverance from it.

Psalm 50

This Psalm is the actings and principles of God, towards Israel, at the time of God's showing Himself. The thesis is manifest. The application and force of the argument towards Israel, as to its condition intermediately, is very plain. It is the summons of the saints - witnesses of God's righteousness intermediately - and Israel thereon brought into question, with the assertion however, and founded on, "I am God, even thy God," when God manifests Himself, when God is Judge Himself. It is the judicial act, wherein the saints, in covenant with God in Christ, are assessors, and the Jewish people, His earthly company, called up to plead when God, the God of the Remnant of the Jews, speaks, and comes, calling the earth from the rising up of the sun to the going down of the same. It is applied to the distinction and ordering of those who recollect and forget God among the Jews, in warning for that time. To verse 6 it is the forming of the session, then from verse 7 it is the stating of the pleading on God's part.

This Psalm brings out the great scene of judgment, and celestial glory, connected with this - the great summons fulfilled in the coming of Christ, to which, of this part of it, Zion is the centre, and in fact to the world here treated of. The whole of these Psalms take in the circumstances of the Jews pre-millennial, i.e., their real condition after being driven out by Antichrist - without the gate with Christ; thus forced upon "the place of dragons" - not being communion with sin. At last, through the intervention of Christ, bursting forth into all the splendour of Christ's coming, in millennial day, before the world, and from the heavens and over the earth; see verses 5 and 6, and also 4, and indeed the commencement entirely.

125 After the general statement, and the bringing in of Messiah, we have the judgment of moral evil when the heavens declare God's righteousness, and God is Judge Himself; and then (Psalm 51) the confession of the Remnant (as of the nation) including the death of Christ (v. 14). Then details are gone into, as usual, and the feelings which are the effect of the evil one's power, and, though the principles are the same, yet it is no longer so much moral discernment in the midst of the ungodly, as the breaking the covenant, and the power of the ungodly one. Evil is open and unashamed - holds its head on high. In Psalm 50 Jehovah judges out of Zion, but bringing in heaven to witness the judgment. It is on the ground of godliness, not sacrifice. In Psalm 51 sacrifice is dropped also, and true inward contrition, reaching to the acknowledgment of the death of Christ, is shown in confession to God.

Psalm 51

The application of this to the sin and restoration of the Jews has been observed by others, and the mere carrying this idea through the Psalm, will give its application too obviously and forcibly to need comment. There are some points however of which I am not at present master - for example, is there any type in the circumstances, and what?

The confession of sin in this Psalm is most complete in its principles, profound in the sense of their transgressions; and "shapen in iniquity," misery begins - sacrifices of righteousness close the purpose.

- 4. This is Jewish properly. Their sin was entirely against Jehovah, and Jehovah could pardon it. The sin of the Gentile economy was much worse, against grace and the revelation of grace by the Spirit when possessed amongst them. They had all manner of sin - sin after illumination - not as Peter says, "In ignorance ye did it." Therefore Paul, in Romans 3, concludes the just judgment of God - He receives the Jews, and judges and condemns the world; here the Church is prerogatively saved for heavenly places. The summons of Psalm 50 is in fact answered in this Psalm.

126 Remark the difference and connection of these two Psalms. Psalm 50 is God's judgment. It takes up those who have made a covenant with sacrifice. God is Judge Himself, and judges His people in order to shine out of Zion, and call all the heathen up thither. But while He gathers His saints by sacrifice, in judging Israel He owns none of theirs. He rejects all ceremonial service, and requires real righteousness, setting before them what they have done. In Psalm 51 is the people's (the Remnant's) confession after this. Here we find sin in the heart fully judged - it owns indeed the sins, and then, when reconciled, will teach others, but bloodguiltiness, in respect of Christ, is owned. No outward legal sacrifices offered (they would have been, if acceptable) but a broken heart. That is, though Israel be guilty of Christ's death, they are here taken in God's judgment on their own ground. They are judged for ungodliness, practical ungodliness in their pretended boasting in law In the saint's confession, inward sin is owned, and inward divine teaching and grace looked for, and Christ's death owned, indeed all the blood shed, but especially Christ's death. God's mind is understood in the former Psalm - plain conscience looked for in a people pretending to be religious. Previous legal relationship only in moral reality in Psalm 50, and heartfelt need of God, and Christ's death in the divinely touched Remnant. What God does not require, the divinely taught mind does not offer - what must be in relationship with God, it looks for from grace. The ungodly offer what God does not want nor heed - fails in what conscience ought to know - and, as to Christ's death, never is aware of his guilt under it through hardness of heart. The contrast is very distinct.

Psalm 52

I see nothing especial to remark in this Psalm. It is the helpless but perfect assurance of the believer - the beloved, in the Remnant, contrasted with the enmity, presumption, and therefore destruction of the last enemy, the Edomite, and its consequences. It is simple and pointed.

127 We have the energy of the Spirit of Christ, risen up after Israel's confession of sin, to contrast the position and character of Antichrist and the righteous Remnant - in fact of Antichrist and Christ in Spirit. Violence, self-confidence and deceit constitute the character of the man of the earth - the contrast is dependence. This is always the character of Christ in the Psalms.

Psalm 53

I do not think this Psalm and Psalm 14 are the same thing; that is the blessing of the faithful Jews by the Lord in spite of the ungodly - this is the destruction of the ungodly Gentiles also by God. Compare Psalm 14: 5, and verse 5 of this Psalm.

The thesis is in verse 1, "the fool"; the folly of saying "There is no God," proved by God's being in the congregation of the righteous. This, in His character of "the Lord," by His confounding and scattering the camp of their enemies, proved there was a God, and proved it to them.

This is a remarkable Psalm from the connection between the evil ones of Israel and the enemies, and the position in which they find themselves. We know from the Apostle (Romans 3) that those under the law, Jews, are spoken of. But the principle averred of them, stating a general principle is "No God" - God's judgment, looking down, is "None that doeth good, no, not one." It is, in effect, the revelation that, when God looked down He found no good, not even in the Jews - His people nominally. This always true, then manifested - He views them as God, not in Jerusalem but looking down from heaven at men; for Israel are lost, as men thence, and indeed Lo-ammi. It is every one - man bn'ey Adam (the sons of Adam). "The workers of iniquity" is the general character - the Jews are found in it. In Ezekiel 34 the conduct even of the Jews may be seen - it left Him a "prey to the beasts," the heathen. "My people," the Remnant are called here in effect, according to Psalm 46, consequently they, the unrighteous Jews, were in fear where there was no need for fear. The sinners in Zion are afraid, though they have made a covenant with death, and are at agreement with hell. But there was no need to fear from this pride of men, for God scattered the bones of those who were encamped against Jerusalem. God, there is the question of righteousness - the others said en Elohim (no God) - despised them. Then the desire of the Spirit of Christ in the Remnant - when God does that, they wait, for He, that is, "brings back the captivity of his people." It is out of Zion first in a Remnant; compare Psalm 126. Jacob and Israel, the whole people, shall rejoice, and Israel be glad. The existence and judgment (and afterwards actings) of God are the great question in this Psalm, partly adduced by the Apostle to determine all question of righteousness for man, as in man - salvation is another thing; it is cited as said to those under the Law.

128 This class of Psalms, i.e., from Psalm 42 to the end of Psalm 72, takes up the condition, not merely of what Christ found Himself amongst the Jews, but in and as a separate Remnant, who were concerned in the union of the evil, antichristian power, the apostasy, and the body of the Jews driven out, even as we have seen in Psalm 42, but the character of God in question in the earth from heaven, when He is what He is - not the Lord in covenant in Jerusalem - the deliverance and interference of God in mercy to the Jews, properly, guilty of bloodguiltiness. God, in pure grace, begins with the worst through Messiah whom they rejected, but united in His love with this separated Remnant, then y'chidim (solitary ones). Deliverance being given in Zion, God having scattered the bones of those who encamped against it, the desire for the deliverance and joy of Israel and Jacob bursts forth, and withal is accomplished, as noticed already, in Psalm 126. The next Book takes up, I think, Israel and Zion restored, therefore bringing in Jehovah and the position of God therefore also. After that, save in Psalm 107 which is a special circumstance, there is mention of Jehovah only.

We have then five divisions of the Psalms. First Psalm 41 - the principles of the presence of Christ's Spirit among the Jews. Psalm 72 - His connection with the Remnant separate as to, and manifested in Zion, when antichrist and the Jews are connected; the world wicked - universal. Psalm 89 - Zion, the nation, Israel, still to be looked after or brought in, with Christ's dealings, God Jehovah's dealings with them; Psalm 106 - a wider scene - the connection of Christ, Israel, and the heathen, and the glory and blessing of Creation - the world ever opposed; the halo of what the millennial glory shall be in its introduction - Christ the Creator, if the Man of sorrows, as well as Head of Israel, and Jehovah - Psalm 150. Then, I take it, some fuller development and special relationships of Israel - their condition, circumstances, and praises in such a time as the earthly centre of such a time. I have not so fully looked into this.

129 Psalm 54

This Psalm is Christ as the object of God's deliverance or saving power, including its desire and acknowledgment - both important as showing the position of Christ. It takes Him, in His whole position as a Jew, from His first trial to the deliverance of the Jews in that day. The Name is the manifestation of the internal and essential power, and character, precisely what is obscured and refused in this world of confusion and evil. The judging is just the intervention of that Name in power, so as to vindicate the consistency of Christ with it - the thread of order, of which Christ was the witness, and which was attached to His name in the midst of evil, because He was it, and therefore the vindication of it was the vindication of God's name; and so the saving by His name was peculiarly appropriate, for indeed it was the declaration of the identity of that Name in God with Christ, as in the world, for He had that Name in weakness. Therefore He says, "Judge me by thy strength," i.e., "Vindicate, as to me in weakness, that character and name which is thine in strength, by the putting forth of thy strength, as vindicating itself." Now this is true as regards man, by its conformity, and as regards the object even, on account of its very weakness, because graciousness of love, and faithfulness of kindness is part of the very Name to be revealed. This cannot be pursued further here. "Thou hast loved," etc. is part of it - "O righteous Father" is again another - and "My God, my God," etc., and "Therefore doth my Father"; so "Not unto us," etc., and even "Be merciful unto my sin, for it is great," proceeds on the same principle.

This is a subject full of interest, because the Church can always go on this ground of unfailing righteousness, and say "Not unto us." The Church is in the character of God, and in this weakness therefore it cries, and therefore it cries for the vindication of this character. So Christ was enabled to say "I know that thou hearest me always," but therefore also "Judgment must begin at the house of God." Thus Christ put Himself under these things, and "It became him" etc.; but "If these things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" For the judgment and character of God run on unchanged, and as He judges by, so will He judge in His strength. But Christ is the vindication of the principles of God, because He is their personification in that very weakness, in which the question arises. The application of God's power settles it; see note on the transaction after Christ's baptism. But we must not pursue this further here.

130 It seems to me that this Psalm also would seem to make Christ speak in the language of mediatorial praise, as well as affliction; and observe the reason.

In this Psalm it is, unusually, the name of God, and the strength of God which is appealed to, but, as we have seen, before God is proved (an only refuge actually for the position in which Christ sees things) in contrast with all men, it puts the relationship in which the Spirit of Christ finds itself consequent upon the truth of Psalm 53. They are strangers - God is not before them - God is His helper. It was not now a matter of covenant, for all this was forsaken, but abstract faith in God. But this faith produces - sense, and application of covenant. Christ is alone in "Me" (v. 2), but "Jehovah is with them that uphold my soul." The sense of favour, on God's principles towards others, is the restoration of one's own soul in righteousness; not "with me," for He was as an outcast for our sake, because perfect, His trust in God as the one only perfect Man, but this induced and became the object of all concentrating grace afterwards. Therefore it is Jehovah, and all the trouble in result is passed - the moral history of all that shall arrive in that day.

Psalm 55

This Psalm is Messiah's complaint of the Jews, from whom He had expected sympathy and concurrence.

- 3. Rasha (wicked one).

- 9. Note the judgment as of Babel in the Lord's actual coming.

This Psalm is the departure, as it were of Christ (in Spirit, in the Remnant) from the city in that day. He has discovered - they have discovered their true character. He retires, and His Spirit would retire ever so far from such a scene and state. It is still spoken of, however, from the sense of what is in the city; in Psalm 63 we find it as actually in the wilderness, yet the confidence and boast grows as they are more entirely separated to God. From Psalm 51, the humiliation of the Remnant, these Psalms proceed with the effects of Antichrist's presence.

131 But there is the energy of righteousness more marked in this Psalm (I speak not of its perfection), and the name of Jehovah is more speedily brought in. "How long shall I be with you?" said the Lord; and even Moses said "Respect not thou their offering." Treachery of those nominally associated with Him - the Jews with hostile power, which gives it this character (as in Ahithophel) - it is the consummation of the evil of antichrist - the union of wickedness - there was none good - all gone together. Then their character is very remarkable all through here. There was nothing to be had unless God, whose character changed not if the prosperity changed - not a friend. A religious associate was the worst, because the nearest enemy. How this was personally verified in the blessed Saviour, all know; but it is carried out to all that solemn scene of the latter day, when those that are faithful must follow that faithful One and Guide - led of Him without the camp. Blessed be His name, who has taught us how and where to trust! Praise waiteth for Him in Zion. Oh! that salvation were come thence! He shall hasten it in its day. Amen. Compare Zechariah 11 all through.

Psalm 56

This Psalm is the complaint of the Beloved as trusting in God's word - the faithfulness of God to His trust in Him, when He had to wander, not having where to lay His head, in that land of which He was born and anointed King; compare Hebrews 5: 7, Psalm 69: 13, 14, and Isaiah 49: 8. This last is a chapter singularly indicative of the union or identity, in the mind of the Spirit, of the Lord and Israel. The thread is quite evident; verse 3 is literal, but in verse 5, this assumption of the Remnant into His character is marked. In verse 10, "His" is put in; it is the testimony on which the trust rests. We may notice the expressions "God" and "Lord"; both are the object of faith.

What is first present to His mind is man swallowing Him up - then God's Word. In Psalm 57, it is the shadow of God's wings, and thence God's sending even from heaven to save Him This enlarges the sphere, otherwise these two Psalms run in the same stream of thought.

- 7. Ammim (peoples).

132 This Psalm applies itself also specially to the state of exclusion and exile, in which the Spirit of Christ found itself, and specially from the midst of those who ought to be His, but, as we have seen, they are all watching together against Him. It is man He finds - Jew or Gentile - man. God only was His refuge - all were as Philistines for Him. Consequently not as united to Israel, speaking of man (a-dam) but all people (ammim). Man would swallow Him up as an outcast, as wandering. The former Psalm saw more the evil within, here without. He feels well what man is. They are active against Him. It is not so much treachery, there is the pursuit of those who have been treacherous against Him, but in effect, the ammim (peoples) are all there. In God only is trust - His position throws Him on this, and throws Him on the faithfulness of God. God is for Him. The Word of God takes the place, as it were, of company. The word and promise of God is His resource and assurance. So ever, when cast out by man, and the word is sure. As the word of God is sure, so is He debtor to God, as one vowing to Him, and when the promise of His word is fulfilled, praises for the accomplishment of it will then burst forth. He is so sure of the truth of the word that He looks to, and knows He shall, "render praises."

- 13. This is the principle, so often found, of the power of deliverance from death - the resurrection, the centre of this. Our portion is to suffer with - theirs to be delivered from.

Psalm 57

This Psalm is at once the distress and confidence of Messiah, when identified with the sorrows of the Jews - the Remnant - when ready to be swallowed up. Its result, in full manifestation of the divine power in the heavens, and His glory over all the earth, is manifest.

- 6. The reader of the Psalms must be familiar with this verse, as the destruction of the enemies in the latter day.

- 9. Ammim (peoples).

Here, in the same troubles and increased, the godly man looks higher - not only trusting in faithfulness in the word, but the Daystar has arisen in his heart, for the night, if long and dark, is far spent, until these calamities be overpast - to heaven, the earth is full of wickedness, but God shall send from heaven. Accordingly, at the close the praise is not varied but from a fixed heart, and called to awake, and praise, among the people (ammim), proposed "For thy mercy," etc.

133  - 11. This is the actual millennial glory, viewed as in the glory of God, and Messiah deserving it for His God's sake - yet in fact He who sought it for God; in Himself, only and really is it accomplished. It is thus a beautiful Psalm. Verse 3 well brings out the beautiful expression of His position. These calamities evidently are the situation of the full development of evil in that day. The principle is ever true for the Spirit of Christ - it is then manifested.

Psalm 58

This Psalm is the glory of the righteous judgment of God against the Gentile oppressors. It is the righteous, most righteous appeal, in judgment, to the wicked - to men themselves. A sense of righteousness of situation rising over the manifest character of the wicked - character distinctly manifested by that situation; rather, in the approach to God therein, the righteous judgment manifests itself to his spirit. The Jews are the expression of righteousness on the earth. Hence this, and righteousness, is a right thing, "So that," in a word, "men shall say," etc. (v. 11). This position is one of great importance - the Jewish manifestation of righteousness. The earth is the place of the manifestation of righteousness, i.e., judicially, though the heavens shall declare it, heaven is the place for grace, "That in the ages to come," etc. (Ephesians 2: 7). But God judges in the earth, and the Jews are the people whom He hath known for this; and, in the connection of Christ with the Jews, this can be accomplished, and fully brought out, as seen here. Righteous in His promise to Abraham and his seed, and Christ in grace associating (in righteousness) a Remnant herein to Himself, but here describing the position, as in Himself as perfect in all ways in it from God and in man, and wickedness being therefore fully manifested, and then, after all the grace to them, judgment - a righteous desire! It proves, in the union with hostile Gentiles, to be a deeper principle - man - "He knew what was in man." Long His patience and grace! Wonderful the salvation of the Church! How it all came fully out! Then judgment - but it is from a place of destitution and righteous faith that it is thus set forth.

134 Till Christ took perfect humiliation, in perfect righteousness accomplished it - there, in the midst of them (rejected) in perfect grace towards them - justice had not its way; "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin, but now they have no cloak," etc. God could simply, in righteousness, have punished iniquity, but He would not have displayed Himself; but now then, in Christ, He could in uttermost grace - manifesting a Head of righteousness! On this being despised, and spitefully entreated, even after all (and the enemies of God pierced, verse 7) the righteous will rejoice when they see the vengeance, sent suitably to not being come in judgment. Christ could feel, as to the Pharisees, "My soul loathed them" (Zech. 11), but in the humiliation of Christ with the Remnant, in the latter day, when wickedness is then accomplished, it is brought out into yet much greater relief. He shall stand up yet for the people (all written in the Book) - a time, such as never was, of trouble. This these Psalms describe, by the Spirit of Christ entering actually, as He alone could, into all their estate.

Psalm 59

This Psalm is a remarkable instance of the identification of Christ with the house of Jacob in their latter-day extremity. We learn also the mistake of looking for the full meaning of any Psalm in any of the circumstances merely of the writer, as verse 5 abundantly shows.

The former point is brought before us in comparing verses 1, 2, 3 (1 and 2 are the thesis), 5, 10 and 11, and also 16. Verse 12 gives the character of the enemies; compare Daniel 7: 11. Verse 13 gives the end, the object of all this; verse 6 shows also their character; verse 14 their disappointment.

Though the subject of these Psalms be the same, we must not suppose they are tautological. Various are the characters in which sin, now come to a head, presents itself - pride, lust, tyranny, and ignorance of, and enmity against the Lord Christ taking part in the afflictions of His sin-afflicted and enemy-afflicted people; and many, correspondently, are the ways in which the position of Christ is shown towards God, towards them, and towards their enemies. In these characters, different Psalms represent Him, and them, and the faithfulness of God drawn down towards them in Him, and due in Him. Therefore He says, "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me, and I have declared," etc., "that the love," etc.

135  - 1. Me y'vay (from my enemies).

We return in this Psalm again to outer enemies, the heathen. It is now "My God," and "O Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel." He has taken up Israel as His people, dealing with the heathen, showing that "God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth."

- 3. This is the character of their evil. It is not now a matter of correction, but pride; in fact, their character is plainly marked.

- 11. This exhibits Christ owning them as His people, in this intercessional Psalm.

Note the "evening" and "morning" in verses 6, 14 and 16.

Psalm 60

This is the half doubting, through sense of casting off, but returning confidence of the Spirit of truth, in the house of Jacob, though the sense that their enemies are not overcome, but that the promises go to results which include that; in a word, it is the sense of the Spirit in the house of Jacob, when their enemies' pressure brings them into the full sense of their casting off, which indeed was (though the reconciling of the world spiritually, yet) the abrogation of judgment in the earth, and the leaving of it by God, but at the same time led them to that looking to God which at once brought them, under grace, to all the promises, and to the "Through God we shall do valiantly."

We have here, in verse 5, the appropriation of the Davidical name to the Remnant, and the identification with him in name. The question arises here, Edom, as a place, seems to be redeemed as by the go-el (redeemer) though, as the strong people and city, it is utterly ruined, and there is no return; see Ruth, Jeremiah, etc.

It appears from this Psalm that Israel is fully recognised with Judah, and Judah in his last character before God begins to act with them, on the enemies around, within the territory, and the Jews possess themselves of Edom. After their recovery from positive oppression and trials, they call upon God for help, in their weakness, for action - verse 4 shows the latter, as verse 3 the former.

136  - 10. This verse invites the God who had cast them off as the God of their help. He had not let them stumble for their fall. They now stay no more upon those that smote them, but upon the Lord, the Holy One in truth.

God and man are again contrasted, but in honest faith and sincerity, humble yet sincere truth after being put out of the positive trouble, under the sense of it, looking for the strength which shall order and establish them as against their enemies, going with their armies - acknowledging it was the casting-off of God - accepting the punishment of their iniquity - owning they were cast off - still as with a trembling heart as to themselves, yet true, holding the banner of God given to them and calling themselves "His beloved." The truth is to come out in connection with them - God is to tread down their enemies - an old position on much better ground to a humbled, renewed people, in whose heart God has put His laws, and revealed their Messiah as Jehovah in righteousness, whom they once rejected; but here it is specially God and the people, and the work in them, not the revelation to them. Here He stands at their head receiving God in their return. The Spirit of Christ having spoken all through, Psalms 55-60 are consequent, it seems to me, in the sense we have seen all through.

Psalm 61

This Psalm seems to be the address of the Messiah, Christ, to the Father, as rejected and expelled by the Jews, of whom He was anointed King, that from the end of the earth driven (in this Enos character) among the Gentiles, He would still look unto Him to be led, to the Rock that was higher than He, as He said, "For my Father is greater than I"; see Psalm 16. In this, as the persecuted Christ, He would abide for ever, for "He put his trust in him." This was His mind in His humiliation.

Then we have, with the exception of verse 7, which seems the interlocution of the Jewish Remnant, His thoughts as under His deliverance, i.e., having brought the Remnant upon Himself, He would now act as became Him, in consequence of the responsibilities so acquired - He would daily perform His vows. Here then we have the Messiah as the exalted Man, occupied with rendering His vows for the salvation of the Remnant felt in Himself (as Hebrews 5) to Him who had been the power of its deliverance, hearing Him so crying. This, with verse 7, is a subject of very deep interest; compare here Psalm 56: 12 with verse 8 of this Psalm, and also Psalm 65: 1, where the form of the blessing is entered into. I do not here state the enquiry, whether this paying of vows by the Lord Christ is only as the Head of His people in the millennial glory, or in the ages of eternity; of the former we have evidence as to the Jews here, for it is in this character, and as connected with them, He specially pays the vows, as with the saints He is in glory reigning. I have omitted to refer to Psalm 22, where the subject and the result of Christ's vows are fully entered into.

137 The latter part of verse 5 here is worthy of our attention.

I also find Psalms 61-68 are a Book together. Instead of being Christ, or the Spirit of Christ in the presence of His enemies and the people's (or Remnant's), it is in the presence of God in their circumstances. The calm appeal and judgment of circumstances in His presence - His Spirit conducts Him as a Man, and so the Remnant, to a Rock higher than He, qua man or themselves. Shut out from His holy presence, in His temple He God is His tabernacle - God who has heard His vows; He has the heritage of those that fear God's name - His confidence is in Him. It is always among the Jews; this is Christ among the Jews, not properly Israel. Verses 6, 7 and 8 (Psalm 61) are the expression of the character of this confidence. "Generation and generation" (margin) it shall be, yea, for ever; and says "Prepare mercy and truth," which then shall meet together - a time of praise!

I think from this Psalm, the tone of the Book changes. Already indeed He had thought of God's rights temporally, and promise and aid, but this Psalm takes another ground, or is in another state. He looks not at the enemies and God as His help, but directly to God Himself, as between Himself and God. From this moment there is progress up to full confidence as to the way of blessing. Psalm 62 rests in God peacefully, though seeing the evil, verses 1, 5-7, and indeed throughout. Psalm 63, though no deliverance be yet come, so enjoys God that He looks back at first covenant enjoyment, and, because His favour is better than life, can praise fully during a life of trial. God is His delight and His security. Psalm 64 applies this to the malice of the enemy, and prophetically celebrates the effect of divine intervention. Psalm 65 so reckons on God, that it declares they only wait for deliverance, to praise in Zion, to draw near in the Temple - counts on God's terrible intervention, and the full blessing of all the earth. Psalm 66 celebrates, in calling all the earth to rejoice, the deliverance itself, and explains the sorrows of the Remnant, and God having heard them. Psalm 67 explains that on their full blessing all the peoples will celebrate God in blessing, under His ways. This is the effect of looking directly and simply to God. Doubtless the cry to God in distress in the sense of circumstances, leads on to looking to and resting in God Himself, but the progress is instructive and interesting. Psalms 68 and 69 show how Christ takes part in deliverance, and how the body of Israel come to be judged and tried.

138 Remark, also, how these systems of Psalms, when they have brought in the prospect and power of deliverance, return to the condition of personal humiliation, whether in view of Christ's rejection and low estate, or the wretchedness of, so to speak, an aged and justly smitten Israel, Psalms 70 and 71; the latter probably occasioned by Adonijah making way for Solomon or the millennial glory.

Psalm 62

This Psalm particularly describes the jealousy of Christ's enemies against Him, and their feebleness because God was on His side - His expectation. From verse 8, is His comment upon this, and the statement of His experience in this to His companions, "the people"; and so "refuge for us." It also glances at the vengeance, as mercy of deliverance to the afflicted children of God. They are indeed bold and unhindered now, but God will recognise me - God will render to every man according to his work. Therefore trust in Him, and always; trust not in oppression, see also verse 3.

- 3. (Heb. 4). Note, here, it is man (ish). This Psalm is in the midst of all the circumstances. He calls his soul to wait only upon God - calls the people (am, verse 8, Heb. 9) to pour out their heart before God, for He is "a refuge for us."Men are all vanity - power belongs to God - mercy shown in justice, soon to be manifested for the patient oppressed. The expression of soul in this is in Psalm 63 - its application to spiritual joy, its character and confidence in this desert world. How often have they been the joy and instruction of my heart! But here I only follow the sense or explication. It is most sweetly rich in joy. The "King" (v. 11), marks the place and consequence, as in Psalm 61.

139 Psalm 63

This Psalm seems to me to be the desire of Christ - now that He has come into the far country from God, in the midst of and under the sin, and misery, and desolations of man wandering, yea, departed from God, as utterly estranged - for Him, and looking at the full glory of the nation, after that glory which He "had with thee before the world was." It is the recollection, so to speak, of Christ applying itself to that which belonged to Him (I see much of this running through John, who is full of the glory) as He says in the very case, "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with" (apud Te ipsum) "thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was," i.e., the Person and place-glory, as Proverbs 8: 22 et seq. It is then the thoughts of Christ, in His time of need, of the glory as His delight, which He had with the Father before the world. The enemy that was against Him should be destroyed - who did not know, or "they would not have crucified the Lord of glory."

It implies also perfect purity of affections, for they, only in this way, find it a barren, thirsty land.

- 11. Who is "him" in this verse? Is it the king, or He in whom the king rejoices?

The last three verses are judgment. What precedes the perfection of the soul knowing God when in this world, and, as to circumstances, away from God. It is Christ really in its perfection, and human nature, but divine perfection in it as knowing God. The soul knows God in the sanctuary, has seen Him there in His own perfection, and is wholly absorbed by the desire of Him known in this perfectness. Hence the state and sentiment in this world is not victory over attractions, nor the resistance of them, but the absolute sterility of the world to the divine nature in Man. Not anything to refresh it, "My soul thirsteth for thee, in a dry and thirsty land where no water is." This is a very perfect state. But God is known, not in the enjoyment of covenant blessings, or relationship, but as God outside them, still in personal link to and with Him - "My God." This is not only appropriation, but subjection of soul. It is "My," but it is "My God"; and this subjection is of all importance for holiness and man's, the creature's perfection as man, creature. Yet I believe never possible but in Christ, or those in whom Christ is their life. I doubt Adam could have felt it. Christ, though a divine Person, yea, because a divine Person, felt it as Man. I doubt the angels could feel it. They cannot be individual enough, nor feel the isolation which Christ felt perfectly, and Christians feel in the midst of evil.

140 There was no sanctuary to Adam where he knew God, and where he was not, and which made the world a desert where no water was. This was the subjective state, and is wonderfully perfect.

The practical effect also is active diligence - "Early will I seek thee." Such a knowledge of God, and delight in Him, makes this earth a desert with no water in it - absolutely and diligently seeking Him. Life is sorrow, as to its place. Man belongs to a place where, through divine feeling, he is without a drop of water, yet an earth to which, in one sense, he belongs, so that it is felt, and a cutting off from all. But then another thing comes in. Life is consequently death. But divine favour is better than life, therefore such can praise while they live, before they see God's power and glory, as they "have seen in the sanctuary," where their hearts have known Him (for us Christ in glory). Hence, God is praised and blessed here. Then verse 7 is help; verse 8, is the whole - it is the perfection of a soul in its state, and in its confidence.

We see too how "subjective" and "objective" are necessarily the same in a creature, in a dependent being. In Psalm 84, as often remarked, the soul is a passenger, not a stranger. He is occupied with circumstances, blessed or tearful, yet with God.

In Psalm 63 My God is El. "To see thee" (lir'oth uzz'cha, to see Thy strength), "as I have seen" (khazithikha, I have beheld Thee) - "contemplated," "had the vision of." Thus verse 1 shows the state of soul - absolute perfection in desire (moral perfection); verse 2, the condition longed for; verse 3, the present result in blessing; verses 4, 5, 6, its application; verse 7 is the other point of thankful trust. In both He is a known God.

141 Psalm 64

The malicious and calumniating enmity of the haters of the Lord - of Christ - shall draw out the wrath of God, and thus, unexpectedly, shall they be taken in their own wickedness. The character of their own enmity against Christ, the Perfect One, exhibits the principles of their own state, and, when drawn out to a head in the account of their own exultation, draws down the vengeance of God - the very same perfection in power, as Christ was in humiliation.

The Psalm is the depth of the secret counsel of the wicked - malice and encouragement; see verses 5 and 6. But God shoots at them, whose thoughts are deeper. Still they shall be a sign of their own folly and God's judgment. Men, "all men," shall fear. Then, afterwards, the Lord shall be the joy of the righteous upright.

Psalm 65

That this Psalm is the restoration of the Jews, or, more properly speaking, the replacing of the Remnant (now a nation) in their old place with God, on the mediation of Immanuel, as introducing millennial blessedness, is, I think, evident. The Jewish portion of this is stated in verse 1, as expected, and appointed, and that in the most beautiful manner possible in the union, if one may so speak, of God's interest and man's in it, according to the promises; in verse 2 it is the Gentiles. In order to this, Christ must take it up; accordingly that which has prevented is stated in verse 3, but in Christ's Person, as for the Jews, as in Isaiah 53 - the latter part being the expression of this by the Jewish Remnant. This leads them to celebrate their acceptance in the Beloved, the Man whom God chose. Then comes the manner of their deliverance, as in answer to their faith; the extent of this over all the earth, and the fruition of blessedness by the removal of the curse from the earth. Such is the scope of this beautiful Psalm. The Psalms here open out more into the glorious results of the union of Immanuel with men - rather the Jews.

142 This Psalm presents Zion as the plain, accordingly, where "praise waits" for God. As soon as ever the Remnant, His people, are set there, praise will begin, and now they have it ready there in their hearts - their sins hindered - they are to be purged away. Verse 4 is the character and anticipation of this; verse 5 the manner of its accomplishment. Its effect and consequences on the earth, as life from the dead. It is a joyful Psalm, full of blessed hope - very beautiful in its spring of holy hope. The answer to the cherished hope and vow of the sorrowing righteous, long estranged but righteous, just ready to burst forth - exceeding beautiful!

Psalm 66

This is blessing of the nations in the deliverance of the Jews in the latter day. Christ at the head of the Jews, or rather as the Head of the Jews, ready to pay the vows uttered in the time of their trouble. It is the voice of the upright Remnant, He being so really, they in acceptance having integrity, as spoken of in Scripture, as Noah, etc., to God, but really truly only in Him, and therefore all this is spoken in His Person, and He has fulfilled all this, i.e., what in His own Person made Him capable of so taking the lead. To verse 4 is the blessing arising from the dealings of God to the nations, called to praise Him.

- 5. This verse in reference to old doings, calls them to see present similar ones putting down the rebellious.

- 8. This verse turns to the acknowledgment of for whom, and in what, all this is shown - "Bless our God . . . he hath tried . . . hath also but delivered us." Note "people" (ammim); so Psalm 67: 3.

- 13. Christ here takes up the word, having His mouth opened, as it were, by the blessing of His people, all along in His heart.

It is then progressively developative from the general call to the nations, to the special feelings of Christ.

This Psalm is a consequent summons to all the nations or lands. It is the song of the righteous, proved such, after their acceptance, and so far restoration, but before the submission of the nations. The judgment (which delivered them, the Remnant, from their immediate oppressors, Antichrist, etc.), of whom, we have seen, is the occasion of this summons to the nations of the earth at large. Having been in fullest trouble, they can now say "Our God" in deliverance. Christ is the foundation of it, in the close.

143 Psalm 67

There are two things in this Psalm - that the blessing of the Jews is the way of saving health being known to all nations, and next, that the praise of the peoples (brought in) is the object of their desire, and caused by the judgment and government of God, and that the bringing in of the people, their restoration to God, was needful to, and occasional of the full blessing of the Jews in detail, that operating the fear of Him who blessed them; see Jeremiah 33: 9.

This Psalm turns, being delivered, entirely to blessing - looks, being blessed, for full blessing on them, Israel - so the earth, to be blessed - the nations rejoice - the earth yields her increase - the blessing of God, their own God, being upon them. He judges the people righteously, and guides the nations on the earth. It is the desire of the Remnant of the Jews in Jerusalem, feeling blessing, for the full outshining of blessing, that God may be glorified everywhere, even their God, "God shall bless us."

Psalm 68

This is a noble Psalm; it triumphs in the thought of the presence of God. The preface is longer than usual, and though the first verse is as a general heading, yet it extends itself to the end of verse 6 - the celebration of blessing, because of the assumption of this place in the heavens by Him of the ancient Name - His character in association with this, especially as regards the Jews; compare the desolation of Edom in Jeremiah 49. God arises - the God that is all this. "The solitary," I should translate "those separated" into the unity of estrangement from the evil of those that were around them - the Remnant and their estate; He maketh them a house, delivers the captives, and brings desolation on the rebellious servant - the body of the Jews. It is the constant, I should almost say technical term for them. The Jews are the object of this arising, but it is the wicked and the righteous, referring then to the presence of God in the wilderness, and the preparation of an inheritance in which, refreshed with rain from heaven, the incorporation of y-khidim (the solitary) should dwell. Then comes (v. 11) the development, when Adonai yitten amar (gave the word).

144 It is a Psalm sufficiently remarkable and characteristic to need little comment. It is the whole course and relationship of God with Israel from beginning to end, as acting on the very same principles - His principles - throughout with, and manifested in, them - taking the name and word in which He went before them, in their first deliverance, in the wilderness, and identifying it with Christ in the heavens, Adonai ascended. Verse 18 shows the address to Christ, as One who had effected all this. "Solitary" are y'khidim. It is a principle of action which we have seen all through, i.e., we have seen the y'khi-dim in their cry; compare Psalm 22: 20. "Lord," in verse 1, is Adonai, i.e., Christ recognised on high; in verse 16, it is "Jehovah"; in verse 17, Adonai; in verse 18, JAH; in verse 19, Adonai; in verse 20, Jehovah Adonai; in verse 22, Adonai; in verse 26, Adonai; in verse 32,* Adonai.

{*Add one to the numbers of all these verses for the Hebrew.}

It is, recognising JAH, the existing God, Elohim, God in covenant, i.e., in Himself, in consistency of character. Jehovah, the Accomplisher of all spoken in Israel - in a word, of promises - properly Adonai, especially who is celebrated in verse 18, recognised as Christ risen, but the same act, mercy, and protection or powerful deliverance, as first in the desert, "Let God arise," Num. 10: 35. In a word, it is all God's glory and truth, as centred and developed in Israel, accomplished and celebrated by Israel in Christ - Christ ascended, their Adonai - God giving, delivering, God giving strength and power unto Israel His people. The triumph is complete and detailed, not only as their ancient God, their God of old, but as in the heavenly glory of Christ, as at the close; see verses 33, 34, 35. Compare Daniel 7: 9, 13, 22, 27, and verses 17, 18 of the Psalm, noting el'yonim (the heavenlies) and verse 27, am kaddishey el' yonim (people of the saints of the heavenlies).

Note the very frequent, and, save in verse 18, exclusive use of Adonai (Lord) in this Psalm; but in "Lord God," God is "Jehovah."

145  - 1. "Let Elohim arise. Let his enemies be scattered, and they which hate him flee before him." This is God manifested as before the ark; i.e., among the Jews.

- 2, 3. "As smoke is driven away, drive," or "Thou shalt drive." "As wax melteth in the presence of fire, let the wicked perish in the presence of Elohim." "And let the righteous be glad: let them rejoice in the presence of Elohim; let them be glad with joy." This is the contrast thereupon of the wicked and the righteous - the great Jewish principle.

- 4. "Sing to Elohim, praise his name, make your triumph in him that rideth," or "rode," "in the deserts in JAH, his name; exult in his presence." The structure of the sentence convinces me that Sol-lu (extol) is used in a derived, not a primary sense, though I at first thought it was. "Make his way ready," a well-known expression, but I think certainly not the sense here. This recognises Elohim (God) as the JAH (Jehovah) that was with them in the wilderness - "I AM hath sent me unto you."

- 5. "A Father of orphans, and Judge of widows (is) Elohim in his holy habitation." This is the character of God as Preserver of the desolate, in which He is towards the real Jews in that day; see Jeremiah 49: 11.

- 6. "Elohim settling," or "establishing" "the separated ones in a house" (see the note previous) "causing the bound in chains to go forth in prosperity; but" (on the contrary) "the rebellious shall dwell in a dry land," i.e., in desolation.

The manner in which this is exhibited in result, distinguishing the poor isolated Remnant and the captivity, and setting them in a house, and the body of the Jews bringing as rebellious into desolation; thus much is the full title subject - the Elohim as manifested.

This verse is the character of God as arisen in respect of the Remnant and the rebellious body of the Jews. While evil prevails, there is no unity but in separation. When He comes whose right it is, then He will gather into one all things in heaven and earth, and it will not be so. The y'khi-dim (solitary ones) are then the united ones - those driven into separated (solitary, if you please) union with Messiah in hope, but by His Spirit separated from the mass, and thereby made essentially one, then shall be settled in a house. That is one fruit of God's arising - next He brings the bound out of captivity, loosing the bands, and, as to the rebellious, the revolters exercising proud will against Him and the poor, them He puts in desolation in a dry land.

146  - 7, 8. "O Elohim, in thy goings before thy people, in thy marching through the wilderness, the earth shook, the heavens also dropped before the presence of Elohim. This Sinai, before the presence of Elohim, the Elohim of Israel."

Here he refers to Elohim's presence amongst them before. "Marching" is a bad word. It is a word of solemnity rather, often used of God's going.

- 9, 10, 11, 12. "A rain of plentifulness" (liberalities) "Thou didst pour, O Elohim, of thine inheritance; when weary, thou didst establish it." "Thy incorporated people" (Thy body) "shall dwell in it; thou hast prepared in thy goodness for the poor, O Elohim."

"Adonai gives the word; great the host of publishers."

"Kings of armies" (hosts) "flee, flee; and the housewife divides," or distributes, "spoil."

- 11. Elohim having prepared the inheritance and being about to place the Remnant now made into an incorporated people - the poor whom He had prepared for in goodness - Adonai (Jesus, as we shall see just now) gives the word, and a multitude carries the message of His goodness abroad. Compare Isaiah 66.

- 10, 11. Further, as to the inheritance of His people, rather His inheritance, it is not left as a dry land. God is interested in it, compare Deuteronomy 11: 11, 12. Perhaps it might be translated: "O God of thine inheritance, when weary thou didst establish it" - for at-tah (Thou) I suppose to be emphatic. Khay-yath'ka (living assembly) is a different word from congregation. The living incorporation of His people as contrasted with the state when they were y'khi-dim (solitary). Abraham, or the children of Israel in Egypt were y'khi-dim, they were kha-y'tho (His living assembly) when established in the land, though indeed never properly or fully so till Messiah joins them; they are then His earthly body, His house, as we His heavenly. Ka-hal (assembly) we have afterwards - the gathering of the people in assembly (v. 26), for worship or praise. When Adonai was at their head, and gave the word, sorrow and dismay might seem before their portion, but then the messengers (of the good tidings of His presence and intervention) were a great host. This I suppose to be not merely Jews. Compare Isaiah 66: 19, 20.

147  - 13, 14. This is the Jewish Bride or body. The establishment of God's throne, not over but in Jerusalem, similarly as in Sinai; so it is according to its power and enactments.

- 13. "Though ye lie among the grates, as the wings of a dove overlaid with silver, and her feathers with yellowness of gold, shall ye lie." Sh' phat-taim (pots) is a difficult word. It seems to me to be a place of ashes, or refuse, put under some other place to receive them from it. Its general force is sufficiently evident.

- 14. "In Shaddai's dispersing kings in her, she is covered as with snow in Salmon" - i.e., white and glittering with beauty. The language is very sententious - she was covered with snow as Salmon.

- 15. "The mountain of Elohim (is as) the mountain of Bashan, a mountain of summits (as) the mountain of Bashan."

Perhaps Bashan had its name from Shen (a tooth, or cliff).

- 16. "Why are ye jealous, ye mountains of summits?" (It is, or at) "the mountain of desire of Elohim, for his resting place" (or rest); "yea Jehovah shall dwell for ever" ("in it," or "them").

They shall be ashamed for their envy at the people; Isaiah 26.

- 17. "The array of cavalry" (or chariots) "of Elohim are multitudes of thousands multiplied" (redoubled), "Adonai is in them, Sinai, in the holy place."

- 18. "Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts in Man, and even the rebellious for the dwelling (there) of JAH Elohim."

Here we have Adonai recognised; it was thus that gifts were ensured for man, and the rebellious became a dwelling-place of JAH Elohim.

The preposition b' (in) gives a very simple force, not answered by any English preposition, as before "dispersing kings in her"; it is not merely as being in her, nor merely for her or her sake, but in her case as putting Himself as the agent of power in her. It is the sphere or place of God's action or blessing, etc., as the case may be.

This verse is also the recognition of those in whom these things were wrought, and has: "Thou" i.e., their Adonai "hast ascended on high, and received gifts as Man, even for the rebellious" (the Jews) "for the dwelling of JAH Elohim"; the Apostle therefore does not quote this in referring to the gifts in Ephesians. The rest of the Psalm scarcely requires a note, taken as referable to the latter days. "The congregations" (v. 26) are not the same word the JAH Elohim in the heavens. The Strength and Salvation of Israel shines through the Psalm. It is a magnificent Psalm. From Psalm 65 to this seems a sort of little Book of themselves - a common subject.

148  - 19. "Blessed be Adonai, that day after day heapeth upon us (blessings). The El who saveth us."

- 20. "The El that is for us is the El for salvations" (or Our El is the El of salvations") "and to Jehovah Adonai are" (belong) "deliverances" (goings forth) "even as from death."

The prepositions here are all 1' (to); there is the ha (the) emphatic to the first El (God). "From death" does not express it perhaps, the force might be expressed, though not the literal meaning by "even from death" "even as to this which they, as a nation, had been obliged to go through." Deliverance belonged to Jehovah Adonai and He was their El too.

- 21. "But Elohim shall smite" (or break) "the head of his enemies, and the crown of hair" (the scalp) "of him that goeth about" (walketh, qui se promene) "in his wickedness."

- 22. "Adonai spake from Bashan, I will cause to return, I will cause to return from the depths of the sea."

Return to blessing, or from captivity.

- 23. "So that thou mayest plunge thy foot in blood. The tongue of thy dogs (has) its portion from enemies."

Min-ne-hu (in its kind). Clearly I should think "its allotted portion," the kind of thing it had to eat, precisely the force of the sentence. We have the word in this very form in Genesis

- 24. "They have seen thy goings, Elohim. The goings of my El, my King, in the sanctuary."

- 25. "The singers go first, the players on stringed instruments after; between" (or in the midst) "the chorister damsels playing on the tabrets."

The structure of the word "singers" I do not exactly understand.

- 26. "In the congregations bless ye Elohim Adonai, ye descendants of Israel."

- 27. "There (is) little Benjamin their ruler, the princes of Judah their company, the princes of Zebulon, and the princes of Naphtali."

Ri-g' ma-tham (their council) literally "a heap" i.e., "of stones" from ra-gam (to stone).

149  - 28. "Thy Elohim hath ordained thy strength; confirm O Elohim that which thou hast wrought for us."

- 29. "Because of thy house at Jerusalem, to thee shall kings bring presents."

"Because of thy house" - it is used for the temple as being the house or palace of God.

- 30. "Rebuke the beast of the reed, the company of the bulls or strong ones, with the calves of the peoples, submitting himself with pieces of silver - he hath scattered the peoples - they shall desire to approach."

This term "Rebuke the beast of the reed," is well known as strong, untamed and proud enemies, as in Psalm 22. It means strength. The general sense of this verse, taking its connection with the preceding and succeeding, is plain and interesting. It is on the rebuke of Antichrist, Pharaoh the beast of the reed, and the complete subjection or scattering of the peoples, the setting them aside as incorporated before, that the peoples shall come willingly up to worship at Jerusalem; but the construction of the latter part is so abrupt as to be extremely difficult. I at one time thought mith-rap-pes (treader down) might be the Rebuker treading down among the calves or bullocks of the people and the pieces of silver.

Bits-tsar (scatter). In construction also with the other, b' (in), but the only other Hithpael of ra-phas (tread down) is used in submitting oneself. The connection of the two last words with the following verse is extremely strong. Otherwise it would be "trampling on the calves of the people, on the pieces or fragments of silver, he hath scattered the people. Altering the points makes it "he delighted in silver." Commonly "calves of the people" is joined with "bullocks," but the structure is precisely the same as "on pieces of silver" and I think it is transitional.

K'ra-voth (translated "war" in A.V.) may perhaps be used for "war," but with the ha* it is regularly "to approach" as "to offer."

{*Sign of the causative species in verbs.}

- 31. "The Khashamnim" (or princes) "shall come from Egypt; Cush shall speedily bring her power or submit to Elohim" (cause her hands to run).

150  - 32. "Ye kingdoms of the earth, sing ye to Elohim - celebrate Adonai."

- 33. "To him that rideth on the heavens, the heavens of old. Lo, he uttereth his voice, a voice of strength."

Adonai (Jesus) is the same Elohim who rode on the heavens - exercised the former authority (sh'mev kedem, heavens of old) in the wilderness, see Deuteronomy 33 26; i.e., the Person who exercised that authority over the Jews, is the same Person who now, over the same recognised Israel, ruleth in the heavens. And this is Adonai Jesus.

- 34. "Ascribe ye" (give the praise of) "strength to Elohim; over Israel (is) his Majesty" (or excellency) "and his strength is in the clouds" - the glory of manifested power from the heavens.

- 34. Bash-sh'kha-kim (in the clouds). The clouds, the seat of celestial authority (faithfulness and blessing) - the place where the Lord rideth where He exerciseth power, the visible seat of authority. The epourania (heavenlies), compare Deuteronomy 33: 26, and so Psalm 89: 5, so, analogously as to the fact; Daniel 7: 12, 13.

See Deuteronomy 33: 26-29 to which all this refers, or however to that which is there spoken of, now fulfilled over Israel. See the note on bash-sh'kha-kim (in the clouds) before It might be "Ascribe ye strength to Elohim over Israel," i.e.; here it is in that place He assumes and exercises the strength which the nations are to recognise, even as Adonai (Lord). His majesty and strength are in the clouds, that is, though exercised over Israel, He has the celestial glory. The sense is pretty much one. On the whole I rather prefer the former, but not the rejection of the latter.

- 35. "Wonderful" (fearful, or to be adored) "art thou, Elohim in thy sanctuary. The El of Israel, he it is that giveth strength and might to the people. Blessed be Elohim."

It is remarkable how this is the word applied to Israel on their restoration in Isaiah 18. I believe the plural to mean sanctuary as Psalm 73; whence in Greek hagia hagion (holy places) that which was within the veil (so we know Him) to which He was now returned in power on behalf of the children of Israel.

If this be compared with Deuteronomy 33, and the return of God to Israel in strength be seen, nothing can be more bright or plain or beautiful, than this Psalm.

As to the names of God, we find Jah, Jehovah, Eh'yeh. I do not know how far I am justified as to the difference, for they are from the same root. In Jah we have the name in itself - simply, "He who exists." Eh'yeh is the expression of it by Himself. So "I" comes in - there is the conscious will of existence, which, in a divine Being, goes with the existence in itself. In Jehovah, Jah is developed into "Is, was, and is to come" - the Securer of promise, in which we have continued existence, time coming into account - continuity present, past and future.

151 This Psalm has led me to look at these names of God, as God. Jah seems to be the existing One objectively. There is One, and only One who is - Eh'yeh is His own assertion of it - conscious existence in will. Jehovah, He who does so exist, but is in relation with others, and revealed in time. He always is, but "was and is to come" is brought in. There is existence, but not only an eternal "now," but a past, and what is to come. He is in relationship, and in connection with time, and so a Securer of promises. And we read of His mercy enduring "for ever." But then another name comes in, which is related to none of these - Adonai, which carries the thought on the face of it of lordship and rule. It is a relation of another kind, not connected with His Being and Existence, but of office and position, flowing indeed from a necessary and essential title, but which necessitates other existences, and a state of things - an office that may be taken or given. The root of the word is simple - "Adon," is "lord" or "master." Abraham was Sarah's "lord," and Eliezer's "master." But there is more than this when it is used of God - it takes the form of the plural, of majesty so called. How used, we will look into a little.

Adonai Jehovah is a constant expression; in the Authorised Version usually "Lord God," which also represents Jehovah Elohim - only Lord. But Adonai is used where it is Jehovah, as in Isaiah 6: 1; "I saw the Lord" (Adonai) "high and lifted up," etc., and at the end, "Woe is me . . . for I have seen the King, the Lord of hosts" (Jehovah Sabaoth). So the Seraphim in verse 5; yet Adonai suits. Thus Adonai is identified with Jehovah. This is quite clear and simple. But it is of this passage John 12 speaks, that the prophet saw Christ's glory, and spake of Him. It is Adonai, but it is Jehovah.

Then there is another class of passages as in Psalm 2, where the place of Christ with Jehovah is spoken of - The kings of the earth rage against Jehovah, and against His Christ. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, Adonai shall have them in derision." And then He is Son, as born into this world, I and to be set as King in Zion, and the kings and judges of the earth are called upon to "kiss," "do obeisance to" the Son, who is about to speak unto them in His wrath, yea, rule them with a rod of iron. But here it was received, "Ask of me, and I will give thee." The Son in a recipient's and servant's place, yet Ruler over all the earth; compare Psalm 8, where He takes it as Son of man, compare also John 10, at the end.

152 These two are remarkably connected in Psalm 110. There David's Lord, David's Son, is called to sit on Jehovah's right hand. This is plain. The Lord Himself uses it, as the riddle for the Pharisees, i.e., how the two could be true. Yet there it was as to One they owned to be Messiah, David's Son; He was to sit there "till" - as He is now. It will be sent out of Zion, when He shall rule in the midst of His enemies - all that is David's Lord and Son," and "His people willing in the day of his power." Also He would be Melchizedek, a Priest on His throne, and the counsel of peace between Him and Jehovah, in favour of Israel, but then there is much more He is Adonai at the right hand of Jehovah; He who is now such will "strike through kings," and "judge the heathen." It is the same as in Psalm 2, but then as Son of God born into this world. Psalm 2: 4, 5 applies before Psalm 110; He is not Son of man yet in Psalm 2 - that comes in, in universal power, in Psalm 8 there. In Psalm 2: 8, the application of Psalm 110 comes in. The previous part is prospective, or rather, all as it stands in God's mind. Still it is Adonai; the One to whom divine rule belongs at God's right hand.

With divine title and glory, Adonai gives us the divine title and character in rule - Him who is Jehovah, as in Isaiah 6: 1, and John 12. But He was Son of man who was to suffer many things, and to enter into His glory. And He has been "straightway" glorified (John 13) without waiting for His manifested glory coming in the clouds of heaven. And this is fully declared in the New Testament, as in 1 Peter 3: 22, "Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him." So in the first testimony of the Holy Ghost; Acts 2: 33-36. This is added to the testimony of His resurrection (the subjective basis of all - Man in His new estate). The Man who suffered on the Cross, then, Jehovah, I AM, is now Adonai; but the things, Hebrews 2, not yet actually put under Him - it is Psalm 110. It is Psalm 2, only this takes in more the whole scene, and half of Psalm 8.

153 And it is worthy of note here, how this affects the ministry of Paul and Peter. The latter, as remarked of old, takes up the rule of God - His government - while laying clearly the foundation of the great principles of salvation. He, both in his sermon and his epistle, goes on to the exaltation of Christ, and His Lordship, and all being subject to Him; Acts 2 and 1 Peter 3: 22. Not so Paul, Acts 13 - he stops at His resurrection, and the Gentiles have the glad tidings of their salvation. And in Ephesians 1 it is His personal exaltation, and then the counsels of God to bring in the Church associated with Him in His Psalm 8 place. If Hebrews be taken as his, it only puts Him in half Psalm 8, saying that the putting all things under His feet is not yet fulfilled - He is expecting, "at God's right hand till his enemies be made his footstool." Paul's time was "meanwhile," i.e., Christ personally in glory, and the connection of the saints, the Church, with Him then and there, though the mystery hidden. Stephen closed the ministry of forgiving patience with Israel. He saw the "Son of man" standing at the right hand of God, but at his last sigh, so to speak, Christ sat down, "expecting till his enemies be made his footstool." Hebrews was really to get the Jewish converts frankly into the Pauline place. John 13 and 17 are not unconnected with this, only it is more His personal glory; John 13 is the work of the Son of man glorifying God, in virtue of which He is set on high in the glory of God - John 17 is the Son going back into the glory which He had with the Father before the world was.

It is a wonderful mystery. He, who is Jehovah, wields all power there, and this He could not were He not Jehovah. Yet He is Man exalted in consequence of what He has been, and has done as Man, and sits at the right hand of Jehovah, having all power in heaven and on earth, hereafter to be brought into one under Him, but not yet put under Him, but He gathering His joint heirs, sending forth the Holy Ghost, the Revealer of what is the earnest of what is to come.

The whole Psalm is the effect of: "Let God arise!" Jesus is the Lord Adonai (as Jehovah) in the clouds. Compare Psalm 45.

154 Psalm 69

The rich affectingness and object of this Psalm needs no comment - "He was heard in that he feared." Only we may note the character of the things in supplication by the Lord - His deliverance, as we have seen before, made the occasion of confidence to the humble. "The humble shall hear this and be glad," so they become the objects of His solicitude (v. 6, etc.). His identification with the Jews herein is manifest, and stands forth in distinctness also in verse 34.

This Psalm thus stands alone in presenting, personally, the great Sufferer - the key to all the rest.

I do not see how it is possible to avoid seeing the appropriation of the sins of the people by the Remnant, i.e., Christ, which is just righteousness, as they went to John the Baptist.

- 6. Adonai Jehovah Tsebaoth (Lord God of Sabaoth). The use of this is remarkable here. It is present not prospective, as in Psalm 68: 16, 18, and elsewhere; so Psalm 70, but that must be considered apart. The Lord takes the place too of the Remnant, yet stands alone in it, as indeed He did in every respect.

Christ here explains His part in going without the camp, as, in effect, the Sin-offering, bearing all reproach, but really of a wicked world against God the Lord, the God of Israel. We have seen the circumstances of Israel, as obliged to go without, towards men, towards God - here of the great Sufferer, not in sympathy but, in fact, alone; and He explains this in His appeal to God first, then to the Lord as to its effect on the poor, and scorned, low laid Remnant around Him - for it was for the Lord of Israel's sake.

Then He pleads the whole case in His own sorrow before God the Lord. He had done all, even He could do, to win them. What had He not suffered for them? His heart had been broken. What had He received? There were none to pity - then judgment, but He, poor, set up on high, praising. The humble hear thus - they rejoice and are glad; it is the sign of their confidence and deliverance. All will praise Him, for after all (the wicked have been judged) God will save Zion, and build the cities of Judah, and there will be an heritage for those that love His name - a seed of His servants.

155  - 26. Here again, though characteristic, we find the blessed Lord alone, yet others associated with Him.

- 29. The distinction of the poor of the flock, and also Christ's taking this place, is evident.

________

I must say the more I read this Psalm, the more I see it does not treat of atonement. It goes into the time and circumstances in which also atonement was made. It is perfectly monstrous to make the effect of atonement to be adding "iniquity to iniquity," and judgment which excludes them from "the book of the living," that cannot be. But I see two distinct things consequent on the attacks on my statements as to this, making me look more completely into it, for one ought to examine thoroughly all that may touch the Lord, to see nothing dishonours Him. One is the full absolute knowledge, in trial, of good and evil - evil in its power, Himself being the good, and so perfectly tested and proved to be. Experimentally learned because He, being perfectly good, and knowing good and evil in moral capacity, had all the evil in man (as one of whom He had come) which showed itself outwardly against Him, estimated, and felt in pressure on His soul, in its true character of evil, treachery, unrighteousness, sad indifference even in His disciples, the absence of all conscience in His enemies - a dreadful thought, for He was a Man to feel it, the hatred to God in them, not surely felt as a passion, for then it gratifies itself for the moment, but felt as He only could feel it as evil - "One of you shall betray me." Good and evil were brought up to their absolute character in love to God (to His Father), and hatred of God against Himself, "Me and my Father." Then, having gone to the end of this, He died to sin. This was perfection of love and obedience in Him. This, besides bearing our sins and being forsaken of God, though this last was what in an absolute way tested the perfectness of His obedience and love - the cup given Him to drink.

Then comes another, more dispensational, character - the cutting off of Messiah - the setting aside, as to Israel in the flesh, the beloved people of all the promises - the utter failure of man in this refusal of Him bringing them love and blessing, and the people of God, as far as their responsibility stood, losing all, rejecting the counsel of God against themselves - a nation lo chasid (not holy), and the beloved people the very scene of Satan's power, so that this terrible word could be said of them, "This is your hour and the power of darkness." This was dreadful, and His place with man in life with it. All that He had as Man come amongst men, turned by His goodness to bitterness, and so making the bitterness more absolute; see, as to the latter, Psalm 102. These are closely connected, as in Psalms 62 and 63, but they are distinct. The first far the deepest morally; the latter, as regards the promises and favour of God, the more sorrowful. But I believe He suffered all that could be suffered. The latter is connected with government, the former with the eternal character of good and evil. What a suffering! What a work! How perfect a one it was!

156 Now therefore He lives to God, and that only. Always perfect in His offering Himself up to Him, and living really to Him, yet He had to do with sin, and, having dealt with it perfectly, He has done with it completely - "He lives to God." He will judge evil no doubt, but in His life He has no more to do with it. He had constantly to do with it (save what grace did, with nothing else), and was made it before God. Perfect to God in the place of sin, and made it, He has died and done with it, died to it all - that He lives, and in that He lives, it is to God. Between Him and God, as living in every thought, feeling - speaking reverently, all that expresses life, there is only God. To live thus (through Him) we are called. In that He liveth He liveth unto God is all, necessary of course though free with Him, but a wonderful thing, a wonderful thought! And, Oh! to have an end of sin! For Him, by His own perfectness, having had to the end of it to do with it; for us as crucified with Him - what a blessing! But it shows wonderfully what the life of Christ, as a Man, is now - what ours ought to be. He died to sin once - was out, by dying to it, out of the whole scene of His connection with it - a connection with, a relationship to it, which only showed, and there by personal perfectness, His absolute carrying out of good when tried fully with evil; and evil being fully searched out, sounded, and brought to a climax with good on the Cross, was passed out of by experimentally dying to it for ever. Good only remained, and God the fulness of it, and everything for man, only with perfect love therefore to those that were His.

157 Such is the perfectness of Christ; only my words are poor, imperfect expression of what God, in a word or two, reveals. Still, searching, if it be with reverence, is good.

_______

I have been reading this Psalm again, and I cannot doubt that the interpretation I have heretofore given to it is the just one. His death is not spoken of - the deepest troubles are, and men's heartless insults and outrage, but what characterises Psalm 22 is not there, there is no appeal out of these to God, and finding forsaking, which is the essential point of the suffering of that Psalm. It is judgment on those who were hostile to Him. It views the historical fact of His rejection, and the consequence to those guilty of it - judgment of the wicked and unbelieving Jews, and so blessing in Zion. The point of the Psalm is that He was heard, not that He was not. The Remnant are in the deepest distress, and know and confess that it is through their sins. Now Christ did enter into this, and in bearing them in the way of atonement (but that is not the aspect here) He prays it might not be a stumbling block to any. Reproach was on Him for the Lord's sake, and His prayers to Jehovah were in an acceptable time. But the Lord hears the poor, and saves Zion that the Remnant may dwell there.

I do not write now to give the proofs that it is not expiation though it was that too - verses 22-29 prove that - but what the true force of the Psalm is, which seems to me perfectly clear, and falls in with the whole tenor of the Psalms. The conflict in sorrow, is in verses 32, 33. It is the judgment of the haters of Christ, and the deliverance of the Remnant to dwell in Zion with blessing. The Lord heard the poor - Christ was the proof of it to the oppressed Remnant, and, when He was there, it was not their sins (now confessed) were not before God, but Christ is a delivered, praying Man, and His enemies judged. Hence the blessing in Psalm 22 is of a far different and wider kind.

In this Book the Remnant are outside, and it is a question of enemies, Gentiles and the nation. Psalms 42 and 43 are their enemies, and Messiah their deliverer; God arising at the end, but the Remnant finding in a suffering Christ the stay of their souls in the deepest of their sorrows. The delivering power is in Psalm 68, but founded on Psalm 69, which is their comfort till deliverance comes. Historically, Christ's sufferings will be their stay, though in the depths, for He had been there. It is when they look on Him, whom they had pierced, that they recognise atoning grace.

158 Psalm 70

This Psalm follows Psalm 69 in this, that He makes the difference (consequence of that Psalm) between the wicked of Psalm 69 and those who sought Jehovah - these are to rejoice though He, as regards the earth, rested in sorrow on to the end. The answer is in heaven, or at the end. Then in Psalm 71 as regards Israel, if He remained poor and needy, Israel, come into its old age and sorrow, is to be spared and exalted, and in verses 19, 20, there is exaltation and blessing. Yet even the language of the Psalm shows that Christ fully entered into it in Spirit. But though there is quite reason not to exclude the writer of the Psalm, yet I feel more strongly than ever, in reading this Psalm, how Christ entered into the sorrows of Israel as manifested by His speaking in the Psalms.

Though the object of this Psalm is the same, yet its character is different; there is more confidence, I say not more faith - more appealing to God on the certitude of His favour; its word also is (for it is brought more to a crisis) "Make no long tarrying." Also the humiliation of Christ, the way of His joy, is affectingly brought forward, "Let others," saith He, "rejoice"; as for me, I am content, to be humbled, to do Thy will for Thy sake; I am poor and needy, but content to be in humiliation, but my joy is in this, making others to enjoy.

It seems to present Christ and the poor as the object of deliverance, not of suffering - a result, in fact, of His faithfulness in the other; He poor, the occasion to secure by intercession the gladness of those that trust in deliverance, but, in His poverty, He pleads that they, at least, may be glad. It is in this spirit Paul says, as to the Church, "So death worketh in us, but life in you"; only there in combat, here in intercession.

Psalm 71

This Psalm, though I believe the literal David to be the subject of it, applies, it appears to me, to the anomalous position (wherein they see Him separated from His own proper position) of the Jews on the setting up of Antichrist, but Christ as David driven out by Absalom. This type will fully explain the Psalm, looking to the Jews, as similarly placed, in the latter day, but finding a new place in resurrection, as in Daniel 12: 2; though that rather applies to another portion of the Remnant, yet scattered, and this to a body of them in, but now driven out of, the land, though not permanently - the last time of Jacob's trouble, closing the typical David's life, for then He takes the Solomon power or estate. Verse 7 was personal feeling, therefore of David properly - verse 8 is prayer, result of exercise, therefore not as of Him, though in spirit identified with them - verse 9, is also association with the same circumstances, though, being the personal sufferings, we have the whole cry from the beginning of the reconciliation to the end - verse 10 was when He was separated from His people, they acted in the same spirit at the close - verse 12, is the position and feeling of faith of the Remnant, as far as they are in the position, in which David was on the setting up of Absalom, on the setting up of Antichrist in Jerusalem.

159 This Psalm is the positive application of what we find in Psalm 70, to the state of the Jews, as apparently utterly cast off again in the close (compare Isaiah 46: 3, 4) the very close of their eventful history - verse 20 is the confidence. But there is the faith, of God's elect, in the Lord now after the sufferings of Christ explained, clearly recognised in the outset. It was a Jewish faith of old. It was however to be as in a resurrection, not in what was old - Solomon, not David, was to build the house - still not forsaken till God's strength and salvation was shown in them to that generation and those that should come. They should not bear fruit so, i.e., according to that generation, but they should introduce a better hope as a risen people. It is as Absalom and Adonijah, these Psalms.

Note, the Jewish people shall be dealt with, in the close, upon their old principles, but they shall bear fruit upon new, under a new alliance. Therefore we have "old age" as in the trial, "bringing up again from the depths of the earth" as in the confidence. Psalms 42 and 43 probably are when, through Absalom, driven across Jordan - so Christ with the sufferers driven out. But His connection in Spirit with the Remnant while in trouble, and connected with or oppressed by, under the sufferings of and estrangement from and by, because they were in power, from Zion, and the temple and worship itself, is very different from His appearance in Person, to deliver and give joy to the separated Remnant whom sorrow and evil around them have separated and driven out. So even compare Isaiah 65, and so the words of Christ to His disciples even as to the world. For, as we have seen here, they were the world. Aye! if called "gods" even, they would die like men - their princes were the princes of this world. This, John's Gospel clearly shows - "Ye are of this world, I am not of this world" - "Ye are from beneath, I am from above," and, at length, "Ye are of your father the Devil, and the works of your father ye will do." He was of God - of the Father.

160 Psalm 72

The manifestation of Christ as Solomon in this Psalm is too plain to need comment. "Thy people" and "Thy poor" are distinctly mentioned, but all the earth is blessed, and under His blessing and reign. It includes, nevertheless, deliverance, quod nota.

Psalm 73

It seems clear, from the third Book of the Psalms, or Israelitish chapter of them, that the ten tribes, at least the Remnant of them, are in the land when the last events are occurring. This Ezekiel 20: 43 would, as to their repentance, confirm. But I do not see that they have more in the land than the last confederacy and Gog - Psalm 83 depicting it, and its judgment, according to Ezekiel 39: 23 to the end. In Psalm 87 we have Zion owned; they had seen its devastation, Psalm 79. Psalms 88 and 89 are the moral side - law and grace. In Psalm 84 they are going up to Jerusalem again, and in Psalm 85 restoration takes place.

This makes the Book very interesting - all the various exercises of the people are developed in it. They are back, but Gog not destroyed, and Jerusalem yet trodden down. It is with the Assyrian, Israel, the ten tribes had to do. It is "after the glory" (Psalm 73: 24, see Zechariah 2: 8) they will be received. God's judgment to cut off had dealt with them in the wilderness. But Gog is not destroyed till the glory appears, which destroys the beast and Antichrist; so that the desolation of Jerusalem was still there.

161 In the fourth Book, the whole nation is taken up (Psalm go) as of old belonging to God. In Psalm 91 Messiah owns the God of the Jews as "Most High"; Psalm 92 is the judgment of the wicked, and the abiding blessing of the righteous; Psalm 93 is the reign, and coming in of the First-begotten. Psalm 101, Messiah takes the government; Psalm 102, His rejection, and divine perpetuity; and then the earth, and Israel had mercy and restoration through trial. Psalm 107 begins the last supplementary Book.

In the third Book, it is properly Israel and promises to Israel, Kol Israel (all Israel) shall be saved. Hence the prayers of the son of Jesse were ended, in Psalm 72, in the glory of Solomon, i.e., the millennial Christ. These Psalms, i.e., of Book 3, are, save the three last, not of David, and there is all the difference of One who feels Himself the Centre of the people, identifies Himself with them, bears their interests, their sorrows in His own Person. There are, in many respects, the same interests, but viewed as those of the people, not "my sins," "my foolishness" (surely He hath borne "our"). It is the general deliverance of Israel, and sung with holy interest by One interested therein, who is to have the deliverance, but does not take all into His own Person. He rehearses the ways of God, the acts of the enemy, and that with details of history, as Psalms 78 and 79; we have the conduct of Ephraim, and the subsequent election of Judah and Zion and David, and the desire that God would be with them as in the cloud in the wilderness. They go up to Jerusalem, and the captivity of Jacob is brought back. Faithfulness and mercy are the foundations of their hopes, as Psalms 85 and 89, only, as we have said, in Psalms 86-88, in the first we have His own Person as the Centre of Israel's hopes presented intercessionally before the Lord - in Psalm 87, Zion is set up, and in recounting the glories of cities and empires, she is celebrated in this, that in writing up the divine register, this Man is counted to be born there - in Psalm 88, we have the Lord, I believe, suffering the judgment of Israel as, under the terms of Jehovah, condemned under the guilt of death. The wrath of God was upon Him, and death, as such, upon His soul; see Psalm 86: 13. It is another point of view of the death of the blessed Lord looked at as associated with Israel; hence also it is in the mouth probably of Heman, not of David, as expressive still of the life of faith, whatever His sorrow, though I do not absolutely rest in the titles.

162 From Psalms 73 to 89 we have Israel viewed as a nation, not the Jews; and, moreover, the circumstances in Zion, not the Remnant driven out. Still Antichrist seems to be in Jerusalem. It is the Spirit of Christ judging and pleading then for all through the history, not as the Remnant fled in the evil day. Psalm 73 explains the whole experience of the Remnant in this respect - "God is good to Israel, but as for me, my feet were almost gone" - but "good to such as are of a clean heart," He is just in His goodness, i.e., consistent with His character.

- 10. This verse discovers this trying circumstance - that, in consequence of the unhumbled boastings of the enemies of God, the foolish and wicked full of prosperity, as yet untouched, God's people (so Israel is here viewed in mass) join the ungodly, their heart not being for God, saying, "How doth God know?" - comparing the consequence of their being as they supposed, and formally, God's people, to wit, chastisement and the untouched prosperity of those who did not care for God "They say" reaches, I apprehend, to the end of verse 14, but, where the Spirit of God was, there was that which stopped saying thus. But there was no understanding. It perplexed the spirit. The sanctuary of God alone gave the secret - they are "in slippery places" till Jehovah awakes, then there is an end of them; yet, verses 21-23, though so foolish, this poor Remnant, who in darkness and trial wait for the revelation of the sanctuary, was kept and held up by God - very foolish, but with God in spirit, and preserved.

- 24. Why this is translated "Afterward receive me to glory," I know not. It is, "During this time of trial and desolation, thou wilt guide me; after glory thou wilt receive me." It is the same as in Zechariah 2: 8. If akhar kavod (after the glory) may mean "according to," that may be, but simply it is, "After the glory of God has been manifested, thou wilt receive me."

- 25-28. This is the great result of the true people.

Psalm 74

This Psalm views the enemy prevailing, externally, in violence, breaking down the sanctuary and defiling it to the ground.

163  - 3. It is oyev (the enemy) who did this, but the zor'rim (enemies) are in the midst of the congregations - "they set up their signs for signs."

- 9. God's people had no signs.

- 10. Both characters of the enemy are introduced; in verses 18-20, the Lord, the covenant, and the beloved people are introduced.

- 12. The ancient deliverances of Israel having been mentioned, the enemy that reproaches Jehovah's name is oyev.

The character of Asaph's Psalms, exceedingly confirmed to me with that of the whole Book, has been noticed. It appears to me that this Psalm represents the position of the Remnant's understanding, upon the evil doings of the enemy (Antichrist), yet in the perception of the rising up of the tumult of all of them; but the reference of the believer is to God in it. It would appear the temple would be destroyed, quod nota. Though one as to hostility to the Jew, we may remark distinction in verses 3 and 4, "enemy"; also the last two verses seem to maintain the distinction; verses 18 and 22 again identify - the same thing as is also in verse 3. In that alone (v. 18) also is Jehovah brought in in respect of the reproach upon and blasphemy of His name. A "putting in remembrance is the tenor of this Psalm - a calling in God, in the spirit of intercession on the part of the Spirit representing the Jewish Remnant before God. The whole is exceedingly instructive in this light, as well as to the prophetic import.

The Psalms

, part 5.

J. N. Darby.

<43002E>

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

Psalm 75

This Psalm is the assumption by Christ manifestly as Adon of the congregation, judging uprightnesses - Blessed time! The whole character of that assumption, in the suppression of evil, is clear. The only question is as to who "the fools" are specifically. It is again the recognition of God, and the joyful consciousness, before the full assumption, or results at least of power, of His Name being near.

- 1. This is the voice of the Spirit in the Remnant knowing the judgment.

- 2 and 3, are the answer of Christ as to the method.

- 4. This verse is as though He had warned, in Spirit, the high ones of the truth, for as He had not failed to declare His righteousness and truth in the great congregation, so He had not failed to warn the wicked. It is the testimony of the Spirit in Christ to them.

164  - 8. This is rather declaration than testimony.

- 9. This is His praises as the Head of the whole Jewish people, as the God of whom all their deliverances have been wrought.

- 10 is the conclusion of the whole matter.

We have the judgments announced, and God's name near - then Messiah. The Messiah of the God of Jacob announces Himself, declares He had warned the wicked, and thus would He conduct Himself when He received the congregation.

Psalm 76

This Psalm needs little comment, save only that it is consequent upon the whole scene of God's deliverance. He is known in Judah, and His Name great in Israel (compare Zechariah 10: 6) bringing in Salem and Zion as the place of His manifestation in contrast with all the strong places of the earth. It is a definite prophetic statement of the locality and extent of God's blessings in celebration.

It is not merely that Israel is delivered, but that God is known - not merely Jehovah faithful, that comes in occasionally in this class of Psalms, but God known in contrast with all else. He indeed is manifested as the God of Jacob; but this is their great glory, that God is manifested as the God of Jacob Judah and Israel are both mentioned. Salem and Zion resume their place. Blessed day! We, yet more blessed, are let into His counsels in Christ, but the nationalism of a Jew is divine. There it is He has met and broken man; the mountains of prey are nothing - as a dream passed. When God arises, Zion takes her place in beauty, owned of Him; and the men of might come to simply nothing, and all their parade passes as impotent, at the rebuke of the God of Jacob. Glorious and blessed word for that people!

- 7. This is the comment of Israel on all this. This came from heaven (v. 8). How magnificent and true the result! "The earth trembled and was still, when God arose to judgment? and to help"; for in all His name and glory, He forgets not, in infinite and condescending grace, the poor, the meek of the earth - that is His name, His character, "The God that comforteth them that are cast down."

165  - 10. "Shall praise thee." What it does, is to praise Thee, todekha.

- 11, 12. This is the summons thereon. I do not know that yiv'tzor (he shall cut off) is more than absolute, "He cutteth off."

It is a noble display of what happens in Zion, and God's manifestation of Himself in it.

Psalm 77

This is the state of complaint in which the Remnant finds itself - God seemed to have utterly forgotten to be gracious. Still this was a God known; there was grace and life in the cry. "This is my infirmity," and the things which God had done, which gave Him this character, are referred to and come to mind. These two results are produced - "Thy way is in the sanctuary," "Thy way is in the sea." Still, in all their troubles He led His people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron; note, the whole people. Confidence is restored and well grounded. The reference is to all Israel of old.

The religious sentiment of this Psalm is too plain for more remark - this is learnt by the Spirit only. We may notice the distinction between "crying with the voice," and "communing with one's own heart." The "crying with the voice" is the point of this Psalm; this brings in God instead of the workings of the anxieties of the measure of unbelief (in present circumstances) surrounded, I will add, not as the heart with unbelief of present circumstances, but with the deliverances which He hath wrought of old, strengthening present faith in Him who will bring about any circumstances. His way is always in the sanctuary, and, when our heart gets there, we understand it. When we bring in God by this cry, we find that it was not God but our own heart we were judging from - a foolish mistake - one that must be in unbelief. Hence the importance of a real, actual cry to God (in faith), or we are seeking the living among the dead; see Hosea 7: 14. The cry of the Spirit in the Remnant of the Jews in their deep waters of trouble is too manifest for enlargement. The answer, on the principle we have mentioned, is obvious.

166 Psalm 78

This Psalm exhibits the failure of all testimonial agency in deliverances, and blessings on the people as such, and the transfer into, or rather accomplishment of blessing in the raising up of David, the Prince in whom blessing and security was secured. Further, I notice the teaching of children in it, as the order of blessing; compare Genesis 18: 19 and Psalm 22, at the end; Deuteronomy 4: 9, 10; chap. 6: 7 and chap. 11: 19. It is a specific character of the dispensation, and of ordered blessing - attention can well see many instances of it in the history of Israel, closing, in Solomon, in Proverbs. There is great reckoning upon God in it, nor is it passed by in Christianity, see Ephesians 6.

There are two things in the Psalm - deliverance and ease, and blessings in the wilderness. The arm of the Lord - provocations here, and limiting the Holy One of Israel when He was their (only) portion, foolishness - judgments on their oppressors, enemies, and giving them their inheritance - their turning to false gods, when they were at ease, in spite of this distinctive salvation; compare all the Prophets, and Isaiah 43: 12. Hence judgment on the people (so God known) but David raised up in grace, and the vindication of His people, see Deuteronomy 32: 36.

It is a most comprehensive Psalm; maschil (causing to understand) as to the hopes, and the whole order of the hopes of Israel - their failure - the order of them - practical faithfulness - and the security (raising up) of David; compare Isaiah 55: 3 and Acts 13, and so Peter, also Acts 2. Also this is a specific portion of prophecy, compare its quotation in Matthew 13, and notes on that.

The language of this Psalm is remarkable. It begins with the right of Jehovah, "Give ear, O my people." But it is in the love of the same interests "which we have heard and known, which our fathers have told us." Who makes this mighty link? The Spirit of Christ who is Jehovah, speaking in the Remnant who recognise His truth in the midst of the people, the nation. Accordingly their history is gone through, but not merely to characterise them, but to characterise Him - to afford that, in grace, which was their only security, for David was a king given in grace. Therefore there is no mention of Saul, but of perfect failure under all circumstances, and the favour of the Lord interposing in strength. The Lord awakes by His own gracious view of the desolation of His people - His pity awoke - an encouragement of grace for the latter days, in their trouble.

167 "Thou leddest thy people" - there was the great principle of favour, but there was much more that God had to reveal for their thoughts in detail. Under this leading, in the midst of all favours, they had walked in rebellion, disbelief and lust, i.e., in the wilderness with God, when He was teaching them Himself. Then, as to all the judgments God had exercised in Egypt, and on the Canaanites in their favour - forgetfulness, and giving themselves up to do the like. Then God gives them up as He had chastened them for their lust in the wilderness - "He forsook Shiloh"; to this, Jeremiah refers. Also, "He gave his people over"; these latter day trials were not the first time - it was an old history. But their misery, as ever (so in Egypt) awoke the Lord and He smote their enemies, and raised up the Beloved for their deliverer. This was the lesson, a pregnant lesson for them.

These parables and proverbs of old prove that it was not merely for David's time, that He who taught Asaph, taught this Psalm. Their business, as in Psalm 22, was to teach their children.

There are some other points in this history. First, the rejection of Ephraim, when strength and prosperity was among His own people, and therefore their early sin is mentioned, for, though God is supreme, there is always consistency of character, if supremacy in grace, though He had endured with great longsuffering. Further, the supreme choice of Zion, and Judah which He loved - the exaltation of His house. Shiloh was, I believe, in Ephraim. The rejection of Ephraim, and choice of Judah, is strongly presented in the Psalm. The Psalm is a parable really.

- 49. "The fierceness of his anger." Za-am is indignation, punitive anger against evil; see Habakkuk 3: 12. Aph, anger, wrath. Ke-txeph, the breaking forth of wrath; from cutting, breaking. Kharah (he kindled) heat of anger. Kharon, wrath, in Lamentations 1: 12; in chapter 2: 6, we have za-am aph (b'za-am-ap-po, in the punitive anger of His wrath). Aph (anger) is very common, and so is kharah (kindled). In Psalm 102: 11, we have ke-tzeph, wrath. In Lamentations 2: 2, ev'rah, arrogance or wrath, seemingly one who passes beyond the bounds of self-restraint. In Habakkuk 3: 8, also it is kharah (kindled) and aph (wrath). In Lamentations 2: 4, khemah, warmth, heat of anger; in Daniel 11: 44, it is khema, fury.

168  We have za-am (punitive anger) in Psalms 38: 4; 69: 24; 78: 49; 102: 11; Isaiah 10: 5, 25; chap. 13: 5; chap. 26: 20; chap. 30: 27; this last is judgment on the Gentiles. Jeremiah 10: 10; chap. 15: 17; chap. 50: 25 (Gentiles). Ezekiel 21: 36; chap. 22: 24, 31; he uses aph (anger), and ev'rah (wrath) - noise with it. Aph is common - Daniel 8: 19 (Israel), chap. 11: 36 (Israel); Hosea 7: 16 (unusual of men, princes); Nahum 1: 6; Habakkuk 3: 12; Zephaniah 3: 8; here also with kha-ron appi (my fierce anger). Its sense is clear. Hosea 7: 16 is the only exception.

There is also another word za-aph (displeasure), but not so strong as za-am (punitive anger). Ra-gaz (he moved with a violent commotion) is more the excitement of anger - rage - he shook with rage. Ka-as (vexation) is ill humours.

Psalm 79

This is the siege of Jerusalem in the latter day, after their return. It is the heathen, not naval (foolish). It is destruction consequent upon its siege, not by Antichrist, as we have noted (chi, when) but the heathen, I believe from Isaiah 22. Persia also, because then the iniquity of that kingdom of the Image, which never persecuted the Jews, shall be complete. It is the utter desolation of the Jews in the midst of the last spoiling of the rivers - Jerusalem is "laid on heaps," but Jacob also is devoured.

We have still to remark that the question is between God, the exaltation of His character and truth, and man, and his ways. Still here the name of "Lord" is now early introduced. The subject of this Psalm is manifestly the attack of what is without - heathen enemies and the nation, not Antichrist the pretended friend. They have attacked and taken Jerusalem, killed the inhabitants, whom the faith of the Remnant views as God's people, praying the wrath to fall on the heathen, for God is viewed in this by faith.

- 8. This verse throws itself on mercy - as ever in faith.

- 9, 10. "For thy name's sake. Wherefore should they say, Where is their God? Let him be known." Thus they connect themselves with God's honour. Then honour from the nation for ever to the Lord. Here it is the thoughts of the nation generally; compare the note on Hosea.

169 It is not the enemy, but the heathen, for they are, in thought, now again Israel - this Remnant, and they love the nation, looking to it as the Lord's nation, and invoking His name.

Psalm 80

The address of this Psalm conducts us to further enquiries. The Shepherd of Israel between the Cherubim according to His placement in the wilderness, the desert - yet a Vine planted and laid waste - yet for the whole nation. This last feature we have observed throughout this Book. It is before the manifestation of the power of the Son of man, at least in His full exercise of it, for it is recognised by the Spirit - the Man of His right hand.

As we find in Amos and Hosea we find here, Israel is connected with the whole nation. This Psalm seems to me the Remnant of Israel identifying itself with the nation, its earliest and better hopes, and with the ark of the covenant, from which, as their first great sin, i.e., as distinguishing them from Judah, they had departed. "Dwellest between the Cherubim" is not the "calves of Bethel and Dan" - they have repented. "Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh" was the order of Israel in the desert next the ark at the west. "Thou hast brought up a vine out of Egypt"; Ephraim no longer mars Judah, nor does Judah hurt Ephraim. The divine interests of the nation are the question now, like a humbled people, honest with their God. Also there is the recognition of the offspring of David, the Son of man. On the whole, this seems to me to be the Remnant of Israel, who have returned, considering, with thorough national, i.e., divine interest by the Spirit, the state of the whole people. This gives an additional interest to these times, and to this Book, as thus taking in all their sympathies, and makes this a very interesting Psalm. How gracious is our God!

This Psalm has no specific relation to any portion of Israel, save as Joseph more particularly implied and involved the land. The Jews being first restored into the trials and exercises of the latter day, the restoration of the others more particularly involved the full coming in of the nations. I believe this Psalm to have its application after the coming back of Ephraim, but before the acceptance of all in blessing. It acknowledges, as looking at them also, God - the God and Shepherd of all, and, while it says Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh, it places God in the midst of the whole nation, as He was when in the ark to which, in the encampment of the tribes, these tribes were next. It recognises the planting of the whole vine, and refers to the Son of man, as to His hand being upon whom all their strength would be set up. It wonderfully sanctions and clears up the whole view we have recently taken of the order of Israel's restoration. The Lord God of Hosts is He that is looked to. It is, on the whole, the Psalm of the Spirit in the Remnant (not as amongst the Jews in Jerusalem as formerly) but after the restoration outwardly of Ephraim also, when all the hearts of the just were upon them, looking to and praying for His strength to be upon David. It is a most beautiful, and simply instructive Psalm as to all these things. The allusion to the nearness of those tribes to the ark is most beautiful. The whole of these Psalms from Psalm 78 open out the whole of this subject very sweetly, and leading us in much submission of truth.

170 Psalm 81

We have still Joseph before us in these Psalms, as connected with a full restoration of the people. The certainty of the deliverance is rested on this, that when they heard a strange language, it was ordained, they heard a strange language now, they were spoken to in it; see Isaiah and Habakkuk. But there might be equal deliverance now; past deliverances are always with God the warrant of present hopes, because He is the same God, and always acts with the same mind. Our faith is to recall them, and then we go in this our might, to wit, that God is with us. We learn also the force of the "new moon." The sun was ever the same, but the moon emerged again into her light - the same moon, for a moment eclipsed and brought out anew, and yet the same moon, and then the trumpets of joy, the trumpets of gathering, for it was not an alarm, but "blowing alarms" had gone before; see Joel. Then we have the reason why all this had been otherwise. "I am the same Lord which brought thee out: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." But the position you have been in is that you would not hearken "Oh! that they had," says God - as the Lord, "how often would I have gathered thee"! Compare Isaiah 43 and Leviticus 26: 40-42.

171 We have, then, again Israel, Jacob and Joseph - the true new moon of the people. Long had they been eclipsed, long hidden by the brighter rays of the intervening sun; but now they began to receive, afresh, light from the Lord. According to this, there was joy. Again also the reference is to what passed, with the whole nation, in the sortie from Egypt - he was now brought from a harder language, a bitterer and longer captivity, and God reveals Himself as the God that did it; God acted then in grace.

This reference is remarkable; from the Red Sea to Sinai all was pure grace, even to murmurers - after Sinai, chastisement and judgment for the same things. So Israel could learn it here. The reference is to grace - God answers to this proposition of joy, "you know how I delivered you then, and proposed as an abiding ground of affiance to me in blessing, to have no strange god." Full of blessing, they had but to open their mouths to the God that had already done such things, and brought them out of Egypt, "but you would not have me, you would not hearken unto me - had you done so, all would have been blessing, continually and abidingly - that is the real secret of your condition." What could Israel answer? Nothing! Their mouth is closed in silence, in such instruction of grace putting them in their right place. God had blessed, proposed to them to continue in blessing, and nothing else, and now showed that He had always desired to bless. What a ground for return! But in what humiliation, infinite humiliation! Silence best became the hearer of this in the Spirit. This was the noble answer of the Lord, the gracious - infinitely gracious - and righteous answer, in the midst of the new joy which yet returned to the old. "I never," says God, "departed from the gracious principle of it. You, O my people - it was my sorrow - departed from me, and consequently from it." A sanctifying but all consoling answer! God had never changed from this joy to which their heart returned. So with the Christian. It is Joseph specially still here.

- 5. Note the expression "I heard a language that I understood not." It is not the Lord interrupting the ensured joy, to put His interpretation on all that had happened. It was not want of love that hindered the blessing of Israel. Is not "I," the Lord placing Himself as coming down into Egypt out of all that was natural to Himself and His glory, and placing Himself there in the midst of what was strange to Him, to deliver them? "I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people, and I am come down to deliver them"; He speaks as identifying Himself with His people, for Egypt's language was strange to God. The language of Canaan - His Canaan - was the one He was familiar with, and owned. It would rest on the word "He went out through the land of Egypt" - thereon He says "I heard," etc.

172 Psalm 82

This Psalm is God assuming judgment but not exercising it - calling strength to be strength in justice. The discovery of universal iniquity gives occasion to the cry, "Arise, O God" - not only the discovery, but their not knowing nor understanding that there is a "God that judgeth." It is not testimony of grace, nor of Christ standing in the midst of the Churches, but Elohim standing in the congregation of power or strength, judging accordingly - speaking to them in Spirit, as to their conduct according to His mind and, bounden righteousness in it as His representatives. But they know not neither understand, "All the foundations of the earth are out of course"; the Jew was wrong - the Gentile powers, oppression - none believed, none recognised God - they were owned as gods, as bearing His image and expressing the mind of the Most High in title and office - but they should die like men. The sorrow was, no Jewish ruler was any better, and God would take judgment into His own hands, for in this also, as in all else, the Son must be the representative, the full representative to wit, in power, of Elohim. Thus we find also judges called "Elohim" continually, sitting on the seat or throne of judgment. It is a Psalm very instructive as to the ordinance of power, and God's part or judgment of it.

The circumstances we have viewed have put the Jewish rulers on the same ground as the others, "which," says the Apostle, "none of the princes of this world knew, for had they known they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." All being thus corrupted and gone astray - entrusted government, which is the power of God, being entirely abused - God stands up to judge and take in His own hands the matter so long abused. Certainly it is true of the rest in whose hands Israel have thrown themselves, but we know that "Whatsoever the Law saith, it saith to them that are under the Law." In fact the judges in Israel were habitually called Elohim. The word of God (logos tou theou) came to them - they had the responsibility accordingly - but all was out of course. The transfer of power to the Gentiles in Nebuchadnezzar, no more than to Saul or David, did not alter this; the responsibility might be more abstract, i.e., depend more upon what was known by others than by them, but the thing was the same. In fact by Daniel, the Lord communicated to Nebuchadnezzar, who was representative of this transfer of power, that it was so given to him, so that the Gentiles entered on the trust with knowledge - the Word of God came to them. More or less, this has been actually the case; if otherwise, not without responsibility. But the great truth is so (that they have had the character of beasts, specially, is true, and their sin) those who were not of the four beasts, were not different in character. Still it speaks specially to those who "received the Law by the disposition of Angels, and have not kept it." God had given them the character of authority, and His Name, and He could not leave it in their hands any longer. They must descend from the character of Elohim to Adam. God, Elohim, having stamped this name of Adam (all that was real) on all that had borne His Name, and, arising in His own Name, judges all nations; compare Daniel. There is yet something in this Psalm I do not see. The general object and truth is very plain. The occasion is the announcement of this in the midst of the troubles which have come on all the nations. It is an important Psalm, and changes the whole face of things.

173 Psalm 83

- 3. As to "hidden ones," see Psalm 31: 20, 23.

The Psalm I take to be the acting of the enemies who are within the bounds of the territories of the Jews, after the destruction of their public enemies, after the cutting off too of the ungodly Jews and Israelites, after God had judges among the gods. All these Psalms, from Psalm 73 to the end of Psalm 85, are progressive history or celebration of circumstances subsequent to the return of the Jews to their own land, and through the actings of the great drama or scene of Israel in the latter day, till, through amiableness of God's tabernacles frequented with desire, truth springs out of the earth. This Psalm is after the destruction of all the Beast-powers, and the question of the people in the Land with those who, still enemies to God, inhabit its borders, who will not rest till they are cut off. This also must be accomplished.

174 This Psalm recognises the national rising of a confederacy against Israel looking to God again in the Land. We have the list already of the confederacy. The Spirit in the Remnant in faith says "Thine enemies"; "they are confederate against thee." It is all national. It is Jacob, Israel (not Messiah) and Jehovah. The judgment will be the occasion of the manifestation of Jehovah - the God of Israel being Elion (the Most High) over all the earth. The Assyrian is found with the people in the limits of Israel. "Possessor of heaven" does not come in here - it is the earthly part of it. Israel is just being established to be a nation - they come to cut them off from it. It is the general character - it presents these nations in their aspect with Israel in the latter day. The cry is to God, as usual (v. 16) by intervening for Israel. He is sought in this character, and this Name becomes exalted.

It seems to me that, at least on the result, Antichrist is out of the way. These nations will act thus, confederate against Israel. Whether they begin before Antichrist is out of the way, is not the question here; it is an earthly national question, whence the other is left out of sight for the moment - only the result is knowledge of the relationship with Israel over the earth.

We have, I apprehend, in Psalm 55, the overwhelming sense of the position when Antichrist has broken his covenant, and has turned against the Jews, particularly the saints but rejecting everything Jewish, and wickedness is rampant in the city, but it is also especially the place of Christ among the Jews, and Judas. And in the scene of the latter days, though the occasion be this critical moment of the change in the conduct of Antichrist, that which is specially in view is the state of the associate Jews. Psalms 56 and 57 are the expression of the state and confidence of him who is subjected to this dreadful time. I add, His word and power above all in faithfulness are celebrated. There is provision for the Remnant of the woman's seed, etc., as well as those that are fled and at the ends of the earth (land). Christ however has passed here in His sojourn upon earth; see Psalm 56: 5, 6.

175 Psalm 84

This Psalm opens out a new and special source of delight, but which unfolds itself in many other passages. When God put man in Paradise, it was not God's dwelling but man's - God visited him there - though man was already unfit for His presence; but, at best, it was man's dwelling though prepared of God for him. But now God calls us to dwell in His house, His tabernacle. This is altogether a new thing and of sovereign grace - our dwelling with Him and in His house (compare John 14 - we learn this by His dwelling in us and so our dwelling in Him) for thus we know the joy of what belongs to the place where God has made His house, and thus become the home of the soul where He dwells. The passages above, Ephesians 2, at the end - Revelation 21 - 1 John 4, and last verse of chapter 3, all open this out.

In this beautiful Psalm, beautiful in its principles for all saints, we find the heart and thoughts of the saints in Israel find a rest again in the courts and dwelling-place of the Lord of Hosts. The relation resumes its place. "The Lord God of Hosts," "The God of Jacob," He is enthroned again in Zion, and in the hearts of all the people. Zion is the centre of the hopes and pleasures of the people, happy in God their Lord.

- 9. We have here the centre on which the desired rays of His glory shine. "Blessed the man who dwells!" "Blessed the man in whose heart are the ways!"

This Psalm I believe to be the representation of the blessedness of those who are gathering in, one by one, after the close of and clearing of the Jewish land, and those, it appears to me, whether the Remnant in the Land, or rather His elect gathered from the four winds, who have had their strength in Jehovah. It is their return to the joy of their tabernacle, or God's, however now the gathering-point and resort of the people though it be one by one. The last verse has its aspect to Christ, who was the only Faithful One, when the real day of crisis and moral trouble came; all the rest was the fruit of that. The Psalm is full of lovely beauty. I only give its actual basis. It only shows, and there only shows, how every moral blessedness or principle shall be drawn out in the exigencies and orderings of that latter day of restoration.

In this Psalm we have the rest of joy, and strength for the way; in Psalm 63 we have joy in God Himself in contrast with the desert, and hence blessing while we live.

176 It is well then to compare these two Psalms, as showing, the former the joy of the common celebration of joyful service and praise in God's house - the tabernacles of God - and hence the love to the ways that lead there, let them, as they will, be tears and the Cross, and the deeper sense that, come what will, though sensible of this estrangement from the public celebration of His praise (see Psalm 42, which gives its tone to Psalm 84) God Himself was sufficient for the soul that sought Him, thirsted for Him in the dry and thirsty land where there was not the smallest refreshment - nothing that life could find its object in and refresh itself by; and hence because His loving-kindness was better than life, it could always praise - was satisfied as with marrow and fatness while it lived - though there was nothing for life, could praise still. Nothing separated it from God's love - the thirsty land only threw it more completely on its proper portion.

I cannot enter into God's dealings here to produce this; but what an amazingly blessed and admirable place it sets the soul in! Where God and nothing else makes its happiness - suffices, fills it, and with His own proper purity - Himself in what He is, and nought human to sustain mere nature, and distract the soul from Him. It is divine joy, and independent of all mere creature (as Romans 8). This enables one to enjoy rightly gifts and blessings, and carries one calmly through sorrows too, for nothing separates from His love. It is not a question of journeying to His tabernacles here, or the way there; only in the thirsty land, the wilderness, God has been and is a help, and one rests under the shadow of His wings there where one is. It is evident how Psalm 42 puts the soul, thus, tried, there; and God knows how to do it for us.

Psalm 85

This seems to be a supplication for the positive blessings which result from God's pardon being theirs, and His favour to the Land and people declared, i.e., the owning this and acknowledging their blessing to be under it, and therefore looking for it. Conversion to blessing is consequent upon pardon and forgiveness - so always, not the contrary. The two first verses state the basis of the supplication - wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. The last verses of the Psalm are remarkable. "Mercy and truth are met together" - not so now; the truth of God was accounted nought by them - in Jesus, the minister of the circumcision, therefore shown in justice as against them. Now they come in on sole mercy, forgiveness (eleethosi) and therein the truth of all the promises is fulfilled withal. They are "met together" - righteousness, the consistency of God with His own character, or the truth of that character, finds its development in peace with His people. Moreover "Truth springs out of the earth" not only in the conduct of His saints, but the power and witness of it in facts, so that "He that blesseth himself in the earth," etc. (Isaiah 45: 16) and righteousness looks with unclouded aspect from heaven - nought to hinder the flow of the consistency of God's character - what now found its unhindered vent upon earth. His righteousness could do so - it is exercised in Christ's reign - and the Lord consequently, as even unhindered, flows forth in blessing - gives that which is good, "every good and perfect gift." The Land yields her increase, and righteousness goes before and leads the path of Christ, who places and sets them in the way of His steps, guides them, not in searchings of the Spirit, but a plain and present cloudless path. It is present righteousness. It is a beautiful Psalm.

177 We find the captivity of Jacob brought back - "The iniquity of thy people forgiven." God is the God of their salvation; but the blessings, consequent on this, are not arrived at, but God is enquired of for them, "That the glory may dwell in our Land," not merely Israel. By these dealings, truth as to the promises of old, and mercy towards the objects of them, who deserved none, are met - these great elements of what God is - righteousness, which would have been against, and peace, for "He has made peace" - the favour and prosperity of God are fully united. As effect, truth, a new thing (guile was there) springs out of the earth - the return to blessing, peace-making blessing; and righteousness, either hid or punishing, can now show the glory of its face unclouded. The full blessing of the Lord shall take its way through the Land. These are the consequences, or what is destined to follow as the consummation of restoration.

In verse 10 we have the truth realised in God's character; in verse 11 between heaven and earth, between men and God; in verses 12, 13, consequent blessing upon earth.

178 Psalm 86

This seems to be the assertion, in the midst of all those scenes, of the identity of Christ with all the sufferings of the troubled Remnant. It is exceedingly gracious to introduce into the midst of the Remnant-trials the interest of Christ in them; verse 14 shows the circumstances, verse 16 the looking for strength in them. For, note, at this time the Lord going forth, goes forth in His previous character, not in His assumed strength as Son of man, as may be seen in Revelation 19.

We have the character and Spirit of Christ in the Remnant of Israel - the nation brought into relationship - if heretofore the providential circumstances and trials, now the moral condition in the circumstances; a very important point, and full of blessing. It begins with the Lord at once, i.e., Jehovah fully recognised, as in relationship with Him. The comparison is with the nations - other gods. All nations are to come, on this deliverance, and worship before the Lord (Jehovah then); they had risen against Israel.

- 13. We have here the principle of resurrection introduced - the ground, in Christ, of all hope.

Psalm 87

This Psalm is the celebration of Zion as the place of associate glory. There are two points - His foundation, and who belongs to it.

His foundation is in the Holy mountain - the great conclusion of the contemplation of the purposes of God, and hence its importance; but the Lord conferred its importance also. "This (man) was born there." This seems to me the placing Christ, as born in purpose into the world, as the Child of Zion. Egypt and Babylon disappear in glory before it. Her children - children to God - shall be multiplied there, for, though we look to Jerusalem which is above, which is our mother, this is more specific. He was born there. The children given after she had lost the other. Our Lord could not be said to be born in Jerusalem at His first coming, though He was rejected there, but in the new Jerusalem He is the Firstborn, and alone in His place. This constitutes the Lord's necessary tie to the place. The external testimony and positive ministers of it in personal praise shall be there too, all God's fresh-springs are then in it. It is a remarkable Psalm - the celebration of Zion, in identity with God and His purposes, established in the presence of Immanuel, with that which flows from it. A great many deliverances and exigencies go on elsewhere, but this Man was born there - the native country of God's power.

179 We have then Zion established, according to the favour of the Lord, in her place according to the Lord's purpose and delight. I say "purpose," because its aspect is in contrast with the grandeur of the world on all sides, but its condition after the fall of these. Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia, all pass in review, but Zion is not afraid of the comparison for those that know her - all Jehovah's fresh-springs are in her. It is His foundation now. Also the Lord establishes Zion among the dwellings of Jacob - favour and delight within as well as contrast of glory without - a centre of affections for the people, just because divine - a link with God; not so all other patriotism, but that is.

Psalm 88

This seems to be the recognition of the full subjection of Christ to death, and the utter holding aloof of men, but this is identified, as in verse 15, with the Jews as from Mount Sinai. The subject is the Jews, but it discovered the identity of Christ with them. It is the plea of the Remnant; it also implies their desolateness.

Christ seems to have entered into the spirit of this Psalm - to have drawn it forth rather - when he describes the elect, God's elect, as those who "cry night and day" unto God, Luke 18; and I suppose (connect here the close of Luke 17) He alludes in that passage to the circumstances to which that Psalm refers. His Spirit, in the Psalm, enters into the circumstances of full sympathy because in full affection, in which Israel the elect, and the elect heart - widowed Israel (righteous in affection, yet feeling all the effects of wickedness, and for others - Christ's true character and state) found themselves in protracted sorrow in that long yet, through mercy, shortened day; compare the confession in Daniel's prayer.

He enters into the long course of righteous judgment due to the people - terrible and awful thought! For the soul of Christ felt it - the judgment of a broken law from the outset - the array of terror which it brought against the Soul who understood its curse, and the weight of it, in holiness - who understood the effect of the law - the terrors of God - wrath lying hard upon Him. Outward mercies are nothing, in such a case, but mockeries, thin as the light air or what passes vainly through it. Still a call daily on the Lord (for the law is the Law of the Lord, therefore its terror) and God with whom we are in relation who has shut us up in this terror, forgotten seemingly of God, but only in the darkness of His anger when we cannot find Him - the more we know what He is, the more terrible to find nothing but darkness - still the cry is maintained, yea "day and night."

180 It is a matter of the grave and destruction. Enemies there were withal - lovers and friends none. Such is the estimate of the Spirit of Christ, the just estimate it forms, and forms therefore in the people in the latter day under the Law - shut up into terror, and alone there with the Lord, their Lord against whom they had transgressed. So much the more joyful and blessed their deliverance! Still, being the Spirit of Christ which alone can feel this, it cries "day and night." What a picture, and how the truth!

This Psalm then gives us the condition of the righteous Remnant, who know the law, understand the law is spiritual, see it broken from the outset, and the circumstances but the consequences of a vastly, infinitely deeper state of things - a real return to God according to their circumstances - death was what stared them in their face, and this, under which they were, was the ministration of death. Their history, in this view, did but add to their misery, but their condition (in soul) before the Lord blotted out their history. They could not get forth - death was before them, but they cried. What could they add to this engulfing in the terror of a righteous judgment, and a broken law - a law against a relationship, and ministration of death? They could add nothing - had there been hope, they would not have been where they were, nor thrown, in the knowledge of righteousness, on a God of grace. It ends thus in perfect misery, but in a cry - the righteous cry of right affections in God's elect. There was One who, taking their sorrow and the curse of the law - being made a curse - understood their cry, and heard it. When they understood it, so as to be brought with Him, He delivered; but death must be, in some sort, read here. Paul, I suppose, understood this much. All must know it in light (for we begin with resurrection), not necessarily in darkness, but for experience, knowledge even often of God, and action through the region of death, i.e., the world. It is often, as neutralising it, and introducing us within the veil of it, very profitable and useful. For them Christ has, at any rate, gone through it; but He has gone through it, so we are really free.

181 It is a very deep and, when known, through grace, a very blessed subject, because it introduces to God, and whatever introduces us there is blessed. The Spirit of Christ alone can make us know it - it is known only by the Spirit of Christ, and He has known it.

Psalm 89

This Psalm takes another ground - it sings of the mercy of Jehovah, quite other, and introduces therefore His promise and covenant, with David, of grace, but He is to be "feared in the assembly of his saints."

This Psalm treats of many miseries, but it takes up the covenant of grace, and mercies, and their centering in the seed of David, or David and his seed. He sings of mercies, though mercies in circumstances may sometimes seem to fail. But the Law is not mercy. The more I regard and the more truly Jehovah, being under the Law, the more thoroughly awful my position - the more I regard Him in mercies, though those mercies may have an apparent momentary failure, the more I can triumph in His goodness and fidelity to His character - fidelity to His character under the Law is ruin. He sings then here of mercies - mercy to be established for ever - and recalls I their faithfulness in the time of their distress, a faithfulness established in the heavens. This has been accomplished in Christ, even when all the foundations of the earth are out of course. "Touch me not," "Recognise me not," said the Lord, the blessed Lord, "Own me not as your covenant King of hope, for I am not yet ascended," i.e., unto the heavens to establish these very mercies. Still this establishment in the heavens secures, whatever intervenes, "the sure mercies of David"; and here they are - Jehovah is our defence, k'dosh (Holy One of), Israel is our King. But then He has spoken in visions of His chasid (Holy One). "Holy One" is not then k'dosh, i.e., of Him in whom all the mercies centre, and are accomplished. They are recounted therefore, and the covenant made, and then the circumstances and miseries recounted in the light of this covenant, and presented to God with the praise of faith on this ground - the Anointed with whom God is in covenant. The footsteps of the Anointed have been reproached - He bears in His bosom the reproach of all the mighty men of the earth; terrible when judgment burst forth therefore upon them.

182 In the Psalms which follow, we have the introduction of Messiah into blessedness, in the immediate circumstances, to wit, of Israel in that day.

I suppose the Lord must enter into the sorrows and humiliation of the house of David, as such, as well as of man and Israel.

This is a remarkable Psalm, as declaring the mercies of the Lord in the midst of trials. It seems to me to have its application subsequent to the destruction of Antichrist, and during the time of the subsequent trial. It is after David has taken the crown, but His crown is profaned as it were to the ground, but it is the mind of the Spirit, at that time. "His mercy endureth for ever," was the great article of Jewish faith. The righteousness of the Jew also was in confessing mercy, etc.; thus the Psalm begins: "I will sing of thy mercies for ever." The rejection of the Jew was that he might be fully brought under this principle; Rom. 11: 31, 32. His faithfulness is establishing mercy for ever, but it is ruled now in the heavens. This (in the throne of David) is the great thesis of the Psalm.

- 3, 4. These seem to be the Spirit recounting, as before in the Remnant, so here in Jehovah, the answer of God as to the manner in which He would act in the accomplishment of that which the Spirit in them expected - "I have made a covenant with my chosen." But while this, as to the purpose of God, is established, a brighter scene is behind, and it appears that the following verses open out this, as a bright appendix seen and recognised (quod nota, for it is joy, and also shows the mercy, as our looking at the Jews does) by the Jews in the Spirit.

- 5. "And the heavens shall praise thy wonders," for they also recognise His works below, and hence they minister one to another. Thus they are known in the heavenlies as now raised and set there, and God known in the midst of them. Then come His dealings on earth - Rahab slain, and the enemies scattered, i.e., first Antichrist and pride, and then the other nations, as elsewhere, as first Egypt and then the nations of Canaan. Then comes the possessions of the Lord thereon, i.e., thereon in result - the bringing in Israel, subjection however various yet Israel. The strength that is in it in joy, as before, in scattering and judgment - the character of the throne then set - the happiness of the people that know it, i.e., the joy of the righteousness of that throne, to wit, the Remnant of the Jews, who having learned the truth (so now), the reality as however formed on this truth, and then he breaks out into all the blessedness of the people of Israel, as a definite object before him (vv. 16-18).

183  - 8. "Who is like unto thee, a strong Jah" - in the sense of compact in which a breach cannot be made.

Note, mercy and truth having met us, we can dwell with God in the habitation of judgment and justice - the abiding dwelling-place of its constant residence. Observe, too, the constant order in which these things are said to meet us. Jehovah, kodesh Israel, closes this scene in the view of faith. Then the Lord, the Father, the God of Israel takes up the word, i.e., the Spirit realises Him in the prophet thus speaking. But I take the vision la chasideka (to Thy Holy One) to be the accepted manhood of Christ, brought in in the recognition of Jehovah of the Jews. This is the Person - He is the Jehovah - the Help of might, and as the former was Jehovah li k'dosh (to the Holy One of) this la chasideka in the prospect or vision of the Person of Christ who is the chasid, the righteous Jew, the Head of them. The Anointed Man is the chasid with, though in vision, them. Things were spoken about David - the accomplishment of mercy in truth (in the Person of Him who could realise both); for chasid is the same as "I will sing of the mercies (chas-de) of Jehovah," only with the emphatic he, so that the whole tenor of the Psalm is plain in representing the mercies of Jehovah (accomplished) in the Person of Christ as ha chasid, i.e., in the Man. Nothing can be more interesting than the deposit of all the mercies (chas-de) in the risen Jesus, ha chasid - the Man anointed; and then compare verse 28, and again verse 34, so His faithfulness.

- 19. Chasid, see verse 1; verse 18 is k'dosh.

- 35. The oath is in His holiness.

- 40, then shows that it is His interest in the inheritance - the plea of David in the time of trial in the latter day.

- 49. We have the chasadeyka (Thy mercies) again.

- 51. This shows that, while it was Christ in Spirit, but on the road of the many peoples, yet this was the reproach really of God's Name; compare Isaiah 55: 3.

184 Verses 19 and 20 give the key to the Psalm, only that the latter part brings in the trouble, and David thereon, the intercessor under it, as identified with the help, i.e., of them, as the beginning gives the general result to the people owning it in Jehovah. Jehovah shows it in the Person of Jesus, and Jesus-David takes up the sorrows which enable them so to trust and rejoice. Note, the Kod-shi (my Holy) as connected there with Jehovah k'dosh (Holy One of); and see the note as to Kod-shi (my Holy) of the saints, and Khas-di (my mercy) of the Jewish people in Remnant. For, observe, verse 52 is the great summary thesis, "Blessed be Jehovah for ever more" (Baruk Jehovah l'olam amen v'amen). "Amen and Amen."

We must note, however, that Jesus was rightfully King at His birth, and His crown, in Person, was cast down to the ground then, and He assumed that position in fact with them in their trouble, as noticed, in the latter day.

Psalm 90

This Psalm is evidently a singular one. It seems to be the stability of the faithfulness in which they were originally called in. Moses pleaded by the Spirit, in the recognition of the long desolation in which as men - dying men - they had been involved, still saying in faith, "Thou hast been our dwelling-place from generation to generation," and noting it, i.e., themselves, therefore on the everlasting, and therefore immutable character of their Lord, "I am the same, I change not, therefore, O house of Israel, ye are not consumed," for He was their dwelling-place after all. It is, intrinsically, a Jewish Psalm.

It addresses Jehovah at once as the God who had always been the dwelling-place of the nation. He who was God before the world was, whose power turns man to destruction, and whose word recalls him. Israel was before Him, in ruin - his misery felt, as caused by his iniquity, all before Him; his days passed away in His wrath - terrible, yet now humbled condition - a true state of soul wrought of God, though not fully knowing God. He prays that, in the sense of their ruin, marked in the shortening of their days - their state of vanity - they may learn the wisdom of reference to God. Praying, "Return, O Jehovah," that He, their Lord, might repent Him, casts them entirely on mercy. Desiring it "early," owning another point of truth - the affliction as of Him, that His work might appear to His servants, and the beauty of Jehovah their God be upon them.

185 Such is the prayer of the Spirit in Israel, looking for blessing - humbled, but calling on the name of Jehovah, the Name of covenant and perpetuity, as their God, yet in mercy, but in benediction on the work of their hands. It is a prayer properly to Jehovah on His name, as known amongst them, revealed to them of old by that Name - faith applying its covenant obligation to their present circumstances.

This Psalm then is more abstract, and speaks from a higher ground, yet is still more specially Jewish, but Jewish in what Jehovah their God is, rather than in relation to circumstances. Nothing to me can be more calm, confident and beautiful - the confidence of righteous humility in faith - the Spirit of Christ - than this Psalm.

In this, the fourth Book of the Psalms, we have God's ways publicly in the world in government, but the secret place of Messiah in it, and the Jews distinctly set as the centre in it. Thus in this Psalm they are set as those who have had Jehovah for their dwelling-place from all generations, and then the government of Jehovah, with whom a thousand years are but as yesterday, is set forth, and man's condition here contrasted with it. In Psalm 91 we have Messiah finding in Jehovah the God of the Jews, by an understanding heart, Him to whom all the power and government belong; and the Lord owns Him. In Psalm 92 we have the double name, and the loving-kindness and judgment of the Lord are shown as regards the condition of the world; before, it was only guarding Him who had the secret of the Most High. In Psalm 93 the reign of Jehovah is announced, in spite of the haughty rage of man against Him. In Psalm 94, the residue demand that Jehovah show Himself Judge of the earth; the detail of His ways is shown as to them, and the throne of iniquity brought into contrast. In Psalm 95 we have the progress of the testimony - the Jews are called; in Psalm 96 the Gentiles. In Psalm 97 the Lord appears. In Psalm 98 judgment is executed in favour of Zion. In Psalm 99 He is seated between the cherubim. In Psalm 100 all lands are called up with joy to worship before Him. In Psalm 101 Messiah takes His royalty and house. The glory and humiliation of His Person are shown in Psalm 102. In Psalm 103 He praises in Israel; in Psalm 104 in Creation. We have, in Psalm 105, all the grace toward Israel recounted from beginning to end - God's ways with them; in Psalm 106, their ways with God, but withal the mercy He showed when they eat the fruit of their ways.

186 All this for the Jews, in the latter day, though it has the same centre in the Person of Christ, is a larger circle and more general principles than what we have had hitherto, and will be more general for them in that day.

Though the difference be not very material, I am disposed to think that Psalms 90-93 go together as preface, Psalm 94 beginning the historical progress. Psalm 90 associates the nation, in its ancient state, with Jehovah, and the Remnant with Israel of old, as a Son is born to Naomi.

Psalm 91

This is an exceedingly interesting Psalm. It evidently involves different speakers. Messiah, and the part He takes in identity with the Jews, is the subject of it. It is a conversation, of which He is the subject, with His avowal of the position He takes. It begins by the testimony of the Spirit generally, of which Christ consequently on the confession of Jehovah gets the blessing. One, dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, i.e., entering into the purposes of Him who is over heaven and earth, compare Genesis 14: 19, 20, shall abide under the shadow of Shaddai - the name of Abraham's God. Then, says Jesus, I will own Jehovah, the God of the Jews, the name in which the true God, Jah, was known to the Jews, see Exodus 6: 2, 3. This was His faith - this Jewish God I will own. He recognises the Object of His faith in His identity with the Jews, pledges Himself to them, i.e., to their God, which is faith, but this is El Shaddai Elion (God Almighty, the Most High). Then the Spirit, in the prospective Jewish Remnant, asserts what He, this Jehovah, will do, "Surely he will cover thee with his feathers"; compare verse 9. In verse 14, El Shaddai answers as Jehovah, "Because he hath set," etc. - two things, "His love upon me," and the full recognition of His character, "Know my name," i.e., Jehovah, who He is, always the same, the God of the Jews. The result is trouble, but audience in it, and the full life of resurrection in salvation.

We have then the connection of the names in which God was revealed to Abraham, and the covenant name with Israel. The love of Jehovah, of Shaddai Elion, was on Israel - but how bless them in iniquity? First then, according to the secret of this love, the righteous One declares, on the announcement of Abraham's God, that it is Israel's He takes as His refuge. Thus the love known has its way in righteousness - grace reigns through righteousness.

187  - 1. This is the announcement of the Spirit.

- 2. The declaration of Messiah.

- 3. The reply of the Spirit in announcement.

But in saying "I will say of the Lord," He has satisfied the love of the Lord in setting up Israel. But the Remnant, led by the Spirit of Christ and identified with His blessing, come in under the promises - He could say, "Fear not little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom," then indeed in a higher sense.

- 8. Here "Only with thine eyes," being thus separated to Jehovah, "Thou shalt see the reward of the wicked."

- 9. This seems to be the address of the Spirit in the Remnant to Christ, verified in the blessing on the Remnant.

- 14. This is the answer of Jehovah.

Identification of Christ with Israel, and of the Most High, who is over all things, with Jehovah, is the great point of this Psalm.

It is evident that the Lord gave up the place and promises of this Psalm, to accomplish His Father's glory in obedience - even His earliest temptation shows Satan trying to get Him to take up this ground, and not simply obey and wait upon God. In vain! Overcome! He is Deliverer, as Son of man, of man from Satan, never in our Gospels presenting Himself as Christ to the people; then, at the close, the question was not of His being obedient and not claiming them, but of giving them all up in death. And this He did - the Shepherd was smitten, Messiah cut off, and had nothing. Hence the sure mercies of David are cited as a proof of resurrection - Paul knowing no man after the flesh, not even Messiah. It was deep suffering, but the more I learn from Scripture, the more I see that, though this were a part of its accompaniments, expiation was a totally different thing, and of an infinitely deeper nature - the moral wrath of God falling on the Blessed One about sin.

188 Psalm 92

This Psalm is the rejoicing of Messiah, in the rest of righteousness, in the Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth. The enemies, the Most High's enemies, the springing up of the wicked is only to destruction, and then the rest, the rest of Messiah and His people. Their then state will show the righteousness of the Lord - their previous state was their own fault - and this was prerogative mercy; compare Isaiah 48: 18 and Matthew 23: 37. It owns also Jehovah in the place of lordship and His faithfulness.

This Psalm takes up the name of God, spoken of in Psalm 91, as united. It involves the blessing of all the earth, and even heaven (Possessor of heaven and earth) with the special election of Israel as a people - exactly the character and power of the millennium. Psalms 90, 91, 92 then follow in full succession - Psalm go, "Jehovah, our dwelling-place," the thing actually in question on the earth. Then, Psalm 91, the Most High, the Almighty, the Source of all the blessings and promises in power and universality of supreme possession and dominion, introduced and recognised by the righteous Remnant, even by Messiah, and so the rest in the Lord, even Jehovah. This connects the blessing and promise and universality with the specialty - both centred in Messiah. This makes the Psalms very important. Psalm 92 seems the first song of Messiah on both these Names - Jehovah, Elion, the true joy of the Sabbath and rest of God, when, in the praise of Messiah, these two Names are united. "Most High" is rather the name of Melchisedek than of Abraham, which makes it the more marked - also recognised in Nebuchadnezzar.

In Psalm 90 then we have the prayer of Israel to Jehovah, according to the faith of ancient promises. Psalm 91, the names of Abraham's God identified with the secret of Israel's God, by the intervention of Messiah, known and recognised by the Jewish Remnant by the Spirit. In Psalm 92, the rest celebrated by Messiah in behalf of Israel, which is the consequence of all this - Jehovah and Most High are one. Now He celebrates, in joy and triumph, the works and thoughts of the Lord. Before, they had been as brutish and ignorant, now they can confidently sing, "A brutish man doth not know, neither doth a fool consider this." The righteous are now to "flourish like the palm tree," to show that the Lord is upright.

189 Whatever men may judge of the origin of the titles, it is well entitled "A Psalm or song for the Sabbath day" - the great Sabbath that remains - the witness of God's thoughts in result.

Psalm 93

The simple purport of this Psalm needs little comment. Only we may remark that, the throne being of old, its character is essential, and in action on the testimonies, meanwhile we come into the power of the throne, in verse 5. The calm majesty of His dominion is shown in verses 3 and 4, for He hath "girded himself over" - He doth that there is an end of all question. It is still Jehovah.

It is a short and noble Psalm - noble in its simplicity of the character of the establishment of God's throne. The floods had lifted up their voice, but the thoughts of the Lord were before and beyond all these. The Lord on high, now known there, is mightier than many waters, but there is now a clearer appropriation of all that to the saint. His power is manifested, but it has authenticated all the testimonies on which the saint in trial has built his hope. He has walked in holiness in the midst of rebuke and scorn and rejection, because of this testimony for its own sake, and encouraged by the promises, yea, and that though He tarried long He would surely come, He would not tarry. "Thy testimonies are very sure." Holiness, known in the truth of promise, enjoyed in the character of God, is the delight of the saint in God's house, in a long and continued perspective. The principles being stated, the application follows, ever being the spirit of prophecy, and provided for the people. If the rest and glory be declared, their word, before it comes, is given them.

Psalm 94

This is a Psalm of great spiritual intelligence, but on the same topic. It is the mind of the Remnant under the prevalence of Antichrist, when the ungodly people are going along with him; but the chief grief is about them, the wilful Jews. It seemed to falsify all hope to the nation, but the righteousness of the Remnant is shown in their utter opposition to and horror of them. It is looked at as the triumph of the wicked.

Psalms 91, 92 and 93 were announcement; here we have the people in the circumstances preceding the joy, before the celebration of joy. The Lord is addressed as the "God of vengeance" in the controversy with the nation about Zion. It is the language of faith, for vengeance is in God's heart, and He would even clothe Himself with it. Faith always knows, calls for, and acts upon what is in God's heart. The special subject immediately before them is the existing union between Antichrist and the people, specially the scornful men which rule this people which dwell at Jerusalem - and there is no help but in God. But Jehovah is addressed as known, for the time is near at hand, and His righteousness, the righteousness of God, ready to go forth. The charge is specially against the Jews - boarim baam (ye brutish among the people).

190  - 11. This is the judgment, for there is a link between Jehovah and the righteous by faith.

- 12, 13. The sweet and blessed testimony of where the faithful righteous, trusting in the God who seems at least to bear long, but will avenge speedily the desolate of his adversary, will be. The Lord be praised, and hasten His work!

- 14, 15. This is the reasoning of the confidence of faith. But it was a trying time. He could look for none to be against the evil doers, Still there was Jehovah, and when he said even "My foot slippeth," the mercy of the Lord did not permit it. And within, thus turning to Him, all was peace; there was this - a multitude of thoughts, still Jehovah beamed like a ray through them all, to make the value of His promise of future rest more felt, and this was the point of His reasoning. And here he views Antichrist established on his throne in Jerusalem. The Lord is coming. This is misery, but is He coming to ratify the presence of Antichrist here? Is his throne to have fellowship with Thee, whose law is iniquity which he deviseth? The Lord "shall bring upon them their own iniquity," they shall be cut off. Such is the position of the faithful before the Sabbath - the judgment of the Spirit of Christ in the midst of, looking at the settlement of evil even by a law in Jerusalem, and in authority. No doubt this gave occasion to a multitude of thoughts. He turns then, in the following Psalm, to summon the people finally, in the spirit of prophecy, to look to and put their trust in Jehovah, upon His greatness, upon His relationship with them, His power, their ancient history - proposing to them this real Sabbath of rest which now remained to them - even now, to-day, after so long rebellion, after all, if they would only believe.

191 Psalm 95

As Psalm 91 is the testimony of the Spirit, concerning the Most High, taken up by Jesus, in the acknowledgment of Jehovah, on whom the Spirit then pours His testimony, i.e., on confession applies to the Confessor all the value of that which is in Him, confessed, even the Most High - that the God of Israel is the Most High, profitless as that Name seemed in the person of the Jews to the Gentiles (i.e., infidels), so Psalm 92 is the celebration of Jehovah by Jesus in that which He is in righteousness. Psalm go is the identification of Jehovah with the people of Moses from old, in order to this process in Jesus, i.e., that He, Jehovah, should be known as the God of the Jews, and that would involve all the consequences of His character to them, on which Jesus takes it up, faithful in knowing and owning that character "I will declare thy Name unto my brethren." It is then the celebration of Jehovah by Jesus we have in Psalm 93, therefore Jehovah malak (reigns) in Psalm 94 - Jehovah King, Jehovah the strong One of revenges.

From this then to Psalm 100 inclusive, and in a new strain, we have the consequences - songs to Jehovah. "Jehovah our God" was the last word of Psalm 94. Then they sing unto Jehovah, coming into His presence. This is the song of the Jews to whom song, the songs of Jehovah, exclusively belong, properly speaking. We know the Father, so that, save in Spirit, we who have believed have in this no part. We have a higher portion - sons with the Father, one with Christ. But we know who declares His Name unto His brethren, and sings in the midst of the congregation. This, then, is the summons of Jesus, in the knowledge of Jehovah, to the Jews, His brethren (in this we have a portion by faith, He being Son of man) but of Jesus as one with them, bringing that word in, "In the midst of the Church will I sing." It is not then the congregation, nor the great congregation, but the summons instead to the great congregation - the result, perhaps, is a small Remnant, but of that He makes a great nation (born in a day), Jehovah, here owned, being in the midst of it, being so owned, and therefore He says, "To-day if ye will hear his voice." Now Jesus addressed this call practically to the congregation in that day, avowing He knew Jehovah, and that He was His Father, and they hearkened not, not knowing the day of their visitation, but now then He takes up the Remnant thus met, and who must own Him, and puts them in the position of blessing. We may learn much as to the Church also from this - one in glory, but seeing Him now.

192 Psalm 96

These Psalms seem the answer of the Spirit in the congregation - this their call to the heathen, the people; hence it is specifically the celebration of Jehovah which we have seen to be the subject of all these Psalms. It is not what "Jehovah hath done" - that is for the Jews - but the Jehovah that hath done it. "Sing unto Jehovah all the earth"; before Him all the earth shall fear, even the Jehovah that hath done all these things, quod nota. In Psalm 98 it is "before the Lord, the King," for the Lord being it, being indeed King, but to the Jews, you will see that the celebration of His Gentile glory includes the gathering into one, heavens and earth - "Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad" (Psalm 96) - whereas the Jewish blessing is the blessing of the world; see Psalm 98: 7. The field and the trees take the place of the floods and hills.

The connection of the heavens, the heavenly glory, with the recognition of Jehovah in Jesus, is most instructive here of one of the many ties and boundlessness of the latter-day glory. We own Jesus to be Jehovah - He is then, the Jehovah of the Jews, but it is He who is our Lord, whom we have owned to be such in the time of His humiliation, even Jesus, and are therefore with Him in glory where we see Him whom they once rejected - the Jehovah of the Jews, even our Jesus. The time is however the same, the Sabbath day. "The Lord cometh," "cometh to judge."

It cannot but be noticed, the constant mention or suggestion of "Jehovah" to the Gentiles in this Psalm to bring them to remembrance. Jehovah Elohim of the Hebrews - the recognition of Jehovah by Jesus, as a Jew, in all His ways - and our recognition that Jesus is indeed Jehovah, is the deep, deep mystery developed in these Psalms in dispensation; so, and in the Person of Jesus only, we know it, with all its vast results. Psalm 90, "Jehovah, the dwelling-place" of the Jews; Psalm 91, recognised by the faithful One; Psalm 92, the preparation for the Sabbath - Psalms 93 and 94, the light through the night of the Sabbath, when the light should overcome it in the morning; Psalms 95-99, the morning service - the new song that the whole Creation, on the summons of Jesus their Head, the Firstborn, shall sing in heaven and earth - the sea and all the world, the floods and hills - the head of redemption, of which He is the Head in His saints - the Gentiles below, called in also. It is indeed the Sabbath day or day of restraint, but of restraint of joy, when none of the redeemed may be wanting - above - below. Joy and glory in heaven and earth - and, in the Jews received, life from the dead to the world - the union of the headship of Creation and redemption, of the Lord Jesus, the Firstborn of every creature, and Firstborn from the dead; compare Colossians 1.

193 We have then the introductory songs, a sort of instruction of the Sabbath eve, the day of preparation, Psalms 96, 97, 98 and 99. "The new song." I believe I have noticed, heretofore, all that is necessary for the general character of these Psalms, but there is a special point in Psalm 96, which remains - the connection of Jehovah with the earth, with Creation. It is not Bara Elohim (God created) merely, nor Jehovah Elohim, but the world established by Jehovah. God shall then lose none of His characters, but they shall be verified in greater glory. "All the earth" here, being not merely "the Land" seems, I think, plain though that shall be the centre. The world shall be established under Jehovah, Zechariah 14, where the same question occurs.

In this Psalm also, for the true millennial blessedness, we have the heavens introduced, for it is the general and extended character of it. This is left out in the corresponding Israelitish part; Psalm 93. It is not the Church's, nor the Father's glory in the heavens, but Jehovah who created them (who is the God of the Jews) ministers in creation a providential, authoritative blessing - the government and blessing of the whole earth. This may be for the glory of the Jews, whose God He is, but it is for His glory - His glory - the glory of His character in all the earth. This is a very interesting point, and a link in the character of the blessedness of that day. All that is judicially and authoritatively distribution of that blessing comes in. What we have seen in Judaea is but a type of the administration which shall then take place, for it belongs to Him by virtue of His glory. It is not merely God generally but a God known in relation character and covenant - that Jehovah, that was known in Israel, reigneth. This is to be announced among the heathen. It was a wider glory, in se, than that over Israel, but it was the same Jehovah. So shall He be in that day. Accordingly Psalm 98 celebrates Him in the consequence of His character manifested in power for Israel, terminating in the same joy, but in the lower sphere merely, for the power is a link with a higher thing, not indeed revealed here, but understood by the saints, that He is the God of the heaven and earth, for these are ours - an Abrahamic inheritance in Christ in God.

194 Psalm 97

We have now the new song that is to be sung, i.e., the Lord has become King. This is the thesis of the song, we have seen. This is of the Gentiles, hence we have "the earth," and "the multitude of the isles" - the destruction of "His enemies" - all that was high, exalted, like wax at His presence, from before the face "of the Lord of the whole earth." "The heavens" also, observe, we have again, and "all people," and "all the gods" are to worship Him, but this is the Jehovah of the Jews. "Zion heard it and was glad," and the "daughters of Judah" rejoiced because of and with the words of the Lord, "Thy judgments O Lord" (Jehovah), "For thou Jehovah art high above all the earth, and exalted far above all gods."

- 6, 7. We have accordingly, the heavens declaring His righteousness, and His glory seen to the confusion of idols. The joy of Zion is here derivative, for the saints by grace, at the last, take the lead.

- 10-12. This is an address to the believers, those that are, under grace, chasidim (holy ones), among the Jews. "The righteous" is particularly Jesus - though true of His character, we have also "Rejoice ye righteous ones," and "We know he that doeth righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous."

You will observe that Zion here is spoken of, not Israel generally, i.e., it is the special place of the glory. Note also the Gentiles are witnesses of His glory - the Jewish song of His relative power. It would appear to me also, that, in dealing with the Gentiles, the Lord is more particularly in Zion, the place of His glory, and the place of His grace, for there He was rejected, Judah shall be His young horse. It applies more to the former part than of the latter-day history, but it is generally true because it is the place of His glory. In Psalm 99, the Lord is known there, in respect of His government in the nation, for it is of the Jacob glory; hence, historically, there is decided progress in the two.

195 Psalm 98

This is, as we have said then, consecutively the Jewish celebration. The Gentile part must come first in this scene, that theirs is the heavenlies, and Jesus Jehovah takes His place here first, and then associates Himself with Zion in judgment, knowing the righteous then the subjects of grace. Now He rules the world in Zion, great above all the people there. The Lord's taking the heavens is the blessing to the earth. His association with Zion surer than that if a woman forgot her sucking child, the Lord would not forget her. He becomes blessing and glory to Israel ruling the world, recurring back, as it were, to the song of Moses. In verse 9 accordingly we have accomplished victory - "He hath done," "He hath made known," "He hath remembered." This in fact is the accomplishment and result of His identity with Zion. Thus these verses are most distinct in their application. It is Elohim, as in that word of faith, Jehovah Elohim. The summons then to the earth is from the Remnant in Zion - Zion bringing glad tidings - it is "a joyful noise to Jehovah," for it shall be a joyful noise when it is to Jehovah, the King (hammelech). There are then also happy multitudes, and peacefully associated authorities, and the world happy - every element - the chorus of His praise, "For he cometh."

And here I must remark that there is a repetition of the ki ba (for He came) in Psalm 96, I imagine because there His coming to the heavens, though it involves the other, is included in the Jewish celebration which hangs upon the existence of the other, and with which, as to present blessing, they have association, save as declaring His righteousness. His place, on coming, is Zion - His feet shall stand upon Mount Olivet. Anticipatively therefore, the Spirit says, "He has come," i.e., to the heavens, and the great general fact (to our glory, as we know elsewhere) He has come "to judge the earth"; in Psalm 96, the latter word to them. "He has come to judge the earth."

Psalm 99

Here again "Jehovah hath become King." This Psalm is after His taking His place in Zion, but not subsequent to the destruction of Gog prince of Magog, but the summons to the peoples upon His taking His place then "between the cherubim" (yoshev k'ruvim). And besides the general truth, the great truth comes forth, the thought in fact, "The Lord is great in Zion, and he is high, exalted is he" - "Let them therefore praise for it is holy" (v. 3).

196 "The King" then is brought in, and the ministrations in which it has exercised itself.

- 4. Observe "The King's strength" - it is the character of the King's strength; so in addressing the King, "Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity." It is judicial strength; I hold these to be past tenses. It is "in Jacob," therefore "exalt," yet "our God." We have here, in contrast with Psalm 97: 7, the King. "The Lord is great in Zion," and "between the cherubim," the first thing. It is "The Lord, our God," "He spake in the cloudy pillar," "Exalt the Lord our God."

We must remark, after Psalm 91, Messiah's announcement there that He took Jehovah for His refuge and His God - all these Psalms are the praise of Jehovah.

The end of verses 3 and 5 seem to be identical, absolute propositions - one to the peoples on His Jehovahship kadosh hu (it is holy) - one on the King's judgment kadosh hu (He is holy). We then have the reference to the original character of blessing, that it was to be found in Israel priest and prophet or caller on His, Jehovah's, name under these though vengeance was taken on their inventions, yet Israel was forgiven now; also was there the King. It closes with the same great truth, "Exalt Jehovah, our God; worship him in his holy mountain, for holy is Jehovah our God."

Psalm 100

Then comes the full blessing in this Psalm. It is the avowal of Israel that it is not their praise but Jehovah's - that Jehovah, their God, He is the Elohim, their unknown God; "We are his people," therefore we are in this position - therefore you are to own us, because He owns us. "Come" therefore "into his courts" - He is your God - here His place of worship; we can tell you what He is. The faithfulness of the Jews says, "Praise Jehovah, bless him, for he is good, his mercy endures for ever" - this is the special Jewish song - and "His truth to generation and generation." This can only be sung and declared by Jews - the restored Remnant - but, being revealed to them, He is this, and now developedly, and so "Rejoice in Jehovah, all ye lands" is the song now. It is consequent upon the other two or four.

197 It is a very beautiful Psalm, and, if understood in this connection, its force is very obvious and glorious, and full. It is a Psalm of blessing - the summons from Zion, to all nations, to rejoice in Jehovah.

In this Psalm Israel, blessed of the honourable for ancient associations, instructs the nations (kol haaretz, the whole earth) how to behave themselves in the courts of Israel's God. Israel could now well teach how His gates should be entered with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise - a lesson taught of old - an ancient title of mastership with the heathen, but how deeply learnt now! Then shall call the ministers of the Lord, and the priests of their God, they say, "Know ye" - "Enter" - "for see, Jehovah is good!" With what heart could they say this; and, observe, it is Israel's choral song from David, the time of assured grace in all times, as often observed. "The Lord is good" (l' olam chas'do, His mercy is for ever) - so in Hebrews - so in many songs of Zion's mercy.

I apprehend this term haaretz (the earth) is used on purpose to serve for Israel proper as an instruction to them, as a whole people, as when David, etc., brought them up together, addressed by the Levites and priests to all the land, and for all the earth, as we say, when they should become, before the Lord in the eyes of the nations, the ministers and priests of their God. Such a place is sweetly beautiful, and blessed for Israel. It is a song of grace too, always - "It is he that hath made us."

- 1. "The Land" or "Earth"; "lands" has no warrant at all.

Psalm 101

This Psalm gives us the desires of David in the government of His house - its principles, for it is the representation of Jehovah. "I will sing the mercy and the judgment; unto thee, O Lord, will I sing." Behold the principles of my conduct, the ground on which I act! It is His representation of His conduct unto the Lord. "When wilt thou come to me?" It appears to me that this alludes to the Solomon reign of Christ, in which the glory of the Lord should fill the house; meanwhile He is acting on all the perfect principles of that glory.

198 In this Psalm David takes His house and waits only for Jehovah to be set up in it, for Christ is set King in Zion by Jehovah, and as His King, so that it is ever Jehovah's kingdom; when Christ's, the character of earthly righteousness acted on in detail, is presented before the Lord as the manner of His conduct when He takes the house - so with Christ in the land.

Psalm 102

This Psalm is neither judgment on enemies of Christ nor the declaration of the fruit of His work - though there are facts that are such - but Christ looked at personally in sorrows, cut off in the midst of His days. How could He have a part in the future blessing of Israel? The answer is His divine Person - the same and for ever, and the children of His servants would continue. It has thus its own very peculiar character.

What is so peculiar in this Psalm is that it brings out the Person of Christ - His divine nature in answer to His sufferings and cutting off. It is not grace to others by His sufferings, nor judgment on others because of their iniquity in inflicting them, but in reply to His utter loneliness in sorrow, and touching appeal to Jehovah of a heart withered like grass, He is owned as Jehovah, the Creator Himself. It is not what He is for others through His suffering and humiliation, but Himself - the answer is His own glory - the blessed title of His Person. This it is which gives it such a peculiar interest.

This Psalm is the righteous faith of Christ in the Lord's enduringness, in the weakness in which He could sympathise with the Jews as cut off in the midst of His days, and His connection with Zion. It applies, to the Jews in the latter day, His faithfulness in intercession by pleading for them in Spirit, in the Spirit of His faith and faithfulness. As the suffering but faithful Man, He pleads in verses 11, 12 and the reply, the testimony, comes to Him in verses 25-27. On the petition specially in verse 24, the great character of Christ comes out. The application of all this is from verse 14 to 22, in which the abidingness of Christ (the Jew) is the revealed security of them, and the people, and their restoration and blessing witness of it, as His glory hung upon that.

It is a song still upon Jehovah. Verse 4 seems Christ's answer of His own experience, and the testimony to Him, to reach the necessities of the case. The stability of Zion was as the new heavens and earth (not the old, which were removable) as depending on Christ the Lord, to whom verses 25, 26, we know, apply.

199  - 10. He does not say "Wrath against me," which I think of moment. In Psalm 22, it is "Why hast thou forsaken me?" It is a most important and impressive Psalm - the circumstances of Christ connected with all this Jehovah-blessing; He is Jehovah. It begins with the suffering of Christ (a sort of résumé of all the Psalms after Psalms 1 and 2) instead of blessing in the midst of Israel. He is a Suppliant in the midst of the nation - but note, this is the salvation of the nation, for He has identified Himself with it - Suppliant to Jehovah, for this is all "of Jehovah" the God of the Jews - having title to the earth also. Nothing could exceed His depression and kenosis. Still (strange as all that might be, as He declares, for His faith and truth fail not) Jehovah endures for ever. This faith is in the sufferings of Christ. The Pillar of the nation, He holds them up, while they reject Him - the evidence of their evil, even though against Him, being the occasion of His intercession and effective sufferings. "Thou," saith He to Jehovah, "Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion." The set time was come - utter desolation, no help, but the memorial of it presented by the Spirit of Jesus. So, for Jehovah was interested in it, the heathen would fear Jehovah's name, etc. See how He keeps up the thought of identifying Jerusalem and Jehovah, even in her dust. Then comes a revelation, "When Jehovah shall build up Zion, he shall appear." In mercy to the destitute He hath looked down from heaven for this - to declare the name of Jehovah in Zion, such was the manner of it - and the peoples and the kingdoms are gathered together to serve Jehovah. If this be all so - if He hears the destitute and delivers - if this be the name of the Lord, and His glory in Jerusalem - how concerning the Lord? As to Him, His strength was weakened and His days shortened - He cried in this position to His God not to be cut off. Then the glory of the Lord bursts forth in all its splendour - "Of old thou hast laid the foundation of the earth." Creation hangs on this smitten poor One. He made it. Creation shall change, shall be rolled up, renewed, but Thou, He (attah hu) exists ever the same. Such might have been His work, but His nature was eternal existence - His years in time shall have no end. Such is the rejected Messiah. Not only shall Jerusalem be the scene then of His praise, but all Creation shall welcome the return of her Lord in blessing, relieved by these very circumstances. In the midst of it the children of His servants should have an abiding portion - honoured those who honoured Him - and their seed shall be established before Him. Thus is the power of this blessing of Jerusalem and Creation fully revealed in the Person of Christ - His sufferings seen.

200 I have spoken of attah hu (Thou He) in this Psalm. In Isaiah 43: 10, we have Ani hu (I, He) spoken by Jehovah. This confirms the force of hu (He) as the ho on, the existing One, see 2 Samuel 7: 28. Of the force of ani (I) or a-no-chi Jehovah (I Jehovah) I am not quite sure, i.e., how far "am" is to be added for its full correct force in such phrases as ani Jehovah v'en od (I Jehovah and none else). It would give a peculiar force to "Jehovah"; "am" may be all right to make an English sentence, but what is the force of it? Ki ani-EI v'en od (for I God, and none else) is plain enough; Isaiah 45: 22 and 5. But the hu (He) is essential and immutable existence. It is in Jehovah, but Jehovah takes in time, as in Revelation ho on kai ho en kai ho erchomenos (He who is and who was and who is to come). Perhaps the force of ani (I) is "I am" - the One who subsists as Jehovah, and there is none besides me; see Isaiah 42: 8, Ani Jehovah hu sh'mi (I Jehovah: that my name).

It appears to me there are two parts in this very beautiful and most holy Psalm. I speak of it thus as concerning the Person of Jesus. The first part closes at the end of verse 16, though the one is the answer to the other - the latter, the revelation of the Person of Jesus Christ the Messiah down to the end of verse 16. It is the Spirit of Christ as identified with the trial and trouble of the Jews, "praising even in their calamities" - He not altering, though they did.

To the end of verse 12 is the presenting, in the full power of His own identification of experience, and therefore all prevailingly with God, the misery and destitution of the Jewish Remnant, and an appeal to interest even from the cause of sorrow in verse 11; so we find in verse 22.

- 13-16. Here we have the reference to the continuance of Jehovah; why then not of that He loved? His Spirit in the servants affecting Zion showed where the Lord's mind, and His heart tender. It was there discoverable; and in verse 16, there was appeal, if we may so speak, to the interest of Jehovah. But this was the interference of the power merely of Jehovah - the external results and the manner of them shown in verses 14 and 16, and identified with Zion; but this was the prayer of the humbled Jesus, i.e., identified with their sorrow, the Spirit making intercession as for them - instructing us in His thoughts, and the reference to Jehovah simply for help. The answer by the same Spirit, taking now the form of an answer, for when we speak of any person in the Psalms, it is the Spirit exercising itself as in the place of that person, thus generalising it, and thus here the testimony continues but becomes a revelation in answer. "He will regard the prayer of the destitute," but how so? "When the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory." This shall be Hallelujah to the people that shall be created. I admit the principle of grace here. Am niv'ra (the people to be created) lets in the Gentiles here in principle. So the Spirit of God testifies in 2 Corinthians 5 and Ephesians 2, but it seems to me here to put the Jews directly under grace in that day, the latter day. Dor akharon (the generation to come) is just the Jews not of this generation; compare Psalm 22, last verses, and Deuteronomy 32: 5, 20, 29, and Matthew 24: 34. It is as in Psalm 22 and Acts 13, resurrection principle, and stability in the hand of Christ; thus was the generation akharon (afterwards) and am niv'ra (the people to be created). Jehovah would declare the Name, unalterable in its purpose, power and accomplishment, of Jehovah in Jerusalem appearing in His glory. Three points are connected with it - hearing the groaning of the prisoner, for Jehovah hath looked down from heaven - to declare the Name of Jehovah - and the Ammim (peoples) gathered together to serve Jehovah. This is the full manifestation of glory in result (not merely vexing in wrath), not merely, nor now, declaring the decree, etc., but the Name of Jehovah in Zion. Thus shall Jehovah be declared then - this is the answer, but there must be a more particular account of the Person of Messiah, in whom it is wrought, who is this.

201  - 23. Here then He declares this humiliation, and is presented as in that He feared, His strength afflicted and bowed down in the way - there He drank of the brook; He took days which might be shortened, in which He could feel death and was humbled to "cry to him who," etc., to God as His God. He was simply everlasting. Such was Messiah. He who was the Intercessor in Spirit in the previous supplication, the other part of His character, rather what He was, is given in the revelation of the answer "Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth," etc. Messiah was the Creator in old time or in the beginning. He endured - was the same - and, though His days might be shortened, His years indeed had no end - He still wielded the folding up of Creation as a garment. But He had intrinsic duration, or so existed - folding up others, but Himself the same. Nor should His given or communicated life, His years have end; and Messiah would withal communicate the same enduringness - they would have it, "The children of thy servants shall dwell" ("continue") and their seed shall be established in thy sight," or "before thee," compare Psalm 37: 27, 29. Though there are also mansions (mone) in the Father's house, perhaps it is thus left at large here to let in this also for those faithful during the Lord's absence; John 13 and 14 just touches this very point - His days were shortening, and He was explaining the very truth of the abiding place in the Father's house.

202 The Jewish character of the question raised in the Psalm and the Spirit of Christ's intercession in it will be manifest from comparing verse 13 with Exodus 3: 15 and Psalm 135: 13.

The twofold nature of our Lord is wonderfully brought out in verses 24, 25, and 26-28; verse 27 is our portion therein.

The Psalms

, part 6.

J. N. Darby.

<43002E>

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

Psalm 103

This Psalm is the praise of the Jews, i.e., of Christ as having sustained their righteousness. It is the answer of thanksgiving to the last Psalm - their latter-day blessing, upon the coming in of the glory, recurring to the sure accordance of it with the testimony to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel, and the unvarying uniformity in faithfulness of the divine character with the full acknowledgment of grateful truth on which all our comfort, as converted, shall rest, "He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities." Man is as grass - the link of God's mercy for ever. Christ is the sustaining link of truth - verse 19 marks the time. It is the rest of praise to the Angels, to the ministers of His pleasure; perhaps the saints executing vengeance in that day, when He will do His pleasure* on the heathen, and after in blessings, and all works in all places of His dominion - reconciling all things unto Himself by Christ Jesus - the scene in heaven and earth, and blessing there. The celebration is still of Jehovah.

{*It may be, however, more general, as in Sinai, though they shall be M'shar tav (His ministers).}

203 The glory of the Person of Jesus having been established in spite of and through His sufferings, in the midst of His sufferings the extent of resulting blessing in the character of Jehovah is estimated and spoken of, i.e., the Spirit of Christ, in the midst of the Jews, calls upon His soul, as one of the people, to bless and celebrate Jehovah. Jehovah then is blessed and celebrated in Israel - forgiving iniquity and healing diseases, as shown by Jesus in the paralytic, therein acting as Jehovah, declaring Himself yet as Son of man on earth who redeemeth, who does not always chide, who has removed their iniquities now, and who pitieth them as a Father His children. "Man," says Israel, "cannot be trusted," but the mercy of Jehovah is from everlasting to everlasting on those faithful to His covenant - so with the Remnant. The extent of this judicial economy of grace is then stated - Jehovah has prepared His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom ruleth over all. We are in the heavens, seeing the Father in the Son. The Jew, blessed with Messiah on the earth, recognises the throne of Jehovah in the heavens - he, the Jew, not being there. But Angels, Hosts, and all His works alike render the testimony, and are called to magnify His power and glory in His necessary and righteous exaltation.

There are the ways of God, as in this Psalm, and the acts and works of God, Revelation 15. These last lead to the knowledge of what God is afterwards, as His works of course must. But in the knowledge of His ways, the secret of His mind is known, revealed in communion. So it is said of the saints, "Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor? But we have the mind of Christ." Christ is the key to all.

We may compare this Psalm with Isaiah 40 - the answer of the saints to the mercies there announced on God's behalf, and how God says He has done twice too much, and the people say they have not been rewarded as they deserved for their sins. And so see how truly the Spirit of Christ identifies itself with us, so as to produce in us feelings suited to a man though according to God (compare Romans 8: 27) and, as created by Him in the heart, are ours, such as we ought to have - divine feelings in man, and different from what God announces by His Spirit in His heart - this through Christ, as having taken the place of Psalm 102, because as He was the expression of God's heart, so also He really took the place in true feeling, as Himself in it, in which He was and felt all the consequences of it; see the beginning of Psalm 102, and verses 23, 24 - lifted Me up as Messiah among men, and then had to be rejected. Thus His Spirit really felt what should be felt as a man in that place, and so in us according to what our position is, "according to God." Study this.

204 It appears to me that this Psalm and Psalm 104 are the blessings of the perpetuity of Jehovah in the Man-Messiah, thus revealed, Psalm 103 being the Jewish blessing, i.e., concerning the Jewish man proved nothing in this matter - Jehovah everything, Him we have seen revealed in Messiah. In Psalm 104 the Creation glory spoken of in detail elsewhere which was shown to belong to Messiah (Psalm 102) is here celebrated. I apprehend these to be the expressions of Messiah's soul, who alone has the fulness of the Spirit to do it, but the testimony of the Spirit for us, for Messiah is also Jehovah, the Creator; compare, in connection with this, as to the Church also brought in, Colossians 1: 13, or rather 12-22.

Psalm 104

This Psalm shows the supremacy of Jehovah in all the earth, in all temporal blessings constituted under His hand, therefore for ever. It is intimately connected with and dependent on the former Psalm - it is a dependent subject. In the sense of this blessing the Spirit of Christ blesses Jehovah. It involves the consumption of sinners out of the earth.

It appears to me that these Psalms involve the post-millennial blessing - the new heavens and the new earth - and declare its perpetuity, and that it is the time in full when the Son shall be subject, i.e., this time contemplated in joy by the Son, and the hand of Jehovah, which shall produce it, recognised in present government. I say "of all," because the connection of the partial blessing of the millennium is shown to flow from the same faithfulness of Jehovah, the stability of whom, in blessing, is the source from which the Anointed Man, the Head of creation, who in perfect union with Him had tasted the blessing, reckons on, and prophetically (in His own joy, for joy is prophecy, i.e., joy in Jehovah's character, for He is stable) declares the fulness and perpetuity of it. It is therefore a most instructive Psalm, and associates the present existing things with the perpetuity of Jehovah's stability, though man be as grass, yea, may have introduced sin amongst it when given as a portion into his hand. But He, knowing the stability and goodness of Jehovah will sing praise to His "God while he has his being," i.e., it is manifestly the Man, Christ Jesus, in His perpetual life. It is a very wide and blessed Psalm in this reaching out into full and ultimate post-millennial blessing. Its connection with present things is its blessed importance, as marking their blessing and stability in Jehovah, not of course in se, where man is not; see verse 5.

205 So far as it is Jehovah judging, ruling, in this Psalm it is in Creation, but in the glory of Jehovah, i.e., not simply in Creation as God, as in Psalm 19, where the glory of Creation and the perfection of the Law are abstractedly shown, but as One who, governing and supreme, has His glory (to whom it belongs) as "very great" in the midst of all things - evil being, perhaps, in judgment if needed - but glorified in all, and ministers blessing to man in the midst of this state of things; but "Lord" is His Name with those that fear Him. The young lions, subject to the same power, seek their meat from God. The Spirit of Messiah will praise Him in this, verse 35. There is still a work remaining for Him who, even in the midst of disorder, sees that the earth is the Lord's, and His glory in it (as a righteous Jew should and would), "Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more." Such is the view of the righteous soul of Messiah in Spirit, viewing the position of Jehovah in the midst of a world whose efforts indeed witnessed misery, but where faith saw Him in the midst of it. "Let sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more" - such desires are imperious, and for the glory of the Lord, and the desire, providentially, of the children of God, for it is Jehovah Shaddai who calls them His children. But it belongs to the providential government of the world, not to the present position of the children - they are to grow together to the harvest; but by faith, one can have meditations of Him in the providence which precedes it, which are sweet, and most sweet to the soul - it is of a glory which shall endure for ever, despite the evil and the efforts of wicked men.

Psalms 105 - 108

206 These Psalms are in immediate connection. The first is the great general principle of Sarah's inheritance, not carried into the questions which thus sin had raised upon it; so and so had God dealt with them making them His people, that they might keep His statutes, and observe His laws.

Psalm 106 is the consideration of the great principle (elsewhere noted) of the endurance of His mercy, in spite of, and overabounding in faithfulness all their failures. Ki tov ki l'olam chasdo (for He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever). The end of which is the salvation and blessing of His chosen, and closes in the recognition that they were dependent on His mercy, being among the heathen; compare the last three verses of Psalm 105 with the four last of Psalm 106.

Psalm 107 is the ways of the Lord in bringing them through all these things, when they have received the mercy sought for in the last, compare the first three verses herein; in the last three verses, we have all the principles from this question. Verse 6 appears to me what happens to them after their restoration. The wise understand these ways. From verse 23 to 30, I see manifest allusion to the position typically verified in the disciples, and exhibited for the purpose of faith in Mark 4: 37, et seq, John 6, Matthew 14, etc.

Psalm 108 is then exceedingly plain. It is the joy of Jesus in putting into possession His people Israel according to the full extent of the promise, after He has vindicated the Name of God among the ammim (peoples). Herein we have again the super-celestial glory of God. His truth surpassing even that glory, and bringing it into play for the purpose of accomplishing His promises, exhibited in mercy to His people, for whom Jesus now stood. You will remark that this is Elohim, not Jehovah, for God is referred to, only this is shown to be Jehovah, even of the Jews in verse 3. He being celebrated among the people (ammim) of the Gentiles (goyim). It is the subjugation of the Israelitish nation at the close of the judgments on the ammim, as noticed elsewhere; see Isaiah 11: 14, etc.

We have again here Christ identified with the Jews (Remnant). It begins by the spiritual Remnant identifying itself with Christ the Beloved - He will praise God among the peoples, even Jehovah, recognising Jehovah as Elohim, otherwise it is always Elohim. It knows now the mercy of Elohim above the heavens, therefore it is after the exaltation of the saints in Christ, and His truth reaching unto the clouds in Jesus and His saints. Therefore He prays that God assume this glory and power in order to the rescue of the Beloved. Christ then, as identified with the Jews, is now brought out into ultimate deliverance in verse 6, which takes up the request of the Remnant, and thereupon Elohim answers that He will vindicate all His territory to Himself, for it is His, and He will own it. There is however the strong city, Edom, a question of conquest, into which the Beloved enquires "Who will bring" Him there? Then is the chorus of all the Remnant nation in the consciousness of recognition that the God who had cast off their hosts would do it, and in Him they would do valiantly. It is that part then of the conflict in which God vindicates the Jewish victory to Himself as then to be possessed, and in which Christ accordingly brings in His unity with the people. Verse 12 casts off the help of man.

207 Thus in Psalms 105 and 106 we have the position of Israel, often noticed, in grace according to the promise of Abraham, and in their own character under the correction therefore and discipline of God.

Psalm 105

The seed of Abraham remember His covenant made with Abraham, confirmed with oath to Isaac, and confirmed for a law and testimony to Jacob and Israel - to wit, the promise of the Land. He guarded them as wanderers - He delivered them as captives, to give them the inheritance of the heathen.

Psalm 106

Here therefore they have to recount mercy, enduring mercy - "Who can show forth all his praise?" "We have sinned," confesses the Spirit of prophecy in Christ (compare Daniel's prayer) always. The Lord says even as on earth (in heaven being One Body, and in expiation, He says "Me") "that we offend not," "thus it becometh us to fulfil," etc. Here, suffering in their sorrow and sin, He desires to see them in the joy of their inheritance as God's chosen - Egypt was not understood, but He delivered them - and they felt and praised. But they soon forgat, and tempted God in the desert and they made a calf. In Egypt, and from Egypt to Sinai, for Psalm 105 (compare Exodus 15: 18) records grace. Egypt was forgotten - the Red Sea forgotten in murmurs, and the calf made in Horeb. Psalm 106: 14 gives the quails after the law - Psalm 105: 40, they are given in grace, as before the law. This evil, however, introduced, and its consequences arrested by intercession which God had provided - "they lusted" - "envied Moses and Aaron" - judgment came - apostatised and "forgat God their Saviour." Intercession interposed here. "They despised His promises and rest" - "disbelieved and murmured" - He left them according to their thoughts in the wilderness. They joined to idols - the zeal of Phinehas stayed the plague. They brought Moses into trouble by their perverseness. They mingled with the heathen - filled the Land with their wickedness. Therefore the wrath of the Lord was against His people, and He abhorred His inheritance, and gave them into the hand of the heathen, instead of the heathen into theirs. "He delivered them oft" when brought low, but they provoked Him still. Nevertheless "He regarded their affliction when he heard their cry" - "He remembered for them his covenant, and repented according to the multitude of his mercies." This reconciled all His ways.

208 The humbled word of faith is, now brought low, "Save us, O Jehovah our God" - for all this is in relationship and faith - "Gather us to praise and triumph in thy Name." Therefore, according to the apostolic direction, it is "with thanksgiving," because with faith. "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting" - He changes not, and all the people are called on to say Amen to this solemn truth. What marvellous grace first, and patience of mercy afterwards! Such is the hope of Israel!

Psalm 107

We begin here a new sphere. Israel restored is the occasion of the display of all the characters of God's dealing with the world, as to His righteousness and judgment; and, by the introduction of the personal history of Christ in His rejection and exaltation, of deeper principles of His dealings relative to the Person of Jesus as the Centre of all economy. It is Jewish, but Jewish as to circumstances which concern all mankind. Thanks to Jehovah characterise its introduction, proclaimed by restored Israel - witness that His mercy, their well-known song, in the end, endures for ever; verses 2 and 3 call especially for this praise in the circumstances of Israel. The Psalm itself speaks of the restoration, and though there was a similar deliverance from Egypt, that shall be no more mentioned, for they shall not say "The Lord liveth who brought them up out of the land of Egypt." "They wandered" therefore (v. 4) I take to be on their return in the latter day - they had been (v. 10) sitting "in darkness" - for (v. 16) "He hath broken the gates of brass"; so of their tossings on the sea.

209  - 32. From this verse is what happens to them after they find their place in the Land; and though they are minished and brought low, yet all iniquity, in result, shall stop her mouth. Those who observe and understand these things will, in spite of and even through all the miseries of Israel (as men) understand the loving-kindness of the Lord. But His dealings are a pattern of instruction for the children of men in those days, and they are called (vv. 31, 32) to execute this praise in Israel in the assembly joining with them.

Psalm 108

We have here the full political arrangement under the glory of Christ - God is to be exalted. Messiah, as Man, addresses God, and the Lord Himself, with God, making His glory as Man the expression of what He is thereto subservient. The Lord among the peoples as Chief of Israel, for His mercy is above the heavens, and His truth above all seats and ways of authority, or appearances which may pass through the heavens - He, even God, is to be exalted that His Beloved, the Messiah, Israel in Him, may be delivered. The right hand of God's power is to be manifested.

- 3. "Ammim" (peoples), and "l'ummim" (the nations).

- 7. God, Elohim, answers "in his holiness," from which He cannot depart; thus generally.

- 10. Edom is singled out, long, and specially now, hostile, see Obadiah 1, 3, 7; and Messiah, in the name of Israel, demands who will go out and bring Him into Edom, the centre of hostile power - so in many passages. Man's help now vain, God will do it - God's immutable glory leaving all earthly appearances far behind, and producing its own upon the earth. Israel concludes, thus encouraged, "Through God we shall do valiantly."

210  - 11. For the last part see Psalm 60: 10, the same words, and I suppose rightly there, but query.

Psalm 109

Having, in Psalm 107, the providence, and in Psalm 108, the determined glory of God, we have now, in this Psalm and in Psalm 110, the part of Christ respectively in rejection and heavenly glory, until His manifestation, in this Psalm, as the poor Man entirely and self-emptyingly dependent upon God, but therefore the prey of the treachery, and wanton, but proud hostility of the Jews, and those who lead them, who were guides to those who took Jesus. The Jews are manifestly noticed, as verse 4, and Judas, but both are headed up in the "wicked man" who shall be set over them - the representative of both the Jews and Judas. But, after all, it was "the Lord's doing," and then "Let them curse, but bless thou."

- 22-25. Oh, how this brings out the sufferings of the blessed Lord!

- 27. Note this verse as to the questions which have been raised. Psalm 110 seems to be the answer.

- 29-31. This is faith's estimate, as from the Lord's truth, of the result.

This is a deeply instructive and interesting Psalm. That it is the judgment of Christ against His worst enemies (wicked) is evident, but the question is in what character He speaks it, and who holds the place of wickedness. We have the Apostle Judas spoken of by Peter, under the terms of this Psalm, but it appears clear, I think, from verses 3, 4, etc., that the Jews hold their place also in this Psalm. But, I confess, it appears to me the hostility of the Gentiles in the latter day, connected with Antichrist as against Christ and His office, and consequently the Remnant associated with Him, is included. This would give it a definite meaning, which I believe it has - the accomplishment of the wickedness of the Jews in Judas, but in this he did but represent them in the latter day, betraying Christ, and put under Antichrist. If this be borne in mind, and we see our blessed Lord, as the Sufferer, as identified with the Jews, the use of this Psalm will be easy.

211 Psalm 110

This Psalm I take to be Jehovah's, and the Jewish Remnant's testimony of, and consideration concerning Christ; but in spirit David speaks the word of the Remnant all through. Only first the testimony of Jehovah to what He was in spite of and upon His rejection - David's Son He might be, that all pre-eminence might be His, but David's Lord also. This then was Jehovah's mind, on His rejection, concerning Christ the Anointed One, "Sit thou on my right hand till" - the times and seasons of that "till" were no part of Christ's mediatorial office; the rod of His power should be sent forth out of Jerusalem - Zion. When He was rejected He would rule among His enemies - this would be all enemies of the Jewish people, not, I believe, Antichrist. His people who rejected Him should then be "willingnesses" in the day of His power - in glories of holiness, according to resurrection power, i.e., in Him, as we (anothen) from above - they (me-rechem mish-char), "from the womb of the morning"; there the stop is by accent. "To thee shall be" (surely is) "the dew of thy youth," i.e., I take it, the new-born Israelites, the Remnant in this character of holiness, and freshness, shall be to Him, "Instead of thy fathers thou shalt have children." The glory of the Jewish people, new born, would hang upon, rather than the old descend (though that were, in one sense, of honour as the only true One) upon Him. He is then, in the power of an endless life, constituted Priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedek, not exercised in this office till the day of His power. Then comes the recognition of the Remnant - this Christ is Adonai, at the right hand of the Father - Adonai, the name of God in power "Christ, the power," etc., at Thy right hand, shall wound even kings in the day of His wrath; compare Psalm 2, which also constituted Him Priest. It is still heathen, Jewish enemies, not, as I observed, Antichrist - unholy power. I do not know why it is put "heads," nor that Rosh (head) is a collective noun - I should say "the chief of a great mighty land." "He shall drink of the brook," He shall receive supplies of grace, He shall humble Himself but be refreshed in His humiliation. Therefore He shall be exalted, "shall lift up the head." How true all this was, I need not say. It is a sort of answer to Psalm 109.

We have, on the rejection of Messiah, the answer of Jehovah, and Christ recognised, in the midst of all this suffering and rejection, by His Spirit even in the mouth of the most exalted of Israel and of all Israel, as Lord. David in Spirit calls Him "Lord." Foes He had found plenty, the same as all - for His love they were His adversaries - but He was to sit at the right hand of Jehovah until His enemies were made His footstool. Thereafter the Lord would send the rod of His power out of Zion - He should rule, instead of suffer, among His enemies. His people should be willing, not in the day of His humiliation, but of His power.

212  - 1. We should learn from this verse partly, how the Spirit of Christ speaks in assuming the people's or the saint's or the Remnant's interest, because it speaks of Christ here as "My Lord" in Person, quod nota bene, for it makes it and the identification more remarkable.

- 3. "The dew of thy youth" - this is, I apprehend, the progeny given Him in Israel instead of fathers in that day.

- 4. Moreover "Jehovah hath sworn," He shall be a Priest after the order of Melchisedek. He does not say He is on high - that was not Melchisedek's place - but a royal priesthood of the Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth, though the title of His life is such, "on high."

- 5. Further, there is a day of Adonai's wrath, as well as power, "He shall smite through kings in the day of his wrath."

- 6. In that day, "He shall judge" also "among the heathen" - wide shall be His empire, powerful and decisive His judgment. "He shall smite" not only many leaving there their carcases, but the haughty "head of a great country." I used to think this was Antichrist, but it does not appear to me certain that it is not Gog, for he is exercising apparently his authority rather amongst the Jews than with the saints. One may enquire more of both, for both are true, but it is rather, I conceive, Antichrist.

- 7. He shall be humbled, in dependence on the refreshings of God in the way, therefore shall He lift it up. The other had exalted it, and he shall be brought low.

Such is the proposed glory of Messiah as such, as Jehovah's answer to His adversaries' betrayal and humiliation. One cannot exclude Antichrist without further enquiry, however.

The three Psalms which follow are the joint Hallelujah upon these things.

213 Psalm 111

Messiah here leads the chorus, or instructs it rather, of the assembly of His people - of the upright. The works of the Lord, in providential power for the accomplishment of all the promises of His covenant, are the theme - redemption for them - truth for Him - power and judgment - His covenant proved and established also, as commanded for ever - His holy glory proved in it - and the fear of Him, the way of understanding, despite all the rebellions of man.

This Psalm is evidently a celebration, after the Lord's doings upon earth, of what a God He is. It is a remembrance of His covenant, even for ever. Whatever they had done, He had maintained His own Name and glory; His acts were mighty, but they were all done in maintenance of this, yet were they done in grace and compassion to them (Israel) for in their favour were all these things done - in their favour was His Name of association with them vindicated. It is by the Remnant, or the Spirit referring to them, after the full glory of His Name in deliverance.

There is a distinction still alluded to between the upright, the preserved Remnant who feared the Lord through the troubles, which proved the true wisdom as it was so intrinsically, and the congregation, quod nota, for it introduces the Jewish millennium. The examination of this Psalm will show the most wonderful collection of the attributes of God "Jehovah" in this work, and of the principles of His dealing with and towards His people, and this His acts show, and declare - thence their character consideratively, and importance.

- 1. Sod (the assembly or secret) is a word of common counsel - a band of friends.

Psalm 112

This Psalm gives the difference of the character and results (as God's part previously) of the fearers of the Lord, who delight - for the heart is active in these things - greatly in the Lord's commandments. Here now is the way even of earthly grandeur, but the desire of the wicked shall perish.

These three Psalms go together, and I know nothing more instructive than the comparison of this and the other (former) one; all three are "Hallelujah" - the first, o-deh Jehovah (I will give thanks to Jehovah) - the second ash-re-ish (O the blessings of the man) - the third hal'lu av'de Jehovah (Praise ye, ye servants of Jehovah) hal'lu eth shem Jehovah (Praise ye the name of Jehovah) i.e., the third being under and in the blessings of the second, by virtue of what Jehovah is in the first as in those blessings, the servant of Jehovah praises His Name so known in them. The person spoken of in this Psalm 112) is one then who, through or without reference to circumstances, fears the Lord - that constitutes his character and he delights exceedingly in His commandments. But this, while taken abstractedly true, has its trial and accomplishment in the evil day; he who is so shall be not only blessed himself, but his seed shall be gibbor (powerful) in the earth - they shall be the great ones "Princes in all lands" - the generation, company, class of the upright ones shall be blessed. Darkness he may be and will be in - is proud in it - the darkness even of Antichrist, for it is of the Jew, yea and worse apparently, after even the indignation, but light ariseth up to him.

214 Then specially what we have to notice is that, verse by verse, the thing celebrated in Jehovah in the other Psalm is exhibited in the blessing or character of him that fears Him in this; compare 2 Corinthians 3 and 4. Where it is the exercise of power, it is actual blessing; where it is the exhibition of character it is forming into it, the likeness or image of Him that created him as the enjoyer of His blessings; and each verse, I think, will be found to disclose this most instructively. But, how blessed that we should have all! How creatively wonderful! The blessing of Jehovah's character transferred, as it were, to us with this entire difference because of its nature and Jehovah's Name, a Name of perpetuity, that it is not, as Adam, defeasible blessing as separate merely and accessible to evil, but even as Jehovah, "His righteousness endureth for ever" - for this wondrous blessing is alike affirmed of both; compare verses 3 and 4 of each Psalm, and verse 9 of each Psalm. And note the two things connected with His righteousness enduring for ever; and compare every verse, as verse 7, etc.

Psalm 113

The dealings of the Lord, the result and character of uprightness, and His fear in Man being shown, the results break forth in praise in the chorus of those happy through it. Christ summons them in Spirit, thus blessed at their head, to praise the Name of Jehovah - the subject of the Hallelujahs in each, for none is like to Jehovah, the God of that people, high above all the heathen, and His glory above the heavens - all things in heaven and earth united under His possession, and specially blessing the poor and lowly Israel. This is Psalm 113. Note, His Name is to be praised to the end of the earth.

215 As to the particulars of this Psalm, it is still "Hallelujah," then embraces the two points mentioned - "Praise, O ye servants of Jehovah" - "Praise the Name of Jehovah."

- 2. The answer begins from the servants of Jehovah, "Blessed be the Name of Jehovah from this" (the time of blessing) "for ever." Praise upon it in every place! "Jehovah," who is the God of the Jews, Hebrews, "is high above all nations" - all earthly supremacy of glory - "Above the heavens," it is not confined there but above them all. "None like him, even Jehovah our God," with which it now closes because He exalts Himself - in grace He humbleth Himself - and who hath made this known? Jesus! That is now known to believers in Jesus. But indeed His supremacy is known in this grace, for thus He does, "He humbles himself," etc., verses 7, 8. The exaltation is clearly Jewish.

- 9. The reader of Isaiah 54 and Galatians must be familiar with this verse. It is plainly Jerusalem, the joyful mother of children. Hallelujah!

Psalm 114

Psalms 109 and 110 having brought in the rejection of Messiah by the Jews, and His exaltation to the right hand of Jehovah, and so judgment on Antichrist, or at least "the head over a great country," on account of His humiliation (it may possibly mean, and more probably, Israel's after enemies, not Antichrist), then the relation of Jehovah and Israel, and what is connected with it - this Psalm begins the application and effect of this to the earth, the effect of the presence of Israel's God. It recalls to the earth, to what happened when Israel was first delivered by Him. But Israel was now brought back to refer to God - their souls were in communion with Him, and their minds were so full of Jehovah Elohim, that they say "Him" without mentioning Him. They know Him as their God, and conceal His name, as it were in a sort of secret triumph, as belonging to themselves, and put forth only His works until, having stated them, it calls upon them to triumph before Him, the God of Jacob.

216 There is great beauty and natural power in the structure of this Psalm. Of old time this was the case - Israel went out of Egypt, Judah was His sanctuary, and Israel His dominion. What happened? How did nature quail before Him, before this power in Israel, before Israel coming forth! What ailed the Sea and the Mountains? Tremble then now at the presence of Jehovah the God of Jacob! What joy for Israel! It was the earth, for in Jacob He is on the earth, and when Jacob says "Tremble," he still remembers that to him He was a God of grace - "He turned the rock into a standing water."

This is a splendid Psalm of memorial to Jacob and summons to the world on the reassumption of it by the Lord Jehovah. There were old times of deep distress, when Israel was a bondslave in an enemy's land, owned of none, but Judah was His sanctuary and Israel His dominion - now scattered and separated, the staff of bands long broken in the eyes of the peoples and the poor of the flock. The sea saw that and fled, Jordan was driven back, the mountains and hills skipped like rams, and lambs (b'ney-tzon), before Jacob, His dominion, His sanctuary. How beautiful is the concealment of Jehovah behind His people, and when brought forward! "Tremble thou earth at the presence of Jehovah." "What is all this, this skipping of the mountains - this astonishment of the waters?" "Where is Jacob?" "Who is he?" The presence of Jehovah is with Jacob - tremble at the presence of Jehovah, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who has power over the creature to turn it to His purpose, as He did in the wilderness, and turn the rock and the flint (and such too was Israel) into pools and streams of water.

Psalm 115

But though Israel may boast themselves triumphantly, turning to the earth, when it looks on high it can only say He hath done what pleased Him, "Not unto us, not to us, O Jehovah" - the expression not merely of humble consciousness but of righteous desire, "Unto thy Name give glory." But His Name is identified, for He has identified it with them. "For thy mercy and for thy truth's sake," for thus His Name was manifested towards Israel - if only truth, then must Israel have been rejected, for they had crucified their Messiah, as well as broken their law, but the promises of Jehovah must not fail because man does, and therefore, in His inscrutable wisdom, He brings in by mercy the accomplishment of His truth, and when, instead of going about to establish their own righteousness they stumble at the stumbling stone, they take mercy as their only and just hope, then the truth is established according to God's own promises and heart; and Jesus is owned as the way of it, for grace (khesed) and truth (emeth) came by Him, and, though rejected, will be established with additional splendour and glory therefore by Him. This then was how different a ground for Israel! Not the law - the law was given by Moses - that was their righteousness, but they had failed, utterly failed. Such is the ground Israel rests on then, and therefore the question can really be raised between God in Jacob and the heathen acting in scornful despite of their old sorrows and present abasement, saying "Where is he?" The answer is of faith. Though Jesus may not yet be publicly manifested, yet, by the Spirit of Christ in the midst of them, "Our God is in the heavens," and, as to all the prosperity of the Gentiles, and their abasement, they say, as Jesus on the non-repentance of Israel, "He hath done whatsoever it pleased him" - the heathen idols are nothing (compare the chapters of Isaiah, onwards, after chapter 40, where the question is raised, and the humiliation of Christ also brought in) and so they that trust in them. Then the Spirit of Christ thereon turns and addresses itself to Israel, "O Israel, trust in Jehovah," and asserts also the mercy - He is their help, etc.; and then the promise of millennial blessing from verse 14, but Jewish and earthly - those spared - (vv. 17, 18) - full of blessing, but blessing for Israel on the earth.

217 This Psalm is the manifest supplication of Israel in the extremity of the Heathen's presence in the latter day, claiming not that they should but the necessity of Jehovah's Name, for there Israel was, and the Heathen saying, ready to say, "Where is now their God?" The earth seemed to say "Not here." But Jehovah was indeed identified with Israel, so their faith now recognised, but in the way of mercy before - truth to Israel, mercy to the Gentiles. Now, they having been in unbelief, "Mercy and truth are met together," but mercy must be their first claim. Their God was indeed in the heavens, and He had done whatsoever it pleased Him. Their idols indeed were on earth, and they were nothing at all - those that made them and those that trust in them - for the question in the latter day shall be indeed the God of Jacob and owning Him. "Let Israel trust in Jehovah," in the midst of all that was going on. Whosoever feared Jehovah should be owned. We can always say yir'e Jehovah bit'khu ba Jehovah (Ye who fear Jehovah trust in Jehovah).

218  - 12, 13. This is the manifest recognition that God had not forgotten, consequently He would bless, answering to trust, the vow of the Remnant.

- 14, 15. Here the Lord turns to the poor Remnant, and declares their portion - too strong for recognition of promise in them, filling their hearts, it burst forth and flows over in blessing on them; compare verse 15 with what we have noticed on al-khas-d'ka (because of Thy mercy) - verse 16 hangs on it. The earthly blessing is the subject here, but under the blessing of Him whose is the heaven and the heavens, but as sent it was in the Jews.

- 17, 18. Isaiah 26 clearly explains these verses, as does Ezekiel. As the Psalm begins with humiliation, it ends in blessing of fulness.

Psalm 116

As in the previous Psalm, the Spirit of Christ entered into the confidence of Israel on the footing to them of mercy, so here into the sorrows in sympathy - there, as mercy was to them merely, it begins "To us" - here, being their sorrows, it begins at once "I love the Lord." Though in answer to a cry, for He cried for them, and was just the One that did, taking their sorrows - present salvation, i.e., in the world, was the point, when only faith in the Lord could enable Him to speak, such was the persecution. Death so wrought in him - not thanatos, where this is quoted, as the portion of the Remnant partaking of the sufferings of Christ, but nekrosis - but here still referring to the Jews' portion, "I will walk before the Lord in the Land of the living," which the Lord, as amongst the Jews, sought, "if it had been possible"; but it was not, for sin was in the world - "The corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die" - a man "must be born again." But the Apostle uses it in the energy of the Spirit, when the sufferings of Christ abounded in him, "always bearing about" etc. And, after all, if even better things were reserved for them, the hairs of their head were all numbered. Satan could do nothing unpermitted (and then for glory and sowing precious seed of faith - "striving" - there was a better resurrection, so that with us men could be "baptised for the dead"), for "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints"; He did not lightly permit it. Oh, for faith to go straight on in this confidence, not fearing "them which can kill the body"! And if we have to say "All men are liars," still, speaking because we believe, because we must trust in the living God, we shall soon say with Paul, "Thou hast loosed my bonds," "I am thy servant" (not to their enemies) "he hath delivered us from so great a death," and will though life be despaired of, for "Precious in the sight of Jehovah is the death of his chasidim" (saints). Specially will this be manifested in the latter day for the Remnant - in the land of the living they will walk before the Lord - the flesh of the elect will be saved - for their sake the terrible days will be shortened, and the vows of the Lord will be repaid in the presence of His people, "In the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst of thee," for it is addressed as a present thing, "O Jerusalem."

219 The union between the Church and Christ, and the Jewish Remnant and Christ is different - we being as His Body above, and therefore in a heavenly manner being one Spirit - the other as their Head, and standing for them in present blessing, and manifested, yet still completely taking their cause as His own, and in His Spirit entirely one with them, and therefore in this sense the passage alluded to, and Paul's quotation, "I believed and therefore have I spoken" has its force. The latter however was during life, and so with the Remnant. Light is here also thrown on the going out of the Remnant of Jacob "as dew" - the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom, a more general expression (John Baptist could do that) - and the outpouring of the Spirit; compare 2 Corinthians 6: 9; Psalm 44: 22; Romans 8: 36; 1 Corinthians 15: 31.

This practical connection of the then Jewish Remnant with those of the latter day, and thus with Christ, may be further searched out, for it clears up many things; in this also Matthew 24 is involved. We do not attach sufficient importance to the Remnant in this character - the Lord looks at it specially. In Psalms 117 and 118 the results are fully brought out.

220 We must remark that Psalm 116 is a Psalm of thanksgiving, and, on the principle recognised above, He does not love the Lord as under the law, but as first loved as for deliverance, because heard when judgment and evil was upon His soul. Christ leads this thanksgiving or return of heart to Jehovah, saying (v. 5), "Our God is merciful." It is the thanksgiving song for deliverance producing love, and love and voice of praise and thanksgiving in remembrance of their estate. The vows are now to be paid, and they can be paid "in the midst of Jerusalem," for the deliverance is wrought; compare Psalms 42, 43, 44, and the Psalms there. There they are under the sorrow - here, the Spirit of Christ puts itself in the place of deliverance; there it was the people, "We have heard," and Christ the object as King - here He Himself leads, as a matter too of individual joy to His people, "I love Jehovah." This makes the position quite different - more near, and a matter of affection and intimacy, because of what was wrought, and Christ intimate with Jehovah in union, but as helped, and the people having put Himself in their place, His hand laid on both. This makes Psalm 116 more blessed. It is His own Spirit rejoicing in the deliverance as One of the people, and so saying "Our God."

Paul quotes both these Psalms in Corinthians and in Romans 8. There is an analogous exercise of the Spirit in us - we may look at Christ as taking us as united to Himself, and so presenting us before God, and there in the highest perfection and place before Him, and also as in us, looking up towards Him and saying, "We." The Spirit realises our union, and then all is liberty and joy, because for us accomplished. The Spirit realises our position, and looks up to Him alone there, saying, "We." And here is the difference of the Remnant then and now, or in apostolic days; when we speak of union, we speak of glory and perfection and rest, whereas in the suffering we are substitutes for Christ in the world, though it be only by union we can go through, and we say, "As it is written, I believed and therefore I spake" - we also - and therefore adds positive resurrection de facto, as to his direct testimony, whereas He says "I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living," and the bonds are loosed - the power is shown in 2 Corinthians 1; whereas, the suffering being before them as their portion before they find Christ, He comes down as it were, and enters into them, and says "I." And thus, while there is a strong connection, there is a real difference. The moment it was a mere fact, and Christ looked at as an Object, it could be taken up directly, "As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are appointed," etc. - it was common to both.

221 This is altogether a Jewish Psalm, and is the assertion, as it seems to me, of the continuance of our Lord in His Jewish character upon His resurrection; but it goes farther and accredits the continuance of the Name of Jehovah of which the Jewish economy was but the dispensed instrument of revelation - as we in Jesus of Father. Hence note also the very important principle that these dispensations upon earth are for the purpose, though blessing in them, of developing and revealing those characters and fulness of God which is the continuous object of perpetual worship and adoration to those so knowing them. God has been so revealed now - the Lord as God-Man, both reveals God in these characters and acts alone in the perfection of His Manhood towards them, nor do I see (though exalted in the faithfulness of God) but this is the perpetual condition of His Manhood, i.e., not that there should be Jews for ever, but that the glory of that character of God, so known in them, should continue for ever. In this sense it is I connect "the Son" to be "subject for ever." Now this is all rehearsed in the millennium, so to speak, the Jews holding the place of the earthly son or servant, as taking the official, respective place, towards God, of the children of men, and Christ the Son of man at the head of them.

Thus this Psalm, I believe, speaks, including or looking on to as involving the principle of the other, but excluding the heavenlies. It is the assertion of Jesus in resurrection, "I still love Jehovah" - I am still in this position, not forgetting what Jehovah was to me in the day of my humiliation - and thus righteously owning and magnifying the righteousness therein exhibited, for God, Jehovah, does nothing to be lost, yea, not even in its fragments. We are of course speaking here solely of the manhood of our Lord - though fully recognised, it is seldom dwelt upon in the Psalms as being more particularly His connection with the Jews, which of course through their Jehovah (see Isaiah 50) was in His manhood, or human fellowship and nature. This then is the perfect position of Jesus toward Jehovah - His full trial, and perfectness in it, and perfectness shown, as else it would not be, in it, and Himself Witness to Jehovah's sure faithfulness in it, as else He could not be - the Son of man glorified, and God glorified in Him. "I love the Lord" - the command was "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God" - but here through and in the midst of all trouble which might have turned away any but His heart, speaking after the manner of men. But Christ declares He will be the perpetual witness of Jehovah's faithfulness, He will own Him because His faithfulness was absolutely proved, hence now, as to connection with the Jews, they live during the millennium, see Psalm 115: 13 - touching the Lord, it is perpetual for evermore, He is the everlasting Witness of this. He declares then standing as the Jew He was, as, the Man in the sorrows of death, He proved Jehovah there, not failing in faithfulness even there. Need we say "He was heard"? We are therefore living because, etc.; hence the result in verse 9, "I will walk being alive," i.e., in resurrection, "before Jehovah in the land of the living," compare again Psalm 115: 18, for the first two verses are the general thesis, in verse 3 begins the explanation; then compare verses 2 and 4. "The land of death" it had been really, He had made it "the land of the living." Jehovah's full character had however been brought out.

222  - 14. We have the Lord Christ fully and publicly owning all that was in Jehovah, so that His character should be fully valued in the day of His glory.

- 16. This seems to me to assert the continuance of Jesus as Servant, the assertion of His perfect position of Servant, the Son of Jehovah's handmaid, be it Mary or the Church in figure, and in this sense, i.e., as born among the Jews, here bayith (house) though indeed bar Elohim, (Son of God) in another character a Servant but the Lord's freed man or freeman, but the Lord's, Jehovah's Servant, and in this character He acknowledged all the blessing, and is willing to own the blessing before all the people, as the Servant of Jehovah owning His Name. In the courts of Jehovah's house ever sings the heart of the Lord when it wept, and rested continually graven upon the palms of His hands (and where He would rejoice) when He was rejected, but His love in sorrow only the rather therefore drawn out. "In the midst of thee O Jerusalem" - "thee," for it was alone before His mind and closed up the blessing. Blessed mystery and blessed truth! It is the resurrection return of Jesus to Jerusalem.

223 Psalm 117

We have here all the nations called in to the blessing and praise of Israel's deliverance. It is still the mercy and truth of Jehovah. Jerusalem having now been made a centre, they are called around. The possession of blessing in mercy begets the spirit of blessing; though once forbidding to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, because they rejected mercy, filling up their sins, for wrath was come upon them to the end (eis telos) - now, they had tasted mercy, and they can say to the nations, "Praise the Lord, for he is merciful to us."

Here, note too, the greatness of the mercy is felt and put first, for so Israel comes in - brought in under mercy; and then the truth, they being morally restored, is found to have endured and been for ever. They could not find it under their lie, yet their lie had abounded to the enduring glory of His truth - under mercy, they had come into this. How deep is the wisdom of God!

This Lord Jehovah, the nations, all the nations are to praise, for this Psalm is the summons by the restored Jews (Israel) as thus under blessing, to the nations to bless Jehovah thus known i.e., upon the ground of the blessing to them, what He had done for them. The summons of Israel restored, for then can they say (so we, in the Gospel of God the Father by Jesus) "for his kindness" (still, observe, putting mercy first) "was strong" or "prevailed," and the truth of Jehovah "for ever." This last word is familiar to any reader in the Psalms. Hallelujah! Their knowledge of Jehovah in their own deliverance enables them to speak of Him to others, and call them in in blessing - so of us as to the Gospel.

Psalm 118

This Psalm takes up mercy as enduring for ever, not merely the sense of the present greatness of it - but when they saw how God's truth had abided in spite of their sin, they see the incomparable patience of God - His own character celebrated in them, as of "mercy for ever." Israel, Aaron, and all may now say, "Indeed, his mercy endures for ever."

As the Lord going before, or amongst the people, had been announced to the earth in Psalm 115, so here we have the fellowship of Christ with the national, special sorrows of Israel in that day, and thus bringing Jehovah to be with them (vv. 4, 5-7, et seq.).

224 All the nations had gathered together against Jerusalem, but Christ was there with them in His heart in the trouble. With Him Jehovah could be, for He trusted in Him, and in His Name He destroys them. The adversary thrust sore to make him fall, but Jehovah was with him. Lastly Jehovah had chastened him sore, but He had not given him over to death. There were three points (and so known in an individual soul); the nations around compassing him; the adversary thrusting sore; and lastly, the real secret, deepest in sorrow, yet the key to all deliverance in it - Jehovah had chastened him sore.

- 14-17. This is the triumph against the adversary, because the Lord must be exalted; trusting in Jehovah's name, of which this is still the celebration, Jehovah's name must be exalted above all these things.

- 17. This verse is Jewish confidence clearly. The Psalm is a remarkable summary of the identification of Jesus and all the circumstances of the Jews in the latter day.

- 19. In this verse Christ's victory through trust in Jehovah in all circumstances opens to Him the gates of righteousness (v. 20). Now this more deeply true even in the resurrection, for heavenly righteousness for the Church but here, as speaking for the Jews not given over to death, it is Jehovah's gate for the righteous.

- 21. This is the praise of Christ as heard (in Israel).

- 22. This is the assertion of the great fact, to wit, by the Spirit of Christ about Himself as Man.

- 23. Here it is recognised by the Jews as Jehovah's doings.

- 24. They make their celebration, owning the rejected One; and then, verse 27, the song recognising Elohim here, and returning, verse 29, to the known Israelitish song. I question whether in verse 27 it should not be "Jehovah is El" - the mighty God.

Thus the division of this closing Psalm, closing i.e., as to this subject, is this:

- 1. First the celebration of the truth for Israel; compare 1 Chronicles 16: 34, and the structure of that Psalm very particularly; 2 Chronicles 5: 13, and chap. 7: 3; Ezra 3: 11; and Psalms 106, 107 and 136. The Psalm in 1 Chronicles 16 is a summary of the heads of what Jews are interested in, as the ground, exhibition, and resting-place of confidence in the latter day, but there only the blessings and prayer, for it supposes the first step of blessing in accomplishment, and therefore can rehearse together the statements of "Mercy endureth for ever," and omit the intermediate miseries.

225  - 2, 3, 4. Then the summons to each sort of person to use the song;

- 5. Messiah, for Israel's trust in Jehovah, and that answered - this goes on to verse 9.

- 10-12. These are the circumstances of Israel, in the latter day, as to the nations.

- 13, is the adversary's part - this, Satan and by Antichrist, but the adversary.

- 18, is the Lord's hand in it - chastening, but preserving. Verses 10-18 therefore are, in a measure, a common subject.

- 19. Messiah takes the advance, being in this now living, accepted position, and then it is the Lord's relation with Israel in connection with Messiah, not Messiah's connection with Israel in respect of the evil that was over them. Messiah's grace in subjecting Himself to their sorrows in this, though they esteemed Him stricken, is the way by which He can take them, now again at the last recognising Him, with Him into the blessedness into which as their Head, as the righteous Jew, He is going. The Lord's own use of it makes its force and application manifest.

This Psalm is one of great importance, it need scarcely be said so indeed, looking at verses 22, 26. But it embraces the whole identification of the Lord with the Jews, and yet it is Him as the objective Object of their trust; the same is true of the Church. It is the celebration of the answer to Psalm 115. It is still thanks to Jehovah in the certainty of His mercy to Israel; compare 1 Chronicles 16: 41, so as to the whole chapter - there is first the portion of Israel not taking in their failure in it intermediately, then the blessing of the earth as in Psalm 96, and then the beginning verse of those Psalms which may be called Jewish Psalms, the certainty of Jewish endurance and preservation in mercy.

Now this Psalm is the taking up of this for ever in the Person of Jesus, and after the celebration of the great Jewish thesis in the first four verses answering to verses 9, 10 and 11 of Psalm 115, from verse 5 to verse 22 is the Lord absorbing into His Person the whole necessity of the Jewish people as one whole thing, wherein and whereby comes out the result of Jehovah's truth and mercy. It is our Lord speaking, in the voice, as Leader of the Jews, of Jewish necessities and deliverance in His own Person, centring the nation in Himself. Verse 5 is in His own Person, thus bringing it in, and then the difficulties are national difficulties and questions; thus verse 10 brings in the latter day difficulties of the Jews. And you may observe "the Lord" mentioned in every verse - "jehovah" is the theme in every verse; compare Habakkuk 2: 4, particularly as to verse 17. When I say "Jehovah" is the theme, it needs correction - verses 5, 14, 17, 18, 19 use the expression "Jah." Jah seems the objective Name of God, as simply God, I AM - the great Name of God as such, not a covenant or dispensation name, but He is known in works and in covenant as Jehovah. This covenant or faithfulness of God, the righteous Man relies on, and is righteous in Himself, being perfect for and as Israel with Jehovah, Israel's God; compare 1 Chronicles 16: 16, where it is prescribed as a covenant of Jehovah to Israel, with Psalm 105: 8, where the fact of God's remembrance of it is celebrated. Thereupon the righteous Man claims for Israel, for He is going to praise Jah, the Immutable, whose revealed covenant in attributes He has proved Himself faithful to vindicating in His acting on them all - the Jehovah (as all) attributes revealed in Jah or from Jah - but claims for Israel, with whom in covenant fulfilment He had identified Himself - righteous in Him, mercy to them - but now claiming on this righteousness shown acting under Jehovah, He so righteous says, "Open me the gates," He can go in and praise Jah, God, the only One, in Himself, but praise Him for the proof of what He is in Jehovah, so He states, "This gate of Jehovah," for Jehovah and Jah are One. "The righteous ones shall go in there," and so praise Jah. This is, I take it, the admission, not merely in principle, of the children - Remnant in the Lord's time, i.e., on resurrection, but the introduction of all Israel, i.e., the righteous, preserved Remnant, the righteous ones preserved in Him in the latter day - for He was "bruised for our iniquities" places it in the mouth of the Israel Remnant in that day.

226 The application of the verses from verse 21 is too certain to need much comment. It discovers the secret of all that was done in the rest - the meaning of their previous rejection - the hidden, faithful One in whom they were sustained, in whom Jehovah was faithful - in the midst of all their unbelief, Jehovah's doing is manifest. It was from Jehovah that was, and it was mercy, their sustainment in the rejected Stone, and it now the Head of the corner. They own Jehovah now in Jesus (we, the Father). Well and worthily did He come, be shem Jehovah (in the Name of Jehovah), for where else did we learn it really, however due to learn? But they have but, it appears to me withal, the blessing in the Father's Name; compare the opening of Ephesians and Colossians.

227 Psalm 119

This exceedingly beautiful and well-known Psalm appears to me to be this - other Psalms testify of the circumstances surrounding the Remnant, as having the Spirit of Christ - this of their state, i.e., the Spirit of Christ in them expressing that state, the law written in their hearts, judgments being executed, so that there is what shows the Lord's interference, so that the sense of this is expressed; but, not yet delivered finally from the oppressor, their estimate of their whole condition under and as connected with their circumstances - the mind of the Spirit of Christ in them. It is most interesting in this point of view - all the holy yet humble thoughts and feelings of this poor people, expressed in the now returning righteous confidence of their delight in God, breaking forth to God who has put His law in their hearts when He is interfering for their deliverance.

Its moral depth too is admirable and blessed in instruction and joy, if we delight in His holy will - the expression and commandments and holy roots of His will - for we know His law is spiritual and we carnal. The condition, however, prophetically in strict application is a Jew, a godly Jew, in that day.

This Psalm gives then the law written on the heart in the fullest and most perfect way; in the midst of trial, after failure and in view of deliverance and blessing, which softens the heart and makes God in goodness an object to it in confidence - opens it to God, and God necessary to it. But these are merely means, the law written there in its full moral aspect - it is not grace, not sovereign goodness, though He who is sovereignly good alone could give it. It is not promise. It is the whole judgment of God as to what is good - the expression of good by Him, in respect of good, moral good, according to His own nature (but not what is essential in Him) but revealed in His word, applied in commandments, precepts, statutes to man and man's circumstances, but the perception of what is agreeable to God, as revealed by Him and revealing Him, not in the essence of His nature but in the judgment of His mind. In His nature He is Light and Love - but He knows good and evil. It is the necessity, the necessary judgment of His nature, applied to all capable of apprehending it to make known good, and now livingly produced in the affections of man's nature, yet objectively present to it as what God wills - His law written in my heart. It is not conscience - that is a very real thing obtained by the Fall, but the will remains what it was; thus no law is written on the heart. It is not sovereign grace, which makes us dwell in love and so in God and God in us, and makes us Light, partakers of the divine nature, with the Holy Spirit filling our hearts with it and fixing them on the divine Object, and finally placing us in glory, though there will, in downward manifestation, be the effect of producing what is conformable to it. But, in itself, it is not union.

228 The law written on the heart supposes a new nature no doubt, but it is delight in that in which God morally delights, with reference to Him as willing it, but not simply in nature or capacity of nature, but as He has revealed it - in obedience as commandment, delight as statutes and ordinances, heart-approbation as judgments, intelligence by the revealed Word in all as good in itself, but good as God's will, and referred to God as His delight in His nature, but a link with God because the heart delights in it, and in it as His expressed mind and will. It is a moral delight within the circle of circumstances, i.e., not within their reach - littleness allows of it - scorn does not hinder it - princes may sit and speak against it. This does not change moral delight, and the thought of God makes others' disapproval simply nothing. It is blessing to the heart, cleanses, is the heart's delight as of God, guides, is sought when the heart is broken. He who thus relies, leans on, the truth of God's revealed will, according to His moral nature, can count on it for result.

We need divine teaching to apprehend it, showing it is more than conscience, though the measure of it for what is right in man. It gives God His authority in the soul, so that we are the willing companions of them that fear Him. In man, as he is, it makes affliction a blessing, to break him into this law, setting aside his will. The heart so taught will look for liberty and largeness of moral room to keep it, but delights in it and is comforted when in trouble - it sustains the soul in affliction because it gives a moral joy which affliction cannot touch, and a heart-reference to God. The Word has the stability of God's unchangeable perfection and nature - it has fixed creation, judges wickedness, and is itself delighted in and counted on. It gives divine wisdom as to our path, wisdom beyond man s, though in simple obedience, confidence as to the power of enemies against us, because the path leads as the way to His results in power. It judges the vanity of all mere human thoughts, and leaves the spirit tranquil and unpretending. It brings in intelligence (indeed life and courage practically) but we need to be guided and held up ever in it. It engages the earnest affections of the soul. Its purity is a delight to the renewed spirit. It abides for ever, but the wicked, the pursuers of man's thoughts and will, will perish. Following it, engages the mercy of God. The desire of the heart is to it. In this mixed scene, the heart is characterised by the desire of it; when full deliverance comes, the heart will praise because of it, formed morally according to the character of God Himself. What an immense blessing, that the divine mind as to good and evil (good morally in God, and evil in man) is fully revealed! Eternal right and good, according to the thoughts and nature of God, revealed in the heart of this world! Christ showed it livingly, but then Christian ground and motive is beyond all this. It is founded on and expresses sovereign grace, though in the children after Christ this will be accomplished. But this is law in the highest sense - the divine estimate of good and evil according to the divine nature and character; but, I repeat, it is a judgment - not what is in God. And here is the difference besides sovereign grace, but this will be produced in us when we are made partakers of the divine nature. We shall judge as it judges, approve, love (morally) and abhor as it loves and abhors.

_________

229 This Psalm is the judgment of Christ's Spirit (of man as in His Spirit) concerning the law under the circumstances in which the Jews were placed, and that not without reference, distinct reference, to the latter day. It is the application of all that we have learned previously, of the identity of Christ and the Jews, to the Law. This will account for the expressions of perfection and the expressions of error as nothing else, properly speaking, does, as it does also of the analogous language; Isaiah 42: 19, 20, et seq., is directly connected with thus; compare Isaiah 43: 8, et seq. It is not the experience of a Christian, but of one having the Spirit of Christ under the law, and therefore not properly applicable, save to a Jew, one who knew the law, though in many instances practically we are no more servants but sons, Galatians 4: 7, but here we have no mention of sons but servants, as frequently may be observed in the Psalm, hence its character to those, who know the difference between the Law and the Gospel, may be clearly seen and ascertained. But as the estimate of the Law in spirit, oidamen gar hoti ho nomos pneumatikos estin by the Spirit of Christ, it is a most blessed and beautiful Psalm, and, as showing the spirit of the restored Jews as acted in by the Spirit of Christ, a most affecting one, for the real proper application of the Psalm is of the restored spiritualised Jews (Remnant), expressing (as acted in by the Spirit of holiness and of Christ) in faith, according to the faith of Deuteronomy, therefore not in the full reign of restoration, their estimate of the Law and the Lord, and thus expressing itself partly as regarded Christ who kept, partly as regarded themselves, i.e., corporate Israel, who had gone astray like a sheep, and went astray before they were afflicted. The Spirit of Christ, the body of the Jews have. Much may be applied to a regenerate believer, but it is not resurrection power nor expression of liberty, which is properly Christianity. It is Christ and His people under the Law, not under resurrection liberty or deliverance. The spirituality of the Law, and God's faithfulness in it, is the portion of the delight of the Remnant during the latter-day trouble and difficulties of the Jews. When the Lord appears there is actual deliverance into liberty of joy, and joy of deliverance and liberty - their oppressors gone. There may be analogy in our case. It is then the expression of Jewish faith before their deliverance after their restoration, partly true only in Christ. Other Psalms have given their outward circumstances, and Jesus' sympathy with them in this; here their moral position and Christ's way of filling up this, for He is "The Undefiled in the way." But it is the expression of the restored Jew about it, as speaking by the Spirit of Christ, and therefore expressing what was true in Christ, the real Remnant, only in part, and of them as planted in Him.

231 Psalm 120

The Psalms from this Psalm to Psalm 134, are confessedly one series, and are to be viewed together, and are songs of Zion, describing, if I may so speak, the process of their restoration. It supposes them to be already altogether in the latter-day times, and that in a very definite character indeed. Generally they are retrospective of its earlier character, and, to say the least, commence with the certainty of the destruction of Antichrist; and that is entered into rather by retrospective operation of the Spirit. It is, on the whole of it, rather the restoration of Israel - "All Israel"; that is the subject - the people leaning fully on Jehovah as One they knew, and that distinctly, and He known and recognised, and they knowing Him, and openly owning Him as their Resource, not in any uncertainty of position. It has more the character of a recital of what they had been enduring, than the expression of those who had none that cared for their soul.

- 1. "In my distress I called on Jehovah, and He answered me." This Psalm tells the cry under Antichrist - the judgment on the false tongue; for deceit was his and characterised him, as Christ was the Truth.

- 5. The next thing is the sorrow of sojourning among hostile powers, with whom they had no wish for war, but who were men of violence - men, not godly men, still less God for their habitation - they were weary of their spirit. Meshech connected with Gog. Kedar would seem from Isaiah 21 to be before the last capture of Jerusalem

- 6. What force there is in that word "Long dwelt"! It seems to me that these songs of degrees all relate to the condition of the Jews in the latter day, simply bringing them into their various positions and relations in that time, and expressing the mind of the Spirit in their necessity - repentance or joy under them. The first point here seems that in their distress they refuse the lying pretences of Antichrist and rather lean on Jehovah. They detect in him the lying spirit opposed to truth, the lying character of the enemy, though not openly revealed as Satan or the adversary. On Jehovah, though unrevealed, they prefer to lean. Thus they are shown to be the Lord's from this - they seek the deliverance of their soul instead of help in a lie. This detection of Antichrist, while a liar, is an important point in their character; which importance we may transfer to ourselves in principle - the first point in which the Remnant is marked, "Deliver me from" - detecting what he is, the very help of the unbeliever. Then, what shall be given to them? "Sharp arrows," to wit, of Christ, the mighty Man; compare Psalm 45: 6, subduing power, and then judgment of fire "coals of fire." But while he thus judged of the Antichrist, yet was he still in sorrow beyond that he so proved in Meshech and dwelt among the tents of Kedar. Now though Meshech and Kedar are the latter-day nations that affect the Jews, yet, I apprehend the point specially here is, he was but a sojourner among quite strange nations. Though rejecting Antichrist he had no home of his own - long has the soul of the poor Jew dwelt among those who know not peace. Now speaking of the Remnant, he is peace; but when he speaks, they are war. This Psalm still has the gloom of his position hanging over him.

232 It is a most important point the detection of an enemy undetected, the evidence of the presence of the Spirit, the Spirit of truth, the revealing Spirit and saving power. I suspect Meshech and Kedar to be the mother and son - their adversaries.

Psalm 121

He will look around then to the hills for help. Whence should it come? Ah! there is the well-known truth for Israel, "My help comes from Jehovah, who hath made," everything man could trust in. "He keeps Israel." "He will never slumber nor sleep" - a sure Guardian. No power of evil shall smite thee. "The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and for evermore." The first of the two - the evil to which they were liable; the second - their sure, safe, and secure refuge - that for ever.

This Psalm is the direct putting of Israel under the help of the Lord, of Jehovah; His character in such help is declared, and His perpetual and unfailing character.

- 1. This verse is quite as probably, I should think, an enquiry - at any rate verse 2 is the direct assertion "My help is from Jehovah," in the character of most High God; compare Psalm 91.

233 The dictionaries say that me-ayin (from whence) is always an interrogation. This makes verse 2 clearly an answer to the latter part of verse 1.

- 3. This verse is the Spirit's answer to the trusting Remnant, and then the affirmation "Jehovah is thy keeper," and this, as it is perfect, so it is perpetual. This is a blessed answer concerning Jehovah to the Jews. It seems addressed to Christ as the Head of Israel.

Psalm 122

We have here the happy results in worship - the third part of the sentiments of the delivered Remnant, the happiness of Christ in them. It is ever Israel in all this. These three Psalms are rather prefatial, such as will be used, but retrospective, as I have said, not historical; from Psalm 123, it enters more into detail. They respect the full restoration, in one form or another, though it may not be viewed as accomplished in them all.

This Psalm is the joy of Christ's Spirit, in the fruits of it in others, in actually going up; but all is restored joy of Israel.

- 4. This is in assembled thanksgiving of worship in the Temple.

- 5. "Judgment" - his delight in the place of judgment.

- 6. The heart of the Lord, who once wept, here goes out in yearnings over His beloved Jerusalem; and, calling to prayer for its peace, pronounces peace upon it. Two great motives too, animating to the brethren, and glorifying to God, draw it out; them He still is not ashamed to call "brethren," and "companions"; and, having so blessedly named them, He, at once introducing them into full connection with the glory and blessing, says, "Because of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek to do thee good." Nothing could be added to this.

As Psalm 121 is the answer to Christ as the Head; so this of Christ to the Remnant of His brethren in His own love to Jerusalem. Psalm 120 is the state out of which these are the deliverances.

This Psalm is the restoration, in the person of David, of Jerusalem the portion of the Lord - the gladness of being able to have it as a common opportunity to go "before his footstool." It is evidently out of, and from a state of trial, but now of assurance, "Our feet shall stand." "Jerusalem" is the point - the point of concurrence to the tribes. The testimony; not, I apprehend, the ark; compare Jeremiah 3: 16. Previously it had been in heaven, compare Revelation frequently. Then, proving the faithfulness of the testimony, thanks would be given to the Lord there - thrones of judgment there - the throne of the house of David.

234  - 7-9. I take these verses to be the words of the Anointed owning His brethren, and God, as the Lord our God, and His house to be theirs. It is the bringing in, in the rest of Jerusalem, as the portion into which Christ came, as the Lord's. It is still the celebration of Jehovah.

Psalm 123

The intercourse is all here entirely with Jehovah, and expresses their position and feelings towards Him. It is this, rather than the circumstances, that is entered into. They are occupied with themselves and Him, being with Him. The Lord is looked at as dwelling out of the reach of circumstances, where rule really was. There, out of the reach of circumstances, the believer could direct his heart, and there there was the ground of patient faith. As Psalm 119 gave the position of the Jewish Remnant, as regards law, in that day; so this, as regards faith. It was their condition, as to their heart, that was in question or expression. They wait upon the Lord their God who was in the heavens, as the eyes of a maiden or a servant to her master or mistress - helpless, and who have no business till they get the word of their master. Until He have mercy upon them; patience, submission, the consciousness of no desert, yet the confidence of mercy - this characterised this waiting people. Then their sorrow, and despisedness was an occasion for mercy - a plea, and so it is in their mouth, and so ever when one is in this disposition. So in the plea of this, strong to mercy, they have to wait. They have nothing else to say, but this is strong on the mercy and loving-kindness of the Lord. There were others, "at ease" and "proud" - they were associated with and dependent on the Lord. This was the blessed, holy, and submissive position of heart of the Remnant - this was the perfection of faith in their position, the expression of the Spirit of Christ which enters into all our conditions - in all their afflictions, afflicted.

235 The power and progress of faith, and herein moral deliverance of the Jew, are remarkably shown in this Psalm, together with Christ's and their identification as led of His Spirit; as Christ in the days of His flesh acted so and was perfect, refusing help around, so now they, brought in in the midst of like misery, cease to look any more to human helps and human succours, but to Jehovah (our God). Here is their moral perfection, and help is now in the heavens - the rest of the Jews will have gone to other help - and here their soul is delivered consequently, the help coming from Jehovah. Isaiah 10: 20, etc., becomes true and fulfilled. You will remark there, it is the Assyrian is in question.

Psalm 124

This Psalm celebrates this in actual deliverance; in Psalm 123 the contempt of the proud was there - here "If," etc., they would have "overwhelmed," and "gone over their soul." But there was One into whose soul the waters had come in, and therefore it did not come nigh them - their power was gone, for Jehovah was on their side. "Men rose up," all the power of man there, their gibborim (powerful ones) were wakened up, and come down with their weapons to the valley of Jehoshaphat, but there the Lord and His gibborim, whom He had caused to come down, were. It was multitudes - multitudes, but in "the valley of decision," and the day of the Lord near. Joel is just the expression of the great inroad on the Remnant, or nation, or of all the nations - chapters I and 2 describing it with the Lord's summons, and chapter 3, what He turns it into - "the valley of decision." Here is the escape of the Remnant whose hope was in "the name of the Lord." "The snare was broken," wide as its cords were spread, and strong to the eyes of men, but the Lord was there. It is not Antichrist so much, as the power of man in the trouble which ensues upon his destruction. The universal character of Jehovah is carefully brought in, because it is His millennial blessedness, His comprehensive Name herein, so manifested in blessing.

It was well they did trust in Jehovah, for, if Jehovah Himself had not been on their side, in man all hope was utterly lost. Men rose up against them and the proud waters had gone over their soul, but it was the occasion of their being able surely to say, Jehovah Himself was for them, for there were none else, and to Him they had looked. Such the effect of extreme and hopeless trouble - in Jehovah's deliverance, the clear certainty that Jehovah is for them. This Israel might now say - a long-lost word in the mouth of the sorrowing but still loved people, "Jehovah is on our side." "Blessed be Jehovah," was now therefore their word. The snare is broken, they delivered, and they could say now with experience, "Our help is in the Name of the Lord who made heaven and earth." Their great and hopeless trouble thus becomes the certainty of Jehovah's being with them.

Psalm 125

236 Then is the celebration of their distinctive confidence. They can now speak about it in the maturity of peace rather than the joyous excitement of deliverance, when they were just saved from being a prey to their teeth.

- 1. "Those that trust in Jehovah shall be even as Mount Zion which abideth for ever," for the peace of Mount Zion is now a witness of deliverance - the same Mount Zion as of old, the seat of the gracious counsels of God uncovered. They trust in the Lord - have the same portion; as "the mountains round Jerusalem so Jehovah around his people, and that henceforth even for ever." But then it was a distinctive blessing. It was judgment - "the rod of the wicked" (and those came against them) "should not rest on the lot of the righteous." There was no mingling; and this applied to the wicked among Israel. It was not a distinction merely between Israel and the nations, but a distinction in the deliverance of the righteous Remnant. So the prayer is for them, "the good and upright in heart"; "as for those that turn aside to crooked ways," Jehovah gives them a portion with the wicked, but these will not be now any more therefore numbered with Israel. Peace shall rest on Israel now accepted and righteous before God - the righteous Remnant become the nation.

This Psalm gives the character of the division and separation. The trusters in Jehovah are as stable as the Mount Zion, which the Lord Jesus loves - are identified, so it is revealed, with His purposes in it. These are the persons who are stable, and the reason and consequence - as the mountains about Jerusalem from this great time out, the Lord, Jehovah, is round about His people and for ever - so the bot'khim (they that trust) now become. For this reason there must be separation, and the Lord honoured before the close, and therefore He rids Himself entirely, so that the wicked being destroyed - searched out till none were found - excluded from the congregation of the righteous, the righteous serve in uninterrupted security.

237  - 4. This seems to me a prayer of Christ bringing down good upon the good, the upright in heart, the Remnant. As for the wicked even among Israel, they turn aside from Jehovah's ways to their own - Jehovah shall lead them forth from His ways to the paths and portion of the wicked whom they have chosen. Yet though they are excluded with the wicked, "Peace shall be upon Israel," though they see it not. Thus the external wickedness is removed, and the wicked among the Remnant of Israel cast forth with it, then peace; the briars and thorns have now been dealt with and no longer choke.

Psalm 126

This restoration of the captivity of Zion is now specially noticed. The very heathen were astonished and noticed the hand of the Lord for them, and the echo of praise came from the people, "He hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad." How simple and eloquent this word!

- 4. This verse takes the restoration of the captivity of Zion as the pledge of the restoration of the whole people.

- 5. This is the joyful experience of Israel, the humbled and sorrowful Remnant, ground and laid low, but with godly sorrow now reaped with joy. But there was One above all who had sown precious seed in Israel, and in love as well as in righteousness, and in both combined, had been a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, their faces hid from Him, but now He filled His bosom with the sheaves, for, though sown in tears, the seed was indeed precious seed, and the fruit sweet to His taste, and the joy of His labour of love, now He reaped it. The husbandman had had long patience for it, and waited the early and the latter rain, but now the precious, blessed fruit came - first labouring, He now partook of the fruits - He came again rejoicing.

238 I have had difficulty in this Psalm, but the point of it seems to rest on "Zion." It had been mentioned in the former Psalm. The hills were "round about" her. But the restoration of Zion is the occasion of the burst of day upon the nation and wanderers - the word is of the Remnant. The last would seem to be of Jesus. All was dark - no titular deliverance - no throne taken - no definite re-recognition of the Lord in the City of solemnities. But when the Lord "turned the captivity" or "restored the rest" of Zion, then were they "like them that dream." The deliverance was then plain in its great pledge - Jerusalem was to be the throne of the Lord. This was to be "trodden down of the Gentile till" - but the "till" was now come. Zion was taken into the hand of Jehovah - He had aroused Himself to take His place on the earth. It was owned even of the heathen - it was the Lord's deliverance; compare Psalm 132: 13, 14. It was so, "The Lord had done great things" for them; they were glad. This forms the ground of the desire of the believing Remnant for their restoration, including I suppose the people in the countries. The Lord has done this - we may now expect all. This remained now for the Lord to do - their heart was in Zion - it was restored - the Lord's heart was there, His hand was there, the rest would follow. It would be as refreshing streams I suppose where the heat and desert was - they had now sown "in tears," not rejoicing when iniquity prevailed, but labouring in trial; compare John 4: 36, 37, etc. But this is the Remnant generally.

- 6. I believe this to be specially of the great Sower - One who did weep over Zion, but, though so He went forth, He returned rejoicing, nor were the streams of His love wanting, and He brings the fruit of the travail of His soul. It is a lovely Psalm, and puts the Lord in a sweet and precious light - light of truth; compare Psalm 14: 7, and see Romans 11: 26. Compare, as to Israel, Jeremiah 31: 6, 12 and chap. 3: 14. And note in these Psalms we have the union of Israel (the first stating their distress, first under Antichrist, then under Mesech and Kedar north and south) in connection with and brought up to Zion. As to this last, see Psalms 2: 6; 48; 49: 35; 87: 2; 102: 13, 16; Christ's interest in it; Psalms 129: 5; 132: 13; 146: 10; 147; and 149: 2. Isaiah, Micah and Zechariah pursue this subject.

The Psalms

, part 7.

J. N. Darby.

<43002E> 239

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

Psalm 127

This Psalm is for Solomon, in which character the Lord builds the house, and we have the expression of the experience of the utter folly of all carnal Jewish expectations and efforts. They might have built the house, and great stones and buildings be there - it was in vain, the Lord did not own it. They might have watched the city, but they had awaked in vain - all had been in vain for Israel till the Lord arose and had mercy; then Jewish blessings flowed forth as upon earth in a posterity given as blessing in the Lord's peace.

This Psalm is the full experience of the Jews, after all their troubles, in entering into their Solomon rest. Many buildings of houses had there been, but all turned to nothing, and their glory was Babel. "Except Jehovah" the God of the Jews, of the earth in Solomon who did build the house - "build the house, in vain have its builders laboured in it." It seems to me this has special reference to the labours of the Jews in the restoration of their temple which the Lord did not own - did not take the building of - for the place of His sanctuary shall be cast down. "Except the Lord keep the city," all their labours were in vain, for the city shall be taken and the houses rifled - toil and labour is alike vain to them - whereas, perhaps, "So to his beloved one he giveth sleep."

When there is the restoration this is its character - it is a new, fresh, prospective blessing, "Instead of thy fathers, thou shalt have children, whom" etc. He will make them houses.

- 4. "Children of the youth," I take to be "young men." It was not "Woe to them that be with child and to them that give suck in those days," for the Lord had built the city, the sons grew up as the plants, and their daughters as the polished corners of the temple. It was not now to say, "Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bare" - the full blessing was come in - He made "the barren woman to keep the house, and to be a fruitful mother of children." Nor was it the prosperity of worldliness, as in Psalm 49, in the due time of sorrow, but the blessing from the Lord in the time of blessing, when the city was built, when the streets of Jerusalem, where the Lord was, should be full of boys and girls playing, themselves blessing from the Lord. They were as arrows in the hand of the mighty man - His quiver was full of them, and He would speak with His enemies.

240 Psalm 128

We have then the natural consequence of this state of things - the restoration by the Redeemer - not ashre haish (Blessings of the Man) but ashre kol-y're (O the blessings of every one fearing). It is an extremely beautiful picture of the Lord's earthly blessedness - sweet domestic security and home, their own home - the picture of Paradise, save that there was labour, but that giving a blessed return. The labour of their hands, not the sweat of anxious brow - redemption blessedness; but while this was so within, there was more than that - the Lord blessed them "out of Zion" - their hearts' desire, and they saw "the good of Jerusalem all the days of their life." They saw their family full of blessing, "children's children," as we read of Joseph, for as the days of a tree, now indeed were the days of His people, and "peace" (the other point) shall be "upon Israel." How different from that day when the one son of Jeroboam was taken away because there was some good in him! The righteous taken away from the evil to come!

It is the fearers of Jehovah that enjoy this blessing - yea, even to children's children. All the associations of their hearts would be satisfied. It was "out of Zion" the Lord would bless them, and they would see "the good of Jerusalem all the days of their life." How of the Lord, and yet how truly earthly and of man - human nature - these blessings are!

Psalm 129

But the record of Israel's sorrows is the record of the wilfulness of others, of the oppression of the heathen, of stablishing their glory without righteousness, but they were touching that in which God's heart was, and if they helped forward the affliction, the Lord was afflicted in it, and they touched the apple of His eye. And though God might bear with it while the necessary chastisement of His righteousness in love was upon them, their will really was in exercise, and they delighted in oppressing Israel, and when the Lord's time had come, when He had chastened in His measure, they would be found only in the increased pride of their rampant will, never having had enough, enlarging their desire as Hell, their heart lifted up. But Israel's cry, even of the just Remnant, would reach the ear of the Most High, when the necessity of His judgment was passed by, and would turn and wither the gathered roots of pride, gathered in pride (as ever) to judgment. These were sheaves wherewith He that gathered had filled His bosom from, and in the midst of the desolations, yea, not one grain of wheat had been let fall to the ground. But here no Mower had filled His hand - no Shepherd led them - no Gatherer of sheaves filled His bosom. They were left to the withering - to the sport of the winds - when they were swept away; a monument only of judgment - righteous judgment - of sorrow, yet no sympathy - only to the beholder for there was no fruit there. The picture is one of sad desolation. It is the testimony of the Spirit of Christ concerning the history of Israel, and the final occasion of judgment, and its character. Zion was the centre round which it turned. It is an interesting and an affecting Psalm.

241 This Psalm particularly takes up the enemies. These desolators - many a time had they done it, and so indeed it was from the days of Chushan Rishathaim onward till Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon broke the bones thereof, and after in their yet worse and more terrible because more evil desolations, their back had been ploughed on and long furrows made. They had just to lie down and be treated at the very will of the enemy who had enslaved them; yet, wonderful mystery! they had not prevailed against them. But there was One who said "Me" for them - One who in all their afflictions was afflicted. His Spirit now taught them to speak in the recognition of the ways of God; and then comes the sum, for Israel through mercy now stood in righteousness "The Lord is righteous; he hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked"; their character was now brought out - "they hate Zion" with which the Lord in grace was identified. But there was no blessing from God or man upon them; when Israel should blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. No mower would fill his hand with them, nor any goer-by say, "The blessing of the Lord be upon you."

Psalm 130

Here we have Him who truly took this place, and (though true of Israel by Him and in His Spirit), casting from the depths His soul on the Lord, therein leading Israel into all the blessing of it. Forgiveness - this was the true hope of sinful Israel, the new ground not under the law at all; and then looking for no other hope, but waiting for Him; and so in verses 7 and 8 His Spirit fully teaches them. The place of the cry is the leading point here. The place acknowledged Christ's Spirit who had been in it, taking its place with them in it, and putting loved yet poor Israel into the place of God's thoughts, and its true comeliness in it - acknowledgment, faith, but that in mercy. His, i.e., the answer of the Spirit of Christ, is in verses 7, 8.

242 This Psalm is the expression of Israel's heart in the now consciousness of where they were, and, "accepting the punishment of their iniquities," looking, according to the principle of mercy, as in Romans 11, in quiet and holy humiliation of spirit. Mercy is the holy ground on which they graciously and humbly rest. "There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mightest be feared"; hence they wait for the Lord. It is the moral recognition of their misery and the cause of it, verses 1-3 thus throwing on mercy. The Lord waited for, for deliverance - His Word rested in - Himself desired.

- 7, 8. These verses show the blessed confidence and hope that belongs to this restoration of spirit.

Psalm 131

His place of holy subjection and littleness is brought out in this Psalm, and so was the place Christ had taught them and taken. He knew all things, but He had put Himself into the place of quiet subjection to God's will, and therein was in the way of blessing. The things which were revealed He took up and taught to Israel, and there Israel found and would find its blessing. The spirit is the spirit of all learning and instruction, but it is not the character of the Church's language, but of the quiet, childlike subjection of Israel as entering, as an obedient child, into the place of its hope.

The former Psalms threw Israel on the mercy, but these are the words of Christ leading them. It seems to be subjection of spirit - the spirit of obedience as contrasted with purpose; compare Deuteronomy, end of chapter 29 and 30, Zephaniah 3: 10, 12, etc. There seems to be the sense of inward subjection, i.e., the absence of self-confidence, and also the withdrawal from all other, his heart "as a weaned child," so as that the Lord alone is exalted. He had bowed under the circumstances. He turns and says, "Let Israel hope in the Lord," etc. - before, it was redemption from iniquities - "from henceforth and for ever," for He was obedient in spirit, and sets Israel in it. So we find the same spirit shown in Matthew 11: 24, et seq. We have the exercise of judgment on the same principle, in Psalm 101. Here He leads the way in it - as man He leads the way in obedience to power, but the spirit is blessedly beautiful and instructive to us.

243 Psalm 132

The Spirit then calls the remembrance of Jehovah, to David and all His afflictions - the type and memorial of a greater Sufferer. This, in each class of the Psalms, is introduced, and David forms the root and centre of Israelitish hopes in grace, through Him who was the Root and Offspring of David, and that on the full apostasy of Israel as to its own ways and God's dealings. The ark, pledge of the covenant, the pledge of God's rest, was heard of at Ephratah, and found in the fields of the wood. Possibly there is allusion here to Christ's birthplace, or when David was little and despised there, as the Root of David was. His heart was secretly on the ark of the covenant of His God, which was cast away by the apostasy of His people (for David was the type of grace after apostasy) and He could have no rest until a habitation for it (Exodus 15) was found. Hence, i.e., from this identification with God's glory in the midst of apostasy, all His afflictions. It was not now, as in Israel's journeyings, "Rise Lord and let thine enemies," etc., and "Return O Lord to the many thousands of Israel," but "Arise into thy rest" - His rest, which grace had recovered in the midst of apostasy, where worship and service was to be.

- 5 and 8. There is a difference between "Habitation" and "Rest." God has a habitation where He cannot finally rest, only it holds out the ground and place of rest, to faith. Habitation, as we have often seen, rests on redemption; as soon as Israel is out of Egypt it is spoken of, not before. But this was not God's rest, as indeed is shown in Hebrews 4, only it was a hypothetical rest, and indeed founded on responsibility as a present enjoyment, but, as Psalm 95 proves, not really the rest. So in the words analogous to but contrasted with verse 8, it was, "Arise O Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered," not "Arise into thy rest" - then He returned to the "thousands of Israel," but it was not His rest. The dealing of Christ with the Sabbath is connected with this - His Father worked hitherto, and He worked. Redemption, then, gave the ground for habitation, and laid the basis of rest; but, even so, Man was tried for it, and, as we have seen, Ichabod was written on all - God, though He vindicated His glory, gave "His strength into captivity, his glory into the enemy's hand." There was a total close to the whole history of man as connected with his responsibility as in Israel and as such (for sending His Son in grace went on a different ground) and then grace comes in in power and sets, when man is proved and found wanting and the breach with man is complete - the ark of God, where God sat as dwelling in Israel, gone - God in His rest, i.e., the ark of His strength in Zion. So that, for the rest of God, not only redemption, but practically the testing of man and finding him wanting, is needed. Then God does His own work in power, and enters into His rest; and this, as He is love, is grace founded on Christ's work and sufferings.

244  - 9, 10. Here we have the supplication.

- 11, 12. The sure basis of promise, and its terms.

- 13. From this verse we have the answer, which will be seen in each request to surpass the desire, as it expresses the Lord's own purpose and the will of His heart in the matter. "For the Lord hath chosen Zion" - it is not merely the want of the people - He hath desired it - it is His rest for ever. Her priests are to be "clothed with salvation" - her saints "shout aloud for joy." Then the horn of David is "to bud," and "a lamp" is ordained for His Anointed - "On himself shall his crown flourish." It is not merely "their children." This shows us, who David is, in the prophets, etc.

Now, to go on to the substantial truth, God being love, love must rest in making perfectly blessed those whom it brings to know and be happy in it, or it could not rest in its love; and, as God rests in His love in us, we, partakers of the divine nature, His love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us, rest in the communion of that perfect love. He rests in perfect love in our blessing, and we rest in the communion of that perfect love, having a nature which can find its rest only there; redemption having enabled us to be there and enjoy it in righteousness - redemption that love has wrought. This rest is founded in the end of man's nature as a child of Adam, as well as on redemption.

245 Then the Psalm brings in some other points. We have seen that David's heart could have no rest till Jehovah find His; his faith looks then to what is found to be God's counsels. This I have noted, but there is more. It is God's desire too - He hath chosen Zion; there is the security of His counsel, but also He has desired it for His habitation - His delight, as well as His counsel, is in it. This is immense blessing. The desire of the heart is there, so that there can be no rest till God has His place, and the perfection of faith seeks it as His - desires that His mind may be fulfilled. But God thereon reveals that His desire is there, not only His counsel, so that He is to be glorified thus, but His delight, and that He desires it for His habitation; and thus His habitation and His rest become one (v. 14). Only, man in nature is set aside, and faith enters into the mind of God, which His power accomplishes. There too He dispenses His blessing.

I add some further words on this Psalm. First of all, David's sufferings are the basis of all, i.e., Christ. Next it is sovereign grace; for responsibility even, under the mercy declared through Moses, was closed when the ark was taken captive by the Philistines - there could be no day of atonement, no blood on the mercy-seat. Ichabod was written on all - God had "delivered his strength into captivity, his glory into the enemy's hands." Sovereign grace raised up Samuel the prophet, and then David, who brought the ark, not into the tabernacle at all, but to Mount Zion, which was thus the seat of sovereign grace in power, in contrast with Sinai. God is called on to "arise into his rest," for He will rest in His love. It is His rest we are to enter into - where His love will be satisfied and His nature perfectly met through the fruits of it, as in Ephesians 4: 4, 5. Christ "will see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied." Hence it is God's rest and of the ark of His strength - a new thing; not "Let God arise and his enemies be scattered" and "Return O Lord to the ten thousands of Israel."

But then man's, the saint's, rest is only in this, "I will not go up into my bed, nor give slumber to mine eyes, till I find out a place for the Lord, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob." His rest, his heart's rest, could only be in the rest of God perfectly glorified. Here we find the desire of the saint's heart, (nota bene) in its desires identified with God, so that it can have no rest until He have rest and be perfectly glorified - a vital principle, the effect of being partakers of the divine nature! And this we shall see brings him in this blessed way into God's counsels, as it is written, "Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor that he should instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ" - the Holy Ghost by the Word leading us "into all truth"; compare Exodus 15 and chapter 29: 46. Our rest is, entering into God's rest - an infinite blessing!

246 But the desire is, rightly according to man, the answer according to God - the desire right and according to God's nature and ways, but the blessing according to the riches of grace. The desire is that Jehovah should arise and enter into His rest, and the ark of His strength, for the strength and faithful covenant-working of God enters into rest when all is accomplished. The answer is "This is my rest for ever . . . . The Lord hath chosen Zion." It is His desire, and He will therefore dwell there. It is more than asked; but it is more, the heart led of God has been brought to desire what is God's desire and the object of His election. So the desire is righteousness for the priests - as John Baptist's father. The answer is, "They shall be clothed with salvation," the full, final deliverance of God. The desire is right - righteousness becomes them - the answer is from God, and becomes Him in the power of His grace. The desire is that the "saints may shout for joy" - all right; the renewed heart must desire the prosperity and joy of God's chosen, and God will give it abundantly, "They shall shout aloud for joy."

Remark another thing. In the desire they are Jehovah's priests, Jehovah's saints - "Thy." So, as to the "rest." And as to the "rest," it is repeated; but as to Zion, "This is my rest." And this is what we want - nothing else will do, or would be rest. But, as to the priests and saints, He does not say "My" but "Her," i.e., Zion's. They are His, but so perfectly does God own the complete association of the Church with Him in rest and blessing, that the priests which are His, He calls hers, for they do belong to her, and the saints which are His, to be hers. There is no difference, and I refer now to the Church - we are His priests, and we belong to the Church, are hers in the most absolute sense. We are His saints, but we compose the Church - are hers. This in the identity of the "rest," is of unequalled beauty.

247 I have omitted the desire not to "turn away the face of God's anointed"; the answer also is more - the horn of David is to bud - a lamp is there ordained for Him - and His crown shall flourish on Him, i.e., He goes beyond the wish. For us it is in heaven in glory; but note, it is there in Zion, Christ (literally King there, as in Psalm 2) is to be glorified in the Church. Nor is here Christ separated from God, see Ephesians 3: 16-21; and here too it is "above all we ask or think." But, as to His crown, He will be glorified with His saints. There too it was first sung "His mercy endureth for ever," for it had blessed Israel after and in spite of all, and found, in the end of His responsibility, the occasion and beginning of His perfect grace. We see the outgoings of His goodness in that which He will do for Zion.

There are two parts in this Psalm - the prayer and the answer, down to verse 10; from verse 11 to the end, it is Christ under the character and in connection with David - David and his afflictions - seeking a resting-place for the tabernacle of Jehovah, "A habitation for the mighty One of Jacob," finding no rest till He had a habitation; compare Haggai 1: 4, and the literal David, 2 Samuel 7: 2. But the truth is, though there is a rest for the ark of God, the ark of God's strength, yet the Lord builds David's house in a higher sense. It was wandering as lost, heard of at Ephratah, and found in the fields of the wood - neglected and despised of men, not "we will worship at his footstool."

I cannot but think this is the setting the human nature of Christ in His glory and strength. It was not God's strength, but it was the ark of God's strength. It being discovered, and the prayer that Jehovah should enter into His rest, there is thereupon prayer for His priests and His holy ones (chasidim), and that He should not for His servant David's sake, His ancient promise and binding grace, turn away His anointed One's face. The subjection of the spirit of the King is marvellously shown, and shows the righteousness of spirit that was in Christ as to this, for the Lord alone was to be exalted, and we speak of Him here as "the Man Christ Jesus," not as "Lord." They would have taken Him by force and made Him a King - the people's King - but He was Jehovah's King, and showed His righteousness in subjection to Jehovah, and not exalting Himself above His brethren (as the Law also prescribed, and as Rehoboam would) for the Jews, whatever their after-learning, when it was not faith, did not, it would appear, look for a Messiah who was Jehovah. This unity was reserved for the Church.

248 Then comes Jehovah's answer to this Holy, subject, King, or concerning Him, by the spirit speaking concerning David. The Lord's answer to all this looking mystically for the resting-place of David's afflictions in the ark of His strength, is the exaltation of Him who is both David's seed and the true glory of the ark.

- 11. The accomplishment of truth to David - "The Lord hath sworn . . . he will not turn from it. Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne"; that is a settled point. Then comes a conditional one of righteousness, true only in Christ the Lord - "If thy children keep my covenant, then," etc. "For Jehovah hath chosen Zion." They may be casually displaced, if they do not answer Jehovah's character, but Zion was chosen - it was His sought habitation; and this was the answer to David's affliction - in Christ, the fruit of his body was set upon his throne; but that, Jehovah's habitation. This was His rest "for ever" - His earthly rest, and He could rest there, Christ being there, but there was a reason too - He had "desired it." Then the blessing. Hence also, after the miracle of the loaves, the wish of the people, and the suitableness of the temptation as to witness of the blessing; but neither were the path of the humble patience of Jehovah's King, till Jehovah exalted Him - not His own (though well entitled) not the people's (though of the promise) power, but subjection of Him and blessing to them in righteousness and grace. So the Lord remembers David's afflictions, for the Spirit, typically in David, was assuredly fully in Christ the King, "born King of the Jews." But the results in blessing are made to surpass the prayer, when the detail is come to her priests - prayed for as "Thy," but soon stamped as "Zion's" - clothed with salvation, "her holy ones" (chasidim) "shall shout aloud." Not only shall the Anointed's face be not turned away, but "the horn of David" shall "bud" there, for David and Zion are now identified, and "a lamp ordained for" His "Anointed" (Messiah). "His enemies" clothed with shame, for He is the David, the Beloved, the Anointed.

249 Psalm 133

The person of the high priest represented the whole people; but the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost, in the fragrance of grace, was that which united the whole people; so exactly in Christ - one Spirit, one Body. They shall in that day appoint themselves one head; they shall not be two people any more in the land, and this not only in form, but in spirit and unity of blessing. Hermon caught, in its lofty head, the dew, or produced it, but it fell in the central place of divine blessing. Thus ministering the power of unity, Hermon was called Sion; but it was written with S, not Z. This seems to be Zion, as we ordinarily understand, where the Lord commanded His blessing and life for evermore. It was the place of grace, the Hill of grace. Though Hermon, whose head was in heaven as it were, was the attractive place of dew, yet it was the dew of Hermon, but it fell on Zion - the Spirit will be poured on them from on high, and "Ephraim will no more vex Judah, nor Judah envy Ephraim, but" etc.

- 1. "Behold how good, how pleasant a thing, the dwelling" (rest) "of brethren, even unity together!" How good and how pleasant surely is it! The literal fact of this shall be in the restoration of Israel. It is the word of the Spirit of Christ, on their all being brought together in rest, as the same in Balaam, on the vision of Israel below. It is the vision of Pisgah - of Christ over Israel, and the expression of His heart to them thereon. The statement of truth in it, "Behold, how good" - then it shall be realised. In Him they were to appoint one head, and the great day of Jezreel to be the whole seed of God. No longer a stick of Ephraim and a stick of Judah, Judah vexing Ephraim and Ephraim Judah, Ephraim Manasseh, and Manasseh Ephraim, and they together against Judah, but dwelling together - brethren - one stick in His hand; as there was a partial restoration from Babylon, and though not the body of the tribes, an indiscriminate recognition of them, and Christ sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But, on the rejection of Christ, the staff "Bands" was broken, though the poor of the flock that waited on Him knew it was the Word of the Lord; and yet more fully in the day of their trouble, when I doubt not there will be more of this vexation than ever before, not taking the apparent restoration in temporal blessings, but waiting for Messiah; for this will be their trial, because of the Word of the Lord. When the trouble comes it will be proof of the truth of the word of the Lord, but when He takes the power, and His horn is made to bud, then comes the unity - they dwell together in unity - and there is the goodness and pleasantness.

250 Its comprehensiveness, and indefectiveness, is a great thing in this; for if there be brethren and not united, the very necessity of their love causes sorrow. Their being brethren is as a root of bitterness to their soul. "The precious ointment" must go "to the skirts of the garment," or "the head" itself could not be happy or content. The oil that was there would be the witness that it was not on the skirt, but now the uniting power of divine love, in Christ, shall gather them, in this unction from the Head, into unity, and like the copious dew of Hermon's blessing falling on the mountains of Zion; for though Hermon was called Zion, I believe here it alludes to Zion in the centre of blessing in the south, and thus the dews of Hermon, and all there - a communicated blessing for them, i.e., in Zion. The Lord has "commanded" emphatically "the blessing, life for evermore," or "the age" perhaps, for o-lam (evermore) has the article.

It is then, the declaration of Christ - the Word of Christ to His brethren - of "How good and pleasant it is" for them "to dwell together in unity." The appeal to it, as now existing by His deliverance, symbolised by the unction from head to the skirt of the garment, and the refreshment of the dew of heaven on the whole land, coming from Hermon but centring in that place of blessing - Zion - and that, the point where blessing is commanded - the centre of unity - the anointing and the dew from heaven, holy savour, and refreshing in it, then filling the land spiritually; seen now, in so far as the Spirit gathers in unity, by the free spirit there, not tarrying for men, nor waiting for the sons of men, and having the present savour of God.

Psalm 134

Zion thus established, praise rises, even by night, in the sanctuary. At peace there, His servants stand in His courts; and as once the day only brought clearer light on their sorrow, now the night itself is awake with the praises of Jehovah who has restored them, and given them cause for praise day and night, and He who has been the centre and power of this blessing - David - now in Zion, which the Lord hath chosen. They bless out of this seat of grace and royalty. The sanctuary owns the royalty, the seat and place of blessing. He who made heaven and earth, the Jehovah of His people, the Creator of all things is, in this power, called to bless Him out of Zion, the place of grace and choice to the Lord. It is not Sinai now. Psalms 132, 133, 134, all centre in Zion - "The Lord hath chosen Zion" - "Commanded blessings out of Zion" - blesses Messiah "out of Zion"; surely the people is restored now. The priest blesses Jehovah, and calls for benediction from Jehovah on Him from this seat of royal grace. Thus is Christ placed - on the remembrance of David and his afflictions, who had no rest till a place was found out for the Lord. Heaven and earth the compass of power, but Zion the seat of peculiar blessing.

251 Psalm 132 is the King; Psalm 133 is specially priestly blessing; Psalm 134 brings in both - pronouncing and ministering praise and the blessing.

This Psalm seems to me to be - Christ, having brought the servants of the Lord (see Isaiah 65: 13, 14) to the sanctuary, calls upon them now to bless the Lord there. Having set their feet at peace, He says, in the satisfied feeling of their rest, "Now praise the Lord"; then, to bless God their Maker, who gave songs in the night.

- 3. This verse seems the answer of those thus called upon to bless, calling for blessing on Messiah from Jehovah, as Maker of heaven and earth, out of Zion, the place where Jehovah, and His blessing, and Messiah was. So we read, "Prayer shall be made for him continually," for He is here seen in His human, Jewish character; as we would ask for blessings on the Holy because of what He is to us, so of their King, King Solomon, who hath set them in the house, or rather, the house among them. "Jehovah" is still the theme.

But though I have said "Sanctuary," I believe the word means rather "your hands of holiness," and I apprehend that Paul, or the Spirit of God, alludes to this where it is said "I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting." These were called upon to lift them up, as standing in the house of the Lord "by night."

252 Psalm 135

Then comes the general summons to the "Hallelujah," identifying Jehovah and His servants. I do not see that these Psalms go beyond Jerusalem and the power - the prospectively "they," we have Israel as pledged in that, as we have seen in Psalm 126. They were now standing "in the courts" of Jehovah, where to be a doorkeeper was better than dwelling elsewhere - a day more than a thousand, and praise was "pleasant" there. It had waited for Him in Zion, and now they could praise there.

It is still, I think, the summons of Messiah who had set them there, delivering them now, to praise. It is good and pleasant, and it is the sense that Jehovah hath chosen Jacob. So Messiah now authoritatively, and with this pledge declares - well is He able! - how He has suffered for them, and now tells it, in this pledge to them in Zion. He adds His knowledge of the greatness of Jehovah, giving Him, to His people, the character of "Our God"; compare John 20: 17. Our Adon, their Head; His power was over all the earth, but there was special treasure to Him in His choice of Israel, and Messiah was not unmindful of His benefits. The Spirit of remembrance was now among them. The memorial of the Lord, revived and fresh, as fresh and more blessed than ever, however they had forgotten and buried them, seeking their own (works), and "Israel his people" was a name of remembrance to the Lord, the moment He was remembered; for He would "judge his people," and "repent himself concerning his servants." He "will judge his people" as subject to the trial of His holiness, "repent concerning his servants" the Remnant; for the rest, they all pass away.

Then comes the full comprehensive summons - Israel, Aaron, Levi fully brought out, "Ye that fear the Lord." "Blessed be the Lord out of Zion," for the full blessing being come in, the Lord is praised "Out of Zion," dwelling at Jerusalem. Before, the blessing was on Messiah from those brought into the house - here, in the full blessing, it rests from Messiah on Jehovah Himself. It is in fact (calling to mind all the favour) something of Psalm 22: 25. With the exception of Levi, we have similar statements with the close, in Psalms 115 and 118.

But there is another exceedingly and deeply interesting point, in this and the following Psalms. After stating the greatness from verses 8 to 11, it quotes exactly what Moses refers to, at the borders of the land, in Deuteronomy 29. There they are set upon their keeping the covenant, so they had undertaken at Sinai - here however all this and the land within, so taken, is passed by, and the Psalmist quotes Exodus 3: 15, the uncovenanted pledge of God's unchangeable favour to the Jewish people, the Name by which He is known, His everlasting memorial, verse 13; verse 14 is the execution of this. Deuteronomy 32 is quoted, as, after all their evils and punishments, for His Name's sake; and, accordingly, the controversy and difference between them and the heathen is taken up, their rock and our Rock being judges. In the next Psalm these leading principles are passed by, or promises, and, after the same recapitulation, the great Jewish hope and principle is celebrated in the fact, He "remembered us in our low estate," and "redeemed us from all our enemies."

253 There is another point to be noticed in these and other Psalms, as Psalms 102, 103 and 104 - the connection of Creation and Jewish blessings, in the supremacy of God and the Person of the Mediator.

This and the following Psalm seem to me to be the praise to which the songs of degrees have led. Jehovah is celebrated - the name of Jehovah - and is called to be by the "servants of Jehovah." They stood now in "the house of Jehovah," "in the courts of the house" of their (Israel's) God. Jehovah had "chosen Jacob for himself" - Israel was His peculiar treasure. He was "great," and Israel's Adon above all gods. "Whatever Jehovah pleased, he did" with universal power, as in Creation and Providence; and that power in delivering Israel, judging their enemies, exercises divine and righteous authority over them in favour of His people, and using that righteous sovereignty in preparing a place for an heritage to them.

- 13, 14. These verses remarkably take in the record of the name of promise to the fathers, given to Moses, as in Exodus 3, and of sovereign mercy on their utter destitution, as in Deuteronomy 32. Note the remarkable putting together of the first and abiding Name of calling and sure faithfulness, and the promise of deliverance, after ruin by the entire unfaithfulness of Israel; Exodus 3 and Deuteronomy 32.

- 15-18. The heathen are therein shown their vanity.

- 19-21. These verses take up the full Israelitish located blessing, according to the ordinance of God in Israel, not His on them, but their return to Him as blessed - at least they are so called on, and in spirit summon their companies, and close with the utterance of the praise itself, with a final "Hallelujah," as it began.

254 Psalm 136

This is both a touching and interesting Psalm. It traces from the character of God, in spite of earthly corruption, through creation, by Israel redeemed, to the blessing of "all flesh" naturally, and the recognition of the "God of heaven." "Jehovah is good" - "His mercy," the Jewish godly celebration, "for ever." He is "God of gods." Ha-elohim (the gods) are the assumed, or supposed, existing authorities over the earth - a name of earthly power, not of supremacy, but as the object of acknowledgment, not of governance; see Deuteronomy 10: 17. The ground of this, He is the doer of "wonders." What man knows not this? The heavens above the formed earth (the types of the arrangement of dispensation) the order of rule. Then deliverance of power as to those in whom Creation-blessing is constituted in order. And we must note, for it is an important point (as here shown) that Creation-blessing is resumed in the Jewish order; first, under responsible obedience by a given law, and then, on redemption in Jesus by power, constituted obedient on earth by a new way. The heavens are possessed by God through Christ and the saints. The order of Creation-blessings is to be looked for then in the Jews. Then guidance, then clearance for the heritage - heritage of Israel His servant - then, the now celebrated mercy of the latter day, verse 23; verse 24, the power of redemption; verse 25, the provision for the world; the recognition of the "God of heaven" - the Jewish position, for "the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom," etc.

This Psalm takes up the well-known Israel's chorus, "For his mercy endureth for ever." The present occasion of their praises, proved that "mercy endureth for ever," and that that mercy had really gone on unceasingly, and had preserved them through their rebellions, and remembered them, as said in Deuteronomy, "in their low estate," and "redeemed" them from the hand of their enemies. It still takes up the Almighty Sovereignty of God Jehovah, and takes up the same elements of praise, but adds Israel's sense of mercy, and that its having endured for ever enabled Israel to take up this very praise now. "He remembered us in our low estate" - then indeed it is that praise really comes out from a humble spirit, and mercy known now, and known in unchanging favour in personal blessing, gets more glorious and lovely, because a love which flowed from itself, not caused by the Spirit, is added to the praises as the sinner's only basis for them all. It is a beautiful expression of this. And the mind, thus taught, recounts them all with happy particularity - power, wisdom, skill, grandeur of governance in the objects formed in their proper order. Judicial and mighty power in deliverance to His people - for the Creator looks at them (and they are immediately associated with Creation in its blessing) who did everything in controlling power over creation for them - distinctive in judgment, Israel passed through, Pharaoh overthrown - who led them with unceasing care where there was no way, and smote their enemies when they would have checked their entrance into their inheritance, giving their possessions to them, His people - and, after all, "Redeemed them from their low estate, for indeed his mercy endureth for ever" - and then blessed in Providence all the race of man, and the animal creation too, for to this his mercy reached, "The God of Heaven, whose mercy endureth for ever."

255 It is not here, of earth merely, for it is for them as much to look up as the Gentiles who had the earth; and the Church, apt to think God did not mind the earth, to look down and own Him the God of the earth. Messiah's reign in that day shall prove Him both; gathering these dislocated elements - failing Israel on earth, and a failing Church for heaven - into perfection and stability, for both the inhabitants of the one, and of the other fully blessed in them - they suitably made one.

This closes, I think, the rising up by degrees to the Lord's house, where this, or these, are sung. What follows takes a wider scope, and yet looks back to the interval, which has been entirely omitted in these two Psalms - discipline, and sorrow, and humiliation for sin by the way - the people visited. The former two took up merely the land on their introduction into it, and looks at them there in their low estate; and this, whatever its cause, was looked at as an object of compassion. "Mercy for ever," was the word, and they could truly sing it then. Circumstances are entered into, here connected with visitations and sorrows in strange lands, and deliverances there, and all that was associated with Israel's state when far from Jehovah, and Lo-ammi indeed really written upon it - quite another and different aspect of things.

256 Psalm 137

This therefore gives an important character to this Psalm, the period of Israel's rejection, and the impossibility of praising the Lord in such circumstances. It is the Spirit thus in the Remnant faithful to the associations of God's glory with Israel, but for that reason incapable of uttering the Lord's songs. They might, with a sort of holy boldness, on God's own principles and holiness, yet with bowing of heart, say, as elsewhere, "Praise waiteth for thee in Zion." Jehovah had His own land, His own place - this He had made Israel's; were they to forget this? It would have been slighting His favour, renouncing the speciality of His mercy. Babylon they might, they had got into - their sins had brought them there - but there they must at least hang up their harps, weeping, because for them the place of this world's careless, apostate glory. For, indeed, if in sorrow they were identified with the place of God's glory in the earth, their portion, if the Spirit of righteousness was in them at all, was sorrow there. Well! the Lord too was very sore displeased with the heathen that were at ease - He was but a little angry, and they had helped forward the affliction. For good He suffered His people to be afflicted, for righteousness too now, but still they were beloved. Now the testimony to their righteousness in sorrow is rendered to them by the Spirit there, and this is the blessed point of this Psalm - even if carried away captive, they were those of whom Zion's sorrows were the sorrows; and in spirit, Jerusalem, the Urim of God's peace, preferred above their chief joy. They could say, when free, this in the truth of the Spirit of their state then. So shall it be in the latter day. All the intervening sorrow of a separate people in judgment is witnessed, and owned by the Spirit of God.

Then we have the three great powers of the world or cities concerned, Zion - but they were Zion's songs, not to be sung but there; Babylon - of it it could be said, for judgment, full judgment, was not yet come about, "Who art to be destroyed" - haughty evil, he would be blessed who executed the judgment on it. Then there was a third party - haters of the Lord, who would be found liars - implacable enemies of Jerusalem, hating it just because it was the Lord's, and they were envious of it; but as they dealt thus in the day of Jerusalem, the Lord would remember them. We see thus that deliverance from Babylon (and so we may add, it falls) precedes its destruction, and, before they can triumph in the setting up of Zion, they can, as delivered and with the Remnant's feelings, speak of their previous position as one that had been. Though Babylon was not destroyed, and Edom yet to come up in remembrance of judgment before God, Jerusalem was still to be spoken of as one remembered, not forgot; not as one which they possessed, and dwelt in in peace, as their glory; but is spoken of as remembered too, and yet in existence. There they had done so and so, and he would be happy that destroyed her; and Edom is still viewed as in power, to be visited of the Lord. It is thus a very instructive and pointed Psalm, as well as exceedingly beautiful in its spirit, and strength of association with the Lord in the scene of the appointed place of His favour, blessing, honour, and glory. The Lord would remember Edom - but Babylon was to have, it seems, some instrumental rewarder of her ways. The judgment on these two closes the Psalm.

257 Babylon and Jerusalem are two cities. Sorrow was their portion in one - the place of joy; joy in the other - the place of sorrow. It was, to the children of the Remnant, a strange land. Jerusalem was remembered. The remembrance of Jerusalem was more than the presence of other and foreign joy. Foreign joy, to sorrow, is the pressure of grief. Edom has her share in judgment, for she had a portion with Babylon, not in the captivity, but in hatred to the city. This was the point of the Psalm - Jerusalem. Babylon is the place of captivity - it is opposed in heart to Jerusalem; there the joy was centred. Hence Edom is brought in. Harps (Kinnorim) gave no pleasure in Babylon.

- 5, 6. These seem to be a sort of answer of Christ, as by His spirit in them; so accomplished indeed in truth in Him.

Psalm 138

- 7. I am disposed to think these are the words of Christ also.

This Psalm is the praise of Christ, as the Jewish Head, for the faithfulness of God the Lord as regards Him, once the suffering One. He acknowledges, as regards accomplishment in purpose, that which came by Him, "grace and truth," and the Word was magnified above every name. Then there are two things - "I will praise thee" (known in the fulfilment of the word), "with my whole heart," satisfied in the accomplishment, as truth from Thee - grace and truth; "before the gods" (all other derivative power known, and manifested to be so now, though often oppressing the Royal Sufferer) and "Towards thy temple," for it was Jewish truth and glory. He confirmed the covenant by grace to them, but in truth of promise to the fathers - truth of God's promise.

258  - 3. There was this faithfulness to Christ.

- 4. Then "all the kings of the earth shall praise" Jehovah, when they shall "hear the words of his mouth," i.e., after the glory is in Jerusalem, in faithfulness to Christ; "yea, they shall sing," etc., "for great is the glory of Jehovah"; and this by His respect to the lowly, to the despised Jew, so shown. "The proud he holds at a distance."

- 7, 8. These, as the first verses anticipated, or spoke the triumph, are the exercise of faith in this, and express His passing through, and association with theirs. The Jews sorrow as righteous sufferers - the righteous nation that keepeth the truth.

- 8. In the beginning of this verse, we have what the Lord, I believe, refers to, as to the matter of it, in Luke 22: 37, and if so, we have the deepest touch of affecting sorrow in that verse.

It is a beautiful and comprehensive Psalm, in the mouth of Christ the Lord. Its identity with the Jews, so often seen, shines out beautifully in circumstances, in reference of worship, in assumption of promise, and all the circumstances.

The Psalm, then, takes up the praise before the whole earth - the Lord's word, His faithfulness in truth, was magnified, above all "His Name." Mercy might have done it and be sung, but faithfulness to His promise, in spite of all man's unfaithfulness (see Romans 3) now shone out in all its glory, and they that blessed themselves in the earth would bless themselves in the God of truth. This is a glorious position, the position of the strength of the Spirit, while its tender mercy is true too to the needy, and in our infirmities too; but this was risen above, in His strength now - the holy temple was there to be worshipped towards. Every promise had come out in its own glory, in spite of the utter unfaithfulness and utter failure of man. It was true "the kings of the earth" had not yet come to bow to the glory of the Lord, nor yet sing consequently in the ways of Jehovah, and Israel had therefore to praise "before the gods." Still this, in one sense, exalted Jehovah's strength. All was not as yet brought into the peaceful blessedness of acknowledged rule, but Jehovah had appeared on Israel's side, so that they had that glory before all the powers of the earth. Israel had cried in the day of his trouble, and the Lord had strengthened him; and now "All the kings of the earth" would have to hear "the words of Jehovah's mouth," and would sing, for indeed it would be and was blessing, in the ways of Jehovah, "For great," the delivered one now can say, "is the glory of Jehovah." Such is the substance of the Psalm as regards the Remnant. It is in the period, after the destruction of Antichrist, in the time of Jacob's trouble - the first great act of judgment, in the person of the associated oppressor of the Remnant, before the earth is subjected, or its kings have learned to bow before Jehovah, the faithful God of His people, in blessing.

259 Still the resurrection of the Lord Jesus is the great hinge of this Psalm; and when the mighty one of death was against Him, in His entering into the time of Jacob's trouble - yet with Israel against Him (associated with him, so that it could be said, terrible word! "Your hour and power of darkness)" - He was strengthened in His soul with strength, and met in His own blessed, peaceful dignity these apostate rulers that stood up against Him, "Was heard in that he feared"; and could take the ground of resurrection against all that was against Him. And so, in the strength of divine favour, He could, in blessed, perfect obedience, take the cup, and thus seal the certainty of this submission of all to Him in the strength of the "Lord over all" evil, even the power of death.

We have then, in the last three verses, the three great aspects of Jehovah's ways - high, but having respect to the lowly - reviving His true and faithful Servant, though such may be in trouble - stretching forth His hand against the wrath of His enemies - perfecting that which concerns His faithful Servant; "For his mercy endureth for ever." And this it is has made way for the glory and manifestation of His truth, according to the depth of His wisdom and unsearchable judgments. In Christ indeed, and so of all promises in Him, His word is magnified above all His Name - His promises "Yea and amen in him." Blessed He who is both Lord and Servant! David's Son and David's Lord! Israel's Sufferer and Israel's Saviour! The same love making Him one, that He might be the other, in divine perfection!

260 Psalm 139

The day of Christ's trouble having been thus introduced, the mystery of the Church, according to divine righteousness, and searching all things even according to death, brought in, but the Church, being brought out of it stands of course above and beyond the reach of it in judgment, for it stands in the power of it according to the favour due to the Person of Christ, and which in Him has raised the Church out of the full result of the judicial fulness of divine righteousness against all that divine righteousness could search, and if it searched heaven or the power of death - the two extremes of that righteousness - it found it in one in perfection, in the other in suffering its full exaction, in Him who thus, in it for the Church and the Church in Him, fills all things.

- 17, 18. The purpose of these thoughts concerning Christ and His glory is referred to, and then, consequent on this, the judgment of the wicked in vindication of His honour (who opposed and rejected Him) and that righteousness may prevail, for in truth His soul was perfect, though He went into the dust of death, in its hatred of evil - and so the Church in Him; and then the searching of eye of divine righteousness, desired for it, is disciplinarian and directive, not judicial as to the acceptance of the person (v. 23).

This rests the whole question on higher ground - the highest and fullest ground taken in this Book. As to the manner of its communication to us and our part in it, it is the mystery of the Church, but hidden here. It is not, "I will praise thee, for I am searched," but "I will praise thee, for I am made." The whole Book of the Ephesians is the Spirit's unfolding and applying, according to the full light of an ascended Saviour, the force of this Psalm, and commentary on it according to the light of the Gospel, and its actual accomplishment.

- 18. This verse is resurrection, and His place in spite of death.

There are four or five distinct parts in this Psalm; verses 1-13, he is fully known, and cannot in any way escape from God's presence. This a solemn and all-searching thought. Verses 14-16, he is God's creature too, known beforehand and formed. In this character he can praise Jehovah. Verses 17, 18, God's thoughts are precious to him. God has made Himself known to him by His thoughts; and if he be in sleep, or the sleep of death, still he is with Him who never slumbers. In verses 19-22, there is opposition between himself and God's enemies; but these must be judged, and himself thus set free from them. Verses 23, 24, the earnest desire that whatever in himself is inconsistent with God, may be thoroughly searched out, and himself led in that eternal way which is God's and of Him. Compare Psalm 16.

261 This Psalm is the mystic Christ, but spoken of in person because so known in connection with the Jews, and the enemies of God; but it is His moral character, as so known in connection with the Church, as having no iniquity, and bearing no iniquity. But, He being fully searched, what is perfect owned, i.e., Himself and His Body the Church, He is in open opposition to the adversaries to God so detected. Indeed Christ was most thoroughly searched in His day, even to death, and no iniquity found in Him, and therefore perfect for His Church before God. It was His death that proved this; therefore His members were formed in the "lower parts of the earth." The Church was taken out of Christ's death, and here is the force of "the lower parts of the earth" - a difficulty as on this very ground, for as Christ's death was the real power in which sin was measured, and out of which the Church in resurrection was formed, so out of this world, in a state of death from God, the Church in its members was taken - Christ having descended there for the purpose, and going really into the full character of it responsibly, even into death and the grave, the lower parts of the earth. Thus the principle of the Church in Christ is known, and the Church formed as His Body out of it - the object - and meeting the requisitions of God's eye, and then therefore used as the scene and instrument of God's power, as answering His moral character which the power was to vindicate, in the form of those in whom it had been dishonoured. No place could escape the search of God's Spirit, nor man find a place from it. But Christ (and the Church) stand it, because formed in the power of the "Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead." The grave was indeed a dark place - the Church's (mother's) womb - but God knew it there, and, by His creative grace, formed its members there out of Christ, "when as yet there was none of them."

262 The Church's conduct must be subjected to the same judgment, though in love; therefore it says i.e., the Spirit of Christ "Search me." It is known, not knowing. Such is the character of revelation, judging the conscience; if we think we know, we know nothing, but "if any one love God, the same is known of him." The principle of the Psalm goes on then on this inevitable searching of God's Spirit, and ends, known as the Church, in praying God to search it.

In passing to the conclusion, it shows first the searching and its extent, above the reach of man, quod nota; for therein, self-search never can attain peace, however useful in itself. But God exercises it - man (Adam) there is beset before and behind, and no place is one, could he get there, where there could be escape from the searching of His trying Spirit. Thus the basis of judgment is laid; but then in Christ the same searching eye has formed the mystic Christ, the Second Adam, in the power and according to the principles of this judgment. Low and far, as it might seem to be, out of God's sight, it was formed therein, and taken in the power of His judgment, from the lower parts of the earth, in love, by His eye. Therefore no judgment then could reach it, for it was formed in Christ there taking the judgment. Thus we have judgment - the Church in love (looked at in identity with Christ) formed of God - then the knowledge of the Church, having "the mind of Christ," verses 17, 18, and 1 Cor. 2: 16 - then judgment against the wicked, and separation from them, verses 19-22, and then the prayer for thorough searching of itself lest wickedness be found in it.

We have first then, man acted on in judgment - the Church - its joy in Christ, forming the history of Christ mystical, including the judgment of the enemies of Jehovah Elohim - the wicked as against God, but then personally their enemies as to Jehovah, for righteousness is established in the very heavens - these are the thoughts of God concerning the man (Adam), and then will be the judgment of Jehovah's enemies. Messiah seemed to be Jewish, and so He was, but a body was prepared Him for heavenly glory. And there the thoughts of God concerning Him found their full illustration, and righteous development. Righteousness was proved there, John 16; and so the enemies of Jehovah (the Jews) were brought to issue, and this is the subject of this very deeply-teaching Psalm; see 1 Corinthians 11: 32. God's heart and thoughts are both proved our blessing; ours should be tried, i.e., we should pray to God so to do.

263 The Psalm addresses Jehovah, the God of the Jews, in which character Christ was subject (for us) to trial, found, I need not say, perfect - the prince of this world came and had "nothing" in Him. Then comes the Church (in Him) with God - there formed, in all the love which acts on these principles. The person arises who owns again Jehovah, and begins to deal with them as Jehovah's enemies. It is a very interesting Psalm.

- 23, 24. This is the abiding principle of the Church by the Spirit of Christ - the Holy Spirit, to Pneuma to hagion.

I have not entered upon the exquisite moral beauty of this Psalm, as merely giving the heads. To verse 13, it is the divine knowledge, found to be inevitable, though supposed could not be concerned in such as we, as man. Verses 13-16 found in grace; verses 17, 18, found in purpose revealed, and still connected in this with divine presence, for resurrection is real purpose, compare Psalm 17: 15; verses 19-22, its then utter rejection of evil as wholly separated to God from the other, treats the evil ones, as adversaries. Verses 23,24, the Church's present use of it in knowledge and grace.

Psalm 140

The saved people being righteous and searched, and the wicked to be judged and slain, these are brought in in their relative condition. And, passing on to the condition of the Jewish people, to speak the words of Christ among the Remnant as taking up their cause in that day, it looks for deliverance from them on the earth; possibly, in the "evil man," noticing the last enemy arising from within, more especially the Antichrist, and, in "the violent," those who seek their own will, from without, against the men of peace and righteousness.

- 12, 13. These verses show the sure confidence of faith in those circumstances. The Psalm, however, is one of character in those He sought to be delivered from - the evil ones and enemies, not designation.

The Lord in this Psalm is spoken of, not in His exercised perfectness towards God, but as connected with the Jews in trial, exhibiting the wrongfulness of His enemies. The "wicked man" I believe to be Antichrist; the "violent man," the subsequent enemies of the Jews, as the Assyrian. And He prays for the Remnant - under Antichrist, they are - from the violent, they are preserved. They have both indeed one general character - which verses 2 and 3 give; though the first and second parts of verse 2 particularly refer to the same in verse 1. He is called ra-sha (the wicked) in verse 4.

264  - 6, 7. These apply to the different deliverances; verse 6 against Antichrist - verse 7, the violent man.

- 8. Still, I believe this verse to be Antichrist.

- 9, 10. These are the destruction of the other enemies, who "compass about." Their being destroyed proves no tongue of man shall prevail over violence.

- 11, 12. This is the result. When the man of violence is overthrown, from His rest the Lord says for them, "I know that Jehovah will maintain the cause of the afflicted" - the poor, humbled, but soon to be blessed Remnant of the Jews - "the right of the poor," for they are in Jesus. He is afflicted in their affliction. The righteous (so made) shall give thanks in Jehovah's name. "The upright shall dwell in thy presence," i.e., in Jehovah's, before Zion, in that day. They "shall dwell," not the wicked among them, but "the upright" when the "man of violence" is put out - their enemies that have compassed them, and the wicked among the Jews, destroyed. Fear, and the snare, and the pit shall have been on the yoshev haaretz (inhabitant of the earth); but the upright delivered and preserved, as righteous, from the wickedness that has come in, shall yesh-vu eth panekha (dwell in thy presence).

Psalm 141

This Psalm makes a more discerning investigation, and enters into the position of the righteous One amongst the people - His being thrown entirely on the Lord for keeping righteousness, so that He may have no part with the wicked. Willing that the righteous should smite Him, He will pray for them in their trials, though they rebuke and reprove Him. All He wants is righteousness, but He desires to be preserved from the dainties of the wicked; snares they had laid around, but He was turning himself to God and desiring this only - practical acceptance with Him, Jehovah, and to Him only therefore He looks. Instructive lesson!

265  - 6. Though willing to be smitten by the righteous, this verse implies still an owning of them, but their liability to heavy chastisements; but, as He prayed in their calamities, for a blessing is in it, in the kharata (Thou cuttest off) so when chastened and overthrown they would hear His words, for indeed they were sweet. He knows it before the Lord; in the day of visitation there would be hearkeners. Thus the Spirit of Christ took up the people - Israel proved in Jerusalem; as for the enemies, it was deliverance from, and judgment.

- 7. Here He looks at the relentless evil and violence, murder committed against the nation. He calls them in that, in Spirit, "Our bones," still; still the individual believer, for it was now on earth (a question on earth), would escape, while the wicked would fall into their own nets. Look at David in the time of Saul, and there is much to guide in the understanding of the Psalm. Prayer is the position in which he puts himself - praying the Lord to put a watch over him.

We must remember that whatever the glory, the Lord is not only against the enemies, but with the sorrows of the suffering Remnant, and expresses them all in perfectness as His own. The Lord seems to me here to assert the spirit of the righteous man, first praying for the keeping of his heart from evil, and actual separation from evil men, then willingness to receive reproof from the righteous. Yet whatever their calamities, He still prays for them. The Spirit acts in intercession in the midst of them. When troubles come, then will they hear His voice, His words, for they are sweet. Thus verse 7 is their actual state and ruin, but (v. 6) the eye of faith, by the Spirit, is to the Lord.

- 9, 10. In the actual activities of the wicked, the Spirit of the righteous man reckons on escape. It is the Spirit of Christ expressing itself in the trial of the righteous man, but in His energy in the midst of the trials of that day.

Psalm 142

Here we find the loneliness of Christ, and, consequently, of His Spirit in the Remnant. But Jehovah was the refuge in loneliness, and where all failed of man He did not; and the voice of groaning was the glory of the Lord's only faithfulness. The Spirit of the Righteous and Holy One was overwhelmed; so of His tzad-di-kim (righteous ones) in the latter day. But Jehovah knew His path, terrible, troubled, and trying as it was, and no man would know Him - not only of the peoples none was with Him, but none of His people - and so shall iniquity abound in that day. So are the saints ever tried; look at Paul, "No man stood by me; but the Lord stood by me and strengthened me." See the account of these very latter days in Matthew 24. But when His faithfulness was proved, the righteous would compass Him about. This then is desertion, while His persecutors, stronger than He, pressed on Him, i.e., as to "the land of the living."

266 This Psalm is the expression of entire destitution, and therefore resting only on the Lord - the profit of chastisement. It is therefore the voice of perfectness of the Spirit of Christ, for the Remnant, in the day of their latter trial, in its extreme state during and in the extremity of the Apostasy, in which the voice, called for by Joel, is drawn out from the Remnant by the operation of this very Spirit of Christ here signifying it, showing before the Lord His trouble. There was nothing else for it. It is the cry, the actual complaint, and to the Lord, which was perfect faith, for there was none but He, quod nota; for this is faith - confession to Him in sin - cry to Him when no help - and this is the blessed Spirit of Christ expressing this. The help is only in Jehovah, and here (and here only) the Spirit of Christ comes in, sympathises with the perfect misery, but in the cry of faith. Before they were only pressed down, compare Deuteronomy 32: 36. Now there was no help, therefore there was help, not help only but the assumption of all things so into Jehovah's hand, because the enemy, by taking it into his, had raised the question that all question ended. But the expression of the passage of His Spirit through the sorrow is exquisitely beautiful, for He knew heaviness with them. The proper time to which it, futurely, applies is the last pervading power of Antichrist, when it is "Help, Lord, for there is not one godly man left." Christ had learned it before, when all forsook Him and fled. Hence His Spirit in them, and pleading of a truth from Himself.

- 4. I know how specially Jewish this is, and Christ speaking as looking for Jews upon earth.

- 7. This is the deliverance of Christ, being the occasion of His being compassed about by the righteous.

267 It is then Christ in the sorrow, perfect in His reference to the Lord. He speaks from His sufferings, through the Antichrist, on to the times when the righteous shall surround Him.

Psalm 143

Here, in this Psalm, it is not solitariness as to trial, but judgment that is in question, that the Lord might be with Him - this between His soul and God. Trials existed - His life was smitten down to the ground - His Spirit was overwhelmed within Him, and His heart desolate - but judgment could not be met by man, "No flesh living could be justified." This is, indeed, just what we have learned by the Holy One entering into it, and He showed this very necessity of all. And the Spirit in the Lord's Remnant expresses just their sense of this, and He, bearing it as their representative, "was heard in that he feared." Still it drove His Spirit for Israel - for Israel here it is that is in question, and that in the truth of their latter-day position, oppressed and having enemies, see verse 5 - to the Lord as His resource, for the communion with Him was uninterrupted and unbroken. On the Cross, vicariously, the Lord did enter into judgment, but that is just what makes all the rest true for Israel, and that only as purging. Thence direction is sought, teaching, deliverance, guidance, and the cutting off of enemies, for He was Jehovah's Servant.

This then is the Psalm of judgment, and Messiah's, and the people's part in it, is very plain, and how He could plead this for them, and they by His Spirit in them. The cry is founded on God's faithfulness and righteousness, not on theirs; as regards the servant's condition - there was no entering into condition. This, I repeat, was just what Christ proved in the atonement - righteousness is pleaded in all His relationship with Jehovah - and then, cutting off His enemies is mercy, and only mentioned as to this, which puts mercy clearly in a new place - riddance of the earth, that there may be a land of uprightness, and an earth of peace through the peaceable fruits of righteousness, and they that trouble gone, in mercy. Psalm 140, then, enters into the position of the righteous generally in the latter-day, in presence of the enemy of the Spirit of Christ. Psalm 141 gives His thoughts before the Lord in the midst of the people in that case. In Psalm 142, He finds there are none - He is left alone. Psalm 143 is the question with the "Lord" as His servant, through the available intercession of Christ - the presence of the Spirit of Christ in the Remnant, thus brought before the Lord alone, with the consequent direct supplication from verse 7 to the end.

268 This Psalm is the Spirit of Christ putting the Remnant, with whom He identifies Himself, and in them the nation, on mercy and guidance - in a word, on the new covenant in grace - instead of judgment for what they were, which is confessed, "none could stand." This is done as in the midst of enemies, and looking for help only to Jehovah in mercy, as well as personal acceptance and guidance. Former power in deliverance is referred to. It is the affiance of the new covenant.

- 5. But how must this verse have drawn out the soul in the thought of what now was! But it was a soul athirst after God; and "heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." Blessed be God! And in taking up the power of the new covenant, how must His soul have gone through the depth of the old in order to it, in the knowledge of that delight of the Lord in them, which set up the new, and the bitter sorrow before Him of that Countenance - all in the power of the holiness of the broken covenant of it! Oh! depth, depth! How marvellous are Thy ways, O Jesus! Jesus, the Lord!

We must take Jehovah's delight, if we see Christ Jehovah in that delight - yea! He loved the people, and, as again declared in Balaam, and then in all the holiness of Mount Sinai the state of them, the world, and the same Jesus, made under the law, knowing that delight, and all this in the power of divine love to the world, all this in Jesus - all seemingly frustrated - all, and much more than this, especially the holiness and the love known in Himself, and broken and borne as if He broke it - then shall we know something of the depth, in our feebleness. Oh! may we learn its truth! The Jewish truths do but show the glimpse of it, as done circumstantially amongst them. We enter into the power of it, but in deliverance in effect; see John's Gospel, thus bringing it out. Blessed be Jesus the Lord, our Master - God, our Saviour!

Psalm 144

In this Psalm Jehovah is celebrated by Messiah as in the war and conflict for the people. First, verse 2, what He is to Him - then subduing His people under Him - then comes the righteous enquiry for judgment, "What is man, that the Lord so long lingers, and pauses before He gets rid of the wicked and the evil?" Compare Psalm 8. For here man is seen - the proud adversary on earth of the Man of God's right hand - after lengthened and infinite mercy bounded just by this state of adversary, which was patience, not with abstractedly possible return, but manifested opposition to good, and therefore would-be feeble acquiescence in evil. Now God's patience had been the patience of perfect power, not of feebleness with evil - man's worthlessness is here then presented to Him. It was now the hand of strange children, and Messiah (pleading withal for them, first for, and then with, whom He was afflicted) must be delivered. "Man is like to vanity," "Bow thy heavens, O Jehovah," and the righteous Messiah claims the intervention of power, and this brings judgment and new songs - judgment, in order that righteousness may bear its unhindered and natural fruits of blessing. It is here with intercession for judgment, because of the position of things. "Happy the people" in this case of blessing of righteousness - Messiah's blessing! Yea, "the people that have Jehovah for their God!" Thus the vanity of man, the judgment and blessing of righteousness are all identified, through Messiah, with His people, even the Remnant of Israel.

269 Before, we had David in sorrow - our blessed Master bowing under the burthen. Now, David emerged from that in blessing, though yet in conflict. Oh! how deep the former! His Spirit overwhelmed within Him! Ah! what was that depth, through which He passed His soul that He might take up the strength of the new covenant for us - witness of God's faithful righteousness! For there also, in our behalf as to be saved, may we say "My strength is made perfect in weakness." "Crucified through weakness," but "living by the power of God"; but because of the power of evil against us, overcome in this righteousness of suffering - so in sympathy with them ("why persecutest thou me?") still. Now, this being gone through, it is "What is man?" here. And, in the full sense of victory, "Why dost thou delay the accomplishment of thy purposes concerning thy people? What are they that they should stand in the way? Remove out of the way!" Compare most interesting testimony, to the other uses of this phrase and thought, in Job 7 and Psalm 8.

It is now "The Lord my Rock." The Beloved is still in great waters, and with the hand, or strength, of strange children - unbelieving and haughty Gentiles - but He has passed through the depth of sorrow about the Remnant of the Jews, where judgment (and so for the Church, of course) as the place of righteousness, must be entered into, i.e., met; and, having passed through that, He has simply the strength of the Lord, His Rock, to lean on, and stand firm on against them, exulting in it.

270 The Psalm blessedly exhibits the effects of Messiah's deliverance for the Jews, as the former the trial of His Spirit for them. In both we have the marvellous identification of the thoughts and interests of His heart with them. Blessed be His name! Deliverance of Messiah is deliverance of all under Him, for it is the breaking of the actual power of the enemy. It then becomes a question, "Jehovah, what is man?" This last too, as to the circumstances, specially affects the Jews. "Thy heavens," and then the effect is plain. It is marvellous how any can doubt the application of these Psalms, though the depth of their principles may well, and will exercise the mind. Well might the Redeemer say, "Lord, what is man?" after what He had passed through, knowing from Jehovah, as in Jehovah, what they were. Oh! the knowledge! Then see the infinite blessedness of Psalm 8. Man's foolishness is in Job 7. Here also He uses the enquiry, "Why make any account of him? Why delay to execute purpose for man - such a creature as man?" Job's enquiry is, why He should take any notice of him to worry him? Here, Messiah's, why should He stop His hand to bring in the blessing, for the folly of resisting man, calls upon the Lord, above the heavens, to show His power and to scatter them in a moment - this is very plain. Psalm 8 unites and solves the two, in showing the humiliation and exaltation of Jesus, the secret way of all God's dealings in both - the hour of trial, the ground of the patience, and the certainty of the subjection of all things to humble, subject Man - quod nota.

Psalm 145

Here Messiah extols Jehovah in the millennial blessings of peace (vv. 18, 19, 20), showing its introduction by the hearing of the cry of the sorrowful oppressed - then tzad-di-kim (righteous ones) mercy and judgment. But that first statement gives the force of the Psalm, and it is most lovely in unfolding His intercourse - the anthem between Him and His saints and all Creation - His works and all flesh - the chorus extolling Jehovah, the Blessed, in that day. It is a most beautiful Psalm in this respect, and carries us far into blessing - and it shall be continuous; we, however, in our own abiding, and in special, eternal blessing - this with Messiah below.

271 This Psalm is Messiah's praise, in the ministry of blessing, in His kingdom - the blessedness of the earth under Him. It is the praise of the saints in the kingdom.

- 10. "Saints." I still take this to be Jewish saints, for it is earthly blessedness, properly millennial, but I do not see but there are elements in it which include, and look into, a further state of things, and therefore it celebrates God's kingdom, not merely Messiah's; but there is the direct earthly blessing in a special state. It is a very beautiful Psalm. The destruction of the wicked, as introducing it, but taking in the general truth. It is the character of God the Lord, celebrated by Messiah, as the Head of the blessing, as His joy, as shown and declared in the blessing, as I said, properly millennial, but including elements of a further kingdom of blessing, and therefore Messiah as there celebrating God, and King whom He could bless, and was the only real Blesser, in personal title, because of it.

I suspect from Psalm 139, but especially from Psalm 142, is a continuous progress. This begins the praise on restoration.

Psalm 146

From this Psalm to the end of the Book is the great chorus of praise to Jah, the Lord - the Jehovah, or eternal One of Creation, and of Israel, of which Israel was made, dispensationally, the tried and blessed head - Messiah as of the earth and of the flesh, coming of them, and coming to them - and, withal, the Lord's earthly sanctuary being in the midst of them, the centre of the blessing, and the peculiar place of nearness.

The Deliverer and Executor of judgment - Zion's God, the Lord - Messiah announces Him thus, He only could; they were the objects of it.

This Psalm begins the course of extolling of praise. This is all properly millennial. This first is Messiah leading the praise of Israel; and, though Zion and Jerusalem be the centre, it includes the whole, saved house of Israel. The deliverance of Israel is the celebration of the character and greatness of Jehovah, and of the foolishness and nothingness of man. The God of Jacob, though, made heaven and earth.

272  - 7-9. Here His character is displayed in His dealings to Israel. "Praise the Lord, O my soul," is Messiah's taking part in it, and marks Him.

Psalm 147

In this Psalm He is to Israel, the Remnant, "Our God"; and praise (and they at peace) is pleasant and comely. How lovely is this peace, and the Lord's prosperity on them! Yea, "He takes pleasure in them that fear him, in them that hope in his mercy," not their own righteousness. Also they have His word, "The oracles of God" - "He had not dealt so with any nation." The Church is high up above, in these blessings. There are two points then - His mercy to Jerusalem, building it up, and gathering the outcasts of Israel, and His power in Creation, His own strength being the thing displayed, and delighting in none else.

The connection of Israel with Creation-blessing is very strong, and a very cardinal point in the order of God's economies. Christ, as originally coming, would have been, had man not been all sinful, the Head over them in this blessing. He shall be, but taking in the heavens, on a larger scale and elevated on a higher principle of grace, and that in purification and redemption; then it shall be as in Hosea 2: 21-23. Creation shall be restored in their restoration; but then higher things are brought in, and a more glorious source of it, but all linked together by the exaltation of the rejected but returned Man. "The second Adam is the Lord from heaven"; but it is grace and government at this time, and not simple order of beauty, with "God all in all." "He sends his word into the world," and . . . "shows it to Jacob." His power, in this nearness to Israel brought low, is the great theme, however, of this Psalm. His power - Jehovah is the theme, however, not the Father as in that character - and the heavens shall praise Him. Though we, in our own special Church-position, rejoice, there is the Father, "Our Father" - "The kingdom" as it is written, "of their Father."

This Psalm brings in the Jews themselves, not Messiah's celebration of Jehovah as their Head, but their celebration of Him as (now) their God. The two portions of this subject of praise are in verse 2.

273  - 3-6. This is His moral character and greatness. Comparing verses 4 and 5, shows this even of verse 4, and we may say the same even to verse 11.

- 12. This takes up Jerusalem; and the subsequent verses the glory and power of that Jehovah, in Creation, who hath so dealt with them.

Though there seems to be a sort of antiphony, all through, of His Creation-power, and His goodness to Jerusalem and Israel, now united in Messiah as King to all, the connection of the two must ever be observable to the least attentive reader. We may speak of it elsewhere.

Psalm 148

In this Psalm Israel's relation with this general or universal praise is then taken up. This is the great earthly millennial result, but connected, as we have seen, with a sphere beyond it - all Creation. "Praise Jah" is still the key note.

- 1. "Praise Jehovah from the heavens" (v. 7), "Praise from the earth." In the heavens are we, but this is not the subject of the Old Testament word - this mystery hidden from ages and generations, but we know our place in it - and all the creatures in them are to praise Jehovah who created them. Then from the earth - and here "The kings of the earth" come in, and "All people, princes, and all judges of the earth" - they are to praise the Name of Jehovah, "For His name alone is exalted; his glory above earth and heaven." But "He had elevated the horn of his people" - He is the praise of all His chasidim (holy ones) even of the children of Israel, "A people near to him." As power was shown in the former Psalm in act, and so the place of praise - Israel and Creation are shown here, as alluded to at the close of it, in the millennial Hallelu-Jah.

This and the following Psalm celebrate these two - universal Creation, and Israel separately - verse 14 (Psalm 148) taking care to bring in their special favour and glory in it, "A people near unto him." A little attention will show the drawing out in the Psalm, in their various order, above and from the earth, and then the moral powers (subject to Messiah) called by Him to praise Jah Jehovah, whose glory is above (now) earth and heavens; and therefore they and all in them called to praise Him. But while His glory is above them, "He exalted the horn of his people . . . a people near unto him"; compare Ephesians 1, at the close.

274 Psalm 149

This Psalm rises up to the proper praise of Israel for themselves, as between themselves and God, in this nearness. The saints here are always chasidim (holy ones), i.e., Israel so accepted and beloved in mercy, the meek and God-honouring ones - the Remnant.

This Psalm is the Hallelu-Jah of Israel in its new song, as in and under this blessing, and the instruments of His, the Lord's, vengeance, for they are witnesses (though receiving it under mercy, is in Psalm 143) of the Lord's righteousness. Also we have evidence of the use of the word kha-sidaiv (His saints) to be of the Jewish living saints; so, I believe, everywhere.

Psalm 150

This is the great and comprehensive chorus. God, El, the mighty, and stable, and only One, who judges and swears in Himself alone, is celebrated, not Jehovah. It looks in the sanctuary now - indeed, specially, the heavenly Jerusalem is this, in the day of glory for the Lamb - but, intrinsically, in the light which none can approach unto, His own secret place of holiness and separatedness from all He is praised in. There, thought, spiritual thought by the Holy Ghost, on earth at least, alone reaches Him - there, not only in His separation above all, but in the "Firmament of his power," the strength and stability of this place of stedfast testimony, of immovable greatness and power - there, His acts and greatness - there, with man's (still on earth) best praise, and there "Everything that breathes" is to celebrate Jah the existing One, Him, indeed, in whom they live and move, and have their being and breath to praise. This is our privilege now, but it is anticipative of the time when they shall actually be called on to do so. This shall be the full tide of unhindered praise to God Himself, where He is, for what He has done. Yea, with all given energies, and by all that hath breath. In formal character it is indeed Jewish and earthly, but, as before, it reached to the heavens, the created heavens where we may be, here to the sanctuary of El where He is in His own glory. And this must close as indeed it is the source of praise, for the soul rises up from Ashrey ha-Ish (happy the man) to Hallelu-Jah, Hallelu eth Jehovah (praise Jah, praise Jehovah) Hallelu El B'kod 'sho (praise God in His holy place). There the soul necessarily stops, at least finds itself at the infinite close of all before it - known only by the Holy Ghost.

275 This is, blessed be God, the closing Psalm - the feeble effort, though by the Spirit, to express His great praise; yet, though feeble, perfect in its principle, perfect in what is expressed, if not in the expression, because of the greatness of Him spoken, and yet rightly expressed to perfection, as human utterance of words can carry it. In "His sanctuary" - in His "firmament of power" - "for his mighty acts" - for "His excellent greatness" - "Praise him" with every effort and instrument - and let "everything," that can express praise, do so to Jah.

- 6. Kol han-n'shamah (everything that breathes) is a very strong and comprehensive expression. Now, though this clearly hangs its witness on the Jews, or Israel, in the millennium, still it looks, it seems to me, beyond. Jehovah is not mentioned in it. "Jehovah" is the securing perpetuity (in the midst of evil, or putting it away) of all that is proper to "Jah." I speak of what is expressed in the name. "Jah" is the essential Object of praise. He is known, as Jehovah reveals Him to us, as Jah. When then we have learned Jehovah in all these things, we say "Hallelu-jah." So here it is El. Israel has been the grand instrument of revealing these things - to them He was Jehovah. Having fully revealed Himself (compare Psalm 68, and notes thereon) thus He comes forth, so to speak, in His Name Jah - His Name of existence in Himself - His Name of strength - "Hallelu-jah." "Hallelu-el" be, etc. So everything from "Hallelu-el" to th'ruah (loud sound) verse 5, hangs upon El - God in His essence. Then comes every derived existence living in the earth (Kol n'shamah) to praise Jah - the great, intrinsic I AM, and Source of life; and then closes with the "Hallelu-jah."

Blessed be God (my Father, through grace) who has permitted me to make this Book my study, thus to go through it, to finish it, not in study but in, thus far, estimate of its truth and blessedness, seeing it concerning Christ, my Master and Lord, to the praise of our God! May we abound more and more in the discernment of Him, and all His purpose! Ashrey ha-ish (Blessings of the Man) may well begin, and Hallelu-Jah finish it; and all between shall reveal the blessedness of that Man, and the glory of that Jah, as Jehovah, through it. And this is the Psalms. And He is a Man, and Jehovah in connection with the Jews (and Israel), whatever other blessings may come in, as there do, besides, and whatever essential glory of Person and existence may be behind, from which they flow, as there is, so as to make it good; else as both the Church and Creation are the witnesses for Supreme Glory known and revealed, and the Head, and bringing in the last (even the creature) and sustaining in Christ, and enclosing the glory, here spoken of, beneath, perhaps for a season and in its parts, but crowned with glory (blessing them) in the Person of Jesus, holding the Creation (by virtue of His personal glory) for their blessing, but this glory the Church brought into, for the Church's glory (as the Creation) flows from, and is identified with Supreme Creation, and creating blessing; quod nota, for it is worthy of much - a great Mystery revealed, and yet above revelation! The Jews are a people known, and no mystery, though a wonder. The Church is, for it is in unity with the Head, the I AM, in its place in Jesus; and so Creation comes in, for it is the head of the new, with the prototokos (Firstborn).

276 The more I read the Psalms, and the more I see God's mind - what the Spirit would teach in them - the more I see Christ's sufferings with Israel, in holy fulfilling of righteousness, but taking His place with the godly ones in their feelings and thoughts, yea, the pattern and spring of them. And it gives the deepest sense of what the Lord went through, and it is different from atonement. But how deep they must have been, loving them as God's people!

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47001E> 1

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John  1

It is not the offices of the Lord that the Gospel of John so much unfolds, but His Sonship of the Father, and of man associated with that which He really was. The Word was with God, and was God. All the historical matter is ministration of the exhibition of this great, leading, central truth, the hinge of heaven and earth as its centre in truth and dispensation. For I must add here, also, that the association of our Lord with the Jews as the dispensed form and purposed revelation of this character is also, in its place, brought in here, with all the development of truth of which prophecy gives the formal accomplishment or display.

This chapter accordingly presents us, as a sort of introduction, so to speak, with the Person of Jesus, in its existence, incarnation, and all the various relationships in which it stood to God and man, centring in its revelation to us (the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, declaring Him), adding the form and character of the dispensation.

Is there not something in the frame of John's spirit, and his communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, which peculiarly fitted him to tarry, as said the Lord Christ, till He came? And may we not learn what peculiarly holds its ground against the subtlety of disorganising heresy and antinomianism (which separate from the love and communion of God) from the exhibition we have of the mind that was in him?

- 1-3. There would seem to be more meaning in pros ton Theon ("with God") than merely apud (nigh), expressed by para Theo. I know of no case of pros ton being used merely in this sense. The most analogous passage is "that eternal life, which was with the Father," but there is ending in included in this word pros, and communicative association. It stood there in the presence of, and associated (vitally) with God. Also "in the beginning" means in existence prior to time; we find Him in essential, eternal existence. Everything else had a beginning, a cause commencing it, but He "was in the beginning." Therefore it is said, "The devil sinneth from," not in, "the beginning." The comment on Theos (God) here is idle, and proves only the ignorance of the commentators. Every affirmation of nature or quality concerning an object is without the article, and the object or subject matter affirmed of with it. Had it been ho Theos, it would have made ho Logos (the Word) exclusively God, and denied the Deity of the Father and the Spirit.

2 We have here, also, the most solemn statement, as of the eternal existence, so of the personality of the Word. He was the Mediator of creation as well as redemption. God could do nothing towards the creature but by mediation. And there was another reason, and that was, that the whole scheme was to manifest the Son, and in and through Him the other two Persons; and therefore all things were created by Him and for Him (to the end of verse 3).

- 4, 5. Then we have the full development of Him concerning whom these things were, and who was revealed in them. Then what He was amongst men (for "as in Adam, so in Christ"; for this Sonship was above the dispensation of Judaism, and so this gospel presents Him). He was "in the beginning" (en arkee). And now in man was death and knowledge entered into the world by sin; but knowledge without the power of truth is darkness and confusion. But the Lord was the power of knowledge in all those things as to which knowledge had come in. "In him was life," not merely here as manifested, but to be manifested, as compare 1 John 1: 2. Light was the perfect rectitude of divine conversation in which this life, being of power, formed and exhibited itself through all that was scattered in darkness and confusion in the knowledge of that which had not the power. Therefore, "He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." So, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death." The life, that which was in the Son Himself, therefore was the light of men. He was, therefore, antecedent to all dispensation, morally as well as actually the light of men, such as they were. But there was another point, their intelligence of this light; hence another truth: "The light appears in darkness," for in light, so to speak, there is no appearance of light, "and the darkness" (now the fact) "comprehended it not." Hence the whole need of dispensation, and the ground of specialty of grace; I do not say the cause.

- 6. There was a man who had a mission from God whose name was John. He came not to be but "for a witness concerning the light, that all might believe." Hence John's mission, though of dispensation in its exercise, in one sense was universal in its character, or rather subject. Repentance is light in darkness, or darkness seeing the light. But still, in its exercise, it was confined, but "That was the true light which, coming into the world, lighteth every man." Such was the character of Christ's (the Word's) manifestation. So, therefore, it was "in the world."

3 We come now to the personal facts, for the moral is here brought into fact, as drawn from fact before, "In the beginning." The divisions of subjects are: verses 1-5, original truths; verses 5-14, display of them abstractly considered in dispensations; verse 14, the truths resumed in the actuality of dispensation. Though I think the Persons are implied, yet the expression is, I think, characteristic: hos monogenous para patros (as of an only begotten with a father). We might translate it in English, conveying these two things: "as firstborn with his father."

- 7. Note also an omitted circumstance, that no testimony was competent, that is, because of man's darkness, to lead or influence the human soul, for there was not only light but testimony concerning the light, see chapter 5: 32, and following verses.

- 10. Most wonderful sentence! Yet the simple history of the whole matter, and when we consider the statement of His character which went before, what do we learn of the world! But all was divided between these two: "He was in the world" (let the world remember it, the world which "was made by him," for we have it here not in abstract but in fact), and "the world knew him not." It was pitch darkness, and the light of God gained no entrance, found no single chord of response which could know that it was light; but farther dispensations had been arranged by which, as entering in by the door in a way appointed of God, owned of them, every tie of personal interest should be awakened and fulfilled. "He came unto his own," for our Lord was the Son of David and King born of the Jews, and "His own received him not," adding rebellion and folly. The light that was in them was darkness, and how great therefore was it! "But as many": it is general, but applies specifically to the Jews. Here we find the characteristic fruit of the mission in grace from His office. "As many as received him, to them gave he right to be children of God." It was the position and title in which He placed them. Thus called from the darkness, He gave them authority to be and walk in this character, what none ever had before, for even Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house, but now He "as Son over his house" (but the time of that is simply the millennial day).

4  - 12, 13. This word tekna Theou (children of God) is John's delight, and is of vast importance. See 1 John 3: 1, and following verses; compare also Romans 8: 14, 16, 17. "Children" (tekna) is, I take it, the family name towards God; sons (huioi) the prescriptive character in which we stand to the world. This speaks, then, of the familiar blessedness of their relation towards God, not their dignity merely toward man; and in truth they were born, they did really derive their life from God; it was by no act towards Him. "Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." So Peter. There is much contained in this assertion. Here, then, we have the whole result of the manifestation of the Word simply considered in its efficiency as of God, as before of its independent existence, and the result of its outward manifestation.

- 14. Here we come to the whole method and order of this glorious blessing and truth. Having spoken of those as made sons of God, he now speaks of the great root and source of sonship, Christ come in the flesh; for here we have it not as of light merely, and therefore damnatory of darkness, but what it was, and now in fulness of communicated grace to those who received Him, who were made partakers of the same sonship, "sometimes darkness, but now light in the Lord."

This was from the will of God; before, what He was in Himself, and as representing God in character; now what He was in grace, replenishing human nature with His fulness as Son of God, and making others partakers in the same: "The Word became flesh." As the other was the essential character, so this is the revelation of the mesne; yet also the way of glory, for "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father also." Christ is the consummation of glory, but it is the Father's glory, while it is His therefore as "an only begotten with a father" ("with" used as we saw it before). Here He is not known; His manifestation, His dwelling among us, was the question; but this is what the glory was. Further, I note this is as manifested, that is, as man, for He was manifested in the flesh. Nor do I see that in this character He is spoken of as Son save as known in the flesh. He is spoken of previously as the Word, etc.; now as Son. Now, though He have this title by inheritance, which none else have, yet is the manifestation of Him as Son of God in and as man, that man by adoption into unity with Him might know they were sons, and thus their adoption into sonship, and reception of the fulness secured.*

{*I read this over, fearing lest there might in human expressions be any colour for that approach to Sabellianism which is not uncommon in connection with the term Son, which I believe to destroy the basis of all truth, but if taken simply it is free from this danger (I hate the heresy, and would guard against the fibre of its roots), and I think takes the truth out of the hands of the heretics Still the manifestation of Him is as "an only begotten with a father"; and what is still stronger as to the fact, "the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father" The confusion is in not seeing He is Son in creation as well as in redemption, and the order of both, and that He redeemed as Son what He created as Son.}

5  - 15. In that which was now necessary, then, to be declared, lest by humiliation that which was to be declared might be concealed, we have the great harbinger of the light at once brought forward to testify, "This is he of whom I said," etc.

- 16, 17. For indeed it is out of His fulness we have all received (these the words of the second John commenting on the force of the statement of the former, connected with his own to which that bore testimony) and that not vaguely, or as grace commonly understood, but by being the fulness available in man, and exhibiting itself according to the purpose of God in all the circumstances in which the Son of God was to be placed, we adopted (and as Firstborn, and Only Begotten, having it in Himself, for "all fulness was pleased to dwell in him") into unity with Him. "Grace upon grace," grace corresponding to every grace in Him, for it is His grace in a man, and ours in Him by union into it; for the law was given as a transferable thing to those who received, or to whom it was made known by Moses. But grace and truth were by Jesus Christ, or the Anointed.

- 18. In connection with this, and in superiority over the law, which was indeed the perfect testimony of His will in testimony in law, there is another thing: "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son," the subject now in treatment, "who is in the bosom of the Father," that is His place, "He hath declared him." The Word, then, was made flesh; that is the declaration of the fact by the Spirit. Then we have the aspect of faith concerning this, and the testimony of John (that is, the Spirit as residing in him) concerning it as the height of the Jewish dispensation, for indeed in principle he was the restorer of all things. We have then faith so apprehending and declaring Him, capacity to understand what the experience of the apostle, in the power and testimony of the Holy Ghost, declares of His fulness, for here was the grand difference of the dispensation. But further, this was the declaration. What? That of which we have received portion - blessed be God! - of God, even the Father. "Lord," said one, "shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us." This, then, in all its fulness, thus fully spoken of, He is, as become flesh, and so revealed to faith, the only begotten Son; therefore so the apostle speaks in Ephesians 3: 16-19, etc.

6  - 19. We have now the testimony of John, and that associated in matter with what we have before had of the Lord, but therein the discovery of the place he held towards Christ and Israel; for in giving honour to Jesus he manifested his own place. Christ was to come among the Jews, and here testified to as the Lord amongst them. He answers their expectations: Christ, the Prophet, that is, like to Moses or Elias. If a person has a direct office from God, it may be as much a matter of faithfulness to affirm what he is (and a test of truth, too, for he commits himself to God's making good his assertion) as to disavow what he is not. He acts, not for or from himself, but from God, in obedience.

We have here the first assertion made good in the circumstances. "He was not that light, but came to bear witness of the light," and, "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not"; and the incipient development of "His own received him not." This addressed to the Jews; testimony to them of John's ministry among them, and of the Lord in that.

- 27. The order of manifestation is not always the order of glory; so we may say of the first and second Adam (compare verse 15).

- 28. Was not all this not only after our Lord's baptism, but also on His return from the wilderness after His temptation? It would appear so, as I see at present plainly from comparison of the accounts in the gospels. But this was as apprehended and felt by John so apprised by the Spirit of who He was, or the outgoings of the Spirit in him. So we see it in the Psalms. It is a recognition of Him as such, not properly a testimony. Verse 32 is the testimony on which this is founded, but it is still the prophetic Spirit.

7  - 29. Here is John's prophetic testimony to Him generally, identifying the Person all through these testimonies as the One who "was before me." His specific office he states in verse 31. Personally, he did not know Him. He was pointed out prophetically to him, and by him; and so he spake; but there was no difference in this in John from the rest. We see the difference of the prophetic Spirit and the gift of the Holy Ghost, and how the least also in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he, though "of those born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John Baptist." Observe here also the prophetic testimony reaches out to His generic character: "Who taketh away the sin of the world."

- 32. We have another definite testimony to a distinct point - the Sonship of Jesus; and this by the testimony given of all adopted sons; also the Spirit of God sent down upon them: "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus"; and, "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts." So because He was the beloved Son (we also loved as He) the Spirit was sent upon Him, token to John that He was so. Here we see the importance of seeing His Sonship in the flesh. If we look at it simply in His divinity all this is lost, and our interest and union in it, though it be also by our being made partakers of the divine nature that we have indeed this portion and union which He had by virtue of being such. Dispensatorily I believe also the Sonship was associated with the Jewish people, for "Israel is my first-born," and, "I have called my Son out of Egypt"; but as "Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world" we know that Gentiles are brought in to be fellow-heirs by the gospel, and receive the promise of the Spirit by faith. In this we have the two great characteristic testimonies as to the Lord Jesus Christ. First (though "He was before me," the same Person here testified of), "The Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," subject and passive as come in the flesh on account of sin, His work in the flesh; as in Person the Displayer of the Father's glory. This is Jesus. Secondly, as actively, and constituted, the Baptiser with the Holy Ghost, manifested the Son of God, not only by the testimony of the Father, declared to us also as revealed to Him (for Christ must declare it as known to Himself), but also to John, the enquirer into the meaning of the Spirit of Christ in him, by the descent of the Holy Ghost, so we, as partakers with Him.

8 From verse 19 to 34 therefore we have the testimony of the prophetic messenger to the Jews on requisition officially, and the open testimony to those that had ears to hear, upon seeing Him coming, as drawn out by that which He was in Himself (blessed be His name!) as come in the flesh. Happy he who could say, though even but prophetically, yet faithfully: "I have seen, and bear witness, that this is the Son of God"! This his joy was fulfilled. May we not say, though most unworthy and infinitely less faithful, Happier yet they who have His words: "That your joy may be full"? The same Spirit in measure that He had, branches of the vine, knowing Him reconciling the world, yet what return of faithfulness and love?

- 35. Here again we have the apprehension of John, that is, the Spirit drawn out by seeing Jesus. It is not so properly a testimony publicly as the pouring forth the mind of the Spirit as acted upon by the manifestation of Jesus, which all, from the Father downwards, unite, taught of God in one common fulness (and to us unspeakableness of delight), to recognise and delight in. The Spirit must, so to speak, relieve itself of its testimony. It is too its office.

- 36. "And looking upon Jesus as he walked." He was looking on Him walking about, and says, "Behold the Lamb of God!" Oh! the thoughts of the Spirit concerning Jesus thus manifested! "Behold the Lamb of God!" And this it is acts on the mind of others; not the mere necessary testimony by which the world may be condemned, but the outgoings of apprehensions by which the saints are affected, and the fire kindled. And this is its subject; this is the way they are affected. It is not merely (fruitful afterwards), "This is he that baptiseth," "and I saw, and bare record," but, "Behold the Lamb of God!" And here the world derides Him, showing its pride and enmity against love. The chance word of feeling may have more efficacy than the necessary testimony of truth. No doubt the presence of the disciples called it out, for when we value we love to bear witness to our value. Oh! that there were this thought of Jesus ever!

- 37-40. "The disciples heard him speaking" (blessed words!) and they followed Him, and said, "Rabbi." They sought to abide with Him, at least to know where He abode. But He tells not only, but says, "Come and see." The whole circumstances of the scene are full of interest. Here is the testimony which the ministry of repentance must always bear: "Behold the Lamb of God!" Repentance dwells ever in the wilderness, but in the leadings of God Jesus is manifested to it, and it owns Jesus the Lamb of God, and the abode of the disciple of repentance is with Him. Yet there is an actual simplicity in the whole which is very remarkable, for these were the first disciples that were led to Jesus. This "What seek ye?" marks no haughtiness, as it were, of purpose in our Lord's first presenting Himself, though conscious willingness to receive to Himself, for the Spirit now dwelt in Him fully as manifested to office; and we have noticed a manifested development of progress in relationship towards the existing body, His opposition to whom was drawn out by their manifested enmity against the grace and truth of which He was the real depositary.

9 This progress is peculiarly exhibited in this Gospel of John. Its simple and unassuming opening is here stated, though its full manifestation in the uprising of the authority of His mind is exhibited in all the gospels, as detailed in facts conversant about the closing of the Lord's ministry with and amongst them; and their deliberate enmity accordingly is marked, and so shown in this gospel, progressively, and the results apparently strange; for, after all, whatever was due, and so owned of God and Himself too, the place of His willing acquiescence, though fully felt trial and strangeness, was in fact to yield then to the evil opposed, it was (but into this, save that it was for His glorious triumph, and the letting in of rich blessings, we cannot enter) "their" - oh! a strange word! - "hour, and power of darkness." But, I say, the humbleness of purpose, the unsectarian spirit (though I dread the abuse that may be made of this word) in which our holy, patient, Servant-Lord undertook the work, or fell, as it were, into it, His acts were as of necessity imposed. I speak of this as manifested for our example. Oh, that we may be kept always in some measure, at the least, in the meekness of the same spirit! Oh! teach Thy servant, Lord, always to be the least, and the last, serving Thee only in boldness, and valuing the secret of Thy love in the everlasting sight of the Father's love above all, all the nothingness valuable only as Thy service. Keep Thy servant to this! for it is a promise and blessing: "His servants shall serve him" (John 12: 26) which study; while we turn now to the passage on which we are reading and noting. I look upon it, then, as of main interests, as being the transfer from John Baptist's ministry to the Lord's, and the manner further of the Lord's first entrance upon His, after which, I think, thus is confirmed His return from the temptation, from which, we may call to mind, He came in the fulness of the Spirit. Observe how this here shows itself, and how restrained, in how apparently restrained a manner (which note). Let us guard against want of energy, but know the Spirit is a Spirit of wisdom, and sometimes shows itself in quietness, not always in manifested energetic power upon man, that is, as exhibited to the mind of man; but withal, "What I have spoken in secret," etc. It does not apply to the duty of testimony or service without, but service within, discipleship, where Christ is known in His body. In this the Spirit of Christ must lead us. It is known as the Son of God, He is felt and understood to be the Lamb.

10  - 41. The development of the natural flow of circumstances and the divine knowledge is very interesting. But we must remark that they were as fully of God, and in the power of God, as the full manifestation of Jesus; that is, they were as fully from and of it. So faith recognises, and God recognises the faith.

- 43. This was His first journey into Galilee, His going into Galilee after the temptation; the first public call the Lord made.

- 47. There is no guile in a prejudice or doubt imposed by apparently or supposedly right institutions or instructions. There may be hatred of the thing to be revealed, but not even in the sight of God a doubt as to testimony about His Son Himself unrevealed. The channel of testimony may be the subject of prejudice arising in the weakness of man from a healthful state of mind, for the devil can deceive this and abuse it.

- 48. Here we see how the circumstances were through the sight of God, and how His mind, unseen, went through the circumstances. We saw the circumstances before, and the knowledge shown of the Person divinely afterwards; then the direct acting of the Lord without circumstance, and that leading to association of circumstances, and now in and through these circumstances, apparently independent, the same thread of God's mind acting as when these were never sent at all, but the action direct. So it is; and this is a very blessed revelation.

11  - 49. Though of universal power, yet in dispensation I still find this expression connected with the Jews, and all this intercourse as yet, though revealing the Christ, the Lamb of God, is Jewish in its substance and adaptation. I am not aware, save in Daniel 3: 25, of the term being used in the Old Testament.

- 51. "From henceforth." Now that the Son of Man is upon earth, the object of divine favour and love, the ground of intercourse between heaven and earth (though special) is restored, set on foot. It is exceedingly interesting to dwell on the occasion of the ministry of angels. It at once arises from exaltation, inheritance, and depression. They are the servants (to God) towards the Heir in His humiliation. Similarly we see in Jacob, and here in the true Jacob, rightly called Jacob, and loved of old. But this is a glorious truth, this renewal of intercourse, and the place in which Jesus now stood in Person. In this we have the place of sons. It is impossible to open this out at large here.

I cannot help thinking that there is a reason for putting "ascending" first; though I am not sure as ministers and messengers of God in the earth. They ascend in respect, as it were, of the things to be reported of His providential care, and the object on which they are made to descend, as the object of this care is the Son of Man. - NOTE, it is as Son of Man that He is the object of this care, thus pointed out.

There is more in this that will lead to interesting subjects of divine revelation and enquiry, if we compare the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Lord, and this of the ascent and descent of the angels of God upon the Son of Man. It has a positive force in this sentence, and also a most important associated force; for though true of the Son of Man, it is true of Him as so designated. He was not now declared to be "the Son of God with power." There is sufficient in this to lead to the clues of thought, but oh! where shall we find the expression of that full, that wondrous fulness drawn out by the Son of God come in flesh, and the relationship into which all things are brought by it? But we must close here.

________

12 There is this very important principle in the Gospel of John not, I think, noticed; and that is, that it takes up the existence of the Word as God, and draws dispensation (and union of glory for the Church) from this; giving, though coming after, preferred before, for it was before even the creation, and the source, therefore, even of its blessing. "In the beginning God created." Of that creation Judaism was the highest dispensed form, if good could have been in the creature. And they had therefore the sabbaths given to them as sign of covenant. But the creation was spoiled by sin, by man; nor could man enter in any way thus into the rest of God. But here it is brought that even when and therefore antecedent to creation itself, "In the beginning was the Word," was One existing who was God, the source and power and substance of dispensation, not depending on, though bringing in, creation; but, hanging on union with the Creator, the dispensation of this by the incarnation (amongst the Jews, yet paramount to it all) is what John's gospel brings forth and develops. This gives it its amazing importance. Hence our hope is in resurrection, our rest in union by it, paramount to creation and creation-rest. Union is the secret of it all.

__________

Note, in the first chapter of John there is also this important division: there is, first, the manifestation of God in the Word; light, life, fulness, and the glory of the Only Begotten of a Father. The Son has revealed Him whom none had seen. He is not immediately called the Christ, though named so by John the Evangelist. John the baptist says he is not, but refers them to the glory of Christ's Person as before him. This is transitional. Secondly, there is what Christ as Man is before God in efficacy for man: Lamb of God, baptiser with the Holy Ghost, and Son of God; that is, as anointed Man here, though much more than that also, the anointing is the evidence and power (compare Romans 1). Lastly, is the reception or discovery of Him by those who become His disciples. They receive Him as the Christ who fulfils Moses and the Prophets. But they would see more than this, the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. This relates, not only to His reception then, but to His twofold character as relates to the earth: Heir of promises, as Son of David among the Jews, and of God's counsels as regards man; Son of Man as entitled according to these counsels.

______

13 There are some details to note in John 1. The great general principles are (as heretofore noted) down to the end of verse 13; but then some details: Christ's Person, verses 1-5; only that when stated to be light, and the light of men as life, it met darkness, which did not comprehend it. This is still nature and principle, but necessarily historical. Verses 6-9 is then historical, but (v. 9) the light formally comes into the world (not promises or Jews or ways), but, though nature and principles, historical. Then we get the darkness, the state of the world and Jews; and it passes from abstract principle (light), to personal activity; light come into the world, as chapters 8 and 9, and elsewhere, afterwards; but it was He who created it, and it did not know Him (autos auton). He came to what was His own (the Jews), and they did not receive Him. Here we have the state of all men, the world, and the Jews. Then we get some receiving Him; but these were a called-out set, they born of God. It was a new thing, or state; of God in grace. We get the truth in all its principles; as to the nature of things, divine or darkness, old and new. The work and gift come in then historically.

________

In John 1, from verse 14, we have first the Word made flesh; Himself come, and dwelling amongst us, "full of grace and truth"; and His glory seen as Man, as "an only begotten with a Father"; "and of his fulness have all we received"; grace and truth come by Him. Then we have God, whom one has seen at any time, declared by "the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father." His work, in its full and present effect, comes after (vv. 29-34); but then marked out also as Son of God down here, by the anointing and sealing of the Holy Ghost.

________

14  - 33. Baptising with the Holy Ghost is never, that I am aware, used of an individual; nor is Christ baptised. He is anointed of God, and sealed of God the Father. Now the body of disciples were baptised in Pentecost, and all by one Spirit baptised into one body. It was power embracing in one all. But the individual is anointed and sealed of God, as established by Him in Christ; sealed for the day of redemption; marked out surely by God; has the anointing of the Holy One.

Note, here, that the general reception of the Holy Ghost by the converts in Samaria is before the manifestation of the wickedness of Simon's heart. Here the above remark becomes important.

Note, first, the abstract nature and intrinsic glory of Christ as the Word; next, His communicative fulness in connection with saints, and revealing character. Then testimony of John to what He comes as to Israel, the Lord; and then what He is for Christians, or in a Christian point of view (I do not say the Church, for it is personally); Lamb of God in view of the world; baptiser with the Holy Ghost; and the Son of God sealed on earth.

Then begins the process of calling, by John, by Christ, which closes with the Residue of Israel owning Him Son of God, King of Israel. All this on earth, and in Israel. Christ in Person was the sole and adequate object of all the care of God. This recognition by Israel brings in the wedding, and the Jews' purifying turned into the wine of joy, and judgment of purification for God's house. Hence the third day of chapter 2 would date clearly from chapter 1: 35 and 43. Remark, too, the setting aside of Judaism (chap. 1: 13), and the ministration meanwhile till judgment and assurance of ultimate blessing, from verse 35 to the end. But it is as Son of Man as well as Messiah.

There is another point to remark. First, all is general, dependent on His Person to the end of verse 18 (compare verses 7 and 31); from verse 19, dispensational acting in respect of Israel, as accomplishing the prophecies, is entered upon, though the personal glory from eternity is maintained. Hence verses 29-34 give the character of evangelical power (vv. 29, 33,34), while the present service whereby the accomplishment of these ways commenced is given, verse 31. But verses 29-34 is a next day, having the mixed character of the result and the present service. Verses 19-23 are purely in respect of Israel.

______

15  - 35, 36, begin again, or go on, rather, with this. He who was the Lord, preceded by John Baptist as His herald, becomes Lamb of God, a suffering One (Messiah) in Israel. It is not here "Who taketh away the sin of the world," for I judge that "Lamb of God" is a title of suffering Messiah in Israel (therefore exalted also). Hence the believers in John's testimony go to Him as Messiah (v. 41). Then, I doubt not, verses 35-42 give the Residue, specially at Christ's coming, verses 43-51 those attached to Christ in the power of His second. Christ has a Nazarean character, but can enlighten whatever be the prejudices of the upright; and here He has the characters of Son of God, King of Israel, Son of Man; given as a whole because of Christ's Person; are in connection with Israel. It is to be remembered that it is henceforth (v. 51).

_______

I remark in John's gospel, chapter 1, all the glory of Christ's Person set forth in a remarkable manner, from His divinity WHO IS to His millennial glory among the Jews as Son of Man; and this very methodically. First, the chapter (as we have often noticed) begins before the beginning of Genesis; that is, not with creation, but with the existence of Jesus always. In the beginning He was. Then what He is abstractedly in Himself is given: the Word, the expression of divine wisdom and divine power. By the Word of the Lord the heavens were of old. He upholds all things by the Word of His power. Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God. He was with God, and He was God. In Him was life also; "and the life was the light of men." John is introduced here as generally bearing witness to Christ as the Light. We have then what Christ is; not abstractedly, but as incarnate: "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us"; His glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Thus He becomes the communicative source of grace to men, in relation as Son with the Father.

16 Then we have specially what the Lord is as regards the Church, or as effecting His work: the Lamb of God. He that baptiseth with the Holy Ghost Himself a Man baptised with it,* and thus witnessed to be the Son of God. Hereon He becomes a witness and a gatherer. Then He is presented to us as Messiah, Son of God and King of Israel; and the angels ascending and descending upon Him as Son of Man; thus closing with His millennial glory.

{*But see first note on page 14. - (Ed.)}

It seems to me that the following chapter shows the Church's part rather in that glory, or the principles of it, at least. The third day evidently gives some meaning. It was not the third day of the preceding, for He had passed into Galilee. Three days were elapsed withal in the former chapter: John's testimony, the Church, and the millennium. For Christ, however, it was the third day; but I see then, on the full display, in a threefold way, of the personal glory of Christ (or four-fold rather): abstract, personal, ecclesiastical and millennial (if I may so call them).

Note, there is this additional circumstance in the first of John's gospel: not only is Nathanael presented as the Remnant in the latter day, but as rejecting Jesus as come from Nazareth in Galilee; that is, under the prejudices of Israel as having so rejected Him, but then received into blessing as the Remnant.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47002E> 16

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 2

A thing done rightly of God, if done with the associations of this life, is done wrongfully. Men would call this perverse but it would defeat the mind of God. It was as important to dissociate that as to do the miracle. The miracle would have lost all its proper place, had this not been done; nay (as we know now), the minister of evil. We have the value of this conduct now in all things. I have never to mind the judgment of man.

I have not fully estimated the value and importance of this miracle. I have sometimes thought that it was typical of the latter day blessings, when He should drink wine new with them in the kingdom of His Father; but I know not as yet Verses 1, 2, 3, 4, is the direct bringing into association Himself and His mother, her association with the world, and His now with His disciples, and consequently His dissociation simply with her. Thus He was manifested. Yet it was no personal failing or hatred but, so to speak, official, as we see at the close of the circumstance. It was important as showing that all His relationship, as ministering in the world, was with the Father. The disciples were given Him of the Father; they were His brother and sister and mother. Here was the first primary manifestation. Having received disciples of the Father, He threw off, in this ministry, all other relationship. Being come to do His will, and nothing else, Him only He owned.

17 The passage appears to show that the bridegroom, etc., were some family connection or acquaintance of the mother, or nominal natural parentage of the Lord. "The mother of Jesus was there." Jesus therefore and His disciples (the association not being wholly broken) were invited to it (the marriage of the parties). This was the occasion of His manifesting forth His glory, of His breaking the association, and showing it in connection with that in which He had come to do His Father's will; that He had those which were new, and His own. But observe the perfectness of our blessed Lord. It was not by avoiding the circumstances, but by the perfectness of the association of His own heart with the Father's will that He thus walked separate; for not only here, but His mother and His brethren went down with Him to Capernaum. I have no doubt that in this, that is, the leading principles of the marriage feast, there is a typical development of His relationship with the Jewish Remnant, as Isaiah 8 and 49.

- 13. Then He comes to act in the exercise of this conscious place, and while in consciousness, yet in no way in assumption of His own glory, but zeal for His Father's honour, forgetful of men, and leading them rather indeed to call Him to account for it; for the power was not yet revealed.

- 14. At the Passover, these things were bought for the feast.

- 15. This is a remarkable transaction. The point of it is distinctly noticed: the consciousness of Sonship (in Him as a Man) making Him zealous for His Father's honour. The point of this book is here distinctly shown out. The world would blame this also, but when there is energy of the Spirit, zeal (which might seem beside itself) when the matter is undeniable for God's honour, is not rejected. It was right to be done; whether it was right to do it in another sense is another question. Here it is left on its right ground: "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." It was witness, too, of that day when, as Son indeed with power, He shall purge the temple of all that defiles it; that blessed day when all shall be cleared away that hinders the Father's glory, and the free access of His love. Now was His time, indeed, to suffer, but still the great result to which this all leads, the purpose of God, known and set in His heart, was breaking forth even out of its time; for it was strange to Him also to suffer, but the great results were not strange. But God gave Him (most glorious Jesus!) the tongue of the learned, to speak a word in season to them that were weary. He wakened His ear morning by morning, He wakened His ear to hear as the learned. But I pass beyond my subject.

18  - 16. Observe too here the association of Sonship with Judaism, and the cleansing of His Father's house (the temple). "I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son"; and this explains also what follows in that place; although also, it is true, the glory, and we in it, is set above the heavens, and so they (that is, the Jews) recognise in that Psalm (8). But how few will understand this! The answer of our Lord, too, has peculiar appropriateness. It was the act of Sonship in power, and vindicating the intrinsic holiness of His Father's house (compare the last verse or verses of Zechariah). Now, in the resurrection He was declared to be "the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness." Here, then, precisely was vindicated "the sign that justified" (as indeed morally it was ever justifiable, whoever did it) His doing these things.

- 17. Compare Psalm 69, and note verses 12 and 14. Our Lord was evidently now progressing into the full separation of His glory. I have somewhere else a note as to His apparently growing, or more elicited sense of the glory of His place and character. This is deeply interesting; and note, this is the development in John precisely of this, as declared in chapter 1: 1-13, etc.; and note accordingly verse 16, and Luke 2: 49.

- 18. This was the act of entitled Sonship (yet a zealous duty and honour to His Father, due properly always, for it was always wrong that God should be dishonoured), so to speak, out of its time. Its evidence was where the Lord set it. He was "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." Nevertheless, for those acts which flow from a title not now exhibited, we cannot look that God should give present vindication, which note. Nevertheless this was, properly speaking, a righteous act. The holiness and honour of God's house was carelessly, or wilfully, at any rate obnoxiously, and most guiltily profaned, and He was vindicating it. But His enemies enquire not as to the occasion, the righteousness displayed, or the result, but the title to do it; and for this we must often wait till God's time. Yet let us take heed that it is such as will be established to be righteousness, when we shall be so manifested in that day, that it is done from a secret communion with God, which will justify it when the day cometh; that it is His will, and done for His honour simply.

19 And, observe, the Lord does it, not without being able to appeal at once to that which entitled Him. Their not understanding it was nothing to the purpose. The act was a praiseworthy act. The same energy of the Spirit which led Him forward in the zeal of God's house, gave Him the consciousness of the title in which He was acting, and which God would justify in that day.

- 22. The acts of Christ are the confirmation of the Scriptures, which are the mind of God exhibited in those acts. The resurrection of Jesus puts the seal upon the whole association, vindicating the application of the words to His Person and His words, as indeed we are there in setting to our seal that God is true.

This is an important and interesting passage for the connection and development of the Scriptures. The principle, easily deducible in these words, is the key to all Scripture, the resurrection being the great key to both, the link that unites and develops both the preceding testimonies as to their object, and when they find, and under what circumstances, that development; for even the sufferings of Jesus all get their character from this, and all the subsequent glory of the kingdom based on that which was evinced by His resurrection, and accomplishing all His words, the glory being not yet come. The Scripture itself would have wanted its proof of truth, if Jesus had not come, for it testified of Him; but, He being come, we know what was in the mind of the Spirit in the Scripture, and we believe it, and that not merely in the things actually done by Jesus, for these get their value by His resurrection, but also being that it is by His resurrection all the glory of the Kingdom, not yet fulfilled, and the words which He spake concerning that Kingdom, and all that was to come, is verified by that great seal. All Scripture therefore is prophecy; that is, in its object it is prophetic of Jesus, it expounds Jesus, and is fulfilled by Jesus, the sufferings of Jesus, and the glory that should follow.

20 This was the first manifestation of Jesus to the Jews in His Sonship to them as a nation. It was not merely the house of Israel, to the poor of which He came witnessing that the kingdom of heaven was at hand (that, indeed, was His great message in love and ministry); but He was sent, in respect of the manifestation of His Person and Messiahship, to the Jews, the restored tribes from Babylon, who constituted properly the Jewish nation in respect of their existing relationship to God, though still "Lo-ammi" (not My people), yet still put in this specialty and responsibility of place in which Messiah was presented to them as a restored people under special favour. He did many miracles now, and many believed on His name; they were done before the nation as such; for at this time they came up from all parts to the feast.

_______

The Gospel of John shows more what Jesus was down here. I speak of the beginning. He was light, life. It is what He was in the world; Himself, as before the world was. The epistle presents Him as the manifestation of what God is, and that in the same character, that by Him we may have fellowship with the Father; adding therefore His work. Further, I judge verses 19-34 of John 1 go together, and present the Lord first as such (John being His forerunner), and therefore as coming to Israel in that character; and then what He was savingly as regards any blessed in virtue of His work before God; and as, in fine, taking away the sin of the world: Lamb of God; baptiser with the Spirit; and Son of God. Then verse 35 to the end (with which chapter 2 is associated) go together, being the gathering of a Remnant in Israel; then by John's introductory testimony, and by going with Christ Himself, and thus in the latter day. This introduces the marriage feast, when the water is changed into the good wine of joy, and the house of God judicially purged; this to the end of verse 22; from verse 18 being a discussion of title, which the Lord founds on divine power in resurrection: destroy this temple, and I will raise it up.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47003E> 21

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 3

This chapter ought clearly to have begun at verse 23 of the last. This is in immediate connection with what goes before. To verse 21 gives us the result of His manifestation at Jerusalem (thus first publicly after His baptism, and public sealing in the world by the Holy Ghost) and the works which He wrought there. After that the Lord went into the country, "the land of Judaea," verse 22. But this interview with Nicodemus was a part of this. The former part presents a general and vague, this a special and contrasted, result. I have been sometimes disposed to think that there was an intended contrast between their general and unreal recognition of Him on account of His miracles, and His intimate knowledge of what they really were, which prevented His trusting Himself to them.

This passage gives occasion to many thoughts, not merely as to the character of Jesus as not seeking disciples; His direct reference to what they were in the sight of God. (With the apostles, "As many as received the word gladly were baptised," Acts 2: 41.) The trial which accompanied the Lord by the very heartless readiness of the people to receive Him, on the mere outward testimony, showing the unchanged nature of their own hearts, without reference to the real character and object for which He came, the nature of His kingdom. This, as rejected, is shown in the last clauses of the former chapter. His power, His object, the character of His ministry, its reception, the full testimony brought out by mercy acting upon the apprehensions of men, but the discerning power of His reception of them, what was in man, and what was in Jesus, are all drawn out here. But, in the order of the book, the leading point is the general reception of Him by the Jews, upon the external-testimony, to please, as it were, themselves, and His reception of them. This is more distinctly brought forward in detail in the case of Nicodemus, and the great principles on which it was founded.

22 The paramount character of the kingdom which He was setting up, and the way therefore in which God was meeting them - (flowing indeed necessarily from the very Being and Person and office of the Son of God manifested as Son of Man; for of moral necessity, being so exhibited, its paramountness to the Jewish system, and its superiority of nature and character over which, also its presentation to the Jews, was exhibited, and hence the result of its being so presented to the natural man who, in respect of his own hopes, so now of its heavenly hopes, would willingly have received it) - is what is drawn out in this very gospel, and here is developed in its moral characters, as well as the result of the juxtaposition of the Lord and the people, as a preliminary introduction to the whole scene: the presenting Messiah and the kingdom to the Jews; but that Messiah appearing, as necessarily from God, in the power, spirituality, and glory of the kingdom of God, and the effect of the uncongeniality of the thoughts and expectations of the Lord and the people from the nature of them. The fact was given before; the interview with Nicodemus develops the principles of it, which therefore follows.

Nicodemus was a genuine enquirer, therefore his name is given to point him out afterwards, but he came in association with the thoughts and expectations of the Jews, as above rehearsed. "Rabbi, we know that . . . no one can do the miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." We learn also, though here exhibited as in the mind of a really sincere enquirer, what were the common feelings of the Jews, rulers even, and Pharisees, at that time; for he acted on them. So often God leads, though these thoughts operated, in his case, in a sincere mind, and led him to enquire for himself, for his conscience, which is always timid, always acting individually and for itself, and therefore afraid of others, though the same occasions, doubts, and enquiries may be, and here doubtless were, externally influencing them. They were willing that Jesus should be the Servant of their thoughts, meeting them; but to enquire in personal, self-subjecting interest was not with them at all. They would consult therefore together, so as to know the result of believing before they believed; therefore the Lord says, "He that is willing to do the will of God shall know," etc. Here is the awful responsibility of these people. Conscience is the real guide to knowledge.

- 1. In this state of things, while at Jerusalem, there was a man, a Pharisee, and a ruler of the Jews, came to Him by night, and said, "We know that thou art a teacher"; we must recognise you as such from these miracles. But he states it in the way which exhibits the genuineness of the conviction of his own mind, while he states the general impression: "No man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." Still this was only outside, there was no kingdom of a new and spiritual character affecting the whole nation. Nay, I am not sure that Nicodemus does not, in form, come short here of the general impression, because he states that to which his own conviction had genuinely (and therefore that only) arrived. "Many believed on his name"; this was going apparently further than Nicodemus, but it was the loose impression of evidence, nothing affecting their souls. In one we see enough to set him in action, though fearfully, for one step in practice is all beyond any advance in theory. But, says Jesus, "the kingdom of God"; I am come with a definite object. He swerves nothing ever below it. Jesus never went below His point. A man "must be born again."

23 But He met, observe, at once, the genuineness of Nicodemus' mind with a simple, full statement of the subject, subdued its views, and what remained of his associations, with "We know," meeting the bud of personal conscience which was at work under it, and Nicodemus at once turns to enquire concerning the matter. All the "Master" and the "We know" is gone, under the power and substance of Jesus' instruction, and his mind is astray, and its genuineness comes out, though in ignorance. I am not sure but that there is a mixture of personal emphasis with unbelief in "How can a man being old be born again?"

But to turn to the substance of the interview. The Lord then, we have seen, was speaking of the kingdom. It was this that He at once brought before Nicodemus, and this He does, and the Spirit before us, in its full proportions and parts, the earthly and the heavenly, with that which forms the basis and the entrance into each. But the first thing which the Lord does is to meet the views of Nicodemus as to the whole matter. He erred in his apprehensions; the eye must be first opened. "The kingdom of God." "Except a man be born anew" (this is the very outset of seeing anything) "he cannot see the kingdom of God." It is a new ground of perception by which we can see this kingdom of God at all. Thus the Lord arrests entirely the whole train of Nicodemus' enquiry. The very understanding and perception must be "anew." This it was most important first to get clear apprehensions upon. The fact was here simply stated: "born anew." Some would say above; but this is senseless, for it mars the whole sense, and makes Nicodemus' following enquiry ridiculous. But Nicodemus' mind in nothing went beyond the natural man and his experience, nor could not. He could have no conception beyond this. Our Lord therefore says as to the principles and method of the kingdom which He then at once introduces, "Except a man be born of water and of Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."

24 I think this part of the statement relates to the nature of the work, and not the instrument of its operation. This is important to the apprehension of its force. It is the answer to the manner spoken of in the enquiry of Nicodemus. The observations on the word ek (of) thus used bear directly on this. "Water" I believe to be significative of the cleansing character of this generation ("anew"), as the Spirit is the character and power of life, in which the energies are put forth, of life in active and natural assimilation to the character of God. "The way of life is above to the wise, to depart from hell beneath." It is true the ordinary symbol of this is baptism, but the substance of the thing is not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, "Who came by water, not by water only, but by water and blood." As Paul speaks: "Having your hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and your bodies washed with pure water." But it includes confessing also, for that is part, and the formal part, of this good conscience. So Jesus proved Himself true, witnessing "a good confession." He had "a baptism to be baptised with."

But baptism is the symbol with us of this, as the Lord's Supper is of that which is spoken of in John. But this, as it need scarcely be proved to a spiritual person, speaks of the thing itself. But it is important to separate it from the Spirit, because this is not merely a purification of the thoughts and habits of the outer man through the intervention of the death and resurrection of Jesus, purifying their hearts by faith, but a giving of life which has its energies through Jesus in every association with the things of God and God Himself. "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." Howsoever, this accordingly is the first great leading principle of the kingdom. This is essential to a place of enjoyment in it in all its forms, essential to personal association in it, vital possession of its blessings; the water is formally necessary. I speak even as above interpreted; this vitally; this lives according to that form. Also in the following words we have the instrumental power or original connected with the nature: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit," of the thing flesh and the thing Spirit is necessarily flesh and spirit itself. It is the kingdom of God. God is a Spirit. We must be spiritual to worship Him, and that which is born of the Spirit alone is spiritual, for that which is born of the flesh cannot be but flesh. Thy thoughts go not beyond the flesh from which they spring. This is true as to the portion in the "earthly things" peculiar to the Jew, to the ordinary form in which the kingdom of God could be presented, to that which even Nicodemus could be thinking of now.

25 It was God's kingdom, and this will be necessary for the real enjoyment of the "earthly things" in the millennial glory. But then indeed it will be, as here also brought forward (and from which Jesus drew His knowledge), associated with the "heavenly things," and its blessings flow down, as it were, on the "earthly things." They were, however, in their nature, considerably apart, without Christ's death intervening, which was necessary to anything of the "heavenly things" being the door to it, and the association of the "earthly things" to it, and in order necessary to these "earthly things" also; for it was of the resurrection, as now no more to return, etc., it was said, "I will give you the sure mercies of David." But we learn also this further blessed truth: how the millennial glory is the very purpose in which the full mind of God as revealed in Christ is revealed, as indeed is stated in Ephesians 1. But here we have the Lord as the revealer, not the accomplisher, of it.

I should apply "we know" to the nature of the necessary enjoyment, "we have seen" to the glory to be revealed. We find it, therefore, the expression of the mind of God as in Christ experimentally perfect, and perfectly answerable to Himself in its nature, of and which He could say, as the witness of it in that day towards God, "We know," and of the glory which is to be accomplished in Him as donatively, and "We have seen"; His indeed in a peculiar sense before, as the Son, but now (that is, in the glory) in the office of it as Man, and so now revealing it. This is a rich and blessed testimony, very full to dwell upon. I mean the revelation in Jesus, in Person and gift, of the character and order of the millennium as from God and towards God; for it is so, and fully in Him in both respects, answering and reflecting one another; He being the great connecting link of association, and that which He said now He could say then, save that it will be actually fulfilled as High Priest among the Jews. He will speak that of which all indeed are made partakers, the spiritual knowledge of God; and, as the King of glory, He will, in all its effulgence, witness forth the glory of the Father which no eye but His has seen; but He will come in it as King of kings and Lord of lords, "which in his times he shall shew, who is," etc. But at this time in gracious yet full (by the Spirit) revelation, if not showing the glory, speaking the words of God, His best glory.

26 Let us follow, however, the order of the passage itself. I observe in the first place applies it to the subject of Nicodemus' enquiry. His relationship to the Jews we know, as our Lord treats immediately of the kingdom of God, which was for them: "Do not wonder that I said to thee, It is needful that ye should be born anew." He had stated its nature before, now its application (for even for their portion in this, that they should have a place in the kingdom, they must be born again), and I apprehend the force of the sentence is in "ye." Do not wonder that I said concerning you Jews, that you must be born anew. For this is a prerogative operation of God. Being so, you will observe, in nature it lets in the Gentiles; for if it be "anew," new from the outset, it bears its own nature and character, and to this extent, that is, spiritual consequences of the life of the Spirit, there is no difference, Jerusalem or not, and producing its title by its result, suited to the nature of the kingdom, entitles the person on whom the result is produced to a share in the kingdom, looked at abstractly, whose nature shows the suitableness of the membership, for the Jew can show no other; this being, as here stated, the distinctive title of admission.

- 5. Besides direct evidence it is evident, from our Lord's expecting Nicodemus to know it, that "water" could not mean baptism.

- 7. "Do not wonder." Man is duller about spiritual things than natural, and admits power in God in these which he will not in those. This is mere pride and ignorance. "Thou fool," says Paul; therefore the Lord has made them analogous. The extent of the force of this conversation as introducing the kingdom is manifest, and its accordance with the great character of this gospel noticed heretofore; also the paramountness of Jesus' character here associated with the kingdom, showing speciality of application or address, yet bearing, therefore, in its principles the seed which should spring up in abundant Gentile fruit, embraced by the universality of His character, and part of His spiritual harvest; and, as it blows where it lists, seeing its fruits and operations, but cannot determine whence it comes, so as to have it in known or determinable operation; nor where it goes, for it is of the will of God; you Jews must submit to its operations as the necessary admission into the kingdom: "So is every one that is born of the Spirit." It brings the power of the kingdom's character, and the operation must be on you for admission. The admission is prerogative opening, as we have said, in principle and in title, also from its nature, the door to the Gentiles, not as such, but as "born of the Spirit." So the apostle, or rather the Spirit, argues as to faith; being of faith, the form of this through grace in man's heart, he that believes is the person who finds part, therefore "all that believe," therefore to the Gentiles, for he is (this being supposed) believing. Observe the ground: Is He not, whatever the dispensation, the God of the Gentiles? seeing it is one God, etc. So one Lord (as here) and one Spirit, one kingdom, and one baptism, one God and Father, etc. So therefore it is here, "every one that is born."

27 Nicodemus was able, not to see perhaps the order of this, but that it was wholly beyond the associations which he had formed as a Jew. His mind was at a loss. "How can these things be?" Not merely in their spiritual character but in the breach they made in Jewish feelings, the immense change necessary for even a Jew to be admitted into the kingdom, and the principles (in a measure), involved in it, though the results of them were not fully measured, doubtless in a way obscure; also how in the previous sentence the previous way in which we observed Nicodemus was received by our Lord is pursued, the personal address as to the substance of the matter, yet as coming in the general feeling of the Jew: "Do not wonder that I said to thee, It is needful that ye," etc. Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know the very principle on which Israel is let into the kingdom? And we may add, besides putting Nicodemus upon right thoughts, it expresses the feelings of our Lord as to the state of the people: How shall I deal with them? what will be the result to them if the teacher of Israel does not know the first principles?

28 But the Lord did not gain Nicodemus, and turning from the "how" He declares the certainty on His own testimony from God: "We speak that which we know"; but they are what are now in His thoughts, not individually Nicodemus. "Ye receive not," and if I have told you the earthly part of the kingdom, and ye believe not, how will ye believe if I tell you of the heavenly things that are the crown and glory of it? It is not merely "earthly things" but "the earthly things," definitely, I think, pointing out the two associated portions of the millennial glory, the earthly and heavenly. "Earthly things" and "heavenly things" are doubtless contrasted in their knowableness, but also in fact, as in Ephesians. "From God," says Nicodemus, but the Lord begins with earthly things showing Nicodemus' ignorance, and then asserts His own real character.

- 13, 14 go together then, but are alike inconsistent and commonly unintelligible to the natural man (compare Isaiah 55).

I observe in verse 16 this (not to enter upon the full power of the sentence, which would require rather a sermon) implies the truth argued out by Paul in Romans 3: 22 in its positive affirmation; so I think in 1 John 2: 2. These, however, remark, are the words of our Lord when stating one of the two great general subjects of His gospel. There is everything implied in this, that God loved the world.

In John our Lord always proposes Himself in His full character to the world. He views Him as paramount to His mission ("He who comes out of heaven is above all"), and therefore, includes it to the world. In Luke and Matthew we have the respective appropriations fully drawn out, though recognised here. Accordingly, verses 15, 16, 17 is the gospel. And as to this then note the "earthly things," the necessary first principles of the kingdom of God, which is "earthly things," to this extent. But the gospel runs properly upon (within, say) the "heavenly things," including and resting on the Lord's death in result, therefore beyond it, "life eternal" (compare chap. 9: 5, 6). They wished the exercise of the temporal authority of the kingdom, our Lord looked further. Compare with the verses here following John 5: 22-24. If the Lord was to exercise trying authority all must be condemned, etc., therefore the Lord sends a trying principle in the way of giving life and salvation, so that he that receives it does not come into the trying authority, the "judgment," but is passed into life from death. Our Lord is now a Saviour, but withal is, as He says, "for judgment," John 9: 39. . But, besides, He will "execute judgment," because, etc. Note the force as of this as to the resurrection of the saints, comparing chapter 5: 29. It is not merely "all judgment," but "all the judgment." If we receive Him we have passed "the judgment," or more exactly are "not judged." They therefore confound all things of the gospel who look to a mere general judgment, in which all are, indiscriminate judgment of acceptance or otherwise; for the salvation comes first, that all might not be condemned. But this becomes the "judgment" to them who receive it not; so that he that believeth not "has been already judged." It is a deeply important principle, and involving the whole gospel. And note there are the "heavenly things." This passage involves the whole testimony in its principles.

29 Our Lord had gone mentioning the "heavenly things" to the verge of His glory, and in doing so had touched on that on which it all rested, His Person and all the mystery in it, but stops short, as it were, to plant it where it found its place among the Jews: death. He descends at once then from the thought of His Being and Person, humbling His thought to service, Himself to humiliation: "No one has gone up into heaven." And then we have these most important essential points in our Lord's character: "He who came down out of heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven." And then we have two great points in the humiliation: The Son of Man must be lifted up; God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, the Son of God. Both "that every one," etc. Both these we must view for right views: the Son of Man lifted up, the remedy for sin, the taker away of death for eternal life; the giving of the Son of God, the evidence of divine love, the love of God. We must believe in the Son of Man lifted up, we must believe in the Son of God given, to have just and right views of the Cross, and the love of the mercy. These exercises afford a large scope, for here undeveloped riches of the wisdom, perfectness, and nearness of God's ways, most large and wide, most infinite, let the Person of Christ, and His work, and the glory and extent of God's love in it, be seen; and men shall marvel, and be saved, and know God in measure in the fulness of His mind of blessing in Christ and by Christ, and Christ the manifestation of all this wisdom and fulness in Him; and this by the Spirit.

30  - 13. The Lord then having dwelt upon the evidence that the glory of the kingdom must surely be rejected, as its first principles were, by the Jews, proceeds to unfold the whole order of these, for which, in the wisdom of God, see Isaiah 49. That very unbelief would make its way. See also Romans 11 at the end. That which was suited to their present admission into the kingdom as a kingdom of God they could not receive, much less the heavenly glory. Here our Lord leaves the "ye." He continues to unfold it to Nicodemus, but it is not as that which was of application to them. But the large fulness of the everlasting kingdom which, in its principles, as in its circumstances, was of "every one that believes," a principle not adverted to in a former part, for we walk by faith, and not by sight. "And no man hath ascended up into heaven, save he who came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, who is in heaven." The Person of Him who was the door must now be declared as immediately associated with this. Thus are heaven and earth linked. No man can report of heaven save He who came down, essential to His Person, the great witnessing fact from God, even Him who even here is the unbroken link between earth and heaven, restoring this association; the Son of Man. They are three coincident and characteristic names of infinite value on earth: "Who came down out of heaven"; "The Son of Man"; "Who is in heaven." This is His character, circumstance, and characteristics in respect of that which is to follow.

But we have now a vast scene opened out to us, that which was immediately associated with heavenly glory, its reverse in this world, alike and uniformly unintelligible, and its present practical bearing as regards the Jew, and by which the Gentile was let in: the Son of Man must be lifted up. "We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth ever. Who is this Son of Man?" Yet it was as Son of Man He was to have this glory. "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the Son of Man, that thou so regardest him? Thou hast made him," etc. And so in Daniel. It was a matter, too, of eternal life, resurrection life, or the life of resurrection power; for all shall not die. This was a great, vast scheme, of which the Jew was ignorant, and of which his rejection of Messiah as presented to him as living, according to the principles of the kingdom, was to be the instrument, and of which the only part now presentable to him, and which showed how totally incapable he was to receive it, was the sufferings incident to it. But this, as connected with the "heavenly things," was of large and vast scope; this was not within the Jewish scope. It was the Son of Man; God so loved the world; every one that believeth; eternal life. God so loved it (could a Jew believe this, as such?) that He gave His only begotten Son, that, etc. A Jew might see the heathen judged, condemned, in such a sending; but no, "the world," not to condemn, to judge rather, but that "the world" through Him might be saved.

31 The presented purposes of God, whether to Jew or the world, on which their responsibilities rest, are not the purpose of glory and result, which arises in every instance on their total failure as involved in that responsibility through the opposition of their nature to God, its weakness through the flesh. He sent, for example, Jesus to the Jews, that He might be their King, but there was a Remnant according to the election of grace. Nor did the unbelief of the Jew make the faith of God of none effect (see the same, Isaiah 49). He sent Him into the world that the world through Him might be saved; and still the way of His glory was through its failure, though it be our deep sin. Yet in purpose, so a Remnant, being made heirs with Him of the glory. Yet for this also it shall be judged. But it was a rejected, absent Saviour in which they were to believe, suffering, but still the Spirit convincing of righteousness, for He was gone to the Father. Hence the division (and saving of the elect); the believer, he never shall be judged: "but he that believes not has been already judged." This all was the great mystery which occupied the mind of Paul, that the Gentiles, etc. He has been judged already, for he has committed the great act of dishonour and disallegiance to the God of heaven; he has not believed on His only begotten Son.

But observe, this judgment is not (though it might be so) arbitrary act of rejection for that dishonour. This is the judgment; it manifested the darkness of man's heart, and the evil which he loved. It was light which had come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. And this, in its principle, was universal; therefore only the elect, whom God changed supremely by His Spirit, were saved: "Men loved darkness." The wonderful accuracy of the Word of God! "For every one that does evil hates the light"; and "there is none that doeth good, no, not one," "they are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable," even those who had the best light and the advantage of the law. It was then it had all the malignity of a rejection of the only begotten Son of God; but it arose from, and manifested, brought into judgment, the evil state of man's heart, the position, love of darkness, because they were dead in trespasses and sins. This, therefore, the Spirit now takes, and convinces the world of sin. "But he that doeth the truth." Again we have to remark the accuracy of our Lord's language. It is not "good works," for God had given them up to a reprobate mind, they were ungodly. But He speaks here of those who had heard and knew the truth as revealed, and by grace (associated always and exclusively with truth) did it. So in Matthew 7. Therefore He saith doeth. "He that practises" (without this "every one that doeth") "the truth." Such came to the light in Jesus, in whom all truth was, and who was the truth, the truth of God's character. Guile was not found in His lips.

32 But the character of God is now known only to man by revelation. He ought to know that which subjects him to God. But so Romans 1. Hence Paul distinguishes in the same manner wrath against "ungodliness" (the general estate of man), and the "unrighteousness" of those who "hold the truth in unrighteousness." But when the light comes these must be proved, not only to be in the dark, and walking in darkness, but as "he that does evil hates the light." The thing is condemnable, and the person first, but the wrath is revealed upon the hater of the light so manifested, he "has been already judged"; and so "for judgment am I come" (chap. 9: 39), the full dispensed operation of this as flowing from God in Jesus, the Son of Man. The Son of God sent into the world is here fully manifested, often its principles leading through suffering to heavenly glory. In this, as it were, Nicodemus had no part. He had been as yet left behind by the first part. This was our Lord's testimony, the outbreaking of the view that was before Him; a glorious thought, an immense prospect, let down from God out of heaven, and turning thither again, when as in Him angels were learning the great wonders and wisdom of God.

33 After this Jesus went into the land of Judaea. On the whole we may remark (while the Saviour passeth not beyond the verge of that which is personal to Himself, as now manifested, and does not touch upon the heavenlies themselves), the very distinct address of the "earthly things," that which gave living Jews entrance into the kingdom, and will in that day, and in which therefore faith is not spoken of, addressed to Nicodemus as representing to this extent here the Jews ("ye"). How this ceases when His death, the entrance into the heavenlies, begins, and the principle of faith in an apparently rejected and so absent Saviour, in which the "every one" at once broadly comes in, and God's loving the world is introduced, while the Person of the Saviour shines through all! But how rich and various is the matter of the Scriptures compared with any comment upon it; how its elementary and eternal truth, flowing from God's nature, can be brought to bear in their simplicity in the heart of him taught only in the necessities of his own conscience, while the depth of all wisdom is developed in the same in the Person and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, before which the wisdom of the proudest man succumbs! Note also the transition (vv. 13, 14), the moment the Lord touches on the full character of His glory, His essential glory, "Who is in heaven," to the full humiliation, to His being made the sign-post of the world's sin. Yet nothing can be more humble or simple than His statement of it. There are, then, two points mentioned, "that every one who believes on him," etc.; first in which He acts from and for man so: "So must the Son of Man be lifted up, that," etc.; then God's love from which it flowed: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that," etc. This was God's part. Note, the only place where Jesus could be as fulfilling the requisition of God's excellency, justifying God, and acting justly, as Man, was to be this sign-post, as we have said, of sin, to have it stamped in abhorrence upon Him. The world thinks that there are a great many other amiable excellencies in which they and God may take pleasure, for they think that He is altogether such an one as themselves.

34  - 24. The public testimony, or preaching, of our Lord began after John was cast into prison, began from Galilee; but this place evinces that He was, by private instruction, gathering disciples, and His disciples baptising before that. On the whole it makes the observations elsewhere made plain (compare Luke 7: 11 and chap. 4: 14, and references). Our Lord's first actings and manifestation, not His public ministry, was at Jerusalem, save what took place at Cana, etc., and which does not appear to have been lengthened. Then He went to the feast; then returned into the country of Judaea, and baptised, continuing there; then hearing that John was put in prison, and that His enemies had heard of Him, He went into Galilee, chiefly continuing about the sea at Capernaum. In Nazareth He took the occasion of the passage of Isaiah 61 to present Himself publicly as fulfilling it; but observe, by the Spirit being upon Him, and thus accordingly there is where Luke begins his narrative of His matured ministerial labours.

- 27. Nothing can be more important; it is the immutable rule of all office, and measure of all authority. Compare our Lord's declaration to Pilate, and Paul's statement of resisting the power, and the ground on which he lays the foundation of his own authority in his epistles, particularly to the Corinthians. Then compare "not as lords over your faith." As to this verse 33 lays the ground. And then compare Proverbs 30: 6. As to faith, there can be no authority; it is as believing (in the matter) the record which God has given concerning His Son. You may see also some observations in the printed paper relative to Paul's conduct with human powers.

In reference to this I recollect Luther to have acted wisely in a case brought to him to exorcise. And compare the sons of Sceva. In this view I conceive the relation of the twelve men on whom he laid his hands is inserted, it was a power properly apostolic (as see Peter and John going to Samaria), and a standing evidence of Paul's being an apostle. He was clearly an extraordinary one, and careful observation will show that the Scriptures have recorded the evidence of his qualification as seeing the risen Lord, so as to be a primary witness, and that the signs of an apostle were wrought "in him." More might be added here, showing the justness of the adaptation of the manner of his qualification to his peculiar office as apostle of the Gentiles, but this is not the place; this applies to dispensation; for it need not be said that there could be no diversity in the matter of faith, though there were diversity of appointment and administration.

35  - 28. There is heartfelt satisfaction (as in full confession of what the Lord has imposed, for this is a responsibility) in having assumed nothing beyond what the Lord has given. Let us take heed withal that we are faithful. Wherever we do we throw ourselves into the power (as far as we are concerned) of Satan, for God confessedly is not with us therein, and there is no telling what use he may make of this, for all the value of previous labour and character is thrown into it, on the one hand, and the discredit of Satan's wiliness thrown upon that, on the other. This is one case, but the Lord's care is over all. Nothing can be more blessed than this testimony of John. It is, I apprehend, the just position of the Church; that is, believing Christians now.

- 31. He spake the "earthly things" (the usual use of ek (from), compare verse 11); first "above all," as to Himself, His place, Person; then testimony. John was merely a witness.

- 33. "That God is true." Some received Him, but none received His testimony. By grace some were made to believe in Him, and after received the Holy Ghost, by which they were then made to see and understand and receive the "heavenly things" in Him; and this was the difference of the apostolic faith before and after they were taught more especially that He was the Christ, the Son of God and King of Israel. They received the "earthly things," principles of His kingdom, and looked accordingly for the earthly portion of the kingdom, but they did not nor could not, through their fault, the "heavenly things" till the Holy Ghost was given them through His ascending on high, where He was set far above, etc., and gave it. Then they preached the gospel, the "heavenly things," with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Christ indeed spake "heavenly things" (of this see other notes), for He spake in the fulness of the Spirit; and though we have but the Spirit according to the measure of our several gift, yet as to the revelation the Spirit (that is, in the dispensation of Christ) is not given by measure; we have the mind of Christ, in whom dwelt all the fulness, treasures of wisdom and knowledge, who was, etc., and Heir of all these things also, for in these last days He hath spoken unto us by His Son, therefore "he that has received," etc. It is not, therefore, "to men"; so in verses 12, 27. Our Lord spoke as though Himself in the "judgment." In verses 31 and 32 He saw the power of this work. This great truth (v. 35) was that which sustained our Lord in the non-reception of His testimony; Matt. 11: 27. This accordingly is the argument, with the proof of the necessity of our Lord's sufferings, by the apostle in Hebrews 2. He did enter into the "judgment" for man, and therefore having this place, and undertaken man, and therefore suffering ("for it became him") being made perfect He became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him. Then the great fact as resting on His glory and place is stated, then the needful (through our sin and unbelief) manner of its accomplishment. So I take it verse 28 of Hebrews 9 is an answer to verse 27 on the question raised by it of how the "judgment" may be gone through. Here we have the present certainty. Verse 27 is their natural portion.

36 There is something blessedly perfect in the Lord's, and in John's answer also, which shines out the more in comparing them. Our Lord speaks in simplicity and power of the kingdom, nothing of Himself, save in humiliation. But He spoke that which He knew, and testified that which He had seen; John in the simplicity of character which was of the place God had given him. The occasion which arose was the comparison of the circumstances of himself and the Lord by his disciples. He answered, "A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven"; thus, while he humbles himself, really verifying the heavenly origin of his testimony. And their very enquiry, "He to whom thou barest witness," confirmed the truth of his word, also as to the truth of him and of his mission. But the full glory of our Lord was necessary to complete the picture or the testimony of the earthly and heavenly things, of which indeed He was to be the Head. But our Lord never glorified Himself, nor went also beyond the limits of His Jewish circumstances as to facts; therefore He closed with His death. Here we have His glory, and this in two particulars, which are the great subjects of full revelation in apostolic and apocalyptic revelations: His having the Bride, as being the Bridegroom, and being "above all," by virtue of the title in which He had descended from the Father (created indeed by Him and for Him) and which made the portion of man He had brought Him into heavenly places to exercise, being set above all authority and power, King of kings and Lord of lords (compare Colossians 1 and Ephesians 1 and close of Revelation).

37 There is a sense in which the Jewish Church is especially called the Bride, and exclusively so, I think, in the prophetic Scriptures of the Old Testament; for though I think it is so in Canticles also, it is so in a peculiar way. But this is so rather as the Lord than as Jesus, when she is to call Him Ishi, and not in the full closeness of His identity with the Bride taken out of His side, the Lamb's wife, the Man's wife, called in that day Adam.

Having spoken of the Lord, then, as the Bridegroom, which is His special glory, he speaks of Him in Person: "He that comes from above." First, His general and universal superiority; next, its special association; "he that is of the earth is earthly," though this as to the principle; that is, John in his place, office and ministry: "He who comes from heaven," as specially associated with the heavenly character and supremacy as at the head of the "heavenly things," in whom the heavens shall be known to rule. This is true in His title and Person as "come," and true in fact when indeed He is "come" over again "from heaven"; as so come, that is, in humiliation. Though such, He testifies what He hath seen and heard, and no man receiveth His testimony. He who receives His testimony, however, has set to his seal that God is true, for He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God. But as both the personal relationship and the manifestation of the glory are accomplished in the Lord Jesus, the Christ, in that day, so shall this also of peculiar and rich blessing; for not only is He King of kings and Lord of lords, "above all," but His name is called THE WORD OF GOD, and consequently in that day we shall know as we are known, and in earthly places they shall not say, Know the Lord, teaching every man his brother, and every man his neighbour; for all shall know Me, saith He, from the least even to the greatest.

This then is a very rich and peculiar blessing, for now we know but in part, and therefore have to prophesy (for others), and that of course therefore in part; but then we shall know, etc; and therefore prophesyings shall cease? and we shall all have common communion in that which is known to and prized by all; and this, though by Jesus, is direct from God Himself. It is not here, observe, merely the Father, but the Sent One of God, who is come from Him, who is the Blessed and only Potentate, the, etc.; the King Eternal, incorruptible, invisible, etc.; for the mystery of His Person is here peculiarly drawn out, that which indeed is beyond our reach, known only to the Father, but all whose excellency is the specialty of our blessing, for He testifieth as Man, saying, I have not refrained Myself, O Lord, and that Thou knowest, to men, even His brethren, yea, as under Him even the unbelieving, "that which he hath seen and heard" with His Father in the glory which He had with Him before the world was (compare Proverbs 8, where Christ is specially Wisdom, the Revealer). But it is as the Sent One, "He who comes," that He is thus the Revealer. Nevertheless in the testimony deposited in Him there was all fulness. Hence the important testimony which follows: "He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God" (as He is as sent the accomplishment of all these words in that day, "in him Yea, and in him Amen, to the glory of God by us") "for," and here is His especial state, which you will again observe is as Christ, and not as God, "God giveth not the Spirit by measure."

38 All the Spirit's mind, the mind of Christ, the wisdom of God, is revealed now in the Scriptures, Jesus Christ being the great Key; for till He was glorified, and set in His place, it could not be so done, "for the Holy Ghost was not yet, for Jesus was not yet glorified," and God never gives the Spirit by measure. He gives it now. This could not be till Jesus was, because He was the One, the Man, in whom it was all to be, the appointed One, as He saith, "Behold my Servant, whom I have chosen, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth: I will put my Spirit upon him; he shall shew forth," etc. Men of old were indeed moved by the Holy Ghost; the Spirit of Christ which was in them did testify beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and the glory which should follow; but He, the Son, on whom it was to descend because He was the Son, the Man of God's good pleasure, and all fulness of blessing and of communion be restored between heaven and upon earth, was not as yet come, and the Spirit could not be given. The authority of Sonship did not exist, the title of inheritance did not exist, save abstractedly in Christ; the inheritance was not acquired; there was no man in heaven to whom the Father had given, no Son on earth sustaining the deposit which was witness of the glory to be believed. But when Jesus, the Man of God's love, appeared, then the Spirit was given, the Person of the Holy Ghost became, and not previously, the inhabitant of earth solely in Him, and circumscribed to His Person, because in Him all fulness was to dwell there, but shed abroad according to the glory of the inheritance as soon as He had ascended on high into the power, and it became conversant as the power, and in the weakness of man, as from Jesus exalted over all things. In this fulness Jesus spake on earth, for it was by the Spirit not given in measure He did and spake all things as from the Father; but on this we have not yet entered, for we have Him as yet merely sent of God and speaking (as a Man) the words simply of God, the Spirit not being given in measure by God.

39 Having come, then, to this great point, that God giveth not the Spirit by measure to His Son, we have another immense and hitherto unopened truth: "The Father" (for such Jesus manifested, being the Son whom God loved, proved by the Spirit given fully), "The Father loveth the Son." This is the blessed and glorious truth which shines upon and crowns the whole, the great crowning and all-comprehensive discovery in Christ, the essence of revelation; as one said indeed, "Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us." But He not only showeth us this, but that He loveth the Son, and this also through all the humiliation; and, further, we know by the Spirit He hath given all things into His hand; therefore "he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son," not obeying Him to whom the Father hath given all things, "shall not see life, but the wrath" (not of the Father, there is no wrath there, not an atom, perfect fulness of blessing, of love; He is Father, always Father, and nothing but Father in love and perfectness, "the Father loves the Son" but) "of God." He is not recognised in the Son, nor is a son. The contrary is disobedience to Him whom the Father honours in the place of a Son, giving all things into His hand. He is not in the relationship of a son; he is not therefore before the Father, as it were; but besides, he actually disobeys Him on whom the Father has conferred, and in whom the Father claims, all honour. "The wrath of God abideth on him"; for whenever a sinner meets God, wrath must be on him, for he is by nature the child of wrath. God so loved that He gave His only begotten Son. Whoever therefore meets Him in Him meets perfect love, and finds God his Father. Nor is it right to say God is reconciled, for He meets the world in perfect love, in the activity of His own love towards them that are lost. But this is not dealt with by the sinner; nay, either he rejects the authority of Him in whom it is expressed, who speaketh the words of God, so the wrath of God, as of love and authority passed by, abides on him. What else can? for apeithon is not merely "believeth not," but it is the accumulation of evil in one act, is not subject, pisteuon. The Son is believed in as of the Father, and having all things given unto Him. He is disobeyed, or not believed, as speaking the words of God; for if He were seen to be the Son, and so believed in, the Father and His love would be seen also (for He indeed was a Man, and we also), and that is eternal life; and then as alive in Him we should receive the Spirit also.

40 Thus does this chapter, whether to Jew in earthly, or in the fulness of heavenly places, open out that which the Lord is in them in accomplishment, and what He was in humiliation even (nothing less in Person and purpose), with also the gift of the Spirit since He was manifested in the flesh, given (when given at all) without measure from God, whereby we know sonship and the Father.

Note, in the introductory chapters of John you have the two parts of the truth of the gospel, the revelation of all that the Lord is on earth, on to the millennium, and the necessity of a new nature in man to receive Him or know the kingdom. It is a revelation of God above dispensations, even if dispensations are to be introduced; and hence above what man is. Now, to apprehend and enter into them he must be of God, born of Him, to see and have part in them. But it goes a little further, though not speaking of heaven, or Christ's going there (for it ever takes up what is intrinsic), but of His being there. It presents eternal life, for in Christ was life. But to have that according to the knowledge of heavenly things which Christ has, the cleansing of the Cross must come in; that is, death to all here, all human associations, of course, all sin. He liveth in this life unto God, and in the Cross according to the absolute glorifying of God in reference to all that was here below contrary in any sense to His nature; not only He living, and is life, that we may live (and are born of the Spirit), but there is a dying to, a removing of, a glorifying God about, all that was of nature, so that we may thus live. He was divine life in the midst of the evil, and perfect there; but He must bring us, through dying, to it, into a new condition where we are not mixed with the evil; thus eternal life.

________

41 A few words on the beginning of John, suggested by a remark in  . . . . that Christ is not sent in the beginning of John 1. I think that what Christ is is absolute. Personal place is from chapter 1: 1, His divine place (man rejecting, or ignorant), and a new birth, through His incarnation, and full work for the end, and giving the Holy Ghost in the way; down to the end of verse 34; recognised Son of God in manhood by the sealing of the Holy Ghost. In verse 35 we begin the historical work of calling. This goes on, as within Israel, in three parts, to the end of chapter 2: 22, but within the limits of Israel (the earthly part), save that resurrection in divine power in Him as God is given (chap. 2: 18-22): John's ministry, Christ's ministry on earth, which goes on to the end, where the Christ of Psalm 2 is declared to be the Son of Man to whom angels are servants, and then the marriage and practical cleansing; but this in resurrection. Then in chapter 2: 23 we come to the difference of outward testimony in Israel, and divine operation, and that a totally new thing and system was coming in; the old thing, or outward testimony, of no avail, gone, and the new thing announced; man wholly born again, anew; the Son of Man crucified, the Son of God given; eternal life; and on this ground, such in Israel would finally have the promises; but, as grace and power on God's part, it could go out to the Gentiles, and associated with heaven, through the cross; the moral condemnation of the world, where Christ had been as light.

What follows is (given to its proper object all through) John's testimony. They are brought together for the last time, the Lord Jesus returning to Jerusalem. His testimony had been brought in for each witness, so to speak. Chapter 1: 6-8, we have John's account of Him in respect of the first part as to Christ; verses 1-13, again his character as to Christ come here; verse 15, which is a parenthesis; then verse 19, this as to incarnation and divine existence, His then place. This goes to verse 28, that as to His incarnate Person compared with John. In verse 29 we have another testimony of John, not to Pharisees, etc., but his own; only (v. 30) the same Person, referring to verse 15 (both to what is not received) But here, while identifying the Person, divine and human, the work is introduced, in all and its double effect, the removal of sin out of the world, and the giving of the Holy Ghost meanwhile, connected with His being anointed, and so manifested Son of God down here.

42 Now (chap. 3: 27) John gives wholly place to Him; not alone personally, but that connected with the whole scope of the new estate in Christ. The Bride was His. This may be more connected with Israel, but is rather a general idea. John's ministry was, though greater than all, prophetic, and referring to earth. Christ, coming from heaven, was above all. Of that He testified, and no man received it; but receiving it was setting to one's seal that God was true. Yet it was as the Sent One; but the Spirit not given in measure. This was His testimony down here. God spake by Him with the Holy Ghost, and He revealed what was there whence He came. But, further, the Father loved the Son, and put all things into His hand, though a divine Person. Then all this was not a dispensation, but of real and absolute dealing in eternal life. He that believed on Him had everlasting life. He who refused to own the Son would not see life; the wrath of God abode on him.

This closes this prefatial presenting of Christ; for John was not yet cast into prison. In what follows He goes to pursue His own testimony to men, the world, amongst the poor of the flock.

_______

In point of fact, John 3: 5 answers to the work of Christ on the cross for us; only here in spiritual cleansing and life; there in judicial cleansing and righteousness. For Christ bore our sins, and put away the fruits of the old man as guilt; but in glorifying God perfectly, so as to obtain for us a title in righteousness in the glory of God. So here the water is the cleansing of all our thoughts, affections, habits, and the Spirit the making us partakers of the divine nature: what is born of the Spirit is spirit (compare Ezekiel 36), which is indeed inseparably connected with our acceptance in the Beloved, our new positive position, for it is in life; though not only so, but by the presence of the Holy Ghost we have that place.

43 We are quickened into the new place with Christ raised from the dead, He having in that work, which gave us a title to be in glory, by glorifying God, having put away our sins by bearing them, and going down to death. He hath quickened us together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses. We are in Christ, or in the Spirit (not in flesh). That is our new place. So we are born of the Spirit. We are cleansed, and forgiven all the fruits of the flesh, and we are born of water. There acceptance does not go beyond resurrection; for we are, or Christ in testimony is, then in the new accepted condition of man in righteousness, God having raised Him from the dead.

But then, in point of fact, the counsels of God had given us a place in glory, and Christ enters into that glory, not only as what, as Son, He had with the Father before the world was, but as having glorified God perfectly here below, and in a work done as answering for us, so as to bring us, according to and by the righteousness of God, into that glory. This is a wonderful truth, but it is God's righteousness, evidently and wholly Christ's work; only the question of righteousness simply is settled in resurrection; only the work which did it was such that in its full effect it could not stop there, but was sufficient, when it was God's counsel to do so, to give us a part with Christ in glory.

______

John 1 and 2 are complete in themselves. What Christ was (not relatively, however, but what He was) then what He became ("became flesh"); then His work and operation, Lamb of God, and baptiser with the Holy Ghost; and then John's gathering, where He is owned as Messiah and His gathering on earth (specially the Remnant in Israel); then the guileless Israelite known under the fig-tree; that is, in Israel, owning Him according to Psalm 2, and the Lord assuring him he should thenceforth see Him according to Psalm 8; that is, as Son of Man, with the highest creatures waiting on Him.

Then comes the marriage (of Israel), and the water of purification turned into the wine of festal joy (and the best) and judgment purifying God's temple, His Father's house; His death and resurrection being the warrant for these acts of authority. But this brings in, though before His public ministry (which, though in Israel, was not in Judaea), the whole new ground of what was coming in; reception by outward, just, human conclusion of no avail; subjectively, one must be born again; a new life, divine life, and so wholly new (anothen) even for the kingdom, to see or enter into it; and Messiah rejected, crucified, but as Son of Man bringing in eternal life by redemption, and heavenly things, association with what was heavenly; meeting man's necessity as Son of Man, and revealing God's love as Son of God given, and this for the world; the wind blowing where it listed; though, even for Israel's future, earthly, part in the blessings promised, in the kingdom.

44 The teacher of Israel might have known (from Ezekiel 36, for example), that this new state must be brought in. Eternal life is connected with the Cross, not with being born again; though it was the action of sovereign grace, and went out, where God pleased, as the wind. But men were perishing, and now received eternal life, salvation, through the Cross. He did not come into the world to judge it now, but to save it. But then came the responsibility and consequent judgment, which hung on the believing on Him or not. This was from light coming into the world, and men loving darkness rather than light. On the other hand, in the end we have the full blessing in Him by faith. He is above all, coming from heaven; tells what He has seen and heard, and no man receives this new kind of knowledge. So verse 11. But His words are God's words, the Spirit not being given by measure. Such His place on earth.

Further, as Son the Father loves Him, and has put all into His hand. He that believes on Him has everlasting life; he that does not shall not see life, but God's wrath abides on him. He is set up as God's testimony, with God's words from heaven, whence He came; and, besides that, as the loved Son the Father has put all things in His hand. Eternal life and wrath depend on His being believed in or the contrary. The responsibility is light come into the world, but the full character of what is involved in His presence (vv. 31-36).

Here we are far away beyond Judaism, even if the Bride be taken as Judaism; though it be a generic idea. With these prefatial chapters justly close. That they are such verse 24 shows. Chapter 4 begins the history of sovereign grace in a rejected Saviour: "Neither at this mountain, nor at Jerusalem."

45 These three chapters of John yet occupy me. First, the testimony of John. The first chapter is a whole. The second gives the two parts of millennial glory, at least their centres: the changing of water into wine at the nuptial feast; the refreshing (or, rather, purifying) of the Spirit into the joy of conviviality, and joy to which we abandon ourselves, the "wine that maketh glad the heart of God and man," drunk new in the kingdom; and the judicial cleansing by the Lord Christ of the earthly worship and house of God.

Then, as to the testimony of John, it is remarkable, though there is abundance to show that He was the Messiah, how little direct testimony there is to this effect. It is His Person, what He is between God and the world, and the glory of His Person, not His economic position, which is in question, though Israel be recognised. We shall see more of this hereafter, when the abstract glory of the Lord is given. The nature of John's person, the witness to the light that was come, is very distinct. He is properly the light itself, but there was a man sent from God; a man, sent from God; he bears witness of the light, that all might believe.

When the incarnation of the Word is introduced, then this John bears witness that He who came after him was before him; as Man, succeeds, but, as the Word, as God, was before him. When the Jewish enquiry is presented, then he is not the Christ, but sent before the Lord, according to the prophecies. Herein he says He whom Israel knew not amongst them came after, but was preferred before him. He was not worthy to unloose His shoe-latchets. In this last it is not pre-existence and subsequency, but excellency; entirely superior, though succeeding or coming after. This really was the place of testimony to Messiahship; but it is to the Lord. He is sent before the face of the Lord, and excellency beyond Comparison as to John himself, such as He was here.

Next we have testimony to the functions of Jesus as Saviour, and in the Church, connected with His Person and nature: Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world; a Man coming after, but preferred before, John, because He was before; that is, Man, excellency, and pre-existence; also Son of God; and, finally, baptiser with the Holy Ghost.

In present testimony, as object of faith and affection, He is Lamb of God. Here the testimony, marvellous in extent, ends; for Jesus Himself takes up the calling and the manifestation of Himself, as Son of God, King of Israel, and Son of Man on whom the angels ascend and descend. Accordingly hereon follows (as we have seen, chapter 2) the two parts of actual millennial glory in their objects and service, not in His Person; that is chapter 1.

46 Then, in chapters 2 and 3 we have the carnal reception of Jesus by Israel is rejected, and the necessity of Israel being born again to enjoy the promises stated; which introduced all, for a Gentile could be born again, being the exercise of divine power; and the earthly and heavenly parts of the kingdom, or testimony of Jesus, declared, and the rejection of Messiah; and the gift of the Son of God as regards the world, revealed as the basis of these things, specially the heavenly things not yet revealed. The condemnation (God acting in love) rests in this: that men hate the light, to which responsibility attaches itself, and to which here the testimony (of the Lord) returns.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47004E> 46

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 4

In the meanwhile the Lord, till John was cast into prison, in just subjection to the divine order having been pointed out as the Lamb of God, not Himself baptising (this would have recognised it as the end of His ministry) ministered merely within the compass of John's ministry, baptising for the repentance and remission of sins, the kingdom of heaven being at hand. Nor is this ever said to be within you, though the kingdom of God was (I believe we have remarked that the kingdom of heaven is peculiar to Matthew). The ministry of the power of the Spirit ends in itself, that is, in its effects wrought, for it is formal and assigned; of Jesus not, for all power is given unto Him in heaven and in earth, and He is the revealer of the Father; His work therefore may seem to fail; the Spirit's never, for the Spirit expresses and acts. The present mind in Jesus is all the fulness, which may yet not be developed. The acquiescence of our Lord in this baptism was therefore suited to that which was developed. His not baptising Himself was so to that which was in Himself. When there is thought beyond the present state of agency this must be, though prospective light from God never fails to throw light on present conduct, for it is the same Jesus. It was not perceiving this which made the fifth monarchy men utterly err (as in spirit also). Satan can make large use (under divine restraint) of such errors even in good men; and error in act goes along with judgment here, for they cannot act in God's way; what is not the time to act, for God does not act out of the wisdom of His own time; therefore the instrument must be a wrong one.

47 But to proceed with our passage. Our Lord assumed now a distinct ministry, a ministry of testimony; not that He did not still offer Himself to the Jews as Messiah; but He had now primarily manifested Himself amongst them with ample miraculous evidence, and they had not received Him, or not in such a way that He could trust Himself to them. He was now to bear witness of what He was at large, having been rejected by them. Their envy indeed, it appears, had now so shown itself that the rumour of His discipling the people having reached the Pharisees occasioned Him to remove from the neighbourhood; nevertheless the place which our Lord held in the dispensation of God toward the Jews is carefully preserved. There is no generalisation of office. He had no thought of going to Samaria. He departed again into Galilee.

But the providence of God had ordered a full manifestation of further glory which was in Him, of the gift of the Spirit and eternal life, as the present power in Him of eternal life, separated from all Jewish association, though recognising that salvation was of the Jews. He must needs go through Samaria. So it was arranged. It was shown in the instance of all most opposed to Jewish prejudices. They had no dealings with the Samaritans. But it was the dispensation of gift and grace. It also set Jesus as the fuller source of blessing and promise to all the tribes of Israel than Jacob himself, or the water that he could give; broke in upon, as it advanced far beyond, in blessing, that association; for the way in which God subdues our pride in Jesus is the vastness of blessing. Nevertheless it arose out of the humiliation of Jesus. He had to ask water from a woman of Samaria, though King of the Jews. It was also to them as worthless that the message was sent. Jesus did not go to propose Himself to them, though He went when invited; as He said, Into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. Yet the glory that was in Him, and what He was conscious of, in the character and bosom of God, went beyond His present ministry; so elsewhere.

48 Having seen their general circumstances and its position, we may notice the truths conveyed in this most interesting account, worthy of all our attention. The interview with Nicodemus showed the necessity that Jews, children of the kingdom, should be born again. Here we have developed, as a gift communicable to the desirer of it, if there were such, the grace of God, and the Person of Jesus opening the door, and breaking down the distinction there was between a Jew and a woman of Samaria. It is on the whole, then, a testimony to Christ as the Giver of the Spirit, and that contrasted with the temporal blessings and associations of the Jacob of old, and the displacing the distinction, to this extent, of the Jew and the Samaritan.

In the first place, then, we have noticed the grace of God, the great principle of the gift, the dispensation of gift. The next point is the Person of Jesus: If thou hadst known the gift of God, and who it is who in this state of humiliation asking of you a Samaritan for water to drink, thou wouldst have asked, and He would have given. The freeness of the gift asked for is stated freely, and the result of such knowledge; but this all depends on the knowledge that God was giving, and what understanding the gift and of the Person and glory of Jesus in His humiliation. But these were spiritual things. They supposed a spiritual person. The natural man understood them not: "Thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep." She was thus shown ignorant of the gift, and of the Person of Jesus. "Art thou greater," etc., than he who did all these things for us? It was needful, however, that the total alienation of the mind from spiritual things should be shown. The woman was not opposed to listen, and the Lord would explain what He meant as to the nature of the thing, but it exhibited her incapacity to understand this also: "Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw." She was simple and absorbed, that which was her sorrow, but all darkness as to the spiritual things. Such is the exhibition of the nature of this gift, and the capacity of the natural man to receive it. He stumbles at the first word.

There was something very affecting in our Lord's alluding to the request He was constrained to make. I am persuaded He saw this woman's mind was not closed, dark as it was; at any rate, even such a reception was in a measure new to the Saviour. It is a wonderful picture of Him, weary and thirsty, and His glory withal manifested in His weakness.

49 In the next place we must remark that this living water is no influence from without producing results in the soil over which it flows. It is something given; the gift of God given to the person asking, given consequent upon the knowledge of Jesus, and bestowed by Him on request, as of God, flowing out of that knowledge: "If thou hadst known," etc. As to this we have spoken before on Ephesians 1, Romans 8, and the case of our Lord Himself, and other passages. The next thing is it is positively given to the person. It is not merely a draught of something by virtue of those influences, but in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. This in the man is a constant indwelling spring, flowing into eternal life. Next I would also remark it is here spoken of the great general truth as personally indwelling for the hope of eternal life, its substantial witness of inheritance, not collaterally as conferred, as the instrument of power for the purposes of the manifestation of Jesus. The simple freeness of it is markedly shown ("Ye have received gratuitously, give gratuitously"); and as to the receiver, If thou knewest, thou wouldst have asked, and He would have given. Knowledge of Jesus, itself the gift of God, is the only circumstance, and He is the giver. The freeness of the gospel is here distinctly stated, put in its order of God.

We have seen the character of the gift of the Spirit by Jesus, and its freedom, and the utter and absolute incapacity of the natural man, though hearing the words, to understand the nature, or anything, of spiritual things, or Jesus by whom they are given. "Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well?" "Sir, give me this water." But the Spirit of God hath another method by which, in the name of Jesus, it as Jesus takes up man where he is, and acts upon the conscience. We speak not of it now as indwelling as the water of life, but as acting in conviction by opening the conscience to itself. Nothing more simple in its power, where the discerning eye of God, to whom all is open and unconcealed, awakes by touching on the spring of its actual state, the consciousness of where it is (and such is the constant experience under the preaching of the word): "Go, call thy husband." You will observe that it is by stating the order of God, what would have blessing if it had been, that the consciousness of he state was drawn out: "I have no husband"; and thus is Jesus the universal convincer of sin, for He is the fulness of the blessedness of God.

50 Verse 18, though here explicitly given, because Jesus was He who was to be actually made known to her by it, is the work of the Spirit in every such case. It brings to light all our ways, and that with consciousness not only of them but of the light into which they are brought, that Jesus is there, by which we are made conscious of them. "Thou hast set my secret sins in the light of thy countenance." Conscience, real conscience, is exercised in the recognition of God, who has thus opened the heart as light in it, for that which maketh everything manifest is light, and Christ the Life is the Light of men, and this He is by His Spirit now. It does so responsibly now towards all, for "their sound went into all the earth" (Rom. 10: 18), effectually in the consciousness of those whom it awakens to find itself in the light. Whenever conscience as of God can be acted on, then the gospel has a way, and hypothetically that is man.

The just effect of this is to lead the mind to look for direction, to look for the right worship of that God who in effect is really thus known (for, as we have said, real conscience is responsibility to God), and to seek it of course when the light of that God has broken in: "I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say," etc. But this passage serves here as a great development of the order of God's dealings, as we have seen. It was in her mind a question between Jerusalem and Samaria, upon indeed the ordinary plea of all false worship, "Our fathers worshipped." On the other hand, it was merely a "Ye say we ought." A convinced conscience enquired of Him as a prophet. The Lord answered her as a point He felt near His heart as come, the Son's word from God: "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh" (He doth not as yet say "is come") "when neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, ye shall worship the Father."

The great source of worship is introduced, and then with the dispensations opening a larger principle than both, when the falsehood of one and the pride of the other (just now brought out in their practical rejection of Jesus, for doubtless this had pressed it on our Lord's mind, we must remember He had just left Judaea) would be lost in the fuller purpose of the Father's love. Nevertheless, in point of dispensation our Lord does not conceal the unwelcome truth (how untimely if it had not been of importance!) that salvation was of the Jews. The manifestation of the Spirit then, by which we worship the Father, though it may cause in the just hour not to worship at Jerusalem or elsewhere, does not, when specially manifesting its liberality to the most profane and hateful to the Jews, and shameful amongst men, for its own, the divine, glory, in any wise weaken or disannul the framework (it were impossible, and they are very foolish that think so) of God's dispensations.

51 But further, "The hour is coming, and now is" (for the Son is manifested), "when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." They shall neither worship in falsehood they know not what, nor in pride and formality, if their formal object was right. There is something very blessed in this, very refreshing to the Lord's mind, just having found that those on whom His heart was set, His own people of old, rejected and refused Him and the Father. But there shall be true worshippers. Such the Father seeks. He needeth not. His nature is too high for these proud rejecters. Yet is there no pride in seeking in truth, answerable in mind and understanding to Him, His will, and what He is as revealed, and in spirit according to what He is. The Father then seeketh, but it is such He seeketh.

I can conceive nothing more blessed than this verse as coming from the Son of His love, sent into the world. At the moment, the state of Samaria and Jerusalem, the people of His love, was just brought before Him. It was manifestly the outgoing of His mind (though written for our learning and the very truth of the mind of the Spirit from God; yea, so to speak, specially, and so it must when His mind came forth, for He spake the words of God), both here and from His conversation with His apostles. It was a mind full of pain indeed, and as is ever the case when the mind is full of felt sorrow for the present state of things in those nominally associated with God, having the prospect of larger purposes of God's love (for He knew God) opening out before it. There is sorrow in that word, mixed as it is with blessing: "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." It was perfectness, and perfect obedience in consciousness, which is true happiness; yet it was of that which was written: "Then have I laboured in vain, and spent my strength far nought; yet my work is with the Lord, and my judgment with my God. And He said, It is but a light thing."

52 There is peculiar depth to me in the union of these two words, "Woman, believe me," and "the Father seeketh such to worship him." There was a throwing Himself upon His Father, and a consciousness of the sympathy of the Father with Him in the spirit of His work which is full, full of what saints alone know, and angels desire to look into. But the universality of the Father's character required always such worship. The Father seeketh such worshippers. But God is a Spirit, and they that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth; they must so from His nature; they do not worship Him insofar as they do not.

This woman had not the Spirit, and therefore could but look to others to teach her about everything. She felt these were things reaching out into a far fuller and richer system than she could be conscious of; they were out of her reach. She had been brought to this, to feel that all her wisdom was ignorance; but there was One who would tell her all things; for she had this only resource, she had heard and knew that Messias cometh, and threw her ignorance over upon Him. It was a happy moment for her soul. "I that speak unto thee am he," said Jesus. This was sufficient.

The disciples came up, marvelled; for neither could they understand the glory His Sonship set Him in. He could have sympathy with none but the Father here; the thing was out of their reach. He was talking with a Samaritan woman; what was the meaning of this? They had not the Spirit, and could see nothing of the largeness of the harvest which the Spirit (which dwelt in Him without measure) would bring in as the minister of the Father's love.

As we have seen the free gift of the Spirit, the total incapacity of man to apprehend anything about it, the method which God uses then to bring the soul into the knowledge of Jesus, through whom the Spirit is received, by bringing intelligence into the conscience, so we find here the effect at once in taking the mind off the things which filled it up, and hid it from the capacity of receiving anything, and that by the value of Jesus, knowing who it was that spake to it. The woman's whole engagement had been her water-pot; beyond that it went not; a more sensible and real thing than that which fills the mind of most. But it was now forgotten, or despised. She left her water-pot, and went into the city, filled with the thoughts of Jesus, to speak to the men (for where the heart is full there is most forgetfulness of circumstances) of One who had told her all things that ever she did. Observe, too, the importance of Jesus in her mind had taken away the pain of the discovery of her state. This, she thought, must be the Christ.

53 The freedom of the Spirit finds its way most readily, and only (for it goes into a sinful world), in a heart where the conscience is most readily brought into humiliation and conviction (and so brought to Jesus, through whom the Spirit alone is received, and who must be known in order to its being received, and is thus known by opening the heart to itself, and presenting Himself as the convincing object of a heart which finds its resource therefore in Him, and thereon the testimony of who He is). A priori, therefore, in the free gift of this Spirit of life the poor sinner is the most in the way of the kingdom, for the natural man receiveth nothing of it at all, and such a one has little to oppose to the light in the conscience when God pleases to shine in. Accordingly this poor degraded woman (for most degraded she was) was chosen of God (amongst the most-rejected of men by those who had the Law and the promises) as the object in and through whom the revelation of the way and power of the Spirit of life should be made known to the world.

We have traced it here most imperfectly, even as to that which is noticed; but nothing can be more perfect than the way in which it is developed in the place. But this chapter should be read with the previous one, with which, in the development of the dispensations, it is intimately connected.

The men came out to see Him. The grace of God does as it pleases; but in itself learning and the like is a hindrance to the knowledge of God and the knowledge of Scripture and the mind of God in it, because it leads the mind to another access of approach to these things, not the conscience, which is God's way, the way of the Spirit. Learning may meet learning, and if one man give false, another meet it by the true; but it cannot meet Scripture, for it meets conscience, and there is no learning in the conscience but that we are sinners. The mind is the subject of the Scriptures, not the Scriptures the subject of the mind, in God's way. Only leave the Scripture to itself, and it meets all learning, and needs none. God may give power to apprehend it to one more than another, but I say it knows, meets everything; the proud heart of man can devise, and wants none of it, and nothing else, but in Spirit judges and divides all things, to the intents of the heart. I apply this to everything, everywhere, and throughout. There is nothing, I believe, which has so much impeded the study of prophecy as history.

54 I shall not dwell upon what passed with the disciples, save only to remark their incapacity to enter into spiritual thoughts, the way in which, coincidently with the whole subject, the Lord goes out into the whole prospect of the harvest which His Spirit should gather in, manifested in the state of this Samaritan woman (as partially in Nicodemus). I do not mean merely individually in them, but brought out before us through them. The thoughts of His mind are deeply interesting here.

Next we may remark the character of the fruit. There was the consciousness of Jewish rejection, the emptiness of Jacob's well; but it was that which was to flow from the power of the Spirit, bringing in a new vitality, eis zoeen aionion, fruit unto eternal life. It was into this they were to be gathered, that the sower and the reaper might rejoice together, for God had broken the apparent result of the seed, it was not to be eaten as such, that the reaper also should be partaker of a common joy, for herein was the saying true, "One soweth, and another reapeth." The apostles in that character were but reaping the fruit which the prophets and righteous men, and above all the Lord, had been sowing, whose hope and whose labours seemed to perish in the earth. In such a time [it is] better is it (pg. 54) it should be so. If we work according to what is present we may reap our own harvest, but it shall be a poor one; but if we sow according to the glory of that which is to come, if we sow by faith, others shall reap it, but we shall rejoice together. It could not have its place of manifestation now. The Lord Himself had but this comfort. He was sowing, yea, He was Himself to be the dying seed of all the future glory.

"I sent" I take to be characteristic: As apostles, this is your office; be ye not proud, or wise in your own conceits. I have sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour. Others (for our Lord took not the honour to Himself alone), other men have laboured, and ye are entered into their labours. But our Lord's joy was in the harvest, that which should be brought in; theirs in it softened by the recollection of who had sown the seed. He who is lowest, and works for unseen fruits, is surely highest, and more simply doing in faith the will of Him that sent Him; for success is present support even for the weak. Nevertheless, "he that reapeth receiveth wages." He speaks not of reward to the sower. His meat was to do the will of Him that sent Him, and to finish His work.

55 Nothing can be more distinct than the going forth of the Saviour's mind into that which, by the operation of the Spirit, it broke, upon the rejection of His Person and ministry in its real character by the Jews; while yet He, simply following the will of God in His present ministry, being perfect in all things. We may remark further that His place, and the place of His disciples, is here revealed in this opening system in perfect detail and principle and order. Our Lord, though so now, and above all in specialty of character, He who sowed, yet does not here (for He was rather putting them in their character in the opening dispensation of the Spirit) set Himself forward as such (that would have been rather giving value to His grief or trial that He knew only, that is, the Lord) but in His place in the dispensation: "I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour."

From verses 34 to 37 there is the full revelation of His and their place as now passing out of Judaism into the harvest of the Spirit, not His to gather, but having the Spirit just to do His Father's will in the limited (so apparently) sphere were He was. Next He saw forth into it (all His comfort). Next the reaping, and what it was even unto life eternal (for we have here the ministry of the Spirit as well as the power before). As Christ was the giver of that, so the sender in this. Next, therefore, this ministry of the harvest being introduced, we have His place, as observe: "I sent you to reap," and theirs in the consciousness that they were but reaping the labours of others' sowing, for "one soweth, and another reapeth."

This power of the testimony of Jesus in the conscience is the great inlet of the knowledge of Jesus, the way in which because man is a sinner, and He would humble man's pride) God will visit and make Himself known to man. But is this all that commends Jesus to man? No, far from it. Many believed because of this testimony, even at second hand. It was this made His entrance, it was on the ground of this they besought Him to remain with them. But everything confirmed (there was no flaw, nothing wanting) the great truth that this was the Saviour, the Christ. All was perfectly conformable; yea, more, adding a stronger ground of faith, now that the entrance and inlet into the heart was given, than the other of the glory of Him now recognised present with us, in "Now we believe, not because of thy word; for we have heard him ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world." The other was the inlet; but, once admitted, all is consonant to the full glory of Him whom the heart is now taught to receive.

56 For observe the perfectness of the confession of these Samaritans. What a contrast to "We know that thou art a teacher sent from God"! "We know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world, the Christ." Whence this large knowledge? From the depth of a humbled heart. The sinner recognises the full character of Jesus, that which is personal to Him, although His humiliation develops to him the full glory of Jesus, because he is in the position, and taught of God, to recognise it, to which, and upon which, the wisdom of God, the full glory of Christ, has been adapted and formed. He is a Saviour.

A sinner is neither a Jew nor a Gentile, but a sinner, and therefore can understand Christ as the Saviour of the world. And He is Christ; but the convinced sinner, having received Him therefore in His full character as Saviour, finds Him present, and knows Him also fulfilling all the testimony of God, and the expectation of the heart of man led thereby. The sinner, the conscience, is the great unraveller (being of grace and gift, and that for sinners) of all the mysteries and purposes of God. Compare the apprehensions of Nicodemus with those developed here, the very glory which was the satisfaction of Christ's heart in the rejection of the former, and you will see the contrast and the difference.

The Spirit of God, we may remark, for we are following His work in this chapter, reveals Christ in His full character: the Saviour of the world, the Christ; His full power and glory, and the special character in which He is manifested as the Anointed One; character and also specialty of His personal estate and relationship, for the Christ included both. The understanding of the mystery, says the apostle, of God, even of the Father and of Christ, into which we cannot enter now particularly; but it is manifest that this openeth out all things, and the more it be enquired into the more it will be seen, as regards man, these two things embrace everything: "the Saviour of the world," "the Christ"; and here into all this fulness, and He only, doth the Spirit lead us, and the inlet thereof is His first work as from without, convincing us of sin by Jesus the Saviour, Jesus the humbled One, manifested in the power of God thus known.

57 The union of the work of the Spirit in the individual conscience, and the full development of the glory of His dispensation in Jesus, so fully brought out in this chapter, is of the greatest importance; and this, as well as the two great points severally, has need to be entered into, that we may be able to understand either really; for it is by His work in one that the other is developed, as seen here, as it is by His indwelling in Jesus that the dispensation itself is set on foot and accomplished by Him as the giver and sender of it.

Let us briefly recapitulate the heads of either presented to us in this chapter. I remember nothing (nor am I surprised at it when I remember what it is, the transition of Jesus' mind, as it were, into this dispensation through His humiliation) that has so enlarged itself upon, and affected my mind, as this chapter, judging by my present thoughts; the touches of deep feeling in our Lord's address; the development of the doctrine and of the relationship in which all stood; besides the truths taught, alike act upon one's mind. But it was my purpose to recapitulate.

But, remarkable as was the character of the testimony then, our Lord did not continue in Samaria. Gracious as His reception was (for they were not the objects of His Father's will; that is, in service of ministry), after the two days He departed thence. That was not the object of His ministry, but neither could Jerusalem be the proper scene of it, nor Judaea A prophet had no honour in His own country; and that was His country indeed and in truth. But His work was not lost there. There were those there amongst whom, by the testimony there, offered a scene of ministerial sojourn; meeting in some compensating weakness the desires of His heart. They were Jews, the just objects of His desire and ministry. They went to the feast; they were poor and despised; a good thing could scarce come out of Galilee.

How remarkably we see that it is amongst those who have the greatest apparent advantages, that which is established in religious economy, that the power of unbelief is found! Samaria takes the lead, and Galilee is the resource of our Lord. Blessed be His humbled name! It is here in principle, for this passage is the investigation of the sphere of ministry, its character and results. It is not in Samaria. They were not Jews, nor of the truth, nor salvation of them, and therefore liable specifically to intelligible judgment. Not amongst the Jews, for there prophetically He was rejected, but here where there were Jews, that is, those recognising the rectitude of the divine administration; they went to the feast, but not in the pride of rejection, which the supposed possession of religious privileges invariably involved, when the Spirit was not in it in power (there of worship); yet here also weakness of reception in His prophetic and personal character, though not rejection or envy, the true position towards or against rejected power. But our Lord's mind was set upon His reception by virtue of His word carrying the demonstration with it in itself of whence it came, and His Person ("they received him" because, etc.); as elsewhere, Believe Me, or else believe Me for the very works' sake. This was moral reception. Hence He complains, "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." Yet the Lord gave them this, but it was a fault with them.

58 The Samaritans, observe further, received Him much more brightly: We have heard Him ourselves, and are sure that this is the Saviour of the world, the Christ. Hence the largeness of their apprehension for His word, being mixed with faith, told the fulness of His moral character. Hence also we see the supposed title to judge, and the assumption of conformity of God's dealing, with the assumed title to be the scene of their missions is one grand bar to the power, which always works according to God's character, and not man's, or his expectations short of the Spirit. For indeed their state made them subjects of judgment, and turned things upside down as special objects of judgment. Thus, though not obstinately opposed, not having the same ground for jealousy, the same spirit of unbelief manifested itself in measure here. Yet they had the benefit of all the miracles done at Jerusalem, morally there seeming to be lost, for they "received him." The jealousy of the Jews where those miracles were done did in fact exclude Him.

This is the general doctrine and dispensation presented here by the Lord's reply to the ruler, and the facts and time connected with it. There were but two miracles wrought here; hitherto only one, and that unsought by the Lord. Yet here was faith shown. The ruler believed, and all his house. We learn also how little we know when the Lord works by His ministry in any place. Let us do His will in the place of His will, and His own results will be wrought by it; though, as Jesus was, we may be pained and humbled by it. Had He done all these miracles in Galilee His reception as Prophet had been marred, the just expectations of the Jewish people unmet, and God in this seen unrighteous, the evidence of Him unsatisfactory, and their real character and state on the other hand undrawn out, as it really was by patience in that ministry, knowing their mind (as it appeared when disciples joined Him), though apparently disposed to believe on Him. But in the apparent frustration, as Jesus was tried, and learned obedience, etc., and so shown forth, so all the order of God's perfectness and man's evil was shown for our blessed profit.

59  - 48. I have stated the general principles of the difference, but there are many circumstances in this interesting story exhibitory of the individual development of faith connected with these principles; they believed when they saw the miracles. We have traced the difference of the Galileans, but here individual faith is shown. Our Lord puts it forth thus: "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." The mind full indeed of its present necessity, and not looking out to the prophetic character of Christ, yet leans upon His power to do it, not merely satisfied on seeing it.

Jesus puts him on the power of His word, acting on his necessity, drawing out to crave and be willing to believe the power, yet taxing it no further than to bring it to that, he rather yielding to his sorrow, yet at the point when it was stretched to exercise faith, saying, "Go, thy son liveth. And the man believed the word which Jesus said to him." Here then there was definite faith, the poor "courtier," who thought perhaps he at any rate should get Jesus, was thrown upon the necessity of his case as a man to believe His word; and he believed, and went. He was put in his right position, the humble position of faith, and received a blessing on his faith (compare the Centurion in Luke 7) and before the time he could have received the blessing, had he had his own way, his heart was refreshed with the comfort he sought, his servants coming out to bring the news, and enquiring the time (for it is upon the word, and belief in the word, the stress is laid), he found it was the time of the word believed that the fever left him, the blessing of faith

60 Jesus' going down might not have been for life. His hope was "ere my child die"; "for he was about to die." But the decision of Jesus, which meets faith and requires it, is always better than our unbelief. It was mercy to put him on it, and what blessing is then in it! It is belief in Jesus' word that marks our first character of faith. The power of this establishes us in the ascertained blessing of having so in the dark trusted in it.

- 54, which is material for the purpose (we have already noticed it), I should translate a little differently. It is manifest he refers to the miracle of Cana: "This beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana," etc.; and here: "This second sign again did Jesus, being come," etc. When He came, there were available signs done in Galilee, and believed on there. Here, I take it, closes the view of our Lord's general ministry, the principles of it being brought out. The rest comes to be a full exhibition of principles, and the reception of Him in Person, and so delineation, or exposition, declaration, of what He was, the presenting Him to the Jews by something leading to the evidence of what He was, and therein drawing out their enmity; and, while He glorified not Himself thereby, developing the position which this held in the world. This marked His Person, Sonship, manifestation of God in the flesh, His showing forth the Father in His glory as only begotten Son, His unity with Him, the consequences of His manifestation in the flesh, and the manner of its operation in it broken, and the life given in the spilt blood, the food of life, its death the seed of life, His lifting up the calling power, with all that was deep and divine in Person, and glorious in results as Man. In a word, it is an exhibition of the Son whom no man knoweth; and this as upon the Jews, and connected with all their typical exhibitions, in which they are brought close, and more definitely investigable, and in their application, too; for in this the feasts, etc., take the Lord up, that is, in His association with the fruits in man and the Jews.

________

Note, the first miracle in Cana of Galilee was (as noted heretofore) the expression of the change from Jewish purification to the joy of the millennial [rest], when Jehovah shall espouse Israel in truth; as the subsequent acting at Jerusalem was the judicial cleansing part of the same period. But from that act all is changed as a present thing. He receives not man's acceptance of Him by mere human faith. A man must be born again. Instead of Christ received, the Son of Man must be crucified, and heavenly things are believed thus, and every one and whosoever believeth the sphere of action, and John Baptist reveals Him fully as to His Person and testimony as well as relationship with Jerusalem as bride; chap. 3: 29-36.

61 Hence (chap. 4) He goes Himself to Samaria, and God's gift, man's conscience, spiritual worship, the Father seeking such around Him as worshippers, and the Saviour of the world, are brought out. Then He goes to Galilee; that is, not established Judaism, but the slighted objects of God's mercy in a really fallen Israel.

Thereon the second miracle in Galilee is the life-giving power by faith. He arrests the power of death when approached in need, as able. This was His present service. He comes in this second character into Galilee, His Messiah reception being out of question; an analogous and larger expression of the full, real state of things dispensationally, which thus is not His going down to heal, but the child really dead. Then He heals by virtue going out of Him by the way, where He is touched by active faith, and afterwards restores to life; Israel being really dead, but in God's eyes only asleep; that is, laid aside for a season, though morally dead. This second miracle, then, is in special connection, but contrast, with the first.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47005E> 61

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 5

There are two points in this chapter, besides the witness: the relationship and relative position of the Father and the Son, and their working, the working of both and either. This is introduced by the necessity of man, the poor man, and brought out the thesis as regarded the Sabbath (which should be in the day of blessing): "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," this being put as a consequence. In fact, this verse embraces the whole chapter. It was amongst the Jews at Jerusalem, and bore upon their present system. The Lord owned their present obligation; He was at the feast; He went up to Jerusalem. It may not even have been a prescribed feast. It was not material to the argument; the fact was elsewhere. The specialty of it is associated with the argument.

62 As to the validity of the questioned paragraph it is not very material. If genuine, it brings the moral of the passage (which rests on what is undoubted) into more specified dispensatory result, the full life-giving and judicial power of the Son brought into juxtaposition with the weakness and unprofitableness comparatively of the administration of angels. The weakness of the means, as requiring the working of man, contrasted with the will-working of the Father and the Son, is the full moral truth of the passage; and the facts of the case, as noticed and reasoned on, are substantially supplied in what follows.

The angelical ministration of the Jews, and all that required the exertion of man, failed as a remedy for evil when there was real destitution and need, what required it most and called out most compassion. It came to "I have not," for he was "under his infirmity." The Lord knew this, He had compassion, He felt for such. The point only He puts is, "Wouldest thou become well?"

The answer on which the point of the whole case rests is, I am weak and incapable to use the remedy. It is a remedy (so was the whole system of the law, the angelic system) which supposes the strength, even if sick, which in real truth is needed. It was precisely the picture of the law (compare Romans 3: 3, and indeed the end of chapter 7; and also chapter 5: 6; as see also Acts 7: 53), for while it proposed health it required the strength to obtain it which the sickness itself deprived it of. This case also implies as there a converted will under the law, without the power of life. This is the point which our Lord meets, and occasions the development of the life-giving power of the Son, and consequently His judgment as Son of Man. In Paul, that is, the Romans, it arises as the question of righteousness, the truth of resurrection, sonship rising up out of this, that is, out of the principles on which this is founded and evidenced, the presence of the Spirit dwelling in a man; the connection of which two subjects, as brought together in the Spirit, is not seen, I suppose, in their then given order by many, and which seems to me to solve many contradictory assertions of God's children (I mean on the subject of what they call holiness, etc.), who have these truths partially. And in truth it is a view in which the full order of the chapter has not presented itself to mind as now, so as to open it out.

But to return to our chapter, and the Lord's discourse here. Jesus met the whole case at once. His word commanded evil; His word was in power; when heard, life-giving; but it was according to His will in power He said, "Arise, take up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made whole, and," therefore, "took up his bed, and walked."

63 The fact is then mentioned on which hangs the reasoning of our Lord and the Jews on the real position in which things were according to the mind of God. It was Sabbath on that day; could the law give rest? The Jews said to the healed man, It is Sabbath, it is not lawful for thee to take up thy bed. The reply at once brought the question to issue: He that made me whole bade me do it. It ought to have brought out the conviction of One present in power of health, acting in and from God. But the Jews preferred resting in their own ordinances (in which they had found no rest, and had not kept) to recognising the Son, the Heir of all the ordinances. I observe here that it was not faith in Jesus here, but the exercise of Jesus' power in will, as flowing from Himself. Therefore it is noted that he did not know Jesus, nor afterwards, till Jesus met him, and spoke to him in the temple. Therefore Jesus treats him as still under the discipline of the Law: "Behold," take notice of this, "thou art made whole" (it is not, - Thy faith hath saved thee, or the like); "sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee."

It was then the supreme exercise of Jesus' prerogative on which He founds His argument, as the Son having had compassion on one as it were dead, incapable of anything (or therefore of helping himself under law), and quickening whom He would. Accordingly the Jews persecuted Jesus. They set themselves up on the righteousness of that which they had not kept, in enmity against the Son, Jesus the Saviour. He did these things on Sabbath. Our Lord's answer embraced the two great points, and at once brought the whole question to an issue. He was the Son: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." God had not entered into His rest as a God of love, the Father, but being such must yet work, and in the manifestation and Person of the Son. The rest of the seventh day was the rest of the creation; and in the law the creation could not find its rest. God rested from His natural works then and this also the law took up, and witnessed, but it could not accomplish it in man, for sin had entered in the flesh, and weak through the flesh. If man were to have a share in this rest (and this was the purpose of ordained and dispensed rest), it must be by the working of God in a new will of His love and power. Sons were to be brought into glory, God's mind was to rest in the surpassing fulness of His own love, in and by the Son manifested in honour in it, for man was ruined, could have no part in God's rest, therefore God steps out of His place, "worketh," that we might enter into His rest, through the work of His own power and will anew on man ruined and dead, impotent even for rest, as the law showed him to be.

64 The end of this was that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father, knowing God in His new character, even as Father, born of God, begetting sons unto glory, and that in and by the Son, that He might be honoured even as the Father. Hence this most unboundedly important and comprehensive expression, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The rest of His love God had not yet entered, nor could not yet enter into. However far they might be from His mind, they might rest here. The Son of God's love could not. It was the time for a Saviour, for the Father and the Son, to work. It was then the new work of divine love, as contrasted with the imbecility of the law. But neither in this case was judgment therefore to flow upon the law; it was all to rest upon the honouring, the recognition, of the Son whom they could not see, though indeed they did indeed see. Accordingly they at once see it in this light; they would tell Him because He not only set aside the Sabbath but called God His Father, making Himself equal with God. Our Lord proceeds accordingly to open out this to our Spirit-taught instruction, for indeed it is a mystery, though full of blessing. There are two points: His Sonship as Man, as being Son of God. It is the Son of Man, observe, as He calls Himself, who is speaking, the Son of God in this world: Jesus makes Himself equal with God. So He says, "That ye may wonder."

But to follow this: I am assuming, says our Lord, no independent, distinct authority. I do nothing from Myself (so the Spirit speaketh not "from himself"), but I follow the Father in His works, and whatever He does I do; for there is no distance, difference. "The Father loveth the Son." The outgoing of God the Father's mind is in Jesus, in the Son. It cannot restrain itself. "This is my beloved Son, in whom," etc.; therefore shows Him all things Himself doeth; there is nothing that is not in common; this too of Jesus in the world (compare the beginning and close of Revelation: "I kill, and I make alive"; and Isaiah 50). So, "For what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." The Son is the agent, as it were, of the Father's manifestation, "God manifest in the flesh." "He will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel." Here our Lord seems to allude to this judgment which He was conscious was upon them, as not seeing the Son. "Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish; for I work a work in your days, a work which ye will in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you." "If I had not come amongst them they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin." "If I had not done amongst them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father." As He says, "Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very works' sake." Our Lord therefore states the two great characters in which the Son is thus manifested to His honour, which is the hinge of all, one in community of work with the Father, who "sheweth," etc., the spiritual, life-giving power of the gospel, as I suppose, originating in the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Life is the object of this ministry, as observed elsewhere: "They that hear shall live." This "now is." It is in the power of our Lord's first coming, and by the power of the Spirit pre-eminent above dispensation; therefore perhaps before even the final dissolution of the Jewish economy (compare chap. 4: 23). But "the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth", as having all committed to Him by the Father, that He might be honoured wherein He had been humbled.

65 It was a fellowship with the Father and with the Son which was proposed in this work, and through which the rest of God was to be obtained; and this in life-giving power to the dead, as 1 John 1; and this, observe, as there stated, in that (even the Son) seen, heard, looked upon, handled, of the Word of life. "As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will." In this the great power is manifested, also all the blessing; therefore the Son does it coincidently with the Father, according to His will. He quickens with intrinsic power, though with the same purpose. But the judgment was the exercise of authority, not of blessing, nor properly witness of divine power. It was not the communion of life with the Father, in which we also were to participate, that we might have rest. The Father therefore "judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all men," even those who rejected Him, who refused the Son as Jesus in the flesh, should submit whether or no to the Son, Jesus in the flesh, that all men "should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father." For as power and blessing is the evidence of God to participators in conscious knowledge, so authority is the source of honour to them who have no community with the Person honoured. Herein then is the great development of that which is manifested in Jesus, as contrasted with the law, in which man, the sinner, could not in himself enter into His rest. The judgment is given to the Man dishonoured. Nevertheless, herein was the Father also dishonoured, for "he that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent him."

66 Having stated the great broad principles as it related to the Persons of the Father and the Son, our Lord proceeds to develop its application to men as the objects and subjects of it. It is as receiving the word of Jesus we are quickened. "Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth," etc. Thus we believe Jesus as sent of the Father. "He that receiveth his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true," etc. But there is a perception of the Person also herein, as well as the mission. At least, it is involved in it, though not expressly. But - there is a reception of the mission as by the word, and Jesus herein: "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me," that is, the Father. However, He here speaks of Himself as the word or speaking, for so He speaks, and thus we hereby know the Father, by the revelation of the Son, and that He is indeed the Son hereby; but I say He here speaks of Himself as speaking the words of God, and this by the anointing of the Holy Ghost, wherefore also as doing it now by the Holy Ghost it is equivalent, which is important to observe; for He does not say, Whosoever believes on Me, the Son, but, "Whosoever hears my word, and believes on him that sent me, hath"; for it is the manner of its operation (as revealing also the Father, the Sender in love and power in Jesus) that the Lord here speaks of, not the Persons acting, for He spoke as Man, though the words were to be believed as God's (and led to believe on Him that sent Him, and therefore Him). So also He judges as Man, but the judgment is God's; for this is just the mystery, His manifestation in humiliation in the flesh. He therefore that receives Him in this character has seen indeed the power of God in Him, and recognised Him as sent of God, believing on Him that sent Him in such. This is the manner of it. The work has been wrought; he "hath everlasting life."

67 The other manner in which the Son's honour is developed has therefore no place or opportunity in him (or indeed it would be, as it were, denying the real power in the former manner); he "does not come into judgment." The power has been manifested in another manner in him; he "is passed from death unto life," a life therefore having (being by this faith) fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, with Jesus the Man and the Father that sent Him, but the Man Christ, the Son; as He says, "With his Son Jesus Christ." The "judgment" is one thing given to Jesus, and into which those quickened by the Word believed, and believing on Him that sent Him, cannot come; for then He would be judging the Father's children, and, we may add, His own redeemed.

This is the broad distinction, then, between the persons, subjects of this power; those believing the word, hearing the word, and believing the Sender, thus quickened, have passed into life, and do not come into judgment.

The state of the subjects, and the full manifestation and manner of the power are then stated; for these words (vv. 24, 25) are the practical address to men as the objects of it. "Verily, verily," said our blessed Lord, "the hour is coming"; that is, in the dispensation of the Spirit, when He should be "declared (diorismenos) to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead"; "and now is"; for He had indeed life in Himself, though now not manifested by the Spirit in power to the world; "when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God" for indeed the Jews were as dead thus towards God, as men, as were the Gentiles; "and they that hear shall live." They shall all hear. "I say, Have they not heard?" So, "My sheep hear my voice." (Compare all chap. 10.) They that hear receive life in the hearing. So, in chapter 6, they saw the Son, and did not see Him; they heard the Son, and did not hear Him. Awful word! "For the heart of that people was waxed gross." "For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son," even Jesus, "to have life in himself"; and the words have the quickening power of life. It is the communicating vehicle ("the just live by his faith," in this sense also, as it is "the law of the Spirit of life"). "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." In this, observe, in acting He acts as Jesus speaking, to whom as Son it is given to have life in Himself. But it is the voice of Son, even of God, that is heard, and heard gives life. "And he hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is Son of Man."

68 It was in this He purchased the glory, it was in this, as humbled, the glory became due. "Wherefore also," that at the name of the dishonoured Jesus, "every knee should bow," etc. It is as Man He is entitled, as Man He was the great Redeemer of all, and purchased also all as Master, though they may deny and dishonour Him (for this term Master [Despotees] is used of the purchased), dishonourers therein dishonouring God also, yet in the Person of the Son (for "he that honoureth not the Son"); therefore as a Man He was dishonoured, as a Man alone occasion could be found to dishonour Him, as Man He shall be honoured in judgment on those who herein dishonoured Him, His servants who denied Him.

But not only so, for there is a double ground. He has it as Son of Man in title over all, as the Man set by God over all, the Man that was the Redeemer, as such, of all; that is, as obtaining the title in virtue of His death; the Man that was dishonoured of all even in death, "whom none of the princes of this world knew, for if they had," etc.; for indeed in rejecting Jesus in the flesh, the Jews to this extent made themselves even rejecting their distinctive Messiah, losing their King, and having no king but Caesar. But King they shall have, even as many as the Lord their God shall call. Woe, woe the day they rejected Him! woe, woe the day! But it shall be brighter through the riches of His grace than ever; that indeed shall be life from the dead, through Him that wept over them rejecting Him. Hasten it, Lord, in its day, and make us taste, oh, how ought we to taste, who have dishonoured Thee manifested in Spirit, that is, in glory, Thy long-suffering, Thy long-suffering! Alas, for Jesus rejected! Surely may we say, "He was despised and rejected of men." Strange, strange infatuation! Was it indeed in that He got the tongue of the learned?

It is as Son of Man, then, that He exercises judgment, the exalted Man; for He was despised even as the Son of God manifested in the flesh. "Marvel not at this," that is, the quickening of the dead at the hearing of His voice, or that the Son hath, even as the Son of Man, life in Himself, for this is the substantive point previously stated; for it is the rejection of Him as Man, as having life in Himself as the Son, from which therefore flows that authority is given to Him as Son of Man to execute judgment. Also as Man He has the communicable life in Himself which as Son of God He can give, and has to give, to others. As thus manifested in His manhood He is rejected; and therefore in His manhood, in this very character, He judges. Here therefore the committal of judgment to Him is but illustrative of the character in which He is the lifegiver, and in which, as rejected, to complete the evidence of its truth, He becomes Judge for its rejection on those rejecting it, thereby illustrating its truth.

69 In this then, I say, the life-giving work only is stated; that is, substantively; the judgment merely corroborative of this, as given to Him, because He is the Son of Man, in which character He was rejected, and in which character He is revealed to us. Judgment is the evidence to unbelief as the service of faith. Marvel not, then, at this life-giving power of His word to them that hear, "for all that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and shall go forth; they that have done good, into the resurrection of life," the full accomplishment of the power of His life-giving word. "What is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, which he wrought," etc.; making us "the fulness of," etc.; as so Philippians 3, according to the power, etc. "They that have done evil" (have not walked in the power of the resurrection life in the world by faith), "they that have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment." The very power they despised shall be exercised mere power upon them, and shall bring them into the judgment, which He, the same raiser, has authority to exercise, because He is that which they have despised; Him because He was. The recognition of Jesus as from the Father, the Son of Man to have life in Himself as Son of God, is that into which we are quickened by the power of His life-giving word, heard in faith. The distinction of the resurrection of life and of judgment is as complete here as the rejection of Jesus as the life-giving power in unbelief is the occasion why we are not in the one but are subject to the other. They cannot be associated, for the rejection of Jesus is the cause of the other, and that by which its validity is demonstrated as to those who have rejected it. When there is life there cannot be in this sense judgment, or it would be the denial, not the proof, of that power which is the point to be demonstrated; for the judgment is committed to Him as Man. The point to be demonstrated is that He had life in Himself as Son of God; while the fitness of the corroboration is wonderful, because it is in that character in which He was rejectable, because He assumed it vivifyingly to others. Blessed be His name! at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.

70  - 30. He here, therefore (as that in which He is manifested and judges), returns again entirely to His human character: "I can from myself do nothing" (as Son of God He quickened whom He would, yet coincidently with the Father) as Man, in which however He had that life. He was the Servant of the Father; came, not to do His own will, but His that sent Him (see also John 17: 3.) And this was in righteousness. It was a judgment not flowing from Himself, nor vindicating Himself. That He left to the Father. His will had no part in the judgment. Simply as it was presented in truth to Him He judged, without the slightest bias, His will having no part in it, for He sought this in nothing. His judgment was simply the judgment (the now abstract judgment) of God on what presented itself, on what He heard, as the evidence meets the law in the judge's mind. He did this too as a Servant, as a hearer, which is His scriptural character as a Servant ("He hath digged ears for me"). It was as Man He judged, and this even when it was judgment on Himself (see Isaiah 50). Neither thus could He bear witness of Himself (though the Son of God being manifested) as Man; for indeed it would essentially deny the very truth of His character as seeking solely the Father's glory, in which He was faithful as a Servant in the flesh; and therefore we may simply say it would not be true, for He would therein have broken in upon the truth of His character. Yet He was in another sense competent, for He was the Son of God, and though Man (and as such would not), yet knew whence He came, and whither He went, which showed His inherent competency (for as such God alone can give witness of God).

- 32. "There is another." Here I believe our Lord secretly refers to God's witness to Him, known to Himself, not that of which He testifies to others (as see chapter 8) of which reflectively He speaks when He says, "O righteous Father," etc., "but I have known thee." And again, "If I said, I knew him not"; and as the apostle speaks, "Knowing God, or rather known of him"; only of Him in perfectness of unity; and hence indeed we may learn the unity and divinity of our Lord; for as the Father bore witness so He was able to know its truth (as compare on this very subject 1 John 5). The Lord then turns to that which was applicable responsibly to them: "Ye sent unto John." Not that He received testimony from man, but indeed as elsewhere bore it to John. But these things He said for their sakes, that they might be saved. Nevertheless, though he was the burning and shining light they would not in its season all rejoice in it. So with some doubt I interpret; but see above, and enquire as to this.

71 Again, the works, and the Father Himself, bear witness of Me; the works of His mission, the Father of Himself; that is, they bear witness of the Man, Him who was Jesus, that He is the Son of God. Not that they had seen the Father, indeed; but the word which He fully met it was evident they did not receive, for they did not believe on Him who fully answered all that was in it; herein the rejection of that to which the word bears witness is the rejection of the word itself, which note.

This leads the Lord to another reference as to that which they received as witnessing to Him, the Man in whom was life to give. The Scriptures, they were all of Him; but they would not come to Him. Not that He desired glory from them thus coming to Him, or seeing Him witnessed of in the Scriptures; but He knew them (though they would not receive Him), that they had not the love of God in them. He had come in His Father's name (trying their love to God), and they would not receive Him, His Son. If another came in his own name, associated with human glory, and therefore willing to receive their praises, and make them of value, him they would receive; thus condemning themselves as lovers of themselves, not God. "How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another?" "Think not," says our Lord, "that I will accuse you to the Father"; for indeed with the Jews was the great question with God, even the Father, as to the reception of His Son, as it is written, afterwards: "Unto us a Son is born," etc., and, "I have yet one Son; it may be they will reverence my Son." "Think not," therefore says our Lord, in the consciousness of His Sonship, "that I will accuse you to the Father. Moses, in whom ye trust, will be your accuser; for he wrote of me." But we may observe the perfect humility of our Lord (compare Hebrews 2: 1): "How shall ye believe my words?" We may also remark our Lord's testimony to the value of the written testimony over oral as the object of belief in certainty and power.

72 This then, while addressed to the Jew, took the broad ground of man in principle, as we have seen elsewhere in this gospel, and took the present testimony as addressed to those amongst whom He was manifested, taking on Him in this even their seed; also, as the object and subject of the testimony, was the life-giving Son, made the Son of Man, and as Man Judge of men; and all that all men should honour the Son, in the largeness of the revelation of the Father, even as they honour the Father. Nothing can be more distinct than the position of the whole matter. Moreover, it was the rejection of Jesus as from the Father that was the ground of accusation. But they received not honour from God only, and therefore He that was from Him, and had His honour, they could not receive. If one came in his own name, having therefore man's honour, which they recognised and loved, him they would receive. This is a deep, important principle morally, and grows into the corruption of the Church; for God's gifts are the occasion of man's honour; and if this be at all recognised, the spirit, motive, and therefore, necessarily, character of service is lost.

Whenever this came upon our Lord He got out of the way of it. He did not receive testimony from men. It was with the Father He had to do, whose honour He bore. However, He would not accuse them to Him. That would have been seeking His own honour (at their expense). But it was the reception of Him as bearing His Father's honour that tried their moral character. But that in which they trusted and boasted (being of God) would be their ruin or their accusation; even Moses, for it was his business to bear witness of Jesus; the perpetuation of his testimony was on account of Jesus. But theirs was a hopeless case.

- 35. So long as it did not interfere with self-importance, till opposition of heart was drawn out, they were willing to rejoice, and rather please themselves in the light of John. They were willing to rejoice in it, but they were not baptised of him.

Our Lord states testimony of John, of His own works, directly from the Father, from the whole counsels of God in the Scriptures, which they received, and which were witnesses of Him.

73  - 37. Note the means of knowing and coming to God, of the Jews here (if all elsewhere, "No man hath seen," but the only begotten Son, He hath revealed Him). He states they had not seen nor heard God; no direct intercourse with Him of nearer or more distant kind. It was by some means that they should know Him, His word abiding in them, and that word testifying Christ manifested in accordance with the counsels revealed in it, therefore all to make wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

- 39. Then observe, they received them, nay, esteemed them as the words of eternal life. Humeis (ye) I conceive to be emphatical (yourselves therefore), and this very nearly concludes me to the imperative, which I had long doubted, but verse 40 tends the other way, so as still to hold me in doubt. However, they did not receive their testimony.

Note, the translation is all very well, but the force of hai marturousai (which bear witness). It was a question what witnesses Christ had of His Person and mission. John indeed was; though He needed not man's testimony. But not to speak of what was afforded Him, there was witness which they admitted: They are My witnesses.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47006E> 73

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 6

As the last chapter of the vivifying power of Christ according to His will was associated, or rather contrasted, with the imbecility of the law, of the ministration of angels, so here our Lord, as the substance or instrument of life as received by faith as broken, that is, the life given, the natural life given, and so the food of men, believers, the vital substance of the chapter, is associated with the type of the Paschal Feast. "The Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near."

Our Lord departed away beyond the Sea of Galilee, of Tiberias. A multitude followed Him. This was a sort of link between the Lord's service and the Jewish nation or body generally; but they were not necessarily, properly speaking, Jews, but there were Jews among them. They followed Him, we may observe, because of the signs done upon the sick, but without, as before, really receiving Jesus as come down from heaven, or the Sent One of God. Jesus therefore went up into the mountain, and sat there with His disciples. Upon this, Jesus, lifting up His eyes, and seeing that a great multitude was coming, at once entered on the subject with Philip, the fact of their necessity being developed by the enquiry to Philip, showing also the familiar exercise of the disciples' mind habitual to the Lord, and His entire interest in them, the case requiring it. For it was customary (and is) with the Lord to meet every need His people are in. It is His occasion of miracle. Another in the same confidence in Him tells Him of the five loaves and two small fishes. Minute circumstances are pleasant when connected with things of deep interest, and showing forth the occasion of the glory of One whose glory is ours.

74 The Lord then, acting upon the benevolent necessity of supplying their need, proceeds to minister food to all, to make them sit down, and with His disciples serve them, serve them royally indeed, as He says in that day, "Verily I say unto you, He shall make them sit down to meat, and shall gird himself, and come forth, and serve them." So Melchisedec; for His royalty is service also to His people, and so ever; for place is always service towards those who are in relationship toward us in it. Accordingly our Lord showed His royal power of feeding and sustaining His people unlimitedly (for this shall be His portion in gift in that day over the creature, as it is also in Colossians, but not thus). See also Psalms 132: 15, 68: 10. So see the time of Solomon's manifestation in the temple when the Feast of Tabernacles was kept; fully then. So of David before (partially); and it was now in power over the creature; for this is His personal inheritance as Son, Firstborn of every creature; but also exercised in unity of royalty, as not simply over the house of David (though so) but also as Melchisedec, the Priest upon His throne; for as over the house of Judah and Israel it is exercised actually in royalty: "They shall hear Jezreel." They assumed the royalty, though in ignorance, from the inheritance, the sonship over the creature. He was the Prophet like unto Moses. Their minds, however, were simply confined to it after the order and desire of their own will. They would eat of the loaves and fishes. They understood nothing of the redemption power. But it shall be of the blessings of that day: There shall be a heap of corn upon the earth, high upon the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon, when men shall be blessed in Him, and all nations shall call Him blessed; even more than the blessing of Abraham; and all the earth be filled with His glory. Hence the force and character of this miracle.

75 However, though we have passed on into these associated subjects, the proposed main subject and point here proposed by the Spirit of truth is the sustaining power of Jesus, His sustaining, feeding, life, or sustaining it by feeding. Upon this they would make Him a King, which led us into the other parts of the subject. This proposal to make Him a King He rejects, and avoids their proposed force (indeed it was only of their carnal will, not indeed in the place or order in which He was in very deed a King). He would not be a King now; though He was indeed a King, and their King.

As the facts of the history (the miracle) are thus instructive, so I think the circumstances of the passage over the sea are so, and connectedly, describing the difficulty and labour and tossing of the disciples, left just at the closing in of troubles, and toiling in the dark a length of way, yet reached not the land. The sea then arose, trouble and storm on the face of the circumstances they were in; it was dark, and Jesus had not come to them. It appears to me that the state of trouble more peculiarly relates to the Jews, and the Remnant in it. He had left the multitude, and refused their royalty, before; and then departing into a mountain Himself alone; that is, not now blessing even the Remnant with His presence; they had to descend on to the sea of this world alone, when it was now late, when darkness was closing in upon all.

In this state simply they are allowed, without any distinct recognition of their intervening condition, to continue, and Jesus rejoins them in the midst of great confusion and trouble, yet right in purpose. He walks in the same evidence of royalty, as in another way before, over all the troubles, unaided by which they were tossed and perplexed, and came near the ship. And they were afraid. They see Him. Here He rejoins them; here they see Him again walking on the sea, and near the ship; they were amazed and afraid; but it was, on His address to them, a recognised Jesus. He saith to them, It is I; fear not: the same Jesus ye have known before, and now recognise. They were glad then to receive Him into the ship. And then the whole scene closed, and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went, but not till Jesus was in the ship rejoining it in the midst of, and walking over, the difficulties and trials they were in; the time of Jacob's trouble; but when they shall be delivered out of it, when a King shall indeed be among them, and the troubled and isolated Remnant, the yechidim, find themselves in the rest they could not attain, and that immediately, troubled as they may have been, even as his brethren before Joseph at his approach.

76 It is the full picture, before the Lord shows the character in which He was to be intermediately received, of the historical dealing with the Remnant, who, as He refused to be King then for the madness of the people, were left alone by Him, to be rejoined when He would bring them to land. It embraces the two epochs when He had to say to the Jewish Remnant: His desertion, so to speak, and rejoining of them, and the consequence. Then comes, connected with the subject, in which the beams of His royalty, or estate as royal, actually shine forth, the development of His intermediate position as rejected, and the true reason and moral force of it. For His royalty was not to be exercised merely in abstract external power over the Jews, lifeless, according to the mere carnal notions of their own will, but to be the vivifying sustenance as broken [of those] who receive the blessings of that life-giving power with which His royalty was associated, in which, as Head of the creation, He had life to give; because the Son, who was the rightful Heir of all things, was given also to have life in Himself, of which they must be partakers to be associated with Him (and this could not be but by the vital union of grace), and that as broken for redemption, for an unbroken Saviour could be no sent source of grace: "He that eateth me, even he shall live by me." And in the power which He had thus could they alone have the sure mercies of David, which even rested on His resurrection, as we know. Thus is the full, large link of His royalty (actual over the Jews), connected with the Sonship of inheritance, and associated with the Second Adamship of quickening Spirit, by which the largeness of that character brings into redeeming union by His death, fully closed round and linked together; or rather, the effectual sustenance of redemption, unison in His death, by which any were brought into co-partnership with Him in that glory: "He that eateth me shall even live by me." This is a most important association.

In this chapter then is associated the prospective royalty of Christ, in which He would feed the people with plenty in His actual position of blessing, and that in which He becomes the actual spiritual food of His people, them that believe on Him unto life eternal, associated with Him in the same life, and this believed in as rejected, broken, and giving forth His life on their account.

77 Having given the general prospective doctrine previously, He here opens out that which is properly Christian, so called, belongs to the kingdom of heaven, in which He was humbled. This flows from His discourse with the people finding Him; they could not account how, or at least when, He came there, on the other side of the sea, from where He had fed them. Our Lord, on their asking it, knowing their real thoughts, at once presents it to them, opening out their practical unbelief, and the character in which He would be manifested, Himself the object of faith, and that as broken and given, and not seen, nor supplying them with the present sustenance of their carnal lives, the life of their hand, that they should not grieve; that they must receive Him in this character, and not from signs of His present power; for He was to be broken as the power of eternal life, having Himself come down from heaven for that purpose. They had seen a sign, but they did not believe, for they sought after the power of sense, and were looking for the fruit for themselves, not for the glory of God. It was presenting the principle of faith as the way of life, and this in the recognition of Jesus as broken and given, as contrasted with any present actual gift to them in their present state (for indeed they were dead), and so the power of life.

- 27. Therefore, "Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto life eternal, which the Son of Man" (note the character) "shall give you: for," etc. Here it was only presented generally as the object aimed at, even that which endured unto eternal life, Himself the giver as Son of Man, sealed of God, even the Father; the substitution of this idea for their thoughts (after the old man) of Messiah, as the way of eternal life, while yet the prospective character of royalty actually blessing below has been held up before us; before that preserved, while this given, in the wisdom of God's counsels.

Son of Man is a most important expression in this mystery or doctrine, for while it affirms nothing as regards the Jew, for as Man He took upon Him the seed of Abraham, it does, on the rejection of the Jew, open the door by the nature, and finds its purpose in that.

78 They then enquire the works of God. Our Lord's mind then goes a step, and leads them a step further: "This is the work of God"; presents Himself as the object of faith as sent of the Father. They ask a sign, evidently showing where their hearts were. As our Lord had said, they looked to be fed, to have their present life sustained in ease. God was to be their Servant in this. Thus they were to be marked as His people; while their carnal man would be satisfied, and their pride fed as well. Such is the carnal notion of privilege, as it would specially appear too among them. Compare our Lord's conduct exactly with Satan.

Satisfaction, faith, in the privileges of another, is the form of the sloth of unbelief which the pride of an apostatised religious system assumes. They required (assuming present blessing, and looking for carnal ease in it now), a "sign, that we may see, and believe." Not only does our Lord present the nature and abstract work of this faith which He was proposing to them, but now in progressive contrast with the characters of their unbelief (for progressive revelation ever develops the deep moral character of unbelief in act) presents the positive, present object of required faith to them, as to which His Father was then dealing with them, the real object of a Jew's faith, and which he must have faith to believe or receive: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses did not give you the heavenly bread," or the bread from heaven; "but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven; for the bread of God is he who comes down . . . and gives." They look for it there as a present gift, for present gift begets the desire of conscious necessity, and willing to believe its truth, and is the handmaid of faith.

Upon this our Lord at once declares and reveals Himself as the bread of life present. Previously it had been inductive argument; that is, leading their minds on from the natural frame of selfish unbelief to the point of faith; then our Lord presents fully the object of faith present; the rest is simply God's work. Previously it was "said therefore." Now, they having said, "Lord, evermore give us," it was no more "said therefore," but "said"; that is, the Lord presents Himself as the full, present object of faith: "I am the bread of life"; "he that believeth." The "I am" includes His flesh; that is, Him come and then present, to be believed on as come in the flesh, as manifested, the life which was with the Father manifested (compare 1 John 1, though that is in another order). He is "the bread of life"; He saith not "life" simply, but the constant sustenance of life, life from God, life from the Father, actually manifested, seen, and tangible.

79 Observe, further, the fulness of character. He was not merely Messiah, but "out of heaven, and gives life to the world," the bread of God therefore; though "My Father giveth you"; yet having this power of life intrinsically. It is therefore (which note) "he that comes," and "he that believes." It appears to me that there is a difference between the hungering and thirsting, the coming and believing. It appears to me that the coming to Him is as in the flesh, the bread, the coming to Him in this character as come in the flesh; seeing Him, God manifest in flesh. Such shall in nowise hunger. He that believeth on Him receives of His Spirit, and shall never at any time thirst, as He saith. We "have all been made to drink into one Spirit," as we know now, after the Spirit is spoken of as water and drink. It is not that the two things are not associated. We have seen in chapter 4 that they are immediately so associated; but though associated they may be distinct; and the coming of Jesus in the flesh, and the drinking into the Spirit as from Him so come, are alike primary truths of dispensation; for the Spirit is received from Him as having come in the flesh and been humbled, and therefore now exalted; so He gives the Spirit.

There is another propriety in this, and that is, it is as believing in Jesus not present that we receive the Spirit, and thirst not, howsoever it be hence the force of that which He speaks in the end of the chapter; for it is not the flesh, but as dead, which is profitable for us, or its death rather: "For he that has died is justified from sin"; "but the Spirit is life because of righteousness"; and hence it was the Gentiles were let in to the full feeding on Christ; for the enmity was in His flesh (wrongly translated, I think, in the English), and neither so was there justification for the believer (sinner), though there have been blessing for the righteous; nor could therefore a Gentile be let in but in this, the way of life; He believed on as dead, and a receiving of the Spirit, he could, and a Jew so come to equal privileges; for the Spirit was, as we have seen, through and after death (therefore "believe"); though abstractedly, as we have seen, coming to Him in the flesh they would not hunger. But we have special knowledge of Him as in the flesh, very special; that is, as dead in it, dead unto sin once, and so believing on Him we receive of the Spirit, and never thirst.

80 It was, however, as we have said, matter of faith to come to Him, even as in the flesh, because He was God manifest in the flesh. Nor could He receive any who did not see the Son. Therefore He says, "But I have said to you, That ye have also seen me, and do not believe" (compare Thomas afterwards; as Peter, "In whom, though now," not eporôntes; so 1 John 1 on the other hand; but this applied to Jews). And then comes the full development of this important doctrine, applicable, as we have said, to Jews, but by the principle of faith, not actually eporôntes, for we walk by faith, and not by sight, letting him that believeth in, as our Lord's answer to Thomas above, Himself the point of access or approach; for His word would be such as might be directly and fully applied by the Jews on the spot, and yet declare the result in full blessing, into which we are admitted by faith, but presented as receivable then in Him come in the flesh; for as yet He has not spoken of its breaking, but what He will do for them coming to Him then sent of the Father.

Well, herein then was His consolation: He came to do His Father's will. All that the Father gave Him would come; but He was perfectly subject to His Father's will, came to do it, and therefore would never cast them out. Though the body should reject, all that came He would receive, and not cast out; for He came, not to please Himself, but even in saving to do His Father's will; and He was content to exercise His power within these limits, He doing that by which any were to be saved, He effecting the work, but content to be the Father's Servant in it. Whoever comes to Him He in no wise casts out. This is not only from His own saving office, but because He is content to be subject to His Father's will, and knows that His (given to Him) shall come to Him. Here it is the direct acquiescence in His personal rejection. Having seen Him being humbled in this, also in saving those who did come of the Father's gift (here above all showing His perfectness as a Servant, for the Son had life in Himself, and could quicken whom He would), He speaks of Himself, as come down, as the Person to come to. Here I first find, moreover, the election of the Father's love (for this gospel is most morally methodical) behind the rejection of Jesus by the body: "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life"; that is, I find it first brought out into operation here as the satisfaction of Christ's soul; so in Matthew 11, end; and here, accordingly, the blessing of this is developed, that of those whom the Father had given Him He should lose none. It would not be left to that nature whose weakness had as such rejected Him, but to the effectual securing in the Son the will of the Father, now to be manifested in blessing of its own authority.

81 The subsequent passage seems to come in to avoid the preclusion of individuals under the unbelief of the body, or man's will exhibited in them. They might have all been rejected as a body. This saves the opportunity to every individual (to be formed, indeed, into a new body or fold in Him) who does see the Son, and believes on Him, of all the blessing that [is] in Christ; for this was the will of Him that sent Him; and he would get the blessing, the full blessing, in due time (in God's way; that is, the Father's way), in spite of the rejection of the body; he has everlasting life, and as a son he shall enjoy the blessings of the Father's kingdom; that is, as risen from the dead, for this was part of the Father's will.

Hitherto our Lord had only spoken of Himself as come down from heaven, come for blessing; but as the body had seen, and did not believe, blessing in spite of them (for their unbelief had been manifested) for every one who should not be included and precluded by their unbelief, who did believe in or came to Him. Not yet had He presented the apparent stumbling-block of His being broken; for, as we have said, unbelief is progressively manifested, and the progressive security to believers of blessing (in spite of the unbelief of those [with whom] they might seem associated), by the progressive development of the supremacy of God's ways, still more distances the apathy of unbelief. Here we may remark, in principle the letting in of Gentiles is provided for, but not as yet brought to might. But as yet, I say, the Lord has only manifested Himself the bread come down, and he that came to Him, and drank, say, of His doctrine (for His words were spirit and life) should have everlasting life.

This being done, He proceeds to the blessing of believers, not to save the credit of unbelief by not propounding full and blessed truth; nor does He hesitate, on the distinct rejection of one truth, to make the matter worse to them by propounding further. They had shown their unbelief: "Is not this the son of Joseph?" They were Socinians; they recognised the natural birth; that is, simply, they did not see that He was the Son of God, that He came down from heaven. He then puts the full principle of their rejection of Him before them: You need not murmur among yourselves; I will tell you the simple truth, says the Lord; ye are reprobate. "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." Death indeed must be the consequence of all this state of things, but "I will raise him up in the last day"; for our Lord has been all through suggesting death as the consequence, and that which intervenes before blessing, in so repeating the raising up.

82 We may remark that our Lord, when the body as such has rejected Him (as He says, "I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not"), as in [the] former chapter, instead of confining Himself to those things which might not seem to hurt or drive them away, on the contrary boldly produces the things which would, while objects of faith to all, draw out of the body those who had ears to hear; because He came to do His Father's will, and boldly avows the principle that they cannot come to Him unless the Father which had sent Him draw them. And this is a leading moral point in this chapter, for it commenced to be developed, as we have said, in this chapter, and this is the only way of doing the Father's will, whatever may please men. The Remnant are preserved by the very character of the words themselves, and their believing necessity: "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life," etc.

Further, we may remark that this argument with unbelief draws out a new principle, not merely that those whom the Father gives shall come, but that they shall come by the Father's drawing, and that none can come but by the Father's drawing. Our Lord, though declaring what was true in general, and in a general way, has not here passed out of the Jews in address and application. "It is written in the prophets, And they," that is, Messiah's people, "shall be all taught of God. Whosoever therefore hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me"; for as yet He had not gone beyond this "cometh unto me." This was all receivable simply by a Jew, and upon the only (true) principles on which he could come to or receive Messiah. But it introduces our Lord to further thoughts; namely, an association with the Father, which, as it isolated Him in character, brought Him into a thought of His place with Him, which enlarged fully the scene of His power, but as ever in the way of entire humiliation and emptying in Him; for indeed thus this chapter is a development of Philippians 2: 6-8 in its two parts; for "being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself." "Not," therefore our Lord says, "that any one hath seen the Father, save he that is with God, he hath seen the Father."

83 This gives Him a character solely of faith, and in which He is life-giving; and then is developed the full unfolding of faith, given "even unto death." The very title of the life, "that eternal life which was with the Father, and was," etc., being from God, reached hence out over and beyond the dispensation of the Jew; and this could only be by death, in which He therefore became the life-sustaining principle of power to all that believed, and by a principle of faith, therefore letting in all who did so, in point of fact, through His grace; though (as is the character of this gospel, as we have seen), this was dispensatorily administered amongst the Jews. The intelligence of this verse just shows out the character of this gospel.

You may remark that verse 36 is that which introduces the principle of election; but this opens the supremacy of God, and the fact of the Father's will; and this, though it may be first to the Jews as here, yet is a supremacy reaching forth to the Gentiles, even as says the apostle, etc.; and this is the point reasoned out in Romans 11; and this in life-giving supremacy; but it is through death, and that even to the elect Jew. The transition is very marked in verses 45-50, from that which is purely Jewish - in all its expressions to the power of eternal life in Christ; and we may observe the very language noticed before, "he that comes," "he that believes," with that very character in Him (v. 46) which introduced the principle of faith. They are just brought into contrast in verses 48-50: "Your fathers did eat," etc., "and died."? "This is the bread that descendeth from heaven, in order that any one may eat, and not die." It has life in itself; as indeed our Lord goes on to say: "I am the living bread."

Its coming down from heaven also gave it universality in its originative character and capacity; as in fact on Jewish rejection by death the life which was above all became, as returning to heaven, universal in its actual dispensation, for it resumed its position of universality, while the rejection of the Jews gave it dispensatory righteousness as regarded their claims, for they ceased in the new mercy; and sin being put away, enabled the communication of the indwelling life to all that believed in Him so risen, as the bread that came down from heaven; for Jesus in the millennial glory will not be an object of faith, though present on earth in some sort He was; so, "We believe, and are sure," because the life was revealed in humiliation.

84 As to the general point see chapter 3: 31. It is, however, still in the vivifying power of life, as made flesh still, though in the power of an endless life; and the power of it consists in the association by faith of the power of the risen life with the death of which we are partakers, planted in the likeness, sin being therein put away, and we therefore receiving a life free from sin; for it is the same Jesus which is alive (we being quickened, and feeding on His life), which was crucified, broken, and His life given; "for he that has died is justified from sin"; so we, receiving life from Him who died, are "justified from sin," for in that life risen we recognise that He was dead, and we with Him, therefore "justified from sin." He also was justified in the Spirit. Hence our Lord also opens out into the full statement in this verse. Had He not been the living bread there could not have been this association, for there could not have been the identification of a life so passing through death. "I am the living bread which came down from heaven; he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever" (receives through the death of Christ communion with His resurrection); "and the bread which I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world" (v. 51).

Hereto our Lord has stated the full doctrine. He now goes farther, and, as we have seen Him, progressing continually; but the Spirit teaches us by it. The Jews had refused Him. He states now (having stated it given for the life of the world) that they, the Jews, must come in on this principle, or they had no life in themselves. How accurate is the language! Thus the Jews must come in. They, the Jews, now again, after the doctrine specifically introduced, unless they eat, etc., they had no life in themselves (it is not here question of gaining life by the Law, but they have no intrinsic life). "He hath given to the Son to have life in himself." But he that was joined into Christ's death should have everlasting life, and Christ would raise up even his mortal body, the vessel of death, at the last day, as quickened in person, by His Spirit, feeding on Him, having (derivatively, indeed, but actually) this everlasting life (in which the risen Christ lives). He by His power would bring the body in the same blessing, raise him up at the last day.

85 The Jew had no life in himself. "He that eats," as such had everlasting life, and Christ would raise him up; for the heavenly things would suit the vivified ones of Him made higher than the heavens. For His flesh was food, and His blood drink; for this feeding on Him thus broken, and His life given, was to dwell in Him, and He in one so living on Him; for indeed it is in this fleshliness of Christ that all our communion with the fulness of God rests. And it is all fulness; they are "all of one"; but it is of one dead, and life given from His, and raised up in the power of endless life, and we "members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." Yet what is the fulness? It pleased (not the Father specifically) that in Him should all fulness dwell, and so in creation and redemption towards the Church, and this in intrinsic fulness: "In him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," and so communicable in actual (personally) and comprehensive fulness. "He that ascended is he also that first descended into the lower parts of the earth" (so here), "that he might fill all things," hence our glory; also in fulness of grace and truth giving us communion with the blessedness of God, in character, as what He is.

This also is in Christ; but we enter into it by death ("for all have sinned"). Therefore, "And you hath he reconciled," in the same place referred [to], "who were dead in trespasses and sins; in the body of his flesh through death, to present you unblamable and unreprovable in his sight"; the enmity, of course, of Judaism and heathenism being also gone, and "Christ in you, the hope of glory"; for death and sin and the power of Satan were all exercisable in respect of this body of death, and hence Christ, as Hebrews 2 and Peter: "Who his own self bare our sins," etc., that in union with Him we might be in a life absolutely freed; for our union with Him was through death, He dying for us, and in association with us. there cannot be a more blessed subject than this, nor one more important fully to understand.

86 He then that eats the flesh of the Son of Man, and drinks His blood, dwells in Him, and He in him. The Lord opens this out, however, further in its activity; and here I would remark that it is [not] dia tou, but dia ton, which seems, I think, to convey a further meaning. And you will observe that it is associated with His being sent: "The living Father hath sent me, and I live on account of the Father." It was not merely an inceptive act of communicated life, but a continual act of communion of life; as He argues, therefore, in another place, "Because I live, ye shall live also." The life is therefore practically also a life abstractedly on account of Him through whom we continually live. As sent, the Lord lived solely and wholly for Him by whom the constant sustenance of His spiritual life, not as from without, but as indwelling, was. So the apostle in Galatians 2: 19, 20. The life which lives from Him must live continually for Him; from Him, not simply as giving it apart from Himself, but by effectual union, it being the actings of that very life in us, as it is His life.

There is some difficulty in bringing out to light the identity of two separately considered things; but the force and importance of it is quite different from merely dia tou or emou, or a given life; it is morally a corporate or aggregate association in all which life is or constitutes life with the source of that life, so as that it all must be di' auton. It is the development and exhibition of it; it is just eme coming forth.

Our Lord, then, having now divulged the whole truth, reaffirms it in its full character and results. Before, He had said less definitely, "Your fathers," etc.; "eat thereof, and not die"; now, this universal bread, which I have declared is the bread that comes down from heaven; "not as your fathers eat, and died; he that eateth this bread shall live for ever," leading to the full statement of given or communicated eternal life, freed too from all charge; as the apostle: "Who shall lay?" etc. "It is Christ that died, yea rather," etc. "Who shall separate?" (Romans 8.) And this sums up the answer to their question in verse 31. This was said to Jews, teaching regularly in the synagogue. The absence of the article marks that the order of the testimony, not the fact of the place, was meant to be conveyed; as we should say, He said these things teaching in church. It was addressed to Jews as so assembled, which is important to the intelligence of the previous part, and confirmatory of what has been given here.

87  - 53, 54. It is not merely knowing Christ as God in which eternal life is obtained, but it is knowing Him as come in the flesh, including death (in a way which we cannot here develop), which constitutes eternal life, the bread come down from heaven, the basis of the great mystery of godliness: God manifest in the flesh, Christ come in the flesh. The third chapter exhibits the operation of the Spirit in renewing the mind, opening the eyes, leading it to see and enter the kingdom by a new birth, while it also then presents the lifting up upon the cross as the object of saving faith; here the great power of the work of Christ, become the life, having come in the flesh, and died, and so become the intimate source of life to His people, by their actual communion with Him as a quickening Spirit, by faith in His death, of which we may see the explication to us in the Hebrews, as particularly in chapter 2, as to the main truths. So afterwards His re-ascent, as here in verse 62.

And we would remark here that, though the Jews murmured, saying, "How can this Man give us his flesh to eat?" it was not at this the disciples said, "This is a hard saying; who can hear it?" but that He was "the bread that came down from heaven"; and accordingly our Lord's answer is, "What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before?" and as to its connection with the flesh and blood He says, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak," etc.

And, as in chapter 3, it is important to remark also here that it is the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, He as Son of Man: such the whole effect of the Fall, even death, resulting from the knowledge of good and evil; and that, by suffering those very results, He eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil; but only in the fruits of it knowing it, not subject to it, that is, the evil; but actually and absolutely eating the resulting evil. This is the meaning of His flesh and blood, His coming into and meeting the consequences of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and thus directly and comprehensively met in Him. It is not as a quickening Spirit He is here spoken of, but a suffering Man, a Man suffering the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil as the Son of Man. Except we know Him thus we have no life in us, as the resurrection is the seal of this, and His ascension into glory: "What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before?" Note this part.

88 It is accordingly by faith in His word that we find the quickening (zoopoiousan) power of Christ, as come into the world, and dead, and alive again. And note the accordant thoughts of Paul by the same Spirit. "We have all," says he, "been made to drink into one Spirit." The Spirit is the whole portion that we have here; but it is the office of the Spirit to take of the things of Christ, and show them unto us. Of these things He speaks here; but it is by the Spirit alone revealing them in our hearts they have any quickening power; to wit, by the word, that is, of Christ; but the whole Scriptures testify that it is by this knowledge alone of Christ that there is justification and eternal life.

And we may here note that men are accustomed to speak as if Christ brought them to the Spirit; and it is true it is by faith in Christ that we are made partakers of the Holy Ghost; but Christ wrought the whole life-giving and perfecting work; and it is the office of the Spirit to do that instrumentally which Christ has wrought effectually, meritoriously; to wit, to separate us out of this world as His possession, as the Scripture speaks, to sanctify us; and, as it is indeed by the manifestation of Christ, so He does indeed by this bring us to Him, and we are made partakers of that which is in Christ; namely, justification, which is of person, not so much of time, for it was wrought in Christ relatively, not in us, unto eternal life.

I am not saying here but that there is a growing conformity to the image of Jesus Christ; but this the Scripture speaks as a command to us. The sanctification of the Spirit it ever speaks of as antecedent to justification, and by which we are brought into Christ, and made partakers of the redemption that is in Him; and it is the corporate name of those who in Christ Jesus, as grafted in, inherit the promises which are true in Him; they are separated out of the world to Christ. I am not saying that there is not an actual, conformable, spiritual assimilation; but I do say, Is this ever spoken of in Scripture as sanctification by the Spirit?

I believe the office of the Spirit has been degraded instead of heightened by this language, and Christ made of none effect. We have heard of being first justified by Christ, and then sanctified by the Spirit. I say, Such is in no instance the language of the Scriptures, and mars the whole plan of the divine counsels, bringing in inextricable confusion. I know Wesley boasted of discovering this doctrine. I know not was it earlier. Sure I am the Scriptures abhor it. I hear that "by one offering he hath perfected them that are sanctified," of "the sanctified in Christ Jesus." I say, The work is Christ's from beginning to end; and the Spirit applies it, fulfilling in its operations the purpose for which Christ came into the world. We have not quoted Scripture, for we affirm that the whole of it speaks thus.

89 Here we find the knowledge of His Person and His death set forth as the power of eternal life, for "every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in flesh is of God"; and He came, not by water only, but by water and blood; not by sanctification only, clearing, if it were possible, the purpose only by the knowledge of Him, but by blood cleansing the conscience, and making reconciliation also; the Spirit, ministering these things to us, glorifying Christ, not Himself, but glorified in fulfilling His Kingdom, being His Vicar and Substitute upon earth, speaking that which He hears.

We have spoken of these things but in part, seeing men are dull of hearing, when they ought to be teachers of these things, which are on their behalf; but we trust it will not be so, and indeed we can but speak of them but in part, as things that are known according to our need of them, not the wisdom of God, who sees them all unministered. But God will be all in all, and they are meant to be thus known; and it is our wisdom, when called on, to know how to minister them by the Spirit according to that need, which the perfect God had regard to in them; for we know nothing of ourselves, and have them but as ministers, that God may be all in all. The Lord perfect His people for that day, that they may be able to enjoy Him as they might through the knowledge of Him in Christ Jesus. The Lord our God hasten it in its day, even our God, that He may dwell amongst them who are able to delight in Him, that God may be all in all.

Note as to those who deprive men of the blood, they take away that which is alone the seal and pledge of the covenant, and that on which the life-giving power depends, the blood of sprinkling, to which, if they do anything, they should pledge themselves. "We have all been made to drink," says Paul, "into one Spirit," and by which the covenant of remission is typified, which they pledge themselves to, they tell us, that inasmuch as the body is really there they do receive the blood. But this only shows their total ignorance of the whole truth and mystery; for it is the body broken, to wit, by death, and the blood shed, and by being shed, which is available to eternal life; and if the blood be still in the body neither can be partaken of at all, for neither have been dealt with so as to fulfil the purpose for which He became flesh at all.

90 His life was given when He gave His blood, and till He gave it His Church was unredeemed, and the mystery of godliness unfulfilled, and it is the pledge of our being His Church, redeemed by His blood-shedding, in which we join. And yet they would give us His body and blood together, as not broken or shed; assuring us, if anything, that there is no redemption! Such is the deceit of Satan where he gets round by false pretences. What shall we say to this: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone"? And yet we are all mocking our own souls as if we were redeemed, and yet partaking of the supposed unbroken and unemptied body, the unperfected person, not of Christ nor of any one else. Alas, alas for men! Satan mocks those whom he has under bondage of an old system. There is not a single substantive truth of the gospel which is not practically and in mockery denied in this changed order.

- 60. This had been addressed to the Jews. We have now its effect on His disciples, which opens out very fully, and confirms remarkably, the interpretation given of the previous part. It was the effect of the whole discourse. This view that the Lord gave of Himself as the bread come down from heaven was very hard to receive. Who could hear or receive it? Our Lord then, knowing their questionings, asks them, "What and if ye saw the Son of Man", He thus present in the flesh, the Son of Man, "ascending up" into the very position (of universality of grace) "where he was before?" the evidence as well as the object exclusively of faith, declaring thus the position and character in which He was a Saviour; saw Him, He says, going up; for this is the real, great doctrine with you disciples; you mistake the nature of the dispensation; it is not My bodily presence. "It is the Spirit that quickens"; men must be quickened for eternal life. It is the Spirit does this. My absence, ascended, is the very order of this. "The flesh profits nothing," but "the words that I speak unto you" now have their very power and value in this; it is not even now My bodily presence, but the reception of My words. My words speak life, for they are of the Spirit. "The words that I speak unto you," this is the point of present reception, "are spirit and life." It is in this character you must come to Me now; "but there are some of you who," though they seem to have come unto Me, "do not believe" (and here we see the importance of the distinction and observation, that it was in some sort by faith, previously made); for thus it is really you must come to Me even now. Any other coming to Me is quite futile. Real coming is on the same principle as when I shall be ascended up, the subject merely of faith by the Spirit.

91 For they must believe that He really was the Son of God, the living God, and in His character as Man from heaven, really to come to Him; and this was faith. "For Jesus" (nor was He willing, save in the special instance and case, that they should continue with Him) "knew" who believed [not]; and therefore our Lord said that none could come to Him except it were given him of His Father; because it included really coming to Him in this spiritual apprehension of what He was, which was the gift of the Father alone. They might, as here, come actually and carnally; but coming to Him even here, as manifested in the flesh, they must come to Him in reality, as containing within Himself the personal power of that glory which was to be manifested to faith when He was exalted, as see chapter 1: 14, or they would come to Him only carnally and falsely, and in denial of Him (therefore our Lord thus far revealed it, that He might have none but real followers); that is, the principles in offence which were the food in glory; so that none (it being really spiritual) could come except the Father gave it to him; for it was His gift to show the Son's glory (as our Lord to Peter). This is an important comment on the whole thing (that is, verses 60-65). Accordingly, many of His disciples showed they had not received this or Him (as remarked), and departed on the statement of what He was, and walked no more with Him.

- 67. Equally important also is the confession thereupon of the twelve, which stands as the representation of the then real confession containing in embryo the living faith, being the gift of God. The Lord said therefore to the twelve, Do you also wish to go (or will - to go)? Simon Peter then showed that the principle of this very hope, which our Lord had been speaking of, was in them: Lord, to whom shall we depart (or go away)? There was a known object of quickened faith to which they had respect. The rest might be offended (He not meeting their fleshly apprehensions), and turn; for they had no necessity of eternal life by faith. The apostles from God had, given them of God; therefore drawn to Christ: "Thou hast the words of eternal life."

92 It was not merely Messiah in the flesh satisfying fleshly desires, but eternal life; for the emphasis is on the words of eternal life. Further, it was, as we have seen before, in His words. It was faith, and quickened moral desires. He spake of God; consequently they believed and were sure that He was the Christ, the Holy One of God. This was the approach of their faith to Him; it was in His eternal and missionary character: "Thou hast the words," etc. And observe, it was by the words, not the miracles; it was not asking a sign; and such is real faith, though the miracles may increase the condemnation; as, "If ye believe not me, believe the works"; "If I had not done amongst them," etc. We have seen the faith in the others rejected (close of chapter 2); this received and recognised, and the looking for a sign associated with the rejection of the words. Peter answered on the principle of common faith. Our Lord was able to distinguish in the profession.

This is a most important chapter. It is remarkable how these chapters of John contain progressive phenomena, so to speak, of the Lord. It is also most blessed, for as it brings down into the utmost intimacy of communion, so it leads us up (being by faith, in spirit, which is what is opened out here) into the full association with the glory and place into which He has passed through death. And, moreover, it associates us (while in the fellowship of His sufferings) so in the life which has passed through death, death for us, and emerged, as free from sin, into the glory of that life which was with the Father, and taking us up in this sin-free and glorified life into union with Himself; yet not simply, but as having passed through death, and even His life given in the perfectness of His and the Father's love, into which, therefore, as well as the sin-free life, we are associated. But I rather seek to find the sense to interpret than draw conclusions from, or speak upon here. The power of the chapter is very remarkable.

93 Verses 30 and 36 seem contrasted. We have noted the development of the electing principle upon the assertion of general unbelief previously. He had spoken of Himself as the bread of life, that in which He was presented as a present object of reception, although, as He afterwards shows, this required the drawing of the Father and faith, and therefore none but the elect would so really come; but therefore (for which I now further note this) after saying that all that the Father gave Him, etc., and that this was the will of Him that sent Him, that of all that He had given Him He should lose nothing, but should raise it up in the last day (for the gift was eternal life, and the body was vivified), and this, etc., that whosoever seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life; which is just, as we have seen, the discerning point, confirming the view given of the chapter. So accordingly in Matthew 16: 16, 17, to Peter. It is the kingdom of His dear Son.

_______

It is evident, from a comparison of the Old Testament with John 6, what an amazing position of communion we are placed in. The fat and the blood were God's bread (food, see Lev. 3: 11); lechem (bread) Leviticus 21: 6, 22; Numbers 28: 2; Ezekiel 44: 7; Malachi 1: 7, 12. Ezekiel shows the fat and the blood to have been God's bread. Now, this true bread comes down from heaven; but, while a living Christ was God's delight, and ours, still we could not really feed upon it until it was offered in respect of sin, and not merely its own savour to God. Hence it was flesh and blood; and this (which was death) so that God could feed upon it as most perfectly and blessedly glorifying Him (the Son's love accomplishing it). So we now feed upon that, eat forbidden food, even blood; and life, or rather death, is ours, and our life. God had been perfectly honoured in these wages of sin. Life in Man has been voluntarily given, and death thus been salvation and the power of life; and we feed upon it; before, impossible and forbidden; now, as impossible to have life or be saved without; so it is our blessed food of God; we eat the true bread of God. We have no life in us; we live by the given life of Christ; but this is the bread of God, the food of His offering made by fire unto Him.

________

94 Though through death it is brought forth to the world, verses 53, 54 yet historically refer specially to the Jewish nation.

_______

Note, in John 5, where the Son of God is spoken of, we have, "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life." In chapter 6, where the Son of Man is spoken of, it is, "Every one that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me"; "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life." Christ's voice as Son makes us know the Father for eternal life. The Father's teaching makes us believe on the Son of Man, come to Jesus, to have eternal life. It is clear the general truth of chapter 5 is the operation of Christ in power as Son of God, though the effect is to believe on the Father; whereas in chapter 6 Christ is the object as Son of Man. Yet, in all cases in John, Christ is looked at as down here, a Person known in the world in flesh. But in chapter 6 the Father draws to Christ in His humiliation.

_______

In the fifth and sixth chapters of John it is to be remarked that chapter 5, giving the sovereign action of Christ in giving life, we get man's responsibility in the last part of the chapter: "The Son quickeneth whom he will"; "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." In chapter 6 it is man's part (though by grace): "He that eateth me shall live by me." Here, hence, the necessity and sovereignty of grace is brought out: "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him."

_______

Note, as we have seen in Numbers, the connection of the shewbread and table with the display of glory in the world, and then the twelve loaves (as the twelve will be on thrones, and thus Jewish). In John 6 the bread is the heavenly Man; it is the one bread (not the Church, though, note that, but Christ alone), and brings out the spiritual, divine character in which we know Him as associated with the Father, living by Him, God's bread; and then dying, so as to judge all nature, and be life by death; so for the world; therefore to give life, and raise (whoever believes) at the last day. It is not royal glory (He refused it then), but divine, spiritual excellency (which is glory); and this as come down into the world. But then man could not eat unless he came in (Jew and all), as a lost sinner by death, and fed in grace on His flesh, and drank His blood. And this is indeed the heavenly Man, but the Man come down from heaven, the seal on whose perfect excellency is set in His going up to the place suited to it, and where He was before; only as Son of Man. He had a suited title to it in that which He had proved Himself here. All this gives us, not kingdom glory, but what He is with the Father, yet as Son of Man, so as to take us up in grace by the way. The one loaf is better than twelve.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47007E> 95

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 7

After this conversation or doctrine in Capernaum Jesus went about Galilee, for He would not Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him. This goes on from chapter 5, the last time He was in Jerusalem (which compare); but the Feast of Tabernacles was near. The note below* gives the general view of this; but there are many things else we must note. There are three divisions in this subject or chapter:

First, the typical facts as to His going up to the Feast of Tabernacles;

Secondly, our Lord's instruction during the feast, and,

Thirdly, His proclamation on the last day of the feast.

{*This refers to the remarks in the last paragraph on this page - (Ed.)[see next major paragraph - "The tabernacles . . . ."]}

The point of the chapter here proposed by His brethren after the flesh was the publicity of our Lord's manifestation: "himself seeks to be known in public . . . . Manifest thyself to the world."

The tabernacles was the type of the manifestation of the Lord to the world, the gathering in of the saints to His resurrection glory, and the Jewish rest. Hence the force of this passage. Jesus went not up to it, therefore, to keep it in its fulness, though in duty afterwards He went up. His time was not yet full come. He states afterwards what was to be expected, as now in respect of this; that is, the Spirit who was to show the things to come. Now, I look on that eighth day, the day of solemn assembly, as typical of the first day, the glory of the Lord's resurrection; as the seventh of the Jewish millennial rest. The Spirit was to be sent from the risen (and glorified) Saviour, the witness of this state of the saints, their portion in that day. He manifests Himself to us now as He does not to the world.

96 In this there are two points: His going to Judaea, the manifestation of His presence, then "in public," that His disciples might see His works; the other, if He did these things, to show Himself to the world, and the expectation of this as showing the unbelief of His natural brethren (the Jews). Our Lord's answer to this was not that He would not do so, but that His time (for manifestation to the world) was not yet full come. Their time for passing through and putting themselves forward in it was always ready. The world could not hate them, for they were of it. It hated Him because He testified of it that its works were evil. "Go ye up." He would not go up to the feast, for His time was not yet fulfilled, and He abode in Galilee.

- 10. I am not sure also whether it does not imply also the expectation of the Jews of the ingathering, and their going up, as if it was come, to the feast (and being, but not Christ's, in it), before Christ joined them there, and the worldly and unbelieving character in which they will go up in this expectation, He waiting His Father's full time. The expectation of Him, however, was fully raised among them, and they sought Him at the feast, but with the usual uncertainty and doubtings of unbelief. But this was in the not determined multitude; the Jews, properly, were determined in their opposition to owning Him as the Messiah. Such, I believe, will be the result also in that day, but a bringing into its full, final development what there was at work with Jesus amongst them.

There is also a marked distinction, I think, between the multitude and the Jews, though involved in the ruin of the latter by not coming out from them to Christ. What our Lord was blamed for not doing was making Himself known openly. But He could not do this. He spoke openly, but He could not make Himself known openly, for He was a moral Saviour. He spoke so, and therefore the world hated Him. If He had manifested Himself, it must have been in judgment. But He did speak quite openly, and thus manifested Himself, being content to glorify the Father, let His own glory be hidden, give effectual testimony, saving, or condemning by the responsibility of man, in the full witness of the Father's glory. They indeed, that is, the multitude, did not dare speak openly; but Jesus did. He did not conceal His righteousness and truth in the great congregation. He had not refrained His lips, and that God, even His Father, knew. The great congregation is always the nation, as such, of the Jews.

97 This was the way in which He had manifested, not Himself, but His Father and the truth. Nevertheless, He did not fail here to declare Himself, showing also that, when He did, only the full hatred of the world, of Satan, was brought out against Him. He came to bear witness to the truth, and avowed Himself to be the Son of God; whereupon, because He told them the truth, they would not believe. He must be received by faith, and morally, or the whole nature and order of the kingdom would be set aside, which was founded upon the necessity of God. Therefore He showed not Himself to gratify the flesh, but glorified His Father, and presented the truth, which could be received by the Spirit.

The next division which we have, therefore, of this subject is the then teaching of Jesus, instead of His showing Himself at the feast (as future); for His time was not yet full come. Our Lord accordingly rests it on the principles we have been stating. Jesus taught; the Jews wondered, as it is written. These wilful, blind ones yet recognised the guilt of their unbelief in seeing that He had instruction which He could never have learned (so of the disciples before the council). Our Lord at once assists them, and confesses the source of His teaching: "My doctrine is not mine," therefore has nothing to do with My learning, "but his that sent me" (My teaching therefore must have been divine in its nature). But the critical point lies here: If there be willingness to do the will of God, as such, such shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or I speak from Myself. Here also He affirmed His mission. But their moral state was the real thing in question. Hence the importance of so sending Messiah.

But there was a distinct and sure moral evidence on this point: he that spoke from himself sought his own glory. This point in our Lord was illustriously brought up to us here in this very teaching, as we have seen, refusing (though indeed He was all that could be claimed) to go up to the feast, and show Himself to the world. Yet so indeed He obtained and showed far higher moral glory for the truth of God and His own glory. On the other hand, if He sought only His glory that sent Him, as it was plain He did, and did now, ascribing to Him all the glory even of His words, in which He was faithful (in which yet again He had yet more and divine glory around Him even as a Teacher) then it was plain that He was true, and there was no unrighteousness in Him. Why not receive His instructions? Here, I say, was the full, condemning (though unwillingly so) moral test.

98 But indeed He could go yet further. It was not merely their rejection of His words, which were manifestly the teaching of God: "Did not Moses give you the law, and not one of all of you keeps the law?" And this was shown in their dealings with Him: "Why go ye about to kill me?"

This was addressed to the Jews. The multitude, not privy to their evil, said, "Thou hast a devil: who goeth about to kill thee?" Where the truth is not received the very ignorance of the multitude of the wickedness of their rulers plunges them only deeper in their rejection and distraction as to Him who charges this wickedness upon them. How large is the labyrinth turned round the unbeliever! how simple the clue, when once it is had, by which we pass through it! Note the fact in many ways, also the careful distinction the Scripture keeps up all through between the wilfully blind Jews and the multitude, who yet as so walking perished in their unbelief.

- 21. I refer this to the pool of Bethesda. It is manifest that our Lord did rarely, or not at all, miracles at Jerusalem, and these bringing their judgment of Himself to a crisis. Hence also the words of His brethren.

"Jesus answered, and said to them"; generally now, and explanatory, so as, continuing the general bearing of His discourse, He should bring them all in, they not having wished to kill Him: "I have done one work, and ye all marvel." In this state they perished, as it is written, as before, now including all, and His works as well as words: "Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish; for I work a work in your days," etc. "Moses" (to him they looked) "gave you circumcision, not from himself but from the fathers; and ye circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If therefore a man receive circumcision on the Sabbath, that Moses' law" (on this they rested, not the promises or covenant in it), "be not broken, are ye angry with me because I have made the whole man sound on the Sabbath? Judge not according to sight, but judge righteously," about these things.

99 This, observe, is to the multitude, consequent on their remark as to seeking His death, from which the Jews seemed to have shrunk back, knowing its truth, but having the ignorance of the multitude as their defence with them, Satan willingly using this with them; to which our Lord therefore applies Himself in this way to meet their thoughts and reach their consciences. I know not that to the Jews He says, "Judge righteous judgment."

Upon His thus addressing the multitude some of the Jerusalemites, not of the body of the Jews as rulers, but who being such knew what they were about, said, "Is not this he whom they seek to kill?" (verifying and justifying all our Lord's knowledge of their thoughts and conscience against Him), "and, lo, he speaketh boldly."

To this, His special part, they also bear witness, and they say nothing to Him. It is evident, I think, from this, they (the Jews) had shrunk from the former charge. "Have the rulers really recognised him to be the Christ?"

The position into which the first charge of our Lord had thrown the Jews gave occasion to this. How various are the shades and forms of unbelief! This drew out the action of the Jews in the authority they possessed, though they could not meet His charges. It drew out the full testimony of our Lord in connection with those, and their state of mind who made the enquiry. The point of their difficulty upon His speaking boldly without the rulers venturing to speak to Him was that they knew whence He was, though they discussed the point afterwards. Our Lord takes it up, and proposes hereon in all boldness to them, thus led to enquiry, the great, eternal and all-important truth to which His testimony was required and all its truth hung. These remarks, however, were not addressed to Him, and His testimony was a public announcement, and not an answer to them, but it was as it regards us therefore.

Our Lord, in this portion of this chapter (where He places testimony in the place of His manifestation, as at the Feast of Tabernacles; that is, making it matter of faith, so as that they should know the Father, by which, being critical and so separative, yet of the full blessing to those who received it, as see before, chapter 1; in truth, that portion contains the subject of John's gospel), has given us two important but closely identified testimonies: whence His testimony was, and whence He was; the import of which, as bringing it to the crisis, we have noticed is manifest; that is, receiving Him so as to receive the Father in a way which included moral apprehension, and so indeed gave, or was the order of, everlasting fellowship with the Father and the Son; for so receiving Him by faith they received Him (compare again John 1), and were born (again), and children of God.

100 Our Lord here charges them with indeed knowing Him, and whence He was; for indeed our unbelief is always of that which we know, and of which the evidence is before us. The veil is not on the glory, but on the heart, as elsewhere: "If, etc.; but now have they both seen and hated," etc. (chap. 15: 24); and so they proved immediately after (v. 30). But there was no reception of the Father in this knowledge. They had full evidence of who He was, but they knew Him only after the flesh; and indeed He had not come of Himself. But He that sent Him (for now He came in mission and testimony) is true in testimony in the words which He declared by Jesus, and in the judgment which necessarily followed, for the words were the revelation of Himself in and by Jesus to men.

It is knowing the Father by Jesus which is alone the full evidence of saving faith, and the resting-place of the soul. Men may know Him, and whence He is; but unless they know Him as sent, unless by Him they know the true Father, they are strangers to eternal life, and come under judgment. It is not knowing what Jesus is intrinsically, but knowing Him as sent of the Father, knowing Him as Man, and so knowing Him as the Son, that saves: "Who by him do believe in God, who," etc. (1 Peter 1: 21). It was in this character that Jesus acted, that Jesus presented Himself. "I know him, that I am from him, and he hath sent me" (v. 29). How the unbelief was drawn out into light and action! The believers may believe that Jesus is a Man, or rather know it. Men may recognise that this Jesus came from heaven; nay, they may believe in the Trinity, that is, own it; but unless they know Jesus as the Son of the Father, as God indeed from everlasting, and one with the Father, but also as Son, they are set in no position, no saving fellowship, which is only with the Father and the Son. "This is the record," "and he that hath the Son hath life." "The Father sent the Son," and Jesus was the Son, and we believe in Jesus by the Spirit, even in the Son of God, and therefore have fellowship with the Father and the Son, knowing whom is eternal life; that is, the Father, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.

101 Hence as a Man His very faithfulness, His truth, was in this that which was vital to us. "I know him, that I am from him, and he hath sent me"; and as this was truth in Him; the knowledge of this is eternal life with us. The acknowledgment of this truth was faithfulness, was the truth in Him. It is eternal life in us, knowing the Father and Him.

It is in all this fully recognised that Jesus will be manifested at the great feast, even the Feast of Tabernacles. It was in the confession of this His faithfulness was shown, when He was seeking, not His own glory, as He could not justly as a Man, but His Father's; but He will then come in His Father's glory and His own, which was now hidden, being come as a Servant. But the point at present was the truth, whether of the Father or Himself, but now as the great point to which indeed His truth was affixed. That He did not speak of Himself the truth of the Father, verse 29 is, we have said, the great confession, which constituted the truth in Him, as the Father was the crown of all. It was felt they sought to kill, for he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning. Because He told them the truth, this was the great secret. And this was the truth, the victorious truth, which through grace overcame; for truth alone, without grace, would have been no salvation, but rather brought us more entirely under the power of Satan, or made us as enemies. Grace with truth overcomes, and is salvation.

Some, probably Jerusalemites, sought to take Him, but no one laid hands on Him, for His hour was not yet come. They showed their mind, but God also showed His. He was true. How marvellous to behold the Lord thus confessing the truth, the Slave of all evil, but waiting upon God who delivered Him from all; as He saith also: "I have not refrained my lips, O Lord, thou knowest: I have not hid," etc. So was He doing here. But many of the multitude (still thus distinguished, nor was our Lord's reproach thus without fruit, though He might, seemed to, have laboured in vain, and spent His strength for nought and in vain), many of the multitude believed with this stunning rebuke to the Pharisees, though of doubting faith in them: "Will Christ do more works?" in a word, on the works which His Father had given Him to do; as He says, "If I had not done among them the works which no other man did," etc.

102 But there were those whose character now developed itself, who dreaded to lose their influence, if Christ were received. The Pharisees sent officers to take Him. It was but the occasion to our Lord to bring out another great truth of His doctrine: His being hidden, being rejected as what He was; until the great feast really came; thus completing as to Himself the mystery which was involved in His not as yet being manifested to the world. He had come to them, manifested and taught who He was, and they would not receive Him. But they should seek Him in earnest soon, and find Him not; nor could they come where He was. Nothing could savour more, on the one hand, of rest to the Lord, but, on the other, of deep and solemn judgment to them, than this solemn word of the Lord's. All the bearings of its deep, judicial truth-telling are perfect and consummate. Christ was to be hid, hid in God (see Col. 3) till the time of the restoration, the true Feast of Tabernacles; He was to be with the Father, sitting there till, etc.

Strange the pride and confidence of man! Where shall He go, that we shall not find Him? Will He go and teach? etc. But their thoughts in vain sought to reach this, for they knew Him no otherwise than as One teaching the people, and thus they had listened. It is remarkable, this reference to the Greeks (in this as hiding Him, as it was indeed associated with His being hid), these distant, despised, worthless Gentiles. The truth is, pride is destitute of grace. They were silenced here. It was evidently something beyond them.

Here closed the doctrine in connection with our Lord's Person on this subject, and He proceeds to teach that which would be the substituted Comforter, but the Earnest during this His absence, and hiding of His glory, and of it as in that last great day; that is, in the heavenly glory.

We must remark here that to the Feast of Tabernacles alone there was an eighth day, the day of restraint or solemn assembly, including typically (as it appears to me) the great celebration of the universal ingathering; and as the seven days showed the completion of God's temporal purposes, so the eighth or first showed the inlet to the eternal purposes, the bringing into, while it passed beyond, the temporal estate, the glory of that which was without it, the gathering into one in Christ risen and ascended, the resurrection glory herein in faith. It was upon the resurrection day, and the Lord's day is the resurrection day; for indeed the resurrection is the great link between both; that is, the heavenly and the temporal or earthly. The last day of the feast was then the great and distinctive type of that which is to be gathered together on the appearing of the Lord Jesus, then no longer hid in God, but manifested in all glory and that in a way specifically breaking forth and having its place in, and character from, the heavenly glory; for it was without the week.

103 Hence in the meantime the Spirit was the witness of all this, coming (though obtained by Jesus as having fulfilled all righteousness and been humbled, which it therefore marks as the way to glory also, that He might fill all things) from Him ascended; or as here, referring to the earthly estate, hid. Hence our Lord (who could not now be manifested as at the Feast of Tabernacles, which He had developed as to all the other, the working, days, the perfect doing of the Father's will, and as to the rest that He was hid in it, and it from them), on the last day, that great day of the feast, promulgates the intermediate and substituting power of the Spirit, Witness and Earnest of His re-appearance.

Our Lord, however, uses language which, while it admits present coming to Him for the purpose (it is to be observed, however, that in speaking of drinking He refers only to the Spirit; He was now rejected as presenting the truth generally), yet in its full application goes forth into the general estate, truth, of faith in Him. He "stood and cried." This was His now great proclamation, this was the great thing for the world, the position in which it was to be set, and to which He now invited those that thirsted then: "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink, he" (then He gives the great proposition) "that believeth on me, . . . out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

The quotation from the Scripture here does not, it appears to me, refer to any one specific text so apparently stated, but shows the Christian meaning and power of that which we might otherwise pass over. There is a mind of God all through the Scriptures, of which the dispensations of God themselves are but the expression. This is true of this sentence also, and of chapter 4 before. I believe such scriptures as Proverbs 18: 4, Proverbs 10: 11, are moral truths, which find their real fulfilment here, just as the waters of Ezekiel's temple are exact illustrations according to their own character. Our Lord means, I am the fulfilment of that of God's mind which the Scripture reveals as a general moral truth, according to the order which God has constituted; which is moral, and to us essential truth. I the rather refer to the Proverbs, though not exclusively, in this, as the statements more distinctively of the logos and wisdom are there brought forward, and the depth of purpose in this is exhibited in chapter 8; and of this John is the great Evangelist, in our Lord, that is, as in Person and its direct connection, not merely in its practical showing forth to the world.

104 Though proposed, therefore, as coming to Him, it is developed there as in His absence in the power of the Spirit in him, but in blessing. There is a difference, too, I conceive, between the well of water springing up into everlasting life and these rivers flowing out. There it was the indwelling power simply as the power of life, everlasting life, and associated of course with the full blessing there, that is, in everlasting things, in which that life would find its development and scope. But here it is as flowing forth from the man who believes in Jesus. That was in him a well of water. Nevertheless it is not unassociated with the man; it shall be a fountain of fulness in him.

I think also, as we have seen our Lord here presenting His doctrine (which was however spirit and life) instead of His Person, and now giving this, drank in from Him, instead of His presence, until or as not yet manifested in the feast, the great day of the Feast of Tabernacles. It is as the witness of the heavenly glory cognisant in His fulness; at least of the glory of that day, the streams of that in the Spirit which go forth from him who believes in Jesus, now the exalted Heir of that glory, and has his belly filled with that by faith; that is, in spirit it is as the receptacle of the heavenly food when it was digested and understood, and brought into the communicating, intelligent supply of the whole man. So the roll was bitter in his belly; and this confirms the view elsewhere taken of the river out of the dragon's mouth to be the heresies, false doctrine, not from his belly (for it [had] nothing to do with his own reception of it), but from his mouth, that others might be carried away by it (potamophoreetoi).

Hence, then, I think that this is the full development of all that full reception of Christ (embracing all He is shown to be by the resurrection and ascension) which is by faith, its going forth out of the belly; but it was in the personal power of the indwelling Spirit, the Spirit received; but specially, as we have said, in apprehension of the heavenly (or rather epouranial) glory, and future but true state. Yet having the Spirit Himself ever fresh and flowing, the full connection of these things is manifest from the comment given us by the apostle: "But this spake he concerning the Spirit, which they were about" (it was after His resurrection and ascension, though allowing of coming to Him then, and it was as believing on Him so gone, risen and ascended) "to receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified."

105 It was then the effectual witness, and had its existence only in the world, in respect of the glory into which Jesus was ascended, which is the truth and source of that in the which He will be revealed; for it was not as in chapter 4 (here as looking up from us to eternal life given so), but come the witness of the glory which belonged to the body in Jesus now ascended as their Forerunner. It was not so much as given (as in the man for his eternal life), but as sent into the world, because of and for Jesus and the Church's glory, and because the glory was accomplished; and flowing forth the witness of this. We say these things that they may be understood; for surely it is the same Spirit, but it is rather as acting than as existing that is here spoken of as in the Church than in the man, though by men perhaps as depositaries of it; but so mainly as vessels of occasion and use, though yet with understanding withal; for it is "out of his belly shall flow." When I say "understanding," the things of the Spirit can be understood by the Spirit. But such is the force of this passage in the main. There are many deep and blessed doctrines too connected with it, but they are not directly stated.

There cannot be a more important statement than "the Holy Spirit was not yet," and the reason given more inductive to the apprehension of the dispensation to which we are here introduced. There is a point unnoticed here, much confirming the tenor of this note: as until the entry into Canaan they drank of the stream which flowed out of the rock, so now, until that day, out of their belly who believe in Him should flow rivers of living water. The force of the expression is exceedingly enhanced, too, by this connection or consideration, the application of which is easy if the foregoing be understood.

106 Also, note, the sixth chapter is the manner in which, during the absence of Christ, till He feeds with present blessing as towards the Jew and the earth, He feeds by death; the soul, as conscious of sin here, even eating His flesh and drinking His blood; knowing that in death He has met the evil, and therefore through faith baptised with Him into it. This seventh shows the manner in which (during the absence of Christ, till He appears in the fulness of first or eighth day glory), the Spirit is given as towards that glory. The realisation of the glory is beyond death, and necessitates death here. But as one respects death to what Christ has left behind, so the other the realisation of glory beyond death in which Jesus lives, or rather will be manifested, for He is now individually on His Father's throne. One is death in the flesh, the other life in the Spirit, prospective of glory. One refers to Christ dying as regards the one, the other as living as the Communicator of the Spirit, the Witness of His glory. Also in verse 37 we have the confirmation of the difference of coming to Jesus present and believing on Him absent: "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." He could drink then from Jesus, in whom and [in] whose words were the fulness of the Spirit. Then comes absolutely the dispensation of faith: "He that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow." It was not merely drinking of Jesus, but the rivers shall flow from himself, he believing or receiving from Jesus glorified. It was true it required the same teaching of God really to believe who Jesus was then as when in glory; and therefore he who believed then would be filled with the Spirit when Jesus was in glory. So that there was moral identity. Still it belonged properly to the dispensation of faith, which is systematically in a glorified Jesus, as it is the witness of that glory from which Jesus sends the Spirit. The passage therefore [in v. 39] is strictly accurate, hou emellon lambanein hoi pisteuontes, not hou hoi mellontes pisteuein. Yet it was given in the dispensation of faith as belonging to that, Jesus glorified being the object of faith, and therefore believers in that dispensation.

- 40. We have then, as the full, and clear, and sure declaration and development of the dispensation and order of God, with some conviction of the truth of His character, all the various uncertainty, reasonings, and imbecility of unbelief. Verse 42 is [as] remarkable as inconsistent; that is, as negativing the pride of the unbelief before. But through all this we may remark, though He seemed to labour in vain, in the distinctness of His statements of the truth the heirs of glory were called out (now perhaps unseen) to be His companions in the truth of that glory which they had received, and by which they had been regenerated in the truth of His unbelieved word. Now He should see of the travail of His soul, when in love He had suffered in the flesh. But for the full accomplishment of His glory He must make His soul an offering for sin. But the effect of the power of Satan in governing by the heads of religious institutions is very marked. On all else there was influence, not on them; yet the Lord provides, in the midst of all this, the instruments of His hand, not by the power, the arrangements, of man, but His own; in the right place, in the right time, baffling the very malice and consultations of the enemy. Oh! if we had faith to walk simply in the way of faith, the way of His will.

107 Observe, too, the character of the frustration of their thoughts. "This people, that knoweth not the law, are accursed." But what arrests them? "Does our law judge any man before it hear him?" etc. And what is this timidity of Nicodemus? Sheltering himself under the plea of their law, thus taking out of their mouth their complaint of the people as ignorant of the law, and throwing the breach of it on them if they pursued their purpose. Oh! if we had faith to trust God; but if we are not willing to suffer in the flesh we never shall.

We have also to remark the reference to authority, as contrasted with the influence and reception of truth. It was not simply this, however, for they were found guilty against the authority of their own system, as it proceeded from God, and thus a full test was afforded. One Nicodemus (nor many) does not alter the character of the body in act, nor of course of the truth of the principle. But why do I proceed? It was over these things Jesus wept. What ought our thoughts to be? Yet the Lord was not undecided. Where was He not perfect? Though the perfectness of goodness in the midst of evil and in the weakness of man, yet the unfailing Witness for and of God in every circumstance, and in no weakness of conduct of circumstances or of defect.

- 52. Again the wanton ignorance of facts disgraced the sincerity of their enquiry.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47008E> 108

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 8

In the close of the former chapter the law had been bandied about in a vague and desultory way as the occasion of pride or the means of (perhaps just) excuse. But here it is taken up in its full moral character, and Christ proposed in lieu thereof, yet not as disannulling but indeed confirming it, and that as the Light, so that, etc., and so as declaring the truth and exhibiting the Father, and the effects of receiving Him. So this was a most important development as regards the Jews, and shows to what a length the progressive contrast of His light and their darkness had gone; for in proportion as Christ reveals truth to us so does the light of Him, and consequently the darkness that opposed Him, and its character as discovered and brought to light by that light, come forth into distinctness of relief; that is, Himself as the Truth, and it must be also the only chance, to speak after the manner of men.

After the rejection of one truth is the bringing out some further light of truth; but when the eyes are indeed closed this only shows more clearly the deadly and now hopeless state of the alienation and evil. None but must remark how much more brought into opposition, how much more distinctly denunciatory, how progressively characteristic of light and darkness, and their full characters, the conversation of our Lord; because, as here brought before us, our Lord begins with the silent and unobtrusive but fully gracious character of His mission; and here, with continual developments of opposition, He comes to speak of them in the full terms of denouncement which the character of that opposition called for in faithfulness, the solemn and awful denouncement of the Lord of glory: "Ye are of your father the devil." The full development of the character in which our Lord stood is equally clear, and progressively, of course, inapprehensible by them on the feasts; that of our Lord which answered in His glory or humiliation, the spiritual sustenance of communion, or the outflowing operations of the Holy Spirit, which were meanwhile and until (even in His absence) the return of the Lord, and in view of the present continuance of His bodily presence, or the Jews' reception of Him therein; and by the circumstances more especially, and the part of the position in which He stood as regarded the law, on the question of life-giving (as before), and so of judgment, and is inapplicable to those already sick through sin. Here the law is brought forward in a fuller light as standing far above that (practically that) in which they made their boast, but in and by which, spiritually and morally looked at, they could not stand a moment.

109 The opening is simply affecting: "Every man went to his own house"; none of them wanted one; "but Jesus," for in glory even now, as He was in conduct, above them, "went to the Mount of Olives."

In the morning the houseless Saviour resumed the place of real if not human glory, that which He should make to Himself for a house in due time. And all the people came, and He sat down, as He was entitled and wont, and taught them. Again we have the scribes and Pharisees brought before us; not, observe however, merely the Jews, but those who in claim and office sat in Moses' seat. This, unable as they were to fulfil it themselves, they sought to turn against the Lord. It appears to me also that this chapter is supplementary to the former. As that gave the rivers of living water, which were till the glory, abounding over the law (compare 2 Corinthians 3) so this the light of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus Christ, as transcending the law, and passing by judgment, not requiring a veil lest we perish, while yet it revealed the glory all the more perfectly and blessedly. Compare still 2 Corinthians 3 and the following chapter, and the fifth previous, and this (the two characters of the law and contrastedly of Christ) with them.

These scribes and Pharisees brought forward a woman taken in adultery (sin abhorred by God and man); a very flagrant case, but one [with] the spirit of which we have seen elsewhere these Pharisees to have been deeply infected. They propose the law which Moses had commanded them, still in the very expression showing no hatred of the crime or sin nor love of the sinner; but, while proud of the law to them, using it merely to bring Jesus into collision with it, and so annul His own character, or else doubtless collision with the authorities (it was not lawful to put any man to death), and probably the benignity of His own character; while Satan doubtless meant to bring the law and mercy into collision, and make the Lord upset the essence of His mission, or else defeat His pretensions with the Jews by upsetting their law.

The object of the men was manifest: Moses commanded, but what sayest Thou? (while it seemed to set Him up on high). True, says our Lord, I will give the law its full way. Let any of you that has not broken it act upon it. He individualises them, and subjects them to it, allowing no haughty common taking up of its principles. There was in this a scornful rejection of their known wickedness, but, observe, a passing by even of the law as against them, no accusation of them, but a leaving them, as the madness of self-righteousness ever will, fully to commit themselves; that is, as insisting on the law He would have let it pass; He would not carry the law into effect as against them, nor did not. He fulfilled, but did not condemn by, the law, blessed be His name! But the law leaves men silent and confounded. Let him that is without sin bring it against his neighbour. Yet so would not Jesus. He loved His neighbour with the perfect love of the errand on which He came.

110 Whenever the calmness of the divine presence leaves, or rather gives, place to conscience there is necessarily and universally the full self-condemnation, not necessarily in righteousness approving it, but in necessity of reflex of the law let in. Accordingly, individually they went out one by one, instead of any first casting the stone. It was, "beginning at the eldest." Shame covered them; therefore went out the eldest first, thinking to be hid, because the more the accusation of self-righteousness the more the utter shame of the opened heart, the hard veil of pride being taken off; and this the Lord's presence will soon do. They would have applied the law, but they could not for a moment stand the light of God let in upon their consciences; for it was not merely this sin: it was "he that is without sin." No sin is allowed or can stand in that light. It is not merely the law good and just, though it be, but light is come into the world, and all that is reproved is made manifest by the light, for, etc. Our Lord, therefore, while He leaves the law (if they can use it) standing; that is, as a ground of condemnation, does not bring it against them. Neither shall they be condemned (though condemnable) for breaking the law (they had before forfeited the land thus, as originally by disobedience); for, "If I had not come" among them, "they had not had sin"; yea, "If I had not done among them," etc. (chap. 15: 22, 24.).

Nothing can be more marked, thus accurate or definite, than the position in which Christ is here towards the law and those taking it up. He sets it aside, not by disannulling it, but by disabling all from taking it up as against any; that is, by conviction, while yet He does not condemn them, nor can they condemn others. Jesus is left alone with the woman. Then He lifts up Himself. Hitherto He had turned His face, or spoken only to leave them more effectually to themselves. Now He lifts up Himself, and when He sees Himself at liberty from them He addresses the woman, asking where were her accusers. He could not be blamed for acting as they had done, but He might have condemned her; for He was "without sin"; and if He had judged His judgment was just. But He did not come for that errand, but that indeed by "no condemnation" men might sin no more.

111 Thus He dismisses her therefore, but oh! with how much more value from Him, who might have condemned her were He so minded or so come! It was non-condemnation from Him from whom condemnation could come, who alone had the title to condemn.

- 12. Our Lord proceeds to expound the great principles as regarded Himself. He declares Himself the Light of the world, and this now connected still with His testimony as from the Father. We have seen elsewhere the force of the life being the light, Jesus being in life the embodier of the full character of the glory (as of the Only Begotten) of the Father, in the circumstances in which it was to be exhibited as Man. It was the perfect idea of God in Man. He that followeth Him, then, shall not walk in darkness. The light will be there before him. All else are in darkness, no matter what they are following. But these shall "walk," have their conversation, "in the light." Observe, it is following, for it regards practice and conversation; but it is the light of life, the living exemplification in the power of life (the will to walk in it marked in the following) in all the practice in which life is exhibited. But the point here is that he has the light of life. We have said that it is in contrast with the law. Now, we have seen that this is positive. If the law shone it was death. But indeed man could not bear it, and the Lord simply, as we have seen, showing Himself abstractedly, would leave us silent and hiding ourselves as sinners. But He is something real and positive in Himself, the light of life; but it involves the life in one to walk in the light of this life; therefore "he that followeth," etc.

This then is the great thesis; one cannot say substitutory of the law, for then it would seem to be confined to those to whom the law was confined, and as limited, but it is full and perfect (the law made nothing perfect); it is simply but altogether the light of the world. Then comes the fact, "He that followeth me shall not," etc. (we have the individual as blessed in it), "but shall have the light of life"; not of law, but of life, for he hath also life to enjoy it. The law was to some, and imperfect; Christ was to all, that is, the world, and perfect. He presented Himself in this character (compare chapter I), and that also; for this is a very broad principle ([see] chapter I of the first epistle of John); but this of the light He speaks now, even while in the world; for He was the light. Hence we have what is walking "in the light," and "as he is in the light"; in which none in themselves can stand; but also now, "if we confess," etc.

112 But this truth is very blessed, for it is indeed the full outshining of God the Father's essence and character into man in Jesus, nothing wanting; and of this we are made inherently possessors, that we might have communion with Him, even the Father, as in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is the thesis. The manner of it is opened, and in this much of its real character. "Thou bearest witness of thyself; thy witness is not true" (v. 13). This regarded Jesus as a Man merely giving Himself a name or character in which He could not have been what He pretended to be. The assumption would have been the denial of it. Our Lord then shows that the very character of His testimony gave credence to the thing which He stated He was. He came to bear witness to the truth. In this He was the light, for His being sent was essential to the light, for it was of and from the Father; yet so as that He was the competent witness, and that Himself (though the Father also bore witness to Him by works and Himself). But though He bore witness of Himself His witness was true, for He knew. And here we have the mystical union of our Lord. Speaking of Himself from knowledge which He had, though through His intelligence as Man, yet flowed from His union and Person; altogether a higher source; and in which therefore He could speak abstractly about Himself: "I know whence I came." He who came down from heaven, "even the Son of Man which is in heaven," He knew whence He came, even from heaven. He came down and He, Jesus, would go (for He who came down was now Jesus) to heaven; yea, indeed, far above all heavens. Here it is the great secret of all. "But ye do not know." They saw Jesus merely as any other man. They judged merely as natural men, and what the flesh could perceive, and that as to everything; but He (who might), bringing out the truth exhibited in the circumstances, judged no man.

113 We may observe here that our Lord does not rest here on His divine authority or nature, but on His witness; because He was able, from His association with God, even the Father, whence He came, even from the Father, and whither He went, even to Him. He spoke as a faithful witness, a witness of the truth, and the Truth. He knew, and they did not know; yet they judged, and He did not. But that was love, and because He came as a witness, a Saviour, not a judge. Yet, if He had judged, His judgment was true. Not (observe again) simply because He was God; that is not what is brought forward here; but because He, the Son, Jesus, was not alone; but nevertheless that He had capability to judge: "I and the Father that sent me."

This then is the great secret of this matter: He could say, "I." But He was now honouring the Father as a Man; and He saith, "I and the Father that sent me." But that also testified His unity with the Father. It was testimony from the Father, which was now the glory of His name Jesus, and He therefore bore witness to the Father, His bounden duty and service as sent, and as Man; for He was "the brightness" (compare chap. 17: 4, 5). All this will be vindicated, His Sonship, His own glory and the Father's, when He does judge, and this He might have done now; for, though in the weakness of the flesh, He knew, He was quite conscious, whence He came, and whither He went. But this humiliation was most glorious, that in which His saints see the full beams of the Sun of righteousness and glory of God, and the brighter because they shone and shine through the veil which did not, though it did, hide them; to them the veil of love. The glory of that Sun of righteousness was seen most sweetly when it was thus veiled and hidden. It could not have, nor has had, such reality as it had there; for with the very essence of humiliation it was the very embodying of the love and holiness and the bright and full glory of God. "It pleased that in him should all fulness dwell."

In the deep consciousness of the competency of His testimony (of which the knowledge of His Person gave in faith the warrant, yet which was true from Him as Man, yet had not of course been had He not been what He testified), He rests it on their law, appealing to that on which they rested, though paramount to it; that is, in testimony. There was the testimony of the Father to Him, but there was the independent (or it would have been useless), yet not distinct, of Himself. Here we have Him wonderfully equalised in competency of testimony with the Father, yet not wonderful to those who know Him; nor am I sure but that "men" might convey meaning. We have then the testimony by the union and His knowledge, we have it also in competency of testimony about Himself. The knowledge implied consciousness of this as the Christ, the Sent One. This gives independent though joint testimony, and His testimony must be true if so be that He were what He testified. Nor could He give testimony of what He was save being what He was, so as that the being it and the testimony are essentially and inseparably knit up together. He not only spoke and told them the truth, but He was the Truth, the reality of the things that He testified of. Nor was this less than that He was one with the Father, and came from Him. Hence, though the testimony was full and the responsibility complete, His testimony could be received only by revelation. "He that hath received his testimony, hath set to his seal that God is true." And, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven." But this, while it was the truth, was the subject of the testimony that Jesus was the Son of God. They at once believed Him and what He was, and Him because He was that; and yet that by His testimony, as also the Father's by Him. Hence the Lord says (for the knowledge of the Person is the truth of the testimony), "Ye neither know me nor my Father." Yet though this were the substance yet was it by testimony, and so the Spirit brought in. It is the Word made flesh, and glorified, and now speaking by the Spirit, that is to be believed. Also, "If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also." For this also is essential in the truth that He was the revelation of the Father. But He, and He alone, is the point in which He must be met. If they had known Him (this was the point of trial and faith), they should have seen all through to the Father; they would have known the Father at once. The full glory of the Godhead within itself, manifested to us, unveiled, revealed, and we brought into perception of it and communion also with it in office. Wonderful thought, vast and boundless and divine! My weary spirit finds its rest and strength and health and itself; by exceeding great and precious promises made partakers of the divine nature.

115 But our Lord revealing or stating and showing what He was, the world must needs kill Him. He was conscious of it. It was merely His hour was not yet come. Such was the enmity of man's mind against God. But the real history of this before God our Lord opens out, with the result as regards them, the resulting climax of what He was, and of their not receiving Him so in the time of His humiliation. "I go my way, and ye shall seek me"; that is, Messiah, the Son of God, "and shall die in your sins," for ye would not, and did not, see and receive Me, who was the Messiah, the very true Son of God; your state of sin characterised in your unbelief in Me and non-subjection, which consisted in not seeing the true God in Him, though He was manifested in the flesh, nor knowing Him, nor therefore His Father. "Where I go, there ye cannot come."

Our Lord does not mention His death, because He was speaking of Himself in His office, though introduced collaterally as that which took place in His Manhood, wherein also He so went, for it is the shining of His Person through all these circumstances which is now in hand, and discussed upon. The Jews felt here that the Lord had got out of the reach of their thoughts, but exhibited plainly at the same time that they were entirely confined to the present scene, and that they saw and could see nothing in Him beyond the Man that was before them. But our Lord could as to them. He opens another and a darker view; for they, while they sought to kill, were so overpassed by our Lord's statements as to reason upon their accomplishment by His killing Himself. There is a full opening out of the contrasted light and darkness in Himself and them: "Ye are from beneath; I am from above." "Ye are of this world" (it is the same thing); "I am not of this world." This was a very distinct assertion. It was of Himself, not His mission merely, but of Himself; it related to His Person; it was the point in question: "I am not of this world." Their thoughts therefore were distanced. He unfolds it: "Ye are from beneath; I am from above." The exhibition of this character was that in the presence and exhibition of Him who was from above they remained of this world; it was this non-perception of the light which left them in this hopeless state. "Therefore said I, that ye shall die in your sins," the non-perception of who He was, the non-reception of Him where He was. He would leave them in the accumulated sins of their unregenerate state. Had they believed, all would have been left where their unregenerate nature was left, gone.

116 The reality, truth, of our Lord's Person, the great point brought out in this chapter, and connected with the sureness and weight of His testimony, is brought out with great power and perspicuity in this expression of our Lord's: "that I am," that it is I; the consciousness of the essentiality of His Person, in which He gave witness not perceived by them, but adequately witnessed in and of and by Him; above all, in Him; but on the perception of which hung eternal life, and was eternal life; and not to perceive its blindness and sin, the sin of blindness. The Jews therefore ask, "Who art thou?" They announce their non-perception of this. Our Lord identifies it with His testimony: I am what I have spoken of; I do declare it; I speak it; My speech is it; that is, It is it speaketh; that is, I speak it to you; I speak from the beginning and am from the beginning the same thing; I am that original of truth which also I declare to you, and have at all times; the same that I have spoken to you from the beginning; I have just declared the same thing.

But you will observe it is the present tense, it is the identity of His Person in testimony He (the Lord) still speaketh of: I do speak forth My Person from the beginning, in its original essentiality of Person, effectuating the counsel which was the primary and constant end of the Trinity: "For it pleased that in him should all fulness dwell"; and here He was, and so speaking; therefore He had title to speak and to judge, for He now speaks from His Person, which entitled Him so to speak.

They were striving to judge because they could not discern Him. But He had many things to speak and to judge. But indeed, though He was this, He had now another office, testimony, and He must have Himself (and willingly in service to His Father in that work of love), not judging, but to be judged by the world outwardly. But He had not to speak of Himself, or bear witness indeed; be it that He spake not truth (that is, in character); but He that sent Him was true. This He must do, and what things He had heard of Him He spake to the world. He must leave them to exercise their own judgment. They might exercise it, but He had a commission to the world. This also He spake in the consciousness of His Person. He spake (as we have seen, in this character, and all through this gospel) in a wider scope (though being so sent in dispensation to them), to the world. He spake, as we have seen, in the consciousness of His Person (which we have seen also the point of this gospel) from Him that sent Him. This vagueness, so to speak (for it is most precise), is purposed. It was not from the Father to the world, for He could not speak as from the world's Father; but He was the Son, and He spoke from Him that sent Him; and He knew Him as the Father; so it is said, "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world." But He spake not merely from God; He was God, but He spake from Him who was the Father; and believers can so speak fully, for they know it, because they know the Son, whereby they know the Father; also they use full pangeesia, compare 1 John 4: 14.

117 They knew not (therefore they "crucified the Lord of glory") that He spoke to them of the Father. John knew, and so spake, therefore interpreting it by the Spirit to us. The Sonship, the Person, and the office as such (that is, as Son), that is, to the world (compare Isaiah 49: 5) are here all brought out in their connection (in mystery) very fully and plainly, with the understanding to the believer of that of which they (the Jews) to whom He was sent were ignorant, that it was the Father. But the point of testimony, the office of the Son so sent (we speak not of His death), is brought out in connection with His Person, which gave it its validity, which therefore became the point of perception, which they did not see, and which revealed of necessity also the Father. The manner in which this would be (the strange manner) opened out; the Lord now there, on their ignorance, to declare. But He begins with the first point, "that I am." The manner in which this would be shown was lifting up the Son of Man. Here we have the distinctness of the position in which He stood and was, and stood amongst them, but in the nature; that is, generically, the Son of Man. In this He was abstractly liable, and submitted, to their power. But when they (the Jews) had lifted up the Son of Man (this should be their office in it, the end doubly of their blindness, that is, in principle) they should know (this is a very deep and wondrous point, the development of His Person in His death) His Person, and that it was He. And nevertheless also nothing was done from Himself (if it had as Man before them they might have called it in question), it would not have been the witness of the "I am," He the Son so there. For the difference of the personality in the two natures is wonderfully, speaking after the manner of men, elaborately (for it is simple and clear in the Spirit) marked and brought before us in this chapter.

118 While as Son He had all title, yet all His title with man was His doing nothing from Himself, and in testimony to them speaking nothing but what the Father taught Him, nothing. But this was marvellous (to us), yet most true in Him. Oh, how silent should we be if we so spake! Yet He did it because He was Son, for otherwise He could not have revealed the Father, nay, nor spoken from Him.

How does this wonderful chapter, while in the perfect simplicity which it has in God, but incomprehensible in itself to man, yet while it tells all the truth, leaving it impossible to see it altogether in one view, because none could know it but One, yet meet, by the very necessity of the case, so that all the truth of it being in what might seem to man contradiction, meet every difficulty and every attempt of man to go beyond the truth, falling into the heresy of his own thoughts! For the point of His doing nothing alone, or from Himself, is the point that proves our Lord's Sonship, thus hanging His glory on His apparent humiliation. Had He done it from Himself it would have been merely a judgable man, or there could have been no Father. So surely does the truth, when known, prove itself, as it is incomprehensible to them that know it not.

We have the Son of Man, the Son sent of the Father, the "from myself," speaking in personality, yet having its truth in His Manhood, yet including also "taught me," again in Person, but also speaking in His Manhood, and "who sent me," again His Person, yet as Son. But we do but weaken it in attempting to evolve it, clearly expressed in the text and that in its relationship; that is, towards the world, and position towards the Jews. But the point is the Sonship: the manner of its display proved the humanity (the nature, the Son of Man) as it did also the riches of the love. His testimony also (for this He came) was perfect; this also was given as Man, though He learnt it as Son. "I speak the things which I have seen with my Father."

119 Further, though sent, and though the Son, He did not act in the energy of that power; for so He could not, properly speaking, have obeyed. That He learned in Man. But He that sent Him was with Him. He avowed this as the incontrovertible sanction to the world, to be proved in the day of His glory, as it was to the believer by His resurrection, seen perhaps indeed before, though not distinctly known, "marked out." He avowed His dependence, Jesus did, for now He declareth His Manhood: also, "He hath not left me alone." He, the Son, avoweth it, though He avoweth it of Himself as Man. Compare just in the Garden of Gethsemane. "He that sent me," saith He, the Son, "is with me; the Father hath not left me" (here conversant, putting My trust in Him, but yet Son in this world), "alone; because I do always the things that please him." A reward for His faithfulness as Man was His not being left by the Father.

How incomparably does it unite (affirm together, that is) and separate all the truth concerning our Lord! He spoke as the Son, or His testimony was worthless, and therefore "that I am"; yet as Man, or there could have been no question. He acted as Man, yet doing all things to please His Father, who left Him not alone, therefore, but was with Him as the Son, and the lowest humiliation of the Man making the greatest exaltation of the Son, and proving to the blind the very essentiality of His Sonship, as we have seen; the testimony made available as the Son's because He gave it not from Himself but from the Father. Men would set aside one of the two stated in these last verses. They are our Lord's summary of both, and His office and position as well, from "Who art thou?" We have it drawn out from the "They knew not," etc., "when ye shall have lifted up"; we have it definitely and explicitly stated, and incorporated with the manner of manifestation and the founding of recognition of Him as manifesting it in His Manhood. It is sure and intelligible and most blessed to faith. The point of all is seeing the Son. Some have erred in this, yea, and on either side. It is not His divinity but His Sonship that reveals it. Neither is it His not doing anything of Himself, unless also His Sonship be seen. This is the key to both. This He speaks of Himself as presented to the world (then to the Jews).

We have then hitherto (the Light of the world) the mission in Man, the Son of Man, and the order and scope of this as flowing from the Person here perfectly brought before us. But the specific character of that which we have seen is the Person of the Son in the Manhood, without marking (though intimately connected with and essential to it) His divinity. Also, on the other hand, the character of the darkness, that as it was of this world. Jesus was not of this world. So more definitely that was not merely character, though it was so, but more originally it was from beneath. He was from above. But our Lord pursues it now on their insolent rejection (as humbling them) of the boon, consequent on the maintenance of their convictions, much further, yea into its full recesses, the truth of what was manifested in Him and them; the humbleness, that is, the disinterestedness, of His assertion, disdaining all glory to Himself, and giving it to God; the simple evidence of that truth, that is, His association with God, even the Father, evinced in the ostensible truth of His always doing such things as pleased Him, as making Himself only a Servant, yet herein vindicating His connection with the Father. These things, thus stamped with truth in the character of their utterance, brought rational conviction to the minds of many who heard Him; for His word, we have seen, was the witness of His truth; and it was indeed His character, we know, in divinity, and so developed in Man; that is, it was a spoken as also a substituting and therefore acted word. But this was the effect of the manifestation by word: "Many believed on him."

120 Then the subsequent address takes up this character; it takes the word as the vital point of continuance. No other association would do. It was thus there was life, and they were His disciples, and they should be free, knowing the truth. They thought, though they might recognise Him, this was rather doing Him an honour, being recognised by Jews, that their association of Him to them, in whatever character it was, was the point of establishment and honour to Him. But the truth of His deity, and that alone, prevented this. Had He been anything else it would have been so. He in the consciousness of His Person and truth tells them that adherence to Him is the way of freedom; and the utmost honour of association He proposes is that they should be His disciples indeed. But His word implied His character and truth, involving also the moral necessity on their part; and this therefore He sets first. I say "consciousness of His Person and truth," and this rather in it simply, not addressively, save to them as men, but as embracing the scope of His thoughts, but as before manifested in His Manhood, so now formatively acquiring its title from His being God, antecedent, as we shall see (and in the power of this acting), to all their divinely instituted incorporation and root on which they rested: "Before Abraham was, I AM" (blessed be His name!).

121 There is another point of view in which we may look at this chapter. As Son of Man our Lord was to the world. They took on them the character of seed of Abraham. This therefore now came in to be solved, though indeed our Lord [was], as the apostle proves in Galatians, and we are, the seed of Abraham; though also "He takes hold of the seed of Abraham." Nevertheless here it is concerned in the question of Light of the world. Thus He was as Son of Man (speaking the glory of the Person of the Son), in this character, He claims affiance in Him for the truth which should make them free. They allege the seed of Abraham. Our Lord meets it, not by coincident claim, for indeed it was in rejection of Him that He became alone the Seed of Abraham before God, but in that in which they rejected Him, that which validated His claim to their incorporation into His word, His claim over them, that which made His word, His assumption, true and necessary: "Before Abraham was, I AM." Not simply "I AM," but validating the claiming word against their seedship: "Before Abraham was, I AM."

The assumption of our Lord was high, very high. "If ye continue in my word, then," what? "then are ye my disciples indeed," to take His word as all; and then the great consequent privilege to be, they should be His disciples indeed. But this was a great point indeed, for it supposed apprehension of the moral character of His mission, the witness, the substance, of God's truth; the truth; what God was. Indeed, in Him, by His word, God expressed the truth, the verification of the word, which the coming of the Son of Man, being Son of God, was, and went beyond dispensation, as entitled, being "I AM" before it. For Abraham is the root of all dispensation properly; that is, in connection with redemption, with the glory of the manhood which the Lord here shows. He was before, and thus gives the crowning truth on which it all hung: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

Let us pursue this; that is, these verses in order. And first we may remark that we have here the announcement from this very Person of Christ, the great moral principle of association, affranchisement with God. For affranchisement and association are one, and only perfect with God; and this associated with the primary root of God's character, of which the word of Christ was the expression. And therefore, "If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." Independence was rebellion, and not liberty, but servitude to sin. They separated Abraham from God, and attached him to themselves (they therefore were in this state); He, the Lord, to Himself, but righteously, for before Abraham was He was "I AM," and as to them, because as Son He appeared rightfully associating in power with the liberty of the house. The Sonship is still the point to see as regards the association with Deity; that is, in exercise, as well as with the Manhood, and none can see why who do not see it. It is the point of communion, and also of exercitial [exercisable?] authority.

122 This great and high assumption (for He addressed it to the Jews that believed on Him) of associating them with Him in order to their having freedom, resting it, as we have seen, on His word, they meet by the assertion that they were Abraham's seed, and never in bondage to any man. This, though an out-of-the-way assertion, taken in its broad character, yet associated with the liberty of their law, and their assumption of personal freedom, brought it just to that moral point, setting their association up against that moral freedom which the Lord presented, and which reached the world in the paramountness of God's character and purpose. How do you say, therefore they ask, ye shall be or become free? For they claimed liberty as Abraham's seed. Our Lord still followed the bearing of the great truth which He had set out with from the beginning, and which closed in affranchisement, association with God, the dispensation of that large association with Him which flowed from His moral character: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that committeth sin is the servant of sin." This is a broad, abstract, universal principle; he is not the free man of God. God's nature was the opposite, the estimate as light of what sin was (this the Lord manifested).

The law did not deliver them from this, and could not do it. Their association with Abraham was fleshly, and so suited to, had its scope through, the law. But this left them, as to association with God, still servants, and faulty servants, having no living place in the house, and indeed failing wholly upon the principle of association with Him in His moral character. As such, their tenure was mere matter of allowance, sufferance, to say it in the true but gentlest shape, and "for ever" was the only time when association was really shown: "The servant abideth not in the house" (here was question of God's house) "for ever; but the Son abideth ever." He still speaks ambiguously, that is; which was unintelligible to one who did not receive the train of thought, but revealing here to us. It is too direct to call it a parable, for the terms are identical, a direct new point in the progressive view which this is giving us of Him as the Light of the world, the Son, the Son as to the house, as in Hebrews, which shows its strong Jewish connection. Hence, "I have brought my son out of Egypt; for Israel is my son," etc. The Israel character of Christ is not sufficiently attended to. It was a most essential point, abstract indeed, but announcing most distinctly the Person when the force of the passage was received, a great advance upon what we have received before. We have had (as Man) the Father spoken of, and also "that I am," as Son of Man; but now we have it concentrated into the great truth, the Son; this established as a principle, and stated, but also indeed a truth concentrated in Person, which is the truth, because it was of God in Him. Hence Pilate: "What is truth?" and He, "I am the truth," etc.

123 From the detail in which He had been speaking of Himself we shall see the Lord again, as realising this to Himself thus announced, speaking in this character in further detail, and leading up as from the Manhood hither; from this to the essentiality of that nature in which He saith, "Before Abraham was, I AM." But this is concentrating in principle (if they could understand) all the elements of His character manifested as the Light into this great leading truth, the Son; and it was this Light in power, for "He shall make you free." First His intrinsic title (which they had not) in the house as abiding there ("the Son abideth ever"), but manifested in association with them; for here He speaketh to them, but so as to maintain His necessary place as such, for so only could God. As developed therefore He states it in principle, because they must submit to this; then the consequence of His freeing them therefore. He only had the inheritance-title from God; for they were servants, slaves. Before, "the truth shall make you free," but now He must assert further it was thus the light of the truth, came in it, was as in the moral character of God. They were made free in the truth, but this was concentrated, all concentrated in Him, and that in necessary administrative power from God: "The Son shall make you free." I say "necessary," not as we could judge it from deduction, but as He was the Word, and therefore the necessary witness of the truth of God in His Person, willingly so to us, so necessary in the glory; willingly in grace, that is, to us, and thus made known as the Son, and so having in God's house (though administratively, therefore He says, "My Father is greater than I") the necessary title of Son. So if the Son made them free they should be free indeed (in truth), for He was the truth of God, and also the Son. They knew it in Him, and were made necessarily (that is, morally and graciously, in the full honour of authority, necessary authority), free, brought into freedom with the Son abiding in the house for ever. It was boon to them.

124 The Lord yearns over them characteristically; nay, His ministry, His service, was to them (see Isaiah 49). But we shall see what they were; so the Lord states it. He had said "the Son"; now He begins to develop it in its action (when manifested in the flesh), "My Father." "I know that ye are Abraham's seed." The Lord recognises the dispensation, as always. But this did not alter the truth of moral character on which the whole depended, distinctly brought out in its cause, principle, and manifestation. "But ye seek to kill me," Me the Light, the Truth, because "my word" does not dwell in you. There was the great thing. The contrast was complete. He in testimony, His service; they in act, exercising their will in murder ("for the," etc.). "I speak the things which I have seen with my Father, and ye do the things which ye have seen with your father." Sad, as glorious, intimacy of association. But the Jews saw nothing beyond their present false associations. The devil, Satan, works (observe) by deceit, by unconsciousness. The power of present things is of the devil; the perception of them, of God. God is the revealer; Christ the instrument in Person, but that in testimony, and as the Word; the understanding, of His Spirit (being equal matter of revelation of the sense of it); for present things, as named, are known by known words; but in truth, by the knowledge of the things, of God's teaching, the understanding, if God's Spirit comes. (Note, this I think is marked in the Hebrew language.)

125 But there the Jews rested: Our father is Abraham. This was defensive. It was not, We are Abraham's seed. There was some pressure in their minds; their conscience as to pressure was affected so far as to be silenced a little, and set on defensive; for our Lord had brought out the fact of moral alienation, yet as so defensive it was a higher assumption. It was not Abraham's association with their assumed dignity before the Lord, but their association, correspondent association, with him as affecting the assertion, "Ye do that which ye have seen with your father." But it was defensive, and for themselves gave the inference (though hesitatingly) of their righteousness, still on the same ground generally.

Our Lord still holds to the moral, the divine, character of the association. He knew they were Abraham's seed; yea, He had spent His life towards them because they were. But if they had been Abraham's children they would have acted in Abraham's character, done Abraham's works. But now, instead of this, "Ye seek to kill me" (that is, there was the spirit of essential hostility, of murder, against the truth from God); "a man who have spoken to you the truth, which I have heard with God": "this did not Abraham." The essentiality of their opposing characters is very distinctly, with the power of nakedness of truth, brought out; that is, in giving the facts, the essentially characteristic facts.

But our Lord adds more: "Ye do the works of your father." He approacheth here on sadder and yet plainer grounds. The conversation of our Lord here is remarkable; guarded, that is, restrained, in expression, yet containing in terms of the utmost moral force, excluding all mixture of extraneous matter, the whole, real truth as regards them. Yet till they in blindness of moral apprehension in their now conscious weakness in justifying defence, pleading their dispensed privilege, as implying, in credit to themselves, moral title as against moral truth, allege it even up to their association with God, does our Lord bring out the real depth in open charge against them, because the contrary exposing truth must be revealed.

Let us learn a lesson from this; for the assertion of the force of evil, before the position of the evil is therein exposed in the light, may shock but cannot operate on the conscience, nor justify God against that soul. Yet all evil is really so. There was evil in the young man that Jesus loved, but He did not speak as here. Yet we are not less to qualify the evil, nor call it good. I speak here merely [of] how consciences are to be actually reached. They said unto Him, "We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God." How far can man deceive himself by dispensed privileges, and the legitimate succession of them, when the moral character of God is not brought before them! Yea, how, when morally corrupt, do these hide it from them, prevent their seeing its necessity!

126 The Lord brings them here (such is always the office of Christ in, as here often stated, His word) into full contrast, for He holds them both united, and therefore can. Man can use one against the other. Christ, then in testimony, once yet in power, shall bring them both together; always in Person, for He is the Word, and being made flesh has, the Son, the rightful inheritance in His own name, therein glorifying the Father. How strange the word, "I know that ye are Abraham's seed": "Ye are of your father the devil"! Power and civil establishment, civil and religious phases of the same thing, cannot be properly united with truth, save in Jesus. While this is not so, we are subject in testimony, yea, in testimony to both in this sense. The Spirit is given, it is given from the power in testimony of the truth, and in its power bears witness to both. This is the great thing which the world (and the Church, forgetful of its place) has in vain sought to solve. Christianity solves it perfectly. It can only solve it actually (till Jesus assume the power) by consenting to suffer; for till then both are not simply united, and may be all averse. Then Jesus will judge as well say, "When God arises." But Jesus united in Himself all rightful title (in that, concentrated in His Person, and as in the purpose of God, He was Abraham's Seed), and also did the truth. He was that One He came as, and He was Son of God, Heir in yet higher title; could say, "Before Abraham was, I AM."

Jesus yet puts it not on His title, but on God's; if they were children of God. "If God were your Father" (He speaks from the consciousness of what He was, for He, as well as it, was the truth), "ye would love me." He tests the moral connection of their hearts with God by the truth, that is, by Himself; yet taking no honour to Himself, but bringing them into the juxtaposition they had put themselves in: children of God if - then so, "for I came forth, and came from God" (this was one point); "for I have not come of myself"; no more than as a Man He spoke of Himself, but as He heard of the Father, as the Father gave Him commandment; so, "but he sent me." But the Jews had closed the evidence of what they were. The full contrast of their state had been brought out, fully brought out, and their blindness in capability of apprehension of the things. Our Lord therefore adds, "Why do ye not understand my speech," My expressions? "Even because ye cannot hear my word," the thing I speak.

127 Our Lord's words were but the echo of what He expressed and was as Word. His word was very plain; gently, but fully, morally, brought things into contrast. But they had no moral discernment. He therefore tells the broad truth. Satan blinds the minds of them that believe not, the god of this world. But they did not know what really "beneath" and "above" were, or they would not have misunderstood His meaning, and talking about His Father, and their father. For God had not yet been spoken of, till they asserted they were born of Him. "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye are willing to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because the truth was not in him."

This was a precise picture, and they "children," and in contrast with what He was who was the Truth. All the developed points of this reasoning are concentrated here; for as seed of Abraham and of God they had not abode in the truth, and because the point our Lord urges, and they sought to kill Him. When Christ spake He spake the truth, that which was indeed His own, but was also of the Father. But he, when he would speak a lie (abstractly, as we say the truth), he speaketh out of that which is his properly, out of his own goods or household. For He (our Lord) had right so to speak of him: he [the devil] is a liar, and from him it proceeds; he is the father of it.

A lie has no existence; it is the product of some storehouse, the proper fruit and vain progeny of someone so in character. The truth has, or it would not be truth; and Christ was it. They were a lie, not Abraham's seed, but the lie of it, not the truth. Christ was the Truth, therefore they were children of the devil; for this lie had no existence but as the progeny of him that was the father of lies, who spoke it; for when he would speak it he must speak it, and did, out of his own; he was the father (no word so correct) of it, being a liar. A liar is always the father of the lie. The argument is then strictly moral, as from the nature of a lie to their necessary childhood of Satan, which our Lord spoke in consciousness of truth. For indeed He was that in truth of which they assumed the place, denying Him while yet they had the responsibility, but abode not in the truth; for they were Abraham's seed. Nothing can be more complete than the depth of this moral conviction, while He spake it as the Truth, for He was the Truth; and His word and He, and therefore the truth of it, were one. The authority and the moral evidence went together. The to pseudos (falsehood) is abstract; the autou (of it) is necessary to the sense when the lie is spoken of as the born progeny of the lying person. So that the construction, though it seem obscure in general, is necessary to the sense. "But I, because I speak the truth, ye will not believe me." They did not believe it or Him, because it was, and He spoke, the truth; for the truth was not in them; it was the thing opposite to their judgment, to the truth of the lie which they were assuming themselves to be, and Him because He said He was of God, which was the only and saving truth. But therefore they did not believe Him. It was the cause why they should. Yet they could prove no sin against Him; and, if not, why not believe Him? Was He not speaking the truth? And therefore the truth, the connection of His being what He spoke, the Word of God, is the great force of all this argument as to the truth, etc.

128 The two great evidences of affiance and affinity to Satan were in these great essential points of moral evil in his character, points which uniformly run through Scripture, violence and deceit (or want of truth). He was a murderer, and abode not in the truth. They sought to kill Him; and because He told them the truth they would not believe Him. I say uniform character: "The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence." "He did no violence, neither was guile found in his mouth." And so elsewhere. But our Lord now dwells upon the truth in their hearing, not merely the truth (which is one point, and they could not convince Him, Jesus, of sin, and therefore ought to believe Him), but as alleging themselves children of God also. "He that is of God heareth God's words," recognises and receives, attends to [them], as such. "Ye therefore hear not, because ye are not of God." Our Lord knew this, for He knew His words were of God, or He would not be true at all. The authority and the truth were mixed (compare chapter 3: 33), and yet see how it is identified with His humanity: "For God giveth not the Spirit by measure," in the following verse.

129 Till we see the Son speaking by the Spirit in and through Jesus we can never understand this chapter, nor indeed that which is revealed of the Person and manifestation and revelation of our Lord; while indeed we shall never know Him fully, for "no man knoweth who the Son is but the Father"; it is His prerogative, and also the prerogative of the Son as such. He requires as real a manifestation to reveal Him as the Father, and who shall do that? The Spirit comes, given of Jesus to reveal what Jesus is; but the Godhead of the Son stands behind the glory of the Person of Immanuel. This, that is, Immanuel, it imports us to know, and this therefore is it that is revealed. This is all to us. We know the Man, the Son, standing there. This is the link to our souls. If we knew Him simply as the Son we should be as far off as ever. Not so of the Father, for we know Him as such, which is what we want, adequately, yea blessedly, revealed by the Son, even the Lord Jesus. But if we so knew the Son we should return back, so to speak, into the simple Godhead (which is impossible for us to do), and not in relationship of love, even as the Father to us. That we know in His becoming Man. Here then it is we know the Son, we know Jesus; here is His relationship of love to us, in His becoming a Man, to know. My point is to know that Jesus is the Son; yea, that Jesus died for me; not who the Son is. Here I have the Father's love, and Jesus' love, and the mystery of God, even, etc.

Now, in agency God always acts communicatively by the Spirit. It is the way of the Spirit's glory, in which He is known as God, and in which God is glorified. Therefore I do not doubt, nay, we are told so, that the Spirit spoke in Jesus; that is, God spake in the Man by the Spirit. But it was the Godhead of the Son that dwelt personally in Jesus, or He would not have spoken the Father's words by the Spirit as a Man. If we do not see these things (always darkly, through our weakness and imbecility) we separate what cannot be separated, the Trinity. That Jesus was the Son of God, that the Father dwelt in Him did the works, and that Jesus spake by the Spirit without measure, are alike necessary truth; and one part would not be true without the other, cannot be separated, and one proves all, rightly understood (compare, too, chapter 3: 13).

130 Our Lord's reason was prompt and conclusive: "Therefore ye hear not, because ye are not of God." This being what is spoken, it is the consciousness of God; that is, the truth of and from God against apparent authority. This was His honour, but it was not apparent. Theirs was; it was the character and ostentation of the thing from men; His the truth from God. Our Lord therefore is distinct in His moral charge, alleging on the other hand that they could not convince Him of sin, and that they were not of God for not hearing Him. The Jews take the external charge or reproach: "Say we not well" (when Thou sayest we are not of God, we Jews), "that thou art a Samaritan" (it proves that can be the only ground they argue from, the external title, He from the moral, internal one from God, the truth), "and hast a devil?" To say we are not of God, it was the part of a Samaritan as regarded their external dispensation; of a devil, they alleged, as regarded their relationship to God; to deny indeed all the Jewish privileges of old, sealed of God, and confessedly so, because while He owned them as such they would not hear Him. Yet so it was. Such is the question between the Church, so called, and those who in the Spirit hold the truth as it is in Jesus: in the saints imperfect; in Him most (yet not most, for there could be no degree) perfect. The Lord denied it simply as related to the point, any real point: "But I honour my Father," I vindicate Him from the false association to which you would bring Him, and manifest and declare and vindicate His true character; and ye do not see all this in Me, but "ye dishonour me." Ye falsely accuse Me, ye are lying against My honour and truth and glory, what I am. But this is no matter; I seek not Mine own glory (this could be forgiven); and if ye dishonour Me, and I do not seek Mine own glory, so that I must leave it there, there is One that seeketh and judgeth My glory and your falsehood against it.

Our Lord now approaches nearer to the source of that in which He thus stood as the Light of the world. As the Father had life in Himself, so had He given to the Son to have life in Himself; given because He had it in Him, as Jesus, as Man; and as such He spake it. The words that He spake were spirit and they were life. He spake (though as Man that He might suffer) fresh from God.

131 Now, in this He was directly associated with the Father. As the Word He had become Man, and therefore attributed nothing to Himself, but to the Father. But it was truth, truth of fidelity, which could come only from an equal to do so. It is the King's Majesty which alone can assume the subject title. It was "the life was the light of men," and the words that He spake (for He came in word), were spirit and life. In this He was associated with the Father in the power of eternal life.

Here therefore He saith, "If a man keep my saying," for He was leading them up to God, "he shall never see death." This word was the power of life to men. If kept, it was eternal life. The power of death was in the lie and in the power of Satan. But life was in Jesus. If we die we simply lose death in dying. There are deep enquiries into truth connected with this, which we do not follow here. But the assertion, though proposal of blessing to them, directly involved what Jesus was. They saw the Word merely externally, and the Man, and therefore the word was madness. No Abraham or prophet was on such ground. Beyond them they could not go; and in them merely what they were externally, and so saw nothing of God.

They thought they were now clearly justified in rejecting such a Man, however He might have troubled them. "Abraham is dead, and the prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself?" Jesus answered, "If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing." This was just, as being Man; but it was true as God, for it would have disowned the Deity were it so. The Father glorifies the Son; the Son glorifies the Father; the Spirit both; while yet it is in it alone we know the Godhead or God.

"It is my Father that glorifieth me; of whom ye say that he is your God: and ye have not known him." Here was the real truth of all, the solution of the great question. "But I have known him; and if I said, I know him not," if I should not own these great truths, then "I should be like you, a liar." All they were was a lie, from their father, the devil; assuming what they were not, and implying their association with God, which, while it was their false boast, was their lie. They said they knew Him. This was their lie. Their assertion of their association with God w the proof of their being of their father, the devil, being what they were. Jesus' saying He was of the Father was the truth of His Person and of His word. Their saying they were of Him as their God was the lie; and the character of the lie we have had before.

132 Our Lord must have owned it, or He could not be what He was, and stated Himself to be: "But I know him, and I keep his word"; true in Him, false in them. They belied their alleged origin. He did keep His Father's word; He was true. The keeping of His was eternal life. But He kept His Father's word; He was true: I am the very object of all the hopes of those you speak of, the truth, plan, in cause and effect, of all the system you falsify. It was "My day" that made the very Abraham you boast in glad, and he had faith in that which you are rejecting; he was the opposite of you. I was his glory; he delighted in it; his triumph was that he should see my day; and he saw it, and rejoiced; Messiah's day, the object of all the types, the very Israel of the Israel of God.

But the Jews were immersed, not in the truth of their system, but in the mere ignorance of acting on present appearances. This is a most deep, essential principle of error which one has to watch; not seeing God, and things according to the mind of God (which was exactly the thing in question), but the mind of man, and that in the things of God; and hence precisely the present state of the Church. It was the grand question between Jesus and the Jews, and the point in which Jesus has to be recognised, and in which faithfulness to Him rests, as in Him to His Father, to this extent.

"The Jews therefore said to Him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" They thought the sense of this the same, because they looked not beyond the outside; but, on man's ground, the Jews' reasoning was generally correct, but it was utterly, morally wrong, without conscience, therefore without God and that which God alone could teach. They now brought it to the point of the mere Manhood of Christ, the point of their darkness. Our Lord, as the Truth, could but give the light: "Before Abraham was"; ye see not who I am, ye know not My existence, My Being, know ye not Me: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I AM."

133 The great truth was told, the essential, the vital, eternal truth, on which all hung, without which there could be no truth, nor any coming unto man, nor bringing man back in redemption to God. For how could he be restored by that which was not? And that was true of everything, save One. Should dust be a redeemer? Yet out of dust he was to be redeemed.

The great truth was declared. Lie there could be none against it. The necessity of the existence of the Saviour assumed the nothingness of all else, could be denied only by violence, not falsified. That a man should say this was blasphemy; and they took up, in their zeal for God, rejecting Him manifested, they took up stones to stone Him. But the time of their iniquity was not yet come, and Jesus was hid. His time was not come, and He went out of the temple.

But what circumstances! and with whom discussed! and what a truth! Do we believe it? Do we, I say, believe it, that Jesus (a Man even as we are, save sin) was I AM? All is told, if we believe Him thus dead and alive again; for therein is the redemption. Through this must He pass.

Is it true? Most simply true, the centre (wondrous! wondrous! to us) of all the manifestation of God, and rightly in its glory, to chosen sinners; lovely in its blessing to all sinners; deep, therefore essential; necessary, in its condemnation, to blind rejecting sinners: God manifest in the flesh! "Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness; God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached to the Gentiles" (so here), "believed on in the world," yet more wondrous still, "received up into glory." Marvellous in its character! This, as to the essential truth, He was; I AM.

Then, as to the dispensation, the thing thus revealed, or rather discussed with the Jews, the subject of the chapter which we have been reading, this deep, most deep chapter, we have seen how the Lord is traced as Light of the world; as Son of Man lifted up; all through as the Son in the power of life, in Person as Son, to this great revelation of I AM; Son of Man to the world, and yet Son of God; and as Son of God the real truth and fulfiller of all Jewish hopes, as the basis of all common promises; and this as, and by, the Word. This is the essential characteristic. I know of nothing that has ever astounded my mind as this revelation of I AM, or the real thought that Jesus could say, "I AM"; the connection of these (to man) inconnectible possibilities, and the wonderful concatenation in which all the dispensations of God are wrought out or fulfilled in it, while yet He remains truly God; and yet could say therein, "the Son of Man who is in heaven."

134 And how manifest it is that nothing but the gift of faith could ever in a single tittle understand or know the truth in the Person of Jesus! while yet, by the perfection of its manifestation in the flesh, every soul was put under utter responsibility of rejecting it as the true word of God, even God in love. But the broad and penetrating fact, "I AM," the all-embracing word, the everything in it, it must at once close all controversy. We must be opposers, or bow before the throne of God. We must stand in awe of Jesus. Well may He say, "Kiss the Son."

Oh! Jesus, Jesus, what sort of subjection is this we ought to have to Thee? We have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now our eye seeth Thee, we abhor ourselves indeed. Oh! can it be true? Can we see this in Jesus? Have we seen it? None can see it out of Him. It is the truth only in Him. Surely we should move mountains if we believed this. Yet is it simple truth. Dwell on it, my soul! Jesus, that thou knowest, that Stranger in the world among His own, was "I AM." Hast thou believed it? Yet thou now wilt believe it. But thou knowest Jesus. Henceforth let me be dead to all but this. I do indeed stand incapable of utterance; I do read with Jesus, talk [with], and watch Jesus in His ways, a Servant, and behold He, even He, is "I AM," with whom I am, whose ways I judge, whose grace I adore. Oh! it is the union of these two things, the Man, the rejected Man by the world, Him whom I look at now with perfect sympathy. Behold! it is the presence of God. Oh! how low it lays men's thoughts, experiences, judgments, notions! The perfection of God stood there, God rejected of men. What can meet or have a place along with this? Let this be my experience. Glory be to God Most High. Amen.

Yet to me it is Jesus. In truth it is "I AM." Here I rest; here I dwell; to this I return; this is all in all. I can only be silent, yet would speak what no tongue can utter, and no thought can think, before it. This we shall learn for ever, grow in for ever [yet shall it] grow more beyond us for ever; for here is God revealed in His essential name, His name of existence, His own name, God revealed in Man, in Jesus. I know Him, I am familiar with Jesus, at home with God, honouring the Father in Him, and Him as one with, and with, the Father; delighting to do it. But I say, Do we believe it?

I do believe it all; yet I believe nothing; I am as nothing in the thought of it, yet alive for evermore by it. Blessed be God and His name! And all shall praise Him so. Yea, Jesus! Jesus! God Most High, so shall it be. Oh, Jesus! Jesus! Thou art "I AM," Thou art "I AM." Yet didst Thou, did "I AM," take little children in His arms! Yea, didst Thou suffer, die, and be in the horrible pit; yea, for our sins! Thus I know the mercy-seat. I know that there is no imputing sins here; yea, that it is God not imputing, that I am reconciled to God; yea, rather, that God is the reconciling One. I am therefore at home with God; and all that is in Jesus is God's manner to us.

135 I know not that I have at all drawn out the things which are opened to us in this chapter. It is the word of testimony to what Jesus is, the Son, to what they that oppose Him are; reluctantly drawn out from the lips of Jesus as necessary to the truth; the restrainedness, yet therefore perfect faithfulness, of testimony, the power of the real Sonship, and mind of God (contrasted with the form) in power in this world; the witness in sackcloth; the word as the word of testimony, the truth of God; not in judgment; and meeting the world in its glory, with the form most subtle to reject the truth, even the dispensations in which it had been externally administered without the power. Simplicity alone hath wisdom. Remember this. It is the truth now. The word of God is our duty, the acting on the word; the belief of the word is our distinctive salvation. The world shall know its truth when it comes to pass. Yet, saith He, I will make thee dumb before them; and we must be content with this often; yea, see the good of it; yet be faithful, and if faithful the Lord shall open our mouth before them, and they shall know the truth of it, though they know it not as truth, that the Lord hath spoken.

_______

There is further to remark on John 8, although the Lord refers to whence He came, and whither He went, to characterise fully the position and place of which He was witness on earth (and both were necessary to this, for He took man's place in it as going back). Yet after this, when speaking of His witness, He only refers to His coming from heaven, because He is the Word, and speaks the word of truth, and as such He comes from heaven. His connection with the Father is orderly brought out (vv. 16-18): "The Father that sent me." If He judged (which He did not, but only witnessed, though His words were the same as the judgment), He judged just because He and His Father were there; but then as witness He is sent (His Father's was distinct); His words ever the expression of His very nature (that is the true sense of verse 25). He had heard them from His Father (vv. 26, 28) that the Father was with Him here; for He always did what pleased Him. But it was not only what He had heard of the Father, but what He had seen with Him. Thus He passes plainly to their true nature and paternity, while He honours the Father, and the Father honours Him; and He is "I AM." This blessed truth could be met only by enmity by those who there spoke with Him.

136 Further, remark that legalised men, even natural conscience, can judge the outward sin. This is what is brought before us here, but as the divine life in man would always feel what the world was, so Christ, in whom that divine life was, made the opposite clearly manifest. He gives first by the divine presence what is called its spirituality to the law. As an outward system it was an arrangement to bring to light if flesh could be associated with God. But it contained the germ of what creation ought to be. The divine presence gives power to this in the conscience, sanctions the judgment of evil, but makes all evil to be judged in the conscience, but judges now no man.

But then, if God be thus manifested, He is not to set up the mere claim of His law on conscience. Being love, and the source of blessing, He could not merely do this; but He is the light of life. This, as we have seen, begins verse 12, and the word and witness of Christ as divine and heavenly comes out, giving the light of life, according to the place He came from and went to. Then we have, as accessories, slavery to sin and slavery to the law; the same thing, man being in flesh. This could not stay in the house; that is, in relationship with God. But truth and the Son would make free. The other point is that, though Abraham's seed according to the flesh, they were not Abraham's children. These accessory points bring the Lord, as He had first spoken of the direct source of blessing, to tell them plainly what they were.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47009E> 137

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 9

Our Lord had spoken of Himself as the Light of the world, and the general results. Here we have the specific results on one blind from his birth. There we had it in simple testimony rejected; here in power of work. The veil is off the glory in Christ in testimony; so to all. It is on the heart, so that, save the power of the Spirit taking it off, revealing it still remains unseen. In the former chapter we have had the word, here the work, of Christ and the manner of the revealing.

The blindness from birth is too significant to need comment, but the Lord in the Remnant regarded it as no sin to be reckoned, nor as matter of sin reckoned, but as occasion of grace. This is the position in which (sovereign) grace views it. It was not judgment, "that." But as the fact were not so it was "that . . . should be manifested." This was the resulting point; then the exercise of power: "That the works of God should be made manifest in him." The light shone, yea, to all; but it was in darkness men hated the light; but the work was in him definite and effectual; grace that regarded its condition, and knew no cause but itself, as it were, and the fruits it was to produce, "that . . . should be manifested." This was the end, the sovereign acting of grace coming in, in the most helpless, when the sight of the world had rejected the Light of the world.

And here comes the distinctive character of Christ. He must needs do this; though He had been rejected by the world, still He must needs work the works of Him that sent Him, though He might have turned aside on the rejection of the world. The work of grace, as it were, all remained. Then in its place it began to work, the real work began to show itself, the work of God in despite of the rejection of seeing man. Christ was a Servant in this work. Though the Light of the world, He did it as the Servant of the Father. He must needs work, but He must needs work while it is day. The day is the time of the presence of the light. But while Christ was in the world He was its Light. The night is His absence. We are not of the night, but of the day; but as being dead to the estate of Christ's absence, and believing in the light, having the light of life. The night is far spent, the day is at hand, says the apostle. This, however, had its direct application to the Jews, with whom He was concerned in Person, yet so as that therein, as the apostle ever carefully by the Spirit presents Him, as we have seen, He was the Light of the world. But this was an additional truth, and must be realised simply because of His Sonship, and because in Person He was paramount to the Jews, though subject in grace to the dispensations of God, and herein a Minister of the circumcision for the truth of God. Not that this was of Moses, but of the fathers. Yet this subjection was the order of the ministration. But Christ's rejection was total night to them. We may, or they individually might, by the Spirit see Him by faith, and have the light of life. But the dim light of the law had ceased as to them in the rejection of Messiah, the end of the Law, and they were in pitch night, having neither law nor Messiah, yet in responsibility in its highest estate. The world had rejected the Messiah, and though (the Light shining in darkness) He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, yet the world knew Him not. While He was in it He was the Light of it; and when He is in the world He must necessarily be the Light of it, though the glory of the Lord may rise upon Zion, and so it is the Lord's day. Nor till He be thus in the world in Zion will it be the day of the Lord, but then being that the glory is manifested it must be, so to speak, universal in the world, though its zenith may be in one spot; in it, however, in zenith, to one spot. Yet this only in dispensation; for it is in a higher character that He is the Light of the world. So that individually in respect of that higher glory it may be more felt and estimated by one far off than one near, though enjoying all its actual beams.

138 There is another remark which we may make, here. This chapter is not merely the contrast between the light as such, the public manifestation of which does but make the darkness more elaborately, manifestly dark (as sin, by the Law appearing sin, was exceeding sinful), and the work of Christ enlightening, causing to see, the light; but that also the seeing the effects of this did not influence those whose eyes were not opened to see the light itself. They remained closed to the evidence of the work of power giving light. As to the word which shone with the light in evidence of a similar case of truth, see Luke 8: 27, and the following verses. A comparison of chapter 11: 9, 10, shows how much the Person of Jesus is concerned in this statement (vv. 4, 5), and shows how it leads us up to God. The comparison of the passages is full of deep instruction on this point. Nor is there any passage in which the Person of Jesus is more involved than in verses 4, 5. For while it was true only as Man, yet was true only also from His union with the Father in His divine nature. In a word, it could be spoken only, as to this, as the Son. The service of the Lord, and yet His being Himself the Light, are distinctly and eminently brought forward, and this in the unity of His Person. The work which He worked was the exercise of divine power. The position of the manifestation which He held was one liable to be extinguished, one of service, and one of which He bore testimony. Through this very liability, and its actual result, "the night cometh." Such is the perfectness of this divine union. A service which, while it was all His glory, the very essential character of God was in Him, and by His grace to be exercised as their essential state by the Church; that is, the apostles, etc.: "Ye are the light of the world."

139 It appears to me that in verses 6 and 7 we have that which is typical of the actual human nature of our Lord, and the knowledge by the power of the Holy Spirit that He was the Sent of God. What the work, then, of the opening of the eyes is, as contrasted with the coming of the Light, is manifest. First, presenting Him to the eye in the flesh, and the discovering Him to be the Son of God come in it ("Heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me"), the mission and the Person being identified in the discovery, for "the Father sent the Son." But the order of its acquisition is knowing the mission. The Holy Ghost sent is the witness of this to us. The result, however, was total and apparent change, so as to make doubt of the identity of his person; a change as assured in himself as it might be reasoned upon by unwilling speculatists. He knew he was the same, and he knew therefore he was changed.

They enquire the manner in which his eyes were opened. His answer shows to what extent he knew Jesus: "A man that is called Jesus." His account gives the full synoptical account of the moral opening by which we see things as they are; for the Spirit without the flesh of Jesus could not show us how things are, for we had not learnt death, nor what it was, but by Jesus's flesh; yet neither had we learnt it but by knowing He was the Son of God. Also these two things constitute all knowledge conferred on us by the sending of the Spirit as established in the resurrection and ascension of the Lord, the Son of Man. But as to his own progress in this he knew this only, the fact of the opening of his eyes by Jesus; and the conclusion he had to draw from this, as to the power in or permitted to Jesus, he was led by the operation of this to believe His word as from God.

140 This was the point which we saw rejected in the former chapter. The exercise of the work of grace results primarily in reception of His word. He knew in this sense He was from God. So the Jews in reply rest in fact on the denial of this: "We know that God spoke by Moses; as for this fellow, we know not whence he is."

This was the differential point of faith; this was the work from the outset; acting on the word of Jesus was its primary form, which is its primary work; that is, in grace and theme, having, in opened eyes, the full conviction of the power in which He came and spake, even of God; hence taking His word as God's, conclusive, knowing Him as a Prophet. So the woman of Samaria, then differently intended. Thus far Jesus was revealed to this man, to the crowd (not the Pharisees), distinguished as we have seen before.

This gave occasion of enquiry and curiosity. But it was the revelation of grace which is here distinguished. The man could lead them no farther. Hence they lead him to the Pharisees, whose different state we have seen before, wherein we have the contrast of regard for external ritual and renewal in knowledge after the image of Him that created him. A blind Pharisee that sees things as they are outwardly is an easy thing to make; seeing indeed, but with the eyes of the enemy, and therefore perverting all things. The difficulty, however, was obvious, for the miracle was plain.

The Pharisees repeated the question, and the answer was briefly, but bearing the whole truth, repeated. It was brought in its moral force, with the recognition of His Person by the multitude, to the wise Pharisees; as before [to] the unlettered, but therefore less darkened, multitude. We may observe the simple fact is mentioned here, for in discussing it the question of the Siloam, as it were, is not yet entered on. It was the fact, the work; this was before them; not the understanding of the mystery now before us: "He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and do see." The external worship of God seems but to blind those who have not the power of grace. But the fact pressed them, and they recur to the judgment of the man. Hence we have brought out in its detail the workings of unbelief of the natural mind judging about Christ, conscious that those to whom they were tied had agreed to reject Him as inconsistent with their system. But natural convictions pressing hard on such are open evidence of divine power; and unwilling that this should be without them, rather than have the credit of it for themselves, as feeling as they must its credit, yea, seeing it with the people, they seek to find some loop-hole in the account of the man himself, leaving it open to him entirely.

141 During the development of all this the Lord stands by; the work, indeed, being real and His in the man, but left to its results, and apparently without support in the trial and manifestation of what is real. In the man's testimony we have the distinct evidence of the progress of his soul, or of the divine work upon it, in knowledge: "He is a prophet." The work is in the believer, and he knows it; but the evidence of the work in another is alike ineffectual as the word, though it be the evidence of the power of that word. "If I had not come" (that is, in the flesh), "and spoken unto them" (in which however His words were not His own in the flesh but His Father's, who says He doeth the works), "they had not had sin; but now they have no cloke for their sin." For this adequately exposed it to their consciences. "If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father." As it is said therefore here, for this chapter is on the works, not the word simply, and brought before them in the evidence of the object of it: "Since the world began was it not heard that any one opened the eyes of one that was born blind."

So all this discussion was just to bring out the evidence of the work in its full external force; and all the reasonings of men upon the subject did but bring this out more. The evidence was applied to their judgment, responsible human judgment, and this was in exercise in their reasoning, bringing their responsibility into direct, wilful exercise. They would have sought (for unbelief is long uneasy, though it dislike to receive the thing to be believed) to have found refuge for it in the fact possibly not being true of his previous state. The parents set aside all ground for their doubt in unequivocal testimony, while they leave their unbelief to work itself out. It was indeed, they knew, settled; they had agreed beforehand. But it was thrown upon this: their unbelief was left without excuse (an important point) on the ground on which they rested, to which they had been reduced, wholly without excuse. They were thrown upon the judgment of him who was healed, if they would have any. In a word, they had nothing more to say. They had confessed the miracle and work, if he were so born blind. It appeared on the testimony they had looked to that he was. How it came about they might ask the subject of it.

142 But the point of unbelief was now complete. They recognised the miracle, while they denied it in the enquiry of the parents. This is the point to which we have him here point, the miracle elaborately ascertained to unbelief, exhibiting deliberate determination to reject Jesus in rejecting him on whom the work was wrought, because he owned Him, as His disciple. The work of the Lord, its effect on the people, the manifestation of unbelief connected with self-righteousness on the presenting, in the subject of it, the full effect in perception of His power, but so as not to give offence even to them, assorted to their prejudices: "He is a prophet." Then the acting of this unbelief manifested, and of Jesus on the other hand, as to this same individual. "They called the man" (they would act forth on this blindness of seeing unbelief), "the second time who was blind, and said, Give God the praise" (a great miracle has indeed been done, they knew he must feel it; at any rate, they were too prudent to resist this, but would bring in their authority to bury the manner); "we know" (you indeed see the miracle, but we, who have larger, fuller means of judging, for the pronoun is inserted), "we know that this man," we know Him, He "is a sinner." I, says the poor man, do not know that; that certainly is a knowledge I have not got; but one thing I do know (there was the consciousness of the real possession of a substantial truth, the experience of the power in his own person): being blind I now see.

This baffled the Jews. They say, What did He do? They recognise the miracle, but enquire the manner how. But the point was the exercise of power that faith discerned. It was the one thing the poor man knew. He had told them indeed the manner before; but the thing his mind rested on was the manifest effect of power; he was blind, and saw experimental effect. As to this point the manner was immaterial, quite immaterial when they owned the power. It was the imbecility of unbelief; he felt it was. I told you, said the poor man, and then (when it was to the purpose as the object of interest and news for faith) ye did not hear; are ye in earnest in what ye say? Why do ye want to hear again, as ye see the miracle? Do ye wish to become His disciples? It was forcing them to the real point of their unbelief; a just reproach.

143 It is remarkable, too, how they rest in their existing knowledge; he on the evidence, present evidence, of God in the thing. Yet observe that their unbelief might be without excuse on the commonest reasoning on their own principles, Jewish principles. Their unbelief was in separating God and Jesus. This was wilful, on the evidence. The resting on old principles merely, or old teaching, though right so as to be its disciples merely, where new power is exhibited, is the form of unbelief: "Thou art his disciple; we are Moses' disciples"; though if they had received what God did say by Moses, instead of merely the credit of the association, they would have believed in Jesus as the Christ, for he spake of Him; but the discipleship in credit of the association is unbelief, the rejection of God, then as now, as the Lord before. It hangs, too, as it ever does after all, in their knowledge or authority; therefore, "We know that God spake to Moses" ("we know that this Man is a sinner"). As generally received as an honour it required no faith to own this. "As to this Man, we know not whence he is." There was exactly the point of faith. It was the full confession of their own utter ignorance in the whole vital point of the whole question, but accepting themselves, the point they set out from, a full reason for rejecting Him; yet still in condemnation, for if they knew not whence, it might be after all from God; for their knowledge that He was a sinner had no real place in their consciences. It was the full confession of their ignorance on the subject, their own condemnation; but, I say, accepting themselves a just ground to their mind for rejecting Him.

But the man had a ground to rest on their unbelief deprives them of. He meets them on the point of their knowledge or ignorance by the certainty of the fact on their own principles. The plain reasoning of faith is most sure and conclusive. It is the work of God to give the faith, but faith sees on God's principles the full force of the moral reasoning of God's acts which unbelief sees not, though fully responsible for; for while faith recognises grace exclusively to itself, it vindicates the evidence of God in that act of grace incontrovertibly, and makes the rejection of Jesus not merely the rejection of grace, though it is so, but the rejection of that very perfect righteousness which it assumingly requires, and that in reality and not in form. The point brought their unbelief clearly to the poor man's mind, making their authority though painful yet immaterial, for it is the rejection of their unbelief: "Herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not whence he is, and yet" (which they acknowledge as a fact) "he hath opened mine eyes." And then, while their not drawing the conclusion was their condemnation, he reasons on their own acknowledged principles, turns Jew with them: "We know that God heareth not sinners," etc. We know these principles. Here is a miracle without parallel, a great work. "If this man were not of God," for the conclusions of faith are positive, "He could do nothing."

144 Answer they could give none, but seal their own condemnation; they were rejecting, not the man, but the counsel of God against themselves, the work of God, the evidence of His word and its power. It was still upon the pride of knowledge, though in the act of ignorance: "Dost thou teach us?" He was not born in sin, but that grace should be shown in him, the works of God should be manifested. They were utterly ignorant of the whole order of God's counsels in grace. But further, if he had been born in sins, the sovereignty and power of that work of grace was only the more conspicuous, and their condemnation the greater. The rejection of a work of grace is darkness as to the only character of God which can rescue us, and at the same time of the fullest evidence. It is in some sort more than evidence of the operation and truth of that. It is, looked at in this light, as left on this ground, a hopeless case

After the evidence of the development of the workings of unbelief in presence of the manifested work of God by Jesus, and their summary turning out by selfishness (though recognising the work, for he was there before them with the power of the work recognised in him, faith shown as flowing from the work in the man, not before him, though that showed perfect responsibility), we have Jesus acting His receptive part, not on the multitude, the Jews, but on these even by their unbelief showing itself on the manifestation of the power of His voice in them. Cast out, it was the leading forth of the sheep, as therein by power of grace distinguished from the mass. It has been a bringing, through testimony to all, and the manifestation of the work of power in some, through and out of the apostasy of the body, brought into manifestation by that testimony and work, and therefore whose form was in respect of it. But this is the case of positive reception of one (of the sheep) out of that which formally claimed the righteousness of God by Him who really was it, their apostasy being exhibited in the rejection. Yet the follower of Jesus was right, independent of the rejection, though there were [those] who were left to be rejected for the faith of Jesus, through His power manifested in them, that the apostasy might be manifested. "Jesus heard that they had cast him out." He did not act till the full manifestation of his faith and their unbelief had been drawn out, and therein their apostasy and his being of the sheep; for he was placed in a very trying position, yet the simplicity of faith made it easy. And finding him He said, "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" Here was the point of saving, vivifying recognition, that in which he was instituted a disciple within the kingdom, associated formally with the life-giving power, brought into unison with that in which the inheritance was.

145 Perhaps the expression "vivifying recognition" might mislead. The truth is, up to this point the whole had been upon Jewish grounds. It was a sheep drawing out of the Jewish fold, owning Him when the body rejected Him, and so being brought to Him as having those greater and not derivative privileges which He had as Son of God, of which as we have seen this gospel of John is the testimony. Hence the confession of the poor man was, "A man that is called Jesus made clay," etc., "and I see." "What sayest thou of him?" "He is a prophet." Thus he had owned His work as a Jew, and the Jews rejected Him in the way in which He was appropriated to them, and so reveals Himself to the man cast out for so recognising Him, in the power of that character in which He was to gather into His glory, into association with Him, those who should believe on Him, whether Jew or Gentile, but identifying himself definitely with Him whom he had seen and who was then talking with him. The very rejection of the Jews, by dislocating his associations from the forms in which Messiah was previously to appear, set him on the readiness of enquiry to a new object; not object, but association and form, order, of faith: "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" The door of faith was opened in his heart by trust in the word of Jesus; and the abstract object being presented, the character and power with which he was to be associated, the recompense, so to speak, of his exclusion, his enquiry, from Him whose word he had learned to trust by the work wrought in him, is, "Who is he, Lord, that I may?" Then comes what is universally the great point, the Siloam point, the recognition of Him as come whose power we have known, whose interference we have known, whom we have felt delivering us, that this Person is the Son of God. There was full recognition of the authority of Jesus. The point was his identity with the Saving Man. So Paul: "Who art thou, Lord?" "I am Jesus." The glory was plain. He calls Him Lord, seeing His glory. The Lord's answer is, "I am Jesus." So here: "Who is the Son, Lord?" "Thou hast both seen him, and he it is that speaketh with thee." The identity was the great point of comfort. He found, in Him on whose authority he had been turned out of the synagogue, the very Son of God, on whom all his hopes should be set, the new and glorious character he was to find. Oh, happy hour which has revealed the glory of that Son setting us in the place of sons, and finding that it was Jesus that had cared for, considered, and been the Servant of our sorrows, through whom we had first found our sight, the Servant of God!

146 But it was acting faithfully on his light (from God), in spite of the world, that he found the blessing, this full resting-place of blessing. And he said, "I believe, Lord." Here then is the point of belief Till we know the Sonship in the Person of Jesus it is, "Who is he, Lord?" Then this is He, one with you. The Sonship in Jesus is the point, the meeting-point of faith: "And he worshipped him." Nothing can be more simple or beautiful than this development of faith, and the record of our Lord's labours in thus saving the Remnant who did not deny His name. The whole scene is most instructive. The comparison of Matthew 11 with this is evident. The comment of our Lord needs no comment. Only practically we may remark that responsibility rests on the assumption of knowledge, the pretension to Church position. Whoever holds this says, We see, and is responsible for the rejection of that which is of God.

But God had this in His own keeping. They rejected, indeed, to their own judgment. But, though this were so, God had a way of His own, a Porter of His own, a place of His own. What they were rejecting was, not Christ, but themselves.

147 The Lord (what follows is addressed to them, to show them they were not rejecting Him but sealing their own judgment, not those who turned the man out, but still the Pharisees as a set of people) opens out to them this in the passage which follows, the whole process of His service (compare Isaiah 49). This we will follow, God's resulting place for this whole matter, and solemn account to those sheep-rejecting, yea, but Christ - and therefore self-rejecting Pharisees. It was the secret of their state, and awful, most awful word to them, specially as seeing the unfolding of the truth: "For judgment am I come," the result of "I came not to judge."

_______

Chapter 7 is the proposal to show Himself to the world, and the gift of the Spirit (the great boon on the Lord's departure) being necessarily connected with His disconnection with the Jews has its proper sphere in the world. Jesus was the Passover. The Spirit, though revealing the glory, was in a certain sense instead of Him as a Comforter to His people, and dealing with the world. The same thing in a measure applies to chapters 8 and 9, one being contrast with the law; the other, removal of natural blindness; though it was found really none was blind like His Servant. The strictest Jew was blind, though he said he saw; so that his sin remained. A Jew's eyes, of course, would be opened; but it was, as a sinner, blind.

_______

The sin of rejection in word and work in John 8 and 9 has been noted elsewhere. But there is more. In chapter 8 we have simply light (Christ) in the world; God Himself, who is light; the Light of the world; but, as the Lord said, the darkness comprehended it not. It is simple darkness, but showing itself in hatred against the truth. In chapter 9 we have the contrast of a rejected Christ, looking, though in it, to His going out of it "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world"; but the action of the Spirit and word on the closed heart in showing truth first (a Prophet), and then the Son of God in the lowly Man who, to nature, was but clay upon the eyes, is given in chapter 9; and though souls were thus given to see, as in the case here, yet the operation of the Spirit of God leading to own Him as the Sent One is clearly intimated; and that was consequent on His rejection. I add here that the Church was set in a different position. Christ was the Light of the world, but still known as the Sent One from the Father. All was blindness. He was clay upon blind eyes But when the disciples were, when the light of the world, to be as a city set upon a hill (as the Lord says, what He had spoken in the ear they were to proclaim upon the house-tops), the Holy Spirit was not receivable in the world as the Son ought to have been received, but the effect of His presence was public. It was not a dove, but tongues of fire. Christ's voice was not lifted up in the streets; only gentleness in His personal work till He sends forth judgment; but in the testimony about Him, Wisdom was to lift up her voice in the streets, and cry aloud. "We cannot but speak," say the apostles.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47010E> 148

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 10

In fact, the tenth chapter of John should begin at the thirty-ninth verse of chapter 9. This is the connecting clause with the matter which we have been considering in the ninth; and verse I begins His exposition of the general truth or principle addressed to these Pharisees: "Verily, verily, I say unto you." It was addressed specifically to them, and began relative to the Jews, His assertion that He had entered in exactly according to the ordinance of God. The testimony to all had been given He had not shunned to declare God's righteousness in the great congregation; that is, the whole assembly of the Jews; as He says, "O Lord, thou knowest." The evidence had been given by the works, many good works, He had fulfilled; in a word, every witness of His mission and Person from God (as indeed His unity with the Father) had been rejected generally, now specifically. They had (saw that, had cognisance intelligently in their own estimation of these things) refused the evidence. But His real comfort in doing His Father's will remained. He had entered in by the door. He was the Shepherd of the sheep. But He opens this out in all its bearings most beautifully, as filling up the required ground, prescribed ground, of entrance, so as to be recognised by the Porter, the sovereignty of God by the Spirit, and being also the door out into the real fold. This was the most terrible word to them. The entrance in of the sheep or others (Gentiles) was not unto them the aulee (fold); but He rejected was the door for the sheep out of that into the poimnee (flock), the real fold.

149  - 1. Note, the former part of this gospel clearly displays that on our Lord's first coming His object was to save and not to judge; and therefore as to the world it is only the call of the gospel. As it is written: I came not to judge the world, but that the world through Me might be saved. And again, What have I to do to judge them that are without? Them that are without God judgeth.

But real believers erring from the path of faith God judges here, that they may not be condemned with the world. Further, as to the visible Church the evil is ever mingled with the good; as our Lord prophetically wills: Let both grow together until harvest. [That was the world, not the Church.] They therefore grievously err who propose to separate the elect in a visible Church, and act independently of the Lord's will, therefore in fact in disobedience; which therefore, so far from being a just judgment, is the object of judgment itself. In truth I can suppose nothing more contrary to the will of God as displayed in this and other scriptures. [True as to the elect; but, while the Lord knows His own, we are to judge them that are within: "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity."] In result, however, it is in its operation separative, though not in the exercise of judgment (compare and study Malachi 3: 16-18). And thus the Lord is come into the world "for judgment," in that, although He came not to condemn the world, but to save it, yet, having come to save, the perfect manifestation of God in the flesh, as God had promised afore of the holy prophets since the world began, witnessed both by the law and the prophets, "he that believeth not is condemned already."

Having stated therefore that He was come "for judgment," the Lord shows how His work is wholly a work of love, a calling the sheep, and exercising the work of a shepherd; still all love, for even if they must be chastened it is "whom he loveth he chasteneth"; "for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness." But His sheep hear His voice, and follow Him, to make room for judgment where love has had no work, the call being unattended to.

Then comes judgment on the Jews, as now a carcase, when the Son of Man came; all the cities of Israel having been gone through, and the gospel preached to the four winds to found a new system. The same we are assured will take place by the preaching of the gospel, and is in fact so by His word in the Revelation and elsewhere: A voice from heaven, Come out of her; and then, In one hour thy judgment is come. And this is the uniform tenor of God's work in the world; the Flood, Sodom, etc. Here apply the principle of Peter: Judgment begins at the house of God, and what shall the end be of those that obey not the gospel? Note, therefore, as to ministry. Therefore the work is always wholly and merely love, and nothing else; and eldership or judgment applies in its exercise by men solely to him within. The judgment to come is declared as a part of the work of love, saying, Flee from it; if not, ye will die in your sins. See besides the instances in the Old Testament, and the whole ministry of our Lord, the twelve apostles, and the general history from the beginning of His ministry to the destruction of Jerusalem, as portrayed in His prophecy (Matt. 24 and 25); and then Revelation 18 and 19. And note here Peter's laying the foundation of the Gentile Church; Paul's history, and non-permission to preach in Jerusalem; and the silence of Scripture as to the ministry of the other apostles in Gentile countries; though it appears they did; the addresses of the epistles with, if Paul were the author of Hebrews, the absence of his name. The case of Matthias may also be enquired into.

150 I suppose that whereinsoever we may judge we shall find "Tamar is more righteous than I." One there was who, as fulfilling the place of man with the perfection of God, might say, "Yet, if I judge, my judgment is just"; yea, although the Father judged no man, but had committed all judgment to the Son, yet judged no man, as a perfect example of the children of God here. As the Word of God He was the witness of God; so are the children who have the testimony of Jesus.

Let us proceed to the detail of the verses. I tell you Pharisees, I open to you the truth: You have rejected Me, corporately, intelligently. I will open to you the sad truth: "He that entereth not in by the door," by the prescribed order of God's entrance into the sheepcote or yard. Christ had fulfilled perfectly, had met, every requisition, subjected Himself to the inspection of the Porter, and the vigilant eye of the Spirit could have found nothing in which God was not well pleased, the perfectness (as indeed He was the True One, and so formally evinced), of every character and circumstance scripturally ordered and pointed out by which Messiah should be recognised. He came to the right place of the scrutiny of His character. It was to the "fold of the sheep," where the vigilance of God would be exercised, the full opportunity of scrutiny afforded by "seeing," which the taught (intellect) of God could exercise, according to that. This was all that could be required. But then it discovered, though formally so, there even then those not recognising Him, not sheep (they heard His voice), they were properly the inmates, it was (which note) "the fold of the sheep" it belonged to them properly. Within, or attempting to get in, in whatever character but by other ways, other means, of influence over the sheep, so as to be there, they were thieves or robbers. This applied to all pretending to lead the people; as He says, "Three shepherds . . . in one month"; specifically, of course, to any assuming the name of Messiah. But whoever was in the fold not being sheep, and not being Christ, whoever was not subject to Messiah's voice (for thus it was manifested), they, it was clear, must be separate, independent, seek to lead against it; they were thieves and robbers. If they were not Messiah, nor sheep, who or what were they? If they did not hear Messiah, they were not sheep. This therefore, that is, His coming and speaking, was the separative point. The works indeed they saw condemnatorily in evidence. But the "voice" is the separative power. This it is the saints, the sheep, hear; the others not. The works are but directed condemnation; it put them into the character of "entereth not," though they might seem hitherto to be "sheep," or led them as shepherds; or rather they were "he that entereth not by the door." They were not sheep, for they did not hear. They were put into the character of "climbeth up some other way," who even does not come to God's place, so that a testimony to the Gentiles would not have done. He must come not merely "to the sheep" but "to the fold of the sheep," and so be subject to scrutinised conformity to God's way, and so come in, etc

151 The sentence negatives all but One, who is exactly the Person, the Messiah, "Shepherd." No matter what other way he comes or gets at the "fold" he is a thief and a robber. For instance, I believe antichrist will more specifically fulfil this than any one else. He, I believe, will come "to the fold" (Jerusalem, the Jewish people), but he will arise in the power of the Gentiles, not in anywise "by the door"; although it was true of our Lord in Person, as He was evincing Himself, or stating the principles of the subject, which showed them defenceless, and made the separation. He rests it on the evidence of His character: "He that entereth in by the door." He is recognised by God. The Spirit of God, the controlling authority of God, opens the door of access into the fold. They took away keys of knowledge, and thought to hinder the Shepherd as an intruder. But there was a Porter, One who had power and title to open, who knew the Shepherd. Whatever they did, and would give Him who was so, Him who met and manifested all the requisitions of the Shepherd, "to him the Porter openeth," the real Porter. Where we really meet, and in proportion as we really meet, the requisitions of God, the Spirit of God will surely open access to the sheep. Others perhaps, for the same reason, because they are not recognised as the porters, will reject. "And the sheep hear his voice." Equally certain is this result. This is a matter of fact, looked at as to them as within the fold. There they hear His voice. The fact is stated as a result as to their position. This is when He comes into the fold speaking.

152 The next point is His personal acting towards the sheep. He came into the fold, and spoke. The effect we have seen in the history of our Lord. Then comes still the certain, real, resulting office: "He calleth his own sheep by name." There is specific appropriation, and He calls them by name, as knowing them. The Shepherd being the doer of it knoweth them that are His. The object is to bring them forth out of it. He enters into the "fold," but it is not the "flock." The sheep in the "fold" hear His voice; then He calleth them by name, and leadeth them forth out of it. The reference of this to the Jews, and our Lord's present position as rejected, is manifest. "He leadeth them forth." He must authoritatively put His sheep forth. His own sheep cannot be allowed to stay there. When He thus casts them out, puts them forth, He goes before them.

The point He brings them to is painful expulsion. It is His doing. He "puts them forth." We are ever fearful of doing this. The Lord has His own way of doing it. "He goeth before them." He was the first rejected of the ekballomenoi, yet it was indeed in one sense His own doing, the necessary result of His moral presenting Himself to the unbelieving body disowning God; and the sheep follow Him, for thus they knew their path. They knew His voice in the fold. When He goes forth it was "He putteth forth." To Him too, though going knowingly forth; they "follow him; for they know his voice." They know it is His voice. They learnt it (through grace) when He spake in the fold. His business with His own sheep is to put them out. This is appropriating: "the sheep follow him" is the character. He knows them personally, "by name." Besides, in His case, they are His own. This is true, properly speaking, of none else. So He says, "Feed my sheep." Though it would seem that in some sort there was appropriate Judaism. He was the apostle of the circumcision. There is generic result afterwards; sheep not put forth, but brought in, but to the same "flock," but the point of the putting forth and following is acquaintance with Him personally by His word: they know His voice. Consequently, a stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him. And here is the safety of the sheep. The voice is the separating power, because it is voice. Those within the fold may call the sheep forth, as though they were the Shepherd; but they have not the voice of the Shepherd. Now, all their defence is in the Shepherd, and therefore when they hear the voice they flee from it, and the effort of the stranger proves but the protection of the sheep. We may note the Shepherd's voice is the security of the sheep, for it implies personal knowledge of Him, and this leads to the knowledge of the Person. It is not the fold, nor where they enter in being thus put forth, but the Shepherd's voice. Consequently others' voice makes them fly, for they have no strength in themselves, and therefore the voice of others alarms them; it is a stranger. All is identified with them with the voice of Jesus. Their distinction is knowing His voice, and following Him.

153 They understood not the parable, though Jesus spoke it to them. Immediately concerned in the things He said, they did not know what the things were about which He was speaking to them. The Lord was speaking about the position in which His sheep were, and into which they were brought. Yet the parable was addressed to them. He told them what He was doing with the sheep. He might have left this untold to them, as those who had slighted, or shut their eyes to, the light, Him as the Light. But here we have not anger. He told them the things, and if understood there was in them that which was calculated to make them very displeased, more than all yet. But they did not know what the things were which He told them. He addressed Himself to them as before: "Verily, verily." Our Lord opened it out therefore farther, addressing Himself still to them: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep."

154 This is a new light in which He puts Himself, but it fills up the other. It is also simple and more decided. They did not understand how He came in by the door, nor what the thing meant. Now He tells them what remains. He had entrance into the fold. The sheep, indeed, heard Him, but none else. Now, He was the door of the sheep, the door out, a door by which they might get out of the fold, when His voice led out. But He was the door generally to the sheep, the appointed way of access. He came in by the door, and therefore was the door. That is, He, and He alone, came in by God's appointed way, and therefore was God's appointed way to others (the sheep). None, indeed, else could come to that door. He was the door of the sheep.

He was the door. Thus far then was the path or the way marked. They were right; assured thus far. This was most important. "To a land that I will shew thee." The "I" was the security, the point of faith; the "shew thee" the promise. So here: "I am the door." Where or what the fold would be was not yet shown. But He was the door of the sheep. As He came in fulfilling the way, He was their way out. Still the Person, and personal care, of the Shepherd was the security, and thus shown.

"All that ever came before me were thieves and robbers." They did not come in by the door; they were robbers of the fold itself; "but the sheep did not hear them." Their character was known by their character. Now, asserting Himself in Person to be the door that the sheep had to do with, the door of the sheep (for on His rejection He would have the sheep forth out of a condemned fold, a fold whose character was exhibited in His rejection), He declares necessarily, "All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers." They are not Him, and He is the door of the sheep, whom God owned. No matter who they were who claimed cognizance of the sheep, that is what they are, for He is the Shepherd, the door: "All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers." But they had none of the sheep, whatever injury they might have done to the fold. The sheep (that is a blessed truth), did not hear them. But besides, He was the door of the sheep; but He was the door: "By me, if any man enter in." Neither is the where yet developed; but Himself (which was the only real security of anything, specially of place or sheep), He was the door. He did not say "out," for the sheep were the real people; it was not to leave the fold. He was the door of the fold itself. Of the "fold" the in and out was in Him. But "in" He does say, because they who were not in this "fold" might hereby come in.

155 Nothing can be more beautifully accurate than our Lord's words here, as we might look for indeed, but accurate in the depth of their moral instruction. But He states it generally. He is centring their thoughts in Himself as the door. "If any man come in by me." For coming in by the door he was no thief nor robber; hence the opening for the Gentiles; for Christ was the door to them in the "fold"; therefore as the door also he that passed by Him recognised God's appointed way. He came in by that which justified his entrance; for Christ [was] the door of the sheep, by whom they must find really entrance. Therefore he who found entrance by the same found the same justification of his conduct, as he who also had no other warrant for his conduct than that He was the door. Therefore he came out. The same had the entering in; he came through Him, the door. Thus the Gentile was fully and co-equally justified, but here as conversant about the door. It is merely "any one": "he shall be saved." That was the point, the distinctive point of entering in. It was not so in the "fold." A man might be there, and not saved; very far from it; quite the opposite. Certainly a mere outer Gentile was not saved. But the first point here is "saved": "by me . . . any one."

Further, we have evidence of the personal care of Christ, and hence liberty. It was not the close system of restrictive Judaism, nor the outer state of unadmitted Gentilism, barred by the middle wall of partition; but being in the Person of Christ they had liberty. They were called unto liberty, because therein is security, and hence fount pasture; wherever Got hat showed the good fields of His food there they went. The Lord Most High, moreover, would lead them there. However, there they might go. It was the order of Christ: "They shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." If it is by Christ we enter in we shall have this. Not having this is not of Christ. All ordinances which do not carry this are not standing fast in the liberty wherewith Christ makes free. This is Christ's order. The door was the appointed way. The appointed way is the way to be saved, the way to go in and out, and so find pasture. It is the order of the Spirit. It is, has, its opportunity of feeding (for indeed herein the Lord is that Spirit) and Christ never can be the door to entering into evil. God forbid! Christ, let Him free ever so much, frees for the feeding of green pastures, holiness of truth; and is not, and never was, a cloak of licentiousness. Man and Satan may use anything for that bondage, as well as liberty. It is the liberty of being always led of Christ, free from sin.

156 But at present He is on the salvation and liberty. Its connection with the Person of Christ is, in fact, shown in the next verse. Salvation and liberty we have seen, now life. "The thief" (all else were so), "cometh not, save to steal, and kill, and destroy." It was for himself, not the sheep, he came. "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." They were sheep who were alive within the fold, but their life was feeble and restrained. They longed for this liberty of life (so now Messiah, when He comes, shall give it more abundantly, give liberty to them in bondage, glorious liberty to the children of God). The rest were dead, unquickened, along with those who should never hear (His voice). He does not specifically say sheep here; "any one" was the last position we had. He came that they might have life (if alive at all, in expectation of Him), more abundantly, and the dead ones live; for to the sheep only in fact would it be so. The quickening voice was to all; it quickened the sheep alone; and He came to quicken them. Here then the Shepherdhood came in. It was over the quickened ones. Here it had its place.

Our Lord having exhibited Himself in all the previous characters, and now giving life, more abundant life, now constitutes Himself the Shepherd, the Good Shepherd. This is in contrast to the thief. Our Lord was then the Good Shepherd. He was so in Person. He had come that they might have life, and He was their Shepherd when quickened. But He was so when in the flesh: "Of those which thou hast given me I have lost none," etc. When they were quickened, He, the life-giving Lord, was their Shepherd, the sheep's Shepherd. But He was the Good Shepherd in the flesh: "The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." They were now brought into contradistinction with the inhabitants of the fold at large (that is, in this chapter), and were in imminent danger. But there was One that stood before them in it. There were others, thieves. He speaks of character; but the grand fulfilment was the antichristian power of Satan.

157 I am inclined to think that this applies rather to Gog, I mean in character. The idol shepherd of Zechariah 11 is, I should think, however, the Antichrist as in his connection with the Jewish people. Compare that prophecy; it is most important. His object was to steal, etc., even as to the fold, which shows (though specifically resulting in the sheep) the generic character of the one there. He could not touch the sheep. He had no life to give. It was the contrast of the object and the existing state; not of the objects of application; though, if followed out, this was in result, as to the life, the sheep only. This would be most fully shown in Antichrist himself. The Good Shepherd was shown in His own trial and difficulty. He laid down His life, His own life, for the sheep (whencesoever though as yet only known amongst the Jews). This is in faithfulness of love adverted to here, not in power of atonement; though it included that. It is the Shepherd, the Good Shepherd; not the Lamb. He was Shepherd when alive, and then laid down His life for the sheep.

Now we have another character, "the hireling"; not the thief (Antichrist, see above), but the hireling. He is not shepherd, but he has the sheep under his care. This is an awful state of things. The sheep are not his. He is there for the gain from the sheep. He acts from this view, not from care for the sheep (see Zechariah 11). The fold is in his power, and the sheep are merely the most helpless part of his prey. Still, it is not the wolf. It is nominally the shepherd, but is not, but is a hireling. "He sees the wolf coming, and fleeth." The nominal shepherdhood of the Church has had this character, not in its devouring, but in its unfaithful character. If they have not been thieves, they have been "hirelings." Caring for the fold is nothing; it is caring for the sheep, because they are His sheep, that marks the true, the Good Shepherd. "Therefore," says Paul also, "therefore I endure all things for the elect's sake, that they may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." This is the spirit exactly of the Shepherd. The fold He did care for as nominally the sheep; the world He did care for as ostensibly the objects of His love, and so exercised; but not knowing, rejecting, the Father. He, faithful in love, in spite of the rejection of the world, went through all this rejection to the uttermost that He might have the sheep. "I endure all things for the elect's sake" is the spirit just of a Christian. The wolf's care was against the sheep. They were his prey. The hireling cared not for them, and therefore the moment they were in question (not gain) fled. There was no concern with him about the sheep. That was the mark of Christ's soul. "The wolf seizeth them, and scattereth the sheep."

158 It is remarkable that it is not said that he devoureth or destroyeth them. Nor indeed does he. But he does seize and scatter them. But where is the shepherd? Oh! here is the awful state, where the sheep are, through their admixture in the fold, their love of the world, under the hireling. It is a state supposed by the Lord, and these are moral characters, and may be traced. Wherever they can be traced it is an abstract consideration of the moral character from the conduct, without reference to the circumstances where it may be found, and hence the more morally perfect. But he is "a hired servant," and not "shepherd." He that is the one is not the other; morally, I mean. There is this peculiar, and felt too, in the character: "whose own the sheep are not"; felt where the Spirit of Christ is. But the Good Shepherd is behind. Yet rejected, dead, risen though He be into far distant glory, the scattering of the wolf has not hidden them from His eye, or made them strangers to the care of Him who laid down His life for them, be it ever so toilsome. Blessed be His name! He was the Good Shepherd, as living, of the sheep called to know Him. He laid down His life for the sheep. These were hirelings, then and onward, who did not care for the sheep; though, whether among Jews or afterwards, and again among the Jews (in the Lord's absence) over the fold. For this is the order.

Note, he leaves the sheep. He does not necessarily leave the fold; but he leaves the sheep, because they are the objects of the wolf. Nevertheless, the sheep as to the then fold are supposed to be under personal care. Therefore when "the hireling" fleeth they are scattered. This, as we have said, is in the Lord's absence. Nevertheless, meanwhile He is the Good Shepherd, and (though risen and ascended) knows His sheep, and is known of them. Yea, though it were so before, yet it was now hidden; it was in trial, perfectly indeed, still not in the bright view in which we see Him now. Both are perfect, but it is in this character as thus exalted that He says, "I know my sheep, and am known of mine." It is His special characteristic as the exalted Shepherd. They heard His voice. He called them by name (see John 1: 42-47), and leadeth them forth. Now as exalted, as the Shepherd, He knows (which is the material point, a point we might be uncertain about), His own, and is known of them; and this in connection with and according to that testimony, divine testimony, of knowledge in which the Father knoweth Him and He knoweth the Father.

159 At first I had thought that this passage ran, "As I know and am known as," etc. That it has an unexpressed association of this kind I believe. Compare the unities mentioned in John 17.

But I think there is something further in it, our Lord acting and presented in and loving as a Man (the representative of God). The world might seem to have a mind, an intention different from the Father. As a Man He did genuinely love the world, and so did God. But He has now introduced Himself in His Christhood, His exaltation after His death, in headship. He speaks of it in the flesh now, because it is always true in His Person. But He is speaking in the Spirit, prophetically (so to speak) thus; and He has full unity [with], though distinction from, the Father's mind. As the Father knows Him, so He knows the Father, and He lays down His life for the sheep. He had the same identity of purpose, and entered into the Father's mind here (whose the sheep were, and who gave them to Him), knew it as the Father knew Him.

This, I think, is included in it, and is a most important point when connected with the love to the world in which He did God's will, who is also love. Unity in knowledge and purpose here, which could only be in equality; or rather, for that supposes separation, identity in union; unity in nature and power afterwards, with the Persons kept distinct in both. The doctrine also is very important. As to the structure of the passage it might run as marked by the asterisk, but you may refer to John 15: 9, chapter 17: 16. The sheep is the point. They are elect; recognised the sheep. As yet they were recognised only within the Jewish fold, because there only the Shepherd ministered. He was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. There only was the recognition. The Person was always the same. Therefore, in the Holy Ghost, as knowing the Father as known, He could recognise that which could be attributed to the Person (which was His in office).

160 Having now viewed Himself as the Shepherd in His exalted position, He looks at those belonging to Him as thus the exalted Shepherd, confirming I think distinctly the distinct positions of the office and order of the passage as followed here: "And other sheep I have" (of the Gentiles), "who are not of this [Jewish] fold," the "fold" in which He then was: "them also I must" (it was an obligation on Him of His Father, and the dueness of His own love), "bring," not "lead out," as before as to the Jews, or sheep among them at least: "and they shall hear my voice"; it is Christ's voice now, "therefore," "turn away from him that speaketh from heaven"; "and there shall be one" (not aulee, "fold") poimnee, "flock, and one Shepherd," to wit, the Church and Christ.

Thus we have the order and motives of Christ, and the sheep too, in this work of love. But there is another aspect in which it must be viewed as to the act in its own value, therefore estimated simply of the Father as such: "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again . . . I lay it down," etc. The perfect submission to the Father's will; the perfect vindication of holiness; the perfect putting of sin in its darkness out of sight by the bright and all-shining light of Christ's work; the perfect vindication of the Father's love; the right estimate of God's character in it; the perfect triumph over evil in it, evil admitted in its full extent as in itself, and the title of God's justice against it as in man; the full giving a way to all the justice, and giving a fully justified door in spite of the accusations of Satan, both perfect ministrations of love to all His saints; fidelity to individual promise, and opportunity of general love, the secure foundation of its sovereign exercise: all these acted out in the voluntary exercise of Christ's love, ever the perfect object of the Father's love and delight. He was the abstract object of His delight. "Therefore"; just the opposite to the Adam of His delight. Also there was no "therefore" in him, save as the work of His (God's) hand. In Christ there is "of myself" (which note).

Note, this includes the resurrection; for therein is the thing which shows its value. There was a "therefore" for grief and (so to speak) shame to God; but resurrection, Christ, was not merely good, but met this, wholly setting it aside. Without death there would have been no resurrection. Resurrection is not simply what is good. Without resurrection death was merely the power of Satan and of evil as from God, marred in honour in the imposition of curse in the works of His own hands. See Moses' argument: "Wherefore should the Egyptians say?" But it was not merely the fact but the mind in which He did it: therefore, "Therefore doth my Father love me." It was the bona fide giving of His life; as a Man, too, sensible of death. This was wondrous faith, perfect obedience, perfect honouring of God. It was the giving of life now, but it was in the knowledge of value, and that He might have it. So He trusted, as Abraham of old [to] receive it again. The union of living, done in Himself, yet in obedience, is very marked. Both were necessary to make it perfect. "I lay it down of myself; no one takes it from me." Not man, he dare not; not God, He could do no such thing. Yet did He in one sense treating Him as a sinner, and man in another sense treating Him also (strange to speak) as a sinner; both, as to the suffering of it; neither, as to the will by which He died: "I have authority to lay it down, and authority to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father."

161 When a person's will is to suffer he can do in obedience. Both were here directly united, that there might be a "therefore"; as they were disunited, or the opposite united, in the first: by one, disobedience, sin and death; by the other, obedience, righteousness, resurrection. The union of the Lord's act and His obedience ("though he were a Son") is here very simple and definite in its statement. It is needful also to remark here the importance of the introduction of this in this place. As the Good Shepherd He laid down His life in love for the sheep. There was the specialty of love, His own love for them; but the value of His work was universal, it was intrinsic; it was; by this the sheep were led to rejoice in it, that they were led to every right thought, that they were led to the divine mind, one mind with the Father, even in the intrinsic excellence of Christ's death. It is a wonderful sentence, "Therefore," etc., and most mighty; and in His simple glory (as a unity of mind) shows the exaltation of the Son in the point of His humiliation Surely well may we wonder at this marvellous mystery of the incarnation. As the Father "therefore" so the Spirit witnesses of this in all its power, for in this they are all glorified, God is glorified. Of this they speak, the Son never, that is, of His glory in it; but He did it, and His work speaketh, and is spoken of, and so shall be till there be no need to speak of it more. Its glory shall be and is unto everlasting, as from it. It is the glory of God in time.

162 One need make no remark on that which follows as to the people's thoughts, but we should do well to compare diligently their sayings with what passed from the Lord's lips preceding. Note, it was "among the Jews"; and note the rejection of the words, the reference of others negatively to the word and also to this work, which was introduced before as the occasion of rejection of work as well as word. It arose, observe, from it. This closed the question as a question of dispensation. The privileges of the sheep were the thing then to be brought out.

Our Lord took the ordinary opportunity of intercourse. He walked about in Solomon's porch, and He was there in the way of intercourse. The Jews had in fact rejected the Lord upon full evidence. They then, with the consciousness that they were going wrong, gather round Him, saying, How long do you distract our minds, deprive us of our ease of mind? "If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly"; we wish to be set at ease about it. They felt they were astray.

Our Lord referred to the ground on which He already stood. "I told you, and ye believe not. The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me." You will observe the introduction of the pronoun "I": "I do in my Father's name"; for it is very important here as characteristic of the Son, and demonstrative of His Person. Elsewhere He says, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." But He and His Father are one. In Matthew, where the Messiahship was to be established, the Lord says, "If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come amongst you." For the fulness of the Spirit of the Lord resting upon Him was the truth of the Messiahship. Thus, while we find the Person of Jesus celebrated, we find that "it pleased that in him should all fulness dwell"; "in him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." And while the Person of the Son was manifested in "I," the inseparable glory and presence of the Trinity was manifested in the Man Jesus here. Oh! here is rest and fulness by the teaching and communion of that Spirit. The works, though done in His Father's name (for that was His Sonship), witnessed of Him; done in His own name, they would have witnessed nothing. Done in His Father's name they witnessed "concerning me," this Sonship and glory in that character. "But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep." The distinction was now fully made. It was now to be acted out: When ye have closed the door upon yourselves, "My sheep hear my voice." I have nothing to tell you more than I have; but "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me."

163 Then comes the portion of the sheep, as their generic character had been fully stated. This is the full, sure result. The previous part had been conversant with dispensation: whence the sheep came, how they were gathered, taken out or brought in, the manner and effects of the hireling's conduct as to present (formal) estate, the external, official circumstances; though the attractive principles were stated. Then the death of the Lord, its special love, and its intrinsic character and value, the basis of the whole matter, having been stated (this we have not fully spoken of as we would), and the principle of the sheep having been stated ("I know them, and they follow me") as such, their actual Christ-given portion, their proper portion in His hand as belonging to Him in the purpose of God, is stated: He gives life, eternal life. Christ, the Shepherd, is the lifegiver, eternal life. See this everywhere in the rest of John. Hence two most important points: "they shall never perish," He keeps them for the glory (see elsewhere an enquiry into aionion, eternal, eis ton aiona, for ever); "and none shall pluck them out of my hand."

The life they receive is eternal life. They shall not perish, and they are in perfect protection, His hand. This was the fact in His Shepherdhood as the risen Man, in which He exercised it. He spoke in the Spirit as to the truth, being the Son of God; but He does not lose sight of His humbled Sonship, yet His glory herein: "My Father, which gave them to me." They are the concern as given "to me," the Man Jesus, of the Father's. own purpose; an almighty secret about the sheep. They are Christ's sheep. In Him they get all the benefits He has spoken of, all their portion in Him; and as such in the actual enjoyment of the blessings in Him, and in Him alone, as His simply and rightfully, and Himself given for them. But there was indeed a great secret between Him and His Father, here stated: "The Father who gave to me" (not them alone, but the whole work, plan, counsel, and glory) "is greater than all," aye, or all things, "and no man can" (no man shall, was the point or fact He had stated before), "no man can pluck them out of my Father's hand." This was the prerogative title, whatever might be in the administration of catching or scattering as to man's responsibility (the shepherd below).

164 Then comes that which constitutes the essential value of the Shepherdhood of Christ: "I and my Father are one." And thus we have Christ in His Shepherdhood traced up from His simple obedience to the Father, entering in by the door, implicit though willing acquiescence in every prescribed circumstance, as the subject Man to truth, the Servant, up to His unity with the Father, through the whole course of the necessities of love which the position and care of the sheep imposed upon Him in the faithfulness of love, up to the security which He rejoiced His love could afford the sheep, in spite of all difficulties, all opposition, in His own essential unity with the Father. Earthly shepherdhood might fail, and would, and the wolf seize and scatter them. But no man could seize out of His Father's hand, with whom He was one; and He would give them eternal life. He would do this, in spite of all, for His sheep. The former showed the failure of all Church order, but the infallibility of Christ's personal care, because He was one with the Father as well as one with the sheep, and the security of these, simply and all through. The perfect security, as contrasted with all fallible systems, is the Person of Christ, from His obedience ("though he were a Son") to His essential unity with the Father, which we have seen so frequently brought out as the great theme of this gospel, here as and applying it to the Shepherd of the sheep.

The giving His life is twice mentioned (vv. 11, 15); both as the acts of the Good Shepherd, but one is the act of faithfulness to them in the danger (as John 13: 1); the other is the knowledge of exalted purpose according to the Father's knowledge of Him and His of the Father. One is the character of the Good Shepherd, "layeth down"; the other is "I know," etc., I lay down My life for the sheep, as such. Note also, in verses 28 and 29 we have distinctly the personal Shepherdhood of Christ's care: "I give," "My hand"; then the abstract super-eminence of the Father's power: The Father who gave - is greater than all things, and no one of all these things could pluck out of My Father's hand. There is no "them." It is the abstract excellency of the power.

165  - 30. Christ is the perfect manifestation to us of the glory of the invisible God. "He hath declared him." He is the brightness of His Father's glory, and the express Image of His Person. But this we lose all (not to rest on controversial proofs) by the Arian false doctrine. The end of our souls is to know the Father. Him no eye hath seen or can see. None hath seen the Father, but the Son. But if the Son reveal not the Father to us, where shall we find Him, or how come to Him? But if He be inferior or subordinate in His nature how can He in His Person show us the Father, or how in seeing Him can we have seen the Father? It stops short therefore of the whole end and purpose of God's counsels and our hopes, it deprives us of that centre of the whole mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh. Take this away, and what have we but dark alienation, infinite, from the fountain of life and light? Here His unity with the Father is brought before us in respect of His preserving His people in the unchangeable security of His own power.

In chapter 5: 17-19 He declares His working in the power of and unity with the Father, appealing at the same time to the works for evidence. In chapter 14: 7-11 He declares His unity with the Father in respect of His manifestation of personal glory. The eternity of His nature is stated in chapter 8: "Before Abraham was," etc.

- 31. "The Jews again took up stones to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shown you of my Father; for which work of them do ye stone me? The Jews answered, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and that thou, being a man, makest thyself God." In very deed that He is so is our hope.

We have stated that this chapter is a continuation of the former, and here accordingly the Lord refers again, having gone through the circumstances of the sheep, to the "many good works.": We have, then, in the eighth chapter the words, the testimony which closes with the testimony of full truth, what indeed they were, but what He was. Then we have the works; but on their failing (being the final external testimony), the effectual agency of His union with the Father is developed in the real purpose of it, both in knowledge and result, in the perfect security of the sheep in spite of all this failing and evil in all the rest, or opposition and enmity connected with it. Hence the transition passage of reasoning with the Pharisees. Then (showing that He had indeed fulfilled everything so as to condemn and set aside all else), His sheep heard His voice, His testimony, the first thing. Rejected Gentiles also would be brought in by the voice of the risen Shepherd, for that was atonement. And then came the effectual arm of power, which would keep them, which had indeed wrought among them, but was rejected; and upon the assertion of His unity with the Father, not simply what He was in Himself, shown specially in this of the sheep, whether in submission, knowing Him and His mind, or in the exercise of the care. The sheep drew it all out (compare John 17 in the unity spoken of). The connection is most important (which note), and their taking up stones to stone Him. He resumes the general evidence of this to them: "Many good works." So upon the same works He says, as before quoted, "Now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father." As to the former, "If I had not come and spoken among them, they had not had sin." For this was speaking from God, and He was as much God as the Father, and more especially the Word. Therefore He says, changing the language, "But the Father which dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." They were to the same purport; but there was a distinction of revelation in them. So, in the eighth chapter, of the word. It was "I AM," "I and my Father are one"; and here accordingly the sheep come in. This is all of great importance.

166 Let us further dwell on the conversation which followed from our Lord with the Jews. What comfort to have Scripture to refer to, to love as the word of God, of Christ, receiving it as true, searching us, and revealing all that is in God, the Lord and Saviour, the supply for the necessities as the remedy for the sins thereby brought to light! Our Lord was here applying Himself to them. I seek here merely to know what this reveals; this is the true way of reading the word. He had left the special revelation of Himself as concerning the sheep, and was now reasoning with them, not as concerning them. That had failed, and He had showed the sheep as taking their place in the care of God, but as condemning them out of their own mouth, as it were: "Is it not written in your law" (not the law of God) "in your law: I have said, Ye are gods? If therefore He called them gods with whom the word of God was." This may be spoken of all power that is of the word of God, by which all things consist, which was indeed in Christ, but more particularly of those (the Jews) who knew or having the oracles were peculiarly cognizant of its being from God; yet, I say, true everywhere, for God is true; that is, rulers who held power of the word. - "And the Scripture cannot be broken." For He does not explain, but state. "Do ye say of him whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am Son of God?"

167 Note. This quotation of the elohim shows, I think, that it applies to Jews properly, for the judges there are expressly in the law called elohim, and hence the rebuke of our Lord is most powerful. "What the law saith, it saith to," etc., though it ought to be true of all. It also shows the import of that word elohim in the law, and how foolish the dispute between judges and God, for it is the calling judges "gods" because they stood as sent in God's place and acted God in their office. We know that all power is of God, and ought to be exercised in His righteousness. This eighty-second Psalm judges them. Compare Psalm 101.

I feel the holy and faithful force of that word, "No man knoweth who the Son is but the Father"; nevertheless, all the things that are revealed about Him, and with the Father, is our life and joy, to know Him, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent. This is the point stated and rested on here; for we must ever remember that Jesus speaking is speaking in the flesh; it is the Man Jesus speaking, though often He may say things which are true only because He is withal God.

He speaks to them therefore merely as unbelievers of Himself as sent, marked, and separated, as the Man Jesus, and sent to the world. There He was so to be known, for He is the Sanctified One. We know Him as such in the flesh No man knows the Father but the believer. Here at once we know the subordination of the Son taking office and Manhood, in the covenant of redemption, whereby, and whereby alone, we know the Father (being "in form of God," He did all this humbling Himself, being first shown indeed as Jehovah of hosts in the old dispensation); yet know Him as one with the Father, which is our inscrutable blessing and joy, for we have fellowship so, by one Spirit: with, etc. But Him the Father hath set forth to be known of the world, and borne witness by His works that His words are true, that He is the Son of God. But the point of faith by the operation of the Spirit is to know the Son, Him to be the Son of God; and thereby and therein we know the Father also, for "he that hath the Son hath the Father also." So Paul: "When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, immediately," etc.

168 I would take notice here, not intruding above that which is written, into what I observe in Scripture as to the manner of stating this in John 1. I find the truth concerning our Lord stated simply and fully to our blessing. The recognition of the Father and the Son comes in on faith, and known by the incarnation, can behold His glory, etc. So in verse 18, the declaration of the Father. And this He is to faith; for faith, and faith alone, recognises Jesus to be the Son of God. Again, all through the third chapter, to the close, we have the great heads of doctrine declared simply and revealingly; the lifting up by necessity the Son of Man; the freeness of the love: "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son," to the same purpose, "that whosoever believeth in him," etc. "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world," etc. Then, verse 33, we have, after "he that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true," even His that came from heaven, after speaking of the unmeasuredness of the Spirit in him (Jesus), so "the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand." This is a doctrine within faith, etc., the comfort and the glory of hope to those who have known and believed on the Son.

All previously we have God giving, God sending; but when we know Him whom He hath sent we thereby know the Father and the Son. We shall find this gradually and beautifully developed in the opening of this gospel, and in the practical and blessed order in which it reaches us, while the truth of who the Word was is set first, lest it might seem subordinate; that is, intrinsically. Hence we find, after the third chapter, the Lord, when speaking in His own Person directly, says ever, My Father, or the Father, which sent Me. When He speaks of the Son of Man, then He says, "God the Father sealed." The close of the third of John is of John the baptist, in speaking of their position (that is, the Jews, not believers): constantly, "God"; for they knew not Him nor the Father. In the seventh the Father is not spoken of, for it is not the point there spoken of. But here, the works being done in His Father's name (for otherwise He must have set up His own glory), He here speaks of the Father, and "the Father sent": "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not."

169 His words were not simply His Father's words; therefore He says "God's words," though He heard them with the Father; but the glory of Sonship He claimed in His works, the evidence of what He was from the Father, showing in faith that the Father was in Him, yet not simply dwelling in Him as a Man, but He in the Father also: alike "The Father in me, and I in him.?" This is a blessed sentence. Doing them in His Father's name, He could (while He therein gave all the glory to the Father as righteous in the world) take it as nothing less in evidence than that He was the Son, so Son as that the Father dwelt in Him, and He in the Father. This is a glorious truth. It is, then, as the object of faith, as doing works in the world, as manifested by works amongst men, or known as the Son by His word in faith (being taught of the Father), that He is spoken of as from the Father, sent, sanctified by the Father, as here, and as in 1 John 4: 14. In Galatians 4: 4 we have the public fact of faith again: "God sent forth his Son," having His existence, being, as so sent, "come." So the law, in its institution in the world on Mount Sinai, "began with glory."

This is the great subject of faith; so when thus instituted (if I may so speak of His being manifested in the world), He was "come under law," showing remarkably how Son is the name of the Person (which is the great due of the whole), not of His nature, whether as Man or as God); for it is quite clear that it was Christ who gave the law on Mount Sinai; but now, "come of woman," He, the same Jesus Jehovah, was "come under law"; a glorious and blessed subjection and truth, magnifying the law in its excellence indeed, and identifying it with the mind of God marvellously. But the joy and glory of faith to a believer is not that as the subject of faith, but therein knowing the Father and the Son. This is the real life and joy and glory, as the apostle says: "Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ"; and this is the portion of the sons, because they have the Spirit of the Son in their hearts, dwelling in them? by which they know the Father, and know His love to them, as to Jesus, and have fellowship with the Son; also being one with Him by the same Spirit as the link of communication in His thus becoming flesh, and knitting the body to Himself, and know their unity in the knowledge of the unity of the Father and the Son, who, if they be not so - then does the Church not know its unity; for it is "as we," "as in us," "as thou in me, and I in thee, that they may be one in us." And this the Spirit of God, in all His characters, brings them, in vital blessings and life, partakers of the divine nature, into the fulness of.

170 This was the closing point of faith, finished here as to intercourse with the people on ample and conclusive evidence. The evidence of the Son is in the Father's works: "If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham." Our Lord submits Himself to the same evidence: "If I do not the works of my Father," whether in power or love, "good works," "believe me not. But if I do"; how but that I am so; if I do, the evidence is complete: "if ye believe not me, believe the works, that ye may know"; of which they are demonstrative evidence in unity of thought, purpose, design, glory, their character in every respect, everything which exhibited that the Father dwelt in Him, and He in the Father. Still it was faith to perceive the glorious truth, which can be perceived only in communion.

"They sought therefore to take him, but he escaped out of their hands." This certainly closed the direct testimony of ministry between Jesus and the Jews. It is not that He did not speak to them afterwards as to dispensation towards them, for He did, as in Matthew 22 and 23, etc. But as to moral testimony, on which that fate was founded in present rejection, this closed it, and the sheep were distinguished. All that then followed was the national rejection, and the calling a people to give fruit in due season. What follows was a vindication of the glory of the rejected Son of God (who quickened whom He would), and the Father's always hearing Him, and the great truth of the resurrection now eminently necessary. Hence, having been rejected in this the point of faith, the Son of God, the central name, as we have seen, of faith, we find this vindicated in the following chapter, as against those who rejected Him in it, in the raising of Lazarus, as we shall see. Then in the twelfth our Lord's headship as King of the Jews, then the gathering of the peoples, the headship of the Gentiles. But to this His death, we learn, was needful. This is the scene of the glory of the rejected Messiah. His ministerial offices (for His people) follow in the following chapters. But we will, please God, enquire and look into them when we arrive at them. Now merely I consider the dependent order of the chapters on what we have considered.

171  - 40-42. Thus the Lord left them; and the scene being, as we have now seen, closed, He returns as it were to the original testimony with which He set out on His toilsome but love-ministered and love-ministering journey. "All things that John said of this man were true." True they surely were, and John bore the best testimony to his own truth, however, in bearing witness, loving, faith - hearted witness, to His glory and Person and work; in a word, all his forerunning message. How long does the faithful testimony of a faithful, rejected witness last and bear fruit, when he perhaps little thought or dreamt of it! The Lord returns to that when all His works and word, wonderful as they were, had been rejected and passed by; "and many believed on him there."

Happy John! rejected as he was; and every word and work our Lord did was testimony to and the seal of his glory. What he spake, Jesus did, and made every word which was his office and glory true. His testimony became effectual in its fulfilment, and the thing fulfilled strengthened in evidence to men, "and many believed on him there." This is remarkable. It shows the work of God going [on] during (in spite of) His rejection.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47011E> 171

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 11

But there was a further and critical testimony to be brought of Jesus in all His characters.

This chapter is of the most interesting character. We have already seen the circumstances under which it was given. The Evangelist therefore is careful to record that it was to those whom Jesus loved, to some of the Remnant who loved and received Him, to whom it was done, though in the presence of the Jews. But nothing is said to them. We have the fact, too, that there was a known and recognised Remnant, the circumstances of whose love were recognised and recorded in the midst of the rejection of the Jews: "It was that Mary." There was a little circle God's love, despised perhaps of man, but recorded with Him, where Jesus' heart might find present rest; poor rest, indeed, but rest for His love in some sort; where His affections, as the ministering Servant of God, chilled, if chilled they could be, by the selfish blasts of the world's unbelief, might expand and find comfort, if they could not rest. "Lord, behold he whom thou lovest." It was sufficient motive, they thought; and they thought well. They knew Jesus, for any claim; they could at once rest them there. It is a great thing to know that even in this sense Jesus loves. They had shown their love to Him, poor as it was, and they reckoned upon His, for they knew it.

172 But there was much more to be developed. It was not only as the sympathising Son of Man with even miraculous power that was to be manifested. There was the whole development of the victory over evil. God was to be glorified, the Son of God was to be glorified in it. There was the whole development of the sufferance of it in reaching its height; that the power of the victory of it even to resurrection [might be] shown; whereby also He should be declared the Son of God with power. The necessity of subjection to evil, the passage through it in the light, not stumbling, where the will of God led till the time for it was come; the viewing it as taking place in the faith of deliverance, so as that death should be "he sleepeth"; the perfect sympathy of our Lord with the suffering under it of man; the identification of the resurrection power with His Person, in contrast with the mere miraculous prevention of evil; the certainty of deliverance; God's triumph over evil, which the resurrection was, as contrasted with the imbecility of man's sympathy; the unity of the Father with the Son in this matter (compare John 5, and compare verses 23, 25 and 41); the effect of it when seen: it is a full canvassing of evil and Christ as in Person with it; what man can do; what he may miraculously be thought to do; and what God in Christ, what the Son, is manifested to do, has been manifested to do.

- 4. Here we have the great general principle, and true indeed in every delivered soul. There was Jesus' love trusted, and Jesus did love them all: "This sickness is not unto death." Not that it was not deadly in its character, not that it did not in fact produce and end in death. He knew it did. But this was not the ultimate result. The permission of evil was for the glory of God; that is, in triumph over it in behalf of the creature, and that in the Person of the Son, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. The resurrection power of the Son is the great central evidence of this. It was the overcoming of evil in its ultimate natural results, the full power of it as in the hands of Satan; death. It was therefore mercy to allow evil, though painful mercy, to have its full results; because it gave unqualified ground for our assurance of God's love through all, and also where evil seemed to have its way; but, above all, in full, unqualified deliverance from, triumph over, all. This was the point exhibited in the world indeed, but in the person of the saints, the really identified ones with Jesus. We must also remark that this is the power of the resurrection, and therefore has not its full accomplishment till Jesus returns, acting in His resurrection power, raising the saints, and taking them to be with Himself.

173 Till then evil is allowed to prevail, as it was allowed to prevail over Him. And though the Lord and His disciples were doubtless intrinsically happier, yet as regards the world and the power of Satan, it was allowed to prevail over them as regards His death. So the case of His saints. Evil is allowed to prevail, but it is not unto death, but reconciles the mind of the saint to the failure of all present things, that God may be all in all to him, that it might be full affiance in God. Thus Adam; thus the Jewish system; thus Christ Himself, fulfilling all righteousness; thus the Church of God; thus everywhere that which partakes of the creature. Resurrection is its hope, a hope verified in Christ actually, where sin is, through Jesus, and in the power of it in result, where only subject, but not willingly. The deliverance here referred to, which we are taught to look to in a rejected Christ (for Christ was now rejected) is resurrection, and therefore in fulness not till His return; for then we see and know the Christ that was rejected. And this is the image here presented; Christ absent because rejected; suffering the evil, therefore, to take its course, as though He did not mind it or could not help it; that is, to the unbelief of those mixed up with it. As He says elsewhere, "As if a man slept, and it sprung and grew up, he knew not how"; and upon His return setting it all aside, and gladdening the hearts of His saints by yet more blessed demonstration of His interest and power, aye, and sympathy ever with us under the evil.

There is more than this brought out before us in this passage; but this is so brought out; for His return was to His saints, quickening the dead, and satisfying those who were waiting for Him, expecting Him. And the Lord now bears a double character; and also His acts, having been morally rejected, His acts are the acts in this moral sense of the rejected One and so, if in power, indicative of the character in which He will return; although, as not being actually rejected, they had a direct agency on those who were concerned in it, and put them under the responsibility of the rejection of Him in the (power of that) character in which He will be actually revealed in all its actuality in that day.

174 This much opens out all that follows, and also the old prophets, as Zechariah. This opens out the force of verse 54, and shows how the resurrection of the saints, I think, precedes the manifestation of Jesus to the Jews; while the first resurrection is shown to be the glory of God; and also, etc.; and that it is subsequent to this that the development of the full actual hostility of the unbelieving portion of the Jews, not the nation, will show itself, etc.; and the order of the whole glory of His Sonship.

But we also learn (which the passage shows) that while unbelief would think that it could only be "if," etc., that the Lord's love watched every circumstance for the greater demonstration of His love. This therefore is set first when the object or thesis of the story is given, the facts on which it rose, and the purpose for which it was: the intervention of death on those that Jesus loved, that the intervention of His deliverance might the rather illustrate His love in their entire exemption, and identification with His glory, glorified in, etc. But "Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus" (none were not objects); they were His hosts in His pilgrimage, as the saints indeed are now (how poorly!); and they are not here yet set first. But it might seem they loved Him, not He loved them; had done, or however afterwards showed it. We speak merely of their character, "what she could." There was deep necessity for His showing this, for they were subject to death. All exemption was resurrection exemption, though being in the power of Him who had borne it, and risen. The full result might be shown in the change, instead of death, of some; an additional illustration of the great redemption.

"Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus." When Jesus heard that he was sick, He abode two days in the same place. It is hard for the Church to think often (for it is unbelieving, very) that it is good for Jesus to stay so long away. And the Spirit and the Bride, too, say, Come. So, for the principle, errors through daily life: it is hard to think it good that deprecated evil should not be prevented by the Lord, that the Lord should not come on the first requisition of love. But, though even unbelief or sin may have brought the evil, we have this wrongful confidence in Jesus' love that He must be at our beck to remove it. Surely He has indeed made Himself our Servant from first to last, but in His wisdom (for that is love), not ours. But we have evidence that the Lord has withheld His hand in deliverance. He has not His eye. It is not from carelessness. When the just time has elapsed He is as ready to go at all cost, though it might seem to man of no profit; and His volunteering to come at cost in the time of wisdom is the evidence it was no want of love deterred or delayed Him. He proposes to go when none else would; but shows that in calmness of spirit and perfect knowledge He had waited the just time.

175 After stating the principle, He says, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth"; as if He had been by his bedside watching; but in what sovereign calmness: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth"! In the midst of all their anxieties there was One, who they thought was neglecting them, whose eye was watching there, marked his closing eyelids, that He might the more abundantly show forth (and to us also) the full power of His love and His fellowship in the glory [of] its exertion in his behalf. In a word, the three great points in the chapter (public points, so to speak) are the apparent abstinence of Christ from appearing to deliver: "He abode in the same place"; His perfect sympathy with us: "Jesus wept"; the exercise of full power in deliverance from its full results. The gracious tenderness of Christ's considerate yet, I may call it, anxious manner, anxious for their belief, runs through and characterises this whole passage. He was at home with His disciples, yet with a feeling which enabled Him to be thus at ease with them, which His fulness enabled Him to have: "Our friend Lazarus."

We must remember the order to be thus: chapter 8, the word rejected; chapter 9, the works rejected; chapter 10, the distinction of the sheep. Here the portion of the sheep, the peculiar, Christ-comforting portion; their resurrection; and herein the real glory of the rejected Sonship; and then (for herein the sure mercies of David were sealed) the Jewish royalty and the Gentile headship.

176 All this the Jews had marred. It was revealed, that is, done publicly and openly after their rejection of Him. "The day" was the time of Jesus' presence in this world, the Light of the world. He, as walking in this light, present obedience to His Father's will, and they, as following Him, had nothing to fear. And so, in general, wherever we are simply doing the will of God in His time we have nothing whatever to fear, because the God is whom we serve, and He is the God and Orderer of all things. When the time of service is ended our departure is equally clear.

There is this distinction: he that walks in the day has the light of the world; but the walker in the night has no light in himself, and it is night, and all is totally dark. It is not said ever we have light in ourselves. We have no light in ourselves; but he that has the light walks in the light (so the believer), in the Light of this World, Christ, the living Obeyer of God's will as Image of His Person. Such was the state of the Jews after rejecting Him. They went on in darkness, though thinking and seeking to walk. They had no light in them. Not so the disciples; they had the light with them

Furthermore, the Lord designates distinctively that, as to the children, the elect disciples, death had passed away: "Our friend sleepeth." His coming thither again will be to awaken them. How sweetly and perfectly gracious is the whole truth, coming from the Bearer's lips, of all the evil which gave occasion to the interference! Never man wept as He wept, or spake as He spake. Yet His people weep with Him, if they cannot speak like Him. Yet withal, with His Spirit, may it be much so, to His glory, from Him and to Him

The Lord gathers instruction to all from His own sorrows, His own trials; content if they be taught and fed. He wept over Jerusalem, and He wept over a world in death, for He saw the Jews weeping; and if His power delivered the saints only, His tears were shed over others. And should not ours [be]? They understood not the Lord's speech, but their ignorance (so ever) is the occasion of our knowledge; for our Lord plainly herein shows that He meant his death in saying he "sleepeth." And so is the common expression the expression of truth: he "fell on sleep," "them that sleep in Jesus," and the like; for it is but that which closes the memory on the sorrows of the world that is passed, to wake up in invigorated strength for a day that shall never wear it out; for pain shall not weary a new-born soul nor a resurrection body.

177 "And I rejoice for your sakes that I was not there, that ye may believe." We see here how a saint can rejoice in evil, in one sense, though not in iniquity; and retrospectively we can even glorify God where we have failed. But thus when these things begin to come to pass, a tide of flowing disorder and evil, "Lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh." Thus we see why evil is permitted; for the greater manifestation of the glory of God, for the everlasting strength and comfort of His saints. It shows how the Lord can view it, His consideration of His saints in everything, and thus how the coming in of the devil's power is made the instrument of their greater edification and everlasting comfort. And it is great comfort to us that the Lord can say as to every evil, evil in which we may be conscious of failure (for every evil is from the Lord's absence in power and the devil's presence, though under the control of God and of Christ): "I am glad that I was not there." For, though it may arise from unbelief, the Lord will bring greater glory out of it, which is our strength and sure comfort; and we retrospectively can see the glory and patience and wisdom of our Lord; for it indeed always ends with, "Let us go to him." To unbelief there was, as it were, no time to go. But the Lord views it all in the power of the resurrection life in which He was going to fulfil the counsel of God. The whole sentence is one of great practical comfort of faith to the believer. The prospective power of the chapter hangs on this, the sufferance of evil; ending, "Let us go to him," in the power of resurrection life. That the Jewish body shall be quickened, so I admit; but it is not on that I rest here.

It is remarkable that Thomas should [be] here brought out in love to our Lord. "With him" I count our Lord. It is remarkable that, at the time of our Lord's going to show resurrection power, the thought should have been that He was going to die, and the only portion of the saints was to show affection in dying with Him. Resurrection power and life is the great object and portion of faith (they were to be witnesses of His resurrection, for that is the defeat of the devil's power), and this is the paint of unbelief. So Mary in the garden, at the sepulchre; so Thomas afterwards; but both show how affection to the Lord may be with utter failure of purpose where there is not this faith. It is illustrative of the position of the disciples when they had not this faith, and their total ignorance of His mind, even in the expression of their love to Him. They loved Him; not, indeed, as the Son of God. Hence Paul: "Yea, though we had known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." Let us go, and die with Christ, is the best that affection short of resurrection power, or the faith of resurrection power, can do. And this is the main point in the connection of the subject of the chapter. They could say he would not have died, they could (through grace) be willing to die with Him; but resurrection liberty was known to none at all. We see supposition of power to hinder, assurance that it would not have happened, willing to die themselves with Him, according to what their minds were interested in; but it is all in every contrast, as the sorrow or weakness or ignorance of unbelief, with the delivering power of resurrection.

178 Thus far then the preliminary position and circumstances. Then the existing ones. Jesus came, and found him dead four days. It was nigh to Jerusalem. It was to be done as a last sort of evidence before the Jews, though not amongst them. Those who had at all ears to hear might yet be separated from the untoward generation. But the same great principle is developed. They came to give the world's comfort. We have also in Martha and Mary very different natural characters, and very different apparent aspects of faith towards Jesus; one ready and conclusive, one affectionate and dependent; but nothing stepping out of the limits of death. The Lord, as analogously to the Laodicean church (while the Philadelphian state was recognised), stood at the door, and knocked, that if any had ears to hear, they might hear. How blessedly, too, the Lord used the poor unbelieving sorrows of Martha and Mary, etc., and the death of Lazarus, to the greater manifestation of the witness of His power than had ever been before! What we can do after we have been apparently driven out by those amongst or to whom the testimony was to be offered is often more than when we have apparent passage in and out amongst them. It may be painful, but we are more separated as to our own strength when it is done amongst the disciples; and it can be done more openly, for it belongs to disciples: and the rest will hear. When He raised Jairus' daughter, the Lord had to put them all out, save the three.

179 We have, further, what our Lord was, as intrinsically in Himself, and yet how He did all things in dependence on His Father, which was His perfection as a Man. Martha's faith went further than simply so far seeing the prevention of evil by Jesus' presence. She believed or knew that, what Jesus asked, God would give Him. "He shall ask for thee, for he is a prophet." Hence the force in that day, "Ye shall ask me nothing"; and, "I say not that I will pray the Father for you." Being sons, we have the privilege of asking the Father directly. We ask in His name. Her apprehensions were confused, not practical; for she owned the fact of His Sonship, nothing of the office of Sonship. The Lord answers her case at once, her anxieties, in the power of what He was; the best way of meeting unbelief; and, while it draws out the point where there is want of intelligence in our faith, gives occasion to the meeting of it by that which is in Jesus. "I know that he shall rise in the resurrection in the last day." She recognised God as ordering this as a common point of faith for all; but there was no identification with Jesus in her mind. She knew that God would hear Jesus. She knew there was a resurrection in the last day. Such is the common faith. But Jesus' quickening power to His saints is another thing. "I am," said Jesus to her, "the resurrection and the life." The assertion is all-sufficient, and comprehends every point of positive faith; and as meeting the aspects of unbelief. There was a resurrection, and God would hear Jesus. Now, "I am the resurrection, and the life." Nor was it a mere general thing at the last day, but the intrinsic power of life in Jesus. "I am the resurrection, and the life." It was, in a word, what He was.

We shall see how faith comes in; for the statement is very perfect; it states the fact in Him, or what He was, not merely its operation in faith, which could have none save He was that (for faith, observe, made no distinction in a general resurrection). Moreover, there is a distinction between resurrection and life; for this is a very full revelation; still it is as the object of faith: "He that believeth on me, though he have died, shall live." Then He is the Resurrection: "And every one living and believing on me shall never die." Now, the Lord in presence is the power of resurrection. Though He has the power of resurrection (and so indeed quickens our souls), yet He does not exercise it, nor could till the earthlies be to be set right, He taking His power; and the heavenlies too. But He had it; as then, so always; for it is intrinsic. He is; but it is when He can say, "I am," that He will exercise it. Now He is as to presence as though He were not, and things are so too. All must come together. The present Jesus was so, the rejected Jesus is so, as to the inward life of the souls of the elect, of the children of God; but their life is hid with Him; and He is so in all its results in the day when He shall appear to them that believe in Him.

180 Martha did not intelligently understand or believe this. She believed what the Lord said to her as His word, and stated all she could of sound faith; but feeling she could not hold communion with the Lord in this, as soon as she had made what she could of acknowledgment of faith (yet she was not rejected) she departed. Ah! how does the world shut up the channels of access, the links of union, between the Lord's heart and ours! How does it now, a cold, loose, general belief in a resurrection in the last day, bar the communion with Jesus who is the Resurrection and the Life, and who opens out all these glorious and blessed truths in the identity of believers with Himself! He is the Resurrection and the Life: "He that believeth." Martha was cumbered about much serving. She went to call Mary to relieve her mind apparently, though not unmixedly, from the Lord's presence, in that in which she could not hold communion with Him.

Oh, how does the world cheat us! Who would have thought that the zealous service of Martha should have hindered her from the joyous portion with the revealing Jesus? Yet so it was. And so it is ever. So much as we have of the world, so much is the glory of Jesus shut out from us. Great things may go first; everything must follow, or the heart sticks yet in the world. It may not seem so deep; it is often stickier; but, thank God! the Lord's love is better than all. Yet Martha was a Christian (that is, a believer); she loved, and Jesus loved her. Her name we have seen (lest she should be despised) is marked first. She felt a righteous, common interest with her sister, and she evidently did so, and there was good feeling mixed up with her bad state. It was marred, spoiled, by her cumberedness; beautiful spots, but no whole; no illustration of Jesus; for many a spot was barren; none was really deep.

Often we turn to speak of Jesus to another because we have not communion with Him ourselves, to talk about Him because we are not able, we are oppressed, with talking with Him; we go to call some sister of the Master, but not to stay with the Master. Deep communion requires much communion; and though labour is good, the point to be presented to the Lord is the fruit. We look for someone else to hold communion with Jesus. We are conscious we cannot ourselves.

181 Yet Martha was loved, it was true; but how cold "The Master is here"! It is plain that in the outgoings of her heart (and we know from what abundance it springs) she had not practically reached beyond this: The Teacher, the Master, is here. Oh, world, world, world! how dost thou cheat us, and deceive us out of Jesus, in whom is all fulness, all fulness dwells; the Resurrection and the Life, all fulness; out of fulness we should receive! Doubtless He looked for Mary. But why? Why had He not sympathy with Martha? Yet He loved her. But the Lord was shut up here: "Dost thou believe this?" His heart was going out in revealing this. "I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, who should come into the world." A sound confession! She went off, and called her sister. But there was not power, either, in this confession. It was saving, I doubt not. The intercourse of our Lord with Martha, and all the circumstances, as well as the words, implants the belief.

But oh! what power was there (yet not all) in that word "the living God"! I believe that indeed is a truth of faith, the present characteristic of His Sonship; the very power of it then was life, quickening power in Christ the Son when in the flesh upon earth, in the power of this life in God. Martha's faith, her sentiment, was defective. She knew the Person (we the Person properly, for the living God was left out, and therefore also set first, now death and sin had entered); she knew not the power, or felt it not in faith. Now, indeed, resurrection was involved in quickening power in life, as intrinsic life, and this was what was revealed in Christ: "Declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness," which note, for it shows holiness is in resurrection standard - in Him, however, declaratively - not living, but it was not necessary to it, but incidental; necessary only by an incident, but this incident consequent upon creature state unsustained, that is, sin, the actings of the creature unsustained. (Hence Christ had no sin, and could have none, for the actings of the creature were sustained, yet as a creature, but a creature in union with God the Son; and this is the solution of the mystery thus far, as argued among many.)

182 But note further, humblingly, that hasty reference to the Lord's heard-of return merely for the supply of or to meet one's own natural feelings (so Martha) is not the way of grace. It may after have to say, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee." There may be, in one so acting, capacity, desire, of communion in those things in the power of which so coming the Lord is revealed, with which He occupies Himself in the communion and blessing of His saints. It is not but that, when heard of as calling, she arises hastily, and goes out to meet Him; but, I say, acting on the mere satisfying of natural feelings herein is not the abiding power of communion, the bringing in of which is the power of Jesus' coming. This secretly shows, too, much the state and frame of mind in which Martha made the communication in which she was. The actings of Mary were, however, immediate on the call.

Martha, loved as she was, yet acted on the impulse of her nature, with no holy fulness of deference to Jesus, yet not without gracious acknowledgment of Him, yet also with no full perception of what He was, and occupied with her natural anxieties, which clouded this, and destroyed her deference: "I know that even now whatsoever thou askest of God, God will give it thee." This itself may be a love of the object given, not of Jesus the Giver; makes Him the Servant, not the Master, of our blessing. If He makes Himself so, in the riches of His grace, blessed as it shall be, blessed be His name! But it was, too, but as an accepted Man with God, the Teacher: "God will give it thee"; no consciousness of what Jesus was in Himself. Though He might even glorify the Father, who glorified Him, though He might glory in the title, the special witness of His love, of Son of Man, yet should His disciples see through and understand His love indeed to them in this; but His glory in Deity withal. To Him be the praise and glory.

But I cannot help thinking that there is much allusion here to the state of the Jewish and Gentile Church. I speak merely in the spirit and character of them. The great truth of resurrection is that brought out, which is the order of blessing to everything where sin has entered. But, in whatever measure of faith and ignorance, all met Him away from the place where the Lord showed His present power. The Jews followed Mary, supposing she was going to the grave to weep, and Mary the suggestion of Martha that the Lord was come, and called for her. Mary could but say, "If here, my brother had not died"; but there was less loquacity, and more deference, and real apprehension. Jesus spoke to Martha, and reasoned with her: He wept with Mary. The full power of death over all alike was brought before His soul, and He wept with them too, and mourned with their sorrow; only with full sense of its cause, power, and as none else could, for they were under it, the power of evil (in death).

183 It does not appear that Martha was there. She did not meet Him at this scene out of the village. There was doubtless perfect love in Jesus, but there was more, the power of help in sympathy. He saw what it all was, as knowing the Father. "He groaned in spirit, and was troubled." But He said, "Where have ye laid him?" The power of human sympathy does but tie down to the grief which it would assuage. It lays in the grave, and puts a stone on the mouth. The Lord indeed grieves, troubles Himself, but seeks the case of ruin for remedy.

The whole of this exceedingly interesting chapter is very imperfectly gone through; for there is the whole depicting of the infirmity of unbelief and man's necessity, and the sympathy and energy of Jesus for the glory of God, and that detailed with the utmost beauty, so as in effect to declare the Father. The present quickening power of Jesus, Sonship, is the great point (with the perfect sympathy with our weakness); and yet the necessity of Christ's presence felt by man is unbelief. Compare the centurion's faith; Luke 7: 7. This, as applied to the whole scope (followed on that word, subsequently: "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again"), is of most important consequence and extensive bearing, as to which the "Lord, if thou hadst been here," is of great import. I speak as to the scene before Christ's death, as well as after.

I do not at all, in this passage of Jesus' life, exclude the sympathy of actual affection. The compassion of Jesus was drawn out, and His affection. He could exercise it, for He was above it, save in sympathy bearing its burthen: "Where have ye laid him?" That is all ye can do. The man that I love I can do more for. How did their hearts bound yet at the thought of Jesus's sympathy! He was at least concerned in their trouble. It set them at ease with Him: "Lord, come and see." John, too, was there, and entered thus far into his Master's mind; as now taught, much more. "It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it." But also observe the tendency (which indeed Jesus meets) to bring down the use of God to the service of our sorrow, instead of the power of God to the remedy of our sorrow to His glory. This is our unbelief. It is, Come and see Lazarus dead; not, Thou, O Lord, art the Resurrection and the Life. But it is thus withal that God is rightly glorified in our weakness.

184 You may also notice how, from the statement of the great truth of power of deliverance, we are passed through the sorrow and power, as it were, of the thing to be delivered from, and then into the result of the delivering power, taking the subject of the sorrow up out of it. This was just the mission of Christ, "who, being rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich"; and the soul is ever (sin being entered in) so passed through this. If He had been simply received, the result of blessing would have been simple and immediate on the manifestation of the power. But the necessity which caused its manifestation implied its entering into the sorrow; that is, in result; for faith would not have led it there; but so would not the sympathy of Jesus have been known. Our comfort is that He who voluntarily led us in, and entered in Himself, can, passing through it, exhibit in His and the Father's glory deliverance, a deliverance enhanced by the expression of His love. But it is quite the way, though it ought not to be, of the daily experience of our souls. It results from unbelief, but Jesus in His quickening power can enter down into our sorrows to make us rich by His poverty. Compare, "The hour is come that the Son of Man," though there willingly, and what then follows here. It was in sympathy merely with others, but the same thing: "I am the resurrection." But they led Him to the tomb. He went there; yea, He wept there. But, brethren beloved of the Lord, He neither remained there, nor left Lazarus there. He remained, and that in immediate power, till He called Lazarus forth from it.

Note also how His entering into the grief enabled Him to call out of it, and produced that groan of sympathy which drew out the exercise of the Father's power. For it is the sympathy of man with Jesus which calls in the exercise of the Father's power and is the exercise of the Son's. The Son of God is glorified thereby; that is, in this raising power, I say, disclose the Father, for it does so abstractedly. It is the glory of God, but being wrought by the Son it brings out this, is the great mystery (of God's purpose), the necessity of man, or his ruin; brings out the union of the Father and the Son, and discloses them in the exercise of this relationship of blessing to us; and then by one Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, we are given fellowship with them, known in Jesus glorified (which note). Compare also the case of Stephen.

185 The sympathy of Jesus shows His love to a stranger, and Jesus yields it to them. We yield to it, or refuse it because it brings us under the power of others. But all was confusion while it was thus. All felt the ruin. Jesus felt with the ruin; and, while they thought they saw the evidence of love, they did not see how He entered into the cause of their sorrows. Their thoughts about His power did but give occasion, or however leave occasion, for the exercise of His spirit. Man's grief, I say, buries deeper. Jesus takes away the impediments. But this groan was the presenting the power of death to His Father, the bearing it in His spirit before God, the witness that He felt with it; and setting us an example of those groanings which cannot be uttered; a groan the Father heard; a groan accompanied with the thanksgiving of faith.

Again, Martha presented the utter hopelessness of the case. It could not be now. That is the point of faith when Jesus is present in power. But resurrection from death, yea, from corruption, being the power of quickening, it matters not what state of death the person [be] in. All circumstances in the power of God are unbelief; He is not therefore reckoned God in them. But here is the glory of God. Man failed under evil; he bound with others under the grief of it. But it stopped there. All men alike mark its power. The power of death is not shown only in the world in them that die, but in those that are left by it. It wastes, and makes the breach, but the waters of sorrow break in thereat, and waste and trouble all around.

Jesus sympathised with it. He was troubled. But it was the active exercise of sensible grief. But He came to the tomb. The glory of God is in His living power over evil in death in Jesus, and the exercise of love (to those ruined by it.) The recognition of this in Jesus is the grand principle of faith. This was Peter's confession, alone in it; and upon this therefore the Lord declared He would build His Church. But blessed to us it is that in this we do see the glory of God. But come to the point of difficulty, we exercised with God concerning it. The Lord came, then, in the simplicity of His power. Now, while the Son did quicken in His life whom He would, yet He takes not the glory, but associates His Father in it, never breaking the link which, in faith, we have with the Father, by Him specially in this matter of life. Our Lord was accustomed to be heard, and accustomed therefore to look to be heard. A groan in the perception of difficulty is often power in it. It has but its power in the groan; and the eyes will follow thoughtfully to that God in the secret of His love who is present in the answer of His love known in His presence. The force of verse 42 is in "I." It is not "knew" simply, but "I knew." But it was a witness to those around.

186 The stone Jesus had had removed, the outward power of death and woe; though useless unless the quickening power came, or it would only have exposed his corruption. The world hides this, but they leave the man dead. But the Lord not only removes the actual imposed impediments, but calls forth. There are many lessons to be learned from this. It was a full manifestation of the Lord's power before many Jews in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, the power of His Sonship. Hence He so prayed to the Father that they might know He acted as Son, and that the Father owned Him. But Jesus loosed him after from what was round him quickened, as the outward restraints to his coming forth when he was quickened. But the effect of all this was diversified in grace and hardening. Some believed, some went and told the priests. We have then God glorified in the Son, and known consequently as the Father; and the full deliverance in the Son from all evil shown in the resurrection of this poor dead man. It was an anticipative exhibition that He was "the Son of God with power." His Sonship and mission from the Father was the great point thus demonstrated and published and evidenced. His ascription to the Father, replied to in such a way, demonstrated to faith His mission as Son, that He was the Son of God having power to quicken whom He will. This closed the exhibition of witness to them. Now their enmity and judgment began.

I have most feebly brought out the bright evidence of this chapter; but I have learned most strong and blessed truths in it, healthful truths, truths of glory (and life). But I am sure there is a great deal more of it. But the leading principle is so central, and the root of all, assuming His death, that its various bearings, as contrasted with the bearings of unbelief, are, I am sure, much more large, and of fuller reference, than are at all touched on here, though the principle be most clear, and is indeed eternal life.

187 But there is another point of dispensation that this might have been; that is, if faith had been in man, if accepting power had been, that is. It might have been the bringing in the Kingdom, supposing the Lord had been received and lived with. The quickening, sustaining power of His life was competent to sustain them in life. He that kept His saying should never see death: the expression is, "he shall in no wise see death for ever." This He testified of there. Here we find the power in which the dead saints could be raised, and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, had it so pleased Him, be called into the Kingdom of God. And this [is] a material point; it was no deficit of living power.

We have noticed, I believe, the full recognition of our Lord in His three great characteristic points: Son of God here; then King, the Son of David; then Head of the heathen, but this in attractive power by death. The whole order of the gospel we have been pursuing is very plain; chapter 3, the general character and Kingdom not yet manifested; chapter 4, its extension by the Spirit taking the worst; to wit, the humiliation of Jesus, and the gift of the Spirit in life, and therefore to any, the stranger, the Samaritan, the worthless one; chapter 5, life and light as contrasted with the law, but in quickening power; chapter 6, His flesh broken, the bread of life contrasted, as life-giving humiliation, with kingly power, so love; chapter 7, the union of the Spirit contrasted with the joy, the universal joy, of that Feast of Tabernacles in which He (the Lord) should be shown to the world, the King, the Blesser; this is what He was then; chapter 8, His word's rejection; chapter 9, the power of His work manifest to the simplest and most needy by its operation; its rejection; then, chapter 10, His sheep called out, that is, God's purpose, and what He would do further, and His discussion with the Jews in the assertion of who He was thereupon, and their final confirmed rejection of them; then the exhibition of His real power and title in the which He was rejected, as we have here traced it; and after discussion upon it, from chapter 12, what He was to His disciples thus rejected. This we reserve until we come there, by the Lord's mercy.

But if the Spirit of life was shown in Jesus, the spirit of murder was to be shown in them, that the whole Israel of God might be absorbed into His Person. Hence their whole character was fully exhibited, not only personally, morally, but as to their own national dispensation.

188 We have now the public act of the Jewish nation, and the position in which they were; for they called a council, saying, "What shall we do?" Then there is the full avowal and acknowledgment: "This Man doeth many miracles." What shall we do? because He does many miracles; and, while they confess the universal effect on the minds of the people, they show (as far as they were concerned, for the Lord's love remained unchanged; but these men were witness) that they had no power: "The Romans will come." The great word "I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people", "There shall not a man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life." Now it was not God's place, God's nation, but "our place," "our nation." Jesus had been rejected. They had no God in faith. They practically denied, unconsciously denied, they had any God, saying "our place," "our nation"; while they infatuatedly assumed it to themselves; and as they have no God in devotion, in acknowledgment, they have confessedly no God in defence: "The Romans will come." They rejected "this man" that "doeth many miracles."

Such is the melancholy picture of this blinded people. We may remark, too, that great as the effort at Babel not to be scattered, [it] produced the scattering; so their effort to keep out the Romans by sacrificing Christ brought them in in desolating power; and this observe, in the confession of His doing many miracles. The present destruction of their moral polity is also manifest: "The High Priest of that year." Who ever heard of such a thing? But they were wrapped up in their own selfishness, with the assumption of power. This was their position, and Christ rejected! It was therefore "expedient"; therefore there was no reference to right and wrong. There was the confession, too, they had no power of preservation. They could not refer to what evidence there was of God in "this Man," because they had no God. This is one of the great characteristics of apostasy. The whole scene is demonstrative of this great point of the position of the nation.

We must not pass by the force of "huper" (for) here, which some have cavilled at. Its application as to this point is obvious. "But this he spoke not from himself." This is a remarkable instance of how far the over-ruling of God's Spirit can go, of the human mind, without any association with its moral state. The Spirit of God made this witness of the apostasy of his nation speak their disposition or his wisdom to murder Messiah, as a prophecy of the purpose of His death as regards the nation he represented. So, may we add, was God affianced to the Jewish people, turning the principle of their curse into the witness of their blessing, and making them in their rejection of Him and His Christ His witness (for they still represented the Jew) of the infiniteness of His blessing to them; we may add, to the children of God, sinners of the Gentiles, the supremacy of His love, His intrinsic love to them, from the declaration of blessing through their sin, making their lie abound to His glory. O happy people in such a case! Blessed, blessed in Jehovah their God, the God of salvation.

189 The Jew must speak God's mind to witness to His love and salvation, though his thoughts had wandered far away. The apostle still keeps up the witness to the great accompanying truth that not only this love to the Jews led the purposes of God, but opening the door to others, yea, for the gathering in from among (for now He is the Head of His people, the Gatherer of His sheep) the Gentiles, the sheep, the children of God which were scattered abroad.

Here alone the term "children of God" is used to [of?] those who may be supposed to be unconverted. But it is what men might call a sort of error of expression, but rests on this, that it applies to the gathering which must look at them as converted, as children of God, which we are by faith in Christ Jesus. It could not be said to convert the children of God; to gather them you may, for that assumes in thought that they are children of God, though it goes out and seeks them in their unconverted state, and brings them in, and gathers them converted, the children of God.

In this little sentence, then, we have the conversion of the wickedness of man into the purpose of God; His abiding identity of love with the Jews in spite of their apostasy, and yet in the wickedness of the act of theirs, then thus apostate, opening the door in Jesus' death, and gathering in the people of His grace, wheresoever scattered. The whole order of the divine counsel is opened out in all its application, and overruling the hand and mind of the Jew, and the purpose and mind of God; "he prophesied." His hand (that is, God's) was in it. The purpose is fully opened in verse 52. But there is much to be learned in every letter of this; for it is not, Not for the nation, but, etc.; but, "not for the nation only, but that also." Its present purpose was the Church, Jew or Gentile. The full purpose was "not for that nation only," etc. So we find fully confirmed the Jewish application of Isaiah 53; and the prophetic character attached to Caiaphas, as noticed above, as exhibiting that point, is fully confirmed and established. And, indeed, on the whole, it is a remarkable synoptical view of the whole counsel of God just in its place, when the actings of the Jewish purpose, on the rejection of the Lord, began to be developed and expressed as coming from the heart of man. God over-rules them, and says, These are Mine. It was on the rejection of Christ by His nation, and a full development of the characteristic testimony or revelation of this gospel, and gives the mind of God, that we may see it through the sorrow, before. The blessed Lamb (to Him be all honour, to whom it is due) was led to the slaughter in the accomplishment of it, that we might see Him there, and the just stamp of honour on Him, as in our affections. For He "walked no more . . . among" them.

190 We have, moreover, in detail the peculiar character and stamp of this dispensation in purpose: gathering into one the children of God. He died negatively, so to speak, for the world; that is, the purpose effected in dispensation is this gathering together in one the children of God. The world ought to have obeyed. But compare Ephesians 1: 9, 10. This was the result of rejection; for the children of God, through grace, would rather have Him rejected than the world received: that the result of full purpose in glory as passing by rejection; for God is glorified in all His ways. I do not enter here into the order; for the Church ought to have taken it in this order. It may be seen in Romans 11, and again in Psalm 95: 9. But we pass on to the chapter.

Jesus' ministry just met the process of their unbelief. They took counsel to destroy. In the wisdom of God they had their own counsel. He walked no more openly amongst them. Jesus retires from unbelief. They perhaps had so far care, yet not care; and whatever they had was the care of destruction approaching. I believe this is indeed typical, and exhibitory of the position in which Jesus will be (and in a certain sense is) previous to His real entering into Jerusalem in kingly power; not having left but hanging on the borders of His people, as now hid in God till the day of His appearing. So will He abide then with His disciples, though more unknown. The attention of the people still fixed upon Him, whatever thoughts were in the rulers. The accomplishment of the Passover will be in the deliverance of the Jews. The offering of the Lamb was now, and they on whom the blood was preserved, they (owning it) will be brought through then in full deliverance, as through the sea, though many may think the wilderness has shut them in. Jesus then, having intermediately continued in the wilderness, draws near to Jerusalem.

191 These facts I have stated I believe to be typical, save the sufferings which were now accomplished, unless in sympathy. And so they will be delivered. The power of that will be to the Jews in that day, as well as the power of the Kingship, although the act on which it rested was now accomplished in their sin. The people were in uncertainty. There was the general sense of the rulers' determination. But "the spiritual man is judged of no man." They knew not the simplicity in which Jesus pursued without reference to man the Father's will, and in which therefore was brought out (as in us often, without knowing how; in Him perfectly) all the mind of the Father's glory. Wherever we act in circumstances in the Father's will (that is, on Jesus' way and commandments) there all the bright results of the Father's counsels are stamped upon us; yea, if it be going into the wilderness (or Gaza, being desert), if the wilderness is our place.

But the cup of the Lord's sorrow was not yet filled up, and it must be made full, and, most blessed Master and Lord! drunk of necessity in Thy love, the necessity of Thy love, in obedience and love. Not that the prince of this world had anything in Him. The people might be at ease in the temple, and Jesus in the wilderness, or in Ephraim. But this was still the patience of service, however degrading. The scene, as to their moral state, was really closed; but Jesus could take no step to throw up the service, not waiting on the Lord's will. This was most humbling; but Jesus in all things emptied Himself. He waited the Lord's will and His leisure, and all His glory (in Headship) flowed from it. There was one thing yet necessary, an enemy within. Let us see the circumstances in which the last sad, bitter drop was put into human suffering, and to us most shameful.

192 Note, also, how remarkably the power of death is brought out in John 11. Thomas, to that obedience, the Jews, Martha, Mary, and all the circumstances to give the full character and power of death over the spirit.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47012E> 192

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 12

A little, but most deeply affecting, scene is then brought out: Christ at His burial supper. For now the Lord let in upon His thoughts and mind the path He was treading, that we might see Him in the meekness of the prepared Lamb; and this last circumstance brought out on the secret of the treachery of Judas shown before, casting its shadow before, in the path the Lord was treading. He well knew what He was entering on; for this is the deepest mystery. We do not dwell, nor could Christ dwell upon it: "If it were an open enemy, I could have borne it." Oh, it was a sad, sad hour! (see chapter 13: 21.)

We dwell on the circumstances. It was the place where Lazarus was, that Lazarus that was dead, whom Jesus raised from the dead. There He was called to supper. Lazarus? Strange scene! the Lord sitting in the sense of what He was; and Lazarus was there. Martha served, willing, but according to her custom. (Oh! keep us near thee, Lord, in heart, the nature of our service.) Mary! the memory of whose love is fragrant, as the burial ointment of the Lord, in the remembrance of His disciples, filling the house; for love to Him does fill the house even now. It is very precious, this ointment, this grace of love; and all is on Jesus. She, however poorly, would thus express it, and she anointed His feet with the nard, and wiped it with the hairs of her head.

Strange to many! but the Lord, the perfect Lord, knew where it was applied; yea, He knew whence it came; the sweet savour of the Father's witness of love; the beauty of the pearl of great price was in it. He was a skilful merchant to know His Father's love was there; it was balm, love poured of God the Father into the heart of this poor woman, that it might reach the heart of Christ in the woundings of the house of His friends. And the love was suited here; it was the return of grace; and treachery for the moment lost its baseness; that is, it was soothed in the balm of this love; the wound lost its pain.

193 "Let her alone." With her and them He was occupied; not with him only; for, indeed, they were all (but for saving grace) in the same state; and He is now before us as generally deserted, even by His disciples. He speaks as driven into His own grace, and finding it here; though justly addressed to one here, as recorded of the apostle, who could in the same grace separate: "She hath kept this." She could have spent it on Him before; and it might have gone; His heart would not have spared it to the poor; but the Father's love in her, she, and in the estimation of God, though we know in ourselves whence it is, had kept this for His burial. Nothing can be more exquisitely beautiful. And be at rest, says the blessed Redeemer, "Ye have the poor," if ye be so anxious, "always with you"; let this little token be spent on Me, this token of love: "Me ye have not always." Oh! the meekness of beauty which in so awful a bitterness of evil thus in divineness of grace cherishes only, and justifies for this poor woman, this token of love. (Lord, may be bow at Thy feet, and show the odour of our love to Thee, that while we think of Thee, the bowels of Thy saints may be refreshed by it and Thee.) Such is the balm for evil in the world, Christ's comfort in apostasy: "She hath done what she could."

Note also, where there is simple love and devotedness, how the Lord directs into conduct which, from its perfect suitableness of affection, the Lord recognises as the expression of the sympathetic thoughtfulness of love: "She hath kept it for my burial." Now, she had had it long time; then she might (and we are assured, was willing to) have spent it on the Lord Jesus; but the Lord ordered that she should keep it to that fitting moment when it was in effect the soothing expression of thoughtful affection. How graciously ordered from on high! "It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with the hairs of her head." So says the beloved disciple.

Now, Martha loved Him, and the Lord loved her. She served before, and she served now. But this was not what personal affection called for now, though accepted. Into this Mary was led in knowledge (nay, but by the Lord of knowledge), though by affection; and the Lord interpreted it according to its real value from the Lord upon her. And so are we, and shall be, led (when there is this suitableness, simplicity, of affection) by the Spirit into right acts of suitable affection, when we wait upon it, upon the Lord; for He directs, unseen, every step.

194 This opened the scene of deliberate apostasy, the touching scene of Christ's comfort in it: not from His disciples; though no traitors, through His grace. And under what circumstances! what cutting consciousness of the mad ungratefulness of the apostasy! His anointing for burial going on in the presence of him whom He had just raised as from "by this time he stinketh"; and the seeds of apostasy now breaking out; but withal the fragrance of love to His soul. Well, too, might it be said (oh! sad, yet blessed word to them to all): "Ye have killed the prince of life."

But the purpose of the priests was resolute, formed in evil. They sought to put Lazarus to death, because the Jews therefore went and believed on Jesus. What a testimony! But they were deserted by it. (Lord, may I be deserted wherever any of Thy children have more grace, more of Thee to know and feed upon. But let it not be so if it seemest to Thee food. May they surely be fully fed, know what cannot be known, the blessed fulness which is in Thee from God.)

These, observe, were of the Jews. It would appear from that, "hupeegon" (were going away), that they went away, and consorted with the Lord so far; that is, as going to Him. They went and believed on Him, so that there was a multitude with Him; and a multitude met Him because they heard that He had done these things. The others were convinced, it is to be supposed, seeing Lazarus, for "a great crowd of Jews . . . came . . . that they might see." On the morrow a great multitude, "having heard . . . took." But when there was none to know Jesus, the Lord had prepared a testimony; for (which is important to remark) His disciples did not understand these things at the first; they, as free from looking for it, were ignorant of it all. The testimony was from the Lord upon the hearts of the people. This was His testimony then of love in the treachery of His disciple, if the honour of the people in their ignorance. "Hosanna," said the multitude. He must have the honour. His disciples are always last to give it. The little they have received has so implicated their own minds, they are so occupied with the circumstances they are placed in by it, that they are incapable, unfit to see further, and bear this witness. But they receive it, and they who are no self-willed witnesses, bear testimony alike to their Master and to them. The world went after Him: part with Him when He called Lazarus out of the tomb, part meeting Him because they heard it.

195 The multitude were witnesses to Him. Thus it was that God provided testimony to His Son. Note also His Kingship of Israel. His Sonship of David depends on His resurrection power. So Paul (Acts 13: 34). But the Lord gave this testimony to this part of His character also: "Hosanna to the king of Israel, who comes," etc. It was an external testimony; but that was immaterial here, yea, it was in spite of all the opposition of His nation, and therefore the more powerful, so that the Pharisees said to themselves, "Perceive ye that ye prevail nothing? lo, the world is gone after him." And so it shall be. It is upon the exaltation of Him to be King of Israel, that is, the multitude of Israel owning Him to be King of Israel, that the world shall go after Him, as the resurrection is the ground of their faith now. We shall see what follows.

This was the second seal put upon Him, or rather the first, for the raising of Lazarus was the intrinsic proof from Himself who He was; this the consequence. In the meanwhile the love of the Remnant comforted Him; nor must we omit the willing service, though less attached, of Martha.

The second result, I mean further typical result, followed. There were certain Greeks (note, Hellenes) who came up to worship at the feast, this Feast of Passover, alike the witness of the suffering of the Lamb, which was the power and the deliverance, which was the result to the Jews (and what followed). Bethsaida was connected with Galilee (hagoiim, the nations). These Greeks came and asked, saying, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus." It seemed a strange event; natural association gave, however, the occasion to forward it to Jesus. Philip tells Andrew. He also, with Peter, was of Bethsaida; and they tell, acquiring thus strength, Jesus.

But here the glory of Jesus was, manifestly, broke forth. It was but a small thing that He should be God's Servant to restore the preserved of Israel; but He should be for a Light to the Gentiles. Glory was to come in here. He was to inherit the praise of Israel. Therefore the Lord says, "The hour is come, that the Son of Man should be glorified." "I will make him," saith the scripture, "the Head of the heathen; higher than the kings of the earth"; "the glory of his people Israel." But He knew there was that which must come in first. He knew it well in the witness of truth that was in His soul. But He knew it in sorrow for Israel. For all this witness comes in after Israel had rejected Him. Alas! sad truth; but that which He wept over shall surely rise to joy; for, watered with His tears, if it tarry long because of righteousness to Him, shall because of righteousness to Him, and His righteousness, spring up the fruitful seed and harvest of His long sorrow. He shall come again with joy, and bring, not only the sheaves of His risen harvest, but Jerusalem risen from her ashes, the blessed and joyous proof that His tears, Christ's tears, were not shed in vain over Jerusalem, any more than over Lazarus. It is for His sake. The witness is in His love; and so it is in Isaiah 49 on this very topic. They shall learn that it is because of Him; they shall join their tears, and come with weeping, though they shall return with joy, and joy shall be upon them then, the [millennial?] age.

196 The King of Israel might have been received. This was the glorifying of the Son of Man. Other thoughts were necessary here; yet in dispensation the rejection of Israel preceded it. Yet [that] this was the place of His reception, His portion, was plain. Well, He felt what Israel was doing, and what portion He had to take. He speaks [of] it here. The Gentiles did but show where it tended, what was all to come; glory indeed, but the glory of a rejected Jew, of a crucified Saviour, Lord; yet the glory of the Son of Man; for it must be by death. The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. This was witnessed in the coming in of the Gentiles; for they were to come to the light, the reception of Jesus by the Jews, which was here in a certain sense wrought, in the witness, that is, of God. But indeed He was rejected by them as to present corporate character; and then the great necessity of God came in: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat falling into the ground die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit." The Lord, the Son of Man, would have been a good corn of wheat, one fit for the husbandman, the Lord non-impeachable in beauty and worth. But to produce fruit it must die, die by the dispensations of God, die because sin had entered into the world, because no sinner could be brought with Him then into the Father's house, to God. He must die to be a risen Head of redemption. Men were, He knew they were [dead]. They had proved themselves so, simply such. He must abide alone. Then there could be no quickened sinner but on the forgiveness of sins; none without the cleansing of it by His blood. They were dead then; their works were dead works, not service of the living God. They must die to what they were alive in, that they might live to what they were dead to in trespasses and sins.

197 Christ was alone in this matter, and He must die alone. Sinless among sinners, what fellowship could He have with them as alive, risen? He could bring life in love to them, having died for them, and sorrow, though it were to die from them; yet not be alone then, and the Sent Source of life. It was righteousness to God, too. Thus, alone, He was justified in thought towards man, and His love made righteous way for; yea, made by this of Jesus the very glory of His character. As for reprobate, sinful, Jesus-rejecting man, He must die. As for God, He must die too; a solitary place; yet not quite, yet so alone. Yet His Father's love quite upon Him: "Therefore doth my Father love me, because," etc. And yet quite alone; alone, to His own incommunicable glory, where none else ever was: the ark of the covenant in the waters of Jordan, parted hither and thither till His people had all passed over.

NOTE. - This is truly given so far, but very imperfectly. It seems to identify the glory of the world's inheritance with the ascended glory, the absolute glory of the Christ, the glory of the Son of Man. This is very blessed. It makes the rejected glory the highest; the poor rejected Gentiles identified with the unsearchable glory of Christ. Nothing but that could bring them in, and they are as it were made first by it. The world all along is John's subject; and Christ treats even the Jews as of it in their place (as Jeremiah 24), the Son of Man taking even death, the full result, on Him; yet herein having all the glory of glorifying God, and inheriting for man. It was universal glory, too, which is indeed glory; but its union, that is, Son of Man's glory (here spoken of) with the height of all personal and divine glory, in and of that in which God made to be glorified, is most blessed, and hence the bearing of the following passage (v. 32).

The other glory was official, as it were, though righteous, or, as Son of God, personal power; but here, being thrown into the full question in death, He rises vindicatively over all evil into the fulness of all glory, for He had gone to the uttermost of evil. Hence the other glory (save the power of His Person) was mediate; that is, Adam having ruined everything in sin, intermediate dispensations met no constancy in man, nor power to receive (being evil) the exercise of that power as sustaining these. They rejected Him. But now He takes it up in the full result of Adam's evil, and assumes it in the constancy of His own glory, from which the stability of all these might stand in grace; not from the weakness of the first Adam, but the honour and glory of the Second, who embraced them all, having indeed in Person fulfilled them all, through the surrounding weakness before; but now to take it, having borne all the result of their evil in weakness, in the glory of His Son of Manship, responsible as from Adam, but victorious in fulness of responsibility. It was death to all into which sin had entered, corrupted. But the Jewish system was short of death; it took up the world, and found or made blessing in it. But in this there was utter failure. The power of life in it was rejected, even the Lord (Jesus); and Christ re-assumes it, not as having created in Sonship into which sin had entered, but in redemption, as also therein sin, being Son of Man in the responsibility. Hence also the importance of seeing Jesus as Son of God in creation, or we break the link of creation and redemption unity (see Col. 1). Then being Son of Man He is the Second Adam of the new creation, the First-born over all things, as begotten from the dead; to the Church as Head over all things (redeemed in Him) to it.

198 The verses thus: the Lord sees His glory in it (as before God, of course), then the necessity of death: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die"; the necessity as regards His followers, the moral truth: "He that loveth his life," which goes forth into the ruined, sin-possessed world, "shall lose it: he that hateth it in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." Those acting for Jesus find this distinction: "He that will serve me, let him follow me; and where I am," the simplest result, "there shall my servant be," blessed in the privilege of sonship, but necessarily to follow Jesus through death, the path He went; one morally life, the other being where Jesus is, as in Matthew 5 and 1 Peter 3 and 4. But note, lest we should think it a meritorious exertion, the principles are identified in Matthew 16.

In Christ, "What shall I say?" brings out perfectness: "Father, save me from this hour"; in us the groan of weakness, it may be, but still well known, as His groan to God also. There is great blessedness in this: "Father, glorify thy name"; for it is and must be all blessedness to us. It is a Father's, our Father's, name which is to be glorified. Let the need of our submission be what it may, it would not be greater than Christ's. He perceives the glory beforehand, sees the necessity associated with it; bows in perfect submission, going down into the valley of humiliation, yea, to the very darkness of death in obedience, and lives to see the glory distinctly which He had seen across the chasm. So even we, though we know the way down, always see glory in result while in the valley; but it is the way to it. He saw the glory in Himself; first, "that the Son of Man," etc., as generally in result; afterwards as connected with death and His triumph over all, the prince of this world cast out; in John 16 judged, because that is the Spirit's testimony; here cast out, for this is Jesus', the Son's, work.

199 The glory of this bore much fruit. Observe how our Lord reflects upon it, adducing the well-ordered illustration. But how divine it was thus to speak of Himself, in the sure prospect that His death in power and God's appointment would bring forth all the result! Strange, looked at as suffering it! How beautifully it rises on His glory! how painfully sure in its necessity! Yet how meekly does He enter into the way of it! His meek heart takes from the witness of His glory its truth in necessity from God and from man, resurrection necessity; but how low and how lowly! Not a craving thought! The glory does but make Him think of the death. He took no glory; death was His glory, as a Man among sinners, as bowing to the necessity of God. Yet what vast, what infinite obedience, when we remember who He was! Conceive such a sentence in that which goes before. He saw, acquiesces, and pleads the principle, but a principle of necessity, necessity imposed upon Him (yet nothing which made His glory); yet imposed so that He must go down, obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. Strange, yet glorious! for it is alone; there is nought like it; it is in this the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified. Ah! how I see His glory shining through this way of the Cross! yet not separate from His Father; yet that which was inseparably from the Father; yet inseparably His own; for the divinity of the Son is preserved in the incommunicable glories of His Manhood acts. If the Father had not been, then He could not have died in love; and yet it was exclusively the Son who did it in Person, and that in unity with the Father, and yet as Man in obedience, in marvellous humiliation, "for no man knoweth the Son but the Father." But we pursue not this further here.

200 The Lord applies the principle, "He who loves his life shall lose it; and he who hates his life in this world," a world of sin, is kept aloof from the associations of it, "shall keep it unto life eternal." It is morally right in its objects, but it must die to the world. This we do in Jesus; but then, being alive by and to Him in resurrection, we keep it (hating the evil, the sign of the new life), unto life eternal. It was obedience, and Christ had eternal life by it. He that would follow Him must follow Him in the same path. The life to God is resurrection life; and, first, because we are dead; secondly, because we must die, as alive without the law, not subject to it; in a word, have to die to sin as dead in it, because of the resurrection of Christ, in which we have the life in which we can do it. But loving the life is the life, the old will, autarkeia, independent of God; hating it is in the perception of the evil, because we can live now (being right in mind) only to God. He holds it then as a free gift from God, and keeps it, for we know that which we have committed unto Him, that He is able to keep it until that day. "If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am" (the consequence, though appointed, is plain), "where I am, there shall also my servant be." I must go; so it is ordered; and am rejected. "Where I am," they wish to be. The consequence is plain.

But, "If any man serve me, him will my Father honour." The actual accomplishment is beautiful; that is, beautifully exact, though not developed here, as the results were not brought out, the way being the point in question. But they are most perfect in all their fittings. We need not develop them here, as they form the great subject of the gospel. The force of the sentence, we may observe, is emphatic: "If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour." How beautifully and perfectly expressively does that then come in: "Now is my soul troubled"! Well might it be so "now"! The Lord lets out His feelings, which is important to observe, for we shall see the force in supplication. He showed where His servant was to go, but it was in deep consciousness of its necessity, of where He was going, and His advice springing from that necessity closes. "Now is my soul troubled"; the Son of Man glorified. How does He pass from the true parabolic fact to the deep perception of it in His own soul! But this led Him to the Father, but to perfect subjection of His will, His subjection of His will in obedience first.

201 We see how little not knowing what to pray for as we ought comes from real sin. It may be really the depth of godliness in the sense and pressure of evil, which would seek, righteously seek, to be saved from the hour, but cannot do that and bear it, and this is (if brought to it) the portion of the perception of its necessity, which causes the suffering, or there is failure. The perception is of the necessity, the unavoidable necessity, and hence there must be failure or submission to it. There would not really be the moral trial in it but from the sense of the moral necessity that is from the whole reconciliation, which implies the very thing being sin is there, which in unreconciliation must be borne in sorrow (which note well). The Lord came for this purpose. We are made (graciously, yet necessarily) partakers of His sufferings. May we indeed (Lord, grant it!) enter fully into His sufferings. We know what is given us, I believe, by this perception, though more may be given. But it is a glorious truth.

But His soul was troubled, and He knew not what to say. What He first said, though righteous, He retracted. He could not but feel; for if He had not felt He had made no atonement; He could not have been perfect, or anything at all. "Save me from this hour," showed that He knew what the hour was. It also showed that He was by no necessity of God's ordering there, but found Himself in it with no necessity of personal subjection. Hence the rather His trouble; for He must willingly (strange position!) subject Himself to that which He could be free from, which seemed like madness. It was the necessity, in us of evil, in Him of love; I say, "in us of evil"; for it surely always is; for we are made perfect in this sense, not in office (for others) but in exercise for ourselves. But it is a beautiful and blessed truth. But I close for the present.

Observe, too, the difference of position in which our Lord stood; not of sympathy with others merely, but of purpose in His own soul: "The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified.'' "Except a corn of wheat," etc. It was a general parabolic truth, which the Spirit taught Him concerning this glory, and any glory if He were indeed wheat. Nay, it must be acted on by any: "He that loveth his life shall lose it," and then, "If any man serve me." But now the waterfloods had come even into His soul. He felt the position He was in. "Now," said He, emphatically, "is my soul troubled." It was not, "He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled," but "Now is my soul troubled." He knew not what to say. But what could He say righteously? "Father"; looking to Him always, perfectly, "save me from this hour." He felt Himself in spirit in it, as indeed He was; for all were in spirit now got ready for the kindling; Judas and priests and all; which He felt now upon His soul. He looked through it into death, death for life, to go through, knowing what death was, a service; yet felt as One who had been one with the Father. Oh! strange and only grief in its nature and in fact! how was none like it! But the spirit of recollection in His obedience was the real thing at hand: "But for this cause came I to this hour." It is My point to go through.

202 Whenever we can say this we have the point of peace, no matter what the trial. It cannot be deeper than Jesus' death, nor half so deep; and we have Jesus' strength the moment we can see that we are brought there to go through it. It is then simply blessed endurance, though trying, because we have simply to obey, and there is no failure of strength. It is exercise of will that wearies us, for there is no strength in that uncertainty of moral judgment, for there is all weakness in that. The moment we can say "for this cause" we have peace; for it is only to be gone through according to the will of God. Then the mind was at rest; but it could have higher aspirations; it was the Father's will, the thing to be done, and in its trial it could say (turning it into that, making in submission the Father, as it were, a debtor; for it was voluntary indeed in Him; yet the expression was simply the rest of patience, the holy expression of what was upon His heart): "Father, glorify thy name."

But what a change! the Father to be glorified out of what He prayed to be delivered from! Marvellous are the progress of our thoughts, when we pass from our thoughts to His ways. There came a voice from heaven, saying, "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again." How is a Father's name glorified? It is His own glory, indeed, in His dealings towards a Son. Now, I have doubted whether this applied to the first Adam, in whom the Father was glorified in his created perfectness, the "son of God," so called, fresh from the great Artificer's hand; and, behold, it was very good. Creation glorified the Father, so that all the sons of God shouted for joy at the Father's glory; or rather at those first temptations of our Lord, in which, where our first Adam utterly failed, and thus dishonoured God, Christ the Lord, "the Lord from heaven," had fully stood. No spot or flaw could Satan find or procure in Him, nor yielded to him, in which he could charge folly, or any thing, on the Second Adam; that which stood as the Son of God, but that which glorified God the Father. He could not skill of such wisdom how in, to him, a creature, Man, and as to the abstract of the nature he met, he found no inlet for his craft, but simplicity, and therefore perfectness, which held him all without, while it understood all his ways, and yet was obedient to the Father. This was skill beyond his, all the perfectness of the Son; and the Father glorified His name. But indeed this was specially the Son's glory, but God was glorified in Him, "simple concerning evil," for God was in Him, and "wise concerning that which was good," with a wisdom that had no folly, but while it was all obedience, was apart from all folly, from all evil; and these two are partly one, for, had it not been for Christ, God would have been in fact only dishonoured by Adam's nature, by Adam's act, though it were his own fault.

203 But now He was honoured far more than otherwise; but He glorified it surely again in the resurrection; had there in the Son, "marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead." God was glorified as the Father. Therefore he says, "Like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father." For "like as" indeed it was; the Son's glory, being the Son; so was it the Father's glory; all too He being a Man, and thus the glory went to God the Father, for He (the Son) emptied Himself. In His dealings with the Son, as with Adam, He glorified His name. But this was for others, for it witnessed to the response of the Father to the Son, that we might know it. Not that the Son needed it. He knew His Father's love. He was stablished too in obedience; neither needed He the certainty that it would be so. It was not for that, but in the simplicity, perfectness, of His own faithfulness, for the love He bore the Father, that He said, "Father, glorify thy name." But could not the Father bear witness to His name? For the glory of the Father's name was His, He being the Son; and this all be for us (wondrous word!) all this "for your," for our, "sakes." What words are these! The Father glorifies Himself; that is the Son's glory; and all this for our sakes! Well may we worship in communion, but in utter humiliation before Him, knowing the Father by the Son. But the point was settled. Resurrection, that is, redemption, as well as creation, must glorify the Father's name; and, while the Son gave, He ministered or wrought, that is, in Him was wrought (as we read in chapter 17; also in chapter 13) the glory to God and the Father.

204 We may remark also in connection with this that the resurrection of Lazarus did not go beyond the life as regarded the original system of the world. There was the life of man, and the energy of that life, restored and preserved. There was no, properly speaking, that is, the change to a spiritual body till the resurrection of our blessed Lord, the first begotten from the dead. In this sense the raising of Lazarus belonged only to the original life of man, and showed the power which the Lord possessed. Blessed for ever be His name, and glorified with the Father in every way over it! This glorifying of the Father's name past included the raising of Lazarus in the power of the Adamic life, sustained, as quickened, by the power of the Son of God, and thus in it properly was the Father's name glorified, in respect of Adam and his life.

From the resurrection of our Lord we have the resurrection life of the Second Adam as the portion of the Church. As to the other, they are not as Lazarus, quickened but dead (which note); for it opens out wide and plain doctrine. Nor will the Church therefore be ever known but in resurrection state; therefore the apostle (Philippians 3); though now witnessed in resurrection power by the Spirit of God. This is mainly the argument of the first epistle of Peter; and hence the anomalous position and impossibility of present perfection of the Church, that it is in resurrection principle in an unresurrection state. But our business is with the power of life, reckoning the other dead. Not it, however, alive, which it shall be in other sort. The first glory of the Father closed its exhibition in the resurrection of Lazarus; the second commenced in the resurrection of Christ; and I doubt whether there be not a wider application of this difference, and with fuller results than men suppose; for the sustaining power of Christ being withdrawn, Lazarus was liable to die again, which shows the difference; though it was as to its results, not to its intrinsic character, I alluded before. "But they that are counted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry," etc.; "neither do they die any more, but are as the angels," etc. But all power of life was in Jesus the Son of God, for it was God's life. Doubtless the result shall be all alike; for the power of God is supreme and beyond our reach in these matters; for we have Lazarus raised thus naturally, and the Lord Jesus eating in a spiritual body, and Moses temporarily introduced to us as in glory, talking with Jesus as in glory, and Elias; though one was changed, the other unraised, and the Lord in a body afterwards conversant among men. We know that we shall not all die, but all be changed. Nor do I say, while all are in the Kingdom, what "the spirits of just men made perfect" may have peculiarly as their place; nor, though it shows much more, do I say how far the Transfiguration shows the various forms of this. Generally it does. However, generally, Lazarus was the power of Christ in the life which was previous to resurrection, though exhibiting the same power, though not the same form, which belonged to resurrection. It is further illustrated in the changed ones.

205 I have only alluded to this subject here, as flowing from this resurrection and the expression "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again"; for I apprehend the former glorifying was in the Son's power as regarded the Adamic life in Lazarus: "The glory of God; and that the Son of God," etc. For it is indeed through the Son the Father is glorified, as the Son by and through the Father. So in the resurrection of Jesus, He was determined, "marked out as the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness." This in death therefore in Himself, that in exercised power therefore on a naturally dead man; for there is no holiness properly but in resurrection and its power, the great characteristic of the truth now. And so was He "raised from the dead by the glory of the Father." It is indeed the great secret of the gospel. It was withal by His power, and therefore declared or shown to be the Son of God with power, power to lay down, power to take again, a new special power. That He should restore life was intelligible; that is, with God, as His prerogative. Himself to lay it down, and take it again, was quite new. Death is the principle of Christianity, resurrection its power: even the "God that quickeneth the dead, and calleth the things that be not as though they were."

206 I believe I have given the general view of the sentence from the Lord: "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again." In life is He glorified, as the Son of Man was glorified in death; that is, the Father's name is glorified in living children; God in the moral attributes of His character shining forth ultimately in this. The sentence here is plain. It is the Father's name is glorified; first, in the sustaining life, in Christ, of His sons; secondly, the resurrection life in which He would glorify it again. The sound of God is heard by all His words, by those only to whom it is addressed. So with Saul.

There was no knowledge of the Father, no real recognition of God, or surely they ought to have recognised, in such an answer to such a prayer, the hand of God. They saw the wonder in answer to "Father, glorify thy name," and they said, "An angel spake," or, "It thundered." If God gave His thunder, it was God, even the Highest, that answered to the word, "Father, glorify thy name." Well might the Lord, the Son of Man, say, "This voice came not for me." He needed no such evidence, "but for your sakes." They thought it was for His; at least, "An angel spake to him"; for "now is the judgment of this world," that you may see even from the Father's voice where the crisis rests, even in the rejection (unto death, the great point in question, that by death He might overcome death, etc.) of Me. Observe, the world (a prophet could not perish out of Jerusalem, but indeed that was but a circumstance, aye, and a forgivable circumstance too, as we know; but the world) cast Him out. Its state was proved herein, in its guilt, whose control it was under; but it was in the power of this very glorifying of the Father, whence all by the Son, the casting out of the prince of it.

But the ruler of it was then cast out, excommunicated from his world into his nothingness of intrinsic evil in the presence of God. It was the great result of the Father's glory, the Son's power. But the fact is what is stated here, and the honour is the Son of Man's: "I, if I be lifted up, will draw." Satan had ruled over the world. In death, that is, in the death of Jesus, he lost his power, and it became the attractive power to all those who had been under his rule, the rule of death. The connection of the world as under his rule, in sin, of death, and of Satan, are here most fully developed. The rejection and death of Christ proved it. The subsequent defeats of the power of Satan are but results of this, a recurrence to resurrection power.

207 Further, as Satan was here cast out in the very point (this the faithful love to God and man of Jesus, the only Son of God, and Man) where men were under and subject to it, this, the witness of their deliverance, should be the attractive point also to them, previously under its and his power. First, the world in crisis judged in itself, the power of its death taken away in Christ. Secondly, the prince of it cast out in power in toto. Next, consequently, this very point in which he had seemed to triumph evidencing the Saviour's love in submitting to it, the point of their necessity, the attractive point to all men. His lifting up was the witness in the world of this, His subjection to Satan, to death, and to the consequences in judgment of sin in which they were lying. I say, the witness lifted up in the world, the attractive point to all; for He is not speaking here of the operations of the Spirit, to wit, of God, but of the acts of the Son of Man in death, as the apostle states, and the Spirit teaches. This is the attractive point to all; the cords of a man to them that had been sinning even with a cart rope.

It is a most important sentence, and cannot be studied too much. Let us see that it is the act of the Son of Man, and that to which with His glory the Spirit too bears witness. It was "from the earth," for the earth was all polluted (and it was consequently "all men," as contrasted with the Jewish people, this was the way of drawing all men), could not bear the burthen of the Son of God upon it, the convicting witness of His presence. But thus in death was a point where men could go. In His bloodshedding out of it they should find it life. I repeat it, there cannot be a more important sentence. But the Lord's own spirit was passing through it, though sent for them. Blessed, cheering witness was it to the Son that His Father's name should be glorified. His heart rejoiced in it. He felt the truth in Himself, and as Son of Man. It had been, "Now is my soul troubled," but passing through perfect submission and righteousness in seeking the Father's glory, it emerged, through the truth of His death, into the blessed results of His own love and righteous power therein: "I, if I be lifted up." Such is the course always of our true joy.

The people went back to the law: "We have heard that Christ abideth ever." They understood the word that the Son of Man must be lifted up. Who, they ask, is the Son of Man? But the Lord's mind had passed on in its own thoughts fully drawn out, the thoughts of all this scene, and He returned to the present testimony to them, but ordered upon this present truth: "A little while the light is with you." Two propositions He puts to them: "Walk in the light while ye have the light." They, the people of the Jews, the darkness was coming, and seizing on them, they would not know where they were going. "While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of the light," even to the Jew as such then, His present duty; the other leading to that effulgence of the light which, believing on it as intrinsically in them there, should shine forth on them as children of it in the resurrection.

208 "These things he spake, and, departing, hid himself from them." Gracious words! Suitable words! Words of present, conscious love! but little heeded; and He knew, though He desired not that, yea, though He had done so many miracles, but it did but fulfil the word of the prophet which He had spoken. The evidence was plain enough, but therefore they could not believe, for Esaias said again, "He hath blinded their eyes." See the notes on this chapter, and compare 2 Corinthians 4. Even so the veil was not upon the glory, but on their minds, as well as their eyes, and much worse too, in the risen glory as there, though the same in fact; for "these things said Esaias, when he saw his glory," to wit, even of Jehovah of hosts, "and spake of him." But this was the real secret, however: "Through their fall salvation is come to the Gentiles": to "draw all" to Him. The testimony here was quite plain, yet, indeed, many of the rulers believed on Him, but the moral principle of the Son of God's glory only had no power over their hearts. They were convinced to their guilt, not converted, but proved to be blinded against God, setting up to be as it were gods, the centres of their own power and consequence. No such heart can, in that state, receive Christ.

The Lord therefore set it altogether on this ground. But oh! how truly is this self-glory, subtle self-glory, the ground and essence of unbelief. (Lord, so show us Thy glory, that we may be delivered from it.) It must be a question with Him that sent Me. You cannot reject Me without rejecting Him. "He that believes me believes him that sent me." He leads His followers to God, and their hearts rested in themselves; and "he that sees me sees him that sent me." I come not for glory, nor to condemn, which I might do, seeking it for my rejection. I am come for the world's sake, "a light into the world, that whosoever believes on me might not be in darkness," its Servant, to bear a light to, and constantly to, him, that he might not remain in darkness, where the world is now. But "God is light"; therefore He came. If a man hear, and do not believe, I do not judge him. I came for a very different purpose; for no such purpose I have; that I came "to save the world." "He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my sayings" (they were sayings of God), the truth, the word I have spoken, the matter and truth of it, "shall judge him at the last day." He shall be shown to have essentially rejected God, for what I have said has essentially recommended itself to his conscience.

209 Compare Paul's account of his ministry, as above; and hence it is that the word still becomes condemning, though Jesus be not here in Person. Its authority too, so coming, should condemn such a one; he has, observe (compare the fact in verse 42) what judges him; the word he has; which I spoke, which I know he has, for I know it was witness, being in power to his conscience; it shall judge him in the last day; "for I have not spoken of myself" [ex emautou; here not ap'emautou from myself]; that is, the word has had a deeper source than you suppose, as from a man; but "the Father that sent me, he gave me" (for He is resting, you see, on the matter, logos, of what He said), "commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak"; My diction, that is, as well as the things. They were God's words, as John the baptist said. And He knew that His commandment, the thing declared in its declaration, entolee - (so in, "this charge I commit unto thee"; and, "The end of the commandment"; in both instances the matter and ministration of the gospel) - "is eternal life." "The things therefore I speak, as He has said to me, so I speak."

There are several words here and elsewhere of different signification; the matter of His speech, logos; His speech or expressions, laleo and lalia; the charge given to Him of it, entolee, eipon, etc., to tell or speak in this sense, declare; and eireeke, communicated to one, address to or say, to open a person's mind to another.

Let us note here, before we close, the various manners in which mortal men, or death or liability to it is presented, that we may see the variety of living power over it: Elias; Moses; the Lord; Lazarus; and the disciples: "If a man keep my saying," etc.; but particularly the former, for it is a great mystery concerning this power of life in the Son of God, and one manifested in their ways. It is not known what became of Moses' body, save that God buried it; a great honour put upon it; though not such as Elias, for it would not have suited his mission. Thus therefore it was ordered. But we know that Satan sought to have it; but the Lord did not, it seems, suffer it, but buried it according to His wisdom, that none knew it save He; which note, for it meets this point; for our knowledge of the living power of God is very small, quickening or preserving in Christ Jesus, according to His will. Let us learn it here as far as revealed.

210 We have, it appears to me, a definite witness of our Lord's remanifestation in resurrection state and fulness in that word noticed: "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again"; and hence was the difficulty that hung over it when there noticed. Christ manifested the full glory of the Father in respect of His claim on the first Adam, or more properly the first Adam's subjection to the law, and victory over death in Lazarus; and, "If a man keep my saying." Adam was exhibited in nature "the son of God." He came directly from God: "the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God." But in this sonship he wholly failed. We know our failure. The Lord took us up here, but all He did was merely vindicating the position of the first Adam from the evil; the position of which had been most fully shown in the Jew, as specifically put under the law: whence Christ was the Son of Man, born of a woman, made under the law, to redeem, etc.

Now, the full extent of this was shown in the resurrection of Lazarus, which completed therefore the witness to that. It was the glorifying the Father's name in Adam by the Son of God. In all His life, and fully in this, the Father's name was glorified; for Lazarus was raised or brought forth into natural life again; the power of death merely set aside; God glorified as the Father, to wit, of man also by the Son, in respect of this first supremacy of natural life, vindicated by Him over evil. But (for this was in the moment of transition after, as we have seen, His recognition in all His various characters being rejected) He was to glorify it again, declared or determined to be "the Son of God with power" (not so Adam) "according to the Spirit of holiness," as contrasted with the flesh altogether, "by the resurrection from the dead."

211 But, as the principle of natural life (not of course in death, which we are naturally) was exhibited in the first Adam, and we failed in sin, and then the law broken (all was indeed in death before God, as such; and the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, vindicated it as Man on God's part from the power of Satan, having overcome him) so in the resurrection life (in both individuals were preserved, and so in the law, by God's grace and power) given to us as connected with Jesus, that is, the Church. We have wholly failed, and the Lord must come and vindicate in Person the fulness of resurrection power, and be really and justly the Second Adam; fulfil this also, and glorify the Father in this character, in which we have failed also.

This most interesting subject we cannot pursue further here, as it would become a treatise rather; but we could not follow this passage without noticing it.

_______

Note the completeness of verses 31 and 32 of John 12. The world is judged by the death of Christ; Satan (shown to be its prince) is cast out. But then, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." How the universal and absolute condemnation of the world (the overthrow, withal, of Satan) and grace in the attractive object, and in itself efficacious work, towards all, is shown at the same time in the cross!

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47013E> 211

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 13

After this our Lord enters on a new character quite; what He was, being faithful unto death (v. 1) as He had been in witness (chap. 12: 49, 50), after His ascension; that is, as out of the earth for His people, who did own Him as in it. He was come "that I might save the world." We shall see this in what follows. His death was the medial point. It ended the world, as it were, in judgment in death, but it opened as the propitiation to it the way to the Father, a door for it, door of reconciliation. There was no worse sin against the world, for it was summed up in Him, all. There was all sin upon it, as in His death, so that it could come only in a new and living way of sovereign mercy by His resurrection. It was in the love to His own which were in it that He went through its rejection, so to speak, unconcerned. The former was an act done for them, in which they had no part as regarded Christ; in the latter they were on Christ's heart, so in the act as that He loved them and gave Himself for them. But this merely by the by.

212 It appears also that the temptations of our Lord; that is, His exposure to the trial and power of Satan, followed the two great branches of His life in which the Father's glory was thus manifested. The first, after which the devil departed from Him for a season, applied itself to cause to fail the righteous life of the living Man, in which He was conversant as Son of God in obedience and acknowledgment of the supremacy of God: "Thou shalt worship Jehovah thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." He was a Jew recognising Jehovah righteously, the Son of God.

We may remark that in the first two temptations (I call them the first two, following the order of their occurrence as facts in Matthew) the proposal to the Lord is as Son of God: "If thou be, command, or cast." But the Lord acts simply in obedience, the place of the living Man, not raising His Sonship or His power (which would have shown a wrong spirit) but taking the holy line of obedience which, worthy [of], yea exalting the Son, was the clear and only righteous path of the Man in which He then stood, and thus baffled Satan. Having therefore overcome him thus in the character of the obedient Man, the Son of God, and vindicated this character and place exactly where Adam had failed, and dishonoured God, as He now honoured Him, the Lord then exercised His power as Son of God in this character, exhibited in the course of His life and walk through the world. The devil, the tempter or accuser, departed from Him for a season. He exercised His power over Satan or the adversary, recognised as what he was, and subdued.

In our Lord's subsequent temptation we see Him in a deeper and fuller trial; one in which He not only overcame Satan as one who sought to lead the living Man out of obedience in the world, and make himself the god of it, but in which He through death (to which obedience was needful, if he should be overcome, because he had got the title of death by the truth of God's word as the necessary result of evil, to which for His disciples' sake He had subjected Himself) in which through death He overcame him that had the power of death. He spoiled principalities and powers. He exhibited resurrection power by being or being subject to death. This then was not victory in resistance, personal (that had been perfectly in the former conflict, and through all His life; the prince of this world could find nothing in Him), but subjection (and note therefore necessarily substitutory, or done for others, obedience to their necessity), in which, while He overcame death, Satan, and put away sin, as standing as the one Man with God, He did it withal with purpose of grace, to wit, His Church, for He "loved the Church, and gave himself for it."

213 The act was perfect, so that there was now no abstract barrier, and all are doubly without excuse. The act was effectual; for He had no need of it for Himself, and He gave Himself effectually for the Church: and in that sense He was the sinner; His sins and iniquities went over His head, a sore burden, and too many for Him to bear; and the Great Shepherd of the sheep offering Himself without spot to God was brought again from the dead through the blood of the everlasting covenant; for He was identified with the sins of His people.

But the act of our Lord, looked at in His personal act and trial, was meeting Satan for the vindication of this new character, otherwise alone, "abiding alone," for all were dead and under the power and liability to death; and meeting Satan in the power of death, Satan being overcome herein, He rose in the power, and His Father was glorified in the Son; that is, in the name of the Father in resurrection life. It is this name which is declared to the brethren therefore in Psalm 22, which hangs on this truth in all its bearings. Into this point the apostle of the Lord now conducts us: Christ after resurrection through death. His testimony had closed.

"Before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world," where He had glorified the Father, "to the Father," the point in which He stood was this: "Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." That end was death, or closed in death; for it is the utterness of His love in its exercise, its trial, He here speaks of, not its continuity as God; though both go together. His going to the Father was come, for He was rejected. Man had proved reprobate, knew Him not, its Lord and God, or rejected Him. Was He to go simply away? He might; and boundless love had been shown, and God justified, but not satisfied. There were an "own" in the world whom He had found. (He bought the world for the sake of the Church, selling all that He had to buy that field with the treasure hidden in it.) He had found them, and loved them, and proved now how truly.

214 His time to go was come; but He loved His own to the end. He went by the obedience to death, or the Corn of good wheat must have remained alone. Twelve legions of angels He might have had; but not so His purpose. Accordingly, when His time to go was come, He saying, indeed said, "I love my Master," for He had become obedient to God His Father; "I love my wife," the bride; "I love my children"; and His ear, the symbol of obedience, was nailed to the door-post. Yea, He free, oh, wondrous word! the ELOHIM, and He became a Servant for ever. Oh, wondrous word of love to His Church, marvel of grace unto the end! Thus Christ, passing into glory, became a Servant to the Church for ever; in death thus, for the sake of His Master, nailing His very ear to the post; on high the Washer of their feet, as we shall see; coming forth in glory the girded Servant of His people; Luke 12: 37. For the Father loved the children, and He was become the Servant of the Father (for their sakes also, for He loved them). Instead therefore of going out free, "He loved them unto the end."

This is the great principle shown in His death. Then it is led out into the service which He executed for them risen. This then was the Church ministration of grace: He washed; we should wash one another's [feet]. Here then comes in a most important point. Judas was there. The heart, sin, was there; and the Lord knew them that were His (v. 13). But the Church is not cognizant in this ministration of grace of unmanifested sin: "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity," the Church's seal. Accordingly the Lord so acted, for He was now exercising the ministration of Church grace. But there was that which drew out into action, delivering (by the ministration even of grace) up to Satan; and Judas was separated from amongst them in the rest: "Then entered" (v. 27).

This is a most exceedingly important and plain instruction. We have the great fact: He loved His own unto the end; then there is divinely revealed to us the fact that, the ministration of supper going on, the occasion of discipline and the time for the external ministration of grace, this feet-washing, taking place. The devil had cast (the seed) into the heart of Judas Iscariot that he should betray Him. The Church has no cognizance of this; for Christ (though the divine Spirit reveals the fact), did not act in cognizance of this, for He acted in order. And so, though we may see it, we have to act; for we could not act else upon conscience of ourselves before God, or of others, but from divine knowledge; that is, in principle, which is not the thing manifested in the Church, but its character, and show we, we cannot act (as we see in our Lord's temptation, subjecting Himself to it for our sakes) till we can say "Satan"; previously merely on obedience, or as on grace, till it be manifested by the act of the person, provided there be a calling, and Scripture to act upon. How humbling, how (if He had not been perfect, as He was) trying to the Lord to wash Judas' feet, knowing what was coming about! Not however in its development, till expecting in His spirit, His conviction, He acting on the divine mind, did the act (not in enmity, but in grace) which brought the revelation of purpose in him that was led of Satan.

215 While it merely remained the devil, and he had put it into the heart, as he had without tempted our Lord, our Lord dealt with Judas (the disciple) as with the rest externally. In His sufferings he was not with Him. This is most instructive. "When I would have healed Ephraim, then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered."

I know not whether I have hitherto noticed the (I believe) uniform distinction between the undiscovered accuser or tempter diabolos, devil, and the known adversary, Satan. The last we can act on openly in denouncement, the former avoid or detect by obedience, and resist. See how (Rev. 12: 11); and see the temptation. If we know Satan in conversation we are always entitled, that is, can say, Get thee hence; otherwise overcome him unknown, as the Lord, by obedience as a Servant; so we, as here noted. And we find this agency of the tempter of the Church and enemy opened out here in the exercise towards any disciple also as met by the great High Priest, who acts in His office, the result of which is always to discern the offender. We must still act in the way of obedience, for it is in the way of love. The intercession draws in God, the Lord's Spirit, into the midst, or to act in behalf of His Church, and the result is the putting out of the offender. For the drawing God into the closeness of the association, by the Church's intercession and acting in grace, necessarily brings, so to speak, God into the discovery of that which is inconsistent, with which He cannot bear, in this association, and He is forced to act in discipline and towards His Church in this behalf, by throwing that which is hidden into such positive agency as enables the Church to remove it, giving the ground of obedience, or in the exercise of power delivering the offender by the power of Satan into the position which is manifest, Satan, an adversary; we have obedience and spirituality, or rather spirituality and obedience.

216 Now, this was the case here. Obedience, if it is simple, is omnipotence in the sense that it puts into the place in which God is acting. God is acting in it, though we may know nothing, and thus it is unseen. Satan is overcome. For indeed "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies." But while this is fully developed here, which we have by no means followed out in commenting on it, let us turn to its effectual ministration in the Church: "He loved his own which were in the world."

The just source and order of dealing with unseen evil being noticed, we pass on in the Word to the blessing to the Lord's ministrations, blessed, servant-like, whose glory was to be humbled ministrations. The structure of the sentence is as follows: "Jesus knowing that," that His hour was come to go to the Father, would not (as we have seen) go out free, but "having loved his own which [were] in the world, loved them to the end . . . Jesus knowing that the Father had given him all things . . . rises from supper," etc., left the personal association with them (not eating again till, etc.) and began His service of washing. That applied in power to "His own"; this exercised towards the undiscovered sinner (or instrument of Satan).

I am deeply persuaded that all hence ought in Church order to be treated as a moral fault (see elsewhere). In the former of these then they (Judas) had no part, though that of course was nothing apparent; in the latter he had ostensibly, because ostensibly a disciple. But this supposes the Church to hold the ground of calling; otherwise any question of God's choosing cannot come in. And this implies faith, order, and discipline, and the presence of the Spirit, the Holy Ghost.

217 Note further (which is our trial), the Church always acts here as under the presence of the traitor; or the agency, efficiency, of the intercessor would be to that extent immaterial. But Christ in this ministers this His intercession; and we have now to see what the efficiency and operation of this intercession is; one, that is, the love, was knowing as to His departure; this was knowing that all things were given into His hands of the Father, and that He came from God, and went to God.

These are the two great points of His ministerial glory. One was the conferred glory in office; the other was the character and glory in respect of that with which He was identified, speaking here only of mission. The Father had given all things into His hand. As the Son, He was the Depositary of all power and glory in manifestation and title. Into Jesus' hands the Father had put it all. Again, He came from God. This is not merely the conferrence of authority, of all things into His hand, being the Son, but the manifestation in moral exhibition of God. He came from Him; not from man; not from anything else; but had simply come forth from God, abstractedly; and might therefore be a Witness to all things else, a Witness of God, as come from Him. An apostle, whatsoever his eminence, is by Jesus Christ. He is by nothing but from God, straight from Him, immediately witnessing in Himself. So, also, He went to God, the adequate Representative of the necessities of man, and capable, in the same unscathed holiness, of standing before Him as when He came forth from His presence (and who is He but God?), the marvel of the universe.

This great truth, then, that He came forth from God, and went to God, with the conferrence of all power on Him by the Father, as officially exhibiting and representing Him, form the great ground on which we meet Him as Mediator; that in which, being a Man, He stands in this wonderful position.

Let us take the statement simply as it stands. It was His mediatorial glory thus brought out, comprehensively stating the power of it. This glory was His. Then, not sitting down to the festival of peace, He with all this glory before Him, as Possessor of all this glory, makes Himself a Servant. There is necessity for His saints. He does not now feast at rest with them, as the Head of His guests, but rises, assumes another office, laying aside His garments, His garments of ease, as a Servant, and girds Himself with the cleansing office which they still needed in the world. The robe or garment of conviviality is laid aside, and He takes a towel, and girds Himself. Who else should have done it but He? This (though He knew that all things were delivered into His hand, and that, etc.) He did - it is universal power, and personal independence of the necessity - He did, because His saints needed it; because He loved them; because He had identified Himself with them; for the grace into which they were to be brought before and in the presence of the Father. Instead of taking this glory in manifestation and independency, He, knowing it His, assumes the office of washing the disciples' feet: "That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word."

218 This, while it was the lowest service, was the most truly exalted in love, His glory as a Man; yea, His glory as God humbling Himself to behold. I believe there is something fully depicted by the Lord's doing it, as to manner, as follows; not only to behold, but having come into the midst of, to minister to in Person. When the High Priest went into the most holy place, he washed the flesh, and put on the holy garments. So even of Aaron and his sons (Exod. 30; Lev. 16, etc.). Jesus girded Himself, knowing all that was His, and washed His disciples' [feet]. When the woman washed our Lord's feet it was as unworthy to do aught else. The Lord in condescension takes the same office. She in humiliation, with her own tears. He with the competency of His own instrumentality. She wipes it with all she had, the hair of her head; a woman's portion, whatever her shame was; He as girt for service, which He had taken in the competency of His love. But we have to remark the identity of the instrument with which He was girt and that with which He wiped the disciples' feet. In the first place our Lord's girding to service was the ministry of love towards His people. That which kept Him still girt was the necessity of service. The anxiety, the ministration of service, the necessity of His people was that [which] girt His mind, set the Lord not at ease with His garments loose. His girdle was thorough identity with the position of His people. But more; I believe the rising from supper was the relinquishment of the position in which He was with His disciples. He was calling, or had them in to the supper, as it were. He was there, and He had called them in. Deipnou genomenou clearly, I think, means while it [the supper] was going on. Instead of going on with it He lays aside His garments, and girds Himself with the towel of cleansing to His people. That is, Jesus, while calling in to the supper, gives up His place at it, that He may minister to the necessities of those introduced, though all power was therein His, and all perfectness; but in seeing this in Him we see the portion of His people; that is, that they should be fitted and associated with Him in this power, and stand in the perfectness in which He came from and went to God, even the righteousness of God; but He, being in this, is girded to minister to them; also their character as sons: "that the Father had given all things into his hand." But the continued position of service in this, in identity girt with that service in the spirit of His mind, is that which we see here. In judgment His garment is down to His feet, because He exercises it in divine power. It is not service; though there is the perfectness of judgment in Revelation 1: 13, a golden girdle instead of a breastplate. This then is the revelation we have of Christ in office, from His leaving the companionship of the disciples a little moment till His return.

219 Next, I remark there is no re-sprinkling of the blood. It cannot be done. There is no remedy if that be denied. But Christ ministers the Spirit in His Priesthood; and what we have to notice here is that, as in Numbers 19, the ashes of the heifer were to sprinkle. Even there [it] was the witness of the previous finishedness of the work, which the Spirit bears witness of to the mind. So it is the Spirit which applies the work of Christ in the first instance to faith. Jesus "hath washed us from our sins in his own blood." Bathed (leloumenos), we have not need to be so again. But there is the exercise of daily cleansing to the feet, cleansing from the effects of our conversation in this world. There we touch the earth, and this is necessary. If Jesus do not take away all defilement, it would not do. Those only whom He thus washes have part with Him. He cannot have feet even left soiled. But He does so for His people. We must bow to this office of Jesus. If He does not wash us, we have no part with Him. We have the sure evidence that it was a mystical action in verse 7. In the priests of old, they washed their hands and their feet; here feet only. It was not a system of doings, but conversation in the world. Walk still had to be taken cognizance of in grace. The emphasis is on "thou" in verses 6 and 7, and "I" also in verse 7: this the effectual ministration according to all the perfectness in which He came forth from and went to God; and in the love and for the power in which all things were given into His hand by the Father. He was a Servant withal in this perfectness in grace to secure them to be in it (compare chap. 17: 24, 25), the daily ministrations of Christ (unless condemnation to those who are not washed in His blood).

220 Blessed truths from the lips of Him who was Truth, who spoke the words of God! Yet was He with us to wash our feet, to be the glorious, yet lowly, Servant of our necessities. The Lord resumed His seat. We notice, in passing, His assumption of His garments and rest.

Note, Aaron never wore, that I can see, his garments for beauty and glory but on the day of his consecration; nor was the rule of the most holy place and the day of atonement made till after, and upon the death of Nadab and Abihu. Then it is said (Lev. 16): "Speak to Aaron," etc.; and the manner is told, and Aaron went in with holy garments, and girt; for it is this part of the office he is the type of. And accordingly (though after the order of Melchisedec, after the power of an endless life) the whole typical instruction of the exercise of Christ's Priesthood now is from Aaron and his service. And all this is the day of atonement, while Aaron is within the veil. By faith we know Jesus crowned with glory and beauty; the same words which are used of Aaron's robes; and that He is set down there; that is, on the Father's throne. But withal He is still in the exercise of this office as Man in His clean white robes, holy garments. But here, note, it is the exercise of ministry towards the people in presence of the Father. He has the perfectness of the blood presenting within the veil. Here He ministers the witness and service of this perfectness to them.

This is the greatest humiliation of Jesus, to be occupied about sin; that is, the defilement of His people. But He does so. It is humiliation of heart, internal exercise. He must rise, and lay aside His garments. He has them all in glory; but here, as it were, He must be girt. He must wash their feet, though Teacher and Lord. We ought to do so. The need of the Church, the witness of its perfectness, our personal grace, and sympathy with, having unity of mind and heart with Jesus, is to be able to wait upon the sins of our brethren. How little we do it!

221 It is sad to think it is hard to wash one another's feet, defiled feet. If we loved our brethren as Jesus loved them we should. Little is it for us, but it is glory. The glory of love, too, enables us to be humbled, humble ourselves to be nothing; and in measure as we ascend to Jesus' spirit, and partake of it, we shall be able to minister. One that is high alone can make Himself low, because He is high. The height of love is to do the lowest service, to go to the uttermost depth. It is here is union with Jesus. Its reward, its glory, is not without. It is the spirit of intrinsic perfectness. In measure as we have His Spirit, as Man anointed, we (as in Him, and He in us) will do it. If we know these things, happy are we if we do them.

It is the only real service. It is what Christ wants and does about His sheep; loved if they do fail. Great glory is it, the very heart of union with Jesus, if we are permitted, enabled to do it, if Christ does it in us. But this can only be in real union with Him. Services may apply to others. This is Christ's work, and can properly be only in them in whom His Spirit dwells, by that Spirit. This is the very portion, the glory of the Church; but, oh! what shall we say of our state, this washing of one another's feet? Again, again I say, "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." Happy! It is the way of happiness. But the nearest to Christ in the form of the Church may be utterly far from this: "He that eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me."

This is the unintelligible thing: all sin in those whom Christ seems to have chosen seems to falsify the whole foundation, or witness of the foundation, of one's hopes. But the revelation of it by Christ beforehand only witnesses the rather that it is He, the Christ, the blessed One, the Son of God. We have the use of ap' arti, "from this present time," as heretofore. He had not told them before, or they could not have got on. They could not righteously have got on with Judas. It would not have been possible. But now the scene of this was closed. The Lord was about to go. Judas was about to be separated from them. He may tell them, with no want of charity in example; yea, in necessity for their sakes in righteousness and truth. How nicely timed the Lord's "From this present time"! He could not on any account have told it before, "before it comes to pass," or it would have seemed to their faith some imbecility, some fallibility in Him. But now the rather it showed His love, His patience, His glory, and every grace in Him most perfectly; more so as regarded ministry and trial than almost anything else of human things around Him.

222 Then is brought out a most important principle; and how simply perfect are the Lord's principles! Exercise of this feetwashing towards others Judas was incapable of. No interchange of spiritual service could he exercise or fulfil his part of. Had they then erred who had received him sent of Jesus? No! He had sent him for wise purposes, in the wisdom of God; chosen to send him. They that had received even him had received him, or those who had done so, as sent of Christ, and it was Christ really in purpose and honour they had received. As far as he was the messenger of Him they therefore were honoured in their act, whatever Judas was, if the Lord Christ chose to send him. This is a most blessed principle. Many a one may have erred in receiving people as sent of Christ who honoured Christ therein. I speak now as to the principle of their hearts, for I speak only as to the gracious consideration of the Lord. The statement of the Lord is, "He who receiveth whomsoever I send"; and here is the principle, "whomsoever I send"; no matter who, Christ is received. Judas was sent; Christ (how blessed to him who received Judas!) was received: "whomsoever I shall send." If Christ has sent any, howsoever poor or without other sanction, if sent of the Lord this is all we have to look to, we receive Christ. The point we have to look to is the sending of Christ; this being, if a person is not received, Christ is not received. The Lord's choice was not because Judas was this, but Judas was the appointed one for it; and that the Scripture might be fulfilled so it was done.

The acts of Christ, though the perfect wisdom of God, were not the arbitrary acts of a moment, but the ordained counsel of God; so that as a Man He could obey them, while His wisdom in them was divine. That "whomsoever I shall send," specially in the present confusion of the Church, is of vast moral importance, the key-stone of holy grace and destroyer of confusion in the Church. We receive the Sender in receiving the messenger. Let us keep this ever in mind. It is a "Verily, verily," of Christ's; and thereby we receive God even the Father, the Sender. See the simple glory of this verse, its dignity! But this, while it made perfect value to those who had received even Judas for His sake when He sent him, turned the Lord's mind immediately to him. The principle is simple, and to be taken in its utmost simplicity, for this is its force. But its occasion arose out of Judas; for our evil is constantly that which brings out the testimony and value of divine principles; indeed, ordinarily so. The principle turns on every side, subduing everything that does not submit itself to Christ, in whatever shape it comes.

223 But it involves here an awful result. The Church never fails from enmity from without. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," as men have spoken. It is betrayed from within, by those who have the form of service, those who dip their hand with Him in the dish. We are prepared for it. The Lord has warned us beforehand. But it is a solemn and awful truth, a truth which troubles Jesus in spirit; the consciousness ("these things saying") that it was one whom He sent, though sent in divine wisdom, who should betray Him.

It were well if all these sentences marked "Verily, verily" were collected. They are the expressions of the great principles which our Lord divulged. This was one of the great principles on which the Church hung: "One of you shall betray me." It was not only, I know who shall, I know Judas. This was not the point. One of you, you that are thus associated with Me; this was what troubled His spirit. Is Jesus, our blessed wronged (by us) Master, less grieved and troubled at evil and apostasy in the Church?

We see in this how Jesus felt things according to their character; as a Man, yet as God. (O God, to what days hast Thou brought us? Our comfort is that the coming of the Lord draweth nigh, that there is resurrection if there is death; and His plans are not frustrated, though our evil be developed. And they are good days, exceeding good days, for the better glory of the Lord draweth nigh. He shall be glorified in all things.) But this is a great principle in the Church: "one of you." It fails from what it is associated with; never from what opposes it. Its glory would only be the more shown by this, and therefore when Jesus takes it into His own hands (and His strength is ours) it is so; and, as we have said, He is glorified at all events.

It was this that we find so pressing on the mind of our Lord, as in Psalms 109 and 41; and the principle of it is shown in Psalm 55. Though I do not think that it applies to Judas, but to the apostate Jews, and that including their connection with antichrist. But it has its vent in Judas in its first lines of character. See notes on Psalm 109. But the "these things saying" is of great force here, showing the connection when it had its rise in our Lord's mind. Oh! what a picture is this of the depths of the divine counsels, that the necessary principles of abstract righteousness, being wrought out in man, necessarily flow out into apostasy and the grief of Jesus, until Jesus Himself takes the power it is wrapped up in, the ordering of the perfectness of Jesus; for without this His glory (man being a sinner) would not have been brought out, not His patient glory, as here (for this was the deepest trial of all; an open enemy He could have borne); nor we have to humble ourselves and say (not His glorious, that is, manifested glory), we also, not as Judas, yet still betray His glory; yea, have turned our glory into a calf. The Church must fail, yea, the Lord knew it had in it from the beginning that which should make it fail. But the order nevertheless of our glory was therein, for if it had not, the glory could not have come in, any more than the death; speaking as ordered without Judas. Yet is it our evil. Jesus' spirit is troubled in it. But we remark that the consciousness of liability is the evidence of safety, the consciousness of no such intention (they looked one at the other), of none such in themselves or others. The sin of Judas was to the disciples an unknown sin, or they would have been partakers in it, if not acting on it; doubting, at a loss, concerning whom He spoke. Thus we find in their fellowship there was no known evil, or there would have been implication of guilt, even in the betrayal of the Lord Himself.

224 There are some in Jesus' bosom who have (learn), and from whom the most energetic have to learn, the secrets of the Lord. Oh! for the day when the Johns and the Peters shall be thus knit together in the common anxiety and interest for the Lord. For love has different characters, but the same object, and works together to the same result. Very different characters gives energy morally to all; to some in act, to some in holy zeal of patience. Peter founded in ministry; John watched over the declining Church; one in active love, the other in jealous love for the Lord. Both wrought in the same daily service. Protracted service will separate those who, in the impulse of the Spirit of Christ, have served with knit hearts while the work was one. There is but one place where we all meet (not of work, for Jesus did all the work), in which we are one, but rest in the fruits of that which He has given us portion.

225 Peter would know; he was eager to know. It is leaning on Jesus' breast alone we know these things. There we learn all things. He is not wont to keep back (for surely He dealeth as a friend) anything. From one thus leaning on His bosom He has no secrets, but He deals with us as friends. (Lord Jesus, give us grace to know Thy mind, know it because by affection and habit we are upon Thy bosom, as servants to do Thy will, so that Thou shouldest have reason to trust us with Thy secrets. May we know Thy mind; then shall we do it in blessed confidence for Thy Church, as friends with Thee.) And what brought John there, habits of affection for Jesus, lead us into such a place, not knowing what we shall receive there, but finding love (it was "the disciple whom Jesus loved"), and love finding its place, and in that place all the rest; but it was the habitual title of affection through grace placed John there. As he was before "reclining," so now "leaning" on Jesus' breast, pressed in his mind that he might extract the secret thence. (Lord, unworthy as we are, teach us, give us thus to be "leaning" upon Thy breast, thus to derive its secrets from it, now left hidden there, that we know not; even so, Lord, in love.)

It showed the uttermost evil, and how base a heart can be [of one] who has even seen Jesus outwardly, and the utter power of Satan over [a] heart not touched by grace with His love; that, to go just to betray that hand which had then given him the sop - but what will not the human heart do untouched by grace? "Am I a dog, that I should do this thing?" - a man will do also in power what he would not have thought of in weakness; for whatever lets loose the heart lets loose its evil, and the uttermost kindness does but draw it out where the evil is; that is, this form of evil, when Satan is working.

The greatest manifestation of kindness on the part of the Lord does but bring out enmity against Him. For whatever the outwardly amiable form of nature may be with which the heart may be clothed, the root, the moral root, of the heart thus fallen is enmity against God, and Satan works it to its point; and whatever manifests, brings the sense of, God near the heart, or would be the instrument of revealing Him in Jesus (Jesus, Himself the great instrument of God's revelation, He in whom He is revealed, or is God revealed) does but, in the instrument of the working of Satan, draw out of course its enmity against and according to (that is, in proportion to, so sad is evil) the revelation.

226 So here: after the sop Satan entered into Judas. The devil had already put it into his heart, and he had agreed with the chief priests. Now he proceeds to the deadly act. We have already noticed the distinction between his putting it into his heart and his entering in the energy of active power, overcoming scruples or difficulties, and the corruption of the heart in desire, and the like answerable work of the Spirit of God in us. But we cannot too diligently study the whole position of the Church here marked out in the presence of the adversary, the betrayer; the Spirit of God and the spirit of evil, as shown too within itself; the office and operation of Christ in meek patience concerning it, which, sorrowful as it is, is the part of the Church; the spirit of intercession and loving care; the hatred of evil; the thorough washing; the spirit of communion; the spirit of service; its learning the sorrows of the Lord's mind, and the manner of them; a sorrowful learning (for it is evil) by intimacy of communion, habitual grace of affection which finds its place near Him, "leaning on the breast of Jesus."

The Lord's holy and perfect (wise) grace, through all by which, in perfect patience in Him, evil assumes its proper place, so that (oh, that we might have this, have enough of the Spirit to act upon it!), so as that the saints have no difficulty; not acting on the spirit of evil (that borne in the patience of hope, in the practical exercise of charity), but the manifestation of evil fully brought out by it, though it ought to have done the opposite, till in opposition to the Lord it found its own place; and none could show one spot of want of charity which hastened its steps, but the contrary, or had distracted the minds of the saints with that which was not of God.

The holy spirit of fear, as all naturally liable to the same thing, which actuated the disciples, wondering of whom He spake, sure withal that He spake true, in conscious weakness; the whole position from beginning to end, till Satan carries into execution his own purpose, is a most blessed and wonderful picture of the Church in its trial.

But this 27th verse is a very awful word. Then comes the accomplishment of wickedness; therefore he was now given up to wickedness, and could be viewed in no other light by the disciples knowing it. But they knew it not as yet. They had no business with it, but with themselves. The Lord may carefully dip a sop in love, the act of love. It turns to gall in the heart of the unbeliever. Satan enters after it, and what then is the sop but the bitter aggravation of iniquity and evil? 4 But what a dreadful thought, "Satan entered into him"! Oh, how should we dread, not in distrust of the Lord, but ourselves, the deceivings of Satan! for as the Lord can have His saints by His power where Satan's seat is, so Satan can enter where the Lord is sitting at table; after (with) the sop He gives; where the heart is ripe to receive him; and, we must remember, in the sure and infallible care of the sheep, as we have even here; for none fell but Judas, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.

227 Our natural man is (in itself) as liable to his deceits as the natural heart of the unbeliever; for it is the same. Thus pride is checked, and the believer's sin may be the opener too, if not humble, and conscious of his own weakness; as Peter thrice openly denied the Lord, adding after cursing and swearing about it, though preserved from the effects of it by pure grace. And in itself in mere justice surely it was as good cause for his being cast off as possible. But his faith failed not, for there was One that prayed for him; and the same grace restored him.

But here Satan had entered in, and the word was only, "What thou doest, do quickly." What a difference! And the character of the act answered to the agent. It was not perfectly evil, as that was (in itself), the failure of the natural evil man under the sifting of Satan, but the active agency of the leading of Satan against Him in His weakness; not the denial that he knew Him, but the betrayal of Him whom he knew, the alliance with the enemies, the acting under the influence of evil immediately against the Son of God as Man, in the point, yet blind led, in which the heart of a believer would most have gone with Him.

How little did the disciples enter into the sufferings, the sorrow, of the Lord, of the Son of Man. No man knew, even of those at the table with Him, what it was of which He spake. There are certain sorrows kept for the secret of the Lord's heart, whose secret is perhaps their sorrow. If He had any to sympathise with Him, His betrayal would have been in this sense easy. There would have been some faithful hearts, a veil over the apostasy of the other. But He was alone in it. None understood what it was. They thought it was to buy something, or give to the poor; but there was something more than ignorance in this wrong estimate, from the heart being occupied with other things than that which the Lord's heart necessarily was. The Lord had just said, "One of you," etc., and told John that it was he to whom He gave the sop; and He gave it to Judas. Now, if their hearts had been engaged with this they would have immediately associated the word, "What thou doest, do quickly," with it.

228 The thoughts and judgment of men concerning all things flow chiefly from their previous associations and habit of feeling and mind. None but God can call them out of them in presenting Jesus. Wrong judgment flows always from wrong affections, or the imperfection arising out of it. God's judgment is that which He acts. The Lord also judged and felt from previous associations, so to speak, and they were all heavenly, though now human.

When he went out, which he did, receiving the sop, the Lord said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified," etc.; that in which the whole mystery of the purpose of God in Christ is developed, both in suffering and in glory, to wit, in these two verses: "Now"; for Jesus had now fully submitted Himself to the suffering, to the trial.

The point of submission was betrayal by His own disciples, one of them. (We in principle betray the Lord [by] every sin we commit.) And this sorrow bowed to, He had taken the cup into His hand. Mentally, as it were, the thing was passed. It was to be carried into execution, but Jesus had taken the step. He had submitted to the sorrow, redeeming sorrow, trusting His Father, to go through all. This was the trial of the Son of Man. In this He was glorified, and God in Him. He acquiesced, made up His mind to go through it. He might have gone free; but how should His Father, how should God, be glorified, the Scripture fulfilled that thus it must be? Here was the hingeing point: the desertion of those most trusted, and His Father alone trusted in, even through the trial, that trial in which was all trial, of our sin, even in the sight of God. Hence our Lord says, "All ye shall be offended because of me this night," "and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me" (Matt. 26: 31; John 16: 32).

229 It is evident that, when our Lord had given His mind to the subject, He speaks of the thing as done. When Judas had therefore gone out, and the stream of Satan's power was now let flow in the betrayal of one of His disciples, the Lord says, "Now has [or is] the Son of Man been glorified, and God is glorified in him." We learn from this that it is not the outward sufferings, though most true and significant (as apparent) to man of the others, but the moral submission to God which constituted the hinge of our Lord's standing in this work. It was not merely (moreover) that He bore the sins of the Church (as indeed He did), but there was a great abstract fact of the vindication of divine glory, independent of all consequences, and more important than all, and which presents itself first to the Saviour's mind, centring in His Person; yea, as it were circumscribed by it; but withal in the person of Man; so that, in the infinite riches and unspeakable manifestation of grace, as in man God had been permanently dishonoured, in Man (even in Jesus) He was to be glorified. And so was it needful for the perfect rescue of His glory without stint. And Jesus spoke here in this character: "Now is the Son of Man glorified," as only He could be in His Person.

Adam, man, the first Adam, as son of God, had utterly fallen and dishonoured God as far as any creature could, as we shall see. He who was Son of God as Son of Man, the assumer of the responsibilities of that race in Person, completely revindicated it to God as the representative of it; baffling Satan wholly, and overcoming him. Man as the son of God had been degraded, not merely by losing God as an effect of sin, but in losing Him his moral beauty was all spoiled. He had been degraded in disobedience by folly in not trusting God, and therefore deceived by Satan, and his weakness or ignorance shown, his impotency and foolishness; easy of deception, and unable to resist its effects, losing the blessings of God, who had crowned him with blessings, for the lie of Satan as to the apple. He had distrusted God, and believed Satan. He had been basely ungrateful to God, and given Satan credit for goodness, God for malevolence in keeping back the best thing from him. He had set up to assail herein the Majesty of God, and to be "as gods." There was distrust of God in all His goodness, belief in Satan in spite of God's word, and the height of presumption in seeking to be "as elohim"; and all this in the exhibition of his utter weakness and impotency, bringing judgment on himself in guilt (though this applies more fully afterwards); hiding himself from God, and then excusing himself by throwing the blame anywhere, but not in holy confession of sin. But how was God's power impaired in this His most favoured creature, companion creature, made in His own likeness, and everything put under his hand!

230 There are three things we have of God through knowledge of Him in Jesus, in whom alone we know Him: grace, truth, and all incommunicable Majesty. All was blighted, as far as a creature could blight it, in the first Adam. The son of God in his innocence, he denied the grace, though possessing many blessings, and took Satan as a better friend than God: God having grasped through envy the last and only worthy thing, He was not to be trusted; and this in the midst of blessings. He denied the truth of God, and directly believed Satan saying, "Ye shall not surely die," and assumed to be "as elohim," to be gods, taking His incommunicable Majesty as a shared thing. God was utterly denied, and the fairest of God's creatures became the only permanent exhibition, or scene of exhibition, of dishonour done to God, of His weakness (of course, I speak only apparent), failure, baffling by His enemy, and spoiling of His works in the sight of all the universe. This was what man was witness of.

I have often spoken of this. I take merely the heads of it now. The principle will sufficiently show itself. The Son of Man, therefore, was perfectly glorified, as acting in temptation but yielding to none of it, and that with everything adverse, even to "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" as Adam, the son of God, had failed with everything of present blessing to sustain him outwardly, and remind him. As in Philippians 2, instead of assuming to be "as elohim" when as mere man, when as Elohim He thought it no robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, and become as a Man, showed blessed self-humiliation, instead of Adam's effort to raise himself, and went down to sorrow instead of attempting to be "as Elohim."

The Lord showed perfect trust in the goodness of God when (though He had to say, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani," and crying, "in the day time, and thou hearest not; and in the night season I take no rest") He says, "Thou continuest holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel." And the truth of God was perfectly vindicated in that, in very deed, He died for sin, the witness that death was in very, very deed the wages of sin; for He became obedient to it. Thus was the Son of Man glorified; now more so than in fulfilling every position, bearing the vindication of God under the burden of all in which man had (humanly) destroyed the possibility of it, in which man had accumulated centuries of dishonour, all offences; and death the portion of faithfulness. He did all which could honour living man in requisition from God, and God in doing it; so that Man vindicated the character of God. Nothing could be more perfect or blessed than this great sight, this one fact for which the world was created, this blessed truth, this single truth: God was glorified where He had been dishonoured, God was gloriously glorified. Could the Son of Man have any other such glory, all the moral glory here shown out, the vindication of what God was? Then if God be glorified in Him, the Son of Man, God shall also glorify Him in Himself. This is the full glory of the Son of Man. When He shall come in His own glory, and in the glory of His Father, and of all the holy angels, the glory of God will appear in the Son of Man, in the face of Jesus Christ. While this is true as to the manifestation of His glory, when He shall be shown in His times (idios kairois), yet straightway He was to be glorified. He had finished the work. God was perfectly glorified in Him; and therefore, though He waited for the Church to be glorified with Him, to be manifested (because that blessed One was to be glorified in His saints, and admired in all them that believe), yet He ascended up into glory, sitting down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having by Himself purged our sins. "I see," says Stephen, "the glory of God, and the Son of man" (for thus it is He is then), "standing at the right hand of God." Thus the Son of Man was (expecting till His enemies were made His footstool) straightway glorified, glory of God, the Lamb in the midst of the throne.

231 This connection of the glory of the Son of Man, and God in Him, and He in God (and that straightway for the Church) is the most important that can be in the moral exhibition which all these wondrous dealings of God can present.

The Lord then goes on to apply the consequences of this to them. But what a contrast! what a sentence! "When he was gone out"! - when the blackest deed that Satan ever had done was now accomplished; that is, morally now, says the unburthened mind of the Lord, unburthened in passing through the crisis, and showing what it was, and dwelt on, and the apprehension of the divine glory in it all - "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him."

232 "Little children, yet a little while I am with you." There was immediately involved in this the leaving of His disciples, the other thought which came in with that one "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him"; and this introduced by His betrayal. "Little children, yet a little while I am with you." They should plainly feel His loss - they should seek Him, but they could not go where He was. This was their condition. It was true of them, as of the Jews. The Jews nor the Church were to follow Him there. Both seek Him, even if differently; neither be, nor could come, where He was. But though not with Him they were His disciples, manifest in one thing, "a new commandment" (for He was One who could give "a new commandment"): "That ye love one another." It was a commandment from Him to them a sign in them (and being as such therefore on positive commandment) to unbelievers that they were His disciples. This was the sign to the world, and so on His commandments, and so applied to them. So the Lord knew that it would so act on the minds of men as an unknown thing, which must depend for its power on something out of this world, and verify thus the truth of discipleship to an absent spiritual working, a heavenly (divine) Lord. There is also force in not merely "commandment," but "as I have loved you"; therefore so known as His disciples; this the standard and power, and therefore not only obedience but love "one to another." On the whole it is the full relationship resulting from the Lord's absence and their being left.

- 31, 32. Christ's part; what relates to Him.

- 33-35. The result of those associated with Him, verse 33 being the basis of the position on which it rests. But Peter was fixed upon natural affection to the Lord, commonly so called, which did not enter into the truths here stated; a mistake to be rectified. This great thing mentioned (v. 31) was to be done.

Jesus alone, He sets them, His disciples, in their consequent place. Curiosity would know, natural confidence assume to be in, the place, ignorance of which alone was proved by the proposal and the foolishness of self-confidence. Peter would know where the Lord went. Now he was to follow Him. He could not go then, but he was to follow Jesus. But he could not follow Him now; for now neither was there power in Peter nor the way made, the way of meeting the holiness of God in death, and going into death in the power of life, and through death to God's presence, a solitary way within the veil. But he should follow Him indeed with power from a risen Lord, and yet within the veil in spirit, through the grace of a risen Lord. But Peter brought it to the very issue: "Why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake."

233 Now this did bring it to the point. If it were not where He was going, it was what He was going to do. It was precisely the immediate moral difficulty of where He the Lord was going. "I will lay down my life for thy sake." But what a blessed word was it, the sure constancy of God in the midst of our weakness: "Thou shalt follow me after"! But the utter weakness of the flesh in the strongest zeal of natural affection and purpose was to be shown. "Wilt thou," says the patient, gracious Lord, "wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? . . . The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice." His zeal led him into the place where his flesh quailed before the power of Satan. But what a power in the flesh! A little maid laid low his boasted purpose. But he did follow Him after. He was led whither he would not, and the glory was there ready for him. The "why" was that he was Peter, one of us. But note the alike impossibility of one who believes, that is, who is brought to love Jesus, without given power, as of the unbeliever, to go where Jesus goes. It is only of God. "As I said to the Jews . . . I say to you also now." We have specially to note the faithfulness of purpose in the total failure of man in the flesh: "Thou canst not," "but thou shalt"; but having thrice denied Him.

- 37. This was wonderful weakness.

As observed below, all that follows hangs on this notion of absence under the circumstances in verse 32, and the force is on "believe" (chap. 14 :1) in what immediately follows. He being thus absent, and like to be in great trouble, the Lord says, "Let not your heart be troubled." It hangs in fact in connection on the end of verse 35, the last being the episode of Peter's confidence in something else. When thus loving each other together, in any case let not their heart be troubled. How so? How had they comfort in God? Did they see Him?

Was He in human sort present with them? They believed on Him. The same as of Jesus, Believe on Me. He was the object of faith as well as the giver of commandment.

234 In John 13 we have, note, the voluntary acting of Christ's own love. But He does it in grace as a service. It is with the towel He is girded with He wipes their feet. In verse 20 it is "whom I shall send"; for, as He was about to go, His service in the world would have ceased, and His reception [been] impossible, unless those He should send brought men under this responsibility and into the blessing.

My present impression is that the supper the Lord instituted, the last supper, was not the paschal lamb itself. His eating the Passover with them was in general. As the paschal lamb was slain between the two evenings, the putting away leaven was over [the] evening before. It was quite late when Jesus went out. Judas had agreed with the chief priests before. He went out to do it after the sop at supper, and goes and fetches the band. Thus Christ was sacrificed between the two evenings on the same day (Jewish) as He eat the Passover with His disciples. Hence John treats it as before the feast of the Passover. So it was, in Gentile computation, the day before; yet in the Passover. He was to depart out of this world. So in John 18: 28: they go out into the hall of judgment, that they might eat the Passover.

Chapters 12, 13. The Jews being the perfection of God's creation-rest, Jesus is proposed as chief. This involved national redemption, resurrection (as of Abraham), and the like; and headship of the Gentiles; but all these deeper principles; that is, sin was in the world, and the Corn of Wheat must die. These, in their different parts, the gospels manifest, with the ministry, the holy, gracious, perfect ministry of Jesus in the midst of these things, flowing from the depths of divine wisdom directed by divine love, in the union of patient obedience and love as a Man, as a Servant to God, to show these things. "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him." But sin being, all these things fail in man, and Jesus dies as to and for them, and brings in, in resurrection, new things. The Jews are set aside, to whom in ordinance the Sabbath, God's creation-rest, had been given. The Church, God's new creation, in the stability and security of the Word made flesh, and risen, who in the beginning, when God created, was, and created, come in here in power resting in that which created. "In the beginning was the Word," etc. All things were created by Him, and for Him, as in the flesh the Head of creation-blessing (here, in error and the craft of evil, the Irvingites take the Lord up, and thence the Church back here); but here dead, because creation was spoiled by sin. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work"; no rest; work in their covenant characters, restoratively, redeemingly; but now Head of creation in redemption; but having in union associated, to present to Himself a glorious Church, with it takes gloriously the creation as His portion; they sons of God by adoption with Him. Then the Jews by grace and redemption (national) brought into creation-rest and Sabbath thereunder (because Satan, who led the world, is cast down, and put in the abyss) are the centre of new earthly glory with Christ by grace. Righteousness and promise not having met, grace and promise meet to God's glory (not man's), all being exalted in Jesus, and all things united (anakephalaio-omai) in Him the Son, and Son of Man; and He takes as Son of Man the earth again, all things here, and the Jews as the centre of it on earth, the nations blessed in them. He takes them when they were rejected, but in grace and stability. Then, all things being subjected (they could not enjoy in worship, because evil, or the power of evil, had come in), and the subjection shown in the glorious Person of the Son of Man, and the dominion and power given to Him, He gives up the kingdom (perfect in all things), that all thus restored may be blessed worship, and God all in all; He, as Man, the subject Head of all intelligent blessing; and this in the end.

235 John's gospel shows all the intermediate part, the operation part; that is, in Christ, the Word and Son; in all its scope as to His Person; rejection here, the position of the Church and Himself, and His relation with the Father. The other gospels give details of parts, and while the economy of foundation is given in the Acts, and the detail and order and place of the Church in the epistles, and its apostasy as in man here, the Apocalypse gives the end of all these things, and teaches (as to those of them which pass now) the Church to cry, "Come, Lord Jesus," come quickly. "The Spirit and the bride say, Come; and let him that heareth say, Come." "Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen." Do not I hear, O Lord? In this my heart says, Come. My soul says, Come. We are here so as in a manner to be "sick of love"; yet in spirit so with Thee, and above this world's, living with Thee; set down with Thee; that we can say, "Thy will be done." Be Thy name, blessed Jesus, fully glorified by their power and ways. Yet Thou knowest me to be "sick of love," desiring Thy presence, holy and blessed Saviour, Lamb of God, our Lord, Prince of peace, King of kings, the Word of God.

_______

236 NOTE. - There is a contrast in John 3 between what the Old Testament gave (by the Spirit) the knowledge of; that is, between Jewish hopes, and truths connected with it in prophetic instruction, and what Christ knew and could tell as come from heaven (vv. 10, 11). So in the end the two parts of John's testimony (v. 29), His Messiahship, in which He had title to the bride, Jerusalem; a joy fulfilled to John, and Christ's position as come from above, and above all; One speaking the words of God without measure; the Son loved of the Father, to whom all was committed; in whom was found life, and unbelief in whom left wrath abiding on the unbeliever. Chapter 4, as the second, gave the character of millennial joy, purification changed into bridal wine, the nobleman's child gives, on the present quitting of Judaea, the saving life as a present thing by faith for the Jewish remnant.

I judge also, in chapter 5, "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee," Christ was acting as a present historical fact within the limits of divine Jewish government. In His doctrine which follows He goes out into the full title of His Person, above and beyond the precincts of Judaism. This introduction of His own proper glory in connection with the Father is connected with their rejection of Him, as a present thing, in spite of the fullest testimony (vv. 31-40). But it was to reject themselves. Coming in His Father's name, they would not have Him. This left them exposed to man's pretensions, into whose hands, in Satanic presumption, they would fall. Moses himself would be their condemnation.

237 Hence (chapter 6) what He was as rejected for those who received Him is brought out. He could accomplish messianic promises in power; as, before, He was Jehovah that healed, so now that satisfied the poor with bread; Prophet, proved such; refusing to be King, through man, but nourishing, according to the counsels of God, in His humiliation and death, those who, tossed in the world in consequence of His rejection and absence [were] introduced into the new thing (v. 30) by resurrection, of which He was the example (v. 60), entering as Son of Man into the heavenly place in which He was before He descended. Hence it is sovereign grace and eternal life.

Besides the moral instruction, I judge that the beginning of chapter 8 shows that He can avoid condemning the worst and most flagrant state of Israel while convicting all who choose to place themselves on the ground of the law in Israel. I have already noticed the rejection of word and work (chap. 8: 38 and chap. 9: 4), mark the two (see chap. 10: 33). Chapter 10 belongs to chapter 9, though flowing all from the revelation that He will have the sheep out of the sheep-yard where they were kept; as the Gentile sheep by His death too. Chapters 11 and 12 are what He was and might have been for the Jews, if received: Son of God, able to raise from the dead; Son of David; Son of Man, the Gentiles coming to Him when among the Jews. These chapters answer to the beginning of chapters we have noticed; what He could, chaps. 5 and 6; what He could not, chap. 7. Then before the Jews (chap. 8) what He was as light for conviction; but (chap. 12: 35, 36) entire abandonment of them; a light for a time, but which hides itself; and then their blindness shown (as announced by the prophet) judicially (v. 40) but in the revelation of the glory of Jehovah Himself, as Christ. Chapter 13, what He now is for His beloved disciples, His own in the world, in view of all His glory, and in spite of all our sin (vv. 2, 3). Verses 31, 32, we have the true full moral character of His death, and the result in present glory, which is in connection with the present thing in title of His Person. Hence the disciples could not follow [any] more than the wicked Jews. Flesh and blood has no place there. But the power of death would be given (v. 36). It was not in man to attempt. It was to plunge oneself into the denial of Christ, whose course and revelation as Son of God supposed and involved death.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47014E> 238

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 14

These chapters to chapter 17 are all regular and distinct subject, we may say introduced by verse 32 before; chap. 13: 32. Believe on Me absent, yet on Me divinely present, but as absent. "There are many abiding places in my Father's house." I am not going merely to escape trouble. If it were not thus, I would not have kept it concealed from you, and kept you through to this point when I was to go and escape for Myself. I am going to prepare a place for you, not shrinking from the place you are in, leaving you. You could not go there now, but I go to prepare a place.

Nor is this all. If He went to prepare a place for them it was for a definite purpose, not in vain, leaving their arrival there uncertain. If He went and prepared a place for them, if that was His errand, if that was what He went for, He (blessed for ever be His name!) would not leave it incomplete: "I come again." It is a great truth, not merely a fact, not merely what He would do. It was part of the necessary truth of their concernment in His sure and fulfilling and establishing love. Do not be troubled, I come again, and I will receive you (here His love was in exercise), to Myself; that where I am, ye may be. Here was the way; for this embraces the whole case in which that would be met. They must wait awhile. "Whither I go, ye cannot follow me now." He must prepare a place for them. Still His love, His continually serving love, to their glory with Him. They must bear with Him doing this. Love for them alone (forgive Him, as it were, the wrong), this comfort He must have, be spent in His love for them, and bring them in in peace. And so it must be, for who else could have done it? And this though one should deny Him in passing through it. But He must have His own way.

Neither was this all; we shall see more yet. It was not, observe, "Where I go," but "Where I am." First, His love to have them in the same place; and, secondly, they would not be where He was going then properly, but where "I am" in the day He took them to Himself. Yet have they to pass through and follow Him morally in His own time; that is, through the suffering. See chapter 19: 20 and following. Where He was, that is, when He came again, they would be; but where He went they knew; for though they were distinct as to position and relationship, yet were they identified, that is to say, in His Person.

239 Note also how they are said, "Ye cannot follow me now," because it was through death, and they had not the power then to pass through death, as was fully shown in Peter, not having the power of the resurrection life in the Spirit. But afterwards they could. For it is not merely His going to the Father, but passing through death; for therein He took the power of resurrection life, and was "determined" (as Man, connected with the impossibilities and sufferings of man), "to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." That is, He took, as regarded man under sin, Sonship with the Father; as it is said, looking at Him thus as the Head of office, "This day have I begotten thee." He entered into this position, into which the believer altogether enters, declaring the Father as Son through death and resurrection. In Jesus it is going to the Father, which is the gist of all this. But that going is from Jesus' absence, from death and resurrection. Hence they did follow Him after; some, as a consequence, actually passing through death therefore.

And hence our glory is more than it would have been had Jesus not been away, our glory in that day, because we know Him as gone to the Father, and as set down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, on the Father's throne; a glory in which we now see Him in a righteousness which could bring nothing unsuitable, not a spot or shade, upon the Father's throne (this is most blessed), but specially rest on the glory of Sonship therein. Therefore, says the Lord, "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know"; because they saw the Father in Him; and hence, knowing Him, not only knew Him, the Way, but the Father the end in Him. Blessed unity of glory! and this in Him a Man. Well may we adore, and find Jesus marvel at their unbelief. But His sheep hear His voice. Thomas saith, "We know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?" Now, this is the very point we do know, being believers, where He is gone; we see Jesus, we see Sonship in Him, Sonship "as of an only begotten with a father."

Here is the present position of the children's glory. They see Jesus not ashamed, by reason of being all one, to call them brethren. Him with whom they are associated at the right hand and in the Father's glory, they are one with Him, members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones, and He as such is at the right hand of the Father, and His Spirit is in them, so that they see Him there in the fulness of the glory. They see the Father in Him, in Him, in the Father's throne, and known as Man, as one with Him. Hence the Church, looking at Him as there, and coming in the glory to take it into it with Him, is said to be "the Church" (of the Thessalonians) "which is in God the Father." Here is the sufficing point, seeing the Father. But Jesus in one with the Father, and the Father in Him; and in Jesus we do see the Father.

240 Our Lord's answer therefore was, "I am the way," the way to the Father; for knowing the Father in Jesus is the way to the Father, in Jesus slain; and the truth for God is in this, the perfect witness and manifestation of God; not a flaw, not a defect, in showing forth God, the truth of what He was, and not only of what He was, but the central truth round which all else revolved too, of the mystery in which God was unfolding Himself, all things that the creature (instructed) could know, the unity of all God's moral ways. And this embraces a wide scope, as see Colossians 1: 15-20, etc. Moreover, it was eternal life to know the Father, and Jesus Christ whom He had sent, which is here supposed, and the subject.

But there is more than this in it. I, Jesus, am the Way of access. It is in the knowledge of Me that the renewed soul comes to the Father; the truth of these things with which the soul is conversant in coming to the Father; that is, in My Person; and not only so, but the life in which the soul has vivifying apprehension, the life and power in which it holds communion with these things, with the Father. For it is as one with Him so quickened we stand in this blessed apprehension and relationship.

Truth is the substance of a revealed thing, the reality of what is spoken. "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." He is the Way, and as the Truth and the Life are these things brought into operation so as to bring one in the way. And not only so, but if they had known Him they would have known the Father also, the end they sought for. In thus being the Way and the Truth and the Life, He was the revealer in His Person in unity with the Father, as perfectly leading them to, and revealing, all in fulness.

"The Father": this is the blessed character of our Lord's thus manifestation to us. He was "God manifest in the flesh"; but as the Son He was all three things of which He had spoken, but therein revealed also the Father. The Persons in the covenant, for it pleased that in Him should all fulness dwell, the fulness of the Godhead, dwelt in Him bodily; and thus knowing Him we were introduced through the glory of His Person into the knowledge of, and fellowship (as a creature) with, all that fulness. Here only we remark, as following the text, that we should in revelation know "The Father." "And from henceforth"; that is, I take it, from the rejection of the Son of Man, they would not see Him in the veil of His (not dead Messiah character), but as the Son of God in the fulness of the glory revealed in Him, and therefore seeing the Father.

241 From the 31st verse of the 13th chapter this character of Jesus opens out. He was as dead from that act, and was stating the result as specially here: "From henceforth ye know him, and have seen him." For he speaks as knowing Him, and this fulness was now revealed in Him, His necessary glory, which must break forth if rejected, Who He was, which would necessarily be manifested if slain, for He would necessarily rise again, "for it was not possible he should be holden of it"; and be "marked out Son of God in power . . . by resurrection of the dead." Now, though revealed in a certain sense, as in Matthew 16 to Peter, yet hidden in His living as in His unglorified state, but the veil then rent, and the glory there seen which was seen in Him. Now, on Judas' going out this was the thing He had to reveal, telling it us before it came to pass. His own mind had entered into it, as we saw in verses 31, 32: "Now is the Son of Man glorified." This is very blessed and clear, true always in Him. Now the veil just to be taken off and He preparing their minds for the glory; for let us see the structure and position of this chapter.

The Lord had said that where He went His disciples could not go, and declared the perfect impotency of the flesh (of Peter) that if it attempted it would only deny Him deliberately; that is, over and over again. He thereon gives them the ground on which they would have much further blessing, and much greater even now, than if He stayed with them. In the first place He was going to prepare a place for them, and if He went for such errand He would come again, and receive them to Himself. Not He stay with them in this miserable world, of which He at any rate could feel the sorrow, but prepare a place for them; not such as we had prepared for Him, evil over good, not good over evil; a place of His preparing, suited for His bringing them into it, and if so come again (for He loved them much), and receive them to Himself, that where He was, there they might be also. Their hearts were not therefore to be troubled. There were many abiding places there, even in His Father's house; and He went to prepare a place for them. This to take the trouble from them. He would not have brought them thus far else. Here was but a tabernacle for any.

242 But the great central point was they were to believe on Him (they did so in God), and so find blessing. And what then came in, they knew where He went, and the way. They would know hence Him as one with the Father, and on the Father's throne, know Him in His personal glory and that which vindicated it to them and therein; know the Father and, by the Spirit (given by Him from the Father, the gift of God), have fellowship with the Father; and being indeed in union with the Son the consequence of association with Him in His risen and ascended glory, in union with the Father, rather than in His human love; that is, I mean, His love to them while in our nature upon earth; for indeed His love was the Good Shepherd's. The power of association, or into which we were associated, was different; but they had the comfort of knowing where He went, and the way. But here it was rather what was in Jesus and what was in them, and to them where He was ascended as their fulness, than living with Him there.

The great point was going to the Father. This must be in the glory of Sonship, and so risen, specially sin being in the world, that is, through death. Therefore, hence, passing through death and to the Father (being righteous) were one. They could not therefore follow Him now; but being risen with Him now in spirit and power, they would know, He being upon the Father's throne, His Person with the Father, the glory of the Father in Him, and fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus. Till we see this unity we cannot understand this chapter. "Henceforth" is therefore our Lord's word from the time of His giving Himself up to death.

But if it had been only thus we might have been defective in the apprehension of His Person. Philip says therefore, "Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us." Our Lord asserts the same glory of His Person and unity as when ascended, though not thus manifested: "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?" It was true in His life though gloriously manifested to us (in spirit) in His sitting on His Father's throne, and showing the Father's glory. "With you": "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." For indeed all the glory of the Father was in Him, being the Son, being who He was. They could not see Him without seeing the Father; they could not know Him, the Son, without knowing the Father also. What had he known of Him? "Dost thou not believe that the Father is in me, and I in him?" Could anything more show His divine glory?

243 The words which follow I believe to be connected with these: "I am in my Father, and my Father in me." "I speak not of myself." And, "The Father that dwelleth in me," etc. He could not say, But the Father speaketh; for the Son was the word of the Father. He did not speak of Himself, but He could not distinguish the Persons here. He spoke the word of God, as in the Father He spake as the Word of God. This manifested His unity with the Father; namely, that He did not speak "from myself."

That the Father did the works proved that the Father dwelt in Him (equivalent glory). Thus while He hid His glory He really told it; but both told on the same point, only that the first was clearly the most blessed, the care of the sheep. "Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very works' sake." Now, the latter surely proved that the Father was in Him; but it could be and was used here only to prove the truth of His word, "Believe me for." The "believe me" was depending on His Person, and brought into communion in affiance on His word with the Father. If they could not see that He was in the Father, and therein know the value of His word as speaking the words of God, being so one with the Father, let them take the evidence of His truth from the works He did; which indeed was from the Father dwelling in Him, thus showing His Person even in their despisal of it, though, so to speak, at the other end in His apparent humiliation, in which they did not see His Person as Son of God, nor know His word as God's word; though it were so that "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," but here of the union thus revealing the glory of the Person.

- 12. I have spent or delayed several days waiting as to light on this verse, to know the Lord's mind in it; and I certainly find rest in my mind. Who does not from the Lord? The truth of the Lord is the first settled position of our souls; His power, all power being His in heaven and in earth, the next great point (on His resurrection) that we know. Knowing this, and exercised in His perfect love, we have to exercise faith in His will, the divine purpose. What I desire to know is His will, His mind, in the matter; nothing else. Would to God I could do all miracles, were it His glory and will. Rather would I have Him glorified than all the miracles in the world. It is for the Church and for Christ, not for fancy. This was the point in the quails (there was failure). This is the proposal of the tempter to the Son of Man (the Lord), on the pinnacle of the temple, wherein He was perfect; in the making bread of stones.

244 A miracle then is not always to the glory of God, always obedience. Does it make miracles unimportant? Far from it; but for God's glory, not man's. If we seek our own there is no righteousness in it. This is the great point, the glory of Christ. Existing miracles are to His glory. Hence, may be, the desire for miracles, as in the prayers after the Council. But miracles are addressed to the unbelief of men. Hence the desire for them when they do not exist may be evil, the occasion of the surest reproach. "Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe." "An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it." Hence faith founded on miracles alone is rejected faith; that is, faith not trusted to, no vital faith at all, not enduring faith.

But miracles are the proof of the glory of Christ. Hence rejected miracles are a proof of the positive hardening of the natural man. Now, here we have the character of the dispensation chiefly, not the extent of the fact. I say, rather than the extent, because it is a great principle. It is not looked at in miracles in the ordinary sense of the word universal. Were it so there would be no special gifts at all. It is the result in dispensation of His going to the Father, the witness of His (the Lord's) identity with Him as in glory. It was necessary to the dispensation as the way of the dispensed glory. Hence it is rested on faith, in that (in Him in whom it is revealed) it is not "every one that believes," as concerning eternal life universal assertion, but a great principle which has its truth where it is revealed; and one person doing it would have been sufficient to prove; not sufficient peradventure to God's goodness or for man's weakness, but for the truth of the thing. Not that this excuses us in any wise for the low estate of the Church, or our works being so few. If our faith were greater surely the fruits would be more.

245 But we must remember that the works and fruits are but the witness, aye, the weak witness of the glory - not the glory. Multiply them too far, it would not be the glory, but rather disprove it, as evincing the continuance of the evil under such ministration, and appear to show it a feeble instrument of remedial process, not the witness of that glory which was above all the evil. Comfort, present comfort, as it would be to us to vindicate from the evil, and desirable as a present witness, I mean to us, which our hearts would yearn after to His glory, as present with us. Nor do I exculpate any, I only affirm it is not "every one that believes."

The great point is it is demonstration, not fulfilment; the other, eternal life is the thing given, connected with faith; hence the question trustworthiness for Christ's glory, none such as to eternal life. "He counted me worthy [faithful], putting me into the ministry." But I put no limit to faith. It is an "Amen, Amen," a great principle resulting from Christ's going to the Father. This was the point, the point to be proved (in condescension to us), the point here, but put as a result, the natural result, that the defect might be manifestly ours, not God's; for power was not wanting. Now, the character of it was this: it was the exhibition of the resurrection and ascension life of Christ; the character of service, not the number of the things done.

The works which Jesus did were witness that the Father dwelt in Him, and His word to be heard. They were works, upon the face of them, worthy of a man, and proving One with whom God was. There was an energy suited to such a display. But now the risen Jesus, one with the Father, was to be "declared" (not Messiah, for Messiah surely would do no greater miracles than this Man's, but) "the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection"; "of God"; and not only so, but His being by the right hand of God ascended. Hence in His being gone to the Father, and taking this higher official place, He would shed forth brighter and more powerful witness, suitable to that place in witness whereunto He was going, His new place of glory with the Father, new in accomplished position, for it was the glory which otherwise He had before the world began. Hence, inasmuch as it was the glory of the Lord absent (bodily) on high in the glory of the Father, "he that believes" was the instrument of its testimony, its exhibition, its exhibition to the world.

246 The publicity of its character was one thing connected with the works being greater, the manifestation of public power in exaltation. And this is the force (it seems to me) of the argument or course of instruction in Luke 12, from verses 2 to 10, which note. By the works which Jesus did it was shown (v. 10) that the Father dwelt in Him, looking at Him now a Man upon earth, but now going into His proper glory: that is, as to His Person crowned with the witness of who He was in Person sitting on the Father's throne. The works were correspondingly to bear witness of that which now was evolved as the object of the believer's faith. This was not witness of His glory as of the Father dwelling in Him (though that remained necessarily true), but of His unity with the Father now brought by His position as an object of faith into actual developed manifestation (horismenos). Of this the believer was witness, who held His place upon the earth in the work done. It was a displayed glory of His Person, displayed to the believers who saw Him as it were (compare Stephen's martyrdom), and by the fruits of that faith, by the Spirit, by the believer.

And this characterises all from the principle of resurrection life to the works and miracles done in the name of Jesus in the days of the apostles. Witness the 3,000 converted at once; witness its universal publication. It embraced the world. It was now not, "Go not into the way of the Gentiles," etc., but "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." It was shown, not in Dorcas or the like as contrasted with Jairus' daughter, but in the universality of their character, in the resurrection character of their own lives, the power of His resurrection. Lazarus returned to bodily life; they were alive with eternal (compare the extent, Acts 15, Jewish, chap. 19: 11, 12, Paul and Gentiles), the power of death gone as to all of it in the word, the resurrection and glory as on the Father's throne, of Christ demonstrated in all the power, demonstration and power, exhibited by the apostles or whosoever "believes."

Nothing can be more strikingly illustrative of this than the Acts of the Apostles. This was the witness to the world (which indeed brought in condemnation), the witness of the proper glory of Christ as one with the Father, as sitting on His throne, though rejected. This afforded to the believer, established, the great point of faith and only consolation to one now left by Him on earth, seemingly deserted, that it was much better in all ways, for He was on the Father's throne; the witness of His Person far more blessed than if merely, however blessed that was, upon earth; in universality and publicity more than in difference of works; save in resurrection, quickening power; as see the difference of Lazarus' and our Lord's resurrection. The "greater" was shown, greater works were done; but it was not in mere surpassingness of physical miracles, but as this competently glorified the Son, therefore resurrection power (all power in heaven and in earth), and bore testimony to them all around, so there was a testimony to them, immediate pledge of the ground of their affiance in Him as connected with the Father, the all-prevailing power of His name in all their looking to the Father, its acceptance, and therefore theirs with Him, their being brought as sons into nearness with the Father (which was all attributable to Him), a pledge to themselves, the full revelation of the Father's character, to whom they were approximated in Him. Whatever they asked the Father in His name He would do it, that the Father might be glorified in the Son. The Son does it for the Father's glory. In the other case the Spirit did it for the Son's glory.

247 This is the main thing, the immediate intimacy we are brought into, and in which indeed all are one; Christ shown to be one with the Father in His throne of glory, and we in Him having access, that He, competent to do so, may glorify the Father's name as Son in us, doing all that is asked by the sons. For here it is "will do" before we do it, evidence merely of the absent glory of Christ, though the perfect glory, glory of Christ with the Father, having the one throne, as one and equal (as the object of faith). Now, as our nearness is shown, and the nearness of His Person as Son, what we ask of the Father He takes up, and does the greater thing. Yea, whatever we ask He will do. Here His glory, and simply in title, to say what He will do, as before of His zeal for His Father's glory, with whom He showed Himself one. Thus was the great circle of His position, service, and their unity brought out. There was more behind as to their direct, actual position upon earth, their actual estate and condition. This is all very feebly brought out, but verse 12 shows the administrative result of the Son's sitting on the Father's throne in the works they did, in which He was glorified, though shown in them, as the Father in Him, by His works on earth (compare Acts 3: 12).

248  - 13. What He would still do, for the Father's glory, towards the Church. The world would not see Him, but they would see the left witness of the Spirit in them asserted to His risen glory out of it. But the Son would still be in Person working towards them, the continuance of His acting in witness towards them. Verse 13 rests it on "My name, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." Verse 14, the extent of His power, "If . . . anything . . . I will do." This is the general great truth.

Then comes the manner of its administration: "If ye love me." This is rather an answer to Peter's unwise proposal, as the former of the trouble in which they should seek Him, how and as what they would now plainly see Him, that though after the flesh they sought Him, yet they knew where He went, and the way. The Father's glory was really in Him. He was going to the Father, and going to prepare a place for them where were many abodes. If they had known Him while with them they would have known His Father and the meaning of His going away (v. 7). If they loved Him, as Peter so strongly, and in one sense so truly, under God's mercy, asserted, the natural consequence was keeping His commandments, though the "ye love" is an emphatic word; the "Me" is also; they are conjointly so, the previous part, and brought out the glory of His Person, and consequently where He went; this their association with Him upon earth, as loving Him known to them in Person, then known, and the consequence, "My commandments." From verse 7 in a measure hangs the discourse to end of verse 14. From verse 15 a new ground is taken; not now the perception of the glory through the knowledge of Him, but the consequences appropriated to them that loved Him, so knowing Him even then.

A great additional comfort and boon was to be bestowed upon them, blessings of which they were to be the depositaries, as heaven was of Him. "Keep my commandments"; this is the way I shall recognise you; and "I will ask the Father, and he will give you" (from Him it was to come forth, for we know now our fellowship with the Father) "another Comforter, which shall abide with you for ever." "He will give." It is from the Father, as we have seen; but the subject of the gift is the Comforter Himself; as God otherwise gave His Son, whom now in bodily presence deprived of; but this should not be thus taken away. He gave it that it should abide with them for ever; that is, the Holy Ghost to be in the place of Christ, but here designated as "the Spirit of truth." This is His first grand character.

249 The world cannot receive Him, as not the object of bodily apprehension or knowledge. For this presence of the Holy Ghost was not necessarily a manifested one, that the world could know, but which was known by virtue of, and because of, His dwelling, abiding with them, and being in them. It was not therefore that which was, or was known, by being exhibited in outward signs, but indeed the comfort confined to the saints, and known by the peculiarity that He dwelt in them, so that they knew Him, and the world did not. The other thing had been spoken of before, distinct from the indwelling of the Comforter. This was a distinct thing, and stood on a distinct ground, "with you"; that is, it is with you it is "He abides." It is a prerogative act in which He establishes His own constancy, not man's: "and shall be in you," the manner of His enjoyment, and blessing of the saints by Him. In some sort He was "with you" then in the Person of Christ. But it is not that, I think, He means here.

Here was a distinct, blessed, and very settled and dispensed order and promise, the abiding and indwelling of the Comforter; I mean of dispensation, "covenant," an ordinance of God this "abode" of the Comforter, par autois, and His being en autois. But more than this, they would not in any wise be left orphans. He would come to them. The world (yet a little while) would see Him no more; but they would see Him, and because He lived they would live. He was not going to die. The world would not see Him. To their natural man they might account it death; but as to them the real interpretation of it was He was going to the Father. The veil (of His flesh) was just going to be rent that they might see into His glory, and because He lived there, really lived, they should live also, for they saw, and they were one with, Him. Consequently He says, "In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you." This path of association with Christ in obedience involves the whole thing.

He is then concerned to pray to bring full blessing of the knowledge of their real place, His real place for them to them, when by the Comforter they saw His glory. They knew that He was in the Father, but at the same time they knew that they were in Him. For thus seeing Him by the Spirit they knew their identity with Him; and He was in them, by virtue of which they saw all these things, "for he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." There was the peculiar order (as we have seen) of the dispensation in which they stood, seeing, not as they did or ought to have done, the Father in Him, but their present (revealed to them as ever true) portion, Him (whom they loved) in the Father. But this necessarily involved their being in Him. Otherwise they would not have seen Him at all, for the world saw Him no more. And how was this sealed and known? He was in them. This was their position. For there is a break in the matter here again; that is, from verses 15 to 20 inclusive; and there are two parts: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." There is the consequence set first. Then Jesus' "I will ask." Now, we are sanctified to obedience, but then the Spirit by which we are so is grieved when it is not so in the love of Jesus; and therefore, though it be there, it is as though it was not there. Hence the Comforter was their portion, and there for their portion; for being quickened they are sanctified, quickened, to obedience, and Jesus asks the Father for them as members of His body - one Spirit. So it is, but not being practically obedient they have little of the joy or comfort of it, they walk comparatively speaking in darkness, as though they were really orphans when they are not; for He doth abide with them for ever. It is the Church's position, if there be any Church at all, I mean vitally, which there must be, or the Lord has failed. It is the Lord's word, necessarily He shall abide with you "for ever." Being given, it is given to them who do believe. The consequence of this was they would know, they would not be ignorant, and they would know more than now by virtue of this indwelling Spirit. Jesus in the Father, they in Him, and He in them; they would know this in and by this union and indwelling in corporation to Him so glorified, and that far from dead. Such was the union: because He lived, they would live, and by this life, the Comforter being present, know the union.

250 The Lord having spoken of the presence of the Comforter (this was the gift to the believers, and Jesus coming to them in His union with them, as Christ, filled with His Spirit), He now goes on to speak of His manifestation and abiding, that is, by virtue of the union of the Father with Him (as objectively His with the Father), the abiding of the Father and the Son with them. This was the portion of the informed believer (chanochs, taught in the house). "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, that is the person who loves me." Thus he is distinguished: having them, and keeping them. The world will say, How keep them, if we have not them? But the saint knows it is grace to have them, that it is grace finds them out by the revelation of God, that (found with desire through the grace of God) they are treasured with delight in that grace; that the discernment of grace finds them. How came John to be leaning on the bosom of Jesus? How, further, Paul to say, "The things which I speak are the commandments of the Lord"? Whence the judgment of the spiritual as to the Lord's mind? However, it is he that has and keeps them.

251 We may suppose an intellectual having, and of course, some kept. No love here. We may suppose a small measure of keeping, and little known what they are sign of. Little love here. However, he that has and keeps. There is the Lord's work of love, and such shall be loved of My Father. So it will, so it must, from the Father's love and its object, be; for now we have them the subject, not exercised on Jesus in the Father as the object. But what a link of love! Loved of My Father! What can Jesus do but love him? and how shown? (their love was on Him; here was another link of this necessary bond of love). In showing Himself. They were loving Him; but one that is loved of His Father, on whom the stamp of love is, he will see Him; Jesus will reveal Himself, the portion and centre from the Father, and from the energy Himself of this love. Judas understood thus much, that He spoke of showing Himself to such a one, as one with Jesus, and not to the world. He asks how; for the questions of unbelief or of reason are the occasion of the full answers of God in love, where it is anxiety towards Him, not closing of heart.

And this was a great point, all hingeing on this sense with the Father and of His abiding interest in them: "If a man love me, he will keep my words." This was an actual resulting case, "he will keep my words"; not merely now obedience to found commandments, but the guardianship of His word, that which is associated with a personal acquaintanceship with His mind expressed. There will be the intercourse, so to speak, of mind. "And my Father will love him," as so acquainted with the mind of Christ, the Son, the source on which it all rests. "And we will come, and make our abode with him," this communed dwelling with of the Father and the Son making the closing portion of the believing, obedient, loved disciple to whom Jesus manifests Himself; not to the world, their portion apart from it.

252 It is beautifully and blessedly in contrast with, "In my Father's house are many abodes"; and then the climax of the intermediate (and everlasting as the subject of blessing) present portion of His people is that the Father and He make their "abode" with them. Oh, what a portion! Oh, what a perfectness of present portion! For it is as present portion we have to look at it, the to menon objectively of the Spirit's revelation; 2 Cor. 3. First, the object ought to have been learnt in person in Jesus, then the Comforter - Jesus comes - thus in gift and dispensation the portion of gift to them. This involves their union being in Him; hence knowledge of who, in whom, He was, and the Father, they in Him and He in them, then the consequence, practical doing of His commandments, having them as such a one would, and His word; and not only His manifesting Himself to them as obedient but as keeping His word, the Father and He in this blessed communion of presence making their abode with such a one.

You will remark that from verse 21 it is personal. This closes the personal portion of the disciples, their everlasting portion. The contrast is short and simple: "He that loveth me not keepeth not my words." Not here word, for that is the taught mind, to the willing heart and ear, the taking the mind as such. But here the words are not kept; not commandments, for they are not taken as such. The Lord does not here press them as such. His words are unheeded. Not so the believer. "And the word," taken all together, "which ye hear is not mine." I am not speaking of Myself as a Man, but of the Father which sent Me. He is necessarily in question by it, for it is autou tou p. He was not only or merely sent to speak for, but indeed while the words were His they were the Father's, and if they were His they were the Father's; hence the responsibility and sign of sin in rejecting Him, not seeing the Father in Him.

This was the point He urged, the great point "not mine, but of the . . . ." The Father sent; but not only so; being the Son, the Father was in Him, and during His humiliation this was the point to recognise, that His glory might be sustained. These things He said being with them, the right time. It was the association of it with His own personal love to them, and with His Person, for in His Person these things were now centred. In Him faith perceived the centre of their truth and the love that made them ours. Their display in order of glory after His resurrection did not make them less dear as known in Him. Nay, they ever centred in His Person. We knew we had them all.

253 But there was another point, not the association with Him in person and affection, but the wide instruction of the Spirit of God present concerning His glory and all truth. Here the Holy Spirit is so called; before "the Spirit of truth," and so subsequently He is called "the Spirit of truth," as that which the world cannot receive, but this being the question. But He is a Holy Spirit solely to the saints, the Holy Ghost, that Comforter whom the Father would send in Jesus' name, "the Paraclete." He comes in here more substantively; before, asked for by the Son, and given to them; here, sent of the Father in His name to teach them all things; a wide and blessed word; at the same time associating them with the remembrance of Messiah's words, the remembrances of His people.

I feel this distinction of importance. No person can read the gospels without seeing that forth-coming of what Messiah was, the exercise of spirit in His humiliation, the sweet breathings through of the divine mind. Yet the ordering of all things suited the circumstances in which they were expressed, and expression of One so walking in righteousness, walking in subjection, and though a Son learning obedience by the things which He suffered, Jewish things, yet wise things, perfect things, wise things; and we have no need of wise things "in public," of that which is unveiled. The hidden, subject character of Christ stamping a power upon all that He was and said, this fund of gracious forbearance and wise expression in His subject estate, exceeding perfectness of spirit and truth in living life here, the Spirit would call to mind in the epistles. In the Spirit we see all the glory unfolded, all things taught; not, "Ye cannot bear them now," but, "Let us go on to perfection." For in the glory unveiled "the Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep things." When it came from the Father, the sanctifying Spirit to the disciples, it would do anything but obliterate the former; it would remember to us the precious and savour-bearing words of Jesus, and besides that open out the wide scene of glory and knowledge of truth which His breaking the bands of death had opened out, or us into their personal position. He had told them it was material to know from His lips who was the Truth before He went. It might have been feeling else, or so supposed. But all the knowledge of things in it was left for the time when the results of that position should be given in the presence of the Comforter. There were promises, great and precious promises, rather a condition of blessing by the presence of the Spirit and revelation of the Father and the Son. But there was an immediate result of association. They were not the result of the things promised. That was to be waited for, because known by them. But there was an immediate, present result from and by Christ, besides this scope of hope: "Peace I leave with you"; a present solid condition in the midst [of], or as throwing its power over, all the varied exercises which thought however blessed could afford.

254 But there is more in this sentence, I am persuaded, than meets the eye in common. The fact is stated; but it is [in] the result of His going away I learn it. All that He here speaks of is the consequence of their state by virtue of His going to the Father. It includes that, and while it involves what He had (been and) said upon earth, and the Comforter coming, the time of its place with them was His leaving them. He left peace with them as One to whom it belonged to leave. He was peace with God, the Man of peace with God. This He left, whatever the advancement of His glory; this He did not take away with Him to heaven. He left it here; their portion, as His; and still as before. This is most blessed; there was "good pleasure" in Him. He knew it, and delighting in God was answerably in perfect delight in Him. So we in our new nature, and in Him in fact. And this is what He has left us, that perfect acceptance in the good pleasure of God in which He delighted and found rest in. He left it; for it was His, and in Him. He gave it; for none had it else; in intrinsic relationship in renewal of mind. But He did leave peace. He gave us His own peace, that in which He stood in its perfectness. Peace He gave to us. But how could He give His peace? It was clearly only in spirituality of mind; for to be so is life and peace; but so as that it was by and given of Him. The spiritual mind has peace because of (for they go together) what Jesus here spoke of, but Jesus' own peace, His position with God, with the Father. This was what was given in sense and blessing.

255 Then comes the word, "Not as the world giveth give I unto you"; and here is the power and blessing of the sentence; for the world gives consumable fruits, and inexpensive, though gainful to itself; not so Jesus: the gift of peace was at the cost of Himself; they of their abundance; but He, taking the necessity and burden of evil, left peace for them. Peace He had, and might have gone so away to His own glory. But He did not so. He passed through the evil, gave Himself for them, that (purchasing them, freed from sin, at the cost of Himself) the peace He had as righteousness with God might be theirs. It was the manner of the gift. Then the infinite difference that was here distinguished: the gift of peace was the gift of Himself to perfect trouble for them, all perfect trouble, His own peace. But that as sinners they could not have but through the sacrifice of Himself. But, being given, He in perfect, self-sacrificing love did give them peace.

It took away fear as well as trouble: "Do not be troubled." There was definiteness of object (Christ was not gone, that is, lost; the same is seen in Revelation 19), known and enjoyed, and that in a much higher way. "Do not fear"; there was constancy of peace. Christ gave peace. He was able, as sacrificing Himself, and that in the certainty of love. Therein there was nothing to fear: God was love, and He was given for them. "Hereby know we love." Trouble is uncertainty. All from verses 1 to 25, took that away. "Fear," the opposite of peace, it "hath torment." But peace given, as the world could not give, took that away; for "perfect love casteth out fear"; and "herein is love" (1 John 4: 10-17, etc.); but here the fact of grace. But this gift implied all other gifts; for it was the necessity of such love; not as giving being a reason for giving no more, but the proof of love, and that in the highest degree; all else but the making good the necessity of that. Christ's own peace in the world, and given to us as removing sin, is the measure of our not fearing.

"Ye have heard how I said, I go away, and come again to you." This removed their uneasiness as to themselves. It was not disappointment or death, but going to return. But if they had loved Him they would have rejoiced because He was going to the Father. For the Church looking at Jesus (at Christ officially) is given as one with Him an interest and delight in His full joy. If they had loved Him they would have rejoiced He was going from sorrow to full joy at God's right hand. In all these things Christ is spoken of as the complex Person whom we know, whereby we have communion and fellowship with Him, the incarnate One. In the same way we see the Jewish Church's joys and interest in Psalms 20 and 21, beautifully illustrating and expressing this, as for them. Nothing can be more beautiful than giving the Church an interest in His happiness at such a moment, in its sorrow, of giving it such express identity with Himself. It was not as though they were left, but He was going to the place of His glory and blessing. They were so one with Him; that was their happiness.

256 And with what delicacy and (to them) exalting condescension does He bring them into identity with Himself then, instead of leaving them with their thoughts here, where only their sorrowful and undignified selves would be found! I am going to greater glory, and you are one with Me in affection and interest. "My Father is greater than I," Jesus incarnate, in office and position in this revelation of glory of which I am assuming the Head; and you are made heirs in blessing, and so in this covenant, as men call it. It is so in the way in which we know God revealed in dispensation in this wondrous economy in which all the Trinity is revealed. Not that which is essentially in Godhead is here spoken of; the difference of Persons in Trinity is never so spoken of; but revealed in knowledge. Ye would rejoice because I; for My Father is greater than Me. Of course nothing else could be sound. It is not in office properly; for in one sense the Father takes the office of Servant of Christ about His people; nor in Godhead, for that is not the question; but as known to the disciples in the revelation of diathecal relationship.

The incarnate Son holds the subordinate place in the way we know Him, as all the Scriptures testify in speaking of it from Genesis; Proverbs 8, which particularly shows it; through to the express revelation in the Apocalypse. Indeed, as all blessedness is in dwelling on it connected with His glorious unity with the Father, so no sort of difficulty arises at all in a simple believer's mind, but blessing and strength; because it is believed it does believe. In the covenant the Son holds the place of service; that is, in our knowledge of Him.

257 "And now I have told you before it come to pass"; that is, this great truth about His going away, etc., to His Father. This testimony before was evidence of truth. Compare Isaiah 41: 22, 23; and before, chap. 13: 19. All, whatever the gift, turns to this, to revert to it, believing in Jesus and His glory. This is the great end of God, a great end of previous testimony, though the Church has another portion in it. So also all apparent sorrows become confirmatory of faith; apparent discreditings turn to accredit the truth and strength of our hope in the Lord. But this includes the glory; that is, the knowledge of it by the presence of the Spirit; as in chapter 13: 19 the sorrow and evil, the prediction of either, confirming the truth of all. In chapter 13: 19 the Lord had not spoken of it before; but from that, as it was just coming, He spoke of it. It did not affect the mission of Judas; but it was now needful to tell it them. It might otherwise have called in question His wisdom or knowledge. The disciples are apprised before, as due, as it were, to them, that their faith might not be shocked; as the blessing of privileged association. The world learned it in the accomplished fact.

But there was more than this in the order of the words. He had not much more to say to them, because possible intercourse with them was near a close. His was discipular intercourse; but the prince of this world was coming, to have it (humanly) all his own way. But this close of His intercourse with them was not at all that the prince of this world had anything in Him; he had nothing; but it was that the world might know He thus showed it in freely communicating His thoughts in it to them; that He loved the Father. This was the meaning of His death, and that as the Father gave Him commandment so He did.

He then arose, and went out; for this had passed before He left the place where they had been sitting. It would appear, from Matthew 26: 30, 31, that after singing a hymn they went to the Mount of Olives. The 31st verse in Matthew 26 evidently is not immediately consequent, for in verse 36 He comes to Gethsemane. Verse 30 merely states generally what He did after the Supper. Taking all from the hymn to Mount of Olives as one act, it appears to me that our Lord said these things while moving to go out, after the hymn; first as to Peter, and then before they actually went away to the Mount of Olives. This 14th chapter, at the close of which He bids them arise to follow Him, doubtless slow to stir in the great scene which He had now opened to them of unlooked-for sorrow and woe, in which Judas had just now led the way, in this it was the Lord said, "Let not your heart be troubled," there are better things to come out of it all. On the way He entered on what was consequent on it all, the state of their position, and judgment of the Lord on it, and His final commending them to God in it so left, in the 15th, 16th, and 17th chapters, on which we now enter, these important chapters thus seen as the Lord's designation of their state.

258  - 29, 30, 31. Perhaps "but that" follows as another object besides their believing on Him, and "hereafter" to "in me" (that is, v. 30), is in parenthesis. Consider then here what was done; with these objects He said these things; what the objects were; what He said, and the connection of what He said with these objects; and how His saying them tended to bringing these truths to bear on these ends.

_______

There are three things in verses 19, 20 of John 14; that is, when we have received the Spirit, Christ is an object; we see Him when the world does not. He is our life; because He lives we shall live. We know (still having the Spirit) that He is in the Father (not here the Father in Him; it is divine union, not even exaltation, and in proper divinity), and we in Him, and He in us. The knowledge of our oneness with Him, as in Him, and He in us, and He in the Father. Then comes another thing: manifestation of Himself to us. Then the Holy Ghost teaches all things, all truth, and brings to remembrance what Jesus said when here; divine truth, and the expression of life in Christ down here, what He was in the world.

________

Note, in John 14, verse 3 gives Christ as going away and coming again, the position of the disciples as to His personal presence. Then comes what they ought to have known by the presence of the Lord Jesus as an abiding truth, whether He were on earth or in heaven; the revelation of the Father by the Son; that He was in the Father, and the Father in Him; the coming of the Comforter involved; and the truth, not that the Father was in Him that was manifested on earth, but that He was in the Father (being on high), and that they were in Him, and He in them. The union and reciprocal indwelling was first of the Father and the Son; then (the divine union of the Son with the Father being repeated, He being in the Father, which was divine, and the natural point as their Head) the union, and reciprocal union, of the disciples and the Son was next stated, the knowledge of which depended on the presence of the Comforter, on His going away, which note.

________

259 Note, in John 14: 20 it is not merely that the divine side of union in Christ is noted because He was no longer on earth displaying the Father, but the whole depth of personal union in Him is brought out as now existing: He in the divine side, in the Father, one with Him; we on the lower side, so to speak; He being Man, we in Him who is Son and one with the Father; and then He in us, to be manifested here below; though it ceases not there. What a chain! And there is light, I suppose, through this, thrown on the glory seen and displayed.

________

John 14 gives the Comforter as personal blessing and comfort, and being in Christ, and Christ in us. Hence, also, the coming of the Lord is to take us to Himself; so it is the Father sends Him in Christ's name, so as to place us as children to Himself. In chapter 15, it is Christ sends it, as glorified; hence it is witness and power. With this is connected Acts 2, and the character of testimony. Hence, Christ is sitting at God's right hand till His enemies are made His footstool (chap. 16, as often observed, in His personal presence on earth, not His sending). All this connection is very interesting. Note how very carefully the sure, abiding place in, and living connection of the believer with, Christ is brought out (John 14: 18-21) before the Lord speaks of the manifestation of Himself to the obedient; which then has a most important place as to communion, though consequently being an abiding, and felt so when manifested. Yet obedience remains a groundwork in principle (see v. 15), for we are sanctified unto obedience; but we have life to obey, not life for obedience; and this life, and all its character (as the revelation of and being in Jesus, and Jesus in us) is absolutely and unqualifiedly put (vv. 18-21).

_________

260 Note, in John 14, the effect of the coming of the Comforter on Jesus' intercession. The Holy Ghost abides with us, and is in us. Christ thus comes to us as the One we have known and believed in (we live because He lives). We know that He is in the Father. We know that we are in Him, and that He is in us. All that is stated as our absolute condition. But then there is, through grace, a loving of Him, an attention to His mind, will, words; so that we have His commandments, and keep them. He who so walks in love to Jesus will be loved of His Father. Jesus will love him, and will manifest Himself to him. Thus, by the abode of the Comforter, walking in Jesus' commandments, He manifests Himself to us.

But further: if a man love Him, and keep His words (which is more intelligently intimate than His commandments, though the same principle; only one is more penetrated with His mind and spirit in keeping His words), the Father takes delight in such, and He and the Lord Jesus come, and make their abode with him. It is not the blessed fact simply that Jesus, though absent, manifests Himself to the soul, gives it the consciousness of His blessed presence and the love that brings Him there (that is, in him), but walking in His mind, in the spirit of heart, attention to every expression of His wish and mind. The abode of Father and Son gives a more full and peaceful consciousness of where we are; we are at home there; not yet in the Father's house with Jesus where He personally is, but in a divine way they manifest their love, and stay with us, and make themselves, thus revealed, our home.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47015E> 260

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 15

- 1. "I am." He speaks. Note "true." Compare Isaiah 5, and note "I"; and compare Isaiah 49 and 52, particularly latter parts.

- 2. "Not bearing fruit," the character of the branch. Also "not." Not it bears no fruit. "And every one bearing fruit," the fruit unto life eternal (see chap. 4: 36).

261  - 3. "Already." Note, He says "abide." Compare chap. 14: 24, and the instructive exposition of the 17th chapter particularly.

- 1. A general statement of the great bases of truth; verse 5, an application as regards them.

- 5. Note much, this is a promise from the author of it, who is able to give.

NOTE. - The fruit, souls unto life eternal; the end, the Father's glory by Christ Jesus.

- 6. Withering the consequence, for the sap of the divine Spirit is withdrawn, which flows to believers by their vital union with their great Head. Note the contrast: a branch in Him fruitful, productive; cast out as unfruitful, then it withered itself (compare Matthew 5: 13). And you may note the order, the seemingly inconsistent but in truth deeply instructive note, "he is cast out"; I mean the way it is stated, indicating that it is declarative of the state of the case. Compare Matthew 7: 15, etc., and to whom spoken, comparing chap. 5: 1, also chap. 13: 10, etc., and 1 Cor. 2, and then note chap. 14: 29-31, and the note there.

The Lord, whose I am, and whom I serve, give grace to the least and unworthiest of His servants to minister to His glory in all the wisdom of the righteousness of the saints, gathering fruit unto His glory, which He has sown, and to obtain a place in the many mansions of His Father's house, through grace. Oh! for His appearing. Yet I know the love which causes Him to bear long. Lord's Day, April 8/27. See all 2 Corinthians.

- 7, 8. Note the order of the whole matter repeated as a foundation for "what ye will." Then verse 8: "Herein is my Father glorified" seems in sense parenthetical, and "that" as the end or result of what is noted in verse 7, and thus will ye be, and be manifested, My disciples, so that ye may say, "Let a man so account of us," etc. I find 2 Corinthians particularly a great illustration of our Lord's mind in this place; and, note, it was His own preparation for service: I will show him hosa dei pathein (how much he must suffer). But there are other things and a better purpose for His servants, as Acts 26: 16-18; "and he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you," etc, and where is our present stay (see 1 Peter 1: 5, 6, and from verse 8).

I think the Lord has shown me His service; I mean simply preaching His gospel to every creature in the power of His grace and Spirit. I believe He is teaching me hosa dei pathein, and herein I humbly bless Him, presenting under the influence of His mercies my body a living sacrifice. But I look for ability in every thought simply as abiding in Him, and for direction simply to the will of God, proving it by the Spirit vouchsafed to us.

262 Having planted them in their personal associations, the Lord proceeds to show them their general position. This introduces our Lord as the Head of a new system. "I am the true vine," the remnant of Israel but the stock of every branch. [That] the use of the word is corporate and official character, must be known to every reader, as Psalm 80: 8; Isaiah 5: 1, 2, etc.; Jeremiah 2; Ezekiel 15 to 17, etc. So Matthew 21: 33. But our Lord closes all this in Himself: "I am the true vine," in Me the branches are to be. The Father is the husbandman. This is in many respects a blessed and very full instruction or revelation. Our Lord Himself thus (officially) becomes the immediate object of the Father's care. The care is coincident with such care as would be to it (Him). Hence He is the Vine, the perfectness and suitableness to Him is the standard care; the love, the perfect love, which exercises itself on it, but so as to preserve it in the character of holiness in its branches, which belonged to it. This is the truth, this is the office of the Father, in which He is bound to the Son, as He is, so to speak, bound to own the perfect righteousness of the people in the Son, or He would not be owning what must be owned, even Him, as righteous and just to forgive all their trespasses because of Him.

So here is the Father bound in this responsible office of love to take care of the branches according to the love, according to the character of the stock of the Vine in which they are grafted and are. How beautiful the committal of the office to the Father's care! What responsibility, I say, attached to the Father, being as regards the Son! It is indeed His own holiness. So we see in Hebrews 12: 9, 10. This then is the love, this the constitution, this the standard love proposes and acts upon; left in the hands of the Father's love, Holy Father, or the care of Him as the Vine exercised on the branches viewed as connected with Him. Further, we see the sureness of the work of the vineyard. There may be many husbandmen, but the real husbandman of the vine is the Father. Thank God for such a word. It is "I," also "My Father." Accordingly in result it is not in the imbecility of reputed husbandmen workmen, but in the certainty of the Father's perfectness and love to Jesus.

263 "Every branch," clearly, I think, "in me," the gist of the sentence rests on the connection in it: "I am the true vine," then, "Every branch in me." Next the point of question in the husbandman. Not bearing fruit, this the ground, not the work: it does not bear fruit; He takes it away. It was a branch in Christ apparently subject to the general influences of what flowed through the stock, the vine; but it proved not; it was taken away. Also note hence, as the vine, would lead us to suppose it is spoken corporately, not vitally; and every one bearing fruit, the fruit that is looked for from the tree. The tree is for fruit; the others did not bear fruit. The branch that bears fruit, to wit, that for which the vine was planted, it He purges. The fruit is the sign of vital union. On it the Father's, the husbandman's, care is spent, that it may bring forth more fruit. Deep comfort for them; standard for us practically! - "Already ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." This is an important passage. Whenever there is vital union with the Lord, whenever there is any God-given faith, the first words of Christ received, so as to know and be identified with His Person, then there is cleansing: "Now are clean through the word."

There may be discipline for conformity, to subject old thoughts to new; but whenever in faith, in vital apprehension, the word has been received, we are pure. The word also, note, is the standard. We have this practically. Care acts in respect of this. It is that which expresses, as regards us, what the Father's care acts in reference to; so that, if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged of the Lord. He spoke: that was the power. The principle was there; they were sanctified. What He spoke was the standard: they were "clean," cleansed from; for His word bears nought of the world. There may be the purifying ministrations, husbandry of the Father, according to that to which we are united; that is, as to inconsistencies, with the emanencies of the old man, with the seed of eternal life planted by the word. And this is where sanctification works in the daily ordinary sense of the word. But we are clean through the word. This is also true in the relative sense of the word as exhibited chapter 13: 10, in that blessed passage of the Lord's girded priestly care: "Already ye are pure through the word." The subsequent operation is for correction, subdual, purging, relative to our purity; and this is the true understanding of the common notion of sanctification; not to enter into it more at large here.

264 The word is the standard. The Spirit sanctifies us, begetting us by the word. Conformity to this is the ministration of the Father's care in rooting out the power and bringing into subjection the old man, and this "that more."

This is a very full subject, but we cannot enter into it here, only remarking that it is not only a sanctification of person but the principle of vitality of character from determining power which is here, so that we are "clean," so as to bring fruit suitable to the vine, because the vital principle, life from God, is in us, though there may be much to be subdued and purged, much to be brought into subjection which belonged to the old man, a vessel made to honour, fit for the Master's use, though this has different application. Compare with this passage 1 Peter 1: 22-25. This purifying process of the Father's love is most important. All allowance of thoughts not of the resurrection vine (according to the knowledge especially vouchsafed) hinders fruit-bearing power; and hasteners show signs of not being vitally branches. The purging is applied to the branches, not to the fruit, as arid tends directly to the grieving of the Spirit, defiling the channels of its operation, and arresting the progress of the glory of the Father in our service. That which follows is the remedy, and is practical; that is, it is not the fact of the necessary security of vital union but the exercise of the Spirit so united: "Abide in me." It assumes connection: "Now . . . clean." It is not seek, apply to, or recur frequently, but "abide."

Now, this is a most important principle, the barrier to the inlet of evil, which chokes and defiles the channel of good from God. I do not say God may not overrule it, and is supreme to restore the soul. I know, know in humble dependence and blessing, He is. Still, I say, the portion of the Christian is abide, a most important and searching word of great power to meet Satan with: "Abide in me"; for the strength is great when (practically) it is unmixed, and the channels (as it were) open with God. The streams are then filled with water, and coming fresh. It is not when coming washing the channels, and showing even the mud it carries away (that may be benefit), but flows clear and refreshing, so that there is refreshment within and around, and the mud and dirt in the channel ever so, prove to it so, earthy, is not contracted. Now, the simple precept here is, "Abide in me, and I in you"; that is, as vitally united. This abiding in Christ is the order of His (thus) abiding in us. The abiding there is evidence, too, that we are vitally united. But here it is practically, and hence is the great principle, including most definitely, however, the latter force: It is in those who abide in Me that I abide. This is the verified "and I in you." "Abide in Me." It is in Christ.

265 Moreover, here is the emphasis, the point of association as the communion of all vital energy, the standard and communication of fulness, and thus all fulness is there. But as the branch bears nothing out of the vine, but withers itself, so we bear no fruit but as abiding in Christ, and this practically proportionately, for all the fulness is in Him. It is not merely the fact, but the exercise of the blessing. There is no fruit "of itself"; "unless . . . abide in me." But this, while it is vitally true, always is proportionately true daily. Then first the relationship between Him, as the Vine, and the Father. Then, as the conclusion of the practical result in this, being by His quickening word, "Abide in me." Then the relation between Him and the branches, the abiding in Him, the intimate connection of which we have seen, with the question of the Father's purging, is therefore thus shown to be the occasion of bearing much fruit; the force of which cannot be mistaken from what we have said, if we have seen internal purging the way for external fruit-bearing, and abiding in Christ the very power of keeping evil as mentally a stranger practically; and hence the flow of healthful sap, no cankered branch, alas, "apart from me."

But not only is this true as to one really in communion with Christ, but, however apparently planted, if one do not abide in Him, he is cast out as a branch not in the tree, withers, is dried up, there is no supply. They gather them, cast them into the fire, and burn them. All this parable brings in the end (in principle) in view, so as to show [it], for this shall be in [the] close. While the individual source of much fruitbearing strength is mentioned before, the Lord here seems to speak of what hung in a measure on their common position, as we know the force of agreement in this: "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done to you." There are two points referring both to their condition or state: "If ye abide in me" (a Church declaration, as it were), "and my words abide in you," if you walk together in fellowship, and My words continue in their power in you, and so the common course of your conduct, then I will answer everything: "Ye shall ask what ye will," seek what power, to carry into effect such a fellowship with Me, "and it shall be done to you." For it was His Father's glory which was just His service, and that He sought, that they should bear much fruit for the Father's glory, as the evidence of His grace was in His children: "And ye shall be my disciples"; ye shall have this also of blessing to your souls, even being my disciples; ye shall here show yourselves really such; and in this, that it was My whole service to glorify the Father upon earth, and in doing this you will show yourselves disciples of such a Master. Thus the double blessing.

266 Then another aspect of this question of the vine opened out: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you." The Father's glory was in their fruitfulness, and they were His disciples. Well, as He in the world was loved of the Father, so they of Him. Then how had He continued in this love? Keeping His Father's commandments. If they kept His commandments they would abide in His love. All this shows the practical position of the vine under the care held to be over it; not here mystical, and sure in its results, but practical, and exhibited in its plain characters. The object of this was not requisition in judgment, but that His joy might remain in them, the joy of full communion with the Father, as in One that ever had the consciousness of pleasing Him. Christ's joy was to do His Father's will, and the perfect consciousness of His union with Him, and so doing His will.

Now, Christ's joy is our portion (Christ's joy was in His own blessedness of obedience, and His union with the Father), and not only to have the same joy, but to have His joy, and we do stand in Him as in the close: "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord"; but here that it might abide in you, and so their joy might be full. He knew the blessedness of this earthly fellowship with the Father. In Him this was their portion, and so nothing would be wanting to their joy. But the manner of His joy was perfect obedience. He had loved them as the Father loved Him. If they walked in His commandments, as He in His Father's, the abiding of love would be theirs. Here was a full joy for a full communion. But the assertion was that thus it would be full.

267 There was another point connected with their so standing incorporated on earth, so as to have the full blessing: loving one another. "This," says our Lord, singling it out, "this is my commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you." That is, self-giving-up love, true love. "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Now, the Lord is not here speaking of His love to enemies, the manner of God's love to the world, but His love to His friends, the peculiar application of it to them as developed in the previous verses, and connected with their keeping His commandments, universal obedience, which is obedience and nothing else. If I (knowingly) do not obey in one thing, I obey in none, for they are my will. On universality of obedience blessing hangs, and must hang; otherwise God would be showing blessing on what was not consistent with His character, which cannot be. There would be no blessing.

And we cannot but remark how obedience is insisted on here, the preliminary of blessedness, the order of abiding blessedness. The state of the matter is stated in verse 6. Persons in Him, or as in Him, are spoken of; then the practical order; then abiding in Him, and His words in us, is the source of all fruitfulness; then comes the love of it: "Abide in me." But then I have loved: "abide in my love." "If ye keep my commandments," etc. In Christ, and His words the director of our minds, we ask what we will. What lack, then, of fruit, if indeed seeking the Father's glory, as His disciples? Loved of Christ, and abiding in His love, Christ's joy abides in us, and our joy is full. This, while it hangs immediately on the last matter, yet flows from all that precedes in the chapter. Then in the order of it, while it flows from that, it is, "This is my commandment," the central point of this blessing, "that ye love one another, as I loved you." The name of servant (though indeed he is His servant, and nothing but His servant in willingness) no longer attaches to the disciple. He is not set in the place of a servant. He cannot be, for he is a son, a branch, one with Jesus the Vine. He is not so dealt with of the Lord; no longer because they were now viewed (as faithful, obedient servants) as planted in the Vine.

Obedience was the order, but He recognised them as friends. Then He makes known His mind. He tells them all things He had heard of His Father. What friendship! What friend to whom we could tell all things? I am that blessed friend. But the Lord tells all that, indeed known only to Him, and could be known only by Him, He tells it all to them. What friendship! How must the secret of the Father's love be in Him, and on us too; exercised in Him, that we should be the confidants of all that the Father makes known to Him! It was a great and astonishing endearment, and yet Lordship of friendship thus to communicate all His mind. And what was it but all the glory, not merely sent by Him, not in Jewish service to God, though by grace His servants, but as planted in the character of the resurrection friends of Christ?

268 But, though friends, it does not put them in equality of circumstances, though of blessing; there is blessed sureness of grace in it: "Ye have not chosen me." It was not their choice of Him that put them in this position, but that which, while it infinitely enhanced the blessing, gave it the sure settledness of divine love. They could not have put themselves in the place of friends by their choice of Him. They had nothing to communicate to Him, unless their sorrows and their sins, when He had opened His heart in friendship to them. He had treated them as friends, having chosen them as such. In the sovereign certainty of His own choice they had all the blessing. There is always a certain superiority in friendship, lasting friendship. Here, as perfectly lasting, it was entire and perfect superiority, but it brings into the equality of love, and shows its greatness in bringing up into it; not conferred acts (that is God's love to us; though we have fellowship with the Father also), but bringing us into the apprehension of all His will, and Himself treating us on this ground. The sign of friendship is making known one's thoughts, which He does not to others; of perfect friendship, if such could be, unreserve. Christ's is perfect; it has no reserve; nothing which it need, nothing which it wishes, to keep back one point; and in that love [that] is not knit there is a holding back of the heart from another. But Jesus has none such. His love is perfect, and He makes us its sure objects; and the greater the superiority the greater the blessing. And here is the amazing exaltation of the believer, the secret intimacy of all Christ's mind. Amazing love! How is the tone of mind exalted, however little we realise it; how, if we really in any sort fully did so!

So the necessity of God's intercourse with Abraham. He had made him the subject of His purposes, and was bound in His sovereign ways (in love) to him: "Shall I hide from Abraham the thing that I do? seeing," etc.

269 And the same Lord here, the very same Lord in like faithfulness of communion, shall we not say greater majesty, for who is so great a God, who yet humbleth Himself to behold, and treats us [as] His friends, in full unmeasuredness of communion? For why should He keep back anything when He had not kept back Himself? And Abraham was called "the friend of God."

And here note the difference of dispensation; then ordering his children after him, because it was successional; here personal and full unreserved obedience (of heart) to Jesus, so manifested in the flesh, and presenting the way of godliness, personal obedience and affiance to Him. Such is the position and order: friends, and friends to Jesus, and friends in obedience. Here is the only rightful place of friendship; and to this end here that we should go, chosen and set for this purpose, that we should go, and bear fruit, and that the fruit should remain; for it was of living power, so that thus whatever we should ask, being friends, the Father, in His name, He might give it them. They were thus spending their friendship in fruit-bearing to the Father's love to Jesus, and the purpose of divine love in the accomplishment, by the grace of Jesus, of the divine purpose in union with and sent by Him, so that as friends they might ask what they would, and it should be given to them; a sure sign of friendship and unity of spirit. To deny anything in the way of friendship therefore in obedience, as to reserve anything, is to deny the bindingness of love. Still it is, "I have chosen." Being thus knit to Jesus, and bearing the fruit, they were the objects of the Father's necessary care and love. And their being in the way of His purpose (through this grace and the choosing of Jesus) knit up with His glory, He must as it were give them in boundness to Jesus, whatsoever they ask. This is the result of the commandments.

The voluntary though obedient love of Christ was shown even unto death, and so our portion; He towards the Father, we to Him. We should lay down our lives for the brethren. But it is in obedience His perfect love above and beneath, and shown beneath, was shown in death, shown in love to those loved of the Father as of Himself. So we to those loved of Him, as in some sort by His Spirit of ourselves. But the track of this was in long previous patience of perfect love, while that was the Father's commandment, exercising His patience, but knitting His love to them, with Him in His tribulations. He could not gallantly show out His love at a moment's effort. It was far more perfect than this; but having patiently "loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." The Father had loved Him, yet not so but that He should pass through the appointed trial, wherein and whereby in His own case it was all drawn out. So we; and the path of this is the path of His commandments, the unwearied patience of God's will. He kept His commandments, and abode in His love.

270 And thus the way of Christ's commandments is the present exercise of that fruit-bearing love in which, abiding in it, we find ourselves, and have grace to go through, by His power in us, His service to the brethren to the end. It is the way of that love, where we find the grace that carries us on. And observe the order. Jesus loves us as the Father loved Him; says, "Abide," and "the way"; "If ye keep my commandments, as I my Father's." Well, then, it is not a mere titual legal precept, but "he that hath my commandments." Well, then, this is matter of the spiritual knowledge of love. Then these things are for our joy, and exercised in, and shown in, loving one another as He loved us; that is, to death as His friends. But this was in the Father's will in a course of obedience. Well, He still keeps at the measure of His love here. Whatsoever He hath heard of His Father He hath made known unto us; friends, if we do what He commands; treated as friends in the communication of all His Father has told; thus set in the path of glory, and thereon the other fruit of blessing in it, if identified friendship with Himself, in His name, as placed in the place of labour and fruit; whatsoever we ask to have done of the same Father, our Father, and His Father, and He so give it. Blessed truth!

All this was for their knitting up together as one body, as is manifest from the very position it puts us in, as common partakers of the love of Him as the Father loved Him, set in this common bond. True, the love might be mutually weak when there was feebleness or failure and indeterminateness in keeping the track of love and fellowship, the commandments. But He stated it for them now. This was the way of it, the force, the order of it. So it was with Him as with His people. He had chosen them for this, that they might be as one in the way of it. Their identity with Jesus was the great secret of it, loved of Him as He of the Father. If the world therefore hated them it was no marvel; it hated Him before. If brought into His blessing no marvel if sharing the enmity of what hated the source of it. But it was the secret of love. The secret of love therefore was proved by it: they were not of the world. If they were, the world would have loved it. It had its necessity of love. But they were not, and this broke all their joys, a sad witness in the midst of them. But there was more in it than this: "But I have chosen you out of the world." This, the secret consciousness of this, what the devil was conscious of, of this the leader of the world: "Therefore the world hateth you." No marvel ground of hatred be whose they were. Christ, besides His glory, was God's Elect, and therefore also the world hated Him. This they had to keep in mind; for it would prey otherwise upon their faith. The servant was not greater than his Lord, if identified with Him; of this, their joyous portion, they would have His portion, identified there where His service was. "If me," "you," "if my word," "yours." Blessed identity! (Lord, make it utterly so.) And the reason runs to the source: they will do it for My name's sake. So it has its glory. And this to the fullest point of question: "Because they have not known," what? "Him that sent me."

271 What follows is a deduction that it does involve them in the whole question. They cannot reject Him or hate Him without hating His Father. They do not know, says the Lord, Him that sent Me. But then is this all? Nay, but Jesus had manifested Him, had spoken unto them: "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloke for their sin." His word had been ample to judge all their acts. They had no excuse, for He, the Truth, had spoken. This led His sheep. But he that hated Him hated His Father also. It was true as the Son. But, then, how manifested? Even in doing works which none other man did. The Father's glory and hand were here shown forth, He the Son in unity with Him: "Therefore if I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father," for the Father's glory was shown in the works, the Son's working, the voice and the works. But however the voice led, and they inexcusable, yet more might have been done. If no cloak, there might have been, it might be supposed, power to bring out. But what none other man did had been done among them, and the Father's glory shown. They saw and hated both Him and His Father. It was no longer merely the Son's voice, with the Father yet behind, but the works witnessing the Father added. They saw and hated. They were in utter alienation from seen blessedness of all the revelation in Him of the Father and the Son.

272 And why was their evil present offence? The love was gratuitous, and here was the desperate evil: "They hated me," the predicted state, gratuitously, freely, "without a cause." Oh, what a word, a sad and awful, perplexing word, for man, as humbling us as to man's evil nature and corruption! They hated the blessed perfectness of Jesus, freely and gratuitously, "without a cause," as the portion of the saints was "without a cause," so as surely there was no cause of hatred in Jesus. They hated the Lord freely, the uncaused movements of positive evil, free evil; a remarkable word, the reward alike in both a sad and predicted state: "They hated me without a cause," and their reward accordingly. Thus was Christ rejected; thus would the world reject them. But the Father had not. When the Comforter, He who should take their part, was come, whom Christ sent from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who comes forth from the Father, He would bear witness. All this is the answer of testimony to what was rejected, the Son, and the Father in Him, and so they. To them the Spirit was sent, the Witness, the Comforter, "whom I will send to you."

The connection was between Christ and them; hence the appositeness of this. As the Comforter He came from Him, but from the Father, or the testimony asserted by Him would not have been complete thus as to union and testimony from the Lord to them. As the Spirit of truth He cometh forth from the Father; for the witness is to Christ, the Father's witness, the witness of truth from Him, bound to vindicate His glory by reason of His humiliation. The testimony was perfect from the Father. He would witness to Christ to them and to the world, in a just way with them in witness sent of Christ from the Father, when He was to the world, who had not received Him, the sure and certain witness of His glory. They also should bear witness, for they had been with Him from the beginning.

There was to be the double witness of the exalted glory in oneness with the Father which the Spirit sent of Him and from the Father would testify of, which indeed was the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, and of the manifestation of Christ in the flesh, known in all the human life in which both the exercise, the perfectness, the human spotlessness, and the graciousness were brought all out to human manifestation and apprehension, that which, while it was the common spiritual food of every believer, yet in its order is, the one glory, the other Jewish perfectness; so the witness is double. The Spirit, He alone witnesses from above, and the disciples the proper witness from below; that is, upon earth, the actual witnesses as with Him "from the beginning." We may trace this (thereby marked to be Jewish in character) [in] Acts 1: 21, 22 and chap. 15: 28, where the former is introduced. The expression is remarkable, and strongly indicative of the latter and its connection. But it is sufficient to have alluded to this here.

________

273 John 15: 4. No fruit without Christ, not abiding in Him. Verse 5, Abiding in Him, much fruit. Verse 7, Asking what we will, if His words also abide in us. Verse 8, closes this part. Verse 9, Divine love. By this joy full. Verse 12, Brotherly love, perfect through grace. Verse 16, The Father, if true to Christ's actings, must minister all needed power to us, to make things good. Verse 17, Commanded for mutual love; then the world.

_______

In John 14 we have Christ taking His relationship with the Father. First displaying them on earth: "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," and then (as Man) as Intercessor on high obtains the Spirit, whom the Father sends. Still He is Son of God, a divine Person: He comes, manifests Himself, and the Father and He come and make their abode. And He puts them in His own place on earth, and they ought to rejoice in His going up to His in heaven. It is (as ever in John) the Son, but the Son as Man; but here in relationship with His Father; the Son, who is a Man on earth and in heaven. In chapter 15 it is His own place on earth and in heaven; His official, not personal place. On earth He is the True Vine. Israel was not. His followers are in relationship with Himself in the place He is in. So, gone on high, He sends the Comforter, who testifies of Him, so exalted. He is among His disciples or exalted in chapter 15; in relationship with His Father in chapter 14 and puts us so; Himself being Son withal, by whom we are so.

________

274 Note, in John 15: 22, fol., it is not sins, but sin. Sins, no doubt, they had; but they were not held definitively in the state of sin, had they not rejected Jesus. If man was recoverable, administrative forgiveness would have sufficed (not that the thing was, or really could be, but supposed). But their state before God was a condition of absolute sin, uncloaked hatred, alas! when there was adequate manifestation of Him, of the Son and of the Father. It is a terrible position.

_________

In John 15, we cannot understand the last verses without taking in the aim of the whole chapter. Israel was not the true vine, but had been planted as God's vine under its responsibility. Christ was the True Vine. But how did Israel lose this place (which it had externally) of God's vine? By breaking the law? No. Christ had come, and revealed the Father perfectly. The True Vine was Christ; the Father the husbandman. Israel was cast out, and rejected (as, in Isaiah 49, Christ, who had laboured in vain in Israel, replaces Israel as the servant), not owned as the vine. Christ (the Son) was the Vine; His disciples the branches. It was the presenting of Christ the Son, revealing the Father in word and work, which brought them under this sin and rejection. The old apparent relationship would have continued, and the sin which involved their rejection not been committed, if Christ had not come, and revealed the Father by word and work. Patience could and would support the breach of the law. The coming of Christ proved it. The reception of Christ (the Son revealing the Father) would have superseded the breach of the law. Israel would have been proved not completely evil, man's state remediable, and governmental pardon sufficient and granted. But the revelation of the Father in the Son brought out the full hatred of man's heart against God. There was no cloak or excuse for their sin. They are set aside, and the True Vine brought out to light.

_________

275 John 15. The force of "I am the true vine," and the expression "vine," which does not entirely go out of His Jewish or present association, though taking a new heading of it, and so passing consequently into the Church filled with the Spirit; hence obedience and abiding are pressed; and that as before the Holy Ghost is spoken of as One who would come; but before that the Lord says, "I am the true vine."

The connection of the True Vine with what was Jewish is familiar in Scripture. Psalm 80 may be referred to as the type of this expression. But Israel had failed; it was "the degenerate plant of a strange vine to Jehovah." Christ took the place of this, having left Israel, but Himself the true stock of it; not a Messenger, or Messiah, come to it in that character. He had been rejected, and revealed therein in the previous chapter, the Father; and Himself as the Truth, and object of faith; and the Comforter as the power of known communion with them. Here it was what He came as, but what took the place of what He came to, and was the truth of which it was the form in responsibility. He was not now seeking fruit of the vine. It was degenerate and strange. He only was the True Vine to God. The disciples were the branches, were clean, through the word spoken. It was not branches recognised as such because there. That was the Jewish principle, and so after the flesh. But branches not bearing fruit would be taken away by the Father, to whom Jesus was the True Vine.

Jehovah did not do so with Israel. There was no individualised question of men fruit-bearing (though individuals were cut off for unrighteousness, or even ceremonial evil committed or unrepaired). Branches there might bear no fruit, and remain; but branches in Me, in the True Vine, in Christ, could not. The Father exercised pruning and discipline, and He taketh away fruitless branches. It is the character of the dispensation in the Father's dealings. The power of unity by the Spirit, in the power of the Spirit, was not yet set forth, but the principle of the Father's dealings with branches in Him the True Vine was; which True Vine (the whole scene with Israel being finished) He could now state He was. The Father had respect to fruit-bearing now; fruit-bearing suited to the True Vine; and purged fruit-bearing branches, that they might bring forth more. This was still not yet exactly the power and energy of the Spirit, though by it; He also might work in ministration; but the word Jesus had spoken they were clean by, already clean. This then was said as to Christ and the word before the promise of the Comforter was accomplished, which was the power of unity in His absence. The professed association of Israel with Him formed a vine and its branches, so far as any did so profess. Thus it was true of the disciples. But there was another truth as to them: they were clean by the word.

276 They were to "abide" in Him. If one of them set up for himself to lead, he could not bear fruit. It was not only the truth they were to testify of, but they must have Him as the source of strength and competency also. Without Him they could do nothing. They must be united as well as, and to, be witnesses, to bear fruit; for sap and life was only in Him. The Holy Ghost might be the power of this, as it was of knowledge and communion with the Father and the Son; but as the Father and the Son were the objects presented in the beginning of that chapter, and afterwards the Comforter as the power, so here. It is presented as the True Vine. The power of the Comforter in this properly was reserved for the development of the Gentile admission as one body, a mystery not revealed till the Spirit came. His power as a witness is spoken of afterwards in these chapters. That might be developed in the unity of the body, but was an independent and, indeed, antecedent subject. They were clean, and they were to abide; so He tells them.

He then introduces further precision of application to themselves, but (that being established) not with the same contrast with the Israelitish formal vine. It is not "I am the true vine," but "I am the vine; ye are the branches": you are mere branches; "apart from me ye can do nothing." Though the source of blessing, Jesus had not yet left the place of subjection, as He received all the Father brought to Him; come to do the will of Him that sent Him (though, equally true, He quickened whom He would). So He was a vine, and they branches; and the Father took away, and purged, according to the wisdom in which He judged of fruit. Christ is not entirely gone out of this character, though passing, as it were, into the source of blessing. Hence, note also, the vine is planted on earth, whereas the Church is set in heaven. So fruit-bearing is on earth, and in every aspect the vine is on earth.

_______

277 Note, in John 15 to verse 8, it looks upward in dependence; from verse 9 downwards in love. In verse 16, as Christ had chosen them to go and bring forth fruit; and of course His choice was owned, and the Father would do all for Him (and indeed was Himself glorified by it, v. 8), they, in pursuit of their mission, had only to ask the Father in His name, and He would do whatever they asked. This, in our little measure, so far as we are sent, is a very great comfort. Note also the difference between verses 2, 6, and 4, 7. In the last two the question is of fruit-bearing and help, not of cutting off. Verses 2, 6, it is taking away, casting off. But query further: is not the passage, in its first words, much more Jewish than we have at all yet supposed? I mean in this, Israel (as often observed) was, though a vine, not the true vine. Messiah, called as Jehovah's Son out of Egypt, was the True Vine. But, as first so looked at, are not all professing Jews then in the land at first sight branches in Him; His Father, whom they called their God, the husbandman? Those now therefore who did not bear fruit (not merely such as Judas), all who did not bring fruit (which they could not do unless deriving living grace from Christ) were cut off. The Jews have been so. But there were some (the eleven, and others) who did. These Jehovah, His Father, purged.

Now, this, as to them, had already taken place by His own word to them. They were not therefore to be thus cut off. But then another exhortation comes to abide in Him, so as to bear fruit. Leaving at any time deprived a man of any possible fruit-bearing. In verse 5 a new paragraph begins, where the disciples alone are taken up as branches; and thence professing disciples then (and afterwards) on the earth come on the scene. Verse 5 gives the way, and exclusive way, of blessing; verse 7 the extent of it. From verse 4 on we easily see abiding is the question. Verses 1 and 2 is what was. Verse 3 makes the distinction of the disciples. Verses 1, 2, we have Israel. Verses 3, 4, now they are clean the need of abiding not to be in the case of verse 2.

If any exclude open adversaries as already distinct from branches, and reckon only those who in a public way (the world had gone after Him, followed Him), I have nothing to say. It does not, to my mind, alter the case: but I add that the epistle seems to me to go greatly on this ground; only, of course, further on in the history; only abiding was the grand question; but even then not of neglecting the great salvation preached by the Lord; though, on the other hand, the heavenly character of the calling is pressed, and they were then pressed to go outside the camp, bearing Christ's reproach. Still, as to the past position (now breaking up) they are told that Jesus suffered without the gate, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood. Adversaries, of course, have for themselves taken an outside position; but the non-abiders seem then to get into it. On the whole, the path is dependence and obedience; the comfort, full supply, and perfect love. The position of the Lord in the seven churches is not the exercise of judgment; but He stands in a judicial position, and takes judicial cognisance of them.

278 It is remarkable, the severity with which He speaks, compared with His patient and forgiving grace to individual saints; because it is the professing Church, and a public witness to be given to the glory of God. Losing first love is enough to warn of excision, in spite of labour and toil and patience. But there is a great principle in this. It was departure, the great principle of ruin in the creature. Indeed, in Laodicea this is the ground of judgment. "Kept my word" is a great thing at the close; for "he that keepeth my commandments, he it is that loveth me." The Judge, too, is remarkably characterised. Not Jehovah and the Son of Man, but the divine Person of the Son of Man. So He judges, and from the beginning I rather think somewhat is right, chap. 2: 4; compare verses 14-20; for there "oti" seems better translated "because."

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47016E> 278

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 16

Thus the Lord had declared their general position in His absence, declared it that as a time of trial they might not be disturbed when it arose. The friendship to Him He had stated, and His joy to be in them, and their joy full. The hatred of the world He had stated, but the reason of it also. He was now more precise, for He had more to communicate. They would be rejected by their religious companions and ecclesiastical authority. This was more definite trial than viewing it as the general hatred of the world, which knew not the Father nor Him. The Church (that is, as Jews) were to hate them and reject them. Their excommunication was as a matter of course. But being ignorant of the Father and the Son they would think they were doing God service in killing them. They were not to be surprised at them. They had been told before, and were to be mindful of them as confirming the truth of their expectations. They were to expect no relentings, for murderers by conscience are surely unrelenting, as it is the power of Satan; not inconvertible, as we know in Paul.

279 The Lord having been with them had not told them these things. It was not concealment, but they were not so while His power was present. Whatever He might suffer He exercised control over Satan; but now that it was matter of faith, His glory, He being rejected, the principle (of sufferance to death) was brought in, and they must expect it in that sense (that is, by present power) unsustained. He had been with them, and there had been occasion for none of these cautions or warnings. He was there to guide, help and secure; but now He went His way to Him that sent Him, and none's eyes were carried forward, or to where He was going. So did selfishness of sorrow, feeling, prevail. But they were filled with the fact of their own desolation. Yet it was not rest to Himself He sought, though it were so. He had made Himself the Servant of His Father's will and their blessing. But He told them the truth. It might seem a humiliating thing to all He had been to them. It was a justifiable thing to them. He should go away. Strange, yet brilliant and blessed mercy! What things has our Lord provided for us, even the presence of the Holy Ghost, His witness! If He went, He would send Him to them. The presence of the Holy Ghost, then, was the greater. The thing which made up was greater than the loss of Jesus, that being which He revealed and declared, but His presence in the consequent blessings was a greater thing. The world was to be against them, and the Church was to be against them; but this was their great link with every blessing, the great distinctive witness of God's portion, their portion. Therefore in the opposition of all the inheritance as contrasted with the world (on God's part), not the temple made with hands, but the presence of God by the Spirit, their portion the conscious witnesses of the divine power. That was gone as a thing made with hands; and they had that which was abiding in the power of its revelation (compare 2 Cor. 3: 11 and Acts 7).

The distinction of their place here is very important. The world rejected, but the Spirit "will convict," and though made "out of the synagogues," the Spirit with them witnessed the glory. This latter, and all the fulness of moral truth connected with it, God's glory being always consistent with His character, they could not be told now, because death had not come in, and they had not that Spirit of life in which they could understand both the glory and the death. For there are two distinct things, the testimony of the Spirit to the world, and its taking and showing things to them of the fulness of Christ, as the Spirit of truth. The latter they were for the most part incapable of now. The promise is explicit and precise. He, the Comforter, the Advocate, shall convince it of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. You will observe it is the marked presence of a Person who does these things: "Having come he will convict."

280 If we are put out of the synagogue, note, we become temples. Were it not, difficult indeed would be our lot.

He, coming, shall convince the world about sin, etc. This is His office. He does not speak of effectual result, though of course there was such. About sin, indeed, in this, that "they believe not on me." It was not merely sinfulness or transgressions; both might have been charged naturally, and by the law; but their very state, their whole state with God. The former, sunk under the bright coming of Jesus from God the Father, were forgotten in this abounding act of love. This proved the manner of God's dealings with the world; not then, that is, in the presenting of Jesus to it. God was in Christ reconciling, and not imputing. They saw no beauty in it or Him. He was despised and rejected of men. They esteemed Him not. Thus was the accumulated evidence of their utter and desperate alienation of mind brought out. They were sin, and nothing else; for where all beauty was they saw none; where God was manifested in the flesh He was not known; when He came to His own in the way of personal grace they received Him not, but hated and rejected Him. This is the great argument, the argument of sin to the world. Here is the ground on which it stands before God, howsoever besides it may have transgressed, as indeed they had. They believe not on Jesus; that is the whole matter, the summing up of all, the concentrating and exhibition of all; enmity against God most displayed in grace; enmity to death; the slave of Satan. Here sin was triumphant, most utterly so, as far as it could be in its weakness and destructiveness in the death of Christ the Lord. But not believing was the same thing as to position.

281 Then of "righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more." To the world there would be no evidence of righteousness in the death of Christ, but the contrary; nor even outwardly in the act of vicarious suffering. To the world it was the triumph of unrighteousness. And not only so, but the apparent utter dereliction or failure of God in upholding that which was righteous. The righteous One was put down by man apparently, and deserted by God. His own word was, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" Indeed, the full tide of the effects of unrighteousness, judicial and moral, all set in and flowed into and over the soul of Christ. If He bowed in His love under the triumphant effects of moral unrighteousness, led of the great head of it, Satan, his hour and the power of darkness, He had to bow at the same moment, instead of finding vindication under the judgment, as the unrighteous One (though righteous), at the hands of His God. It was the full resulting exhibition of the power (but weakness) of unrighteousness in the hands of Satan, left (in order to the full result of divine glory and vindication) to come to its height of evil; the utter rejection of sin by the Father, even when laid on the Person of His beloved Son, where if anywhere it might be passed by. In a word, while the cross established in the Person of Jesus the most perfect righteousness on the part of Man, as may be seen in the minutest contrast with the first Adam, and the most perfect vindication of God in the same act, as may be also seen in it, there appeared the most total failure to own or vindicate this; it seemed left helplessly in the power of unrighteousness. But indeed vindication there would neither have been it, or given it its force; nor would it have given it its righteous reward. Righteousness to death was needed, and righteousness under apparent rejection, to show the full force of its reception at the right hand of God, the right hand of the Father, the Majesty on high itself.

It was God's righteousness illustrated in the Son that was to be shown; and though in Man, in whom it was to be wrought out, it had no adequate witness of glory but at the right hand of the Father. And hence as to this the intrinsic importance of the position of Christ to the Church before His return: "I go to my Father, and ye see me no more." He was alone in this, alone in righteousness. Even His disciples forsook Him, and fled; or denied Him, and stood afar off. None even outwardly stood by Him, or were able to drink the cup; that is, then, or be so baptised. And though the coming of the Lord will be the time of His joy in being glorified in His saints, their being glorified with Him, yet the reward of righteousness was in His acceptance of the Father, His glory vindicated and adequately shown, and only so in His sitting down on the Father's throne. This is a blessed and glorious thought. He, speaking of Him as a Man, owned and vindicated the Father throughout, and sits down accordingly on His throne in righteousness. And righteousness in its fullest, highest sense was here, as between the Father and the Son; that is, the suffering Jesus shown, but shown in the glory of God. See chapter 13: 31, 32.

282 The world is convinced of righteousness and its perfection, then, in the suffering Jesus being at the right hand of the Father, the Majesty on high, in righteousness. Vindicatingly and effectually He was alone. Then He, and none else, sits, and righteousness is demonstrated. It would not have been done so here, though as to actual righteousness He might have been at any time vindicated; but righteousness in man would not have been wrought out in its fulness, nor God glorified in it, and love and divine counsel so ordered for His glory. Left in the world to be seen of those (however gracious to them) who rejected or forsook Him would not have been righteousness. And the present glory of the Saviour is the full, personal witness of righteousness. Though alone in it in death it morally extended to the Father. Here it was effected, declared, and known; of course, only to those to whom, by the Spirit sent down, it was witnessed; though it was the testimony in love, declared to the world which had rejected Him, the unrighteous world. Besides, there was a righteousness in death which was more than intrinsic; it was vindicating God, and therefore God vindicated it. It was not merely that which was just (in Him as Man), but that which fully justified God in character; and therefore God justified it, when it was done, at His right hand. As regarded Man, the righteous One was rejected, and therefore they saw Him no more. But the righteousness, all that God was, was vindicated, was brought into light from evil, and He went to the throne due to Him, accepted of the Father, and it due to Him.

283 I do not speak of the continual tendency towards it, or the trial through which the Lord passed anticipative of His death, but abstractedly. The Lord's righteousness upon earth was natural righteousness, perfect consistency with what was required of God, Adam righteousness. Therefore this extended not to God. Therefore He says, "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but One, that is God." As He says, "I will make all my goodness pass before thee." So in Psalm 16; the Lord expressing His portion as Man in His mind or spirit, doubtless, when He said, "Why callest," etc.: "Thou hast said unto Jehovah" (He here owned this place before the Father), "Thou art my Lord; my goodness reacheth not to thee." This was the humiliation of Jesus. Now this righteousness seemed altogether lost; for He was not only despised and rejected of men, but so as to be esteemed smitten, stricken of God, and afflicted; and no witness to man of the contrary. But the ascension to the throne of the Father showed a goodness that extended to God there. For indeed God had been perfectly glorified in the death of Him, the Lord, the Head of a righteousness which had its place there, as Adam was naturally excluded from God; He re-admitted, having suffered for sin, to the Father's throne. And here was the extent and effect of righteousness, and here our place and acceptance with God, whatever our actual condition. And this is the abounding glory of the gospel. He was seen no more. The world was righteously deprived of Him. Righteousness then, note, was evinced, not in seeing the Lord in the glory (that is the glory of grace), but in Jesus at the right hand of the Father, and seen no more. It is a present portion, and equivalent to the throne of God. But enough thus far.

"Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." The same way judgment is known in principle as passed, because the head of the system is judged. The Prince of believers is on high; seen no more even by them; and their righteousness therefore was not merely associated with Him on earth in such order of righteousness (as indeed they could not), but by faith, as not seen, with Him whose righteousness reached to God's throne, to the acceptance of the Father. "Therefore doth my Father love," as God was glorified. The prince of the world, so proved previously, was judged; and so judgment was proved; this world as such judged in its head. Thus it was convicted of judgment, sin, and righteousness; set on quite a new ground, even the rejection of Jesus on earth; His reception to previous glory with the Father in heaven in His throne; but herein the setting aside the whole system, proved to be under the power of the apostate enemy of righteousness, of God, by the death of Christ; judged in the rejection of Jesus, in His resurrection proving who was rejected. Hence the reception of Jesus graciously when He reappears is not that righteousness of faith which has its place and portion with the Father in the Father's house; for it does not know Jesus there. But this is the Church's righteousness and portion, and it has fellowship therefore with the Father and with His Son Jesus by virtue of the Spirit so revealing the Lord; a greater portion, a portion of faith; therefore not rest, but which reaches to the righteousness of the Father's throne.

284 Then as to the conflict as to the world in which they are conversant, though there is no judgment now, wrong judgment proceedeth, and though in the world while Jesus was at the right hand of the Father, and hence though knowing righteousness in conflict, yet kept steady and in comfort, knowing by proof of the Spirit sent down, the prince of this world, even the enemy to be judged. It was "this world" which hated them, but the prince of it was judged. It all hinged round the great truth of the absolute rejection of Jesus by a led world, Jew and Gentile; known, and the reception to the Father known, by the sending down of the Spirit. Thus far was testimony to the world, and so was expressed now as subjects of it; but the glory of risen and glorified hopes nothing but the Spirit could understand. They could not bear what followed upon death now, and all the mystery of the wisdom which was to be opened in His rejection, exaltation, and the hope of the Church in that, and position of the Jew. It could not consort with present thoughts and hopes of faith.

The gift of the Spirit would open it out, and show the bearing on the world, in love gathering into the glory. But when the Spirit was come He would guide them into all truth. This was given as to disciples, not to the world. Here He is primarily called the Spirit of truth. This is one great official character that it has; the same Spirit, but having this farther office towards them, to guide them into all the truth; for He shall not speak from Himself, as conversant on the earth, when He is spoken of officially as the Son there, and therefore of present things; but what He shall hear; that is, as communicating the counsels of God. He shall communicate, the counsels as from on high from God. Of the Son it was said, because of fellowship, "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen," as one with the Father, the Son of Man "who is in heaven"; but He, because of revelation as from them in whom the fellowship was, "that which he shall hear"; "and he shall shew you things," or the things, "to come." All the truth seems contrasted with the conviction of the world upon the elementary principles of what had taken place in Christ; that is, evinced in that. But He should guide into all truth, that is, the disciples. What He heard: this was His revelation from heaven. He spoke them (that is, on earth). What He should hear: it was open revelation; it was not as Christ, measuring ability, but "whatever he shall hear"; for He does it ministerially, Christ the Lord ministering suitable revelations; as heard He shall speak. Compare Matthew 10: 27, and with equal force. So [Matthew] 10: 19, 20. "Whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak." It was a measured and specific communication, though no measure in Him acting ministerially. What He heard He spake, and consequently the disciples. It was not discretion, like Christ. He came to make a revelation, and consequently to declare what He was given to reveal, as so ministerial, to the perfectness and perfect counsels of God, in gift. The Spirit is supreme in this; that is, in revelation ministerial. So accordingly we, as by command; our silence but little of the Spirit.

285 But there is another difference. There is no limit now, all the glory being Christ's, but the measure of His communication, for He is the word (of life), treasured in the Scripture. Actually He communicates it by the Spirit, according to the counsels of God and ministration of the Father. Whatever is to be said for the profit of the Church He speaks from that source, revelation chiefly also, in one sense, but knowledge, doctrine, or reproof may take its place; but properly revelation of the mind of God from above, as now between us and Him. And besides these He shall declare to you things to come. This may be by speaking, but not, I think, necessary.

But besides revealing the matter of our present association with God, and testifying to it as from God, that is, "whatsoever he shall hear," He will also show us the coming things. Now this may be the whole extent further of the things to come, the scene before us; but it is not ta mellonta simply; that is, the things of the dispensation to come as contrasted with the present, the ta enestota; but, though including them, not as a distinct dispensation, but the things coming as contrasted with the present associations with God. And this is the special portion of the Church of God. He speaks simply present things. He declares to you "things to come," though all this be in the Church. So Abraham: "Shall I hide?" So the disciples: "I have called you friends." And here I think we are led into the word prophecy, the latter being the specific character of it, but the whole coming as used under this. I say, underneath this, for prophecy is but the utterance and expression of the portion of the Church, and of God's mind in it; and this explains to one this word generally.

286 The general office of the Spirit is then declared, in which all these are comprehended, but the general object specifically stated: "He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you." In revelation of, in declaring, things to come, He glorifies Christ, for He is declaring Christ's things. But in this there is no separation from the Father, for it is as "all things that the Father hath" are Christ's. He says "receive of mine"; and this unity of possession, as in all else, is the very blessing of the Church; for were it not so (as indeed it must) in receiving or hearing of Christ's things it might not have known or received the Father's; but in knowing, spiritually knowing, His we know the Father's. So we shall know the Father's glory in the day when He appears, for He shall appear in it. This then is the great subject of the Spirit's operation; it glorifies Christ; it is "of mine," "whatsoever things are mine," as between Him and the Father; but we know "in detail," though the Spirit searcheth all things, and shall not till that day know all, that is, collectaneously as known, but in part, and so prophesy in part "of mine," and the Spirit communicatively and ministerially receives (which note) and declares. He searches all.

Having stated the circumstances connected with the blessing of the Comforter, He proceeds to speak of what concerns His own Person. He was not going to die, so to speak, but to go to His Father; and because He was going to His Father, He was about to be unseen by them soon. Yet "a little while, and ye shall not see me; and again a little while, and ye shall see me." This of the disciples too. This was true in a partial, momentary illustration on His resurrection; for though He had not gone to the Father He was there because He went to Him, being raised by the glory of the Father, and it showed the real, personal seeing of Him. It would be but the visibility of Christ was reinstated in the resurrection, and at any moment He might appear; and His appearance and appearableness had its date from then (which note). He was not dead and buried merely, but He went to the Father, and therefore they saw Him no more; and in a little while they would see Him again, being risen again. He was that Son of Man, that risen security of the mercies of David, the Second Adam who was to appear. His actual manifestation was the form and pledge of this, and therefore verified their hopes. They were begotten again to a living hope, though the great result and reality to be brought out of blessing was the day in which, after a little while, He should appear to their joy.

287 Thus then, as regards the Remnant, it had accomplishment, or rather exhibition, in His being seen after His resurrection. For this was not to all the people, but [only to] witnesses chosen before of God. As to them, their sorrow was turned into joy; they knew and saw the risen Jesus. As regards the nation, and the results, the Man that was to be born into the world was to be when the world to come should be, or introduce it however. And here we get the force, I think, of the birth of the Man Child. He was born to the hope and knowledge of the Church and Remnant when Jesus was raised, and appeared to the Jewish believing few; visibly so born. But as regards the nation He would not be till the day of His appearing; as they say in that day, beholding His glory, "Unto us a child is born, to us a Son is given." And so as regards the world subordinately, and as they were in sorrow now; and then at the resurrection of Jesus their sorrow was turned into joy. So of the people in that day, they will be in the "tribulation," but forget the trouble for the abundance of joy when the Son is given to them. They recognise that the Child was born to them, coming in by faith, even as the Gentiles did, who, seeing the glory and the Lord, had to be taught faith: "I am Jesus," that One that was slain. But the whole was the personal presence of Jesus to the Jewish body, now known only in a Remnant, for they had rejected Him; and then indeed a Remnant not made a nation, they had sorrow in knowing His rejection by the nation. So in the latter day the sorrow of faith as to who He was. But He would see them again, and their heart would rejoice, and none be able to take it away, for Jesus gave it.

288 The Church was built upon this joy, for it was by those who had seen Jesus. It was taught to wait for it; for that on which it was so founded was not seen. Hence its ambiguous position. We have the joy of known and seen resurrection, and glory; now the grief of an absent Saviour and the joy of hope of seeing Him; yea, and being with Him in the glory; then its joy fulfilled.

"And in that day ye shall ask me nothing." The knowledge of the Son in resurrection puts them, in the knowledge of Him, into the use of new appointed relationship towards the Father. They were not to ask of Christ present, as strangers to the Father, but as knowing His place with them, and His place with the Father, "determined the Son of God with power," and their relationship with the Father by virtue of Him, they were to ask the Father in His name, and He would give. They could ask the Son from human knowledge of Him. They had never so seen the Father in Him, that by knowledge of the Son they could ask the Father for that they needed. Nor would it be merely at His persuasion of the Father, for the Father Himself loved them, but by virtue of their union with and the prevailing name of the Son. In and by Him they could so ask. He had spoken to them in parables. He had opened out to them the various ways of relationship, and shown it as the portion of the children, and what that portion was (in parables). But now He could declare Him boldly. He would cause them to know Him.

This would be fully developed when He Himself manifested the Father's glory. But it is not confined to this, because the Church is made cognisant of it by her spiritual perception of Christ as the Son in the glory, the Father being revealed by the Spirit; that is, in the Son, and all the glory of Christ testifying of this. He does not say, therefore, come out from the Father. This they had not really understood. They had believed His mission of God.

He then, in verse 28, describes the positive revelation. There were two things in utter contrast: the world and the Father. They could not unite. He left the Father, to come into the world; and left it, to go to Him. This relationship with the Father by the knowledge of the Son: in future in manifested glory and communion (which note); for 1 John 1 shall be true then; now, by the testimony and revelation of the Spirit, of His oneness with the Father, and revelation of Him; and our oneness with Him, and the Father's love to us. So Christ does not ask the Father about us, but we loving Christ, the Father, His love centring on Him, loves us. They had believed that He came out from God, acknowledging Him.

289 But there was a further point: "I came forth from the Father." They had not understood the personal relationship. As the Son of the living God in the world they had owned, being given to own, Him; but they had not understood of Him as the Son with the Father, and coming forth from the Father. This was the great revelation of the Spirit, as it would be of the glory. When He, being gone back into the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, He in spirit could "shew them plainly of the Father." The work being accomplished, and He, in His come glory among the Jews, being rejected, the full glory could be brought out. The shining through of any of this was the occasion of the rejection of Him in the other. Verse 28 is the declaration of the great leading truth which was behind all His dispensed manifestation. But their minds had not as yet really received it; for although they saw divine knowledge in His perception of and answering what their minds were working on, and giving this explicit answer as to being seen no more, etc., or that on which it was founded, they did not fathom the real revelation in it, the revelation of Person and mission; His Person antecedent to mission, His own glory and His Father's, and all flowing from this.

"Now thou speakest plainly, and speakest no proverb," but their perception went no further (not having the Spirit) than in this, "We believe that thou camest forth from God." This the Lord had already acknowledged as that which introduced them into the love of the Father. But into that love as yet they did not enter. It is the fruit of the perception of the Spirit; that is, as known. The whole showed the need of the Spirit in setting in the relationship. So consequently, "because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts," etc.; and here our Lord was thrown upon this very truth. He was not to be associated with them in His own glory, but delivered up; and of them He must say, "Do ye now believe?" As they said, "Now we believe." How little they knew themselves, or without the Spirit could go through the trial of faith, or think that the flesh could go through the death of the flesh! He was thrown alone upon this personal relationship with the Father, and its truth proved the power of death was to come in, and they be scattered, the sustaining power of Him in life being gone, every man to his own. There was no power of vital fellowship with Jesus in His Sonship, and then man's support is natural, he goes "to his own." How true this is!

290 But where was Christ's "own"? Nowhere here. He had none. He was left alone, and to be alone; only this thus declared, "I am not alone" (this great truth He had been speaking of to them); "the Father is with me." When they were left alone (so far as regards the world) they would have this comfort of seeing Him so, but with this difference therefore, that He had overcome it alone in the conflict. In Him, though for profit's sake put through the conflict, they had peace. They could be of good courage, the world was overcome. Amen. Be of good cheer, glad to be in one which is the victory of Jesus. We can say Jesus is with us; the Son, He hath overcome for us.

The point of verse 32 is Jesus being completely thrown on the truth which He was disclosing, before the former truth was, so to speak, setting aside (though not before God). But the disciples were not beyond it, and the Lord therefore was thrown upon the intrinsic power of this, that alone in the trial He might receive, as having suffered through it, others into accepted, adopted fellowship of the blessing as the risen Lord, "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead."

But let us follow the text. Here was the failure of all fleshly association even with Christ, because Christ relinquished the ground on which it was held by either suffering to take a better inheritance for them with Him, they wholly failing, so that there was none but He in it. But the Father was with Him; this was the consolation; and He gave them the same: "In me ye shall have peace; in the world tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome," etc. It was said to set them on this ground: "in me." He was out of the world, and they in it. He turned out of it, so they would have tribulation in it. His comfort was in the presence of One not seen to the world, where He seemed to be alone. In Him they would have the same. He had overcome. Thus His statement made the moral passing through of the suffering of His lonely death and rejection; and on this ground He speaks in what follows.

_________

291 I have been struck particularly with the evidence in John that the whole course of the Lord's ministry (that is, beginning with chapter 4, where we have seen it publicly commence) leaves the Jews aside, as blinded, reprobate, and unbelieving. It is true that chapter 10 begins the direct revelation of the election; but the Lord Jesus (being here as Son of Man and Son of God, not as Messiah to the nation, beginning with Samaria, but teaching neither there nor at Jerusalem men should worship the Father) always treats the Jews as in a hopeless state of reprobacy, fulfils His testimony, giving proof of it by His works, till they accomplished their iniquity by His death, till (as it is expressed) His hour was come, and thus is the means of gathering many; but all through the Jews are treated in His dealings with them with the utmost severity.

He judges none, for He was not sent for that, and He always honours His Father (His true and highest honour as Man here for Him, He was the Son), not Himself; speaking His words, and doing His works. Also He states (without minding the stumbling-block therefore) the strongest truths in the bluntest manner, so as to offend them; for their time was really past. See chapters 5: 42, 43 and 6: 43, 44, 61, 62, 65; chap. 7: 6, 7, 18, 19, 28, 33, 34; chap. 8: 14, 15, 19, 23-26, 28, 38, 41-44, 47, 55; specially here, because here they are put in proof by the word, as in chapter 9 by the works. Note, He proposes Himself in both as the Light of the world; closes chapter 8 with the assertion of His being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, "I AM," and chapter 9 with receiving the worship of him who had eyes to see, as Son of God.

In chapter 9 the Lord has no intercourse with the Jews; they are convicted, by the effect of His works, of blindness, utter blindness, as pretending to see; and the Lord only draws the conclusion that He was come into the world for judgment (though not to judge). How sad an evidence all these chapters afford! After this, the Residue of true sheep, the purpose of God, power of resurrection, and so His glory (as has been seen) as Son of God, and thereafter as King of Israel and Head of the Gentiles, are manifested; and then, as Priest, in voluntary humiliation of love, having all glory as come from and going to God, and having all things in His hand; that is, His glory and service during this economy on high. Afterwards He teaches His disciples their position in His absence; but all this was after saying to the Jewish wise men, "Your sin remaineth." And here I note the manner in which, while the various glory of the Lord (the only true One) is made apparent, they are tested as already opposed, and therefore reprobate; chap. 10: 26. This point is stated distinctly in contrast with the sheep, who heard His voice, whom He called and saved.

_______

292 Chapter 16. We get Him [the Spirit of truth] going onward in this work. It is not remembrance and present truth, but all truth and things to come; all truth while Jesus is on high (for He hears, being down here), and His future glory. In all He glorifies Jesus, taking of His, and showing it; but all the Father has is His, so that He says of His, the unbounded inheritance of the Father's glory.

_________

Note the character of the difference of the two sendings of the blessed Spirit in John 14, and 15, 16. In the first, as often noted, the Father sends in His Name. It is their comfort and sustaining; One who comes instead of the One they were losing; leads them into all truth; all the truth, excellent and heavenly things; would bring Christ to them in Spirit, so that they would not be comfortless. He would bring all things to their remembrance which they had heard of Him while here, and teach them all things. He would stay with them, which Christ could not; and be in them, which Christ as then present could not.

When Christ sends Him from the Father it is more in testimony: "He shall testify of me," the glorified Man; would guide them into all the truth; show them things to come; bring down heavenly things, what He heard, when come down here; and show them things to come down here: the double testimony, take the things of a glorified Christ, and show them to them; and all that the Father had was His. Heavenly truth, prophetic truth, and the glory possessed by Christ, that is, all that the Father had; these are the three subjects of testimony; chapter 15: 26, 27, gives the double subject of testimony generally, testifying of Christ exalted in glory, and bringing to remembrance all that He had said to them on earth.

293 Note, too, how markedly He is spoken of as down here. Whatsoever He hears, that shall He speak. He is in the place of a servant in the apostles, as Christ was; only it was not incarnation, of course; but He was hearing, and speaking down here. But chapter 15: 26, 27, gives His business down here, verse 27 depending on chapter 14: 26. But chapter 15: 26, 27, makes it much more personal and blessed, and engaged their personal affections in their testimony. This would not apply to Paul, of course. He only speaks of His humiliation as part of the immense scheme of truth and of grace.

________

We have seen the 4th of John bring the Lord into Galilee a second time in the way of life-giving power to one ready to perish. This is pursued in chapter 5 in this way, that all means or ordinances are unavailable for healing, because they suppose the power which the disease of sin has taken away. Christ then heals by life-giving power. He gives the power needed; and the impotent man carries the bed he was couched on. At the same time the miracle is wrought on the Sabbath, setting aside the seal of Jewish covenant, on the ground of the Father and the Son working in grace, as observed heretofore; and then the full development of life-giving power is gone into, life out of death; not merely healing; but the full bearing of this comes out, truth as wrought in Christ so as to deliver from judgment; for life-giving and judgment were both confided to Him; the latter exclusively, to secure His honour from all. This is more than intercepting death, though that be the power of life; it is life in Himself, and that according to the glory of His Person. It characterises what He introduces in place of Judaism, but is eternal in its nature, and connected with the glory of His Person, though His official place, too; for, though Son of God, it is as Man He is manifested such here, and in that character judgment confided to Him. The end of the chapter contains testimonies which left the unbelievers without excuse. Assurance here is connected with not coming into judgment. The life-giving power of the Son of God being exercised, it is not in order to bring into judgment.

294 Chapter 6 is much more historical, chapter 5 being rather power connected with His Person. But of chapter 6 I have spoken; only here I judge, the tossing on the sea, though general in principle, and the portion of the saints during the whole time of His absence, but it applies to their circumstances on earth and, I doubt not, to His return to His disciples there; that is, the Residue; just as His miracle was for the poor of Israel. The doctrine of the chapter replaces this by another portion. Christ is here the object of faith, not acting in life-giving power.

Chapter 7. After bringing out the positive truth of the glory of Christ's Person, and Himself (in humanity and death) the object of faith and the true nourishment of the Church, death being the drink of life to it; having given Christ as the true manna, and the substitute of the paschal feast; chapter 7 considers the nation, as His brethren after the flesh, quite set aside, as having its portion with the world. The time for Christ to show Himself to the world was not come. The true Feast of Tabernacles for Israel, He presents Himself as sent of the Father. If there was the moral disposition to do His will he would know of the doctrine. All is uncertainty and confusion in the people, the Jews (that is, those of Judaea) astonished at the position He held, wondering what the rulers were about. Had they owned Him to be the Christ?

At last they send to take Him; but Christ announces His leaving them in a quite different way, and going where they could not come. Not only the Jews are set aside, but He is returning into a new sphere of existence, where they could not be. They would remain in their confusion; and, Christ going to the Father who had sent Him, they could not be there. But the Jews rejected, and Christ absent, the Holy Ghost would be given as a river flowing forth from him who had it. Instead of the manna and the waters of Rephidim, it would be Christ and His flesh and blood; and waters, not drunk, but flowing from the belly of him who drank of Christ. This flowing of the Holy Ghost would take the place of [the] rest of tabernacles realised by Christ's presence, when He shows Himself to the world. It is more than drinking in the desert, it is the Holy Ghost taking the place of Christ's presence in the Feast of Tabernacles.

295 In chapter 8 realities are brought out in the strongest and fullest manner, still beginning with reference to the Jews, but bringing out still further the full glory of the Lord Jesus; for chapters 6 and 7 were, so to speak, administrative; that is, what was so among the Jews surpassed with what Christ was; and so indeed chapter 5. Here the character of the law is brought out, as taken out of the hand of man, and placed in the hand of God, using it to the conscience. But then Christ is not come to judge, though He could, because He would do so in reference to Him whence He came and whither He went. He is the light of life, and whoever followed Him would not walk in darkness, but have that; and He was showing the law to be universally condemnatory, the light of the world.

The Jews are shown to be of their father the devil. All is shown in its true spiritual character in this chapter; and Christ not only presents Himself as Son, Son of the Father [showing], that sin made slaves, and the law held them in this position, but that the Son would make them free of the house, as the truth would deliver them from bondage. But things being pressed to the full bringing out of truth, the Lord not only mounts up to promise before the law, but to him who by election was before promise: "Before Abraham was, I am." The Jews, fully aware of the import of such a phrase, again take up stones to stone Him. Thus the divine Redeemer and Shepherd of Israel was cast out, after the full bringing out of who He was.

In chapter 9, His sheep follow Him, to have part with the Son of God. The words of Christ, which revealed God His Father, had been rejected, and they would have killed Him, because they revealed God. But He worked the works of Him that sent Him while it was called day. Here also the Jewish position, in contrast with the light of God, is brought out. They saw the retributive justice of God in the blindness of this poor man. It was his parents' sin, or his own foreseen.

It was really nothing of the kind. To Christ it was the occasion of the working of divine power, to give sight to the blind. And such was the real state of things. Really blind by nature, it was God's work to give sight. This in itself set aside the whole Jewish system. God was working in divine power to one incapable by nature, instead of ordering justice according to conduct. But the manner is notable. He puts upon his eyes what was doubtless a figure of His human nature, and when the power of the Spirit through the word is added he sees clearly. The Holy Ghost taught that He was the sent of the Father. The apostle himself gives the word which solves the meaning of this remarkable act of Christ, the bearing of which is stamped with the clearest evidence.

296 The Sabbath Day, sign of the old covenant, again comes up. The evidence of the divine power sufficed for him who had received his sight. The reasoning of the others on these forms betrayed them. Yet they have, through the parents, complete evidence of the reality of the miracle. But the sheep, clearly enlightened, is cast out, to have share with the Son of God, whom he knew already as hearing the word of God. He believes, and worships. (Lord, give us thus to own Him, who has gone through all things for our sakes, and to know that the opening of our eyes is His work.)

This position is fully unfolded by the Lord in what follows [chap. 10], where He unfolds the course of the Shepherd, His real position, as to Jews, as to Gentiles; the electing love of God; rising up from His obedient entrance by the door Himself to His unity with the Father, including His passing through death, as taking a new place in taking life again, thus perfectly pleasing the Father, whose ways and glory needed this; and death out of love to the sheep, for whom He would so give His life.

In all He stands alone. All Jewish pretension to it (even on this ground as shepherd of Israel) was false, and to plunder the sheep. He proves them unreasonable on their own ground; appeals (if they do not believe His words) to His works, and leaves them entirely, after they had twice sought to stone Him. This closed the setting in testimony before them God thus manifested in Him, the revelation of His Father, who they said was their God; for His being in the Father, and the Father in Him, this was the truth brought out to them.

The rest is preparation for His death, with the proof of what He would have been as a present blessing and glory, had He been received. The Father renders Him this testimony as needed before He goes. We may remark the Jews treated as unbelievers, to whom no room for the testimony He had given remained (chap. 10: 25).

Chapter 11. As regards the Jews, we have the proof that He could have brought back (as to power) all the saints departed (I say "as to power," because He who knew man knew expiation was needed); in fact, it is the revelation of life in Christ, the Son of God, according to the form in which He held it, as to its effect. He has it in Himself He is it. As Christ was the power of resurrection and life-giving, the Jews are the instruments of death, and that against Him; but indeed accomplishing God's counsels unknown to themselves.

297 In chapter 12 we have first, it seems, the picture of the Remnant, beloved of God, and attached to the Lord, and that in principle in all times up to Christ's death; its true, but lowest, form in Martha. She serves willingly, even away from home, at the supper they make Him. In Lazarus we have the saints departed being brought to life again; in Mary, who had sat at Jesus' feet, and heard His word, another kind of devotedness, so to speak; her heart, attached to Him, enters into the circumstances in which He is. She anticipates His death, and attaches herself to Him as so leaving the world, yet in an affection yet looking at Him in connection with His ties here. She anoints His body for the burial. It is not Christ on high. It is, in the highest and anticipative sense, looking on the pierced One, and mourning; highest, because it is not after, as leaving a friend in doing it, but her heart entering into His devotedness in doing it. The Lord accepts this as opportune, and Himself insists on His going away. They remained here. One of His disciples betrays for money, even a thief. The Jews' hatred is open and violent. The secret of His thoughts and purpose of His heart was really with her who had sat at His feet. The Life-giver, the Son of God, was to die.

Next, He enters in as King-Messiah. The next step is His glory as Son of Man. The hour was come (for the Greeks demanded Him) that the Son of Man should be glorified. But if the Son of God here below, the Life-giver, must die, the Remnant only associating themselves with Him, so He to whom the glory belonged must too. Messiah, Son of Man, if it were not to abide alone, must die. There was something deeper than Jewish royal glory. If He had to say to man, and the glory connected in God's counsels with it, He must die. Full moral glory must be given in man to God; and in spirit these also would be with Him, must follow Him in this. Still, He deeply feels what it is, but in perfect grace and submission looks to His Father, who replies by the double glory of raising as Lazarus, and raising to the better resurrection; and thus the Lord sees the world judged, and His lifting up on the cross the point of gathering to all. For if the cross be ignominy and death it is lifting up above the world, above every creature and everything in it, to attract or to deter. It is not heaven; but it is not earth, it is perfection before God in respect of evil; the highest thing, we may suppose, unless it be the enjoyment of God Himself, regard to whom, and that absolutely, it supposes.

298 For a while Jesus was still here as light. But in fact the Jews were blinded. They loved the praise of men. Christ revealed the Father, and the perfectness of the word which He spake would be the ground of judgment in that day. Still the Lord, rejected and cast out down here, was to go and to take His true place, that place which belonged to His nature, and His place before the Father, which shone through all His intercourse with the Jews when walking down here, the rejected Christ, the Son of David also.

But [chap. 13] His disciples are the abiding object of His affections, His own which were in the world. In this His true, though new, place as Man, He does not cease to love them, and in the presence of the work of Satan (which, through one of them, was to bring about His final rejection and death, as to what was here below, but in the consciousness that the Father had confided all to Him the Son, that He came from God, and went to God) He, in the perfect humility of love, sets about the service of His disciples according to their need in this world, in order to have a part with Him before His Father on high. It is not now His death entered into by a Remnant which surrounded [Him] with affection and testimony to His present power; His departure from earthly acceptance and glory, the setting sun of His earthly acceptance and place, with the bright rays of what it would have been had man had the heart to taste and accept it; but the full power of evil in Satan's influence in the wicked heart of man, in contrast with the full nature and official glory of the Son of God; and then His love to His disciples continuing as in that place, and to associate them with Himself as in it.

Having all things from the Father, and Himself coming from God, and going to God, and they to have part with Him, He passes out of the scenes where, in the midst of them, He would have been Son of David and Son of Man, surrounded by His elect and even risen saints, into His own proper place with His Father and God. This is the proper key to all this part of the word. With this in view, He shows them the continued exercise of His tender love: their Servant, to wash their feet; they were every whit clean, personally, by the power of the word, but whose feet yet touched the world; and then shows them their part with Him also in the exercise of the same ministry of love. For here it is not question of atonement, but of service. The same in mission; he that received His messenger received Him; still thus identifying the disciples with Himself.

299 That His cup might be full, one of them was to betray Him. The closest friendship in grace, the one to whom the sop of intimacy is given, is the ground and occasion, bears the fruit of the worst wickedness. Where Satan has possession of the springs of the will, there the heart is given up to his power, not as seeking an object, but hardening against even natural feelings; for every man would not betray his friend with a kiss. But this brought on the full translation of Jesus to His new, but rightful and perfect, place.

Note here, it is not in contrast with the Jews merely, but with His own familiar friend, betrayed on earth by him. He really was One who came from God, and went to God, and to whom the Father had committed all things.

Now He enters morally into it: "Now is the Son of Man glorified." This is remarkable. He was going to be glorified outwardly, but in Man; in Him who had fully (without sin) taken his place, heir of all his sorrows, and the counsels of God as to him; was not merely the object of these, but was to be the vessel of all that could glorify God. He had the glorious place of perfectly glorifying God in the most adverse and difficult circumstances, and made good His character in the midst of sin, which was opposed to it. And, as it could not have been otherwise, truth, holiness, justice, love, majesty, Christ gives Himself to bring out, gives Himself up: a glorious place for man, where the wondrous counsels of God have set Him; God thus is glorified in Him; then, as necessary consequence, and justice itself, God glorifies Him (as to position and outward glory) in Himself.

Nor is it merely hereafter in display, but a present, necessary consequence as to Christ Himself. Thus He enters into His new (and, as Son of God, old) and rightful place. God is glorified. He does not say the Father; it is "God is glorified," and thus in us through Him. Christ was necessarily alone here in now accomplishing it. The disciples could not follow Him now; yet (glorious thought!) they will follow Him; it is our place. Our present place is to be on earth for one another what He was for us. All human attempt to pass that way ends in failure and dishonour; as the ark was to go first, and then when it was a dry way because the ark had gone down into it, we pass Jordan as truly as the ark.

300 This evidently puts Christ out of the present scene; and on this ground chapter 14 proceeds. He could not rest here with them, but He goes to prepare a place for them in His Father's house; and He would come again, not to be with them as to the Jews and the world, but to take them to be with Him. But then they had seen and known where He was going, and the way; for He was going to the Father, and they had seen Him in Him, and He Himself was the way. But this was not all. Not only would He (chap. 13) purify them for communion, but He would, when ascended on high, obtain the Holy Ghost for those who obeyed Him, so that they would know He was in the Father, this full place of divine personal glory; and, further, their own union with Himself, so that they should be as near as possible to the Father, they in Him, and He in them. This was the effect of the presence of the Holy Ghost.

But there was yet this further: He would not leave them, even down here, deprived of comfort and alone. He would come to them in a spiritual sense. If they really loved Him (for they were troubled at His going away), they would keep His commandments. The Father would love them. This was an immediate affection, which they knew not yet; and Christ would manifest Himself to them; the double effect of walking in His ways. Judas asks how it could be that He should manifest Himself to them, and not to the world. The answer was, If a man walk according to Christ, the Father and He would come and abide with him. This was their present portion down here, till they abode in the Father's house on high. The Holy Ghost Himself would teach them all things, and bring all to their remembrance that Jesus said. He went away, indeed, but He left peace with them. He gave His own peace. Blessed portion here below! So that, if He placed them with Himself before the Father, according to the place He took, He left them also the place which He had with the Father on earth, the place of perfect peace, whatever He met with on earth.

Further, they were entitled to have joy in His joy; that is, to rejoice because He Himself was happy, not merely because He had made them so; a high and blessed privilege, showing how He would have one even in heart with Himself.

301 This quite closed the series of revelations which treated of the transition from earthly, Jewish relationships, or risen with His disciples on earth, to His place with the Father in right of His Person, and in divine counsel, giving the revelation of their condition in His absence in respect of this, both as regards His Person and the presence of the Holy Ghost; their future portion and present peace, meanwhile. Though there could yet be some communications, it would not be much, for the prince of this world now came: for Satan is such; for the rejection of the Son has shown it. He had nothing in Christ, but His passing through the sphere of his power in death was that the world might know that He loved the Father, and obeyed to the end. The world, alas! would have hoped something from Satan's power to stop this witness to God. How often does it! But in Christ all this power of evil was truly the occasion of the full and perfect proof of love to the Father, and obedience to Him. Here the Lord closes His relationship with the world. "Arise," says He, "let us go hence."

What follows is a developed doctrinal discourse founded on all these truths. We may remark the parallel between verse 7 and verse 37 of chapter 13; Peter could no more know the bearing of that (typical) purification, necessary to have a part with Christ, in His real, now as Man realising, relationship with the Father, than go by the way of death, which proved Christ's moral and perfect competency for it, into the Father's presence; competency for the glory of God, for He had perfectly glorified Him there where God needed it, in a new way (so to speak), and where man must do it. What a wonderful mystery! for who should obey for man but man, or could? for it would not have been according to the exigencies of God as regards man, nor of man under sin towards God. But Christ was Man obedient under sin, and with the perfect feelings He ought to have towards and before God there, and death, and Satan's power indeed, too.

Chapter 15 takes up the fact of the two great positions of Christ as setting aside the old or Jewish state. Christ Himself was the True Vine. Israel had been but the outward form. Note, all is on earth here. The disciples were already of it. But then it is in principle also the system continued on earth in its responsibilities. This might have been fully realised if the Jerusalem form of administration had continued. It is always true in principle of the Church viewed as on earth: fruit (whatever the gift) is derived from communion. They were to have Christ's place in testimony on earth, not as servants, but as friends who had His mind; that is, all He had received of His Father; that is, as down here on earth, perfect in His prophetic place among the Jews, come in by the door, though one with the Father, and speaking from Him. They were to be united among themselves, have this spirit in common which He had had towards them. All the means of true and full fruit-bearing in their position on earth are gone into. Their place in this was association with Him, and obedience, and disposing thus of all power in supplication.

302 Then He provides for their own proper joy also in this position. They would be persecuted, as He had been. Blessed privilege! But the Father not known, and He hated without a cause. The personal testimony of Jesus had left them without excuse. Had the old vine not rejected this last, this one proper, full testimony of the Father Himself, they might have remained in their position. Much, many, and various sins God could have pardoned in government; but they had hated the Father manifested in grace, and the Son (who had manifested Him) present in grace, so that the breach was irreparable, and they must be left in their sin. And so it was written in their law. Thus the old vine was wholly set aside.

But there was another, of whom He had spoken already, who was to replace Himself; the Comforter, whom He would send from the Father (for now He takes His place on high), who would bear witness, and they also, as regards all His life here. Hence their entire rejection by the old vine as an ecclesiastical system, and that even in their blindness in thinking to serve God, as (they supposed) they knew Him according to the old system. But it was total ignorance of the Father and Him, the true, full, only real revelation of God (who was their God), the truth and perfect light which had now only really come into the world; the rest having been only really provisional.

The Lord had now told them what concerned their relationship with the old system, so that it would be a confirmation of their faith when it arrived. His presence with them (supporting all Himself) had rendered it necessary while He was with them. But they were still too exclusively occupied with the old, and their own circumstances, as left down here. None had his soul lifted up to enquire of what a God who was acting, and was not surely frustrated by the evil of His enemies, was going to do when Jesus was going. If (apparently by the wickedness of His enemies) He left, and all link was broken off down here, surely larger purposes of God were to be accomplished.

303 We may remark here that, as up to His rejection He had put in contrast His revelation of the Father and the Jewish order, now He is the True Vine, instead of the old one; and the Holy Ghost reveals Him, while He puts them in immediate relationship with the Father. We may remark that chapter 14 speaks particularly of the personal relationship of the Lord with His disciples in connection with His absence; the effect that this had upon them, and how both as to His having them ultimately with Him, and how He would be with them meanwhile, how they would enjoy it; the Comforter He would obtain, and the like; and this also in connection with His Person, what they had really had in Him when He was present, and how that bore on their association with Him even that He was going.

The other grand element, then, dependent upon the breaking of the connection of the Lord with the old vine (at least, of His apparent place in connection with it), was the presence of the Comforter, the Holy Ghost whom He would send, and that in connection with His going up on high. The effect and sphere of His presence was entirely above and independent of the Jewish question. He dealt with the world of which Christ was now the exalted Head. He took totally other ground than the law and the Jews. He demonstrated the sin of the world, and that because they believed not on Him. His presence was the consequence of the Son's being rejected, and by the fact brought them in guilty. It demonstrated righteousness, because it showed Jesus above, received of the Father, and taken from the world who would not have Him, to see Him no more. Awful effect of the justice of God the Father! But judgment was not executed on the world, but its prince was judged; for Satan was proved to be that; but he had committed himself to the utmost in the death of the Lamb (and He being raised up and glorified), fatally for ever committed himself; he was judged; and the triumphant presence of the Spirit proved it.

304 Besides this effect of His presence, He would guide the disciples, and show them things to come; and, further, take of Christ's (and all that the Father had was His), and show it to them. Truth, prophecy, and the full glory of Christ was their portion under His teaching. Yet, further, Christ's absence was but for a time. He was not cut off, but going to the Father; and as this was really what was about to be accomplished they would see Him in a little while. This is a general principle. He was not lost, but soon to be here again; true for testimony on His resurrection, and finally at His return. Further, He placed them in immediate relationship with the Father. They should not ask Him, as if they could not go to God themselves; but being thoroughly associated with the efficacy of His work, and the acceptance of His Person, would go to the Father in His name, who loved them as attached to Him.

The Lord, in fine, speaks plainly as to His whole position, quite independent of the Jews. He came forth from the Father, and came into the world; and again, left the world, and went to the Father. The disciples perceive the plainness of His answer to their thoughts, but not its force, saying, Thou camest out from God. Nor had they, necessarily, the force to follow Him in the death which was His way to return. They would be scattered each to his own. All would be broken up by His rejection and smiting, and He left alone (but the Father was with Him); but in Him they would have peace; in the world, tribulation. It was a natural enemy, but overcome.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47017E> 304

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 17

- 1-3. Hitherto their case had been laid before themselves, not before His Father. So with Christians. Through His name they adjudge their place, their way, their trial and their comfort from the Word. This their case they lay before the Father which was in heaven. This chapter displays our Lord fully as having finished His own, and committed the work to them. The connection of the first three verses is thus the matter of these, and the whole may be for study and fervent supplication. But it is indeed well to draw particular attention to the method of God's counsels in these three verses. The Father had given Him, He declares, power over all flesh, that He might give eternal life to as many as He had given Him. Life eternal was to know the Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He had sent. Therefore says our Lord, "Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee." Thus the Father would be revealed through the light of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord in the Person of Jesus Christ. Yet is not this the end. "Glorify thy Son," for the hour determined in thy counsels is come; "to the end that thy Son also may glorify thee." But then, blessed be God for evermore! it was the counsel of His own glory to glorify Himself in that work of love, of giving eternal life by Christ Jesus, therefore "as," and the union of these, His own glory, which must necessarily be the end, with our being brought into the partaking of it through the abounding riches of His grace.

305  - 5. "With thine own self." This might seem to mean that He was to be clothed with the personal glory of the Father; but does it mean more than apud te ipsum, in correspondency to "on the earth"? The position of "with thee," in the various readings, marks the plain sense. It amounts in result to the same sense, and in this glory He is to come again.

Having thus conducted His disciples to the point of association, the point of death, where He was to be left alone, He turns to prayer, and presents them so left (first presenting the new power of the state of things) to the Father's care. Earth was now left. He had finished all possible manifestation of the Father's love there in vain. His eyes now turned to heaven. He was conscious He had declared the point at which He had arrived alone with Him. He poured forth His heart to Him concerning His Church. The earthly glory was closed; Messiah, sad word! rejected. He was now to be glorified in His real glory, the Son with the Father, "an only begotten with a father." Heaven was the place to which His thoughts and portion were now lifted up, and His eye affected His heart. He thought of His glory there, and His disciples there. How determinate, how composed, how void of uncertainty or amazement in mind is the word, "Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee"!

The effect, the service, so to speak, was mutual; but One had been obediently humbled; therefore "Glorify thy Son," that so glorified He might glorify the Father: always His desire and work, for He was the display, the brightness, of His glory in His own; but He had been humbled Himself, hidden His glory, therefore looks to be glorified as now in it, "that," etc.; for here it ends in the perfectness of the Lord's will and the competency of His glory.

306 Observe, moreover, our Lord had not been glorified, though all glory was His, and faith saw through to it. His had been the full display and acting of the Father's grace. "The grace . . . appeared." We know it has appeared. This Jesus showed all through His life; the other was His, but not shown, save in glimpses for a moment on the Mount of Transfiguration. But now, though it seemed through death, the Son was to be glorified, and the glory to be displayed from this. This was to be the position in which the Son was to be viewed; and then He proceeds to say what He had done for His Church, His desires and will. There were two points of the glory; that is, as manifested: power over all flesh; eternal life to as many as the Father had given Him. It was not now Messiah's Jewish glory, but the Son's universal authority, power over all flesh, and these given to Him eternal life with Him, as we shall see. Here was the form and body of the manifested or manifestation of glory from His Person.

But this eternal life is not a distant thing, waiting for the glory and manifestation. "This is eternal life," a present thing, the knowledge had by virtue of this position of Jesus. First, the Father to be the only true God. They had known the true God in Jehovah, the God of the Jews. They were now to apprehend the Father as such, and so to stand in relation to Him as before the true servants of Jehovah, now known as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and to know, in which alone they so stood, Jesus Christ whom the Father had sent, to know Him as Jesus, to know Him as the Anointed, to know Him as sent, and above all to know Him; for Jesus Christ, whom the Father had sent, was the Person to be known; and thus it is He is presented to us. He is these things, and is so sent, and the point is to know Him; and this is eternal life, to know Him with whom Jesus intercedes, the Father, "the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."

Thus we have the opening presentation of Himself, the character of His glory as acquired intermediately, the power and character of eternal life and knowledge of the Father and Him. Then the Lord opens out the service and passage into another system detailedly: "I have glorified thee on the earth." This is what Jesus had done in the midst of and tried by all the evil. He had done it, done it perfectly. That was now accomplished in the rejected Jesus, in the place of the first Adam. He was now to assume the place of the Second. He had also finished the work given Him to do as the obedient Servant even to death. There was nothing left for Him more to do here which God could require, which His Father could require. He had given Him the work, that He should do it, and He had accomplished it, filled it up. He had glorified the Father in the rebellious world, and finished the work which He had given Him to do. This as a Servant. Now then the glory: Do you, Father, says the Lord, fulfil thy part, thy due part: "Thou, Father, glorify me with thyself." This was due. But then indeed, though due to Him as Jesus, it was the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. This was a taking up the title in redemption; and so as regarded the objects of the work also. But it was a return into His own glory, in that character which He had before as Son, before the world or any creature was. This was the great thing to be manifested in the glorifying Him who had perfectly glorified God the Father, the only true God, when His whole character needed to be shown by evil, and could so be shown in grace; all His character, even in the world, upon the earth, the great scene of Adam's (man's) question, and the perfect result in Christ, then to follow the glory. Thus far of the Person of Christ. Now the objects of His work.

307 But observe that the glory is not spoken of as given. He is glorified as Man; but it is with glory which He had with the Father before the world was. It is not given glory at all here as to His Person; but all the other things are, with remarkable repetition, spoken of as given because He received them as Head of the Church, as the Man; making the exception the more remarkable. There was given glory, and that He speaks of as also given after. The glory of His Person was not given. He had it with the Father before the world was. This is a remarkable and blessed point. It proves the pre-existing Sonship, and given glory, and the parallel glory with the Father. He had subjected Himself, indeed, though He were a Son; but it was the fulness which was His which He returned into (blessed be His name!) for the Church. So He speaks in equal terms (v. 1); and indeed verse 3, and here (v. 5). In the rest, verse 2, thrice, verses 4, 6, 7, 8, 9; and after, in verse 10, we have the connection. The remarkable accuracy of these passages is most striking.

308  - 6. "I have manifested thy name to the men which thou gavest me out of the world." This was Christ's work, manifesting the Father and His name. The resurrection was the great public testimony of who Christ was, and witnessed by the Spirit is testimony: "determined Son of God with power." But He manifested (which note, for He was able, thus the Lord) the Father's name to the men actually given Him. It was not the world, but those whom the Father had given to Him. He manifested the Father's name to them, given out of the world. They were the Father's, and given to Christ. All this of Christ in office.

"And they have kept" not My, but "Thy word." All this is the grace which identifies the disciples with the Father, and Himself their Servant, only given to Him. He did them all service, His competency shown in this, the nature of the service now. But the Son could do it, for it was to reveal the Father. Christ's words, too, were His words. The disciples had kept His word. That was a great point; but that was not all: they had kept the present word, they knew the things given. Here was the blessing: "Thy name"; "Thine they were"; "they have kept thy word." There was nothing short of full blessing. It was not Christ, the Son, short of or separate from the Father. It was His things He had given to His people, even while here in flesh in the world. Christ was not there, in Person and service, separate from the Father. This was the real truth now disclosed; always true, however dull they were to receive it. But, in keeping His, the comfort was they had kept the Father's: "And now," looked at as thus received at His hand, "they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee." They saw, not merely the David excellency and Messiah distinction, but the Father's glory in [the] hands of the Son; that all the things that Christ had given Him of the Father were of the Father, in the competency of the Son to hold. The Father was shown, and it sufficed. Nothing more could be, save the actual glory. They knew that they were really the Father's. It was glorious knowledge.

The Lord all along here was speaking as Man, but asserting therein His unity with the Father. The reason was thus explained. They knew that all Christ's things were of the Father; and the manner of the revelation: "For I have given them the words which thou gavest me." This was the manner of the revelation. And they received them. This was the divine grace; but so in fact they received them as true by Jesus. But they purported to be words from the Father, therefore they knew them to be from Him; and thus the humiliation or assumption of no glory by Christ in Himself was indeed the revelation of all His real glory, though His humiliation was real.

309 We belong to a higher system. If we do not humble ourselves in this, our real belonging to another cannot, will not, come forth. For indeed the real power and consciousness of belonging to another, though not assumed, will make one grieved at, and it impossible to assume, the glory of this where evil is. There is great glory in being content to be humbled. But having received the words which He gave in His Father's name they knew truly and surely that He came out from Him; that was His real association and glory; and that the Father had sent Him, the authority of His mission. They had known One, as seen in Himself, in what He was; they recognised it: as, "Do the rulers know indeed that this is very Christ?" And they had believed; for this was not matter of recognition, but faith that God the Father had sent Him.

Thus known and manifested, having heard His word, and believed in Him that sent Him, and so having eternal life, He asks petitions about them: not about the world; they are not, and could not be, the subject of His petitions. He could not pray for unity as to it, but concerning "those whom thou hast given me; for they are thine." Thus He throws them, by the actings of His love, upon the necessity of the Father's love, and that by their fellowship and union as the Remnant. Then comes out the great truth: there is no distinction in limit, but perfect identity in common interest in all that was thus mutually theirs; and the Son was glorified (another reason for the Father's care over them) in them. They were the Father's, and all the Father's His. His the Father's, and He was glorified in them. And therefore here, besides the glory, the covenant unity, in respect of the Church, and all that was the Father's and the Son's. How blessed and marvellous the love that sent the Son! How rich and unsearchable the grace in which, in the union of the Father and the Son, every available blessing between them becomes available to the Church, because the Father has given them to the Son, and "all of one" is His and theirs! The union and consequent mutual bond, so to speak, in the covenant of the Father and the Son becomes, all of it (as afterwards prayed upon) the available blessing of the Church.

310 There is also most important truth contained in this word, "And all thine are mine, and mine are thine," and as standing counter to all false lights as to the dispensation. But I use it only now for the purpose for which it is used in blessing here. But we must take it as a positive and simple truth. Nor must "I am glorified in them" be left out. It is a great general truth. "They are thine . . . and I am glorified in them," are two reasons. The other brings out the statement in parenthesis, and this last rightly appends on to the subsequent part of the prayer, for it formed the necessary basis and plea of His praying for them and committing them to the Father in the persuasive plea, "they are thine"; then they prayed for on the great basis of the covenant, being the Father's and the Son's glory, peculiar to themselves; and hence not concerning the world; not thus afterwards in respect of the distinctive consequences; here of the actual relationship of love to themselves in which the Father's issued, and in which in accomplishment the Son would be glorified. Therefore He says, "Holy Father."

But this is the development of all the truth of the covenant, not in which the Church alone is concerned, but the unfolding of the glory of Christ, the love of the Father, all Christ's to be the Father's, having no inferior association, and having the advantage of their situation, and all the Father's Christ's, showing the real and full glory in which He stood as so holding them; Christ the middle point. All that Christ had as sent had the privilege, necessarily, and glory of the Father; that is, of being His; and all the glory and blessing, everything that was the Father's, was His also and so the sheep's glory too; and in them He was to be glorified. And so in some sort they to be brought into all these things common to the Father and the Son, for this community of the Father and the Son is the basis of all security of truth being known.

There was another point bringing out of this as to the state of the Church as the subject of prayer: "And now these are in the world." It was, we know, Messiah with His disciples in the world, but the development of this glorious unity in the Father: "I am no more in the world," etc., "and I come to thee." This was the position of the intercession then; they in the world, Christ not, but He gone to the Father, and now He prayed Him to keep them in His name. He had kept them in His name: for indeed, though called out in a Messiahship presented to the world (that is, the Jews as such), they were called out in the trusting of the Father's name, and so kept for the glory, not for that by the name in which its full character was stamped, "the Father"; not yet knowing its fulness, as we have just seen, but kept in it, and for it about to be revealed, though under the state of Messiah responsibly presented; but seen refusing to be so simply received, but walking as the Son of God, hence tried, exercised, and despised; rejected and tried too in being bruised so from on high, but to rise into the liberty of Sonship, and to call His disciples into it, but they in trial as yet in the world, and He not manifested, and then this their portion in knowledge, and the Father's truth received in the Son's word, and glory meanwhile.

311 And here we have very remarkably and deeply instructively the character of our Lord upon earth, His position, and how and whence led, and the bringing out of the disciples (compare Matthew 5, etc.); the subsequent state of [the] Church, and the Lord's conduct as to publicity while on earth, and so a practical precept for us; for we are not yet manifested, but we are associated with Christ as He with the Father, with the knowledge of the Spirit. But we are in an earthly system, but we walk through no divine earthly system to which we are bound, formed for earth, but spiritual fellowship with the heavenlies; as Christ the hope of glory ("I am no longer," "I come to thee," though "these are") forms just the character of our estate, and thereon our association with the "Holy Father," kept in His name, in which, not in Messiah's, He came, in His Father's name, assuming nothing, as noted. They had been given to Him. He would have been acting not to sent purpose if coming in His own name. He came so entitled, fully and perfectly; but He declined (humbling Himself in this), and kept those who owned Him Son of God in the Father's name. When another comes (to wit, Antichrist) in his own name, him they will receive. It will suit their selfishness. Hence the desolation of the Jews in the latter day. But Christ not in the world is the point of faith. But ascended, and with the Father, He acted acquiescently in that ordained. He kept really in that which was ordained, in a far higher sense now His, and so in patience kept His disciples for it, continually in feebleness turning to the other, and hard to wean from it. This is the only ordained glory, not Christ in the world (which note); and this is the point of faith. This was vital and necessary, not merely an ordained glory as Messiah's was, though that true. Flesh and blood might in a measure reveal the other; the Father alone could do this; and if done before His resurrection it was a special, anticipative act, and so done to the disciples. How specially blessed is this committal by the Son to the Father of these His people whom He knew thus left in the world! This "whom thou hast given" is an important change, and makes the sense, I think, very clear: "That they may be one"; "Keep them in thy name, that they may be one, as we."

312 The Son walked in the Father's name, as really one with Him, and so showing His glory, being outwardly humbled, though concealing it; so, if leaving in covenant revelation and unity in their own real nothingness, they would be kept as one thing. They had no independent existence. They did not belong to this world; they had no place in it, if they were kept in association with the Holy Father; as Christ's unity and union with the Father was shown by His going up there where He was before; and known to the Church so called out they would have this (necessary) unity; for they, as nothing, were known together in Christ as belonging to, as of, the Father, being indeed together vivified by one Spirit, as one life was spiritually the Father's and the Son's; as they were one, so they in one Spirit as into fellowship in Christ, with the Father and the Son, as so one. This is a great glory and mystery, but it is by the one Spirit being the life, and bringing them into this fellowship of the unity of the Father and the Son, known in and by Him in whom they were. Out of this they had no unity.

"Holy Father" was the characteristic of unity, real unity; sons in holiness in Christ, but as, according to this name, the Father kept them as one, verse 11 states the state of the circumstances or case, the consequent committal to the Holy Father, and its operation and result. The Lord now opens out the state of their case more fully in detail, in contrast with their circumstances previously. He delivers up His charge to the Father's hand, having failed in nothing: "While I was with them in the world I kept them in thy name." Of the manner of this we have spoken already. The keeping in the Father's name is the great point in unity, because the unity as known to us of Jesus and the Father is the name of Father and Son, and the Spirit in us is a Spirit of adoption.

313 In the Father's name Jesus had kept them, and He had guarded them Himself, so that none of them was destroyed but the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled; for to this obeying the counsel Jesus was subject. He watched effectually, and when this was done, if bowed in failure, we see the Scripture fulfilled therein. It becomes the occasion of meek obedience; we have not failed. This was perfectly true in Christ; in principle is for us. The joy of the Son was His unity and fellowship with the Father, and now He was going to Him. He was not of the world. It was now evinced in His going to the Father, as true in His soul ever, and this fellowship and their bringing in unity into it as put thus into the Father's hand in the knowledge of His name, and ending in fellowship with Jesus known as gone to the Father.

This identical union in the Father's love, true in Him, communicated to them, gives them His joy (in their like, though unequal, weariness, but His joy). He had also given them the Father's word, not simply His "words," the instrument of their instruction as spoken by Christ in His reception, but the subject matter of the Father's mind expressed: "Thy word." And the consequence was, this being their portion, the world necessarily hated them, because in necessary consequence they were not of the world, as He who was the very expression of that word, Who was, as it were, that word, was not of the world. As being His disciples they were no more of the world than He was. "I do not ask that thou shouldest take them out of the world [though they be not of it], but that thou shouldest preserve them [morally] out of the evil" that was there. Not merely "guard," but "Thou shouldest keep," preserve from it, out of it. This was the request antecedent to, and the foundation of, their earthly manifested unity. A separate people in the world was the character and foundation of the Church; a preserved people, as by the word given; hated of the world.

The former unity was towards God, as given and kept in the Father's name, their own unity mutually in power; this their character (in the word), and so the manifested unity. This is the position, then, of the Church, out of the evil, in unity, knowing the Father. Not out of the world, but out of the evil; its eye with Christ to heaven, hated by the world, having the Father's word from Christ; preserved out of the evil, though in the world. In result they are not of the world, as Christ is not of the world. By virtue therefore of their union with Him, and fellowship in Him, as He by virtue of His divine power and fellowship with the Father, as a matter of fact they are not of it. But there was practical daily sanctification needful for them, to keep them, because of the applicability of their nature to the things of the world around them, from the evil.

314 Now, God the Father's truth is not simply communion with Him, but the application of the principles of His character and revelation in Christ in detail to the circumstances, in contrast to and separation from, discerning separation from, the evil in which they were conversant. Thus they learnt by the evil, though not from it, and were sanctified by the truth, in knowledge of it, to God. That truth was the word of which we have spoken above, the subject matter of the revelation of God the Father in Christ, which put them in contrast and conflict with the world, and sanctified them from it in knowledge; "renewed in knowledge after the image"; so judging all things.

Then, so viewed, separated to God, and from the world as to evil: "As thou hast sent me into, so have I sent them into, the world." They were sent as witnesses of what Christ was, as He of the Father. They were merely sent; then they did not belong to it. They were sent as not belonging to it, as active witnesses of something else of which they bore the record into it, and they being thus sent in, "for their sakes" Jesus thus set Himself apart; in the world exhibited the power and character of complete separation to God, so that by the perfect exhibition of the truth in Him they might be spiritually sanctified. As He exhibited the pattern in power, so as the risen Head He became the source of the conformity formally: "Know him," says the apostle, "and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death," the full extent of our sanctification in truth to God from evil, "for he that is dead is free from sin." Jesus set Himself thus definitely apart. He did not merely come and do certain kind things, but He passed through the whole course of evil apart from it in power, and so that we might be sanctified in truth by the truth in Him, "the truth," as the apostle uses it, "as it is in Jesus" (see the passage). This was the pattern, example, and the power shown.

315 But while they were thus the primary objects He did not pray for them alone, but for those who should believe on Him through their word, that they may be all one, their union into identity with them by the one Spirit. The Father was in Him by a divine unity; for, save physically, things cannot be one else properly. He was in the Father by a divine unity, yet He was a Man; showing thus the form and power of our union with the Father and the Son. And this is still by the divine Spirit dwelling in us quickened into union with Jesus. But this is the portion of the saints, and is practically so when the Spirit is present in power. But their portion is one in, as one in spiritual acquaintance with, the Father and the Son. It is [not] merely one as by the divine Spirit dwelling in them corporately one with another, but one in actual fellowship, union in spiritual knowledge of the Father and the Son, one in us as so known as one, by the communion of the same Spirit; and yet so known as the Father and the Son by virtue of His manifestation, and the Church's knowledge of the Son by the [Spirit] come from the Father, by revealing unity of the Spirit, as of the Father by the Son, revealed and had communion with Him, and now it is Him actually known. It is known by those that have it. It flows from the manifestation of Christ in the flesh, the Son, and the Father in Him; and in knowing Him in the Father our knowledge of unity in both, our knowledge of the Father, simple in individuality; this spoken of before in "Holy Father," of the Son in the depth of the covenant, and thence in this fellowship of unity as to both the Father and the Son (compare Matthew 11: 27). And in this united common acquaintance of the Father and the Son, and unity thereby, is the world's witness: "that the world may believe."

The power of the word in identifying those who were total strangers with the preachers ("shall believe through their word"), making them one in the Father and the Son, in them as one, planting them (once strangers) into the same unity in the power of divine and common unity, was evidence that He in whose name these things were wrought really was sent of the Father. The same unity, being produced in all that believed, was evidence of the divine power that accompanied it of the mission of Christ. The unity in the Son and the Father proved who the Son was, and so His mission. The glory of Sonship in rejected humiliation was Christ's glory upon earth. But it was more than this; for the thing itself was given. Christ had power to give what was given. This remarkably illustrates the supreme, and yet in His place, trusting and receiving position in which as Man He stood: "The glory which thou gavest me." The Holy Father's name, the unity of the Father and the Son, sanctified into conformity to the sanctified One known by the truth, was the previously spoken power of unity, now the glory.

316 Our Lord had sanctified Himself, set Himself apart for their sakes, showing the truth of righteousness with God. In His power, thus sanctified and separated to Him, they became by Him acquainted, in the knowledge of His unity with the Father, with the power of unity as to whoever was brought into it. But then it ended not here, because the consequent result of glory hung on it; that is, in the Person of Jesus; and then He, the Son, gives to them the glory given to Him. This constitutes the full power of unity. When I say "them," this is the position they are brought into; the glory is given to us. Here is the great triumph and blessing. Christ gives it, but it is His glory, the glory which is the display of divine fulness in Him; given of the Father for the display of all the fulness; for He shall come in His Father's glory, in His own, and of the holy angels; and He shall be glorified in the saints, and admired in all them that believe. How could they but be one when they have this portion where they have their very being by the glory being theirs, so that they are but in individual nothingness as in the glory, the glory which is the Son's, together? This is what they are in God's mind, therefore they are one: "That they may be one, as we are one." For the Father and Son being one are one in the glory, perfectly so, absolutely so. With us in the glory, so our blessing; as to them their independent existence, though still each knowing it.

Believers are made one, made one as in the glory. The glory makes them one, as the unity of the Father and the Son makes the glory, and, [He] being incarnate, we are brought by the gift of and association with the Son into the glory so given to Him, which fact gave them fellowship with Him in that which, as to Him, was that which He had with the Father before the world was. Not that the given glory was essential glory; for Christ had the double glory, the glory with the Father before the world was, and given of love in covenant place which He had in virtue of His humiliation, redemption glory. Into this we are brought, but into fellowship with Him who had the other. Therefore He says, "I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected in one." Verse 22, it is clear to me, in full relates to future glory; and though it ought to be comparatively so now by the energy of the Spirit, then will they be fully perfected in one, the Father in Christ (in glory), and Christ in them. When all the saints have the glory this will be the case, for this actually takes them out of the occasion of disunion. The other end of it is that the world may know that the Father sent the Son, and loved them as He loved Him.

317 We may remark that it is not here "believe," as in verse 21, but "know"; and then, when the glory is, the world will know that the Father has loved them as Jesus, for it will be manifested in the giving of glory, the same glory. There may be measure of realisation of the power of the glory, and so known; but this is only relatively in witness, and not properly. Thus the Lord is said to manifest forth His glory, and His disciples believed on Him; and this might be in a measure true with Peter and Paul, and the like, but not in the proper sense of the thing itself; for our Lord had not then the glory, but says, "Now glorify thou me," etc. So rather of us. But then the world will know. It is as far as it was Jesus' in the world. The Church had occasion to show forth the pattern of it as to personal conduct.

But it behoves us ever to remember that the connection of the Church is with Christ risen, and the glory which is His consequently; and hence the power which it showed was witness, not simply of what He was divinely upon earth, but of His risen glory, and pre-eminence over the creature, and the power of Satan in it; and hence He even could properly give the glory actually given Him, but in resurrection. And then the extent of the Father's love to the saints, now despised by the world, will be manifested to the world. Then they are perfected, all being now brought together into one, "that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and that thou hast loved them, as thou hast loved me," which is the consequence in blessed fulness, the world now knowing its full blessing, and they who were rejected shown to be loved as Jesus in the glory given to Him, and so shown accordingly. The manner and basis is spoken of differently. The former was their communion in the knowledge of the Father and of the Son; and therefore the Lord says, "As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." This is the Church's portion. "Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." Now it is "I in them, and thou in me." This is the order and manifestation in the glory, the Father manifested in the Son, He being in His glory, and He glorified in the saints who are in His, in which all the rest follows, which could not be till then properly. Thus the prayer embraces the whole condition of the saints. I say not in what measure of manifestation it may be meanwhile, for it is written, "I have given." He is exalted.

318 First, from verses 11 to 20, their condition as set in the Father's care. Verse 19 is more His exalted state, and properly His exalted state, not His humiliation. Then verses 20, 21, the actual fellowship of the Church as knowing the Father and Son, so sanctified into the glory, and His Person known properly and fully therein. Then the gift in result, giving them the glory given Him, and its result. Verse 22 states what is given them, not the place where it is enjoyed. It is therefore the positive portion of the Church in the love of Jesus exalted. Its partaking is a matter of prerogative certainty in the due and appointed time.

The other point follows to the end of verse 21, that is, "demand," what Christ was presenting to the Father concerning the Church then, is a great fact: "I have given them the glory which thou gavest me." I have given it to them: this was manifested, through faith. Power more properly flows from His Person, which is not the glory given in humiliation, afterwards in universal dominion and glory. So in measure in us. The world had accordingly despised them; but then it was to be seen that the Father had loved Christ's people, even as Jesus, in Jesus' care.

Then comes what the Lord's own desire and delight is, His wish: "That they whom thou hast given me be with me where I am"; when the world is to learn "that thou didst send me"; just these that received Me, "where I am," "with me." They had tasted His humiliation, and were to see His glory. The world indeed despised and hated Him, and despised His disciples. But this was a thing much prior to the world, a thing (even the Father's covenant love to Jesus, to the Son), paramount to all the world's thoughts and interests: "Thou lovedst me," and I must have these, whom this poor, fallen world rejects, "with me" there, for My happiness, even in that glory which thou didst thus prepare for Me, that they may see what really belonged to Me, though the world despised Me, and they knew My reproach. It was a counsel antecedent to, paramount to, the world. He was not praying for the world now, but for the identification of that, the disciples and believers with the glory which was above it, setting out the whole Church's position, up to fellowship according to His own desires, and for His glory, in that according to His love. This was His "will," His delight.

319 Then comes, hanging on the last words of verse 24, it is not only the delight of Christ's love, the body's identification with Him in that which was the fruit of the Father's love to Him before the foundation of the world, and into which He had now brought them, but it is now, as things then stood, a matter of righteousness; not now "Holy Father," confer these blessings, but "Righteous Father." Here is the state of the case. "The world hath not known thee," so proved in their rejection of Christ, and the Father in Him. This was the cardinal hinge as to the actual state of the matter in Christ's glory. "The world hath not known thee; but I have known thee; and these have known that thou hast sent me."

Foolish world! with all its self-importance, [it] crucified Him whom the Father loved before its own foundation, and merely because it was ignorant of the Father as well as Him. What, then, did it know? Not itself, surely; no, nor yet the Spirit of truth when it testified of these things. It counts itself wise simply because it is ignorant; but unto them who are called there is One "who of God is made wisdom."

Little indeed did our Lord enjoy of His proper glory in such a world. It was in the sense of this, as the Man Christ Jesus, that our Lord here appeals to His righteous Father; suggesting, if I may so speak, in the spirit of prayer, as entering into His presence, where His own soul had refuge, that they had indeed known Him. Nothing more. It was, as it were, a vindication of His own glory, universally in right to be acknowledged, and thus giving ground for the pouring out of His spirit in humiliation, entering into glory in the access of His deepest separation. "Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son." "But I have known thee; and these have known that thou hast sent me." And note how He transfers the privileges to those to whom He had made known the Father, who had owned His mission from the Father: "And will declare it; that the love," etc. So that it is given to say, "Seeing it is a righteous thing with God," etc. This opening out of our Lord's feelings is worthy of the deepest study.

320 But I say, I measure not the measure of manifestation. "We see through a glass darkly"; but the things we see are the glory. We sit in heavenly places in Christ, though not actually, as in verse 24, with Him. The glory which we have now, perhaps a reproach, is the glory that remaineth. We have it not in glory, but what we have is to menon eudoxee. We are partakers of the glory that shall be revealed, and in our union with Jesus by the Spirit we have fellowship with the glory, moral power, though not yet revealed; but the result is "where I am." In this we return to chapter 14: 3, and know that it is upon the coming of Christ.

There are two points: the world will know then the mission of Jesus, and love to the Church. As to Him being where He is, their delight after all will be in dwelling on His glory: "may behold." And then will be manifested in glory the love wherewith He was loved before the foundation of the world, and we in it. As to the Church, "Holy Father"; but, now manifested "Righteous Father," He would so deal even now distinctively upon this love to Christ, Immanuel. "The world hath not known thee." Before the foundation of it Jesus was loved, and it did not know the Father. The distinctive treatment was therefore just. Love in Him had been manifested to it, as in this gospel. Chapter 3: 16, 17 and following is thus connected with verse 24.

- 25. "But I have known thee." He speaks of Himself as thus separate from the world in it. "And these have known" (the commencing point of vital union) "that thou hast sent me." Verse 25 a justifying reason, as verse 24 contains the blessed purpose of love in Christ. Having received Christ as sent of the Father, the consequence followed. His revelation was received and efficient. He, Jesus, declared the Father's name to them; not an idle work, but an effectual revelation of Him in that relationship. He had done so in life; He would do so in resurrection. The same thing indeed, but now effectual in its character: "That the love" (that is, the Father's, with which He had loved Him) might be in them, and He in them.

Declaring the Father's name was indeed putting them in the place of sons, partially in life, vitally in power. His constant work now being so, they stood in that relation in which the Father was perfect towards them. The love wherewith the Father loved Him was in them, for Christ's revelation of sonship (which note) was the real communication of bringing in fellowship with Himself. It was giving the communion of sonship, as He says therefore, "May be in them, and I in them." Thus He dwelt in them in the power of known sonship; for it is not here, note, as before, "that the world may know." That was the giving of the glory; this externally is manifested as by the glory; but now the general present position of the Church as informed by Christ in contrast with the world, as brought into fellowship with Him by this following His word in indwelling sonship, the love in them wherewith the Father (the righteous Father) had loved Him, and He also. This was the general and characteristic state of the Church, as the previous points had been its successively developed characteristics (v. 11), by the "Holy Father" kept one in their actual relationship in fellowship with the Son; still ever true. Secondly, as called in by the Spirit, and so as "Thou in me" and "I in you," known by the Spirit separate from the world, one in them. This is communion by the Spirit; then the glory by which manifested to the world; thus characteristically the given state of the Church in the disciples. Verse 26 is a blessed and distinct verse. It is a blessed and glorious chapter, and yet full of simple truth.

321 Before we turn to the facts which follow we would turn a little to the order which precedes. We have seen the closing moral rejection of Jesus in chapters 8 and 9, manifested in word and deed. In chapter 10 consequently we have what concerns the sheep, and the unity of the Father and Him in this purpose, their rejection of Him in this character. Then the open manifestation before the nation that He was this, in the power in which He could have brought in blessing. Then the deliberate rejection to death of the Prince of Life; but so the purpose of God brought in. This by the public authorities, who should receive and understand. Then the developing apostasy in Judas (see on Psalm 109). The manifestation, but for their rejection, of His preparedness; received, to fulfil all their hopes; praise fulfilled out of the mouth of babes and sucklings; riding King of the Jews. All things prepared on the part of God; the Gentiles ready to come in, as chapter 12: 31. All this belonged to His character abstractedly; that is, as not involving death.

322 The Lord then states the necessity of His death, and that His disciples must follow Him therein. But it was the judgment of the world withal, and of the prince of it; and the attractive character and power of Christ was by His death, rejected out of this world, not accepted in it. This was the point that brought the Jews to their bearing. "Messiah abideth ever," how then "lifted up"? The warning to them. Verse 35, a little while the light with them, but they in very deed walking in blindness, verses 38-40 showing their now real state. Then returning to the consequent position of the world, though rejected in the Jews in His place, as of or in the world. The Son with the Father, and so believers on Him believers on the Father. "I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness." Gentile and Jew were both in it now, and He being rejected of the world. Here His proper new sphere in which He called the Church came out; and this He opens out in its moral power to the close of the chapter, and what the reception or rejection of Him really was individually. Then follows, consequent upon His final rejection and cutting off through Judas, His service as to the Church. First His continuous love to His own in the world to the end. Then His ministerial office in service of the brethren, priestly in its character, and their place with one another. He knew whom He had chosen. Then the ministration of present communion under this. The absence of the Lord, and their strength meanwhile in their love to one another. Natural life could not follow a rejected Christ. Then from chapters 14 to 17 comes the whole position of the Church in Christ ascended on high till the close, all that belonged to them therein, as in union with Him, distinctly and fully brought out: chapter 14, their general state of relinquishment, and position under it; chapter 15, their mystic Church union, not merely vital, in the Christ as the True Vine, the only faithful One found; the state of the old branches; the witness in them and by them; the expediency, chapter 16, of His departure, and the coming and witness and work of the Holy Ghost; His return; their state toward the Father, and their real whole state because of which His mission really was; the inability of the flesh to walk in His steps to the Father; nevertheless He had overcome the world; chapter 17 the intercession for them, and putting them, of His Priesthood and office, in their right place, and then in the glory; that is, showing it as their known portion.

323 It is very much to be noticed how it is the Father's word that is spoken of in John 17. The Father and the world (as long ago remarked) are in specific opposition. They have the Father's word, that which reveals a whole state and order of things of Him, according to His presence, His affections, His house, of which Christ the Son is the centre; and the world hates those who hear it. Their place and relationship with the Father are the Son's. They are not of the world, as He was not; even if in it. The Father's word is truth, and by that they were to be sanctified. The world is vanity and a lie; they are formed in affection and heart by the Father's revelation; but Christ especially is this, the centre and central object of the Father's house. So He sanctifies Himself, sets Himself apart to this place as Man, Son with the Father, that what was in Him might, as possessing their affections, set them thus apart to what was of the Father.

Hence, also, those brought in by their word were to be one in the Father, and the Son one in us; the Father delighting in the Son, and in Him; the Son in the Father, and in Him. Nothing could be more absolute there. They were thus fully brought into communion with both; and, living in the Father's blessedness (contrasted with the world), where Christ was the Son, were to be one in them, no two thoughts, but one; no two objects; no two delights; no two joys; they were to be one in that blessedness of the Father's delight and fulness, of which Christ is the centre, and the filling object; even as, in the lower order of the glory of the heavenly city, "the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb was the light thereof."

________

More completely John 14. Christ is the object of faith; not with them. But He goes to prepare a place for them, and comes again to receive them to Himself, that where He is they may be. He has revealed the Father in Himself, and so they know where He is going, and the way. Then by the Comforter they know they are in Him, and He in them.

In obedience He manifests Himself to them when and as not to the world. His Father and He dwell with those that keep His word. Besides, for this He leaves peace with them; gives them His peace. They are not to be troubled and afraid. Then more particulars of detail are in it for them especially. Asking anything in His name they had it. The Comforter brought all things to their remembrance. Loving Him they would be glad He went to His Father. The Lord had now closed His present relationship with the disciples as a Remnant connected with the Jews, and gets up, and leaves that association: "Arise, let us go hence." Fatal word for Israel! He had shown it, anticipatively, in getting up from supper, in view of His priestly action in chapter 13; but He had not done it historically. Then He sat down again.

324 Hence in the following chapter (15) He declares that Israel is not the true vine at all. He is the True Vine, and the professing disciples (then the eleven) are the branches. But note here He states the general truth: "I am the true vine . . . . Every branch in me." Then He affirms a particular truth: "Already ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." Thereafter He distinguishes them and the general truth, verses 3-5; clean disciples, verse 6, "If a man"; verse 7, "If ye"; and then, "My words abide in you," etc. Thus we get Christ, as the True Vine, supplanting Israel, as in Isaiah 49, and then the Holy Ghost come when He was away. They had a testimony, and were to abide and continue. The Holy Ghost would bring down His own testimony from heaven, while (according to chapter 14) helping them also in theirs. This completes this part.

Chapter 17. He unfolds, as we have often seen, their whole place with the Father and with the world, and at last (v. 24) shows their true place in heaven, and the Father's love while we are here; but, note the word, sanctifies them through, not the, but Thy truth. It is the Father's truth they were to be sanctified by, that revelation of the heavenly state and what Christ is as Head of the new creation before the Father, what is conformed to the counsels of God as before the world, and the new glory in which Christ was with Him, His Father; theirs according to His own nature, and which is brought out in what is heavenly, as a system displayed before Him, according to those counsels.

Christ was this as a Man on earth, but it could not be received there. We enter into it as setting, through the revelation of the Holy Ghost, our affections on things above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God. This was before the world existed. So the promise of eternal life was given us in Christ Jesus before the world. It was manifested in Christ's Person in the world, if men could see it (so far as they did they saw and hated it). It is established in Christ now as Man at His Father's right hand; and will be in full display and result when the heavenly company are complete before God in heaven. Hence the world is always in opposition to the Father. We are not of the world, as Christ was not, but sanctified by this truth, the Father's truth.

325 All through this part of John the way in which this rejection of Christ has thrown the world in evident opposition to all that we are brought into, to the Father, is very remarkable. It is a rejected,outcast system; condemned; judged; never to see Christ as there in it, if connection had been possible. Again, the Holy Ghost is the testimony, because it is down here witness that Christ is rejected, and received by the Father. Such a view of Christianity makes a total opposition as to place and walk with all that connects it with this world. The striving of the Spirit in us is against the flesh, for it is simply evil (born of flesh; born of Spirit, spirit), but it is co-ordinate with the world; and so is law, which the Spirit sanctions, but supplants as the power of the new creation. But this by the by.

The point here is the world (grown up according to flesh) away from God, and the new creation, and to us, but really, in Christ, glory (who is also eternal life according to this) before ever the world was, and now rejected by the world, so as that the breach and contrast is irremediable, re-connection impossible; realised in Christ's Person, as Man entered into glory; brought to us in faith by the Holy Ghost sanctifying us thus (compare 2 Corinthians 3), by the Father's truth fulfilled in the new creation, when we shall be taken into the glory, and like Him. This was before the world existed, and is the mind of God as to man, and what is to be in result in man, and all subordinated creation before Him. John 17 gives it fully.

- Chapters 15 and 16 are dispensational dealings in time, conformable to it in respect of Israel, as of the old thing (also disowned), and Christians.

- Chapter 14 shows us Christ's revelation of it when on earth, and the Spirit's showing us we are in Him where He is entered personally into it, and how far it is realised in obedient ones now.

- Chapter 13. He maintains us in daily fitness and competency for it.

326 When Christ's death came in it was the judgment of this world. He was witnessed Son of God through Lazarus' resurrection into this world, and the Father glorified; Son of David in riding in; but when He is to take the place of Son of Man (which He was in Person) He sees He must take it (if man was to be thus brought in) by death, and so have Psalm 8. If Psalm 2 was in a certain sense possible when in flesh (not really so) this could not be. The corn of wheat must fall into the ground, and die. This He sees in all its gravity, but submits, and seeks the Father's glory, and then sees the judgment of this world, and its prince cast out; and He were thus the attractive centre for man.

But this was at the basis of the matter. It is personally and dispensationally considered in chapters 14-16, and fully brought out, yet as to the disciples then, and us as in this world in chapter 17, or displayed in glory in it; only verse 24 makes us enter into the cloud to enjoy what was before the world in the glory of the Son loved then. This is brought into our hearts now. The heavenly character of what the Lord was leading them into has come far more forcibly before me as referring to, and connected with, what was before the world, and in opposition to what was in the world, and Judaism, too, than ever; not as a new principle, but as distinct in perception.

_____

I return to put a little more complete the end of John in order. Chapter 11, Son of God in resurrection for this world. Chapter 12, the little Remnant who entered into the consciousness of the rising hatred of the world. His place as Son of David. Then, as Son of Man, as taking the heathen, He must die, and His disciples follow Him in the same spirit down here. But the world is judged, the prince of this world cast out. He, as crucified, rejected from, lifted up from, the earth, is to be the attractive centre for all. (Giving up what we have for God is getting more according to His own power.) In chapter 13 as He now must depart from them, He having fitted them by regeneration essentially for being with Him, maintains it as to communion, He having all from the Father, and going to God according to His nature, as He had come from Him. But this is morally made good in the cross, in which all that God is is glorified, and so [is] the Son of Man in doing it. The disciples in flesh could not follow Him there, more than the Jews; but they were to love one another. The pretension of flesh to do it only led to denial of Him, when it was tested; a solemn lesson.

327 Then He shows (chap. 14) that where He was going to had been manifested on earth (an important point as to much of His mission and what is said of it), for He was going to the Father. Hence "the way"; as coming to Him they found the Father. But when He was gone they would know more that they were in Him in that place, and He in them, and know that He was in the Father. He does not say the Father in Him; that was more manifestation on earth. Thus, besides their practical state, the full association with the heavenly thing was now taught. Hence He calls them to arise, gets up from His place of being with them here below, and leaves that. By the Spirit in obedient ones He shows Himself, and the Father and He make their abode with a man.

Now He shows that Israel had not been even the true vine of promise. Thus not only sinful man, and any connection of God with him, was set aside, but all fleshly religion and connection with God. He was the True Vine. They were to abide in Him. If His words abode in them too they could use His power; and they were to abide in His love. This even disappeared literally, but not in its analogy, nor in its power. As to the Jews, they had no more any cloak; and, in fact, they had both seen and hated both Him and His Father, They would be witnesses as having been with Him.

The other point here, and for the heavenly part and glory of Christ, was that the Comforter would come. He would show the world's state, righteous against and out of it, and its judgment; Satan being its prince, and judged. He would reveal to them the heavenly Christ. They would be in direct relationship with His Father in this state of things. They had believed He came out from God. He had come from the Father, and returned to Him, leaving the world. This closed the communications.

In chapter 17 He puts them in their whole place relative to the Father and to the world. And now they were set apart to the heavenly thing; and, being not of the world, were sent into it. Finally, that they were actually with Him when He was going into what He had as loved before the world. Meanwhile this love, as applied to Christ, would be in them; He being in them to draw it there, so to speak

328 This leads me to dwell on another point: how the Church, and our election in Christ also, is so very distinctly put forward as not of but before the world. Christ was life. Christ, as Son, was with the Father in His own glory before the world was; and in Him, as to the counsels of God, the Church was set up, and we had the promise of eternal life in Him before the world existed, and we were chosen in Him then. There was no world, or system of the world, in being then. He who was this life, and manifested the Father, came into the world.

Nor was this all. The world had departed from God. The elect, in themselves, all who now or yet may form the Church, were like all men in the world, of it, as regards life and nature, children of like nature with the first Adam. In this position, and according to this relationship, we were responsible. Then we were mere lawless sinners; or, the law having been given as the perfect measure of this state as it is, breakers of it. But all that belongs to the world state and creature condition. The rule was elevated morally, and was the perfection of a creature with God in its own responsibility, what was its perfection. But the world had departed wholly from relationship with God in it, and if they had the law had broken it. Nor was this all. The Father was manifested in it in goodness in Christ; perfect goodness, and towards and in man, "good pleasure in men." The Father was declared, revealed; revealed, adapted to, presented to, man. Man entirely rejected it as man, elect and all, without difference; and Christ dies, and leaves it, and takes as Man His heavenly place and glory He had before the world was, what was before the world in His Person, and in the counsel and mind of God as to the Church in Him; now, however, heavenly, in the sense of man being there, and actual setting up. The Man of eternal counsel is the heavenly Man; the world, the intermediate thing, being judged, condemned, and done with. Christ had come (from and manifesting the Father) into it; was rejected, and it was condemned; and the Church, which was known and in purpose before the world existed, was brought actually out in connection with the heavenly Man, the true Man and Eternal Life, Christ, the centre of all God's purposes.

He had glorified God as to the intermediate and responsible thing; not only personally in His life, in which He was alone, but in respect of sin and sinners on the cross; so that the glory of God was also fully brought out, as indeed it could not have been otherwise. And He takes His place as Man in virtue of both the title of His Person and God's righteousness as to His work. So John 17. But there the counsel of God, His object and delight before there was a world at all, comes out too. The Church is united to Him, as in heaven, by the Holy Ghost, and the universe itself is to be put under the risen and now heavenly ascended Man, with the Church associated with Him as His body and bride. Hence all that takes Christians back to the world, to the law, to all that flesh has its part in, takes them back to the system they were redeemed out of. That they do not, and as in Christ, never belonged to at all; the law being the measure of responsibility in it, the intermediate system antecedent to which the Church had its place with God, before the very sphere in which mortal man has had being existed; the Church which God has now set up actually in the heavenly place into which Christ has entered, when the man or Adam sphere, the world, has rejected Him, not knowing the Father.

329 Under this Man and the Church the world will be. But we are not of it, as Christ was not of it, but of the Father, and now gone to Him, Man with Him, and we in Him. Of this the Holy Ghost is the revealer and the power, uniting us with the Head. But the law as a true measure, fleshly religion and its ordinances, the attempt to regulate the world, all belong to the Adam system, though the first be God's rule for it, not the Christian; it is going back to it, the beggarly elements. This it is that Paul insists on, the Church's place connected with redemption, the divine place of the Son before the world, with which (as now made good and returned into) the Church is connected with the Holy Ghost. It is true of life, life and incorruptibility being brought to light by the gospel; only this life existed, before the world was, in Christ; hence has in itself been true all through; whereas the heavenly Man, Man in heaven, and the Church raised up, and in Him there, did not and could not exist in fact; for He was not there as Man.

But in what a place this puts the sticklers for law, and those who insist on influence in the world for the Christian! No doubt the law is perfect; but they are putting man back, out of Christ on high, into the system of the world and Adam responsibility. John is just as clear as Paul as to eternal life and Christ's place, but he does not treat the question of the Church. Paul was made the minister of that. Hence Paul would not know Christ after the flesh; that is, Christ as connected with the world, come to it in connection with men's Adam existence, in which Judaism was the testing form, and hence in His Jewish connection, to which He had offered Himself, and had been rejected. Hence, while fully owning Him as the fulfilment of promise (even as to this only in resurrection) he would only know Him as He had been revealed to him, the glorious Christ who had taken His place, really His own, but as Man, according to the eternal thoughts of God before the world in which man, as responsible creation, was tested. Hence our conversation is to be in heaven, and our life the display of that of Christ. This is the mystery (Ephesians 1 as a whole) of Christ; as to its form down here, Ephesians 3. So Christ hope of glory in Gentiles (Col. 1).

330 I fear I have given this confusedly and feebly; but the subject is of first-rate practical importance; it alters the whole nature and character of Christianity, and enters into every detail of life. Am I a living man, a child of Adam? or have I died and risen, so as to belong to a heavenly Christ, drawing life from Him, and having to display that, not take the law for my guide, as still alive in the flesh? This put down flesh; dropped Judaism, which was in it; revealed the Father; shows we are in Christ (who is in heaven), and He in us. This shows the Church now wholly heavenly, as suited to the heavenly Man, the fulfiller in fact and object of pre-worldly desires, thoughts, with which the world can have nothing to do. It did not exist when they were in God's mind, and so the Church cannot belong to it; yea, exists as composed of those redeemed out of it, and connected wholly with the rejected and ascended heavenly Christ. The world is "this present evil world." The two great points are eternal life and the Church; connected with Christ as Son and as Man set far above all principalities, etc., in heavenly places. The Church exists only in connection with Him. With the former part the opposition of the Father and the world, of which John speaks; for in the world of this creation the Son revealed the Father, and the world did not know Him, would not have Him. But what and who He thus was He has been transferred, and as Man, where that glory is at home, heaven, the Father's house, and there the Church is united with Him through the Holy Ghost; as, as individuals, we have our heart and home there, expecting Him to come and take us there. Where has the Church got? What is the putting it under law?

331 Note here how the manifestation of the Father in Christ stands in connection with the heavenly thing, though the disciples could not know it by the Spirit of adoption as themselves in connection with it. But what was manifested in Him was the Father Himself; hence the apostle: "Whom none of the princes of this world knew, for had they known they would not have crucified the Lord of glory."

Note, in practice as to this, what is said: "We are clear from the law." We have not ceased to exist, but we have been nullified (vernichtet, annulled) as regards, cease to have any existence, as to law; my existence is annulled (Rom. 7: 6, flowing from verse 4). Then on the other hand Galatians 5: 4: "Ye are deprived of all profit from the Christ whosoever of you are justified by law." So death: "Who has annulled death," 2 Tim. 1: 10.

The first two are very remarkable in their contrast. The law is not annulled, but we from it as dead in Christ; we are no longer thus alive as in the nature in which we were of this world, children of Adam. On the other hand, if we turn back to this, we turn back to life in the world and flesh. Thus the two things being contradictory we nullify ourselves as regards Christ, do not exist as and in connection with the risen and ascended Christ, who is out of the world. Hence, too, what is heavenly, what is Christ, is necessarily the cross down here.

_______

Chapter 17. It is not only blessedly true that we are a common object to the Father and the Son, but that Christ's, the Son's, interest is entirely in what belongs to the Father. This was His perfect place: "I pray for them; for they are thine." But this is part of the great truth that, while everywhere one with the Father, He in John takes the place of subjection and receiving (though He were Son). This is a very striking feature of this gospel, and of the Person of the Lord as with us; and even as to the truth (God is not the truth; He is the subject of it), though the truth be a thing in itself which the word tells, yet when applied to us. Christ sanctifies Himself, that we may be sanctified by the truth. Grace and truth came by Him; and now He sanctifies Himself, that it may be realised in us: "Which thing is true in him and in you; because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth." God is true, but not the truth.

332 But other things are opening in the chapter, besides those heretofore found. What characterises John's gospel in the most peculiar manner is the Son's being equal with the Father, one with Him, and yet at the same time subject to Him as Son upon earth; all His language that of equal with Him, yet doing nothing without Him; all in obedience, receiving all now. Evidences of this run through from the first chapter all on. Now, this is the case here. He is (though just going; the hour come) speaking in the world; and His disciples (save verse 24) looked at as in it. All the unities then are in the world, though the last be in glory. But the first is as the state from which the activity parts, not the activity itself; that begins verse 14. The Lord there looks that they may be one, "as we." Now, He is on earth, but one with the Father. Hence, through unity of nature and divine union in the Godhead, He has the purposes, objects, thoughts, way of feeling, seeing (to speak with human language), the same mind with the Father. He takes the place of service, but is one with the Father: "All mine are thine, and thine are mine." He looks for this for the apostles according to their places; not only one morally, as partakers of the divine nature, but through the Holy Ghost one and the same in all; and as filled with Him they should have complete unity, the Spirit being the source of a divine oneness in all their thoughts, mind, purposes, and way of thinking and feeling, as flowing from, and the mind given by, the Holy Ghost; several persons, but one in the Holy Ghost. Paul could say, "We have the mind of Christ" (the "nous").

If all had this they were one; yet as receiving, of course, in their case, and in the place of service; but it was the mind for service that, as I said, comes in verse 14. In verse 21, as heretofore observed, those who believed through them are brought in, and it is in communion, not in the power that goes forth: "one in us." The same divine power of the Holy Ghost, but leading to this union in fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ (compare 1 John 1: 3); one in worshipping, and conscious dwelling in God; for fellowship is also common thoughts, joys, feelings, mind, as to all we are occupied with. Only, as is manifest, all the fulness of this is in the Father and in the Son. We are in it to delight and worship and adore.

333 It is another thing to have the secret of the Lord, and go forth with it in power; yet here with no pretension, for in this unity it is common to all; yet hence evidently divine, for for fellowship one with another we must be in the light, as God is. The last is evident in the display in glory: "I in them, and thou in me" is the form it takes. The glory is the same. Still in it the Son displayed the Father, and He will be displayed in us; but then for that it must be the same glory, His glory, or He is not displayed; and then perfectly in result. They are kept in the name in which Christ knew the Father. They are kept in immediate relationship as children with the Father, and in the holiness of the divine nature; and so in the power of the Holy Ghost are one, nothing diverse entering in.

________

John 17 is a very remarkable chapter, not only for the rich food saints have long found in it, but for the place it puts the disciples in in connection with that Christ Himself was in (partly noticed in a previous paper in this volume). If we take the true reading to be "whom thou hast given me" (v. 9), as it seems all do (changed, doubtless, because they could not understand it) this becomes still more evident.

We have seen the special place of Christ in this gospel, one with the Father; God; the Word; but more, when the actual, present, concrete fact is brought forward, the Word is made flesh, and dwelt among us, was the Shechinah amongst us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of an only begotten para patros ("with a father"); von Sieten des Vaters (from the side of a father). He represented the Father. He who had seen Him had seen the Father. The Father dwelt in Him, as He was always divinely in the Father. So John 1: 18; chap. 3: 13; chap. 14: 20. But this is the other side of the truth, the divine side, so to speak. He stood there, however, recipient as Man, now and in glory (though He had had it before the world was). The Son represented Him personally, as He was in Him, and declared Him, as in His bosom, yet Son down here in Manhood. Words, glory, life, all is named; and so the Son is seen in John, though with reference to His eternal Sonship, in which He was one with the Father. "He hath given the Son to have life in himself"; "the words which thou gavest me," and so on.

334 Now, the first unity in John 17 is connected with this: "Keep them in thy name" (that is, "Holy Father") "which thou hast given to me." Now, it is not that Christ was called Father, but that this blessed Man, the Lord from heaven, the Son, bore and presented that name (not Himself; the Father would glorify Him, He the Father), glorified it; He that had seen Him had seen the Father; had manifested this name to the men given to Him out of the world; would have them go directly to the Father, as themselves sons (of course in His name; that was the very power of it); so, "Because ye are sons, God hath put the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father."

This name, then, the Father had given to Him. All He did was in it, as He came in His Father's name. (The band came from the chief priests, and acted, not for themselves in anything, but wholly in the name of, and their actings were the actings of, the chief priests.) "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." This was direct; the disciples clearly through Him, but as kept directly by the Father, whom they now knew: "Keep in thine own name which thou hast given me," and in which they were thus directly kept in immediate relationship and as conscious sons in communion, as filled with the Holy Ghost. Only the Son now, who once had kept them in the Father's name, now went up as Man ("I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee") into the glory He had with the Father before the world was, so as to be objectively with the Father, with whom He was always one. "I come to thee"; and they stood in His place, kept by the "Holy Father," in the name given to Christ to make good, and which He had made good at all cost and perfectly in His Person in the world; and by this they were to be one.

"Thine are mine, and mine are thine," and He now, Christ the Son in Manhood, was now to be glorified in them in the power of the Holy Ghost, who was the Spirit of sonship, hence of association with Christ, [the] Son; but directly with the Father, because they were sons, and represented Him whom the Father would glorify. And as they knew the Father, so the Holy Ghost took the things of Christ, and showed them to them. And all that the Father had was His, not as Christ, but as Son; more, "All that thou hast given me is of thee"; that is, the Father, not Jehovah, and He accounted as such. Thus they, representing Christ, would be one (in the power of the Holy Ghost), kept in the name given to Christ in this world; that is, to hear, reveal, and glorify by acting for it and its glory in everything. They were to glorify Christ, but then Christ bearing this name, as come in His Father's name; yet all that was the Father's His, and His the Father's; those He had specifically given Him by the Father; for all here is received, and the Father glorified by Him, and He to present them along with Himself (for we have not union here), "the Firstborn among many brethren."

335 Now, the first disciples were to carry this work on in this world; and as Christ, always in communion with His Father in His work, revealed Him, and carried His name before the world, so they would His Father's, and the Son's, the knowledge of which is life eternal. Being wholly this and in this, by and according to the power of the Holy Ghost, they were one (only in grace by the Holy Ghost); as we are in their place of service, and as led by the Holy Ghost. That was their place, though receiving all.

Now, the Lord directly connects it all with what He had, before the world was, with the Father, both at the beginning and end of the chapter. This gives a wonderful place to the disciples in the Lord's mind. It was noticed before, in the former part of the paper: their starting-point, Stellung (position), not the service itself, and a prayer that it might be their Zustand (condition); their place down here, and what was needed to connect it with Christ's place in heaven, with what went before; He being glorified is in what follows (vv. 14-19).

In the first unity (vv. 9-11), I find much more distinct Persons in Christ and the Father (though ever divinely one); but here, as Mediator, "I pray for those whom thou hast given me." Hence "Mine" and "Thine"; though all Mine Thine and Thine Mine. "They are thine, and I" (not those that had been in Christ) "am glorified in them." "I am no more in the world." "I come to thee." Thus, though one, the distinction of the Persons (Jesus being as One that had been on earth, and had His place there as Man) is distinctly brought out; I do not mean merely in Godhead, but in the accomplished order of events. But then with this there was no difference or duality of counsels, work, whose were the Father's, whose (Christ's) all were; one and the same in thought, purpose, mind, and carrying out of work; though each had His place in carrying it out; and so by one Spirit, by the Holy Ghost come down, was it to be with the apostles. The unity of the person is merged in the community of work and mind.

336 In the second unity it is more absolute, what doctors call intercession. "As thou, Father, art in me." There was display and manifestation on earth in Christ. "I in thee." That was simply divine (compare chap. 14: 10, both; verse 20, only the divine part). Here it is more absolutely divine in both parts, yet preserving Christ's personal place. Christians are to be one in them, Christ being gone on high so as to make it to be by faith and communion, not manifestation here. In this sense it is the highest, less earthly (and in one sense Jewish, and miraculous display on earth) than the first. "Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ."

The third comes to be manifestation again, only in glory; and only thus the Father in the Son: "I in them, and thou in me." This is not so simply divine, "Us," but it is divine in glory; for the Father is again seen in the Son, His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, and His in us. The world will then know that the Father sent the Son, even the Lord Jesus. In verse 24 we get it, not in unity of the Father and Son, but in heaven, and His personal glory, though now still given to Him; but as loved before the world (that rejected Him) was.

________

Note the very striking connection between the position of the Lord in glory claimed in John 17 (in Him connected with His Person, necessarily) and the place given us in Him in the counsels of God. This is wonderful. In John 17 we have, "Glorify thou me with thine own self" (para seauto), "with the glory which I had with thee before the world was"; received from the Father now, as He had become Man, and speaks in that condition, the Son of God become Man, that men might become sons of God; the finishing of the work, of course, the actual foundation, as it must be, if we were to have a part in it, and a part of His own too; the purpose: "That they may be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory . . . for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world."

337 Now see our place in counsel in and through Him, 2 Tim. 1: 9: "Who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and incorruptibility to light by the gospel: whereunto I am appointed," etc. And again Titus 1: 2: "In hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began; but hath in due times manifested his word by preaching." Besides the general doctrine in Ephesians 1: 1-6, and elsewhere.

The life was then manifested in Him, and as Son here in Manhood, and then "true in him and in you." So that, as Christ had the glory, one with the Father before the world was, and has now re-entered into it as Man (not what is essential, for that He never left, was the Son of Man who is in heaven, the Son of God in the bosom of the Father; His divine nature in itself, of course, is incommunicable, as Godhead in itself). So the promise of eternal life was given us in Him before the world was, His purpose and grace in Him, and now is revealed that He has taken it as the Father's gift as Man, holy and without blame before Him in love, and the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, before God, and to the Father: My Father, and your Father; My God, and your God.

The Father's name, the one true God, is the basis of John 17; Christ as Son, but as Man, and putting us in His place with the Father (while here), and before the world. Then in verse 22 we get the given, displayed glory (as in Luke 9), before the world. In verse 24 the glory within (as in Luke they entered into the cloud); still as given, but as entered into, within the glory He had before the world was; for in verse 5 He is going in, as He is within in verse 24. It was the Father to the Son (v. 7); but given, for He was a Man (emptied Himself) (Phil. 2: 7). But 1 John 3: 2 is yet to be considered; compare especially John 17: 5 and 24, with 2 Timothy 1: 9, and Titus 1: 2; add 2 Thessalonians 2: 14.

_________

The general order (not entering into detail) is exceedingly interesting in John 17. The Lord gives the words given Him (v. 8); (thus, that joy may be fulfilled in them); verse 14, the Father's word, and they are hated of the world; verse 22, the glory. All this in this world, or before it, for joy and witness by word and in power and glory. Then what we have with Him in the glory, and meanwhile to be with Him where He is, and behold His glory; and meanwhile the Father's name declared, that the love He was loved with may be in us, and He in us. The foundation for all this is laid in the first verses of the chapter. Of this there are three parts: The Son is glorified (to glorify the Father); Christ is glorified because of His work; thirdly, He manifests the Father's name to the men given to Him. The first gives the place and character He takes on high; the second, the ground on which He can introduce also in righteousness; the third introduces us into the relationship in which He is as Son. When I say "order" I do not mean the regular and orderly division of the chapter, but merely the points noted; for the manifestation of His name to the men given to Him properly precedes and introduces the giving them the words. Remark, too, that the giving the word is giving the expression of the divine nature and mind, as Christ the Word was; and this looked at as separating from evil, and associating with the good in which He was and is set apart for our sakes as Man. The whole is to give us the same place with Him.

__________

338 I further remark on John 17 besides laying the ground for it in His own exaltation, and manifestation of His Father's name to His disciples, the Lord puts His disciples in four distinct ways in His own place: in His position with His Father; as to the world while in it; in glory; and then in the Father's love enjoyed in themselves. Further, note, in directions for the world we have two means of keeping them from the evil: "Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth"; "For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth."

This world is all one great falsehood. The word gives us that which tells the truth as to everything, is the clue of the divine path thus, so as to avoid it all; we kept from the evil. We are not of the world, as Christ was not. Hence Christ also when tempted uses the word, and is perfectly kept from the evil; but this through truth, and supposing the new nature, the divine (in the old we are of the world), the word being the path of that nature through the world (giving no place to the old man but nullity and death) is in a certain sense only a keeping from.

339 Then the Lord adds, "For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth." He was this in the world, because He came down from heaven, and was heavenly, and while here as positively declaring God, did so because while here He was (not had been) in the bosom of the Father, and drew from and lived "on account of the Father," had no cause, motive, principle of life but Him. Now, while personally thus on earth separate from sinners, kept from the evil, He was in this state alone; but when, in the full accomplishment of this separation, He was made higher than the heavens, then He could take us, redemption being accomplished, into it with Him, and minister it to us. Thus He sanctified Himself, that we might be sanctified through the truth.

He has taken the full, new, heavenly place of man, what we may call the new man, the second Adam, according to God's counsels, and hence the affections are filled positively with that which tells the truth, and there is a real deliverance, because it is not keeping from, but being filled with Christ, having the affections filled with the new blessings according to the new life and nature, and there is the communication and ministration of grace and strength in Christ. So in chapter 8: "The truth shall make you free"; "The Son shall make you free"; the attraction of the tempting things go when the mind is filled with Christ; another nature is at work, and the thoughts are filled with its objects. In this state the evil is repulsive.

_______

I remark, in John 17: 17-19, two distinct characters and means or sources of sanctification, whose difference is full of interest and instruction. Christ is the Word and the Truth (that is, He expresses God, and tells the truth of every thing), as coming from God, and revealing Him. The disciples were not of the world, as He was not. As disciples they had the communication of what Christ revealed of God, all the Father said to Him, and their moral nature too. He prays, as to the form of this, that they may be sanctified through the truth. The Father's word was truth. This makes the sanctifying power the revelation from the Father in the Person of Christ. But in verse 19 it is not what Christ is as revelation of the Father, but what He is as model, set before the Father in glory in heaven, and that as Man. Then the truth revealed this too, and thus sanctified them; so that the first part was the revelation of God through Christ, the Word and Truth; the second the true communication of what He is as Man before God, according to His thoughts and counsels in glory. This gives a very remarkable fulness and reality of character to our sanctification. Through grace, we are really set apart to God, in conformity to, formed after, in our nature and walk, these two revelations or aspects of Christ. This is very full and blessed.

__________

340 In John 17: 23 the world beholds the saints' glory as given to Christ, He having given it to them, that it may be known they were loved as He, as a Man, as sent. In verse 24 they behold His as loved before the foundation of the world (this the world does not); therefore they are where He is, "that they may" (which note, for this is a special portion in the glory besides, though connected with communion).

_________

How very strongly the sense that He was going away, that momentous moment, when the world would see Him no more, is impressed on John 13, 14 and 15! How they bear the impress of it! Chapter 16 is rather what takes His place, and their immediate relationship with the Father; chapter 17 blessedly puts them in His place with the Father and with the world, founding it on His Person, work, and revelation of the Father, and His words to Christ Himself.

_________

To the end of chapter 9 Christ's manifestation as to His Person having been made to, and rejected by, the Jews; chapter 10, we have the sheep; then, chapters 11, 12, the vindication of His character as Son of God, King of the Jews, and Head of the Gentiles (in glory), bringing in death; and then His Priesthood (chap. 13), as in glory, in service; chapter 14, we have what He was to His disciples as the object of their knowledge in union with the Father, so making them know where He was going; and then, as Mediator, obtaining the Comforter, making them know, not only that He was in the Father, but their union with Him; they in Him, and He in them. Then chapter 15 gives the Son's place as to the body, or at least the branches; at the end of chapters 15 and 16 the Holy Ghost, the Comforter's place; and then chapter 17 gives the place the Father takes as to those thus given to Christ, and how Christ commits them into His hand as the subject of His love and glory, and His Father's care, as His own.

___________

341 In John 17: 17-19 there is connection with what precedes, and some thoughts are needed to complete what has been said. Christ had given them the Father's word, and the world hated them. They were not of it, as He was not. He was of God, of the Father, thus negatively not of it. It was really because they partook of a nature and character, of what Christ had been, as Word of the Father come from heaven. He asks, therefore, for the accomplishment of the position: "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." They were not of the world, as partaking of the nature of this. The Lord desires they may have the realisation and development of the other, the heavenly. Next, they are sent into the world, as He had been sent into the world. It is not now merely for themselves, but as sent to bear witness of what Christ was. The Father had sent Christ, to manifest Him; Christ the disciples, to show what He was. But then He sets Himself apart in glory for that, that they may bring the true witness of the heavenly Man, as He of the Father. This also was part of the truth.

_________

In John 17 I have noticed of old the way in which Christ puts His disciples in the same place with Himself. But, besides, there is the mutuality of the interest of the Father and the Son in them, we knowing the Father's relationship and love to the Son, and the Son communicating this, the love which He enjoyed as devoted in love to us, so as to communicate all His joy to us, and yet also because we are the object of the Father's delight. He manifests His Father's name to us, yet He does it as He knows it Himself, so as to bring us into the same relationship with, and knowledge of, the Father's love which He has, proving the devotedness of His own to us. We are the common object of this intercommunion and relationship of the Father and Son, and at the same time of the peculiar and personal love of each. The order is thus: the Son is to be glorified, that He may glorify the Father. But this has a two-fold reference to men in connection with whom He has taken up His place, power over all flesh; that is, His public title and prerogative, as glorified, to give eternal life to as many as the Father has given Him.

342 Here, when it is in connection with us in blessing, the Father's love is at once brought in. He has given us to the Son; the Father's thought of love the source, but all the accomplishment of it committed to the Son: He gives to them eternal life. Then this eternal life must necessarily answer to its source. It is to know the Father only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.

The knowledge of the Almighty is acquaintance with protecting power; of Jehovah, faithfulness to promise; of the Father, in the exercise of love, is eternal life. It is to know Himself in His own blessedness in relationship with the Son. Hence is added, "And Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." The Father and His love in sending (still the knowledge of Himself), and He also expression and accomplishment of this love in whom is that life. To be in relationship with these is the very essence and reality of eternal life, separated (in the power of the full knowledge of God in grace in this blessed relationship of Father and Son, and of love to us in sending Him) from all else. So thus one is with the true God, all idols away.

Next Christ has finished the work, and glorified His Father on the earth, and is to be glorified, as we have seen, in virtue of having glorified the Father by His work. He has this other title to the glory now, though He had that glory with the Father ere the world was.

Next, He manifests the name of the Father to those whom the Father had given Him; so as, in point of fact, to put them in this place of relationship. But He does so as to those who were the Father's, and by Him given to Him; and they had now kept the Father's word. But this was not all. They had understood that all that the Father had given to the Son was of the Father. They knew its source, and the relationship of the Father and the Son. It was not separate power in Christ; not Jehovah becoming Messiah; it was the Father who had given to the Son.

343 The reason introduces us into all the unspeakable grace in which the devotedness of the Son in love to us puts, that all the communications which the Father's love had made to the Son, which were the fruit and expression of that necessary love the Son had made known to the disciples, so that they knew what the Father's love and relationship to the Son was, and that the Son (as to His love) would bring them into it. Thus also they knew that He came out from the Father, and that the Father sent Him. This is the status and condition of the disciples, of believers. The Lord then begins as to His praying for them, not for the world. His prayer was founded on their relationship with the Father and Him. He prayed for those whom the Father had given Him; and here the mutuality of interest in this common object comes out in the fullest and most blessed way; Christ prays for them because they are the Father's. This was the motive to His prayer. He presents them to the Father as His, but His love to the Father makes it a motive with Him to pray for them, because they were His. Blessed assurance, too, for us! but letting us into the mutual feelings of the Son and Father's heart, and about us as object. And this community of interest between the Father and the Son had no limit. All that was the Father's is the Son's; and all that is the Son's is the Father's; and to the knowledge of this and this relationship we are admitted.

The second reason to which the Father's interest in the Son's glory gives its power, the Son is glorified in them. Then He states their relative place thenceforth: Christ no more in the world; the disciples in the world; and He gone to the Father. For their full blessing He prays that His holy Father would keep them in His own name. He addresses Him as His Father, but as it is in His own name as His holy Father He keeps us. It is in this blessed relationship, according to His own holiness, He keeps us. Thus the disciples are one as united in Christ, in the same relationship to the Father.

It is as partaking of one Spirit; for God the Holy Ghost being the power of this union, it is a divine union in which we are, by a divine nature and the same Holy Ghost in all; so that that which is the spring of thought in me is the spring of thought in another saint. We have common glory, the same spring of living power, one single Godhead nature in, and active in, all of us, even the Holy Ghost; and therefore, as animated by that, the same in thought, counsel, and object, as the Son and the Father have one divine nature; the same spring of thought and purpose. They are one in everything, save the distinction of Persons; and hence it is their oneness is precious, for the distinction of Persons puts heart, liberty, will in it, and divine purpose of love. Christ had not kept them in His own name. He gave the glory to the Father; and now the Father would keep them, as entrusted to Him by the Son, who had redeemed them. He had kept them; and now He was coming to the Father, and said these things that they might have His own joy fulfilled in themselves. Well He might say "joy." But such is perfect love; it can keep nothing back from the loved object. If it does, it prefers in that something to the loved object; it is not perfect love. Jesus, who did and does love perfectly, would have His own joy (and He knew what joy with the Father was) fulfilled in themselves. He then goes on to their consequent relationship towards the world.

________

344 I have not sufficiently remarked the contrast and transition from the then present association of the disciples with Christ and that into which He was bringing them in John 17. Other points have been frequently opened out. I now only occupy myself with this. The first verse states the change. The Lord looks up to heaven from earth, and says, "The hour is come"; and He is to glorify the Father; the glorified sent One will as the Son. Then verses 2 and 3, I apprehend, are absolute; that is, apply to the universal effect of the Lord's work, be it in earth or heaven; verses 4 and 5, He directly contrasts the two cases; verse 4, what He had done on earth; verse 5, what was now about to take place as to Himself; verse 6, the condition of the disciples as in association with man down here; verses 7 and 8 complete this point; verse 9, His prayer commences, and with the blessed truth of the common and thus redoubled interest of the Father and the Son; verse 11, they are left in the world while He is leaving it. They are to be immediately kept by the Father in thus direct knowledge of Him, as heretofore mediately they were sons with a Holy Father. So had Christ been, and they would thus have His joy fulfilled in themselves. Now, verse 14, He sets them in their place in the presence of the world. It is Christ's, as often remarked. He had the Father's word. See chapter 8: 26-28. He has now given it to them. They are not of the world, as He was not. They are set apart by the Father's truth; that is, by His word, the full revelation given by Him. What He had revealed (that was the truth) was their moral being in the world. As Christ had been sent, so they by Him now. This however shows their place as taking His, without defining in what association they did it. This comes in verse 19. He sets Himself apart (from all the world) as the glorified Man of the Father's counsels in love, that they might have the truth in this shape and way. This gives the definite character and power to the truth itself.

345 This closes the direct prayer. Verses 20, 21 bring in those that believe through their word. Verses 22, 23 is the new thing in its full outward result, but now connected with the glory into which He was entering. There was a partial display of this, no doubt, in Christ in life (see John 2: 11), and in the disciples consequent on His exaltation (see chap. 14: 12). But this was only partial. It is not here with or before, but descending manifestation or display in, a proof where there was already faith of the extent of the blessing, or in spite of unbelief, irrespective of real faith. This is also consequent on the taking of the new place, a yet more blessed one, and where we see, even in this intimate chapter, how the display of the kingdom is distinguished from the heavenly joys of the saints themselves ever with the Lord, loved before there was a world to be displayed in. Jesus would have His disciples there where He was according to this love, connecting His glorifying as Man with the eternal love of the Father to Him. This is thus distinctly applied now in connection with His breach with the world; for when it had not known the Father Christ had, and the disciples that He was sent.

That was the then present closing scene and associations in which He had declared the Father's name to them; but He would now in such sort declare it that the love wherewith He had been loved should be in them, and He in them. They had owned Him as sent, and He had revealed the Father's name, now declaring it. The love He had been loved with on earth was to be in them, and Himself in them. It is heavenly in what is revealed to them as truth, heavenly in glory, heavenly in abode with Him, according to His present place, and the Father's eternal love to Him; and the present declaring of the Father's name brings us into the Father's love as He was on earth.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47018E> 346

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 18

How beautiful is the evidence here of relinquished power! Hence John (the Spirit by him) presenting Jesus in His Person, and the scope of His work, passes by Gethsemane, where the veil is taken off (for a moment) the Lord's own suffering in it. He knew all. The name of Jesus of Nazareth, confessed by Him, had such power in it that they all went backward, and fell to the ground. Of course, He could have acted in power, or going away, as He pleased; but He saved only His disciples, not Himself, giving them the occasion of escape, putting Himself before them, rebuking only their resistance, explaining that the cup His Father had given Him to drink He should surely drink. It was a willing surrender, whatever His suffering. Going forth, He said to them, "Whom seek ye?" And how full of dignity!

Nothing can be more beautiful than the evidence of willing surrender, the acting of Christ in Person, or rather the (willing) passion; not the suffering in His soul. This was just in the order of John, who ever thus brings Him forth to view; didactic, not historical; that is, in character.

- 17. What a stout thing man is! It was a bad time to own it. He could confess it another time.

It is a remarkable thing that Jesus' Sonship having been fully proved, and His surrender of Himself in it being noted, no notice of this is taken at all in examination before the Jews, but of His royalty over them fully, as rejected by them and given up to Pilate; because this brought Him out into His resurrection position and state of Sonship, the reality and power of it (see vv. 35, 39, 40; chap. 19: 6, etc.). And then afterwards His Sonship is brought in as asserted, and He gave no witness to this. It was not witness to Him, but He was to be rejected in His full character before the world (see further chap. 19: 12-15), the full point brought out, and then verse 16.

- 24. Another reason for not owning Him. He was a condemned Person practically. He had just been beaten (woe worth the word!) by an attendant.

347 There is a difference between Paul and Jesus (the Lord) here. It was not all wrong in Paul; but it was not Jesus.

In the other gospels more of the circumstances of the denial are mentioned as regards others; here its connection with the Lord. The garden should have called him to remembrance; but to save by strength is another, a different, thing from confessing in word when suffering.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47019E> 347

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 19

- 12. The fear of natural conscience.

- 15. "Away, crucify him." Most sad here the scene closed. The Jews gave up, not indeed Jesus, but themselves deserted into the hands of the Gentiles. They had now no king but Caesar, the prince of the Gentiles' power. As to them the question was between Jesus and Caesar.

- 19. Thus, while what was in Jesus was hidden, the Jews were completely rejected and humbled.

- 21. They were humbled already, but we close here.

Thus this gospel brings out all that relates to His Person in its minutest details. The same self-sufficiency which rejected His mother when He was abstracted in service, now thinks of her when every trouble and sorrow was upon Him, and shame. But it also shows the close of service, and the different character in which our Lord stood now from the time of His service (and this is important), and the simplicity of Jesus' example when not in service. It is a thing to be studied, and that much withal, the measure of the association of human care with the fellowship of divine favour, as in John.

- 30. Still the same point; not the suffering "Eli, Eli," etc., but the surrender. So before Pilate: "Thou couldest have no power," etc. And with the Jews, though rejected: "If I have spoken evil," etc. Now still the same great truth: He gave up the ghost when He said, "It is finished." Blessed word! and blessed will!

- 34. The answer of divine love to the last insult of man in Jesus, showing how this divine grace did overcome and surpass man's extreme iniquity in its uttermost character, just in Jesus' death both met, even in Him. The blood and the water came out as the shaming answer by man's sin, God glorified in it. It is the power of Jesus' death, what came out of it. The piercing of Jesus in the flesh is that which gives the blood and the water, the sanctifying and cleansing power, its cleansing power in its double aspect.

348  - 36. There seems to have been difficulty with some as to where the passage referred to was, and the paschal lamb has been brought forward. But it seems manifestly to refer to Psalm 34: 20. And, what is more interesting, it leads us to the subject of the Psalm. Hence I think we have the reference of Hebrews 5: 7, rather than in Psalm 22, 34: 4, 6, 7. John (while Matthew seems to bring forward the official prophecies, so to speak, declaratory of the Messiah) seems here to show us the Person and sufferings of Christ, and draw from the Old Testament a testimony which (while the other confirmed the authenticity of Christ's mission) affords the most deeply interesting light to the matter of that.

How the Lord prepared a tomb for Him! This was Joseph's own new tomb, but indeed prepared for Him.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47020E> 348

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 20

- 4. As to the order of this see a note elsewhere.

"The first shall be last, and the last first." The thing they came to was the empty sepulchre. Such is this world, the empty sepulchre of the risen Jesus; though we have the witness in it of the risen Lord, the sure and composed proofs to faith that He has been in it, and though under the power of death there, is gone out free. I have a strong conviction that John and Peter here note the Gentile and Jewish people thus cognisant here of the death and rather resurrection of Christ, owning He is gone, and that it was He, the Lord indeed, the Son of God, that was rejected, and was dead. They had not known the Scriptures, nor taken the testimony of faith, but believed on the presented evidence. They went to their own. It had no other effect on them here. There was evidently considerable confusion of spirit about them yet.

With Mary it was otherwise. She was not so satisfied. She was a sinner to whom the Lord was most dear as a Saviour, a very gracious Saviour, above all a Saviour. She was bent over the tomb because her remembrance of the Lord was there, and she had not found Him elsewhere yet. She looked for Him only there in sorrow without. This was the Church's position. The Lord was taken away, and it knew not where they had laid Him. But as yet it knew not the resurrection. This is taught it, for she stood as the Jewish remnant, the received one by grace; not yet the ascension, but the answer is there. Jesus Himself reveals Himself to her risen. Before, we have seen the value of the death. Forthwith, when the body was pierced, when the death was seen, into the heart, and some of it opened, blood and water came thereout. Now the comfort of the resurrection. Angels watched the tomb for her that came. She looks away now from the tomb, the answer of her soul being given to the angels, but the answer to her not being found there because Jesus was not there, and His Person was the place of blessing. But as yet, till He calls His sheep by name, they knew Him not. But "Why weepest, whom seekest thou?" is His word. The Church, the quickened soul, knows Him thus speaking as risen, and owns Him as Master.

349 Thus is the Church planted in grace in the Remnant. This is its principle, the principle of its mission in the resurrection. Not the restoration or reception then into corporate fellowship with Himself as present, bodily present, as He will be hereafter; for He must ascend first. He was now only manifested to them to establish the ground of their faith, not to give the actual present accomplishment of their Jewish hopes. In result He must go in the accomplishment of His glory to receive the kingdom above, establish righteousness in the heavens, receiving the kingdom of the Father, make the kingdom properly heavenly, and also in its heavenly glory the Father's kingdom. Therefore He says, "Touch me not; for," etc.

But it does not separate Him from them otherwise. He now, on the contrary, for the first time calls them "brethren," because sanctified to be sons by His resurrection, wherein He was as to us "determined Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness"; now therefore especially and the rather showing the exceeding greatness of the grace, He says, "Go to my brethren"; they are now put in this relationship; I am still identified with them as a Man; I never lose this character: "I ascend to my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God." This is the message of grace. This is the position in which the disciples are set. She (Mary) saw the Lord, and He said these things. The Lord still identifies Himself in His position with them. Thus they are owned as disciples. We shall see just now how He meets them collectively so received. Moreover the Lord said, I am going as so associated (see Psalm 22: 22.).

350  - 17. "Touch me not." May this text present to us the revelation of our Lord's state as the Firstborn among many brethren, "the First Begotten from the dead," "the Firstborn of all creation," as contrasted, on the one hand, with His ministry in the form of a servant, and, on the other, with His personal glory, the glory which He had with the Father before the world was; in a word, presenting Himself in the character into which we enter as partakers by hope, and therefore purify ourselves even as He is pure; that in which His humiliation and His glory meet, and hence their bond?

"Touch me not." They thought that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel; but all seemed confounded by His death. "Messiah abideth ever," but lo! He is alive, and they were disposed to receive Him as now entering in the flesh on earth into the throne of the kingdom of Israel, as those that held Him by the feet, and worshipped Him. Nor were they wrong. Nor was it, on the other hand, without the body He arose; for when He would show to them and to the ages to come this truth also, He says, "Handle me, and see . . . for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." But we should have been short of all the blessed instruction which He meant to give us concerning Himself if we had merely known His divine dominion and His resurrection in the body. We have further here, previous in order as well as time to His ascension to the mediatorial throne, His proposal of Himself as risen in human nature, as "the firstborn among many brethren," "Go, tell my brethren, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; my God, and your God." See Hebrews 2, the whole of which epistle indeed is a development of the great truths of our Lord's Person and offices as God the Son as Man, and the offices of redemption, primogeniture in the Church, and mediation founded on the offering of Himself, flowing from the wondrous incarnation; and in this gospel He is fully proposed to us in all these characters; and the study of it with this apprehension will unfold its spiritual instruction in a way wonderful to the soul, and which can only fathom it or find rest in it from the apprehension that, while He is every way infinite, He is love, and that knowing Him thus by love is alone knowing God. What a blessed thought! for love peculiarly meets necessity, while it satisfies the highest delight. It can be approached, though infinite, by infirmity; for who could dare to know God if He did not reveal Himself in love?

351 But to return to the text. Our Lord presents Himself here, as above mentioned. In saying therefore, "Touch me not," I conceive He means, You err in addressing Me here as the Object of your allegiance and worship. I have not yet entered on the throne of My kingdom; but go to My brethren (blessed word!) and tell them I do ascend; I am about to fulfil all their hopes; yea, far indeed beyond their hopes. I ascend; yet I ascend not separating Myself from them in the body of love; for in ascending I own them still as brethren; nay, I ascend in this character to their Father and Mine, to their God and Mine. So that in entering in as King of Glory where, and not here, they are to look for Me, I still am in perfect union with them as My brethren.

I think John's gospel will be found to contain, not so much as matters of fact as in the declarations of our Lord Himself, a perfect revelation of the mystery of incarnate love, how God was in Christ, and this in all its fulness, everything which in purpose and work, as well as manifestation, filled up all that infinitude which was between a sinful, rebellious, apostate creature and the infinite God in love, having its foundation, not (which were impossible and contradictory, making us God) in our loving Him, but in His first loving us. Wherein we would be gods we enter into enmity against God, and so into that which is essentially contradictory of the divine nature. O foolish and deceived man! Well might David say, "Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, so longeth my soul after thee, O God! My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?"

There is but one other thing to the renewed soul, that for which the Son left the glory of the Father; the work of love in patience here. "Therefore," says the apostle, "I am in a strait betwixt two." But indeed the exceeding riches of love gives both to His children; that as the Lord set forth the fulness of both, so, as we are partakers of His Spirit, we are made partakers, as Peter says, of the sufferings of Christ and the glory which shall be revealed.

If I might suggest as a matter for more full development and possibly more enlarged accuracy of statement, Matthew's gospel contains the dispensation of the kingdom of heaven; Luke's gospel the moral nature of that kingdom, and the development of the work of conversion in its members whomsoever. Of Mark's I am not prepared to speak, and I suspect that the epistles, though all containing the same great truths, will be found to be relatively characterised in such a way; certainly the epistles of John and the Hebrews are the revelation of the Person and offices of Christ; that is, of the Son of God in the flesh by whom we know and see the Father; while the Romans, Galatians, Colossians and Ephesians unfold the dispensations of God's grace and counsels in their several bearings, from the lowest personal truths to the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, whose judgments are unsearchable, and His ways past finding out. It is not given me to pursue this further at present. There is another more general view of the same subject which with God's blessing I will take other occasion to enter on: I mean the structure of Scripture and its perfectness.

352  - 19. We have now the manner of the Lord's manifesting Himself to the gathered Church; that is, in the midst of the world, gathered in the midst of it, in hostility to itself, in token of the resurrection, and as of it; gathered on the first day of the week, when man's hindrance might be complete. Then nothing separated from Jesus' love. The doors were shut, but Jesus, "that same Jesus," came and stood. He was personally present in the midst of them, saying, "Peace be unto you." He had never so said before; but now peace was spoken through Him because He was risen. He spoke peace, I say, that very same Jesus, for He showed them His hands and His side; and joy was their portion now. Once, though not dead, "they were affrighted, supposing," etc. Thus we have just the picture of Jesus present, in spite of every obstacle, in the midst of His brethren, gathered in the power of His resurrection; thus too sanctifying by His presence. We may remark in passing their gathering, as after, "the first day of the week." But the point is the manner of His revelation, the presence of Jesus risen, in the midst of His brethren, giving peace and joy in believing. The Lord's presence is as true now in the midst of His brethren so meeting as in the day of His glory; though not in the same sort; but He is as present. He distinguishes afterwards the difference of those who believed without seeing; to wit, the Church and those who by [it]; to wit, the Jews and world in the latter day. His first salutation of them, the establishment of their certain knowledge of Him; and, being doubled, the thing certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.

As necessary to eye-witnesses, they saw Him personally; but it is true wherever two or three are gathered together in His name. They are sent from "Peace," from Jesus, missionaries from Him with peace. The knowledge of Jesus, and carrying it about them as so gathered, enjoying the Lord's presence (having peace), they are constituted missionaries as so receiving the blessing. It is not the twelve apostles' nomination. It does not appear they only [were] there; though they doubtless were pre-eminent. And if it were only by virtue of this, as commissioning them, Thomas had no apostolic commission at all. But it is, "Blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed"; showing the then power to rest in faith: "I believed; and therefore have I spoken."

353 Care is taken to show by Thomas it was no simply apostolic commission in its immediate application: chapter 17: 18 was. Upon His sending upon His commission to the Church He qualifies them, endues them with authority and competent power as such. Saying this, He breathed on them, and says (blessed words! He then had power to give it), "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." The ministerial gift of the Spirit is surely the perpetual gift of the Church, and by receiving by virtue of this, sinners to whom peace had been preached receive their forgiveness; and if rejected, cast out, their sins are retained, and bound upon them. This applies to the least case of discipline; but I speak of the principle; hence acted on, testified of by the Spirit, in holiness (for here Holy Spirit), and so that bound in respect of which this holiness acted. Not here the Spirit of truth, but a Holy Spirit; and thus their act is recognised, is the act of God in result, so done. So given it was a most important office, a most important competency. They received the Holy Spirit as given of Jesus, so binding the Church by His mission, sending. Who shall not go according to his measure, the measure of the gift of Christ?

Is this the portion of the Church? It is. It is the Church is here designated. Peace by virtue of His resurrection is the blessing to them. Peace is the basis of their mission, out from Jesus abroad. Verse 22 gives the ground of their reception of others. It is not mission of gift (that from ascension), but mission from His Person with the blessing; mission of the Church from Jesus risen; not ministry, save as the whole Church is sent in principle by the knowledge of the same Jesus who died being risen, and in this sense positive ministry; the Church being ministerial for Christ by virtue of the Holy Spirit dwelling in it, breathed in it in the power of resurrection life, as Adam. The man so breathed into became a living soul. We are made partakers of the life of Jesus, the quickening Spirit. The style runs: "Having quickened us together with him, having forgiven us all trespasses."

354 The Paraclete abides with us for ever, given in character of the Spirit of truth and Holy Spirit. And there are those who shall believe when they are looking on Him whom they have pierced, to whom Jesus will yet show Himself in due and appointed time in mercy, but with this reproach. And, as verse 28 will give the full confession of the Jewish Church and brought in Gentiles in that day, so verse 29 gives the judgment of the Lord on the difference. The saints are those who, having not seen, yet have believed, and they shall be in the glory. This point therefore of believing on Him, the basis of the Church here set out, is the comment on the whole paragraph in verses 30, 31. 1 Peter 1: 8, etc., rests thus on this ground. Resurrection day is marked in verse 26. They are the two visions of the Jewish remnant of Christ, the former being that on which the Church is based; verse 29 being the warrant and ground of blessing of every subsequent believer or believing Gentile. The general fact of the establishment of His resurrection has its weight from all the circumstances. Verse 21, to the end of verse 23, is the part which is of such importance as giving the position and state of the Church.

The substance has been given: first, conviction of resurrection, but no communion; the disciples went to their own home. Their calling by grace by name; Jesus' revealing of Himself and individually; then His presence, and giving communion, not as when bodily present, saying, "Fear not"; but on the contrary, when met in private for fear of the Jews, His presence as risen giving peace and joy; glad when they saw the Lord; common peace and joy in believing, in communion, thus acting. Then again peace given as the ground of mission, and efficacy to the word by the Spirit breathed, and all their acts sanctioned; that is, as so led by the Spirit; as the place of forgiveness when no imputation was, but judgment of evil so receiving or rejecting. This the abiding portion of the Church so having the Spirit; forgiveness being the character of the dispensation, and communion. Then the conduct of Thomas, as we have seen, represented the Jewish people.

________

355 Resurrection, as to circumstances. First, the angel rolled away the stone, and sat on it, alarming the keepers. Next, Mary Magdalene comes alone to the sepulchre, and, seeing the stone rolled away, she goes and tells Peter and John (or, at any rate, left alone at once on seeing the stone rolled away), who came to the sepulchre. Mary returned with them, and perhaps other women (or these came afterwards). She stays there when Peter and John go; and then she sees the Lord, and speaks to Him, besides (as the other women did) seeing the angels in the sepulchre. She returns to tell the disciples in general (so that we are sure there were two messages). It is this second time on turning she sees, and, on His naming her name (calling His poor sheep by name), she knows Jesus.

I doubt, however, that this was the same as the other women's seeing Him. But it is very probable they came somewhere about this time; but He appeared first to Mary Magdalene. She returns to the disciples, and so did they with, first their message from the angels, and, secondly, both Mary and they with the fact that they had seen the Lord. Hence it is stated in general that the women did so; though John and Mark give more minute details. But I suppose Mary Magdalene was alone. I should rather doubt she had communications from the angels. Her words to Jesus on her second visit seem to make it certain; and, moreover, she then saw them.

In Mark, I take it, it is general, as in Matthew the women. Matthew 28: 2-4, happened before the women came, I judge, and the address to the women is given generally as the angel's message to them. It might prove it was the same angel, but no more. She was a lonely one, this Mary Magdalene. We can tell, I suppose, why.

The only difficulty in this account seems to me to be Luke 24: 22. But it is evident verses 10-12, are a mere summary of what happened, to give the general idea. Hence also we have merely women from Galilee, where (note) it is said "certain others." Perhaps these were women not of Galilee. They may have been men. Mary Magdalene is said to have gone alone in John; and it is evident that, if the others went with her, all her conduct was solitary in its connection with Jesus. If the other women went with her at first, they must, on her leaving, have wandered away somewhere, and most of what is in John [have] taken place in their absence. I hardly think Mark's "seen first by Mary Magdalene" can be the "All hail" to the other women; nor this last the "Mary" and "Rabboni."

356 Note, first Mary looks behind her as she was stooping looking into the sepulchre. On His saying "Mary," she turns right round. It is to be remarked that Mary first says, "We know not"; so also it is "My Lord"; which, if not showing that the other women were there, at least shows that, as to the state of her soul, she was associated with them in mind, or associated them with herself. But this could not continue; there was not the same energy of affection. Hence afterwards it is, "I know not where they have laid him." Here she felt her lonely, isolated affection; for full affection is always lonely, save its object.

The Gospel of John

J. N. Darby.

<47021E> 356

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

John 21

I cannot help thinking that [chap. 21] is the exhibition of the resurrection power of the ministry of Jesus. But I think it has a further meaning. The former manifestations of Jesus were personal; peace, and Church mission, and character. I have spoken sufficiently on that as to this reference to believing on Jesus, and the mission of faith by the Spirit; Church position, its advantage, faith's advantage, over sight. There it is witness; here it is not witness, but gathering power. Now certainly in a sort this was true in apostolic ministry, and so had its proportionate realisation.

The power of resurrection did bring in a great multitude, but it has surely a further force. When Peter once before on the Lord's manifestation let down his net at the Lord's word, his net brake. Here it is specifically noticed, for all they were so many his net did not break. Now, it is true that, preached by the apostles, there was a large ingathering compared with the testimony of the unrisen Jesus; but surely it has, as the former, to the Church position, having received the Holy Ghost, to the work of Jesus in the world, calling them to dine, and therefore primarily applied to the Jews. When they were first called the net brake, and filling the ships they began to sink; but now the real time of the full manifestation of the power of the Lord Jesus' resurrection, being the latter day among them, when, after the interval, from His manifestation in Church reception, they go alone to fish again. That night they toil to no purpose; but in the morning Jesus, unawares to them, is on the shore. Under the direction of the yet unknown Saviour they fill their nets; and now they are no longer broken. They could not however draw it then for the multitude of fishes, and the Lord is discovered to them by the discerning thought of John, well acquainted with Him in the spirit of love. Peter leaves the ship, and joins Him on hearing it from him; and they drag consequently the net to shore, full of great fishes and unbroken. They were in a "small ship" now, and but one (which note). Nor were they far from shore. But there was already food, fishes prepared, brought, not by them, there; as to which they had nothing to say; but Jesus was there, and all was ready to their sitting down to eat before Him; that is, prepared. They were charged to bring of their gains; and then, when dragged to shore, they found what they had gathered, had caught. Till they got to shore out of the ships they did not see the fire and the fishes there, and bread.

357 -16-18. Manifestation to the remnant called by name, though sinners; but not now taking His Kingship, for He must ascend first. Verse 19 to the end, His revelation to the Church, and its character. Here the revelation of the future ingathering brought to shore; called to dine; Jesus then there gathering; brought to shore, and yet Jesus having fish prepared there with Him already, the fruit of other toil and power. And though I have said "Jews," it is not necessarily that all shown ashore were Jews, but that it was a Jewish work, after a bidding, though not a known manifestation, of the Lord. Then in work there shall be no net breaking, but the netful drawn to shore. Jesus' words: "Which ye have now taken."

There is something very peculiar in the manner of our Lord's revelations. How John and Peter are ever together in their interest in the Lord, and so in each other! It gives a peculiar interest to the relation of the circumstances in which they were engaged. There is always decency in reverence.

Then this word "cometh" shows Jesus not at the place till they were come there, though the fire, etc., was prepared. Then He is present with them in the same familiar kindness as heretofore at supper. It was the same Jesus. He then personally joins them. All this, it appears to me, is the Lord's dealing with the Jews in the latter day. It is quite clear that these were the direct simple testimony to the Lord's resurrection; but I cannot help thinking that the allusion to the Jewish Church and latter day manifestation of the Lord are here.

358 -15. The commission given to Simon is one of much importance. Conferred in grace in retrospect of his fall, it showed to all the manner of graciousness. But the Lord is paramount in grace, and confers as well as restores, abounding in His own riches, as well as patient to our defects; and whether in Paul or Peter, our utter weakness and evil is shown as fitting for service; denying or destroying the Lord, man's preparation for preaching Him and feeding the sheep. There is much more here therefore than mere restoration. He restores his heart as towards Him, on the unrejected appeal to His own knowledge of him, that knowledge now more fully owned, which had known him about to deny Him. The same knowledge now constituted him before the Church the feeder of His lambs, etc. It is again, we may remark, personal, not entitling, but calling by name; as when He said, "Thou art Peter"; so now, "Feed." But "poimaine" (shepherd) is a different thing from "boske" (feed), and it mars it to translate it the same; for "poimaine" means all the care of leading, guiding, protecting from wolves, etc., as in Acts 20: 28, 29; the whole care of those taken forth, exposed to danger. Then afterwards, "Feed my sheep."

-17. Strange man! He who went on (left to himself) to deny the Lord thrice without stint, is grieved because he is asked thrice, "Lovest thou me." Yet what grace in it! He did know all things. Happy for Peter, He knew and saw only the good, His Father's work now. It is a great thing to say, "Thou knowest that I love thee."

If it be asked, What means "touton" (than these)? I say, Everything except Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ.

This was the general care of ministration; not mission, but ministry. Authoritative commission before, it was suffering for and content to glorify God now, in authority of mission and governance. I cannot help thinking here again that the reference to Peter is the founding of the care and ministry of the Church of God in the circumcision, and its apostolate. And I suspect that the triple charge refers to the triple circumstances in which the Church or ministry was set: Jewish remnant, scattered and abroad, and Jewish remnant, etc., again. There was the promise withal that he would be given to follow (in the strength of Christ's resurrection, what he could not do when Jesus had to suffer) Jesus, as he had spoken before. It should be the subjection of his will, not voluntary acting.

359 The whole of Peter here seems to represent the ministry as standing on Jewish ground, and of direct association with the Lord. John, on the other hand, as before now, signifies general or Gentile Church ministration. If the Lord choose it to tarry till He comes, that was nothing; Peter had his own association with the Lord; he was to follow Him.

There seems also to be a progress in the way the Lord questions Peter, though Peter's association is constant: "Lovest thou me more than these?" "More than these"; the things in which he was occupied during the absence of the Lord, to which he had turned after he had lost Him on his denial. He had seen Him since, but it is manifest he was receiving a quite fresh, redintegrated commission to him as a person: "Simon, son of Jonas." And when there is any denial or failure to the Lord, though we may even go on again in His company, there must be this redintegration, "conversion." From hence his service springs.

The next question is, "Lovest thou me?" Then, "Hast thou affection for me?" hast thou thine heart in Me? as, "Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick."

Peter's assertion moreover is uniform. "Knowest" (ginoskeis, v. 17), is a stronger word than "knowest" (oidas, vv. 15, 16), denoting recognition. But, save setting the circumcision at the head in ministry, and the triple character of it, there is more in this than the Lord yet gives me to see. The sheep primarily are the Jewish remnant; but there are others not of that fold, we find, where the Lord's special love rests. When this is drawn out towards Him thus He turns it: Feed (care for) My sheep.

The double portion of the Church, then; death, and tarrying till Jesus come, one following Him, the other if His will; and it may be a more toilsome service, but His will. Love to Jesus may lead us to death; but Jesus' love so tasted may often set us in ministry where we might be glad to follow Him so. The circumstances of John were left comparatively dark; merely "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" But Peter was to be more specially identified with the Lord in circumstances. The apostle therefore, or the Lord, does not explain this; only denies its applicability to the reverse of what Peter's was personally, as though it referred to his personal death. We know that John continued till the whole system of the Church was broken up (see beginning of Revelation); and therefore, as it were, to the Lord's coming. The rest was only prophesied apostasy till He come. Thus he stood as the representative of the system; as Paul of its energy in commencement. We have an instance here of the falseness of drawing conclusions here from Scripture. The point was not denying the conclusion (What has God to do with it?) but "Jesus said not to him."

360 This is always the answer. It was not a part of the conception of the Church in its strength in Jewish association to be cognisant of its positive endurance in any continued or protracted form. It was merely thrown out, as in the compass of divine will, to be shown by that will, not the professed purpose in character in which the Church was set forth (which note) as in Adam's innocence. Yet the purpose, as so dependent, is darkly thrown out. It is not merely, "What is that to thee?" but, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" It did not affect the duty on which the call to Peter rested, nor affect the position in which he was placed. There might be other and wider scenes of God's purpose, but the command of God, and place of the apostle, rested on what was thus spoken to him. After state might show the concern and use which the Lord had for another instrument, person or things.

It is very remarkable the way the Lord discloses, and yet conceals, His will here, and opens out the force and meaning, I apprehend, of this, and the nature and time of the protraction of the dispensation; specially knowing the use made, in point of fact, of John, active after. For it was not Paul, the inceptive energy of the Church, whom we find ministering the Churches in Asia at their (real) close, but John. That was set aside, and he became the witness of the character of its protraction through and onward, till the meeting-point of the Lord's coming indeed, with the (moral) judgment and prophecy (providential chiefly) meanwhile; and then the great result; that is, the awful system formed. The real secret of what it was to result in, which begins from Revelation 12 properly; and compare this, verses 21, 22. The real result with the Lord, God and the Lamb; and then [the] close of all, which [is] in Revelation 2: 1, etc.

361 But if all the things of His glory were written the world indeed would not contain the books. Amen.

________

As to the order in John: there is in the whole gospel a regular order and definite presentation of subjects.

Chapter 1. The Being and Person and excellency of the blessed Lamb is shown, and His relative place also with God, with the world, the Jews, with John, with the Father, and the position of the disciples with Him as manifested, and so with the law; the consequent blessing in us; the whole Being and relationship of Christ. He is the Word. The revelation of the Father by the Son is the way we know God. Then comes the actual address of John to the Jews as to what he was. The previous statement was of what John was relative to Christ's position from what He was in the world; here as Jewishly coming after Him.

- 29-34. His testimony to what Christ was; Lamb of God, manifest to Israel; Son of God, proved so, not by resurrection here, but anointing.

- 35. First, John's disciples joining Him as the Lamb of God, and finding Him who is the Messias.

- 43. The next day Jesus gathering disciples for Himself; and, lastly, guileless Israelites, found and known under the fig-tree, owning Him as Son of God and King of Israel, and henceforth the glory of the Son of Man; the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man present therefore on earth; the third day [chap. 2] the day of resurrection. This is the association of the Church, a new character; His (Jewish) mother cast aside; the water turned into the wine of the kingdom. It is not introduced consecutively (for Nathanael properly includes the earthly part, and consequences of it), but a separate statement to show the Church, and withal in a certain sense the Jewish marriage of Christ. We belong, as it were, to the third day. Verse 12 seems to show, after the purpose in the Church was manifested or set about, that mother, brethren, Jesus and disciples were all together; which was just His earthly ministry in that place which was exalted (though really in heart His city) and should be brought low. Then comes His royal, clearing righteousness in His Father's house. His resurrection (for His body was really the temple of God) was the sign of His authority, and thus therefore was the ground of faith. Another point was now opened, the way of entrance into this kingdom. They must have a new life and nature, be born again. Many believed on Him through miracles; but it was not to be trusted, it was only what was in man.

362 But [chap. 3] there was a remnant wrought upon, hindered where true, and not merely fleshly owning, but in whom fleshly righteousness was good for nothing (and here the real work of the Spirit begins in its truest, yet necessary, work) and with this Jesus coming from heavenly places, having seen and having communion with that which He now revealed from God, and all things of the Father in His hand according to the glory He had seen, and so the Kingdom in two parts: earthly things, for which Jews (for it also hung on resurrection in "the sure mercies," and was really with God) must be born again, as the prophets testified, for the real enjoyment under God of the earthly things. Besides, the Son of Man must be lifted up, not received of the Jews now (His miracles only affected what was in man), and so be the door of heavenly things; fit men for them too, even eternal life; enable them to enjoy them according to the love in which, as Son of God, He was given. Then the judgment. It was the rejection of the Son; but, as He was the Light, it was the proof of all previous and other darkness.

All this passed previous to the Lord's entrance on His public ministry. We have then his public testimony to the Lord's service and ministry, His relationship, not merely His Person as brought out in type in the circumstances. John disclaims blessedly whatever was not given from above. Man can only receive what is thus given him: "I am sent before him; he is the bridegroom, and has the bride." It is Jewish. It was John's joy to see Him; but He came from above, and was above all. What He has seen (with the Father, and heard, the words given Him, see chap. 17) He testifies. No man receives it. He is sent of God; His words are the words of God, and acknowledging them is acknowledging that God is true; a divine revelation of God to the soul. Man does not receive it; for what He speaks as a Man is without measure of the Spirit in testimony to Him; is not Scripture, but the manner of the Holy Ghost's presence. He was present, and whose power He was given. He was the Son with the Father; had all things, as such, at His hand. Life was through faith in Him, eternal life, that is, in the Son. When the Son was not believed, the wrath (not of the Father, but) of God rested on hum.

363 Here [chap. 4] the ministry of the Lord properly begins, connected with life; the previous part, the most important, being prefatory; and therefore the ministry of John is introduced here thus fully again; and consequently it goes forth into the world to sinners, a worthless woman of Samaria learning not at this mountain nor Jerusalem men shall worship the Father, God being dissatisfied with all that is; much not in truth, none in Spirit, yet acknowledging His own. He is the Saviour of the world. In this, then, the Spirit, as a living Spirit of communion and sonship under the gospel principle of grace, and a Saviour to sinners, is set out the great fundamental principle, yet not forgetting the outcasts of Jacob even; and this, while thus exhibited, proving the non-reception of it by the human, the natural heart, the detection of that heart in all its ways by it, and giving life by a word, at distance, through faith. But I suspect there is more in this last of the nobleman.

Then [chap. 5] we have the Son of God brought forward in life-giving, and also judicial, power, as contrasted with the impotency of means sent, as the law, because of the very nature of the disease; the ample evidence given, however, to the Son, so as to leave man without excuse; then [chap. 6] to the place of Jesus as Son of Man, owned a Prophet, would be made a King, but taking the place of Priest, while His disciples toiled through the sea, and meanwhile (the sign of God being that He came) therefore faith in His power everything, and effectual love then proved; this by the word, "the words of eternal life"; withal God, there, with Himself; not merely as incarnate, but as slain, and so ascending up to be a Priest till He rejoined them, and they were immediately where they were seeking to be (strictly this is Jewish also).

Chapter 7. His glory, still as Son of Man; or, rather, postponement of glory, as connected with the Feast of Tabernacles and giving of the Spirit as ascended, the witness of the glory meanwhile; this specially including Gentiles: "If any man thirst." "Every man to his own," etc., Jesus to the mount of Olives, the place whence He was to go and where return, and where He prophesied in Matthew 24. Then Jerusalem; Jews put on test, as a body, by His word (chap. 8); the light of life (condemning all alike, the current of corruption) contrasted with the law ruining sinners in their hands. This was "I AM" before Abraham. They were of their father the devil.

364 Chapter 9. The power of sight by the work of Christ, removing as contrasted with natural darkness, and so His work of power as exhibited in others rejected, they saying they saw, their sin remaining. [Chap. 10.] What He was for the sheep, the Shepherd, traced from coming obediently by the door to unity with the Father; finally the question and grounds of faith stated therein. Then [chap. 11] the display of that wherein He was rejected; or which He would have there been, had He been received. First, Son of God, by resurrection in power over evil; but here by restoring the dead to this world, for to this He belonged as yet (on this ground verses 25, 26 would be true, though it will be true on a higher as to resurrection to a heavenly calling; Jesus' presence in either case, for it is the Son who is the resurrection); resolution of death, and that even of Lazarus, the consequence. Then [chap. 12] as King of Israel; then of the Gentiles; but for this death was needed; by which, however, judgment of this world and the prince of this world. Verses 35-50, the comment on this, arising from the statement of the lifting up of the Son of Man, the Christ that was to abide for ever.

Chapter 13. The glory of this looked at; that is, what place He took on His going to the Father, His new station, which was what death really led to; girt, not with a golden girdle, but the towel with which He wiped their feet; continuous love, teaching entire humiliation to serve the disciples, on being exalted on the world's rejection; no cooling of the love. Verses 3,4, washes their feet, does priestly service; then the Spirit by word, etc., for a pattern to them. The power of Satan in the evil of the flesh; the perfectness of Christ's work (vv. 31, 32) looked at in its real light; thus love shown, and so who are disciples. Disciple does not mean merely obedience, but one taught of Jesus, and who is learning, or has learnt, and practises Jesus' ways; the utter incompetency of the flesh to act on these principles. On this His departure, where the flesh could not follow Him; what was their comfort; position and dealing of the Comforter come, and Jesus' presenting them then (with the Church contrasted with the world) to the Father, and the Father to them, as He had and would.

365 Chapter 14, individually or in relationship as persons; chapter 15, more corporately or as incorporated; chapter 16, the Comforter's service to the world, and in the Church; chapter 17, committal to the Father, and place with the Father; that is, Holy Father, for the disciples ("righteous" as between Him and the world) to bring out in them the witness in glory of who He was; chapters 13 and 17 might seem both priesthood; but chapter 13 is priesthood as regards the evil gathered in their walk, and therefore exercised in connection with the water and girded towel; and in chapter 17 we have their presenting in the unity and association with Himself in their new nature, and by the Holy Ghost, to the Father: one regarded service here; the other, position and acceptance there.

Chapter 4, then, the Spirit giving living communion proper to the gospel. The three previous chapters were before the close of John's ministry, or the commencement of the Lord's public; chapter 5, Sonship, Son of God; chapter 6, Son of Man in all His characters; chapter 7, the Spirit, till the glory of Him as sent manifested to the world; thus complete; chapter 8, life contrasted with the law; chapter 9, light contrasted with natural darkness; or worse, supposed light; chapter 10, care of the sheep; chapters 11, 12, vindication of Sonship, and Israelitish Kingship to Gentile dominion; death necessary; then, on exaltation, priesthood and service still; comfort by the Father, Son, and Spirit, the Church's portion known; the Church; the Spirit, conviction of the world, and in Church, and connected subjects, as flesh; chapter 17, the Church before the Father. Such is the theology of John.

Then, chapters 18 and 19, His betrayal, accusation, and death; but power and willingness here shown all through; not condemned as Son of God (for this has been in question in the whole book, and a title of power, and the controversy with the Jews sovereignly carried on, on this head, all through), but their guilt in charging Him as making Himself a King, and Son of God before Pilate, and His condemnation by the world, as He even says here, "I came into the world"; slighted as Son of God, though afraid; and condemned and rejected as King of the Jews, as Caesar's friend.

Then, in chapter 20, the Church according to the principle of its foundation, position through Christ's ascension (the kingdom not being entered for His personal owning them); enjoyment of His presence in pledge of resurrection; mission; authority by the Spirit; restoration of the Jews, as a remaining Remnant, by sight. Thus it closes.

366 Chapter 21, the closing dispensations and history of the Jewish and Gentile Churches in the persons of Peter and John.

To chapters 18-19. His Person and excellency individually. After John's ministry, chapter 4 is an introductory chapter. After chapters 18-19 in connection with the Church; chapters 14, 15, 16 and 17 have an evidently distinct character, because they are the view of Him subsequent to death and exaltation, as viewed in chapters 12 and 13. Up to chapter 10, the place of manifestation had been Jewish; that takes the sheep; chapters 11 and 12, beginning, had been the vindication against the rejecting part.

_______

Chapter 21. What a character grace takes in the case of the restoration of Peter! At the moment the saints would have, so to speak, the greatest value in Jesus' eyes, if change there could be, when He had just redeemed them, He confides them to him who had just denied Him. How the very extent and perfectness of this grace was the spirit in which Peter had to watch over them! Grace produces thus what it seeks in affection. Being what it is towards the heart, it produces in it the conscious feeling of what it is; that is, it creates the affection by its manifestation. It was this grace of which Peter had to be the instrument. And, further, the Lord promises to Peter that he should do the very thing which he (failing in will and human strength) had failed in doing; so that the very bitterness of having failed is taken away; for he would do, not by his own will, what he had failed in doing, and so glorify God in it. How perfect this grace is!

_______

Note also John 21: 19. The administration of the kingdom of heaven closes and comes to nothing in Peter's hand, as to its special character, as it had in Jesus'; though in both all the counsel of God was accomplished. In John's case, who speaks of dwelling in God, and God in us, the essential principle of the dispensation and of life, and who can therefore hang suspended in God over its fate, in the energy of that unfailing life, when all its forms are gone. The Lord holds him thus in this suspense, unseen, apocryphal, till He come; and this was his place, and his heart's answer came quickly, for the Apocalypse looks only into a gloomy future of judgment in the Church (the bride of Christ above); for such is that book. It has no earthly blessing or form, which note. It is entirely heavenly as to the Church. He was the one who had the intimacy of Christ's thoughts as near Him, habitually on His breast; and he follows by affection, not in the command on earth (see also verse 7); he follows from affection and the power of the call addressed to Peter; but the result is, "If I will," etc.

367 One must understand with John in that intimacy if one would know the meaning of the answer. Nothing is of the recognised position of the Church on earth. That was Paul's part. As a fact, John returns thither when he says, "The Spirit and the bride say, Come." In prophecy it is judgment. Below, the Church is in mystery, and the marriage above. Peter ministers the kingdom of heaven; Paul, the house of Christ, as on earth holding a certain place. John goes up, and looks down into judgment here, and has the Church for the marriage of the Lamb above. Also in his (John's) epistle the Church has no place or standing; it is life in God in the family. His first epistle is the Father, Christ, and the family; their life. In the Apocalypse it is the throne, the Lamb in it, and servants, seals, and judgments on the earth. The Church, as spouse, takes her place by righteous judgment. The apostles rejoice in judgment. He comes forth judging, and making war.

_________

I see more than ever a divine Person in John, and, now especially in chapter 8; so that it is the divine Person that, with the Father, gives testimony to who the Christ is. All this gives a very peculiar and very instructive character to John's gospel: the Word made flesh (chap. 1: 14). Before that it was simply the divine nature in itself, and a new nature in us needed to receive the manifestation of it. Then we come to the Person of the Word made flesh. Our connection with Him is brought in, and His work in its full result in the world, and for us, as present and permanent blessing. We receive of His fulness; He is the Lamb of God; He baptises with the Holy Ghost. Then His actual connection with the world (indeed, with all things), in the government of God.

368 Note, the Person of Christ, the Word made flesh, is seen in its fulness, and we are seen now (after His work and departure) in connection with and receiving from it. This is present consciousness. What follows is testimony as to what, when the testimony was given, was not yet accomplished. But His Person runs all through.

I just add, chapter 2 completes chapter 1, save verses 23-25, which belong to the next chapter, which should begin with "But" or "Now." Then the work in us is taken up, and the work for us, from chapter 1: 11, 12, and 29, 36. But the Person of the Son is returned to, and withal its definitively testing power. Two points are referred to here: He has "seen and heard"; that is, what is divine and heavenly. As a Man His testimony is God's; for the Spirit is not there in measure.

In chapter 4 we have the commencement of His public ministry, which is a breach with Judaism. In chapter 5 we have the divine Quickener; Judge as Son of Man. In chapter 6 the Man come down from heaven, and dying, and going up where He was before; again showing the divine Person in the Man. In chapter 5 the divine Quickener is the Son of Man, and judges; that is, will hereafter. In chapter 6 the Son of Man, bread, and flesh and blood, for us; ascends up where He (now Son of Man) was before: chapter 5 is divine, and future; chapter 6 human, and present in grace. But if ascended He was not now for the world; and this brings in the Holy Ghost, so that chapter 7 goes with chapter 6; only the effect postponed, and the Spirit given to believers meanwhile.

The development of the giving of the Holy Ghost is from chapter 14, consequent on His going up on high; chapter 13 being the water part, on His going away, and leaving the world; though the main washing could take place while He was here in a certain aspect (this is in chapter 15), for they had received the word: chapter 15 is exceptional, what He was then in connection with the Remnant of Israel, still as Son (save the last verses). Otherwise it is very striking how everywhere He is a divine Person in and as Man, as we have noted in John 17. It is remarkable that we have not properly Pentecost in John. Passover is alluded to (chap. 6), but then, Prophet and refusing to be King, He takes the place of Priest. The Holy Ghost is referred to on the eighth day of tabernacles, when He could not show Himself to the world; but it is as dwelling in us, and outflowing.

369 From chapter 14 we have the Comforter fully taught about, but no connection with Pentecost. In chapter 6 He comes down, and goes up where He was before. But substantially it is Christ on earth, a divine Person, a Man there, which is taught, that Passover and tabernacles present. The Holy Ghost comes in, however, fully by the by as a substitute for Christ, another Comforter. This only points out that the subject of the gospel as to Christ is on earth. It is personal. The Holy Ghost is His substitute here. Hence, even, I will send Him to you from the Father.

It is not the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God. That is official glory, not personal simply: that we have in the other gospels. He is the Lord there; and this place ever true to faith, yet in testimony confirmed and present power closed with those who were witnesses to His exaltation. And so did the Church, looked at as an immediate whole. The Comforter abides for ever. In John we know it was individual.

END OF VOLUME 7

Genesis

J. N. Darby.

<41004E> 10 {file section a.}

(Notes and Comments Vol. 1.)

Genesis 1

In Genesis we have what addresses itself to man in his responsibility, the first Adam placed in it, and what it is needed he should know. We may have counsels in types, but no more; it is the sphere of responsible man, and man in it. The existence of God is assumed, the creation of angels not spoken of; but first the creation of the heavens and earth needed to be known by us, then the forming of this scene in which we are as established in it, where I may notice that the expanse is not called good as no actual part of the things formed in connection with man. Then creatures being finished, and the last pronounced good (chap. 1: 25), the solemn creation of a head to represent Him in it, is taken up, and a lord or head over the creation that had been made, but quite a different thing; "saw that it was good" (v. 25) closed the creation.

The "image" is the great point (v. 27), though "likeness" is stated, and image is the word used in the New Testament. We have then, Gen. 2: 15-17 - definite responsibility, and verse 18 and following - Lordship, and counsels as to the church, in this only a helpmeet for Christ found; the Lordship was independent of it, but in all of which He was Lord - no helpmeet, no companion; though a living soul, so far is man from the animal which petty infidelity would, in its low thoughts, persuade us he is.

- 1. There is an apparent difficulty in viewing this as a primary creation, and then passing on to present formation, when we compare the fourth commandment in Exodus 20; but I think it rather confirms it, for it takes the creation, as we have it now, as the whole subject of the commandment, as a distinct whole; for the firmament is called "heaven," and then we have "heaven, and earth, and the sea and all that in them is" (Gen. 1: 6, et seq): light not being mentioned. Also in Exodus 20: 11 it is "made," not "created," and it is evident that angels do not come into this category of creation. Light, I apprehend, is a peculiar thing - a power, whatever its seat, more than an existence created - and the causing this to be, and seating it anywhere, is surely from the fiat of God, but not the making some material being to exist.

All was created of the universe as a structure. The heavens and the earth universal, as a fact the universe. Elohim created this vast system; in respect of man, earth having its recognised place, we have no stars, they merely come in by the bye, that all might be attributed to God; but God was the Creator of the whole scene.

11 - 2. He then leaves the heavens, and begins with the earth; God's dealings with it, and what belongs to it, hence its heavens so to speak. But first the earth - it was utterly a chaos, but a watery chaos - a desolate waste of unorganised existence, not necessarily without form, all matter must have one, but its condition and state an unformed one - without order and waste - in darkness which rested on the watery waste, for such it was. Darkness was its state when God began to deal with it; being in this state, for we begin with it in such a one, knowing nothing of it between its creation, and finding it in this state, we have here "darkness on the face of the deep.

The state of the heavens we have left behind us; we are conversant with the earth in a state of chaos. The spirit of God brooding on the face of the waters is formative power.

- 3. God commanded the light to shine out of darkness, "Let there be light"; it is not said that He made it now, but that where darkness was, there was now light.

"Let there be light" is not formative or adorning by His will, out of the texture of what exists. But He does not say that more than the deep was in darkness. God created the heaven and the earth. "And the earth"; He did not destroy darkness, but brought in light on the face of the deep, and distinguished them for us; for Him they are both alike as to seeing. Light was there, where it was not before God commanded it to shine out of darkness. So in our hearts, there it is created, but not in se, because save in God who is light and dwells in it, light is not a thing but a state, though God may have created what gives it and so it. I do not speak scientifically and materially. Till we come to light again all is a mere ordering of the earth, and light is ordered for the earth, then indeed we have living souls, not said of man; but, God's image, how he became a living soul is in Gen. 2: 7.

- 4. "And God saw the light, that it was good" - and divided it from darkness - separated the two - first darkness on the earth, then light

12 - 5. The first light was day; the evening brought on darkness, then morning, and so one day from first day light to morning. There was evening and there was morning, i.e., light comes in where there had been darkness, and so one day; the continuance of the light is supposed till the next evening darkness, for God called the light "day." Hence though morning came after the darkness day was spoken of, and if we translate it simply it is plain; and there was evening and then morning - one day. That is alternation, and day till next evening; how, is not said. But we have night; first, darkness everywhere on the deep - light - night and day - evening and morning. The light may have been created there, or merely placed. There was light, and darkness separate, but also interchange and passage from one to the other, the gradual disappearing of light, and its dawning - day, night - evening, morning.

As regards the day, evening and morning, the light created out of darkness was called "day"; but there was no morning then, hence evening comes first - the disappearance of light. But to complete the recommencement of day, evening and morning must come in - the created light apart from darkness - day; then there was evening, and there was morning, of course with night between, and that counted a day. Although the Jews count from the evening r cannot think this the meaning here; the light had been brought forth and called day; the evening was the close of that - the disappearance of light. Then I read "and there was evening" - evening was - "and there was morning," one day. The night is not taken account of, but by implication, it was the primeval state - absence of light - not a creation. God's works are in the light, only if darkness come on light appeared again - the dawn - there was morning. The evening is noted first, because it closed the day just created, or ordered by light brought in.

Everything a man speaks of as created exists as much in dark as in light. The continued exercise of creative power, I apprehend, we are very ignorant about; that it exists we know and upholds, which is the same thing - save the exercise of divine will.

- 6. An expanse.

- 7, 8. Then the atmospheric heavens, the actual blue sky was formed; waters above - the treasure house for the rain, and below - the heaven or firmament. That was the second day; there was again evening and morning - the disappearance of the light, and its reappearance.

13 - 9. Next the sea is made by withdrawing the waters from the surface of a part of the earth, and causing the dry land to appear. Nothing was made the second day, i.e., any new thing; the separation of waters above and below, leaving the heavens free as a firmament between, was not a new substance created, hence it is not said to be very good.

- 10. But now we have land and sea; this was good. The air (sky or firmament), water, earth and sea are formed, and day and night.

- 11 and 20: "bring forth" are different - in verse 11 it is da-sha (sprouts forth) "let the earth grow with green grass"; and in verse 20 it is sha-ratz (swarms with) "let the waters swarm with swarms of ne-phesh" (soul); in verse 21 it is sha-ratz'.

I think a-sah' (formed) is used for forming, putting them in their order and place according to His will.

He made lights - the firmament - man, in counsel as to what he should be.

Create" is used for heaven, and earth, and man; ya-tzar (formed as a potter) when it proceeds out of a certain sphere or place it belongs to; so even in Gen. 2: 7 of man, see also Gen. 2: 3.

- 11-13. Plants are now formed; the earth "brings forth" - this first here, and it was so, and good; a third day. The dry land and the seas were the actual forming the habitable earth, and then plants.

- 14-19. Then luminaries were formed, serving to divide day and night, and form epochs, and regulated, or periodic times.

NOTE. - "To divide"; day and night were already divided; this was a special ordering of the function of light as to the earth, in and by the lights.

It is a mark of revelation this to me, for no one inventing a plan would have separately formed light, and sun, and moon, at such an interval. This is order, not existence of light, nor forming, creating the bodies that bore the light.

- 20. We have now the living creatures of the waters, and fowl in the firmament; fowl, though flying in heaven, belonging to earth.

14 - 21. I do not see more in its being said "God created great whales" than the importance of the thing; vast as the creatures might be, they were mere creatures.

I think "created" comes in with intentional fitness; it is the beginning of living creatures, it begins with great whales.

NOTE. - Up to that it had been the creation of materials, the earth, or mere plants; now of living beings.

Tan-ni-nim (sea-monsters) are very large water animals. And then we have it again when we come to man; there is matter and its forms - life and its forms - and man. He is made as part of the sixth day, but it is a new creation.

NOTE. - In chapter 2 the living creatures consequently are wholly dropped; the heavens, earth, and plants are created by Jehovah Elohim, and then the detail of man, and his responsible connection with the paradisaical earth. We have what man really is first, ya-tzar, he is "formed" as a body, and then God breathes into him, etc.

NOTE. - Also in chapter 1 we have after the making the beasts (v. 25), "And God saw that it was good" - the closing judgment on each day's proper creation. Man comes afterwards, wholly apart.

- 24. Next, on the sixth day, the earth brings forth animals. The earth brought forth, on God's fiat, all living creatures on it; they had as in the sea ne-phesh khay-yah (soul of life) - man is quite distinct.

- 25. "He saw that it was good," is said after the beasts habitually, at the end, before "there was evening, there was morning" - day.

- 26 begins a subject by itself, though on the same day. Man closes the formed creation, but he is not properly of it, and save as he comes in under "every thing God had made," there is no pronouncing that he was good; he is not otherwise part of what God looked on and pronounced good - that closed with the animals. You have first light - good; then separation of light and darkness; then the earth formed; firmament; sea; dry land (note, no fire is formed), it is covered with plants, and revolutions of time ordered by celestial luminaries. Then living creatures in water, and fowls, then animals on the earth; these are "good." Thus the form of creation, as such, was complete, and its lord was to be made as a distinct thing; I repeat, the closing "and God saw that it was good," comes before any question of man. On the sixth day the earthly form of creation was complete; yet man was formed as a living creature, with a ne-phesh khay-yah, but it is not said when.

15 - 30 seems to say that the beasts of the earth (as a general expression) ate the green herb. We have not "cattle" and "beast of the field," but whatever was a living thing on the earth (as in the ark I suppose). But the statements are not alike; in chapter 6: 21, it is only cattle; chapter 7: 8, cattle clean and unclean; chapter 7: 21, cattle and beast, without "of the field"; see chapter 2: 19, 20, where they are all first called "beasts of the field" and then "cattle" distinguished.

- 31. It is not said of man "and God saw that it was good." It is said "He saw all that he had made, and behold it was very good," but man held an exceptional place, and his likeness to God, etc., made it more than a mere good creature; as part of the whole, of course he was so, but he was a distinct being.

Of course all things were perfect and the fruit of perfect wisdom, but there is counsel and plan only as to man.

So we find "it was good"; that is, the ordinary creation of that day closes before He begins with man, who is wholly apart. Counsel is taken when all the rest is already formed - counsel to have man in God's image, not first "like" Him, but in His "image," one that represents Him and is formed to represent Him; he is characteristically one who presents Him to others. In order to this man is made after God's likeness, no doubt without evil in him, but as representing God, a centre of the whole system, looked up to as such, the centre of all affections; one conscious of being all this, a much more compound and relative being it seems to me, as having body, soul, and spirit, than angels are; and the single centre of a vast scene subject to him, which no angels are.

The outgoings of affection, and claim thus of reference to him, as was found in no angel (see Gen. 2: 20); at any rate, man is here carefully contrasted with the living creature which the earth brought forth, is not called such (though he were so too); then the sixth day creation was finished and pronounced good, and then man is formed, according to counsel, according to God's image. Thus according to Genesis 1 man was a distinct being made, when the subject creation of plants and living creatures was complete, in the image of God.

"In our image, after our likeness" (v. 26); this has always had something vague for me. I am clear it is not righteousness and true holiness; that is the new creation - renewal in knowledge - quite another thing. Adam had not the knowledge of good and evil, and therefore could not be righteous wholly. But, indeed, this thought is a total inapprehension of what the new creation is - its difference; nay, man, though fallen, is said to be created after the likeness of God

16 I am not yet clear as to all it may mean, but I do see an amazing position in "likeness to God." The consciousness of unity, of a supremacy above all around him, of being the necessary centre of all in relationship with himself; this bringing out all the affections of authority, and reception of dependence connected with this position.

Now this self-centred place as regards others (under God of course, for it was only a likeness and an image) was a most amazing one - no angel held it, for - more glorious as a creature - he was a glorious servant, and the centre of nothing.

The actual dominion was a consequence; but it was one, "and let him have dominion." Innocent Adam would ascribe all to God; fallen - ransack and overwhelm the world, to subdue it and be a centre, with the desire of empire, the Babylon of his creation.

Absence of evil made part of this place; as God created him he would have been a happy, beneficent head. Christ, the Image of God, will have this place.

The autarkeia (sufficiency in oneself) could not be in a creature - it denied his nature; Man did not do to be alone, and he had Eve. Here he is the image of Him to come. As to "image" and "likeness"; "image" is that in which he was created; it was a kind of imitation, or reproduction of something; I believe this is just. "Likeness" is the form in which one is manifested; he was according to the likeness of God (see Gen. 5: 1) he is in His likeness, because this was them manifested in man. Christ was made in the likeness of men - this manifested form; it is not a creation of reality, but the manifested form He took.

"Likeness" seems to me to be what Adam was in that place till he fell. An image represents - reproduces; likeness is conformed to. Man cannot quite lose the place, he is not another, nor a new creation; the likeness he has. He is still said to be made in the likeness kata theon, as in Genesis 1, gegonotas, the perfect (note James 3: 9), it could not be other wise as to ginomai; we are renewed after His "image"; this at once shows it is not. We are called upon to be like Him, new creation, moral likeness practically, only we have received the life in which we can; this is a wholly new thing, divine, with the knowledge of good and evil. There was likeness to God in Adam, in that evil was unknown within. Conscience, as necessary from God's nature in him, so by man's constitution, had yet no place internally; but this is different from holiness in this, the absence of moral power, evil being known and kept without by the energy of the divine nature; necessarily by nature in God; and through grace and the participation of the divine nature in us.

17 An image represents, but a likeness corresponds, but it must be seen how far tze-lem (image) and d'muth (similitude) correspond to the English words in sense.

In Genesis 1 man is created in God's likeness, and man begets a son in his fallen one, this is the main point, but the latter was also after his image. The likeness is the appearance anything affords even if it be itself - I speak of the word - likeness is the fact of appearance by which I can represent to myself what a thing is. The image exists to represent him exactly, and as replacing him. When a likeness is very accurate it becomes an image; hence the shadows of the law were not the very image, they did not strictly represent, though there were analogies - shadows of the highest importance. At Sinai, Israel saw no likeness, such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. But when man is created, he is created "in the image" of God; next, "after his likeness"; he was the representation de facto of Him on the earth, and not so "like him." Hence man is the eikon (image), the image and glory of God in 1 Corinthians 11: 7, it is the place he holds as representing God; so Christ is pre-eminently "the image of the invisible God."

But James shows the folly of blessing God, and cursing him who was made in His likeness; it is not his place and glory as representing Him, this would be quite unsuitable, but what was created - like what he blessed; he does not enter, I apprehend, into the question of the likeness being lost (those who cursed did not either), but the original constitution maintained as the archetype of God's mind - not the result of fallen man; hence it is gegonotas, not genomenous - the condition of creation continued to the mind, not the established fact and its actual consequences. But then, I apprehend, when it is growth according and up to a perfect representation of the original of what He is as He expresses Himself - not qualities, but full growth into the whole personal presentation of what He is - it is image. Likeness is in distinct qualities; "image," complete presentation of the person. Hence in Colossians 3: 10, they were renewed in knowledge according to the image, the complete presentation of what, and of all of what He was - a wondrous position and calling - here "likeness" would not do, indeed would have no proper sense - "according to the likeness" - it is according to Himself, but as presented, so as to be known in the revelation of Himself. Hence also in 2 Corinthians 3: 18, it is according to or into the same "image" - ("as in a glass" should be left out). "We with unveiled face beholding the glory," "are changed into" the very "image" itself of it; Katoptrizomai (I look into a mirror) is "looking home" or "thoroughly into it," and it is ten auten eikona (the same image).

18 These, and the passage Ephesians 4: 24 are very remarkable in connection, and in a certain sense in contrast with the "image and likeness" of God in Genesis. Ephesians goes first in thought here, then Colossians; then 2 Corinthians 3. I think verse 3 shows it could not be mere likeness; Christ is written on the heart by the Holy Ghost. Analogous qualities would have been likeness, this is more. Still we behold, and are changed into, not Christ of course, but His "image," by life-giving and communicating power of Himself by the Spirit; so Romans 8: 29, we are summorphos tes eikonos. It is a glorious calling, not merely like qualities - through grace we have them as a consequence - but complete, though not Him (see the transfiguration), but as Him. Compare 1 Corinthians 15: 38, 39.

As explanation that "image" has the double sense, formed on the same idea, of anything that represents an unseen being - as the image of Jupiter - which need not be like, but of which the final cause is to represent - and hence perfect conformity, because then it does represent, "he is his very image" we say; and this in moral things, i.e., in moral qualities, goes very far, for we cannot be like, really, without having them. The limit to this sameness in moral things, when there is likeness, is there, subsisting as a source in the Person of God, or of Christ who is God, and derivatively in us, for the Godhead necessarily carries with it a character which is wholly its own; It is divine - infinite - has Its source in Itself - sovereign goodness - and the will of a divine nature - not a duty.

__________

19 There is another division of Genesis 1 besides creation, and the days, made by the words "and God saw" and "it was good." First He creates - He then separating the elements, so-called, to make the kosmos or order out of disorder - makes light to shine out of darkness - the first needed act dispelling the darkness that brooded on the deep; and that was a day. Then the open expanse of heaven or sky; the second day. Then water and dry land, giving each its name; and the world thus prepared He pronounces "good." That is the first division - an ordered kosmos.

NOTE. - The saying "it was good" was not at the end of day.

Then He begins to adorn it, and first produces vegetation on the earth; this is another division, and "it is good"; third day. Then He orders the ephemeris of heaven - lights to order seasons, etc.; only declaring therewith that He made the stars. This is the third division - and "it is good" - the fourth day. Next the waters are peopled, and fowl to fly in heaven, and this "is good" - the fourth division - fifth day.

Then beasts and other creatures having life, and this was good" - the fifth division - part of sixth day.

The first mention of "life" and "moving creature" is in the seas, in the fourth division; here, too, blessing is first pronounced.

The fifth division of mere creation, and an ordered kosmos adorned, and peopled with moving life, ends with the earth bringing forth living creatures; God closes it by "God saw that it was good."

Man stands wholly apart, as the ruler, by God's purpose and counsel, of the earth He had created. Separated wholly in his nature and place; of, and from God; but yet connected with the living creature too.

There is no blessing pronounced on the living creatures of the earth, but on the Head of them, subjecting them to him; and all is on the same sixth day; their respective food being provided, but not life given to him for food; he had the fruit of trees - the beasts, the green herb; and all was "very good."

20 Man being set distinctly, and separately at the head of all after "behold, it was good" pronounced on that division of the work; yet he comes in the same day with the cattle of the earth, and the general order. "Create" is used as to the universe, great whales, and man.

The difference of Genesis 1 and 2 is evident. I do not understand how the infidels make any difficulty or inventions about it. Evidently in chapter I he takes his place in the creation, the work of God as God amongst the creatures, male and female, like the other animals (only paired especially, and that noticed), whereas in chapter 2 it is in his whole moral constitution and being, and place, and relationship in the counsels and ways of God, as He has had to say to men, that he is noticed. Yet in one sense, as a creature, he is distinguished from all others; God thinks about the way of creating him, and has pleasure in that which is like Himself and His image. To this no creature could aspire. But it is not relationship, but God's delight in Himself and creation after it. Not the new creation (as often remarked) of Ephesians 4, that would never do; it could not fall - ought not. It is not mere creation of a being, but a nature communicated - partakers of the divine nature. Nor is it anthropomorphism (i.e., being the form of His body); that were poor and no purpose worthy of God, and pretentious too in man to think of. What is insisted on, however, is the image, not the likeness. So Genesis 9: 6 But in James 3: 9, "likeness," not "image." But "likeness" must, I think, come first for him to be so, as "image" must in the birth of Seth. As I have said elsewhere, an image "represents," a likeness is "conformed to." Seth did represent Adam on the earth, had his place, though not the first in it, or he could not be an image, but alas! he was in his likeness, too, a fallen sinner.

So when man's blood was to be shed it was not his moral goodness but the place he held and dignity, his representing God as he had been set, but which made it unfit he should be killed. James will not have man cursed, and here "likeness" is the fit word; we bless what God is and curse His likeness - man, who was made in it, for so he speaks. Hence (as I have said elsewhere) He formed man spotless, sinless, free, with a will to be for ever used in the sphere he was placed in, and the centre of all the affections and reverence of the sphere he was placed in, and he stood alone as the centre of it all, the image of God. Christ will be, though far more, yet this, perfectly; being One that in the highest sense fully partakes of the divine nature.

21 We have only then to inquire in what sense it is said in Colossians 3, "renewed into knowledge (epignosin) after the image of Him that created him" - and this I think when reflected on is profoundly instructive - Ephesians is, it seems to me, more the likeness. "After God in righteousness and true holiness." It is like Him - what He delights in Himself. So in the commencement of the Epistle, "chosen in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love - to himself." Hence too, I add, it is kainon anthropon, a new kind of man, and we are ananeousthai, it is the spirit of our mind, it begins all afresh with a man of a new kind, and there is no question of knowledge. Hence it is God Himself, as such, before whom we stand. In Colossians it is more Christ all, and in all, representative and image, Himself of God; and so in chapter 1, "who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of the whole creation."

Now there is the true full image of God only in the whole creation - where in Adam was the image of Him that was to come; and even in forgiveness it is in Colossians, Christ forgave" us; in Ephesians, "God in Christ." In Ephesians Christ offers Himself to God. So again it is here having put on the neon anthropon, the man that had not been there before, not the kainon, new in its kind of nature (though that it surely was too), but it is renewed (anakainousthai) into knowledge it gets during the apprehension of that which is quite new in nature. It estimates the new man - Christ; for Christ is the perfect manifestation of what this new man is in us - we see God represented in Him. The moral apprehension of what God is in Him, also represents Him before men. Hence too we are in Christ, and God is far more fully revealed? or rather spoken of directly, in Ephesians than in Colossians. We grow up to the stature of Christ, He is the head of the body and the like. Our life is the life of God, a kaine zoe. We are mimetai Theou.

In Colossians, "worthy of the Lord," we are to walk in Him, and Christ and His fulness are much more spoken of. Christ is our life, Christ is our all in all; the peace of Christ is to rule in our hearts, the word of Christ is to rule in our hearts, the word of Christ is to dwell in us richly. Now this is very precious, but it is different; we have more of the fulness and life of Christ, our association with Him, in Colossians. His glory is more brought out, the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily. In Ephesians He is more the Man once dead, now raised and exalted. How precious to have both. But I think it makes the force of "likeness" and "image" plain for us, and makes the character of the two epistles very precious to us, and how divinely exact in things where man's wits, I am persuaded, would have never worked. And, remark likeness "would not apply to Christ, for He is God. "Image" does, because He does, as Incarnate, represent God. He never imitates God, for He is God. We are called to these things, yet He is the pattern of them, because God is revealed in Him, but then it is original in Him. Walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave Himself, and to God; all this is very perfect. Hence in one sense we find Him more exalted in the Colossians, because He does take a kind of official, or representative place, and that has to be guarded against any misrepresentation All the fulness was pleased to dwell in him" (the English translation is horribly false) and all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily. All this is as it should be. Compare Genesis 5: 1, where it is "in likeness," because it is Adam's state. He was made in God's likeness, not what he was before others, but what he was.

22 Genesis 2

It is not the fact of man's being a living soul that is the distinctive point, but the manner of it. The statement, "Thou shalt surely die" (v. 17), certainly implies that, had he not, he should not have died - death entered by sin - the power of the breath of God would have sustained life, but it would have been life here, in relationship with this world. All that follows is government, and consequence as to this - outside the place into which God had brought man, in probation, in blessing. Afterwards, in this state, the question is raised of obtaining life there by obeying, as he had lost it by disobeying, but this, also, in the sphere in which it all took place - the earth.

Then, indeed, God gives life (as in fact from the beginning He had done, in view of redemption) in connection with another world.

23 Real, moral separation from God, sin, and what it was, is known only spiritually; though conscience, knowledge of good and evil, is in all, though away from Him.

NOTE. - Hence whenever a man seeks eternal life (even if he has it) he is under law.

God has given it to us in His Son, though we do seek it in a certain sense, as we have it not yet externally in its own sphere; we have it, but not formally, in another world. Hence in Romans 2 (where the great eternal, unchangeable principles of good and evil are maintained, paramount to all dispensational dealings) those who go right, though eternal life be given as the result (apodosei will render), yet they seek glory, honour, and incorruptibility; we are called, as Peter says, by glory and virtue - nor does he speak of being sinners merely - that they were, but contentious, and not obeying the truth, and having pleasure in unrighteousness; yet the judgment is universal on every soul of man working evil.

If eternal life be given as John unfolds it, that does not weaken the judgment of right and wrong, which even made it necessary; only there is the atonement of full efficacy when life is given. Eternal life, though really given, and our life, is yet surely looked at in resurrection blessedness; yet while its nature could be fully happy alone there, it is equally true that its nature, which will be happy there, is already in us, and that nature is the principal thing, because it enjoys God, and this even true as to the millennium.

Eternal life will not be satisfied, though blessed then, because the Prince of Life and Peace is there, and the power and contradiction, and temptation of Satan gone; nor do I suppose they will die; still, if life be there, there is the seeking for glory, honour and incorruption; and the sight of Christ - the perfect display of it - sustains this.

There is not the kind of desire we have, because the eternal life, nature, is enclosed in this tabernacle, in which we groan in conflict and temptation, and they enjoy, under a present Christ, the full effect of holy and righteous power; but if groaning after it be not there, holy desires I doubt not will, but this will be in communion with Christ. The thing displayed is government, which will be celebrated, but there will be within, what will characterise saints, that they still want a better or fuller accomplishment of their relationship with God; only they wait in peace, fully glorifying Christ there.

24 In this chapter God forms man dust from the "ground," i.e., he had his form first of all without life, and then breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. God Himself was the source of life to him, "for we also are his offspring." He was Ha-adam (Man) from ha-adamah (the ground), and then got life from God; it was thus Adam became a living soul. That man, and man only, had life from God, not simply by will as an angel might, but communicated from God and in a body, is evident, but only as life - existence. As to animals, they are formed from the ground, but they are brought to Adam to name as the paramount lord; it is their relation to Adam here, not their nature; all refers to Adam's place before God. Alive, through the breath of God in his nostrils; responsible; in the garden he had been placed in to enjoy; lord of the animals by God's authority; and God, interested in his estate, gives him a helpmeet taken out of himself, made for him, not a human being with him.

In the first chapter it was the animal's place with God as Creator, and Adam before Him; the second chapter is not repetition, nor is it another contradictory report as alleged - one is creation, and every creature's place in it or over it; the other the whole moral place of man when God, the Lord God, set him up as such.

- 4. The right division is here; the term "God," and then "Lord God" alone shows it.

The first chapter of Genesis should be clearly to the end of chapter 2: 3; this is complete, with Elohim. God created, and God rested, and sanctified the seventh day. The serpent speaks of Elohim, as such, in contrast with His creature; but Jehovah Elohim is in communication with Adam and Eve.

So Eve and Cain refer to "Jehovah," nor is it here "Jehovah Elohim," but simple "Jehovah"; only Eve in giving birth to Seth says "Elohim," so the following history of Seth's family is "Elohim." All this is simply historical, not the mind of one knowing Jehovah and His ways, showing what they were.

"Jehovah" I apprehend is simple relationship; "Jehovah Elohim" relationship, and moral dealing connected with God in His moral character as such. So in chapter 6 "Jehovah" said (v. 3) "My spirit"; that was directly His ways with men. But "Elohim" saw (v. 5) God, such as He is as God - this was the great historical fact; (vv. 6-8) his relationship to man - "Jehovah"; (v. 9) historical again to the end, the Creator deals with creation; chapter 7 "Jehovah" deals with Noah, but I should begin chapter 8 at chapter 7: 17, thence to chapter 8: 19; verses 20, 22 are specific relationship according to the estimate of the writer; chapter 9 history, again "Elohim"; then clearly all is with the Creator, and the earth, so on till we have "Jehovah Elohim" of Shem. Nimrod was a hunter "before Jehovah," it is morally viewed, not merely before God - "before God" would not have the same thought; exceeding great, but "before the Lord" is another thing; he was morally viewed and judged. Then in Babel we get clearly moral responsibility and relationship, and so on with Abraham, though there in electing grace. I think judgment is associated with "Jehovah," it is, however, mainly relationship.

25 NOTE. - Chapter 4 is in connection with chapters 2 and 3, i.e., on the ground of "Jehovah's" dealings - chapter 5 on the natural ground of "Elohim" again - man's history on the earth - "Jehovah's" previous dealings, as such, are referred to at the end - chapter 6 commences "Jehovah's" dealings again.

It is to be remarked that Sodom, as Nimrod, is before the "Lord." The typical victory of Abraham gives Jehovah a new name, One above all gods, whose heaven and earth are, and that in possession.

NOTE. - Though "Jehovah Elohim" is used in the history of Eden, both the Serpent and Eve say only "Elohim." Passing over Enos, whatever the force of that may be, we get Noah building an altar to "Jehovah"; I suppose a name religiously known from Enos - there the blessing is, note, from "Jehovah," God of Shem, while Japhet's being enlarged is only "Elohim." The next is chapter 12, Abraham built an altar to "Jehovah," and called on the name of "Jehovah", chapter 14: 22, we have more; chapter 15: 2 is "Adonai Jehovah," if I recollect. Sarai calls Him "Jehovah" in chapter 16. The revelation of the name of relationship is in chapter 17, but it is not "Jehovah" in chapter 18, but that was appearing as a man - it was altogether fitting. The angels and Lot say "Jehovah." In chapter 22 "Elohim" all through till Abraham calls "Jehovah" Jireh.

- 5. V'a-dam a-yin "And man was not"; it was the state of things.

26 - 7. N'sha-mah (breath) seems to me the act of respiration souffle; ruakh (spirit) (chap. 7: 22, etc.), the existence of respiration as life, spirit or life in us. God breathed into man's nostrils a nish-math khay-yim (breath of life), it is not there ruakh. Thus we have, in the Flood, all in whom was the nish-math ruakh khay-yim (breath of the spirit of life) - this spirit of life itself - ne-phesh khay-yah, a living soul, is all that constitutes individuality - personality - what taken together constitutes I - a person without reference to the body, though in it and living in it, and hence, if used for a dead body as being the apparent person. The ru-akh is the power of life which is exercised in us in breathing, the thing that acts, and in us lives, by breath. Man became a ne-phesh khay-yah (soul of life) by God's breathing the nish-math khay-yim into the formed and organised dust, and so there was a ru-akh which was life, and in the body maintained by breathing. God did not breathe a ru-akh, nor did man become n'sha-mah, or even ru-akh, but a ne-phesh. Ru-akh being the power of life, this word ru-akh is used of Him; it is the active power of God. As to the rest, I have remarked.

As far as I see without a concordance we have only ne-phesh khay-yah (soul of life), then ru-akh khay-yim (breath of life), or nish-math ru-akh khay-yim (breath of the spirit of life) The ru-akh khay-yim (breath of life) made man a ne-phesh khay-yah (a soul of life). The ru-akh khay-yim (breath of life) was in flesh, but no being was ru-akh khay-yim (breath of life), man was (became) ne-phesh khay-yah (a soul of life). Then, moreover, arises the question, is rle-phesh khay-yah (soul of life) said of any but man? It is said, Genesis 1: 20, 21, of what the waters brought forth, and verse 24 of what the earth. Whatever I suppose had ru-akh khay-yim (breath of life) was ne-phesh khay-yah (a soul of life). Indeed ne-phesh is itself breath or breathing. And this form of life, animal life (I suppose animal the same derivating) man clearly has. But the difference is immense of his becoming so by Elohim's breathing into his nostrils, so that we tou gar kai genos esmen

The object of Genesis 1 is not the Beschaffenheit (constitution). God formed the beasts of or from the ground; so Adam, dust from the ground, not a man from the ground, but dust, and then breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and thus from this breathing in of God he became a living personality - the offspring of God in His existence. Hence God says (chap. 3: 19) "and to dust shalt thou return," but that in no way affected that which was breathed into the dust, or spring in man from that divine breathing. And, as I have remarked, whatever divine intimation there may be in chapter 2: 17 or chapter 3: 3, in the execution of judgment, there was only reference to this world, not to the soul; all that was behind. Thus, "He drove out the man," was removal from God's presence, and his place before God; but, externally, it was only exclusion from Paradise.

27 The whole question of the soul's relationship to God and a judgment after death is untouched here, though, as a spiritual person, I may see separation from God to be eternal ruin. Gradually the instinct of man's soul was lit up by the declarations of the Spirit in the Old Testament, particularly the Psalms, but there was no revelation of life and incorruptibility till the Gospel; they were not brought to light. The Pharisees were right - they had concluded it from the Old Testament, and the Sadducees did not know the Scriptures and the power of God. But the Lord Himself draws it from "I am the God of Abraham," etc., and it is added, "for all live unto him"; death is only death as to this world and man's place there. This revelation has so much the more clearness that the original sentence was limited to that; all still lived to God. So of eternal judgment, it was part of Jewish faith, as in Hebrews 6, but formed no part of the original revelation. Wrath of God from heaven on men was revealed when the Gospel came in, for it met it.

The deep moral effect is justly pressed - He drove out the man - that the God of love, the Creator, should do; that cannot be too deeply estimated. It is rightly felt as judgment, when I know what God and a soul and divine favour means, but the doctrine of soul and life, etc., is not entered on in the passage.

So in Ezekiel, though "the soul that sinneth it shall die," it is still dealing with a living man, responsible on the earth; it may be used as a warning and threat, but its application is life on the earth in the land of Israel.

In 1 Corinthians 15 we have exactly the same statement as to the first man. He is ek ges, chotkos, and we see here that it applies to man as here in the body. It is mortal - sown in corruption - flesh - corruptible, i.e., it is the body - man alive on earth in a corruptible mortal body. It is the body which is always designated thus.

28 In speaking of blood it is always the life of the flesh, not of man, but of all flesh, though of man as flesh, i.e., in his animal nature. Indeed, in Genesis 9 it is carefully distinguished.

The life is in the blood, but He requires the life of man from his brother, because in the image of God He made man. See Leviticus 17: 10-14, and Deuteronomy 12, but I do not exactly know what da-mo v'naph'sho (the blood thereof for the life thereof) means. Query, if the accents be not wrong - the munakh under da-mo - and if it should not read, "for the life of all flesh (is) his blood," it is for his soul.

For v'naph'sho - with, or for the life of it, compare Leviticus 17: 14, twice, and Genesis 9: 4; from the last it is evident, I think, that the expression means in its state of living existence, flesh; v'naph'sho, is not to be eaten; and that state - of flesh ruined - lies in its blood. Thus, Leviticus 17: 14, becomes plain, "the life of all flesh," i.e., the subject life in flesh. The fact is simply stated at the end of the verse: ne'phesh kol-ba-sar' da-mo hu - "the life of all flesh is its blood"; i.e., the abstract principle - flesh's life - is the blood. The beginning of the verse merely adds that it is in its state of living existence. Genesis 9: 4, comes in to show that the term means with the life in it - flesh, with the life in it - or its state of living existence - which is the blood.

This makes it, I think, quite plain, and it is important too.

- 7. To go back to this verse; it is evident that it is the nature, the Beschaffenheit (constitution) of man, what he is really, and, at the end of the chapter, the woman's relationship with him in creation; it would have been quite out of place to have introduced her having the breath of life from God; it is not even said she had a living soul. In chapter I: 24 we have what the beast is, how he was created, the way he existed as a living thing; as this verse does of Adam, how he did. In chapter 1: 26 it is not said even that man was a living soul; his distinct place in creation is pointed out.

As regards Eve not having the breath of God breathed into her nostrils, it is not the subject of this chapter, but her relationship to ha-ish (the man); otherwise she is included in the ha-a-dam, who is made in the likeness of God. They were called ha-a-dam in the day they were created, and she is fully aware of the prohibition to eat the forbidden fruit as alike applicable to both (vv. 16, 17). No doubt this speaks primarily of Adam by reason of verse 18; but it is not the less certain that it is ha-a-dam, the race, that is contemplated - Gen. 3: 3 gives the command to Eve as to Adam, ha-a-dam had it; verse 18 begins a history by itself, so verses 7 and 8 are both distinct elements in the account. Adam is looked at as ha-adam - as the head of the race, but chapter 5 shows Eve was included, "Let us make Adam," but so God created ha-a-dam, male and female. This (chap. 1) is Adam's creature place, from Elohim - chapter 2: 8, his relative place with Jehovah, including Eve, verse 18 et seq; his relative place to Eve; chapter 3: 20, hers to all that followed. Chapter 5: 1, 2, both in respect of the whole race.

29 - 7, 25. All this is the sixth day.

- 8. This is a constituted place of present blessing and trial. He was not created in Eden, but of dust, and the breath of life breathed into him, that is all; the garden is formed, and he is placed there under such and such conditions. The whole scene is one of relationships, and the footing on which the man stood in every respect.

- 15 et seq: blessing, responsibility, purpose of union, conferred intelligent dominion; then his partner, but his own position was with God first. And though the woman was first transgression, yet the Lord says "Thou," and speaks to dam of the disobedience; for temptation never justifies departure from God.

- 19, 20. This implies a kind of knowledge given of God, which man has not now. Nature, as such, was much more, and otherwise the domain of man.

- 20. The first Adam is ha-a-dam, the second time simple l'a-dam (to man); that is, the first is man as such in his place, before God, put by Him in the place of authority, of which naming in Scripture is the constant sign. All was thus placed under his authority from God; this put him in his place with God as to this. God brought to him every beast, etc. But he, though in this place, with all authority from God (Psa. 8) found, in all that had been brought before him, no associate, no help k'neg-do (as before him), none to answer to what he was, and be before him as such. Adam, let him be ever so much ha-adam - the man - in this place of authority, found no companion for Adam.

30 Ma-tza (found), if not referred to ha-a-dam, must be referred to God, as bringing all this before him; the immediate antecedent is ha-a-dam, otherwise it must be referred back to vay-ya-ve (and he brought), verse 19.

- 21. This is after he is in Eden and dominion over creation, but the purpose (v. 18) expressed, before Adam in lordship is conscious of suited relationship in contrast with creation, and of the quality and source of Eve, when he receives her. In Christ there is necessarily more in His divine purpose of love - as man it is so also with Him; but He consequently takes her before the exercise of his lordship, but not before His title to it as exalted, see Ephesians 1: 22.

- 22 is Ephesians 5: 27.

- 23. NOTE. - Adam had the knowledge and consciousness of the manner of the formation of his wife, though it were done in a deep sleep - zoth (this) seems all through in contrast as well as hap-pa-am (the time), with the beasts. He gives her a name as well as them, but a name which in the most intimate way connects her with himself. If she was k'neg-do (as before him), it was that she was me-ish (from man). Yet it was in some sense the side on which he was connected with the animals. The hap-pa-am shows this clearly, as indeed zoth, though there is contrast, and this is important as being in creation itself, yet now called to walk together in the grace of life and in spirit; in k'neg-do there is neither male nor female, so truly is it a new creation. But here he gives her a name, as to the others, and Elohim brought her to the man; but then, spiritual things apart, he needed the help, it was not good he should be alone. She was not brought merely to know what he would call her; the identity too with himself, or derivation from himself, was his first thought. The cause of her name was in this. Still it was only one flesh. How thoroughly true and expressive is Paul's statement, "The man was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression," and "the woman was made for the man, not the man for the woman." In the creation she is put e'-zer k'neg-do (a help as before him). In the fall all passes with her, and Adam is I-shah, her man. But in Christ all is new, there is neither male nor female.

- 24, 25. These are, I apprehend, the remarks of the inspired writer.

31 I have noticed it in a measure, but the passage from chapter 1: 25, 26 is very remarkable and distinct; the day's work ends, so to speak, as to mere creatures of God's hand, with "God saw that it was good." Then comes His mind, God said "let us."

Query, What is man? He is first God's image - represents Him, and presents Him; that it might be rightly so, He created him in His likeness, but the point, as we see in verse 27, was His image. The beasts were l'min-ah (to its kind), but man kid mu the nu (according to our likeness); Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, conversely.

Man is the image and glory of God - stands out before God, as one that characteristically represents Him, showing His power and mind, and yet only representing and presenting Him. Hence Christ, in the highest sense, is the Image of the invisible God; he refers to God entirely, yet represents Him as a Viceroy. Besides this, Christ is God manifest, and so only fully presents Him; but we ought to present Christ, but that is another thing.

K' (as) or kath (according to) is not exactly "in," verse 26. We read of the likeness of the appearance of a man; the likeness of four living creatures - of their faces; the likeness was k' (as) coals of fire (Ezek. 1: 13). Seth was in Adam's likeness, the same thing man is according to the way God is seen and known, he is not the same, but answers to what God is, and is set forth as him in whom God represents Himself. The conscious centre of reflective power, though dependent on God, or not really representing Him, but so void of evil that it might be so, and his consciousness towards God abide, that he might consciously be in the place which was His image. The Viceroy has the King's power, not his own, or he is not one, but has the King's power, i.e., not in efficiency necessarily, but in title, and place towards those below him - "have dominion and power" is another thing.

But the peculiar place of man is most remarkable, he must be very miserable or very happy. No doubt, now, it is necessarily so, more than in Adam, because the knowledge of good and evil, and of God through the death of Christ is come in. But there was real likeness - no evil in man - though no holiness and righteousness and intercourse with God, free. A mind - I do not mean reasoning - having capacity for it, in communicated thoughts and feelings, as we know from his history in the garden - that which God could appeal to (not mere conscience), as competent to receive, and enter into, and return, as impressed, His thoughts; and so Adam even when guilty can, though wickedly, still about that which God is cognizant of. This is an immense point.

32 In "Adam, where art thou?" we have natural relationship recognized; "the woman thou gavest me," though thoroughly wretched, and wicked, yet deals with God, as the object of, and cognizant of His doings. And so does man now, though presumptuously, and wickedly. So God with Cain; he is able to understand God's moral reasoning. Now this was rightly so, less conscience before the Fall; he would own God, know goodness, know power, feel His goodness, know his place, know the beast's, know Eve's; have God's mind in respect of Himself, and His ways in creation; was competent, as looking to Him, to act naturally from him in his created place. All this was a great matter; in all this he stood alone. But the "image" was the place, the "likeness," glorious as it was, was needed for it; the "how" is not stated here, it is the fact that is stated.

Yet of course the word means, generally, something, but if I say "That man is very like his father," it is the fact, without saying what all the points of resemblance are, though, of course, there are such, but the fact strikes, when I may not yet see what it is in distinctly. And the fact here, as it is like God, is the important thing. I have no doubt it was in simply answering to the mind of God; a very different thing from reasoning to draw a conclusion, which is the proof of ignorance, and the opposite to what God does.

We can easily understand that, if God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, there must have been in kind, and capacity of being, what answered to God's nature, but in responsibility personally. It was as a creature - "let us make," so God created, but in making He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Hence in his living soul there was necessary association with God, or, as a sinner, exclusion with a natural capacity of enjoying the sense of it hidden for a time. It is not here a question of what the affections towards God were, but of the natural capacity; so Elohim speaks to them, which He did to none else, even when He blessed them, besides much else.

The angels are never said to be created in the image and likeness of God, as man is; I suppose they have the knowledge of good and evil, and so in creature righteousness and holiness, are so far more what God is. This, man had by the Fall, "the man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil"; this, therefore, was not the image or likeness.

33 Genesis 3

The order of this chapter is interesting. After the temporal judgment of death we have Eve, or life, first brought in; faith recognizes life above and beyond death, and judgment of death. Then Jehovah clothes man through death, and takes away nakedness, and then prevents access back to the tree of life - to nature's place in blessing - which, indeed, now would be perpetuated curse. Abel's is another element; he comes - approaches God by the slain lamb. In Noah we have another - the deliverance by executed judgment out of the old thing into the new. This is death and resurrection as baptism figures it.

NOTE. - Before Satan began to introduce, or could introduce, lusts into the heart of man, he produced distrust of God, and when that was brought in man was easily a prey - all was really gone. As to the way of grace, see then with what infinite goodness, and surpassing grace God attracts, and warrants confidence in the chief of sinners, in Christ.

- 6. It was dreadful - so deliberate and bad - yet how graciously met by Christ's being the woman's seed.

NOTE. - "Where art thou?" is the first great question. It was the first visit, and, as I believe, the first day. God was walking about in the garden - visited man - it was natural for man to be with Him.

Adam is addressed, and speaks alone; he is the responsible man. So the woman here takes her place again, sad as the excuse was, "to be with me."

- 9. God however called to the man - Ha-Adam; it is a terrible scene, and a terrible confession, an unnatural thing so to speak - "I heard thy voice, and I was afraid"; but the fig-leaves and the skins, long noticed by others - man's and God's covering - is most instructive and beautiful.

NOTE. - The Lord does not say in coming into the world, as in the garden, "Where art thou?"

34 In Isaiah 50 we have indeed, "Wherefore when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer?" but He came with the full knowledge of the state of man, as he was, in full, ripened sin, and utterly evil and wretched, in the state in which the full development of the fall, in all its effects here, had set him; and then in the very midst of this, and as taking his nature, without sin, but exposed to all the suffering, He says, in perfect grace, "Here I am among you." What a truth this is! No doubt atonement was needed to bring us to God - impossible without it - but at least God was with us here, and with us such as we are.

- 13. Query: the force of hish-shi-a-ni "cause me to be false or wicked"?

Elohim asks nothing of the serpent; with man and the woman he draws out the fact, and the conscience as with interest - with the serpent, it is only "because thou hast done."

It is to be noted too Elohim gives no reason to the conscience of the woman. He assigns her her lot. With Adam He enters into the cause, he had listened to his wife's voice, and slighted God's - the first was his excuse. So in verse 12.

- 14. It is remarkable how every part of this, to the end of the chapter, is external - government as respects this world; internal or eternal relationship with God is not touched upon, whatever may be implied or involved in it. The exclusion from the tree of life was de facto from living for ever in this world only.

- 15 is an exception, yet even that is accomplished in the earth.

The question of eternal life or heaven is not raised, separation from God, death in trespasses and sins, left to a divine appreciation of evil; only that man fled from God's presence, and God drove him out from the place of blessing, and there is no way back. Only we have the blessed parenthesis of verses 20, 21, faith in life, and divine clothing.

Why enmity between the woman and the serpent? Was Adam qua Adam held for overcome? and that it was in the hope of the seed that any resistance or hope began?

- 16, 17; and that Eve understood; how perfect all this is! The coming of Christ from heaven has brought out other light, but all this is earthly and governmental; the prophets and psalms had no doubt lifted up the corner of the veil into another scene of life.

35 I have noticed that all the judgments are temporal, or rather government on the earth, for the bruising of the head will be final; at any rate the conflict, and bruising of the serpent's head was not in Adam.

It is remarkable how God owns the superiority even in fallen Adam, he had to say to God, though the woman brought the mischief. So indeed Adam, "I heard," though indeed the history says "they heard." He was the image and glory of God - wonderful place - yet in the woman, the fall and the enmity; in the woman's seed, the conflict and victory. Eve then gets a name, not from Adam but from her children - Khav-vah (life), not Ish-shah (woman). It was not her proper title, I think, but still a title of life and blessing, for death was come in.

When the clothing by redemption comes in it is individual, for Adam and for his wife. It is remarkable that here this thought, with others as to man's condition, of Elohim, recurs as in the making - not in the present temporal judgment - only here it is Jehovah Elohim, not simply Elohim, "as one of us." It is not properly counsel, not even when He says "let us make," but it is association with others; others are addressed when "the man is become as one of us." It is the statement of a fact - but a statement in community of thought with others called "us" - but there is community of act in the other, and consultation, not of doubt, but together, "let us make," or "we will make," and "now lest he put forth," therefore Jehovah Elohim sent him forth, and "He drove out the man." Man becomes a Gershom as to the earthly paradise, his natural seat. This was definitive exclusion, more than the earthly judgments. These are the whole of man's relationship to God as such. Then he is the head of a race.

- 20, 21. This is wonderful grace of faith in life, and divine clothing; and it was present judgment before the driving out comes, which is a distinct announcement.

- 22, 23. It seems to me also that herein Adam was kept from the sin of presumption; it was mercy in the midst of judgment. Not that this is the only consideration; it was the arrest of presumption, as defeating God's plans.

I have often remarked that this chapter presents only the earthly, or governmental consequences of sin; but the truth is, whatever were the developments of this relationship, or the experiences of godly saints, which necessarily savoured of this truth, the full separation from God which sin causes, and is, was only brought out when He Himself was revealed, and indeed, could only then be. Indeed it is what is in Romans 1: 18.

36 NOTE. - Though I do not say historically, as they are separate statements, yet in the Spirit's mind, as presented by God; Eve's being the mother of all living where death had come in, and Jehovah Elohim clothing them with coats of skins, before they are driven out of Paradise, grace met their need by God's act, before they were driven from forfeited natural blessings (which they could indeed no longer so enjoy) by judgment.

It is carefully to be noted (I have already partially done so) that the sentences pronounced on the serpent, the woman, and Adam do not go beyond present earthly results, for even the bruising the serpent's head is his whole power over man which is on the earth; the whole question of the soul is behind More may be intimated in the distinct statements that come at the end of the chapter.

The first thing I notice in the end of this chapter is, there is no confession. Adam and Eve tell the truth as to fact, and God pronounces judgment accordingly, as He sees fit, but there is no moral action in their hearts apparent. The serpent is not asked, his judgment goes first by itself - enmity and final destruction by power through Him who had the heel bruised. We then get the present effects in this world on to death (where, note, death is pronounced on the man only as representative of the race, as before the life - breath of life - was communicated); but then we find faith on man's part as to life, Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living - this, after death was pronounced. Then God clothes them both. Life is not from Adam, so to speak, it is the woman's seed; but clothing, and putting away nakedness (the witness of sin, verses 7-10) is Jehovah Elohim's act; this is full of instruction - grace first brought and fully. Man is then driven out from the place of blessing, and all recovery of life naturally. This is the judgment, and blessing of man, as man before God; the history of the race comes in chapter 4.

NOTE. - Death also is a part of the personal temporary judgment of man here, which in certain aspects is an important point. The relations of a soul with God do not come in here, unless by mere analogy. Adam's calling his wife's name "Eve" is clearly a new thing, for he had, as united to himself, originally called her Ish-shah (woman) a supplement to Ish merely - now he (the sinful man) is wholly laid aside. The woman's seed is what God has recognised as that in which the original mischief was to be set aside. Sovereign grace for the remedy comes in the place, and origin of the sin and evil - man, as man, and Adam has no part in it - only he gets the good of it as having faith, as Adam, had here - he is clothed - here it is individual - there is neither man nor woman.

37 God then drives out the man, still the representative man, Ha-Adam - of course Eve with him - but in all this Ha-Adam is the representative man before God - the head of the race.

Even in chapter 4 it is "Ha-Adam knew."

NOTE. - Adam after that disappears; Eve expresses her thoughts and faith; the mistakes, but thoughts with Jehovah or God, are hers. The race is in its fallen - Adam - state; we have no Ish-shah any more, the whole scene is changed.

I have already noticed - lust was not the first thing with Adam, but distrust of God which opened the door to lust - and Christ's restoring confidence in God in the vilest of sinners. But there is more than this as regards Christ Himself. In Adam's case Satan got between Adam and God; the creature's place is dependence in confidence, from this Adam turned and got into sin. Satan insinuated that God had kept back, through jealousy, the forbidden fruit, because if man ate of it he would be like Himself; (Note: this is just what grace does with us, in wondrous mercy, in Christ before God.) Thus dependence was lost, and man acted for himself, for his own happiness - this was will - so that when dependence on and trust in God goes, necessarily will and lust follow. Now Christ, when tempted of Satan, was just the contrary; Satan tried to get Him to distrust God, and act on His own will for His happiness, to lead Him from dependence. The Lord met it by dependence, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh out of the mouth of God shall man live." This was dependence on God (as for the manna every day). So as to trust, "Thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God" - not try whether He will be as good as His word, which is distrust. Thus the wicked one could not get between God and Christ so as to interrupt dependence - could not touch Him, nor introduce it into His soul. When he tried it was in an open way and profitless, and he was rejected as an openly detected Satan, and that was all.

38 In the first instance, the most legitimate want, connected with will, would have been departure from God - taking the world by will without God.

Dependence is a special claim in a world departed from God, more than even Adam in Paradise, though every creature is dependent. Christ trusted God perfectly, so as to wait for His will; then, on the pinnacle of the temple, He trusted God enough to wait till the occasion came for the accomplishment of promise, and would not try it in His own time to see whether he was.

NOTE. - That God became a God of judgment is the consequence of sin; sin has turned Him into this; and man's knowledge of good and evil - He is holy, He is righteous - hence if evil comes in He must judge.

But with innocent man there was no judgment; He was blessed, with unfallen angels. Blessed be His name, He is love revealed in Christ - that is what He is. A child may know his father to be a judge, but he does not know him as such. In fine sin has made God a Judge.

As to Conscience and the Fall, it is, in one point of view, the result of the Fall. Man is set in an anomalous state, they are "as gods," "as one of us," in one sense; they have the knowledge of good and evil, but with this immense difference - God knows good and evil, but is as Supreme over it all; man, as a sinner, knows good and evil, but as a creature, in owning it, is subject to evil, he knows good and evil by being subject to it, by having sinned. God, moreover, the source of all good, knows all evil as something without, not of, Himself; man, the receiver of all good, knows it as in himself, subject to it in himself.

The first man was the failure of the creation under evil; the second man was, under God, the supremacy over evil. So the resurrection was the great point of evincement, for as death was the head and full power of evil, resurrection was the full triumph over it in man, even Jesus; hence Jesus became the second Adam after His resurrection; the power of manifested life in man, that is properly and fully, when He was manifested to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. He, previously to that, proved His competency in His human state, and became it, as having overcome evil - overcome evil with good - instead of being overcome of evil, when all natural good was made His, He overcame with good when all natural evil was made His. He had all quickening power in Him indeed while living in the flesh, but He was not the head as having been made perfect through all. But Adam sinned in Paradise, or Eve individually, and, as ejected, became the head of the fallen race. Christ acted faithfully in the world of sin, and as risen out of it, became the Head of the saved race - the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him. He was not subject to, but overcame evil; Adam in good and Paradise became subject to evil - such was the contrast.

39 The analogy of the first and last Adam seems carried very far, if we take our portion in Adam as excluded, and in the Lord, the last Adam, as risen, and gone in within the veil; for our position in one and the other is largely in fact and morally fully correspondent. Just as we have seen in the circumstances which made way, laid the ground, for their respective characters elsewhere, in the sin of Adam, and the obedience of Christ unto death, and taking the two together as in the opposition of final results, it is most instructive.

Genesis 4

This chapter, as already remarked, as a continuation of chapters 2 and 3, carries on, evidently, the question of sin into men's relationship with one another. It is not absolutely said that Eve gave Cain his name (Seth she did), but the thought is hers. Ha-Adam is merely the course of the race. Eve was Adam's Ish-shah here, but "Eve" is in sense; it was her thought on the Lord's mind of giving a seed; she has gotten a man - "Ish" - the name Adam gives himself in chapter 2; she came out of "Ish." She - Eve - on this great new event, had from herself, with Jehovah's will, and as from Him, a man, a born man, seed of the woman in the world. I say it was her thought; it is not "the Lord hath appointed," that was deference to His will. This, her feeling, though looking to the Lord; she looked at the gift, though she ascribed it to Jehovah; but it was man - natural man - a child of Adam really; evil, yet outwardly in the place God had set Adam in - a tiller of the ground. Abel's place was a place out of the natural place in which man was put, whatever brought him there; he kept sheep, a new and invented thing. In this relationship with God, he was clearly in faith, offering a sacrifice of slain beasts; Cain in nature.

40 Then comes out exasperated hatred; but first the immensely important ground it is all on - law and gospel. First, we have God still in intercourse with fallen man; He had clothed Adam - grace had wrought; next, acceptance if he did well - that is law - if not a khat-tath (sin offering) was there, ready for him; that was the ground he was on with God; as to his brother, as the elder, Abel would be subject to him. But what man is comes out; hatred is above all fear, and remedy or intervention of God. Sin against one's brother fills up the measure of sin against God, through which they were already cast out. There is, again, a present judgment as to the ground; and, besides hiding from God's face (which his own conscience tells him), he goes out - here his own act - from the presence of the Lord, not in sorrow - no humiliation in His presence - the despairing complaint of selfishness - and makes the world as comfortable as he can without Him.

I do not dwell on the evident figure of Israel, I have spoken of it elsewhere; the moral ground is what I look for here.

In Seth's case "God hath given"; it comes from Elohim's, - God's - own act, not "I have gotten" from "Jehovah"; here again Eve is in the sense, and all right. Subsequently the worship, or owning of God - connection of men with Him - was with Jehovah; a name of relationship. This closes this part.

This was the breaking out of an evil nature, when it was there. There cannot be a more important chapter, whether we consider the fact of Jehovah's intercourse with fallen man, or the ground He puts him on, or Cain's conduct afterwards, showing where his nature was. Yet it was founded on the intention of God with Adam. Cain's worship, after Adam and Eve having been clothed with skins, shows great indifference and hardness I think; he had the signs of sin and judgment always before him. Not so Abel; yet he approached by faith - it was Jehovah. Intercourse had given occasion to worship; it was duty, only duty in Cain; spiritually intelligent approach, which had taken notice of his state, and God's grace, in Abel.

NOTE. - Clothing is from God - sacrifice from man, only the true Lamb was God's Lamb. It is remarkable that Gin's worship should be connected with nature and the curse, of which he was daily cognisant; Abel's with God's act in grace, however noticed or apprehended, for slain beasts had been the means of clothing Adam's nakedness.

41 This chapter is a wonderful display of grace, after the fall and exclusion. Cain is nature, and the world after Christ's rejection.

The woman looks for the promise in nature, and connects Jehovah with it - "I have gotten," etc.

Cain's is the worship of nature, when doing what God had set man to do. But nature under grace is "vanity" (Abel); and if connected with Christ, i.e., coming, owning sin, and by death, is rejected of men, and under death must have, in itself, its sentence. In nature Jehovah owns right and wrong. If Cain did well he would be elevated, and his brother subject to him; if ill, there was sin; then sin is completed by murder, and then "instructed" (Enoch) world comes in; but grace, acting in the midst of nature, fails under the power of evil, i.e., of result here. So Christ has in death fully shown.

Then the world is built up - then we have God's appointed seed

- 1. It is "Ish" - not "a son," not "Adam," not "Enosh"; there is triumph in what is right, and promised, but according to nature - he is born after the flesh - not Seth "appointed."

"I have gotten from Jehovah"; verse 25, "Elohim hath appointed me" - but that was after Abel.

There is nothing new in it, but it is wonderful to see how complete is Eve's mistake as to the man from Jehovah. The first man - his blindness and natural insensibility to sin, and where it had placed him, and thinking to worship with what was the sign of the curse - then man of the wicked one - murder and falsehood, and driven out from God - the world and its enjoyments - the whole history of the first man.

Abel coming with the sacrifice, as the only way of access to God, receives testimony that he was righteous; God testifying to his gifts. Seth is the appointed man instead of both.

- 2. Cain was in his legitimate place according to nature; Gen. 3: 23. Compare Zechariah 13: 5, rightly translating the close - "from" is not amiss - "with" (His aid and blessing).

- 4. Abel's is wholly out of, and above nature and duty; it is faith.

42 NOTE. - Though there is no way back to life here, there is access to God while here through faith.

- 7. "Accepted?" (" and . . . door"); but the khat-tath (sin-offering) is at our door in Christ.

- 7. I have long thought that "sin-offering" is the true translation here, but I am confirmed in this thought, by the whole course of the history, in an interesting way.

In chapter 4, the question is of the state of man, and how, being such, he could approach God; the answer is, by expiatory sacrifice, which owned the state of sin, grace, and the remedy it afforded; or, rather, the self-offering up of another to God - it is "fat," not "blood" as for committed sin. It was not a question of guilt from sins, but of man's state, so here it is a sin-offering "if thou doest not well." The two things are quite distinct, one is the abstract consideration of man's estate before God; the other, getting an individually purged conscience before God.

I cannot but think that lap-pe-thakh khat-tath' ro-vetz' (sin will be the lier at the door) is a sin offering, meaning it is quite ready - "lying at the door" I suspect to have come from this. We have the doctrine of the eldest, as before of the woman - dependent - looking up to - and desire - and being ruled over. If it be a "sin offering," it shows how early it was spoken of by God - a thing known and recognised.

NOTE. - Not only was there faith, but God had intercourse with Cain, as having to say to man after the announcement of the woman's seed, and the skins - the person and the work.

It is objected that till the law there was no khet' (sin). In general, I apprehend this is just, and the difference important; as in Abel's sacrifice it was the state of man - "Where art thou?" - not what he had done. The burnt offering took this ground; it was not for particular faults which a man had committed, but that man, driven out of Paradise, alienated in sin from God, could not come to God as if nothing had happened; sin, and death for sin, and the glorifying of God as to it, must come in, in order to approach acceptably; and this was the general character of sacrifice till the law made imputable transgressions. It was the ground on which sinful and excluded man stood with God.

The blessed Lord, having come down to reconcile us, took this place - was made sin - and His perfected obedience was, when He was made sin, He drank the cup.

43 When I see sin really, as God sees it, I see it is putting away; I see what it is, only when it is put away. "If one died for all, then were all dead," they were away from God in sin, and He, in its judicial infliction, drinking that cup, was forsaken of God - just feeling it as it really was, as forsaken of God - separated from the presence of God - as to what His soul felt, and judicially. Hence when sin is presented to me fully (not merely my particular sins), Christ and His cross is presented to me - He, on the cross, a sacrifice.

And I think there is allusion to this in the Lord's word to Cain; I do not say it is to be translated "a sin offering," but sin has been laid at my door by God - how? - in Christ. No doubt I have sins to be dealt with; but, when the world is convinced of sin, the whole status of man is exposed - it is in the cross of Christ. So, even here, it is in that "lying couched at the door," that sin is laid there.

Still, it is to be remarked here that the case of Cain's not doing well is put, i.e., not the status of Adam; it is a positive and imputable fault which is supposed, then sin "lies couched at the door," and the word of course is so applied - sin-offering.

If the s'eth (accepted or "exaltation") refers to his exaltation above Abel, not to his place before God, though it be supposed withal, then khat-tath' (sin) refers more to sin itself. I am still rather disposed to take it as a sin-offering, at least Christ presented as such. It is not "at thy door," and it is a reply to anger and a fallen countenance.

There was no need for it, he well-doing - exaltation and acceptance of person; and in ill-doing - the remedy there.

It brings in the state of man before God, and in Abel's offering, that state met, and acceptance - the burnt offering; and thus, supposing sin, the remedy there. There was no need for irritation or hopeless despondency.

It may not be treated of formally till Leviticus 4; but, when these great elements are discussed, it comes in as a part of the needed punishment, and remedy of God for the sinner's sin.

Man was ruined, there were no offerings for sin; Noah offers, and the Patriarchs their burnt offerings (these last only in Palestine, and the young men at Sinai, Exodus 24), and in these cases sin-offerings were not in place; when the law had raised the question of imputable sins, then they were; but here, as a great principle, they are in their place. After the general principle in Abel, Abraham's offering (chap. 15) was the founding a covenant, but it was hardly a burnt offering.

44 As regards khet' (sin) there is another difference. In the o-lah' (burnt-offering) as Abel's, and all others, man approached God by it; he came by it freely to approach and worship God. So here Abel comes; the manner of coming, as recognising all truth, is in question. It was as referred to - it is willing, though due, heart-coming to God - but how to come, now sin had come in, and man was out of Paradise. But Cain's was positive, active sin, and a sacrifice required for that evil; not only man was a sinner and excluded, but he had committed a sin, and against his brother - hence, khet' (sin) was there; still I think presented by God in Christ.

I cannot come and tell the Jew who has slain the Christ, nor the world which has not believed on Him, of their actual sin, without presenting the sacrifice lying at their door; that is, in the grand principle of it, God's way of presenting their sin to them.

In this way the sacrifice of Abel, and Jehovah's words to Cain, have great importance amongst the great foundation principles here set forth; we have the burnt-offering, and sin-offering as the great foundation principles of relationship, and clearance with God, replying to "Where art thou?" and "What hast thou done?"

- 8. The completing of sin in its second part.

- 10. See Hebrews 12: 24.

- 13. Rather as in the margin, but in the sense of despair.

- 14. "Of the ground."

- 17. A city here first - the world.

But in Lamech we also return to the Jews.

Civilisation is not merely post-diluvian.

Is there nothing peculiar in va-y'hi bo'-neh (and he was building) instead of ba-nah (he built)? Is it not characteristic rather than historical?

It is nothing new, but very striking, how much more activity and interest there is in the history of Cain than of Seth. It comes first too - it is after the flesh - in fact Abel disappears before it - but less of the individual than of the world.

In Seth we have individuals only - they lived so long and died, that is all; but the progress of the world is largely recounted in Cain's family, cursed from the ground - hidden from God - but establishing cities, and arts, and luxury, and a sister whose name was "Pleasantness." But what a character it gives to the world - "despair" with God, and marked "not to be killed" with man city, and luxury without God - gone from His presence - is that the world?

45 We have another element, "not of the Father." Still it is in rejecting Christ what it is.

He went out from the presence of the Lord in despair, not in repentance - with his life safe. I cannot but think Lamech's a threat - "Have I done as Cain? I will be seventy-seven times avenged" (only I admit it true of the Jewish remnant at the end, as slayers of Christ).

We have the difference of the name of Seth, after we have learned that all is "vanity" (Abel - He'-vel). "God has appointed," not "I have got."

NOTE. - Here it is Elohim not Jehovah, the whole thing began again, so to speak, from Elohim, and so does chapter 5 completely; Cain is not owned at all; Seth is instead of Abel, though he takes the place of rejected Cain.

Then began a distinctive people of God in connection with the name "Jehovah"; not a people called out by it as Israel. Cain had gone out from the presence of Jehovah, and taken care of himself, settling down where Jehovah had made him a vagabond; but in Seth's time the matter began again, and Jehovah was owned on earth.

We have He'-vel's (Abel's) portion, a better one not here revealed.

Is there anything in the names Khanoch' (Enoch) and Enosh?

The condition of the world and man is singularly pictured out in all this.

26 is a distinct part. Enos is in contrast with Ish; nor is it simply Adam - the race. They took the lowly place failure and death put them in. And then (men) began to be separated to the name of Jehovah, and to be distinctively associated with Him, and worship Him. This was the knowledge of faith; it is not "on Elohim."

Nothing provokes the world like divine favour. But Jehovah reasons with Cain on the ground of responsibility, and present government or order, in a world of sin - doing well, a sacrifice of sin-offering if needed, and superiority here in the world. But this, though he did not care for God, would not do; his jealousy was of man enjoying this favour in grace - allowing it to run. Cain was utterly evil - no relenting - no profiting by God's patient goodness.

46 The order is, Abel accepted according to Hebrews 11 - faith; himself accepted and his gift - sin - death - judgment - propitiation recognised.

Cain, like the world, untouched by conviction, is not accepted; as the natural man, furious; Jehovah reasons with him, the case put before him, in grace, to do well, or, in grace, a sin offering is there - no relenting, nor profiting by it - fills up sin against his neighbour; judgment from the world (as Jews with Christ) - no hope or relenting - despair.

God had not said to him to leave His presence. Cain does and goes out from His presence himself, to dwell where judgment had made him a vagabond, and then comes the world - the world as God sees it in its true place before Him.

NOTE. - Cain and Abel - wicked nature and suffering in grace - both disappear; Seth only is man appointed of God - Christ, when He comes again.

Otherwise we have man wicked, the rejecter of God - Adam fully developed - Christ and suffering saints in grace, both pass away. Seth is the appointed man - Christ, as the Son of Man, to come.

It is a wonderful chapter - the whole history of nature and of grace.

Genesis

J. N. Darby.

<41004E> 46 {file section b.}

(Notes and Comments Vol. 1.)

Genesis 5

This begins quite anew; it is a new division of subject.

We have the moral history of the antediluvian; history, much more of Adam (man) in what proceeds; the rest was nothing, save Enoch. They lived and died; of Cain's family a good deal - they civilized the world. Here there was one Enoch, and the prophecy of a world to come.

- 1. As to Adam (man), it is only said the "likeness" of God, not "image," the point here being what he was, not his place.

So it is Adam, not Ha-Adam, the representative man. But we return to the first chapter here, it is "likeness," not "image." Man is still, according to place, the image and glory of God; this will be actually fulfilled in Christ. The answer in God's mind to "what is man?" for all failed in glory, is to be made good in Him; failed that is in responsible man. In James we have him made in the likeness. Christ is never said to be like God - nullum simile est idem (there is no "like" that is "the same"); He was the revelation of God, in a word He is and was God. But God created them also as an animal race, and both get the name, of the one created, as being this race; but here individually; there, but as one being characteristically. "Adam begat a son in his own likeness, according to his image"; in chapter 1 it is in His "image, according to his likeness"; but Seth was in likeness, morally, the same thing. Seth, though taking the place of Adam, and so according to his image, could not have Adam as that of which he was to be an image. Adam was created to be God's image, Seth was in a certain sense in this place, compare 1 Corinthians 11: 7, but he was not Adam's image, but according to it, but he was in his likeness. These are Adam's generations, not the woman's hopes, or faith, but what man, a child of Adam, was; in chapter 4 Seth is God's gift to Eve, here the "child of Adam" (male and female); Adam begat a son in his own likeness.

47 Nothing can be more striking than the way in which "God," and "Jehovah," are distinctively used here; "Jehovah" always connected with moral government; the dealings of "God" with those he had to say to.

Enoch walked with "God"; verse 22 - it is the ground which "Jehovah" had cursed, verse 29 - it was dealing of the righteous Governor.

God is the Being, the Originator, of all things, and is named in His nature.

Thus, in verse 1, we have "God"; so Enoch walked with "God," "God" took him. Verse 29, which "the Lord" hath cursed; so chapter 6 . 3. But in chapter 6: 5, we have "God," because it is what He is, Himself, in His nature; but it repented "Jehovah," here He is in heart occupied with His dealings with man; so chapter 6: 7, but in chapter 6: 12, it returns to "God's" own estimate, as "God," and so to the end. The Sovereign Originator of all is now going to set it aside, and begin a new world. In chapter 7 he begins to deal with man in a relative, so to speak, official way, and it is "Jehovah"; He is carrying out His thoughts and we have "clean" and "unclean." In chapter 6 He was a Creator, here a Governor, and see how they are brought together in chapter 7: 16. In chapter 8: 1-19, it is "God" setting up a new thing; verses 20, 21, special dealings with Noah and men. In chapter 9 "God" establishes the new earth; in the matter of Ham, verse 26, we have "Jehovah" again. The contrast of chapter 4: 1 and 25, noticed precedingly, is very striking; there was, though on divine ground, in a certain sense, assumption in verse 1; all is ascribed to sovereign originating grace in verse 25 - but this brings out a people, who know the revealed "God" in His name.

48 NOTE. - In chapter 1 God gives names Himself to "day" and "night," to "earth," "heaven," "seas" (not to "light," light was light on the face of the deep), to the things formed on the earth, or in the seas He does not - His word brings them forth, and they are good when He sees them - nor in this chapter, when they only come in as part of Elohim's creation, though in a special way does He to man. But in verse 2, we learn, when man's history is begun, God, not Jehovah, called their name Adam in the day He created them; that was the name, as a race. Adam gave Eve her name first Ish-shah, then in faith, as I suppose, Eve - Khav-vah - and he gave names to all animals.

NOTE. - Adam, though asleep when it was done, knew whence Eve was - Ish-shah is her natural relation to Adam - Eve (Khav-vah) her place after the fall, and revelation of the gift of the seed. The repetition of chapter 2: 19, that "out of the ground Jehovah Elohim formed every beast . . . and brought them to Adam" is to be noted. So he gave them names as his, and so to the fowls (fishes are outside this); but there was no helpmeet (k'neg-do). Then the woman is of himself, yet given a name - subject to him - his.

She is afterwards Eve, but now Ish-shah; names of large import; first, when death was written on him, he gives her the name of Eve - God had separated her - the seed of the woman was to come, and Adam retires as it were, accepts it by faith as promise and gives her the name, not of connection with himself, but of her posterity; death, with God's judgment on the Serpent, did not hinder her being Eve - she had that place by promise, not by connection with Ish; but in chapter 5 the race is taken up in both, on the ground of creation, and now fallen.

- 3. Seth is in Adam's likeness and after his image; he was like Adam (fallen), and represented him too on the earth. With Cain and Hevel (Abel) we have nothing of all this; they had their own history, but are not brought forward as any way representing Adam, or taking place, it was intrinsic moral walk, yith'hal-lekh' eth ha-Elohim (walked with God - not Jehovah), not merely relationship in government, as in chapter 4: 20.

49 - 27. Methuselah died, at the very latest, the year of the Flood - according to Septuagint 14, Vat. 6 years - all make him 969.

- 29. The Patriarchs here were in the Adam condition, calling on the name also of the Lord distinctively; not Cain's condition - their actual personal state, save Enoch, we do not know. This verse shows the Adam state and the Lord owned.

- 32. Shem was 98 when the Flood came; and it is likely these three sons were born after Noah was 500 years old, certainly all but Japheth. Probably none are named but those who escaped - born when apart from the world; he may have had, probably had, many others, unless he lived alone all his life till then. Twenty years before this he received the revelation of the end of all flesh; the direction for the ark was later, chapter 6: 14-16.

Genesis 6

Up to this chapter I see three characters of sacrifice. God covers our nakedness, that is our first need as sinners; next, coming to God in worship, we are accepted, personally, according to the value, and worth of our gift. Then God smells a sweet savour and says "I will no more curse." But this makes a new heaven, and a new earth; here earth, and note here, in spite of, and as meeting the wickedness of men, compare 6: 5; and it is Ha-Adam here. But then we have something more here; they were clean beasts. It was founded on God's mercy, according to His mind, an odour of rest. Abel's owned death, and needed sacrifice, in himself - came in faith, and all its value was on him; but Noah's was the sweet savour of Christ according to God's mind, acceptable in itself so as to bring favour and blessing on the world. Abraham's is more worship of God, who revealed Himself; doubtless he offered sacrifices, but it is not what is noticed; so at the second altar he called on the name of Jehovah.

50 - 2. Jude and Peter seem to make the B'ney ha-Elohim (sons of God) the angels; but God effaced all this in the deluge, and so may we; but the Titans and mighty men, heroes, find the origin of their tradition here.

I have little doubt this is purposely obscure, but the language here, in itself, tends to the thought that B'ney Elohim (sons of God) were not of the race of Ha-Adam (man).

"Wives" is not right; nashim (women) is not necessarily "wives." They chose those they liked, and compare verse 4; and query there if it be not "and also after the sons of Elohim went in to the daughters of men, and they bore to them; these were the heroes, mighty men which were of old, men of name"; these were Nachsatz.

- 3. "Jehovah said" - all is of Jehovah till the historic recital, verse 10. "My Spirit shall not always strive with man," in his wanderings - he is flesh; "yet his days shall be," etc.

Yadon, from dun (judges, contends with), rightly "strive" or "plead" I cannot doubt; it is the regular sense of din or dun, and even where it is judge, very often the judging is a judicial striving of God with man; see too the noun.

- 3, 4. Here we return wholly to the race of "Ha-Adam."

It is a question whether akharey-ken asher does not mean "after that," "thereupon that," and no stop, or only a comma between "them" and "these"; Asher (that) is not "when," or "als"; akharey-asher (after that) is clearly so used, and I see not why akharey-ken asher; asher is not "when," that I know.

I can understand two distinct classes here, but they seem to have subsisted together, though the first may have, in the first instance, preceded the second. They may have been Cain's progeny; another offspring of the unholy mixture of the sons of God and daughters of men. Certainly the two are brought out as bringing about the Flood, they both characterised the epoch which brought about the Flood - "those days."

The principle is the mixture of those who are of God with evil; but I am not aware that B'ney ha-Elohim (sons of God), is ever used for men. Job 38: 7, they are surely not men, but angelic; so Job 1: 6. B'ney El khay (sons of the Living God) in Hosea 1: 10 (in the Hebrew 2: 1), is surely different. Judges are called "Elohim," but not B'ney ha-Elohim (sons of God). But there is no question of that here; so that the usage is certainly for beings angelic, not human, in nature; see Jude. I cannot for a moment doubt the force of this B'ney ha-Elohim (sons of God), and b'noth ha-Adam (daughters of man); and Jude quite confirms it. It seems to me also that akharey ken is not "afterwards" but "after that"; i.e., the consequence of this alliance; they were Titans and such like. All these traditions had a source. It may be questioned if the nephilim (giants) and gib-bo-rim (mighty ones) are identical.

51 But then, afterwards, only the general state of the race of Ha-Adam (Man) is spoken of. The sons of Anak are called nephilim; elsewhere giants are "Rephaim"; the connection with the traditions of giants, Titans, etc., seems evident.

I cannot help thinking that the war of Titans (mythology), and the details referred to in them, are directly connected, not merely with the fact of the deluge, but - though mixed up with the original desire and temptation, "ye shall be as gods" - with the apostasy of angels, and the frightful oppression, war, and corruption, and open rebellion against God. No doubt Scripture - the Spirit of God - has clothed all this dreadful evil with a veil of brief words, and the pious mind will see the divine wisdom, and perfectness of this, yet enough, as in so many cases, to explain all the various traditions of the heathen world as to it, and that is all we want. The tartarosas of 2 Peter, and the sinning angels of Jude; the genealogy of Titans, and their end are too closely connected not to give a character to the history of the world before the Flood, which accounts for its being passed over. It is curious that these poor slaves of the enemy while worshipping the gods who, they alleged, destroyed the Titans, yet honoured these as illustrious, and the origin of creation; and how Satan had succeeded in making the righteous Noah and his family, who were spared, into fallen gods, though they owned the judgment on apostasy which had spared them. But such is man, if not kept of God.

They are called giants or nephilim, giants I suppose earthborn; all this history is their being men of renown. Ovid says, besides the violence against men they would have aimed at heavenly rule, but were judged. Yet the giants and Titans are said to have been in contention; the oppression of the heaven-assailing rebels, who would have introduced all this, may be here alluded to.

52 Hesiod's making only three ages before the Trojan war is remarkable; he very likely meant to compliment his ancestors - the common bent of poetry.

He says:

Titenes upo zopho eeroenti kekruphatai (the Titans have been buried in murky darkness).

And again tois ouk exiton esti (for whom there is no coming out).

And again before this he says: kai tous men Titenas upo chithonos euruodeies pempsian kai desmoisin en argaleoisin edesan (and sent the Titans beneath earth, whose ways are open to all, and bound them in grievous chains).

I have sometimes thought that in this verse (4) two classes of persons are referred to - the giants, and men of renown. They were men of renown (I apprehend the article in the Hebrew is emphatic), the builders of Babel aimed at it; it is possible that the mythologists mixed up this story with it. I apprehend certainly it is "the" giants were in the earth in those days, and also after that the sons of Elohim came into the daughters of Adam, and they bore to them, the same were mighty men which were of old, men of name - of the well-known name, an'shey hashshem, the men of name.

I do not in the least pretend to say how the impiety against heaven was shown, nor disentangle all the mythological accounts, but the great facts seem plain; Jude must of course be looked at, his subject is apostasy; Peter's, just judgment - apostasy (Jude) as leading to judgment.

With Jude, the angels are cast down, and not seen, they are upo zophon (under darkness), Sodom and Gomorrha prokeintai deigma (lie there as an example) in the earth; this is all fitting.

In Peter, we have it therefore with the Flood - the world's judgment, and a remnant saved - judgment being his subject, and an elect remnant. The reserved judgment no heathen could know, Satan would not teach them that, for it was responsibility was there; the eternal judgment, or of the secrets of men's hearts, was not his subject of course - now that full salvation is come in, he may reduce men to this level, quod nota, and so he does. Hence the importance of full grace for deliverance from him.

NOTE. - Milton - I do not know what men of taste will say - was a miserable engrafting of all the heathen mythology on what was, after all, error so as really to make a fresh heathenism; that is the effect for the imagination, and so merge the power of what approached to truth in it. With most beautiful poetry, no doubt, it is a very mischievous book; indeed I have ever thought it so since I read it. But he was full of various learning of this kind, and turned Scripture scenes, and his views of truth (which was not the truth) into it. Purity mixed with corruption is corrupted purity, and that is not purity at all, but as an effect, and an evil worse than new corruption, save indeed, as the word implies, that it is always that, for corruption always implies something good corrupted, there is no evil created. What God has had to bear with in man! but He is perfect in all, and oh! how great the grace which has brought, and brought us, into the perfect light in grace and truth by Jesus Christ.

53 The Satanic idolatrous version of divine facts, as to God or man, with which truth is connected, having its origin in what, in itself, truth had to tell - this truth, as given by God, both gives us the positive blessing of itself, and explains, and guards against all that Satan derives from it.

Apply this to the corruption of Christianity. I do not doubt that this system will come in again in the gods, mauzzim (Dan. 11: 38, 39), and that Satan will thus, where he exercises his direct power, so rule the world. How great the deliverance of being in the light.

NOTE. - That the evil being in the form of a serpent was called aphophis - the sacred asp - or the giant in Egypt, he was also called the brother of the sin.

- 5. But besides this, man's - Ha-Adam's - wickedness was great upon the earth; I say, besides this, for it was general, though this may have had a great deal to say to its coming in in this shape. Rol-hay-yom is surely "continually" not "every-day" - "all the day."

- 5. "And God saw" - He sees all things; He cannot forget His faithful ones, and He does nothing, but He makes it known to His servants the prophets.

- 7. Ma-khah (to blot out), is a very strong word, "wipe" or "blot out," "destroy."

- 9. His walking with God was not merely the acknowledgment of Jehovah, which he did, but "walking with God" - his moral character and walk - fear of God like Enoch.

- 11. So the earth was corrupt before God. We have the origin here of diaphtheirai tous diaphtheirontas ten gen (to destroy those that destroy the earth), Rev. 11: 18; but it is only in the Apocalypse, and thus Hebraic in language, but in 1 Corinthians 3: 17, is the same, save dia.

54 - 13. All is simple judgment here, there is no intercession. We are not on the anticipative ground of grace in communion, but simple deliverance in judgment.

NOTE. - When the end of all flesh came, the spirits are in prison, yet it died.

- 18. Noah stood alone for the covenant "with thee."

There are two things here: the declaration of not repeating the curse on Adam as to the ground, and the non-repetition of the Flood. This was founded on sacrifice. The new world, as this earth, was founded on sacrifice, the first on judgment; then the curse, here the curse no more repeated; with man's nature fully seen, God acted on the sacrifice, not on it.

As to labour, partial relief, see verse 29.

- 7-12. I cannot but think the raven and dove emblematic, though not a type; yet the ravens brought food to Elijah.

- 11. Ta-raph, "pluckt off" or "fresh" - not an old dried one to be found anywhere.

- 12. Where the dove could rest, Noah could; so blessed be God, with us; yet then, no sure rest, now sure.

- 21. We have here the propitiatory character of the sweet savour of Christ's sacrifice. It was not a sin-offering, bearing, and putting sin away, but one which met the mind of God, as to His sense of sin, by the perfectness of the sacrifice - a reyakh hannikhoakh (odour of the rest) to Him; so Jehovah said el-lib-bo (in his heart).

- 21. The word as to the curse is this - Noah was to comfort man concerning the work of his hands, because of the ground which the Lord had cursed; it does not say the curse was gone, but there was comfort in labour as to it. But further, there was to be no repetition of the curse, or the Lord might have been always at it, for all the imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil and that continually. But there was this on the ground of sacrifice, "the Lord smelled a sweet savour, and the Lord said in his heart, I will no more again curse," neither would He smite the earth with a flood. He would not again act as He had done. And the effect of this sweet savour is very striking, not in changing God's mind, but in revealing what He is - the source of peace.

Love was free in righteousness, righteousness glorified in the sacrifice, the sacrifice love had provided. The Lord had seen that the imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually, and the Lord said, "I will destroy." But now, the sweet savour of the sacrifice was the ground of action - what drew out the heart of God - moved it in grace, and could because righteously; hence, though seeing all the evil, acts on the sweet savour. If I deal according to what man is, I must always curse, for the ground of cursing is always there as spoken of (chap. 6: 5, 6). Hence "I will not again," do it, or act as moved by what is in man (for there is only evil), but on the ground of the sacrifice offered. Here as to the world, for the old world was, as to dealings of God, left to itself, only with a testimony, and was founded (besides Cain) on "He drove out the man." This world was passed away, and sacrifice was the basis of God's dealings in testimony as to this. In the old we had full individual testimony, as Abel - Enoch - but they by cross or heaven left the world they belonged to outwardly. This had in view the world itself, and the rainbow was given in pledge, and appears in the throne, in Revelation; when in chapter 11: 19 God is taking up the earth we have the ark of His covenant, and the Lord begins again with the Jews. Revelation 4 has a far wider range; He is Creator and all created for Him, and redeems out of nations, peoples, tongues, languages. And this opens a good deal the book of Revelation. In chapter 4 the throne is set in heaven; it is the heavenly throne making good in power the universal title. In chapter 11: 19, the temple of God is opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant is seen, and then the Jewish people immediately come on the scene, and the wars and judgments. In chapter 5 angels and all even ept tes ges praise and glorify Him that sits on the throne; the elders and living creatures fall down before the Lamb who has redeemed.

55 - 22. It was yet a remaining earth.

Genesis 9

This chapter gives Noah's family and personal fall, and the judgment on Canaan, son of Ham. It is Noah's personal history and prophecy; but it was the fall of the head of the new world, with all its consequent history. Babylon was another thing - association to make a centre to themselves without God. Then God constitutes nations out of a family, or three families, at most. It is the actual basis of the state of the existing world - the world such as it is.

56 - 2. What a different dominion from Adam's! (chap. 2: 19, 20). God there, as Creator, puts all living animals under Adam's power; he names them. Here, God is a preserver, soter, but the animals are merely placed in Noah's power, and fear, the character of relationship; Noah is their destroyer, whom they fear. Blood is put into his hand in the way of government, for blood shedding, life taking, was in the earth. It is clearly a setting of the whole thing upon a new system, and footing (compare Gen. 1: 28, 29).

- 6. This puts evidently the image of God on a different footing from moral qualities.

- 20. The history of Noah, and his patriarchal prophecy.

- 26, 27. Is it intended, the difference of Shem and Japheth? Jehovah, the name of relationship with Shem - Jehovah, the God of Shem; and Elohim, simply the fact of divine power and providence - "God shall enlarge him"; he gets the world, as such, when direct relationship is not established in the world; this is the basis of the world's history.

The whole chapter gives the relationship of God with the new world and its order; this is the world's history in general, in prophetic plan according to God.

Genesis 10

This chapter begins that historically. It is a general history of the local planting of the nations of the earth; not a date of an event - the geographical arrangement of the world. It looks back, and sees the earth partitioned out, and traces the families from their sources.

The world is here ethnologically arranged, as to races and families; morally, in chapter 11: 1-9, and at the same time nationally, as distinct countries. We have here the central family before God; but there is another fact, the earth was divided (v. 25).

- 5. Parad (separated) - not palag (divided). They separated from one another, and so settled; this verse is evidently after the confusion of tongues, so verse 32. Verse 19 shows it to be of Moses's time, only Nimrod and Peleg are as special facts noticed on the way.

57 It is remarkable how Noah entirely disappears after his fall and prophecy. Headship over the world there was none; but first association, and then individual energy.

- 6-8. We have Ham, Cush, Nimrod.

- 8. I do not think Nimrod was the immediate son of Cush, it may be, he was of his family. The chapter takes up the different families, as Mizraim, Philistine, etc.; then Nimrod is singled out from his beginning an empire. But Babel was there before he began, as beknown there to this day.

- 10. I suppose Nimrod was after the dispersion; Babel was the beginning of his kingdom. It does not appear if the division of the earth was before or after. The dispersion was judgment - the division, arrangement, and man's life shortened by half. Conquest may have been after this, or the arrangement consequent on Nimrod's violence; in Scripture they are independent facts. The first fact is Nimrod - imperial energy; the second, general ethnological location as a fact. The judgment on the family of men, is what brought the ethnological division about, verse 5.

- 22-25. Shem, Arphaxad, Salah, Eber, Peleg. If Ham's family had the same length of life, Nimrod was long contemporary with Peleg. Peleg was born some sixty years or more after him; but up to Peleg the ages were, say 430 years. Peleg lived only 239 years, he died, according to Hebrew chronology, 340 years after the Flood, he was born 149 years before the death of Noah. Nimrod with similar ages died 87 years after Peleg and was contemporary with him all his days. The whole period of the lives of the members of Shem's family is not noted, so that the Spirit would draw our attention to it there, chapter 11; here the change is the important thing.

- 25. I suppose, with many others, the division of Peleg to be a distinct thing. According to Hebrew chronology, Noah died 10 years after Peleg. The Sept. Chron. of course alters their relative dates; according to this, Peleg was born 401 after the Flood; I think Nimrod lived say from 267 to 576, Peleg to 510. If we accept the Hebrew chronology, this division was in Noah's lifetime, indeed long before his death; if that of the Sept., not so; at any rate, I apprehend, after the dispersion. It seems a kind of orderly settlement - a distribution. Remark how Noah has disappeared; his authority was lost. Where was he when the tower was set about? The dividing, besides their record, is the great subject of this chapter.

58 NOTE. - All the present mighty ones are Japheth. Of the four empires, Persia (Elam) alone was Shem, and favoured the Jews; and, as the Rationalists say, Shem was monotheistic, which is true - "Jehovah, God of Shem." They did not know the true God without revelation surely, but providentially were not Jovists - mere mythological heathen, i.e., of the four, for the Assyrians were idolators, and were of Shem.

After Nimrod and Mizraim, for Ham began, the great powers of later days have been Japheth; Asshur was Shem, but he never pulled down Jerusalem, nor built it up as others did; perhaps Nebuchadnezzar was Ham, the first Chaldean empire was. I suppose "went forth Asshur" (v. 11) is right, for certainly they had Asshur for their first great god in Assyria. They had really the longest, and, on the whole, greatest empire; but though a rod for Israel, they never came into collision with God's throne in Jerusalem, nor supplanted it; Sennacherib would have done so. As far as Assyria is concerned, the alleged monotheism of Shem is a fable; they were idolators as the rest.

Genesis 11

This was their first descent into the plain, where they would have centralized themselves, and were dispersed. They would have humanity one - a kind of republic; God made nations and tongues of them. Then Nimrod began an empire, and afterwards there was some kind of partition among them of the known earth in Peleg's time.

- 2. Mikkedem, eastward; the word seems to me thus formed - it is used as in the mouth of a person speaking in relation to himself - a person to the east of me is, of course, coming, speaking, or looking from the east, thence mikkedem, eastward.

2 Chronicles 4: 10, "the right side of the east end," i.e., the right side in relation to one looking towards it, for it faced the south, and was not to the east of the person, therefore not mikkedem, but ked'mah (eastward); so mikketheph, on the right side; so I take mimmul (on) to be opposite the south; so 2 Chron. 5: 12.

59 Chapter 10 is practically a parenthesis; this chapter continues from chapter 9, or begins afresh as the next noticed fact, and settles providentially the state of the world after Noah; here, the "Lord" is dealing - "God" began the world afresh with Noah in chapter 9.

The history of the old world after the flood is ended, and the new form of men's relationship - the world, not Noah's family, but nations, tongues, etc. - is established.

To the end of this chapter we have the genealogy of Abram, but not the Lord's dealings, though in fact the call had come, but the action is Terah's.

- 1-9, comes before chapter 10, and goes by itself, showing how, by the judgment of God, historically the dispersion of mankind, came about. This closes the tol'doth (generation) Noah; and now the origin of the whole state of the earth.

- 10-32. These verses go with what follows - Shem's family, they are the distinctive tol'doth (generation) Shem.

- 2. Bik'ah (a plain), a low river plain.

- 5. B'ney Ha-Adam (sons of man) again.

- 10 begins the generations of the family God owned - the history of Abraham's race - the people of Jehovah - He was the Lord God of Shem.

- 19. Diminution of half the duration of life, connected with the regular settling of the earth; not the spreading of the various stocks and branching off of families.

- 24 et seq. According to Jewish chronology, i.e., as given in the text, the last born of Terah's three sons was born only four years after Noah's death.

Chapters 12, 13. These two chapters give the whole position consequent on the calling, and its realization in the heavenly place of faith, with the contrasts of weakness and worldliness.

We have the general promise on which the faith was built, and Abraham distinguished and separated.

Genesis 12

This chapter evidently begins a wholly new matter, and relationship with God.

God had formed the world, and called Abraham out of it to be in it to Himself, and deposits all blessings and promises in him as a head of race; it is the beginning of promise to men - save outwardly, no more flood - and it is not to men, but to a chosen person, and then to his posterity, as taken up for God by Himself in grace.

60 The interesting points of detail I have noticed elsewhere, but this is the place they hold in the history; it begins a new one, and promises, and blessings to descendants.

God elects, reveals Himself, calls out to Himself, and deposits promises. Here the path of faith is entered on, as a stranger in the world which God had formed by judgment - the world around us.

Now, separation from Terah - natural ties - comes first; going down into the world, from natural motives, at the end of the chapter. In the first case, he does not reach Canaan at all; in the second, he leaves it, and denies his wife - Jehovah was forgotten - but he is well off through it. The true relationship of Christ and the Church must be lost when we get into the world.

Abram is a stranger with an altar, but none while with Terah, none in Egypt; they belong to the place of faith, not exactly to the revelation by which God calls, but by the revelation of Himself, by which He associates with Himself in the place of promise, and this brings in necessarily the seed.

We have seen sacrifice for Adam, in Abel, and in Noah, here an altar - worship on the revelation of God Himself (in promise), or that carried on as a known relationship with God. But then in verses 7 and 8 it is immediately connected with Israel and the land; he was in the place of promise. The general testimony brought him out as the Lord commanded him, but worship is only in Canaan. Here note too, as regards the promise and its going, Abram's seed; the descendible quality, though actually enjoyed in the path and place of obedience has nothing to do with a nature, or relative place with God in virtue of the sin, or goodness of that nature.

Abram is shown, called by God's revelation of Himself, and receives the promises; not as Adam, a father of a race in his image, and exclusion from God's presence; there is the path of faith, but God calls and gives, and that to the seed too.

It is not descendible nature and place, but grace and promise - he is a stranger too by faith, out of the world - not out of Paradise, and God's presence, by sin. "I am a stranger with thee," so we as to this world, but besides we sit in heavenly places - we are let in by righteousness (through one Man's obedience), and belong to Christ (as his children to Adam); we are not strangers in our Canaan, but in the world we are; but in our walk we are, for spiritual wickedness is still in heavenly places. We see how union with Christ has given us an entirely new additional element to Abraham; Abraham had not so much as to set his foot on, nor have we, actually, as men in the body, but we are sitting there in Christ.

61 NOTE. - We pass here definitely from great general principles, in which God is revealed, to special dealings with one specifically called out into relationship with Him.

It is all Jehovah, not that that is the particular name of revelation - that is El Shaddai; but it is not Elohim, but Jehovah's dealings, only he is shown to be Elohim as One who condescends to man - is the Source of blessing, and who executes judgment, looked at as an historical fact; chapters 17: 3-14, and 19: 29. See also chapters 21 and 22, in the last God Himself looking for absolute obedience and confidence - a contrast with Eve and Adam. But the dealings are Jehovah's; hence, note, we have the question of man's ways in the relationship into which grace has called, and by which conduct is judged - not mere right and wrong in detail.

- 1. God appears to Abraham, causing him to seek the country; he does so in the land (v. 7), and he builds an altar, it is the ground of worship. This he renews as his habitual portion (v. 8); having none in Egypt, he only returns to the one he had, at the first, on coming back.

This personal designation, instead of dealing with Ha-Adam, is most remarkable; and setting the blessing distinctively in one called out from the system which God had settled as the world. Abraham is called out of his country; his heavenly place is brought out only, when he has not so much as to set his foot on, in the country God had shown him.

"Had" is right here, see Acts 7: 2. What has misled many is supposing Abram to be Terah's eldest son; verse 31 clearly depends on this.

- 2. How is heyeh thou shalt be? It? If it be the name, it is, I suppose, "in thee shall they bless."

- 3. "I will curse" - pronounce a judicial curse, pronounce a curse arar (he cursed), him that curseth, speaketh injuriously, wishing evil-kalal (to curse). Here clearly it must be Jehovah not Elohim and the creature Ha-Adam.

62 This verse then goes back to chapter 10: 32, in grace.

- 4. Terah was 130 when Abram was born, or a trifle more, i.e., the time between his death and Abram's departure, 205 - 75= 130. Terah begat Nahor at 70; there were thus some 60 years between Nahor and Abraham, but most, or a great part, of this was passed in Ur of the Chaldees. Lot was born there, and I suppose Milcah married to Nahor.

- 5. They had been some time in Haran.

- 6. This is the root of perseverance of faith; and being a stranger, he could not have what he was called to.

- 7. But the Lord's revelation of Himself, in the place Abraham was called to, reveals to him the way he would have it, and is the ground of worship; this continues as his condition - a tent and an altar. Still promises are on earth here.

- 10. Nothing wrong apparently, but, when tested by the difficulties of the place of faith, he does not walk by faith, nor consult divine wisdom and will for guidance. He acts on the wisdom of sense, but that is Egypt; and this goes further, he must conceal the full truth there.

The world takes up what belongs exclusively to the man of God, but is judged for it; the man of God had denied its being exclusively his, because he had lost his own place of calling with God. This is the forgetting the Church and distinctiveness of blessing where we are called.

The call and blessing of Abram is most deeply important. The world's history had been gone through - the Adam fallen - the world formed by man's sin - Babel - his multiplying and forming settlements - and the earth divided - countries were formed - and then a kingdom or empire by man as a mighty hunter still connected with Babylon. Now we get, not merely individuals called by grace, or walking in godliness, of and in the midst of the race - one of the families and countries of the world - but one called out of the scene which God Himself had settled. Countries were that order; Abram is to get out of his, and blessing established and settled in him as a stock apart. It is not dealing with Ha-Adam in his responsibility, but positive purpose and grace calling out and conferring a blessing. It is on another principle from man's responsibility.

Then countries are left behind as the things called out of; in the millennium they will be taken up - all the families of the earth (ground) will be blessed; but here blessing is deposited in a called out one - further, "I will make thee a blessing," nothing more full or complete than this. Did man, or angel, or any, wish to know what a blessing was, look at Abram. "In thee," it is said, "shall Israel bless, saying Jehovah make thee as Ephraim and Manasseh"; he was blessed of God so as to be a model and pattern of blessing; so we, through infinite grace, in a much higher way, that in the ages to come, He might show the exceeding riches of His grace, in His kindness towards us by Christ Jesus. Hence Paul, in the personal consciousness which we have of it through the Holy Ghost, says, "Would God that not only thou, but all who hear me this day were both almost and altogether such as I am, save these bonds." He was a conscious model of blessing, and that is the true Christian state, nor does any aright, else, truly honour God, when we think of the grace given to us in Christ - in His own Son; things that angels desire to look into are for us - a place in Him above creature name - and not merely glory, but blessed in Him, one with Him and loved as He is loved, and in the same blessed relationship as He is in with the Father.

63 NOTE. - In chapters 12, 13 and 14, we have the relationship of the called in the earth with the world; failure is seen, but in general it is "called out" and "leaving it" - perseverance in heavenly separatedness from it - leaving, because of the promise, the world to the world, and, in the end, full victory over it, and blessing in it from the Possessor of heaven and earth under Melchizedek. In chapter 15 we have the principles on which, by faith, the called is sustained in going through it, while not enjoying the effect of the promise; while chapter 16 is the failure, and here the earthly people are under oppression of the free but must submit. In chapter 17, the inheritance of the world is brought out by the covenant of circumcision, and Sarah - the free woman, under the new covenant, is mother of the heir, for He was rejected under the old. Here, mark, however, it was historically a covenant to keep a covenant in the flesh; Israel had to keep it, and execute it, and one who did not would be cut off; it was imposed, the bought servant was to undergo it - it was his duty. This was connected with faith, i.e., the position of the believer - he was father of many nations before Him whom he believed, for this hangs on chapter 15 (compare Romans 4); still the word is, "Thou shalt keep," Gen. 17: 9. Now in Christianity, the seal of faith is a gift - it is the Holy Spirit, and it is power, "after ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise - earnest of the inheritance, till the redemption of the purchased possession," and baptism, which has the form of outward recognition, is conferred - granted, "who can forbid water?" "what doth hinder me to be baptized?" it was more in association with Jewish ground and ways of relationship with God.

64 The commission in Matthew supposes the residue of Israel all right, and sends out to gather in the Gentiles, all baptizing them according to the new light. Paul, though he owned and submitted to it, for all was to be linked together, was not sent to baptize, but to preach the gospel in power.

Even this, however, did not impose a law on flesh, nor seal a promise by man's act, but implied remission of sins, and deliverance, complete by death and resurrection in Christ - that immense saving, and divine life-giving boon, which is given through Him.

Hence, though they came under it by the call of God, it was, in form even, a conferred benefit; they were baptized - the Church baptized them to confer the benefit, and admit them by death and resurrection into its blessings, and standing before God; thus, in ordinance, the character is opposed - the seal of God is the Holy Spirit. Circumcision is before the birth of the son of the free woman; hence we find it also as to time in connection with the effort to have the promise by law - the unbelievingness of the vessel of promise - Sarai.

Genesis 13

Now there is giving up because he had his portion; thereon the Lord leads him to the full knowledge of his own portion, this leads to his building a new altar. Now he is finally victorious over the world; this produces no altar, but blessing and praise through the royal priest. Hitherto we had altars - relationships of faith turning to worship.

- 3. Bat-t'khil-lah (at the beginning).

- 4. Barisho-nah (at the first).

There is the true point of return, but no progress; but he returned to the altar there, and there he called on the name of Jehovah - cared for meanwhile, but no calling on the name. The Lord's prayers are as little possible in a strange land as the Lord's songs are unfit.

65 - 8, 9. It is a difficult place, where grace must separate; but it always yields as regards self and the world. It gets what its desire would rest in, though only by gracious conduct, the heavenly place and promise. This is not the cross, but the spirit of grace. Self goes necessarily towards judgment, because it does not know itself; all this is very instructive.

When the world and self are given up, the place of promise is more measured and known. Abram was fearful - it was want of faith. Lot's heart was in the world - selfish - it was a sad course with Lot.

- 10-17. The whole picture is striking of Lot and Abraham, but I have considered it elsewhere. Only remark this, that Abraham failed in faith, got into sorrow, and returned; Lot chose the well-watered plain, and got into Sodom, and out of it into sorrow, as through fire.

- 13. I think "sinners," laY'hovah (before Jehovah) is special; it is not merely "How shall I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" (chap. 39: 9) i.e., a true conscience and the fear of God. It was Jehovah, the Governor, offended and, speaking reverently, disgusted, with the evil, infamous as it was.

- 14. How beautiful it is from this verse!

- 18. There are three altars here; God's appearing to him in the land, the regular, natural so to say, habit of communion, sign of the bond of the soul with God. To this he must return on leaving Egypt; he builds no new one - and consequent upon his survey, and realization of the place and gift of promise. In Egypt, of course, none.

NOTE. - I do not find any intercourse like that of Abraham with God; Noah's is the most like it after the flood - there too we find an altar; then there is a present salvation ordered of God - the altar is to Jehovah. But when the blessing comes, it was Elohim renewing the earth - the ordering of the condition of the world only - Jehovah comes in with Shem. Here it is special calling and promise, and revelation of Himself, and intercourse on the ground of it.

66 Genesis 14

The whole history closes in the end of this chapter, with Melchizedek, and the revelation of God in His final character in time, or dispensation - Possessor of heaven and earth - victory after failure - and full final blessing, and praise, and that in the King of righteousness and King of peace.

- 2. "That these," better left out.

- 12. "And he, a dweller in Sodom," is rather emphatic in Hebrew.

- 14. Grace does not cease to care for the worldly believer, who has got into weakness, though strength be with faith.

- 19. This is power and its full results, as it will be indeed accomplished. It receives all from the Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth; so Abram knows God. There is not an altar here, we are on other ground; Abraham was only prophetically and typically on this ground, but worship is not prophetic. It is the people of God's (Israel's) full victorious blessing in the millennial earth.

From the world's possessor of the earth the believer will take nothing.

- 22. NOTE. - Abram, in speaking to the King of Sodom, takes the place of Melchizedek's revelation - acts on the full results of all, in his ways as to this world. "I have lifted up my hand to the most high God, Possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take" - will not give the world an opportunity of saying - "I have made Abram rich." He who possesses heaven and earth will do, what seems good to Him, with us in this respect. Abram here, with his brother, with the enemy, with the world as such, is above the world - its master and superior - morally and really - Lot under its power; if we enjoy it we are. On Church ground, with Sarah and Pharaoh, he had failed; but he had gone down through trial, not inquiring God's will; it was not taking the world, but his own counsel when tried.

NOTE. - Abraham gives up the world in liberty - conquers it in power - refuses it that he may have everything from God. He is blessed of the most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth.

NOTE. - While Abram is called by the revelation of the God of glory, and then by God's again appearing to him in the land, he gets the ground of worship; with us it is more inward and intimate, though on the same principle; Christ, that bread of God, is revealed in our souls, as the object revealed by the inward working of the Father's drawing, and then our worship is not merely by an outward revelation which calls forth praise and adoration, but we feed on Him slain for our sakes. All the divine love and grace, the perfect obedience which has been shown in Him, dying in love for us, draws out our praise and adoration to the Father who gave Him, and to Him who gave Himself; and the soul is fed by this grace, the heart delighting in it inwardly, and entering into it by the power and working of the Spirit of God. This is evidently a nearer and more intimate thing, hence we see how the Lord's supper allies itself to worship, witnessing too redemption. The glorified Christ is another thing, there we are drawn out after, and see the absolute completeness of the work, and the new place into which we are called.

67 There was no promise, before Abraham, to any person as an object and depositary of it; there was an object of faith in the judgment of the serpent, as to the promised seed, but there was no person an object of promise. What Christ was to God is to us of infinite interest in this way; for the drawing out of one of deep and admirable affections, and large mental powers, an adequate object is necessary, that all He is may be displayed and in exercise. Now Christ, looked at as an object, was divinely and infinitely so to God and His Father; such was He, that all that was in the Godhead of infinite perfection was necessarily and perfectly drawn out - what a blessed thought!

NOTE. - It is into this we are brought, as put in Christ; as love, "that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them," this is only a given case of it - "that thou hast loved them as thou hast laved me." He is gone to His Father and our Father, His God and our God. When we think how all that God is, must shine out on Christ in glory in the Father's house, and remember that we are there with Him ever, and like Him, we see what the infinite enjoyment of our heavenly place wilt be. What a sweet, blessed, and peaceful portion!

68 Genesis 15

This is a new order of chapters; the place of faith and triumph has been given as a whole in chapters 12 to 14; here we have God's ways - promise - law - covenant, etc. Historically, the title of God seems founded on the facts of the preceding chapter, and Abraham's conduct; this makes the difference between this chapter and chapter 17 still plainer; here it is Jehovah.

Abraham having conquered the power of the enemy, and refused anything from the world, God is his shield and exceeding great reward; being his he asks for himself and is answered, receiving the promise of the heir, and the limits of the earthly inheritance - what man down here wanted. God did not appear to Abraham here; the word of the Lord came to him, and he believed it, and he is justified, it is for righteousness to him. It is not worship. Faith is sealed by a covenant for the earth.

The beginning of the chapter seems a reply to the renouncement of chapter 14; this gives a character also to what follows. The intervention of God was from Himself, not a reply, so that the other questions were awakened.

God reveals what He is in Himself to Abraham - his defence and portion for ever - but His grace leading out the desires, and meeting the condition of man also, assured all that in grace.

There is His word for the positive, conferred blessing; destitute man finds His righteousness in faith in it; being God's word he believes it, notwithstanding all in himself which would make it impossible through weakness - impossibility of submitting to the sentence of condemnation, and the greatness of sin causing doubt as to grace. Further, the Lord volunteers to recall his attention to Himself being concerned in it in grace (v. 7), "I am Jehovah that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it" - I came to you, when a poor idolater, with the purpose and intention, and your lot depends on grace and purpose, not on your strength or condition - it did not then - it does not now - I had the purpose when I visited you in your misery, when you had not even the desire for it.

Next, Jehovah encourages him by binding Himself now by the solemnity of His own act, in which it was impossible for Him to deny Himself, or lie as a man would by a similar solemn covenant; He passes between the pieces of the victim.

69 But more, the value of the Sacrifice, its moral claim, its title, to set aside which God must deny Himself - not be Himself, which is established by Himself, and which is between Him and Christ, so that Christ would not have what has infinite claim for what it is - divine righteousness, which He should have (see John 17 and 12); the whole power of that which is founded on what God is, is now engaged in securing the blessing. This is wonderful truth!

God has graciously entered into this - given us this assurance - but the same necessity of His nature which rejects sin - the same truth which cannot fail - the same righteousness which cannot fail - the moral obligation which flows from His nature in the highest possible way - is engaged in the blessing. It, relatively and repulsively, in its negative effect, rejected firstly, necessarily, sin - a sinner; but in its positive, and powerful reality of nature, will, and righteousness, and debt to Christ, now secures the blessing. It has so voluntarily acted to secure me, and make me happy, but it has acted in manifesting itself in the work of Christ, and cannot afterwards deny itself; it is between Christ and God, though to my security, profit and joy.

He has passed between the pieces, the sacrifice of Christ, the offering of Himself up to death; it is the sacrifice He despises, that is, morally, Himself, whose character has been perfectly glorified in it, if there is not perfect security of blessing. What a wonderful grace, and condescension is this! Yet God is glorified in it, and in Himself in it.

Then there is another thing, man's nature, such as we are, can have no part in it; hence it involves death as to this, He brings us out into another scene and state where we enjoy the profit. Abraham passes under the horror of great darkness, and sleep, to come under the promise of blessing, and receive it, in this way of severity. Christ therefore has, in accomplishing this, died, and risen again to enjoy and enter into it.

Death must pass upon nature, when God gives blessings, secured according to His, in righteousness; this also becomes real deliverance from sin. God becomes (is in this and becomes) the light (of life), and the furnace of His people, to consume all that connects with the life of sin.

It is a wonderful display of God's ways and dealings, basing blessing on Himself, in connection with sinners, through the work and sacrifice of Christ Himself; the Holy Ghost realizes all this in our souls. Romans and Galatians, in a more elementary way, are just the development of this, and the doctrine in them as found elsewhere in Paul; other consequences are attached to it in connection with the Person and title of Him who wrought it.

70 The driving away the birds (v. 11) seems the guarding the perfectness of the Victim of sacrifice from all contamination or imperfection; the living, working Christ as man does this, for Abraham is the living dying man.

We have here an entirely new thought or principle; hayah d 'var Y'hovah el Av'ram, "the word of Jehovah was to Abram." The God of glory had appeared to him, and spoken (chap. 12), but now there was an express word or revelation, a communication of God's intention and mind.

It is all prophetic announcement; d'var (word of) Jehovah, not personal relationship.

- 2. Adonai Jehovah.

- 4. Here again d'var [Y'hovah] elav lemor, "the word was to him, saying," in this faith is manifested, Abram he-emin ba-hovah (believed Jehovah).

NOTE. - It is not when Jehovah appeared, but when the word of the Lord came to Abram, that he believed, and it was counted to him for righteousness.

- 6. Better, I think, as Paul interprets, to translate here "believed the Lord"; there is b' (in) in Hebrew, but the verb with it has scarcely this force.

- 7. "And He said, I am Jehovah"; the davar (word) was Jehovah who had too made him go out from Ur of the Chaldees.

Now too Jehovah makes a covenant with him.

We have not the davar (word of) Jehovah again till 1 Samuel 3: 1, 7, 21, which makes it more remarkable; in verse 21, it is formally distinguished, Jehovah spoke to him (Samuel) bid'var (by the word of) Jehovah. After Genesis 15, and Samuel, and to Nathan, 2 Samuel 7: 4, we find it with Solomon when at Gibeon, 1 Kings 6: 11 - 12: 22, Shemaiah; and with the prophets regularly, particularly Jeremiah and Ezekiel; in Daniel not, save in reference to Jeremiah. Psalm 33: 6, is remarkable, even if it cannot necessarily be made personal, because we have davar (word) and ruakh (spirit), Isaiah 30: 33, is nish'math (breath).

71 - 13. It is clear that either in the 400 years, all are from that time to the exodus, or that 100 years is the equivalent of a generation. In the fourth generation they shall return, Ya-shu-vu (they shall come again), verse 16 seems from Egypt where they had gone down. Abram's portion is parenthetically in verse 18; but verse 13 applies to his seed, and the "serving" to the Egyptians, for the nation that subjected them to it God would judge, verse 14.

Then the 400 years comes in question, that is, whether it is directly found in-nu (they shall afflict) or not; it is not by the accents; Athnakh comes before it, then it would be "up to 400 years hence"; however, this I still leave in doubt. There is no reason to confine ger (a stranger) in a nation not theirs to Egypt, and if so, the 400 years becomes simple, only it is what we call round numbers. The two events occupy 400 years; the fourth generation would then be the stay in Egypt; "returning hither" clearly does not refer to a sojourn in the land. The only question would be on b'eretz lo la-hem (in a land not theirs).

The Mal'a'k (Angel of) Jehovah, (is not this the first time we have had it?) is distinctly called "Jehovah."

We are here, not in the large principles of moral good and evil, and God's ordering of the world, but of man's ways as within the calling of God; man's, or woman's, workings and plannings, and the result in God's hand. The only person who was any way right, save despising her mistress, for which she suffered, was Hagar, and to her an Angel - messenger from Jehovah, speaks; not to any one else in the chapter. Abram accepts it, and gives the name pointed out.

But Mal'a'k Jehovah seems an inferior manifestation to Jehovah's own visitation; the ye-ra Jehovah (Jehovah appeared) as chapter 12: 7, and as we learn from Acts 7, already in Ur of the Chaldees, and again in chapter 17: 1; in chapter 15 we have another form of revelation - the word of the Lord d'var (word of) Jehovah was to Abram in a vision, ma-khazeh. The Lord's appearing seems more present relationship; it produces worship, or familiar intercourse, communion in confidence and intercession according to its nature. At first such a revelation as led Abram to God, chapter 12; it is not said "appeared," indeed it is passed over as already done, for Terah had taken Abram before; it is only in chapter 12: 4, that he moves "as the Lord had said." The word of the Lord being in a vision, produces faith in what is said.

Genesis

J. N. Darby.

<41004E> 72 {file section c.}

(Notes and Comments Vol. 1.)

Genesis 16

This chapter is evidently law, but the delay of promise to want of faith gives to flesh the occasion of putting itself on this ground. God uses it to raise the question of righteousness - to judge flesh; it must return back to promise in submission of will. Israel under law, Abraham's seed according to flesh, God does not give up; not only promise was before law, but, for flesh, law must come after promise, because flesh takes up law, in self confidence, to obtain the hope of promise.

Here chapter 15 is the promise; the manner of its accomplishment, in divine grace and power, is not yet revealed, nor is it until God reveals Himself in chapter 17, after law. Christ may be known after the flesh; but as Sarai was the state, no fruit of promise by divine power; yet Abram acts on flesh's impatience to have it, according to flesh's desire, in its own way.

In a certain sense Ishmael answered to chapter 15: 4, but it was all flesh's doing. Under promise, Israel according to flesh will have inheritance, but it is not in the place of Sarah and Abraham, the heavenly glory over the Gentiles; in itself, in chapter 21, it is cast out, and cannot be heir, it will come in no doubt under grace. Even in chapter 15, it was promise according to desire; in chapter 17 according to Elohim's own full purpose, and direct revelation of Himself; chapter 15, we have seen, however, met faith, only Abram did not, in reply, rise above want.

NOTE. - Up to the end of chapter 15, we have promises fully, and a covenant for earthly promises as to Israel, and government, the smoking lamp, and the furnace. But the development of the seed is after the entering into relationship by express revelation, and the consecration of Abraham to Himself by God by circumcision - the judgment, though here only partial, of the flesh; before this we have the earthly seed, which is according to law - Hagar, which God takes care of providentially, but which is not the true personal son of promise in grace.

Note further, this is not the leading to faith by grace; it was the seal of faith, as we have the Holy Ghost as a seal - the special relationship in which Abraham had to walk with God.

It is not until chapter 17: 19 that we have the personal seed; the promises to the seed, and to the land are confirmed, and will surely be accomplished, but the personal seed is nominally revealed to the exclusion of the legal seed, though the former must be born for it to be carried out.

73 Historically we are on earth, and it goes on so, but in principle we are getting out of flesh - promise and circumcision, or rather circumcision and promise, with known relationship, and communion, by the revelation of God Himself, are brought in. What God is, is made the ground of relationship - hence, note, communion.

Remark further, Lot was never circumcised; circumcision is not simply believing, though it be the true place of every believer now. Israel was circumcised when they had crossed the Jordan, as remarked elsewhere, not in the wilderness. Lot, though he left Ur, was, as to his own faith, not separate from the world, on the contrary, connected himself with it - was a believer in the world. Circumcision, in its full import, takes out of the flesh; we have died with Christ, and cannot be consequently alive in the world.

The reproach of Egypt was rolled away at Gilgal; hence, circumcision comes after chapter 15, which connected Abram with this world, in promise; then we have the heir, as an immediate promise, and the judgment of the world, but God in communion with Abraham about it. This gives the character of chapters 17 and 18; millennial promise may come in, but founded on death and resurrection.

Genesis 17

In this chapter we have again God, and here it is not only historical, but there is special ground for so taking it; for instead of a Mosaic, i.e., a divinely given apprehension of it according to the then knowledge of Jehovah, it is what then passed as it passed, and was the communication by God Himself of another kind of knowledge - that of God Almighty - Elohim revealing Himself as El Shaddai, as in Exodus 6: 3. But though Jehovah did this, and Jehovah did that, as Moses and Israel, here the one true God, and it was important that Israel should understand that their Jehovah was not a particular god, but the one true Elohim. Yet it was not with them of old Jehovah, known as such to Israel, "Jehovah" did and said so and so; God had that name, what its import is is another question, but it was their knowledge of Him as to themselves; it is a revelation of what Elohim was - the Absolute, ever-existing One; not merely "I am" (abstract existence), but perpetual existence. Hence One who went on, as to men and lives, with His purpose, could be counted on for promise. In actual governmental dealings with men He could not be simply Elohim, that is God in His nature, whereas as Jehovah, He governs - is something in connection with men - has descended into relationship and dealing; and hence it was important to see that He, Elohim, who said "I am El Shaddai," which was being something, and putting Himself into relationship, was Jehovah; and here the New Testament speaks as clearly, in that it was in the Person of the Son. Thus this chapter is "Elohim," and chapters 18 and 19, "Jehovah."

74 - 1. God appears to Abraham and reveals Himself, and that by the name by which He declares to Moses He was made known to him, and to the patriarchs, Isaac and Jacob. This has a new character, it is not worship, nor an altar, but communion, a still higher, as it seems to me, and more blessed thing; Abraham falls on his face, and Elohim talks with him, having declared His special name of relationship. He then unfolds all His purposes, and the death of the flesh is brought in. But hereon Abraham (chap. 18) receives the visit of the Lord with two angels; the Lord abides with him as a guest, Abraham knowing Him, but saying nothing to Him, as the Lord, when all the rest were there, the Angels and Sarah. The son is promised as soon to come, and then God reveals His purpose as to the world, treating Abraham as His friend; hereupon Abraham acts on this ground, he is alone with Him, and he pleads with Him - intercedes for others. There is the confidence produced by this revelation of Himself by God, and the communications which followed, and, while owning Him as Judge of all the earth, yet a counting on mercy and goodness - no asking for self - not merely worship, but intimacy, communion, and intercession; and Elohim went up, when He had done communing with Abraham. This is surely of another character from the building of an altar, and more blessed, though worship will have its place in heaven. But surely this will not cease, though a display of friendship, in condescension like this, may have no place.

NOTE. - That after stating that it was Jehovah which appeared, it is always "Elohim" - God in Himself, as such; it is wholly on the ground of His sovereign purpose and action.

75 It is ett'nah (I will make, lit. give), not ka-rath (he made, lit. cut); grace more simply and obligingly. It is not merely here the Lord appeared, and said something, and then Abram builds an altar, but He appears to reveal Himself, saying, "I am," so and so, "walk before me," so that Abram fell on his face as a present thing; and then God not simply yo-mer (said), but talked with him y'dab-ber itto (talked with him). The covenant is given, is, and is established liv'rith olam (for an everlasting covenant).

- 3. Abraham does not ask in answer to "thy," which characterized chapter 15, but is on his face, and Elohim talks with him. God cannot reveal Himself, and be only to a nation; this we see in Christ even down here, though He may be to a nation in His own wise, sovereign will.

- 7, 8. I think we get here a covenant with the seed - and Abraham - to be a God to them, i.e., to Abraham, and his seed.

- 8. To be their God in the land; this last consequently is, "I will be to them for God," i.e., as coming into possession of the land, though it was given to Abraham; so, before, it was "to be a God to thee, and to thy seed after thee," here only lahem (their).

- 9. Remark how it here begins afresh with Elohim, as a fresh starting point with man in Abraham, which is to be noted, not as in relationship.

- 10. This seal of righteousness and the covenant is founded on chapter 15 - the righteousness of God.

- 12. Surely the eighth day signifies that circumcision is in resurrection, not in nature, hence after Jordan was passed.

- 16. "Also" - but in verse 19, "indeed."

- 17-19. God seems to accept the faith of Abraham, and Abraham's laughter in his heart gives a name to his son - Isaac, laughter; it was the simplicity of heart in the unexpected glad tidings; Sarah's - for God can discern - was incredulous, mocking satisfaction.

- 20, 21. Ishmael does not belong to this chapter, but he is blessed in it as a son of Abraham, and so loved, but he is no co-heir; that cannot be, all that flows from a higher source. Circumcision was not instituted when he was born - it was life in flesh; but he is circumcised now, for the sure mercies of David can only be through resurrection. Abraham and all take this place now that it is God's revelation of Himself; but it is connected with the revelation of Himself before the heir comes.

76 - 22. God went up from him; He was talking with Abraham, and went only when He had finished, and Abraham could present the desires of his heart to Elohim, and had a full answer, but God had His own purpose.

- 23. Abraham's obedience was blessedly prompt. It is, though in the flesh, yet a bright scene; all that belonged to him, all his house, are subjected to God's covenant.

The position of Abraham (and so of every believer) seems to me a very blessed one. He is the one in whom God centres and deposits blessing, and that from which blessings flow out to others without. Now this is the very character of God, only that in Him it is essential and original - it is Himself; while in us, of course, it is Him. God is the centre of all blessing, and in Him, and in His nature, blessing is, but it is by grace deposited in the believer, and flows out from him; he dwelling in love, dwells in God, and God in him; he loves therefore because divine love is shed abroad in his heart - what a place to be in! Christ the fulness of it in man, but we entering into it in Him.

In the circumstances in which this has place in Abraham, God had, on the manifestation of pride in man, settled them in divers countries by languages; they were not merely dispersed, but, in Peleg's days, the earth was divided - the earth was arranged and ordered under God. Now Abraham is called out of what God had settled, to be to Himself, and so the depositary of blessing. It was not the Adam race (ha-Adam) in its responsibility, but the active, self-originated, and originating grace of God, which called out one to be the head of a new race in grace, to Himself; and as the place and family of blessing - Abraham's seed (now a spiritual seed, another connection with Christ no doubt) on the failure of the natural because it was flesh, and according to purpose, but still as Abraham's seed, the family of blessing. This is an immense and most important principle.

There are three principles or characters of revelation; first, the personal dealings and relationship, as in chapter 12, Jehovah calling - revealing Himself in the land - appearing to Abraham, so as to draw him out in various ways, in relationship to Himself. Next the word of the Lord; and this was the foundation of faith, on which righteousness was counted. Then God, as such, for now Abraham could be righteously before Him, puts Abraham in a known position of covenant standing, as a system of blessing in grace to him and to his seed, and he has the seal of the righteousness which is by faith. God here talks with Abraham and he gets his dispensational place.

77 Remark well the character of the different revelations to Abraham in chapters 15 and 17. The first is what God is for Abraham, and Abraham asks what he is to have; the Lord in grace tells him this. But in chapter 17 God says what He is, the name by which He makes Himself known, and thereon it will be found that, though God gives the present hope of the heir, Abraham's place is not to ask for himself, but that of communion with God - God talks with him - eats with him, and, though reverently, Abraham is familiarly in intercourse with Him, and then, according to this position, intercedes for others. This is a sweet and important difference.

This chapter gives a new and very wide ground. No doubt it is still Jehovah, but it is not appearing in covenant and personal relationships in gracious dealings. It is Elohim Himself all through; the relationship name - as with us, Father - is a sweet thing, and we come in our personal relationship, under it we have access to the Father. But God is God, and does what He pleases in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; here He reveals Himself as El Shaddai - Elohim talked with Abram. He does not take the name Jehovah with him, though it was Jehovah, but of God Almighty, so Abram falls on his face, yet He talks with him - so Sarah is not my princess - that was with man - but princess.

Here only Abraham is fully put in his place, not his personal place of blessing - that is in chapter 12 - but full relation place towards others - nations - seed - land - and God Himself, as of God. He is the Adam of blessing towards those below him, as he was of responsibility - the father of us all before God; that, Adam never was - he was the father of us all driven out from God - only now of course it is spiritually and in Christ. That is Galatian doctrine and Romans 4, yet Paul there treats the covenant of this chapter as founded, as regards Abraham, on the faith of chapter 15 - quod nota. But this refers to the righteousness - God takes this place with a personally accepted one, and that was by the word of Jehovah - it was faith.

78 Genesis 18

This chapter is a different relative place in the communications of God, consequent on the place of faith.

Note, in all this chapter, Abraham never calls the Lord "Jehovah," here it was not the name of relationship. In chapters 12 and 13 his altars are to Jehovah, and again at Beersheba he calls on the name of Jehovah; so in chapter 15: 2. But here in this closer communion and intercourse with God, founded on his walking in covenant relationship, in his own place as set of God in the earth, it is Adonai.

The mystery is evidently intentional here, and the perception of faith, and the already exercised spiritual mind in Abraham, instructive and divine. He knew he had to do with One who visited him thus, but, till the Lord reveals Himself, he acts towards Him in the way He comes; this was true deference, and heavenly propriety, and he receives the fruit in the Lord's gracious familiarity with him on this ground - a significant anticipation of Christ's presence. From verse 9 onwards the Lord blesses him, in revealing Himself, according to and as a reward of - as meeting - this instinctive perception of who it was. Under the Spirit's power, we always do what is fitting.

From verse 22, Abraham deals openly with the Lord, then alone with him, on the full known ground of what He is. All this is exceedingly beautiful. What a thought - to receive the Lord thus! - it was Martha's privilege, without the cumbering, and hence the communion besides.

It is evident also that true intimacy is exercised when alone, and so it is here, and what a place this gives!

When judgment is announced as to the world, the immediate giving of the Son is made known to faith.

In this chapter we have no doubt Abraham's place, and contrasted with Lot's, but the patient goodness of God, in government, is brought out, more than Abraham, at the end.

- 2. It would seem that the three men stood suddenly by him, nitztzavim alav (stood by him).

- 3. Abraham only speaks to One - "in thy sight"; there was discernment, but no intrusion into their secret.

- 4,5. This is all in the plural. The Angels would have known the discernment of the saint. Then all enters into the apparent form, and this continues to verse 9.

79 - 9. It is not that all spoke, but it was not Jehovah testimony.

- 10. Here it is again the revelation of Jehovah given by the inspired writer. The name of Isaac (laughter) is from Abraham's laughter; however Sarah may have disbelieved, Abraham fell adoringly on his face, owning the communications of the Lord, not so Sarah. How very different is what seems like in the things of God! But in spite of Israel's unbelief, God's purpose will be accomplished. (See Psalm 126.)

There is wonderful depth in this passage. It seems clear the Word takes up the declaration here, being a word of promise; also it is Jehovah in verse 1, and I suppose in verse 3 it is Jehovah, or else it is a common titular name of Christ as the Supreme God, and particularly connected with the Jewish people. In verse 5 it is "they" said - Abraham compelled doubtless in his mind by the Spirit, addresses (them) as Jehovah or Adonai, and says "favour in thine eyes"; all personal acts are placed plural - "your feet" - "ye have come" - "your servant"; that which recognised Jehovah, singular - "Thy sight" - so in their acts - "they did eat" - "they said" - and "He said returning, I will return" - we shall see more concerning it afterwards.

- 13. Here we have Jehovah Himself, directly.

- 14. For Abraham, Sarah's unbelief is only an occasion of confirming his faith; this also is blessed. Sarah did not fail to see that the Lord spake, but there was the unbelief of heart which thinks of flesh.

Our poor unbelief is very often a reason for the Lord confirming His word in mercy, yet were we happier in Him in simple faith - "speak the word." The passage is singularly beautiful.

- 17. The portion of the believing Church of God.

When the Lord has promised the Son - the seed of blessing and laughter - in the old age of the Church, He looks or turns towards Sodom, nor does the unbelief of the Church alter His purpose concerning it. Shall the Church also not be afraid to laugh? But the Lord shall make it laugh. Indeed Abraham is constantly used I think for the men (people) who compose the Church, and Sarah for the Church subjectively, or in the abstract - Abraham, the men as acted in by the Spirit (failing or not).

- 20. The Lord declares the cry of Sodom, and He going down to see - Abraham enquires - recognising the righteousness of judgment, pleads righteousness in sparing for any's sake - then the Lord instructs us in the measure of His (accurate) judgment in reply.

80 - 25. Abraham clearly treats Him here distinctly as God - the Judge of all the earth would do right.

The place of Abraham is communion with the Lord about the judgment - Lot is only saved, by his interference, out of it - but Abraham was where he stood before the Lord - it was the top of the mountain whence he saw the smoke of the plain going up; and mystically this place is Heaven, for God says to Abraham there, "I will go down and see" - and that is the place of intercession - of the Church in spirit.

What a wondrous passage this is! It appears, certainly to me, that Jehovah appeared and talked, but that it was He only who alone reveals Jehovah, who was the man of those three thus associated with Him as the messengers of His service - for He is Lord of angels. Yet we know that He has had Angels strengthening Him, and He sends them here - the executors of His judicial power, compare Matthew 13: 41, for it is the Son revealed who is the executor, the Father judging no man, but committing all judgment to the Son - and He, as Man, will here exercise this judgment; I certainly do think also more particularly that Abraham represents here the saints, and Lot the Jews, though what else, I say not here. There was some good in Lot, though he was in Sodom; there was the sense of evil, and hence he did not lose the good - he liked to have it with him - I do not say it was the only motive, the apostle commends it in Hebrews.

But what that in Benjamin should be formed the sin of Sodom!

We are admitted to the Lord's thoughts by revelation; only leaving that, He treats Abraham as His friend, and I think that, though verses 20, 21 are an abstract revelation, yet the place they are introduced shows that, as to the nature of the communications, the Lord, though with Abraham who was on earth, was on His own heavenly ground, not gone down to earth in judgment, and to judge; this is important as the place of intercession. Only the Lord knew of course what He would do, and the two men - angels - had gone on their way, but faith's heavenly intercourse with the Lord, however imperfect, is within all that.

Note well, this is all connected with chapter 17; it is not as in chapter 15, God for us in our wants, which ends, in all cases, in what we are on earth. It is God with us - hence revealing Himself - hence grace in us does not ask for self, but intercedes for others; it has already all from God, according to His delight, only chapter 17 is sovereign purpose, as Elohim is minded to have it; this chapter (18) is gracious communication - the Lord dealing with Abraham as with a friend. In one, Jehovah is Elohim Shaddai - blessed that He is so! - in the other, He is, though Jehovah, still as a Man as near in intercourse, and revealing all, as He is solemn in judgment. And note, in treating Abraham as a friend, He does not tell him what concerns himself, but what is in His own mind concerning others. This is the Church's place - the Christian's - this is what we do with a friend - how singularly blessed! surely more than "What wilt thou give me?" though that has its place.

81 The Lord's own most patient grace in judgment is also shown both in verse 21, and in the intercession. Abraham never says "Jehovah," but "Adonai"; Abraham was not in his place, as at home on earth, when he pleaded with the Lord; he was with Jehovah in the way of faith - we may say a heavenly way. He returned to his place - the home of nature; there he had received the Lord, but in his communing and intercession, he was before the Lord, where the Lord had taken him.

One can scarce believe the extent of intercession, or patience of God's grace and gracious ear; but there is however "once more" - yet the Lord more righteous than that - note however the language of verses 30 and 32 - most wondrous!

Then - what a scene! - but how great the patience.

It is something like 2 Corinthians 12, where we begin with the third heaven, verse 2, and end with vile conversation, verses 20, 21, yet in Christians; here mainly, the world.

Genesis 19

We have here the wretched picture, not only of the grossest wickedness, but of the moral consequence to the saint of getting into such a place; think of Lot saying "my brethren," and offering his daughters. Where sin is not a horror, there is companionship and friendliness.

There is nothing here at all of the ease and familiarity of Jehovah's intercourse with Abraham; this is all the ways of Jehovah.

82 On the whole this is a sad scene. The believer, if in the world, would have importance in it - do good; he sits in the gate - the gate of Sodom! But Lot is not easy at being found there, he acts as at ease, but he would hinder the strangers from knowing what a place they had found him in; it is no use, he takes it on himself, uses atrocious means, for what could he do against them? Power delivers him, that is all. These are Jehovah's ways in relationship with men; it is not Elohim here; note from verse 17, it is practically referred directly to the Lord, "He said," so verse 21 - and verse 29, we find Elohim; they are God's ways, and judgment. We have noticed the general case elsewhere.

- 1. See the place Lot found himself in - the place of society and the worldly place, but it was not Jehovah he met. I suppose there was right feeling, and discernment however; his soul was righteous, but fleshly interest had brought him where he heard it (2 Peter 2: 7), and to no purpose.

- 6, 7. What a picture of the falseness of his place. How strange he could have rested there; and akhay (my brethren)!

- 8. I think there was the desire to avoid, with respectable strangers, the perception of the company he was in. It is dreadful, and such an offer.

- 11. I suppose this shows very persevering wickedness; no sense of God's hand upon them.

- 14. Content - every point must be dwelt upon in this chapter - sorrowful, yet merciful (verse 19), so most instructive.

- 20. Lot's seeking to save Zoar seems a terrible proof of moral low estate. Grace indeed is wonderfully shown, but that this wonderful intervention of grace should not have led him to joyful obedience to the Angel's word!

- 21. Though accepted and borne with, how he clings to the city, and the plain. He believed the testimony as a fact, but in no way enters into the spirit of it, or he would not have sought one of the cities; he escapes, that is all. The true place of Abraham - faith - he is afraid of.

- 27. Note; one sees the judgment in the place where one has been in communion - for us heaven.

- 29. Note that it is Elohim here; the historical fact as to God's dealings; otherwise intercourse and dealings with Jehovah.

83 - 30. Judgment is so near what mercy has spared that Lot flees from it. The judgment of the world he recognizes, but he never himself judges the spirit of it.

- 31. There were plenty of men in the earth, but so unbelief calculates.

What lessons his daughters had learnt in Sodom!

Even before this, it was for Abraham's sake Lot was delivered.

God in judgment and government could not think of Lot with satisfaction; he was righteous, He did deliver him, He knows how - yea, the evil enhances His grace in doing it, but "God remembered Abraham" (v. 29).

It is a sad and terrible picture; his pleading for Zoar is an expression of utter prostration as to faith.

There cannot be a more terrible picture of the fruit of connection with a godless world than this history, and see how the world is infected by it - a stain upon the moral feeling. What details of the case there are!

- 37, 38. "Unto this day" - this gives a dismal sense of what the world is. Sin perpetuates itself till judgment comes in, and gives the sense of a world infected by it, and which has its history from it; and we know this - not that the mind dwells on it as occupying it, for our own place is with Abraham on the mountain - with our Father in heaven.

But if I think of this world, I must in truth know it thus. And note, this was after deliverance; faith and confidence in God had been destroyed - sunk in dissoluteness of moral feeling.

Genesis 20

I think this refers to Jewish position before the manifestation of Messiah. It is not the place of faith, but the contrary, but then, while Israel is in the power of the world, God preserves the nation for Himself and for the time when "to us a Son is born." It is elsewhere remarked that the woman is the state, and the man the conduct in general in types of this kind. The Gentile power is not looked at as hostile here, but as in a false position in respect of the people of God.

Though the typical and spiritual import of this chapter may have its place here - and I believe historically it has been doubted of old time - not only was Sarah very old, but chapters 17: 24 and 21: 5, show that it was within the year she bore Isaac (if the chapter be according to date), but it may be early in it; if not, chapter 12, between verses 8 and 9, may be the place.

84 It is all so very sad; besides the judgment of the world, and saving God's people out of it, which is simple enough, I do not quite understand. Historically, as to those Israel was in connection with, it is very clear, i.e., as to its object. I see the care of God over His people, even when they are in evil, and failure, as of Lot, and Abraham in Philistia; this is most gracious, "He suffered no man to do them wrong," but, I apprehend there must be more figurative, and dispensational truth in it.

- 3. With Abimelech it is "Elohim."

- 4. Lord is "Adonai."

- 18. It is Jehovah again. The divine government in relationship with Abraham.

I think I see the position of Abimelech clearer, which was something obscure and undefined. Chapter 14 closes the history of Abram proper with victory and Melchizedek; chapter 15 supplements it by the promise of an heir of his own bowels, but in connection with Israel, the numerous seed, and the covenant of the land - still a seed is spoken of; chapter 16 is the effort to have it according to the flesh before the time - the Hagar, and legal principle; chapter 17 begins a fresh revelation - God is revealed to Abraham as Shaddai, and he the father of many nations - still we are on the ground of the seed here; chapter 18, the Lord visits Abraham and the personal seed, Isaac, is promised as an immediate expectation - the Church's place in communion with God on the mountain, and the judgment of the world revealed - God treating him as His friend - the spirit of intercession. Then comes the deliverance of Israel, but through the fire, just escaped - in principle, the believer mixed up with the world. In Abimelech we have the power of the world; Abraham and Sarah deny the true place of Sarai - the Church loses its place and the expectation of the promised seed; it is taken under the protection, into the home, of the king of this world. All goes on as if no promised seed was in present expectation; only God takes care of it all. Though unjustifiable in a sense, yet the world did it in integrity; but God takes care where man's faith does not, and all is kept for the promised seed, but Abraham and Sarah are both reproved. There is more faithfulness in the world's power than in them. The Church (Christians) has lost here then its present true place and relationship, and expectation of the promised seed. In what follows, the seed is born; the seed according to the flesh - Israel under the law - the system, and all born after the flesh, done with. That part of what had to say apparently and fleshlily to the root of promise, goes to Egypt. But now Abraham has the upper hand of Abimelech, and reproves him, and Abimelech, and the world's power, seek him because God is with him, and he plants a grove, takes possession of the land with his altar, and this is the everlasting God - "His mercy has endured for ever." But it is a grove instead of a tent, for, besides the deeply instructive principles, Israel is always in view; hence also Beersheba. But now other truths as to the seed must come in, and to the one seed, which is Christ, always in view, but here distinctively.

85 Genesis 21

- 1. We have in the ways and faithfulness of Jehovah in promise, His name brought out.

Then all the dealings historically are Elohim; Elohim had spoken, not man; Elohim, in mercy, heard the voice of the lad; Elohim could not allow the bondwoman's seed to inherit.

Note here how we have the origines gentium, no doubt in the family of Shem. The Ishmaelites, as is known, characterise whole countries to this day, but they were allied with Ham, and Egypt; here his mother and wife were Egyptians. Now that Isaac has his true place as sure and only heir, Abraham recognises Jehovah, the God of the full future of purpose, the El o-lam (God everlasting). This helps to the khay-yey o-lam (life everlasting); Daniel 12: 2. Only the now incarnate and glorified Christ gives other elements of it.

This chapter brings in the heir and that is clear enough; the fleshly heir is cast out, the seed of Hagar, only as Abraham's seed there is earthly blessing. The world recognises Abraham as the one blessed of God, and here we come to earthly and so Jewish title, yet by the manifested seed.

- 33. This was a kind of pledge of the possession of the land, as also the tide he gives Jehovah. He was Jehovah olam for a future day yet hidden, save in promise; Beersheba was literally the bounds of the land.

86 - 33, 34, is a sort of taking into possession of the land or earth, and the name of God refers to that; He is Jehovah, the El olam, the God of Might for ever, for the yet hidden future.

Note this; the conduct of the believer - as under the blessing in the land wherein he is a stranger, not having so much as to set his foot on - and Isaac, not in the same strength of blessing, yields - in principle right and alike, but not exercising the same spiritual energy - not in the same power of blessing. Is it connected with what goes before?

Genesis 22

First we have, up to this, the path of faith and promise in various forms, and degrees, and failure; and I think the person of the seed as of promise, all that connected itself with Christ's Person, and in the divine power of life. Now the ground, sacrifice and resurrection; promises given up, looked at as connected with flesh, and promise to one in it.

NOTE. - It begins with Elohim dealing with man, and then brings in Jehovah dealing with the faithful one, founded on the perfect work done to glorify Him, and the blessing attached to the risen seed.

- 8, 9. The calmness of Abraham is lovely.

Note here, that Isaac is not slain and laid on the altar but laid on the altar to be slain - in this, more exactly like Christ No doubt there was the fear of God, but what wonderful intimacy what passed at the offering up of Isaac must have given to Abraham. First, God's calling him to such entire self-devotedness to Himself, to give up everything nearest heart to Him, and thus be to Himself, not for another; then withal to trust Him, for the promises were given up and Jehovah trusted for them.

NOTE. - God tempts (tries), as such, but the consequent promises are from the Lord. But all promises, as flesh could trust in them, were given up to and for God; this puts him in a very peculiar place - a place of intimacy - and into which he was brought by God, by His own will to Himself - a wonderful place!

The confirmation to the seed is noticed elsewhere.

87 The whole scene is beautiful, yet solemn; a wonderful act of resigned obedience, and unreserved giving up of self to God, and trust in Him. It was meant as a test, and to bring this out, a fit testimony to Him who did it in far other depths, but a blessed testimony. We have both blessings here united through the seed, and not only promise, but through obedience. It is evident too we are here with wholly a new starting point; Elohim is taking new ground, and as Elohim, in absolute surrender to Himself, accomplished in Christ, and thus takes Himself, "By myself have I sworn," as the sure and immutable ground of blessing, and blessing to Gentiles in the seed. It is in this respect a very important chapter; it is founded on God's nature and righteousness, passed (here in figure) the whole sphere of evil, and in righteousness entered into a new one, which must answer too to the worth of that righteousness, and drawing from God what His own nature could give according to that, yet from Himself as its origin and source, though in righteousness and holiness, fruit of His own nature, counsel, and will, yet saying "because" as Christ too Himself has said both in terms, and laying the ground for it. The scene in itself is of wonderful simplicity.

This chapter seems also the trial of the Church; as possessed by the Spirit, the Church is the man, as in service and affection, and corporately the woman.

Can any doubt the blessed beauty of the covenant-sacrifice of the Son, though there be more in principle in it, i.e., being a principle, it contains more. Thus God's relinquishment, i.e., Christ's of Jewish laughter, to have resurrection joy - and the Church's also - bitter as it may seem, all hang on this example of God, shown in the sacrifice and surrender of Christ. So Sarah's laughter of unbelief is God's laughter of joy, for He chooses the weak things.

Genesis 23

- 1. Abraham therefore about 147 years old.

In the noble manners and sentiments of patriarchal simplicity, we have the great truth that Abraham, having the heir and all promises, had nothing here below, but must buy a sepulchre to bury his dead out of his sight, that is all he had a present possession in the earth.

88 I certainly think that this is the passing away of the spouse of the unrisen Lord (Israel under the old covenant in flesh), to make way for the spouse of the risen One, that has to leave her country like Abraham (we are not here in the type of Sarah and Hagar) but after the offering up of Isaac.

- 4. How, where there is faithfulness, the consciousness of our true position, given of God, is carried with us in the most ordinary circumstances, and shows itself as a witness of truth for God - a burying place in righteousness, but that was all.

NOTE. - We are here after the sacrifice and resurrection of Isaac in figure, and Abraham is a stranger in the land; Sarah (mother of Isaac) is gone, and Abraham knows the God of heaven and earth, as seen below, and a bride sought for Isaac, who is not to go back to the world Abraham was called out of.

Genesis 24

The positive prohibition to bring Isaac down to the country Abraham had left, and seeking a spouse for him in the place of promise (heaven), by the mission of Eleazar, spoken of elsewhere already, and Rebekah taking the place of Sarah - the Church instead of Israel.

- 3. Here Abraham attributes to God His full title of glory in heaven and earth. There was to be no connection with the rejected race - with the world in which he dwelt a stranger. It enhances the Melchizedek title (not state) of God, and according to Colossians and Ephesians 1, but there fulfilled in Christ. The whole title as a sphere of glory is here - Abraham calls God "Jehovah the God of heaven, and the God of the earth," further on, to his servant Eleazar, "the God of heaven" as He who had called him; his faith owned Him the former; in realisation He was only and distinctively the latter, and hence the source and power (through grace) of Abraham's hope. Daniel speaks of the "God of heaven," he could not of the "God of the earth." Some say Christ has all power in heaven and on earth, and we believe it, but He has in no way taken the earth yet, and even in heaven He is on His Father's throne. The Canaanite was a judged race in the place of promise. But Abraham will not have Isaac in the place of nature - the place out of which he was called; and note here, therefore God (Jehovah) is God of heaven - he knows the God which took him out of his country in this character. Isaac was now risen (in figure), Sarah's burial declared him a stranger - he sought a country - he was on heavenly ground. Hence we have a type of the Church, and of the Holy Ghost's work, sent to draw her to the Son - heir of all - out of the world too. Canaanites are a peculiar character of the world - the apostate world - of which Satan is prince - his instruments and power.

89 - 8. Note this point; for though the spouse may be taken out the world, yet we can never return into the elements of it again. The man represents the Church in the energy of the Spirit - the spouse, its substance and position as acquired subjectively by the Lord.

12 et seq, the laying the ground of faith right, shows the existence of faith, and finds its effect even though in inferior circumstances - so, "Truth Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs," etc.; so, the centurion, etc.

NOTE. - Abraham gives no blessing to his son; God gives it directly to him, and confirms it to his seed. He charges Eleazar only not to bring back Isaac to the place he had left, and to fetch his wife thence. No doubt Abraham had the earthly promises, but this separation to the heavenly thing is remarkable in his case. He merges, as on earth, in the risen Isaac. As I have noticed, he calls God, "the God of heaven and earth," and Jehovah, "the God of heaven," when he sends Eleazar, which gives these names a greater force. Daniel had only that as a resource when, as God of the earth, He had left His throne in Israel; but here it is the positive source of blessing. Abraham had had his blessing from the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, but that is specific.

Genesis 25

This may be after Sarah's death, but is not necessarily so; it is an account of other details of his history to complete it, and show the nations that were of his race.

- 1. "Then" is hardly a note of time; or rather, there is no "then"; it is "And Abraham added to take a wife." But Abraham lived 35 years after Isaac's marriage, how long Sarah had then been dead is not said - chapter 24: 67 would say not very long. The "added" is used for "again" or "another."

90 - 6. Most probably applies to a previous period - what, save as to their races, makes no part of his divine history. It looks as if Keturah was after Sarah's death, but "then again" is only English vay'yo-seph (and added); it is merely the additional fact, and Abraham took another wife, not positively saying when - though very possibly it may have been after the death of Sarah. He lived 75 years after Isaac's birth, being then 100 - Sarah died at 127, so that he lived towards 40 years after Sarah's death. Only Isaac's bringing Rebekah into his mother's tent, though much more meant to show the substitution of one to another, seems to hint that the time was not so long since her death. Abraham was 140 at Isaac's marriage, so that he lived 35 years after that; it was therefore, as I said, towards 40 years. Abraham was some 12 years older than Sarah, assuming her death and Isaac's marriage to be not far apart - a year or two.

- 7. Some thirty-four years after Isaac's marriage.

- 11. Elohim blesses Isaac. Here again it is God, as such - God's blessing on man.

- 21. The blessings for which Isaac entreats, and which are given are of Jehovah.

- 34. "He ate and drank, and rose up and went his way," refers, I think, to his profane indifference.

Genesis 26

This chapter answers as to Isaac, chapter 12 as to Abraham, but there is nothing answering to chapter 17, nor indeed to chapter 15, there is something of both in verses 3, 4, but the revelation of God, as all that depends on it - as the intercession for Sodom - is wanting. Jacob, returned to Bethel, has this revelation as in chapter 17.

All this must be enquired into - it is connected with the full blessing of Israel. Then what was Isaac's place, leaving aside chapter 24, or is there any connection with this?

The whole of this chapter is in connection with Jehovah, even Abimelech so speaks - it is a matter of covenant acknowledgment.

- 2. Here Isaac comes under Abraham, but the blessing of the nations in the seed is promised. There is no personal revelation as a source of it.

91 I do not see the free liberty of grace in Isaac as in Abraham (personally), nor the faith of him that left all. He is blessed, but is more tied to earth - he gives way to Abimelech - suffers from the Philistines - makes an oath with the world - has his title to the land limited. There is no Lot left to choose, nor intercession for Sodom. He is blessed, but less with God, and more with man. No sacrifice of Isaac. It has another tone altogether.

Rich in possessions as he was, he cedes Abraham's wells to the Philistine, instead of chasing the four kings and freeing Lot. How things, the effects of faith and unbelief that is, last in the world; Beersheba and the Philistines are found again in the later history of Israel.

- 5. Refers to chapter 22.

- 23. Here evidently the Lord furnishes a kind of limit to the land of promise.

- 24. Here he is on Jewish ground again.

- 25. Then he has his altar and tent. Jacob has only Jewish promises and the nation's blessing in them. The particular revelation of God's name to Abraham was in connection with the Jewish promises; Gen. 17. The first was a personal calling, and establishment in promise. He reveals Himself to Jacob by His name, but there it is Jewish again. The seed stands alone with Isaac, as with Abraham, and on the same ground.

- 29. That is, had now taken the place of Abraham, as the one evidently blessed of Jehovah, and that is the place He had taken in verse 24.

NOTE. - In the history of Abraham and Isaac, both had the revelation of God, consequent upon a series of experiences, I mean the full revelation for communion, not that by which grace called them, and, no doubt, Abraham failed, but the experience of Jacob was away from God in failure, and confiding in the flesh, and being, in many respects, in it, i.e., walking after it, and he returns through great grace, but with struggle and conflict.

Abraham's path, in general, was in intercourse with God Himself, leaning on Him, looking to Him, in a word in the main before Him, and the result is accordingly.

The same promise is made, pretty much, to Jacob as to Abraham, as to his own blessing, and that of his family; but all the communications that follow there is nothing of in the case of Jacob - no intercession for others - no blessing of the nations in his seed - all this is wanting. He is blessed by God, and in communication with Him as to it, but not in fellowship with God in the purposes of God's own heart, beyond Jacob himself. All this is instructive.

92 Genesis 27

How we have sunk down here from Abraham's history - Isaac's mouth is full of venison; who would have thought of such a thing?

And what a different place too Rebekah has from Sarah. It is a sad picture; nobler human nature indifferent to God and the promise; and he who cared for it, a base and false nature, and led by the cunning of woman; yet all accomplishes the purpose of God, and we know Esau heartlessly despised God's privileges, selling them for a mess of pottage - he was profane.

- 33. I do not doubt that the thought of God's coming in to thwart his flesh had greatly to do with Isaac's trembling, e-pho ("then") - mi-e-pho ("WHO then?")

Sad as Jacob's course was, the overruling hand of God is most plain. We have a mixture of Jehovah and Elohim; Rebekah speaks of the blessing before Jehovah; Jacob says "Jehovah thy God" to Isaac; and Isaac speaks of a field which "Jehovah hath blessed," but in the next verse asks blessing from Elohim. It was God as such giving blessing to man - it came from God. So in the next chapter it is "El Shaddai (God the Almighty) bless thee," he going on a pilgrimage to a strange land. So Elohim gave to Abraham, it was God as a Sovereign.

Genesis 28

We have got out of the venison here, and Jacob is subject to God's mind, not only in his words, but soberly in his will, but then we have come down to earth, and to Israel. Jehovah is there the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and will take care of Jacob even when a wanderer; the land is given to him, and in him and his seed all the families are to be blessed. It is not the promise confirmed to the seed, but the numerous seed the seat of blessing for the earth.

93 - 3. Jehovah never appeared to Isaac by His name of God Almighty; he knew Him, we see, as such, but it is not the revealed relationship of the risen seed.

Jehovah appeared to him twice (see chapter 26: 2, 24). Isaac was not to return into Egypt - the risen man into the world - he was Abraham's seed. To Jacob God reveals Himself as God Almighty; this is all, I apprehend, characteristic, and is remarkable.

- 8, 9. Well meant, perhaps, but this imitation was no use; it is, besides, ethnological.

- 11. M'ra-ashoth (pillows) at his head. Angels of God, servants thus, or messengers, apart from Himself, but of Elohim as such. Clearly John 1 refers to this, but not with the foolish thought that Christ was the ladder - He held Jacob's place.

- 13. But we get Jehovah at once in His intercourse with Jacob - it is specially relationship.

- 14. Here the seed is Israel, for we are on earthly ground, and so it will be; before, it was in Abraham and in his seed risen (compare chapter 35: 9-13), only the earthly seed and blessing - we have no Galatian promise. To Isaac we have no promise of the land (but see chapter 26: 3, 4); only the personal promise of a numerous seed. He was the seed of promise, and is the figure of Christ thus risen and exalted. The heir of promise ought to be Abraham's, so to speak, not Jacob's; Abraham had all the promises.

- 19. How striking these earthly memorials, and associations with God. But we are on wholly earthly ground here; this attaches to earth though (and this is to be noted) connected with heaven. The vow and all partook of this character.

- 20-22. The vow of Jacob was a poor thing, suited indeed to one driven out, through his want of principle; faith in a certain sense, but faith used for selfishness. Never did Abraham, or even Isaac make such a vow.

Genesis 29

We have men here, not Jehovah, or Elohim, though surely God was behind it all; but it is a different scene even from

- 14. How different from Eleazar's bringing up Rebekah to where Isaac was. Jacob was to avoid the Canaanites too, but he does return to Padan Aram himself, and the whole scene, though touching, is, in spiritual elevation, so totally below the divinely imprinted dignity of Eleazar's mission.

94 - 32. Sorrowful and wronged Leah alone speaks of Jehovah.

Genesis 30

How dreadfully all is sunk morally from Abraham's, and even Isaac's time. It is not barrenness of flesh, and God coming in, in promise, and power; but, oh! what a scene of selfishness, jealousies, and craft. One only spot of green is in it - Rachel, the barren one, is heard. All the rest is miserable and flesh, only just chastisement, and discipline from God; and how it has characterised the race since! Yet God has blessed and will bless. How thoroughly we have got into man, and man's ways. So Rachel here, even in special circumstances, has no thought of Jehovah's ways; it is "Elohim hath judged me," and so all through, till her heart is softened by grace; then she says, in faith, "Jehovah will add." Joseph is the promise of Benjamin. Laban too owns Jehovah, and Jacob calls Him so. The rest of the chapter is Jacob, but, oh! how far we are from Abraham; yet Jacob is found in Hebrews 11, not this; but it was righteous recompense as regards Laban.

Genesis 31

- 2. No great wonder; but the natural fruit of all this evil and planning. What a path of peace is godly simplicity!

- 3. Still Jehovah is with Israel in grace; there is government with God's people, but government in favour. We have Jehovah Himself taking up the matter again; He always pursues His plans. But it is a personal God, "the God of my Father"; the true God, but brought down to their relationship.

- 9. It is God acting as such, save the angelic message alleged by Jacob, verse 11.

It rests on this ground - a family God, or God, Creator and providential Ruler.

95 - 52. This was, after all, a formal separation of Jacob from the world; God had taken care of him till now, He always does of Israel, but even by angels - He only meets him after this - He told him to leave, that was all.

Genesis 32

This rises up to Jehovah.

- 1. It is not Mal'ak' (angel) Jehovah, but Mal'akey (angel of) Elohim; God's providential display of sovereign care.

- 2. "Mahanaim" is not a sovereign covenant act.

NOTE. - Jehovah can send him away in this character, but, till he is back in his right place, He does not reveal Himself on the way in any way by His name; but he can refer back to that kind of revelation.

- 9, 10. But it is only as a present thing, Peniel (the face of God); and this was all in its place, a faithful, gracious, but not a revealed God; we ought to have both. It is in His place we have this.

- 20. This is all wretched and the fruit of evil.

- 29. We have often remarked, there is no name here, no revelation of God; there was a name at Bethel, not of present relationship, but of promise and care. This is conflict - he is not returned there.

- 30. NOTE. - In confirmation of the view of Jacob's wrestling heretofore given, that all that he can say (and though perfect grace in God, how poor as to communion with Him), is "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved" - was that all? Oh, how sorrowful! Note too, the struggle was in the dark which is very expressive.

Genesis 33

Preserved, victorious in the struggle of faiths he calls God, here only, El, Elohe Israel; there was faith and even worship, but founded on circumstances, and present interventions of God in favour of self. It was well, but low down in the scale of faith; he was not yet returned to God Himself, as He reveals Himself, though he had found Him faithful to him in mercy.

96 Genesis 34

- 31. Where evil is, and men are away from God, nothing is right on any side; but grace can come in and overrule the evil and set right, as in the next chapter.

Genesis 35

God calls him back to his first point of departure; there Jehovah's name had been revealed to him; then the purified house of Jacob goes to the meeting place where he had become an outcast. Then God reveals Himself by His patriarchal name, directly, and the land comes in sight. But it is not said Jehovah appeared as to Abraham and Isaac, and there is nothing of the blessing of the nations in the seed. Isaac is much more lost in Abraham; God never reveals Himself directly to him by a name, He is the God of his father Abraham.

A vast deal afterwards is history often interesting, and important, but only as a preparation for God's dealings as Jehovah. The only places in which we have "Jehovah" in the rest of the book, are in Judah's case, chapter 38: 7-10, where one sees they are His special ways, and government; with Joseph sold and in trial, chapter 39; and, after Dan, Jacob's waiting for His salvation, which is an Israelitish millennial desire, chapter 49: 18; his present wish of blessing for Joseph is from God Almighty, his own name - of relationship with God. We get "God" often - His dealings, as ruling all things, in contrast with men.

- 9-11. All is gone through, as if he was then just returned, and he really was then only returned to God at Bethel, where he had last been with Him in leaving Canaan.

- 11. Here God is revealed, but the promises are only Jewish; we are come down to that now - Jacob and Israel are their name.

- 13. God goes up then from Jacob - as from Abraham, after talking with him.

Experiences are useful to bring us to God, but they all disappear when God reveals Himself.

- 14. Here we get Jacob upon Abraham ground, because it is renewed in grace, see chapter 17: 1-22, but both are on earthly ground; Isaac was never placed on this, he was still alive too, see verse 27.

97 - 18. The true Heir, in figure, of renewed Israel; the former thing - Israel - dead and gone, and the new, the Son of its affliction, but of His Father's right hand.

Note the beauty of the order as to the Patriarchs.

Abraham, depositary of the promises, is a stranger in the place of promise. All we read of his journey, as owned of God - for he failed with Sarah, he had not departed as the Lord had said - was " - he went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan he came." We have no sign of the Lord being with him in the way that he went down into Egypt, though He visited Pharaoh with plagues.

His history, of which we have detail, is - a stranger in the land of promise - communion with God as such - and depositary of the communications, and promises of God.

Of Isaac we have nothing, save the fact of his being offered up (which was the act of Abraham, though Isaac is submissive, God provided Himself with a lamb for a burnt offering) and his going out to meet Rebecca.

The history we have is of Eleazar fetching Rebecca to him - he is hidden; his dealings with Esau and Jacob only introduce these two, it is not his history. He represents Christ unseen, and the Church gathered.

As in Esau we have high-handed rebellion, and self-will - in Jacob, we have God with him in the path, secretly by His providence, but a path occasioned by his evil and unbelief. In this sense - God with us - "in the way," is a humbling, and to us an evil place - blessed and patient grace, and turned to good and blessing - still a humbling place; God's name is not revealed to us in it, even when we prevail to have blessing by faith through His grace.

God is with us "in the way," but we should not be "in the way," if unbelief had not, for a time, put us out of the proper place of promise. Jacob was a stranger from, not in, the place of promise; the Lord would keep him, and bring him again, when he was a stranger, and his way and wanderings from Canaan - but he was going from this place which might be an anchor to him.

98 It would seem that the wrestling had not set his heart right, for he buys land, and is not a stranger, and, but for God's providential interference, would have settled and made alliance. Also the strange gods were in his household, and he seems to have known it. He had not fairly come to God; chapter 37: 1 alone brings us back to the proper patriarchal, Abrahamic place, and Allon Bachuth and Benoni accompany, or are connected with the altar that was raised; chapter 37: 1 is grounded on chapter 35: 27, and 36: 6.

How entirely in Jacob's history we descend into a lower sphere; also he had reason to say "few and evil." But then we have more of the ways of God, and His supremacy above evil, and yet His dealing with evil, and therein His gracious process with the evil doer, and all this is very precious to us.

Of Abraham, the called man, the friend of God, we have an ample history of what man is in that place, imperfect surely, but most blessed.

Of Isaac, the heavenly man, little or nothing but the fact - he gets a wife, and does not go back to the place he was called out of.

Of Jacob, we have a long and detailed history, and the blessing of Isaac belongs to it. It is man, though man with promise, and the patient condescension of God with him, making good His counsels, and after all through faith, but giving us a sad history, though life shines through it.

We are still in dealings and providence - government; Simeon and Levi do what scatters them in Israel, in their cruel wrath. It is a human history, and human ways.

But further, when Israel gets back to Bethel, in which place alone he is fully back to God after his compulsory wanderings - and even the idols only then put away - yet kept and preserved, but then when God reveals Himself, we have nothing now of the blessing of the nations in the seed. It is purely Jewish, Rachel - representing the mother of the seed of power in the earth - departs, and he, who was the son of her affliction, is the son of his father's right hand. God takes care of him, blesses Jacob meanwhile, but he does not meet Him in the place of promise till Bethel, and then clear from all other gods.

When he had settled his own place on earth, he had to move away, though there he recognised El as the Elohe Israel.

99 Genesis 37

Jacob's dwelling in the land where his father was a stranger, is not, I think, a contrast in evil; the same word ya shav (to dwell) is used as to Abraham and Lot together in Canaan, and as to Lot in Sodom; it is that he was now not a wanderer out of it, but a dweller in it. Still he was more settled than Abraham was, only when he did settle, God stirred him up out of his rest.

- 1. He was desired in chapter 35 to go and dwell at Bethel; here it is put he "dwelt in the land of his father's sojournings," but the history now is the history of his sons; his history till he went to Egypt is in this one verse. In chapter 35 Jacob has the blessing here below, the seed of power, son of his right hand, and there the mother dies, and the history is the history of his sons, and of Esau besides.

Jacob sinks into the shade, though then Joseph is on the scene, and so verse 2 begins: "These are the tol'doth Jacob, Joseph being," etc. The wanderer was kept, the time for the possession of the land was not come, and that was Jacob's figurative place; only he is Israel, and Bethel the place he has returned to.

Bethel is the second place for Elijah; he begins at Gilgal, which is to be noted - separation, promise, death, heaven, and return in power (resurrection).

- 9. This is the general idea, as his mother was now dead, or he must have had the dream before his reaching Canaan in his seventh year, ten years before this. The Jews have noted this, as showing a dream, not properly a prophetic vision; but this is clearly a prophecy.

In the account of Joseph, so deeply interesting, we descend more to history, only, already elsewhere noticed, it is a perfect picture of Christ and Israel. We have only Judah's conduct as soon as Joseph is brought in, and all is connected with Christ in one way or another.

- 21. This seems to exculpate Israel as ignorant.

- 26-29. Judah sold him to the Gentiles, Reuben was ignorant of it. Judah was directly guilty of selling him to the Gentiles; when the Benjamin character comes in, Judah is identified with him - is surety for him.

100 Genesis 38

This is Judah's history and genealogy.

- 10. The God of government had to say to it.

Genesis 39

- 2. Matz' liakh (prosperous), that is the fruit of the Lord's being with one; Adonai - what matter, if the Lord was with him, and made all prosper with him. Ish-matz' liakh (a man prosperous). He prospered, for Jehovah matz' liakh, Jehovah made to prosper, that is what it is.

- 4. Vay' shareth (and he served), i.e., waited on him personally.

- 9. It was a plain moral wrong against God - not a question of Jehovah's dealings.

- 21. This was as true as when Jehovah was matz' liakh (prospering) him - how blessed this! and the consciousness of it makes prison and prosperity alike. And it ends here, as there (though the prison was a little lower than a slave) in favour, Jehovah matz' liakh (prospered) him; this is what we want. It is connected - though the prison was with the fear of God; but it is all Jehovah in government - not God Almighty.

If Abraham give us the bright and blessed picture of communion with God, in Joseph we find goodness and unsullied integrity of heart towards God, in the midst of, and where the power of evil was. It is a lovely picture, and, in this, a beautiful foreshadowing of the Lord in His life - the Beloved of His Father.

Faithfulness is the way of divine spiritual understanding.

How we have got on here from the great outlines and principles of truth, and God's ways, and the freshness of individual faith to the working out of righteousness; the time came that his cause was known, "the word of the Lord tried him," Psa. 105: 19. But it is Jehovah who is with him, the governing God, not by His name God Almighty.

Note how far the trial of Joseph, limited by divine ordering from anything that should hinder it - intended to frustrate God's purpose - and apparently clean against it - and his righteous suffering in Egypt only just bring about the whole thing they seemed to frustrate; it was in the Egypt his brothers sold him to, and in the prison Potiphar put him in that led him to the butler and baker, which set him governor over all the land of Egypt. We cannot put God out of His way. It is better to trust him. How little they thought they were bringing about God's purpose they thought to set aside, still less that they were arranging a touching figure of the blessed Lord, the restoration of Israel after their repentance, and that He that they rejected should be the head of the heathen.

101 Genesis 40

Joseph's history is excessively interesting, but I do not think he is. He was upright and God-fearing, and God's hand was with him, but there is very little of God in his history. We are in Egypt, and it is Egyptian, and worldly, save that God is everywhere. With his brethren at the end he was gracious; he closes with the Sovereign God, not Jehovah, chapter 50: 24, 26.

Genesis 41

- 41. Note, the humiliation of Joseph was God's path to his exaltation.

- 51, 52. It is all Church ground, not Jewish.

Genesis 42-45

NOTE. - Joseph presents to us Christ as Wisdom - as rejected - first, His revealed claim of dominion and His Father's favour occasion His rejection by His brethren - then He suffers, and His wisdom is known, "till the time came that His cause was known," etc. - then in power - then receiving again His brethren.

Genesis 46

- 15. Dinah is not reckoned in the thirty-three, Er and Onan are.

- 26. Dinah is reckoned, Er and Onan are not - they were dead.

- 27. Jacob is reckoned in.

102 Genesis 47 and 48

- 3. We have reference to God Almighty appearing in Canaan, but all through here it is God, the One Sovereign, not man. In the great body of Joseph's history, we see His hand, not His name, only in millennial hope, after Dan, Jehovah comes in.

- 4. All Israel is to be K'hal-ammim, an assembly of nations.

- 19. Ephraim is to be m'lo-haggoyim, fulness of nations; the last a large word, but not, I apprehend, a number of different nations, and it hardly seems to be a "multitude of nations." Is not that the meaning of it? Is not this "fulfilling" or "fulness of the nations" something else? See Septuagint v. 4 sunagogas ethnon and v. 19 plethos ethnon and compare with Romans 11: 12 ploutos ethnon.

At any rate not "a multitude of nations"; see Isaiah 31: 4, "all the shepherds together," I suppose. The multitude of nations shall be to Ephraim, not to Manasseh. I am disposed to believe it is the mass of Israel's tribes, but the whole body of the peoples of Israel was counted to Ephraim.

Note it is haggoyim (the nations).

NOTE. - It is not the Jews but Israel all through.

Genesis 49

Here we have, after all, the whole history of Israel clearly set out, besides the history of particular tribes when important.

- 3-7. First Reuben, Simeon, Levi - Israel according to the flesh - heir according to nature; it has failed, it is scattered for its violence and cruelty.

- 8-12. Then Judah is the place of royalty; here the coming of Shiloh, and this part of the special history is noticed.

- 13. Zebulun - they mix with the Gentiles.

- 14, 15. Issachar - they bow down to them and serve.

- 16-18. Dan - seemingly lost, shall still judge His people; but in Dan the apostasy is brought out, then the remnant wait for Jehovah for salvation.

- 19. Thereupon we have one - Gad - heretofore overcome, at the last overcomer himself.

103 - 20. Asher - abundance and blessing are there.

- 21. Naphtali - liberty and good words.

- 22-26. Joseph - full millennial blessing.

- 27. Benjamin - full millennial power.

Genesis 50

- 10. As regards Jacob's burying place, when they carried him into Canaan, they did not go the straight way to the south of Canaan, but they went to Atad, which is beyond Jordan. Yet he was buried in Mamre, so that their carrying him to Shechem or Sychem has nothing extraordinary in it.

- 23. NOTE. - The third generation means three, not counting the point of departure, and as Jacob's sons' sons went down, there is nothing to fix the fourth generation necessarily within seven from Jacob inclusively.

The blessing of Jacob is clearly the scheme of God - that of Moses His dealings in the land as with a people there - a scheme connected with present conduct in the earlier part, and then His counsels.

Notes and Comments Vol. 1, Section 4.

J. N. Darby.

Conscience

<41005E> 104

As regards Conscience I have more than one point to note.

First, speaking, as infidels and annihilationists do, of its being the effect of education, etc., is all confusion - confusion between a rule by which it judges, and the intrinsic power to judge. No one denies - it may be misled by education - making such or such feelings a rule, an obligation; but a rule, or obligation imposed - and all such are so - is the opposite of conscience.

Conscience is the sense that there is right and wrong, and when called into activity by an act, that such is right or wrong, it pronounces, by its own judgment, that it is right or wrong, it pronounces for itself. I may have dimmed, blinded, influenced, misled it, but Consciences are; und fürsich (and in itself) is the judgment I pronounce from instinctive, and uninfluenced persuasion that such an act is right, such wrong.So far from its owning a law, it ceases whenever there is one which has authority, because it has not to judge for itself.

Quite true that the instinctive judgment of conscience is according to some inscrutable law, but that is another thing; it is not the perception of that law, but man's judgment of right and wrong in itself. It is our knowledge of good and evil, not a rule outside us. Hence, when Adam had it not, was not "become as one of us, knowing good and evil," he had a law, to which obedience was to be paid, and as to an act in which there was no right and wrong in itself - he might have eaten had it not been forbidden.

Man acquired this judgment of right and wrong, because "as one of us knowing good and evil"; of this there was no trace before. It was a question of obedience, law, and authority - subjection to God; but he enjoyed goodness - blessings - had to be grateful - but had no question of there being a right or a wrong perceived by himself - no power of it, no occasion for it, no possibility of it; it would have falsified his whole position, - he would have ceased to be innocent. Indeed the thing was impossible, for he was not as God, holy, i.e., essentially abhorring perfectly known evil - known because, and by being, holy; and sin was not in him, he could not innocently know evil to judge it. When a law was given, no doubt it might condemn what conscience did, but conscience had no more to do; if godly, under law man had only to obey.

105 Again, education may corrupt the judgment as to what is right and wrong, but supposes the judgment faulty. I suspect that the true test is, that whenever the conscience is falsified by education, the will and passions will be found to be at work, and though the person may not think of it, it could not be denied by a person not having his passions engaged. It is conventional right and wrong found by circumstances; hence, as in mere civil circumstances, conscience is the ultimate rule. We have Pascal's dictum, "juste c'est ce qui établi, donc tout ce qui est établi est juste"; only when this violates too seriously the conscience, or natural sense of right, or wrong, it tends to revolution, i.e., will breaks out against the pressure.

I suspect the immutable law of right and wrong is founded on relationships, whether with God, or as God has formed them; from them duties flow. Only that man having been set lord over the earth, possession has come in also; it is regulated by convention, only if it too much violates the right to possess in others - in many - it tends to violence in order to possess - wants ministering to this.

Grace has brought us out of law into absolute obedience to a Person, but then it has its own rules which we need, and has set up the absolute authority of a Person, and a relationship which governs conduct, i.e., right and wrong, as all relationships do; Christ being the perfect model of that in which we are with God and man.

But we must not confound the rule of right and wrong with conscience - the discernment of right and wrong. "To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin"; that rule varies divinely, even because the relationship is changed. My duty was a man's, a child of Adam's to God, and to other children of Adam, for that was my place, and relationship; it is of a child, a son of God, of which Christ is the pattern. Hence one rule or test of right or wrong is universality, practically what I hold to be right for all everywhere, but modified by this principle, where the same relation exists, i.e., one formed of God, creature, son, daughter, wife, etc., man with God, and with men, general or specific, whatever He has ordered. Only we must distinguish between obedience to God, or what represents Him, and conscience viewed as judging right and wrong. It is right to obey Him, wrong to disobey, and so far conscience comes in, for man had a given, has an instinctive, recognition of God, but it is not any judgment of right and wrong, as such, in the act itself. It is not what man acquired by the Fall, i.e., the divine prerogative of judging right and wrong for himself, "one of us."

106 The question may arise, how far grounds of judgment, and so far reason enter into conscience, and I answer, "not at all"; they go to lead to the estimate of the fact of the relationship, and whether it be violated, and I conclude that the thing is wrong. I then pronounce judgment, not on the thing, but on myself, or another conscience is at work, I call it wrong; but conscience always judges the thing. But there are, thus, three ideas connected in our mind with conscience, which we must look at if we would not have confusion in our minds; firstly, the sense of responsibility to a Being above us, principally to God, not the duty of loving Him, that is law - but authority; this, Adam had before the Fall; secondly, the sense of good and evil; thirdly, the self-judgment or repulsion of heart, as to others, produced by it when an act is contemplated it condemns; the second is properly, I apprehend, Conscience.

Innocence

<41006E> 107

The loss of innocence closed evidently the simple enjoyment of blessing in thanksgiving. The knowledge of good and evil being come in, God, in saying "the man is become as one of us," has declared that man, to be with God, must be with Him as suited to Himself - as knowing good and evil - in a word, in righteousness. One must, having knowledge of good and evil, be suited to what God is according to it; but there is a certain modification of this to be introduced, not the diminishing or lowering of required righteousness (dikaioma), so as to allow of any evil, for that is impossible - God cannot allow evil, He would not be holy if He did - but the taking the measure of the knowledge of good and evil, according to the real light and moral condition of the position in which he is - I do not mean as fallen in this position - but according to the moral elements of that position in which he is with God. If he is perfect to the level of that position he may righteously live there, and enjoy God there; man never was, but it was put before him - it is the law. If, as man, he loved God with all his heart and his neighbour as himself, he would righteously, as man, be happy with God, because he would meet the mind of God perfectly, as knowing good and evil in the position in which He was, according to the knowledge he had of God; He was perfect according to that - man was never so, because he had lusts - but the case was put. He never de facto could have been so, because he got the knowledge of good and evil in and by sin; unfallen Adam had not a bad conscience, but he had not a good one. The truth is, there was no such position of man, because he set up to be like God, knowing good and evil - he made the measure for himself in desire, and would have risen up to God - by robbery been equal with God; he broke through to be with God, and now he must be with Him or shut out. He cannot, of course, be independently equal, which would be absurd, but he must be morally fit, according to God's presence, or be excluded from it; there is no return to innocence, or to the tree of life on that ground.

The law, however, never took the ground of introducing into the presence of God, as He is, according to the absolute revelation of His nature - Christianity alone does that - it keeps man without, hiding God, "Thou hast said thou wouldst dwell in the thick darkness," and gives to man thus without, but from God Himself, a perfect rule of right for the creature as such, condemning withal all that entered into man's state contrary to this, and, further, putting man into relationship with God on the ground, however, of natural creation, but assumedly in the rest of it - a thing really impossible now that evil was entered, and meant to show this, but still, for this very purpose, established on this ground.

108 The perfect rule was, loving God with all the heart, and one's neighbour as oneself - sin and lust condemned, and the Sabbath added to all. But for a sinner, evidently this had no reality but to condemn, and it did not profess to bring to God; it gave a rule to a people outwardly already brought into relationship with God, but with a barrier, and a double veil, and a priesthood, but it gave the perfect rule of right and wrong to the creature, who had the sense of it according to his nature, in the creation; but he was a sinner, there could be no rule in respect of sin but condemning it, but the law contained, as Christ showed in extracting it, the perfect positive rule; in this respect the perfection of the law's bearing is most wonderful, only it was the opposite of bringing an unjust man to God.

God is unveiled - He was manifested in grace in Christ, but, through His death, the veil is rent, "He suffered, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God" - this accordingly is according to good and evil as known of God Himself; and as walking "in the light as he is in the light," we are to be fit for God as He is - "rejoice in hope of his glory" - joy in Him. Our estimate of good and evil is the divine one - what is fit for God's presence; in view of this Christ has made the expiation, He is sitting, in the full condition belonging to it, as Man at the right hand of God. It is an unspeakable blessing, but the necessary result, we may say, of the work being God's according to His counsel, and wrought by Christ; for where should Christ be, as to His Person, or in desert of His work? Then the Holy Ghost is come down thence, while He is there, according to infinite love, to bring us in spirit into it - to bring us through the rent veil into the Holiest of all.

Such is our knowledge of good and evil, and the fruit of Christ's work - the darkness passes, the true light now shines; our coming to God is "renewed according to his image in righteousness and true holiness." It is an immense blessing. There never was really any being with God on another ground than in the light as He is, as brought by grace, and power, out of the darkness into the light, knowing good and evil. He cannot - and have this knowledge - do anything short of Himself, i.e., what was fit for, worthy of Himself; so that, as when man was ruined, and got into darkness with the knowledge of good and evil, God only could deliver him, He delivered him necessarily for His own glory, according to His own nature.

109 He put man provisionally on another ground - of perfect creature blessing, but as a sinner apart from Himself, to bring out where he was in sin, and which therefore spoke of sin, and a positive curse - but this was by the bye for a special end.

The only thing is innocence or glory - innocence in human condition - earthly; glory in a heavenly, Angelic condition sustained. Hence I apprehend, morally speaking, angels could not be brought back because of the knowledge of good and evil in the light with God; so man, Hebrews 6; but - innocence lost, with the knowledge of good and evil - the work of God according to His own glory, and hence necessarily bringing into it - or, a law, provisionally showing the abstract moral perfection of a knowledge of good and evil in a creature, but actually, relatively founded on a prohibition of evil, which brought in, where really apprehended, the conviction of sin.

Civilisation

<41007E> 110

Civilisation is the artificial and polished life which arises from the elaborate development of skill, in which the faculties of men have been exercised, and in which men are associated, by common recognised rules, and where the mental faculties are in play, and can act reflectively on themselves, in contrast with men individually, or collectively acting from natural impulses and passions, and, at least in a greater degree, by means which nature affords. For the faculties exist in the savage, and the impulses and passions remain in the civilised, and, if let loose, unrestrained by common recognised rules, can use the means acquired by civilisation to satisfy them, as in revolution, war, etc.

Consequently in civilised society men are more dependent on each other, and more closely united; in savage life more personally free, and individualised, though man is naturally social, if not gregarious, for social is different from gregarious - supposing mind and speech.

As known in the world, civilisation supposes the fall, but so indeed does barbarism, though in a different way; in fact civilisation began, on man's being driven out from God, in Cain's family; Gen. 4: 16-24. Adam in Paradise had no basis of civilisation, the simplicity of his life in innocence gave no occasion for it; what the effect of Genesis 1: 28 might have been, supposing Adam had remained unfallen, can be only supposition. Barbarism was the natural effect of Adam's state when he had lost God, and civilisation is the effort to make, by the development of human faculties and the resources the earth furnished, the world pleasant without Him. What could a naked creature, thrown upon his own resources outside Paradise, be but a barbarian? - though the hunting state was a lower state when alone, and the means of life, but connected with natural energy as in Nimrod - though God had sent him out to till the ground, and clothed him with skins, not utter barbarism, but little more, only peaceful.

If we begin again with Noah, we get something more - barbarism was that into which men sank.

The earliest record language gives is a keeper of cattle; "daughter" means "one who milks the cows."

Genesis, Typically Considered

J. N. Darby.

<41008E> 111 {file section a.}

(Notes and Comments Vol. 1.)

Genesis 1

CREATION AND FORMING

The establishment of man as the image of God, and in dominion.

The first verse stands alone as an immense, simple, and unique revelation (verse 16 alone at the end connected).

The second verse, the state of the earth at a given time - tohu bohu (wasteness, emptiness) and in darkness.

Next there is the divine vivifying agency according to the divine will.

First, God, as regards this scene of power, willed there should be light; it is not said bara (created) - it did not spring however from the earth - it was no produce of it - it shone when God commanded it to shine, God saw it - no man or eye else was there to see it.

NOTE. - It was night, and day for the earth. The dividing was now, whether the fiat of God for its existence was, I cannot now say - it may have been so. If light was made to shine perfectly on the earth - not twilight - evening necessarily came first.

I hardly think that hay'thah (was) here is simple existence, but more "was become" (geworden war), yet so that it actually was in that state - was - but as a state into which it had passed - come to be - still was, but by beginning to be. I have no objection to "there was," but as a consequence.

In Exodus 3: 14, we have "I am that I am," in the future or abstract tense, but that seems another thing - the English auxiliary answers to it; only the tohu bohu was not the effect of creation, so as to "evening and morning" it was an effect.

In verses 8-10 we have evidently a descent in the use of shamayim (heaven) and eretz (earth) from verse 1, for the dried place is now eretz contrasted with the waters, not the globe contrasted with the hashshamayim (the heaven) and so shamayim is the expanse between the lower and upper waters, not what is contrasted with the eretz; so in verse 14 rakia (firmament) has a conventional visible sense, not as in verse 8 - compare verse 15.

Verse 14 is remarkable in this, that God does not make the sun and moon, "and it was so," but, as with the light, "God said, let there be lights"; in whatever way, He made them appear as centres of light to the earth, He set them for the seasons, and signs of the earth, and it was so. And God made all these lights, and the stars, and set or gave them to light the earth and rule, etc.; and God saw that it was good.

112 He made them - when the solid bodies were made is not said - they became lights to the ordered earth now; all the ways of expressing the creating, or ordering, almost are different, and surely not without intention. In verses 11, 12, there is no making nor creation, nor for the light; in verses 3, 4 He made the firmament "and it was so" - the atmospheric heavens, I apprehend; in the third day, verses 9-13, there is no making; I doubt that verse 17 applies to the stars, but it may be so.

In verse 21, life is in question, even animal life - God creates again. Man might have fancied the waters teemed with life from the sun or something; it was of moment to distinguish the animal body as coming to-tze (let bring forth) from the earth, yet, verse 25, God made.

In verse 26, bara (created) is again used as to man; before as to the races of animals, verse 21, in sea or air, and originally heaven and earth. Image represents, and presents likeness - does so fitly - the thing is like, because it corresponds to what the image presents. An image represented Jupiter - likeness was only ideal. A picture is "like" - it is the very image, when it presents himself to my mind; here it is "image," according to His likeness - as to the first he had God's place, a centre of subject dependent creation, looking up to him - no angel had that; likeness was another thing.

Genesis 2

The delight of God - intelligence as to the man's creation. The inheritance of delight, and the wife taken out of him while sleeping.

This is all in responsibility of obedience.

NOTE. - The heir or governor is also spoken of as being born of the woman, i.e., when fallen, for so great is the grace in purpose - made out of the man in accomplishment in evil - He born out of the woman; marvellous grace - "for neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord," but the man was created first, not the woman, and "the woman being deceived, was in the transgression," but as the woman is for the man, so is the man by the woman, quod nota, for, as we have said, it is marvellous grace.

113 Howbeit this chapter is the creation or forming the delights of God, and of him whom He had created.

I doubt the order (v. 4) eretz v'shamayim (earth and heavens) is changed without design; we are here descended to the present ordering of the earth, and earthly heavens - yet hanging on the original creation.

In verse 7, man, dust from the ground. There is no forming spoken of for animals - life was a different thing, though real, for here man becomes a living soul by God's breathing into his nostrils.

In verses 8, 9, the planting the garden is a special act of power and will, as verse 9 shows - verses 8, 9 have no time here, save putting the man into the garden. I cannot but think, verse 10, that the force of the passage is this, "and a river went out from Eden" (not the garden) - that practically stands by itself - then its object, "to water the garden"; then, a river system going forth, it separated itself and became four sources, i.e., of large streams, which flowed through the countries elsewhere. Ethiopia (margin Cush) is then a difficulty as to what country.

In verse 22 we have another character of a creative act - He builded it into a woman - it was no doubt creation, but formed, as to its materials, out of the rib.

In verse 23, these words, zoth (this) and hap-pa-am (the time) are to be noted, because they connect this with all that went before, as to the beasts, etc., and the same word is used in verse 19, vay-ya-ve (and He brought). It is a remarkable and interesting proof of who the Lord Jesus is in Ephesians 5: 27-30, particularly in verse 27; note both the points are united.

Note the intelligence of Adam and his knowledge of the mystery of the woman's creation; so, I suppose, the names of the beasts were right, only here the point is dominion - this is so, as to woman, for he gives her a name, but owns she is part of himself. This time it is so, as indeed the name shows - part of himself, but subject - he can give her a name, himself too - she was taken out of Adam, but Ish; so, no doubt, she is divinely called, but Adam gave her the name from himself, and to himself in giving it. All this is very striking.

114 Genesis 3

RUIN

Judgment - but on Satan, and, connected with fruit here, the curse of present sorrow.

NOTE. - The present sorrow is not the pronounced judgment, which is not touched upon, it remained in its full force in se.

Note, also, that fallen Eve is the mother of all living; and the Lord clothes with skins, but bars the way of nature, under responsibility in sin, to life.

There is more in it, but Adam gives here a name also to his wife - one of faith and authority, not of relationship with himself, Ishshah - still the mother of all living is a wonderful word, when death had just come in. But they are not yet clothed in divine righteousness, but though in sorrow, their curse to be children, and this he would take up on the judgment of Eve. Children and posterity - yea the bruising of the serpent's head was promised, though in judgment on it, by the woman's seed; but clothing the nakedness gave no return to undying life on earth - eternal life was not yet revealed, nor incorruptibility - these were brought to light by the Gospel.

Genesis 4

We have then the principle on which thus fallen men can stand, or do stand with God - this on the ground of coming, and how they could come.

I should question "accepted" in verse 7, the rather as s'eth (exaltation) is used for it here. The whole question of relationship - faith, by a sacrifice - doing well, if it existed, recognised, and therein eldership - lifting up - Abel's desire would be to him, as Eve's to Adam, and he would rule over him - otherwise, it must be khat-tath (sin offering), sin was at the door.

115 All this is the ground of nature - faith knows how it is met in Christ, He has been made sin for us; the whole history of nature and grace is here.

Then it is secondly, not merely "where art thou?" as to sin against God - but "where is thy brother?"

Then, "cursed are thou" - but neither is this in se final judgment - it is "from the earth," as the Jews of whom it is a type.

Then, the whole effect of going from the presence of the Lord, and settling in the world, i.e., we have the extent and character of sin - the suffering of the righteous, and the substitution of the appointed Seth.

NOTE. - Ish (a man) the name of strength and honour - Seth calls his son Enos (a fallen man) the contrary. Ish was the head of hope in nature - Ishshah was taken out of Ish. Nature also takes Jehovah with it in accomplishing its hope, according to promise, and says "I have gotten," but it must come to Abel (vanity and emptiness) - if accepted, and come by death and to death, be rejected of men even to death.

Genesis 5

Then the whole family of God, who only die here.

Enoch specially presents the redeemed, translated Church.

There is a difference here from chapter 1: 26; "in his image according to his likeness," here "in his likeness according to his image" (v. 3), this is natural, I think. God meant man to be His image, and created him according to His likeness therefore; man could not create anything - he begat him in his likeness, he could do nothing else - and hence according to his image, to take the place he was in, this was a consequence of begetting necessarily in his likeness. Hence indeed we have not "a son" - he begat after this manner.

But calling him "Seth," I apprehend, was an act of faith; Eve gave it him in gracious thankfulness - God appointed to her - Adam adopts it indeed, but with him it is simply the appointed one, not appointed to him. Eve was not wrong, but this was quite right - by the divine Spirit, I apprehend, which moved Eve's heart, but it was prophetic in Adam.

In verse 32, I apprehend the date is vague, indicating about the time in which God began to deal in view of the Flood, but if the genealogical age of chapter 11: 10 be taken, Shem was born three years after Noah was 500. I suppose Japheth was the eldest.

116 Genesis 6

We have in Noah, the coming in of a new world after testimony to the old, and judgment in his circumstances, representing the Jewish remnant, as Enoch the Church. "The Lord cometh with" (not to) "to execute judgment against those who spake against him."

NOTE. - The occasion of the judgment was, the mixture of the heavenly family with the earthly - the daughters of men.

He cannot be alone with God - must through weakness, or through love (as in Christ) take the sorrow and trouble in the flesh.

Here the restraint of this curse, on the earth, came in on the sweet savour of the sacrifice of Christ, viewing and in full view of the sin of man, which was the occasion of it - such was the new world, founded on that death and sacrifice.

Externally hitherto merely creation, of which God could repent, and destroy on corruption and sin - not so of His calling - but typically, a complete history of all God's dealings, to the end, in their principles; the roots, thus early shown, of that in which we degrade, but through which God has glorified Himself, and shown His righteousness; this is to the end of chapter 8.

In verse 3, I suppose it is (the flesh) "leads him astray"; but God's Spirit should not always deal with man in remonstrance. He would judge him, but give him 120 years delay. I see no difficulty in "in that he also."

De Wette reads "my Spirit shall not always strive with man on account of his going astray, he is flesh and his years," etc.

Young - "in his folly (or error) he is flesh, and so let his days be," etc. All take it as wandering. The sense, after all, is the same, for "he is flesh" is the reason at any rate.

The important question is the force of basar (flesh); now I do not think that, in the Old Testament, an instance can be found in which basar is used in contrast with "spirituality" - with "Spirit" or "the Spirit" and with "God," it is - but that turns the other way here; hence, because of flesh leading them astray cannot I think be the meaning, to say nothing of hu (also); "flesh" in this sense, is the discovery of Christianity, consequent on the Spirit being in the Christian down here.

117 Thus hu basar goes together, and I apprehend it is, that God will not always go on striving uselessly with a mere mortal, fallen and resisting, and an occasion of disorder - evil, and flesh have not to be respected with patience for ever.

He is flesh - mortal man - and not God; "the Egyptians are men, and not God - their horses flesh, and not Spirit." "He is flesh, and so let his days" - this with a slight change of stop, to give emphasis to hu basar, is De Wette's translation. But I apprehend De Wette applies 120 years to the length of life - this I believe to be a total mistake. It is the space allowed for preaching repentance, and the ark; "in their wanderings" would be quite as good as "because of," or better. It would then stand thus: "My Spirit shall not always strive with man (or amongst men) in their wanderings - he is flesh - but his days shall be 120 years."

This was the end of Adam as created - Noah's was a new world, though still of fallen man - but dispensational, founded on sparing through mercy and grace.

Genesis 7

Note the continued difference between God and Lord; God is a more secret, and at the same time universal name - Lord, of positive relationship. There is no question of sevens, or clean beasts with God, but with the Lord. God in speaking to Noah speaks of His own thoughts, and what is before Him; the Lord commands him in certain duties and relationships.

In verse 21 and the like, we have the witness of the way in which the corporate nature of man - the ha-Adam is spoken of, so in chapter 6: 1. o protor anthropos.

Genesis 8

God is to Noah a faithful Creator; at the close He accepts the sacrifice, and smelling the savour of Rest, alters the terms of His relationship with the judicially judged earth. The passing away of judgment was gradual, and the dove - the peaceful reign of the Spirit - though it bring token of peace to them in the ark, of whom we have spoken, found no rest till they were all passed.

118 Note also, the ground was cursed for man's sake; this is arrested on the typical sacrifice, because God finds a savour of rest in that, and, on the recognition of the evil in man, which had led Him to destroy, declares He will no more smite, but the regular order of creation should subsist while the earth remained.

Genesis 9

The world is here begun again - we cannot say "a new creation," but "the world that now is" - the other is entirely an old "world that then was." Compare the donatives in chapter 1: 28 and also verse 22 - so far it is, in part, man animally, yet withal in the image of God too, and dominion here; the terms of the new donative are quite other, and suppose, though no more curse on the ground, or destruction, sin to be there, and the sword in man's hand for righteous judgment - life, which was reserved before to God, now is put in government, and restraining vengeance into man's hand - so are they called Elohim.

We have then here, on restored blessing, not all peace, but subjection, government, security against evil, and the earth - the entire subject here - its failure in Noah, who began to look for the earth's blessing - and on the sin of his younger son, the distribution by God of the three great families by Noah's prophecy.

Note too, verse 6 - God never loses His rights by the failure or evil of man, nor His privilege so to consider it - so with the Church as against His enemies, or Israel either, for they ought to have recognised God's title in it, though He may punish and chastise at the same time.

But death and life are prominently brought out and the value of life manifested by death.

It is evident this chapter is a complete new ground and beginning of the world, though sin be still there, and death seen to be reigning, but life claimed as belonging to God. Man was made in His image, thus man in se connected with what was before, though the dispensation and footing of man with all things and God also, be quite new; also we have the failure, and then the generations as in chapter 5.

119 Blessing here is conferred of grace - on sacrifice, for that is ever needed - and Noah and his sons are blessed without reference to what they are. It is a primary analogous blessing to Adam's, though not anything of federal headship in sin for the sons are blessed with him.

Also the covenant is made with the earth - the Lord would not again curse it - Adam's present judgment was dispensational, so we shall find here. But this present rest and comfort concerning the work of their hands, because of the ground which the Lord had cursed, was abused, as before disobedience had been shown, Noah drinking himself drunk, and losing his intelligence, and the true place of government as head in wisdom, was thus against Him who had set him in blessing, and then relative sin comes out, as before in Cain, in not loving his brother - Canaan, Ham, does not respect his father. Hence the first prophetic testimony of patriarchal family announcement (for descendance now comes in - the blessing having been on their seed after them) opens with a curse, and hence it lights on Canaan; but this does not touch the covenant blessing given in grace, for the rain still descends on evil and good, and the sun rises on just and on unjust. Special government under law there may be, but on the earth in general this continues, and will, so long as it endures.

The taking off of the curse - dispensational curse - is not the redemption of the creature absolutely, as to death necessarily - this is an everlasting covenant with man, independent of law and righteousness. The new curse - prophetic - falls not on Earth - that Noah could not do - but on the unrighteous despiser of the Father and the reverence due to Him; hence it lights on Ham in his child, and is strict prophetic righteousness, but while so, as in pain and sorrow to Noah's heart too, for he has to see this prophetic judgment in judging his own ways, by a curse on those whom God had instituted in the blessing of creation with him (v. 9).

What sure ways of righteousness here, and quite a new feature of providential righteousness and judgment, and that in descendants too, while grace rules supreme before - independent of - and over all. The same consequently, the spirit of prophecy taking up this, plants Shem in the place of blessing, and relationship in this state of things; the governmental mind of God, in dispensation, prophetically revealed as to this relationship with Him, "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem."

120 Hence, the curse reversed on earth as Creator in new successional dispensation, it lights on the head of the rebellious son amongst the families, only election is placed in the place of relationship with God - He is the Lord God of Shem. And yet other general providential purposes and ways preserved for the history of the world, but not in this relationship; God, in His own will and thought, shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in Shem's tents. God does it, but He is not the Lord God of Japheth; Japheth may come in these tents for the blessing, or at least in relation with the blesser, while he possesses in providence the power, but we must rise up to God in supremacy, beyond the relation of this covenant dealing, to find Japheth in this blessing. It was the dealing of God prophetically with the earth - here Japheth might have power, but He was not the Lord God of Japheth in it; for him revealed foresight begins, but it begins (as the testimony in Paradise) after sin entered in, and therefore with a curse, adding thereto elective relationship, and supreme providence.

Thus was, while the earth was concerned in it, all the basis laid for what was carried on in Israel. This was the first prophecy; it is not that the Lord has not been pleased to reserve us the prophecy of Enoch - even He who knows the end from the beginning - but it was the first revealed order in prophetic dealing and government in the progress of God's dealings with the world.

Noah - as John Baptist - closed one scene and ushered in another in which he died, as those of the old before him, for really in man nothing was changed, though in circumstances, and even guilt, much; for blessing and grace was sinned against - Gentiles or nations soon begin now to have a place in our thoughts in the Word.

We have the sacrifice, blessing or promise, and covenant, and for the earth. This is distinct from the position - he is set in the failure and the curse, and the ministration of divine government in it.

The important division into all the different nations, and tongues; Japheth, isles of the Gentiles, and see verses 5-20, 31. In Ham's family, the first human kingdom by means of man's violence; "he was a mighty hunter," "and the beginning of his kingdom." This chapter throws light, by these nations, etc., on all the after prophecies. The dates, and ordering of providence go in Shem's family, and in fact on Eber being brought to light, Joktan was east; by them were the nations divided after the Flood.

121 This gives one great branch of prophecy - providence and pride, and more peculiar relationship to God, the God of providential ordering.

Genesis 10

The generations of Adam were after the full ruin, so here, after the curse. Also they are the generations of the sons of Noah, for they go by descendance; now it is not ha-Adam.

We have the nations and the beginning of a kingdom - quite a new thing - there were violent men before, now nations and a kingdom individually set up. They broke off from the stem and settled there, "in their lands" - thus countries had their origin too; this was settled in Peleg's time, only these were they who could not stay at home.

The isles of the Gentiles are all from Japheth; except Javan and Tiras - these we may say are all in Gog's expedition besides Peres, Cush and Phut - not Japheth's sons - Madai is not properly so perhaps, but in the kingdom it is mixed up with Peres - these we shall see afterwards.

Tubal and Javan are mentioned in Isaiah 66: 119 - the stopping of the accents there, in the Hebrew, does not join Tubal, Javan and the isles, but separates them as distinct, semi-closing the sentence at Javan - verse 4 here shows the connection. Tarshish, and we see Cush - Asiatic, it was part of or adjoining the land of Assyria - Babel was the portion of Nimrod his son; for Havilah, see chapter 2: 11, there was, however, a Havilah, son of Shem, also we have those who with Tarshish attended Gog for spoil - Sheba and Dedan.

In verses 7 and 8 we have instances how this genealogy supplies us with two things - the great families which appear again in the latter days, and the detail of families by which God's purposes, and Satan's plans and wickedness were brought about in the course of events. This Nimrod has much to be noted in character; note also - as in Cain - the city building. The whole character - the city building is nowhere else.

122 Chittim or Kittim, we are familiar with; Elishah, Riphath and Ashkenaz alone are not expressly mentioned in the latter day array. Mizraim is not mentioned with Gog - the land of Mizraim does not escape the wilful king; Cush and Phut we have seen with Gog. Lebim and Cushim are also connected with the wilful king - the former from Mizraim, see verse 13. Canaan also is well known, only so far as it remained, in Sidon, etc.

Note the language as to Shem in verse 21, Elam, Asshur, Lud and Syria alone are spoken of Shem nationally, but he was the father of all the children of Eber. The three distinctive characters of the three are to be noted; is ga-dol (greater) certainly "elder"?

The purport of all this is obvious - only we remark Japheth haggadol - Elam, Asshur, etc.

In verse 32, they settled by breaking off from the parent stock, or settled branch. Note this principle of nations, consequent on Babel, was entirely a new one.

Note, "the Lord" comes in here; also note, even Shem's families come in after the curse of dispersion on the sons of Noah, for this chapter is the history of the sons, the government is there, Noah stands alone.

It is national, derived from families, the government of the Lord now, but then that as a consequence of the judgment on Babel. Here, in Shem now, one family is taken up, and progeny, not death, is noted in the catalogue for, though under ruin, the Lord comes in as the Lord God of Shem, and this was now His way of blessing, i.e., as to the earth. But the order of God is here, the dates, families, and division of the earth - unity in evil - then Babel, Nimrod and Peleg give the three great types of this state of things.

We may also note that the characteristic title of the nations is consequent on the judgment on the public sin of the dispensation - the tower of Babel - for they are divided "after his tongue"; Japheth has the isles of the Gentiles, Ham is first great, Shem is noticed as younger, but the father of all those counted among the name of descent of God's people - their name among the peoples - "the Hebrews" say the Philistines.

123 Genesis 11

Note that in verse 5, we have B'ney ha-Adam (the sons of Adam) - still their common generic name, no nations yet. As in chapter 10, the first human kingdom, so here the first great human confederacy to maintain themselves together, and exalt themselves in a joint centralizing name, which God has called "Babel" (confusion). This, though another point, was the head or beginning of Nimrod's kingdom. This was the occasion of a new character of judgment - scattering, to confound the pride - not simply destruction, to put an end to wickedness. We have then the chronology of Shem, in whose special family - for the Lord God was the God of Shem, though Japheth might be enlarged, and dwell in his tents - was the calling of God, an entirely new principle, now manifested actually, though doubtless true before; this was the principle.

We learn from Joshua 24, the occasion was idolatrous worship, i.e., ascription of power to demons, and not to God, which made judgment unavailing, for it was ascribed to the misleader of man; such was the occasion of the principle of God's calling. Till entirely disconnected from his family, he could not go to the land; Acts 7.

We have the public sin, and the Lord's judgment of the world, in providence, for it, and the descent of the chosen family from the chosen head of it. This was prepared in providence, for calling must stand by itself. Though the family afterwards were called, the immediate family are called, and the notice de facto that the separation of Abraham was incomplete, for he was obliged to be left a good while in Charran, because his father was with him; afterwards, God's mind and way in the matter is seen - he "went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan he came."

Thus we have man (ha-Adam) and the end of all flesh - Noah, and the new world, and his failure - the government of the world based on this failure by calling and judgment (on Ham's family), and the preference of younger to elder - providential arrangements thus ordered, and then further - Babel and violent power, beginning the subsequent history - and then the family of the owned seed. The call of Abraham begins all on a new basis.

The national order had its root and occasion in the sin, as all in the sin of Adam - the family order of the world was completely ruined in the tower of Babel; this was the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom. And there man's renewed empire began, not only with violent Nimrod, but with the divinely established throne of Nebuchadnezzar. In general, we have association in unity of men, and power in an individual as king of Babylon. We learn from Joshua 24 that Satan had set himself up as the head of providential agency, as god, even in Abram's family, so that some new intervention of God was absolutely necessary, unless He should have destroyed all, He Himself had created, again. As the sin of Adam became, in the knowledge of good and evil, the occasion of blessing far higher, so the sin of Babel and confusion became the platform of blessing in Abram - he is to be a great nation; yet the widest blessing reaches back beyond - the families of the earth are to be blessed - so did grace as to Adam.

124 NOTE. - It is upon his return out of Egypt to the altar at Beth-el, the house of God, that the separation takes place, and the world and the inheritance become clearly distinguished.

Genesis 12.

This great principle is brought out - called to act - on faith, in God's Word for a promise only in hope, and when there only in earnest, a land to be shown - a nation - blessing - and all families blessed in him - this was the most general promise - he was the man, the depositary of promise, and promised blessing.

The Canaanite - the power of already announced evil - was already, and now, in the inheritance where he was brought; so we, see Ephesians 6: 12; but the principle, "they went forth to go" and "they came" - that was their condition - through this, and in this, however, he moved in liberty; but there was a famine in it - he, without call, or direction, goes down to Egypt - the world - then denies his wife, gets presents for it, and the prince of this world, and his house judgment, till they are let go.

This is entirely a new principle in the world; God had, under Peleg, settled them in countries of their dispersion. They had not only settled in their countries, but it was divided - allotted out. Abram is told of God to leave his country - he becomes a stranger and a pilgrim upon earth, as regards original natural ties in flesh, but he has not here done with earth as the scene of blessing - he was to go into the country which Jehovah would show him.

125 But the calling of an individual, and settling blessing in him, is a most important principle. It is not the responsibility of ha-Adam, nor individuals owned and godly through grace, but the purpose of God calling one out, and setting and centring blessing in him; and it is remarkable how blessing is dwelt on and repeated, cursing only coming in as a fence - a judgment on any who should wish it on him. But Abram was called to a land (country), and the races or families of the earth (ground) were to be blessed in him - he is taken from them to be a blessing to them. Making it a blessing means, I apprehend, the type of it - "the Lord make thee like Abram" being the best wish of blessing possible; but all that was an earthly habitation he was separated from.

This being the very type and model of divine blessing is most remarkable, and more so far in us, for indeed we are - being in Christ - beyond all comparison; this is grace and a sovereign, original purpose.

Note, too, not only was he the model and type in which divine blessing was expressed, but he was the depositary and so source of it to others; this, far more fully and actually the case, in its complete fulfilment in us, is a very divine place. We have so the divine blessing in God Himself in Christ, in conscious communicated possession, that we become the communicators of it to others. This is first of all Christ's place, but he that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him, and so it is shown and flows forth. Compare John 1: 18 and 1 John 4: 12, as showing how this is.

This principle is not only supreme on the part of God, and the accomplishment of His counsel, but it is clean contrary to, and out of the order His natural providence had established; the world was ordered by families, everything arranged by families settled in such and such terrestrial divisions, and kindred was the tie that bound the earth together.

Abram is called to loose all these, and leave them; corruption was come in, and they that were of God must be to God, but then the great principle of calling out by special grace - God interfering because of His grace, and in grace having one for Himself in the world - was manifested.

126 Yet Terah acts for himself, and takes Abram a certain road towards the place; Abram did not act on the call at once. The expression "the Lord had said" is correct, from Acts 7.

Although the call was from out of the world as settled by providence in families, yet, being called out, the blessing ran in that order, whatever might be contained under it, or however God might bring about its accomplishment.

NOTE. - This is "the Lord," as acting within the sphere of covenant, and dispensed relationship, not simply in supreme Godhead; the land he was to go to was of God the Lord's showing; "he went out not knowing whither he went" - it was dependence and confidence in the Lord - the ear opened to hear His will. Then the promise - a great nation - blessing, his name great - to be a blessing - kept, owned, so that blessing and curse should depend on treatment - and lastly besides, all the families of the earth blessed in him, I say besides, for making him a nation was one thing as called, and the families of the earth, left where they were, being blessed, is another; there we have, on Terah's death, his acting on the call - kept, perhaps, hitherto to himself, Terah had no part in it, and he dies in Haran, for Abram was to be out of his house and kindred; on this, Lot accompanies him, but he had neither after all - Sodom was his place of loss of all - on the contrary, in verse 5 we have the purpose of obedience, and its certain accomplishment in grace according to the calling. "They went forth to go, and they came" - the whole effect of the promise in a certain sense.

Abram passes through the land - the powers of evil, which are to be destroyed, are still in it.

By calling, the depositary of promise is brought into a place which is to be the rest, but he is there as a stranger - the powers of evil, afterwards to be exterminated, being still there.

Here the Lord appears to Abram - reveals Himself - now for the first time spoken of; this is in the land, where he is brought by faith - there is the revelation of the Lord Himself to him; hence it is a promise of the land - this land - to his seed, for he was, though in hope, a stranger in the effect of the promise, as regards the part of it here taken up, therefore this land.

Here also is worship ordered before the Lord - "he builded an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him."

It was also a promise of the land to his seed, that is, in fact, it was the assurance of futurity - of perpetuity according to the nature of the thing.

127 This is the place of communion and worship - "in the heavenly places" - the Lord revealing Himself there, the seal of faith in communion, and so ground of worship, carrying with it the assurance of eternity in it, and the consciousness that we are in the place, with the Lord, to which he had called us; for He has called us to His own kingdom and glory. But in these heavenly places, the power of wickedness - the race on whom the curse ruled - still are; we are strangers, yet the Lord appears to faith, in secret as it were, and, though moving to and fro, the Lord's altar is ours, in spite of the Canaanite, in every place. These are the two subjects in verse 9. In the end of the chapter we have Abram, not in the title of the Lord, but acting on distress, on his own wisdom, enriched outwardly, but his wife in the hands of the prince of this world; the end is judgment on the prince of this world, for, if man be unfaithful, God vindicates His own titles.

We have in verse 16 a remarkable picture of the departure of the church from God - Abram, whose acts are in question, representing the persons in it who dealt with the Church in this way, and got rewards - rewards or gifts of a harlot specially, as they say such in character. All these things they got from Pharaoh (king of Egypt) - everything they could wish, and in favour, but in dishonour of God and of her too, through whom the seed of covenant was called - beautiful in the eyes of the world, Egypt had nothing to produce like it - but besides being beautiful, she was the espoused of Abraham, the spouse of promise in the purpose of God. It was distrust of God in Abraham, which led to it, and to deny his inseparable bondship with her, as separate (for ever) from all others - this in spirit, but it has striking reference to the Jews when the bride of the Lord; he was not Abraham (father of nations) yet.

Genesis 13

Abram returns to his former altar - "at the first"; this is a great principle, be it for Christian or Jew; it is the history of the stock of faith - great principles. Lot, favoured hereto fore with him, chooses what is good, and well watered, but the scene of God's judgment, into which he gets.

128 Abram gives up, and has only the scene of judgment, and gets all things, and it is promised now to him, and his seed, as in chapter 12: 7. This was when in the land, always an actual thing, not a promise for a principle to all, though we may apply it in a sense.

We have the entire separation of faith from a portion in this world, so that it should come into the inheritance of God's counsels - worldliness in him that had not the promises, or however did not act in faith as renouncing the world, having to dwell in the place of judgment, acting on the senses and selfishness to which this was then the best place, the apparent place of the Lord's blessing; this also is a type of the Jews.

Note in verse 12, Lot pitched toward - up to, even to - Sodom, but in verse 12 of the next chapter he was settled here.

Genesis 14

I think that "in the days of . . . made," is not "that these" made - Chedorlaomer was chief; I suppose the king of Shinar was the foreign nation most connected with the Jordan kings.

Note - whatever brings one into the blessing, brings one into the power of the world; it is not the delivered land - the Canaanite may be in it - but there is no choice of Sodom - the power of the Lord is with those in it.

We have then the captivity of Lot in the wars of this world (as Israel, who chose the world, shall be), and the liberty of a deliverance by Abram who acted in renouncement on promise; he can use the world with him, as his servants, for he is acting for himself on his own principles. Melchizedek - the Lord Jesus - Priest and King, comes forth to bless - not intercede here - the most High God, now possessor of heaven and earth, and Abram from Him; but all that comes of and from the men of the world is ever, and utterly rejected. His superiority is owned.

129 Thus the great principles of the life of faith in the Church, and Israel too, are stated.

It is the victory of Abram over all the powers of the world, which had subjected those with whom Lot was associated, and thereon the full blessing of the depositary of promise of the King-Priest, on the part of the most High God, possessor of heaven and earth - on the other hand the royal priesthood of blessing in the whole sphere of heaven and earth possessed of God supreme, and centring in Abram.

Thus the great principles of the life of faith in the Church, and Israel too are stated; this closes completely this book - it is from chapter 12 to end of chapter 14.

The calling, position and failure of faith - the dependence and renouncement of faith - and the effect of worldliness - triumph of the heir of the world, and the royal millennial blessing in Christ in heaven and earth.

Genesis 15

We now come to other points - the seed and heirs - and the covenants - the flesh and spirit - and the principle of justifying faith.

God the Lord declares - after this deliverance and refusal of anything from Sodom - "I am thy shield and exceeding great reward." This was the great, the blessed - how blessed - infinitely blessed - and for ever beyond all our thoughts in communion with Him - and glorious truth, our own too in some measure, as He is the Father of all them that believe. Such then was - if such was - God to him - the deep resting place of all brethren - an anxiety on his soul, the occasion of an instruction - the manner of it; he had no end but "the word of the Lord," for this was by "the word of the Lord" quod nota.

The Lord appeared, chapter 12: 7; but here we have the word brought in - to him saying he should have an heir out of his own bowels - his body now dead, it was a resurrection, and Sarah in the same way. Here he exercised faith, i.e., in God raising the dead, giving him a numerous seed - compare Romans 4. Thus the promise of an heir - faith in the word of the Lord - and God raising the dead - all are now introduced as concurrent principles, faith now being first mentioned - the word - the heir - and resurrection, though all had been true actually, or in hope before. There is also the principle of a covenant dealing - God's entering into the minutest detail of the interests of His people, and all their history, knowing their path, blessed be God, even in sorrow - their enemies all before Him - their deliverance all arranged for good - and binds Himself in the same covenant, whether of a lamp to guide or a furnace to prove. And if the horror of a great darkness - the power of the destruction of the flesh - the shadow of death in the midst of Abram's care for the sacrifice against corrupters, or the power of evil - the weight of God's judgment on the flesh fall on Abram's soul, He who covenanted with him passed through the power of death for him, to secure a covenant which He only could make - He only sustain - He only secure thus to such, as to any sinner.

130 Here we have faith counted for righteousness; before, it was "thee only have I seen." Enoch walked with God - Abel's works were righteous, though we all know all these were by faith - but the principle is here first introduced.

Note - the Lord does not appear to him here - it is a new kind of revelation, and as to the manner, an inferior one - prophetic - not the revelation of Himself. But it was first about Himself, only relatively to Abram; hence here we have the plans and purposes of God, and faith. Heretofore God's appearing, and personal relationship - great principles, and promises - now, the world having been judged, overcome, refused, the earthly purpose of God in the heirs (people) and inheritance is prophetically brought out, and secured by a covenant, full of mystery. The proper founding of an earthly covenant, on the revelation of a name of God, is only in chapter 17 - He was revealed there on this patriarchal ground of God Almighty. All this chapter is Jehovah.

In verse 2, does mah-titten-li (what wilt Thou give me?) refer at all to s'kar'ka (thy reward)? At any rate take notice of the connection of the previous chapter; unless a son is born, and an inheritance, the destruction of enemies is of no avail - the refusal of Sodom's goods is not all, without the possession of the Lord's inheritance, and here also comes in the recognition of character in chapter 22 - without an heir, gift is naught. In Adam, first inheritance, then head - now, in redemption, first the heir - (the inheritance subsisting, but being ruined), then the inheritance. So then here in promise "what give - seeing I go childless, and my heir," etc.; for herein God must have an Heir - as well as he an heir of misery - in redemption; and Heir of Worlds as a servant, ven-bethi (the son of my house, v. 3), but not so, there is an Heir of promise, One who indeed is Heir of God, and resurrection Heir, and herein declared Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, and not herein a servant, but a Son, though herein a Servant in love. But He was the Heir of the Church - also in another sense, of Abraham's promises, as object of promise.

131 Note also, this comes out of "I am thy shield, and exceeding great reward." So the millennial glory, which is the heir and the inheritance, is the gift of God, as all in all, to the Church - Christ is all in all, quod nota, for it opens much the two things, for they are in one sense two, yet one, for He is the first and the last, yet the Man of intermediate inheritance in which the Church, etc., learns this great thing - it is the lesson of it, and by indwelling. The inheritance was a former - unrevealed - one to Adam, but in act it follows on the heir, and that as a voluntary promise; the covenant was a necessity, without it we may say bammah eda (whereby shall I know)?

Note - on the enquiry as to the heir, which was necessary for any promise, the word of promise is given, and believed - the inheritance, voluntarily promised, is matter of covenant "whereby shall I know?" quod nota; the answer primarily to mah-titten-li is the heir. The covenant and the inheritance includes however sorrow with it; in this sense Joshua is a most important character. But surely it was a sad word mah-titten-li when God had said anokhi (1); but God directed Abram's attention to Himself in saying "a shield to thee." Yet God meets this with the promise of the heir (seed, in an earthly sense) and inheritance - we must look out, I do not doubt, upon this (Abraham) as the image of our Lord's faith (in weakness), as well as Father of the faithful, but I speak in a general sense - it was a sad picture of the weakness of the human heart, sustained (to learn God) by intermediate witness of blessing, till all was accomplished, for this is God's way - for what could be so great, so blessed as anokhi - the end, centre and substance of blessing - all blessing. "I am thy shield," yet he says "what wilt Thou give me?" now this was tide in Christ, and here it is justified - but wretched weakness in us, for what blessing but is in God? Yet He has met this weakness in the righteousness of that tide, for so Abraham represents both - it is a most important sentence, whether in principle or in type as to us.

It seems to me that, in verse 6, he-emin ba-hovah is more justly "he believed Jehovah," than "in" Him - he put his Amen to what Jehovah said - it is not trusting, because it is confiding, or trust in His word, which is believing Him.

132 In verse 12 there was the covenant security of death, but the power of death - it rested on redemption ground. God came down on man in darkness, but bound Himself by death, and sacrifice, to the gift. Trial and guiding light were the character in which He secured it, but death was on the creature, and God bound Himself. It is not exactly our place, because we come in after it is accomplished - Christ having gone through it for us, and we are entitled to reckon ourselves dead; still there must be the death of the nature, and we often pass through it to arrive at liberty.

In verse 17, alatah (thick darkness), I apprehend is "thick darkness" - quite dark; so in the other places in Ezekiel 12 where it is translated "twilight." It must mean obscurity - thick darkness, of which He was to profit - to be hid.

NOTE. - Paul counts from the confirmation of the promise to law, 430 years (Gal. 3), that was some 14 years after this, perhaps more - 14 or 15 years from chapter 16 (see beginning and end); but he takes evidently Exodus 12: 40, as a general statement. I apprehend the statement here need not be a captivity and servitude of 400 (or 430) years, for at first the Israelites were not enslaved - it was when Joseph was forgotten - and this makes it easy to believe that the 400 years is the terminus of the period, given in round numbers. The Samaritan and Septuagint, in Exodus 12: 40, would be an interpretation, and it looks like a gloss; the computation from Kohath, and Amram is of no weight. That the 400 years is a terminus, from the then present time, seems borne out by this, that it is given as a reason, that the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full - it would be in 400 years - they would be in Egypt as to the 400th year; 400 years is an absolute sentence - afflict them - 400 years. There is the difficulty of the sojourning of the children of Israel - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were not there - but the text may be occupied with them, as if they were. On the other hand, it may be said, that Paul in Galatians 3 takes the whole patriarchal time in Canaan, as the time of promise, and the 430 years from Jacob's descent into Egypt.

We have hitherto had the calling and history of Abram, father of the faithful, depositary of the promises, and the great principles connected with it. Now we have the heir and the inheritance - first then sought in a carnal way - the promise of faith and the carnal way of getting it.

133 As to details, we have God his shield and exceeding great reward - the promise, on his plaint, of the heir - faith, by which he was counted righteous. The same God that called him to this land to inherit it - the definition of the inheritance by Covenant to an oppressed and delivered seed - God, binding Himself to them, for this, as a burning lamp and smoking furnace. The heir was promised generally, and then seed as the stars of heaven; being promised generally to him, he seeks it then in the way of the flesh, instead of waiting on the Lord, and the bondwoman, being cast out, becomes yet the object of providential care and promise, but not in the house of Abram in the promise, but of supreme promise - God living and seeing.

After the heir, the detail of promise here was the land and the numerous seed. In this way chapters 15 and 16 make another division of the Book.

Note, in Eden it was judgment on the serpent, and the setting up of the woman's seed not properly a promise; it was a grand dealing of God, according to His own mind - and nature too - announcing the destruction of evil by that which here had its source in the feeble and failing woman, the first Adam quite set aside - unless he came under it.

In Abram promise begins, and he is called by that which is temporal - but of faith, "which I will show" - but brought into the place of promise, here he has nothing, and thereon he begins to look for the city which has foundations; the land is promised to his seed, while he enjoyed communion. The nations were to be blessed in him, chapter 12 - in his seed, chapter 22; the special promise - to wit, of the seed to come - was then narrowed to David's seed, while established and confirmed.

It is clear then that Abram must enjoy the inheritance after a heavenly manner, i.e., he being in a heavenly position, for this was the position of his own faith. Then he is an heir according to promise, that is, he will so have the inheritance in a heavenly manner.

Christ Himself, come according to all these promises according to the flesh, takes nothing, but becomes heir, after a heavenly manner, by the power of resurrection; and Abraham will no doubt inherit the world thus in Christ.

This seems plain - that that which Abraham came to and had not - and Christ came to and took nothing - he who saw the day of Christ will surely enjoy after a true and heavenly manner, according to the glory of the Seed of promise, who shall possess it, and as taking it under Him - this I think presents no difficulty. But then another point comes in - Christ, who came thus according to promise, was, in that nature in which He came, above all promise - He was one with His Father, this could form no part of promise. The question then arises, what is the Church's place in this?

134 By the Holy Ghost's dwelling in us, we are brought into a marvellous unity with Him who possesses this nature - who is in it, one with the Father - we are one in Them; this unity being by the Holy Ghost, is applicable only to those in whom - to wit the Church - the Holy Ghost dwells; if Christ is in the Father we are in Him, and He in us, hence though the blessing comes upon the Gentiles, the present means of an election of Gentiles was not revealed to the ages - it was a mystery hidden - the day which Abraham desired to see, when the promises will be fully accomplished, is not yet come; and this will be the spouse of Christ, in a word, though the elect among the Gentiles come into blessing (as had been promised to Abraham) they come in now, by a means which rises far above promise, in Him who was loved before the foundation of the world, and according to a purpose formed, as to them, before it too, and which was not revealed by promise, but is based on the Person and work of Christ actually come, and union with Him before the world, is what is peculiar to the Church, see John 1 and 17, our union is with Him who was so - it is at Christ, as revealed by John specially, we are to look - its administrative accomplishment in Ephesians.

However, I do not think we can say that Abraham was properly of the aionon (of his heavenly inheritance I have already spoken) but I doubt that Election, Calling and Promise is properly an aion. Noah's then existed and contracted itself, so to speak, into Israel for the time; nor do I exactly see, on the other hand, that looking for a city makes him the city. It seems clear that there is blessing without the city, for the nations of the saved shall walk in the light of it (Rev. 21: 24) - that he will enjoy it, I doubt not at all - that he will be in it, remains yet not shown to me. A grave question connects itself with this - that special privilege here bears no distinctive result above; for God had reserved some better thing for us - does this cease with this earth? By one Spirit we are all baptized into one Body, compare Ephesians 5 and 1 at the end; also the Church displays to the principalities and powers in the heavenlies a new thing.

Genesis, Typically Considered

J. N. Darby.

<41008E> 135 {file section b.}

(Notes and Comments Vol. 1.)

Genesis 16

We have then the hurry of the flesh seeking for that which would be had only by promise, bringing in the old covenant - the means are always the great point of faithfulness to God, for here it is He is trusted in patience, for the flesh is always readier, the flesh engenders by its confidence, the old covenant and sorrow is with Israel; what we seek for our good in it, turns to our sorrow in that point, and the new covenant loses its position in us. The bondwoman must return, and submit to the free, but if Israel fail, for so it was verified in history - (principles are continually brought into their history now, for we have got into details, as in chapter 15 at the close) - still, as cast out, they are under the eye of Him who liveth and seeth them even in this condition.

Genesis 17

We have Abram's family covenant. God reveals Himself - appeared to him - as the Almighty God; He was known to him by this name, see Exodus 6. A covenant between God and him, to multiply him. And God talked with him - he on his face; covenant with him - father of many nations - and kings - a God to him and his seed after him - the land and their God. All this for ever, without condition, and his name changed for the covenant. Here, being a pilgrim, and continuing so, God is not ashamed to be called, and to lay the basis of being called, his God. The covenant of circumcision given to be kept - true circumcision to us by Sarah, the new covenant - he shall become father of nations, at least she shall be mother of them, even of kings. Howbeit, as Abraham's seed, but before this covenant, and after the flesh, Ishmael should become a great nation, but that was all of him - the son of the new covenant was joy; God left Abraham and went up, and Abraham kept the covenant, and with his house was circumcised.

136 This chapter, though with an important break, goes on to the end of chapter 21. We have again quite a new presentation of the way of God in the promises - it begins all afresh. Jehovah lays a new basis - Jehovah comes and reveals Himself by His name of relationship to Abram - chapters 15 and 16 were all within the circumscribed sphere of covenant lordship - He is simply the Lord Jehovah. We have now the father of nations consequently brought out - the heir promised by Sarah - the new covenant - and the separation of His people's family by circumcision - His fellowship with Abraham as His friend - His revealing His counsels and mind to him - Abraham's intercession - God's judgment of Sodom, where Lot, or the earthly-minded remnant was, yet who were of Abraham - for God remembered him and saved Lot - and here there is the break I spoke of.

The end of chapter 19 gives the posterity historically of Moab and Ammon; Abraham was up above, out of the judgments - not escaped from them. In chapter 17 we have God in His own supremacy - in chapters 18 and 19 the Lord in His covenant actings in promise and judgment - chapter 17 is the proper revelation of God to Abraham as such, and bringing him, and his family, into covenant with Him because they were his family.

Genesis 18

We have now a most blessed portion. Having settled Abraham as the father of many nations, and the new covenant in Sarah as the mother of them and even of kings; after this we get the communications of God with Abraham for his own soul, and joy, and as to His dealings with a corrupt world - a world where (here moreover representing the Jews and Israel) Lot was.

This is a blessed truth, i.e., Abraham being on this ground of "father of nations," and the new covenant brought in; he is the subject of the communications of God of the immediate gift of the heir, and His judgment of the evil world "I will certainly return" and "shall I hide."* The Church at large laughs at the idea of the gift of the Son though long ago promised, and originally desired.

{*In the end of note on chapter 22, this is still equally true.}

But God comes down to see the state of the world, though even the cry is risen up till He comes down and sees; His long-suffering is perfect even to the very end - how different we. Yet as to the consequence it is our privilege and place to say "Lord, how long" in the desolation of His people, for love and for His glory.

137 Intercession is Abraham's place, he has nothing to do with the judgment - but knowledge of it - but the Lord is far more accurate in His ways, and does not take this step till the case is hopeless, for He is very patient, though in the end a consuming fire. Blessed be His name in all things; for judgment itself is mercy, clearing the evil that good may be blessed.

Genesis 19

The judgment of the world in its sin manifested.

Here there are but two, and they as ministering angels, and just Lot is delivered, but this is because of the promise and favour to Abraham - it is grace; it is a question of the world and a remnant, and that remnant near the ruin (though delivered, so as by fire) because it had taken the world when it seemed well-watered everywhere, as the garden of the Lord, and very little like the place of fire and judgment to the eye of the flesh. God had given, men might say, all these things, so He had in a sense; what then? Man was a sinner, and relinquishment, service and promise was his place; why promise, if he had his portion, and had not to declare plainly that he sought a country? First he chooses the well-watered plain - then pitches his tent towards Sodom - then lives in it - and then is driven out, with loss of all, by judgment of destruction.

Genesis 20, 21

It seems to me that the Spirit of God takes up much more the Jews in the latter day here; it is not that we have not, in principle the same thing as in chapters 17, 18 and 19, but its proper force is there. And it arises on this question with the king of the land over Abraham's wife, over the Jewish people as having a Husband, and as belonging to Him - they may treat them well in ignorance, but the Lord claims them for Himself, and others cannot thus have them.

138 Here also it is all God - not the Lord - not the order of covenant, or ordered relationship, but God in His supremacy. In the case of Pharaoh, it was the world, and Abraham is treated well, and Pharaoh plagued with great plagues - here the judging after the flesh - Abimelech is in the land, and does it in the integrity of his heart, but is bound to own Sarah to be another's - then he can reprove Abraham, and give him the land to live in. Thereupon the heir is born, "to us a Child is born, to us a Son is given"; thereon the heir, as under the old covenant is clean turned out, and Abraham can reprove Abimelech - give to him - set the borders of his lands - and then take possession of the land in a figurative sense - plant and grow there - call on Jehovah, the everlasting God, who now (figuratively) had given him the promises - the world (who owned however the Lord, see verse 4) acknowledging that God is with Abraham in all that he did - this after the entire casting away of the old covenant, and so it shall be. We may enter into this in spirit now, but it shall be accomplished in the latter day.

Chapter 12 is much more the Church and the world - Abram being the general depositary of promise; query - would not this suppose the bringing in of the new covenant (even as to the Jews) before the birth of the heir to them? The power of deliverance is a distinct thing from the preparedness of heart before God, and this last is a thing owned in Jewish dealings; Psalm 119 seems to teach the same thing - there the law is written on the heart, but salvation or deliverance is not come. This is an important principle in prophetic Jewish history. The Church stands on other grounds in its address to the world, although the same effect is produced. Is not this too seen in the Lord's life, in grace going to the chief of sinners, and yet saying "except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye can in no wise enter"?

In these two chapters then we have Abraham and Abimelech - the heir born - and Abimelech and Abraham again; in chapter 15 the covenant of the land - the heir and land - the Gentile world being refused; in chapters 16 and 17, the two covenants in their contracted character, and the heirs respectively of each; in chapter 18, the new being made known, Abraham thereon the depositary of the immediate promise of the spiritual Heir, and of the divine mind, closing with the execution of judgment; chapter 19, the close is special.

139 Here we have the relation of the believers, or those that hold the promise, before the heir is given and after, subject to (by their own folly, it is true - for God was Almighty, and they were to walk before Him) the world, or its king, and fearing before him, and then the Heir born to them and ruling the world - true in principle ever. It will have a special earthly accomplishment in the Jews, received under the new covenant with the Heir - the old covenant turned quite out, and the world reproved; but the Church anticipates these questions.

We have already seen that the man represents the conduct, the woman the state of the relationship with God; thus then it was not only generally with Abram and Sarai; but Abraham denies the total separation of his wife - the Church - to himself, even as Sarah, but it was not Abimelech's fault but Abraham's; so with the Church - it is not the world's fault, but the Church's - believers' - that the Church is put into the hands of the world in this sense. Sarah is finally reproved, though both are in fault, and Abraham intercedes for the world then, when Sarah is restored - this has special reference to the Jews and Christ - so in Numbers 12, Aaron, though also guilty, interceded for Miriam; Abraham takes Christ's place in spirit then - and so indeed the remnant, though guilty, noted hereafter.

Save the natural, original sin of man, God preserves His own seed in this - and the glory of Christ - by secret providence; but its condition before the world is lost - Abraham has no wife - believers recognise none of this separation of the Church to Christ as His own.

We have then the Son born according to the new covenant - to us indeed now in spirit - but actually, when He comes as such into the world, and then instead of Abimelech's reproving, Abraham reproves Abimelech.

As to the Jews, I should say it was the interval immediately before the coming of Christ as the Son born to them, in which the Gentiles are entirely unfruitful while they are in their hands - the Son is born, and they give up and cast out the old covenant, and then Abimelech recognises that God is with them in all that they do, not seeking to use them for his own purposes.

NOTE. - It is Sarah who is reproved, for she ought not to have acquiesced, and Abraham is dealt with, in the way of grace, as a prophet - for so God looks at the Church in Christ for intercession according to His mind, as full of the Spirit; compare Numbers 12, where the judgment is on Miriam - Aaron interceding, though in the fault secondly, if not first.

140 The age of Sarah moves me nothing - for the Church or Jews, the people of God, lose nothing in the sight of the world for their purposes, though in the sight of God in themselves grown old and barren. I see no necessity to assert that the fact happened where it is placed, but in its typical order I have no doubt it is in the right place, and in this sense it bears a most important character in the sight of God; it is when Sarah bears the burden - or may be supposed to do so, for it is not directly stated "for the day and hour knoweth no man," but from the place it occurs, looking back from the fact in chapter 21 to the promise in chapter 18 - of the Heir of all, the laughter of those that hoped, and the glory manifested of His Father in the world.

If it be the case, as above, about the Jews, then there is a recognition of them in Abraham in blessing, before the full blessing comes in - indeed it is so for Christ's sake, for in all their affliction, blessed Lord, He is afflicted - and thus Abraham would represent both Christ and the Jewish remnant, before the open manifestation of Christ, but it is more a display of principle than full details. It was when Hagar wandered and lay down, in despair, that Abraham made a covenant and reproved Abimelech after.

Many of the types present the perfections of God, or Christ in one sense, and the actings and therefore failure of faith in the other.

I have no doubt that, in the type strictly, Abimelech, Sarah and Abraham present what is Jewish at the close - God secretly preserving the remnant, but they in the world's hands and the people treated well - Satan seeking to keep them there. Then the Son born, and the distinction of Hagar fully made, and she cast out, and then the supremacy over the world; but, though all this may pass actually among the Jews then, it is true spiritually, not only with the Church, but even an individual soul, for example, getting under the old covenant, and seeking its blessing and heirship there.

Then with some necessary adjuncts from chapter 22 to the end of chapter 24, we have a new distinct revelation. In the previous part we had the Lord's revelation of Himself to Abram as El Shaddai - the covenant of circumcision - and also father of many nations - and the relative position, under this, of Church and Israel in Abraham and Lot. Then the new covenant and the Heir - here we have the Heir distinctly brought out - in connection with the Church - sacrificed and raised again in a figure; afterwards His Father giving Him all He had, sends His messenger (who had all in His hand and takes an earnest and proof), to seek a wife, and brings her back to the Risen One come out to meditate, having left the place where the providence of God had met and secured the subject and type of the old covenant; chap. 16: 14.

141 The force of all this can hardly be mistaken - the Holy Ghost taking the graces and gifts, and revealing that all was given to the Son; and seeking by the Father's will a bride for the Son, whom He brings back to Him, He having left the place of providence and the old covenant.

Sarah, the Jewish mother, is here removed ever viewed in the new covenant, and Rebecca is brought into her tent, and so Isaac comforted - and so the true Isaac. Meanwhile the land became the burying place of all their hopes, and that is all - all that Abraham, the depositary of promise, took in the land, and that not as his, but bought in it. It was only for the dead - a possession - pledge of other title to it, however. The world which has received Him in death, He must have for an inheritance; on the sacrifice and resurrection, the promise was confirmed to the seed. Verses 20-24 of chapter 22 come in, that the chain of history may be complete.

Genesis 22

We have then, the heirship and its principles and effects having been stated generally, the manner of accomplishment of the blessing in figure, and the extraordinary course, which was taken with the Heir, by reason of sin, and here we find the promise confirmed to the seed (Christ), which had not been mentioned since Abram's call - for all between was strictly, properly, Jewish, though the change of name might, as to the election, be extended to the Gentiles - "In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."

In this most beautiful chapter of his personal intercourse with Him, who, if He spared Abraham, did not spare Himself in giving His Son, we have the principle clearly brought in - the inheritance is taken in resurrection, and therefore on a sacrifice which can purify the joint-heirs to be with Him, according to the power of that resurrection, while many blessings may come therewith to the natural seed.

142 Genesis 23

Here we have Sarah disappearing as the mother of the heir consequently, for grace in resurrection has children and not parents, and thus the Jewish Church as the mother of Christ, though honoured as such, gives place to the King's daughter, the same expressed in a new character ("instead of thy fathers thou mayest have children") as Sarah in chapters 20 and 21 was looked at, as we have seen, as the mother of the heir and so Jewishly. Abraham still declines to have even this from the world - a burying place for Sarah - to owe any man anything; if Israel as of old be buried, it shall be buried not by the goodwill and favour of man, nor take its grave from anyone but he who honours it.

Genesis 24

Here we have the father sending Eleazar - a type of the work of the Spirit, with a testimony that all was given to the Son to bring back the Church (to whom He displays many gifts, and on whom He confers them) - to Isaac; the details are very beautiful.

This will be true in the recall of Israel in the latter day, but has full truth in the Church now, Jesus being glorified.

We have here the most perfect and lovely account of the work of the Holy Ghost in the call of the Church; no doubt Christ will have the earthly Jerusalem in a similar manner.

Genesis 25

We have here the extension of general blessing to other nations, though Isaac be heir of all. We have then the principle, not of death, resurrection, and inheritance, but of election and separation in those who might seem, externally, the heirs, and the apostasy of him who had the natural derivative right - an important principle, looking only to present things, the things that are seen, instead of saying "our light affliction, which is but for a moment," etc., "while we look not at the things which are seen," etc. - "thus Esau despised his birthright"; so the Church - so Israel - in not recognising the Holy Ghost, but taking the world and its mess of pottage - the other saying "we have no king but Caesar"; though if grace went to the Gentiles, it was "away with such a fellow from the earth." In Esau was all the energy of the flesh too, as well as the birthright; but it was announced beforehand, "the elder shall serve the younger." It is with the barren and the weak that the blessing is always found, for He chooses the weak things.

143 We have now Isaac as the resurrection Church and power. Fear was the principle of Abraham's conduct with Abimelech; note the difference of the flesh for God's commands, and the Spirit acting in faith; chapter 21: 11 to 22: 3.

The seeking the Church by Eleazar, for Isaac, is after the setting aside of the Jews in Sarah, while Abraham had not so much as to set his foot on, and had to buy only a burying place - the earnest of possession; so with Jacob, and Joseph when in Egypt.

Rebecca is taken into Sarah's place, and Isaac is comforted concerning his loss of Sarah - the Jewish mother.

From verse 12 we have the blessing of the nations, as sharing the goodness of Abraham, the depositary of promise - but Isaac is heir; they might enjoy the blessing, but were not heirs with him - so of the nations brought in.

Then the great depositary of all promise, however accomplished, and developed, passes from the scene, and it closes alike as to flesh and spirit - Isaac and Ishmael bury him; and we begin again quite fresh with Isaac, the resurrection heir, and the path of faith or unbelief (as it was with Abraham) under that principle. Isaac now takes up the place of blessing and subject of testimony. He is found now in the place of God's providence to Israel, cast out under the old covenant - the place he had left to receive Rebekah.

Ishmael has the pre-eminence after the flesh - twelve princes according to their nations - and Rebekah barren; here another principle comes out - distinctive election. Abram, though chosen, gave especially calling; this, predestination - there were two people, but the elder should serve the younger. Esau grows - is mighty - the elder and beloved of his father, for carnal reasons after the flesh - but is profane, and for a morsel of meat - having no thought of the privilege of God, or of what was beyond selfish life, beyond his death - sells his birthright for a mess of pottage; he despised note, not the blessing - none do that when present - but the birthright which gave him nothing.

144 Though true of anyone, I apprehend in Esau we have specially the type of Israel - Ishmael is Israel under the law - but Esau is the profane rejecting the birthright for the mess of pottage - their Messiah, for a few momentary carnal privileges, and security under the Romans.

In Jacob we have Israel also, and their history; cast out - wandering, but God with them to bring them back - the promises secure to them and temporal earthly blessings - and this, after all, under God's favour their object; the stone of Bethel is still in the land for them, and praise to be rendered in God's house out of covenant earthly blessings.

Note also here, that Christ for the Jew (i.e., in its earthly order) is born of the new covenant.

We have then the call of Abram, as the depositary of promise - then failure generally, and thereon enriched by the world - the renouncing of worldly object, and the seeking it, and so distinction made; Abram being identified thus with the inheritance of promise - Lot, saved through mercy, with the place of judgment - finally Lot carried into the world (hostile) as a captive - Abram victorious over his enemies, and thereon coming into the blessing of Melchizedek, God being Possessor of heaven and earth; these were great principles, wherein Jewish or Church things take their place, but they are the great scheme or order of principles. In chapters 15 and 16 then we have the promise of the seed, and a numerous posterity - God being his shield and reward - and the earthly inheritance defined - the effort to have it through man's will by the old covenant. In chapter 17, we have the proper appearance of the Lord to Abram himself, giving him his place, and taking His name of relationship to him - Almighty God - circumcision, the seal of this covenant with the Father. Then the promise of the seed by Sarah, the new covenant - the judgment of the world asserted - and the deliverance of Lot; note, here Abraham takes the place of faith and intercession - the heir of faith is to be born to the new covenant. Therefore Abraham is more specially here, the Church in the heavenlies - the heir is not born to Israel yet. Then in chapters 20 and 21 we have unfaithfulness, or the connection of worldly power in a fleshly way; God's asserting His right to Sarah, as in the new covenant (and the heir) - rejection of the old - superiority of Abraham, thereon, to Abimelech - the land defined as Abraham's. Then resurrection placed as the basis of blessing, and the call of the Church - he with Christ in that.

145 Genesis 26

We have here a different phase of the relation of the Church and the world. No longer returning into Egypt in the famine, but to sojourn in the land promised, and God be with him - the obedience of Abram securing blessing in the seed. But the associate power of evil within its borders - the power of the world, and its resource in the trials and difficulties - the famine in which he found himself - and here again the unity and identification of the wife is denied, though their intercourse (His kindness to her) makes it evident that she was so. But here the power of the world is made to show favour to Isaac and his wife; for the Lord was with him to bless him sojourning in the land in obedience to the Lord's directions. Therefore though weak and failing in faith - for he drew towards the world in dwelling in Gerar, which never became actually Israel, but the evil was presented on the world's part - though he sinned, he denied not, did not give up his wife. Blessing was upon him manifestly from the Lord, and worldly power ruined him - that which was in the land, but was not of the seed of God, and they stopped the wells - would not allow the drinking places of the seed of God, though they had digged them; Isaac recedes, having first met contention and then hatred, and giving way - at last, room - that they might be fruitful; and then he returns to the place, where Abraham had fixed the mark of his portion - the well that he digged for himself - the utter border of Israel.

In this sense, though when come again in power, Israel should have it all, yet then Isaac had no business in Gerar - he was to sojourn in this land, but then he had no occasion to go into the place of what was of the world (and the world in controversy with Israel about the borders of their land) where he is brought into fear, contention and hatred, through their envy; but he has, in such case, only to recede where the mark of God, given of old to faith, will be the place of renewed blessing, as given to the father of the faithful. And there, upon the blessing of God, the hostile world, which just before drove him out, now seeks his favour and alliance; in a word, we have the direction to the resurrection Church - its conduct, still clinging to the world - within its borders - the world jealous of its blessing - contending - hating - and the Church giving way - yields all to it - comes into the border of the promise, where God blesses it. Then the world is glad to come and own that the Lord is with it - humbly submitting itself to him, whom it now owns is now "the blessed of the Lord" - the world never owned this while the Church was within its borders, but ruined it - the same day, the Lord gave them that water, fresh digged, which had been to Abraham the seal and occasion of the testimony of what belonged to himself, and where he had called on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God, who had now shown a fulfilling of His faithfulness and mercy in this name - it is an instructive picture.

146 Genesis 27

In this chapter we have the dealings of God with the seed after the flesh, and after the Spirit, bringing in their actings too as such.

The more man is brought in, the more misery and wretchedness manifests itself, and here especially by a mixture of right and wrong, which however God fully discovers. In Esau, we have the profane elder brother, whom yet Isaac, who stands representing the general body here in this dispensation, loves best (according to the flesh) and would bless; but he was profane and had sold his birthright, and could not inherit the blessing of God in promise (so that the purpose of God according to election should stand, as it is written) and so Esau finally proved himself - this, divine judgment and power ordered, i.e., that he should not. Jacob had proved his value for it (strength and self was Esau's portion) and he would have it, but he set about to get it - not in patience on God's will in God's way - by the womanly cunning of his mother; here - not profaneness, but ecclesiasticism which, not being intrinsically and profanely strong to seek a blessing, is always wickedly cunning, and full of lies - she, in her place, was as bad as Isaac who would have blessed the profane (but this is sad declension) but God ordered all aright - Esau did not get the blessing, though he got a blessing by his hand, according to his character, one analogous to him; Jacob got the blessing according to the faith which valued the birthright; but for the manner in which he sought it, present trouble, sorrow, rejection, and the wrong and deceit himself had exercised - God is faithful to give, but He is faithful to judge and chasten those He gives to.

147 It was all a sorrowful scene - God yet provides for keeping him from Esau's evil, in sending him away - he was not to marry the daughters of Heth.

We have now two great parties - the profane apostate seeking present blessing, and the failing and deceitful heir using, and led by deceit, valuing however the birthright, and inheriting the blessing, yet through trouble.

Genesis 28

We have here, when the character which God put upon this transaction with Jacob was manifested, Esau's imitation of a conduct thus directed; this we must expect, but in fact it only revives the previous lawlessness from God, and does not remedy but rather increases the evil - the sentence was already passed, and when there had been any opportunity for it, or good of it, it was not God's will, but his own he did, now this imitation was too late.

Jacob departs under the direction of his father; he leaves this well of the oath where the covenant of blessing was established; and here, before he gets into his misery, the Lord in the dream shows the whole economy of the providence, and government of God occupied with this outcast Jacob as its object, and the Lord declares He would be with him, and not leave him till He had done the thing He spoke to him of, and here in the blessing we have him and his seed mixed up for the blessing of the families of the earth, for now we have left the resurrection Church and come to Jacob and Israel - and upon the ground of these blessings, while outcast, he vows to take Jehovah for his God. As Isaac was the type of the resurrection Church having been so received in a figure, so here we have the type of the Jewish outcast state to return humbled but as a Prince with God - we have then the subject opening into wider details, because we must have the history of the Church during the period of Jacob's outcast state.

148 This chapter is the security of Jacob under the promises, made to the fathers, that he alone, forlorn, was the object of God's special care - the centre of the service of the messengers of heaven - down upon earth; and then, in the land given to him, would be God's house to him. The relationship of Jacob's ways, founded on this, was earthly, see verses 20-22.

Genesis 29-31

Here we have Jacob taking rather the Lord's place in type - though all through we may trace Jacob's actual character as Israel's in the flesh - but then it is the Lord's earthly character. He meets Rachel, serves for her, but has Leah instead - yet afterwards receives Rachel. As the Jewish mother, God remembers her too afterwards - she was barren, grace takes her up; so that afterwards, we have the history of Christ, rejected and elevated to glory, in Joseph her son, and Benjamin the son of his father's right hand, and his mother's dying sorrow - the earthly power of Christ for Israel when He comes to Joseph, i.e., when Christ takes this character, Israel comes into the enjoyment of the best of this world's possession; but this, after - here God secures Jacob's temporal blessing, in spite of this world's wrong. He secures him against the power of the world, also taking him up in his trouble. Though he feels the effect of his evil ways, his individual history is a deep lesson of a believer's not entirely trusting, but using his own carnal wisdom, or listening to another's, to secure a blessing which is ever according to God's purpose. Alas! they may have it too often from the Church, properly so called.

God, note, turns all this to blessing, and secures Jacob from any profane union with the worldly Canaanites; hence, Jacob is properly Israel looked at as a remnant, but the remnant as partaking of Israel's sorrow, and hence, in its place, of Christ.

Thus, whatever the real evil which God has chastised in him, as between him and the profane, Jacob has been blessed and has obeyed his father's voice, and so of this remnant.

There is difference between Ishmael and Esau; Ishmael was not the wilful profane one, it was merely that Ishmael took up the birthright promise - blessing after the flesh - whereas Esau despised his birthright, and so was profane. It is true of all apostates, but Israel was in the former position, as under the law; in Hebrews they are set on the ground of Esau rather. They hate the heir of God's election. I cannot help thinking that the beginning of chapter 29 is typical, and that now Jacob assumes the character of Christ, though we have much of Israel's sorrow, and besides that, of his personal failings too.

149 He was a stranger, unknown, and seeks Rachel only - he would have her alone. The flocks, in general, cannot be watered until the well is opened, but He opens it and waters Rachel's flock, and Rachel here is His Jewish chosen and beloved flock and bride. It was His - was His flesh and bone - He was a Jew.

But after all He has not Rachel, but Leah first; still He has Rachel, for He serves for her too, and withal for His inheritance.

All this was the time however of Israel's sorrow, and outcast state, and of Christ's sorrow and suffering with them, yet it is the time of the begetting of the children, as well as watering the flock and tending them. It was "high day" - the time of rest was not yet come.

But Jacob oppressed, and ill seen among the Gentiles, returns, urged by circumstances, but really directed by God, to the land of his pilgrimage, as of the fathers.

NOTE. - Benjamin, the son of his father's right hand, and of his mother's dying affection, was the only one born in the land.

Rachel here carries her images with her.

The secret providence of God has blessed Jacob and preserved him all this time, though it was a time of failure - a spirit of cunning instead of confidence in God - the time of his being outcast, and rejected, in this type of Israel, though this was really the time of the begetting of children, "for more are the children of the desolate, than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord." Also had he Rachel last of the two, though he sought her first.

Genesis 32

Jacob, thus preserved by the secret providence of God, where nothing can be owned in him, yet blessing secretly secured, and preservation, returns to the land of promise.

150 Edom is to become the portion of the profane; still here, this profaneness of the flesh is the stronger as to flesh, and the flesh must be put down in Jacob, before he can be fully blessed - for, though on the borders, he is not yet come into the land, nor up to Bethel. It is quite a different account - there Jacob had had the instruction of God's interfering with Laban - here the Angels of God met him, and he recognises God's host, still the thought of Esau possesses his mind - he had wronged him in manner - getting by fraud what he might have waited on God to secure to him; he did not wait on God - that was the great evil. Present after present goes to appease Esau, rather his own fears, for Esau's mind was quite turned, he had no evil intention against him. He cries, however, to God in his distress, alleging God's command for him to return; also he sends over his children and wives - he was alone - for God's mind was to take all this flesh into His own hand for correction. So our blessed God does - in another's hand it would be enmity - here it is love, and He who deals with it, strengthens withal the new man within. He does not leave Jacob with Esau in the fear of the flesh, but takes him alone to Himself, for the correction of the flesh. All this was in secret. The day - breaking was coming, and He was not revealing Himself, yet He shows the weakness of flesh in His hand - blesses, but refuses His name; but on the morrow Jacob passes on first, and without fear.

Here Jacob has prevailed with God, for faith and life were there, and has hence his name, but still with struggle and mark of what power had been there struggling with him, not in revelation; further it was struggling that he might be blessed, not in intercession, or peaceful, though reverent nearness as Abraham - that is rather the Church's place - still he was blessed there. But, I repeat, it was a struggle to be blessed himself - the Man wrestled with him - did not talk with him as one to whom He should reveal His mind, as to His friend, and go up when communing was done, then judgment of the world was the subject.

Genesis 33 - 34

Esau now leaves the promise however to him, and goes to the place God hates - to his own portion.

Israel now, not at Bethel, and yet unpurged, see chapter 35: 2, buys in the land where he was a stranger; hence righteousness itself becomes confusion and violence.

151 Yet God is still with him, and he is driven out from this ungodly settlement, for it was not his rest as yet.

Genesis 35

He receives the direction of God - purges out the idols - goes to Bethel to the God, who met him in his distress, now remembered - thus the God of promise, providence and mercy. None now pursue him - he builds his altar, El Beth-El, for El Elohe-Israel was too soon before. Here Deborah, Rebekah's nurse - Israel, as of old - the cradle of the Church, dies. Jacob is looked at as now only come out of Padan-aram; God reveals Himself by the name of his father's God, i.e., as He had to Abraham and Isaac, and blesses him then, and gives him the name of Israel, and this is the true blessing and honour. It is a new Beth-El now. Rebekah was the heavenly Church, as we have seen, brought by the Holy Ghost to Christ; Deborah was its earthly Jewish care-taker in infancy - its nurse - what went with, but was not the spouse.

Jacob was never properly blessed till now, i.e., as standing brought back before God - I speak not of promise by Isaac - here he comes into Abraham's place; this would not be at Jabbok, nor at El Elohe-Israel, nor, really, till now. Here also we find Benjamin brought forth - Christ as the right hand of power - His mother's affliction, who dies and passes away in producing Him, but the Son of His Father's right hand. Also here, the beginning of Jacob's strength, after the flesh, is proved "unstable as water" that cannot excel. Jacob has his lot in his father's sojournings, at Hebron, large as his family, and great as his possessions were.

Such is the history of the secret, but restoring, Providence - the judicial process which took all into its own hand, that it might bless in spite of Esau, still the effort at fleshly establishment, and at last purged Israel moving (from Padan-aram) to Beth-El, and the full renewal of blessing to him, thus restored. Esau entirely away, and the hand of strength now born to him in the land - Rachel passes out of sight, but Jacob takes the place of Isaac in the earth.

152 Genesis 36

Esau's royal and ducal strength - his family greatness before there was any king in Israel - for God reserves His own time, man's time is always - Jacob being but a poor shepherd, a plain man; this closes this part.

The counsels of God are now to be developed more, in the Person of the Lord Jesus; so it is indeed in Isaiah. When Joseph was born, Jacob thought already to pass out of Padan-aram, but all was not then accomplished - the inheritance not yet served for. The power of life and faith with God is however most wonderfully shown in Jacob's wrestling - and even in the wrestling, though not peaceful communion; yet more, this wrestling may be in intercession, as in Epaphroditus, it may be - but perhaps the Lord alone had it purely so - in the conflict of bearing; for in us, though this may be, it is corrective also, but there is prayer that we may not enter, and so passing through the trial with God.

Genesis 37

Jacob is now in his natural place, but a stranger there - for all trial and correction and discipline does but bring one to one's proper natural place, though it may be with more experience of one's self and God; but simple faith in what God is, has its dignity, above experience itself, though it be experience of God - always blessed. The history recommences to bring out the Person of the Lord in Joseph. Joseph was loved of his father, and envied of his brethren, and further had communication of the mind of God. He is presented here as taken from among his brethren - he has the consciousness (though little and simple) of his own exaltation in the mind of God, and this is important - it is in no way pride, but owning God's mind and purpose, and gives wonderful strength from God, and glorifies Him - we see it constantly in the Lord Himself - no service can be done, as of God, but through this, and therefore service must be given up, or else thus alone true humility preserved; "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business" is consistent with the most perfect humility, and spirit of obedience. It supposes, till experience is made of man, that all will acquiesce in it, as of God, as simply as he who walks in it does, because it is of God, in obedience, as owning Him; hence, when opposed man's state is known, and God becomes all to the soul, we may marvel at their unbelief. God in this feeling is everything - we see it in the Lord.

153 There is difference in the dreams of Joseph - one is, his brethren first - as the Lord would be amongst the Jews - but then He was under His father and mother - He would have been a Jew and taken His place in nature, but when the Sun and Moon, as well as the eleven Stars are subject, all authority and all power, Judaism and every constituted authority is put under Him. Jacob himself is startled - he generally stands as the remnant and heir of privilege.

Yet so it is with the Lord - no Jacob, nor descendible privileges reach the scope of the thoughts of God concerning Him - He is above all; "let thy mother's sons bow down to thee" could be a blessing from patriarchal and prophetic lips, but Joseph's were to be above the blessings of his progenitors to the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills, and that as on the head of Him, as to circumstance, who was separated from His brethren; but in truth it was his in the mind of God, for even they were prophetic and so circumstantial, i.e., moving within the ordained sphere; the bowing of his father and mother evidently came direct from God, and Jacob understood it not, though he might learn it - not bless as the greater - not observe the saying that fell from the little one's mouth, the communication of God directly to him. His brethren envied him - God's supremacy was an ill thing in their eyes - their own as given very agreeable; righteousness in Joseph has already detected their evil - he visits his brethren according to the order of subjection, in which he stood, the messenger from their father to them; here he is rejected, with some remorse in Reuben, and on the suggestion of Judah, sold to the Gentiles.

Genesis 38

Thereupon, in Judah's history we find the utter wandering and misery of Judah, but therein again, and out of this, the genealogy of grace; he marries Canaanites - sin is in his family - commits fornication with his own daughter-in-law - all was gone wrong. Yet in this sprang Him in whom men should bless, saying: "the Lord make thy house as the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bore unto Judah" - "do thou worthily in Ephratah, and be thou famous in Bethlehem"; though it might be said of him, how hast thou broken forth?

154 Genesis 39-40

The righteous Joseph, charged with the sin of which his accuser was guilty, is treated as a malefactor by the Gentile authority - his feet put in the stocks, and the iron entering into his soul; he is delivered to the Gentiles, and by them mystically put to death. There he is the interpreter of restoring blessing and fatal judgment; before there was the counsel of the Lord to Messiah's natural Jewish and supreme advancement, and exaltation in principle - here rejection and death comes in, but with it, the Lord's mind in saving and condemning the guilty according to His true counsels.

Genesis 41

Interpretations belong to God. All through this, the Lord was with him, though thus rejected and clean forgotten as a dead man out of mind. It is as thus rejected that he becomes the interpreter, there is no true interpretation without the cross, it is there that God's interpretation has its place, its ways their accomplishment, there is in the principle of it - moral principle - the wisdom of God. His general counsels in result might be before Messiah's glory: yea, that it was to be set above the heavens, this glory of man in Jesus; but this but paved the way for Him who was lifted up to be cast down, and there all the moral ways of God have their discovery. God did as Joseph had interpreted. But also here he is to interpret the whole history and fortune of the world, its blessing and its misery, its time of comfort and of trial, and provision for it. Counsel as well as knowledge is here - the wisdom as well as the knowledge of what God's mind was. All the interpretation is identified with the low estate of Joseph, quod nota; then after righteous humiliation, and wisdom comes exaltation to power to the right hand of the throne, he becomes head of power, and conducts everything according to wisdom, and everything is reduced under Pharaoh. Here he is not only Lord but he has his Gentile wife. We have then generally in Joseph the depositary, as well as object, of the Messianic counsels, head among the Jews, supreme as to his personal dignity, the sun and moon are also to bow to him, then the interpreter of the counsels of life and death in his prison and the word of the Lord trying him also, and then the knowledge and counsel both of the world's condition, so that thereon by power all should be reduced under the authority of the throne.

155 Genesis 42

The need of Jacob now forces (for this is a new scene - Joseph is seen here in his exaltation over all) to seek in Egypt what he found not in his state of pilgrimage; the world knew not what to do, but then thus Joseph's brethren are brought into close contact with him, though they know him not. He, however, knows them. He makes himself strange, and then by their distress their conscience is awakened as to their old fault, while there is severity used towards them, yet is it according to the principle of the fear of God. Also grace is in exercise, though this makes them afraid, feeling that God is with them - Conscience being awakened, that vast and vital step.

But they are brought into the same position of feeling very graciously and in grace, still by power they could not struggle with, as the sufferer in the sin they had committed - they are all first thrust into prison themselves, and then in the person of Simeon, kept under bondage, and made to feel, through their father's interest in Benjamin, what the selling of Joseph was.

Genesis 43

Jacob clings to Benjamin - the Jewish character, in power, of the Lord Jesus, and so of the remnant hope - but there must be complete submission. If Joseph has been rejected by their hatred, Benjamin and all must be surrendered even by Jacob, and Benjamin must take his place with Joseph before the store house of the world, and the best part of Egypt be opened and given to Israel. Joseph must be bowed to of force, and owned according to His revelation of Himself - there can be no keeping of Benjamin, according to Jacob's mind, as if Joseph were not because His brethren had rejected Him.

156 Joseph had taken cognisance of all their condition - there was no escaping. They return humbled by the grace - alarmed by it - having no idea of grace; then, Judah surety for his brother, they own the glory of Joseph without knowing him as their Joseph, as the rejected one - bow to him - find further grace in the restoration of Simeon - and find that they are perfectly known, though they know not. Joseph is by himself, but his brethren according to their age.

Genesis 44

They are now brought to the deepest anguish as to the loss of their brother, and thus in spirit really to suffer - Judah himself, rather than Benjamin be lost.

Genesis 45

Thus morally restored, Joseph at once reveals himself to them; there stood no man with him. Here there is identification for the first time between his person and their fault - and instruction in God's counsel in it. They had felt the abstract sin before in themselves, but they had not known him who was thus now dealing with them in it; not till then was a complete moral renovation of their heart, by a process of apparent severities, and real grace bringing them to this point of obliged submission and actual reward. The restoring love is most touching and perfect; the mind of the Lord communicated to them, and God's love made the solution of it all.

Genesis 46

They are then brought - and that nationally in Jacob - into the best of the land near Joseph, but He reveals Himself to them individually as His brethren. Now his father was to hear of his glory in Egypt, for indeed Messiah was dear to him (Jacob), though he had not understood His glory far above and away from him.

157 Genesis 47

Pharaoh, as on the throne, has the same mind, and makes the power and resources of Egypt bring him down there, that all the good of Egypt might be theirs. Joseph is the source, and centre in nearness of relationship, but the authority and power and resource of Pharaoh is in the same mind. Jacob then is the remnant looked at nationally, and abstractedly - his sons, the actual brethren, the Jews - especially Judah, under the influence of the discipline of Christ, as before rejecting Him; Reuben, the body at large, i.e., the tribes in general, or three of them. Rachel here is the Jewish mother - "my wife" Jacob calls her; Joseph is born of her, but has not His glory there. Joseph is now known as alive - Governor of the world - its Source of blessing - and Jacob is brought to Him in this character of glory and power. Israel has still, however, his own portion, and separate place in the world in 4 Goshen, and in the best of it.

Now also Joseph reduces into full order, and subjection to Pharaoh, all the land, all its inhabitants - the priests are excepted through privilege, they have their own portion - now, in the fullest sense, the heritage and possession of Pharaoh, Lord alike of Goshen, and of all; this closes at verse 26. Blessed be the Lord who orders all this! We have a touching evidence, in passing, of the superiority of the saint's portion, however poor a saint he may be. Jacob, confessing his poverty, as such, blesses Pharaoh, the great power and glorious one of the world - its head - and "beyond all controversy, the less is blessed of the greater."

Though reduced into order and subjection, it is really in blessing - "Thou hast saved our lives; let us find grace in the sight of my lord," is the people's word - "we will be Pharaoh's servants."

From verse 27, we recommence with Israel - he is the representative, as indeed in name now of the people; hence, in the Spirit of God, he unfolds their lot. Still Joseph is the one on whom he leans, that the desire of faith may be accomplished concerning his bones, for if now in Egypt by providence and judgment, hope - faith - turns to the place of promise, and seals its confidence in the promise by having his resting place there; if he be not, his bones are to be found there, for if Israel has left the land, God has not relinquished His title; His title is not touched, founded on this, the answer of the oath of Joseph - securer of this promise. Israel worships God, feeble, and in a certain sense outcast as he is, for, as such, he is now to pass away from the scene.

158 Genesis 48

I think in this chapter we have the evidence of the root bearing - this - children of Joseph when relegated into glory from the apparent title of blessing, but the Jewish character of motherhood formally lost at the same time in Rachel; yet these same strange children equally loved because of Joseph, who, after all, was Rachel's child - yet here in grace, as even the younger is set before the elder. They are then directly on the root of promise, but only as adopted - being children of Joseph in a strange land and Gentile glory, their own mother being not Rachel. Here also the double portion - the inheritance of the elder - is given to Joseph, in spite of his brethren's fraud, in spite too of Satan's craft, by the power and will of Jacob, as of God; the birthright was to Joseph, despised and rejected as he was - this, however, has a certain Jewish aspect, as all questions of inheritance have.

Communion is the proper place of the Church, as united to Jesus - Jesus' own glory in the Father's love - not God giving an inheritance to the man, though this rests true even - we have obtained an inheritance, it is God's inheritance in the saints.

It is evident that this chapter is the prophetic history of Israel, as an earthly people, issuing of Jacob according to their settlement in the land in relationship with him; not the thoughts in grace of God towards them as to be accomplished in the latter day, as in Deuteronomy 33 - one was paternal after the flesh, though of revelation, the other prophetic of the man of God.

NOTE. - In Deuteronomy the benediction of the heir, as even for the whole people in particular; we have here evidently the object of favour or grace.

Genesis 50

We have then the interpretation of Joseph himself, on all the designs of God in this matter, in his touching answer to his brethren.

159 Joseph might be supposed to have some respect for his father, for that which had stood in such a relationship to himself - as Messiah issuing of Israel, and was their beloved - but when Israel was set aside, as viewed in this light, and Joseph was to deal with his brethren simply as such, then he might take vengeance.

But grace is perfectly brought out - he was not sparing, simply because they were his father's children, but of his own love and grace, and judging of his own position by the counsels of God. Grace, supreme grace ordered the relationship, and will, between the blessed Lord, and His Jewish brethren in that day - all title of Israel as of old is passed - it is gone and passed away. But He is full of grace and favour towards His brethren, they have been forced indeed to recognise Him, and that is utter humiliation, and the truth of his dreams, though they would have set them aside, and, because they understood not, fulfilled them, but now, all is grace.

After they are brought back, humbled by grace, Joseph sympathises with them, and shows that his rejection, though meant ill by them, was God's counsels in good towards them; also, now he would sustain them - grace took its free, and unhindered plan.

The counsel of God having brought about the means which made grace free and unhindered to bless on this new ground - evil done away - the relationship of brethren there - and the very evil, in God's wisdom, having put him in the place of power above all, whence in blessing, evil being far, grace could act in all its bounty - such was Joseph's - such is the blessed Lord's plan, especially in that day towards His brethren. He speaks to their hearts, verse 21 margin; this closes.

Joseph now takes, as such, the place of prophet attached to the promise, and far from Canaan, and the restoration yet distant, faith has equal assurance of it, and he gives commandment concerning his bones; the splendour of Egypt made the promise nothing less precious, long might be the time (for now he takes Israel's earthly place as prophet - the counterpart of Gentile exaltation) sorrowful the delay to Israel, but it was not the less sure, and his bones in Canaan was more to the hope of the heir of promise, the spirit of hope in the prophet, than the most lordly grave in Egypt, far from the promise of God; and when God had identified Himself with His people in hope, Egypt was empty of this - Canaan full of it to his heart - whatever its condition to man, or the present excellency of Egypt to the thoughts of the flesh, his hopes rest there, and identify themselves with Israel's future return. Here he was, as I said, the type of Israel's hope, now far from the land, as before, of the heavenly glory of Christ; blessings were indeed on the head of him that was separate from his brethren, above the blessings of his progenitors - the whole way of God's counsels are opened out in this blessed and favoured servant and type of the Lord - type of glory above, and prophet of hope to Israel below - the place of the Lord Jesus now, though Israel must be humbled to receive it, and own Him of whom it shall be said, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."

160 Here remark it is a thing entirely future; it is not as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob buried there as a sort of pledge of the land belonging to them - to Israel in time to come - to the Lord for ever; it is out of Canaan - faith in a future restoration, when God should accomplish His purpose concerning His people.

- 24, 25. In the first two classes of the details of faith (Heb. 11: 8-22) we have the absence of sight, and of possession, and of the power of nature, and God counted on. The promises make them heavenly, the names are El-Shaddai (God Almighty) and Elion (Most High), Possessor of heaven and earth - one, security on earth when it is not his - the other, opening heaven, if he does not get earth. Then after that, renouncing earthly promise in flesh as a present thing, but counting upon it in future as set up in Christ - Isaac, heir of promise, given up in flesh, known in resurrection; the purposes of God in Jacob and Esau; the heir and inheritance - double portion in the sons of Joseph (compare Genesis 49: 22-26) and 1 Chr. 5: 1, 2 - this producing worship, God's proper blessing, and inheritance in the true Joseph, and then the literal promise of the land on earth, in Joseph's bones.

Here the book closes, and the actual principles of deliverance, and relationship are opened out - actual then for Israel, and typic of God's accomplishment, known to faith; the bones of the fathers were pledges of the hope of promise in Canaan, Joseph's of restoration from Egypt.

Will

J. N. Darby.

<41009E> 161

(Notes and Comments Vol. 1.)

What is will? I have often thought and yet do not know, I mean have not sufficiently analysed. There is, strange to say, unconscious will - a dead, or better a sleepy man tumbles down, or even an animal in many respects does not act on his muscles. At any rate man - he holds himself up - asleep, he does not. Take a dead bird, its wings hang about, etc. - alive, they would not in the same way. It is not a judgment of preference; animal will is the mind to act on certain present motives - a pig runs to the food trough, he is shut in and cannot, but has a will - judgment of preference is not, discernment of right and wrong is not. There may be a general moral will to do right, but temptation determines the will which puts us in activity at the moment, i.e., lust may be stronger than the reflective will. Judgment of right is not even reflective will or intention, but reflective intention is not will, or is moral will, and not the will that decides conduct when man does actually will. I may will according to it, but will is the present determination actively to do, though I may be hindered doing. The man is determined when there is a will, he may have determined before, so as to purpose; will is subject to present motives, good or bad, in the creature when it acts as will - to the judgment of motives when it purposes. A man may purpose to seek pleasure, or, purposing otherwise, have his will actually determined by temptation. Purpose is my moral condition in itself then; will, my actual state as to power over myself and temptation, only the want of power connects itself with conditions on certain sides. But I doubt it can be called will, till there is an actual determination, when the matter to be determined is before us, perhaps before our minds, but before us as something to be done. But a vast deal of the moral state or condition precedes that, perhaps all - will being a result.

I may say it would be a good thing for me to go and visit such an one to-day, and I purpose doing it - "I will go and see," is another thing; the motives have determined the judgment and intention in the first case - the will overcoming the influence of obstacles in the second. There is no will till, having the object willed about before me, I am decided in purpose as to it. Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor (I see the better, and I approve, I follow the worse); here, video meliora, proboque, is no will - deteriora sequor is the fruit of will - to know, consent, take pleasure (Rom. 7), is not will, but besides that which in such case determines the will, to will parakeitai moi (is present with me). It was really the law of the new nature, but was brought into captivity, the law of sin carried the will away.

162 Christianity makes free too; man is perfectly free to will, i.e., there is no determination ab extra in his natural state; but he is not free in will, because the law in his members brings it into captivity, which is merely saying he has a sinful nature. It is a matter of fact, because the rule, or nature, or law of good and evil cannot change, and, however overlaid by false education or customs, can be reached by the truth, and so the word does by the power of the Spirit of God; it penetrates, and natural conscience resumes and asserts its empire - that does not set free, nor deliver, so that we carry out the will determined by the conscience - the hindrance of lust is there, but there is deliverance in Christ. But it is here that Romans 7, and natural conscience come together, the applied rule awakes the conscience, and gives it its title in the moral judgment. Besides that, quickening power determines the will, but still deliverance is to be sought, for right desires are not power, even when will is included in the desire. It will be given surely if sought, but that is another thing, and an important difference, because it casts us in dependence on God, gives the sense of guilt and inability in the flesh to please God, so that we have first to be in Christ. Redemption goes before power, and that is an immense fact, and alone puts us in our place, quod nota.

At any rate free-will has no sense, because there is no will till it be determined; free to will as to external compulsion is another thing, in that sense the will is free; but if I have a sinful nature, it is de facto inclined to evil, till I am born again. Conscience is another matter.

No being can have a will free, unless it can create, for otherwise it is always acted on by, i.e., is the result of, motives; hence, to say the will is in bondage is strictly true; morally, man unfallen had no will, for creature perfection is obedience; man, fallen, is governed in disobedience by corrupt motives, and thus is merely a sinner, and his will is under sin.

I have already spoken of free-will, but there are one or two points perhaps not clearly and shortly stated, if I remember right; nor the difference of sense in the word free, i.e., free from external constraint, and free morally and internally; in the latter sense it is pure nonsense. If it be meant merely that God does not hinder man from choosing the good, surely he is free enough, or that He did not force him to remain obedient when he was innocent, that is true - it would not have been a test thus, nor any real obedience at least proved - he might have been obedient without its being shown, or disobedient in will without its being shown. Man is free, if by that is meant that God does not hinder his choosing good, or force him to choose evil. But an interiorly free will is all nonsense for a creature determined by motives, and that is what is meant by free to choose. And were he what is called, free, he would be in the most absolute state of degradation. It never was, nor could be so; man was never a blank sheet, good and evil being before him, neither when innocent, nor now - but besides, to be so, he must be perfectly indifferent to good and evil, i.e., in the most degraded state possible (and if he be so, what is to determine his will?), or have no moral existence at all.

163 If it be said: But there is a latent disposition called out by the presenting good and evil - a latent disposition to what? If there is to one, then the will morally is determined - if to both equally (i.e., to neither when presented), then he is in the last state of moral degradation, and there is no ground in his nature for a preference. This is not true of God, for He loves the good, and hates evil. He is free to do what He pleases, and can will, and so create objects of delight; but a creature's place is to obey, not have a will in this sense of will. A free will is really nonsense, for a man where will is wills something, i.e., it is determined on an object, but of this I have spoken; but in the moral sense of choosing good and evil, it is a horror, a dark vacuity of evil to be absolutely indifferent to them. Historically it never was, man should have rejoiced in the good and enjoyed it before his fall, and did. He fell freely, but did not know good and evil - the moment he had a will, he was gone. When inclined to evil, to leave him to choose is mockery, or the proof of evil; in God's dealings it is the latter. It will be asked where then is responsibility? First, it is too late to ask as regards God. But I answer, it is as to its principle this - to live according to the relationship in which I am. That is true responsibility, I have to fulfil its obligations - this is true in every respect. The acquirement of a position by conduct is a fallen state, it is the principle of law. If a being is created in a given state, he ought to live up to that state - keep it. Now man has lost it, and is out of relationship with God, he is ruined on the ground of responsibility already - the law, which proposes life to him by his doing, is the means of convincing of sin. When Christ is presented, man is free to receive Him, and life in Christ for him; but his actual state is proved by his seeing no beauty in Him to desire Him.

Holiness

<41010E> 165

To estimate holiness aright, we must first of all think of God Himself in His holy nature - and of a nature, a divine life in which we have fellowship with and enjoy Him. But for us, sinners, we must then take into account Christ, in and through, and by whom we have a pare with God - further we must take cognisance of the operation of the Holy Ghost, through whom all is revealed and imparted - lastly of the state and condition of the sanctified.

There is another point needed to be gone into to judge rightly of it, that is the object before us, which, as a means, sanctifies us; for the creature morally lives by objects placed before it, and acting on it. Besides all this, the Word of God, which is that in which all is revealed, and works effectually in us through faith.

With a holy God we have to do, with a holy God to be in communion - holiness becomes His house for ever. But it is important as a preliminary point. to distinguish between righteousness and holiness, both elements of God's nature and character in which we have to do with Him, and even practically that in which we are assimilated to Him in the new nature, "after God created in righteousness and true holiness" - I do so, because these are often confounded, to the prejudice of the soul's peace.

Righteousness, as contrasted with holiness in God, is the judicial estimate of, and dealing with what is right or wrong - involves responsibility to some one, and obligation in the one judged - and, in its exercise, the authoritative acceptance or rejection of what is presented to its judgment. It is used also for that which is the fulfilment of obligation, and acting according to what is due (and in this sense is true even of God), and satisfies that judicial estimate, but also for the just estimate itself too - the righteous Lord loveth righteousness - in all cases, its measure is consistency with the relationship in which we stand - in God, consistency with Himself and His own perfection, maintaining withal the obligation of those relationships in which He has placed us. It is thus doing right according to them, or judging justly how far right is done.

Holiness, on the other hand, is the abhorrence, in the nature, of what is evil, and delight in what is good and pure, and, when we speak of men, God having His own full place in our hearts,* as in God it is His separation from all evil, and abhorrence of it. One is connected with judicial title, the other with the delights of the nature.

{*We being creatures, must be set apart to something.}

166 Now we are clearly told that "without holiness no man shall see the Lord." This, assuredly true, acts on the conscience, and it is all well; but then we seek to be holy that we may be accepted. But in this case, it is really righteousness which is sought - God's judicial estimate of us according to what we are - it is a question of acceptance, hence of judicial estimate, not of holiness, or our own delight in good, or hatred of what is evil - and feeling evil in us, we feel God cannot accept us. Thus, though there may be a holy nature, and an abhorrence of what is evil, and delight in what is good, there is never holiness practically till the question of righteousness is settled; because the holy nature acting on the conscience, this - our righteousness not being settled, nor our acceptance in righteousness known - necessarily raises the question as to that acceptance, and ought to do so. Suffice it to say that it must - hence the true desire for holiness destroys peace. When the question of righteousness is settled, and the soul thoroughly convinced of sin, "none righteous, no not one" - and that it cannot make it out, even if the will is present with it - cannot make it good as an obligation, which it is before God, the flesh not being subject to the law of God, as it cannot be - and has given up hope of righteousness in itself, and through grace finds Christ its righteousness before God - peace made by His precious blood, and He in the presence of God for us - divine favour resting on it in Christ, knowing that it is in Him, and that it is accepted in the Beloved, by one offering perfected for ever - in a word, washed from its sins through His precious blood, and not only so, but accepted in Christ in the sweet savour of His acceptance, then the delight in God Himself, from whose love all comes, is free, holiness has its free scope. We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have been reconciled to Him. It is of God's holiness we are made partakers, even when chastened.

This, then, is practically what holiness is - the soul in the new man in the light as God is, enjoying His purity (enabled to do it through the blood of Christ), and that in grace, having fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; and the more we take it in this simple manner, the more really and practically shall we know what it is. If we are holy, we shall know what holiness is, only it will be enjoyed in its fulness and perfectness in God Himself, and so directly connected with love, for God is love; His other essential name is light, and in that we walk, being light in the Lord, and there enjoy, as we are formed by love. We have boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Christ - and what brought us there? Infinite love - and what do we find there? Infinite love - and in Christ, nothing in us inconsistent with it; and, walking with God, nothing in our minds or consciences. "We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have received the reconciliation" - for this we must have life, divine life, to know and enjoy it, and by the power of the Holy Ghost be separate, through the eye being fixed on Christ, from evil to good. The simpler we apprehend this, the better, if we would know what holiness is. It is separation, in living communion, to God who is holy.

167 It is only as to the means of meeting the practical difficulties of many souls, that I pursue the subject into any details, showing how Scripture teaches us on the subject. I know not anything which will more fully express our calling in this respect, than the first verses of Ephesians 1, "According as He hath chosen us in him (Christ), before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and without blame before him in love" - this is the counsel of God as to us in Christ. The other part of it - being sons - is His prerogative and sovereign purpose, the good pleasure of His will. The first is according to His nature, both not only in Christ, but Christ's own place in which we are set by grace; it is the first which is according to God's nature, so that He cannot have other than such - this is our subject here. As it is here spoken of as the counsel of God, the degree of realisation is not. It is what His purpose about us is - it is identified with what God is, in His nature and ways, and what Christ was before Him; of course He is essentially the same now that He is glorified. The second part of the calling - sons - is relationship, but Christ's also - He is gone to His Father and our Father, His God and our God. On this wonderful and perfect place (we could have none other such), I have entered elsewhere; my part now is to weigh that part of it which is contained in verse 4. We may look at it in two ways, as God's nature thus imparted and reflected in us, and enjoyed in its perfectness in Him - or as Christ, as man before God, according to it. God is blameless in His ways - He is love and He is perfectly holy - we are called to answer perfectly to what He thus is. We are made partakers of the divine nature; the spirit of love and holiness is that of the new man in us, and, as such, its fruit blameless - hence it is said, we cannot sin, because we are born of God. Thus the Christian state is, with a nature derived from God, "born of him," and hence necessarily holy - to be "before God" in His presence; an infinite and infinitely perfect object - God Himself - before Him, with a nature capable, as being of Him, of enjoying Him. We must add, the Holy Ghost as the power of doing so. The divine nature, with God who is love, a divine and infinite object - "before him" - to enjoy, with no thought of self needed (for we answer to His own nature), save to know that His favour rests upon us.

168 Now, the actual accomplishment is imperfect because the flesh is in us - in heaven, perfect; but in this passage it is looked at in itself, without estimating the degree of accomplishment, and in Christ we are perfectly so now.

We may also look at it in Christ Himself, as Man here below - He was holy and without blame, always before God so, and in love; the same applies to verse 5, but on this I do not enter here. It is what we have to seek to realise - communion with Him who is light, being light in the Lord, and in the light as He is, called to have communion with Him, not grieving His Spirit who dwells in us. The measure of it in practice is walking as Christ walked, and walking in the Spirit as we live in the Spirit. Walking in obedience, we have our fruit unto holiness, a greater knowledge of God, walking in His presence and enjoying Him, and are more deeply imbued with His estimate of all things, with His mind, more separated to Him in spirit, before whom we thus walk. In obedient righteousness in Christ (for it is to Christ's obedience we are called) we walk, and increasingly in the atmosphere in which God dwells. Practically separated from evil, we live in that we are separated to, we delight in Him, have communion with Him, and are separate from all that obscures this, and distracts us. True we see through a glass darkly, then face to face; but the objects are the same - God revealed in Christ - and the nature in which we enjoy them, the same. We joy in God - we have the treasure, but in a poor earthen vessel, and needing to have our senses exercised to discern good and evil; still, we walk in the light as God is in the light.

169 I may now inquire into the means of so walking, and what and how it is, as to our place in this world. It is in every sense - place, state, relationship with God, nature and glory - likeness to Christ, and that in glory, for this is the only good. It is true, this includes glory as well as holiness, but so it is presented in Scripture - we are "changed into the same image, from glory to glory" - "he that has this hope in him, purifieth himself even as he is pure."

But there is another element, which though collateral, cannot be separated from it, and that is, love. If God is holy, His nature is love as well as light, and He cannot, so to speak, be divided'; and thus divine love is inseparable from holiness. For divine affections in us is the very being of holiness, and these cannot be without divine love - we partake in them of the divine nature. Failure in love would not be holiness, but flesh and sin - self as a centre, if not positive hatred - and this is not holiness, for holiness is separation of heart to God in known love, and so walking in that spirit with others. This gives us too, superiority over the evil with which we have to say; this, in an infinite way, is in God too, in whose communion we walk in holiness, and then we are followers of God as dear children. Compare Ephesians 4, 5, and Matthew 5: 43-48, and Luke 6: 35, 36.

So we find in 1 Thessalonians 3, "the Lord make you to increase, and abound in love one towards another, and towards all men, even as we do towards' you, to the end he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." A remarkable passage, showing the path of holiness, before whom it is measured and estimated - before God, even our Father; and, when and in what circumstances - the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ with the saints in glory. Sin is always selfish - holiness inseparable from love. It is holiness before God and our Father. It will have its estimation in the time of glory.

Such is the nature of holiness in general as stated in Scripture.

We may now look at the blessed Lord, as the One who in every respect is the way and pattern of holiness to us. And first of life - we are born of God; but this by the Holy Ghost. It is a wholly new nature communicated and given, which Adam innocent had not more than Adam guilty. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit, partakes of the nature of Him of whom it is born, as every nature does. It is entire contrast with the Adam life in us; "that which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is spirit," and "the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary one to the other" - "they that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh, and they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit" - "the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace." We shall have to see that the power and mind of the Holy Ghost is included here, the objects being there, as well as the nature; but the nature born, as we have seen, is of the nature of which it is born. So the Christian by faith has put off the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness, is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him. Here "renewed" is that which is wholly new, was not before, not that merely which is not grown old God's seed remains in him and he cannot sin because born of God, not the flesh that is born of the flesh. It is a holy nature - Christ as life - our life the last Adam, not the first. "Not I," says the apostle, "but Christ that lives in me"; and again, "when Christ who is our life shall appear." And in formal doctrine, in 1 John 5, "God hath given to us eternal life, and that life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." "He has sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him." He is "that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us"; and as it is expressed of this life in 1 John 2, "which thing is true in him and in you." In Him this life was the light of men - He was the light of the world.

170 Thus as He was the holy One of God here, only absolutely and perfectly as born, even as to the flesh, of the Holy Ghost - walking in love - so we, as partakers of life in Him, He being our life, are holy brethren, are saints, brought in as we have seen by His precious blood, but saints as partakers of the life also that was and is in Him.

If we look at that life in Him, we find perfect separation to God, love to Him and to us, and necessarily, separation too, consequently, from all evil, passing through the midst of it, but not touched by it, goodness and holiness in the midst of evil in the power of divine love - and that is our path.

171 This takes a double character in the Christian, according as we look at him as emerging out of a world of sin, in the power of this new life and the Holy Ghost, "the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus" - or as sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and coming thence, so to speak, into the world. The one we have in Romans 12, the other in Ephesians 4 and 5. In the former, we yield ourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead - yield our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, our intelligent service, proving what the good and acceptable and perfect will of God is. Here it is the original principle of giving ourselves wholly up to God, separated, sanctified to Him. It is simply that - and that is much - and true of the believer; we have not love connected with it.

In Ephesians we have another aspect of the believer's consecration. He comes as a dear child, out of his Father's home, to show out his Father's character - "be ye imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love as Christ hath loved us and hath given himself for us, a sacrifice and an offering to God for a sweet smelling savour." He gave Himself - not just loving His neighbour as Himself - but gave Himself up, not merely as separated from evil to God, but in love to us, divine love, looking downward in love to need - hence a sacrifice for us, and also to God, looking upward in perfectness to what made the sacrifice perfect. This too is our pattern - "hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." Here, while offering up to God is perfection in the sacrifice, love comes fully in - one is the measure of what we ought to be, as walking in this world as alive to God in Christ; the other is the measure of devotedness of walk, as manifesting God's nature and loving others, but still having the eye on God as the One towards whom we act, that all may be perfect. The lower the object in the love of grace, the greater and more divine the love; the higher the one to whom it looks, the purer and holier the affection, and here it is God Himself. Self is wholly got rid of in both - it is thus a holy love. We are not said to be love, for that is sovereign in goodness and free, though we are to love. We are light in the Lord, for we have a life in which is the purity of the divine nature - God's seed remains in us, we cannot sin. Such then is our life in its nature.

172 And as to this unselfish grace, we are called on, not to be, as Abraham, perfect with the Almighty, nor, as Israel, perfect with Jehovah our God, but perfect as our Father which is in heaven is perfect. Such is our life in its nature, for indeed it is Christ Himself - "he that hath the Son, hath life." God has given us eternal life, and that life is in His Son.

But we cannot omit the Holy Ghost, who is at once its source and its power. We may consider the Spirit as inseparable from this life, as the stream is connected with its spring, or apart, as a divine Person who leads it, and reveals the objects by which this life is governed - "they that are after the Spirit, mind the things of the Spirit." The Holy Ghost is, as we have seen, the source of this nature - we are born of the Spirit, and this is spirit. But the Christian is also dwelt in by the Spirit - the seal of faith in Christ's blood - our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost. We have liberty with God, and that as sons, and are delivered from the law of sin. The bearing of this on holiness is evident, indeed it cannot be without it; not only does it introduce us into the holy atmosphere of God's presence in confidence, but occupies our affections with what is there, making us abound in hope by His power. But His presence is a measure of holiness down here - "would I," reasons the Apostle, "use the temple of God to sin with?" So we are called on not to grieve that holy Spirit of God by which we are sealed. It keeps the conscience withal awake. The Spirit then is life because of righteousness, enables me to reckon myself dead, and to hold the flesh practically in subjection, and, by His power, I mortify the deeds of the flesh, so that my communion is not interrupted. He is the Spirit of adoption, and bears witness with my Spirit that I am a son, and so keeps me in the free enjoyment of divine and heavenly things - takes the things of Christ and shows them to me - has revealed the things that are freely given to us of God, enabling me to discern them. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (and this is based on redemption - a new place - in Christ), sets me free from the law of sin and death, and enables me, as a son, to enjoy the things which are above - yea to joy in God Himself - have fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

We get this double basis for our walk in Ephesians 4, the having put on the new man, and not grieving the Holy Spirit of God. It is nothing less than God dwelling in us, and we in God - His love shed abroad in our hearts by His presence. How this is the very place, and breath of holiness, is evident; in such a state, according to the measure of our growth, what God is and suits His presence, and nothing else, is in the mind - see 1 John 4: 12-16. We have thus the highest and fullest character of holiness in the believer - a nature capable of enjoying God, derived from the Spirit - a holy seed of God in him, and the Holy Ghost dwelling in him - God dwelling in him and he in God - the same Spirit dwelling in him, shedding His love abroad in his heart. This is the fruit of redemption. God never dwelt with Adam, never with Abraham, but as soon as He had redeemed Israel out of Egypt, He dwelt among them - "they shall know that I the Lord their God have brought them up out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them" - here in an outward way, between the Cherubim. And now, so soon as Christ, as Man, sat down at the right hand of God, eternal redemption being obtained, the Holy Ghost descends, sent by the Father - the Spirit of adoption - in Christ's name; by Christ from the Father, to reveal His glory as Son of man above - to dwell in those who were washed in His blood, and He dwells in us individually, and collectively too. On the latter I do not enter, as we are occupied with personal holiness.

173 The Apostle Paul gives us the blessed effect, he desired for the saints individually, at the end of Ephesians 3, "Strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the length and breadth and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled up to all the fulness of God." John speaks more of the divine Personality of Christ revealing God, and so our dwelling in Him, and He in us - for habitually he does not distinguish God and Christ, speaking of Manhood and Godhead in the same sentence, though in chapter 4 he goes up to simple Godhead, and His presence known by the Spirit; Paul more of His mediatorial place - of the counsels of God accomplished through His work and in His: Person, and that to the glory of God by us. So that the form is different; still as one gives the fact, true through the Holy Ghost, that God dwells in us - all in whom Christ is - so Paul, in the desire of the saints realising their privileges, leads us up to the fulness of God.

174 But while this is the full blessedness of our present state, living here as creatures acted on by grace, there is another aspect of the operation of the Holy Ghost in us; that is, the fixing the affections and intelligence on the Word which the Holy Ghost reveals, and that with sanctifying power. Thus the Apostle in Ephesians I prays that they may know the hope of God's calling, and the riches of the glory of God's inheritance in the saints; for the creature, whatever the excellency of his nature, lives by objects - is characterised by those that govern him - money - power - pleasure - in a word, our object, what our mind, our phronema is upon, is what we morally are. Thus where it is on Christ and on heavenly things, we are Christian and heavenly minded.

These then, the Holy Ghost reveals, fixing the affections on the object thus revealed, and so sanctifying the heart. Thus, so to speak, in its natural effect on the new man - "With open (unveiled) face beholding in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord." So in holy spiritual activity - we know that "When he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is, and every man that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself even as he is pure." So the Apostle in Philippians 3, "This one thing I do, forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth to those things that are before, I press towards the mark for the calling of God above,* which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

{*("High," is ano the calling is "up above").}

So the exhortation (though the Holy Ghost is not the subject of the Colossians, but life), "set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth"; but these things are called "the things of the Spirit." "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." "We have received not the spirit which is of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." Hence our conversation is in heaven, and we declare plainly that we seek a country.

175 But this consideration of the sanctifying power of the object the Holy Ghost sets before us, gives us the true character and only measure of our sanctification practically - Christ in glory - "we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" - " conformed to the image of his Son, that he may be the firstborn among many brethren" - "as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." The only object and goal of the saint is the prize of the calling above. This one thing he does. Hence he purifies himself even as He is pure - knowing he shall be like Him in glory, seeks to be as like Him as possible now. When Christ comes, even his body of humiliation shall be fashioned like Christ's glorious body.

The goal and object of the heart of the believer is Christ glorified, only the present effect is sanctifying him according to that measure, leading him to walk withal as He walked down here, and to grow up to Him, who is the Head, in all things. As Christ ever looked up to His Father, and ever did such things as pleased Him - in His case perfectly - so we, He being our life, looking up to Him glorified, walk in our measure as He walked. Hence we read that Christ sanctified Himself - set Himself apart - as the Man in glory according to the counsels of God, that we might be sanctified through the truth - our souls formed by the revelation of that into which He is entered.

It remains to be noticed that it is the Truth - the Word - by which we are thus sanctified. The Word is the truth as to everything, but it is, as Christ was in Person, the revelation of what is heavenly amongst men, and perfectly adapted to man on the earth. Though it be made effectual, by the Spirit, in the heart, the Word is that by which all is wrought, from the giving of life, onward till glory comes. So, just before the passage quoted above from John 17, we read, "Sanctify them through Thy truth - Thy word is truth." Hence, as to life - "of his own will begat he us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of his creatures" - man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. It is by words the Holy Ghost taught, that the things the Holy Ghost revealed were communicated. It is the incorruptible seed of the Word which endures for ever. Hence it is by faith - sinners are sanctified by faith that is in Jesus. The Word is the revelation of God's mind, and of all that is unseen, and, accompanied by the power of the Holy Ghost, is faith in the heart; and thus we are sanctified and live by it, in communion with God according to what is revealed - are so far sanctified to Him.

176 It may be well here to note the way in which sanctification is used in the Scripture. It always means separation to God, consecration to Him; but it may be, in us, sanctification of our persons, or of the state of our souls. As soon as we are believers, we are set apart to God, sanctified - all Christians are saints; and hence, strange as it may seem, when sanctification and justification come together, sanctification comes before justification.

But then there is, or ought to be, as to our actual state, a perfecting holiness in the fear of God, as growing up to Him who is the Head in all things, - the enlargement of spiritual apprehension of the objects on which the Holy Ghost fixes our affections - an enlarged acquaintance with them, and living in that new creation, and, as to our path here, senses exercised to discern good and evil, more confidence in

{Found in this unfinished state.}

___________

NOTE. - In general the heavenly millennial blessedness is far more largely brought out in the New Testament, as well as the Old, than the time when God shall be all in all. But the blessedness of the latter has struck me as being amazingly great in this way. There is not so much conferred, not so much official glory, relative excellency of position, conferred glory, if we think of being with Christ, though indeed that will never cease, but see where we shall be. The Lord is as second Adam, the proper human Head of the whole blessed race. They stand as His brethren, are like Him, He the Firstborn no doubt, and channel of blessing, but still the Firstborn among many brethren, in the same place, state, and image, though He at the head of it. They are all of one, and now completely like. Yet He with whom they are thus connected - one common race, though He be the head of it - is One with the Father in the unity of the divine nature. What a place to be in, how close the association! surely leading to adoration, for the nearer we are, the more we adore; yet still how wondrously near! How intimately associated with divine things, not merely conferred blessings, though all be conferred, and so doubly appreciated, yet still how near for enjoyment! How deep the peace, and full the blessing, when we are fit and competent to enjoy it! I apprehend our millennial nearness will be education for this, as our present state for that. But it is a wonderful place, and near enough to be peaceful enjoyment.

_________

177 NOTE. - We ought to think of the joys of Christ as well as His sorrows. Nothing shows where a man's heart is and what it is, more than when oppressed, distressed and full of sorrow, where his heart finds its joy and if it finds a joy unreached by it. We see these joys in Christ a secret comfort in the midst of His sorrow. He had meat to eat which man knew not of. Besides His communion with His Father there was this working of love to us. Paradise shone in upon His heart in comforting the poor thief. "Go in peace" refreshed His spirit in the house of the Pharisee. "She hath done it for my burial" justified Mary against the reproach of selfish man. "Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes" was His joy in the sense of the heartless rejection to which the wickedness of man subjected Him. How blessed to the heart besides learning where His joy was to think that He found it in the working of love to us!

Image and Likeness

<41011E> 178

FURTHER NOTE

I certainly think that spiritual relationship to God is much more founded on what is spoken of in chapter 2 of Genesis, than the recital of chapter 1. In chapter 1 it is much more the place man holds in the whole creation - no doubt a special and distinct one, still as taking his place as of God there; chapter 2 is his distinct relationship with God in connection with his nature.

He is the image of God and likeness in chapter 1; he is the genos (offspring) in chapter 2. But it is a wonderful place.

In James 3: 9, it is homoiosin (likeness) not genos, and Acts 17: 28 condemns the idea of this likeness being anthropomorphism.

As to man's creation in the image and likeness of Elohim, I think we must add the exercise of voluntary thought. This is of immense moral importance as connected with responsibility. It is not mere happy obedience to God, flowing from an undivided, untempted nature, kept in its unity by Him without another thought, but obedience connected with consequences; this we have revealed as the basis of all, not with knowledge of good and evil - it was no evil in se, but disobedience. But this was connected with another immensely important thing - the consciousness of a special connection with God, and God's special interest in him, wrought by breathing from Himself into his nostrils the breath of life.

Now as God must have had, and must have His delight in Himself? so Adam had his blessedness in God in this conscious connection. This was the point of trial; he gave it up, alas! (yet, through grace, for blessing), for self, and satisfaction to mere self. The fall was total; externally disobedience, but more than that, departure. He gave up God, and his connection with Him for an apple - and worse, for self. It was not the knowledge we have now of what God is, who has so blessed him - that is the new creation, wherein we are renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him that has created us in righteousness and holiness of truth - but it was the blessed possession and consciousness of the connection of having to do with God according to His love and thought and delight, as God delights in Himself because He is perfection; all the communications of God in chapter 2 mark this. This position is not lost but ruined, and the necessary source (unless a new bond be found as in the blessed Lord, by the incarnation, death and power of resurrection, or life in redemption) of eternal misery. There is disobedience, and Christ has died for that. This is bad enough, but there is separation from that, from the consciousness of which by our nature we cannot be separated, and this is what is so dreadful. The renewal, I need not say, is in Christ beyond, and God being glorified as to all the evil. He is the image of the invisible God in a higher sense, for here the knowledge of good and evil is come in, and He is the manifestation of God in love in the midst of it.

179 This puts man in a wonderful place, only making his failure the more dreadful - no creature can stand - his recovery the more glorious, and gives us to see the absolutely complete character of redemption - a second Adam, though bringing us livingly unto Him. Dependence in obedience was his place - not using his liberty or power for his will; that place the blessed Lord took, and, in the same responsibility, kept in perfect grace and perfect submission, preferring His connection with His Father to all, learning obedience, though always having no will but to obey ("Lo, I come," etc.) - but renouncing all self to do so. And He bound the strong man in the midst of ruin and evil, as Adam failed in the midst of blessing. But besides He bore the abandonment, in the full consciousness of the divine joy of connection as none but He could know it, into which we, by guilt, had voluntarily, and to our eternal ruin, run; we, thus brought back, restored, reconciled to God, according to this perfect work of grace, our sins and all our once condition, in which they were committed, wholly gone through His work, and serving now only to make grace known. What a wondrous thing is redemption!

In Adam there was proper personal intercourse (i.e., with God), responsibility and relationship - intelligent relationship with Eve given to him of God - and everything else subjected to him by God. The consciousness of this connection is far more intimate and powerful now, because it is by the Holy Ghost, much more properly divine in Christ; with Adam it was as a living soul - his own nature. This gave it its own character and importance, but it was evidently a different thing. It is a divine bond now - "we joy in God"; it was responsibility as a creature then, excellent and admirable as was the place he held, and had been put in, the more so as an image of Him that was to come. We must not confound being the image of - and being made in the image of (i.e., of Elohim).

God's Questions to Man

<41012E> 181

The questions which are put to man by God are very remarkable, as shewing the position in which man was, whether in the first Adam, or when put by Jesus in the second - for it is this difference which is the wonder. First, God says, "Adam, where art thou?" - he was away from God - He had to ask where he was, i.e., to put his real state to Adam's conscience. Adam had hid himself; he was naked, and could not, dared not appear. Away from God, naked - but the question said he was separated from God, and that by his own conscience. Terrible, horrible condition! Such was what the first question brought out.

The second is, "Where is Abel thy brother?" here his malice, as murderer, against his brother. Here it was the not loving his brother or neighbour, as before not loving God; I speak of the principle. It was the positive active wickedness of man's heart when departed from God, and here also it was hatred against what was connected with God, and in His favour, and had the signs of His favour upon him. This was fully shewn in the rejection of Christ, of which this was the first manifestation in principle and type. (It is a clear figure of the blessed Lord's rejection by the Jews, as Cain is of them.)

Last, it is not God simply addressing responsible man as such, but a glorified Man who is indeed the Son of God - the Lord, gone into the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. But though the Lord "God over all blessed for ever" (for who but He had the title to put such a question?), yet He was Himself a man who had died for sin, for the sins of others, had accomplished Abel's sacrifice; Himself had put all His people's sins away, glorified God as man - accomplished righteousness, so that in virtue of God's righteousness, He, as man, was on high - in whom man had taken his place in the presence of God in the divine glory - the new Man - the heavenly One - according to the full glory of the desires and counsels, and the perfect display of God's character, power and glory - and that in respect of sin and man's ruin.

A Man in divine righteousness in divine glory, and the perfect display of divine love in being there. It is not now simply God supreme, and Judge who asks "Where art thou?" "Where thy brother?" It is Jesus in glory in righteousness, who owns His poor members on earth as Himself - "Why persecutest thou me?" He had men on earth who were one with Himself - what an infinite change! Man, too, had been manifested in Paul in the Cain state; not even content with that, he was in the condition of a Christ-rejecting, Abel-slaying Israel. He is active enmity, not content with Christ's death, nor passively resisting them at Jerusalem, persecutes them even to strange cities. He is the strongest expression of resisting the Holy Ghost's testimony, and gives his testimony to putting Christ-beloved ones to death, and seeks himself to kill them. To him sovereign grace is shewed as a pattern of God's ways, - forgiving even the Cains - now rising up over the extreme and highest wickedness of man, and on the other side owns the poor remnant as being Himself. Grace to the chief of sinners, to hostile - resisting - Christ persecuting - Holy Ghost resisting Israel; and the poorest feeble saints one with Christ, members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones - the Church. Such is the testimony of the question of grace (though addressed to the very then form, and that, the highest possible form of sin) when Christ has taken His place as Man glorified, when redemption for the chief of sinners is accomplished, and the Head has taken His place, so as to own the Body as in His blessing below.

182 It would state it clearer to say, how remarkable the difference between the questions God puts to man in respect of his responsibility, and that which can be put, and is put when Man is in the glory of God, in virtue of the accomplished work. That was then man's place in the presence of Him who is "God over all blessed for ever," owning others as one with Him. It is the contrast between God on earth putting the question, according to His majesty, to man in his responsibility - he was in sin, and Man, "God over all blessed for ever," who puts it, being in Heaven in virtue of accomplished redemption.

He cannot accuse of that height of wickedness at which Paul was, without owning all believers as one with Himself in glory. Paul (Saul) was slaying them because of Christ whom he could not reach in heaven; his resistance to the witness of the Holy Ghost was against the members - to convict him of the sin, Christ owns them such.

This was one part of this wondrous truth, the other is shown in the reasoning of Ananias. The reasoning and confidence of heart with the Lord, shows the intimacy and familiarity of the disciple, produced by Christ's speaking as One having a common interest with His people. Blessed community of interest in grace! Hence Ananias speaks in the same, and reasons with the Lord in his foolishness. Yet as He had spoken of Saul's praying as the happy sign as we might be, now He does not reproach Ananias, but tells him to go as Saul was a chosen vessel to Him, to bear His name, and so on. What a place we are thus set in relatively to all without us and within, through union with the Lord Jesus!

________

183 NOTE. - God justifies. How ineffable must our state be in His eyes, i.e., in truth. He cannot approve or justify, but according to His own nature and being. His approbation must be according to what He approves. What a state for us to be in! In Christ, that God not only pardons our sins, but justifies us. No doubt those whom He justifies are ungodly in themselves, but His justification is the seal of His absolute approval of what they are, according to what He is. What an infinitely perfect place to be in! It is God who justifies - who justifies according to the unalterable judgment of His nature. This is true even as regards our sins, for He is just by reason of Christ's work in doing it. But how much more as in Christ, when it is the positive approbation of us in our place. And in fact, not only has He perfectly set aside our old sins, but glorified God so as to have this place as man, and we in Him.

Promise

<41013E> 184

The promise, without condition, is given of God, and must surely be accomplished, but it does not raise the question of righteousness, but it does not satisfy it either, and while we lean merely on that, we cannot have peace. Conscience is before promise, not only responsibility, but knowledge of good and evil, or right and wrong.

(Note: the bruising of the serpent's head is only a revelation of the second Adam, and His glory and title, not a promise to the first; Abraham's is a promise, the blessing of the nations being connected with the seed.)

Hence, man cannot really meet God till his conscience be purged, or by meeting, feel the absolute present need of it, not of help, but of present purging, his state being made sensible to him by God's presence.

The law raises the question of righteousness, in claim on the conscience, and condemnation on God's part, necessarily, if not fulfilled.

The promise here depends on man's fulfilment of the condition, but the question of righteousness is raised; the promise may encourage, but it has nothing to do with satisfying the claim of righteousness.

Christ comes (man rejected also the fulfilment of promise in Him), He purges the conscience, accomplishes righteousness, makes us the righteousness of God in Himself. The fulness of the effect of all promises is in Him, and is the testimony, and accomplished proof of divine love, which indeed lifts the Church above all promise. Conscience, promise, law, all find their close in Christ, only promise rests on the same basis as He that is absolute, perfect, sovereign grace.

Prayer

<41014E> 185

The more simply we act on divine precepts and exhortations, the better, for they are the fruit of absolute divine wisdom, which knows divine perfectness and human wants, met in Christ too; but I would say a few words on the real character of prayer.

The answer to prayer seems to me the going forth in divine actions in power - what has flowed forth from divine wisdom, forming desire and wants in the soul. This connects itself with love, dwelling in love, and hence connects itself with confidence which faith expresses. Hence, if it be a mere lust, or to consume it on lust, it is not answered (James 4: 3), or is answered in chastisement - is a Kibroth hattaavah (graves of lust); if it be in the Spirit, and the prayer of faith, it is answered according to the request. Thus also it is connected with the moral state of the soul - the entering, first in the 3 nature of the thing desired, and then spiritual acquaintance with God's will, into the thoughts of God, and what His love would have and cause us, as moved by that love, to desire. Christ, perfect in this, could say, "I know that thou hearest me always," save in atonement, where yet, in result, He was yet more gloriously heard.

We are often mixed in our thoughts - there are things that press on us as human beings down here, and we cast ourselves on love, and are sure to be met in love, though the answer may be other than we might seek; but God meets the moral intent of the prayer - what His Spirit has produced - though the positive request, in which wisdom failed, may not be accomplished in itself. But what moves down to us is always what has moved up to God, as wrought in us by the wisdom of God, and the confidence wrought in us by dwelling in love; hence, our prayers should flow, and do where real, from what is immediately drawn from Christ being in the heart by faith - identity of interest with Him (through grace) in the secret of the Lord with us. But there may be the sense, thorough spiritual apprehension of the holy goodness of God, of need according to it, and desire of heart towards it, and yet not intelligence of the divine way of meeting the need; this is the case in Romans 8, but He who searches the heart knows the phronema of the Spirit, for He intercedes for the saints according to God.

186 Grace comes down, and works through the circumstances, though there may be even no remedy for the circumstances, but there is a want, a desire according to God - the Holy Ghost is there.

Then, too, all things work together for good to them who love Him; faith realises God's intention - hence, in the knowledge of His will, knows that it has the petitions - and this reliance on the ear and arm of God is ever met. Grace comes down, and takes up its place in Christ, and in faith through Him, in the wants of men and saints down here, and in Christ, according to the wisdom and mind of God, producing perfect confidence in His love, and in the activity of that love; and so in Christ too, as Lord in its place, He was perfection in this down here - we, according to the measure in which we enter into His mind.

But the great general principle is, that what came down into our wants in wisdom, goes up and is answered in power; but this coming down is in grace in Christ, so that it is immediately connected with divine love, and the confidence of faith expresses this. The great secret is to be with God. If God trusts His mind with one, and thus he is a prophet, then the action follows - God does not let His words fall to the ground; and to this there is analogy or approach, when we walk wholly with God, though there be no official function, and, in the case of the prophets, what was announced authoritatively was at any rate sometimes, always in spirit habitually, prayed for, as James teaches us in Elias for the famine, so authoritatively announced in history. And so the Lord Himself, in the case of Lazarus. But what a place this gives to prayer - dependent intercourse with God in grace, as admitted into His interests, though encouraged to bring every want in childlike, perfect confidence in Him, because He has taken up all our interests into His own love.

Divine wisdom, acting in the midst of this world, in love, looks for the exercise of divine power. It is not simply divine wisdom, but as Christ Himself, divine wisdom exercising itself in the midst of evil; then, as we have seen, dependence is wrought out in it, and confidence where the divine will is known with certainty of answer. Divine power at our disposal, and when not, when it is the expression of a want with submission to that will and confidence in divine love which gives peace; "If we ask anything according to his will," etc., and "make your requests known . . . and the peace of God shall keep your hearts."

187 As regards prophets, spoken of above, you have Abraham and Abimelech - "he is a prophet, and he shall pray for you"; it is nearness to God which gives power, i.e., enables to dispose of it - "This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."

I see no difficulty in God's answering prayer connected with general laws, if we allow God to be free to act in His own world, as free as I am. Do I change general physical laws, when I go on request to visit some sick person? My will - how, I know not - acts on and by those physical laws; gravity is in my feet, or in the earth, force in my muscle, electricity in the nerves which set it in motion, yet I, in my poor way, have answered a prayer. Now I fully recognise more power in God, because He can, I need not say, not only change His laws, but, without doing so, give force to agents in them - produce gastric juice more powerfully, or more electricity into the system at His will, without introducing a single new element, or law which governs it. Laws remain the same; His will interferes to produce agency by them. He may work a miracle - raise the dead - which is by no law - has done so. But I do not speak of miracles, which take place when He changes a law, as when He makes the hatchet swim, but of when He works by law - of particular effects of His will. This may be miraculous as when a strong east wind acted on the sea, and another took away locusts, or brought quails, but He may give special activity, or quantity to agents which act by laws regularly. I am sure, at any rate, He hears and answers prayer. The very action of mind on man's frame is so wonderful, that such results may be produced, and God's own mind, as to external circumstances, that I see no difficulty at all. Laws which bind nature I admit; laws which bind God I do not. Besides many or most prayers refer to spiritual things.

The difficulties, as to prayer changing God's mind, etc., which sometimes puzzles a sincere soul, and is common with infidels, are I think a mistake.

As to the bright effect of it on our souls, it is just the same principle as speaking to them, the moment I believe that God works the real work Himself. God not only gives us blessing with Himself, but He gives us a part in the other part of His blessedness, viz., blessing others. I preach - man gets eternal life - yet it is wholly God's work, not mine; yet God graciously gives me a part instrumentally, yet as owning entire dependence on Him in it. This dependence is more fully owned in prayer; God does the work, but not more than in preaching, but I am more directly intimate with Him - expose my desires - love to souls - their wants - or of His Church, and He acts as He did in preaching. And I have more in common with God than in the latter, I reach more difficult cases, where speech cannot be, and distant cases, the power of Satan, the world, and every hindrance to souls I cannot reach even. There is more intimacy, common interests with God, though in dependence on Him, and a wider sphere than in preaching.

188 It applies, too, to all action which we can seek from God, even our own wants; only that when love would not give what we ask, we may not receive that we ask for.

Life

<41015E> 189

The connection of life, the sanctifying word, and glory is very interesting in Scripture. Connect the following passages: "the truth shall make you free," and "the Son shall make you free" - and that in contrast with being the servant of sin; then, "Sanctify them through Thy truth, Thy Word is truth" - "For their sakes I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified by the truth" - for the Spirit takes of the things of Christ, and shows them to us; but this is the heavenly glory, especially of His Person, into which He is entered in following the path of life - hence, "we, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." This is particularly brought out also in the Lord's work, and our aspirations, in Ephesians 5 and Philippians 3. In Ephesians 5 we find the Lord having loved the Church, and given Himself for it, sanctifies and cleanses it by the washing of water by the Word, that He may present it to Himself, a glorious Church, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. Now, one would say, the cleansing has nothing to do with glory - yes, it is the realising in a life, already given - which, spiritually speaking, is Christ - all that is in Christ thus glorified; we are changed into His image; in living principle, and nature it is there. It is objectively realised, and the life formed into it, and all inconsistent removed by the communications from a glorified Christ to the soul - we grow up to Him who is the Head in all things.

Then comes the physical change, by change or resurrection, so that the body also partakes of it, according to its nature, see 2 Corinthians 5, and Romans 8: 11. So in 1 John 3, "we know that we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And everyone that hath this hope in him, purifies himself, even as he is pure." So the course of the Christian - Paul would know the power of His resurrection - go through anything for it - having the excellency of the knowledge of the glory of Christ, and his hope being to be raised up from among the dead - he has not yet attained, nor is already perfect, but, forgetting the things which are behind, and reaching forth to the things which are before, he presses towards the mark of the high prize of his calling in Christ Jesus - the calling ano (above). When Christ comes, the vile body will be fashioned like His glorious body - but all tended, in one laid hold of for it, towards the result of the calling above. This gives a true character to the whole Christian life; it flows from this, "which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is now past, and the true light now shineth," and is expressed with power in Hebrews 11: 5, "Enoch was translated that he should not see death; for God took him, for before he was translated he had the testimony, that he pleased God." So indeed of Christ, only it was always perfection, "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." This, then, is our life.

190 Note the extremely full and elaborate development of the Christian's character, walk and spirit, as partaker of the new life, in Colossians 3.

Realism

<41016E> 191

It seems to me that the disputes, between Realists and Nominalists, arose from confounding the acquirement of knowledge by the mere human mind, and the original divine intention and purpose in creation. God created Adam an individual man no doubt, but also eth ha-Adam (the man) - that kind of being, and in His image after His likeness. A child may know man in its father, and gradually generalise, because it has only human sources of knowledge, and humanly; man is only an idea. But the faith that believes in a Creator, knows that God created a kind of being which is that according to His thought. So even with the Church - Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, to present it to Himself a glorious Church. Now it was not an idea with no reality, He was going to present it to Himself - it did not exist actually till it is built up of Him. Whether we call an idea in God's mind a reality - which it must be - is a question which man may decide - He calls the things that are not, as though they were. Still, they have reality for faith, according to God's mind who chose to have such a thing, though the mind may learn by abstracting, and so the universal be, as to his learning it, a name - but he would not have it to learn, were it not really an existing thing in the thought and purpose of God. God had a certain purpose about the creation - man - connecting it, redeemed, with His Son. Other creatures have not that place - I say, What is man? and there is an answer, and an answer which will be accomplished. Only there may be thought to be a difference between classes or races, and compound ideas - as a state, a church; but it is not well-founded - only, one is natural order, the other a constituted state of things. But if God had in His mind to have a church, it is a real thing, not merely a name, nor indeed is abstraction needed here - I have only to embrace God's idea of it. So of the state; if it were God's will to group people under authority or government, the thing is a real thing, and the name the name of a reality, though here abstraction may be called for, as He may allow different forms of government, each of which may group men in a state. Men's classes when they are genera (not species), may be fictitious, and merely for convenience, but that is nothing to the purpose if there are definite species.

Forgiveness

J. N. Darby.

<41017E> 192

(Notes and Comments Vol. 1.)

Forgiveness is, I think, evidently the changed aspect of the mind of him who forgives, as regards the faults of the forgiven. Where judicial authority, or an injured right existed of the forgiver, and judgment as to the person concerning the act, ceased in the mind, judgment was no longer its aspect for the wrong done. It may be authoritative judgment of the wrong, or the kind of authority there is in the possession of a right - there is authority as to that, so that we may say, in general, that it is authority ceasing to view the fault in the aspect of judgment, and, thereon, releasing the offender who had come under that judgment; hence, it is evident, it cannot go beyond the claim or title to judge of him who takes cognizance of the offence. All beyond this is impossible in the nature of things; I may forgive a thief, or a murderer, his wrong, but this does not screen him from the laws, nor from God's judgment if unrepentant. A man may be forgiven of God, and yet as testimony in the world, providential effects may follow, because the spheres are different, and everlasting exclusion from His presence, or favour, is the effect of sin; or, I may impose a condition - as if my child had stolen an apple, I may require him to return the apple, or I do not forgive him, because there is a double relationship - my parental authority, and the wrong done to another. But, in general, forgiveness is the release of one in fault from the judgment of one in authority - who has title to release him, and this includes all wrong - and takes place in the mind of him who has authority, who ceases to hold him in the aspect of judgment.

Many consequences and effects may follow, but this, I think, is what forgiveness is; the consequence is, it is according to the measure and sphere in which that authority moves, and applies to the judgment from which the offender is released. God may chasten governmentally for our good, or even in testimony as in David's case, and Numbers 14: 20, yet, as between Him and the guilty, forgive, and not impute the sin - no longer hold him guilty. I may forgive a wrong doer, but it is measured by the value and import of my forgiveness. The church may bind sin on a guilty Christian, in the exercise of discipline, or forgive, in restoring or releasing from the discipline, and God will sanction it, but it does not go beyond its own sphere, and competency, and it acts in that which God sanctions. God - if it be rightly done - will bind what the Church has done, but the Church does not forgive sins in the sense of eternal forgiveness for salvation - it is not its sphere. It is its sphere to deal with them here, and God will set His seal upon its actings; so could the Apostle forgive, as we read in 2 Corinthians; so, through the prayer of faith where sickness was a chastisement from God, so that His dealing with sin stood in the way of recovery, compare Job 36. God puts His sanction on the forgiveness which the Church grants in its sphere, but the Church cannot pretend to grant the forgiveness which belongs to God, in His sphere of authority. God sanctions my forgiveness of my enemy, that is another thing from my having a title to forgive, divinely, the guilt of sin against God. The administration of the Church is different, and God has committed an administration to it, but God's sanction of its action in that, is a different thing from its assumption of His sphere of eternal mercy as to guilt. That, what Peter bound on earth might be bound in heaven, is a different thing from his having all that heaven itself could - had - put into his hand; the king may sanction all a viceroy may do in his own proper sphere, that is not saying the viceroy can do all that the king can do, as such.

193 When all the Apostles were commissioned to preach remission, this was from God. It was no action of the Church at all - on the reception of the Word, they were admitted into the Church, their sins being remitted; there, there is no imputation of sins. Hence Ananias can say to Saul, "Arise, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord" - it was the earthly administration of forgiveness, a present reception of the peace which Christ had made - then the government of God, I add, of the Church begins, and in that sphere of government, forgives or binds by judgment; God does so, as in Job 36, and the Church, cognizant of His mind, ought to be able to do, and the individual by the prayer of faith obtain it. It has nothing to do with the putting away, or imputing sin as to condemnation, but only, as far as the Church goes, to those who are forgiven by one offering - perfected for ever, or supposed to be so, and dealt with as such. "Do ye not judge them that are within; them that are without God judgeth" - their reception in again is present administrative forgiveness - they enjoy, as amongst the forgiven therein, the privileges of those who are. In this sense of reception, the Church forgives, see 2 Corinthians 2: 7-10; hence, I have the administration of forgiveness by admission to Christianity - coming into the place in which I have left my sins behind me, and indeed, for faith, my nature too - this, as an administrative right, as in baptism; Colossians 2: 12, 13. Romans 6 as to nature.

194 Then a man is within, and the Church or Assembly judges him, and its administration of the government of God - not of salvation, but in respect of the saved - begins; so, in Job, "He withdraws not his eyes from the righteous." And as to the righteous, saints, saved ones, sins may be forgiven, or bound on the person, and here two or three, gathered in Christ's name, are competent, and their action, done under and with Christ's authority, will have divine sanction - but, as I said, divine sanction on their act is not God's act in respect of His wrath and dealing with sin, relatively to the sinner's place with Him of forgiveness or condemnation; that has been settled in the conscience of the sinner by faith, and reception into the Assembly as to his actual status. Discipline, even by God, is for the righteous - when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord that we may not be condemned with the world; the moment I have made it a re-forgiveness of the person, in the sense of grace and acceptance, I have upset Christianity, and denied the place and standing of the Church - to say nothing here of the work of Christ. Government does not begin till that is settled - the righteous are governed, chastened, forgiven, judged, now - and, as I have said, sanction from God on our acts, is not our pretending to His.

Forgiveness implies too the release (aphesis) from the penal liability to which the judgment of the mind of the forgiver rightly holds it; but forgiveness is properly what I have before referred to - this is an effect. It may be applied to the person or the faults; it has rather the previous and essential sense as to the person - the latter (aphesis) as to the sins. The words are different, at any rate often when applied to people and sins, as Luke 7: 42; 2 Corinthians 2: 7; Colossians 3: 13; Ephesians 4: 32 it is charizomai - of sins aphesis. But we have aphes auto (forgive him) (Luke 18: 3), and charizesthe o ti; 2 Corinthians 2: 10, and chap. 12: 13. Etymologically, charizomai (to forgive, or show kindness to) is evidently more the favour of the person forgiving but actually exercised; aphiemi, its application to dismissal of the sin - a release. The force of aphiemi (to forgive or leave) is seen in Matthew 6: 12, 14, 15, and Luke 11: 4.

195 No doubt God must be satisfied, in the holiness of His own nature, as regards Himself - that there may be forgiveness, that must have been. Still, as to judgment, it is according to the relative responsibility quâ judgment and punishment, though exclusion be the state of all unless reconciled; nor - though founded on the intrinsic work, so that eternal joy may be there as to what is essential to it - is conferred blessing by this consideration. The earthly saints in the millennium will not have their place within the veil; they are (say the Jews) thoroughly forgiven, but the Lord is with them, not they with the Lord in heavenly places. Sin will always be sin in God's sight, according to His nature - hence there must be the blood of Christ according to His own perfect obedience and sacrifice of Himself; but they will return - their repentance will be according to, and by their rejected Saviour, when they see Him. It is real, but refers to earth, to acts on earth, and has its fruit on earth then.

We have four words for "forgive" in the Old Testament: Ka-phar, Na-sa, Ka-sah, Sa-lakh. The first commonly used for atonement; the sin was covered by a sacrificial act in God's sight - God was satisfied, and so forgave. Na-sa is airo (take away), the sin was removed from God's sight, and so forgiven. Ka-sah is "cover" - it is covered, hidden out of God's sight; the last is forgiveness commonly so used, and as the effect of ka-phar. But the main point is that when the question of righteousness was raised, the evil was there, and on the great day of atonement (kip-pur), it was a memorial, a remembrance of sin, a witness that it was not put away (though of provision made for it) nor God accessible in His holy presence. Hence for every particular sin, the atonement had to be offered (ka-phar), a renewal of the act typically which put away sin. Forgiveness is when the mind ceases to look in judgment at the offender as under the sin, and the mind is returned to favour towards him, or holds him now in favour, if not before in it. But the state of man as an object of wrath was not revealed in the Old Testament; it dealt with man, as to the question of righteousness, on the ground of probation, though pointing to atonement, and giving a means of reconciliation, so that transgression, when occasion required, might be done away - put out of God's sight. Hence ka-phar towards God, kis-sah as to the man.

196 Christianity reveals righteousness on God's part - the veil is rent, one full, final, unrepentable sacrifice for sin made - so much so, that repetition is the denial of its value. This has been accepted of God, as the putting away sin athetesis (putting away, disannulling) (perhaps ha-them "make an end of," Daniel 9: 24). Into this we come, and stand in God's presence in light without veil, where sin is not - Christ having perfectly glorified God, and borne, and put away our sins. There was no actual athetesis of sin ho airon ("he that taketh away") though pointed to in shadows. But Christ has appeared in the end, sunteleia ton aionon (the summing-up of the ages), to put away sin for God and for us, and man (the believer) is accepted as and where He is - that is his status before God according to what He has wrought, and the passing away of judgment, and forgiveness is necessarily absolute and eternal, for sin is put away, as such, according to that judgment and the nature of God, and our sins borne. God must deny that doing to bring the sins up, whereas His righteousness (and He cannot but be righteous) is active and exercised in owning it there only, perfectly; that is what in the highest sense righteousness is - "Of righteousness, because I go unto my Father," that is, righteousness as in act. Forgiveness is according to this passing away of judgment, and this was announced in the gospel. Forgiveness, when declared, puts the forgiven person in a new position with the forgiver as regards what is forgiven - if all, wholly so - but at any rate as regards what is forgiven.

The full efficacy I have spoken of is a question of positive revelation. During the Lord's life, when it was just about to be accomplished, but was not yet, we have to learn whether in any given case the Lord speaks as to the particular case, or as to absolute forgiveness. Thus in Luke 7, the word, "Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace," intimates a full forgiveness, not knowledge of all Hebrews 10 or Romans 8, but of Romans 3 at any rate. The case of the man sick of the palsy has a more Jewish character, yet doubtless as to his then standing, was a full forgiveness; It alludes to Psalm 103, sa-lakh (who forgiveth) - actual forgiveness as present favour. But this raises another question; if forgiveness is the action of the mind, of one having a right or claim which has been injured or slighted, giving up displeasure and not holding the person any longer guilty towards him - the wrong must have been there to be forgiven - God could not have forgiven innocent Adam. Besides when announced, and so we speak of it, a person is forgiven, enters into the enjoyment of the favour expressed in it. I admit that unbelief may hinder a person's thinking himself forgiven, when the wronged one's mind is wholly towards the wrongdoer in love, and that even between man and man. Still, in itself, it is a relative position which supposes previous displeasure with the fault; "that they may receive remission of their sins" we read. It puts the individual in a new relative position; hence forgiveness must be after the commission of the fault, in respect of which the person is forgiven.

197 The ground of forgiveness may have been, and has been for us, long ago surely, laid in the work of Christ; no discipline could be exercised but in view of this - sin would be, and have remained exclusion from God's presence - but this laid the ground of appeal as to Cain, typically, as in Israel, and was in fact what made forbearance with Old Testament saints righteous. Now it is declared; but forgiveness (which in form never went beyond government then) which is now the abiding state of the believer - no imputation of sin, and righteousness imputed - is exercised as to, is granted in occasions of profitable discipline to the righteous when humbled, supposes the existence of the fault, and its forgiveness, though we may speak of the person's being forgiven, but he is forgiven something. Just as in repentance, man passes from will and lust to the judgment of his sins and sin, so when one forgives, he passes from displeasure and judgment of the sin - i.e., viewing it in judgment of the person - to favour, and ceasing so to judge. Hence, though there is no time with God, and no imputation of sin to him that believes, and he, if he knows the truth has no more conscience of sins, yet forgiveness, as a fact, cannot be till the fault is committed, and the mind of the forgiver turned from judgment to favour. It may not be, as to the Christian, as to any imputation, but then there is no forgiveness any more in that sense either, but governmentally He may bring a person's sins upon him, or forgive, and then it is actual in time after the fault, and, when grace, causes displeasure, see Jonah - so even for the forgiveness by the Church - so even of Israel in the latter day - all founded on Christ's work, its value known to us now, so that we know nothing can be imputed. In this sense we are perfectly forgiven and justified - before Pentecost unknown, so that it was continual occasional forgiveness, as in governmental forgiveness - not known of Israel, in the latter day, till they look on Him whom they have pierced.

198 Justification is, in the first instance "from," Acts 13: 38, 39; hence here, and in Romans 4 does not reach beyond forgiveness, so chapter 3: 25, 26, and so chapter 4: 5 - and resurrection is the status in which it is made good, though ascension and glory may be the effect of that by which it is made good. Still in itself it has nothing to do with glory, but with a judicial approbation of the state of the person judged, though the work, in virtue of which he is justified, may obtain glory, "whom he justified, them he also glorified."

In the gospel we have the revelation of God's righteousness; Rom. 1: 17. This is strictly the righteousness of God; in chapter 3: 25, 26, we have endeixis "pointing out," "showing," and in the sense of proving, "showing" is the word in English. This is done as to forbearance with past sins, and to show it at the present time, so as that He is righteous, and the Justifier of the believer in Jesus.

In chapter 4 it is imputed, but this is righteousness, i.e., the man accounted righteous, not God's righteousness imputed; in that sense "imputed" is ellogeitai, not logizetai. The former connection suggested to me, only one must allow the last is accounting righteous, not God's righteousness, though it be according to that. God does not impute sin, or imputes righteousness; imputation of righteousness is not in question. Sinners are justified, chapters 3, 4, and 5. In chapter 8 we have a condition before God, where, founded on Christ, the Holy Ghost has set us. But in chapter 5: 18-21 we have dikaiosis (justification) and katastethesontai dikaioi (will be constituted righteous) - and that is the doctrinal statement in this part of the epistle; chapters 6, 7, 8 are only explaining the status of those so justified, as dead to sin and alive to God, and under the effect of the presence of the Holy Ghost. In Acts 13 they are justified from all things. Resurrection is the state in which justification is established, although that by which it is so established may be a ground for higher glory, and it applies to our being manifestly clear, in God's sight, of all the offences of which we were guilty, and judicially cleared before Him. But righteousness is an abstract word - I am constituted righteous - that is my standing before God, and there is a cause for being righteous - judicially so accounted. Here the obedience of Christ - I am constituted righteous before God in virtue of Christ's obedience; no doubt I am justified from sins as having the profit of His death and resurrection, but I have the actual status according to the worth of what was done - I am estimated a righteous person, according to the value of what was done. So Hebrews 11, "testimony that he was righteous," "God bearing witness to his gifts."

199 But justifying is of a person judicially in question; hence we have it not in Ephesians - when it is a new creation, God has not to justify that - His work. Justification, on the contrary, is of a responsible person, and with whom justice is occupied; hence, first from what we are guilty of as children of Adam; then resurrection of life, judicially, in the place, as to judgment, which belongs to the person judged by the judgment - not by the counsel, that is glory - but a positive status before God in righteousness, and that in resurrection. The judicial mind of God owns us by salvation as before Himself, not in the old condition in flesh, but in the new, alive to God righteously, without blame before Him, and that is in virtue of Christ's death, for we are not actually blameless as we know, though the new man cannot sin, and we are through Christ judicially placed in that. It was dikaioma eis dikaiosin zoes (righteousness for justification of life); in actual result not yet, though the new man be faultless and free - because of Christ's death, sin and the tempter have no title. In the counsels of God, glory comes in; in Christ's case, He is in glory now by righteousness, but that is only of Him, and an assurance and guarantee for us - He appears in God's presence for us, and is withal our Forerunner.

In Romans 5, verse 19 gives the abstract idea - what characterized the two persons referred to. It is definitely contrasted with the law in verse 20.

There is another thing we have to consider as to remission. It has been proclaimed, hence it is not in the Gospel when Messiah was come, only in the mind of the Forgiver; it was declared, proffered, present forgiveness, i.e., when so addressed to any one - applied, he was released; this might be governmental as heretofore in Israel, or from wrath. But Christ comes, saying, "Thy sins be forgiven thee" - "But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins" - and the man is healed; and now full forgiveness is preached, as between the soul and God, as Luke 7, Acts 13, so that the person is in a forgiven state, no sin judicially imputed to him - it is not merely "I have (God has) forgiven" the person, but the person is forgiven. That is his declared, manifested status. In John 20, the administration of this was committed to the twelve, it was nothing peculiar to Peter; it was their mission from a risen Christ in the world, who breathed on them in life-giving power. He had stood amongst them speaking peace, then repeats it, sends them as the Father had sent Him, breathes on them, and declares that those to whom they forgave sins, should be forgiven. It is not the Kingdom, but the message of the Gospel administered in application by the twelve. Nor has it to do here with merely governmental forgiveness; the power might reach that, as in Corinthians - but it was the present administration of forgiveness to men. Baptism may have been associated with it in its due place; but the passage is a general abstract, conferring the competency to administer forgiveness on their mission from Christ, as He had in the Father's name.

200 NOTE. - Although the communications on which the work of a servant of God is founded, and by which he is strengthened in it, are not the state of his own soul, yet, inasmuch as it is an immense favour, and that which has passed between God and his soul, if he act inconsistently with it - neglect it, as to his moral state, and act unworthily of it - God may deal with his soul in respect of this neglect and unworthy treatment of such grace, and all the pain of a grieved spirit be in his soul. For these communications are an immense grace - how great the evil of slighting such, I mean slighting, in conduct, this intimacy with God, with which the soul has been favoured! Note this well.

Feelings

<41018E> 201

All our best feelings are wrong, if we look at them absolutely in themselves, and hence, give ever the feeling of poverty, and imperfection, and not reaching up to the relationship in full, even looked at relatively - and this is necessarily so, for being fallen creatures, what is a good feeling in a fallen creature cannot be according to the relationship in which, abstractedly, he should stand. Our right or good feelings, being the consciousness of what we are, cannot be according to the relationship in which we stand, but contrary to it, and a confession of being out of it, when we are in it - we cannot take the place we ought to take - what other have we?

This makes all, looked at before God, so very poor, though grace may accept and delight in it; but Christ was perfect in every relationship in which He stood, but did receive what was due to it - stooped down from that, in grace, to the circumstances in which we, or Israel, were, and at last received what was due to our condition.

In His interview with John Baptist, what was John's place? His thoughts are necessarily in disorder, however gracious, "I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?" If he was to take the place of baptizer, what was his personal relationship to the Lord, or rather actual condition before Him? His relationship, as of God, was baptizer, but how could he take it when what he was, was brought into question by the presence of the Lord? But Christ's is perfect, "suffer it to be so now"; He can take this place in grace, according to God's ways with the people, but His part was perfect in it, and He gives it in service to John, for "thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness," for He was following the path of God in perfectness, and John was to fulfil his service in it.

It was a good, and gracious, and suitable feeling in John, but evidently, taken absolutely, a wrong one - his personal state as a man, and his relationship which he had to fulfil in it, did not correspond. It is always so, save only what is of the power of the Holy Ghost, based upon the redemption which is in Christ; for that supposes the whole natural relationship gone by sin, and makes death its starting point. Hence, as in Christ, and practically, so far as we are really dead, we can have right feelings, and movement of soul, because it is the Holy Ghost's testimony of God Himself, as known in and by redemption, and has place in an entire abnegation of all that we are. This is an important difference.

Exodus

J. N. Darby.

<41019E> 203

(Notes and Comments Vol. 1.)

Exodus 1

Genesis sets out all the ways of God, but does not touch the question of cleansing a conscience, nor a people called to be in connection with God in His house.

Exodus treats the relationship of a people with God, and of the cleansing of the conscience, in order to their being in it, and being able to be with Him.

It is evident that the affections, and whole condition of the people of God, must depend on their relationship with God, and the manner of their association with Him. Now in the case of the Patriarchs and, though differently, under the law, God was manifested down here on earth, and though they of course could say, "God is in heaven," and, as persecuted, had only there to look, yet their proper legitimate condition and sphere of affections was associated with these blessed visits of Jehovah to the Patriarchs, or His presence in the cloud, and the Shechinah of Glory. So will it again be in other circumstances in the millennial day - the sphere and place of their affections will (though there be higher) have an earthly centre and object.

But after the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God, there was no longer any - the object of it had moved up there - the Son of God - and was hid, "our lives are hid with Christ in God"; so that the affections and whole condition of the Church is wholly connected with what is heavenly - as to the Centre and Object, it is hid in its life there. The Holy Ghost is come down, but it is as the power of bringing up, and centring its affections there; this evidently gives a peculiar and most special place to the saints now, in their relationship to God - their whole condition as regards Him.

NOTE. - Some people's affections take their value from the object on which they are set - some make their own, in the strength that is in them, the self-devotedness they exhibit. But I suspect that there is defect in both, and that the meeting of both - save, of course, divine affections in God - would have proved the inefficacy of either.

204 Exodus 2

Note here as regards Moses; although it is evident that he was put under a long humbling process to prepare him for the work, as nothing in himself, yet the thing that God notices of him in Hebrews 11 is, that energy of faith in which yet much of flesh was mixed up, at least energy which had not the known direction of God - he thought, but they understood not; Acts 7: 25. Besides this, it is his independent action, not fearing the wrath of the king; this is full of practical instruction.

- 22. In Gershom (a stranger here), we are at once put in connection with the sentiment of Moses (the position of Christ as to Israel) as to the people, though in Egypt, in contrast with Ephraim (fruitful) and Manasseh (forgetting), where we have the exalted Christ connected, in a heavenly way, with Gentiles.

- 23. Za-ak, crying out; sha-va crying out more to some one.

- 24. This word vay-yiz'kor (remembered) is a touching word.

NOTE. - There is a difference between Moses and Joseph. Both are separated from their brethren, both represent Christ as so separated; but Joseph takes the Gentile glory and Church place, Moses the identification with his brethren. Moses descends to identify himself with them, Joseph is rejected and sold by them; it is their sin which separates from him, and they return to him exalted, through famine humbled before him. Joseph goes through their rejection of him, through death (so to speak) but into exaltation; and there, having received a Gentile wife, calls his son Manasseh (forgotten) because the Lord had made him to forget all his toil, and all his father's house. He receives in grace, but in his place of glory, the people that had rejected him.

Moses has a Jewish character; he sees, where God saw it, the affliction of His people - he leaves, for the time was not come to deliver, and though the heart of the wicked ones rejected him, he is in no way separated in heart from the misery of Israel. His son is not Manasseh, but Gershom (a stranger) - he was a stranger away from his people - he returns, as identified with them - to them he makes himself known, to deliver them, in spite of the resistance of the king, from another king who knew not Joseph. He is their head and deliverer. God is not, "God sent me before you to preserve life," but Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, demands the deliverance of His people, "Let my people go!" Sovereign, saving grace was before - delivering title and power now. We do not find Eliezer (my God is a help) till chapter 18: 4, when Israel is delivered, and the Gentiles come to eat bread with the elders of Israel. We have then the double character of the Lord's relation with Israel - a Stranger with them when they are oppressed, and their Deliverer as the God of their fathers.

205 Exodus 3

- 2. Mittoch (out of the midst of); I suppose it blazed up above it, hence the bush was bo-er ba-esh (burned with fire) yet not consumed. Here we are in the full tide of Jehovah or Mal'ak' Jehovah.

- 4. Here He takes His title as nature - an additional proof of the way they (the expressions) are used. It was not merely a Person, but a Being who was such - God - hence Elohim in verse 6, "to look upon God"; but in verse 7 it is naturally Jehovah.

- 13. This shows that Israel had as much as forgotten any true God of their fathers, or did not know any God as their God.

- 14. The question then comes, what is eh'yeh (I am, or I shall be)? It is not ha-yah (he is), which has much more the sense of ginomai (has become), used for existence, but primarily of what did not exist (werden) before; eh'yeh is much more existence proceeding not from a beginning, a cause, but in, or from, self. It is not ho on (He who is) exactly, which is simple existence at present; whereas eh'yeh seems to me to imply self-derived existence - a term, I admit, inconsistent as all mere human terms must be (unless eh'yeh itself, given of God) but which will be understood. I, and being, are both in eh'yeh, not in ho on. It may be enquired if asher (that which) be "that which," and not an adverb "inasmuch as," so that "I am so that I am," or "I am because I am"; but of this, query.

He exists in the powers of His own existence - not caused - and in the will of His existence, not by it so as to make it a cause of His own existence, which is simply absurd, but in it, as we say self-existent, which happily hides the infirmity of human thought.

206 The Hebrew future [i.e., eh'yeh, I will be] is not simply future, but future to the thought in the mind, only "being" cannot here be separated from "I" as a consequence. "I" and "being" are coincident, yet morally "I" goes first; "am" is affirmed about "I," but also an immutable existence, but, as I said, this must be enquired into.

Jehovah is the name He takes with Israel, but this is the application of eh'yeh to continuance - existence relative to those in time.

- 11, 13, 14, 15. It is God, the Being who was such then absolutely "Eh'yeh"; and then Jehovah, the God of your fathers.

- 15. Eh'yeh (I am) had sent him, but it was Jehovah in personal relationship with them for ever, and l'dor dor (unto all generations). Jehovah was the God of their fathers, but not the name in which He was revealed to them.

- 22. "Borrow" is certainly an unhappy word - it is "ask." They were going out with a high hand, after terrible judgments.

Note the difference of Moses in his intercourse with God at the bush, and what he was in Egypt, i.e., how entirely, when God is working by him, all question is gone - he is possessed, and moves on in unhesitating energy every step, not so much thinking about the power, as animated by it, having a just sense of what God was. The power was acting in him - God willed that his own state should be exercised, brought in question, brought out into his own consciousness - in him (Moses) the power of the circumstances predominates over a present God as to Moses' heart; but God working by Moses, every trace of this disappears - not that Moses was changed in this way morally not necessarily so, but God had taken him up into His hand, and was now using him; before, He was showing him to himself, that he might know it was not himself - this is important to notice. I note it here, the long sojourn in the desert which occurred, was not the presence of God which revealed, and brought out humblingly in one's own sight, but here, between God and Moses - the latter may be often needed too - nor was this the Moses - work in Egypt, it had wholly disappeared.

At any given time, God may leave us to pass on in peace, or in regular duty, which requires absolutely His power and presence, without placing us in either of these cases. It is important, in all, to be fully before God, and to remember that the absence of the power of circumstances over us, and our power over them is not necessarily our state, if God is using us, though He may employ the vessel so as to use it, as is indeed His way. Elijah would hardly have fled, if his soul had been in the power which was ministerially exercised by him; and that, in general, is what ought to be - but Paul wrote an inspired letter, and for a time was sorry he wrote it.

207 Exodus 4

- 24. Pagash (he met) is more than karah (he met with) or kara (he met), something of paga (he touched, he met) but not so strong: even in verse 27 it is more, it is the active side, "he lit upon him."

- 26. Khathan (bridegroom, son-in-law) is remarkable I think here; it is not properly "husband."

Exodus 6

Evidently this is the beginning of God's proper relationship with and taking up of Israel; He gives Himself a covenant name of relationship. What goes before is preparatory, and God gives Himself then (chap. 3) a personal name, Eh'yeh, which is not repeated here. Then He reveals Himself, though for Israel, here His name by which He was to be known by them. We see also here the remains of unbelief in Moses; he is of uncircumcised lips, and cannot speak to Pharaoh. God uses this to bring about His own plans, and put Aaron in his place, and show where true power was. But was there nothing of the result (or of the effect of the same cause) of his going before waiting for the Lord's sending, and wisdom and power, in smiting the Egyptian, though his heart was right? Yet God uses our weakness, and puts all in its place through this; He that glories must glory in the Lord. There were forty years needed to cure him of Egyptian confidence in the flesh, when his heart was right. But he went in his own strength and will; the fear of Pharaoh was already in the act of human violence - such are we!

208 If God give us sunshine, let us not forget, still remember that Christ is the Sun.

The connection of this chapter with Deuteronomy 32, already noticed elsewhere, is exceedingly striking, as showing the place that these prophetic revelations hold; at the end they (the people) are returned and stand in the house, celebrating Jehovah who has blessed - that is the place of the Psalms.

- 3. It is no way said that Elohim had not this name - His name is His nature and character; but He did not appear to Abraham, etc., by it, but as Shaddai - did not make Himself known to them by His name Jehovah.

- 5. Note here the power of evil making God's people groan, recalls to God His covenant and promise, and He takes the name by which it is accomplished - which involves its accomplishment; it is not to be feared.

Exodus 7

The deliberate wilfulness and hardness of Pharaoh's heart is most evident, in spite of the Lord, but then Jehovah's hardening it in His government is equally plain. There are three words used for hardening, and it must be seen if there is any special use of them, for they are different; khazak, kaved and kashah - the second of these, kaved (is heavy) is chiefly used for Pharaoh's hardening his own heart; the first, khazak (he tied fast, made firm) is used intransitively, but also actively of Jehovah, and I suppose of Pharaoh also; the third, kashah (is heavy) is used actively for what God did. Thus in chapter 4: 21 akhazzek (I will harden), in chapter 7: 3, ak'sheh (I will harden), in both cases with ani (I), I suppose emphatic, like ego.

- 13. In this verse it is doubtful, as khazak has a neuter sense also, but in the next verse (14) kaved is used to describe the state, but my impression is that it is intransitive, as in chapter 8: 15, 19; whereas, when actively Jehovah, it is always vaani . . . eth libbo (and I . . . his heart); hence verse 13 would be "and Pharaoh's heart was hard," i.e., firm, unmoved - kashah is more "obdurate." The form with kaved is the same I have supposed - neuter, with khazak, that is kaved lev Phar'oh (Pharaoh's heart was hardened, verse 14) and yekh'zak lev-Phar'oh (Pharaoh's heart was hardened, verse 22) - in the former, it is clearly the state, or it would be k'ved'ti (I hardened) or ani k'ved'ti (I hardened).

209  - 14. The English gives in the previous verse, "He hardened Pharaoh's heart," and here, in this verse, "Pharaoh's heart is hardened," for the same words; the sense is "remained firm and unmoved." Kaved is, I suppose, stupid, heavy obduracy; kashah is hard, bitter, severe, as in Genesis 42: 7, Exodus 1: 14 and chap. 6: 9. It is a hard, embittered feeling against what one has no strength against, or is ill seen. Kaved is used actively (in hiphil) as to Pharaoh himself, but the form of phrase is, as the others supposed, active - eth-libbo (his heart), chapter 8: 15, 19, was hardened (hard) is right, as elsewhere, save in chapter 7: 13.

Exodus 8

- 22 (18 in the Hebrew) b'kerev haaretz (in the midst of the earth) is a remarkable expression, present government being there, and commanding all that is there, and note, this is not Israel. When evil comes from this, it is p'duth (redemption) for God's people, verse 23, margin.

- 32. Here again the active sense, with kaved, as before, Pharaoh did so, eth-libbo (his heart); in chapter 9: 7, kaved, the state was, remained hard, or obdurate; in verse 12, it is actively with khazak and eth* and Jehovah; in verse 34, it is kaved, more active and positive I suppose than in verse 7; chapter 35 it is more general - the fact historically; in chapter 10: 1 it is kaved with eth, Jehovah actively; and in verse 20 it is khasak, active, Jehovah hardened, with eth; so in verse 27, and so finally in chapter 11: 10.

{*Particle put to mark direct object.}

Exodus 12

The character of the Passover sacrifice - for it is called ze-vakh (sacrifice) - is pretty plain. There was nothing burnt to the Lord; the holy character of the lamb was preserved by anything remaining over to be burnt, no bone to be broken, nor any part carried out of the house; but there was no sweet savour to the Lord, it had not that character of sacrifice - no altar or place of approach, neither hik-riv (brought near) nor hik-tir (burnt in sweet savour). It was not in character nor effect, coming to God; it was keeping God, as a righteous Judge, out, so that they escaped - keeping Him righteously out (we can say by glorifying gloriously His righteousness), but still as a needed means meeting the case, and excluding the Judge as having now no ground for entering. Deliverance by God (that is, the Red Sea), drawing near to God, a sweet savour to Him, or coming to Him in any way of worship or communion, are not found here.

210  - 8, 10. The fact that the Passover was to be eaten at night, and nothing left till the morning or burned, seems, I think, to intimate that it was entirely apart from the whole course and scene in which nature and sense are conversant - a matter between God and the soul abstractedly, in the full undistracted claim and holiness of the divine nature. No circumstances entered into it - no question of compassionate apprehension of seen misery. It was sin and the holy judgment of God met, where nothing else was; so, as a sign of this deep and infinite truth, all was darkness for three hours with Christ on the cross - nature hidden - all between God and Him. Then all was to be burnt - there was no mixing it with any thing common; Israel was sanctified by it, like the priests, so that they ate it, but it could not be mixed with other food.

Exodus 13

We have the unleavened bread, and the first-born consecrated, as the consequence and result of deliverance from Egypt, i.e., separation (consecration) to God in the double sense of purity, unfeignedness of heart, and complete devotedness. These are the fruit of having to say to God in the way of divine power in deliverance - the result of the sense of it - note this.

This is brought in, in testimony, before the Red Sea.

Note too, the connection of unleavened bread and consecration of first-born on common ground here; both as a memorial in the land - the double character of the moral result looked for (produced by grace) in those delivered.

211  - 18. I think the force of khamushim (harnessed) is evident enough - they did not fly away individually, though they went in haste - it was Jehovah b'yad khazakah (with a strong hand) did it.

Exodus 14

- 4, 8,17. Khazak, Jehovah directly hardens.

Exodus 15

There is an analogy in many of the results of the passage of the Red Sea and Jordan, which deserve attention; though one was deliverance out of Egypt into the wilderness, the other entrance into Canaan. After deliverance by the Sea (the death and resurrection of Christ) death is found - to drink the waters of Marah - but they are made sweet. Only here it was imposed, i.e., had to be drunk, though it was turned to sweetness, as it ever is. So after passing Jordan they are circumcised; but here, as it is death and resurrection with Christ, it is mortifying - they apply the power of death to flesh, for they are dead.

In the wilderness you have Christ as manna, the bread come down from heaven, suited to the wilderness - Christ humbling Himself; after Jordan, Christ as the old corn of the land, the heavenly Christ, He who is of heaven (the Lord from heaven), in nature and character - not that He is not a man, but His origin and being is of heaven itself.

After the Red Sea, they were coming out under the personal power of the Passover, so to speak, saved from judgment then by it; in Canaan it is the sweet remembrance of long known deliverance. They eat it with unleavened bread of the corn of the land within the place where resurrection has brought them; out of the Red Sea, in the wilderness, they find shade and refreshment, which God has provided. In the land, Christ appears as Captain in conflict spiritually, and looking for holiness for it, as in His presence in the bush for redemption. All this, and especially the difference of the last-mentioned, is extremely interesting, and instructive as to the way we receive and know Christ, as brought into the wilderness by redemption, or into heavenly places as risen with Christ.

212 Exodus 16

The manna comes down - there is no smiting anything; but, besides the general instruction elsewhere noted, in order to have the water the Rock must be smitten - so, the Spirit could not be given till Christ was smitten.

Exodus 19

NOTE. - We never (save the sanctifying the seventh day) get holiness brought out as an attribute of God, nor of anything in connection with Him in the book of Genesis. But it is a mistake to suppose that it is the law which makes the difference, as if it expressed God's personal character; in us holiness must be holiness to the Lord. God is holy because He abhors evil, and delights in good according to His nature, but we can be nothing but evil without being consecrated to God - all else is evil.

Adam was innocent (not consecrated to God, so as to follow good, and be far from evil when knowing good and evil) for he did not know good and evil. One day was consecrated to God - was sanctified; but redemption consecrates a people to God. Hence you find a holy nation before the law was given - a people purchased to Himself and set apart to Him - brought to Himself. And God was glorious in holiness in the Red Sea in judgment.

In this chapter holiness was put upon the ground of obedience, but that alters nothing. He had brought forth the people which He had redeemed - He had guided them by His strength to His holy habitation. The terms on which they foolishly put themselves (v. 8) did not alter the fact of the thought of consecration to God, see Leviticus 11: 44, and chap. 19: 7, 8, 26, et seq. But this leaves the extremely interesting question: "what is the principle of relationship with God in Genesis?" which I here reserve, only remarking that the same principle applies to God's dwelling with man. It never took place till redemption gave occasion to it, this is also brought out in Exodus, chapter 15, where we first find the other, already noted.

I apprehend that the notion of redemption makes the difference, not simply in itself, but because, as by the work of God, it brings, according to its power, to Himself - "I have borne you on eagles' wings, and brought you to myself" - so His dwelling among them.

213 Now Abraham, the brightest of saints (I do not of course speak of the ground of his everlasting hopes, as known to us, but of the principles of his history) of that time, did not stand on that ground. He was chosen - called - and the promises given to him - called to go out to a land which God would show him, but he is not presented to us as brought to God by redemption, and hence consecrated to Him. He was blessed - cared for by the Almighty - visited - made a friend of God, but God did not dwell with him. He quitted his country on a promise, and call, he was not redeemed, by a mighty hand, from the midst of enemies, blood being on the door to shelter him. Calling, promise, blessing, care was there (not redemption) walking before God as a stranger.

Abel's sacrifice might seem to present this (redemption), but Abel's sacrifice is an offering to God, not redemption by God; he could come with and by this, and be received by faith, and so it is used in Hebrews 11. It was Abel's offering, not God's redemption. All this as to the value of redemption, and its character and effect is full of interest.

Note, that the people really undertook (only that the communications were necessarily such as suited an earthly state) what Christ undertook in Psalm 40 but what a difference! He there is the real Servant, and that, as in everything, by previous title; though Israel came in to put man to the test by it. But in the volume of the Book, He was the real and willing Servant of God, glorious in this place, who had the true title to all glory. For the willingness was in divine and perfect love, as the competency to accomplish all equally perfect; the competency to obey as great as the willingness, the principle of obedience. As perfect, the coming and all He came for, was the divine will - yet as perfect in love in doing it; it had the stamp of what was divine upon it, although the manner of manifestation was human and subject. How different the undertaking of those who must be kept by a barrier from God, when undertaking to earn a title to be near; Christ went forth from God - they, outside, could not even be allowed to come near.

214 Exodus 20

In the giving of the Law we have clearly Elohim, God as such, and man in His presence. Moses went up to God, the people drew near to God, and God said, etc. But then in all that is given it is Jehovah thy God, and the whole character of the Law is this, "who brought thee out" - "thy God" - "visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children" - "the days long in the land." It is on the ground of a people in relationship, "I have borne you on eagles' wings, and brought you to myself. Now therefore" - A law to Gentiles would own them not outcast, as a people whom God could guide, and give rules to, in connection with Himself; that law may contain a true rule for man in flesh, but must be given to man in relationship to God, as a rule for him in that place. The Gentiles were not yet revealed (see Simeon's song), and God winked, as to government in this world, at the times of ignorance - nor even finally will they be judged by it. Reasoning on the spirit of nomos (law) is something else, and goes further; the Pharisees had hopes of eternal life by it. Christ never says this: "This do and thou shalt live." As Scripture speaks: "He that doeth these things shall live in them." Man's natural longings and heart may go further - he thinks he can keep it, and seeks that fuller life he knows of by it. Not so faith, "if there had been a law given, which could have given life," for now life means more - then only by times, in longings.

Note the law was never in itself put into the hands of man. God spoke the ten commandments out of the midst of the fire on Mount Sinai to the people. Moses coming down from God, without direction from God, finding the golden calf made, breaks the Tables at the bottom of the mount - how introduce indeed the law of God into a camp where it was already broken and another god set up? When Moses goes up again, he is told to make a chest to put it in - God and His law are alike hidden, though given as a rule of life. That which has led me to this, is that when the throne of God was set up in the midst of Israel, the faces of the cherubim who constituted the throne - "He sitteth between the cherubim" - looked not to the ark, but to the mercy-seat which was over it, and covered it. The law was not slighted or enfeebled surely, it was placed in that holy receptacle, which indeed represented Christ, but it was hidden there. All that constituted the throne, the attributes of God, though perhaps governing men as a present judgment of conduct as to it, yet, as regards the covenant, looked at the mercy-seat. Now that was divine righteousness, the cover of pure gold - and the blood of atonement was sprinkled on and before it - with that, the faces of the cherubim were in connection, at that they looked. The law was deposited and honoured there, but the power of the throne dwelt with the mercy-seat. No doubt clearer blessings in unveiled light are for us, but this was not simply law; it was, as to government, a throne of grace according to the name proclaimed to Moses.

215  - 24. The altar here is for burnt-offerings and peaceofferings - sin-offerings are not contemplated. It was worship properly speaking; the commandments were given and breaches not yet supposed; so in these ordinances, they were all order for the land, nothing of sacrifices. In the enumeration of the three great feasts even, it is not the Passover which is the first, but the feast of unleavened bread - so when the sacrifices were offered to seal this command, burnt-offerings alone were offered. The sin-offerings, even in the sacrifices, constituted a distinct and separate head. Again, the altar on Mount Ebal was an altar to offer burnt and peace-offerings on, and rejoice, but the curse on failure only followed, Deut. 27: 7; Joshua 8: 30 et seq: and they stood there in the valley to bless; afterwards the responsibilities were read - yet when the altar was set up (Ebal), they stood to curse.

Exodus 23

- 27. "My fear." How true that is - this secret action of God which takes away courage, and produces dread, compare also chapter 15; see what Rahab says, Joshua 2, and compare the end of Philippians 1, verse 28, and what Peter says of women; 1 Peter 3: 2.

Exodus 25

- 2. This, and the root rum (lift up) [in the word t'rumah, an offering] helps one to understand the heave-offering.

- 18-21. With regard to the cherubim; in Genesis 3, they are set to maintain, as instruments of holy, sovereign, guardian power, the way of the tree of life against sinful man. They are instruments of judicial holiness maintaining it against inroad; it is a known supposed power, eth hakk'ruvim (the cherubim). Next, the mercy-seat was the throne of God in the holiest - the blood made propitiation there, but it was the place of the throne - of divine righteousness. Gold, silver, brass were divine righteousness in its intrinsic qualities - its stability of purpose - so securing His place and people - and in spiritual acting, energy in accomplishments, in man, or in connection with what it had actually to deal with humanly, not as judging man, for then it must be gold, but as displayed in work in man.

216 The Cherubim were out of the gold of the mercy-seat, i.e., they were instruments to sustain the Majesty of divine righteousness - the throne. They were not that righteousness - that was marked by the mercy-seat itself - but they were the instruments to maintain the majesty and expression of it, when God dealt in it with the creature as such. We find further that in Ezekiel they had the faces of a man, an eagle, a lion, and a cherub, again a man, an eagle, a lion, and an ox; the living creatures had those of a man, an eagle, a lion and an ox; Rev. 4: 7. But in 1 Kings 7: 29, we have lions, oxen, and Cherubim; in Ezekiel 41: 18, 19, they have two faces - a young man, and a lion, but this was half on the door. In Ezekiel 1, they have four wings and straight feet like oxen's feet, and hands under their wings; here in this chapter (Exodus 25) we have the faces of the two cherubim looking to the mercy-seat, and wings joining at top; in 2 Chronicles 3 the faces towards the house, and wings stretched out touching the sides of the house and each other - here God sat, and will sit as on earth - from hence Moses heard a voice when he went in; Num. 7: 89; 1 Sam. 4: 4; 2 Sam. 6: 2; 2 Kings 19: 15; 1 Chron. 13: 6; Psalm 80: 1; Psalm 99: 1.

It is His place and throne of Majesty, where He allows nothing contrary to it (see Isaiah 37: 16), but where He dwells among His people, in the place of glory, because He has set His throne there, and governs them, and speaks to them there - has His palace and throne there - though He may dwell in a tent, yet unchanged there, in the same Majesty. But on the cry of His people, He rides - comes, in the same Majesty, intolerant of evil, and in the Sovereign power of judgment; but that is deliverance, and hence, note, He puts blood on the door posts, He draws out of many waters - hence the very foundations of the earth are discovered - hence He hears, though it be Israel's deliverance, out of His holy temple, the place of His terrible, royal Majesty, "In his temple does every one speak of his honour" - what a wonderful thing that He should ride forth in majesty! No wonder redemption is such a thing! and that Christ must have gone so low, being under the blow and dealing, through grace, of this Majesty - for where should blood be found to put upon the door posts? But study this Psalm (2 Sam. 22) and see how far it is the deliverance of the Lord, under the power of death, the enemy, by the visitation of this Majesty. In 1 Chronicles 28: 18, it is "the chariot of the Cherubim."

217 In Ezekiel 1, we learn that they "had the likeness of a man," "brightness," "coals of fire," "lightning" - we recognize the display of 2 Samuel 22.

- 22. This is the apostolic office of Christ, or rather prophetic - Christ is speaking from the Father, and ordering all things in the embodying of His Church; yet as risen and so speaking from heaven, which is the proper order of ministration in the mystically formed body. Our Lord was, in fact, speaking from heaven, when in the body, the words of God, from the Father within the veil; as the Jehovah of the Church, He did give forth His commandments, apostolically, by the hands of those whom He sent in this office. See chapter 29: 42.

Exodus 26

I have some things to remark in the materials used in the tabernacle, etc. In the tabernacle itself, or tent of the tabernacle, there was linen, blue, purple, scarlet, cherubim, but no gold. The veil (v. 31), purple, scarlet, linen (only linen last here), and cherubim - no gold. The ephod was gold, blue, purple, scarlet, fine linen, and the curious girdle the same - no cherubim. The pomegranates were blue, purple, scarlet only; there were bells of gold.

Gold I apprehend, was divine righteousness.

Fine linen, perfectly pure nature - here man's.

Cherubim, as everywhere, judicial authority - but divine.

218 Blue - heavenly.

Purple - regal.

Scarlet - earthly honour and glory.

Now in the tent and veil there was no gold - it was Christ as Man; but all was gold inside either, and cherubim were on them - as Christ, as such, had the judicial authority, but wielding God's judgment committed to Him.

In the ephod and girdle, which is of course priesthood, there is not Aaronic or judicial throne, but there must be divine righteousness, though girded for service. In the heavenly character, which was under, and appeared below the ephod, there were the three colours, which give the triple character of the fruit, which belongs to the heavenly character - what was heavenly, royal, and glorious. These were manifested as belonging to the heavenly man; but the priesthood was really a higher character, it belonged to what went within - the righteousness of God - not merely what was the consequence for him who went in.

The hanging of the holy place had no cherubim, nor gold; it was simply what Christ was, manifested as a Man; Exodus 26: 36; chap. 36: 37.

The curtains were 40 cubits by 28, the tabernacle 30 long by 10 high and 9 wide. Thus the curtains not only hung down the sides, but the back; and only on the sides the ends were half a cubit from the ground. The goats' hair curtains reached a cubit beyond the lower end of them, and were half a cubit on the ground on either side, and as there were 11 curtains instead of 10, there was (v. 12) a superfluity, se-rakh ha-odeph (portion that remaineth), was divided between the back and front. Then I apprehend, not as once I thought, that the corners were doubled to strengthen them, not cut off so as to destroy the square inside, and make it 10 cubits wide, or more; but thus the six boards giving the breadth unchanged. GRAPHIC

NOTE. - There was gold in the high priest's ephod and girdle, but none in the veil, verse 31; chapter 28: 6; chap. 39: 1-3, and elsewhere; while there were cherubim on the veil, not on the ephod. The veil was Christ's flesh, behind which Godhead was hidden. The perfect effect was there in Man, divine grace in a pure human nature, but in going in the divine righteousness had its place, for He was before God. It was not merely efficacy of work, and so judicial. He is the propitiation for our sins; but Jesus Christ the righteous was there. It is in Him what perfectly meets God's mind, because it is divine - nothing else could be in itself. In John it is intrinsic in the way of nature, it is so spoken of, as 1 John 2: 29; then it is the judicial question, as 1 John 4: 17; but it is intrinsic in Him, in order to appear for us - the divine perfection in righteousness in itself. It is not that He is changed of course, but it had to appear before God in heaven; purity, and every grace to us outside. But then it is not merely He is our righteousness, but One is there who, having accomplished that work is Himself there - appears in the presence of God for us - and such that all God's positive delight from His very nature must go out towards Him. This is a blessed place to stand in - Jesus Christ the righteous is there.

219 Exodus 27

I know not where I have written on the typical meaning of the metals in the tabernacle; there are a few words, in some part, on the gold and brass, in the books of the Bible.

I have heretofore considered brass as judgment according to works, when in connection with responsibility, as gold properly righteousness in se - the eyes as a flame of fire, as the penetrating power of God's judgment (Rev. 2: 18, 23), in the latter God "searches the reins and the heart," and gives to every one of them according to their works; Philippians 2: 12, 13, 15.

Gold is intrinsic righteousness in God's nature - that which we approach in; here I do not mean His essence, but what we approach in. Brass is the judgment of righteousness as applied to man; hence the altar of burnt-offering was of brass, the laver was of brass - one judged sin in a sacrifice, the other by the word. It marked the immutable nature of that judgment - God, who could not bear sin, must deal with it. What led me to it was, the sockets of the pillars of the court were of brass, and the fillets and hooks of them silver - what gave stability was judgment - was Gilgal work. The curtains separated the profane from the holy - God's people, as with Him, from the world at large - their hooks on the pillars were silver and their fillets.

220 I am apt to think this is grace as displayed in man - God's grace; as the brass was God's judgment - firm and immutable - so did grace secure, but it was the ornament; judgment in God's ways secures, but it is their stability, and as the foundation, God's immutableness; grace in fact is what all hangs on in its actual maintenance.

The moment the light was brought in, and the use of the olive oil, then the priesthood of Christ is introduced, and the priesthood of Christ and the Church looked at corporately - looked at as a service. Aaron and his sons were to trim the lamps, they were to ascend up always - the priesthood having been ordered in Aaron and his sons. Then came the daily burnt-offerings, and then the Lord met with the people to speak with Moses - that was the ordinary worship and communications (as with Moses for what he had to give to the people at the ark).

Then the altar of incense; this was to be before the veil, that is, by the ark of the testimony, "where I will meet, saith he, with thee." Aaron was to burn incense on this every morning, and so in the evening. It was without for use, but it belonged within, and was kodesh hakkadashim (holy of holies). When he dressed the lamps, and when he lit the lamps, he was to offer on it. This had nothing to do with burnt-offering, but was of priestly approach.

Note, though Aaron and his sons were only to order the lamps, it is now Aaron's office, and though the light was to burn always, yet it was de facto to be kept alight by night it appears. Then we have presented to us that connected with the manifestation of the Lord's presence in Israel. For the people as such, the remembrance of their existence involved the acknowledgment that they owed their life to the Lord, and His remembrance of them would make it forfeit, but for this acknowledgment which implied atonement.

For a priest as such, he washed his hands and feet merely for service, being already near to God - the two characters of the effect of God's presence in Israel. The whole chapter has its importance from this, that it is the account of the whole order of relationship, and its administrative power when the arrangements of God's presence were complete - what that presence involved in recognition or worship - there was not common use to the two altars of burnt-offering and incense. These things for the exercise of ministry were not mentioned before.

221 Exodus 28

- 6. There is gold in the ephod and girdle, not in the veil, see chapter 26: 1 and 31; no cherubim. In chapter 26: 1 and 31 there are linen, blue, purple, scarlet, no gold but cherubim. In verse 33 of this chapter we have only blue, purple, scarlet.

- 26. On the edge thereof, over against the ephod within.

- 27. Does it not look as though the kith'photh (sides) did not go down below the waist, not further than the girdle, or what is makh'bar't'to (its coupling)?

- 29. This historically he never did; he went in his linen garments only on the great day of atonement. All was sustained in mercy; but the system, as ordered, had wholly failed.

What were the garments used by the High Priest on the great day of atonement? When did he use the garments "for glory and beauty"? Was it at other time than on his consecration? see this verse and 30, also chapter 29: 29, 30, and chapter 39: 41-43. Was the breastplate on Aaron, when he went in to the holy of holies on the day of atonement? Leviticus 8: 7, 8, seems to explain it, i.e., in consecration; all were upon him in that chapter, but they were separated in service, compare chapter 16: 23, 24. The whole subject should be considered in reference to Exodus 28: 2 and 40, and Hebrews 9: 7 et seq, also Romans 2: 10.

- 30-38. As to the priesthood, there are three subjects besides the persons of the saints whose names He (Christ) bears on His shoulders and on His heart - their judgment in grace, and obtaining guidance for them in walk. Next, that His going in was to produce fruit, and testimony in us - the bells and pomegranates; thirdly He bears the iniquity of our holy things. All is thus thought of.

Exodus 29

- 2. For b'luloth (tempered) see note on Leviticus 2, and the second sense (to pour together) in Gesenius, and the force (to mix oneself, Hosea 7: 8) of hithpolel.

- 4. Here first we find the expression "the door," etc. From verse 11 we learn that it was properly before they came to the altar, between the door of the court and the brazen altar. The laver is said to be between the tabernacle and the altar, see chapter 30: 18.

222  - 6. The word here ne-xer (crown) is remarkable. It is his separation or consecration, the same as Nazarite as to the root.

- 9. The high priest's girdle was called (av'net) from its beautiful design in weaving; this only from girding. And note, this is quite a new scene, the dress of Aaron when he comes with his sons is, like theirs, quite different. His personal consecration was complete before.

Nothing can be more marked than the way Aaron and his sons are thrown together after verse 8; and then, as heretofore remarked, comes the sacrifice and offering. The previous part equally shows a living Christ anointed without blood; and see verse 21, also heretofore noticed all with him. But then this does show what is called mystical union - not real by the Holy Ghost, but all His people looked at in Christ, at any rate the children which God has given Him, He being a revealed Christ. But they are all washed together (for we are born of the life of which He lives, and purified with the purification with which He is pure), but He is anointed alone (vv. 5-7). His sons are not clothed as priests till after

But further he was anointed alone without sacrifice, as Christ received the Holy Ghost - witness of holiness and sonship; but He could not then be priest, nor is Aaron said to be consecrated by this - his hands were not yet filled. The first verse shows that for hallowing them to priesthood, the second ram was the ram of consecration (filling the hand); the sprinkling of blood hallowed them. Here seen all together (for without the sons He represented, there was no need of blood, but then there was no need of priesthood either, that involves others and blood) we must have the sons and of course necessarily Aaron with them, or there was nothing. Hence the ram is called the ram of Aaron's consecration (v. 26). His hands were filled, but in verse 24 his sons too with him, for if Christ goes with Himself as an offered gift, so do we thereupon (v. 24). Verses 19-25 give this consecrating part when they are all thus together (verse 26 is apart), hence in verse 27 we have the two mentioned - me-asher l 'Aharon ume-asher l'vanav (of that which is for Aaron, and of that which is for his sons).

223 What is called consecration is through death, as it is evident Christ's death must come in for His going to offer as priest in the sanctuary, appearing for us, but it is not the same as the hallowing, which is rather our idea of consecration. It was through death giving them somewhat to offer, as is said in Hebrews, filling their hands. Christ (Aaron) could be anointed on earth and sealed, because He was holy and the Son - but He could not be a Priest without something to offer, nor, as sin was come in, without blood, and so an offering to carry in. In one sense He was raised through the power of His bloodshedding, because having charged Himself with our sins, He must put them away to rise Himself - His resurrection is the witness of our being so, but then we are raised and consecrated with Him - "He hath quickened you together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses." The anointing alone was the witness of Christ's personal absolute perfection as a Man taking us up in His work, of course then all that we bring into the partnership He has graciously taken up (our debts and sins) must be taken into account, and He, in blessed grace, took all the burden, but then we necessarily rise into the place with Him into which He enters as consecrated to God, i.e., as priests - as men walking in infirmity on the earth, He is priest for us - but as consecrated, our hands are filled to offer all the preciousness of that offering to God subordinately, and to our acceptance in coming as He does. Our gift is testified of, while we are accepted in approaching and worshipping. It is not offering in the sense of sacrifice - we do come, but as sinners, by that - but as offering the gift, our hands filled with that which has been sacrificed, death, and that is always the wages of sin, but not as a sin-offering, that was the first great thing, here the bullock, but as a perfect offering and sweet savour to God.

Verses 5-7 and 26 are the ones in which Aaron is alone (besides Christ being the Victim). In the second case we see Moses having his part - the distinct priestly part - what belonged to the offering priest. Christ of course was both Offerer and what was offered; but in the former, He was in living purity looked at apart, as consecrated to God as Priest, the heave breast, His own part, heaved up to God, not merely hatt'unphah (the wave-offering) but hatt'rumah (the heave-offering), but which as priest (Moses and so always afterwards) He ate, enjoying personally the intrinsic blessedness of the consecration and offering to God - worthy offering! This is true in general as far as we can go, verse 31 and following. But then He had His own apart (has) when Moses has the heave breast.

224 We must remember that the Lord Jesus (Acts 2) received the Spirit after His ascension, from the Father, which He shed forth on His disciples. In this case, in the figure, besides the blood on the ear, etc., the blood and oil were sprinkled on Aaron and his sons, and garments, etc., The introduction of Aaron here, I do not think a difficulty, because it is evidently on account of his sons, to give them their place which they could not have apart from him - and so it is said, "with him" - and we have our place with Christ, besides His personal dignity and excellence.

Notice here that in Leviticus 8 the tabernacle and altar were anointed, with Aaron, before the sin offering which is not in this chapter - this must be further inquired into.

- 36. As regards sprinkling the tabernacle, etc., with blood, we find that Moses offered a bullock for a sin-offering (see verse 12) and then here we have the altar sanctified khit-te-tha (thou shalt cleanse) not a-lav (it) but b'kap-per'kha a-lav (in making atonement for it), that is make an atonement for it - reconcile it. Hebrews 9 applies this to all. What I have to note here is that this was done after Aaron's sons were brought forward, and the anointing of the altar comes after this (v. 36), see verses 10, 12; compare Leviticus 16: 14, 16. But we must again note that in Leviticus 8 the anointing of the tabernacle, and all in it was in connection with Aaron's anointing, before the sons and bullock and blood were brought in. This comes in in verses 13-15. The Lord taking possession of all things on the title of redemption, descending and ascending (Eph. 4) is plain, and their being reconciled and cleansed with blood, as in Leviticus 16; but this is in contrast with Messiah, for I doubt not it is when there, He descends and then ascends far above all heavens. All this is in a measure mature in my mind.

All things were created by Him and for Him, and so in result He takes them in point of fact, and so takes them with the redeemed as joint-heirs, though the title be evidently all His, and He, in this sense, is entered by His own blood. But He glorified not Himself to be a High Priest, but Him who said to Him: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." Now He was not set in the place of heavenly priesthood here, but His Person proclaimed as on earth, as personally qualified for it; and as such the Holy Ghost came upon Him - "I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God." But Christ thus as Son and Man was the Heir of all things; nor is His personal title as Man, divine love withal, the least difficult to comprehend, nor the consequent fact, already referred to, of His actually taking it (we being joint-heirs) in redemption - Aaron never went officially into the holy place in his garments of glory and beauty; and in this character of Son, it seems to me, Hebrews 1 introduces Him.

225 No doubt it shows Him sitting down, when He had by Himself purged our sins, but it shows a title of Son behind all this, and all things subsisting by Him; i.e., the Creation is looked at independent of its defilement by us (though it has been so), so He is anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows - this was not receiving the Holy Ghost, as in Acts 2, after His ascension. His kingdom has a sceptre of righteousness - He has loved it and hated iniquity. It is what He is, not what He has acquired by redemption, for He acquired a title by redemption besides redeeming us; but here He is above Creation by inheritance, and I suppose the sanctifying the whole created scene to be the scene of the display of His Manhood glory in His own perfection (not as merely cleansing them because of us) is different from Creation - the anointed tabernacle was of course made - and from cleansing with blood, because of sinful creatures defiling them. All was, as the Son had created all, to be the scene of the Anointed Man's glory, who is the Son - and not as cleansed, though this was required and took place, but as the scene sanctified to God for that. The cleansing was a subsequent affair, and connected with need brought in by others; but this comes in in Hebrews 2 - and query if this does not show that in verse 9 we should read "everything" (pantos). Verses 6-8 give the title and purpose, and verse 9 brings in the way He had to take it up as things were; verse 10, in respect of the glory of God as Supreme, and as bringing in many sons to glory; verse 14, as destroying the adverse power; verses 17, 18 putting Him in the place of the efficient High Priest and the tempted Man. Hence man never entered into the Creation rest, though the works were finished; into God's rest through Christ's work, he (the believer) will.

226 And this fully explains Hebrews 5; it is calling (kaloumenos), in verse 5, "Thou art my son" - then verse 6, actual priesthood after Melchizedec, as to personal title too - and office, I righteousness and peace. The sufferings come in as to this "though" (v. 8), and then He is de facto prosagoreutheis (saluted) as such, so that now it goes within the veil. This leads on, of course, to the Aaronic pattern of priesthood in practice now (though in contrast) which supposes death, and blood to carry in; which, interesting as it is, is not our subject. But note we are in Him, and worship too, as above the Creation (Hebrews 7: 26). What follows is application to conscience, and cleansing, and the blood needed for both us, and the heavenly things represented in the tabernacle; Hebrews 9: 14, 23. So of eternal redemption, and eternal inheritance; and here consequently we have the passage referred to (v. 21), to which only Exodus 29: 12, 36 refer as far as I know - these verses do. This opens out some fresh apprehensions of the place of the blessed Lord in His title, and also the epistle to the Hebrews. In this aspect also we may say every creature of God is good, being sanctified by the word of God and prayer. In this respect, to Christ, every creature - the whole creation to Him - must have been sanctified. That which we do in detail, was completely so with Him.

- 42. We learn thus what the door of the tabernacle is. The altar of burnt-offering was at it, and when the people came into the court before the brazen altar, they were at it, see note to verse 4 - just as Christ's cross was lifting up from the earth, but not in heaven, compare chap. 25: 22. From this it would appear that we are warranted in looking continually for fresh supplies of direction as a constituted people, not merely as constituted to be a people, from the Apostolic office of Christ the Lord. It was iv-va-ed la-kem (I will meet you), I'dab-ber e-Zey-ka (to speak to thee) - hence it was at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation (as the other from the mercy-seat), and He met them. This is a most important point, and though set without where the people came, it was sanctified - a sanctified place of meeting - and hence the occasion of the notice. There was the continual burnt-offering; this was offered in the place of resort, without the holy place, whereby, though not the holy place into which the priests (believers) alone enter, access to the holy place is the way to the holy place of the world. Christ's offering-place was the world - sacrifice-place was the world - not the church; none but believers go in with incense, or eat the shewbread with frankincense, or trim the lamps within; but the meeting-place was sanctified, it was a place where God acted and met - it was cleansed on the day of atonement, and upon the footing of this, the Lord meets us Apostolically in every necessity of direction which our wants may give occasion to; I do not say this leads us out of Scripture, but, though not inconsistent with it, it is not a mere abstract original constitution, but a spiritually-afforded direction to them, not by the priestly, but by the Apostolic office of Christ.

227 The Spirit of God guides us, but we must remember, has guided the Apostles into all truth. In Matthew 28: 20, we have the whole of this truth, and the comparison of the passages throws wonderful light on it. It is subjection - for this is the force of the Apostle's office, "for the obedience of faith" - but instruction withal and light for conduct by which we act vigorously. It is only so far as we are made partakers of the Apostolic spirit, that we can act really on Apostolic directions, yet it is obedience, "I will meet with you, to speak there unto thee." But then these were communications not within, not by Urim and Thummim, according to bloodshedding and cleansing in respect of responsibility and according to God, but not in the sanctuary. Manifested glory however sanctified it; it was God displayed without, not our going within - God also dwelt amongst them. Thus far it went, and it is a very important principle - never took place, not even with Adam, but by redemption - but it is not yet dwelling with Him, as Christ is entered as Man, and the disciples feared when men entered into the cloud.

I think, from an examination of the passages in which heave and wave-offerings are found, it will be seen that heave-offerings are a more absolute and entire giving up to God. Wave-offerings are presented to Him, sanctified by being thus presented, and He owned in them, but their need for the service of man, i.e., for the Church. When Aaron and his sons are consecrated, the heave-shoulder, the offering priests' part in peace-offerings, is burned; Moses eats the wave-breast, the part of Aaron and his sons, the priests in general. The general fact confirms it, the heave-shoulder was eaten by the priest who offered the blood, the breast by the others. The heave-offerings of the children of Israel were what were offered up to God - consecrated to Him. Note also Aaron is consecrated by the blood of an offering of sweet savour; the leper is cleansed by the blood of a sacrifice for sin.

228  - 45, 46. Note there is a reason why, as often observed God's dwelling with man is the effect of redemption only. All that God is, in the most glorious way morally, is revealed and made good in redemption. In sovereign grace and counsels, love, active love, righteousness, holiness, and man the redeemed, is brought to Him in redemption, to know what He is as so revealed, but to know it as in Himself. For as it is revealed in what is done for them, so they know it in Him who has made Himself known in doing it - they are brought to God, capable withal of knowing Him thus. They must therefore have Him with them, or the real full effect is not there - neither the glorifying of God in it, nor the necessary result in us - neither objectively, for the object is not present, nor the consequent effect subjectively in us. Compare Ephesians 1: 4.

- 46. The first thought of one moved by the Spirit, being delivered, is: "I will prepare him an habitation"; and so is God's purpose in deliverance, though man may set wrong about it - at least He makes of His people an habitation, "They shall know that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them: I am the Lord their God." But this thought is not the first accomplished. The Lord, walking all the while in a tent as to His formal house among men, and, even before this be well pitched, can say as to His work in grace: "Thou hast guided them by thy strength to thy holy habitation." The promise comes afterwards: "Thou wilt bring them in, Thou wilt plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established." Thus the people, wanderers as they were, dwelt in the habitation of His holiness; God walked in a tent, for we also are moving to and fro, "I will dwell in them, and walk in them." David also proposes to build a house for the Lord; then another truth comes out - the Lord builds his house. But in effect Solomon - Christ, King in peace and Priest in glory - builds a house, whereof the pattern was revealed to David in spirit; "I have built thee an house." We also desire to build an house for God - God is minded to dwell among us, and that we should dwell in the habitation of His holiness; we dwell in Him, and He in us, and we are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. But in result Christ is Son over His own house, the true Solomon of whom it is written: "I will be to him a Father and he shall be to me a Son." He will have to say, "but I have built thee a house" - this, as every other glory, is reserved for Him; we are that house, holding till that day our position through grace, for the house is built in Spirit now, as then in glory. For us what is important is to be builded together for a house, not to build a house for God, though the desire be good - and meanwhile to dwell in the house of His holiness in Him, for that is our house in the desert.

229  - 41, 42. I go back to these verses to note this only, to lead to the train of passages, for the thought which gave rise to it was not at the time of writing; note particularly, the sweet savour of burnt-offering continually, where God meets with Israel outside - though He speaks with Moses.

Exodus 30

The competency to minister actually, being settled in chapters 28 and 29, after the place and its arrangements and furniture were ordered, we have the place of God's meeting and presence with Moses and with the people, to speak to Him, as it was said: "I will dwell among the children of Israel, etc . . . . that I may dwell among them." All these were for the actual ministration; the priest was so entirely looked at as a priest, that anointing him was not looked at as contained in the expression "man's flesh." This chapter just takes in all, consequent and hanging upon the end of chapter 29; i.e., the presence of God in the midst of the people, and the opening of the chapter is very sweet in that respect, incense, ransom, feet-washing, and the priest's service as to incense and light, and the savour of the incense to God, and the anointing for man.

- 10. The altar of incense belonged, though without, to the Most Holy Place - it had not any connection with what was done as approaching for acceptance. It was ko-desh kodashim (holy of holies) to the Lord.

- 12. How jealous God is of anything like glorying in the flesh!

- 18. Note the laver was made after all the rest, nor is this all; in the directions given, it comes after the incense (consequent on Aaron's consecration), and the ransom-money of the children of Israel; and it was used only for the priests to wash their hands and feet, when they were to be occupied with any service, and then comes the anointing oil. It was wholly a priestly instrument of service; they were washed at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, but it is not said in the laver, nor is any way intimated. The door of the tabernacle of the congregation was properly the entrance before they came to the altar - so, note, the disciples - "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you" - that was during Christ's life; but it was as having all things delivered unto Him of His Father, and come from God and going to God - as going on High after the sacrifice of Himself - that He washes His disciples' feet. And He was clean according to the word Himself - Ten archen o, ti kai lalo umin - so by the word He had cleansed and quickened them, as Aaron and his sons were washed together. This however in its nature, hence it will be true of Israel in the millennium, for we know the value of water as death - it came with the blood out of Christ's side. Still in essential nature it is the new divine life, though not so in death to sin which we count ourselves to have passed through; but the washing of hands and feet was within the Altar - the washing of feet by Christ as having gone out of the world to the Father, having passed through death.

230  - 32. Note the phrase "holy is it, holy shall it be to you."

The sweet incense is offered when he dresses the lamps in the morning and when he lights them at even. It is in connection, that is, with the lamps, i.e., we have the advantage of it when our light is in question - it is not in connection with sacrifice this. Query: how is common individual atonement brought in here? It is in connection with the service, no doubt. Perhaps they had their share as much in the priestly service, i.e., the fruit of it - the actual partaking was by washing; now it is not cleansed, but redeemed by a price. It is a memorial; the exercise of priesthood must be by practical cleansing and in the power of the searching word by the Holy Ghost. The Israelites are always before the Lord as objects in the service, the cleansed ones as in the service as priests - for light we have the comfort of intercession.

231 Exodus 32

- 2. Aaron was sadly ready - he feared the people.

- 5. "Mine eye affecteth my heart." His conscience would save itself but accredit the calf; it went on to long ages in Dan and Bethel. Whenever we give in to the flesh in divine things, it is always naturally so, for power only can deliver from nature.

- 10. How beautiful han-ni-khah (leave alone). He expected Moses to love the people, and interfere, but it was a terrible word "leave me to my righteous anger."

- 11-14. Jehovah says "thy" according to the people's unbelief - Moses says "thy," according to faith; and so here, in the relation by the Spirit he says "His." See also chapter 34: 27, "with thee and with Israel"; they had a place by a mediator in (governmental) mercy.

- 31. Moses goes up specially to God here.

The character of Moses is certainly one of the most blessed in the word of God; still all man's conduct in the Scriptures is given us to judge by - to judge ourselves by - and I think I see in the breaking of the tables, man's righteousness it is true, but not a divine act - not that I think he could have done anything else then - it was surely righteous. How could he bring the precious open law of God into a camp which had already violated it, and was naked to their shame before their enemies? But I do not see that he had consulted God, in lowliness of spirit with Him, about the law, and "what am I now to do with thy law?" broken-hearted as to its honour and this result. Christ was in a different position - in the same as to Israel - but what a position He took, Himself the victim of all this! It is true He alone could, that is clear, but one feels the difference, and what a place as to the law and the condition of the people under it, He takes as victim. How, accomplishing righteousness, it sets aside the whole condition of the people by taking it in grace - this set aside all necessity of vindicating God's honour in acting as to the people - He did it gloriously, perfectly, in suffering, and accomplished all, and magnified the law and made it honourable.

I was led partly to these thoughts by the manner in which the Lord speaks always of it "which thou brakest"; He takes pains to make it the act of Moses, and it is a serious thing to break what God Himself has hewn out - the tables were the work of God. He had not consulted the Lord, though he had interceded for the people. God did not make the tables over again - Moses was now to hew them out, there was something lost; I think I see something of the same spirit in his intercession at the end of this chapter, most blessed devotedness, that which in a certain point of view the spirit of Christ must produce in us in its root and principle, that is the entire preference of God's people to self - but not the same nearness to the Lord as when he was up alone with Him, before the sin had been seen, and had excited his indignation. The effect of his hot anger seems still to cling about him in his intercession, and the Lord answers His blessed servant abruptly and shortly, according to His majesty; even in this (and not otherwise, because this blessed man was very near God) with the "froward he will use frowardness," for it was a hardy speech of Moses. Christ did it as sent - being come to do the will of God - the prince of this world had nothing in Him, but as the Father had given Him commandment, so He did; this was perfectness, divine in character, and man's place where, nothing but divine perfectness acted in Him - He alone could hold that place, but then we should hold none but obedience; thus the Lord returns, in His answer to Moses, to every man's own responsibility: "He that sins I will blot out; do thou go and lead the people according to the forgiveness I have already accorded" - for this intercession came after the forgiveness accorded on an intercession, entirely founded on God's glory and promise, not on a proposal to put himself into a place of vicarious responsibility.

232 In truth we have here a most important point. It was impossible to bring the law into camp - it would have been to put the law of God under the patronage of and beside a golden calf - to degrade it violated in the dust, and Him who gave it, with it. But being on earth, he cannot get out of the position of law and sin. The tables are broken, and all relation impossible - he judges the people in anger, and leaves the camp afterwards. This was not God acting, after the violation of the law, according to His counsels in Christ - Christ, so to speak, when this counsel of everlasting covenant was to be accomplished, was broken - and not the tables - to make an inseparable union because founded on accomplished righteousness, and not the impossibility of association because of accomplished sin, with which the law of God could have no community. And then see the other side of this truth - the time for the accomplishment of this counsel of grace was not yet come, and therefore God does not put it into the heart of Moses on the mountain to ask: "And what am I to do now with the violated law?" but, after having broken the tables of the violated law (having received in virtue of the promise to Abraham, etc., a pardon as to God's acts of government, and afterwards in hot anger broken the tables) he says: "Ye have sinned a great sin, and now I will go up to the Lord; peradventure I shall make propitiation for your sin." But the answer of God sets aside entirely the work of expiation, and casts each sinner on his own responsibility in this breaking of the tables, and proposed but rejected expiation - leaves entirely out the work of Christ, which places the Church on the ground of accomplished justice - God's justice - after a violated law.

233 Here God shews all grace in government - sovereignty which enables Him to spare whom He will, so that He is not forced to destroy the whole nation, but He governs, imputing to children, etc., and not holding the guilty for innocent, but He places them again under the law, which He writes anew - the commandments on tables which Moses had to make; and note here that it is this ministration which is the ministry of death and condemnation, for now it was that the veil was put on the face of Moses, to which the Apostle alludes in 2 Corinthians 3.

The whole of Christ's path was the inverse of Moses'; He comes down to make the expiation according to God's positive will, and presents on high the expiation accomplished, and goes up to intercede, fasts to have his extraordinary view with Satan, as Moses with the Lord.

After God has been with Moses face to face, in personal faithfulness in abandoning the camp, a nearness he never had before, he has all boldness in respect of governmental association with the Lord - but this nearness is exactly what the people cannot look at at all, his nearness in intercourse with God Himself, touching all that regarded them, for they were substantially under a violated law. Moses goes up, in a word, with a "Peradventure," which cannot be realized; each one that sins is to bear the consequence. Christ comes down to do God's will, and His offering is the accomplishment of it, Hebrews 10 (as well as keeping the law), and He goes up to present an expiation accomplished. The Church sets out on this ground; often men seek now to make grace carry on law as a rule - this was the ministration of death - grace but added to guilt, if the individual responsibility remained according to the law; and what is a rule violated? The comparison then of 2 Corinthians 3 and this chapter, etc., sets this point in a most clear and striking light.

234 Then grace as the ground of government and actual relationship, based on mediation (for Moses had found grace as mediator, and Israel was "His" people) is most lovely. First God will come up into the midst of the people to destroy them in their humiliation and taking off their ornaments, for they were gay on leaving God. God has time, so to speak, to consider, instead of having an insult before His face, and then He will not go up with them, for their stiff-neckedness would break out again, and He would be forced to consume them - but, on grace being fully revealed - Moses demands that He should go up because they had a stiff neck, for how should he carry them up else? The only means was that God should take them entirely to Himself and possess them.

As to the act of Moses, he was in it necessarily incapable of any possibility of taking the place of Christ; as man, his devotedness to God's glory and the people was magnificent, but it was man, and absolutely impotent in the circumstances, and that is the lesson - they rest therefore, each one under his own responsibility, unhelped. God can love His people, shew His grace, and those that were really saints bear, in view of the sacrifice to be offered, but there was no putting men on this ground now. Grace in government, precious as it was in the way, and understood by the saint to his heart's comfort, left the people in responsibility where they were. There is government for the saint, and responsibility for the saint, but founded on justification also - the government of God perfects life, and clears it from extraneous evil; then government, i.e., of the people, was to prove there was no justification even when that government was in grace, as all must be on God's part, seeing man is a sinner.

Exodus 33

- 7. Here Moses is down below, outside the camp to the end of chapter 34: 1, when he goes up again. His own intercourse with Jehovah, of the highest character, was here.

235 It is to be noted here that the word for tabernacle of the congregation is not the same as the tabernacle - it is O-hel (tent) not misch'kan (habitation). Mish'kan is the dwelling-place, chapter 29: 46, I'shak'ni (that I may dwell). O-hel is a tent, but the regular tabernacle was an O-hel Mo-ed (tent of the congregation) as Moses' tent, was before it (the tabernacle) was made - a tent of appointed meeting. We have in chapters 39: 32 and 40: 2, the Mish'kan o-hel Mo-ed (tabernacle of the tent of the congregation). See Exodus 35: 11, Mish'kan, eth o-ha-lo, etc. (tabernacle, his tent, etc.), see also chapter 36: 13, 14. The tabernacle of the tent of meeting, chapter 40: 34, 35; the cloud covers the O-hel (tent), and the glory of the Lord filled the Mish'kan (habitation), and Moses could not enter into the O-hel Mo-ed (tent of the congregation), for the cloud abode on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the Mish'kan (habitation). Moses could not enter, because the cloud sha-kan (abode) upon the O-hel Mo-ed (tent of the congregation).

We have ka-hal (congregation), Mo-ed (assembly), and E-dah (appointed gathering). The first called together ekklesia; the next, meeting with God in an appointed place, see the first mention of it in this verse - hence a feast. The last more an appointed assembly of the people. The two last are from ya-ad (to appoint).

- 12, 13. Compare Colossians 1: 9, 10, "Thy way," etc.

Exodus 34

- 7. Note the same account of the ways of God, is given originally in the second commandment in chapter 20: 5, 6.

- 9. Note in the history of the golden calf, the stiff-neckedness is noted already in chapter 32: 9. Moses does not speak of governmental mercy, but goes above to God's own glory, and to the unconditional promises of His own purpose; but he associates, as often remarked, the people with it, which is faith as to this. But there is progress - his intercession at the door of the tabernacle is upon the general ground that they are God's people. Faith and the Lord's thoughts meet - God retreats into His own sovereignty, does not go on the ground yet of governmental mercy, for indeed they had cast Him off. But when God has revealed His goodness - Himself, as far as was possible - then Moses goes further, and begs God to go amongst them - puts himself as one of the whole company in God's revealed presence, and prays Jehovah as Adonai to go amongst them, because it is a stiff-necked people; he is amongst the people, but this is very holy boldness - and we know we need God's doing so, or how should we get through - and very beautiful, but founded on revealed grace. But in all this Moses shines greatly through grace; he is there - God revealing Himself - yet not confounded, or as dumb before Him; there is a just demand suited to God's glory - suited to the people's state and want. In God's threatenings, it was Moses separating from the rest, and making the tabernacle outside the camp, which brought God down to speak face to face with him, but it is a dreadful sorrow and burden of heart, when the people cannot be with God, but it is only one who has His mind for them; I say "one," for in such a case the heart is always isolated, God only knoweth its sorrows. In the energy of the master-builder, Paul "could travail a second time in birth" for them - this Moses' faith did not know; we have not "Peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin." The Lord give us his zeal for God's glory, and the holy boldness of His interests as intimate with Him, and to know how to travail in birth too, in the power of grace!

236  - 33. I apprehend that the sense given in English to this is right. See also the Dutch translation and Meyer. The force of this verse would be, "and Moses finished speaking with them having (or, when he had) put a covering over his face."

- 35. This would, I think, imply that at any rate, as long as he was getting these divine communications he kept the mas'veh (veil) over his face, except when he went into the Sanctuary. Even 2 Corinthians 3 which has been alleged for the opposite view, proves this - for it alludes so beautifully to the fact, in speaking of the veil on Israel's heart, that when it turned to the Lord, it should be taken off.

Exodus 36

- 35. Note again here, there is no gold in the veil.

- 37. Note the purple and scarlet here.

237 Exodus 38

1 - 18. Nor was any gold here.

- 25. There was silver offered, see chapter 35: 24; but here only the redemption-money is noticed.

I think the position of the brazen altar and the laver, show the order of presentation to men of sacrifice and sanctification, of which repentance is the first form; the coming by sacrifice is another thing, yet that shows the adequate sense of sin. But then the character of sacrifice attached to it gives that of the repentance. It is not Christ's Person which characterises repentance (though that be necessary if in His name), but the sacrifice - if Gospel repentance - that is, the judgment of sin according to the responsibility of man, but of man having to say to God, for it is not the gold on the mercy-seat; only Christ, being presented in grace, His rejection becomes the measure of sin. But this is, I think, more the judgment of sin, not sins, not failure as man, and I doubt it is so properly called repentance.

The altar referred to the responsibility of man - to putting away guilt according to that measure; the laver, consecration in the way of regeneration, and sanctifying to God.

Then the ark, the coming to God, in the holiest.

In Ephesians, we have only the latter, the portion of a new creature.

Exodus 39

- 2. Here there is gold.

- 22. "The robe of the ephod" - this confirms the thought that the ephod came only as far as the Girdle, joined under it to the blue skirt, though the robe itself may (v. 23) have reached up to the neck, but it is doubtful. See chapter 28: 31.

- 37. Of this only it is said to be set in order.

Exodus 40

- 9. As regards the facts of the Old Testament, of the holy places and vessels, they are these. When the tabernacle was set up, all was anointed. The altar of burnt-offering was daily sprinkled with blood, when Aaron and his sons were consecrated; see chapter 29: 36. Blood was put upon the mercy-seat the day of atonement, but this was not to cleanse it, but it was also put on the altar of incense. But an atonement was made - a ka-phar - for the Holy Place by the former, and for the altar of incense, i.e., the places of approach, by the latter - there is nothing said of candlestick or shewbread - it is the place of priests (saints) approaching. The place without, and altar, was for sinners to come to God by - there God must act in His ways to bring them to Himself; that was another thing.

238  - 15. Note in this sanctifying no blood is used as to any, or anything - it is the sanctifying in itself.

- 35. Yet he was in the cloud on the top of Sinai. How the relationship with God is of His own grace and way!

Notes and Comments Vol. 1, Section 1.

J. N. Darby.

<41001_3E>

Preface

The ministry of John Nelson Darby is, by the Lord's mercy, so well known as to render comment unnecessary; it only remains to explain the circumstances under which the present writings are published.

His executors have found, amongst his papers, a number of note books, in his own handwriting, containing many comments, notes and meditations on various subjects of divine teaching, explanatory and otherwise edifying, and have decided to set them forth for the benefit of the Church of God at large, and in the interests of the truth.

It was Mr. Darby's habit to jot down, in such books, thoughts on Scripture and scriptural subjects as they occurred to him, not in any regular order, nor in view of publication; thus, the germ of thoughts, amplified elsewhere by him, will sometimes be found in the following pages, together with fresh and deeply interesting matter, such as might be expected to issue from the private study of one so richly taught in the Word.

These writings were not revised by the author with a view to publication, they were made solely for his own use; and are now put forth with the earnest hope that the Lord's people may derive much blessing and instruction from their diligent perusal.

"I know thy works: behold I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name," Rev. 3: 8.

Such is the Lord's approval of those who, in the midst of perilous times, seek to keep themselves pure, and to continue in the things which they have learned and been assured of.

Bath, December, 1883.

Fragments

<41001E> 1

It has been the gracious wisdom of God to bring great principles - such as love, righteousness, and others - into evidence, by facts. This makes it simple to the poor, and keeps intellectual power in its place, and this is all right, and divinely right. - Milwaukee, April, 1865.

________

I have been very profoundly moved in seeing, on reading over old tracts (some quite forgotten), for the desired publication, all the principles, on which the fate of the world and the church now turns, brought out thirty to thirty-nine years ago. God was in it in a way I did not know, though I felt it personally to be God's truth. But, what a solemn thing! but then it has made me feel the responsibility of bringing it all out, systematically, before the professing church; before it only came out occasionally as particular truths pressed. But the main point is the truth itself then coming out; what progress in disruption has been made since! - October 18th, 1865.

________

What a sorrowful thing it would be (must we say "would be"?) to our hearts, to say "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course," - and that end in "the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine," etc. - and "they shall turn away their ears from the truth!" Was that the end, here below, of fighting the good fight of faith? What a world we live in! With this Paul identifies finishing his course; in another world it is different, but this is sorrow. So Christ however, Isaiah 49: 4, "I have laboured in vain." - 1867.

________

It is surely a wonderfully blessed thing to be like the blessed Lord, but I think latterly I have felt the blessing of it to be more in the full capacity to dwell on Himself, unhindered, which it will give, than in the fact of being like Himself. - 1868.

_________

2 There is nothing so petty as the human heart, but nothing on which God, by His grace, can compose such lovely, and transcendent music, because man is the subject of redemption through Christ.

_________

The more I go on the more I see how we are in a wholly new position; but, oh! how poorly we are in it.

_________

I follow with sympathy, with an associated heart, all the path of Jesus by the Holy Ghost, in meek, holy, devotedness to God. I ought to follow actually, even to laying down my life for the brethren. Having Him as my life I can feel with Him, however infinitely more perfect He may be. I may present my body a living sacrifice; my heart goes with Him, however poorly I follow; even in Gethsemane I ought to watch with Him. But when dealt with by God, and I speak only of the burnt offering, when the fire of the altar tested all fully (which is not merely offering Himself, but what met Him, to test the perfectness of the offering), then I only look on and adore. I bow my head and adore.

________

Christianity depends in its work on what it brings, not on what it finds; our side, and relationship to God by it, wholly on what we find, not on what we bring. In a word, it is grace, not man, though he be formed and led by it. Thank God it is.

________

Ah! it is not all the truth that we are far from God, but when God is come into the world we hated Him. Thank God it is a new creation, and we love Him, and He loved us.

________

Self likes to be served, and thinks itself great. Love serves, and is great.

________

3 No public prayer will do without private, but God always answers private.

________

There is no familiarity like familiarity with perfect goodness, and that is our position, by grace, with God.

________

See how, in the Cross, the whole question of good and evil was brought to an issue in every way.

First, it was the complete display of man's enmity against God, - the contemptuous rejection, alas! of God come in love, for His love He had "hatred"; and in every detail, disciples, priests, Pilate, all bring out the evil that is in man. Then Satan's power is fully manifested, and that over men in their passions, and, in one sense, in death, at least in the sorrow of Christ's soul.

Next, I get the perfect man as nowhere else; perfect love to the Father, perfect, absolute, obedience, and that in the very place of sin, and the cup it had filled. And this in human weakness, Satan's power (though above both, by looking to God), and the forsaking of God.

And then God Himself, in perfect righteousness against sin, and sovereign, perfect, infinite love to the sinner - His majesty and truth, both made good.

Such is the Cross! In the history of Eternity it stands alone. Man in God's glory is its blessed result.

Evolution

<41002E> 4

I see nothing in the elaborate statement at the opening of the Belfast meeting* which affects the evolution system, or divinely-formed species at all. Creation it does not touch, as none of them do. But more, that embryos were gradually formed in the womb was always known. That microscopic investigation has discovered segmental division, and the separation into an upper and lower set, with the lines between, may be very interesting to anatomists, adds nothing but details. So, that there are general principles of formation from lower to higher genera in the foetus growth is curious, and shows God's acting analogously, and with system, but no more, unless the contrary to the development theory, because after all men and women have human children, and cocks and hens chickens, and it shows that these analogies of formation do not make intermingled species now. Phillips in his Geology, though afraid to say so, shows there was no cross-intermingling of species. And it is one of the remarkable things that from the same materials and analogous processes, both in plants and animals, specific results are produced. The oak and the bramble grow from the same soil, but the oak does not become a bramble, nor the bramble an oak. Forms of inception, and food, and digestion are the same, and we have eggs, and upper and lower segmentary division, but a man grows into a man, and a pig into a pig.

{*British Association for the Advancement of Science, Belfast, 1874.}

I do not see that evolution or development, once creation is fully recognised, is anything that concerns us. We all admit it. A corn of wheat, if it has lain 4,000 years without germination, if it meets "the scent of water" will sprout. Supposing the microscope discover there protoplasm itself, or appropriating power leading to organic growth, that is what in English we call "life" in its broadest sense, tree, animal, or man; in every case protoplasm in a cell. What was there 4,000 years is evolved, appropriates extrinsic stuff, and is a plant of wheat, and will, by "seed in itself after its kind," produce more evolved wheat. Now if God pleased (and who can say He did not) - chose - when chaos reigned, to-hu (wasteness), bo-hu (emptiness), to form such plants all at once from protoplasm to wheat, or an oak, and cause them to produce "after their kind," by an instantaneous act of will, what should or could prevent it? This the evolutionists do not pretend to explain, nor can they - that is, how protoplasm came there.

5 They - for science is always, and necessarily atheistical, when it does not honestly confess ignorance (and honest in this sense its pride seldom is), because it can only follow experimentally the series of what does exist, and can only trace it as existing, but how or why it exists can know nothing, for that is no matter of science - they, to get rid of God, will say matter is eternal, but not only cannot prove it, but a finite mind cannot have the thought "eternity" in it, so that all that is wilful falsehood. Notwithstanding, in spite of us, we know there is a cause, but that is not science. It is clearly seen change of species is another thing; God no doubt could have made it so physically, but it is not proved, and Darwin admits the proofs fail in geology, and if we are to believe the best searchers into the question it is disproved (as Phillips on "Geology of the Thames"). God may allow commixture, and mules, if He pleases in nearly related species, but this rather proves there is no such change, for no such race producing "after its kind" has been found; but it is another question.

If evolution, as daily seen, takes place in four weeks where necessary conditions exist, or waits four years till they do, it is evident divine power could at once produce, I mean produce, so as to set the principle at work, in a moment. The foetus they tell us on its train goes through all classes of life from beginning to end in nine months; be it so. Why not in nine seconds - be formed so as to do so? But men producing fishes, or fishes producing men, have not been found. It is a mere hypothetical conclusion of what may have been, but this is not science. Science may arrive at a general principle of what is, and so find what will be on the principle which is known in existing facts. But permanent change of species has not been found; varieties from circumstances are common, union of kindred species forming none may be found, but "after its kind" in nature remains "after its kind."

Now Genesis 1 takes up the facts as apparent and no more - does not touch the "how." There are species - horses are not oxen, nor cats dogs, nor men apes - they may tell us they were or may have been, but, as I said, that is not science; but Genesis 1 takes up the positive and unquestionable facts, and does only one thing - reveals the creative authorship of God, and that is all - the "after its kind" is the statement of what is which we all know; more real science than the modern pretended science, and adds what confessedly is not and cannot be the subject of science - creation - and which Scripture says is of faith. A more precise account is given of man, because there was a moral relation between him and God; his body was distinct from his soul, and when made, God breathed into his so-formed body and he was in relationship with God, as nothing else was. This was, though creation, more than mere animal creation. "Let the earth bring forth" was for mammalia. God formed man out of the dust. Os homini sublime dedit (He gave to man a face that looks on high), and then connected him livingly with Himself. But what I had on my mind here was, that Moses took up the ostensible facts, and does not touch the "how" (save with man who is in relationship with God), but merely that God, the Creator and Orderer of all that was apparent, ba-ra created, a-sah formed, ya-tzar made (as a potter); He creates all, and then the earth being to-hu bo-hu, He brings it into order with everything, from plants to man. Hence when what orders times and seasons is set in order, he adds, "He made the stars also," but that is all. The creation of angels is not mentioned, they do not belong to this creation.

6 The creating is brought out I think as distinct parts of the general statements. First God created the heaven and the earth, then He goes on and orders it as earth with its bringing forth. This is to the end of the fourth day. It was the habitable earth, the waters being separated, and the earth, as ordered of God, standing out of it. Then comes the creation of what peopled the waters, it was what belonged to and was of them, but still was a distinct and new part of creation, the lower, and in a certain sense, unordered part. Then comes the higher class of living creatures, from the earth to which they belong. This was a bringing forth, but of the highest kind; still it was a to-tze (let bring forth).

Then comes a quite distinct act; God takes counsel in Himself to make man in His image, and creates him. So that the earth is looked at as the proper object of what had been created originally, and the account is continued in it; but then the separated waters have their own special notice, of which, though not the dwelling-place of man, the great things were God's creation; and then apart from all, though on the sixth day, but no to-tze, man "created" is repeated three times. Nor do I think "created to make" is without special intention; all was His creation, but with a view of ordering it before Him.

7 The men of science forget that they can deal with phenomena only, and the evolution, if they so please to call it, of what exists; with existence they have nothing to do; evolution and fixed laws have nothing to do with it either. Fixed laws are learned from the constant course of things, but the constant course of things supposes the things whose course goes on, and even to have gone on long enough to call it a fixed law; man may see the perfection, and universality of it, and conclude perhaps it is a fixed law, but he cannot by science go beyond the constant order of what is.

Evolution is true to a certain point, the foetus or sperm becomes a man or a beast in due time. I have seen no evidence of change of species by it, not certainly, in historical time, in geological mummies and fossils there is no change of species; it is not science but fancy.

Further, though man ventures pretty far, and no man denies variety in species, big cows and little cows, and horned or unhorned, yet it seems to me that fixed laws and evolution are difficult to reconcile. It is all well to fancy that circumstances so act on an ape that he takes the human form, and say that this operation of fixed laws must have produced that consequence, habit begetting a second nature; but it is not science - phenomena and deduction from it.

Species are, and the fixed law is that they remain species, and always have; change into other species, arbitrarily, from circumstantial influences, is not a fixed law of nature. At first it is an accident, if it has a natural effect, i.e., the consequence of an antecedent, but this is individual, and goes no farther than will, and need; there is no change of race in it. All apes did not shorten their arms, and turn hands into feet together, and, if one did, we should have as many races as circumstances, i.e., there would be no fixed laws at all; but the truth is, the thing, as far as known phenomena go, is disproved really.

But the main point I would insist on is, that science only begins when the system of uniform succession of consequents from antecedents exists, so that the whole system exists, and exists under an order of fixed laws, and science can go no farther than the discovery of them - is absolutely and necessarily confined to them - means only that - and if it presumes to go farther, wholly ceases to be science; accounts for nothing, and has no ground to go on in accounting for anything, beyond a course of things already in existence, having such fixed laws; as to existence, and fixed laws, or any knowledge about them, it is out of court - ceases to be science if it attempts to touch them.

8 Science could not even say that in another Universe bodies, instead of having what we call weight, gravitation, or ether, or what it may be, which are only names after all, are not in a self-repelling gas which drives them away from one another; science knows what is, and no more. Existence cannot be said to be a consequent from an antecedent, nor even fixed laws - what goes on according to them may be.

But mere fixed laws, and consequents from antecedents reveal causation - mean that a certain effect follows because another fact is there. Therefore I must pursue causes, evolutionary ones, if you please; and existence must have had a cause, and the fixed laws or causes must have had a cause, for all facts we have ever ascertained flow from antecedents.

What is the antecedent to existence and fixed laws? You tell me - you leave me in the dark, for I cannot conceive a cause which is not caused; I agree you are there in the dark, and must be. Own it, that is all, and that your science can only know present phenomena, and not God, and we are agreed. But men of science are afraid of being honest in these things.

The argument, as to infidels, is mere stupid presumption, and is merely this: Science, i.e., man's mind, cannot go further than antecedents and consequents; it comes to a point where it has to stop, for, after all, they cannot deny this, therefore there is nothing beyond.

Angels

<41003E> 9

The creation of angels is not recorded historically, but that of this visible universe; then they, already created as a separate body of beings, show their interest in the works of God - "the morning stars sing together, and all the sons of God shout for joy."

When Christ is born, first the Jewish aspect is announced to the shepherds, and then a multitude celebrating it - their public delight in God's ways, and, with unjealous delight in them, declare that God's good pleasure is in man. It is the heavenly aspect of it - they see God's mind in it - not the conscience part or man's evil. They chant glory to God, for His love is here, peace on this ruined earth - the place of their service - and en anthropois eudokia.

When Christ enters on His ministry, they are His servants in the wilderness, and in Gethsemane. The gospel revelation, which does not have them for its object, they desire to look into. The sufferings of Christ, and the glories that follow, bring a more solemn apprehension to their minds; it is not simple joy like creation, or incarnation and its natural fruits; over every sinner that repents they rejoice, it is joy to them. In the church they learn, as in heavenly places, the manifold wisdom of God; they had seen the glory of God's revelation on earth; they are to us, in love, ministering spirits; they praise in a circle outside the redeemed, in the Apocalypse; yet in our state we are but isaggeloi (Luke 20: 36), united to Christ, and all the saints His redeemed.

The Wilderness

J. N. Darby.

<41020E> 239

(Notes and Comments Vol. 1.)

That the wilderness is a place of learning self practically is evident, but it is a testing - you are with God - His ways, as said elsewhere. He humbles and proves to know what is in our hearts, but He has brought us to Himself. Up to the Red Sea, it was a question of Satan's power (Pharaoh), and God's deliverance, by which, as to our standing we are brought out of the flesh to Himself - death and judgment executed, but while on the Lord's enemies it was ruin, that death and judgment became deliverance, in that Christ has passed there, and this judicially goes the whole way. We are redeemed, delivered; sin, Satan, flesh, judgment are in this respect all done with, and we are, in a new place - brought to God. We are not only forgiven by the blood on the lintel and doorposts, but in a new place, judicially and livingly - Romans 8 gives us this - not merely peace with God as justified, but brought to God by deliverance as to our judicial standing, Christ being our life. The experience up to this, we have, I may say, up to Sinai - the Red Sea crossed; our place in the flesh left, and we in Christ as to acceptance, from which indeed nothing shall separate us.

Now begins the wilderness journey, only with the Holy Ghost instead of the law. We are indeed dead to sin, to the flesh, and to law, because not in the flesh to which the law applies; instead of that we have the Spirit. But all this applies to what God's judgment passes upon; our relative condition to God, the whole creation indeed groaning, and we as to the body, the Holy Ghost given to us, and, as to acceptance - in Christ and knowing sonship - without fear in the midst of a groaning creation, and the vessels of its groans, through the Holy Ghost given to us. But all this is our condition relatively to God, and a most blessed one - reconciled in a poor ruined creation, and rejoicing in hope of the glory. For in His purpose "whom he justified them also he glorified," and we count on faithful love to bring us there. And in our place judicially we are with God in Christ, and God with us - in us - so as to know our relationship and place.

The question now arises as to experience in this place, and how far it applies to Canaan as well as the wilderness - Romans 7 or Egyptian experience - from Rameses to deliverance or even to Sinai, does not come in here - it is in a good measure sifted. The character of wilderness experience is not that. It is Deuteronomy 8, God is with us, amongst us, and we pilgrims even if we forget it. It is the way, God who has delivered testing us; and a deal there is to learn, not now as to judicial standing, but state, and state in it having to say to God - in His presence, He in us by His Spirit - that He may know what is in our hearts (not we what is in His heart, though we know it far better by it, far better) humbling us, proving us; though at the end He has not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor beheld perverseness in Israel, and it will still be said as to Israel at that time: "What has God wrought!" But Israel had been fully tried; it was not uncertainty and distrust, when they had, seemingly as called, to find their way to deliverance, but when delivered their state of soul tested - and written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come. Of this, Numbers being the account of it, and Deuteronomy partly the commentary, we have spoken as being the ways, not the purpose of God, an important principle, which Romans 8, Colossians 1, and the thief on the cross teach us clearly.

240 How far then does the entrance into Canaan connect itself with experience? This is clear that, though both the desert and Canaan are parts of our Christian state and exercises: one, God testing us as here, what is in us, our state - the other, our conflict with wicked spirits in heavenly places - yet success in this is dependent on our faithfulness, though from God's power; yet Canaan in its nature comes when past the desert, and Canaan per se is part of the purpose of God, which the desert is not, and this makes a great difference. We have long seen that the Red Sea and Jordan coalesce in the cross, but not in experience. The desert is by the bye.

But, for faith, we are not in that flesh which is tested experimentally in the desert. In the desert, the Christian as in the Epistle to the Romans, is looked at as down here though justified and alive, and having, being justified, the Holy Ghost (see chapters 5 and 8) who dwells in us, but the cross, even as death and then resurrection, has a double character. It is deliverance and redemption, so that we are brought to God out of slavery to sin; and it is also passing out of the whole scene (even the desert) in which we live as living men and passing into heavenly places by resurrection. This raises the question, for Romans 6 bears on it and its connection with Colossians 2. In Romans 6 we have no change of place but I am dead to sin, that is my state as reckoned by faith.

241 What the world is to me, as alive to God in Christ, is changed. I am redeemed, not in the flesh but in the Spirit, in Christ and Christ in me, and the world a wilderness, as it was to Christ, not the Egypt of my lusts. We have a new life (v. 4), the life of Christ in us. But Romans 6 is purely subjective, as is indeed chapter 8, our old man is crucified with Him that we should not serve sin. We reckon ourselves dead to sin, and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord; we, alive in the flesh, are baptised to Christ's death - openly take part in death as in Him. In getting righteousness by His obedience we take our place with Him in death, and we walk de facto in newness of life. It is the likeness of His death, i.e., in baptism - His death - such is the profession - not in Egypt, that is the flesh; we are professedly identified with Him then in baptism, we shall be as a consequence in His resurrection; and we go in the knowledge that our old man is crucified with Him, that we should not serve sin - all subjective, so we cannot be charged with a lustful nature of fleshly will, if dead, and life is in Christ - so faith reckons, so I reckon myself, verse 11. Nor does chapter 8 go further, save that we have the Spirit.

In result after the Red Sea, after the days of grace - but only grace for earth up to Sinai - they took the promises on the ground of law and their own obedience, whereas we are on the ground of the Spirit - this gives hope. The law could not do, we have learned, because of the flesh; but we are not in the flesh, supposing the Holy Ghost dwells in us, thus far we get hope, saved in hope and helped through the wilderness, and God orders there all things for our good. We are not in the flesh, but we are in the world, but having the Holy Ghost the power of hope and comfort in it, and sons and heirs, groaning and waiting for the redemption of the body - in Christ and Christ in us - so Romans looks at us. This Colossians accepts, i.e., death with Christ, but adds we are risen with Him too.

Now this, though it does not take us circumstantially out of the world, makes us belong to another; a risen man is not of this world, even if in it. "Touch me not; but say unto my brethren, I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God" - He belongs now even as Man to another place. The glory of the Father is involved in His resurrection. Besides Christ and we are looked at thus in a wholly new state. I look at Him - when I speak of His being risen - not with divine life in the wilderness: that He had when alive down here. When I look at one risen, death closes all behind him, I see nothing beyond death, for it is death in which he was, the nullity of all in which he had been, and here alone quickening comes in. So we were dead (spiritually towards God) in sins, and are now quickened with Christ - the passage is in Colossians 2: 11, 12 - but verse 13 takes up the ground of being dead, and Christ having died in our sins and so put them away - come down, in the putting of them away, to where we were, though it were not possible He should be holden of it, yet we are then quickened with Him out of the death, where we were lying, and into which He came in grace, so that the sins were put away.

242 Hence it is not only our state, but we are dead with Christ to the rudiments of the world (not here to sin) we are not alive in the world, but have died as to that - died with Christ (this is a putting off) - and being risen with Christ, seek the things which are above where Christ sits. We belong to a new place, though not got there yet, and our affections are there where Christ has got. So that though de facto in the desert, we are as to heart and associations in a new place - we belong, and consciously, to another world; we walked in evil when we lived in them - we are dead and not only have a new life, but it is hid with Christ in God, and we shall appear with Him in glory. There is no rapture, nor are we sitting in heavenly places in Christ - it is a risen heavenly man upon earth. Life is hid, but up there with Christ, also hid - when He appears, we shall, so that it is now, and then, on earth, or then not of it, the heavenly part of it being a hidden time, only we are in life identified with a risen and hidden Christ, quickened together with Him. It is not subjective merely, but actually here, and in life there connected with Christ in life, not purpose - Ephesians is purpose. The fact there is, Christ is glorified to be Head over all things to the Church, and we are sitting in heavenly places in Him. In Colossians, it is Christ in us, the hope of glory. Clearly in Colossians we stop at resurrection, and resurrection as consequent on dying, not on quickening when dead; we have no dying in Ephesians - we are dead and quickened, raised and sitting in heavenly places in Christ. In Colossians, we have been buried with Him in baptism unto death (are dead from the rudiments of the world - not to sin here), and we are risen with Him, not of course actually, through faith of the operation of God who raised Him. We have passed by death out of relationship with the world, for, as to status and relationship, a risen man belongs to the new creation not the old, he has died out of that. God in power has raised him out of death, as Christ the forty days He was here - His resurrection was the basis of all. As to the status of the man, it was the new thing, but he had not yet got possession of what was given to the second and new Man - but he was it. Hence we have, in circumcision, a putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision which is of Christ. But this is a passage out of, and into a state of the person, not possession of the things. "Touch me not, I am no longer of this corporeal world, and back in it as your affections think. I am not yet ascended, but tell my brethren I ascend, and their personal relationship is with my Father and God as so risen." Hence verse 12 gives the reality or ground-work of verse 11 in Colossians 2. I am put out of the world into death (of the old man) and risen up again, and as to acceptance, place, title, relationship, essential state, belong to the new thing; in it, as to my essential status, passed through death to the old world out of it, but not yet ascended, my conversation is in heaven - I look to His coming from heaven to change my body of humiliation and fashion it like unto His glorious body.* That He had not when risen and not ascended; but the glory and heaven is a given possession according to promise, grace, and purpose, not a needed state as resurrection is, and that connected with a life, in and to which we die. Hence in Gilgal the stones of death were set up as a memorial; it refers to putting off - to Jordan, and entering into death - dying. No doubt it was past death, but it was, after all, putting off the body of flesh to which in us sin attached, and in which Christ was made sin. Hence we bear about in the body the dying - that which is the putting a living thing to death (nekrosis), as of Sarah's womb. True you cannot separate the quickening what is dead and in it a new creation, and the dying and rising; because all that God was, was glorified in what Christ there did to become the Head and beginning and centre of that new creation, filling it with redemption glory. Hence we find them together as in Colossians 2; still they are separate. In Romans, we have one; in Ephesians the other; in Colossians, both - only stopping short, in the quickening, at our being out of the dead state, and connecting it with forgiveness. In resurrection out of death (dying), we carry the memorial of dying with us and the memorial of Christ's dying too where the power of death was** for us gain and blessing.

{*But this is Philippians. In Colossians we shall appear - all is here what is meanwhile - is hid.}

{**When were the twelve stones put into Jordan?}

244 We are in this, thus in a transition place - we eat the passover which remembers judgment and atonement, we eat the old corn of the land, Christ in glory, but we have not the land and have done with this world - the manna ceases. No foot of Canaan ground is possessed, yet in our status we are past death, having put off our old man - we do not belong to the world at all, we have died and are risen - I have died with Christ and have risen with Him. It is not a new creation, but something that has happened to me as in Christ when I was alive as to the old man, though as to my status, it is the life in which I live in the new creation; but that leaves all that was before death, dying, and deliverance behind. I did not exist for the new thing. There is an analogy between Red Sea to Sinai, and crossing Jordan. The bitter waters realise Christ's death (the Red Sea) but experimentally - it is made sweet by the cross. Gilgal is more a thing done. I have the manna, Christ and the passover answers to it, but the manna tests my being satisfied with it. I have the water, but conflict is there and which succeeds, and then the millennium, but am I victorious, yes or no, according to Moses' hands? After Jordan, the corn of the land - Christ glorified - and then Him by the Spirit, not the millennial picture and the wife brought back. Red Sea to Sinai is down here, though all be grace - the Sabbath with manna - the grace side of down here, but still down here. After Jordan the body of the flesh is put off - the corn of the land, Christ in glory, fed on; but the memorial of death kept in us and in Him. Not rest or conquest yet, nothing possessed; status as we have seen, not possession - not in the world but death to it. "Touch me not" - fit for heaven not earth, but "I am not yet ascended" - but the status of the disciples, His brethren, His status.

Going back to Gilgal is not testing, but faithful going back to renew one's strength with God, in practical recognition that we are nothing, not in the flesh, and as the flesh tends to spring up, going to our true place with God where it is nothing - the body put off, as 2 Corinthians 12, only there it was wrought practically. Paul realised the corn of the land and his Gilgal. Ephesian truth, as said, is purpose, and that is a new creation not by passage out of the old; we were dead in sins, wholly dead, and Christ is looked at as, when dead for our sins, raised out of it - it is not dying to sin. There is no life in us as towards God, and as Christ was raised and set at God's right-hand, a Man in the divine glory, a wholly new thing (though life was intrinsically in Him) we are raised from this death in sins, quickened with Him, and made to sit in heavenly places in Him. There is nothing but the new thing which begins (not in Christ, of course, He came into it in grace, but in us, in Him as Man, it was new and began) - a new creation - God's workmanship created in Christ; nothing existed of it before in us. It is not setting right our status by death to sin, but Man according to the purpose of God, a second new created Man, belonging to the world of His purpose, only as I said, Christ had brought life into this world, only went down into death as to His existence here and then took dead man, first as to status fitted for it, but then actually into the glory of God's purpose about him. But as yet, for us, it is in Him - we sit in heavenly places in Him - "if any man be in Christ Jesus," kaine ktisis (a new creation) evidently old things have no place there, "all things are of God." We begin with non-existence as to those things - not dying to them. Only in Ephesians, the new man is after God created in righteousness and true holiness; in Colossians, renewed into knowledge after the image of Him that created him. In Colossians, the new man is neon - a fresh start, but anakainoumenon eis epignosin (renewed in knowledge). In Ephesians it is kainou - what is actually, totally new; this as the putting off, is past (aorist) but the renewing, not letting it grow old, is present and ananeousthai; this is practical.

245 Thus too in Colossians, the hope is laid up for us in heaven; in Ephesians, blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, we are before God holy and without blame; in Colossians, made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. Our life is hid, with Christ, in God; save in life and hope the heavenly part is left hid, we are not in it, when He appears we shall appear - the intermediate time is passed over - we seek the things above, are not sitting in heavenly places in Him. So Christ is in us, the hope of glory, and we eat the old corn of the land in chapter 1: 10 et seq, but it is still, "if ye continue" for it is under heaven, only we are out of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love, only it is deliverance from its power, not fighting its rule in heavenly places with God's armour on.

246 Another thing is important to remark in Colossians; it is character not relationship. They are elect, holy, and beloved, followers of God as dear children, to walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing - not as being with God in heavenly places, to come out, like Christ, and manifest God. So we have not the bride as in Ephesians 5 - "walking worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing" is, as filled with the knowledge of His will and strengthened with all might down here; this connects itself with there not being any thing of the Holy Ghost in Colossians.

In Ephesians it is the counsels of God, and accomplishment so far as Christ raised from death to God's right hand (that He might fill all things), and we, dead in sins, quickened with Him and put into Him on high. It is the heavenly places and we in spirit in them, and contrasted with the old and corrupt world, and we coming out from the heavenly places into it - only it is by the Spirit which gives consciousness of these relationships. Hence there is no coming in Ephesians or appearing; we have the thoughts of God, not His way of bringing them about, only Christ glorified as He actually is, and we, in Him, coming out to act like Him; then the Church's relationship, and being there, and Satan not actually cast down, conflict in heavenly places with him. But it is Christ's dealings in love as to the Church, and so not finished yet - it is what is in Christ's mind.

In Colossians there is the new creature or new man in its own nature and character, and the heavenly things matter of knowledge, but there are the heavenly things themselves, and in Ephesians we are in them in Christ, compare 2 Corinthians 5: 17, et seq, where both, the whole subject is taken up in a brief but comprehensive way. This extends even to Christ's connection with the old things the whole system parelthen, gegone kaina - new things have come in, in their stead. It is a blessed thing to think that these are all of God. We must remember that neither Colossians nor Ephesians suppose us to be actually seated in or in possession of heavenly places. We are at best, as in Ephesians 2, there in Christ, and this consequently puts us in warfare with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. The purpose is all there in Ephesians - Christ actually there, He is set down and we in Him. The Colossians gives us the status which, in us, fits us for it. In no case are we actually in it. In Joshua it must be physically realised as a picture.

247 The desert then is properly experience - the testing of the heart down here. In Jordan, and even in Gilgal, there is a given state wrought belonging to faith - which is experimentally realised, or rather the desert up to it (not merely Egypt) and we are placed in our status - our own place - meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. God says: "Ye are dead and ye are risen, ye are circumcised," the standing is realised by faith (we reckon). But then it is when the purpose of God as to us is realised (Ephesians 1), we are active warriors to take possession - the Lord's host. And hence it is here we have armour and not till now; only it is even so, "having done all to stand" in Ephesians, not possess. Our experience is only on actual failure, self-confidence as at Ai, not taking counsel with God as at Gibeon, so we have to return to Gilgal after victories to renew our sense of nothingness and separation - have His presence produce its effect downward on ourselves, not merely be strength with us, and so have power and faithfulness in combat, so that experience comes in as an effect but it is not the place of experience. Colossians 2: 12, 13 clearly bring out going to death, but so, for faith, become dead - putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, and, as dead in sin and uncircumcised flesh, quickened together with Christ when He was dead and gone to everything here. Now in that He lives, He lives unto God, always perfect He has now nothing to do with anything else. It is a life, and ours in the new man. But in Romans it is only dying to sin. But when dead in sins and the uncircumcision of our flesh, we have been quickened out of death, a dead man has nothing to do with the world or anything around him, he is dead - we had nothing to do with God or the new creation at all, not now looked at as dying to it, that is verse 12, but dead - non-existent as to God or any feeling there, nor any to be awakened, dead (though there be always a conscience) and with Christ we are risen with Him from this state, and have a nature belonging to another creation. The first belonged to this world, the second to the new one, so does our life, for He is it as so risen, the guilt being put away; with this Colossians is occupied, not with the world we belong to - 2 Corinthians 5: 14-18, we have the general view of it.

248 There is another point in connection with this: how far in the Red Sea there is a dying with Christ, and how far the Romans takes this up? Now we must remember that the Romans always looks upon man as on the earth, not risen, but having Christ as his life and of course justified - alive to God in Christ but not risen with Him; that is, I may say, carefully avoided as in chapter 6. Now in Romans 6 we have "baptised to Christ" and "baptised to his death." Thus we are dead to sin, so cannot live any longer therein, but we are seen as living here. Then our old man is crucified with (Him) that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we might not serve sin. Then he that has died is justified from sin - we reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. If Christ be in us, the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit life; sin in the flesh is condemned, Christ having been a sacrifice for sin - I am, by a life, made free from the law of it. Now here we are not crucified; we are not dead, but dead to something - only abstractedly one that has died cannot be charged with sin, is justified from it as a present working, evil working in him - and I reckon myself dead, so that sin should not reign in our mortal body, the old man crucified, so that we should not serve sin.

As to the Red Sea, it is, I suppose, clearly the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and this, as to believers, as deliverance and redemption. It was judgment on the enemies as death and judgment, and in this sense closed all as death and judgment do, but being in another is complete salvation - so the thief goes straight to Paradise, and we are brought to God. But then it is not into the sphere of purpose, that though from the Red Sea to Jordan has a double character - from Red Sea to Sinai, grace, and Sinai to Jordan, or at least to the end of Numbers 20, law and sifting - yet in either case it is as in this world, even in going on to the millennium in chapter 18. It involves having done with the flesh or evil nature, but not our going out of the world as in resurrection (as in Colossians), nor into a new sphere, as in it in spirit; Amalek comes to attack them, not they Amalek.

249 But I leave this picture complete in itself as a whole up to Sinai; after that, they get their testing, as we do, with God in the wilderness. Hence, though alive in this world, and as so alive, we get the moral effect which is developed in its own sphere elsewhere, but here as still alive. Thus we are baptised to Christ's death, and so reckon ourselves dead, as we have seen. Our old man is crucified with Christ, that we know; but so that, being here, sin should not reign in our mortal bodies, for we are in them, not risen. A man that has died is justified from sin; and if we have died with Him - and that I am so to reckon myself as regards sin - I believe I shall live with Him, for He died to sin but once, and lives ever to God, and though on the earth, I reckon myself alive in Him. But the communication of Christ's life, He being alive after redemption accomplished, makes me account myself dead to sin, the old man crucified with Him; the power of the Spirit being with me through redemption, I am free, sin in the flesh being condemned in Christ.

Chapter 7, also, comes in parenthetically, showing that we are dead to the law by the body of Christ. He has died, and He is risen; by His death, by the body of Christ the bond is broken, we being in conscience killed by the law, and so not risen with Christ, but married to Christ risen, morally beyond sin and law, but alive, de facto, in this world. The end is experience under the law as often seen; hence we have not "dead to the world" - "the rudiments of the world" - "why then as alive in the world," etc.; we have been redeemed, have a new life in the power of the Spirit, see sin in the flesh condemned for us in the cross, and see the old man crucified with Him, for in the body of Christ I am delivered from the law too. If Christ be in us, the body is dead, because of sin. When the law is done with, we have died in it, as in Galatians; if it had not been through Christ it would have been condemnation too, but that was in Christ's dying. I have then life in Christ, know my old man was crucified with Him, and am married to another, not to law in the flesh.

In a word, we have all the effect morally of Christ's dying, in the life of the new man - may have died in the law if under it - but we have not died with Christ and risen, though through His dying we reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. Still by our baptismal profession we have died with Christ; for here it is profession, taking the place, as redeemed by Christ's act, of the judgment of the old man - the judgment of the Red Sea, Christ's death, not as myself dying and through personal faith in the operation of God, raised with Him, and so passing at least in a new knowledge into another sphere of existence, at least so far as that my status belongs to it as risen. I judge what sin in the flesh was by Christ's death, and living here look for resurrection as a fact, but appropriate that death in that judgment of the old man, sin in the flesh condemned in the cross, and hold ourselves for dead with Him as to sin, not letting it reign in our mortal bodies, not serving sin. But it is practical, not status - the realisation and appropriation of Christ's death when alive to God in the Spirit.

250 The Romans thus is man, as a fact, alive on this earth, but spiritually realising the bearing of Christ's death when redeemed and brought to God, and His resurrection as far as justifying goes, but it is only faith and spiritual apprehension of it, redemption having put him into the desert as in this world, also Marah is sweetened to him by the cross. But he looks at all as done in Christ - only as alive in Him he judges the old man crucified with Him, that in this world he should not live after the flesh. It does not go on into a new state, but, redeemed and alive in Christ, judges that from which he is delivered; and we must remark that, though we apprehend more Christ's being raised and we with Him, and sitting in Him in heavenly places, there it is only faith too, and the possession of the Holy Ghost and life according to resurrection, not merely life. This is not in Romans; in Him, known by the Holy Ghost, and He in us, is.

We look out from life (as here) by the Holy Ghost, at what the effect for us of Christ's work, death and rising is as to what is not of Him, as in the condition in which He is. Place is not openly spoken of, nor consequently the world as in contrast; only he lives to God in the totally new state, and knowing his redemption out of flesh. On the whole, the more it is studied, the more it seems to me that Romans looks at a man as alive in this world, but by faith called to realize what the bearing of Christ's death, to which he has been baptised, is. Hence he looks at the old man as crucified with Christ, he being alive here, with Christ's life too. Hence no charge of sin (in the flesh, condemned in the cross), you cannot charge a dead person with it. Hence we are dead with Christ; but we are not with Christ in the Red Sea, but baptised unto Him when it is over, and He is risen, so that we reckon ourselves dead, though alive in this world. And the wood has made the bitter waters sweet, for baptised to His death makes a rejected human nature; but He being our life we can do so, and hold ourselves, though alive, as dead to sin, not letting it reign, though in these bodies. But the "dead with" is by baptism, not by the Red Sea, and if we be dead with Him, we shall also live. It is a conclusion drawn, not a new state; but the status of the Christian is recognised as that from which all is judged.

251 It is clear to me that Romans 6 is, as alive, a realisation by faith of the meaning of baptism - we can take it in, but our status is alive in the world, and I reckon myself and my life (living) Christ; for, otherwise, I am dead and gone. It will be a new one, but I am in a mortal body - not dead though I reckon it so, Christ being dead. But dead in sins, and dying, supposes us living - quickening does not; in this we are nekron, a corpse. Hence it is a new creation. Resurrection, in unity in a new state, comes after quickening comes in Ephesians; resurrection is after having died in Colossians, and when dead we have only quickening.

We are not seen in Christ in Colossians, but Christ in us - hope. But in Christ as above is above, not hope but a fixed place. Man is not presented in Colossians; it is "that we may present," etc. - so that testing is not over. The doctrine is "being made meet," but that is tested, i.e., whether we possess it really. Romans takes it all up as the work of God, and therefore it is "being reconciled, we shall be saved," etc. In chapter 8 we are in Christ, hence secure, no condemnation. It has not the testing character, because it is God's work. In Colossians, God's work is doctrinally assumed, but man not being in Christ, is in a tested state. It is not journey towards, but my state, which leaves the question of whether it is real, till I am in possession. There is exhortation in Romans, but no question. God justifies; who condemns? If He does, He glorifies, and nothing separates. It is God's side of the matter.

Colossians is our state, Christ being in us; but till we are passed out of this scene remains the question "Is it really so, do I hold fast to the end?" The status is a man dead and risen, that gives the character to the Christian, but is he really such? Hence in Romans if reconciled - justified, glorified, saved. In Colossians reconciled, hoping for glory, to be presented, if we continue; not exactly an end to be reached (as the wilderness), but a state to hold fast, continue in the faith, etc. So that in Romans we are saved men but here, dead to sin. In Colossians, risen men, but here, presented if we continue. It is an experimental tested state, though not a journey, and so after all was Canaan. Paul was striving that it might be so.

252 NOTE. - The wilderness ends in Numbers 20, the end of Aaron's ministry, by whose rod they could be led through. In chapter 21 begins combat and war, and then the question with Balak of being able to curse them, Satan's power, so as to hinder their entering into the Land. And then justification there refers back to all the course of the wilderness - not merely original redemption, when it was a question of the accuser with God. It throws considerable light on the structure and force of the Book, seeing this division. What makes it so striking morally is first comparison with Deuteronomy 9, at the same time, and it shall be said - not of God, but "of Jacob and of Israel: What hath God wrought!"

Symbols

<41021E> 253

Ordinary prophecy gives the application of power to a certain path, and against certain conduct, approved and disapproved respectively of God; it is never the statement of mere facts - those facts are the introduction of God's power sanctioning, and judging certain things, and introducing Christ's glory. But a symbol gives the morally characterised existence of the thing itself.

The character of symbolical prophecy is different, and has special instruction in this respect, that, from the nature of it, it gives the full moral characteristics which designate, in God's eyes, the thing spoken of.

In all prophecy, principles then are involved, but, besides this, facts which effectuate God's judgment on them, and His estimate of them, for neither does He ever so act, till they are ripe; hence also, if we seize the moral bearing or language of symbols, we get a large introduction into the mind and purpose of God.

A symbol is more than a figure, though in its nature it is figurative.

A figure is simply the use of some known fact or object in nature, or some material act, to represent, and present sensibly, what is moral or mental. It runs into every part of language, and is used unconsciously, e.g., he drew a lovely picture of virtue - "drawing a lovely picture" is a mere figure, at once intelligible, and hardly felt to be a figure and so of almost every sentence we use, which is not simply speaking of material things - "he dragged me into an argument" - "hammered away at his subject."

A symbol goes further; it does borrow images, but it uses them, not merely to render a mental thought more sensible by material objects, but to create a positive object of thought, often combining various circumstances, and characteristics, to give the moral idea of the object whose existence it thus reveals characteristically and as a whole, so that it may be recognised by these characteristics. The mere figurative speech thus takes some sensible fact, as the vivid expression of what is mentally known, or communicated; the symbol takes any known elements or objects to create a new idea - to express a new fact.

The symbol, however, is not always a combination of characteristic elements; it may take an object which is in relationship with others to represent what is in an analogous one - as the Sun, for supreme authority. In such cases, indeed in all cases, the main point is, to seize the abstract idea meant to be conveyed; hence also the object used as symbol by itself, may be also spoken of in positive relationship with another, and the relationship is the point of the symbol, and then we must not confound it with the object taken by itself.

254 Let me adduce some instances to illustrate what I have just said: In the ten horned beast we have a combination of elements - body - heads - horns. Besides as a beast, what is ravenous is depicted, what is not intelligent as a man, is not in submission to, and in relationship with God, but acting by its own will and power. In a great tree - exaltation and power in the earth, and therewith also competency to protect, and to be a resource for others; or again in the Sun - as indicating supremacy, or supreme authority - we have examples of the second class spoken of. Fowls of the air picking up seed and devouring it, are not the same as fowls seeking shelter under the branches of a great tree, because the idea is not being fowls, but devouring and taking away, of which fowls were a natural instrument in such case; in the other the thought was not fowls either, but the power of the tree to shelter and protect, and the abstract intention of the image is that which we must look to.

Some further details will render these preliminary remarks still clearer, and afford a safeguard against the precipitate use of symbols. When their use is well understood, they will be found to be a regular language, requiring indeed patience, and the power of analysis and abstraction to learn the leading idea of each term, but still, when that is learned, affording considerable assistance in the interpretation of those parts of Scripture in which they are employed.

First then, the same symbol may be used for several objects, and such as are opposed to each other in their historical existence, provided the abstract idea represented by the symbol be maintained.

The Sun may be, and is used of Christ as Supreme in righteousness, or of the supreme power in the dominion of the beast; in either, it is supreme power - in the one case, of righteousness, in the other, of oppression and bitter persecution. The clothing with the Sun in Revelation 12, is still with supreme authority; "the moon under her feet" (of the woman) is merely the reflected system of law and ordinances, entirely put down and of no worth - in fact, the state of Israel under the old covenant. The new moon, or the blowing of the trumpet in the new moon, is the return of Israel to light and honour after disappearing from view; it is no longer the reflective character in contrast with the sun, but re-appearance which is the leading idea. Taken simply as the moon, it is a secondary, and not the supreme glory in the place of authority, with the sense perhaps of dependence on another. When sun, moon and stars are found together, all in the ruling and conspicuous place of importance are embraced - what stands in a conspicuous place, a place of display and rule.

255 I will examine now various symbols which occur to me.

Sun - Supreme rule as ordained of God, in blessing or judgment. "The Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings" (Mal. 4: 1, 2), but it is the time of judgment. In the Apocalypse we have Jerusalem, clothed with the Sun - Jerusalem, or the Jewish people clothed with supreme authority - the old reflection and image of it in the old covenant, under her feet; so, chapter 16: 8, it is the supreme power in the earth of the beast. The source of the image is evident - the sun set supreme in the heavens. The full antitype will be when Christ, the Sun of righteousness, takes to Him His great power and reigns, Joel 2: 10, quoted in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, Acts 2, Revelation 6: 12, and chapter 8: 12 - in all these the idea is supreme rule in the sphere spoken of.

The Sun, then, is supreme authority, set up over the earth.

The Moon, a reflected and subordinate vessel, to represent governmental authority on the earth.

The Stars, smaller independent authorities - vessels of light and power.

The Sea and great waters, masses of people, viewed as such, that is, taken in the mass as unformed and undirected.

Rivers are portions of population, to which a given form and direction has been given. It implies often some principle which gives it its character, or produces national consistency, or a nation; only that when used in its highest sense, it is more connected with the influences which flow from God's presence - the refreshment with which He blesses the earth, or even the heavenly city - because a perennial stream, in the East, is a chiefest blessing. As the rivers, in general, are mere general influences which animate and combine men, and give, as a motive, their impulse to them, so this is God's influence to refresh, and make glad His people.

256 Water, when used by itself, is the Word in the power of the Spirit of God, but it is still the divine source of truth and grace. That which would have been an influence, flowing down from what was near God, to carry diffused blessing and refreshment from Him in all quarters, became, in fallen man, after Babel's judgment, local influences which combined men in human passions and energies. Water, in itself, is looked at also as cleansing, but, in this character flows to us only through the death of Christ - death to sin is the only true cleansing - but this requires more accurate analysis.

In the use of water, as a symbol, we must distinguish the element itself, and divers objects physically composed of it where its physical condition is not the symbolic use. In itself, it is used in a double way, as cleansing and refreshing, this is quite natural from its use - we drink of water, and wash with water - with both the Word is connected, as it vivifies and cleanses, we are "born of water" and "washed with water" - but "born of water" is intimately connected with cleansing, but it is used for refreshing and drinking.

Where we find "great waters," "many waters," the idea is wholly different - it is not applied to us internally or externally; it is a mighty unformed mass, seen often in tumultuous motion, and is used for masses of people, as such, i.e., not characterised by particular forms or institutions.

Living water is fresh and clear - it is refreshment in the power of the Spirit, whether springing up in us into eternal life, or flowing from us. The next use of it is in the form of rivers. Still I think here we must distinguish the cases where the main idea is refreshment, and the river is merely its perennial and abundant character, and where "river" is the main idea. Thus, in "a pure river of water of life," the main idea is "water of life"; it flowed from the throne of God and the Lamb. "Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" - this, whether finally in the heavenly city as a symbol, or on earth out of Jerusalem, gives the idea of a blessed influence proceeding from God. It leads up to one of an inferior character, but analogous - that Eden was a water-shed, or plateau of water sources, and thence went off in four streams for the refreshing and blessing of the country below it; this, though they may remain physically, has been ruined, and now rivers are from the source and power of man, however Providence may order it. "My river is my own," says Pharaoh - the king of Assyria was to "overflow all his banks and reach to the neck" - thus rivers came to mean symbolically, nations, armies of people under certain direction or influence, flowing onward actively in a given direction, as, "Whose land the rivers have spoiled." It is still the outflow of active principles, but not of God; the ultimate abstract idea is the same. I have been fuller here, however, because it is the case the most difficult to separate from its adjuncts in its various applications.

257 A great tree is exalted power and greatness in the earth.

Green grass is general prosperity.

A mountain is the established seat of authority.

Hills are naturally used in a smaller sense, only of inferior power.

A fig tree is man under divine culture, and hence specially Israel, in whom this was displayed.

Vine, and vineyard is the plant of God's planting, and what He has formed religiously, and ecclesiastically; hence, first Israel, then Christ Himself, always of course on earth; lastly, corrupt and apostate, still on earth, and then finally of it, though under a religious or ecclesiastical form.

The Cherubim, I believe to be judicial power; after the garden of Eden, they became the throne - in the tabernacle, regarding the law or covenant - in Ezekiel providential government and judgment - in Revelation 4 they are still the attributes on which the throne is founded, stability, strength, rapidity of judgment, intelligence. But they also refer to the creation; they are the heads of creation on earth - government also is on earth, and refers to this creation. But to the Cherubim in Revelation 4 is added the characteristics of the Seraphim, because judgment was not only governmental, but in view of the revelation of God, and final according to what He is. The vessels and instruments of His power are no part of the symbol.

As regards the tabernacle - Brass, is judgment of evil according to the responsibility of man - Gold, according to what is fit for the presence of God - Silver, I apprehend to be the faithfulness, and stability of God's purpose. The court and tabernacle figured the heavens - the most holy, Christ Himself, as we know by the rending of the veil. God dwelt in Him, but we also are His house. The common thought is, the dwelling place of God.

258 When we come to glass, it is purity - not as applied to cleanse like water, but that in and on which we walk, where no defilement can be contracted. We have it mingled with fire, when purity as an unchangeable standing is attained, through judicial chastenings also; it is gold transparent as glass (Rev. 21: 21) when divine righteousness and perfect holiness are united in our state and all we are conversant with. It may be remarked that there was no gold in the veil - there was in the Ephod and breastplate. The veil was the flesh that hid, though divinely, what was within. The Ephod and breastplate figured His whole Person in exercise, though a man in grace.

When fire is added to brass, it gives the searching power of judgment, as the full trial of everything.

White, referred to robes, is blamelessness - pure humanity to which nothing could lie reproached.

A horse is the spirit of power from God, gone forth to execute His purpose in judgment - whatever the instrument.

A white horse is imperial triumph and victory; the other colours give the character of the intervention of God.

Horn is the expression of power, and habitually in a kingdom, and so in a king, but in a king as having the power of the kingdom concentred in him, not the king personally save so far as that is the case.

Heads, on the other hand, are forms of government.

Wings, are rapidity of execution, when referred to flight. They are also used for protecting power, when shadowing any under them, from the familiar image of the hen.

The earth is the revealed scene of God's dealings - hence, often more immediately connected with the land (the same word) of Palestine.

An earthquake, a violent disturbance of the order and quiet of the ordered earth.

The darkening of the Sun, the supreme authority over the earth losing its ordering power - black as sackcloth of hair, the same, only stronger, and with the idea of trouble, and extinction as a guiding, governing light.

The moon into blood, subordinate and derivative power violently losing its native character.

259 Stars of heaven falling on the earth, smaller local powers losing all their lustre and authority.

Heaven rolled as a scroll, is the whole seat and place of authority subverted; and so of Mountains and Islands, the stable seats of authority subverted, and what was ordered, and rose above the vague mass of peoples, removed.

Colours are symbolical; blue, purple, scarlet - heavenly, royal, and glorious; fine twined linen, purity of nature.

Times - seven, completeness in spiritual things, and what is directly established of God; twelve, perfection, according to God, in human institution and order; forty seems to have a meaning, but it is not so clear to me.

Dragon - is open, idolatrous rejection of the Gospel of Christ by Satan's actual power.

Beast - is the civil associate glory, and assumed power of the Roman empire under whatever form.

False prophet - is the concentration, in moral iniquity, of the influence of what was the second beast, or hierarchical energy of spiritual deception. No doubt in Revelation 16 the beast is in its last form, but it is just in equivalent of this name and character of beast that the Spirit acts; hence also the second beast, when it speaks, though having the lamb's form of power, has the voice and utterance of the dragon, as above noticed, for such is the force, though not the form, of the second beast.

Inspiration

<41022E> 260

There is this character in inspiration - I do not speak of the Old Testament now, which is not in general, properly speaking, doctrinal or a revelation of God, but of His acts and ways on the earth - there is a revelation of such truth relating to the glory of Christ, or of God in Christ, as could be had by no human knowledge, and this, though new truth, yet when known we see to be necessary truth, He being what all the rest of Scripture declares, so that it falls in with, and connects itself with an infinite number of other truths, and consequences, and relationships which apply to and are connected with His Person.

Thus, take Colossians 1 - we have a revelation of the glory of Christ as Son - all things were created by Him and for Him; now no man but can see here that it is a declaration of truths or doctrines relative to Christ, which can be known only by relation, are given as such, and have this character. Yet it is clear that, if He created all things and all things were created for Him, if He takes a place amongst creatures (e.g., as man), He must when He has, be, as to final purpose, the Head of them; yet this connects itself, though an independent revelation, with Psalm 8, unfolded by the Apostle in Hebrews 2 - the doctrine of the Headship and exaltation of Christ, in resurrection, at the close of Ephesians 1 - His heirship of all things as Son, Hebrews 1, and a multitude of passages which link together the whole body of doctrine as to Christ, as a whole.

Take again the Epistle to the Hebrews; here we have a definite revelation of the priesthood of Christ, and His ascension into heaven, in the presence of God the Father, to exercise it. Now this presents itself as a definite positive revelation, yet it connects itself, though quite on a different subject, with the whole doctrine of our heavenly standing, which is so characteristic of real Christianity and so contrary to Judaism, see chapter 7: 26, 27, yet links it with our present known and felt infirmity, and gives us the bearing, aim, and key to the whole Levitical system, while it sets it aside entirely. It is connected, too, with the numerous passages which unfold, on the one hand, the divine nature and glory of Christ, and at the same time His elevation to heaven - noticed historically in the Gospels and the Acts, doctrinally in the Epistles - and at the same time employs in the fullest way all His humiliation and suffering, whether for righteousness and love as living, or for sin as dying, yet it copies and repeats none of the history we have of these, nor even cites them. It is a divine communication which identifies itself with them - it is a divine whole. I give these merely as examples of what I can express very imperfectly, but the spiritual mind will apprehend me.

261 There is another mark which I do not enlarge on, as often noticed - the absence of mere human persuasion, and the divine authority with which the Word speaks to man, not which it assumes for its own credit, as fearing it might not be accepted, but as never needing anything for this authority acting in love for man, and woe to him who does not! It is what the centurion said was sufficient - eipe logo (say in a word) - I speak of this character. Mohammed claimed this, but he proved, supposed it would be denied, justified it. Scripture, while asserting it if needed for edification, leaves itself to its own expression of what it is.

Another point I observe is its reality, i.e., it really deals with men's souls. You may find good writings pressing things on men, founding themselves on Scripture, using the authority of God to deal with men, and speaking as men; you may find spurious works pretending to give communications of Peter or Paul, etc., but they are written to prove the excellence of Peter or Paul, piously or evilly, for there are both, but none have the smallest appearance of God really dealing with men, as God, if He be God, must deal with living, real men's consciences, and with love as well as truth, as God a Saviour. It is a real, present, living, actual declaration and dealing of God with men, according to what both are, and bearing all the consequences of such a dealing.

I may unfold truth - I may urge even conduct as a matter of exhortation - but when good men have done this, divine communications are owned; but divine writings, as a direct communication addressed to souls, imply in their non-reception the rejection of God in the truth which He reveals as an eternal necessity to the soul, and in the authority of His word which conveys it. It is the present basis of relationship between God and the soul, and cannot but be so as revealing God to it.

If such Epistles as Philemon and 2 and 3 John be excepted from the first character in a measure, not only they have this last fully, but they are the touching application, and securing of what is largely revealed elsewhere, and guide souls in the application of it, and the faithful maintenance of it according to its importance as grace and truth from God, and that in the ordinary, actual, practical circumstances of life, when it was difficult for man, and kind men, or yet more, perhaps a woman, to do it. They are the tempered mortar which bind the great stones of which the wall is built, and all the little ones, too, together - the wall is not the less complete for that.

262 There is a character in the Scriptures very remarkable, besides the blessed fact of its being the truth - there is not a wandering of the human mind - a device of the enemy - an elaborate system of error - those immense systems which flow from a mixture of depraved original truth or knowledge of God, and the workings of the human mind, and craving after what it had not of God. There is not one of the things which the enemy has raised, by tradition and human imagination, into high-flown deception, which are not judged, and their true character told in unmistakable terms - this is very remarkable. They are immense and elaborate - high flown - wrought out - puffed up, so as to engross and amaze and mystify man. A few words of God break the whole spell; vast as they are they are all described in an unmistakable way - their immense and imposing vastness puffed out into swollen power, forms of piety and professed wisdom shrink into the evident certain truth which gives the key to them all.

This, in more than one way - they are morally accurately described in every element of their character, the facts are told with matchless simplicity, while they are but the idle exaggeration of as fabulous ghost stories, when some simple fact is known; and this in so few words, so true, so perfectly telling everything about them, that the divine character of the Word is marked in the most wonderful way. Hence, I apprehend the Mosaic history was written after the schemes of idolatry were afloat, and the institutions of the Levitical law took up all that had been abused, and gave it in its true place, even in symbols, and associated it with the true knowledge of God.

There was a difference as to Christianity in this - the early knowledge of God, though true was of course not full as now; hence there was opportunity of man's seeking out, when fallen and under the enemy's influence, many inventions. Moses - God's word and revelation - comes after, and takes up all the symbolical expressions and puts them in their place - judged if evil, or rightly used if divinely expressive, or gives the facts which accounted for all that deluded man had made gods of. Christianity is a perfect revelation of God - the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth - the Lord has not only appeared, but been glorified, and the heavenly things themselves revealed, the veil rent, and the Holy Ghost given. This does not of course hinder those who are not converted, who are without God, from framing like systems, nor the enemy from deceiving by traditions connected with these truths, and the sources they historically flow from; yet could there not be another revelation for the full one is given. The Lord Jesus has been glorified, and in every way but seen glory - fully revealed God, and has in every sense completed all truth. Hence these things are prophetically told of, as a part of needed truth, through the goodness of God, only indeed when they had a proper moral character, so as to vex the Church and try its faith. God allowed their germ to appear in the Apostles' days that the divine Word might shew them out - other than shewing them thus, they are dealt with in judgment when the glory of the Son, which they deny, is revealed.

263 The Apocalypse, which treats of the corporate and open form of such evil in the world, is hence all through a book of judgment, and though indeed all so - I speak now from chapter 4 out - and the evil is so dealt with, even when a witness is given by men, fire goes out of their mouths and judges. It is not like Christ at the Samaritan village, but connects itself with judgment, and the divine announcement of the everlasting Gospel is that the hour of His judgment is come. Hence the Spirit does not speak expressly, as in the Epistles, but symbolically - we are on the ground of earthly dealings where alone Jesus is not owned, but Gentiles in power - such is the key to the use of symbolical prophecy, I believe - but this by-the-bye. The great principle, I speak of, gives, besides the blessed positive truth, a singularly remarkable character to the Word of God.

As to inspiration, it is a mistake to suppose that the reception of texts, which declare inspiration, do not affect the credibility of the history, because they show the writers, if not true, to be fanatics or impostors, and thus their facts cannot be trusted, at any rate as an adequate revelation of God. No doubt historical veracity and exactness are quite different from inspiration, and it may be very useful, for persons at a loss, to prove the veracity of the inspired historians, but you cannot really separate the history from the design and intention of God, if it be inspired at all. God does not set man to write a history, which is to reveal Himself, without a purpose.

264 Again, much of the history of Genesis could be known only by inspiration, or even revelation; so even of the Gospel history, and while I quite admit the historical veracity may be rightly shown, or rather the folly and unreasonableness of those who dispute it, and that the human character is manifested in the inspired authors, yet I must, if I sit down to read it as Scripture, I must estimate it as a divine work

Manifested power in the agents, by word and deed, founded Christianity, not Scripture in the first activities, save in the Old Testament, but, in the last days, Scripture is the safeguard and then I must have it "inspired of God."

Evidently belief in Christianity may be brought about, not without the Word, but without any estimate or personal examination of the Scripture; but if I take Scripture up inspiration is directly involved in its own account of itself, and gives it its value - you cannot read it as Scripture, as a record of what a religion is, but as an inspired statement. Is it to be alleged that the histories of Scripture do not reveal heavenly or heaven-given truth? If the Gospels do not rightly present Christ, but only a human estimate of Him, where am I? If the creation be not inspired, where am I? Or the whole history of Genesis, or if the accounts of Israel's history be not according to God, how have God's righteousness in judgment?

The discourses of our Lord - their historical occasion and bearing - (and they are generally abstracts) if not given as God would give them, cannot possibly teach me aright - they will mislead me with the authority of Christ. They are His teaching, as the wisdom of the Holy Ghost recorded it, for the Church in all ages.

My faith in Christianity may not depend on the Gospels at all - no one's did at first - but if I have them, and their contents do not give me a divine revelation of Christ, I have no divine ground of faith left, save as God's sovereign grace may keep me without any known ground. I admit the human element for men, but I cannot do so to the enfeebling the divine. God uses each Gospel to present the truth of Christ's history by a human instrument, quite independent of the other human instrument, but not of God - each gave what he knew to be the truth, the Holy Ghost called it, in fit place, to his remembrance.

265 You have four witnesses, but you have God making each of them perfect, and sure in his own place. Christ distinguishes the testimony of the Apostles and the Holy Spirit, but He also says that the Holy Ghost would make their testimony perfect, bringing to their remembrance what He had said.

I admit the human element fully - it is most interesting, and Christ tells us the talent was given according to every man's ability, and still more, the working of the Spirit in the inspired authors in the order of the dispensation they were in, even to the difference of the apostolic writers; but it is utterly* unfaithful and false to tell us to read them as authentic human writings - an element or form of expression, because the Holy Ghost was acting in the circumstances to which the form applied, is not a human writing.

{*See Birk's Treatise on Inspiration. He is afraid of rationalists in combating them.}

In meeting unbelief I may show the rationalists to be unreasonable on their own ground, and if they are genuine they are for him so many confirming testimonies, but if they are authentic human writings, and I read them as such, I exclude the divine element while so taking them, and half of it becomes tradition or hearsay. I take the first chapter of Genesis - as an authentic human writing, what is it? I take the first chapter of John - as an authentic human writing, what is it? Who can authenticate the Word being with God, and being God? What is the Revelation as a human writing? Why even the different order of events, if a mere human writing? All the revelations preclude this - authentic writings, if you please, and by men, but authentic human writings I cannot receive.

The Holy Ghost may bring things to the remembrance of the witnesses, and only certain things, and in a certain order, and, when brought, they distinctly remember them, yet the whole be the fruit of the Spirit's work, and that in detail as it stands. Besides, many things are in the Gospels of which the writer was not eye-witness - all the birth part - even Gethsemane - Matthew gives what he did not witness, and not what he did, it is not therefore consulting his own memory, though the Holy Ghost may act in that memory, when He sees fit.

266 But as regards the human element in inspiration, especially in the New Testament, we have one or two passages which express it clearly.

The Old Testament gave a testimony to Christ, besides the historical basis of the whole matter, in the history of man and God's people; He was the subject and object of their testimony, but Christ's and, through grace, our testimony, is different - His testimony was the expression of the thing in Himself, so ours, though imperfect - the life of Jesus manifested in our mortal bodies, the epistle of Christ written by the Spirit of the living God on the fleshy tables of the heart.

Now the New Testament inspiration partook of this, though there was also, in tongues and prophecy, dictated utterances; that is, the full blessing of the thing revealed was conveyed to the heart and understanding. How was Paul made an Apostle and minister of the Church? By the revelation of Christ in glory to him, for his own conversion, through grace; so he speaks, "When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood" - so in 2 Corinthians 4, "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give (out) the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" - so indeed in 1 Corinthians 2: 12-14, they had received the Spirit to know; only, when it was to be for divine communication also, they spoke it in words taught of the Holy Ghost. And this is the instruction of the Lord Himself on the subject, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink, and, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him should receive." The streams which flowed forth for others, were the fruit of what had been drunk for self; this is true of all so ministering, only, as we have seen, for what is properly called inspiration, the words were given by the Holy Ghost also.

The very nature of Christianity is God manifest in the flesh, entering personally into all our sorrows, temptations, and trials, manifesting God's perfect goodness in them, and then, through redemption, raising man to the elevation of which Christ's Person and work were worthy in glorifying God, the divine glory, likeness to Christ as He is, gone in, in virtue of it, to heaven. And such is the character of Inspiration, or work of the Holy Ghost as to the revelation of it, and indeed necessarily must be, i.e., it enters into the whole place and circumstances of man, reveals the glory into which he is to be brought, God glorified perfectly in Christ, being the holy and eternal ground. Hence nothing is too great for man - still man, for he is brought into the glory of God like Christ the Son - and in righteousness, and partaker of the divine nature, nothing too little for God, because He is entered into the sympathy of love, with all that man is, and introduces divine life itself into every detail - words - what? The tone of a man's voice - counts the hairs of his head! It will enter into the case of a runaway slave and his master - of the health of the children of an elect lady, it will take up everything in which divine life can exercise itself, and give a tone to our ways, children and parents, masters and slaves - and there is nothing in which divine life does not show itself.

267 It is the blessed truth that first in Person, then in inspired doctrine, and the life of Christ in us, God is entered into everything in which the heart of man is engaged. I find God and in grace, where the unhappy rationalist finds only a cloak.

Freewill as to Inclination and Choice

J. N. Darby.

<41023E> 268

(Notes and Comments Vol. 1.)

All men speak about freewill is nonsense - free and will do not go together - there is no will till a person is decided and determined. Man is perfectly free to will, as far as constraint by another goes; in truth, as far as man's faculties go, he cannot be otherwise, i.e., it is his own will where he has one - his body, his acts may be constrained, and fear may make him will as other inclinations would not have led him, but his will as will is always his own. The moral part of the matter does not lie there, save as having one's own will is sin, i.e., determining without reference to God, instead of obeying - the claim of independency to have a right to act supremely, without reference to another having authority over us - it is what determines the will, and makes it what is called "free," i.e., our own, in which sin lies - the power of such and such things over the heart. I admit this alleged freedom, i.e., the pretension to be independent of God, to be the very principle of sin - it is rejection of God and His authority, but the ally of this is "pleasant to the eyes, good for food, a tree to be desired," etc. - confidence in God making us happy lost, and so objects desired, and then will in activity. Only, lust having thus come in when will is set right, the lusts remain as a hindrance, and power is needed to deliver. Does not this amount to the will not being a proper faculty of the soul at all? Something existing, even when inert? Will is "I" in the determination of activity - there is none when it is not determined; when choice is made, then there is will (i.e., may be), the lust or desire, which has gained the mastery over "I," leads "I" to intentional activity towards the object desired. And it is the same in God, only the objects of intentional activity are not, of course, any desire which moves Him in the object - save Christ - but the creatures of His own wisdom. He is Author from Himself.

A creature could not be a creature and not imperfect, and hence liable to fall - I add could not be in the truth; hence, in a glorious state he "abode not in the truth." As to man he fell tempted, when something above and out of his state was presented, having lost sinfully his confidence in God.

269 Perfectness, in good, belongs to God - all else must be imperfect because it is not God.

As regards indifference, i.e., absence of preference, foreknowledge does not imply the direct appointment of the fact, but it does suppose a necessary consequence, though it may be necessary if - thus, if a creature, being imperfect, be exposed to temptation, he will certainly fall; I may act on it, as a certainty, i.e., God may, who perfectly knows the bearing of all things, without the smallest compulsion on the person - He may have seen it right to leave the creature exposed to it, and have this moral trial. There was way to escape, no necessity, no predisposition to evil - it was the necessary imperfection of the creature, a question whether there should be any free creature at all, and moral condition exist in the world; if there were, it could not be otherwise, issuing in the bringing about the previous purpose of redemption, purposed before, not based upon the fall of man.

But "free" needs to be examined; willkuhr (absolute will) and wahl (choice) are given as the elements of freedom or freewill, but it is said it is not an indifference which supposes no inclination more to one than another. Freedom, it is said, is in not being compelled, and in taking counsel and choosing. Now the absence of compulsion is clear, but choice is another thing.

First, what is will? I believe nothing more than the exclusion of other inclinations by one predominate one. This exclusion may come from strength of passion, or a superior motive - there may be an abnegation of will to obey another, recognising his authority, but will is only a predominant inclination; but it has no moral character where there is not the knowledge of good and evil. Thus, an animal gratifying its lusts - there is no relation violated, though violence may now be come in. How far then has arbitrary self originated choice? It is said it is not indifference - there must be inclination - this is not then simple self-originated choice. I choose within a sphere subjected to me - out of it, I cannot; I may desire, which may prove my moral state, but I cannot actually choose. But in that order of things, mentally subjected to me, at least, either it is rightly subjected or not; if rightly, I am a creature - it is by the will of another. So it was in Adam's case in innocence - he was set to dress the garden, and keep it, he did so freely, but according to the order of his mind, and the garden's order - so that self-will, i.e., a determination or desire was not in exercise - he did what had to be done according to the perfect order of his own mind, and it was delight because it was the order of his mind, in which it worked freely without a craving of desire. Now that tests have come in, it is another thing; will is now desire appropriating something to self, at least mentally.

270 Now to have will free, clearly there must be no compulsion - I say, I need not do it, I am not obliged; but when we speak of will or choice (willkuhr) I have clearly cast off God - am not subject to Him, i.e., the sole, true, determining motive for creature will is wanting, and all is really evil. But if I am already inclined, I am on the way to a determination, and in fact determined, unless some other inclination, more powerful, comes in - ease, or passion, or pleasing some one. If I have only the first inclination, my will goes that way - my will is formed, not self-originated. I may by conscience see I ought to do so, and intend to do it, when the predominant motive is not there (for I admit conscience - knowledge of right and wrong in all), but when the motives come to act, then the will is formed - if I am absolutely indifferent, no will takes place; if I am not, the will is determined, saving a more powerful motive; thus choice and self-originated will is a mistake. When I say "he has a very strong will," it is another thing - it is carrying out my will by firmness of purpose against other men's opposition. Take three objects, A., B. and C. I do not understand why it should be said that if we are equally inclined to A., B. and C., we cannot be to A. and not A. It is not so, if inclined only to A. and B., for in that case I am equally inclined to take A., and B. that is not A. But this supposes that I am forced to take one or another as incompatible, else the inclination would be to both. If I must choose, the A., and not A. have equal power - not in A. by itself, for if I am inclined to A., I cannot be inclined at all to not A.; but when another thing I am inclined to involves not A., I am not directly or positively, but as a mere consequence equally disposed to not A. Now if it is A. or B. or C. it is the same thing, because each is compared with each, and one loses the other two in any case, and my positive will can only be governed by one. But if it is A. or B. and C., and I am inclined to each individual equally, my will is formed by the two at once, because the predominant inclination is two to one - yet it fixes on no particular two, so that it comes to the same thing, unless accidentally determined.

271 I admit therefore liberty of will as far as freedom from compulsion - I am free to will; my will is never free - will is a determined purpose. But to say that an inclined will is not formed by what inclines it, is false upon the face of it. If nothing acts upon it to incline it there is no will at all - there is indifference, i.e., no will. A nature inclined to good is perfectly free in obeying - it is what is called the law of liberty; but a nature indifferent to good and evil, or inclined to the latter, cannot choose the good - it is indifferent to it, or inclined the other way. If personal persuasion, or terror lead it to the good, it has not chosen the good, but been formed by the influencing motive - you cannot say indifferent, for then there can be no choice - if you say preference, or inclination one way, the choice is already made.

I may be told that I may be inclined to a given thing, and conscience arrests me. Very right; but then I am not free* to choose, but bound and rightly bound. Man being governed by motives, all may be and is foreknown, he being perfectly free, constrained to nothing - if absolutely originated, it would be hard to say so - but I do not believe man capable of originating anything.

{*This is right, but not sufficiently explicit. "Free" is ambiguous - I am always free as regards external forcing; but conscience recognises an obligation, and, save Atheism, also obligation to divine authority. In either case, choice or will becomes simply sin. I admit the difference of conscience and authority, but, in either case, will is simply evil, rather choice, for it denies the obligation. I am free, but not free to choose, save as free from compulsion.}

Inclination without necessity, is not tenable ground. Absolute indifference, to make man free, is absurd, for then will cannot be determined, but is a partially determined will - determined to good or evil; if to evil, it is a hard case to set it so, and make it responsible as a free person; nor is it more so if to good. It is not simple probation. Besides, if there be already an inclination, it shows that such inclination is a nature, not a will, and hence the whole ground taken is false.

But further, choice has nothing to do with freedom. A nature in perfect accordance with the order in which I am set, is free - such is called, morally, the law of liberty, when I will in nature what God wills in authority - so Adam, setting aside the forbidden fruit, was free in the garden, but had no choice to make; God chose to put a matter of choice before him, as a probation or test, but His doing it specially, and by this ordinance, proved it was not so otherwise. Nor is there any difficulty in God's full foreknowledge, only it supposes what is - our nature - and He supplies the occasion in which man shows himself without any influencing at all, and then God shows Himself in grace.

272 Then the imperfection and fall of the creature, if tested in this state, exists - the forbidden tree is there to test it - perfectly free as far as any influence of God is concerned, but, because so, showing what it was. God knew perfectly well the result, but it was the effect of creature-nature, it is only when we really see this, we get free from it. So God knew human nature, and all its details under certain influences, and in certain positions, and presents Christ. It is free, but shows in freedom what it is. The independence of the unfallen creature, and the enmity of the creature, with a will and lusts, who had separated from God, would not have been shown without these things. But it was display of what the creature was, not choice, or, if you please, display of what choice in the creature, when tried, was, i.e., will without God, and will against God - separation from God; distrust of His goodness began it, but will and disobedience followed - I speak of man.

But choice, to make out righteousness, is all a blunder, because if man had not gone wrong, there was no righteousness to make out - if he had gone wrong, in heart and will, choice was no good to make out righteousness, to say nothing of setting aside Christ. Return to God - faith - is alone the path of it that became perfect in its object - the Father revealed in the Son, in Christ, and in the revealed purpose of God, when, as Man, He has taken the place of Glory, Head over all. The responsibility came in by-the-bye, however real, as it is, and its reality the basis of the bringing out of the other, in the first Adam, the perfect purpose in the Second.

But I think there is some confusion between choice between good and evil, and a judgment as to what is good and evil. Take the instance of the ass between two bundles of hay; this does not meet the case of choice at all - the supposition is that the two bundles are equally attractive, and there is only one desire - to eat - on the part of the ass. It was not choice between bundles, but equal attraction hindering action. I admit it could not happen, for if he turned his head for something else, the object would attract on one side, and it would eat - but the question is not met, for it is no indifference in the nature of the animal as to good and evil, or even as to objects having contradictory power in their nature, so as to act on different inclinations in the mind, and this is where the insoluble difficulty for all the philosophical class is. If there be good and evil, or mixed so as to require moral determination - if there be motive producing will - if all things are not alike - it must be on some disposition in man that the object acts, i.e., the inclination; the good and evil is there already.

273 It is complicated because there is conscience, and in general some sense of the authority of God, which is not an inclination affecting the decision of the question; hence, though the state be important, it is not all, for it is clear that the will of God ought to determine me, i.e., I ought not to be free to choose. "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work."

But further, with regard to freewill, man's likeness to God is an important point, for man was set to have a will and to exercise it; Angels were not. This leads us to a double sense of will.

First, the mere energy of nature which sets our practical powers in motion; this all active beings have, even animals - so Angels, only their activities, and what they will flows from the will of another, even God. But there is another sense of will, where I determine for myself from some motive; this Adam had in innocence, independent of the test of obedience which exercised him on the point whether his will was at any rate subject to God's, or what man is pleased to call "free." He was put into the garden to dress and to keep it; he dressed it as he pleased; he pleased himself in it - was meant to please himself - and, though in a little finite sphere, was in the image of God in this, which Angels are not. But he was in God's image in doing as he pleased simply; being governed by motives (which man calls being free, because it is not obedience to another), is a far lower state than the spirit of obedience, and so indeed in itself was Adam's, for Christ took the place of simple obedience and doing God's will.

No doubt we can have elevated motives, and so far our character will be elevated, but an undetermined will is clearly weakness; for it has not simply delight in good nor, by love of good, freedom from evil. To be undecided between good and evil, and to be determined by motives extrinsic to oneself is clearly a feeble and infirm, yea, an evil state. That God can act on us, in this state, by motives which elevate us, is true, but that is another thing, and is grace, and indeed connected with the gift of a new life; but, as to the condition, it is an evidently infirm and evil condition, to have to choose between good and evil, for it shows my will to be not morally determined for good - that I have not a will in good, not obedient in love - but a will to be governed, to be created, formed by some motive, perhaps a bad one.

274 Now I refer to an absolute will, as an image of God, though exercised in a subordinate sphere, and a contrast with a perfectly blessed state, such as Angels. It may be a title to have one without restraint from another, but till I have chosen, I have no will - what gives me one? If God and good, it is grace; if not, it is something else that is evil and self. Freewill belongs to God only, in its true sense - the right to please Himself identified, as it is, with the essential goodness of His nature; it belonged to man, in a finite way, within the limits of obedience. To say he was free to do evil, save as not outwardly hindered, is an abomination; now he is certainly inclined to sin, to say he is free to continue in it, equally so. He is bound to turn to good, but finds hindrance in an evil nature.

As regards God's choosing, out of all possible worlds, the best, it is a weak and foolish thought it seems to me, as the world must in thought be created to compare, and He who could think a good world and consequently approve of it by His thought, had no need to think a bad one to compare with it. His own thought, which in thought created it, could do so for His own glory, according to the perfectness natural to His own thought - I do not create by my thoughts, nor am I perfect to do so, and I compare; save as mercy and in gracious condescension to us, God does not think - we think, because we do not know. I do not admit that this created world is of God's counsels at all - it is a fallen one; besides it results in something, and the result must be the object of counsel, not the probationary productive process, though He may order all in it towards that result, but what is perfectly to the purpose, as means, may be utterly inadequate as an ultimate object of purpose, and if we attempt to justify it, as such, we must be wrong. The Christian has no doubt of this, because God has revealed the mystery of His will - the gathering together in one of all things in Christ.

275 NOTE. - The completeness of God's love, its perfectness, was shown in a double way - He could not give more, He would not give less. It is infiniteness in the fact and perfectness of the will - I mean of the will in love.

NOTE. - It is a blessed thing to see that what saves us - the death and resurrection of Christ - takes our affections also clean out of this world, and places them wholly, as to the very nature of them, in life and object elsewhere.

Dependence

<41024E> 276

It is evident that no creature can subsist in truth, save in absolute dependence on God. It must be kept to be in the truth - cannot subsist without it - for, if it is not dependent, and if dependence is real, it must be kept. It has lost its place of creature, if it is not in the truth of it. The first principle of its being, as such, is that dependence; it is in virtue of creation, i.e., it subsists in relationship with the Creator, and with the Creator as such, and does not exist if the Creator has not created it - exists in virtue of His power as Creator, and of His will too; hence, the moment it has made itself, in will, independent (in fact it cannot) it has falsified its existence - its existence, morally, is a lie in opposition to the truth of its necessary condition, that by which alone it exists. Thus dependence is alone the truth of any creature.

But, if this be so, there must be an active process of sustainment by Him who creates, otherwise the dependence is in vain; hence, whenever the creature is left to its responsibility, free to the action of its own will, its first act in will is its fall - it has gone out of dependence - it has left God - and the truth of its position with God, its subsistence, if it subsists, is a lie, and will becomes, not a mere part of nature, setting the rest in activity, but a will of its own, i.e., rebellion against God.

A creature, not positively sustained, necessarily falls; and if there is to be responsibility, and moral trial, in whatever shape, this must be gone through. Christ is just the contrary of all this - He was dependent and obedient - came, when in the form of God, having no independent place to seek, in the form of a servant to do God's will. When good and evil are known in a state of things grown up away from God, besides the conscious disposition itself, the Word and prayer are the expression of the two sides of this relationship.

But what an immense thing it is, after all, to have perfect good come into the midst of evil - perfect good in our nature; and, tempted, preserving itself in the midst of evil, and perfect good victorious over the effects of evil. This we have in the blessed Jesus. But we have more, not evil put away by power - that will come, but evil put away by righteousness - God dealing in righteousness with sin, so that sin being, as to the moral nature of God, put away, i.e., God perfectly glorified as to it in judgment, righteousness is made good in Him, and in glorifying Christ. The result will be, sin gone out of the world before God; but now by the Holy Ghost, union with Him who is glorified, who put it away - He is God's Lamb and baptises us.

277 The result of sin in death is set aside too; so, as good has been manifested, kept itself, triumphed - so, righteousness is exalted - hence justification a judgment for - and death annihilated and Man glorified. We have more than the reign of good - union with Him who is the centre of it, and who has glorified God. In the work, both parts of it, He was alone, only now we are to manifest the good in the midst of the evil. But perfect good in the midst of evil, where only it could be in grace and in this perfection, is the divine riddle; hence, a way, as we have seen elsewhere, heretofore - in the two Paradises there is no way.

But I have another remark to make. It is important that we hold fast the sense of the victory of good over evil by faith now, while evil has the upper hand, or our thoughts of God will be wrong - falsely characterised, I do not say false. We cannot, ought not, to hide the evil or palliate it. A world that has rejected the good that came into it, is in itself an evil and judged world; its works too are evil - there is no good in palliating evil. But then I ought to be so with God, according to the perfection and work of Christ, as to be able to come in according to His mind into the scene of evil, i.e., with a sense and consciousness of perfect good. This gives a different tone to my having to say to the world; I shall find evil to say to, evil to know - morally speaking it is all evil, man's mind being in a lie and false - enmity against God. Nor am I to deceive myself as to it; I know it in knowing myself, but I come into and approach it with the sense of good in my soul - I think no evil - I see in the very creation around me proofs of goodness, see God's creation in it, and by faith look at it, and enjoy it as such, though I know evil is in it - as Christ who knew all the evil, yet could notice the beauty of a flower, and tell us that God fed the ravens. And so it should be with us - we ought not to let the sense of evil around us shut out God. Christ has entitled us to see good in the midst of evil, though that good has made us conscious of the evil.

278 NOTE - The presence of God keeps everything in its place - nothing else - else the human mind works. John does not worship up in heaven, when others did, his place was to see and record. The living creatures celebrate, and the elders worship - when John saw the Angel, he was going to worship him. What a difference the presence of God makes!

Religion is a dependent bond, connecting us with God, or a bond by which we are consciously dependent on God, i.e., a Being we look up to as having power over us.

The old consciousness is not capable of being applied to this new object, because the new object has qualities and rights which that consciousness cannot admit. Faculty is not a mode of action, but a capacity to conceive or act. But I deny all capacity, or potential energy to apprehend the infinite; man would cease to be mentally finite. It is in our mind, only the negation of finite, the moment "measure" comes in.

Miracles

<41025E> 279

What is said, by some, of the suspension or reversal of known laws, in miracles, is a blunder; if it be suspension or reversal really, it must be of a law known or not known, and increase of knowledge cannot change it. That, I judge, is not the point, but exercise of divine will, so that, that takes place which, by the ordinary course of known laws, would not have happened, although the operation of known laws may be, by that will, set in activity. Thus, if a strong east wind dry a passage in the Red Sea for the Israelites, just at that moment natural causes are in operation - produce their natural effect, i.e., their effect according to known laws, only divine will sends the east wind.

There are miracles in which divine will produces immediate effects, independent of known laws - eminently resurrection. The effect of the miracle may vary according to the knowledge or ignorance of men, and men may pretend to miracles falsely, when ignorance is great; and Satan can work them by second causes and appearances, so that a sign or a wonder may come to pass. All this refers to the ways of God, and what He permits; but the fact of a miracle is the divine will being the immediate cause (causans) of what happens, even if natural causae causatae be employed. The devil may be allowed to use causas causatas in a way to deceive, by producing effects by them which, by the course of natural causes in themselves, would not happen.

The only other supposition is, that God ordered all the course of natural causes, wind, quails, etc., so as to produce, at a given moment, the miracles, say of the Red Sea, or flesh for Israel. But this is only a cumbrous miracle, making all nature work for one miracle, because then will that God should not have a will. It is, so to speak, a greater miracle than an immediate interposition, and is just as much the effect of God's particular will. The account in Exodus is much more simple and natural - states the use of natural means, "And the Lord God caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind," etc.

As with God there is no time, the difference is really nothing after all; it is an unusual effect which is the direct effect of the intervention of God. If it be said that an effect of natural causes, which never happened before nor since, was known by God to be coming, and that He brought the Israelites there, just at right place and time, it is only a more cumbrous way of accomplishing the work, and (for now intelligent purpose on God's part is recognised) God's making Moses "go through the pantomime" of lifting up his rod, etc., an explanation I should leave to the taste of those who give it.

280 A miracle is the direct intervention of God, whatever means He uses, with a purpose to be attained. An interference with nature's own course, by combining the direct interference of God in the order of nature, is what we mean by a miracle, when it is a particular intervention as a testimony.

If it be an arrangement of the moral laws themselves, to produce a particular event at a particular moment, in favour of a given people, say dividing the sea, it is, as we have seen, a cumbrous miracle; having nature as a servant is not the point at all.

A miracle that has to be proved is folly; its use is, as a proof, its own evidence, being itself to the apprehension - though other corrections may come in, as a safeguard, but not things to prove it a miracle. I do not at all accept the idea, that that which is the effect of natural laws is a miracle in the time when these laws are not known; because it then comes about by the operation of those laws, without any intervention or purpose of God. If God sets these agents in motion on the demand of an individual, or for any specific cause, there is a miracle for all times - the acting of God's will, in producing a result in power, is the essence of a miracle. It may not be suited to such or such an age - that is a matter of God's wisdom; His purpose is to reveal His judgments, and He will do that most proper for that end.

We may ask how far the devil can work miracles; I know of no limit, if God allow it (as in Egypt, etc.) in the use of natural laws or producing appearances, and they have the primary effect of miracles on those who cannot account for them. The criterion is amply given in Scripture, but beyond nature or deception they cannot go - create a louse, and Satan's instruments are at hand (Exodus 8: 16-18); natural agencies he can use, if allowed - changes to any extent as far as I know; God alone can create, or by His own will, of itself, produce or cause what is to accomplish His purpose. He disposes of nature as its Master, and does what He pleases; Satan uses power by inferior power, within the created scene, but cannot go beyond its modification, nor do it when he wills. Up to a certain point there may be the same apparent effects; but they accomplish God's purpose, even if Satan's present object be obtained by it. Jannes and Jambres helped to harden Pharaoh's heart, but it only occasioned the display of God's own power and government or judgment; Satan's are all lying wonders, even if power beyond ours be exercised.

281 The purpose of the miracle enters largely into our means of judging, if a question arises. It is essentially a power above, over, and independent of the laws of nature; Satan may have power over them, if permitted to use it, which we have not, but not above or independent of them - man's will can set aside many of them, but by the use of them; of course Satan may have much greater power - I raise my hand which would, without will, fall, but I use muscles, nerves, magnetism. I do not a bit know, none know how more than I do, how the Magicians' rods were turned into serpents to the eyes of men, only the power is comparatively to me greater, i.e., I could not do it; hence, power beyond my capacity - evident power - does not necessarily control me morally, even if I admit it to be power beyond me - I must know its author, i.e., who is its author.

True miracles must be to demonstrate God, and reveal Him in some way; if a miracle does not do that, it either produces no effect, or sets me against its author - a being who has power but is not God, in whom I confide, whose goodness I know - for a miracle is always a testimony of or to something.

Useless miracles (not useless merely to man's selfish profit - no true ones are simply such) cannot be true, i.e., miracles done which are not a testimony of God.

If power be entrusted, and be so used, as in tongues, it is to be expressed; it may be a witness of government, as in Egypt, and generally in Israel; it may be bounty, and deliverance from evil power, as the Lord's and the Apostles', but, while they are their own evidence as to power, they have always a meaning when they are divine. They bear testimony to something which God is operating; they are dunameis (powers), and terata (wonders), but they are semeia (signs). Hence, "if a sign comes to pass saying, Serve other gods," the sign is not denied as power, but it is judged as permitted, and testing evil - it is evidently not of God, save as a permitted test.

282 But while they may be confirming signs to the Word, and missions of God's servants, they are of the utmost importance as signs of a living, acting God who intervenes, and abidingly so; we profit by them, i.e., as revealing God's ways more by them now than when they were wrought. They might be convinced of them then - they may be now; but the intervention of God is more clearly seen in its character and purpose, when we have them collectively. They verify themselves a posteriori (from the latter) not merely historically, and richly inform the soul. Have the Lord's miracles no character? And note, He conferred power on others to work them - "healing all that were possessed of the devil, for God was with him."

I quite understand that one who knows mere material laws, and gives freewill to man (not morally, but will, I mean) but none to God - who is in a horrible state enough to be content with this world, or to pretend he is, for he is not - will reject any living God, any thing above these laws, because he has no idea above them; material sequence of facts is all he can apprehend - conceives no moral action on man, nor perhaps by him.

But to one who is not thus debased, a miracle is not merely a wonder, which de facto has its evidence of power to him who sees or experiences it, but has its meaning and character in the ways of God, of God intervening amongst men - Moses did not do Christ's miracles, nor Christ those of Moses; the prophets in Judea did none - Elijah and Elisha did.

When God's covenant truth was among His people, miracles were not wrought as by the prophets in Judah - they were in setting up Judaism, in a measure in re-setting up in Samuel, and when away from covenant relationship by Elijah and Elisha, i.e., when they were the needed expression of mercy and power towards His people.

No man can deny the power of God to work a miracle at any time, if we admit He works them at all, but we may learn from Him, His way and what is fitting in it; one who can compare the miracles of Popery, or even of the earlier ages, with those of the New Testament, must have lost moral instinct, and have no scripturally formed discernment. The latter were goodness going about doing good, healing all that were possessed of the devil - the sign that a Saviour God had come into the world - and never for self; Mediaeval were the gratification of self and hierarchical power - miracles of passions, and a destroyer God, if any; they were wrought where the system in which they were enacted universally prevailed, and had power and persecuted, and to sustain it, not to make good a testimony in grace where evil power prevailed - they were the opposite of all divine miracles. Christendom had, as prophesied, gone clean away from its own standing in grace.

283 Any particular miracle of goodness I would examine in the second or third century - nay, even now, what would be called miracles, but which are mere answers to prayer. For miracles were a special, personal gift - effectual prayer was open to all.

I do not deny either the credulity or the incredulity of theologians, both are man - one, imagination, the other reasoning - but neither have anything to do with faith. Witchcraft subsists, in a gentle form, to this day, and is prevalent in England; spiritualism has come in, a necessary reaction against the folly of rationalism, and its degradation of man, in pretending to exalt him. Rationalism takes reason - half, a very poor half of man, because reason can know nothing beyond itself, and yet pretends to limit all to itself; imagination takes another half, with equal folly is more liable to be deceived by Satan, because it has no measure but terror or fancy, but is more false than reason. Neither have God, or God's revelation - the truth which puts all in its place. Imagination without God opens man to every kind of delusion, and to the power of Satanic spirituality - there it works.

Man is formed to have to say to a world beyond him, he must have it without God or with Him - imagination, Satan, or the truth, that is Christ. Now rationalists do not refer to truth, and hence it is a mere question between reason and imagination - the power of the powers of darkness, if there be such, and the power of darkness if it be only reason, for that is, necessarily, the denial of all beyond man's present apprehension; and beyond that, hopes, fears, desires, cravings, imagination will go, in spite of all the rationalists in the world.

But further, the system of reasoning and argument that all is appointed beforehand excludes miracles, because if all is appointed beforehand there could be none, but they are appointed too; the only effect this argument produces in me is, the total absence of all ground and proof. It makes the present state and order of things, the best possible on choice - this as a fixed, subsisting state is monstrous. It may be the best to bring about something, and I believe it is, but to say it is the best, and is so in itself is monstrous - it would suggest, I speak with reverence, incompetency in God. It is all very well for a philosopher writing a book in his study, but for one who has visited the wretchedness of man, and felt for it, thought on the heathen, it comes like ice to the heart - it leaves out Christ and any brighter hope to which this state refers. It excludes God, but a fixed and appointed set of events, all certain beforehand, not fatalism, but brought about by free, uncompelled agents, who have an inclination calculated upon.

284 The reducing miracles to a foreseen part of all the fore-appointed events is very poor in character; they are not more miracles so than another thing, besides it is no answer, but denying miracles, because these fixed events are by causes producing them, and so all foreseen and certain beforehand. But if miracles are the effects of causes, so that with adequate knowledge we may foresee them, they are not miracles at all, for a miracle is the intervention of divine power by divine will, but a man-caused event is not that.

If it be said, a certain state of things will necessarily cause God to interfere in that way, then cause is used for motive, and the whole nature of God brought in as moved by certain states of things. Now I believe that "known unto God are all his works from the foundation of the world"; but if I am to take in all events, I must take in Christ's coming in grace, or deny it - His coming again in judgment. I must believe in the setting aside of whole systems as Judaism - a world, as by the flood. This seems to me to take the course of the world not out of the foreseen and fixed events, but of a mere succession of causes which give a certainty, as being withal the best world it could, looked at as now a result of counsel (comparing, as they say, every possibility of worlds), that all results in God's glory.

That if I had God's mind I should have done the same, that there is no doubt of, but that says nothing; but, concluding from the state of things as a course of events, I could not have concluded to the sending the Son of God to die on the cross for sinners. Now it is done, I see divine and infinite glory in it; and most surely it was determined, and a certain truth. But no divine foreknowledge could have looked at that as one of a course of events - divine wisdom could not have known it but as from itself as a source. The free act of God's love, according to wisdom, I grant - the moment I get the acting of God, I get not merely foreseen events and disposing things, but a will. I am sure what God does is the very best, but I cannot take it as a deduction but as the fruit of will.

Law

<41026E> 286

Law is an imposed rule. But there is a difference, a law imposed on material objects which have no will - they go on without will, i.e., in themselves, in the manner imposed upon them; where there is a will the law is outside it, even if the will coincides with it, and it is obligatory, even if the will resists, if there is authority to impose it. It does not follow that it is arbitrary, because it may be the perfect rule of the relations in which the person bound by its exists. But further, the constant action of motive will is not inconsistent with an imposed rule; nay, more, that law or imposed rule may exist where the motive will only is in operation, when external power acts. I have a tube, so and so perforated, or a stringed instrument, so and so tuned; if I play, it gives necessarily, being so tuned, a given sound, but gives no sound at all if power from without does not move it. But matter does not move of itself, without something we call "force." It is moved; this force, therefore, must always act, otherwise the constancy of action, i.e., the law, is not there.

I am aware it is held by physicists, that motion once imparted, goes on (save resistance), but this is only mystification; what makes it do so? It is force - let it turn to heat or anything you please; it is a force producing an effect, which is not in the matter, as it may act differently on it - move, produce heat, light, etc.

Nature is the property or quality of any being or thing; His nature and His name is Love - man has a depraved nature - it is the nature of iron to rust linen. "Natural" is somewhat different, it is used for the sequence of the property or quality, in relationship with other things, which, when constant, we call a law; how it has it has nothing to do with what the word means - but in fact, we only know that sequence experimentally, this, experience gives us the knowledge of - what is natural.

Testimony is another source of knowledge, and, in moral things, conscience, but in what is subject to man (testimony may reveal what is not, conscience has nothing to do with it). We learn what is natural by experience, because the constancy of sequence is only so known by human knowledge - that is Science; God even has been pleased so to subject Himself, not to mind, but to human knowledge - not a law, or sequence, any such inference may fail - "hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us"; so that law, or an imposed uniform rule, is only so known.

287 In this sense, what is supernatural is not knowable, is unthinkable. We cannot know a priori the nature of a thing - they say Adam did in giving names - at any rate we do not. But that there are other sources of knowledge is evident; there is testimony, not to what is law, or must be according to nature while it subsists - for I cannot say it always will - but to facts, which may be more important than sequence by a law; that my father died yesterday, though according to a law of nature, I know by testimony, not by the law that produced it.

Knowledge of what must be, if nature continues as it is, or as long as it does, cannot be separated from law; calling it a law is that knowledge - the knowledge of constancy of sequence. Hence, saying a thing beyond the natural is unthinkable, is tautology, merely repeating that, what is natural is natural, i.e., a constant sequence, whose constancy is known by observing it, and is only true, assuming that it continues; sufficient for ordinary purposes of life, but not real knowledge. In fact, Science, it appears, shows the contrary - that the state of things carries its dissolution with it, as it proves a beginning. But this kind of knowledge cannot apply where will is exercised. I may judge how a person will act, from long acquaintance with him probably pretty certainly, if my apprehension is at the height of his nature morally, not otherwise, i.e., consciousness of what it is in myself, makes me know how it will work in him; but that is not in knowledge, save in abstract as to perfect nature, when I am competent to estimate the perfection. But per se, knowledge cannot judge of will, and to say will does not exist is folly; it can judge of motives, or nature which operate in producing a positive action of will, but it cannot, by experience, judge of what is not yet in operation.

Now I admit that God acts from nature, but then I must have the power to apprehend that nature, and therefore possess it - "he that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love" - man acts from motives; One has a Sovereign will, in which, however, He acts from His own nature; man, under influences; matter, by its given nature or imposed influences. Knowledge and the facts or state of things are confounded. As far as I know it, I know how God will act, from His nature - this known by testimony and facts - though by His dwelling in us by the Christian - I know how man will act, who has a will subordinated, by knowing his motives as far as I do so - I know how matter will act, which has no will, by fixed laws which govern it, which therefore, as far as exact knowledge goes, is, assuming its continuance, certain, because there is no will.

288 Science knows, alone knows, this lowest kind of knowledge - the sequence of facts where there is no will; all else is unknowable to it, because it is necessarily for man thinkable, flowing from the natural conclusion innate in man, and necessary to govern his conduct naturally, i.e., in material things (but no further) - that, if one thing has followed another ten times, it will the eleventh, I conclude to a law of nature from natural effects, but it is only a conclusion thinkable - practical, not absolute certainty; quite sufficient for action, but no absolute certainty - that is only by testimony, assuming the testimony to be absolutely true. It is not the question whether it cannot be false, but of the nature of the certainty. If true, it is absolutely true, there is no thinkableness nor conclusion about it.

Reason tells me what must be, testimony what is, hence reason can never go beyond the scope of its own powers, never really tells me what is, never gives me certainty. It is not its business to tell me what is, but from what is to draw a conclusion, necessarily, consequently, within the limit of its own powers. It cannot say yes or no beyond them. Miracles have nothing to do with the use of means or not, the character of the miracle may. Where will puts the powers of nature in motion when they would not be, or in a way they would not otherwise be, by divine will, there is a miracle, as dividing the Red Sea. Jehovah sent a strong east wind. That was a miracle (assuming the fact on testimony, we speak of its nature). The resurrection of the Lord, again a fact resting on testimony - here was no use of natural means, but experimental knowledge upset by a fact, not denying the general law of death, but reversing it in the fact, but a fact which confirmed the law; but was no law at all.

Miracle is God's intervention as above and independent of law. Man acts by will, but is not independent, or above it - hence his action is not supernatural, is not a miracle, though his will acts independently in it as will; he can use natural means by will, as subject to the laws that govern them, above their own experimental action when there is no will, not by the known divine machinery of nature going on, but set in motion by his will, on which therefore I cannot count as a necessary consequence; I melt iron, set wood on fire - the sequence of that is a natural law, but I set in motion the quality or activity in the given instance; I raise my hand - but there is no natural sequence of hand-raising, only that when will so acts, the consequence will follow - how, we cannot say, further than material means. Bushnell's definition: "a process from itself according to a uniform law," though nearest the mark is, I think, fatally wrong in the word "from" - say "within" only, and it is right then; also "by mere nature could not" is defective, read "by mere nature would not."

289 The unbeliever rejects the intervention of God, His will being at work above all means, even if He work by them - he would no more believe God's immediate will divided the Red Sea, than that the blessed Lord rose from the dead. It is God's intervention of His own will, that unbelief does not like; because it does not like God, and would exalt man, whom he reduces to the very lowest kind of knowledge, and that abstractedly uncertain, for reason knows no facts, but draws conclusions.

As to mathematics, there is no conclusion really from reasoning, but the ascertainment of facts. The demonstration that certain forms or expression of quantity are equal or not - equivalent in value; there is no law in the matter, no sequence, nothing to experiment.

Revelation deals with nothing subject to law, nor of its reign. Revelation is of facts, or it may be nature; certain things follow necessarily but not as by a law. It deals with conscience and heart, putting God in His place - not with reason at all, in its nature it does not. Of the power of reason as absolutely incapable of knowing God I have spoken elsewhere; here I speak of the nature of revelation, that it deals with facts, reveals them, not with reasoning - it is testimony.

The mere fact that the revealed thing does not come in any sequence or law, proves nothing, because the assumption that nothing can be but what I know by experience is perfectly groundless. Admitting all in the system, subject to reason, to be governed by law, that cannot prove there is nothing outside it - that is not a subject of reasoning, but of testimony.

290 This is the glory of the resurrection, that it stands out a matter of pure power, and no sequence of any thing, nor by any law. This may be added. How far is there a reign of law in moral things? There can be none; in consequence of moral things - government - there may be. I may see that to a certain course of conduct consequences are attached, but, in itself, each moral act is by itself, acting up to or inconsistently with the relationships in which we stand, or allowing will or lusts to govern us; it may have sequences in government, but the act is what it is, without anything to do with what follows.

As to revealed things, if we had absolutely the mind and nature of God, the things revealed to us might be known as necessarily flowing from that nature. But this is not the reign of law, but the moral fruit of a nature which acts spontaneously, according to itself, and cannot be known experimentally until learned, and then not as a law but as acts which display it. But to know this a priori would be to be God, to have the nature and being, and there is but God who is God; when He has acted we learn what He is by it, if our eye is morally open; and if I have learned His ways in part as we may, it is not a sequence of cause and effect in the creature, but the expression of a nature which expresses itself, morally by will (the reign of law is without will) or by motives which govern it.

The actings of a living nature, which expresses itself, are spontaneous, or do not express the nature. There are in creatures passions which may be roused by what acts on them, as fierce anger or passion as it is therefore called, a kind of emotion of spontaneity and subjection to external excitement.

Christianity rests specifically, while recognising the reign of law in its own sphere, on that which is outside and above it - the resurrection, i.e., the natural reign of law. It was morally impossible that Christ could be left under the power of death; he who believes He was the Son of God knows He could not be holden of it. But when I say "morally," it takes it out of the category of natural sequences, and means impossible, God being what He is, and Christ what He was.

As to Creation, it is a matter of testimony - we cannot really conceive a form existing without a maker; but we cannot conceive now, for if we could it would not be creation - productive means would exist which correspond to the capacity of my nature, which is not that of a creator, ex nihilo nihil fit (out of nothing nothing comes) only expresses the extent of human capacity, both intrinsic and experimental - of this I have spoken elsewhere. Not the idea, which is nowhere right naturally, but the consciousness of God is everywhere in man; as to ideas, what proves there must be a Creator, proves we can have no idea of Him - we cannot tell what creation is, or it would not be creation, and as the reign of law applies to the order of what is, what is objectively thinkable cannot apply to creation, which as an idea is not thinkable as to what, though necessary to formal being, which is thinkable, i.e., subject to reason. Creation, i.e., what is created is thinkable; creating is not. The causa causata of schoolmen is law; causa causans is God.

Annihilation

J. N. Darby.

<41027E> 292

(Notes and Comments Vol. 1.)

That which proves there is a God, proves that we cannot know, nor conceive an idea of Him - i.e., that there must be a cause for what subsists. There is a God, because a thing cannot exist without a cause, but that is not God - it is, after all, only saying that we are finite. I must believe that He is. I am sure that there is a God, because I am sure that what exists, cannot exist without a cause, but what cannot exist without a cause is not God. The impossibility of conceiving existence without a cause (which proves there is a God) is the impossibility of conceiving Him who is that cause, and who exists without one.

Now, unless God be pleased to destroy, as He has created, there is no such thing as annihilation; man is as incapable of one as of the other. So those who are commonly called by the name of annihilationists, or at any rate, many whom I have met, exclaim against the title; they say the soul is resolved into its elements. This is simple materialism. I am not going to reason on the essential individuality of spirit, though the thought of man tends that way, necessarily, from the original instincts of his soul; nor do I say it is false; nor do I say that souls also have a very subtle and refined body, with Platonists.

Our idea of spirit is not material, when we think without reasoning, but when I reason to prove, the character of my present nature necessarily comes in, and as I can only think actively according to my present structure of being, I can have no idea of positive existence, but corporeal existence. But the first thoughts which are not reasoning, and often the justest, do recognise the existence of being, without corporeal existence. If I think of a man's dying, I heed not whence the thought comes, I have the thought of an immaterial principle separated from the body; if I begin to ask "what is it"? I can only form an idea according to my present existence and structure, which is the union of body and thinking and a moral principle. If I say "I will," I am exercised, not thinking of any material body at all; if I begin to ask, "what is this I?" I am brought down to the order of apprehension in which I exist. Now reasoning or formed thought is, and must be, subject to this, or we should not be what we are, but thought is not. If I say, God - "I am" - I have no thought of anybody; if I seek to form an idea in my mind, I am necessarily an anthropomorphist or something like it, for anthropomorphism is my nature, and the necessary form consequently of my thought. But I readily distinguish between "I" and all matter - "I will leave the room" - "I am come," or "the doors are locked and I cannot."

293 I agree with rationalists, that all not God is relative - all else must be at least relative to Himself. But when they reason from this, they are altogether astray, because they can only reason in their present relationship, as far as objective ideas, formed in the mind, go. But that proves nothing as to any other than that I am in, and it is simple folly to pretend to assert there can be no other. I know that I cannot get through a wall, because as to my material nature I am, in that respect, what a wall is; but what has this to say as to a spirit going through a wall? If such began to reason, he might think me a very gross material being, who was stopped by being no better than the wall itself, nor, in this relation, am I.

All is relative but God - exists in relationship which He has formed, and can change, and into which disorder can enter.

The connection between matter and mind is notorious - now, to say "it must be" is merely the irrational folly of saying that my present state is the necessary and universal form of being. You may have examined with Mr. Owen and Professor Huxley, every cerebrum and cerebellum from a Lemur to a Pithecus, and you have not touched the question; you have seen it on the side of matter, and of matter only, and you are incapable, in ideas or reasoning, of going further, because that is the form of your existence now, and even so, only one and the lowest side of it.

The consciousness of existence has nothing to do with material existence. When I say "how do I exist," then I get objective thought, and cannot go out of my own form of existence now, but "I" has said its say before any objective enquiry comes in. One is objective knowledge - ideas; the other, an inseparable part of myself - not an idea at all, yet of more importance than all the ideas I may have; for I do not call God an idea, or it will be a false one, subjecta quasi materia.

Beginning without a cause being impossible, save only in the case of the absolute origin of existence, gives the thought there must be a first cause; all the rest is creature, i.e., has a cause, and shows us we cannot know that first cause. I was arrested by the difference of a thing's existing and beginning to exist; but I thought there was some fallacy here. I do not know what "absolute commencement" means - it has no sense to my mind; and though "beginning to exist" makes it more sensible, yet it is not beginning which is the impossible idea, but existing without a cause. I can understand continuance, because what I see or hear, I may yet see or hear, etc.; but when I think of existence continued or beginning, I must have a will - that is what it is impossible to avoid supposing. Now this is more sensible at the beginning, because existence requires a will for it to be - before a thing existed it could not have a will to exist, therefore there must have been another. It is just as true of subsistence every moment, but not so sensibly true. Hence existence without a will, i.e., a cause of existence, is inconceivable by me; hence I know God must be, because a will must be, and I cannot know Him because He subsists without a cause, as we speak of causes, for such a term has no real application to self-subsistence.

294 I look at a thing without reference to time or beginning; I say "that could not be without a will that it should be" - a man, a tree in one sense never began since the creation, a house did, but I do not think of beginning. A thing exists - there must be a will somewhere that it should, clearly not its own, and thus beginning makes it clear, for it did not exist to have a will, before it existed, and this is the only possible sense of absolute commencement, i.e., beginning when there is nothing to will its being. But this I can only say in a sphere which proves the fallacy of saying it is necessary (when once I have got rid of the thought of "beginning" being what is impossible, whereas it is existence) for it is contingent on the fact of having a beginning, to which an extrinsic will is needed; but it only applies to that dependent on a will extrinsic to itself. A Being may exist without a beginning, and a being may exist with a beginning; but it is really only saying a creature is a creature, i.e., created. Everything has an origin, but does not begin to exist, save at its first creation by a will; a tree does not begin to exist, though it does as a tree, but it existed in the seed in the tree and so on, but, at first, there must have been a will, i.e., absolute commencement, but not without an extrinsic will, and that is what I cannot conceive, but all the rest of its continuous existence depends, just as much, on a will, nor can we here speak of time.

295 I suppose existence when I say "begin," and go back to it, and "beginning" merely means, I have come to a point before which it did not exist - hence, could not have caused itself to begin. Hence, in an absolute way, I can say "in the beginning," because I speak of caused existence, and say "In the beginning was the Word - who was God." "In the beginning" - "was" - are two absolutes; I conceive one because I say "beginning" with the thought of a cause, when I say "was." I believe, only "was" remains always true, without a beginning, for in the beginning necessarily was.

Nor can I conceive non-existence absolutely, for I must conceive something. It is an intuitive knowledge of God, when we come to the point of beginning; hence beginning, or causation, is carried to all beings out of God, i.e., I am led up to a Being with no beginning, and a will - the former inconceivable to me - and hence to the absolute dependence for existence of all else, which involves beginning - an absolute beginning. Nor do I see any necessary thought or judgment, save that the creation is a creature - is not God - which may produce itself in different forms perhaps; and this can only be necessary supposing there is a creature. The only necessary thing, I repeat, is God - all else is contingent, i.e., dependent on His will, not denying a finite will in man, who was made in His image, but this is no more necessary than his existence - cannot be.

It is urged that God only has athanasia (immortality) - doubtless. If any being had of itself athanasia, it would be God, or at least independent of God. God alone has it. Whether God has made beings to die or not is another question; thus, nobody pretends that Angels are immortal of themselves, independent of God, nor that they are mortal - the Lord says the contrary. As to man, death came into the world by sin, so that before he was not mortal.

The only other place in which athanasia is used is 1 Corinthians 15: 53, 54, where clearly it is the corruptible and mortal body - what is of the earth, earthy, of dust, it is flesh - so when living it shall be changed; the soul is not changed, mortality is swallowed up of life - the tabernacle, in which we groan, is changed - we are unclothed, clothed upon. And note in 1 Corinthians 15 it speaks of Christians who have eternal life; that does not die, nor cease to exist I suppose. Hence the to thneton (the mortal) does not apply to the soul, nor does the soul of the saint, who has eternal life, cease to exist; he is as mortal, in himself, as the sinner, hence eternal life, or perpetual existence in life, does not touch the question of mortality, nor mortality perpetual existence, or does the saint cease to exist - and his eternal life return, like Buddhism, return to the infinite source of divine existence in Him, and then come back to what does not exist at all (if we must use such contradictions) which God has created again, now glorious - there was no soul meanwhile then, though it had been quickened with divine power, or is it not quickened divinely at all even in the believer - has no part in divine life? If it is quickened, what becomes of it after death? If one who has this dies, and it does not cease to exist, death, true death, is not in itself ceasing to exist, or a saint does not die, nor is mortal, for it is of saints Paul is speaking in 1 Corinthians 15: 53, 54, athanasia does not belong to a saint who has eternal life, more than to a sinner, i.e., it is evident that "mortal," "corruptible," "death," applies to the state in which we are down here, where death is entered by sin, and to the separation of soul and body; it is "killing the body," and has nothing to do with the soul. A soul which has eternal life has not athanasia more than a sinner, i.e., it has nothing to do with the dying nature of the soul - but in capacity, as a fact, of ceasing to exist in the state in which they do at present exist.

296 This is always true of God, though incapacity is an unsatisfactory word, impossibility de facto - thanatos (death), a cessation of existence in the state He is in, is not possible, that becomes our state de facto; we die no more, but are isaggeloi (equal to the Angels), but what puts on this state of athanasia is what was liable to death - the body - which could be killed; for we live because Christ lives, we have life, go to Christ when we are absent from the body, yet we die as truly as others, and so did even Christ. But no creature could be said himself to have athanasia, though we may put it on by God's will and power as to our state; and this shows the sense of 1 Timothy 6: 16, and that it means essential immortality, or that it would cease to be true when one was raised, for athanasia is predicated of our raised state, and Christ as raised man has athanasia - dies no more - death has no more dominion over Him.

297 The fact of the giving of the law is the strongest possible testimony against the annihilationists - its being a ministration of death and condemnation brings out the responsibility of the soul in the strongest way. The Cross indeed is stronger yet, yet it puts its seal on this, for Christ bore its curse. But the law, as the Cross too, deals with man as a responsible child of Adam; the giving of eternal life is an entirely distinct and new thing, but needed, while it leads to higher joys, because of the judgment coming on responsible man. And so Christ's death was needed that we might have life, because the new thing could not morally be given otherwise, without undoing God's claim - could not in righteousness. My incapacity to meet the claim does not destroy the claim, any more than my wasting all, so that I cannot really pay my debts, destroys my creditor's claim.

But the law is addressed directly to this responsibility, and to man in the flesh, for whom it is the exact rule. There cannot be a more direct or plainer proof of the responsibility of man, and of a soul capable of and under guilt, than the law.

No doubt life in Christ is a new thing; grace acts sovereignly, and though it abounds over responsibility, in the giving of life, has nothing to do with it - God could raise up stones children to Abraham, but that does not hinder the previous responsibility on its own ground as a distinct thing.

The Cross, as the way of having life as we have seen, meets one that the other may be according to the righteousness of God, and the curse of sin, fully maintained, leading to heavenly and higher glory.

NOTE. - It is an essential difference, between man's thoughts and God's, that man, who makes himself the centre, would have light as he says - even divine light - to have life. God's way is all the opposite; the life was the light of men - Life, the Person of the Lord Jesus, comes first - and that is right, because it, and it alone, puts God in His place; nor could the law do this - it was given to man as man.

Worship

<41028E> 298

Adam would have surely worshipped, praised, thanked and adored God, who we know could familiarly come to him in the cool of the day; but neither here nor in Angels was there any surrender of self - their part was to be and abide simply what they were. They were in their place with God, and God had His in their hearts, and could have no other; and there was no self to give up.

Christ could, being in the form of God, make Himself of no reputation, and come in voluntary self-abasement to do God s will, and give Himself up to glorify His Father; we who were aliens from God, being quickened by Him, and alive unto God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, can through grace yield ourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead, and our members instruments of righteousness to God. But thus is not worship, though in us a worshipping spirit may delight to do it. Further, all pretension to worship God now, unless through redemption, and the death of Christ, is sin - it is insensibility to our alienation from God, and in our state of sin, pretending we can come to God as if nothing had happened; Christ's offering of Himself, and being made sin, lays the sole ground of all worship. And in the converse order, when we come by it, in virtue of this we can offer ourselves, but that is not worship, though it may accompany it we yield ourselves to God, because we were strangers, but now can, and indeed are not our own, but bought with a price, as Adam and Angels were not - that sacrifice is not, properly speaking, worship.

Taking it in its first character, it is Christ giving Himself - through the eternal Spirit, offering Himself without spot to God, or then made sin for us, or a perfect spiritual life tested by the fire of God's judgment, and a sweet savour to God; an o-lah (burnt offering), a khat-tath (sin-offering), or a min'khah (meat offering). The zevakh sh'lamim (sacrifice of peace offering) was, as an offering, an o-lah, i.e., the fat, but the communion and feast of the worshipper

Then, in its application to us, the khat-tath, or sin-offering begins - this is not worship, it is clear; the o-lah is the perfect offering unto death, in the sweet savour of which we come when we worship; the min'khah we feed on as priests, i.e., Christ s living perfection even to death, but none of this is our worship, though we come by it when we worship - it is the central thing on which all our worship rests and is accepted. Only one aspect has to be enquired into, seen in Abel's sacrifice, coming with Christ, so to speak, in our hands as a gift to God; this is what is presented to us in Abel, but the reference to it in Hebrews does not treat it as worship, but he obtained testimony that he was righteous, God testifying of His gifts.

299 There is, in offering up gifts to God, homage rendered to Him, and, so far as a sacrifice, of self, but this is only when coming from a distance, and hence looks to acceptance, and this cannot be but first by a bloody sacrifice, i.e., by Christ. Hence, when He offered up Himself without spot to God, it was to death even as a holocaust, but when we go thus, we go from outside to be accepted - it may be not doubting it will be so, but to be accepted - thus, though it be the door to worship, and springs from the spirit that leads to it, i.e., a soul returning by Christ to God, yet the sacrifice is not in itself properly worship, nor even coming by or with it, though thus last is, in a measure, homage to God and so worship; but true worship is in a known relationship, praising, adoring, thanking, blessing God in the consciousness of His favour, in His presence as those brought in by the work of Christ, both cleansed and according to the value and savour of His sacrifice, but as in a known relationship of present favour and grace wherein we stand, so that we joy in God, and, I may add, are before the Father who Himself loves us.

It is the outgoing of heart in delighting in God, and adoring Him for all He has done when we think of that, but flowing from what He is to us; and we are actually in His presence, never forgetting surely how we got there, for He has been manifested in that we have learned love and righteousness and holiness there, but as within, praising Him whom we have found, in our present relationship to Him.

There is another thought connected with the Lord's supper, besides its being that symbolically, in virtue of which, and in the perfect savour of which we, risen and in God s presence, do worship; these are the sin-offering, which comes first for the returning sinner, and the burnt-offering. In the peace-offerings the fat was the bread of the offering of the Lord - Jehovah fed upon it, and the priest and the offerer and his friends fed upon the rest. Christ, who was God's delight, is our delight - He feeds upon the perfect offering of Himself, Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again" - we feed upon His broken body; we do feed, with delight, upon that which came down from heaven, but we cannot feed upon it, as such, without or separate from its being broken and its blood shed, and, even in dwelling on Christ, in His humbled life, it is always with the consciousness that the Cross completed it, and threw its character of perfectness over His whole path, besides the work that was wrought there. It is not a glorified Christ we feed on then, but on a sacrificed Christ, His broken body and shed blood, wherefore it is "in remembrance of me." There is no such Christ in existence now, and the blood must be drunk, a separate thing, out of the body - that is redemption - without there is none.

Revelation

<41029E> 301

A revelation supposes its own possibility, for what exists is possible - that is clear, but it is not an a priori point, for it would have to be proved - it cannot be proved without a revelation. But it is not doubted either, save as a result of reasoning; man never questions the possibility of a revelation. In his natural state, he makes God too like himself, or like a fish, to suppose he cannot communicate with man; it is only when revelation has made known the true God - perhaps a mixture of reasoning and conscience can go thus far, as in Plato - that the distance is felt; at any rate, a revelation is not made to Platonists.

Mankind have no idea of such a difficulty; and a revelation, besides being founded on an actual revelation of God, as to Abraham at Sinai, in the Person of the Lord Jesus to Paul, is, when it becomes individual, only to conscience in the power of the Holy Ghost.

We are accustomed to think of revelation as it stands now before us, but no revelation began so; it was to a people called by the revelation of God Himself, to a people or to individuals to whom He displayed His power - or if false, who so pretended, or had diabolical revelations. But it is true there is no natural supposition that God cannot reveal Himself; it revolts feeling, and one may feel it ought to be, and must be, or it destroys all link with God, all positive authority (not sense of right and wrong, that is independent of it, we are as God "one of us" in that) and direct responsibility; but I do not think reason ascribes to Him a capacity to communicate with the creature He has made. The heathen doctrine of logos, bathos, silence the unknown God, all flow from a certain apprehension of God, which consciously reasoned Him - man far away from God.

Power of apprehending by thought is not the same however as power of communicating to man; I do not say to thought used in the sense of reason, which use of it however is a great fallacy, when used to say mind or man's power of concluding is all that is thought. It is a small and very narrow part - in reasoning, my mind is the measure, and it cannot go beyond itself. But that does not prove that another cannot produce a sensible effect on the soul, and that is a thought - the two things are quite distinct; the two even run up into one, in what I may call instructive thought. A holy, living Being produces trust; it is a conclusion, but it is not a calculated reasoning, or it would not de facto take place - we have often to correct such conclusions in fact, but they are often far truer than calculation.

302 It is false that reasoning is the highest faculty of the soul; conscience and affection in which thoughts are produced, as acted on, are both clearly higher. Reasoning is the province of a weak nature that does not know intuitively beyond physical science; it is the result of weakness, and ruin in its nature, of imperfect and feeble knowledge - de facto Science is so too.

Eternal power and Godhead may be discovered by reasoning, still more and clearer by impressions; but what He is, reasoning can in no wise tell, feeling and impression can, in a measure. I feel He must be good and pure - but that is no reasoning. But though I admit it is folly to deny a revelation - folly as to reason - I do not admit that, as a mere objective thing without, God s character, ways, etc., can be made known - if this implies the fact and not the mere display, the act it may be, but not the how of it. Hence capacity I admit, powers I deny; and this is the doctrine of Scripture - adequate evidence, but no perception - yet on the other hand, rejection and darkness through the will, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life," "the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not," "they have both seen and hated" is not any true knowledge of God. Love and Light were displayed, but the light was rejected, and the love never known at all; God's character and ways were not known, they were displayed. What man could see, he hated, hence sin; what God is to those who knew Him, man did not see - they say "we see," and their sin remained, yet He does not say "ye see." He can, to explain this, say "seeing, they see not, nor yet understand"; that would bring conversion and healing, for receiving Him man must be born again, i.e., the quickening word (therefore faith) reaches him by the Holy Ghost, but not by reasoning, but by that in which he is subject, not active.

This difference between responsibility and grace is constantly overlooked, i.e., previous responsibility ends where grace begins; responsibility is in a relation where we are; hence, when grace has put us in one and for ever, there is responsibility there. Acted on, man finds himself lost, and is saved.

303 Reasoning is never conscience, though a rational creature may have both, and one may act on the other, or rather be a basis for its acting. God's reasoning is an appeal to heart and conscience, not to reasoning.

Christianity is a revelation, not merely of what all may learn as Newton's Principia, but which does put them, not as instruments, but in relationship just as near God as Paul himself - that is what it reveals.

The notion of rare condescension in a revelation is an utterly absurd objection, if the thing revealed be complete truth, because, once revealed, there it is for all times - it is itself eternal. There may be, because of man's weakness, a preparation for it, and there was a testing of man which was the true preparation for grace. This men may object to, though the right-minded will only see the goodness and wisdom of God; in both wisdom will be justified of her children; but to object to revelation (for we must not confound inspiration with it, though this, in a special manner, be needed for revelation), that it is "rare," is unmitigated nonsense - except through patient mercy, a revelation must be, for what it contains, unique, save as patient mercy towards men may confirm it by renewed testimony, yet these are in fact never identical. The objection of a yoke upon conscience is simply saying that light is a yoke and burden on the eye in seeing - either everybody has all the light and knowledge of God, and of right and love, and spiritual purity, that it is possible to have, or a revelation is a blessing. Besides, divine authority is necessary if God and man are to have to say to each other. Under the plea of reason, refusal of revelation is merely a claim of absolute independence of God, and thus it betrays itself.

I find gods of passions in Heathenism (and, though modified necessarily, in Popery too, i.e., the saints are used to get the desires of men's hearts), and I find conscience in individuals, and amiable qualities; I find the latter in infidels, and men will make much of their natural conscientiousness and amiable qualities, in contrast with others, to exalt self. But I never find God and conscience connected but in revelation - even in Judaism, "who shall ascend into thy holy hill, who shall dwell in thy tabernacles; he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart," etc.; the character of God is brought to bear on conscience in every respect, and this is connected with our happiness - being with God, and consequently necessary according to His nature and character.

304 Christianity does more; besides bringing us to God, and without a veil, and because it has, it sends us out in love to others, who have not this, to bring them to it, because we know God who is Love, are partakers of the divine nature, and He dwells in us according to it - hence there is an activity of love, and that to bring to God.

Gods of passions - man pretending to be much by himself - that, I find in heathenism; in infidelity, poor wretched man is all. But in revelation man associated with, brought unto God's presence, and what he is connected with that, first in the claims of His nature, and then in the activities of His grace, but now I insist on the connection of character. Grace, in every sense, gives a closer connection, making us partakers of His nature, filling us with Him; but I speak now of moral connection - that is only in revealed truth.

False religions never take notice of the conduct of their votaries, but of their interests, i.e., their relationship with their God is based on their interests - the question of conduct is a question of Corban (a gift) only.

In the case of corrupted truth or true religion, this has been necessarily more difficult, because the judgment of God morally is the basis of it all, see Romans, and it seemed to overturn its base, not to have men immediately responsible to God; but here the human priesthood comes in, and Corban has its place, and the priesthood is charged with the responsibility of the mass, so that their responsibility to God is not destroyed but merged, and, so far as the priesthood do not settle that, it is attached to signs or sacraments with which Corban is associated, and the immediate relationship of the soul with God is merged there. So far as it is maintained, it is maintained not in the grace which draws near - the true Corban - but in the terror of judgment and eternity, which throws their souls, not into the blessings of the divine ways in Christ, the true and only Corban of God, but into the devotions of which we speak, and God's moral being is effectually excluded - for indeed man cannot approach such a God.

What we have to do is not to see this, but to lift up the veil on what God is in holiness - not in terror, as if He frightened away, and others could draw near - and manifest Him in love; and by the power of the testimony, which brings Him near, connect men with the holiness of God by the grace of Christ, by which, and by which alone, they can be near and know His holiness really, for judgment dreaded, though true, is not holiness known, nor apprehended.

Love and Holiness

<41030E> 306

The love of God is the source of all our blessings and joys, and God is Love; but in a certain sense His holiness elevates us more. His love is perfect; we dwell in love, dwell in God, and God in us; it is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us - it is proved by the death of Christ, and so we are to walk in it. But it cannot be said we are love; God is sovereign in love, "rich in mercy, of his great love wherewith he loved us" - all this is, objectively blessedness, and in us, and enjoyed by us in communion.

It is said we are "light in the Lord"; He makes us partakers of His holiness - partakers morally of the divine nature. No doubt we love, but we are light. How blessed this partaking of the divine nature! And to this we must have respect too in our relationships with God. We know, thank God, that He is love towards us, and indeed in us; but He is Light, and as this tested man, so, in grace, man is made it, i.e., the new man has this character, "after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness."

Now I cannot but feel that, in fact, there are souls perfectly sincere, and in Christ agreeable to God, who as to the Word and prayer are in an outside place practically. The Word is the revelation of God, and, in and by a Man, suited to man, reaching him there where he is; and prayer takes up our wants where we are, and presents them to God - goes in where He is, according to what He is.

Now there are practically two states - true states - as Christians in connection with this; the Word reaches a renewed soul as for man down here, and so it is, but he takes it, and as down here - it is a light to his feet and a lantern to his path, but he takes it as suited to him down here. It came he recognises, from God, but it occupies itself with his condition here; it came out from God to him who is outside - came in grace, and he so received it, and all right. But, save in owning the grace that gave it, he does not go in where it came from, but is thankful for that which is a light where he is, and so far it is all right, but his spirit remains there, in that which the Word is adapted to; this was properly the character of the law. In the case I refer to, there is this difference between it and law, that grace is owned in God, and in that given, which is very important; but the man remains outside, and has a word adapted to him as walking as a man outside. He is not living, thinking, feeling inside by it. The ray has come down and lit up his path, but he is in, and occupied with his path, though acknowledging the Sun as the source of light.

307 So in prayers; men are in wants and difficulties down here, and they carry them, as down here, to God, and this is all quite right, and they will be surely heard, and graciously heard.

But there are Christians, whom the Word carries in to what it reveals, not what it throws light upon. Divine wisdom does give here a path, according to divine wisdom, which the vulture's eye has not seen, but it comes from above, takes the heart up to the source from which it comes, and reveals what is there, and causes the soul to live there, and this is another thing. It does not cease to enlighten the path, and we need it - God's wisdom in this world, a divine path in it; but Oh! how much more blessed to have fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ - to say "the only-begotten Son who is (ho on) in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him" - to know where He is gone and the way!

Christ is God's way and truth in this world, but He is the way to and revealer of the Father, and the things which God has prepared for them that love Him, the way of knowing the things freely given to us of God; and we may live in them, and understand, for example, the promises to the seven Churches, and a thousand other passages which tell us about what is within. We have it revealed in John, we are brought into it by Paul, and even by John too. And so with prayer; I may pray from my wants, and for my wants, and others, too, as we have seen, and it is all right. But if I am living in the heavenly things, and see the saints in the beauty that belongs to them in Christ, and my prayers for myself and for them are formed in what I am dwelling in, how much higher and more earnest they will be; I am thinking of them, or of myself, with the thoughts of God, and want them to reach them - my desires are formed by these, and I labour with God in prayer for them. The Word, through the power of the Spirit, reveals heavenly things - I see the saints according to God's mind in them, and as with God, and for carrying out His desires, and His thoughts for and in them, I plead with God according to these thoughts. Oh! what a different thing it is! But how near we must be to God so to labour in prayer - to labour for the carrying out His thoughts in them, as they are inside with Him.

308 NOTE. - It is good sometimes to see the saints, the Church and people of God in their own beauty as viewed of God; it elevates our thoughts, gives God's mind of what is lovely and what we ought to be, but are in God's mind, so that His affections and delight are revealed to us. Surely it will humble us as to our practical state. Thus in the parables of the treasure hid in the field, and pearl of great price, we have what they are to Christ - He sells all He has to have them, gives up His life, everything, to have them, for joy thereof - what a place to have with Him! Indeed in a higher scene, when in the form of God, He gave up the outward glory, and made Himself of no reputation, and took on Him the form of a servant - when He was rich, for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich. But doubtless the parable specially designates what He possessed as Messiah, but not excluding higher glory. So He shall see the fruit of the travail of His Soul - in us - and be satisfied. So in the parable of the pearl of great price, He was looking for what was specially lovely and beautiful - understood it - was seeking it, according to His estimate of what was beautiful, and that was according to Himself - His own mind - and found one specially lovely, and sold all to have it - the saints in whom He could delight and be satisfied - so precious to Him, He gives up all for them; how lovely they must be in His mind, for they are indeed according to it - He loved the Church and gave Himself for it, to sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water by the Word, to present it to Himself a glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish - a pearl of great price. Hence He will be, in the end, glorified in His Church and admired in all them that believe. How blessed, and what rest it gives the heart! But even now He says: "And I am glorified in them."

END OF VOLUME 1

Fragments

J. N. Darby.

<42001E> 1

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

It has been the profoundest joy to me that the truth giving the scope and true character of Christianity, and the special truths which compose it, learned from Scripture because it was there and was the truth about man, and the truth as to God and His ways, learned for its own sake in grace, has met every part of the system, infidel and erroneous, which has sprung up in these last days. How it shows, and makes one feel it was divine teaching! May one be kept simply there. 1878.

_______

If I open the Old Testament anywhere - the Gospels, the Epistles - what different atmospheres I find myself in at once. In the old - ways - dealings - government - man, though man and the world governed by God - piety no doubt, but piety in that scene; and even in the Gospels and Epistles the difference is quite as great - in certain respects, more important. In the Epistles (so the Acts) one active to gather - souls devoted to Christ, valuing Him and His work above all - power shown more than in Christ on earth, as He promised - it is gathering, then caring power. I get back, though now in the power of the Holy Ghost and grace in a saving, gathering way, to man, and it soon fails. But in the Gospels I find a Centre where my mind reposes, which is Itself, always Itself, and nothing like It - moves through a discordant scene, attracting to Itself through grace (what no Apostle did or could do) and shining in Its own perfection, unaltered and unalterable in all circumstances. It is the thing about which all service is occupied, as its point of departure, and to which all under divine influence is attracted, for it is God. I was struck with this on the wide Atlantic, my head weary with long storms, on turning to my title - that blessed Book.

________

It is a blessed thought that Christ will Himself introduce us into the Father's house - into heaven. What an entrance will that be, when He leads us in, the fruit of the travail of His own soul - His own - and glorified according to His worth - and all His heavenly company there! And we await that day.

________

2 As witnesses of what God is to a sinner, it is evident the Christian should be at peace, and in the consciousness of grace, as well as righteous in his ways, for thus he is, to sinners, an evidence of what God is to sinners, for he was one himself; and he is witness of the efficacy and enjoyment of that grace.

________

As the Pharisees opposed the intrinsic righteousness of Christ, and the Sadducees the doctrine of His resurrection, so the principle of Pharisaism became anew the great source of public trouble in the Church, and sought to add to, and to legalise the truth which it could not deny, so that Christianity should cease to be grace.

________

Had the saints of apostolic times waited for the fulfilment of various events, before the coming of the Lord, they must have waited for the dispersion of the Jews, and a whole series of events, of long duration, connected with that dispersion, as well as their bringing back again. It would have come in as an historical event, in a series, not as a living expectation; but they were the Church - not Jews - and the Lord was precious to them.

________

Promises, precious promises there are for the wilderness way, and indeed the glory at the end, but properly for the way. But without promises we know God in redemption - rejoice in what He is, through what He has done, "We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received the reconciliation."

This is perfect blessedness, not what He has given, but what He is; this was the ground of the Syro-Phoenician woman - He would have had to deny Himself. We get not at promises, but at God Himself, and that by what is manifested and wrought in Christ. Promises are things given to us, but this is the Giver - this runs all through Christianity in its nature.

________

Christ is perfect enough to be always good; and as absolutely and infinitely perfect, is always absolutely and infinitely good.

3 I think the fact, that we have no Psalms in the New Testament, but a direction to sing them, is very significative of the presence of the Holy Ghost. The Church sings its own - has its own joys, and its own relationships.

Note that the angels, not sang, but shouted for joy at the Creation; then at the birth of Jesus, not then man; and in Revelation 5 the saints praise, the angels celebrating the Lamb outside.

________

I have noticed incidentally, but not sufficiently, that the sealing is connected with the Gospel of our salvation; this makes what has perplexed many pretty clear. It is when the Gospel of simple salvation is received that we are sealed - so indeed with Cornelius; Acts 10.

________

I apprehend that practically, the sealing of the Spirit connects itself, in Ephesians 1, with the calling, i.e., stamps us and marks us out, and consciously so, for it; while, as earnest, it is connected with the inheritance. The anointing would connect itself with verses 17, 18.

The Cross

<42002E> 4

There is that in which the Cross stands alone. In Christ's glory I shall participate, and though God is One, and above all, so that there can be no comparison, yet in divine excellency in Person, Christ participates in the divine nature with the Father and the Spirit, and They are one with Him; but in the Cross, though the Father's love is revealed in it, and that He offered Himself through the Eternal Spirit, yet in the suffering proper to the Cross He was alone - wholly alone. It is in this sense, morally, more than the glory - that others can have - on the Cross what was excellent and glorious, none had share in accomplishing with Christ. He is the Lamb slain above - we reap the fruit, but He accomplished this glorious work Himself, and was alone in accomplishing it.

The full bringing out of good and evil on the Cross is very striking. God (speaking reverently, for the expression is incorrect, it was manifestation, yet to make myself understood), God was fully tested, and He was above sin, and there was absolute righteousness against it, and perfect love. Man was tested, and he was enmity against God - that was all his history, unless we add details of evil fruits. Christ, blessed be His name, was tested, and it was a perfect savour of love and obedience - there remained nothing to bring out (for faith); all was fully - good and evil - perfectly brought into the light; even Satan was there fully manifested, against the manifestation of love in Christ, and as god of this world.

That it was indeed necessary that the death of Christ should intervene, in order that the love of God could satisfy itself in flowing out in unhindered blessing, is easily understood in grace; but what depth of love is in the expression "how am I straitened till it be accomplished!"

What endless wondrous outgoing of love in all the life and actings of Jesus! We should think it infinite, for it never failed; but He - such was the depth, the power, the divine fulness of that which was within that He was straitened - His love wrought in such power, in such necessity to itself to bless, that to Him, His heart was straitened till all that saving power, in which God was fully revealed and glorified, could go forth to bless. This tells us clearly what He was. It is a wondrous expression - and such was the work upon the Cross; it was sufficient to let flow out all this love - wondrous work too!

Power in the Midst of Evil

<42003E> 5

There is a danger of being disheartened and "vexed" through the prevalence of evil, "Because of the abounding of iniquity, the love of many shall wax cold." How perfect the blessed Lord was in this! All was iniquity around Him, yet, in perfect communion with God, His spirit walked in peace, so that He could notice and recognise even all that was naturally lovely - the lily of the field - God's care of ravens - all that was of God here. But this is because He was perfectly near God (I speak of His mind as Man), but, for the same reason He judges perfectly man and all his thoughts and intents of heart.

But marriage is owned from the beginning - a child, in which simplicity, confidence and undistrusting readiness of heart to believe, guilelessness as not having learnt the world nor its vanity - beauty of character, when He looked on the young man, who had displayed that character, He loved him; this is lovely, but the presence of God must try man - where was his heart? He went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. With the best dispositions and readiness to be taught, and plenty to make good use of, the state of the heart is found; "who then can be saved?" With man it is impossible, but then with God all things are possible. At the very outset, the Lord had shown him he was all on the wrong tack, seeking goodness in man - God only was good; the heart was detected - the Cross alone would do, those who follow Him must take it up - death to what man was, the only path. But then there was a blessed starting point for this, "He came to give his life a ransom for many," Mark 10.

The Cross was first redemption, then the death of the flesh; and we are, for ourselves, to take up the Cross, and, for others, to serve as Christ did. He had in this character, as now calling souls, only the cup to give - His baptism and His cup, though there was large, ample reward for those for whom it was prepared.

Then comes the reference of this question to the disciples' path. Where the flesh is not crucified, the world and Satan have power - they followed trembling, when He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. There can be sincerity and blessing - Christ, the Son, revealed and holding fast by Him, but the flesh not subdued to the measure of that which we really believe, then there is fear and weakness, and it goes even to the point of being called Satan by the Lord. See the difference of Paul by the Holy Ghost - his righteousness which was a gain to him, was loss to him, he needed it not; had he anything of this world? It was dung and dross, and followed - this one thing I do. If he had forty stripes save one, or despaired of life, he had the sentence of death in himself; he looked to a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory - a bright example of the power of grace and the Spirit, so as to have an undivided and so undistracted heart, and power with him as in Christ, a perfect example of the good which Paul had to imitate - a heart perfectly free in its own self; tested indeed, but perfect, and so perfect with God that it could, as above all the evil around it, deeply as it was felt, see and recognise all that was of God.

6 It is wondrously full of instruction to see man's heart sifted, yet all good of God owned; that edge of the divine word, of the word of Christ, which can run its edge through all that to us is so mixed up; nature and fallen nature - nature from God, and nature from man - and in perfect goodness in the midst of all, yet tell us plainly of the needed Cross, and the grace of a needed redemption.

Leviticus

J. N. Darby.

<42004E> 7 {file section a.}

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

Leviticus, though connected with Sinai, quod nota, in the wilderness of it, is spoken from the Tabernacle - this is its character. Then, after the offerings in order, of which sin-offering is special, the covenant and worship was founded on burnt-offering - sin-offering found to be needed, and then the law, manner of use and order of them; then comes Aaron's consecration, according to Exodus 28 and 29. In chapter 9 their hands are filled, but note here no blood is brought into the holy place for sin; though there might be evil to be atoned for, relationship is not yet supposed to be broken. But all went wrong; first in Nadab and Abihu, and then in not eating the people's sin-offering by the others, and though Moses was content, yet it altered all the order of approach. Then - though there had been failure - from chapters 11 to 15 inclusive, clean and unclean are to be discerned by the anointed, consecrated priests. Chapter 16 on the fault of Nadab and Abihu, etc., the necessity of reconciliation, and that the way into the holiest (Moses, the heavenly man, always went there) was not yet made manifest, was declared, and the manner of entrance there by Aaron prescribed in atonement. Thereon, i.e., after chapter 16, defiling wickednesses are gone through, connected with the people's relationship with God; this to chapter 20 inclusive.

Then the holiness of the priests in separatedness to God, and in approach to Him; then of the people's offerings. Chapter 23 contains the whole course of feasts, chiefly of joy, typical feasts, the history of the Lord's ways, the whole period of dispensation with them - a long gap, or interval left where the Church comes in. We have then what belongs to the holy place, save the altar of incense, which in effect was for the most Holy, the passing of the mind out of the holy place, i.e., we have the perfectness of the connection, of Christ's connection with Israel, and of the Spirit's (in this latter we know the Church has a place) - the double mystic perfection of 12 and 7. Twelve loaves, Christ's incarnate connection with Israel I believe, and then the sevenfold perfection of the Spirit shining on the candlestick that was of beaten gold (compare also Numbers 8: 1-4) but here it was before the Lord. This is the full mystic perfection of Israel; for us the Lord has taken it up into a higher sense. Then the Word reverts to the terrible legal sanction of all on which it actually stood, noticing any connection with a Gentile, a profane person, and the spurious offspring. Then, having given the people's mystic place in God's design and purpose, with the sanction of their present standing in it, the Land's portion as God's is mentioned - the sabbaths and the jubilee, and the portion of the people as the Lord's servants in it; chapter 25: 23 and 55. In chapter 26 His warnings and threatened dealings with them, as to the Land, first in it - then in turning them out of it - and restoration on Abraham's covenant, verse 42; this the Law. In chapter 27 are voluntary vows; up to chapter 26 are statutes the Lord made between Him and the children of Israel.

8 Numbers is their history in the wilderness - written, too, for our admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come - and what was connected, in God's dealings with that.

NOTE. - The three first chapters of Leviticus go together under the same "the Lord spake unto Moses"; the sin-offerings are another category of offerings. The meat-offering was most holy, and for the males only among the priests, as the sin- and trespass-offerings.

In the offerings it is formally the sons of Aaron to whom the sacrifices were brought, not to Aaron. I do not call to mind any sacrifices Aaron or the anointed priest offered (save for personal sin) except the great day of atonement, and his consecration - indeed in public service only the former. It was Christ's one great sacrifice. But the estimate of Christ, the handling of Him in the soul can only be by those who are priests, who are Christians. One only can do the work, and represent us, but we are with God, and in certain cases feed on, and that as priests, according to what Christ has been and has done when here - in Himself solely offered to God, glorifying Him, as made sin for us, but fed on in His perfectness and death. The unfolding of this in Leviticus is most precious.

The day of consecration was the day of the acceptance of the whole service by God, but as to the sacrifices, did not go within the veil. Aaron was in his garments of glory and beauty - he offers a sin- and burnt-offering, the two essential kinds; the people, every kind. Sin- and burnt-offerings are that in which Christ is accepted of God for us. It was the great general public act, and fire came out from God and consecrated and accepted both. The people enjoyed all that Christ was in life, and death besides, founded on the sin and burnt-offering. On the great day of atonement, he had special garments, and the service referred essentially to sin which was there; but to God's very nature within - the blood was carried within the veil. Before he offered anything else, he changed his garments, the burnt-offering was subsequent and consequent on the other. The service of Leviticus 9 was not consequent on actual sin and defilement. It gave the full character of Christ's sacrifice and Israel's part in it, or ours as regards responsibility. The day of atonement was in view of actual sins and defilement, and that in a twofold way - God's throne and guilt. The rest was apart. In this sense it was only a sin-offering and sin-bearing. In both cases, i.e., chapters 9 and 16, it was in view of men, not intrinsic and its own character with God; hence the sin-offering comes first, as the burnt-offering in chapter 1. They were for us, but Christ came to put away sin; God's character and majesty and love and righteousness and holiness called for its putting away according to them. It was necessary that it should be put out of the universe, and Christ stood, who knew no sin, as made sin before God; it was about sin, man's sin, as he stood before God. This was the great fact which stands alone in eternity's history, and is finished.

9 So in the meat-offering, the perfect, proved man; then communion, and as a distinct thing, the sin-offering. But in the burnt-offering, the man brings it; it was on the part of man, sin being there, in view of sin in man, but the priestly estimate of all that it was to God. It was what it is for faith. Both that and the meat-offering are complete in themselves (compare John 6, only there we eat) under God's eye, not for actual sins to bear them and clear us. In the day of atonement this was so, even Godward it was a sin-offering, the goat, and because of iniquities - compare Hebrews 9, "put away sin," "bear the sins of many." Hence in this estimate of divinely taught faith, it is not the High Priest, but Aaron's sons. He gives too the reason why these two are the occasions on which Aaron offers. There remains the special case of Eleazar the priest, with the red heifer, which, though done once, was not in the sanctuary. In the post-consecration services, there was no going into the sanctuary in connection with the sacrifices, they were at the altar. Then Moses and Aaron, king and priest, go in and come out.

10 Leviticus 9 only refers typically to Israel. The work does not go within, though effectual to forgive according to the judgment of God; and its efficacy is revealed only when the king and priest come out - when Israel sees the Lord. The priest may bless from the sacrifice before manifestation, and so it is, but the worship is when Christ is seen. and the worth of His sacrifice known. For us, the Holy Ghost is come out while He is within; the fact of going in and coming out, only, is noticed here. On the day of atonement, the blood is carried within.

There is a difference in our enjoyment of Christ, our enjoyment of blessings in communion, sha-lom (peace) founded on the blood and fat being offered to God, (and this was eaten by every clean Israelite) and the enjoyment of the perfectness of Christ in Himself, which is for us of course through the blood of the holocaust, and, as a rule, accompanied it - we read of its meat-offering. This was in the meat-offering only for priests. This was offered to God intrinsically in its own perfection, not atoningly for others without; this last, man could not eat, but it was its own perfectness, as suited to God - all the incense offered to God - the expression of pure unleavened human nature, presented to God and burned for a sweet savour, but human nature expressing what was divine, but in a man; kneaded with oil, and anointed with oil as a whole, and in all its parts. Here, while the incense was all burned to God, priests, there consecrated to God, eat of it.

In the peace-offerings, there was, whether thanksgiving or voluntary, joy in the effect of Christ's work, and connected with it (if separated, it was not accepted) and fellowship one with another. In the light as God is, cleansed from all sin by the blood, we have this fellowship. But in the meat-offering, there was no fellowship with others; it was the enjoyment of Christ Himself, that of which the sweet savour is gone up to God, as a memorial, but of which I eat by grace. In the peace-offering too, there were leavened cakes. In the meat-offering it was not to be heard of - John 6 does not, I think, go with this; it is all manwards as in general. No doubt when so come, He was all this in perfect blessing, but here it is His incarnation and death that we might have life, blessed truth too, but not the offering of what He was in Himself towards God. Indeed this is only seen in Christ, when actually so in result, John 6: 62; and our share in it also actually, verses 39, 40, 44, 54 - only John is individual and receptive faith for eternal life, not common enjoyment, when the sacrifice is known as a saving work.

_________

11 We must not confound the yak'riv (he shall cause to draw near) part of the offering with the rest - the dealing with the presented, offered thing. It was Kor'ban (oblation). The word "offer" is used for this part, and ish-sheh (a sacrifice made by fire), and O-lah (holocaust); Christ offered Himself through the Eternal Spirit - this was yak'riv - but He thereon became an O-lah, an ish-sheh, and even a khat-tath (sin-offering) by the coming in, and acting of God. The offered Victim was laid on the altar, the fire of the divine nature and judgment proved Him so as to show there was nought but sweet savour, and consumed, and dealt with the sin He bore. But in Christ the separation is moral - He gave Himself up to death - He was proved in His giving up to the fullest extent of death, and therein shewn to be perfect; so, as to sin laid on Him. But His giving Himself up, and His proving and suffering were distinct - the consuming the sacrifice and the death were distinct - yet it is clear the consuming the parts, after death, has no literal place in Christ; but the death work and the altar work were distinct - the altar, consumption, was not Kor'ban, but the fire dealing with the Kor'ban - yet in Christ it went on clearly before, and so up to death.

The Kor'ban was the offerer's, or, when the blood and slain animal was dealt with, priest's work - one, the absolute surrender, the other, presenting to God - but it was presenting, offering up, bringing to God.

There were then two things - the proving by fire, and consuming by fire (this, without the camp) and the accepted blood; when the blood is considered, the Victim is clearly looked at as One perfect, and proved so to the end - it is sprinkled, as of known, complete value. And so indeed as the burning by fire, and hence it came after death in the type - it was burned for a sweet savour, or without the camp as made sin (then not yak'riv); and this is important, and hence after death, which we by faith can apply to Christ, all went up as a sweet savour. No doubt He went through the proving, but the type presents the sweet savour of the proved thing after death. Historically, in the antitype, the fire was applied to the crucified One, but it goes up, a sweet savour from thence as the sole result of that fire - it is equally important that, looked at as sin, this was all consumed outside the camp.

12 The priest's part then comes in; it was not the yak'riv part, save as already slain He brought the blood nigh, and caused the sweet savour to ascend - Christ offered Himself in His own perfectness, and He presents the blood for us. But then the High Priest represented the people as such, and in this character, when He has personally, not as priest, offered Himself to God, He acknowledges the people's sins - He becomes that khat'tath, but in conscious confession first, not in judicial suffering - that follows. But the sins are laid on Him - the Lord has laid them on Him, and He, willingly bearing them, confesses them in perfectness before God for reconciliation being made. This the high priest does as representing the people, but it is not high-priestly in the proper sense, though the high priest's service - the priest's was with the blood, but then the sacrifice was finished - had the high priest not done this, there could have been no priestly service at all; even this was not done on earth, but as lifted up from it. Earth was connected with flesh, there was no reconciliation for it, and, as long as Christ was alive upon it, He presented Himself to men in the flesh; when that is done with, He begins His lonely work, where none could enter while it was going on - and, as representing the people, He makes reconciliation. Hence, no priesthood in any sense was exercised on earth, for the reconciliation work in which the High Priest was engaged, was as lifted up from it, and, though not in heaven, no longer on earth.*

{*This is very obscure, but very important for the understanding of Christ's offering of Himself and work; the main point is the difference between the yak'riv and the sacrificial work, obscured by the word 'offering' in the English version.

Leviticus

J. N. Darby.

<42004E> {file section b.}

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

39 Leviticus 9

This chapter in all its aspects refers to the earthly blessing of the world to come, and that in virtue of the sacrifice of Christ in all its aspects, and, at the end, in virtue of His royalty. Hence remark that the blood of the sin-offering, though the body was burned without the camp, was not carried into the sanctuary - it was sprinkled where God met the people. The efficacy as to bearing away sin is the same, but there is not entrance within the veil, nor properly call to go outside the camp. The sacrifice is referred to in all its parts, and viewed as meeting man, or used by him - sin-offering, sin-borne-burnt-offering, the perfect savour of Christ's offering up Himself - the communion of the peace-offering, the real, proper apprehension of Christ, such as He was down here, comes last, for so indeed it does, when we are brought into communion, as the result of the sin and burnt-offering; we then afterwards are occupied with, and estimate the personal perfection of Christ.

40 Here the priest's eating the meat-offering is not noticed - it is enjoyed, not feasted on in connection with priestly service. In the bringing it into action, this order is not observed - we have the sin-offering, the burnt-offering, the meat-offering, and then the peace-offering, because in fact Christ is all these first for them (Israel) before they have the communion. When Aaron blesses as Priest he does so not from the Sanctuary, He does so for us through the Holy Ghost - but from the sacrifice; this concerns what is noticed above - we have the efficacy of the sacrifice, but no entrance within the veil, nor relationship with Christ as there. It shews also the source and character of the blessing of Israel in the latter day - they get it from the sacrifice. But the public recognition of the value of the sacrifice in the world, and so by Israel, is by Jehovah's appearing in glory, i.e., Christ Himself, and so the people own it. In virtue of their having blessing through Christ's priesthood, and of course sacrifice, Jehovah appears to bless, but it is Christ, King and Priest, who appears. Historically their repentant cry brings Jehovah down to them - but this turns out to be Christ, and they look on Him whom they have pierced, and mourn finding that it is the Lord their Redeemer, the Messiah whom they had rejected and crucified. We know Him within the veil through the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. The eighth day is the beginning of a new system.

- 2. As far as I see, rams are consecration or because of desecration; they may be burnt-offerings, but as having a specific character, they are as above. If for trespass, it is for desecration or defilement, and so in the priest's consecration. Bullocks are representative as of people or priest, and hence also may come in as measure either of the party or of the faith. Thus as a sin-offering a bullock for Aaron and his house - for the people - for the priest - so of the largeness of faith in a burnt-offering. This (imperfectly expressed) assists, I judge, in explaining some feasts in chapter 23, which were the circle of feasts on earth; we have in Pentecost two wave-loaves - so there were one bullock and two rams, because they were offered up as one body in Christ, but there were two distinct parties consecrated. In Numbers where the offerings, not the circle of dispensational feasts are considered, we have not yet the full offering up of both representatively, but the nature of the consecration one; because it is not here the dispensational circumstances on earth, but the power of the offering to God. There was a remnant of Jews, and there was the offering-up of the Gentiles, but their consecration in Christ was one. In the seventh month, in the beginning of months, which was in general restoration, the same, because in fact there will be the double offering-up. In the seventh month, which is specifically Israel's restoration, one bullock and one ram - on the tenth day, the same, for that was clearly Israel. This was besides the sin-offering, considered elsewhere, and which was rather the heavenly saints, as Aaron and his family, and Jewish, and in principle all saints in Azazel (scape-goat).

41 This aids in Tabernacles. There we have thirteen bullocks, not full perfection doubled. The whole circle brought in Jews and Gentiles all complete, still all lost; and then we have a double consecration here, the two rams - the power of the earthly completeness declines. The fourteen lambs are Christ's perfection in representative efficacy as a Victim, itself never changing, and with the two rams including, I suppose, heaven and earth, though I have hesitated if it was not the difference of Jew and Gentile. On the eighth day, we get out of the Jewish circle into an extraordinary resurrection day, and then we have unity in all save the lambs - the Church one offered in Christ to God, and the consecration one. How far this eighth day would include the perfect time after the millennium I do not say, but it is possible, for they get into such a state indeed. The seventh day would then have to be considered which maintained the double perfectness of Christ as Victim, and double consecration which representative completeness maintained its perfectness only in singleness. Is it earthly only?

NOTE. - The burning of the burnt-offering and the fat was a distinct thing. Moses had done it in the ordinary way "according to manner." This was a special act of the Lord. They were burning on the altar, when this took place publicly as a testimony of the Lord's acceptance of them.

- 4. The min'khah (meat-offering) was to be b'lu-loth (mingled or tempered). This was the main essential thing, what Christ was personally, though also anointed.

- 7. Is there any reason why Aaron by the offering for himself made an atonement for the people also, or does it refer vaguely to what follows?

42  - 9. Not here within the veil, though burned without the camp. No doubt the blood had to be carried within for Israel, or for any, for God was thus glorified. But as to application to Israel, the blood was on the altar without, quod nota bene. But the goat of the sin-offering for the people ought to have been eaten (chap. 10: 17, 18); compare chapter 4, the sin-offering for priest and people.

- 11. This chapter, as I have said, refers in all its aspects to the earthly blessing to come, in virtue of the sacrifice of Christ, and of His royalty. Yet note, the flesh and skin of Aaron's sin-offering was burned without the camp, but no blood was carried within the veil, nor indeed further than the altar. Nor is this blamed - the not eating the sin-offering for the people is - nay, the place of blood-sprinkling is "as the Lord commanded Moses"; the people were included, verse 7, u-v'ad ha-am (and for the people).

- 17. Is not mil-l'vad "besides"?

- 20. The yak'tir (burned) is not, I think, necessarily here the actual consumption by Aaron's putting the fire - he may have put it no doubt - but the ceremonial order of his doings; the actual consuming may have been by verse 24. It has been said it was the evening sacrifice there, but that seems to me to be getting away from the mind of the chapter. The fire from the Lord did not necessarily first set fire to the wood, but it consumed the sacrifice.

The fire consumes the sacrifice, and the fire consumes the two sons of Aaron; in both te-tseesh (a fire went out), quod nota. To-kal (devoured) is repeated too.

- 23. With regard to the offerings at Aaron's and his sons' consecration, blood was not brought into the holiest or holy place, the bullock was burnt outside the camp; so with the red heifer, and these sacrifices when the cloud had filled the tabernacle. The people were not to go in, and the priests could not go in till they were consecrated; here Moses and Aaron go into the tabernacle for the first time. The first thing must be every bearing of Christ's sacrifice, before any approach within - the revelation of God here below required this. Christianity comes in a different shape, because Man (Christ) is gone in, consequent on the accomplishment of the sacrifice in every character of it, and the Holy Ghost comes out as a witness of it, and that is the way of the presence of God on the earth now.* There was only anointing in its first setting-up, so even of Aaron and his sons, Exodus 40.

{*I am partly indebted for a suggestion in this last.}

43 For the full consecration we must go to our previous chapter (8). But the offerings were only on the altar, though burned without the camp; it was culpability, not propitiation. The whole of this is Israelitish to the end, when the Lord comes out. The Holy Ghost not only anticipates this, but comes from within when Christ (Man) is gone in there according to the glory of God. There was no proper propitiation but on the great day of atonement - no going within the veil; but I must look into this further.

- 24. This consuming was not setting fire to, but God's testimony of His acceptance of what was offered. There is no sign of the original lighting, by fire from heaven, in the case of the tabernacle.

Leviticus 10

- 3. In both to have His first place - for sanctified is here giving Him His highest glory; so glorified before the people.

- 8. Is not this the first time the Lord speaks to Aaron, now consecrated?

- 9. A disordered internal state - the excitement of flesh, and absence of the sober sense of the presence of God is as fatal as, perhaps leads to, strange fire; they are closely connected. The priests' sense of divine presence, and godly sobriety is needed to our senses distinguishing between sacred and profane, unclean and clean - the former what is fit for God, or the opposite - the latter for the saint, and the opposite; and to teach in the word; so ever.

- 14. Here "a clean place," not "holy"; the daughters eat of it. It was not a priestly eating, but provision, though due to the priests as offering. It is evident that the eating of the t'nu-phah (wave-offering) and t'ru-mah (heave-offering) was not a priestly act. They were consecrated and eaten by the priest's family, but in a clean place, not in the holy place as the rest of the min-khah (meat-offerings). Here the t'nuphah and t'ru-mah were peace-offerings founded on, but not a proper sacrifice. They were communion on a sacrifice itself, though identified with it - but the fat was always burned.

44 I have looked into the Levites elsewhere - they were a t'nu-phah and were waved before the Lord.

Leviticus 14

In the case of the leper, it is different from the consecration of the priests. This is not consecration to God primarily, though blood be needed for us, and Christ, who needed of course none, yet associates us with Himself according to the power of it, exercising His priesthood in that power before God. The first thought is cleansing, consecration from defilement, though we reach up to the anointing oil, and here it is poured on the head of the cleansed one - he is viewed individually as partaker of the Holy Ghost before God.

First note he is become intrinsically clean, as we are when born of God, but he has to be cleansed and consecrated to God to be with Him, in communion with Him judicially, and in respect of his responsibility - first the work of Christ Himself, His death and resurrection, and the perfect and complete sprinkling with His blood, shed in the power of the Holy Ghost. The bird is killed, over running water in an earthen vessel - the power of the Spirit working in a human body. This is identified with the shed blood, and with this the man, clean as to disease, is sprinkled, and is pronounced clean. He clears himself from everything that could carry the remains of corruption with it; and then the various offerings are offered after seven days, but first the man is consecrated to God by blood and oil. The last kind of sacrifice, that for actual trespasses, is slain, and the blood is put upon his ear, thumb, and great toe. In this it is analogous with chapter 8, but there it is what is needed to the sons, having a part with the personally holy priesthood of Christ, the sinless anointed Man - cleansing consecration by blood. Here it is the quickened sinner who is restored to God, and cleansed and consecrated by blood that he may be, and then he gets his own portion, i.e., the knowledge and enjoyment by anointing - his mind, acts, and walk cleansed by blood, and he in all of them consecrated to God, according to its value.

Nothing as we have heretofore seen is to have a place in thought, act, or way, which does not suit the blood sprinkled on the organ of each; we are wholly thus consecrated morally to God, according to the price of Christ's blood.

45 Then the anointing takes place, and the power and action of the Spirit of God is operative in the man's consecration; but first note, it is its action before and in the presence of the Lord - not, so to speak, a prophetic action, coming out from Him with a partial revelation, a light shining in a dark place, but the full present unction and action of the Spirit of God before God Himself. The oil was sprinkled seven times before the Lord, not merely a person holily consecrated to a function, but the Holy Ghost (the Comforter) present, and in its fulness present, and acting towards the Lord. It was then besides put where the blood had been put - we are no more to grieve the Spirit of God in these things than we are to admit or do anything inconsistent with Christ's blood - His holy intelligence of God is to govern our thoughts and acts and ways; and then the rest of the oil is poured on the man.

Thus, consequent on the blood-shedding, the full presence and power of the Holy Ghost is developed, as with men. First, the Comforter is come - present, but before the Lord; John 16. He is there Himself in His fulness, He who fills all things, but present as sent or given, here before the Lord. Next, it follows the work of Christ in the individual, i.e., as wholly consecrated to, and cleansed for God in all his thoughts and ways, giving the holy, active, intelligent consecration, and, owing to the value of this blood-shedding, cleansed from sin, and to God according to the putting away of sin, and redemption to God by death, the death of Christ.

Then further, the Holy Ghost is given to give the full, conscious place of blessing and relationship to the believer - the oil is poured on his head, he is anointed - the love of God shed abroad in his heart - knows he is a son, is in Christ and Christ in him - is at liberty in this new place, has not merely the thought and walk of a holy man, but is an anointed man - has the Spirit of adoption, knows his place, a place angels never had, they were never sealed with the Holy Ghost. We know thus God dwells in us, and we in Him; this is more complete than the official anointing, and it is for personal fellowship, and personal relationship, but a divine one, and of sons in its nature. It is a wonderful thing that God should dwell in us for our enjoyment of Him; we dwell in God, and God in us - but then the Father and the Son are the objects of our fellowship and our faith. The Holy Ghost is the power of it, dwelling in us, and that in the power of a new life. Chapter 8 was priesthood, and the blood needed to bring in and fit us for it, and associate us spiritually with Christ, so that we might be priests with the perfect One; in the chapter before us it is our place as redeemed in the power and intelligence of the divine Spirit of God.

46  - 6, 7. In cleansing the leper, the bird was killed over the running water, the other bird was dipped in his blood and so the man sprinkled, and then the man was to wash; in the case of a house, the bird is dipped in the running water also, and the house is sprinkled with it.

There is no burning on the altar nor outside - death must come in, but the object is purification; it is sprinkling with water, though with all the efficacy of the blood. It is the action on the conscience, not the presenting of the efficacy to God, though the work was needed to purify the conscience. Further, it was a trespass-offering, of which the blood was taken to sprinkle the ear, hand, and foot; that is, first the sinner had to be occupied with his actual evil - what affected his conscience - not abstractedly with the sacrifice of Christ for sin. That is needed, because God must see all sin put away, even that which we see not, and sin as such; but this will not do as regards the conscience - practically it comes afterwards, and is all-important in its place, but the conscience to be purified must be occupied with its sin; there is reality and personal humiliation in that. Thoughts, acts, and walk must be put under the efficacy and safeguard of the blood of Christ, and then its absolute efficacy as to all sin in God's sight can be entered into - after that, His perfection in devotedness to God, and life of holy grace and service as Man; the trespass was wrongs done to God or man in things forbidden, or violating a right, but here I judge the full sense is that which I have given. The former part was without, to purify and render capable of approaching God, in coming under the intelligent efficacy of the work of Christ; he is not at home in the camp to worship; but he can come into the camp as cleansed, so as to enter into the full relief and peace and drawing nigh of conscience. He that is cleansed by the water comes in the efficacy of the blood, but he does not yet know in his conscience the applied efficacy that he finds progressively when he draws nigh, so as to enter into the full appreciation of Christ's offering of Himself to God, and to draw nigh to God according to the acceptability and acceptance of Christ Himself, having so offered Himself for God's glory.

47 Christ has given Himself that we may come - the water brings us, dead to all creature condition and human glory, into the camp in consequence of this; there we realize all the efficacy and importance of the death which Christ has suffered, not merely to bring us in by purifying us, but its proper value before God. The detail seems repeated to show the impossibility of a sinner, not thoroughly purified according to the purification of the sanctuary of God's presence, coming into that presence in peace.

- 25, etc. The leper was cleansed by the blood of a trespass-offering being put upon his ear, etc. - the priest was consecrated by that of an offering of sweet savour which was in effect a peace-offering of which Moses had his part, and Aaron and his sons ate the rest.

Leviticus 16

In this chapter sin is entered - man's sin is shown - so that the free intercourse with glory in connection with flesh is impossible. But this brings in the connection with Israel in a new way - atonement, the full savour of Christ in connection with death, and the total putting away of sin (not merely bearing sins, and forgiveness of them) so that there was an absolute standing on that ground before God. Then an actual subsequent bearing away the sins of Israel, and a cleansing of the heavenly things also - a wider work than blessing without in virtue of sacrifice.

Christ is presented in the double character, for the nation and for Aaron and his house, and as to Israel as with the bullock for the Lord's lot, and then the bearer away of the people's sins - so it was Christ was offered, and died for the nation, but for the gathering of the Church also; afterwards the sins of Israel will be practically removed. When the bullock is offered for Aaron and his house, the whole and perfect atonement is made, and for it the whole personal savour of Christ's offering ascends up, and the blood for others is presented in connection with that, "He has put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" - no doubt bearing our sins, but the truth intimated here is not so much the forgiveness of particular sins, as the total abolition of sin as between us and God by atonement, so that we stand on this blessed ground with God - it is the only one on which a sinner can - though in an inferior order, the goat, not the bullock. It is the same for Israel - Christ has made atonement, or they could not be blessed.

48 Then further, the whole scene is purged; this is a new feature, connected with Christ's going through the heavens in the virtue of His blood, and purifying the whole scene, to make it the place of His universal dominion and display of glory - not merely suffer that Israel might be blessed - but that blood be carried within, and the redemption of the Church, the purifying of all things wrought out, and the blessing of Israel flow from that height and be in connection with it.

Then afterwards when Aaron comes out, the people's actual sins are administratively removed, and they can be freely blessed. This diminishes the direct application of the scapegoat to us; but besides that, we enter into and anticipate all that is true of Israel, as grafted into the tree of promise, and that Christ's bearing of sins is thus applied, yet I believe only positively spoken of in Peter and the Hebrews, where the Jew is first; yet it is as propitiation formally, in general, extended to the whole world; 1 John 2. This gives a much fuller character to the work of Christ for us, while it leaves not the smallest cloud on the truth that He washed us from our sins in His own blood, for sin is totally put away - our standing-place is without it before God. It is not merely sins administratively removed at a given epoch when Christ comes out, but we enter into the holiest completely purged. It is a full, heavenly, sinless qualification we now possess, "made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." No doubt fundamentally the same work is done for Israel, or they could not be blessed, but we go within with Aaron; their sins are, as I have said, administratively removed when he comes out.

The purification in the sanctuary was a distinct part of the great day of atonement; the cleansing of the outer sanctuary distinct. The burnt-offering came afterwards quite distinct; nobody was to be in the outer sanctuary, when the high priest went through the cleansing of the inner - that was the essential substantive thing, the blood being brought to the throne, as the Lord's lot, and that was done for himself and his house (the priest's) and all the congregation of Israel. Verse 16 comes in by the bye. There was to be a cleansing of the place - that had been done for the most Holy when the blood was brought in, and it was to be done for the tabernacle - outside there was no such cleansing. In verse 18 he comes to the cleansing of the outer sanctuary, so that what was cleansed was the sanctuary itself, the blood being sprinkled before God Himself and on His throne, for Aaron, his house, and all the people, and during this time, no one was to come into the outer. Then he went out of the sanctuary, and cleansed the altar of incense, i.e., all was cleansed when man approached to God - not when man was cleansed by God. The tabernacle as the place of approach was cleansed; then came the putting the sins out of sight, quite another matter but connected. And then as a distinct service, in other garments, the service of offering outside. Nor was there any specific cleansing of the candlestick and table - they were not approaching-places.

_______

49 I notice with much interest lately that cleansing, on the great day of atonement, referred only to the tabernacle itself and what was in it - not to the court or what was there. Here only the blood was carried into the holiest of all. But as to cleansing, the heavenly places alone are in view - this is full of interest; there was a cleansing away of sins on Azazel, but that was a distinct part (not as to Christ, separated in His work - the goats were one Christ) but it was a different subject - sins put away, but no approach in that to the sanctuary. And as to the holy of holies, the witness still there that the way was not open. Still, though only the shadow not the image of the things to come was there, the principle of entrance in peace into the presence of God was there - the blood was on the propitiatory. This was a thing wholly apart from all regular Jewish offerings, none of which contemplated entrance there. But what was done, was cleansing everything within, because God was there; it was apart, unconnected with any other sacrifices. When it was complete, the high priest offered burnt-offerings - but they were no part of this service. This, too, was not available for an occasion - it was effectual for God Himself, here only for a year no doubt, but cleansed all around Him for Himself, for what He was, and when all was revealed was an eternal redemption, an eis to dienekes.

50 But the point I am now upon, is that it applied only to what figured the heavenly places. The red heifer was apart as a sacrifice, and was connected with approach to God, but for those who could still defile themselves where death was, and in this sense outside; but it was for particular defilement of man, which his conscience must take notice of as approaching God, but was of water to restore communion, though founded on blood and the consuming of sin, but blood only sprinkled where the people met God, outside. It was for the actual defilement of man, not what affected God's presence where He was; it came in, in a supplementary way, for man in his relationship to God where he could defile himself, hence is found in the book of Numbers - the wilderness journey. It was an outside thing, though of course referring to our relationship with God. Hence it is found in the Hebrews, just alluded to as a supplementary thing.

In Hebrews we are always weak individuals, in the wilderness, with access to God in the holiest where the High Priest is, only sitting down there.

The scape-goat referred to actual clearing and putting the sins away, so that they were not found again, hence applied to Israel (though of course it was for us). But it is only the outer part - we are looked at as responsible, according to our Adam standing in this world - our intercourse with God as human beings. But within was where God's presence was - not exactly our Father's house, but being where God reveals Himself - where all is according to His nature, and what is in heaven is revealed to us, "What eye hath not seen, God has revealed unto us by his Spirit," indeed, now there is no veil; as to our entering in, it is the ta agia. But this is properly our place, and note here that there was no Azazel bullock. No doubt our sins are put away - Scripture, thank God, is full of it - but our characteristic relationship is cleansing for God, for His presence. Christ has spoken what He knew, and testified what He had seen, and by the Holy Ghost we follow Him there where He is gone, not without blood too; and that is what we belong to, and what belongs to us. We start with learning what God is for us down here, and all is forgiven, and we are redeemed out of this world, though in it, and we belong, by the purchase of Christ, to the place where He is.

51 Thus I would remark first that the cloud of sweet incense and the bullock seem our proper way and ground of acceptance - the two goats, Israel's, though we come in, as regards our guilt, in the same way, but the other is our own proper ground, i.e., the personal acceptance of Christ, and God perfectly glorified in His offering - not merely bearing our sins away.  -  That meets need, and blessed it is that it does, still there is that which glorifies God as to sin, and divine favour in which Christ stands, and in which we are accepted, and this is where we are before God, the sweet savour of Christ, and God glorified as to sin, as only through the sacrifice of Christ, not bearing sins, but according to John 13 - this part the Jews have not. Their blessing, no doubt in a general sense, is founded on it, and the blood of the goat was put on the mercy-seat, as well as the sins carried away; but though Christ must be there that they may be blessed, they are not in His blessing - standing before God in the virtue of it, as He does.

- 8. As regards Azazel - the word is pretty plain I think, I have heretofore noticed it; Ez, the goat - Azal (to depart) in whom the sins fail and disappear - and this is practically, I suppose, the force of eretz g'zerah (a land of separation), to fail, to be removed, perish, excluded. The sins disappeared wholly - they were sent off, and so gone to the land where no man was - they were lost. The use of the two words, only thus used here, is remarkable, for the total disappearance of sins, never to be found - there was no one there to seek for or find them. Just as in the Jewish idea, death removed man from this world, and then there was no remembrance, it was a non est as to this world - so the sins, they were gone, and were not, not to be found, like Rachel's children though not longed for.

The fact that there is no scape-bullock seems to me to depend upon the fact that they were priests. Hence, though in the necessarily imperfect shadowing of the law, it was only approach that was in question, qua priests we are not guilty sinners - for such, the actual sins must be cleared away - as priests we draw nigh, and that with boldness into the holiest now, because Christ has perfected the work which brings us there - for us once for all, and we have no more conscience of sins.

It seems to me that though I doubt not that the blessed Lord in bearing our sins held the place of Aaron as representing the people and confessing their sins on Azazel - not properly a priestly but a representative office (for priestly was in ability to approach God when others could not, and here he took their place as sinners) - yet Hebrews 5: 9, 10, points out distinctly that He was established as High Priest, only after His sufferings, "being made perfect," i.e., having been passed through His consecration by the things which He suffered, He became, and is thus and then saluted of God a High Priest - God publicly owns Him thereon.

52 I certainly think, as to the strict application of it (for as to efficacy, whatever efficacy there is in Christ's offering we have, and what is true of the Jew we have) yet as to the letter, the bullock for Aaron and his house is for us, the scape-goat is for the Jews. Aaron and his house were atoned for by themselves by the bullock, as directed indeed in chapter 4. The sacrifice was of greater value, of weightier import than that for Israel. But this is not all - this was complete before there was any purifying of things and places - Aaron and his house are purified by themselves; and in the case of the goat the blood was sprinkled on the mercy-seat, and atonement made for Israel also before the cleansing began. Then, in the Lord's lot, begins the putting the blood on places, before Azazel. It makes atonement, and purifies the holy place and altar, defiled by the uncleanness of Israel. It was Godward, the nature of sin as uncleanness in His sight; with this the places were all cleansed (the heavenly with better sacrifices) but the only thing mentioned in the first goat is the places - no doubt in respect of the uncleannesses of the children of Israel, as affecting God and His presence. No doubt thus death had come in and a sin-offering, but it met God, and after the reconciliation of the heavenly saints, the places were reconciled; and then last of all, when the high priest had confessed Israel's sins, Azazel was taken to the land not inhabited. And this confirms the order of power - first the Church received, then the heavenly places cleansed, and then Israel reconciled; there is the Church, the reconciling the heavenly things, and Israel. There are other precious differences elsewhere noticed, but this as to the proper order of application.

- 14. Notice that on the great day of atonement, the blood was sprinkled seven times on the mercy-seat, and upon the altar (v. 19) - as of the red heifer at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, once as far as appears on the mercy-seat.

53 NOTE. - The blood of the offerings for sin for priest and congregation was sprinkled before the veil; on the great day of atonement it was on the mercy-seat; in ordinary cases on the altar of burnt-offering. This would make it communion, but it puts the people (through the priests) in the holy place. At any rate the congregation must be fit to be represented there by them - fit for that place. Personally they came no nearer than before the altar of burnt-offering; there consequently their sin-offering was offered.

NOTE. - We have in fact the blood on the mercy-seat, and the scape-goat in Romans 3 and 4; only the Lord's lot is set out in testimony for us as guilty to come, an hilasterion (mercy-seat) through faith in His blood - the scape-goat is as delivered for our offences (and raised again for our justification) and propitiation, though in view of God's glory (among whom I dwell), still is for sins as 1 John 2. The Lord's lot was a sin-offering, though not for particular acceptance or restoration, but, in general, for God who was there.

- 15. The sprinkling on and before the mercy-seat had its own efficacy before the Lord, but the cleansing then began with the holy place, etc. It may be they were sprinkled, with blood certainly, if Hebrews 9: 21 applies to this, but that may be doubted; otherwise it is said only of the mercy-seat and of the altar before the Lord, i.e., the altar of incense. Atonement was made for the places, but specific mention of blood could perhaps only be on the mercy-seat and altar.

The altar of incense was to be sprinkled (Exodus 30: 10); but when the tabernacle was set up it would seem it was not sprinkled with blood (Exodus 40: 9; chap. 30: 26, etc.); the brazen altar seems to have been cleansed with blood; Exodus 29: 36. The sprinkling with blood and cleansing leads to the judgment that it was so done with all (the altar of incense certainly) on the day of atonement. Moses' doing it would not mean more than its being done under the law; but the connection with Sinai (Hebrews 9: 19) tends to show that it was then, and not recorded in the Old Testament. Still Hebrews 9: 21 gives no clear judgment that it was at the setting up; verse 22 clearly generalises it, so that we may suppose he was already beyond Sinai.

- 18. The question then arises, what is the altar here? In verse 20 the tabernacle of the congregation is said positively to be reconciled. The altar cleansed was the altar of incense, the altar before the Lord (see chapter 4: 6, 18). This changes the character; this reconciliation (ka-phar) to make atonement, was of the places where they went to God (only by priests). It was the holy place or sanctuary, the tabernacle and the altar. Aaron was to sprinkle the blood on the mercy-seat and before it; He makes atonement for himself and for all Israel - he makes atonement for the brazen altar before the Lord, i.e., reconciles it, but it is not said of the mercy-seat. In verse 17 he makes atonement for himself and house, and for all Israel; he makes atonement in it (verse 16) for the holy place, but not for the mercy-seat, but he does specifically for the altar; it was the idea of the people approaching. The altar without was not the place of approaching, save as under sin; the atonement was made there - the sacrifice, whose blood was to work thus efficaciously, was offered there - but it was distinctly the place of approach that was cleansed. The place of approach and of offered incense - the mercy-seat - was what they approached, blood was put on it and before it for them. The altar without was the place where, when offering was made, the thing, as far as man was concerned, to come there with was sin. Hence we have blood put on the mercy-seat, atonement for Aaron and Israel, the cleansing of the holy place, tabernacle, and altar; then putting Israel's sins on Azazel.

54 It gives an absolute character to our reconciliation which Israel's has not, though in substance it is just the same. Christ was made sin for us - the whole thing is put away. It is not a question of dealing with sins - that of course would have been, if this work had not been done; but Christ intercepts this, and God's righteousness is now declared, in which we stand to start with, by faith, and are always in. No doubt we are made to feel our sins as a means of discovering our state, but this is only the way of getting at it - we are all under sin, in this condition before God. I learn it by my sins, or much more deeply by my sinfulness, and then find I am made the righteousness of God. In Israel there is a dealing with particular transgressions. No doubt if Christ had not atoned for all our sins we could not have been the righteousness of God in Him - He did, Scripture says it, abundantly, thank God, but He was made sin and glorified God as in, and about it. But it is done, and we stand in righteousness in the efficacy of His work.

55 But Israel has to meet God about the transgressions they have been guilty of - suffer about them - feel Reuben to be guilty about their brother - transgressors, and God dealing with them as His people about their transgressions. It is surely practically true of us, yet not as His people who have sinned as such, but as merely and wholly sinners, and nothing else. Hence Israel has to feel in a special way that their sins, when they had to say to them, had been laid on the head of the scape-goat. My whole place is changed to be owned as righteous in Christ before God - Christ my righteousness; of course if He had not done the work on the cross I could not be, still I come in from a place of utter sin and alienation into divine righteousness. The truth is the same - the manner and circumstances are different. Indeed we have the bullock of atonement, they the goat - yet Christ for both, and Christ ever perfect in His work.

The question whether the altar before the Lord which was sprinkled was that of incense or of burnt-offering does not affect the general teaching of the passage. See verse 12, also Exodus 30: 10. My impression is that verse 12 is the altar of incense, see Exodus 30: 10; but it does not affect what is the important part of the question, I only add some fruits of further research.

The distinction of judicial righteousness connected with responsibility, and our approach to God according to what He is, is of all moment. This last connects itself with the purpose of God, Christ's delight in the sons of men before the Creation, and before the responsibility; but it is not that side that is treated here, but the nature of God, and access to Him as such. Israel stood formally in the place of responsibility, the law being the perfect rule of it; it was their standing as to the present government of, and relationship with God.* That could not be, it is true - that is, forgiveness and purgation from sins - if what God was had not been glorified; and the Lord's lot was offered (in this case only the blood was brought into the holiest) and our responsibility is also met as we know, thank God. He gave Himself for our sins, "died for our sins according to the Scriptures"; but it was Israel's place as such, though in spirit we get the good of the new covenant, but then what characterises us more is our approach to God within, not merely being in Christ, but as regard's God's nature and presence, the bullock marks our place - we have died with Christ, are not, in faith, in the old creation; it is not our politeuma (citizenship). It is more than the needed basis of forgiveness - it is justification of life. The bullock-offering is our whole position and present relationship, our calling is heavenly, and we have boldness to enter into the holiest by the new and living way. It is "quickened together with him, having forgiven us all trespasses," though here it is not the life, but the ground of acceptance - but it is in death and resurrection, beyond and out of the old creation. He was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Hence too remark that, when the blood was carried into the sanctuary, the bodies were burned without the camp, a religion of man, as in this world, did not consist with it. It is death to the world - and heaven. This is a most immensely important point. The Epistle to the Hebrews is just leading them from one to the other; till then they had united both - served the tabernacle - it could not be.

{*The question with Israel was, Could they come? Nor was the question fully solved - into His presence they could not; His presence, the Tabernacle, claimed sacrifices. His presence with us, as noted by others, is by the Holy Ghost where Man, consequent on the purgation of sins, is Himself on the throne - the veil rent.}

56 The putting the blood on the mercy-seat was meeting God in respect of sin in the essence of His Being in death the fruit of sin - a wondrous truth! It was when made sin and bearing its curse, forsaken of God and dying that Man's obedience was perfect, and love to the Father in Jesus, and that wherein God's righteousness against sin, and supreme love to sinners was manifested. In the place of sin, as made it (and God Himself was perfectly glorified, John 13*), obedience was perfect. Then the sprinkling seven times before the mercy-seat was the perfection of its effect for our approach. This sevenfold sprinkling therefore was done on the altar of incense - God was not seated there. The scape-goat met responsibility and judgment founded, of course, on the blood of the other, but the first part gave access to God as He is, and the fitness of incense service, and this is truly blessed. The scape-goat was, first of all, Israel as an earthly people on earthly ground, in the flesh, but of course applicable to us (as Isaiah 53), but to us as having been on this ground, guilty as sinners in the flesh by what the flesh produced; but now out of it, all that gone, not in the flesh, and as to that perfected for ever; and so now standing on the ground of the blood within, with "boldness to enter into the holiest" - not justified without merely, but "made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light" - so that while the positive preciousness of the blood remains for God Himself, yet it is not contrast with a state of guilt, but positive joy and worship where there is none.

{*In John's Gospel, forgiveness of sins does not come in.}

57 Peter does not go beyond redemption out of where we were, and bearing our sins, and so dead to sins, man suffers in the flesh, is not dead - he has the Red Sea fully, blessed perfectness of work too, but not I think the Jordan. 1 Peter 1: 3 is the Red Sea, but we are in the wilderness, though with a lively hope; hence of course the appearing is what is before us. Christ is ready to judge, and God's government on the earth is treated of; he reaches the "Day-star" as an extreme point of hope, and "the day of the Lord will come."

John, i.e., in his Epistle (see before as to his Gospel), is a different class of teaching - it is Christ's, or rather the Son's Person, and life and that reproduced in us. Still he refers to the other, but puts it all together, "His blood cleanseth from all sin" - we are on earth, but Christ is the propitiation for the whole world, as well as for Jewish believers. Man is not looked at in the flesh; it is not exactly, therefore, bearing sins, but then we are in this world as Christ is before God, so as to have boldness. It is, what He is we are; and, in this, love is perfected. It is all what suits God, though the cleansing blood be necessarily there. But we are in the light, as God is in the light. It is what divine love has done for us, and the place it has put us in.

Paul, though he be essentially the same, does not give us Peter's form of it, "He gave himself for our sins," "died for our sins according to the Scriptures" - Hebrews gives us both sides, but the first more in view of the general result; "to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" and, in correspondency to death and judgment, "bore the sins of many." Paul, I think, brings it more from God's side - Peter more Christ's work "that we might live to God." In Paul, God sets Christ forth a propitiatory "that he might be just in justifying." "He gave himself for our sins." "God commends his love to us." He reasons more downward from grace, though both meet in the one act, and are substantially the same as to this. "He was delivered" in Paul "for our offences," "God made him to be sin for us" - God is for us in it. In Peter, He dies and is raised in glory "that our faith and hope might be in God." The truth is the same, but in Peter it is more our need and judicial. Hence, too, we never get sin in Peter, only sins. You get "the God of all grace" as a title, and referred to our present walk, but you never get the love of God, or love as in Him presented in Peter - what we know as the fruits of it are, but it is not presented as such. All this is not clearly put, but profoundly interesting.

58  - 18. As to kip-per (the piël form of ka-phar to cover), and kip-per al (expiate for). Al (for) follows the natural sense of kip-per (expiate), as the Lexicons say, though other prepositions be occasionally used. But it seems to me that kip-per must be very much taken alone in the sense of reconciling or appeasing, and the al merely gives the object about which the kip-per takes place. We may have it as "reconcile," with no preposition, as Genesis 32: 20, "I will appease, reconcile his face," Daniel 9: 24 with a-von (iniquity), Leviticus 6: 30. But we have kip-per al (expiate upon) the scape-goat. We have also Exodus 30: 10 in English "atonement" upon it. Then Leviticus 8: 15 "sanctified, to make reconciliation upon it." In all al (for, etc.). Here the altar of burnt-offering. Now al must have different senses here - no atonement was made on the altar of incense; and it does not answer in the case of the scape-goat (in English "with"); with persons al is common. We have also l'kap-per al . . . min (to make expiation for) with al of the person, and min (from) of the sins. In Psalm 79: 9, we have al with sins. In Leviticus 16: 17 we have b' (in) the holy place. If "in" be right absolutely the b'ad (about, or for) himself, his house, and all the congregation (a l'addresse de), not the object of the act, but as that which has its part in what is done, Exodus 8: 24; in verse 33, we find kip-per without a preposition for the places and things, and al for the priests and people of the congregation. The only real difficulty is the scape-goat, but I apprehend it comes under the general rule. As to the altar of incense - it is only "on it" so far as it was defiled by the sins of the people. It was the object of the ko-pher (atoning work) made; so in verse 33 the places were reconciled, but the expiation had to be made about the priests and people as the object - b'ad (in reference to) offers no difficulty.

59 In chapter 8: 15 I am disposed to take l'kap-per a-lav (to make expiation for it) as meaning "in making reconciliation for it" - He sanctified it - in this, ko-pher (atoning) for it. It was the object of the ko-pher (atoning) here, as in Genesis 2: 2. As to Leviticus 16: 10 "to make an atonement with" gives substantially the sense, though "with" may be too precise. The instrumental "with" is b' as in Genesis 32: 21; Exodus 29: 33; 2 Samuel 21: 3 - but the scape-goat is the object as to which the l'kap-per (to make atonement) takes place, is before the mind as where sin is in question, requiring the ko-pher. In the passages with b' (in), this has nothing particular to do with the word kip-per, it is the common use of it, but here the scape-goat presented the sin as needing l'kap-par (to be expiated), but those were the sins on the goat - the goat was as to itself identified in idea with the other, and on it the sins were carried into a land where none could find them, and so peace was made; so that "with" gives the general sense, though too precise. As having the sins laid upon him, atonement was made in respect of him, not of the goat, but what was on him, and the blood being shed, all the sins carried away into the land where they are no more found. All was cleared away and removed - Christ bore our sins on the cross, then atonement had to be made for the sins that were upon Him, and there it was made in the same act, in His dying. For Himself, clearly no propitiation was made - He was making it; still He was the scape-goat, as well as the Lord's lot, and the actual sins that were there had to be atoned for. What He stood as, and what He carried was the object of the propitiation He made. In Leviticus 19: 22 we have al, both for the person, and for the sin.

_________

(Dated  1874.) I turn to this great day of atonement a little more clearly, or rather precisely and definitely. The blood of the bullock and of the goat were sprinkled on and before (for I suppose this applies to the goat too) the mercy-seat, and on the altar; so that as God was glorified by the blood, so access was given by it, "boldness to enter by the blood" - God glorified, and we able to draw nigh. But then the altar of incense (as I have supposed it) also sprinkled, i.e., communion, when not actually in heaven but only in heavenly places, according to what glorified God; and this is all we have of the blood on the great day of atonement. The bullock for Aaron and his sons - the fullest value of Christ as an offering - ours, though what was essential was done for Israel as regards God. Azazel was the actual putting-away of sins; then there was the burnt-offering, and fat of the sin-offering burned on the altar - the perfect value of Christ's sacrifice as a sweet savour to God, by which He is glorified in Christ's perfection in His sacrifice, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again." But the blood is here all within for God Himself, approach to Him and communion; see the difference of the sin-offerings even when the blood was brought into the holy (not most holy) place. The blood was sprinkled seven times before the veil - the place of approach in worship; then on the altar of incense, and then all the rest at the foot of the altar of burnt-offering, and, as to the people at any rate (nothing said as to the high priest) there was forgiveness. It was according to God, but it was not the foundation of all the rest; nor for God, the Lord's lot. Even the scape-goat was the removal of the sins, not exactly the forgiveness. In particular or individual sin-offering, it is evident - but in all there was restoration of communion, not foundation for it. Hence we have not forgiveness in chapter 16 - cleansing we have, and sins put out of God's sight.

60 The more it is weighed, the more important does the great day of atonement become. It is not a burnt-offering to be accepted according to a sweet savour, nor a sin-offering to restore a soul by priestly intervention, or the people and priest in sprinkling before the veil and on the altar of incense, so that communion might be restored to them. It is in no sense application consequent on failure in responsibility. It was a sin-offering, and of course in respect of the priest and his house, and the people, but not application and restoration - God was in view. No doubt that the sins were carried into a land not inhabited, but it was not personal restoration nor access; as the blood on the mercy-seat, it laid the ground for it, though in another way. It was substitution, doing the work which bore the sins away out of God's sight. So in sprinkling the tabernacle, it was "because of the iniquities of the children of Israel among whom I dwell." The blood was brought in in respect of sin no doubt, but as meeting God's own nature. The sins were gone, but no blood was put on the brazen altar; it was not measured judicially by man's responsibility. The sins did not suit God's presence, and cleansing was effected on God's throne and before it, and on the altar of incense. We go into the holiest - the veil is now rent. Burnt-offerings were offered afterwards, and the fat of the sin-offering, and the rest was burned outside the camp. A religion for the sanctuary is not a worldly religion - it goes outside the camp or earthly relationship with God. When the priests were consecrated, they belonged as such to what was within; hence the offerings were burned outside the camp; till after they were consecrated, they of course could not go in - not inside the brazen altar; they needed the judicial atonement. This was a special case; hence the blood was poured out at the brazen altar (for they were taken as sinners to be priests), and the body, etc., burned without the camp. In the case of the sin-offering for the anointed priest or congregation, the communion of all was interrupted, and the blood was sprinkled before the veil and on the altar of incense, for there it was needed to re-establish it, but the blood was put at the bottom of the altar of burnt-offering, for they were guilty - the bodies burned outside the camp, the blood having gone into the sanctuary. It was not God's nature met, but communion re-established with it, and judicially met withal at the altar of burnt-offering. Individual cases got their place back where communion subsisted. For Aaron himself there was no offering.

61 What makes the absence of a scape-bullock easily understood is, that it was for priests, persons already within as such. What concerned them was approach within, or rather God's nature or character within, for they would not have been there without it - it was done, in fact, when they were consecrated; but it gives strongly the true character of worship. In point of fact we were sinners just as Jews will be, or were, on the earth, and hence have needed the scape-goat, when our responsibility was in question as they do; just the same exactly as we anticipate the use of Isaiah 53, or even the blessing of the new covenant, but it does show what our worship in the priestly character is (compare Deuteronomy 16).

NOTE. - The new covenant does not go beyond forgiveness, and remembering sins no more. No doubt all depends, to the eternal blessing, in Christ having carried the blood once for all into God's presence, but the effect in the new covenant is only forgiveness, quod nota. How this shows too where the Evangelical Church is, though with their knowledge of sin they have not even this!

Leviticus 17

62  - 7. Lass 'irim (to wood-demons) from sa-ir, that which is hairy. The English Bible has "unto devils."

- 11. It has been thought that atonement "for the soul" should be "with the soul" ban-nephesh; but I doubt. It is not huper (for) but "in respect of," "in the matter of." But note, only what is on the altar makes atonement.

Leviticus 18

Remark how in this Book, when the details of evil are judged, Jehovah puts Himself personally forward as the One whose character at once rejects, and makes all these things impossible to His people - "I am the Lord." The people were in relationship with Him - He sanctified them. See also the two following chapters.

Leviticus 19

- 5. Ye shall offer it for your acceptance.

- 11. "One to another" seems to apply to all these words.

Leviticus 23

Feasts of the Lord, mo-ed (a set time), feast of unleavened bread, Khag (a holy feast).

Note the Sabbath, passover and unleavened bread were not dependent on their coming into the land.

- 9. Introduces a new ground of the feast.

- 10-14. This is an offering of obligation, and connected with the whole people - one of the regular feasts of the Lord, Christ's resurrection, to which Pentecost was subsidiary, though one of the great feasts, while that in chapter 2: 14-16, seems a personal free-will offering. It was not in itself a mo-ed (set time) feast; but it comes under a "the Lord spake unto Moses saying"; in verse 15 (chap. 23) Pentecost is attached to it, so to speak. Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles were gathering feasts; the Sheaf, the new Moon, and the day of Atonement were not. They were actings of God of whatever character, the basis of gathering perhaps, or leading to it, but not the gathering itself; Christ's lifting up did gather - "draw all men" - Pentecost was the actual power that did it. Tabernacles, not yet fulfilled, will be the great congregation when all Israel will be brought home from their wanderings - for us the heavenly assembly of all saints. But then resurrection presented the accepted sheaf in resurrection to God - it was Christ, first fruits of them that slept.

63 In the new moon Israel re-appears. The great day of atonement was not only the Lord's lot for His glory, but the actual putting away of the people's sins, and their knowing it through the appropriation of it in confession - so of us anticipatively by faith through the Holy Ghost.

The Sabbath, God's rest, stands by itself - the great Promise that overrides all.

Then the Passover, the basis of all, founded on which we have the feast of unleavened bread, the general result also in the sinless character of our association with God; verse 4, therefore begins afresh as the grand basis of all, unleavened bread being connected with it. The rest are special and actual dealings of God, and states and terms of relationship with Him; hence verse 9 starts with a new "the Lord spake," and that begins the ways of the Lord in the resurrection of Christ, first fruits from the dead presented to Him. Sabbath - Passover - and Unleaven are the general great truth of our being assembled to God, verses 1-8.

Then I get resurrection of Christ - the gift of the Holy Ghost - present dealings - then Israel recalled - their humiliation, and owning of sins, and the atonement made (Isaiah 53), which we anticipate as first fruits of His creatures - and finally the feast of tabernacles, which comes after the fruit of the land is gathered in, and the fulfilment of all promise is celebrated in blessing. The divisions are thus marked by "the Lord spake," verses 1, 9, 23, 26, 33.

As to the offerings, some points are to be observed. The Lord's Passover we know - it is the grand basis; hence in the feast of unleavened bread, the sacrificial worship is commanded, but there are no special sacrifices. In Pentecost, a full perfect sacrifice is introduced of perfect satisfaction to God, also a bullock and two rams - consecration or failure in it - and, leaven being in the cakes, a sin-offering, and two lambs for a heave-offering. All kinds were introduced with the Spirit, the full knowledge of what Christ's sacrifice is in every form, seven being full worship in Christ acceptable to God. In Tabernacles none but the general sacrificial worship. They are all really connected with the Passover. In the Sheaf of first fruits only a burnt-offering - it was Christ; with the two cakes a sin-offering (only here) there was leaven. In the blowing of trumpets, only the usual sacrificial worship, on which all is based, i.e., Christ's sacrifice, blessing being only in connection with this; it is calling God to remembrance in Israel, when they reappear. On the day of atonement also, only the usual sacrificial worship - it is Israel's confession of their sin, afflicting their souls. There were, we know, offerings showing the whole work of Christ for sin, but here it is the historical aspect, so to speak - whoever of Israel does not humble himself and mourn, recognizing what Christ's Cross (now come in glory) was, will be cut off - fulness expressed, as I have said, in Isaiah 53. Verse 22, I suppose, presents the remnant called out and, as sacrificed by the beast, belonging to the Spirit's time of work, but only exceptionally left, but not the offering up of the Gentiles, but not the bread of the first fruits yet gathered in an inferior way, so to speak.

64  - 11, is not rat-zon, "for your acceptance?" The wave-sheaf and the first fruits go together, and are connected with the land - resurrection and the Holy Ghost - and these with the non-riddance of the corners of the land form a complete whole. The offerings which were complete are spoken of elsewhere.

- 18. This seems to be a special offering, "with the bread." Numbers 28: 24 on the Passover, the then prescribed offering was daily, it seems, implied in verses 26-31, but it is not said. Here it is specially with the bread, for otherwise the number of offerings is not prescribed. Compare Josephus, Ant., chap. 3: 10. The seven lambs - a perfect sacrifice; the one bullock - the plain measure of the worth of Christ's sacrifice, without question of its estimation by piety, or in its effect on the heart; the rams - always consecration; two - full witness of it. The sin-offering as meeting the leaven, and two lambs for communion; hence two, as adequately witnessed - it was here in its natural completeness and simply itself.

65  - 24. The feast of trumpets is a distinct feast, nor is this directly connected with the land; there was an offering made by fire - God was acknowledged in the sacrifice - but the blowing of trumpets characterises it;

- 25, what sacrifice is not said.

- 27. The day of atonement is again distinct - it is a covering out of God's sight (kippurim atonement);

- 34, etc., so is the feast of tabernacles.

NOTE. - While leaven is met in the feast of weeks by the sin-offering, as needed to the actual relationship of the people, in none of the others it is so - we have "an offering made by fire" - not even in the day of atonement is any sin-offering mentioned; in the feast of weeks, the sacrifices are fully noticed, and the wave-sheaf - this is remarkable. When, if not in the Church and by the Holy Ghost, are they known? In the rest there is worship (the Passover speaks for itself by itself) and by an offering made by fire - that is all;

- 37 and 44, it is the same. It is always the mo-ed in the meetings with God, not the way of reception. So here, in this part of Tabernacles, it is specially characterised as to the character of appointed meeting with God; so as a Khag (holy feast) to the Lord, their former part, wanderings, are celebrated, and in verse 37, in general, worship-offerings are mentioned but not sin-offerings - offerings made by fire, no servile work, and on the tenth of the seventh month afflicting their souls. Then we have, but save the feast of weeks, no sin-offering nor any specified, though in Numbers those of Tabernacles are very remarkable. But in the feast of weeks we have the full intelligent appreciation, in worship, of sin in ourselves (though presented sinless) and of all that Christ has done, and of our presenting before the Lord; t'nu-phah (wave-offering) - t'ru-mah (heave-offering) seems to me to be more absolutely "offered up," as we say "given up" to God; though t'nu-phah was "consecrated" in general, t'ru-mah belonged to the priest who offered. The Levites however were a t'nu-phah, and they were (Numbers 8: 16) n'thunim n'thunim (wholly given; literally given given) to Jehovah; for nuph (offer or wave) see verses 10, 13 and 15. Still it was for service as wholly consecrated, and that we all are as a prosphora (offering up, sacrificing), Rom. 15: 16; but I still doubt this was a t'ru-mah. The t'nu-phah Aaron and his sons ate, just as the Levites were given to them - the t'ru-mah was in the intimacy of priestly communion; one was blessedly useful in service, and consecrated to it - the other in the mind of Christ. There were I think three steps, Aaron, sons and daughters, all clean in the house - Aaron and his sons - and the offering priest; but see Numbers 18: 11-13 - but this hardly abrogates the distinction of Leviticus 7: 31 and 33, certainly not chapter 6: 26. However, here I only refer to them for t'ru-mah and t'nu-phah; see Leviticus 6: 18, also verse 29, and chap. 7: 6-9; there is "the priest's that offereth" (verse 9) and (verse 10) distinction, "all the sons of Aaron," or in verse 10 merely general, contrasted with the people, and verse 9, appropriative - I mean distinction as to the kind of offering. If so, this would make an interesting difference in Leviticus 2 - the flour, dry or with oil, generally for the priests, that baked in the oven or pan for the priest that offered it. For the general idea of Aaron and his sons, as contrasted with the people, or burning it, see Leviticus 2: 3, 10, and chap. 7: 9. What is "one as much as another" in verse 10? For each one who did it, or for all? See verse 14. Verse 33 seems decisive as to the difference of t'ru-mah, even if daughters ate it, which I doubt, in the court of the tabernacle.

66  - 42. The Jews, it appears, hold that none but an Israelite-born could keep the feast of tabernacles, i.e., dwell in booths, whatever the common joy might be. This has an intelligible reason, Israel having been, as such in the wilderness, as now strangers and wanderers. In Exodus 12: 44, bought servants were to be circumcised and keep the Passover - they were redeemed members of the household, and separated to God by circumcision. Now in Zechariah 14: 19, the Gentiles are to go up and keep the feast of tabernacles. The sin of Jews was they would not own mercy to Gentiles. Gentiles must bow, and join in the joy of mercy to Jews; if they do not, this shall be their sin - they will be dealt with in judgment about it - they would not submit to Israel's grace.

Leviticus 24

The candlestick and the shew-bread seem a kind of appendix to the Feasts. These are the gathering of Israel in connection with Christ, and the privileges granted to them through Him. The candlestick and shew-bread seem to be their estate according to God's purpose as in their normal condition before God, and in connection with Christ as Man, but full of grace and the Holy Spirit, or at any rate and rather the light of testimony by it.

Atonement

J. N. Darby.

<42005E> 68

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

The atonement is laid as the great central ground of all God's ways in righteousness. God is perfect love to us there - He is Love; but then, where no hiding, excusing or patience with sin because of weakness was in question, where One who could bear it was, was made sin, all God was, in His necessary antagonism, horror of, judgment against sin, went out against sin, as such, in Him who was able to bear it. God being glorified, purpose, government, as death or chastening His children, can all come out and have their place.

The worth of that, according to which righteousness is obtained, is such that the purpose of God righteously unites us to Christ, and gives a place where He is in glory like and with Him - we are children, holy and without blame before Him in love. He gives to the Jews a place on earth, and deals with them for the display of His government down here; so with us as His children - God deals with us in chastisement and discipline, but all this supposes righteousness and non-imputation. There could be no government without this - God's forbearance before the Cross was justified by this.

It is evident there are two kinds of righteousness - justice as against evil, and adequate appreciation and even recompense of good. "Vengeance is mine, I will recompense saith the Lord" is a different thing from "The righteous Lord loveth righteousness, his countenance beholds the upright"; though both are abstractedly the just estimate of good and evil.

As regards the former, and the controversy we have had, when God has the character of a Judge, my adversaries are all wrong, because God's righteousness as Judge is in Scripture connected with blood, as in Romans 3; so in the Passover. But as to the principle, no man could ever plead a part in the second dealing of righteousness save Christ Himself, for "all are sinners"; Christ, even as a Man down here, could be accepted as perfectly agreeable to God. But then Christianity, and even Judaism in its figures, goes a great deal further - for grace reigns through righteousness, and sinners were to be justified or accounted righteous.

To be justice, in the common sense of the word, it must be the just estimate of conduct itself, or adequate satisfaction for the fault - thus, a man serves me in a thing, renders due service, I am just in recognising this, I own him in the place wherein he stands; if he owes me money and another pays it, or has done a wrong and another repairs it, he is also clear. In the case of material service, another's doing a man's duty may suffice, though, if the service be owed by the man, I am not bound to accept it; still, in material service, if the service only be due, and the man not in responsible relationship to me, I may be justly satisfied. But in relationships and moral right and wrong, this is not so, I cannot accept another's doing what my son owes me and be satisfied with my son; righteousness here requires the duty to be fulfilled, or is not satisfied. To be atoned for and put away as guilt can be rightly, because the guilt is owned, but not a doing the work or duty so that there should be no guilt. The latter weakens the personal obligation, sets it aside, the former owns and atones for it.

69 But in Christianity there is more, for God is to be displayed, grace reign, and man to be brought to God Himself. Hence the measure is God's glory and in itself unveiled, not man's duty - of this anon. But any attempt to meet responsibility in relationship by another's fulfilling the claims, tends to destroy the sense of guilt in it, and is morally heinous - if another has done my duty, and it is as if I have done it, or better, the claim satisfied, then I have done it as to justice and I am not guilty.

If it does not meet the case thus, the idea turns what is due into a material debt and destroys the moral nature of failure - becomes doing, not conduct. I ask if another's doing my child's duty would in any way affect the relationship of my child to me?

This I see in the figures - reconciliation must have an altar and blood-shedding; wrongs may be repaired toward man or toward God, and so it was ordained under the law, but in questions of obedience and relationship not so. There is guilt, and atonement must come in; omission or commission is all one here. Do I fail in worship to God - can another worship for me? Now all our questions with God are questions of obedience and relationship. But then according to principles I have noticed before, though all be done according to the glory of God, for indeed it is one act - the death of Christ - yet the application of the work to man is different; the brazen altar met man's sin coming as such - the mercy-seat was introduction into the presence of God. It was a golden throne; it was judgment against sin, and righteousness to enter into His presence. So Christ - He was both - He made propitiation for our sins, He is our righteousness in the presence of God in virtue of His sacrifice in which God was perfectly glorified. There is the firmness of God's judgment against sin, and perfect access to Him in light and glory. But then note, it is in either case grace - God acting sovereignly for Himself, and hence all must have the value of that. Our very forgiveness is God's righteousness, "we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins." Hence God shews His righteousness in forgiving - is righteous and justifies, according to this, the believer. God's righteousness is upon all that believe. But we do not think of repaying God now - nor may we now - "if thou hast sinned what doest thou unto him?"

70 The blood of Christ, i.e., the moral power and meaning of His blood-shedding, is the absolute perfection of the divine nature in connection with sin, as putting it away - it leaves no blot, no stain, nothing contrary to its Holiness. It maintains, speaks of, tells out that Holiness, and yet not alone simply, but perfect love in it. It is the acting of God in the perfection of His own nature that is Love; for the spring of God's activity is love because it is His nature - what He is in purpose, will, what shows His nature - but it maintains what is necessary to it, i.e., Holiness, and this at the cost of the perfect devotedness of Christ to it, to both, i.e., to God, and that was perfection in its place too. But Godhead is perfectly, fully revealed, and indeed in nothing else; it is known, Christ knew it, others in some measure, but here it is all displayed, not in what God does in power, i.e., what He produces, but what He is and does in His own nature in the display of Himself. It is an exhaustless theme, as such a display of God, as such alone could be, must be. The Cross of Christ is the centre, as to what is displayed, of all glory - the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him; all the details only bring it out, but into these I do not enter - it is the great thought I desire to dwell in, I should not say "on," though that in mercy and grace and privilege too.

Smiting

<42001E> 71

People have talked much of smiting, but the truth is it is not applied in Scripture to atonement itself. It is no harm that the mind associates atonement with it - nay, it is useful - because it is the great and essential thing of the Cross where Jesus, the Blessed One, was smitten. But atonement was a far deeper and unfathomable act of suffering, and wrath drank into the soul - forsaking, not smiting.

Smiting is used as to the setting aside by death all the Messiah privileges, though we may, and it is all well, associate the other deeper work, done at the same time, with it. It is only used in Zechariah 13: 7, and quoted thence in Matthew 26: 31, Mark 14: 27, and Psalm 69: 26, referring in all to the relative position He took, contrasted with an accepted Messiah - the Shepherd was smitten and the disciples scattered. This is not making His soul an offering for sin, and the Lord laying our iniquities on Him; it refers to His position, and being Shepherd of Israel's faithful ones in this world - He was, in this character, smitten. The effect was the scattering of the sheep, not forgiveness and atonement. Hence we see it applied when they come to take Him, and the disciples fled. No doubt the actual blow was in his death - I speak now of na-chah (to smite) - it is any blow; ne-ga (stroke, plague) is used in Isaiah 53: 8 (margin), when the thing is explained, not na-chah, "For the transgression of my people was the plague, or judgment, stroke upon him." And so we know it was; but this is the explanation, blessed explanation of a fact which had also an outward aspect. Na-chah is the simple act of smiting; ne-ga goes, I think, further. This is seen when both are used as participles, "Yet we did esteem him na-ga (stricken)" - thus absolutely, the plague of God on Him; smitten of (mu-keh)* God and afflicted. The truth was He was made a plague for the transgression of His people. But Messiah was cut off as such, and took nothing, and the sheep that were with Him then as Shepherd were scattered, and hence, as we have said, it is applied already in Gethsemane.

{*Participle of na-chah (to smite).}

But there was, I am persuaded, in the atoning work a much deeper element. The forsaking of God in respect of sin, that no thought of ours can reach, though, blessed be God, it has reached us, for every sorrow was to meet there. I judge it is the want of deep apprehension of what atonement is - of what Christ suffered in His soul for it, which leads to cavils about other sorrows, and the application of passages to them. Every sorrow was there, but there was one which only the spiritual mind can in any sense understand. Isaiah 53 shews that this was the case that, as they esteemed Him outwardly under God's judgment - and He was, in a far deeper sense, for their transgression - "With his stripes they were healed." But by this act, in which atonement did take place, there was, besides the atonement, the setting aside all His earthly Messiahship, and the taking away His life from the earth; and all this the Lord felt and entered into as to the setting aside of the people by their own wickedness.

Cleansing

<42007E> 73

Nothing is more striking than the extreme care as to the defilement of leprosy in Leviticus 14, as to the details.

We find first that the man is cured, he has no longer the disease, the will of sin - he is converted. Then comes the cleansing - first Christ Himself given in humiliation, but in the power of the Spirit according to God known in the Word, in a poor earthen vessel but over running water. All this world's glory and nature - what man knows naturally, from the cedar to the hyssop - all is stamped with death, and the man sprinkled seven times - he comes under the absolutely perfect efficacy of Christ's death; this, outside the camp. It is essential efficacy of Christ's work, what is necessary for him to have to say to God; then he comes into the camp, but he must then be cleansed to have his place, and worship with God's people according to His presence among them, his own conscience and all taint of sin must be purged and removed. He shaves, and washes his clothes and himself with water and so is clean. There is the washing of water, regeneration, a change of condition, of habit and thought according to the Word, in order to his being amongst God's people; the washing of regeneration, not I think merely being born again, though involved in it.

But he is still out of his tent, his regular dwelling among God's numbered people - there he waits seven days; on the eighth, he again shaves all with scrupulous detail, not noticed before, for he is now nearer God, and washes clothes and body again, and is clean - v'taher (and he shall be clean), what had been said of his previous washing, and so he was, but that was cleansing from known sin, cleansing from the evil which he had come to know, what in his previous state affected his conscience, in fact what he was defiled by, so that he could come into the camp. Now he must be cleansed for the sanctuary, according to the purification of the sanctuary - the seven days complete, and a wholly new state and era beginning, which is really resurrection and divine.

Then he brings all kinds of sacrifices, save peace-offerings which are communion. The blood of the trespass is put upon his ear, hand and foot - he is cleansed and consecrated to God in thought, act and walk, according to the value and worth of Christ's blood. He is here before the tabernacle of the Lord - has to do with God in His sanctuary. The blood being thus on him, the oil is put on it - the Holy Ghost is given in consequence and as a seal of perfect cleansing by the blood - and he has to walk and think according to the power of the Spirit as according to the value of the blood. And then the oil is poured on his head - the Holy Ghost is given, that it may lead, guide, give him liberty, communion, and all that He brings by His presence in the soul.

74 Then the sin-offering and the burnt-offering - Christ bearing sin, and Christ offering Himself without spot by the eternal Spirit to God - are offered to Jehovah, and the man is clean. Cured first he was after the sacrifice of the birds - the charged bird gone away into the desert - sins put away when washed clean, and so entered - next, when washed in the camp, clean - next when the offering was offered to God, clean for Him in the sanctuary.

We learn the difference between the efficacy of Christ's works, so that being regenerate by the Word we are clean, and the application of Christ's blood to all we are according to our place in the sanctuary, and its own infinitely perfect nature, so that we are dead to sin, not merely forgiven - a state of heart and conscience, or, when the heart, as risen, goes with the conscience, according to Christ's death unto sin once and now living to God in that He liveth. Then we come before God according to the efficacy of Christ's offering before God, or rather its value to God, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again."

Forgiven, cleansed from what we were, we enter the camp; in it we are cleansed as dead to sin, and the Spirit life, and given to us also - before the Lord according to the value to Him of Christ's offering, and so cleansed to be before Him and for ever, according to what His presence is, and Christ's worth - accepted in the Beloved.

In the consecration of Aaron it is to be noted that there is in no place a carrying of blood within the veil; this is very notable. Yet there was a burning without the camp for Aaron, see Leviticus 8 and 9 - this for the people was wrong; note this, for Christ did indeed and necessarily suffer Himself without the gate, even in respect of that which had no connection with going into the holy place - as the Jewish people and others in the millennium - but He bore the sins of Israel, not merely Himself in that way expiatorily, but as feeling them and bearing them as burden in sympathy, in respect of governmental judgment of a received people. We have seen the same truth in connection with the sufferings of Christ - His distress in connection with Israel as suffering under displeasure in the last day (or any one under law), besides suffering for love and righteousness, and suffering as expiation.

75 Leviticus 16 is thus quite apart on another ground from the consecration of Aaron which was properly Jewish. Chapter 8 gives this regularly in consecrating Aaron in connection with them, in which there was no entering in within the veil, though the bodies of the sin-offering were burned without the camp; and then, in the application, there is the same as to Aaron, but then Aaron should, as to application to Israel in respect of God's dealings, have eaten the goat of the sin-offering which indeed he had not done.

But I question whether chapter 16 did not put Israel in connection with the most holy place in blessing from thence through a priest who had entered in there, though the veil subsisted and none but Aaron went in; and this in connection with judgment for sin - Nadab and Abihu, i.e., the failure of blessing on any other ground in any case. Hence, even on the inauguration day, Moses and Aaron go in and come out - King and Priest - and bless the people, and the glory appears, and then the fire consumes the sacrifice as from within, i.e., its acceptation by God as within, in respect of judgment, is publicly known to the people. This is, I apprehend, the position and doctrine of the Hebrews, only adding the heavenly calling, and abiding peace, and going within, i.e., the contrast of our present place, as we have already seen, but then reserving Israel's place in the last days.

It is evident that a priest, so minded, would have had profound joy in the thought that in virtue of Christ, the grace of God by a sacrifice of perfect reconciliation and expiation, the Israelite who had failed was placed in perfect acceptance with God. The eating of the sacrifice was thus in spirit the sense that one, beloved of God, was brought back morally and according to God's glory, to His favour through the perfect work of Christ.

This is the joy that belongs to our occupation about the fallen, though it be sorrow and humiliation, still, by Christ's coming in between, God is glorified and the heart comforted and lifted up in love. It is another thing to partake of the offerings as the fruit of the land, and free-will offerings all heaved up, or even waved. This is the joy of the fruits of the Spirit of the heavenly country in others, a true and, in one sense, more unmingled joy but less deep. Besides this there was the feeding on Christ properly speaking for oneself, though in communion. This indeed had a double character - priestly and common joy - joy which flowed from and was enjoyed in communion (but which might become mere common natural joy in the things enjoyed, and so profane in what referred to God) this was the peace-offering and what was immediate enjoyment of and with Christ. The Lord give us to know the service of gift - all this belongs to us in Christ.

Faith not Sight

<42008E> 77

The external course of events tells us nothing of what is really going on - that is inside it all. If the external plannings of men or Satan further God's plans they succeed, if not, they come to nothing; but what is really going on is still inside them all. Thus they would not have taken Jesus on the feast day, not to have an uproar, but He was to be the Paschal Lamb and He is taken. The Jews would have often taken Him, but His hour was not yet come; when it was, they take Him - their wicked plans succeed. When the heartless superstition of the Jews had the malefactors' legs broken, what was really doing in the one case was sending the man into Paradise.

To the outward eye what happened to Job were raids of Arabs and Chaldeans - ordinary predatory raids, and a violent storm blew down the house; Satan was in it all, and behind him God arranging the purifying of Job's heart and our instruction in all ages.

The political plans of Augustus, as to the census of the Empire, brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus, and then it was not carried out for nine years, when Cyrenius was Governor.

All we have to do is to discern God's will, and have by faith the courage to do it. All His strength is power to carry us forward. It may seem all to turn out ill, or be a cross - it may be so, but we shall have the result of God's counsels and blessing by the way. Man succeeded in crucifying Jesus because however wicked the act on their part, it was just carrying out God's plans. He knew His Father's will - sought only to glorify His Name - had faithful obedience to act upon it, though to man's eye it was the ruin of everything, every religious hope even, and so it was in man and in flesh, but the birthplace of all counsels in glory, of that new thing in man wherein He will be glorified for ever, that wherein He was glorified in all He is essentially. The outside was wicked men's success, the end too of pious men's hopes - the inside what all blessing that ever was, or could be really and permanently, is entirely founded upon, and that wherein alone God is fully glorified. Christ learned and did His Father's will, Satan's power and man's wickedness were there, triumphed as nowhere else. It was the foundation of all true and eternal blessing.

The Person of the Lord

<42009E> 78

How beyond all our wonder and praise is the Person of the blessed Lord! As an Apostle could say, and more because he knew it better, "Great is the mystery." But in one respect He was one with us all, great as His revelations were. No man knows the Son, yet He lets us see that He is that which no man knows. Who could say but there "God is known in death?" Is it not there love, God's love is known, never known really till known there? Yet it is weakness, and, as to His place as man, the very end of man. But in Himself God is known in love by His being down here with sinful men - by that love reaching even to us. He made Himself of no reputation, emptied Himself - not that He could be other than God - there is the mystery - but as to the form of God He did. Hence having taken the form of a servant, He is always such - receives all. Even when He takes the kingdom, He goes a long journey to receive a kingdom, and, when by His perfection in power He has subdued all, He gives it up to God even the Father. He gives up His own spirit when the time comes, but recommends it to His Father - raises up the temple of His body, but is raised by the glory of the Father - grows in wisdom, speaks what He knows, but He is the wisdom of God; He can do nothing of Himself - is obedient, but He is the power of God, and quickens too whom He will; created all things and upholds them by the word of His power. And this was His perfection, with the whole power of evil against Him, never to go out of the path of dependence and obedience - never to use power by His will. Thus He bound the strong man as in the wilderness - in death how much more even - He could have had, even in dependence, more than twelve legions of angels, but it would not have been obedience fulfilling the Scriptures.

But what an emptying that was when He who was God could come into death, though suffering, though obeying, bring all that God was in His moral perfection into death, and then when it was needed, in man's extremity through sin, in man's weakness, in the place of Satan's power, there glorify it - love, righteousness, majesty, truth, all found glorified there. God is glorified in Him, yet it was in death, and because it was death in all it meant for God; but it was all the power of love, i.e., God, in the emptying. I do not turn to John's writings here, already elsewhere spoken of, where the divine nature of the Lord is so distinct,* where He comes out as God - not genealogic from takes the place of receiving everything. It is contemplation of the wondrous and unsearchable fact I seek, not Adam or Abraham or David - and yet, as made flesh, always proofs which are everywhere where He is.

{*John 5 gives plainly this position of the Lord, chapter 6 is more distinctly as man, still He comes down and goes up again.}

79 But I would weigh some facts in the Gospels as to the manifestation of God in Him. When the blessed Lord had to do with unbelievers whom He knew and had to treat as adversaries, though His being God comes out - save His knowing all men, as yet not judging - what God is does not come out at all; it is only when driven, by the wilful blindness and hostility of the human heart, to speak of things as they are, that forced and driven to the necessity of it, so to speak, the fact of His being God comes out, "Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him, but Jesus hid himself." There is no revelation of Himself in John 8. He does not come to judge, and the woman is not condemned - she is to go and sin no more. He gives divine power to the law, or rather He is, by His word, divine power in the conscience - no grace is in question, and they all go away one by one - divine power in the Word awakes the conscience. He is the Light of the world, and he who follows Him does not walk in darkness. But here there are none such; it is simply the Light shining in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.

But Christ is divine - He can bear witness of Himself, yet He says "as the Father has taught me," as ever, in John, receiving all. Nothing inconsistent with grace, but the simple absence of all contrary to it. He could not contradict Himself, but He is only Light in darkness. As Man He hardly appears here, for that is grace; other cases present themselves where grace is at work. We may first take the woman of Samaria - but here away from Jerusalem, where with the Jews (not the people) He is always in judgment - where the great change of leaving them and having to do with the world, and bringing men to have to do with the Father and with God spiritually, and that by life in the power of the Spirit, are brought out, and where Christ is the rejected Man and feels it, but is thereby thrown into the consciousness that He is the divine Giver of eternal life in the power of the Spirit. But here we have the Lord fully as a Man; the Jachin and Boaz of Christian truth had been set up in chapter 3 - Man or Jew was naught, must be born again, and the Son of Man must be lifted up. God had loved and had given. Christ was a rejected Christ - He left Judea where the Pharisees were jealous and would none of Him. Christ must be a rejected Christ for us to have part with Him - sad thing to say, but so it is - if it die not it abides alone. No doubt He could always quicken whom He would, but without His death we could not righteously see God, and if a man received a new nature without His death, there would be no putting away of the old; we must be risen as well as quickened - a new place as a new life - and that is only by His death. But He was rejected, felt it, afterwards wept over the city, felt it deeply as none of us could feel - we see Him comforted, as rejected by His own to whom He came, by fields white to harvest.

80 He was weary with His journey and sat alone in the world - Oh, wondrous place! The world He had created, but more, into which He was come in love: and here only a weary Man feeling the rejection of His love, but, as to the place He had taken, dependent for a drink of water - He who had made it - upon this poor sin-wearied woman. But He had come where He could only come in grace; salvation was not of Samaria but of the Jews - promises were theirs, but they had rejected all - grace had its work outside, but then it was humiliation and on rejection he must needs pass through Samaria. He submits to human circumstance and conditions - He acts in divine grace. Here therefore where grace, free grace works, we find Him fully Man - a weary rejected Man, bound in spirit on a way He must needs take, and waiting on the kindness of another for a drink of water. Grace is in the humbled and obedient Man - there it is that what God is shines out. It is not "before Abraham was, I am," but "if thou knewest the gift of God," i.e., grace, "and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink." It is not the supreme God forced, so to speak, to say He is so to heartless adversaries without conscience, but God revealed in what He was in a lowly Man, and by His being a lowly Man; and surely if grace is, that is grace.

What heart is in the words! What a need to win the confidence of a weary soul! Yet the simple expression of what His own heart was full of, of God as goodness and brought out, as to circumstances, by the pressure on that heart of the rejection by His beloved people which he was suffering under! How wonderful to hear him saying just then "Salvation is of the Jews!" Perfect owning of God's counsels and ways! But in His rejection in them, grace flowing freely out - the natural expression of what He was full of, but as that was love, love which seeks to bring a weary soul to confidence in God by bringing that love down to lay its wants at the feet of such an one, to win confidence in a love that could do it. "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith" - there He was - "give me to drink" - come even there - "thou wouldest have asked" - He would have given, for He was the giver. What a scene! Such a lowly place! And to learn what God is in it! Yea, what he is by it!

81 There is no feeling like that of the perception of the Person of Christ, and His words and He are one - He was what He said, always. Yet it is thoroughly in human nature I look at Him here, yea, that is the way and here I learn it. With adversaries He is simply God - in grace He is a Man yet God, and only precious as a Man because He is, and, as a Man, dependent. Yet we have seen the Father in Him.

I do not go into the state of the woman, that is another part of the question of the chapter. But He is the object of adoration for eternity.

I turn then to the Syro-Phoenician; here it is "He could not be hid." It was not the flowing out of a pressed heart to sorrow and need, but what God, so to speak, must be where faith is - Himself - He cannot not deny Himself. Still grace rises above all promise and curse, and God is revealed. It is not as in John 4 where the pressure on His heart of the rejection of His beloved people, and all it implied, had brought out what was in that heart; deeper still, the divine overflowings of goodness not meeting promise, but finding its comfort in going out in free grace to need where no promise, no title was - rejected love making new channels for itself; God giving, and hence naturally where need, not where promise was, and giving eternal life and bringing to God in Spirit and in truth, for God, as He is was revealed, and so the Father seeking worshippers. This was John 4, and hence we find the opened heart of the Samaritans wider than promise, knowing more than appropriating pride, own Him as the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

But in the Syro-Phoenician woman it was different; He goes to the borders of His earthly mission, retires to be alone (Mark 7) and would not have it known. Here it is not His own rejection, He labours among the poor of the flock - His mission according to prophecy, and as to Israel the designs of God - He is servant of this mission, nothing more, as to the place He takes; He is not rejected by proud Jerusalem, but sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But He is in His mission, but in His divinely traced, not free path, He goes out of the sphere of active service to the borders of the curse without.

82 Meanwhile moral truths had come largely out; ceremonial observances contrasted in Israel with divine commandments, but, still further, the heart of man, called in question in contrast with all such mere ordinances, lost in importance, not merely in contrast with divine commandment, but in their nature as merely external; God looked at what came from the heart, not what went into the belly - a simple truth, but which for man is hard to learn. God goes to the true nature of things in respect of man - what comes out of the heart - what he is; but what did come out of it? Murders, evil thoughts, all manner of evil, and the Lord had no more to say. Then He leaves this scene of labour, is alone personally - as Man in position He would not have it known; but it was. Then we come to what was known; He goes, as I have said, to the borders of the curse - the place which served Him as an example of hard-heartedness - the people on whom God's curse rested as compared with Israel. What wondrous elements are all brought together here! But He sought to be alone, i.e., out of His sphere of labour; His mission, as a sent one, a servant, He insists on. But a want was there, a want which sought goodness in power, and God was there; the poor woman drawn by it, though purposely repelled to prove her faith (the disciples would have got rid of her - neither owned promise, nor in fact exercised love as above all promise) draws out what is above all promise, what recognizes fully the right to possess where promise was, but appeals to goodness as, after all, reaching over it, fully recognizing man's complete misery and wretchedness without a title - a vile dog, which there was saying everything that was unclean and vile, but appealed to a riches in goodness which could reach in mercy even to that. Could Christ say "No! God is not that"?

No! God was there manifested and faith had all it sought for - it had found Him; there was no need of claim or goodness, but the confession of worthlessness and absence of all title - a need whose resource was in the goodness of God. The Servant who held Himself to His mission, as service He had to do, was after all the God of all grace, and God revealed in Him, and while owning God's ways in Israel, standing alone in the presence of the curse and the absence of all claim, what faith owned, but therein found God and infinite goodness - Israel's servant was God manifest in the flesh, was goodness, above all evil, above all curse, was God and God manifested. What God is is known in His being revealed in Man - being a Man; for that was infinite love.

83 But there was more than the revelation of His Person and the exercise of His power; I turn to another case, Luke 8, the Pharisee and the Sinner. Here we have not the rejected state of man and free grace rising above it all, but actual degrading sin in contrast with human righteousness - a legal condition as man stands in it, and what this blessed One was for sinners. Three hearts - man as he stands in his own righteousness - God's in Man - and the poor and degraded sinner touched by grace and won, in a certain sense unconsciously (i.e., with no dogmatical knowledge) by what was manifested in the Lord, what He was in blessed love first, then forgiveness. The legal man thought to judge, by human competency, if the Lord, this Preacher going about the country, were really a prophet, but he judged according to human righteousness - what man should be for God, but only in an outward way; his own heart, God's heart and light, and even this poor woman's heart unknown - light and love, light and conscience, and love in the heart, i.e., God, alike wholly unknown. God was in his house, in light, as He showed, and love, and he never found it out - despised Him - had no civilities or courtesies for Him - and judged from his own heart - while He was not like it He could be no prophet. Here self-righteousness, divine grace and sin come together in fullest juxta-position and contrast, and divine light which makes all things manifest too, and that in the Person of the lowly Preacher, the Son of God. The Pharisee is wholly blind - says he sees judges from his own heart, and sees neither the manifestation of God in Christ, nor the work of grace in the woman. Light and love are alike wholly foreign to him.

84 The Lord shews fully that He is the light that makes all manifest - knows what is in the Pharisee's heart - knows the woman's sins - and what the Pharisee was thinking of Him and her. But more - His grace, the grace that was in Him had attracted the heart of this poor sinful woman - her need was great, her shame great, her sin deplorable, to no human eye could she turn that would not scorn her but One, and that was God; there her heart found confidence - the more she was distressed and brought low, the more was her comfort in finding that heart; there, in that mercy, her shame could hide itself, for it was grace to her - scorn was not there. But all this, through grace, had won her to hate and own her sin. It was the meeting point of sin and grace, confession of a convicted heart through confidence in goodness in Jesus - sin seen and God seen, and because God was seen in love. Divine sight was there, not blindness, divine love had brought in divine light, so that God and sin in self were both known, and God trusted, and a guileless heart produced because grace was trusted. How deep a work to bring a soul to God, and have sin judged and God known! And then Christ was all - she thought little of Simon and his guests save One, Jesus was there and that absorbed her, she was delivered from her shame even as to all the rest, but not her shame before God. Then a silent heart wept, and washed His feet with her tears. There was boldness in her confidence, yet lowliness and thanksgiving in the boldness, she kissed His feet too, and spent what she had of precious on Him. Then as He had occupied that heart with Himself in grace, He occupies Himself with that heart - He has done with Simon and the rest - to such a heart He must give peace. But first He takes her part in that which shows not only that He knew Simon's heart and all about it, but there was that of which Simon knew nothing - besides blindness as to His Person - forgiveness. God, happily for her, knew all her sins and had forgiven them - wondrous revelation! The grace that revealed love and goodness, had brought forgiveness with it - relief, full and perfect, from God - when sin had confounded the soul before God, was seen as sin because God was seen and in grace, the grace could tell that it was all gone - before God forgiven.

The Person of Christ had drawn - she loved much. The grace of God in Christ had forgiven - of that, of God, Pharisaism knows nothing. The Lord takes up the woman's case in presence of the Pharisee's contempt, and shows what he was - what she was - what God was - what He was in Himself. Then He occupies Himself with the woman alone, "Thy sins be forgiven thee"; their remarks do not arrest Him, "Thy faith hath saved thee - go in peace." He had sounded the Pharisee's heart, sounded and brought to light her's - revealed God's, and conferred forgiveness - confession of sin and forgiveness of sin (and that is the cross for us) are the meeting place of the sinner in truth and God in love. Here again we have God revealed in a Man, but specially in respect of sin.

85 In the first case He does not come to judge, but He is simply with adversaries, and is simply in result "I am." In the woman of Samaria, He is rejected of the Jews and grace flows out giving life, going up to eternal life above, bringing to the Father - God known as a Spirit - and this by grace going out where promise gave no salvation and no claim to righteousness, but sin and need.

In the Syro-Phoenician, where faith comes, grace rises where grace is gone above all barriers - God is revealed to faith, and must be above them all, must be what He is in grace, cannot deny Himself, and faith pierces through all barriers, urged by need to appeal to what God is in Himself, in grace, and He cannot but be what He is, or be kept in by the barriers when that was reached, though He was there in One serving as sent where promise was; still God was there.

Luke 7 goes deeper and Light is there - Pharisaism and sin brought fully to light; the utter and deplorable blindness of Pharisaism manifested what man in self-righteousness is - no perception of God at all, nor of anything in Him. Then to the sinner a deep true perception of what He was as grace meeting need, and hence brought to God according to the power of His presence, and the grace of His nature, He being known, humbled fully before Him, but brought to Him according to what He was, the bond of the heart with Him formed, with Him known, and forgiveness, peace, and salvation received. It is deeper, because it goes into the full moral question of the state of man with God - light in the heart and soul of man as he was.

The case of the palsied man in Matthew 9 is somewhat different. It is not God revealed in His nature of goodness, what He is in Christ for men; it is relative - Jehovah of Psalm 103 manifested in Israel, His ways in Israel in grace, but relative - what He was, of course, but according to promise and prophecy.

86 I do not again enter into the full bringing out of the three hearts in Luke 7: 36 - to end, the Pharisee's, the sinner's looking to Christ, and, blessed be His grace and name, God's own heart already spoken of; light and love were there, neither the least known to Simon - he was blind, thinking he saw. Christ, in whom it is revealed, is the subject of our adoration. I only notice now "Thy faith hath saved thee" - how God owns, as that which He sees in the heart of the poor convicted believer, what He has wrought. Tears and repentance were there, true love to the Saviour, excellent fruits of faith, but faith by grace, gave her Christ; hence faith saved her - God's work in the heart, by which Christ was seen and appreciated. Her heart was thus shown, what God indeed had wrought in it, but in it; but then it was what it was fixed it wholly on another, it was not objectively itself nor reflectively - it knew Christ only. It produced lovely fruits, most lovely, which the Lord owns, but it saved because it saw Christ only. But what is lovely here, that Christ owns, attaches value to what was in her heart, wrought there surely, but was in it; its action on Him as its object gives us to see divine appreciation of the state of the heart thus having Him for its object. He does not say, "Grace has saved thee," though true, "My work, my blood-shedding has saved thee" - that would have been speaking of something in God, of His own work; but He speaks to her of divine value for something in the heart of the poor woman. This is unspeakable goodness, divine tenderness and favour. If it be a wonderful picture in presence of Pharisaism, we have to leave the Pharisaism to itself, as the Lord did, and see the Lord owning what was of God in the heart that turned to Him. The poor, desolate, and lonely woman could go away and say, "I have His approbation on what is in my soul" - the comfort of His approbation, yet thinking of Him still, not of herself, for thinking of approbation, a father's approbation, is not thinking of what is approved, or of self. Faith had saved her, and she could go in peace - she had it from Christ - and her faith in His Person gave divine weight and grace to His words.

The Old Testament

<42010E> 87

The fullest moral teaching of the Old Testament has a peculiar character natural to the character of the then relationship to God, but in that goes most pure and deep, indeed I think has it more fully and deeply than the New - it is that of responsibility, but going to entire integrity and purity of heart. In the New Testament we get far more grace and fruits of love, no doubt the other is supposed or laid as a subjective ground, and out of which divine fruit is to grow, as Christ who was in nature and person holy - was the winning display of love and grace among men; the Holy One came down, He was holy, He lived in grace (of course not ceasing to be holy, I need not say) so holy that He could be in love without stint in the midst of all, and thus go down to the vilest. But the Old Testament looking from Adam upward was to enquire how man could draw near, not the display of God to man in man; I think in the Sermon on the Mount, with the exception of merciful which God showed Himself - and the opposite is hard selfishness and cruelty - it will be found that Old Testament principles in this are pursued to their full inward power, only, I think, with more calmness as became Christ, not so much in requirement and exercise of heart, as in the Psalms, as a model and perfect expression of what it is in its blessedness. The government of God with the Christian applies itself fully to this subjective state, and it is (as it was perfectly so in Christ) that subjective condition in which, as in unhindered communion with God, the other flows forth from Him whom I know in love; see, for example, Colossians 3: 12-14. This is the natural consequence of the distinction of position - the Old Testament was the new life of a sinner with whom the question was "How shall I come to God?"; the Christian is come to God, and is of God then in the world.

Of Cyprian's treatise on unity I have not much to say. It is all declamation, and that is all. Whether Novatian was wrong is a question on which historical facts must be known and judged by Scripture. But Cyprian tells us nothing. There is a good lot of false doctrine as far as it goes, and the visible Church is all episcopal unity - the ark and no safety out of it; that is all, so he says. But there is nothing grave and serious in it; he had his idea, and quotes Scripture and Old Testament as the fathers do.

The Sabbath of the Old Testament

<42011E> 88

Genesis 2: 2, 3. - First mentioned.

Exodus 16: 5, 22, 30. - Given as a gift in grace to the people while under grace before the law.

Exodus 20: 8. - Given as a commandment among the ten; this however associated with the rest of creation, as the whole system was.

Exodus 31: 12, 17. - Given at the close of the order of the setting up of the sanctuary, as a sign of the covenant established by priesthood, in the mercy-seat a perpetual covenant.

Exodus 34: 21. - Given as part of the covenant founded on supremacy and intercession after breach of the law - covenant in connection with their portion in the land by that covenant

Exodus 35: 2. - So imposed in connection with the setting up of the Tabernacle thereon.

Leviticus 19: 3, 30. - The comeliness of their association one with another and with God in the land - all that became them as a nation liable to sin, but consecrated to God there.

Leviticus 23: 3. - Prescribed as the characteristic beginning and sum of all the feasts in which they were called to appear before the Lord in pledge of rest.

Leviticus 24: 8. - The shew bread was to be ordered from sabbath to sabbath.

Numbers 15: 32. - Expressed as an obligation during their journey which this book traces the principle of in the wilderness

Deuteronomy 5: 12. - Ordained in connection with Creation rest, but as a memorial given as a remembrance of the grace of deliverance from Egypt, and thus of rest afforded to servants.

Nehemiah 9: 14. - Remembered as made known to Israel as their special privilege.

Isaiah 58: 13. - Prophecy looks at it as understood as a privilege in grace - my sabbath.

Ezekiel 20: 12. - Given as a sign between God and them - His sabbaths.

Numbers

<42012E> 89

Numbers 3

- 25. The door of the tabernacle of the congregation, i.e., the entrance of the court to get at the tabernacle. The altar is elsewhere said to be at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, there only, the people came. The laver was only priestly washing.

- 42, 43. Those only, I apprehend, who were as such in their fathers' houses unmarried.

- 46. As regards the change of number in Levites and first-born - Israel was numbered the first day of the second month, the people started on the twentieth, and as far as appears, the numbering of the Levites was the very next thing to the numbering of Israel, and of course that numbering was taken. Certainly many things passed between the numbering of Israel and the twentieth day when the camp moved.

Numbers 4

- 3. Host, tzava, as in verses 23, 30, etc.; see Exodus 38: 8, and 1 Samuel 2: 22, tza-va (to assemble by troops); but in Numbers 8: 25, it should be "service" as in verse 23 of this chapter.

- 14, for "censers" read "shovels" or "pans," it is from kha-thah (to remove), as ya-im (shovels) from ya-ga to take away. Which was shovel and which was pan I cannot say, but I apprehend the first were shovels, and the second pans, from the analogy of the word.

NOTE. - The laver is not found in the vessels carried in the desert, and covered with different cloths, and the reason is, I think, evident, and confirms the sense I judge to be that of these ordinances. The laver, though a means of approach, was no manifestation of the divine character which produced a corresponding result in the believer; it was merely a means of the purification of man needed in his drawing nigh to God.

Numbers 6

I take it this chapter applies properly to Israel. The remnant even, though not wilfully, is under the sin of the dead, and must own this to begin again; his first separation is all lost. This has been done by faith in those that owned, as in Acts 2, their guilt in it - they are separate, but the time of separation is not closed, nor the time to drink wine begun. The remnant at the end will enter into this in a peculiar manner, and through deep affliction, because of their long infidelity; still they will have learned their entire dependence on the Lord, and, in the way of repentance, the death of Christ, after long remaining unclean. They will be anew separated to God; when all that is closed, they will have their proper liberty, strength and joy in communion and power. Hence, with this is connected the blessing through the High Priest and His sons at the close of the chapter - Christ, Head of his own family is introduced in that character, as bringing the blessing of Jehovah on Israel, "They shall put."

90 The hair is sign of neglect of self for the Lord, and dependence on Him - power on the head, hence a sign of subjection in him that wears it, but subjection in devoted abstraction from self. Christ will drink the wine with them; it will not then be dependence by faith, the energy of faith in an absent Lord, restraint on self, though power through grace may accompany this strength made perfect in weakness.

- 27. This closes a division of the book. The people and camp are numbered and formed, their purity, and that even in consecration to the Lord, secured.

Numbers 8

Up to the end of this chapter is evidently the establishment of Israel as the people consecrated to God for the journey, and the type of the Levites as having service, but service dependent on the priesthood.

Numbers 9

This chapter presents the case of consecration, not of will, in an individual case hindering the bond of union with the congregation where God was; withal the presence of God for direction in the journey, to stop, to go on, or to abide.

91 Numbers 10

- 11 and 12. On the twentieth day of the second month they leave Sinai and rest in Paran.

- 13. From this verse to chapter 12: 16 is in the journey; it is all we have of detail in journey, for there, in Kadesh in Paran, they refuse to go up to possess. They are ordered to turn to the wilderness by the Red Sea, and then go up presumptuously and are discomfited. All that is said of the journey is in Deuteronomy 2: 1, "we compassed Mount Seir many days." There were thirty-eight years from Kadesh to the brook Zered; Deut. 2: 14. They had been a good while in Kadesh before the Amorites discomfited them; the spies were forty days absent after; after the twentieth day of the second month they had gone to Kibroth Hattaavah Hazeroth, from thence they came to Paran; on the return of the spies they were at Kadesh. Chapters 11 and 12 are in connection with this chapter in the journey; in chapter 13 comes the realisation of promise in hope, and chapter 14 closes completely this portion of the book of Numbers.

The chapter before us is the order of march, different already from what had been instituted, and with more grace also; as chapters 11 and 12 are the failure in the journey, weariness, complaint, discontent and lusting, and then the prophet and priest rising up against the royalty of Him who is face to face with God, Aaron alone as priest making intercession. Thus the Church is in this guilt in refusing the supremacy of Christ as King taking sovereignly in grace whom He will. This is especially against Christ in grace, for this principle is also presented, that Moses, type of Christ in sovereignty and proximity to God, was also type of sovereign grace - he had married an Ethiopian woman. Here the Lord is, where He was with Moses in grace when Israel fell, without the camp, but then He is with Aaron and Miriam in judgment, who claim grace to exalt themselves. Miriam, who is in the position of testimony, for such is the place as prophetess, is covered with sin.

- 36. Here we have another division of the book; the freewill offerings, and charge of the Lord, and the journeying - the two parts of the wilderness life. But the ark went sovereignly forth.

92 Numbers 11

Note, the spirit of Moses had got away from God, not only he says, "How can I bear this people," but when the Lord says "You have despised the Lord among you," Moses says immediately The people among whom I am." All return to the world in heart is really slighting the redemption which has delivered us out of it; but what is really important is this, that Moses as well as the people shows this want of confidence - the thought of want of power in God. God shows that there was not merely in Himself, but in the midst of them, the power in abundance which they had not faith on the one hand to trust, on the other to exercise, for, in order to governing and leading up the people, the Lord takes of the spirit which was on Moses and puts it on seventy elders, who should effect with him this task, and to draw the attention of the whole camp, for Joshua knew of it by the display of power in the midst of it. Such is unbelief!

Numbers 12

How deep the instruction in this chapter! "The Lord heard" - if we knew always how to leave it to Him! "The man Moses was meek" (poor in spirit) "above all the men on the face of the earth" - he left it all there - "The Lord heard." It is all beautiful.

- 10. The Lord, so to speak, spat in her face - how terrible! Yet there was much grace mixed with it all.

- 11. Miriam comes first in speaking against Moses (verse 1) - Aaron is the first to confess, and owns his own fault with her in it. It is the same word in Deuteronomy 8: 2, "he humbled them and proved them, to know what was in their hearts."

Numbers 14

This chapter is the revolt of the people despising the pleasant land, the fear of the difficulties setting aside faith, and in consequence producing a disparaging report of the land itself - they were gathered together against the Lord.

Besides the general instruction, I have this to remark that Caleb just brings in what the rest all leave out - the Lord; and then, note, the effect is the heavenly good and joyful blessing is full before his mind - it is a good land, and the difficulties which absorbed the others disappear. "They are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, the Lord is with us: fear them not." Blessings and heavenly joys cannot sustain faith when the Lord is not looked to. The grapes of Eshcol were forgotten, as though they were not, for the others, and if faith be not in exercise, how should heavenly things be seen?

93 Note too in Exodus 3, we have full grace - here government. There Abraham, Isaac, Israel; hence "My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest," and as we have often noted, the ground of consuming, grace and power comes in, the ground of looking for God to be with us, for He does not impute, but is with us against the sin. Here it is the principles of government there announced, not original absolute grace; hence there is government, judging, chastening. The rest, as far as I am aware, I have noticed elsewhere. But what perverseness, that while they forget the Lord entirely as to the path and difficulties of faith, they remember how to charge Him with bringing them into their present condition when they are discontented with it.

- 32. Shall pasture - be nomads.

- 34. Not "my breach of promise," but my turning against them, my hostility - t'nuati (my hostility, my alteration) only found here and in Job 33: 10, "He findeth occasions against me." They would learn what it was to have God thus dealing in anger with them. It is to be in a position which brings anger and judgment from God; "My turning away and being hostile to them" is "You shall experience what it is to have Me against you."

- 44, presumed, i.e., proudly of their own will, see Deuteronomy 1: 41.

Numbers 15

Here we have grace which after all secures the land and joy and communion therein, the stranger being also admitted to this; error supposed when in enjoyment of the promises and atonement; presumptuous sin condemned; the memorial of the fringe of blue, the marks of heavenly-mindedness in communion, which recalls the commandment and gives force in the conscience to the first deliverance. Blue was next the gold always in the tabernacle.

94 Note how after the various forms of rebelliousness or unbelief, complaining, lusting, self-righteous exaltation of prophetess and priest against the king (who held immediate intercourse with the Lord) and despising the promise, the absolute certainty of the promise in grace, comes in before the apostasy of Kore, in which the perishing comes. After this, it is brought out that priestly grace alone - Aaron's rod before and laid up by the tabernacle of witness from which the righteous judgment had come forth on Kore - could take away the murmuring and lead them through the wilderness. The special place and privilege too of priesthood then comes out most instructively, and here alone, chapter 18: 10, is eating in the most holy place spoken of, which must be communicatively from office; I cannot think it is among the most holy things.

The order of these chapters is very interesting.

- 15. Hak-ka-hal (as for the congregation). Does this make the sojourner a part of the congregation?

- 23. From the day that the Lord commanded (began to command) and onward to your generations.

Numbers 16

Here we have Levites, ministers of service, who will be priests between God and the people, and the famous men who rebel against the authority of Moses. The direct judgment consumes these, and the fire of the sanctuary they would approach consumes them. Korah acted on all the congregation, but Moses in judgment, and Aaron in intercession afterwards, when their hearts rise against the judgment or Moses as cause of it, preserve the people. The supremacy of Christ as Priest is established as being near to God, but thereon the priests, and He especially in the day of atonement, but the priests every day being thus brought nigh, have to bear the iniquity of the sanctuary. This is an important principle, it is not sin against the commandment of the law, but the iniquity of the sanctuary; but the communion of the sanctuary, chapter 18: 10, is theirs, and everything that the Lord takes as His, but this as priests.

95 Remark how for the history of Korah is a point by itself, the coming into the land being fully assured in grace, at the end of the failures in faith of Israel, in the previous chapter. Korah, etc., is positive rebellion against the authority of God in the royalty and priesthood.

Note the contrast between Aaron's formal self-exaltation along with Miriam against grace, sovereign grace, and God's exaltation of the priestly position as alone holding the burden and enjoying the communion and God's food of the sanctuary - all was polluted to all unless cleansed by this consecration; chap. 18: 32. Thus the world, alas! through the Church firstfruits.

Note prophecy and priesthood never reach the place of sovereign grace even in the Church. The Church's own place is in Moses marrying the Ethiopian, and face to face with God, because it enters into the mind of God where Christ is.

Numbers 18

Note the difference of priestly and family communion, all depending on Aaron in verses 9, 10 and 11-13.

Note too, that the first three verses of Leviticus 2 are the ordinary meat-offering, from verse 4 the baked meat-offering - the latter dry, or mingled with oil, was for all the males of the family - the baked ones entirely the priest's that offered it; one was isolated offering in Christ alone, the other was general Church communion.

Note, in passing, the wave-breast was for Aaron and his sons; the heave-shoulder for the offering priest. This, however, would seem to be only in the case of the peace-offerings; the trespass-offerings and sin-offerings were for the males only, the heave- and wave-offerings for all the family, see also Leviticus 10: 14. However, in heave-offerings there seem to be more decided consecration, not for service as presented merely but entirely given up; the Levites were a wave-offering. The heave-offering was an offering of gift, save the heave-shoulder; the heave-offering of dough, Numbers 15: 19-21. Leviticus 7: 14, I apprehend, must be one of the unleavened cakes.

The wave-offering seems rather presented to the Lord, and then to subsist for whatever service or use; the heave-offering to have been more offered to the Lord. It is a common word for everything offered to God and given up, so to speak, to Him.

96 Numbers 19

We have here the provision for defilement by sin, the principle of death in the desert, by death accomplished - long since applied by the power of the Holy Ghost.

This chapter is the restoration of worship. And so it is as to the Spirit, it is not forgiveness as acceptance, but a needed process in which the soul, and defilement on it, is brought sensibly connected with Christ's death by the power of the Spirit to be able first to worship, and then to serve.

It is well to take first the offering in itself in connection with Jehovah and then its application.

In the case of the red heifer the Lord speaks to Moses and Aaron; several are so. Moses receives what is necessary for God as such - the law between Him and man. When Aaron comes in, i.e., is addressed by God as in already, of course it refers to God, but it is priestly service, where we have to say to God. The red heifer was both. Intercourse with God refers to His holy nature (1 John 1) - compare Joshua 5: 15, and the bush - as much as reconciliation, but still this is supposed in it. Here the blood was where the people met God, the efficacy of the great day of atonement is supposed, the individual is restored. Where he meets God, the perfect and abiding efficacy of the blood always is. It is purely a sin-offering all burnt without the camp. There was no imputation, the ashes proved that all that was settled long ago, but the man could not come to the tabernacle, though the blood was there. His communion and worship were interrupted; the sense of the sin, according to the death of Christ, was brought upon Him by the Spirit and Word. Hence the address was to Moses and Aaron; it was necessary according to what God was, but it was also restoration to one who was defiled, the atonement being a settled thing. It was not a simply priestly service. Then it would have been "the priest shall take," etc. Moses and Aaron give the heifer to Eleazar, he represented Aaron, but Aaron received the command, to give it its true and full character. The sprinkling with the water was by any clean person, not a priestly act, but none but a priest could take the blood. It refers to the wilderness, our path here, hence does not go within the veil, though, as burnt outside the camp, having all the efficacy of that which did, based itself on it, only applied to the journeying state, to man with God, not abstractedly to God in His nature. It is the High Priest, but as such, in atonement, he must for the full character of it go within the veil, but that is not the point here. It is a high priestly service, but refers to the administrative restoration in our walk here. Hence we have Eleazar to represent Aaron, but Aaron receives the command; it is not, or only as restoring relation with it as far as the people could go, sanctuary work. That was Aaron's part, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens. It is high-priestly, but not the High Priest's proper place. That meets the eye of God, and represents the people and is perfect once for all. The command to Moses and Aaron meets this, but the work itself, while based on a perfect sin-offering is journeying restoration, based on what is perfect, but applied administratively to restore the man's cleanness, in order to come.

97 We have to consider here the analogy of our walk down here under the government of God, and Israel's place. Peter's epistle connects these two. Query, does Israel, in the millennium even, go further? I suppose not. His place then does rest on Christ having carried the blood within, but his relationship is at the door; they had in the fullest way touched death in crucifying Christ, even if it were atoned for.

The red heifer gives us a wonderful picture of God's estimate of sin in respect not of judgment but of holiness and any defilement. Its starting point and basis is the blood sprinkled seven times where the people met God, but showed that that had been wholly settled. Further the great day of atonement is supposed; there the blood was within the veil, so that God had been perfectly glorified as to sin, and the sins also put away. All that was a settled point, and for the approach of the people the basis laid in the seven times sprinkled blood; the question of personal state and defilement hindering communion remained, and to this the ashes of the red heifer applied. What I here note is, how in this respect, defilement and communion, the least defilement is intolerable to God. Every one that touched was unclean, the priest, the man that gathered the ashes, that sprinkled the water, all that was exposed in the house, the man that touched. Then I have the measure of uncleanness, the death of Christ, the Spirit and the Word, for the water is the Word in the power of the Spirit; the ashes were there, proof that sin as such before God, imputable guilt, was all consumed in the death of Christ, but it was measured by that in the heart. It was God's measurement, the true one of it, the Word discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart, as the eye of God - whatever is not of the life of Christ in us grieves the Holy Spirit.

98 We know, by the ashes, that the sin was all consumed and put away, and that enables us to estimate it as a question of holiness and our state. Thus the death of Christ, sin against His holy grace, the Spirit and the Word, are the measure of sin to the heart, but as we learn first its evil, we learn grace is above the evil and communion is restored - we judge ourselves, not having to be judged for it, and then return into deeper sense of the sunshine of God's favour.

But there is more; the glory of the world, all nature was cast into the burning of the heifer, and, when the water is applied to our souls, all this is gone and we are simply with the sole state of the soul in question with God. There is a natural life in which we live from day to day, even where rightly; here the soul is alone, such as it is, with God, according to what He is - revealed in the Cross, by the Spirit and the Word - and nothing else there. This makes it an absolute searching out, at least as to all that is then in question, as to its then state. We are manifested to God, and there is nothing to veil it, or interrupt the direct revelation of God to the soul, alone itself with God, naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. It is wonderful how there we are in the inner world, and not in the vain show of the fashion of this world which passes away.

Note, the Levites were not washed but only sprinkled. The only other case of the use of the word is the red heifer and Ezekiel from niddah (separation) chapter 36. Perhaps it is because it is only service as offered in life, and not dying and renewal or new nature and life in order to be oneself with God, and that before Himself in heavenly places. The priests were washed.

99 Numbers 20

Moses acted not on the grace, but with "his rod" and "we," and was shut out, which note well, blessed as he was. May our souls be subject to His Word, His blessed Word!

- 14. This is not the same as Deuteronomy 2: 3. This was a proposal to cross Edom at once, but Edom would not consent, and they wander there a long time; at last God says, "Ye have compassed this mountain long enough."

Numbers 21

- 1. The "when" is wrong here; he heard sometime or other, and when they came into his neighbourhood, he attacked them; see chapter 33: 40.

- 13-15. Verses 14, 15 alone present any question. I see no reason why they could not have been written at the time, but my impression is that these two were added when the book was edited. This it surely was, traditionally by Ezra. It may have been by Samuel, or even Jeremiah when found in the days of Josiah, but by divine prophetic care owned by Christ Himself.

These references to Jasher and the book of the wars of the Lord, or legendary songs occur several times. They are appeals to common history as recognising an unexampled wonder, or some alleged right for which their own testimony or faith would not avail - thus Jephthah. It seems to me quite uncertain whether "Is not this written in the book of Jasher" (Joshua 10: 13) is by the author of the book of Joshua. It may be prophetically inserted as a witness to the truth of the account, as a phenomenon patent to all. It may have been a series of received history, a compilation so called, containing a notable number of passages in their history, compiled and added to at various times, just as I avow I do not know the date of the phrase in the book of Joshua. It is added as confirmation, and no change of what was originally written. It is even a question with me if the previous part of the verse be from Joshua. 2 Samuel 1: 18, clearly comes in parenthetically, whatever its source.

100 Numbers 23

In Balaam's prophecies, the first three are the actual state, the fourth is the future.

The ark taken, and the priestly relationship broken, the royalty substituted fails also. Nehemiah does not attempt the crowning of Zerubbabel, there is no re-establishment of the fallen system, the Gentile slavery is acknowledged. What rested on man's responsibility was gone irreparably; but this did not touch what God had substituted in His own sovereignty to maintain communication with His people according to His own fidelity when they were unfaithful. In Samuel ordinance is there, and Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi are there as prophets, and though that closed the canon up to John the baptist, yet we have, even at the end, Anna a prophetess who speaks to all who waited for redemption in Israel. Nor did the unfaithfulness of Israel touch the looking of faith to the resources which were in God, nor to the supply of that which was needful for the present exigencies of His people. This gives a clear idea of the position.

The great principle of the Balaamic history is that God was the unsolicited Guardian and Blesser of His people. The machinations of enemies go on, and that unknown to Israel, who consequently seeks nothing from God, but He is active for His people from His own grace to them, and nothing escapes Him. "Who are these men that come to thee?" says God to Balaam. God began as He did with Satan in Job's case, "Hast thou considered my servant Job?" On the other hand, Balak is in entire and all-perverting darkness. First Israel was forbidden to touch Moab, next he says, "He whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed," and he was seeking to bring the curse on Israel when God had said, "Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee," so that he was just bringing it on himself.

This interest that God takes in His people, for Israel knew nothing that was going on, is of the profoundest interest; it was between God and the adversary, see Zechariah 3, not between God and Israel - then He judges evil.

- 15. See chapter 24: 1.

- 23. Note here it is said concerning Jacob and Israel, "What hath God wrought?"

- 25. Hatred and unbelief think of circumstances, and Balak, having been frightened by the sight of Israel, seeks in the folly of unbelief to withdraw Balaam from the influence of what he dreaded himself, for unbelief never thinks of the thoughts of the Lord, from whom surely the people was not hidden. His perseverance in seeking the curse enlarged the blessing; it is always thus. He does not know God, and God could not merely repeat the blessing already given, thus it is continually developed.

101 Note, after his justification Israel rises up as a lion, and does not lie down until after having seized the prey. When seen in his beauty, having pillaged the nations, he lies down and who shall stir him up? And note verse 16 (chap. 24) when prophecy is brought out he has the knowledge of the Most High, which is not of in verse 4.

It is interesting to see the terms that Balaam uses; "Jehovah" and "Elohim," and only in the two last prophecies when he did not seek enchantments. In the two first he uses only "Jehovah" and "Elohim"; and mark how in verse 3 "Jehovah will come to meet me," and "Elohim met Balaam," and "Jehovah put a word in Balaam's mouth." "How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed, and how shall I defy whom Jehovah hath not defied?" Verse 16, "And Jehovah met Balaam." . . . "Balak said, what hath Jehovah spoken." . . . "Elohim is not a man." . . . "Jehovah his Elohim is with him." . . . "Elohim brought him out of Egypt." . . . "What hath Elohim wrought." . . . "All that Jehovah speaketh that must I do." All this is clearly Jehovistic, though Elohim is used, because Jehovah is Elohim. So in the next chapter, "And when Balaam saw that it pleased Jehovah to bless Israel," we are here clearly on Jehovistic ground - "then the Spirit of Elohim came upon him, and he heard the words of Elohim, and saw the vision of Shaddai . . . "they are like the lign aloes which Jehovah has planted" - he could not go beyond the commandment of Jehovah. Again in verse 16 we have "heard the words of God, knew the knowledge of the Most High, saw the vision of Shaddai." In this last prophecy which is a continuation without his going to meet again or Jehovah's meeting him, but which is introduced by the commandment of Jehovah, it is the distinct assertion that Jehovah, the Elohim of Israel, took the place of - was Shaddai the Almighty, yea Elion, who would order the whole world as He pleased, and of this Balaam warns Balak; compare Psalm 91, "He that dwelleth in the secret of Elion (Most High) shall abide under the shadow of Shaddai." "I," says Messiah, "will say of Jehovah, He is my refuge, my fortress, my Elohim, in him will I trust," i.e., He takes Jehovah, the God of the Jews, for protection, for the shadow of His wings. Hence He is protected by Almighty power - Shaddai. Hence Israel says, "because thou hast made Jehovah even the Most High" (for He is so, above all Elohim) "my refuge, thy habitation," He would be protected, and then in verse 14 Jehovah owns His knowing His name. Now Balaam shows this prophetically - Jehovah, whose name is all through in question, is Shaddai, is the Most High; Elohim, God Himself wrought for Israel, and there was no enchantment against Him, Jehovah met Balaam and declared Himself Shaddai and Elion in favour of Israel, taking the last name when He was setting the world aright in judgment, as He does in the mouth of Melchizedek, adding, "Possessor of heaven and earth."

102 All this makes clear what I have noticed a hundred times for edification before any controversy, "Jehovah" is the name of relationship taken with Israel, as "Shaddai" with the Patriarchs. No man could have given a name used just as frequently as "Elohim," as unknown in point of fact. But God revealed Himself specifically to the Fathers as "El Shaddai;" and they were to walk in the faith of that name, as Jehovah to Moses and Israel, and they were to walk in the faith of that; to us as Father, and so we are to walk. "I am El Shaddai, walk before me and be thou perfect," "Thou shalt be perfect with Jehovah thy God," "Be ye therefore perfect as your Father who is in heaven is perfect." "So ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty" - Jehovah Shaddai.

Numbers 24

- 3. Terrible thing to have the eyes open when we have no part in what we see. But it is a wonderful scene to see this man forced of God to give unwillingly God's testimony in favour of His people, rebellious and perverse as they were. God insisting on His own mind, a true prophet is in the midst of and reproves the people, a false one is forced by, taken by God above them all, and has God's sovereign mind of grace and purpose above them all; he is not fit to reprove them - that is a holy work. But the scene is wonderful - God's mind all blessing. Compare Deuteronomy 9 for testimony in the camp; and note here it was after all their history.

103  - 16. The second point* is added, and points to the latter days and millennium, when the Most High is the name God takes. But further, the first two prophecies are the present relationship and mind of God towards Israel; Jehovah is there in the power of God, a Deliverer who has taken the people to Himself. That was God's present testimony. But in the third we get by the Spirit, Abraham's God (vv. 4 and 9) and so far that closes it - Jehovah their God is God; but the blessing of the Almighty is there. Then in the fourth the millennium and Christ. In one sense the third closes as to Israel and Elohim Jehovah Shaddai's blessing; in the fourth Elohim the Most High takes up the world, the latter days, and "thy people," and Asshur and the ships of Chittim.

{*In the Hebrew.}

- 17. I should think, certainly from Jeremiah 48: 45, that Gesenius is right in his interpretation of kol-b'ney sheth (all the children of Sheth) children of noise, i.e., tumultuous war.

Numbers 26

- 59. For the omission of subject to "bare," see 1 Kings 1: 6 and 1 Chronicles 7: 14, whatever the difficulty connected with it; compare Exodus 6: 16-20. This verse (59) is the greatest difficulty of all as to the counting 430 years of captivity. I do not see that the 430 years of Galatians 3 is so much so, because it must, if strictly taken, refer to Israel's offering, for the covenant was kekuromenen (confirmed), i.e., some forty years after the arrival in Canaan; and the term here "begat to him in Egypt" implies, it would seem, it was one (i.e., Levi himself) who had come down, so that it might have been otherwise. Jacob was one hundred and thirty on coming into Egypt; Gen. 47: 9. Joseph was thirty when he stood before Pharaoh. Jacob came down nine years (seven of plenty, two of famine) afterwards. Joseph was about seven when he arrived in Canaan, seventeen when he was sold. Thus Jacob was 10 + 13 + 9 years from his arrival from Padan to his going down to Egypt, i.e., thirty years, i.e., ninety-eight when he left Padan, and about seventy-eight when he went there; he had remained some thirty-eight after Esau's marriage. It is remarkable these late marriages of the first Patriarchs - Isaac was forty and had no child till he was sixty, Abraham none of promise till he was an hundred. Now Judah was about fifteen when he married and had children then. The moment of transition was the end of Jacob's life; he goes down, sixty-six souls of his family. They were to be as heavenly strangers till then, now to multiply for the earth; they could hardly have been had they so multiplied, they must have settled somewhere as Esau. Yet while at ease and princes, they were yet but a few of them and they strangers in the land, and when oppressed and ill-treated they multiplied and grew. In these were God's ways.

104 Numbers 28

- 2. Query as to this, "for my sacrifices made by fire," and compare Leviticus 3.

- 11. It is no doubt here l'ishshay (for my offerings by fire); but "and" is put in. "Bread" here is "food," there lekhem (food, bread); it may not exclude the min'khah (meal-offering), but the main object is the slain victim. See also Leviticus 21: 6.

Numbers 32

- 19. Both "yonder side" and "this side," are meever (beyond, from beyond).

Numbers 33

As regards this chapter and Deuteronomy 10, the supposed difficulty is the proof, whatever we judge of the position of Deuteronomy 10, that the writer wrote from a knowledge of facts which hindered his supposing any liability to have his account attacked by difficulties which arose from ignorance - the best proof of real competency and integrity.

First I remark that, after two years, arriving at the mount of the Amorites, they failed in going up and compassed mount Seir many days, thirty-seven years; they went backwards and forwards in this neighbourhood. Now we have three journeys backward and forward from Moseroth or Mosera to the Red Sea - Ezion-gaber point, when at length they turned round to go northward by the south of Seir - and from the Red Sea to Mosera.

105  - 31, etc., they go from Moseroth by Bene-jaakan, Horhagidgad to Ezion-gaber. Thence they go to mount Hor, and Aaron dies. It was in that country that Arad attacked them; his destruction is related between Aaron's death in mount Hor and their journey back again to the Red Sea. So that we have the journey from Moseroth to Ezion-gaber by Benejaakan and Gudgodah or Hor-hagidgad, from Ezion-gaber back to Hor, and, in chapter 21, back from Hor to Ezion-gaber before they turned round to go northward the other side of Edom to Moab.

Mount Hor is a district in the western edge of Edom, for the Israelites "pitched in mount Hor in the edge of Edom" before they turned Edom to go northward; but we have, in compassing Edom, a journey from Mosera to Ezion-gaber, from Ezion-gaber to Hor (the same side of mount Hor - more or less on the same identical route) and from Hor to Eziongaber. Now the first time they pass from Mosera by Benejaakan and Hor-hagidgad, i.e., a part of Hor designated by Gilgal. They returned on their steps to Hor by Kadesh. In Deuteronomy we find them going in the inverse direction, as might be expected on their return going from Bene-jaakan to Moseroth, which thus proves the general course of their journeys must have been towards Hor, for on the return journey we know they were going there at the time Aaron died, so that Moseroth is an encampment in the district and neighbourhood of Hor; from the encampment he went up into the mountain itself to die.

Then in Deuteronomy 10: 7, they return, as we have seen they certainly did, by Gudgodah and Jotbatha, which, according to verses 32, 33 of our chapter, is on the road from Mosera to Ezion-gaber, thus: - (see Map overleaf ).[See 42_n&c2a.png] GRAPHIC

The left line through the dots, verses 30-35; the middle line as in verses 36, 37, and Deuteronomy 10. Aaron dies in Mosera in mount Hor where Israel pitched, and would have passed on through Edom but could not; then comes the right hand line. They come back to the Red Sea (chap. 21), pass up the other side of Edom, and cross the Jordan beyond the Dead Sea; now chapter 21 connects itself with chapter 33, compare chapter 21: 10 and chapter 33: 43.

So that it is a great confirmation of the accuracy of the account, and only shows that Mosera is in the district of Hor, and that it was from this station Aaron went up to die. We have the three journeys positively stated, yet no one would have thought in reading, the two verses alone gave the two journeys, and that they returned on their steps, i.e., from Bene-jaakan to Moseroth, and then back by Gudgodah to Jotbatha. Yet the full accounts of Numbers prove they did, and the places in Deuteronomy are found exactly in the order of going and returning. We have positively in Numbers Mosera to Ezion-gaber, Ezion-gaber to Hor (chap. 33), Hor to the Red Sea, i.e. Ezion-gaber, and this by the stations which in Deuteronomy are mentioned, one in the order going to Mosera, and the two others on leaving Mosera in the order coming from towards Ezion-gaber, which we know to have been from Hor where Aaron died.

107  - 4, 5. Two solutions have occurred to me, each side being 2,000 cubits; but that allows nothing for the size of the city thus: - [See 42_n&c2b.png] GRAPHIC

The other, which I suppose must be the meaning, is verse 4, the pomoerium,* and verse 5 the fields round. In verse 5, the pomoerium is reckoned to the city itself, hence not said from the wall; it was merely mikhutz la-ir (outside the city). The only question would be, if the whole would be only 2,000 cubits, but then there is no mention of the second 1,000 by itself.

{*Pomoerion or pomoerium, a space void of buildings within and without the wall of the city.}

The Mystery

<42013E> 108

We may, I suppose, put aside some passages where this word occurs, as furnishing the explanation in themselves, and giving its application to something special.

1 CORINTHIANS 15: 51

"Behold I shew you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." This may have place at the summing up and accomplishment of the mystery of Christ, but it is a special mystery revealed; so 1 Corinthians 4: 1, "Let a man so account of us as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God." So Babylon is called "Mystery"; and the "mystery of iniquity," though it has its connection with the mystery in way of contrast, evidently is another thing apart.

1 CORINTHIANS 2: 6, 7

There is nothing very precise here - it is the character rather of his testimony, and the wisdom which he spake; it was not the public, common-place wisdom wrought out of man's wit, but the wisdom of God in mystery - things which never would have been known but for God's communicating them, and which were of His counsels in Christ, hidden, while His government even was of this age, for a time but revealed by the Holy Ghost to those who are based upon the risen Man, whom God has made the Centre of His counsels and of the mystery. It is this wisdom of this place, these counsels of God before the worlds for our glory, known therefore only by revelation and by the Spirit, and this is what he goes on to speak of to the end of the chapter. Here then "mystery" is not the subject of the revelation, but the character of the wisdom which the Apostle by the Spirit spake.

ROMANS 11: 25

We may also put this aside - it is the special mystery, ancillary to the prosecution of the great mystery, of setting aside Israel as blinded for a time, "in part," until the fulness of the Gentiles was come in. This was a peculiar plan of God, which was not exactly the Church nor the kingdom, but a temporary displacement of the earthly part, not its establishment under the new covenant, nor Messiah, but the setting aside of Israel in part, under blindness, until the fulness of the Gentiles should be come in. Then this preparatory thing being accomplished, the blessing of Israel, as such, would take its course according to the enlarged scope of the counsels of God, which embraced the heavens also. It was a subordinate special mystery, for naturally Israel would have been continued placed under the new covenant, and the Gentiles blessed with God's people; but all this is for the moment set aside, that the Gentiles, as a special thing, according to the counsels of God, to whom all His counsels are known from the foundations of the world, may come in. This then also is a special mystery, though serving in its place to the development of the great mystery of God's will in result.

109 ROMANS 16: 25

We have here the mystery without being told in what it consists, "The preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of (the) mystery, as to which silence was kept in all ages" (in the times of the ages) "but now manifested, and by prophetical Scriptures according to the commandment of the eternal God of ages, made known for the obedience of faith to all the Gentiles; the only wise God through Jesus Christ to whom be glory for the ages. Amen."

Here however we have much, as suits the Epistle to the Romans in which is revealed that "there is no difference, for that all have sinned," that Christ is set forth as the mercy-seat through faith in His blood, the righteousness of God being the only one for all, and upon all that believed, Jew and Greek, i.e., Christ risen - Object of faith and Power of life in resurrection, which was in effect the basis of the mystery. Its result was not stated here, i.e., revealed rather than preached; we have here what is preached as the basis of hope to bring in souls into that which was revealed. Further, we have seen in this epistle a special mystery subordinate and ancillary to this, that is that blindness in part is happened to Israel till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; indeed this was, in a sense, necessary to it - impossible to preach no difference through a risen Christ while the Jews maintained their privileges. The Gentiles brought to light by a risen Saviour - sufficient Object between them and God, without the intervention of the Jews - such is the face of the mystery presented here, and proclaimed to the Gentiles for the obedience of faith. No difference is proclaimed; the unity of the Body is not yet brought out, but we have creation groaning till the manifestation of the sons of God, the joint-heirs of Christ who suffer with Him and will be glorified together. See chapter 1: 16, 17, also verses 2, 3, 4, 5; compare also Acts 15: 7-19.

110 EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS

These still remain and here we have the substance and sum of the mystery.

EPHESIANS 1: 7 - 12

God has made the riches of His grace abound towards us in all wisdom and understanding, "having made known to us the mystery of his will according to his own good pleasure, which he purposed in himself, for the administration of the fulness of times, to head up all things in Christ, those in the heavens and those upon the earth, in him in whom we also have received [our] inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory, who have pre-trusted in Christ."

Here we have evidently the mystery in its general scope according to the counsels of God, that is, to gather together and head up in one all things in Christ, in heaven and in earth, for the administration of the fulness of times; they also among the Jews who had believed anticipatively in Him, and the Gentiles also, being to the praise of the glory of His grace as taking inheritance with Him, and in the meanwhile sealed with the Holy Ghost until the redemption of the purchased possession.

111 EPHESIANS 3: 3, 4, 9

Here we learn that the mystery was made known to him by revelation. It is the mystery of Christ (a Messiah accomplishing the earthly promises of God is no mystery) that was committed to Paul, to make known what was the dispensation of the mystery, hidden during the ages in God, Creator of all things, that thus by the Church might be made known to principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of God, for it was a new thing. Here we have then added that the preaching of the fulness of Christ, and making known the dispensation of this mystery, brought the Church into the position of testimony of the variousness of God's wisdom to the heavenlies.

In Ephesians 5: 32, "This mystery is great, but I speak as to Christ and the Church." Here we have a special part only, that is the union of the Church with Christ, as of His body, His bones and His flesh, which set the Church in its own special and wonderful place when all was headed up in Christ in heaven and earth. It is a special mystery to itself.

EPHESIANS 6: 19

This merely takes up in general the idea of that which was thus specially revealed - the mystery of the Gospel. It was not the good news of evident import, as of old - the accomplishment of promises which belonged to the aion or aionoi of this world, but the mystery which none of its princes knew, or they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

COLOSSIANS 1: 26, 27

In Colossians, after naming Christ as the Image of the invisible God - the headship of creation - the headship of the Church - the reconciliation of all things - the present reconciliation of the Church - comes the ministry of the Gospel to every creature under heaven, and then the ministry of the Church to fulfil the word of God gives i.e., all its fulness, to wit, the mystery hidden from ages and generations, but now manifested to His saints, to whom God has willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you the hope of glory. Here we have another face of this revelation, unknown through the ages - suited to the subject of the Colossians, the bringing in Christ Himself as the fulness, so that they had no need of Judaizing; thus it is "among the Gentiles," Christ is in them the hope of glory. It was the practical realisation of the unity of the Church with Christ, not in the height of its privilege, but in its preservative power, still being really the mystery, i.e., no Messiah accomplishing in person the age, but a Christ among the Gentiles, source and power of hope. This then gives the present power of the mystery here below.

112 COLOSSIANS 2: 2

We have here the mystery of God in which are hid all the treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge - this in order that they should not be going to seek fantastic notions elsewhere, evidently implying both the whole extent of God's counsels, long time hidden, and the position and interest of the Church in them by its unity with Christ, centre of all these counsels.

COLOSSIANS 4: 3

The Apostle here speaks of the mystery of Christ, for which he was in bonds. In general this is the same Gospel of a Christ for the Gentiles according to that which was now revealed, for the first time, of God and formed in part of conscious knowledge, and which was specially entrusted to Paul, that he might make it manifest as he ought to speak. These passages give the just idea of the mystery, that is Romans 16, Ephesians and Colossians, alluded to in 1 Corinthians 2: 7.

There is yet another passage which bears on the same subject, though it treats it in another way, it is:

1 TIMOTHY 3: 14-16

The Apostle speaks of Timothy's conversation in the house of God, the pillar and ground of the truth. The Church is thus in the world, the sustainer of truth, and what is this? The mystery of piety or godliness. And this is what Christ was among the Gentiles - Object of Angels' gaze - believed on in the world, and received up into heaven; in virtue of all which the Church existed. She sustained, as united to Christ and thus the centre and body of the mystery in the world, the knowledge of all that He was to whom she was united. God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of Angels - thus incarnate and owned - preached among the Gentiles (not again a Messiah present among the Jews), believed on (not seen) in the world, received up into glory - thus the necessary Centre of all things - so by counsel also in the accomplishment of this ordained glory which identified itself with that inherent, which found itself, in Him by whom and for whom all was created. The Judaizing Gnostics are again set in contrast by the Apostle. This, I think, quite shows and confirms the force of the expression.

113 REVELATION 10: 7

This passage remains; here there is more apparent difficulty, and that partly from the word musterion. The word etelesthe seems always to mean something brought up to its completeness, hence often necessarily the end of a thing, because, if I am accomplishing a task, finishing it is arriving at the completeness of the task, but if it is something in progress, or which develops itself, then it is its full existence which finishes, if you will, the development. And this word musterion carries its own dissolution, because the moment the subject of it is brought to pass, it ceases to be a musterion - when labours are complete, one ceases to labour; when the work is complete it exists in its perfection - thus teleo may mean "beginning to exist" or "ceasing," because in either case it is the completing of something. But here taking the words chronos ouketi estai (time shall be no longer) I think we must take etelesthe musterion, not as if the subject matter of the mystery had ceased to exist, but that the mystery is accomplished and ceased to be an unaccomplished mystery. It was no longer a mystery spoken of, and only circumstances working out to that which was contained in the mystery as a revelation; this would now take place and be accomplished. This gives its usual sense to mystery, but supposes that God, having only revealed certain things in hope - Christ in us, the hope of glory - His power in the proper exercise of government, so that evil has not been allowed to rise, has not been exercised.

There is also in 1 Timothy 3: 9, the general expression "holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience."

114 It is a striking expression of the state of things in which we are that Christ, not simply works miracles and sets aside the power of Satan wherever he is, but gives power to His disciples to do it - yet John Baptist is put to death and it is not hindered. And He would not do any mighty work in "His own country"; Mark 6.

Note the absoluteness of Christ's gathering out of the world, and being a separative and positive Centre, is shown in this, that He received even those who were with John Baptist. The whole passage has a character of unworldliness which it is well to note in the elements already given. He gathers round Himself - God Himself - as a new gathering to Himself out of a world which is thus judged and left as evil, a way wholly new and divine through it, following Christ (none in and of it), and heaven opened here on Christ, but to us now through the rent veil. All is taking (not the body yet) out of earth and associating it with God on a new footing with Christ and with heaven through the rent veil - oh! what a blessing.

Deuteronomy

J. N. Darby.

<42014E> 115

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

I cannot but see the book of Deuteronomy as standing on quite a different ground in the purpose of God than the four books. It is more than questionable if a single ordinance of these books, after their first establishment, was perfectly fulfilled in the wilderness - their children were not circumcised.

It is an elaborate system formed after the pattern shown in the Mount, and as to events "they happened unto them for types, and are written for our admonition." It is an immense typical system, the facts historically true, but selected and given with ulterior and spiritual intention, often unknown to the author. Where, as in Deuteronomy, there are instructions for the practical living state of things in the land, and where this order was in no way carried out, the general provision is for the state of Judges. They are referred to, and the case is put of their having a king, but it is a practical state of things prophetically seen from the time of going over Jordan till the final restoration of Israel - the secret things. The notion of its subsequent composition is absurd - if the Pentateuch existed, no one would have connected another contradictory system; both being composed together subsequently is equally absurd. But the abstract typical system, and the directions for an actual disordered state of things, pursuing the great elements and introducing moral principles of a more general character, are perfectly intelligible. Had Moses, instead of being inspired, made both as an arranged composition, it would have been equally difficult. It is true inspiration, which is the key of it all. It is, in the main, a general direction for order in the country, and provision for an unformally ordered state. The types, when there are any, as in chapter 16, are of a more general spiritual bearing The four books are a systematically ordered system, in many respects indeed, only fitted for the wilderness. Tabernacles was not, and that was never regularly kept.

The Lord quotes from Deuteronomy in His temptations. The moral motives for obedience are chiefly there.

In this book, holiness, grace and communion are much more remarkable; and note also the people are entirely anew placed in covenant with the Lord, see chapters 26: 17, 18, and 27: 9, 10. And remark here the new form of the dictation of this covenant; it anticipatively supposes them to be in possession of the land, and in worship and in joy before the Lord, and Moses and the priests the Levites. He who mediates, as revealer, the blessing, and they who minister its maintenance by a sacrifice and communication of worship, place them as "this day become the Lord's people," and therefore insist on keeping the commandments commanded. This is altogether a new covenant from Sinai, as it is said "the covenants," see also chapter 29: 1. It is a new base; it is not now "if ye shall be," but "avouched to be" - worshipping in joy, supposed in the Land, "This day ye are become," "Thou shalt therefore keep." Yet as the endurance, quod nota, of the blessing rests on the perseverance of the people in fidelity, it fails in result, though there be room for patience, as well as if it were based on the "If ye will obey, ye shall be."

116 Deuteronomy 1

- 1. b'e-ver (on this side); in Numbers 32: 19, it is me-e-ver (beyond, on yonder side, on this side).

Deuteronomy 2

- 10-12. These three verses are a parenthesis and should be so marked.

- 10-12 and 20-23, are both of them evidently parenthetical. "The children of Lot for a possession" . . . "now rise up" . . . "unto the children of Lot for a possession" . . . "rise ye up, take your journey." These accounts of the country are graphic notices of great value, not only historically (the surest we have) but of God's ways and men's in peopling the earth, violence, war, etc. The only question is as to "as Israel did unto the land of their possession." To say that "go in and possess the land" proves it means only Canaan west of Jordan is folly; whatever was their possession, they entered into it on dispossessing the inhabitants. Nor is there the least difficulty in supposing Moses wrote it. He had partly entered into possession by casting out the Amorites; and what is stated is the way Israel entered in, not the history of an event. Hence Moses could say, in an Aorist sense, Israel entered in in the same way, but from the way it comes in I am strongly disposed to consider it as added, because we have an exactly analogous passage, I may say word for word without this addition, "destroyed them and dwelt in their stead," only that in verse 22, we have "even unto this day." This may be Moses, as it had long taken place. It is to be noted that the Horims are twice spoken of, verses 12 and 22. My impression is the passages are a divine prophetic addition. I do not think it is simply to encourage the Israelites, though it would do this in showing the ways of God - "the Lord destroyed them." But it showed important history - these giant races, and their pride, and removings, and destructions when God so willed.

117 The early history of man, found only with certainty in Scripture, is of much importance in judging of what short-lived man is. The characters of men of God may be given by their own mouth by inspiration. Paul does so speak of himself, only when forced to do it, largely; in the more familiar style of the New Testament says they made him a fool in speaking so much of himself. The question is, if it be inspired we should lose immensely if we had not these passages, and God has put them in for our instruction, without consulting the incompetent judgment of man happily for us. A part of the whole picture of truth would be wanting if this were not here.

- 13. "Said I" is wrong, and should be omitted.

Deuteronomy 3

- 20. b'e-ver; clearly "beyond"; see also verse 25 and chapter 4: 46, 47, 49; also chap. 11: 30.

Deuteronomy 4

- 34. How "war"? see Exodus 15.

118 Deuteronomy 5

- 15. This is motive, not the thing celebrated.

- 28, 29. It is not the intention or desire to obey which was presumptuous - that was all right, and there is no allusion to what was said in Exodus, which was after all this. God had spoken out of the midst of the fire, and then Moses went up. The presumptuous point was taking all the blessings and covenant on the specific ground of "If ye will obey my voice, ye shall be." They might have said "We fear to have all our blessings depend on our own obedience, for fear we lose them." In the covenant of Sinai, the being God's people, and getting the blessing was "if"; and, I repeat, it is the whole point, when, after the terror of God's appearing, they said "We will obey" - it was a natural effect of terror, and a right intention. But they begged to hear no more, and no covenant was based on it - on Moses going up and bringing the "if" tranquilly down, they tranquilly undertook it as the base of blessing. Bound to obey they were - intention to obey was right - but a covenant of blessing on that condition was the grossest ignorance of self and was presumptuous.

The reason why God did all this was to teach men that, on this ground, no flesh could be justified. Nothing could be more important. The promise to Abraham had not raised any question of righteousness - it was a simple promise on God's part, certain to be fulfilled. But here the question of righteousness was raised as it ought to be and must be, and first on man's part for God, according to what was rightly required of man; when that point was cleared, and flesh proved what it is, then the righteousness of God was revealed through the promised Seed. We should not have had half Romans and all Galatians but for this.

As to delusion in the people, clearly there was, as the golden calf proved. The law was never given to man, as such, as God's way of blessing, but to a peculiar people called to Himself, and brought to Himself, to have flesh tested. It was given as exacting obedience as the prior and indispensable condition of life and joy. It was positively "If ye obey, ye shall" . . . "Do this and live." To Abraham, further, it was unconditioned promise, and the uncircumcised was cut off from blessing which remained to others - at the law the covenant was absolutely based on the condition of man's obedience as its first principle.

Continual access to God did not lay open to them - individual faith in promise might go to God, but the law, tabernacle and all said, "Death if ye come near." God did not come out - man could not go in. In Christ God did come out, and, blessed be God, Man is gone in; the Holy Ghost signified this by the veil - "We have boldness to enter into the holiest, by a new and living way, consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh," and we draw nigh. And even in the sacrifices, they were in contrast with Christ, a remembrance of sins still there - now "perfected for ever," never to be remembered.

119 Deuteronomy 7

In this chapter we have the consecration of the people to God.

Not to lose sight of it, I mark that the infidel argument from this chapter and Ezra 9: 11 is wholly without force, and, as usual, superficial. The same language as that of this chapter is found in Exodus 34: 12-17. The use of the word "prophets" proves nothing at all - Abraham was a prophet; and Ezra in this verse speaks of their then going into the land when the prophet spoke, and so said "by the prophet speaking." All the objections are nonsense and worse.

Deuteronomy 8

Here we have the discipline and exercise in the way.

Deuteronomy 9

Note here, the strength of the Lord with them in conflict with power greater than their own, but the history of the rebellion of their heart.

- 15-24. This goes by itself - a kind of parenthesis. Verse 25 takes it up from verse 14; verse 15 takes up Exodus 32: 15, adding other cases of rebellion. There is a vast deal more as to Moses with God at the door of the tabernacle in Exodus, and above chapter 32: 31.

- 18. This is the second time, speaking simply historically, in reasoning with them about their sins; it alludes directly to Exodus 34: 28.

120  - 25. I think that here, "because the Lord said he would destroy you," leads him back to the first time, with which he then goes on.

Deuteronomy 10

- 1-9. I take these verses to be all a parenthesis, and verse 10 to connect directly with chapter 9: 29, showing that after the apostasy of Israel, the law (but now in the ark), the priesthood, and a land of rivers of waters, and levitical service with no inheritance but the Lord, was set up a system of patient grace in Israel. The death of Aaron showed, through Eleazar taking his place, that the priesthood continued, as did the service of Levi in the land which is the subject of this book, not merely in the wilderness in which all this was set up.

- 1-11, takes up the standing of the restored people. The basis of it all is laid in Exodus 34: 1-9, which stands by itself, passing on (verse 28) to Moses, with the people - a mediatorial condition and government, see verse 27.

- 6, 7. Compare Numbers 33: 37, 38. There is no difficulty here.

Deuteronomy 12

The subject here is the one place of resort where Jehovah's name was. "Ye shall not do so" refers to this, "ye shall not have high places." They might eat flesh anywhere, clean or unclean, only consecrated things were to be eaten where Jehovah had placed His name. Who was to eat it is not in question I think here at all, only the Levite was not to be forgotten. It would apply to the priests as others; whatever of this kind was to be eaten, and whoever was to eat it, it was to be eaten there. Priests are swamped in the whole mass of Israel.

- 5, 6, 7, 16-20, see also chapter 14: 22-27, the people are to eat the tithes and firstlings; whereas in Numbers 18: 17, they are specially the priest's as the tithes were the Levites'; also the tithe is at the end of three years, see chapters 14: 28 and 36: 12, 13. In chapter 14: 72, the tithe seems to be yearly, see also Numbers 18: 21.

121  - 5-14. One thing is quite clear, that the leading thought is "the one place" to which they were to go; for things are spoken of, of which no man ate anything.

- 17, 18. But here there is more difficulty, for here it is they are not to eat within their gates; still we find again this point of the place prominent, and the eating spoken of vaguely - they might eat of any (clean) beast, only pouring the blood on the ground. But what belonged to God, sacrifices, vows, etc. (verse 26), they were to take to the place where Jehovah's name was; and then it was left to apply the eating to what it legally applied to.

- 27. They were to offer their burnt offerings, the flesh and the blood, on the altar of Jehovah, and the blood of the sacrifices was to be poured out on the altar of Jehovah their God, and they would eat the flesh. Now this referred strictly, according to the law, only to the peace-offerings - of sin and trespass-offerings the priests ate, and parts of the peace-offerings, and that is recognised in this book. But the point is offering was to be made here, in what referred to divine worship, to God, not to what the soul lusted after - here he might eat in communion with the altar, with God, but here only. Sacrificial eating was at the chosen place only. Hence what the soul lusted after, the unclean could eat of (verse 22). It is to be remarked that there was no payment of tithes by the people to the priests, nor at Jerusalem - they paid tithes of all to the Levites, then the tithe of their tithes to the priests, and then ate their tithes at home as if they were the, now, sanctified fruit of their fields. With regard to Numbers 18: 24-32, it is possible this may have dropped through disorder and carelessness; but the carrying up tithes to Jerusalem was a distinct thing. All nations have god-festivals, and Israel was to have theirs in connection with Jehovah according to the rudiments of the world.

As regards our chapter, it would thus, as noticed, offer no difficulty - offerings were carried up and they ate the part which was to be eaten according to the law; nor does chapter 14: 22, 23, etc. offer any difficulty as to this distinct or second tithe - they ate it before the Lord, or took up money and bought what they liked. Only firstlings, first-fruits, and all vows, heave- and wave-offerings remain, see Numbers 5 and 18; these all belong to the priest. These reh-sheeth (first-fruits), so far as males went, some think they were all other firstlings except the males (Rosenmuller), or firstlings generally, not the priest's. But it is wrong as to the priests having the worshippers to eat with them; some, only the clean males of their house could eat, others all the family. But they must be a second set of firstlings as there was a second set of tithes, which there clearly was, see Tobit 1: 1, where the second tithes are very distinctly brought forward, and the third, so that this was a known ordinance in Israel. As regards the firstlings; the first-fruits were given to the priests, so in chapter 18. Tobit speaks only of the second tithes, but these or their worth he spent in feasting in Jerusalem every year. We must leave, I suppose, the directions of Numbers, etc., where they are; they are not the main object of Deuteronomy, but the people's going up with their festal joy to Jerusalem to connect it with Jehovah, and the firstlings and the like to be such as they might otherwise have eaten at home, but, according to Deuteronomy, were to go to Jerusalem with.

122 The first males, if the first born, would remain to the priests. The immediate object was to identify all their common joy with Jehovah by the place. Next, the character of worship, and all these services and directions, is common enjoyment of the blessings promised - not approach to God in the holiest. As to this, see Deuteronomy 16 and 26, and Leviticus 16.

Deuteronomy 14

- 1. Compare with this Galatians 3 and Matthew 5.

Deuteronomy 16

- 9-12. The day of Pentecost was evidently thus - whatever day the first handful could be had, it was offered on the day after the Sabbath (Sunday); thence to the seventh Sabbath was forty-nine, and then on the fiftieth (Sunday) Pentecost was celebrated. In itself it had no connection with the previous feast of unleavened bread - historically it was so, but they were distinct ordinances. See also Leviticus 23: 15, 16.

123 Deuteronomy 26

The main points are noticed in the Synopsis, but I note the whole here as important. The worship is characterised by the open declaration, and founded in its nature and character of the present possession of and standing in the blessing which grace and redemption had brought the people into, and this it is I note as important. They are in the land, as we "in Christ" in heavenly places, "blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ," and we come with the joy, thanksgiving and praise, the worship that is, the first-fruits of that. It is the rising up by the Spirit of the return and effect of being in and enjoying the fulness of God's blessing. Then it is in the place where God is fully revealed, and where He dwells - the place in which He has put His name, which He has chosen to this end. He gathers the people, and so the soul with its first-fruits - the first-fruits of its privileged blessings - into the place which He has chosen to dwell in, and where He fully reveals Himself; we know where and the way. For us it is the Father's house, "My Father and your Father, my God and your God." Then not as without, hoping to get it, but as within, in the enjoyment of all spiritual blessings, as that in which we are, we offer our first-fruits to God. What we were surely comes in and greatly enhances the blessing, as redemption necessarily does, and such a redemption! But it enhances it, not alters or diminishes it, "A Syrian ready to perish was" - not "is." The first principle is the present full enjoyment of the blessing itself, and that is sufficient - characterises it - only we do remember how grace has given us such a place.

Next, thanksgiving to the Giver goes before enjoyment of the gift; so ever.

Then, we rejoice in every good thing.

Next, there is not only blessing, but an estimate of what heaven - the Land - is, as God estimates it in itself, not merely its fruits for us, but what is the glory of all lands - what makes it precious; this is a blessed privilege.

Then grace flows out, the necessary effect of enjoying the love of God.

Note too, that while the personal consciousness of being in the place of blessing is the first and personal feeling, yet in the worship the whole people of God are taken in verse 9, "He hath brought us"; so, ever the Holy Ghost says "loved us, washed us, saved us"; though I know it for myself and say "we," yet, as often noted, I comprehend "with all saints."

124 Then comes obedience, "I have not transgressed . . . have not forgotten"; the last a special test of the spirit of obedience. Then diligent care to avoid defilement or turning anything away from God to self - purity and consecration to God.

Then blessing is prayed for on the whole people of God and on the land; i.e., as for us, as belonging to heaven itself, and the sense of its nature and excellency is repeated. In all, in and by this worship, and all brought out in it, we belong to God, and have God as our God.

Deuteronomy 27

Here note, on the one hand the altar is put on the mount of cursing, on the other it is not here a threatening of excision of the body, but a malediction on the individual who did not observe what was contained in the law; so that they are supposed in possession, but evidently on untenable ground. The public dealings of God with the nation in His right of government and righteous government are in the chapters which follow.

Deuteronomy 27, 28

Remark how not only here the curses alone, not the blessings, are recited (as alluded to surely in Galatians 3), but in chapter 28, where the governmental dealings are unfolded, how largely, though in a manner characteristically correspondent, the curses are developed and insisted on compared to the blessings. This stamps necessarily a peculiar character on the relationship between God and the people. It gives to us, accustomed to perfect and unwearied love, a somewhat painful feeling, not as to the rightness of it, but as to being in such a relationship. It is just what ought to be under law, indeed blessing must be always simpler, for the blessing itself, the favour is the great thing, and on a hard state of mind more positive and lower motives must (i.e., may) be brought to bear, but it makes us see what the position of law for man's heart is.

125 Deuteronomy 29

- 21-23. Note the way in which the Lord passes from the individual, separated out of the tribes of Israel, to the whole land as a natural consequence which follows certainly; compare the use of it in Hebrews.

Deuteronomy 31

There is much encouragement and comfort that the exhortation and charge to Joshua is given in the same time as the prophetic song which announces the failure of the people. Our present work and duty, whatever it may be in the Church, hangs from the charge, and is sustained by it, whatever we may know of the results as regards man's unfaithfulness. Note this well.

- 25-30, compare Acts 20: 17, 29, and following verses. The analogy is very remarkable.

Deuteronomy 32

The connection of this chapter with Exodus 6, already noticed elsewhere, is exceedingly striking, as showing the place that these prophetic revelations hold. At the end here, they are returned and stand in the house celebrating Jehovah who has blessed. That is the place of these Psalms.

- 8, He set the bonds of the "peoples" not "people."

As regards the development of principle in the Scripture history of the world; first, Innocence which precedes the ways of God, then man left to himself in sin (though not without testimony), but without governmental restraint. Then the principle of government in man's hand in Noah. After this, the sources of blessing and governmental interference being by man attributed to, and so morally fallen into the hands of the enemy, the separation of Abraham takes place by the revelation of the glory of the true God, and election, calling, promise, and we may add faith, are brought out fully to light as public principles of dealing, for without doubt God has acted on them ever since the fall. Then the establishment of a people, by redemption and deliverance, under the law and immediate government of God are introduced - a people of God in the world. Within this come priesthood, prophecy, and subsequently royalty.

126 After this, the government of the world trusted to man - one man as head of empire and sovereign authority in the world - replacing a people in relationship with God, centre of other nations, who ought to have owned Him. After the rejection of Christ, who came under this state of things, the government is left externally unchanged, only the Jews are set aside; various historical changes take place, but the age remains unclosed, and the Church is called out for heaven, and then, God resuming His dealings with Jews and Gentiles as guilty of rejecting Christ as Head of all, and in Him all is substantially resumed. The Law - a people by redemption - Israel, centre of nations - universal dominion in Man - royalty in Israel - and the results of calling, election and promise; the Church being in its own place apart, i.e., associated with Christ. Babel may be noticed, by the way, as introducing the formation of nations, of which Israel was to be the centre.

The book of Deuteronomy then contains the terms of the responsible possession of the land with Jehovah there, so that their enjoyment of it should be inseparably connected with Him where He placed His name. Chapter 26 gives the expression of this and closes the book. It does not go beyond Jacob and redemption out of the ruin he had got into by going down into Egypt, and enjoyment of the blessings brought into by it. This is not approaching God, nor sure promises given to Abraham, etc.; the latter are not the subject of the book, for he was a stranger and a pilgrim, and the former gave rise to there being nothing, save a few circumstances to secure their and the people's enjoyment, about priestly action. Chapter 16 gives another character, God's work by which He gathers round Himself, and the condition of the people so gathered around Himself. Every male was to come to the place where He had put His name.

The three feasts are well-known, prefiguring the work of the deliverance of the soul based on Christ's blood, its state in connection with it - the gift of the Holy Ghost, so that there is a free-will offering, and the common joy of grace, yet warning - and the full enjoyment as no longer pilgrims but blessed in everything. The wilderness is not Deuteronomy. There it is properly typical, and the question was approach to God Himself in the holiest; hence it is heavenly, though the heavens were not yet opened, the veil unrent, and no one able to go in. Hence in this book there is no eighth day to the feast of tabernacles, nor are the sacrifices before as in Leviticus, and still more Numbers, but gathering round Jehovah and the spiritual state connected with that which did it.

127 L'amour de Christ est un amour qui est au dessus de toutes nos misères, mais qui s'adapte a toutes nos misères, et qui n'est froissé ni refroidi par aucune de ces misères.

The love of Christ is a love which is above all our wretchednesses, but which adapts itself to all our wretchednesses, and which is not repelled nor chilled by any of these wretchednesses.

Le tombeau dans lequel nos péchés sont ensevelis est le monument de la grace éternelle de notre Dieu.

The tomb in which our sins are buried is the monument of the eternal favour of our God.

The Red Sea and Jordan

<42015E> 128

It is clear that the Red Sea is more the positive work of God who delivers, and the Jordan more that in us which realises it, as associated with Christ. We are "begotten again to a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" - I am set free and brought to God - he that had the power of death is destroyed - I am brought to God. Christ having died and risen again, death and judgment were there, but Christ has gone through them, and I am free and with God; death and judgment ruin those not in Christ.

But I have died with Christ in Jordan. It is a real work in me in the power of the Holy Ghost, so that that flesh which does exist, and was tried and judged in the wilderness, as it is, is dead, as I am crucified with Christ, and we sit in heavenly places in Him, and war there. There is no circumcision in the wilderness; it is the first thing in Canaan, and strength there and the camp there. There are no hostile powers destroyed in Jordan, they are there to fight the other side - we being the Lord's host. The ark had dried the river - then Gilgal characterised it. "Through death he destroyed him that had the power of death and delivered them that were, all their lifetime, subject to bondage." It is ourselves in Canaan, and the ark is there, we with Christ in grace - the power in Him; death is not inflicted as judgment, but it is death to sin. God condemned sin in the flesh in Christ's death, but that is Red Sea work, but then He died to sin there, and we reckon ourselves dead to sin; but not in Jordan deliverance through Christ's death, where death and judgment were, but death in us, and with Him, as an end of flesh - not deliverance from and by, but with and to - then practised and realised in Gilgal, not known as deliverance once for all.

Though we start from death and resurrection, I do not think that Colossians takes us out of the wilderness; it is not however Hebrews truth, but a condition between. It takes up the Red Sea, but not for the wilderness, but in view of Canaan. The wilderness was no purpose of God (see Exodus 3: 8 and chap. 15) but His ways. In Colossians the hope is laid up for us in heaven. When we are said to be risen, it is only the administration of Christ's resurrection in baptism (not so in Ephesians); it is "we are buried with him in baptism, wherein also we are risen with Him through faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead." It is only, too, on our going down into death as theretofore alive in sins, which is not in Ephesians, where we are dead in sins and created anew. Hence when he speaks of the Ephesian part (chap. 2: 13) he does not go on to resurrection. But then we must remark that in the Ephesians it is a distinct point, i.e., "quickening" is alike in Ephesians and Colossians, then, without any reference to baptism, resurrection and sitting in heavenly places of Jew and Gentile is stated. In Colossians, resurrection comes by itself, connected with baptism. Being "in Christ" is in all, Romans, Colossians* and Ephesians, except Galatians - there it is not.

{*In Colossians even "in Christ" has a more practical character, not place but standing, "Ye are complete in him"; otherwise it is wholly "Christ in us." In Galatians even Christ in us is "life," not "Christ in us."}

129 What is more remarkable is that, while Romans and Colossians have also Christ in us according to John 14, in Ephesians this is not found, save in the wish that He may dwell in our hearts by faith, which is quite another thing, and could not be applied to His being in us. It is clear Colossians is only a state on earth, but dead and risen with Christ and looking up to heaven. As heretofore remarked, we have not the Holy Ghost here, but life. The Colossians, too, is exclusively to Gentiles, not the union of both Jew and Gentile in one body, though the Church and Body be specifically named. Hence also state and condition, not relationship, is fully developed; not relationship either to the Father or to Christ. It is not the plan or counsel of God, but the state of the Colossians. Hence in Ephesians we have no "if"; in Colossians we have "if" in the first chapter - as they were on earth, the question remained. But it is not through the wilderness, but holding fast the hope, for the position is in chapter 1: 27; so verse 5, the condition is in verses 10-14. So Ephesians 1: 4 is counsel; Colossians 1: 22 is what is to be. So the result in Ephesians is the showing forth the exceeding riches of God's grace; in Colossians we have "a hope laid up in heaven." "Resurrection" in the Colossians is after burial to death (we had lived in sin); in Ephesians, it is when we were dead in sins. After this in Colossians we have no resurrection. "Quickening" makes the essential difference, resurrection and heavenly places in Christ the place. Had He taken man living on the earth, He could not have made them one, but dead in sins, Jew and Gentile were all alike.

130 Colossians looks back and blessedly too - forgiven all trespasses, but stops there; Ephesians forward - it is a new creation. In Colossians, renewed in knowledge, but there it is anakainoumenon, a wholly new thing really, and so eis epigeosin, for it partakes of the nature; in Ephesians, "after God created." In Colossians the believer is clearly in the wilderness, but we can have a new life, whose hope is elsewhere; in the wilderness, and by faith looking at the resurrection of Christ, we are begotten again to a living hope by Christ's resurrection; so Peter, so Colossians 2: 12 - we are not baptised in Jordan, but to Christ's death (the Red Sea) - our death is the end of the wilderness position, and the end of the wilderness death itself. But in Ephesians, this is looked at in the nature that belongs to the wilderness, or Egypt as it is - sinful flesh dead towards God, and, as to God, we begin in Jordan, or rather in what He does with us there when Christ is gone there for us. It begins with Christ, not as dying but raised from the dead, and so we dead in sins, found so, where He had come in grace (hence in virtue of the blood and the Red Sea) and quickened together with Him.

But Colossians goes farther than Peter; in Peter, Christ having suffered, we arm ourselves with the same mind, have faith in the Red Sea work, and so arm ourselves with the same mind, begotten again to a lively hope through His resurrection. That we have in Colossians but we have more; we were dead in sins and the uncircumcision of the flesh, and are quickened with Christ. But that goes no further here. It is life, Christ as our own life in the wilderness, and our hope and affections in heaven; dead with Him in baptism gives occasion to resurrection, not quickening when we were dead, i e., chapters 2: 20 and 3: 1, refer to chapter 2: 12, not to verse 13. It is life, and life in the power of Christ's resurrection to whose death we have been baptised, and by faith in the operation of God, are therein risen, so that our profession here is resurrection and risen life - we are not alive in the world, i.e., Egypt, Christ is our life but it is hidden; we are on earth. Hence it is Christ's appearing that is brought forward - the hidden life manifested, and here.

The link between Ephesians and Colossians is in "the truth as it is in Jesus," the having put off the old man and put on the new - difference no doubt, but still a link. Just as the Red Sea and Jordan have the same general thought, but one at the beginning of the wilderness, the other at the end - one, deliverance out of Egypt, the other, entrance into Canaan - one, smitten with the rod opens the way, and is judgment, the other, the ark in it and the way made when the priests' feet touch the water. It is the power of life in grace.

131 As regards figures, Ephesians, though it recognise the fact of sins and redemption, yet in its teaching sets us wholly in Canaan, as once dead and a new creation, and Christ Himself as so risen from the dead. All is in heaven. We have no wilderness, or man proved here. Man is looked at as non-existent morally for God, and no feeling there, and none to be awaked. The Red Sea as redemption and Jordan coalesce - indeed the Red Sea comes in by the bye, that is, though redemption through blood be fully recognised (chap. 1: 7), yet our sitting in heavenly places is the beginning of our history along with Christ. It is our state, and we begin from over Jordan, i.e., as out of it; or Israel is looked at as in a lost dead state in Egypt, and, as I have said, the Red Sea and Jordan coalesce, and we, as far as the type corresponds, are out of Jordan or death. Redemption is just noticed, but the purposes of God are before us, and that is in Canaan and with Christ or in Him now - the Red Sea and Jordan - Christ's death and resurrection, and especially Jordan (ours with Him), supposes we have to die, and of this there is nothing in Ephesians, being in heavenly places. In Colossians this is hope, and death to sin through Christ's death is brought in. Man lived in sin. A new creation is no part properly of the types; we may see where it comes in, but it stands by itself. Hence the calling in Ephesians is before the redemption, the inheritance after. Redemption supposes a people, object of God's favour, to redeem, though in Ephesians only forgiveness is spoken of. In one we are associated with Christ before God according to His nature, chapter 1: 3-6 (redemption); but having put us there, we are trusted with the knowledge of Christ's glory in purpose, and so made heirs with Him.

The calling is more sovereign grace, not government of what is; one, we in, the other all things under Christ. Only hence we inherit and reign with Him; of this the Holy Ghost is earnest, of our place the power, only in these earthen vessels.

Galatians and Romans I have spoken of elsewhere; 2 Corinthians has the doctrine of we in Christ and Christ in us. But in Colossians we have the administration of death to the old man and resurrection in faith of Christ's, i.e., here, and are quickened with Christ so as to have His life (here), and the hope of what is in heaven.

132 Another thing we may remark in the difference of Ephesians and Colossians is that Colossians being life is far more subjective, compare Ephesians 1: 15 and Colossians 1: 9 and following verses. In Ephesians it is more contrast with the old creation; compare, in the highest development of practice, Ephesians 4 and 5, with Colossians 3. Even in the highest subjective thought in the end of Ephesians 3 the apostle turns to what is around in glory, and we are filled to this fulness. Also it is power not life. It is not development of life but contrast - the new creation and power, and the old as it actually was. Even in Ephesians 3 it is power not life, as verses 16, 20. Chapter 4: 17, begins with contrast.

But I have said the Red Sea and Jordan coalesce. The desert constitutes the ways of God, seeing what man is, but Canaan was His purpose. Israel was brought to God at Sinai; nay, even at the Red Sea, and even in the song of Moses, from redemption (Exodus 15: 13) he passes to Palestine and enemies in verse 15, which is striking (so in chapters 3 and 6). But they are different; one is Christ's death and resurrection looked at as leading forth a redeemed people to God, not merely forgiveness but redemption - deliverance by Christ by redemption. It is the redemption and deliverance itself, "He hath begotten us again to a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." I am redeemed out of the condition I was in, and brought to God, so verse 13, 14, is hope assured. But I die in Jordan, though it be by the Ark (Christ's) going into it; I do not say "He has delivered me by death and resurrection," but "I have died and am risen with Him"; I do not say "I am redeemed by glory," but "I am not alive in the world." It is Christ's death, but it is mine - the twelve stones are there, as a memorial, where the ark was, and they are where it came out, brought from the depths of Jordan. Then and then only is the reproach of Egypt - our captivity to flesh - rolled away, not in the desert; there the flesh is practically detected when we are delivered, "to know what was in thine heart." But at Gilgal, after I recognise myself dead, there is true circumcision of heart, the circumcision of Christ; then the Passover can be eaten - Christ's death looked at from God's side, in remembrance, with no blood on doorposts to secure from still threatening judgments, but all this owned much more deeply, because free and in Canaan. Then, too, we feed on the old corn of the land - a heavenly Christ. None of this could we do till we had passed Jordan.

133 The wilderness is no part of God's purpose, only of His ways; redemption and Canaan were His purpose; Exodus 3, 6 and 15.

I think it is important to notice that, in a certain sense, the Red Sea is complete, and closes the history - gives redemption its proper power; not the purpose but the redemption; the wicked are judged in death and judgment, and the people saved and brought to God - to His holy habitation. There is distress and guilt before redemption, but that is complete as the thief could go straight to Paradise. All that follows is experience till rest comes - experimental. There is a short epitome of experiencing grace till they come to Sinai, brought to God. But not only is the wilderness proving them, but Jordan connects itself with what is experimental, only based on faith. We have died with Christ, we are risen, we then find circumcision - return there as our perpetual basis of operation. Christ has dried up the Jordan, made it the way into Canaan; but it is not His death as a perfect redemption, the gospel as in 1 Corinthians 15, but our state, crucified with Him, not death as judgment, though He bore it as such, sin in the flesh being condemned, but death, ours to sin, in Him. We go into a new order of things - the place of purpose by it; it is not perfectly meeting our condition, and saving us as the Red Sea. It is connected with experience, identified with purpose, but connected with its realisation here.

There was no ark at the Red Sea, there was in the Jordan; the first was deliverance out of Egypt (natural state), the other entrance into Canaan. One was redemption, the other, the accomplishment (so far) of purpose. One was instrumentally wrought by Moses, who held the rod of God, i.e., the power of God in His dealings, the other by Joshua who led the people - the present power of Christ in the Spirit. One brought to God (in grace) in the wilderness, the other was to lead into the place of purpose - the resulting place of the people as God's host. Judgment, as well as death, was in the first, as we know from the Egyptians; in the second only death, there was no judgment - only the redeemed people had to do with it. The Red Sea was an act of sovereign power in redemption and deliverance. The blood on the lintel and doorposts having met the sin, now full deliverance is wrought by the death and resurrection of Christ. Satan's power, judgment which shut them in, were gone and secured Israel for ever from them. It was finished, done, and they were delivered and with God.

134 But in Jordan death was there as death - it is the end of the career down here in every sense. But Christ goes down into it, and makes it the door into the heavenly blessing of God's purpose - He enters in alone when Jordan overflowed all its banks. But His going into the river destroyed all its power for His people. Here then, though going in alone, yet it is not redemption accomplished for them; He personally enters where they have to go, only they go over dry shod, and it is not a barrier but an entrance into heavenly places, and in that power they have all the good of it, i.e., done with nature and the wilderness for faith, dead to sin, to the world, to the law. They are crucified with Christ, though it be all a blessed passage into Canaan, and efficiently Christ is there till all are over. It is not redemption from and making it a wilderness where we are, but death with Christ, resurrection with Him; He associates His people with Himself, and they enter into a new place through what wholly closes the old. The differential point is that He goes where the people are to go, only making a way for them there, not delivering them from a place and state of condemnation and ruin, by redemption accomplished in Himself.

Joshua

<42016E> 135

Joshua is Christ as leading by the Spirit, which we have elsewhere seen, thus he seeks victory; he will attack and overcome. Even supposing Amalek sought to slay the weak ones, this does not alter its character, but only gave the occasion to the exercise of this energy; compare Exodus 17.

Joshua 1

Note the energy of faith and God fully with it - the energy which asks much, and which has the sources of water, and the grace which receives strangers by faith; at the end the failure of this energy.

Joshua 3

The Lord, after all the unbelief and failure of Israel, their incompetency to secure to themselves the blessing given, divides Jordan as easily and as graciously - indeed with more remarkable tokens of love as to them - as He had done the Red Sea.

Joshua 4

- 20-24. Note that not merely is circumcision in Gilgal within Jordan in the land, but the stones out of the bottom of Jordan are pitched there - we carry the witness and power of death there. We are dead and risen with Christ, not merely circumcised in heart - Christ's power is in it as well as the humbling though profitable end of self.

The full and entire deliverance of the sinner is associated, and indeed the only ground on which it can subsist, with the mortification of the flesh. The stones brought up from the bottom of Jordan were placed in Gilgal, saying, "Ye are risen, mortify therefore"; and in Colossians 2 we find the true circumcision of Christ identified with the complete deliverance by His triumph over Satan, and that in death and resurrection; see Colossians 2: 11-15, and indeed to the end. Indeed without this deliverance in power, the mortification of the flesh would be impossible; it needs power - its only principle is death, for the flesh is unchanged.

136 Joshua 5

- 2. However much the Lord's power may have inspired the enemies of God's people with terror, so as to apparently secure victory, the first thing, before any effort to win it, is to make good the relationship with God by a perfectly circumcised heart; compare also Ezekiel 3: 3.

- 13-15. There is a point I have not noticed; the manna, Christ for the Wilderness - the corn, the heavenly Christ, i.e. Christ now in heaven as well as heavenly, i.e., heavenly as now - the Passover looking back, not a present escape merely, i.e., the Cross understood with all the value peace in heavenly places gives it - all this after Jordan and Gilgal, and the Captain of the host coming after, i.e., the beginning of conflict. But there is another point - simple obedience and dependence. In heavenly things men are for or against "for us or for our adversaries"; but whatever the conflict, all we have to say is "What saith my Lord unto His servant?" This is the spirit in which we are led - something like Paul, though there is a shade of difference there. The holiness needed for the conflict has been remarked. It is the confiding obedience which I had not noted; nor let us forget that if we eat the corn and fruit of the land now, we have the hidden Manna in heaven - Christ in His thrice blessed humiliation is never lost to our hearts.

The passage of the desert, however invaluable the instruction contained in it, is in a certain sense a parenthesis in the history. The Jordan coalesces, so to speak, with the Red Sea. I still judge what has been often remarked, that the Red Sea is the death and resurrection of Christ for us, and the Jordan our death and resurrection with Christ, but that only shows that one is the realisation of the other, and that all the desert is not the realisation, as in point of fact it is our life in this world with and under the hand of God, but not in heavenly places in conflict with Satan. This idea, remark, leads to a further point, that as we are dead and risen again in fact, another point is involved - ascension - for then we enter into the heavenlies; the redeemed and justified people are not there necessarily - it is their calling, as in Hebrews. So, as to justification in the Romans, we have never the ascension (only once, chapter 8, the fact that Christ is in heaven to intercede), while in the Ephesians we are sitting in heavenly places in Christ. It is not our ascension (then combats will cease) but our place in Christ there which brings, as in Ephesians, into combat with spiritual wickedness, though as to place and title we sit in Christ there. Combats with spiritual wickedness do not belong to the wilderness - we are there with God by redemption.

137 But some interesting points are connected with this coalescing of the Red Sea and Jordan bringing into the heavenly place.

It is to be supposed that the Passover was celebrated in the desert, as the case of an unclean person, or one on a journey is considered, but it essentially belongs to Egypt or Canaan. None of the men, born after Egypt, had been circumcised; this was evidently a characteristic difficulty. The moment they cross Jordan, before a conflict, they are circumcised - then only was the reproach of Egypt rolled away - they eat the old corn of the land, and they celebrate the Passover. And now, note, they had not to put the blood on the doorposts. In Egypt it was present security from deserved judgment - when sitting in heavenly places it was the memorial of Christ's work which had delivered. I apprehend that we never, in this way, realise and meditate on the value of the Cross till, as dead and risen again, we are sitting in heavenly places. Entered in virtue of it, we contemplate its value from a heavenly point of view and capacity. In Egypt we are, as men speak, at the foot of the Cross and come to believe on it as that which we there need. The Christian only in the wilderness may enquire from his experience if he is really out, and has properly, not as in Egypt, the blood for his present need to look at, nor as in heaven, the sweet and blessed memorial of what was done to deliver him. The saint, as sitting in heavenly places, turns to the true Passover, the work of Christ, with thoughts which not even the undelivered sinner in Egypt can have, though it is not his present need.

Nor, as elsewhere observed, is there circumcision till then. Manna was suited to the desert, the corn of the land and the Passover for those who had passed Jordan and were circumcised, who had judged flesh in a heavenly way. This character of the desert is instructive too.

138 Joshua 10

Note the difference of the ways of God. In Ai there is positive sin - lust is at work in the camp - God will not go out with the host, nor justify and so strengthen sin by letting it go on unnoticed. In Gibeon there was false self-confidence after blessing - they did not consult God, hence bound to their enemies. They are obliged to defend and hinder the destruction of the very thing they ought to have destroyed or possessed. They are not beaten, but obliged, though conquering others, as regards Gibeon to be strong to their own prejudice, and preserve what, in weaker times, would be a thorn in their sides.

Another instruction here is that, led of the Lord, Joshua is not, by the attack of his enemies, turned aside to follow them, or hindered from pursuing the course which the Lord Himself sets before him in his conquests. He takes the cities which are on the road the Lord leads him.

- 13. The first part of this verse, and 2 Samuel 1: 18, a parenthesis, make no difficulty.

- 29. Note the taking down the king of Ai - God's possession of the land as pure; and the altar on mount Ebal - the people putting themselves in relation with God as brought there by Him, on the ground of thanksgiving - enjoyment, but of condition under, more.

Joshua 14

- 10. This makes about seven years for Joshua's wars up to this. It was seven years from the time of crossing Jordan, or in the seventh year when Caleb came to get possession of Hebron. The details, and as to Debir must be enquired into. In northern Palestine Joshua had long war. The southern kings he seems to have conquered more rapidly. Probably while engaged in the north, remains of the Amorite tribes and Anakim had returned to their cities, and Caleb had to drive them out. It is the detail of what is related in the end of chapter 11, there, in a general way, ascribed to the leader in chief appointed of Jehovah. This would tend to make the time from Jordan to Joshua's death thirty or forty years - say he was thirty, a young man, when Caleb was forty; thirty-eight years in the wilderness = 68; 110 - 68 = 42. Thus he outlived the wars perhaps thirty-five years, compare chap. 24: 29 and chap. 23: 1.

139  - 13-15. As to Kirjath Arba and Hebron; the name "Hebron" is as old as "Kirjath Arba," only it appears at first to have been the name of a district. We read in Numbers 13: 22, "Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt." It had received the name of "Arba" from some great man among the Anakim. But in Genesis 13: 18, we have "the plain of Mamre which is Hebron"; it is evident that "Hebron" was the local name of the city - its first name, perhaps from the district. Some great chief among the Anakim attached his name to it, but this was merely occasional though it prevailed while they held it, which in the time of Caleb they did; he restored its ancient and true name.

Joshua 24

- 7. See in what manner the immense goodness of the Lord considers the conduct of Israel. Israel had murmured, Exodus 14: 11, and complained bitterly, but had never cried to the Lord; but in the intercession of Moses all became their cry - their sorrow was a cry. How wonderful this goodness! Compare Exodus 2: 23.

Baptism

J. N. Darby.

<42017E> 140

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

Baptism never refers to Jordan, but to the Red Sea. It brings us where we have the manna and the spiritual drink in the wilderness, but into the wilderness where these are. In Canaan they were not - the manna ceased, and they eat the old corn of the land. That is, it is wholly short of heaven, and passing Jordan as bringing us there. It brings us to no part of what God gives, save supplies by the way, deliverance from Satan's world not bringing into God's place of habitation.

But this must be more enquired into; the blood met the judgment of God against them where they were in fact - sinners in Egypt, though God's people. They go through exercises up to the Red Sea - there they are delivered from their previous standing; redemption is complete, even to final deliverance, in figure, for the Egyptians are destroyed. But though redemption be complete, so that they are brought to God (Exodus 15), it is all, even to judgment, this world, and as a present thing this world as a wilderness with manna, water, and grapes and guidance; none of this is heaven, and this is the real difference. Hence typically it is Israel, or, as an analogy, the Church on earth though for heaven.

We have then Mara, manna, quails, water and Amalek - the whole scene so far, and Jethro's feast to Aaron and Moses, and Zipporah brought back. But all this is a little scene by itself, and wilderness life characterises the actual effect of the passage of the Red Sea. The celebration of the song of Moses is that we are brought to God - that enemies will be as still as a stone - that we shall come to the place which God's hands have established as a dwelling place. They were baptised to Moses, but Moses himself never entered into Canaan. The wilderness is a place where responsibility is tested as to arriving in Canaan, even in figure, see 1 Corinthians 10. We are not baptised to Moses in Jordan.

Though redemption was complete, the persons brought out are subject to a responsibility which supposes the possibility of not arriving; other things may make them safe - if they are really the Lord's, they will surely be kept - but their place there is with an "if," as in Colossians 1 and Hebrews, and so in 1 Corinthians 9 and 10. It is the external thing founded on Christ's death, based on a full deliverance, but testing as to the individual. There is testing even in Colossians - none in Ephesians, nor is baptism referred to, save as to professed faith and Lordship; conflict and government, the armour of God to be able to stand in the evil day, but not on a journey, uncertain whether I arrive, or sure to fail in myself, and if he is, sure to be kept by another, but only therefore sure, and hence tested.

141 Baptism takes this ground - redemption by Christ's death, not merely secured from judgment by the blood on the doorposts; I go further, I am brought to have part (am baptised into it) in His death professedly in baptism, and hence am called upon to walk in newness of life. I reckon (if it be real in me) myself dead - that I shall be in the likeness of His resurrection. I am called on to reckon myself dead to sin, and alive to God through Him. I am started in my responsible course in this world on the blessed ground of redemption, to reckon myself dead to sin,* alive to God, and to yield myself to God as alive from the dead, and a blessed privilege it is to pass through this world - free, by redemption, to live to God, and to serve in such a world as this. The Spirit of God is given to me, and if it is real it will certainly end well.

{*This, however, is an argument used with Christians on the ground of the spiritual intelligence they possessed. The baptism merely brought them professedly associated with Christ's death; hence they were to reckon themselves dead to sin. But crucified with Christ is not spoken of as "I am crucified," only it involved it when faith was real.}

Romans 6 goes further; it takes Christ's death as death to sin, and the state man was in (He, the sinless One), and draws conclusions from it for us inasmuch as He was risen. But we were baptised to His death, i.e., to have a part in it--we are alive to God through Him risen (and consequently to Him risen--not to law), sin was not therefore to reign; but there is no resurrection with Him. The man in flesh was alive, and he has passed into death through Christ--there is no resurrection with Him.

Ephesians looks at it (and therefore never touches on baptism, save as the sign of outward profession in contrast with the unity of the body, chap. 4) in a quite different light. We are not to die, nor have died as alive in sin, but dead in sin and quickened together with Him, raised up together, etc. Hence, too, we have no justification in Ephesians, but a new Creation - we are what God makes us in Christ, His workmanship; we were dead, Christ in grace comes down there for us, accomplishing the work of redemption, and putting away sin, and we and He are all raised up into a new place.

142 Colossians is somewhat between both; a hope was laid up in heaven. We are quickened together with Him, but not simply a new creation, but forgiven all trespasses, and called to have our affections above, where Christ sits - not we in Him, our life being hid there; Christ is our life - He is in us - we are complete in Him, but not in Him so as to be sitting in heavenly places. We are dead, risen with Him but on earth, not merely delivered from but looking to, because we have the life that belongs to heaven, and He is sitting there. It is not union in the body by the Holy Ghost, but life. It is the character of life as Christ in heaven, but not union - being there and sitting in Him there through the Holy Ghost

Now in the Red Sea we have deliverance - the salvation of God connected with judgment of evil, dealing with men, in either case, as belonging to this world; but Jordan is a passing out of the whole condition of responsible man in the world, godly or ungodly. We had, to have done with it, and we have, to do with death. The memorial stones were in Jordan, but death as away from God, in the place of death itself. It was not merely pronounced judgment, but being away, forsaken of God. The ark goes down there; it takes us out of death, through it, and introduces into heaven where Christ is gone, who has glorified God. Moses, figure of legal responsibility, as alive in the world, himself dies, has nothing to do with the land save reaching the vision of it, like a dying man seeing out of this world; he is no new creation. Christ is not here seen as shedding His blood, nor as a Deliverer in the place of judgment, but we in Him, as He for us having through death the place of man here, find entering, and we having done with the Wilderness - life down here - entering in Him into heavenly places. With this, baptism, as a sign, has nothing to do. It goes, in Colossians, as far as rising through faith of the operation of God in raising Christ, but places on earth with our affections and hope called to be in heaven, and then we appear to earth; our union place by the Holy Ghost is left out.

Romans is a conclusion - to live obediently and rightly here; Colossians, to live in spirit in heaven, but it is a hortative consequence. In Ephesians, we are sitting in heavenly places; what is sought is the presence and power of the Christ, who is there, operative in us on the earth still to make us vessels of God here.

143 In a word, Jordan is death as ceasing to belong to this world at all, and entering into heavenly places, as belonging to them, with an ascended Christ. The Red Sea is death as redemption and deliverance, leading us to live to God in this world, and "if" remains. The Red Sea is deliverance into a responsible life in this world, though, if life be there, we shall reach the goal; Jordan is dying to it, and entering into Canaan as united to Christ.

Baptism is at the Red Sea - not Jordan, though we may add resurrection to it as leaving sins behind, "Having forgiven you all trespasses"; we walked in them when we lived in them - now I have put off the old man and put on the new. It is individual, and reception into profession, "One Lord, one faith." There is no conflict with spiritual wickedness, no taking possession till Canaan. In Egypt they were slaves, not combatants - in Canaan, the Lord's hosts; in the desert with God, for their good - in Canaan with Satan, for God. Hence baptism goes further in Colossians than in Romans, but never puts us above nor in the body or unity. It saves - we wash away our sins in it, we go into death in it, and in Colossians 2 it is added we "are risen"; hence also it is individually. The Church has never to die. It is first born in the new Creation, and when we are risen in baptism, it is by faith of the operation of God, so by the resurrection of Jesus Christ; but it is never entering into heavenly places. There was no ark in the Red Sea, nor memorial stones set up in it, or taken out of it. Hence Paul, though of course it could not be abrogated, was not sent to baptise, and carefully tells us so, but had a revelation about the Lord's supper, which is the sign of the unity of the Body to the partakers.

I have added here and there notes to explain, on reading this over; but it is important as to baptism and the nature of these epistles. It is clear that baptism, though it may go on to resurrection, in a certain aspect giving Christ for our life, never takes out of this world, but puts us in the position of responsibility in it, according to newness of life surely, but it is, "So we also should walk in newness of life." In Colossians it is, "If ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled. Hence the force of the warning in 1 Corinthians 10. They were baptised, etc., "But with many of them God was not well pleased"; we are called to walk in this world as dead and risen again, as in the Wilderness - this is the utmost. Hence it is the expression of the outward visible Church, "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." We have a good conscience of the resurrection, we "Wash away our sins calling on the name of the Lord," are received into the responsible place of God's people in this world - that which is analogous to the Vine. The Wilderness and the world is a testing place of result. Though with sure promises for faith, we are made companions of Christ "if," in this aspect of things - and so always looked at as in this world, in the wilderness; this, with the fullest comfort of promise and God's faithfulness for faith, is the character of Colossians, Hebrews and Peter.

144 Romans stands somewhat by itself, because it takes the ground on which the individual stands, the root of it, the nature of the place, and does not (save in occasional exhortations) deal with professed position, but the nature of the things he speaks of - their real value. As to this point, we have baptism in Romans, death, i.e. baptised into Christ's death, that is its real character as respects sin; I am to reckon myself to have done with it as a dead man - I leave what I was by baptism. It assumes Christ to be dead and risen, which is already our justification, chapters 3 and 4. This obviates the flesh's reasoning against the doctrine, by showing that that, by which we have a professed share in this work of Christ, is a profession to go into death to have a part in that as to sin, i.e., not to live in it. But we have no Church place, body, nor house, nor profession (save in exhortation), but individual place and baptism is referred to this.

In 1 Corinthians we have "All that call on the name of the Lord" assumed sincere, and being in the place of saints, but still the question raised; and here the ground of a public position, and a question as to its reality is directly raised, as noticed in chapter 10. We have the body in chapter 12, and the responsible profession, the egioi kletoi (called saints), but all that call on the name of the Lord in every place - a wise master-builder, but the possibility of wood, hay and stubble (besides corruptors); and hence the result in question, though both together there and hope it was all right, but warning. So the difference is made in Peter and Hebrews, of persevering and drawing back in individuals (there no question of Church); hence the Corinthians is the fullest unfolding of the Church on earth, though God's view of it is fully contemplated there. It was there as what He had made it, but placed under responsibility, and man's work down here, not the statement of the result prophetically - that is in Thessalonians, Timothy, and elsewhere (the tree of promise, because it is not the place of Church doctrine in Romans 11). But in 1 Corinthians the wood, and hay, and stubble is in God's building, but God's actual "building" (on earth) "ye are" - "He has set in the assembly."

145 In Colossians we have more than in Romans, i.e., justification of the individual, and guarding that doctrine as to the individual. In Colossians, we have, "Wherein also we are risen by faith of the operation of God, who raised him" - it touches Romans by "dying," and Ephesians by "quickened" together with Him; but if quickened, forgiven, not going on to union, and sitting in heavenly places, only this looked at as truth, but the saint is seen as in fact dead and risen with Christ, and looking up where He is, his life being hid with Him there. It is not the Holy Ghost, but it is by the Holy Ghost we have the Body and union. It is life which, being Christ, is in heaven; hence also Christ's coming is "appearing" and our appearing with Him; union with and so meeting Him and being with Him for ever is not here. The fact of the body and the Head is recognised, but the Christian's place in the teaching of the Apostle is "Ye are dead and risen" . . . "seek what is above, where Christ is." It supposes our being with Him before He appears, or we could not appear with Him, but does not teach it as its subject. Hence, I say, it goes further than Romans on this point. It is not "baptised, you a living sinner, to His death and now to reckon yourself dead and so walk in this world in the newness of life," but "buried with him unto death" "risen with him, being forgiven" - "therefore look up where Christ, who is your life, sits." "Buried" here is having totally done with the old condition of sinner, and here he looks for reality - he is risen together by faith of the operation of God, who raised Christ from the dead. It is not merely what it means as in Romans, and responsibility, but an explanation to true Christians, as such, of what their real place was, not by profession but by faith in contrast with forms and ordinances (quod nota); it is not "baptised to," but "quickened together with" - all your trespasses forgiven - they were pistoi en Christo gesou (faithful in Jesus Christ).

146 In Romans, it is the meaning of the thing as to previous life and present individual responsibility. In Corinthians the professed place as a public body in the world, professing Christ to be Lord. In Colossians the faithful in Christ Jesus shown what their place in Christ was, and even in contrast with ordinances though expressed by baptism. They had circumcision, but in its true and more than figurative power, as baptism showed they were gone, dead, and buried, and through faith in God's power in raising Christ, raised with Him, as their coming out of that burial of course expressed, but in the world and not to have their affections on what was on the earth, but on what was in heaven where Christ their life was.* But this was the extreme limit of baptism; nor is there question of being sun (together with) Him, without introducing "by faith" - the en o, and there is no co-session.

{*It will be seen I have applied en o, Colossians 2: 12, to baptism. No doubt there is en auto . . . en o, as the main subject of the sentence, but the two sun seems a stronger connection, and sun . . . erz o, seems a forced construction, and en lo baptismati seems to run together.}

Now in Ephesians, though it touches Colossians on one side, we get out of this. There is not what a living sinner dies to, but a dead sinner is created again - God's workmanship. Hence we have nothing to do with dying to sin, nor with baptism, save as connected with one faith - a professed one, and Lordship; body, Spirit and hope go together, for "by one Spirit we are baptised into one body," and abound in hope through its power - that is our one common profession here. In Colossians we have not justification, but we are complete in Him, and are to look up. In Ephesians besides not speaking of justification, we are sitting in Christ in heavenly places, and are to grow up to Him in all things, "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," and are to manifest God's character of light and love according to the model given in Christ. Of course, as we do not die to anything, baptism is not introduced as that, in any way, which passes on us.

Now the Red Sea, in one sense, knew no effect but Canaan; so redemption for us - heaven in type, for Israel in earthly reality. So in Exodus 3 and 6 there is no wilderness spoken of - Canaan is purpose, the wilderness only a way. Thus, in this sense, the Red Sea and Jordan coalesce, and as to earth even judgment is complete at the Red Sea. But when we come to the ways and dealings of God with and in us, the difference is very great. There is no ark in the Red Sea, no touching the waters of Jordan with the priest's foot, no experiment of death in any sense, even if its power is gone. At the Red Sea God delivers by power - His rod smites the sea, and there is deliverance of the people. It is redemption - they are borne on eagles' wings and brought to God, led forth by His strength as a redeemed people to His holy habitation - they leave the place of bondage; by Jordan they enter into the place of promise. The ark goes before them - Christ enters into death, though with divine power He dries it up, and we pass over; but we do so - it is a path we have not passed with our feet hitherto, nor could nature do so, "Ye cannot follow me now, but ye shall follow me afterwards." We have done with the wilderness as with Egypt, with manna, the cloud to guide, and all wilderness provision; hence Jordan brings us into an Ephesian place. It is not union, but heavenly places which we have by union, and so by the baptism of the Holy Ghost; hence the comparison is made in chapter 6: 12.

147 The Colossians, as I have said, contemplates this position as true; hence "complete in him," and we have circumcision in Him, as Romans says "Those who are in Christ," but it puts us experimentally in the wilderness. Hence, though privileges are presented as a subject of desire, i.e., realising Christ in our hearts by faith, and we have to take the armour to withstand, there is no "if" as to our place - we are not raised in baptism, but raised up together and made to sit together, as He raised Christ, according to "His great love wherewith he loved us." It is not "if," but the Spirit has sealed us for the day of redemption.

Baptism finally introduces on the ground of the faith, redemption by death and resurrection, into a responsible place; so 1 Corinthians 10, one may preach the truth, and have the sacraments and be cast away, and fall in the desert.

The gift of eternal life, and the sealing of the Spirit, lead one into the consciousness of being in Christ, united to Himself now as sitting in heavenly places, and soon to be with Him bearing His image. Here there is full present assurance of faith, and assurance of being "in Christ" - an eternal thing in which we are, and have eternal life, eternal redemption, heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ. De facto we are down here, with a given faith and hope, to pursue our journey towards the thing hoped for - in the wilderness, on the footing of redemption - in the wilderness, on the footing of responsibility to "by any means attain," but having to persevere with promises that faith confides in, power that keeps through faith for the inheritance kept for us, but having to get across, having to attain, to persevere, to walk by faith and not draw back to perdition, though the believer will surely be kept, and He who has begun the good work will finish it unto the day of Jesus Christ; for we know that we have been apprehended by Jesus Christ that we may apprehend the result in glory (take hold of, possession of). But we have not yet, and are most usefully passed through the desert. Philippians is the model practical walk of this; hence, as we have seen, all is earth, judgment too at the Red Sea - not at Jordan (Canaan), that is followed by power and conflict and government in it. It is Jericho, Gilgal, the Passover and the old corn.

148 Jordan is, in one sense, a supplementary repetition of the Red Sea. It is death in both cases, as in Romans 3: 20; chap 5: 11; and chap. 5: 12, to end of chap. 8 - dead and risen with Christ, so as to enter into the place of power in union with Him ascended.

This makes the Corinthians extremely important, because we have the profession and the true Church brought together. The assembly of God, "with all that call on the name of the Lord" - one Lord, one faith, and then the assembly treated as the body. Yet the outward sacramental thing before that, where they might fall; and so God's building might be built with wood, hay and stubble. It is the Church on earth, but the Church assumed to be such in its privileges withal, yet on the way - "confirm you to the end." They were in fact carnal, though assumed not to be natural; in this character they were to take care, as in chapter 10, "Ye are God's building," but there might be wood or hay; nay, one might defile God's temple, but they were it. Their bodies are members of Christ, temples of the Holy Ghost, but he might deliver to Satan even such; so he says "the weak brother perish" . . . "destroy not with thy meat." Yet the Lord will surely keep His own, and so He has told us in chapter 1 assuming these, the Christians at Corinth, to be such, only in this world to be proved. "So run" again, "that ye may obtain," and then comes the reprobate preacher, and perishing after the sacraments, and the watchfulness against evil, and self-subjection, life and its working as well as preaching and sacramental privileges (compare the olive tree). Yet in that very chapter they are all treated as one body, "We are not to be condemned with the world, but chastened" . . . "If one suffers, all suffer." Union seems to me to be dealt with after chapter 10: 15, but even here men may have gifts of power and be nothing; chapter 15 is a question by itself. All this is very important as instruction as to the Church, but must, though the principle be clear, be further looked into.

149 Ephesians 4: 4 takes the ground of 1 Corinthians 12, only it is more simply the thing in itself; Ephesians 4: 5 takes the ground of 1 Corinthians 1: 2. In a certain aspect the Colossians is nearer Romans than it is to Ephesians, because in Colossians we die from a state of life, "ye walked when ye lived in them"; we are buried unto death. In Ephesians 2, following the end of chapter 1, we are dead and Christ comes into that place, and then comes union or being in Him, not hope. And this is much more Jordan, but that Canaan and Joshua are in themselves union; but Christ comes into the place of death, destroys its power, and what follows is association with Christ where He is, not hope when our life is hid there - we sit in heavenly places in Him.

In Colossians we are risen with Him, but there it stops; hence, what is in Him apart is more brought out, as in chapters 1 and 2, "He is the first begotten from among the dead." And if we are raised, it is not union and position, but faith of the operation of God who raised Him. It is life, not, as heretofore observed, the Holy Ghost. And further, not only have we no co-session in Him, but we are not sunzoopoiesomenoi to Christo (quickened together with Christ).

The contrast of the address in 1 Corinthians and Ephesians is, I apprehend, marked in purpose. In Ephesians we have "the holy and faithful brethren," and then "Head over all things to the Church," and, after showing how in the new Creation they were in Him, to be so the unity of the House also is brought out, substituted for Judaism, but substituted by God, and viewed in its ultimate condition and present forming by God. In chapter 4 we have incidentally the three unities of the Spirit and body, Lord and profession, God and Father over all and in us. In 1 Corinthians it is with the external local Church at Corinth, possibly a mixed thing, "all that call upon the name of the Lord" - the outward profession. Incidentally we find (chap. 12) in connection with gifts and their exercise, and the one Spirit down here, the Assembly viewed as the body of Christ, but down here - the local Church standing in the place as its representative.

150 Query if the "Church of God . . . called saints" is not to be distinguished from "all that call." No doubt it might be a mixed thing, but it stands as representative of the Church of God as such; the "all that call" is profession as such. This makes chapter 12 more substantive teaching; he begins to allude to this in chapter 10: 15 but chapter 12 is the teaching on it. I find chapter 10 very peculiar in this respect: we have the sacraments as external ordinances having the supposition and possibility that those who partake of them be lost after all; such we have seen is the character of the Epistle,* the Church on earth in its profession, and so as responsible, but then the responsibility involves reality and meaning, or rather we are responsible for and in what is meant, verses 16, 17, the communion of the body of Christ, and we one body as partaking of the one Head. How true this is we know, but it is very instructive as to our position, i.e., the real position of the Church in this world. External sacramental standing and enjoyment of privileges (compare Romans 11: 17, though that be not the Church, but it comes in principle to the same thing) - chapter 11: 5, and then, verses 16, 17, the apprehension of wise men.

{*See previous remarks, but it requires further research.}

There is, I think, progress as to baptism, but it stands on very peculiar ground, obscure as a Christian institution. John the baptist preached the baptism of repentance - he prepared the way, saying they should believe on One that came after. But his business was to take the nation up on the ground on which it stood, and call to repentance, and in fact form a remnant to receive Christ; the remission of sins was in view for those baptised. But he preached repentance, and they were baptised to that, and so ready to receive Messiah - the Son of Man, even on earth, had power to forgive sins. When Peter preaches, he preaches Jesus rejected and exalted, made Lord and Christ, not repentance; when they were pricked in heart, he says to them "Repent," but the baptism was to the remission of sins because the work was done which gave it fully. They were baptised to the remission of sins. Repentance in man was always called for. But John called for that as his business, the remission was to come after.

151 The baptism was the baptism of repentance; now for the remission of sins to those that presented, Paul has a new commission. He is not dealing in the midst of a known people who have promises, calling souls out of it to repentance, and they should receive remission, separated from the untoward generation. He takes up man as man (owning the Jews) and brings him into God's presence in light. He was delivered from men wholly, from the people and from the Gentiles to whom he was sent, but belonged to neither but to a glorified Christ, to open men's eyes, and to turn men from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive remission of their sins, and an inheritance among them that are "sanctified by faith that is in me." He is not sent to baptise at all, and though he called men everywhere to repent and turn to God, for this is the essence of his work everywhere, yet it is not presented in his mission under the form of repentance - self-judgment in respect of a place we are already in, and inconsistencies with it, and advantages offered as the Law and Christ presented to Israel - but a change and deliverance from human blindness and Satan's power, to light and God for the remission of their sins and an inheritance by faith in Christ. This made him, first in Damascus, then in Judea, then to the Gentiles, call men to repent and turn to God. But for the Gentiles it was, even in testimony, a wholly new state, and baptism forms no part of it, no more than the mission in John; and he tells us himself, he was not sent to baptise. It went on; but practice, not commandment, is what we have in Scripture.

We have a commandment connected with baptism and apostolic mission, and to the Gentiles exclusively, but then there is nothing of repentance or remission. It is simply discipling all (the Gentiles), baptising and then teaching them. The direction in Luke is repentance and remission of sins. In Mark, salvation belonged to him who believed and was baptised, for if he was not, he refused to be a Christian believing it to be true. No doubt those that received the Word were baptised, and so the Gentiles. This is historically clear, but the thing baptised to necessarily changed, and it dropped out of the mission to the Gentiles - it never was formally in any to the Jews, but introduced by Jewish habit, and by the authority of the Holy Ghost in the practice of John the baptist and the Apostles, and then of all. First it was to repentance to remission, then to remission to receive the Holy Ghost, then it widens out - as many as were baptised to Christ (all, I suppose, but so expressed, taking up the fact as it stood) were baptised to His death, planted in the likeness of His death - further, had put on Christ; no question of Jew or Gentile or anything else. It continued, only taking the form of truth into which men were brought, with the distinct declaration that it did not form part of the mission, though used always in it - Mark giving the strong ground of practice not obedience surely, but the openly becoming a Christian, putting on Christ. I do not think Paul ever commanded them to be baptised, but they were, and he did it himself.

152 Salvation is essentially in resurrection - of course through Christ's death; no doubt, as regards the counsels of God, the raised are put in heavenly places, but resurrection is the new estate. He "hath quickened us together with him, by grace ye are saved"; then comes the fruit and accomplishment of counsels. So in Romans we have justifying and presenting in righteousness to God. And the Lord could say, "I go to my Father and your Father, my God and your God."

The counsels of God set us individually in heavenly places, and besides that, as members of the body of Christ, and Jew and Gentile are raised up together so as de facto to involve the unity of the body. But when we are viewed as quickened together with Christ, we are looked at as dead in sin, and being quickened it is a new creation, a complete new place and salvation. Romans goes further back, there in Christ we have died to sin. Colossians, in practice, develops this, but Romans develops the life and nature, so there we die and are alive through Christ, and set free in practical power; but being in Christ and the Body, though recognised as common Christian knowledge, forms no part of the teaching of the Epistle - there a sinner is justified by the blood-shedding and resurrection of Christ. In Colossians and Ephesians it is a new Creation, and this involves counsels; justification, righteousness. Hence Christ's resurrection issues in justification of life in Romans, our quickening with Christ in Colossians and Ephesians; and resurrection with Him in Colossians involves, as part of that same plan and work, our being blessed in heavenly places, and the body of Christ.

153 But resurrection, after the effectual death of Christ, clears us and puts us in a new place in a new life. It saves us. We have died to sin, and are alive to God. The essence of it is in ezoopoiese, the form in resurrection egeire - anastases ek ton nekron. The sunezoopoiese (quickened together with) involves our being in the same glory further on. The sunegerthete (you are risen with) is found only in Colossians 2, in connection with baptism.

Note as to baptism - baptising in the name of Jesus is en or epi, but as to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, it is eis, which makes all the difference, save in Acts 8: 16, where it is also eis to onoma.

The Table of the Lord

<42018E> 154

It is a mistake to think that the proper blessing, or true character of the Lord's supper is connected with the title "Lord." That word is used as one of authority to guard against associating it with idols, and against profanation - to give it its dignity, and that is all right surely; but the proper word of blessing in it is "Christ" - "the communion of the Body of Christ" - koinonia (communion) and Lordship do not go well together, so when we partake of the Lord's table it is metechein.

Many ideas are current on this subject, and that on the part of those I truly love and value, and used by others with different intent, which I think unfounded. It is insisted that the Table is the Table of the Lord. No one of course doubts it, or that He whose Table it is, is the Lord, has peculiar claim to this title, this distinctive title. But while the heart joyfully owns this name, it is not, nor cannot be the highest and happiest aspect of the Lord's supper, not that which especially belongs to Christians in it. Of course were Christ not the Lord, not only the Table, but Christianity would be gone. But "Lord" is not the name in which Christians have communion there; and that is their precious part in it. "Communion with the Lord" is an ill-sorted term. The term "Lord" is used as to the Table when it is used in contrast with evil, or as a place of dignity and judgment. The Table of the Lord in contrast with the table of devils, the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. Hence it is added: "Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy; are we stronger than he?" Again as to judgment: "This is not to eat the Lord's supper" - "he shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." Hence if we would judge ourselves we should not be judged of the Lord; and so on. But when the Apostle speaks of communion, he does not speak of "the Lord,"; but "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?" "The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" And this is the more remarkable, because the moment he begins, in the same passage, to speak of the authority, contrast as to devils, and judgment of evil, he says always "the Lord," but as to communion not.

The Lord's supper refers both to the Passover and to Sinai: "This do in remembrance of me" evidently alluding to Egypt, and the occasion itself showing the one, "the new covenant in my blood" referring to the other. As Passover it is the recollection of deliverance through One broken for us - deliverance from judgment and wrath; as blood of the covenant, it puts us in a new relationship, on the ground of grace through the forgiveness of sins.

The Joys of Christ

<42019E> 156

We ought to think of the joys of Christ as well as His sorrows. Nothing shows where a man's heart is, and what it is, more than when oppressed, distressed, and full of sorrow, where his heart finds its joy, and if it does find a joy unreached by it.

We see these joys in Christ - a secret comfort in the midst of His sorrow. He had meat to eat which man knew not of. Besides His communion with His Father, there was this working of love to us. Paradise shone in upon His heart in comforting the poor thief. "Go in peace" refreshed His spirit in the house of the Pharisee. "She hath done it for my burial" justified Mary against the reproach of selfish man. "Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes" was His joy in the sense of the heartless rejection to which the wickedness of man subjected Him. How blessed to the heart, besides learning where His joy was, to think that He found it in the working of His love to us!

_________

It is lovely to see how the Lord does not merely show a resignation under trial produced by an effort which makes Him bow - and yet be absorbed by it as we often are, but a perfection of obedience and acceptance of His Father's will - such that He rises altogether above it, so as to be quite free to be in the fulness of, and express just what grace would do - or if needed, truth also - in that which was presented to Him. Thus, when led to the Cross, to the women he says: "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves and for your children, for the day's come," etc. Then on speaking on the Cross for Israel, He says: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." This was the very one and only ground which could be good for Israel - the Holy Ghost answered to it in Peter's sermon; and Paul refers to the principle. Then to the thief on the Cross He says: "Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise." There was the full present effect of His work and salvation. Now how perfectly calm, as if He had only to teach in peace from heaven, is all this, and in perfect appropriateness in each case, which divine clearness could give; and how wide the scope of instruction!

157 The judgment of Jerusalem - the ground on which the Jews might be forgiven in virtue of the Cross - the full present blessing in virtue of the Cross, short of resurrection not yet accomplished. The whole scope of truth was here. Thus if we quietly do that which is given, and trust God in the peaceful answer to what is brought before us, what wide-spread power of truth comes in!

Ministry

<42020E> 158

The connection of the Levitical service with priesthood leads, I think, to some blessed instruction; because priesthood, in its full sense, is the connection of man with all that is revealed of God in redemption. Only there is another element to be taken into consideration now - the Father revealed in the Son. The Levites were first wholly given to God, according to the efficacy and cleansing power of Christ's sacrifice. Then, for their service, they were given to Aaron, and accomplished their appointed tasks. Now, it is only under the hand, and at the disposition of the priest they can act, though their service be appointed; so we, the priesthood is for man, but to God, and is based on all that in which Christ, in connection with man's lost estate, has glorified God, and in which all that God is in love, grace, righteousness, majesty, truth, and holiness is glorified, and that in bringing man to Him in knowledge of all He is, and formed into blessing for God's glory according to it, of which Christ is the fulness - the veil now rent, and the way into the holiest open - we entering in there - He appearing in the presence of God for us.

So, it is when Christ is ascended up on high, having gone down to the lower parts of the earth, and then gone up on high so as to fill all things according to this redeeming work, that He gives gifts of ministry, and to bring the saints to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. And it is only as coming from this excellent fulness and nearness to God, that we can exercise true ministry, the spring, quality, subject, and resulting effect in confirming souls to it, are all there. Here is, besides this, the revelation of God Himself, of the Father in the Son. But this follows the same rule; He comes forth from the Father and manifests Him, but it is ever as in the bosom of the Father, "No one has seen God at any time - the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father" (not who was, but who is) and in the full concentrated love of the Father, as the only-begotten of the Father, and in this nearest enjoyment of, as in His bosom, He declares Him. It is in this constant association in receptive fulness and communication as Man, that Christ's ministry was carried out, and that in absolute consecration to His Father flows forth.

159 And this is our path of ministry, only that for us it must be "always bearing about the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus may be manifested." In Him it was personal perfection. It gives a wondrous character to ministry.

Promise and Grace

<42021E> 160

There are three things in Scripture which go before God's work and grace in Christ, and to which His coming applies. First, conscience - man fell in sin into the knowledge of good and evil; next came full and absolute promise before law - law put the promise on condition, and brought in the curse; then Christ purged the conscience, giving God's own holiness as the proper measure of it - accomplished and put us in possession of the promise, and took the curse of the law, working out a better righteousness. Yet He has not simply met them, for he has raised conscience to the height, not of what fitted man as a creature, but to the height of God's holiness by the blessed revelation of it. He has given the promise in His Person, and added union with Himself, which, while it accomplished, was beyond all promise - this is the great truth of the Church - and has brought in a far better righteousness, God's righteousness. And the great difference is this - the former things were in relationship with men, and though the promise was God's, and as sure as His Word could be, yet it was in connection with, and could have and will have its accomplishment in men (through Christ) on the earth; but the fulfilment was in the revelation of God accomplishing His own thoughts, and revealing His own nature. It had its character and fulness necessarily in connection with and measured by Himself and His thoughts.

Fragments

<42022E> 161

This comfort, at any rate, we have in all our weakness, that in the ages to come God will be able to show the exceeding riches of His grace, in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus; He will be glorified.

________

Not only is it perfect grace as contrasted with uncertainty and legal fitness, but the Father's conduct was the Son's place and the whole of it - He had no other. It is to be noticed that, in Luke 15, in the prodigal son, it is not Christ's meeting the claims of God's justice as a holy righteous Judge, but the divine favour and goodness, though He had the best robe on (Christ), a sign of that favour and love - fitness, but according to the Father's heart.

________

It is a great thing to have an infinite object, and an infinite capacity - God, and the Holy Spirit in us. I know well it is in a finite creature, and here in a poor earthen vessel, but there is nothing like it in those who are finite, and connected with the full display of God in redemption. And this infinitude of object and capacity are brought together by the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him," and "Hereby we know that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit"; "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by his Spirit which he hath given us." The angels, as creatures, we know are above us, not only excel in strength, but are most lovely in their sinless service, but of course they are not subjects of redemption, of that love which reached from the divine nature to man's sin, and displayed the former (while it brought to light the latter too), and that to bring man into the glory of God, and righteously through the work of Christ. Then the Holy Ghost gives us divine power to enter into this.

__________

"Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace," is seeking to carry out, in spirit and gracious manner and ways, that unity of saints externally in this world, which is essentially and always true in the unity of the Body in Christ, and thus to manifest it.

_________

162 The obedience of Christ would not have been as perfect if He had not been God. Where duty exists, it is the expression and test of love; and where would have been the fulness and inward perfectness of obedience, its motive, if He had not been God who is Love? So He says "That the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father hath given me commandment, so I do." But it was the expression of infinite Love, and so was perfect.

_________

The real intimate knowledge of God is beyond Satan, who is only in created heavens, though he can transform himself into an angel of light. Observe the difference heretofore spoken of between "Herein was Love manifested to us, because God sent his only-begotten Son," etc., 1 John 4: 9, 10, and "Herein is Love made perfect with us," etc., "Because as he is, so are we in this world"; the double and complete thing - most blessed - first, love to us miserable here, on the Cross, but then perfected and proved. What blessed things belong to a Christian, in that we are what all that Christ is before God! Love in the manifestation of God to us, and that in love - Jesus being given even to death; but perfected in all the effulgence of divine love and inexpressible delight in Jesus, and all that Jesus is as having accomplished the work, and His Son before God even the Father - as He is moreover, so are we.

_________

If the hopes of the Church, in a heavenly way, had been economically the portion of the saints before the coming of Christ, then the death of Christ must have been, as it were, a duty or a desire. But it is this which makes the Apostle cry out "O the depth"; and much as it might be, in a sense, secretly known, and prophesied of as an evil, sinful fact, and typified as the effect of sin, the union of the Church in heavenly glory was a thing hidden from ages and generations. There was what was the clear support of faith, and interpretation of the depth of God's wisdom in the circumstances, but nothing - not a word - which could justify the circumstances as to man's part, by which all the salvation of man was brought about. Well might the Apostle cry out in speaking of this as to the condition of the Jews, and its aspect in bringing all under mercy, "Oh! the depth of the riches!" For it is wonderful.

________

163 Note particularly, the Church is to give witness upon earth though its calling be heavenly; though its calling be heavenly, yet on earth show more or less also the powers of the world to come; the responsibility of the Church in this respect is quite distinct from its privileges. Note this particularly in the beginning of the Revelation, the Son of Man judges the Churches on earth, and is only "First born from the dead" - His titles are earthly though risen. But note the Churches were to do this, so they are responsible for it, and so, connected with this point, though they may have an independent higher calling - so analogously the disciples cast out devils according to the power of Christ's name upon earth, yet they were to rejoice rather that their names were written in heaven. Now it was by the Holy Ghost as to power no doubt, but still it was not as heavenly calling but the title of Christ in blessing to bless on the earth - to set aside earthly judgment on account of sin - this was an accessory portion of the Church, though important to its place of testimony to Christ on the earth, for His title was to it, and He has power for it. The Church then has grieved the Holy Ghost in this, and not maintained the honour of Christ, still it is not its highest place. This is a great key to the Revelation - it links the two and shows the Church's portion here, taking up the Churches in connection with Christ in this point of view.

_________

God could send just and adequate threatenings by others, or present to man what He required of him, and the consequences of failure, but no one could present the love of God to man in his sins but Himself (for no one was it) and that as above all. Man, enabled by the Holy Ghost, could speak about it as exercised towards the sinner, but he could not present it, for to do so truly in fact he must be it; and moreover he must have been such as God only is in love, to be able to be it in presence of all that was contrary to it. Such was Jesus! Truth indeed came by Him too, for no one could be the truth but He. No man had even a right to be such love to the sinner but God - it would have been a presumptuous wrong to God.

_________

164 NOTE. - All worship is properly with burnt-offerings - death comes in but it is a sweet savour, "He by the grace of God tasted death for everything." Sin-offerings come in for need by the bye.

_________

It is almost equally wonderful that Man is gone up on high into the presence of God, and that God came down into the misery, sorrow, sin, and death of man. But both these marvellous things are the truth. What a place man, seen in this light, holds in the counsels of God.

________

God's promises are precepts to Himself - binding on Him, and as His to us, showing us what He is in Himself.

_________

Some people's affections take their value from the object on which they are set. Some make their own in the strength that is in them, the self-devotedness they exhibit. But I suspect there is defect in both, and that the meeting of both (save of course of divine affections in God) would have proved the inefficacy of either.

_______

What appears frankness is not always full openness, dire tout ce qu'on veut, n'est pas dire tout ce qu'on peut.* What is the Christian's part? To say nothing unnecessary on principle, and then one is simple in both. Let the Spirit guide us in all we actually say.

{*To say all one wills, is not to say all one can.}

_________

165 NOTE. - "In Jesus" is not a scriptural expression as to people - we have "the truth as it is in Jesus." It is in Christ Jesus; Jesus is the name of the Person who is Jehovah the Saviour - Christ is His office and relative place. So too the name of "Church of God"; "Church of Christ" is human, and not used in Scripture. "Church of God" is that which Scripture used and raises the thought and idea of the Church far higher, and gives it a reality and a meaning.

I add a remark, made long ago, proving that Scripture is much more accurate than we think in these matters; it is never said "God loved the Church," nor that "Christ loved the world." Christ's love of the Church is connected with relationship - God's love of the world with His character.

_______

It is a blessed thing to think that we know God, are more intimate with Him, adoringly surely because intimate with such Majesty, than with ourselves or any other being, human or angelic. He has revealed Himself perfectly in and through Christ, and dwells in us, nor is He inconsistent with Himself, or ever else but what He is, and as which He has revealed Himself, and we, partakers of the divine nature, know Him according to the apprehensions of that nature through the Holy Ghost. We dwell in Him and He in us. We can say this of nothing else; all else is uncertain in itself or outside me, but with Him I am in communion. I know Him because He reveals Himself - nothing else does, nor can - and that, as I have said, in communicating a nature which can know Him.

The Humiliation of Christ

J. N. Darby.

<42023E> 166

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

The humiliation of Christ opens out to my mind in a very full and blessed character. The essential being of Godhead cannot change, as is evident - the Absolute, as men speak - and whatever His humiliation, all the fulness of the Godhead (theotetos) dwelt in Him bodily. His emptying Himself (ekenose) applied to the morphe (form). He was in the status, condition of Godhead, of which, not to speak of outward glory, will and acting from His own will (though one with the Father, see John 5) was proper and essential. But the full purpose of His will in free devotedness, and always so, was to give up His own will, and this according to eternal counsels; Psalm 40.

It was not a lowly being, to whom it is evil to have a will of its own, who had none - that would have been nothing; nothingness was the place of nothingness. But He who in His essence could will, gives up His place, or condition as such, and says "Lo, I come to do thy will." It was a divine act, always so, but a divine act of kenosis (making empty). He was thus relative to the Father, not only as Son but as Servant - an immense truth! He gave up, not Godhead - that could not be - but the status and position of it, and came not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him.

Man answered to this place according to the counsels and glory of God, as the angels, the obedient administrators of power, witnesses of a sustained creation, but he who had been made in God's image, and now fallen, was in the condition to be the sphere of the display of all God's moral glory, mercy, grace, righteousness, above all, love, for God is Love; in a word - redemption. Christ was a Man. And now, in the same perfectness, He takes no will, not even of man, not even to eat when He was hungry - He lives by every word out of the mouth of God. He humbles Himself and is obedient even unto death, and that of the Cross - no resistance - no escape, though legions of angels would be ready at His call. He perseveres in submitting to all - a tested obedience, even to death. Not merely obedience in peace, as Adam innocent might, or an Angel (though doubtless they must feel the ruin) but tested by unvarying giving up of self and where evil was.

The Absolute in nature becomes Relative as a Servant in place - and "no man knoweth the Son, but the Father" - but this is revealed; and in this character exalted as Lord above all now. We adore Him as God; we see Him gone down under death as man, yet kenon (emptying) Himself, humbling Himself, laying down His own life what belonged to, what was divine all through. Now the centre of all the sphere of display of the divine glory and of all in which it is displayed; but this is an outward consequence, Philippians 2. But the place of Man and Servant never given up - wondrous truth! Only He rules over all the sphere of His humiliation - heaven and earth are subjected to Him as Man while such subjection is called for - He reigns till all things are put under His feet.

167 But in His own personal place, in which He is in connection with us, or rather we with Him, He never gives up the serving place - He takes it now; John 13. In Luke 12, He takes it in glory, but in the heavenly blessedness connected with us - those His Father has given Him. And finally, when the reigning and subjecting process is complete, and He gives up the kingdom whose power was needed for that, He takes the simple subject place as Man in the eternal blessedness of God - still "God over all, blessed for ever more," One with the Father - but His place as the subject Man perfect, and we with Him. Wondrous thought! The Firstborn among many brethren, metochoi (companions), not, note, koinonoi (common equal sharers) we could not be that, compare Hebrews 2: 14, consequent on verse 11.

God - and no mediatorial kingdom and power - being all in all - His kenosis (emptying) is no more undone than His Godhead. He always was and is Son with the Father - was and is always God; and now is and ever will be Man kenosas heauton (who emptied Himself), it was, and so ever is, His own divine act; only He has a temporary kingdom according to eternal counsels in this character, a kingdom which He gives up. The apostle John enters largely into this; his Gospel is the expression of it, but it comes out elsewhere in connection with the names of God, Light and Love, both of them essential names of God, yet with some difference, for Light has something of quality in it belonging to a person - Love is more absolutely personal. God is purity and manifests all things. But we are light in the Lord; as partakers of the divine nature, we partake of this quality. In 2 Peter 1: 4, we are theias kotnonoi phuseos (partakers of divine nature), not tes (of the), and it is by promise our own state. But we are not love, for Love is sovereign goodness - that we cannot be; we love as partaking of the divine nature too, but we cannot be sovereign goodness.

168 But in Christ's kenosis (emptying) of Himself, and the course of His humiliation unto death, we find this love exercised - it is divine love expressed - we have seen the Father in Him - love brought to need - love active; "Hereby know we love, because He laid down his life for us." So that the revelation of God, that in which His Being acts, according to what He is, was in this way kenosis and self humbling of Christ; only we add "He gave his only-begotten Son," when we speak of it historically in its external action. And Christ, thus the expression of Love, i.e., of God, in the world, God manifest in the flesh, was also necessarily Light in the world - purity, and showing what all was, but showing sovereign goodness to it when thus manifested.

Formally, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ - He was the love of God in the world, and light in it. The darkness comprehended it not. But it was in Man, and it became thus impartitive, the Word of life, "He that hath the Son hath life," they that received Him being born of God; and being cleansed, the Holy Ghost could dwell in them in order to power of realisation. Thus the Apostle prays that they "may be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith," not merely be life and righteousness, but dwell there in the power of the realisation of faith - He who is the expression and revelation of love - that we may be rooted and grounded in it. We dwell in love and in God, or rather here He in us, and thus are at the centre of the display of glory; the more external thing, and so far finite that it is in that which is created, but the display of God's glory in it, though not without love as its source and sustaining, for it is in redemption. Christ thus takes in all - first descended then ascended that He might fill all things - but then the Saints, and this is their wondrous place, are associated with Him personally here, and we "comprehend with all saints"; for they are indeed His metochoi, loved as He is loved, however personally infinitely above them.

Christ has taken this place in the same divine, perfect love, self being gone, that He might put us in the same place with Himself - whom the Father had given Him - and even now, His peace, His joy, the Father's words, the Father's love, and the glory given to them - gone to His Father and our Father, His God and our God - to be with Him where He is; for in emptying Himself and becoming a Man, it was to associate us, the joint heirs in the same place, though ever Firstborn. Hence the Apostle adds "and to know the love of Christ" - not abstract here, "rooted and grounded in love," through His dwelling in our hearts, who is the divine fulness of this love - Himself; but now He has entered into the counsels of actual glory, length, depth, etc. - it is the love of Christ, the actual manifested, exercised love, yet still divine, "it passes knowledge," that we may be thus filled into all the fulness of God Himself, which indeed dwelt in Him bodily; compare 1 John 5: 20.

169 Colossians does not enter on this ground, only touching it in "Christ in you, the hope of Glory." It is blessed to see how the highest being of God is exercised in grace towards any poor sinner. It is there it is, though afterwards perfected in us, see 1 John 4: 12, 13. This has partly led us in this enquiry into the counter part, that "as he is, so are we," because it is thus we enter into and understand it; "we are in him that is true, i.e., in his Son - he is the true God and eternal life."

But the gospel of John gives us large communications on this humiliation of Christ. His Godhead shines in every page of all the gospels, but John, as every one knows, in a peculiar way gives us the Person of Christ - the Word made flesh. Now I have remarked elsewhere the fact of the way in which He is everywhere One with the Father, yet receives all. But it is the direct expression of the truth we are studying - He is God, He is one with the Father, He is I Am. Everywhere He speaks to His Father on a divine footing of unity; "I have glorified thee, now glorify me." But He has taken the form of a Servant, never "now I will glorify Myself." "My Father is greater than I"; "The glory thou hast given me" - yet it was a glory He had - "with the Father before the world was," "Thou hast given him power over all flesh" - "I receive whoever comes, for I came not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me." He finishes the work the Father gave Him to do - it is the Father that sent Him; so chapter 8: 26. But it is in this chapter the Lord says: "Before Abraham was, I am," which the Jews well understood.

In a word His path was "that the world may know I love the Father, and as the Father hath given me commandment, so I do." His divine nature and Godhead shine throughout, but He receives everything - is sent - and has taken the relative place of recipiency and subjection. John 5 has a peculiar character in this respect, and presented at first some difficulty to my mind. "As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, so the Son quickeneth whom he will"; "My Father worketh hitherto and I work," as the Apostle notes, from the Jewish consciousness, making Himself equal with God. But in verse 19 he at once takes the place He is come into. "The Son can do nothing of himself (aph heautou) but what he seeth the Father do." "Whatsoever he doeth, these doeth the Son likewise," and quickening comes as part of this - "The Father loves the Son and shews him all." But He, though He acts with the same divine power as the Father, yet is shown all - does nothing aph heautou; and in verse 26 He hath given to the Son to have life in Himself, i.e., the Son in the form of a Servant down here, and given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is Son of Man. So that we know that it is in this humbled state that this applies.

170 Thus it becomes the clearest exposition of this unspeakable truth, the result of that, when in the form of God ekenose heauton - His own act - divine all through, at every moment. How true it remains "No man knows the Son but the Father"; but we adore Him. He is not ashamed to call us brethren, for now we are ez enos (of one).

But the point my mind rests on is, the kenosis of Himself; the rest is consequence, however blessed; Psalm 45 : 6, 7; Hebrews 1: 8, 9. Christ ekenose heauton, and took upon Him the form of a Servant. Our best delight will be to be hidden behind Him and see Him have all the glory. It is interesting to see that whatever depth the Person of the Lord may give to this, the blessing itself, which has its very character from its adaptation to our state, is enjoyed by the simplest faith, and the more simple the more it is enjoyed. Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith is enjoyed by him in whom He dwells, not by him who can explain it, though it be true it must be enjoyed in order to be able to explain it.

But this humbling of Christ by Himself is divine love, and in exercise - we know God by it. It is Himself in activity, yet in giving Himself up in this unspeakable way. In the Father He remains in essential Godhead, in the Son one with Him in the exercise of it, coming down to serve, the object in which we know God and see the Father. God is objectively before us in the Spirit's power, operative power in us to be able to apprehend, and have the love shed abroad in our hearts so that we dwell in God and God in us.

Judges

<42024E> 172

Judges 10

- 4. Note there is nothing here as to his conquering them, or them being called so after him.

Judges 13

- 25. "At times" is added to avoid the idea of permanent action in "move." It began to strike him, but it was by impulses, as pa-am (to move) implies.

Judges 17, 18

The land was the land in connection with Dan, and especially of Zorah and Eshtaol. Now this was the very part of the land that was captive to the Philistines. There Samson was born and there his doings. The Northern Danites came thence, and set up their teraphim before Samson. It continued as long as the House of God was in Shiloh, a few years after this. Samson judged Israel twenty years. Then there was Eli still in the time of the Philistines; he judged Israel forty years. This image of Micah was there all the time the house of God was in Shiloh; this gives a date. The captivity of the land was the Philistine captivity. There being no king shows nothing but that there were kings elsewhere, compare Psalm 78: 58-61. And note, they were priests to the tribe of Dan, not to the northern part of it; so the men said "To a tribe in Israel." Were it not for verse 31 (Judges 18), one might well suppose verse 30 to be a prophetic, later addition; in this case, "the captivity of the land" might mean the Assyrian. But Jonathan is none the less a near descendant of Moses, and the question is one of interpretation, whether the captivity refers to the Philistines or a later one; if a later, then verse 30 is a prophetic addition. This I think very probable. The Judges, written in Samuel's time or thereabouts, go down to Shiloh. The prophetic addition shows the idolatry to have continued till the captivity. But this in no way affects the question as to Jonathan, or the date of his name.

Ruth

<42025E> 173

What a comfort it is to find such a history as this after the end of Judges - refreshing and pleasant to the heart to see that, in spite of all, God has a people where the sweet and pleasant fruits of His grace show themselves and ripen before Him, plants of His garden though they be in a bleak and lonely world, and cared for by Him though little noticed by the world, and happy to pass through it unheeded by it.

How little Israel at large cared for Ruth or her affairs? But He did, under whose wings she was come to trust. An active faith that brings us, is better than all other that goes on in what is enjoyed. Yet this has its place, compare 2 Timothy 1: 5. But this has its place rather when positive service is over; compare John 19: 26, 27. But how much larger a space in history and in Israel's thoughts did such a scene as Judges 20 take.

Note, it is Jehovah all through this book.

Notice of Lange's "Life of Christ "

<42026E> 174

{The Life of the Lord Jesus Christ: a complete critical examination of the origin, contents, and connection of The Gospels. Translated from the German of J. P. Lange, D.D., professor of Divinity in the University of Bonn. Edited with additional notes by the Rev. Marcus Dods, A.M., 4 vols. Edinburgh: J. and J. Clark, 38, George Street. 1872.}

In page 18 of the preface of this book we have "Christianity, the announcement of the Incarnate Word." It is this assuredly, but this leaves out redemption, and God's righteousness, and our connection with Christ glorified.

Section 1 (27). "We can form no conception of man without God, nor of God without man" - of God without man we can think, for He created him; Man without God morally we can, atheoi en to kosmo (without God in the world) till he has to say to Him. But it is a root principle here. Independent of Him, or not in relationship, he cannot be.

Page 28. Man has to say to God but not (naturally) as a child of the Spirit, and reason knows neither the universal nor the eternal for man is finite; he knows what is infinite only negatively. Reason knows what is under it - subjecta quasi materia - but conscience and responsibility alone are the link of intelligence as to God, and then faith. If He reveals Himself, he is in the infinite and cannot get out of it, but cannot measure it. It is not the subject of measure, because it is infinite. Reason has no capacity to apprehend the eternal Spirit, because my reason is measured by my powers, and the eternal Spirit - God - cannot be, or He would not be God. There is no idea of God. There is consciousness, we have to do with some One supremely above us.

Man's righteousness is measured by the relationships which the law takes up, with God who gave it, and his neighbour. He cannot, unless dwelt in by God, enter into the rule of life which is absolutely universal. I do not deny the sense of beauty may give, at least awaken, the sense of having to say to God otherwise than animals - it did with me. But all the rest here is fancy when a new life is not there, and then sadly vague. Righteousness we may know because man fell into a conscience, not love; no heathen ever knew love in God - agape (love) does not exist in classical Greek. With revelation, what he says is true as Proverbs 8, but what follows is unsatisfactory, and obliges God to man, not having His love free which it is though sure, and dimming righteousness. If He is there, it is unpossessed and separate, and therefore infinite misery.

175 Pages 29-30 is all right in the main. "Man as created" is in a certain sense, in His nature, but the responsible man is confounded with the Man of His counsels. This was the second Man - man surely, but still distinct. "Created after His likeness" is not incarnation, nor incarnation redemption of those lost, and bringing man into union with Himself is never spoken of. But then all about attraction and repulsion is false; God wrestled with Jacob, though He gave him strength to overcome, not Jacob with God, and he halted all his life, and God refused to reveal Himself. There was the process of grace going on in Israel, but it was not Israel who spoke; Isaiah 64: 1. In Christ it ended "Now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father."

There were promises and grace; these he confounds with law. The covenant with the people was the old covenant which ministered to bondage; he confounds all together.

Page 31. "The repulsion" is the state of the fallen nature, which law and even Christ only brings more clearly out. "An excrescence of the nature" - of what nature? Man perverts his nature, and his nature cries out. All this is confusion. Conscience cries out, and he is miserable without the object his nature is made for. Experimentally right, but confusion from making man good, and a want to be good in nature. The result is all a delusion.*

{*This translation is all astray here.}

Page 33. Here again the great mistake "of a more excellent nature" as "the elect who first receive divine life" - "They do not come to God as strangers" - "He sends them" - their original nature the proof of their election! It is curious, the vague absence of truth with some experimentalism of a Christian mind. But he goes on to, not from Christ; and his statement leaves the divinity of the Lord very loose:" Thus He is the One, in the sight of God, by reason of the reality which God hath given Him, in that He hath bestowed upon Him the fulness of His gifts and of His Spirit, that He may communicate them to man." Then what follows is all loose, "The sighs of humanity pleaded with the Spirit of God." "To flesh and Spirit," leaves all vague; it is conscience - or what Spirit?

176 And again the divinity of Christ is, to say the least, very loose, "He was anointed with the eternal fulness of God, thus He was the God-man" (ewigen Göttesfülle denn er war der Gottmensch). And all he then says is really unintelligible or supposes sin in Christ. Where was the "sinful nature of man consumed?" But sinful is not in the original, only Naturlichkeit (naturalness) - a different thought; he has no idea of its proper sinfulness - it is old œon; and verklärt, if "transformed," is gloriously so. This as in Christ is "the redemption of humanity" (Menschheit).

"Choosing members out of Christ's body" is rather strange (p. 37).

Page 38. Note man has the Spirit, "Each individual has the Spirit as a Person"; as to the fact he is a Quaker. So the "Holy Spirit of the divine, human life." Again of Christ, "corresponding in the eternal organism of humanity to the fulness of the Godhead." "The Holy Spirit is in all, in different measure of display in different persons," and here "according to the fulness of what it is" - but this is not God, the Word incarnate. And note here it "streams out from Him" - in Scripture, He received it be-Adam (for men) when He went up on high, redemption being accomplished (Acts 2), otherwise He was alone.

Page 39. "Everywhere pervaded by a gentle breathing of the Spirit, a gale of eternity." "From this head," Christ, "and from His (its) agency is developed the infinitely rich and marvellous organisation of the life of mankind."

Page 41. "The more man develops the inmost depths of his nature, the more does the fulness of the Spirit, the glory of God," etc., "appear in Him."

Page 42. See the curious account of Christ here, and the Church in page 43; it is a kind of mystic Sabellianism.

Page 47. "Christ, head of humanity," as such in its unity. "All made alive in Him, and in this life they form that organic communion which He so fills and animates with His divine fulness," etc. It is monstrous - a strange, unreal illusion. "The God-man develops His life in the organism of the divine-human Church . . . . Nature is elevated till God is all in all!"*

{*The translation here is wholly untrustworthy.}

177 Page 50. We have mysticism falsifying and confounding. Christ's "is a lasting influence which must work till it has attained its end, till at His name every knee shall bow," and see this carried out in what follows - "the regulation of the company" Ordnung der Gesellschaft.

Page 55. We get his delusions again. The third paragraph, "If we contemplate the œon of the natural world of mankind, His life may be designated as the end of the world," is, in the first part, delusion, in the second part Christ's action - his great false principle definitely stated, and indeed the fourth paragraph on into the next page. The Notes developing do not render werdender. He refers to man conscious of himself, being conscious of God. God being mankind which is not brought to a complete thing till humanity is perfected as a whole; it is becoming God, is it not fully yet - developing is unfolding what it is.

Page 58. "The manifestation of God in the flesh" is not God manifest in the flesh. The whole wretched system of reconciliation is unfolded in the next page - it is Irvingite at-one-ment, and with original man, in whom desire after God as a need of heart already was. "Faith and prayer were in Abraham," "His call was an answer to them." Note the question is not of the spiritual development of man, but of the revelation of all that is in God, righteousness, sovereign love, and that to sinners, and so atonement and yet more.

Page 60. All this is confounding the craving of a want feeling emptiness, and positive desire after an object. For this the object must be known, and the subjective desire formed by it. Now the Heathen did not know God, "There is none that understandeth, none that seeketh after God." For all these men man may be developed, his salvation looked at, but God never as God, as such.

Page 72. Atonement is the Irvingite at-one-ment, thus: "Atonement is the central point of His being: in Him divinity and humanity, the spirit and nature, ideality and reality, Jew and Gentile, heaven and earth are re-united." Only he does not quite deny atonement as usually meant, as Irving. But it is the same vagueness as usual.

Page 75. "In His sufferings on the Cross is seen the reconciliation of the world, and by the light of this reconciliation a glory is shed upon all sorrow, upon all that is dark and terrible on earth, as being a dispensation of God's hidden kindness. Judgment is seen in its deep inward union with sin - annulling grace, and the world is illuminated to its very depths by the light of the divine government, glorifying itself in its victory over all evil." "His Spirit glorifies even the Cross, by revealing His victory in the resurrection." But in page 80, we do not know where the atonement is, "If then we contemplate the matter of the Gospel history in the impression it has left on Christian life, in the assurance of the manifestation of God, of the atonement, of victory over death, and of the heavenly glory of Christ and His people, the conclusion is irresistible, that in this definite and full memorial of the Christian Church we behold a sacred memorial to all mankind of the great days and great facts of their re-union with God."

178 Now as against the Strausses and rationalists this is all well to the point, and shows a personal sense of the real import of these things, and so far good, but looked at as doctrine what is "a memorial to all mankind of their re-union with God?" And with "the heavenly glory of His people?" Is it all ideal or real? The abstractedness of certain statements makes them absurd. What is the effect, as a reality, of what they never heard of? Abstract truths are often invaluable, but the way mankind is spoken of by Lange and others, translating into a fancied reality the ideal, makes all false. Thus, that "Christ died for all," was "a propitiation for the whole world," and all mankind thus interested in it, is of all moment, but when as some, Lutherans commonly, they make the world reconciled, all is fatally false. So God was in Christ reconciling, but the world, as so manifested, "knew Him not," and His own rejected Him. Make the abstract truth of His dealings to be an applied fact, all is false. So the Word of God was foretelling and typically symbolising the coming Christ, but when it is made a growing progress in the realising of the ideal, it is all totally false, and this is the system of these men. The reality of sin and of atonement disappears in mere vain fancies.

To be exact we must have the German, it is Versöhnung, and is merely "reconciliation," "at-one-ment." But the system is plain enough in Lange and in a host of others, and where run to ripeness produces the grossest fanatical heresies and evil, as in Mercersburg, Irvingism, a large class of Baptists in America, etc., at this time.

The utter unreality of the whole thing, and thereby the falseness of its ideality may be seen in pages 85, 86, "That line of theocratic Monotheism which forms the key-note in the history of the religious life of all mankind"; and, "The order, then, of the general records of the life of Jesus appears to be as follows: - (1) The New Testament; (2) the Old Testament; (3) the theocracy, especially the Christian Church; (4) the religious life of the human race." This alleged development of religious life in Heathenism, perfected in Christ and so spread forward on the Christian Church, is widespread from Germany as its centre. You may find it in M. Muller, Jowett, Lange, Dormer, Mercersburg writers, and numberless others - it is the fashion. It is simply this: God originally known, men did not like to retain in their knowledge, but the want of a God he could not get rid of; hence idolatry, etc., with a consciousness that could not be got rid of, an agnostos theos (unknown God). And this these foolish philosophers make progressive religious life towards Christ. Hence Lange makes Christianity and Talmudism the proof, but Talmudism is merely man's corruption of a divine, though an imperfect revelation - Christianity either a revelation or historically the corrupted result of what was revealed. And as to the four general records of Christ's life, in what was "the religious life of the heathen, a general record of Christ's life"? They did not know God, nor of course Christ. This the Word of God insists on, both as to intelligence and desire. It is confounding natural conscience and the craving void of a want of what they have not, with the revelation of that which meets that want. The revelation of God in Christ awakens the desire where it reaches the soul, and a man comes to himself, and, God being Light as well as Love, the conscience is brought into action according to what God is, and so is an Anknüpfungspunkt (as entering in, beginning point) for God in the soul; that conscience came by the Fall - the want by man's being driven out from God for whom he had been created in blessing.

179 And remark how revelation drops out of even Lange's idea of testimony. The Gospels are "the direct impression made by His wondrous personality." Now I do not doubt this, but the Holy Spirit and His operation on the disciples is excluded; He was to call to their remembrance whatsoever He had said unto them, and hence it was according to His holy wisdom and purpose. And as to heavenly things, which are the essence of Christianity, they could know nothing but as the Holy Ghost revealed them, see John 14: 26; chap. 15: 26, 27.

180 Page 90. We see the import of much of the idea of a preparatory life of Christ in the sentence "The life of Christ himself was gradually introduced by the consecrations of the lives of many, found in the line of the Old Testament genealogy of Mary." The whole of this is trash. As to "the eye fixed on heroes," "How can you believe who receive honour one of another"? That there were wants in human nature, which nothing meets but Christ, is true, but confounding Christ who meets them, with the want to be met or any false heroes who did not, is false. That there were God-appointed types of Christ in Israel where the revelation of God was is true. Of Scripture, as might be expected, he is very ignorant; I mean, as a scheme.

It is not as to the life of Jesus, His Person, that there is any difference as the rationalists pretend, but all that was dependent on Christ's being in heaven as to our present state in virtue of accomplished redemption, and as to the Church, as His Body, was wholly new. So, as to union of Jew and Gentile.

Then of inspiration we do not find a trace. As to the real difference of the Gospels he sees nothing but "what you must expect," page 100 et seq.

Criticism by the understanding is essentially false. Mere integrity of the text of course may be enquired into, but even here spiritual discernment bears a great part. But God, if it be a revelation, does not present Himself to be judged, but addresses Himself to conscience - judging man. See John 4, and the crisis was not to discern what it was by previous competency, but men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. The whole of this system is false, and connected with the first principles of it.

Page 115. "Jehovah commanded Abraham to offer up Isaac; he was willing to make the sacrifice; but, in the decisive moment, he understood the command as if Moloch had said to him: Slay Isaac." I do not understand if "in the decisive moment" be Lange's own; if so it is as poor as it is false.

Page 117. Note 3 shows the utter falseness of the system in its root, it declaring the incarnation was no humiliation. It was for Lange the result to which divine life in humanity grew - the perfect divine-human, the grand result. But this makes the whole system false, and totally so. It is true that humiliation directly and verbally applies to Him as man, "Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself." Still it is clear that the whole passage (and one sees now why these doctors deny it) is opposing His course to Adam's exalting himself, when a man, to be as God; whereas the Lord, when in Godhead form, emptied Himself (not of Godhead - that could never be), but of the status of Godhead as such, "the form of God," and became as Man a Servant. Now humiliation is properly coming down in the sphere in which one is, but laying aside His status as God is another and a much greater thing ekenose heauton (He emptied Himself). It was laying aside not the nature assuredly, but the state and condition in which Godhead naturally subsisted, and taking another, and in this sense was the greatest act of self-humiliation - a coming down from the status itself, not being lowly in it. It was a positive arrangement of God, "a body hast Thou prepared Me, . . . then said I, Lo, I come to do Thy will O God." Now it was not solely with a view to the redemption of mankind, for all God's glory in redemption was brought out by it, and our being in the same glory with His Son, John 13 and 17. Compare Proverbs 8 and Luke 2, the shepherds' chorus.

181 But He goes back as Man into the glory He had with the Father before the world was. When He had taken humanity it would have been as a failure, or temporary means to be thrown away as no longer of any use. When He took it He took it for ever, that He might bring many sons into the same glory - His metochoi (companions). But He is in the glory He had with the Father before the world was - but He is as Man in it, and such was the wondrous counsel of God that we should be conformed to the image of His Son - the Firstborn among many brethren, bear the image of the heavenly as we had of the earthly. And this is the true place of man with Christ in grace, not His union with us, which Scripture does not know, for "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone." Redemption is blotted out of Scripture by this system.

Page 122. Interpretation here is all mistaken and nonsense, but needs no remark but that Christ being recognised as "the eternal principle of the universe" is panchristism instead of pantheism, and shows indeed where the whole false principle is, and the mischievous evil of it, for He is in and identified there with it, with "this present evil world." He is its Creator, and it is fallen, i.e., man at its head, and so under the bondage of corruption. It is confounding Adam, the responsible man and head, the image of Him that was to come, with Christ the Creator and Saviour, Lord of all as Man.

182 Page 125. In every place revelation and inspiration is entirely ignored - the gospel history is "the reproduction of religious consciousness or impressions." I own the human side which I think a great blessing, but the theory is absurd, for what is it to me, as to the account of Christ, what Peter, or Mark, or Luke felt about it save as mere vessels to communicate on God's part what is to affect my mind? If there be a revelation at all it must be from God, and it is not the effect produced on Mark by the history I want, but the history itself from God.

Page 152 et seq. There cannot be a more complete ignoring of the operation of the Spirit of God than all this, of the passage John 14: 26. That the revelation of the Spirit in Christianity was connected with the personal appropriation of the things revealed is blessedly true and distinguishes it from Old Testament revelation, "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him," and the divinely thirsty soul comes to Christ and drinks; out of his belly flow rivers of living water. The New Testament says "us"; the Old Testament "Not unto themselves but unto us." But to confine it to this, excluding the positive action of the Holy Ghost according to John 14: 26, is to leave us to the profitless uncertainty of man's mind. The whole statement of Christ's sorrows, and the reply as to the difference of the Gospels is written in total ignorance of the truth; as total ignorance, though in a very different spirit, as those who made the difficulties. It is all miserably poor.

Page 181-2. We have here, in fact, true inspiration formally set aside. There are four factors (p. 181), but the Holy Ghost is not among them - "(1) direct remembrance; (2) tradition; (3) written memorabilia; (4) already existing gospels." Then in page 182, we have what he allows of the Spirit, i.e., its moral operation and effect of the Gospel in the heart of the writer, but none direct in the work - that is formally denied, i.e., the doctrine of inspiration of the older theology. It is a mere vital energy in the person. But the truth as to it is as old as John 14: 26; he is an infidel as to inspiration, nor has he one true idea of the import, character, or bearing of the different Gospels. It is emptiness exemplified though he is defending them against rationalists. He says that "the old theology forgets they were continually filled with the Spirit"; they were not always filled with the Spirit, though he always dwelt in them, and further were not always led by the Spirit to write Gospels. The human part is followed with little intelligence, and the divine part denied. But it shows also, what I have not doubted, that in these Fathers also there was no true faith in the Holy Ghost and Word. They represent the falling Church, not the Scriptures given by inspiration of God as our sure resource when the Church was fallen. Origen saw better than Lange's note on page 186. The whole structure of his reasoning is as prosy as it is weak.

183 In page 223, after an immense mass of confusion and weary misapprehension of the spiritual meaning and purpose of the Gospels, we have the evil root of the system brought out and connected with it: "Divine strength partially remains in man," etc., and "The life of Christ after the government of the incarnate Love of God in the depths of Israel's life," whatever that means, entered into the world to pervade it; and all this goes on to realise itself in the four forms in the Church and in the state (military among the rest!) and so in the world. It is deplorable nonsense.

Page 258 is an entire misapprehension of Christianity founded on the false basis of connecting us with an incarnate Christ without redemption. Hence Paul's ministry is set practically aside, and the entire rejection of the natural man.

Inspiration is equally ignored. I believe personal faith as to life and atonement has saved his own soul from the effect of all this, but the system is false, and fatally false in principle and in every part and detail. If "as the incarnate Word, Christianity was perfect from its very origin," redemption formed no part of it. The incarnate Word was perfect ideally and really as he says, and therefore He was rejected and abode alone till His death wrought redemption for believers. We find too what he calls receptivity that is the author's elect ones who from natural qualities received Christ.

So in page 259, we have the fabulous nonsense of the system fully brought out. It is not worth notice in presence of the false teaching, but more complete stuff than pages 259, 26I, could hardly be found. But "redeeming incarnation" is the doctrinal central point, and prophecies were "the beginning of His incarnation."

184 It is useless to go through all the imaginative nonsense of every page, but some points of positive error may be noticed.

Page 273. Here as everywhere, "receptivity" and "dispositions" before grace.

Page 278. The mixture of state and merging the positive communications and operations of the Holy Ghost in a state of suited feeling. Mary is "the climax of the old œon," and pureness the new. All the rest is fancy, but sets aside the true history. The thoroughly Christological view of life and of the world is the essence of error (page 279).

Page 281. Christ "could only have become a prophet by being born again"; this is the effect of making prophecy a state of life and soul, not inspiration - Balaam and Saul disprove it.

Page 282. The second paragraph embodies the full statement of the false principle. The mystical nonsense, but important as reaching the climax of humanity in Christ as human development, may be seen in page 285.

Page 286. "Religion is the first and most general form of the coming of Christ," not the effect of His quickening power. It is a Werden of Christ. All that follows states the false principle, as does what is said as to the Law. This too is connected with Christ taking the nature of man, not the person of a man.

Pages 288, 289. Again the denial of inspiration; and see the use of Isaiah's prophecy, also the abominable statement of the origin of the holiness of Christ's human nature. All that follows is mystical nonsense.

Page 295. Here again denial of inspiration, "Healthy poetry is transformed into a supernaturalistic formula"; this in speaking of Elizabeth's salutation of Mary; Luke 1: 43-45. Openly again in page 296, "We consider Mary the authority for the history of Jesus' childhood."

Page 299. "Christ saved and enriched the world." All is framed on the false system of the denial of the corn of wheat remaining alone till after it had died, and the denial of any real inspiration.

Page 303. He does not even give heed to the Greek text, it is panti to lao (to all the people) not "to all nations." See too the note: "It may here be, once for all, remarked that our view is, that in the realm of primitive Christianity there is for every Christological human disposition a pre-disposing revelation, for every revelation a corresponding human disposition. The God-man could not but be surrounded by a periphery of the God-manlike." See too the mystical notion of the state of the shepherds.

185 The difference of Matthew and Luke is slurred over unreconciled, and the history of the Magi as pure trash as ever I saw. The careful rejection of the real intervention of God, and the way all is made subjective is noticeable here as everywhere, and wearisome to repeat. The question as to Luke is on chap. 2: 39.

Pages 312, 313. Inspiration is here denied again, and true circumcision, as shown in Christ, made to be "civilization of nature."

Pages 314-318. All this is really deplorable stuff. I never read such nonsense in this line of things as this book. There is an absolute ignorance of the mind of God which is painful to read - fruit of ignoring God's action in the statements.

Page 322. Christ "the genius of the new human race"; speaking of Luke 2: 46, 47. So page 332, but the statement he founds on Colossians 1: 15 is wholly false, and the argument none at all, "Christ is the first-born of the new human race, or rather the prince - born of mankind, and of the world."

Pages 323-324. He cannot help introducing his own thoughts, degrading the Lord. He makes, too, by deifying man, everything natural unnatural, while God disappears. I doubt his soundness as to the divinity of the Lord. But the whole is a pack of childish stuff, He never "expressed an ideal of dwelling in the temple"; he degrades everything.

Pages 326-328. As to prophecy all is infidelity. It is not only stupid stuff, but absolutely and in its essence false - the contrary is positively taught in Scripture. There is no trace of apprehension of the divine mind; it is deplorable.

Pages 349-357. The account of John the baptist, though all hollow, needs no comment; that of Christ's baptism by him is false from beginning to end. The meaning of John's baptism was exactly the opposite of Christ's death - led people to receive Him and not put Him to death. If it signified Christ's atoning death in His case, it did so in the others, and they were all Saviours; it did not mean two things, though Christ be expressly excepted by John's remonstrance. And so far from its being to Christ's death, those who had received it were baptised over again to that; Acts 19. Christ threw Himself in with the godly remnant in their first right act, but the Spirit of God takes care to except Him from its meaning as to others. The whole thing is total ignorance of the truth. It was not the law, "the law and the prophets were until John," then the kingdom of heaven was preached.

186 The Lord's baptism by John was at the end of the account of his ministry, as related in the beginning of the Gospels. When he says "I knew Him not, but He who sent me," etc., it refers to John's personal knowledge of Christ in contrast with his prophetic testimony, not to his testimony dependent on the Holy Ghost coming on Him. That only showed He was the Baptiser with the Holy Ghost. He had given a prophetic testimony that He was the Lamb of God (John 1: 29), with the same distinction, verse 31. The testimony, verse 32, was subsequent. This made him competent to say through the prophetic revelation (v. 33) that He baptised with the Holy Ghost, and was Son of God. It is after this the exclamation "Behold the Lamb of God," whereon the disciples followed Christ; He had now publicly taken His place. There was already a previous testimony, verses 15 and 19 to verses 26 and 27 Then the next day that of verse 29. But the turning point of Christ s position is in verses 32-34. But this stands by itself undated, and was what John said after it had taken place, when Christ had left him thereafter.

The object of the chapter as to John is to give all his testimony as to Christ. And in this place the two capital points that He was the Lamb of God, and the Baptiser with the Holy Ghost. This last comes in as a distinct record. This took place after the Lord's baptising John; then the Lord was forty days in the wilderness. And the Lord went on acting, but not in public ministry, and John went on till cast into prison, and the Lord was in Jerusalem and went into Galilee, but did not definitely leave Judea and go into Galilee till John was cast into prison - taken up in Matthew as the next thing after His temptation because this was His public ministry in Israel, so Mark and Luke. This is only in John 4. John is more the personal history of the Lord, and then the giving of the Holy Ghost. Thus John 1: 32-34, though perfectly in its right place, comes in, as to chronology, parenthetically; verses 29, 33 served one the other as to date. As to the date of the event, verses 32-34 may have been, probably was, before verse 19.

187 It is wearisome to wade through pages without any truth at all. What stuff is in pages 357, 358! With the usual denial of inspiration though John says: "He that sent me," etc., "said to me"; and the usual ignorance consequently of the meaning of Scripture. Again what namby-pamby nonsense is page 359, besides just exactly a contradiction of the truth as to John. One phrase, however, I suspect to be misrepresented in the translation, for if not he contradicts himself; he says, speaking of John the baptist, "As the prophet of the Messiah he knew nothing officially of Jesus." It should be, I think, "knew nothing officially of Messiah as the Divine Prophet," i.e., yet.

Page 360 is the same stupid nonsense. How bright the simple record of Scripture is compared with all this! But this ignoring consciousness, now widely spread, is very bad.

Page 361. All this is not only mystical nonsense, but utterly false doctrine; he does not really believe Christ to be God or man; it is a kind of Sin - Being with divinity. It is the most complete folly and nonsense that could be thought of. I suppose He thought Himself possessed of divine intuition! Facts are mere nothings to him; but then besides the root principle of the abominable false doctrine is here too - a really antichristian scheme.

Pages 364-365. The unutterable stuff of this "Christological pantheism," here leads him to fatal error as to the divinity and Person of the Lord. His merging personality in life and life-consciousness, and this connected with inspiration, makes at once a mystical world of folly and false doctrine. The utter falseness into which it runs may be seen by a comparison of page 366 with the passages the sentences allude to. He confounds too temptation from without with lust within, and brings in gross moral ignorance from making Christ a kind of perfect soul of a totally corrupt world imperfectly from creation, while "ideality and reality met in completeness in the Person of Jesus." But was He as God before incarnation? What is "more tempted by sin than any other man"? "Tempted by sin" has indeed no sense; where is the sin the man is tempted by? He confounds trial and lusts. Man has sin that dwells in him; had Christ? All this is ignored. Compare James 1 and Romans 8.

What is "feeling the temptation of the world"? As its soul it may be understood - a divine fulness and an evil world in the same person, which is his dream, would produce this antagonism; but was the world Himself? He was "the principle of the creation of the world" (page 360), then "of humanity," then "of Theocracy," till last of all He became "the life principle of Jesus." The distinction of finiteness and definiteness is false, for what is defined is finite, though it may be used metaphorically. Did He create the world? Who was HE before the incarnation?

188 Page 370. The Cross is degraded by this system. In Gethsemane and Golgotha He was alone, save His Father and God.

Pages 373-374. You may get a specimen here of the man's mind. It helps to account for all the wild fancies in the book. If you want what is equally low and nonsensical, you have only to read the account of the temptation; the pandering to rationalism is deplorable. How much simpler to say, "He was tempted of the Devil!" So God says. How he appeared I do not know, which is indeed not the least consequence; the enquiry spoils its power.

Page 394. All this on "the plan of Jesus" is very bad. Spontaneous perfectness and uniform obedience is lost in a mass of poor ideas. It is really a wretched book with an idea of depth which is only human mind, and worshipping it, and missing wholly every divine apprehension of Christ. How different the divine simplicity of the Gospels! All this planning and arranging of Christ (pages 393-394) lowers Him in every way as a divine Person, as an obedient Man who lived by every word which came out of the mouth of God, and who walked in daylight so did not stumble. There is no true conception here of a single element of His path.

Pages 407-408. This is better than the rest, though an effort to beautify ideally what is much more beautiful simply. We must remember (page 410) that neither Lange nor any of these men ever go into that other world in which alone we are connected with Christ - the world into which He is risen Hence all the conclusions they draw are always and necessarily false; but this page shows great ignorance even of the Old Testament. The second note shows only how low he and such reasoning can go. But it is the effect of not seeing the judgment of man in the flesh, and Christ risen, and the new Creation. The third note (page 411) shows how totally he is unable to meet the difficulties by not seeing the coming of the Lord, and the Church's place. Most of the fourth note is very sad. It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.

189 Page 413 is a very clear statement of the evil principle of the book; so page 414 near the top. It is striking how God is left out even in miracles (page 418). It is "a new higher life stage." I do not think he really believes in the divinity of the Lord; i.e., that He is God; see pages 419 and 470, which convince me that he is not sound.

"The Son of Man anointed with the fulness of the Godhead." When? It confounds incarnation and what happened after His baptism by John - "Jesus and the Christ." I admit of course that He cast out devils by the Spirit of God, and that the Father who dwelt in Him did the works; but the question is His Person, the life realised in the Old Testament, the Angel of the Presence, etc. His becoming man was, as to form and status, a kenosis.

What is "incorporated with humanity"? He abode alone.

I suspect Selbstanschauung is mistranslated "actual vision," and misconceived, and conformed with what follows. At any rate the total falseness of the whole system is fully shown in the last sentence: "Christ Himself exhibits the completed mediation between the unconditioned omnipotence of God and finite conditioned nature - therefore the mediation of miracles." But the resurrection knocks all the argument on the head. No nature process would have raised Lazarus in his body. But the whole of this (page 422, last paragraph) is the false principle of the whole book. Alas! resurrection and all else succumbs to the pestiferous folly of this book. "Clairvoyance by its purity," "Demoniacal possession by its awakening foreboding power," all are a "mediation of the life power of Christ in miracles"; and if you wish to see a specimen of the quintessence of nonsense, you have only to read the pages on resurrection (page 426, etc.).

Page 432. He goes a step further here in uniting Christ and the world.

I read through, but the connection of effect in people with casting out demons, the previous susceptibility of souls for good, spiritualism, which has governed all Lange's thoughts, here the assertion that miracles were by the mediation of moral states, is as miserable as can well be conceived; that sin and Satan's power are connected, and chastisement may be found with a moral ground for it, no one denies. See note 1, page 446, for a specimen of trash.*

{*"We can represent to ourselves Christ's agency which changed water into wine in successive stages. From the history of somnambulism, it is known that in the high degrees of magnetic rapport, all the sensations and tastes of the magnetiser are repeated in the person who is psychically affected by him. Now at Cana there was no circle of magnetised persons assembled round the Lord, but a circle of souls whom His presence had raised to ecstasy in their festivity. What therefore in the department of magnetism may appear as a fact, might here recur with intensified power, and in a more vitalised form (as, for example, the constrained morbid clairvoyance of the somnambulist in the free healthy clairvoyance of the prophet). When therefore Christ calls forth in Himself the intuition (Anshauung) of wine with fresh creative power, when Christ drinks good wine, the others drink it also by means of the psychical connection. But the company that surrounds the Lord is not a mere circle of passive receptive beings. His companions are by faith brought into active harmony with Him. As the branches do not merely receive the sap which the vine conveys to them, but form the wine out of it and with it, so these festive guests, at the moment of their union with the Lord, infused all their plastic life power in order to complete the change. This is the first stage of the immediate operation of Christ. But the second goes into the elements of the beverage which they enjoy. And here we would call to mind the taste of magnetised water, only to indicate again how, in a higher life circle, the same phenomenon may be repeated in a higher key." - Pages 446-447.}

190 Think of the wedding guests become one as branches with the true Vine, with Christ as "principle of the world's transformation," and so the water becomes changed for them into wine! What I wonder at is how men of sense can have had such utterly childish nonsense translated; but this is a phenomenon to be noticed. It was a higher ethical ecstasy, a beautiful but extraordinary state of mind! They were transported by the power of Christ's Spirit from the beginning of the world to the ecstasy of the transformed world! That it was typical figure I believe, but: - I do not go further into the mass of mystical nonsense with which this morally weak man goes on, pages 451-453. The resurrection of the wicked has no place in his system. Miracle I have noticed elsewhere - exclusive of natural means it may be, but the true miraculousness lies in this when God's will, whether powers of nature are used or not, is the cause by immediate power, if without natural means, mediately or by those means of an effect which would not otherwise arise, is produced where natural agencies would not be in activity without God's will at the time - it is a miracle.

191 Pages 476-479. All is wrong here as to parables. Christ uses them both ways. I do not doubt that God formed the imagery of the world in a way adapted to moral use, but to make it part of the form of life is all false - a kind of Platonism.

Page 483. All the statements as to the parables of the kingdom are incorrect, and the interpretation erroneous, while his "susceptible souls" are mixed up with what is really contradictory through his dread of "fatalism," and denial of grace.

Page 491. Here, with the common misinterpretation, we have the evil principle of the whole book. I leave all the parabolic interpretation; but (page 512) we have the natural human heart identified with grace in Christ; in page 515 a difference in man's nature, in man's capacity for salvation - a horrible principle flowing from his rejection of grace. Whence comes it? See too page 523, where "kingdom of the Spirit

means" man's state spiritually by nature," "the mental gift"; so page 524, the unfaithful servant, where the principle comes forth in a frightful shape.

Prophetic Map

<42027E> 192

What I conceive is to be expected as to the map of Providence is very simple, and speedily to be shown. Turkey in Asia to come under the power of Russia, whereby it, in Scripture designation, becomes the king of the North, wherein Gog is identified with it, being brought up out of the North quarters. Turkey in Europe to be made, as far as Philip's power extended, Greece again and perhaps the courts of the Archipelago in Asia.

Austria would probably take hold of the Serbian and Bosnian provinces, which were not part of the Grecian kingdom. Persia will be under the influence of Russia. I have a strong notion of the severance, in a great measure, of the Babylonish provinces from the minor Asiatic, and to be independent of them, though not of the power of the king of the North; Persia may be amused with, but he will not have the possession of some of them, while England will merely offend him on the other side, but it is on the former part I rest as facts as stated.

I think Austria will be dismembered, and change its position.

It would appear to me thus (see Map). [42_n&c2c.png] GRAPHIC

In Ezekiel 38: 6 we have "of the north quarters, with all his bands" under Gog as their head, "chief prince" (or prince of Rosh) Meshech and Tubal.

In Daniel the land of Mizraim does not escape, and then "the Ethiopians shall be at his steps."

We have here then the two component parts of the Gentile portion of the great valley of Jehoshaphat.

It is my opinion that the French will carry the power of Antichrist overrunning the Mediterranean, and I should think Greece, i.e., carrying them along with them, and should find themselves at the point of division just in the Arabian country, i.e., the point of contact, Jerusalem and Judaea as the southerns always have as we know. Russia, the northern Scythian nations, I am disposed to think the Turks also, but do not feel sure the position they will hold (it is as possessing Turkey, i.e., in Asia particularly, they will be king of the North - but see the distinction put between the Assyrian and Gog) Persia or rather Media and Persia - Peres (see Daniel 5) will be in their train, and also, so I interpret, the eastern Ethiopia or rather eastern descendants of Ham, just as the western or southern descendants of Ham will be "at the steps" of Antichrist or the mature apostate body, for they will be judged as Antichrist, Gog and Magog, for coming against the Jews.

193 As to Poland, it seems at present reserved between the two for squeezing out the Jews as it were, as in fact, I believe, they are a mixed race not properly eastern, Scythian nor western; but Sarmatia, southern of internal Africa and China will have, I conceive, no proper part in this great catastrophe. They are included in other descriptions at least as far as I see.

It is to be observed that the Medians and Persians are different races, the former being Japhet, the latter Shem, i.e., Japhet and Shem bore a part in the taking and destruction of Belshazzar in his impiety, and I suspect Shem and Ham were in Babylon, i.e., Shem as ruler and Ham as the mass of the people. However that may be, we know that Ham possessed the southern parts of Euphrates, etc., i.e., we have Ham on the two rivers, the Nile and the great river, and separated by Shem, i.e., Judea formerly theirs in possession in Canaan. Esau and Ishmael holding Arabia - we thus readily account for the nations apparently the same in Antichrist's and Gog's army, in fact it is just what under the circumstances we might expect. I say "apparently," though Cush be mentioned in both; and there were undoubtedly descendants of Cush on both sides, for the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel, etc. So the word "Libyans" in Ezekiel is Phut, a son of Ham, and in Daniel Lebin; I should suppose the same as Lehabim the son of Mizraim.

The annexed form of map will make it plain.

The French, i.e., Western Europe under Antichrist, then will extend their conquests along the Mediterranean, Egypt not escaping. Gog, the chief prince of Magog, will possess himself of the rest of Shem, and therein of the eastern Cush and Phut. They meet naturally, the body of the Jews having come out of both, i.e., east and west (note, Uz was the son of Aram); specially Poland I suspect beginning it in Judea where the valley of Jehoshaphat and all related in Joel and Daniel take place, for there, it is manifest, all the powers of the world will be brought together as they have acted within the limits of God's known providence, and formed the subject of Scriptural statement as to kingdoms, i.e., powers in the world previous to the interposition and restoration of the four great kingdoms with "the power" of Ezekiel, acting as described in Joel; and of other types the Gog and Magog of Revelation includes all and runs over the whole extent of the inhabited earth, not the powers of the earth as in the formative system, for then the system is formed and it is re-action, in God's wisdom and permission, of judgment on those not truly of it, as I am led to believe.

194 The Noachic and Abrahamic earth under Providence so as to leave the will of man to act; see Genesis 10: 1, 2-4, and compare also Ezekiel 38: 13 and Genesis 10: 7. For Daniel 11 compare Genesis 10: 5, 13, also Noachic.

Note, Nimrod was the first gibbor-tzayid (mighty hunter) in the earth; gibbor-tzayid is "prowess," including craft, cunning, i.e., tzayid (hunting). It is an important characteristic word running through Scripture; compare 1 Peter 5: 3, Christ the Chief Shepherd. Compare also 1 Peter 2: 22, and Genesis 6: 4, 11.

There is not a more important chapter in Scripture as to the providence of God than Genesis 10. We may enquire the names of the cities - this city-building is of Cain; see also verse 22. Does not this make part of Asia Minor Shem, though there were Ludim, sons of Ham?

1 Samuel

<42028E> 195

1 Samuel 2

- 25. The arresting prayer in the way of God's governmental anger is not new, see 1 John 5: 16. It is refused in Jeremiah 7: 16; chap. 15: 1. Here the question is merely asked.

1 Samuel 6

Critics have made a difficulty in this chapter about fifty thousand in Beth-shemesh, but it is a blunder. "He smote the men of Beth-shemesh, but the fifty thousand were Be-am (of the people) - Israel, not Beth-shemesh.

1 Samuel 7

This chapter is practically the one which gives us Samuel's own service as judge.

1 Samuel 9

- 1. "Seer" is the term used in common parlance in Samuel's time for prophet; another word is used in Genesis 20.

1 Samuel 10

196  - 8. This is clearly a verse by itself. The previous verse ends the present directions for Saul, and his direction is to "do as occasion serves." Then comes a special direction in case of his going down to Gilgal; nor did he at once take up the kingdom, but went home.

- 9. This verse goes on with what had been closed in verse 7. He takes his place publicly as king only in chapter 11: 15, which goes on, Samuel considering his office as closed, to the end of chapter 12.

1 Samuel 13

- 1. What difficulty there is in this verse I cannot conceive. Saul "was the son of a year in his reign" (see margin) "and he reigned two years over Israel, and Saul chose," etc. "Saul reigned," is the identical expression used in Kings, "and . . . was . . . years old when he began to reign," but, if so, his age is left out - "He reigned (two) years" is the accompanying expression there. He must have been between thirty and forty, for Jonathan his son had command of troops; a younger son forty when Saul died.

- 8 refers clearly to chapter 10: 8.

- 19. "Hebrews" is the regular Gentile word. Abram is called "Abram the Hebrew"; see also Exodus 2: 6, 7, 11, 13, so chapter 1: 16 and 19. There cannot be a doubt that it was the name used by strangers - "the children of Eber."

1 Samuel 21

- 13. Ey-tiv (it please) used for seeming good with nothing to follow.

1 Samuel 23

Note particularly the difference of the strain of David in his last words, and the song when he was delivered from all his enemies and from the hand of Saul - when the Lord had been with him in all his difficulties and trials, and what man was in the enjoyment of all the results of this deliverance and exaltation by the Lord's blessing. The end of blessing here is to recount the failure of man - of trial, the abundant fidelity of the Lord. This is true in many other instances, yet the covenant remains firm and assured; but triumph over sorrow, humiliation in the results of blessing over man in blessing, read again the end of 1 Samuel 2. This is a most important and humbling consideration. How completely the case with Paul, i.e., the Church, but it is in the intimacy of confidence we can treat it - not justify those who are the occasion of it.

2 Samuel

<42029E> 197

2 Samuel 7

- 23. "For you"; one MS. (182), Kennicott, has "for them." I should have suspected l'cha "for thee," "for thyself."

2 Samuel 21

- 1. There is no "then"; the only note of time is "In the days of David."

- 15. The war was rather on the part of Israel against the Philistines. The war was against the Philistines.

2 Samuel 22

- 24. Not iniquity, i.e., indwelling sin, but that which would have been iniquity for him if he had done it; this is the true sense of it.

2 Samuel 23

- 8. It is to be noted that these statements contain no complete recital of the facts, but merely what redounds to the glory of the person named in what happened. "Whom he slew" is a mis-translation; the stood) against eight hundred who were slain at one time. I have some doubt if 474, a good M.S., Kennicott, be not right, "The wise man"; however he is called in 1 Chronicles 11: 11, "Son of Hachmoni"* (margin).

{*"Hachmoni" is "wise" or "a wise man."}

- 11. Shammah is omitted in Chronicles, and his deeds are ascribed to Dodo's son, Eleazar. They were very likely both there, but I should doubt it was the same occasion. This is a foraging expedition for plunder; 1 Chronicles hardly so. The language, however, is nearly identical.

Except Abishai and Shammah, the first twelve were the monthly captains.

198 2 Samuel 24

- 6. Dan-jaan. Dan is evidently not Laish; it was a name known long before, as may be seen by Jor-dan. This is confirmed by the comparison of Deuteronomy 34: 1 with this verse, where we see Dan-jaan was above Gilead, "All the land of Gilead unto Dan." Joshua 19: 47 is evidently an insertion subsequently to complete the history, verses 46 and 48 very apparently coalesce when it is left out. It is one of the proofs of the careful revision of the records under the prophets.

- 9. In Chronicles 1,100,000, but there all the males of Israel - grown men. Here Judah on the contrary given as a whole in round numbers; here formed men of war. In Chronicles I suppose more exactly. Note here the 800,000 were Ish-khayil (valiant men), the sum of the male population was greater, i.e., 1,100,000 without Benjamin and Levi. The men of Judah are taken in general here, they are not given as Ish-khayil; hence in round numbers. In 1 Chronicles 21: 5, the men of Israel are not the Ish-khayil. If this word be sought with a concordance, its force is very plain, as Judges 3: 29; 1 Samuel 31: 12; so with B'ney (sons of, i.e., sons of strength, soldiers).

NOTE. - We say "Come"; the Jewish remnant "How long?" So the saints when speaking of vengeance and judgment. Christ to Israel, man on earth, "How long shall I be with you?" How we see the difference everywhere!

1 Kings

J. N. Darby.

<42030E> 199

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

1 Kings 6

- 1. I have no doubt at all that this applies to their being settled in the land. The Judges were three hundred and ninety years - rest two hundred and seventy nine, oppressions one hundred and eleven years - Samuel, up to Mizpeh, twelve - 402 years; Saul forty, David forty - 482, not taking into account overlapping of years of judges or reigns. Samson and the Philistines must not be counted apart, nor Eli; they were in the time of the oppression of the Philistines.

1 Kings 8

- 30. The whole of this prayer is founded on the direct government of God on the earth - does not go beyond the promises made to Moses.

- 66. This eighth day I suppose was at the end. It would seem from 2 Chronicles 7. 8, 9, that the Tabernacles was last, the dedication of the altar first. They went away at the end of the day of restraint.

1 Kings 9

- 25. Solomon also offered incense, and burnt offerings and peace offerings three times a year.

1 Kings 15

There is certainly confusion here, as verse 6 comes in after Abijam. It is some question to me if Maachah was Absalom's daughter or granddaughter. If Absalom's daughter, allowing only five years from Absalom's death, she must have been six years old at David's death; the common chronology gives eight. Rehoboam was a year old when Solomon began to reign, so that she was five or seven years older than Rehoboam if Absalom's daughter, supposing her born within a year before his death - the shortest possible almost. Solomon reigned forty years, this makes her forty-six or forty-eight at Rehoboam's accession. It is possible she may have been Absalom's granddaughter, as in Chronicles it is not said his mother was Maachah. If 2 Chronicles 11: 20, 21, 22, be directly connected, it is clearly so. The mother's place was, and is a kind of official one in the East, not the wife's.

200 There remains 2 Chronicles 13: 2, which, if not a mere misreading, must be compared with chapter 11: 20-22; and, if the same Abijah, raises further the question of Absalom or Abishalom - is Absalom the son of David? The fact of 1 Kings 15: 2 and 10, shows that something is to be sought out, some key I mean to it. The author of Kings and Chronicles cannot contradict themselves, nor each other, in the same passage, and both on the same point.

I think it is evident that it was not Absalom's daughter - it might be his granddaughter but it is very doubtful. Maachah may have been Abijah's grandmother. But there seems little doubt Abijah's mother was of Benjamin; it may be she was called Michaiah, and Maachah as the change of name is the commonest thing possible. Uriel and Abishalom were both known. One Uriel, I suppose, her father, the other a wellknown ancestor. So Abihail, 2 Chronicles 11: 18, is evidently only a descendant of Eliab's. It is thus possible, though I doubt it, that Maachah may have been a granddaughter of Absalom, and daughter of Uriel. What adds to the probability of this is that Absalom was son of Maachah, so that the name may have been kept in the family; 1 Chron. 3: 2. Uriel was a Benjamite, and called his daughter Michaiah; Maachah was given in Judah where David's family connection was naturally kept up.

1 Kings 18

- 36. Elijah cries, as Moses did, to the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. Who was happiest and nearest the Lord? It is not in the worst times, at any rate, we are always farthest from God. The people took no heed when the question was on their faith in the God of Abraham; on the proposition of a sign they say "It is good." This shows their state - it was a sad but a misled one; the rulers of this people caused them to err - a pitiable one, but what a sign of the power of Satan.

2 Kings

<42031E> 201

2 Kings 9

Ahaziah killed in flight in this chapter, in 2 Chronicles 22 he was caught and brought before Jehu; buried by whom?

2 Kings 17

- 33. Whence had they brought them?

2 Kings 18

- 4. This was very distinct faith, and reference to God - I mean the destruction of the brazen serpent.

2 Kings 20

In the history of the fall of Samaria and the Assyrian inroads, there are questions of chronology partly internal partly comparative with profane history (cuneiform). The margin (Usher and Lloyd) have resolved the interval by an interregnum. This is at any rate in substance right, because Hoshea is said to have reigned nine years. Yet in the twelfth year of Ahaz he begins to reign, and Pekah was slain in the third year of Ahaz, for Ahaz began in the seventeenth year of Pekah, and Pekah reigned twenty years. I do not enter here into the nicety of current or complete years. What was the condition of Hoshea, said to reign instead of Pekah, whom he slew, I do not know, therefore I say "in substance."

Then in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, i.e., the eighth current year after Samaria was taken, Sennacherib came up. This all hangs together perfectly; then fifteen years were added after his illness. That his illness was before the Assyrian invasion is clear from verse 6, and the same in Chronicles. The external difficulty is this: Shalmaneser came, it seems, three times against Samaria, was overthrown, and Sargon, mentioned by Isaiah 20, took Samaria ("they" in Kings, i.e., Assyrians). But by the Assyrian Sargon reigned at any rate seventeen years. After Samaria he conquered Philistia, Egypt, or at any rate the Ethiopians, and thus was in or near Judea. This puts Sennacherib's attack in the twenty-fourth year of Hezekiah, in the sixth Sargon takes Samaria; Sargon seventeen at least, twenty-three at least complete. Now it has been a question whether it should not be read "in the twenty-fourth year of Hezekiah" instead of the fourteenth. "In those days" it is said "of his sickness," but it was certainly before. Further Merodach Baladan sent to congratulate him on his recovery. Now Merodach Baladan was put down by Sargon his first year, but, it is said, immediately returned. But Sennacherib put him down again on his accession to the crown. Thus it might be in the reign of Sargon, when he was king in Babylon, that he sent to Hezekiah, and as Sargon was attacking or had attacked and conquered Philistia and Egypt, the promise to preserve from Assyria was quite natural. Jerusalem would be evidently in danger when Samaria, Philistia and Egypt were conquered, and Merodach Baladan, having resumed his power, would naturally seek to coalesce with Jerusalem, and after chapter 18: 15, he had not many treasures to show his ambassadors.

202 2 Kings 25

- 27-30. This is one of many passages which show a revision of the previous historical parts of the Old Testament at some such date as Ezra. The prophetical care of the published history is one of the Biblical facts of importance as to inspiration and authority of Scripture. The middle of Isaiah is a demonstrative example of it.

1 Chronicles

<42032E> 203

That Chronicles is a gathering up of fragments that remain I long ago noticed, besides its Judah and Davidical character as contrasted with Israel - very likely by Ezra, a priest or by a Levite. They take up the remnant that returned, but go back as far as possible to its connection with their original history.

1 Chronicles 2

It is to be noticed that though Jehovah was known, the name did not in general enter into the habits of popular thought till it was a national God, and then it did, and this is a proof of the antiquity of the Pentateuch. The names are not compounded with Elohim, but with El.

Further, there is no evidence in Chronicles of any names compounded with the name of Jehovah or Jah before that name was taken in covenant by God. The earliest is that of "the sons of Ethan; Azariah," verse 8. In what generation he was is not shown; Ethan was in the same generation with Achan's grandfather, and Achan was in Canaan, so that Azariah was quite probably after the Exodus. The notion that genealogies give all the steps is notoriously unfounded, and in Chronicles it is merely the gathering up of memorials. In this case it is more than probable he does not say "the son of Ethan" but "the sons" - Azariah was the only one who represented the family.

There is no proof that Caleb was the son of Hezron, son of Pharez; if it was the same Caleb as in Numbers, he was the son of Jephunneh. One thing is certain, the Hezron in question died in Canaan in Caleb Ephratah, and it was after this that Abiah bore a son. Hence we see there were no early names in Chronicles with "jah"; Abijah was the grandson of one who died in Canaan. In general the names are after the Exodus. Carmi and Hur are given as sons of Judah because they were directly descended from him, for they were clearly not his sons, nor was Shobal; verse 50 shows that Shobal was at least great-grandson of Judah's grandson, and Reaiah was his son, i.e., there were at least six generations.

The notion of some that the name "Jehovah" began with Samuel is, upon the face of it, the most improbable possible. It is supposing that the nation had no name for its God at all - a thing the most unlikely, and the most unlikely at that time, and if they had not a divine revelation. A nation without any name for its God is incredible in those days.

204  - 7. Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah.

- 42. Caleb is here clearly of the race of Judah.

1 Chronicles 3

- 21. The sons of Rephaiah are either stocks apart as constantly given in Chronicles, or connected with the preceding royal race through daughters or unnamed sons of one or another branch; and this is confirmed by Hattush, grandson of one of them, coming up with Zerubbabel. So that they were anterior in date, as a genealogy, to Zerubbabel's coming up - collateral branches of the royal race with Zerubbabel - sons of some of Salathiel's sons or others.

1 Chronicles 9

The beginning of this chapter shows the services of these genealogies, used to link the two, though imperfect. Compare Nehemiah 7: 63-65.

- 1. We shall not understand Chronicles till we see it the re-establishment of the remnant, but connecting it with the old things. We see, too, if the source be ascertained, passing over generations is as nothing in the genealogy.

- 11. Note "House of God" is used in Chronicles in the historical part, though "House of Jehovah" in editorial, so to speak. In Kings it is "House of Jehovah." Daniel says "House of God."

- 35-41. This is taken up again from chapter 8: 29-38, to carry on the former history beginning with Saul's death, and begins the history with recurring again to the family of Saul. The porters and singers were Levites of a particular category. It all clearly refers to the return from captivity. Chronicles and Nehemiah are distinct lists, perhaps using some like sources, made at different times.

205 1 Chronicles 10

- 4. Does this dying word say anything for Saul: "uncircumcised"?

1 Chronicles 11

- 1. There is no "then." Simply it was some years after - nearly seven. This is often the case in Old and New Testaments so that there is no mark of time.

These names are, excepting Abishai, the captains of the courses each month, only Dodai is given not Eleazar son of Dodo.

- 36. Here the lists seem to diverge from those in 2 Samuel 23.

- 39. Here they seem to correspond again.

- 42. These from Zabad are all added.

1 Chronicles 12

- 23. Compare chapters 11 and 1.

1 Chronicles 16

- 22. We have the joy of faith, see Psalm 105. The Psalm goes on then with the famine in Abraham's time and its consequences. Egypt and God's government up to the land not the subject here.

The Psalm 96, but not so definitely, is the bringing in the First-begotten. It is Jehovah's claim and title here, and that over all the earth which He will assume in judgment but for the world's joy.

- 34. After past and future are sung past faithfulness and power to come. His unchangeable mercy to His people is declared, and then the repentance and final consequent blessing - the first and last verses of Psalm 107.

As regards the presence of a testimony on mount Zion before the establishment of Israel in settled peace royally from God in this chapter, we have the first part of Psalm 105 - the part that recognises the pilgrim character, and certain promises without condition given to Abraham or the Fathers, and their position in the midst of kings. This was the basis of their position - these were the promises they were to remember. All the dealings of deliverance in Egypt are no more recorded here, as their faults in the accompanying Psalm 106. God remembered Abraham in Egypt - they were called upon to remember him now. Jehovah had remembered His covenant. His judgments were now in all the earth. It is a call to Israel to get upon their true ground of the ancient promises and seek Jehovah; the ark of the covenant being now not established in the Temple but by the faithfulness of God in the midst of His believing ones. Psalm 95 was different - it was a moral summons to Israel in general not to harden their hearts while it was called "to-day"; but Psalm 96 here follows, which is the appeal to a new song for all the earth on the ground of Jehovah's glory. They are called to come up and appear before Him, then giving up the gods of the nations; next is the well-known formula of "His mercy endureth for ever" established by faith here, verse 41, enjoyed in 2 Chronicles 6: 3, recognised by Nehemiah, owned in the manifestation of glory in 2 Chronicles 7: 3, and recalled and applied to Israel's circumstances in different Psalms in the acknowledgment of all their failures. Psalm 106 their bringing back, and the dealings with them, from all lands, in the recognition of this day that the Lord has made for them, and of Messiah, then more widely to the Creator of all things, God of gods, Lord of lords, that redeemed by judgment His people from the place of their captivity, that guided them, put them in possession in spite of all obstacles; who remembered them when fallen and redeemed them and provides for all; Psalm 136. But it is particularly, it seems to me, Psalm 106 that is taken up here, i.e., half Psalms 105, 96 and 106.

206 1 Chronicles 29

- 22. The first time I suppose was in 1 Chronicles 22, or it is a wholly new sentence.

2 Chronicles

<42033E> 207

2 Chronicles 6

- 4. This is what we look for, l'David (unto David). David embraces the Lord's character in the days of His flesh, His humiliation, and His conflict until His peaceful glory in the built temple, His enemies being overcome, should be manifested. Then He is also the Church's Husband; during this it is of import that He should be the humbled Man, and it is of the truth, and indeed essence of the faith of the Church that she should also own Him as the Anointed, clinging to and cleaving to Him as Her Beloved. In all this David was a type, and therefore expressed by the Spirit, according to that in which he was made a type, the full development of all that appertained to Him, according to whose order he was spoken of as the beloved, the David (beloved, dear) while he looked out in spirit for that which should belong to his son Solomon, for it was out of the David state, that all the glory of the Solomon state grew; and it was the view and aim of the Solomon state, though unattained, that was the basis of the conduct of the David state, for neither could He have been Solomon without David, nor yet David without Solomon, neither, as regarded God, even "Him for whom" etc., nor Himself "who for the joy" etc., as we see with much other matter begun and ended with in the Hebrews as to mystery.

I conceive therefore, waiting for further proof, that l'David means "upon," "of," or "concerning" the circumstances of the Beloved, i.e., it is the expression of some part of Christ in His character as "Beloved." This, we have seen, embraces from His leaving the glory to His having it again, i.e., from His humiliation to His Solomon state, for He left not His divine nature or glory, but His assumed - He took the Jesus-Glory, and the life of His people, that He might lay it down and take it again as the ground of His and their exaltation, quod nota, as, and so I apprehend, Hebrews 2 states. All the acquirement of the Glory is His David state (specially this applies to the two great times in Jerusalem, in His presence there in Person, and afterwards in Spirit, i.e., in the latter day), the enjoyment of it His Solomon state, when He is manifested to the people.

And so accordingly I receive 1 Chronicles 17 which is immediately connected with this ha-a-adam ham-ma-a-lah (the Man of high degree) but I do not take the Jehovah Elohim (O Lord God) to be more than address, so it is constantly, and here, and is the pledge of the covenant power of God as rested in on this subject.

208 Here also I think we shall find the clue to the ka-hal (congregation, verse 22) and b'ka-halran (in the great congregation, verse 25) in Psalm 22, that very full Psalm. Ka-hal is the David congregation, though as true of the other, Christ's Solomon congregation, or of peace; compare 1 Chronicles 13, etc., and 2 Chronicles 7 and 9, also Psalm 72.

2 Chronicles 7

Note, in the feast kept by Solomon at the dedication of the Temple, that though the feast of Tabernacles be kept, yet the great day of atonement was included in it. The fifteenth was the day of Tabernacles (Lev. 23); they left Egypt on the twenty-third; so that there was that seven days, thus 15 + 7 = 22. But the feast of the dedication of the altar was 7 days to 15 - 7 = 8. So that the great day of atonement fell on the second day of that feast. Did they keep it, or is it passed over in silence on purpose? It having been in the antitype fulfilled long before, now the fruits merely are reaped.

2 Chronicles 15

- 10. The fifteenth year of Asa was thirty-five years from the death of Solomon, or at any rate from Rehoboam's mounting the throne of Judah.

2 Chronicles 16

- 1. Josephus says probably it was in consequence of chapter 15: 9, that Baasha built Ramah, and this all together brought on war, for Ramah was hardly built. Baasha died in the twenty-sixth year of Asa, see 1 Kings 15: 33, and chapter 16: 8.

209 2 Chronicles 21

The eight years of Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, include it seems, the time he reigned with his father, who established his other sons out, but made Jehoram king. He seems to have reigned two years and over with his father, five or six after his death.

Jehoram, son of Ahab, began in Jehoshaphat's eighteenth year; in the twenty-third year of Jehoshaphat's reign, or in the fifth year of the reign of Jehoram son of Ahab, Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat began to reign; six years after Jehu kills Jehoram. Their years do not tally, so that the fifth may be the end, and eleven and over be counted as twelve; in the twenty-third of Jehoshaphat, Jehoram be already in his sixth, but in sum the eight years include his co-reign with Jehoshaphat.

It is said that in the Mesopotamian chronology, "begin to reign" is not counted in the dates which begin with the new year. It is also said that in Palestine part of a year is reckoned a year; thus if one reigned three months more than eleven, it is counted twelve. So that if one were short enough a year might be counted to three kings.

2 Chronicles 22

- 2. It is known that forty-two should be twenty-two, as it is in 2 Kings 8: 26.

- 9. I am not anxious about it, additional facts so often clear up difficulties, but I think this verse can be easily reconciled with 2 Kings 9: 27. First, the order that he should be buried because he was Jehoshaphat's son was executed by his servants taking him up in the chariot to Jerusalem. When he saw Joram killed he turned and fled and Jehu pursued, not personally at the time for he went on to the palace and had Jezebel cast down, and ate and drank, etc. But he did not let him go any more than the king of Israel; hence he orders others to smite him. Found in Samaria - a natural place for him as Ahab's family was there - thence he sought to escape and took the road to Megiddo and was slain, brought to Jehu, he had him sent up to Jerusalem and buried. But the story is not clear; or, as is more consistent perhaps, they found him in Samaria, brought him to Jehu, and he escaped thence and fled, and was then killed in his chariot, died at Megiddo, and was then taken to Jerusalem and buried. The apparent immediate connection in 2 Kings 9: 27, is only in italics. In Chronicles Jehu seeks Ahaziah after killing his brethren; it was on his way to Samaria after the death of Ahab's sons (2 Kings 10: 11-13), and then it was in verses 8, 9, of our chapter that he sought and found Ahaziah. This makes the account plain so far that there is no kind of contradiction. If Gur and Ibleam are between Samaria and Megiddo, not Jezreel and Megiddo, it would be almost certainly the true one, and I apprehend this is the case if modern maps are to be trusted, but in another order. From Samaria Ibleam is beyond Megiddo; from Jezreel it is to the right, being north of Megiddo, Samaria south, Jezreel east, but it is the going up, or ascent, to go there, and he got as far as Megiddo though wounded in his chariot and no further. The ascent to Ibleam was the road from Samaria. It is very possible it did not go through Megiddo; there is a range of mountains between Samaria and Megiddo in the map. But from Jezreel nothing would take him to Megiddo. Kings mentions nothing of Ahaziah's going to Samaria, which was quite natural as Ahab's family was there, and it was his way, or nearly so, to Jerusalem, but merely says, Jehu gave orders to smite him too, which was done on his way to Ibleam. Once slain, Jehu made no difficulty about his being buried being Jehoshaphat's son.

210 2 Chronicles 34

- 9. They had been sent, doubtless, round the country, over which it appears Josiah exercised a certain control, see verse 7. It was these who returned to Jerusalem. The three mention in verse 8 managed it with the high priest.

- 14. Not a book but the book. It was a known thing, "the Book of the law of Jehovah by the hand of Moses."

2 Chronicles 35

- 20. This was thirteen years after.

Ezra

<42034E> 211

Ezra 2

- 41. It is possible there may be a textual error here; compare Nehemiah 7: 44.

Ezra 9

- 9. It should be we "are," not we "were" in this verse; the difference in the sense is important.

Nehemiah

<42035E> 212

According to ordinary computation Nehemiah came up B.C. 445, returned in twelve years, i.e. 433, and came back "after certain days," see chapter 13: 6. Hattush came with Zerubbabel, B.C. 536.

Nehemiah 5

- 1. Note here that "the people" and the Jews are already distinct.

Nehemiah 11

- 12. Are not the verses wrongly divided here, i.e., this verse should end at "two" in the third line, and verse 13 also should end at "two" in that verse, and then on to "great men," end of verse 14? However it is so in the Hebrew.

Nehemiah 12

- 16. We have here Zechariah the son of Iddo in the days of Joiakim son of Jeshua; and in the Targums, in Jeremiah, the Jews are accused of slaying Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophet and priest, in the sanctuary. Note in Zachariah 1: 1 Berechiah is the son of Iddo; compare Matthew 23: 36, "Zacharias the son of Barachias." So that we have remarkable historical probability of Zechariah the prophet's being so killed, but I avow that 2 Chronicles 24, being nearly the last chapter in the Hebrew Bible, I think it exceedingly probable that it may have been the Zechariah referred to in verse 20 that the Lord refers to, "Son of Barachias" being an addition.

Job

<42036E> 213

It has interested me in the history of Job that all Satan's accusations failed. God practically justified him against them. "In all this Job sinned not." The trials served as preparatory work for God's purpose which follows in making him know himself, and giving us the solution of the great problem of this world's government, at least so far as to set aside man and his judgment and righteousness, and God's use of it for His special dealings with the saints. Of this Elihu is the interpreter, and man's nothingness and self-judgment is then brought out and God's blessing.

The patriarchal character of Job is every way evident; the history which introduces and closes it speaks of Jehovah. It is an account given by another, very likely Moses, including Job's expression of submission. But in the dialogue which is the didactic part of the Book, including Elihu, all is God and the Almighty. It is its character I speak of here, for his age and the character of the idolatry confirm it.

Job 1

- 1-6. This is the history of the book.

It is to be specially noted that in its introduction and close we have Jehovah in the Book of Job. In all the Book itself, including the speech of Elihu, we have Elohim, Shaddai, etc. In the Book itself we have the ways of God as God in the whole world. In the introduction and close - the interpretation of divine government - we are behind the scenes in revealed dealings. This leads to special observation of Elihu's place. There are springs or sources of action in the beginning and close - motived dealings; in the Book, facts on which man reasons, and from which he draws conclusions; we are above in the former, below in the latter. Compare Job 3: 21, and Psalm 139: 15.

Job 2

- 9. Compare Job 1: 5.

214 Job 3

The comparison of light of life in the Old Testament and the New has something remarkable in it. In the Old it is coming and being as born in the outward light of this world, as in verses 16-20 of this chapter, and more fully and to our purpose in Psalm 66: 13, see also chapter 33: 30; but for the New, for the Lord, this is merely John 11, "the Light of this world." But "In him was life and the life was the light of men"; and then John 8, "He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life"; it is not the light of nature - life in this world. "Seeing the light" is being born in the Old, having light in this world, having life in it. Now the Light of life is having Christ, seeing by the power of that life which is in Him, He being withal the Light itself. "The life was the light of men," but a phenomenon contrary to all physical possibility, "the light shineth in darkness" (where light is, darkness is no more) but in man "the darkness comprehended it not." But He is Light - in John 8 detected the Pharisees, the light exposes all things. But following Him there is more - the Light of life - he livingly sees the light, just as the new-born babe first, and the living man sees the light, is in it because alive to Christ who is the Life - when received He is the Light of life, i.e., being alive we see the light as living men, as being such, "In his light we see light."

Job 5

- 9. Note this verse and yet more to the purpose chapter 9: 10; I have thought there might be connection with these passages in the mind of the apostle in Romans 11: 33 seeing the reference to Him who created all things, and so bring out comparatively the unsearchableness of this counsel of God, these riches of Christ.

Job 7

- 1. Job is the enosh (man) in himself, i.e., as exhibited in himself, see verses 9 and 17.

215 Job 9

There is more emphasis than we are often aware of in this chapter. "How should a man be just with God?" More emphasis on "with God." Man may be just in a certain sense - not fail in a way to disturb his conscience in his relationships with men - but just with God is another thing. The three friends put the course of things in this world as an adequate expression of God's righteous judgment. This even is not true. But when the question is how to be just with God, it is wholly different; and this the inward exercises of Job's soul brought him to. The working out this, though in impatience, is what we have in this chapter, and arriving at a need, at the conclusion, which the Saviour specifically met. God was there, fear being taken away, and One who could lay His hand on both. Man in the inward parts is exposed before God.

- 21. On the ground of being perfect.

- 29. On the ground of being wicked.

Job 27

- 3. Note here man's spirit is called ru-akh Elo-ah (Spirit of God), so it returns to God Ecclesiastes 12: 7. So we have "The God of the spirits of all flesh," and certainly Ecclesiastes 3: 21 is important "Who knoweth the spirit of the sons of Adam? That is it that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that is it which goeth downward to the earth." Compare Numbers 16: 22; chap. 27: 16, and Hebrews 12: 9; there cannot be a stronger word than genos. Its sense of kind makes the sense of race or offspring so much the stronger.

Job 28

This is a very remarkable chapter; it pursues man's skill as doing all sorts of things - skill, metallurgy, engineering, binding the floods, and bringing forth hidden things from the earth. Skill, unlimited in a certain sense, in what is subject to him, but this is not wisdom; that is not in the land of the living - only one thing in this world, though it be it not, has heard its fame, knows it negatively - "death and destruction," they show that all that is vanity does not sustain an I, and which cannot sustain itself. God ordered all these things; and so far, as to creation, i.e., where man lives, had wisdom as to what does occupy man. But He put man in relationship with Himself, that is more. And the true recognition of this, and the consequent exercise of conscience, that is wisdom for man.

216 But then will comes in (Job 29) in connection with self and makes self, alas! its centre, though even God be owned. And compare the conscience chapter before God, and self-complacency with and before himself and before men. And how then (Job 30) pride and contempt of others and occupation with evil with love of self breaks out.

Job 33, Job 36

There is a difference between these two chapters. The former speaks of the ways of God with man, the latter of His ways with the righteous. Hence it does not follow in the first that man is converted, only God deals with him; if he hears it is well, he gets the blessing. It is God - God dealing with man, whoever he is, and so breaking his pride; then if he hears the word he gets the blessing. In the latter chapter God is dealing with the righteous, "He withdraws not his eyes from them"; it is not only that He deals with them. Hence he has a specific object - He shows them their own ways - opens their ear - commands them to return, "If they obey" and so on. This is a different and specific action; with hypocrites it is another thing. The general government of God is to be considered in the first case, see verses 29, 30.

We have to remark this in Elihu's speech, that he brings forward God and gives Him first His rights, and draws all his conclusions thence. He first speaks to Job and shows, as we have seen, God's dealings with men by which He asserts His supremacy and warns them God deals with men. It was not a question who was right and who was wrong between God and men, nor as the friends said of bounden retributive justice. Next he speaks to wise men who can understand him. Job had been haughty with God - said it was no use delighting Him. Elihu says He is certainly righteous, and it did not become man to say even to a prince "Thou art wicked," much less to God. Here he speaks of God's title to be owned, and of what He is, but He does judge rightly and break down pride. It becomes man to bow under His hand and seek to be taught. Elihu desires here that Job be fully tried and humbled in view of the dishonour done to God before wicked people by his words.

217 In Job 35, Elihu turns again to Job, and takes up the title of God against him. Job had said "What profit should I have if I were cleansed?" Elihu says, "What profit would God have if Job were righteous?" "Judgment is before him in the midst of all the oppressions of the earth," and Job should see His hand and trust Him, and was visited because he did not, and yet Job had not sense to find it out. Next Elihu speaks of God's dealings with the righteous whom He chastises for their good, but still in view of His own character and title. If the righteous submit they are blessed, and so would Job have been; but hypocrites have no understanding of His ways, and cry not when He binds them. He then exalts God in general. In all he speaks in God's behalf.

Job 38

- 1. Note Elihu speaks of "God," and of "the Almighty." Here we have "Jehovah." In the few words of application between the Lord's speeches, He is called "God" and "Almighty." Here it is ignorance; in Job 40 Job acquiesces in silence. The Lord takes up Job's competency to call in question His judgment; it results in self-abhorrence.

Note farther that "Jehovah" is in the mouth of the author of the Book, not of the personages in it; so in the first two chapters. It was important to identify Jehovah with the God of all ages and all dealings with men, but the persons whose history is recounted did not so know Him. This is all natural and true, and gives its true moral date to the Book.

Job 40

- 2. Note as to date and composition and even moral object in this Book, the author always says "Jehovah." The persons in the history always say "God" and "Almighty," and so Jehovah Himself to Job in this verse.

- 15. "With thee!" note this.

Life and Eternal Life

<42037E> 218

It is well we have Christianity. The thoughts of a future life by philosophers well show what their thoughts are worth. How thoroughly disgusting for instance are the thoughts of Madame de Gasparin. But one thing is specially worthy of note, that ancient heathenism is rapidly reviving. Lambert is merely Buddhism (or do I confound Brahminism here with it from want of memory?), save that in Buddhism in the three highest worlds there is no danger of descending.

All the Gasparin view is horrible and pretentious nonsense. Christian spiritual joys - the love of brethren - Jesus as He is - divine delight of a new man - all that constitutes heaven is out of philosophy, unknown to it. The Christian is more at home there than in this world. This is natural as they have no idea of a new life. But philosophically the spiritualist's ideas are wrong. I - personality - does not require memory; I is never memory - it is always conscious I. It supposes continuity not memory. I remember facts but they are brought to a present I, which I thereby continue to that time. It is done easily in brief space. The present I - there is no other - is in yesterday made present. If I look at I as in the scene past in time, my consciousness looks at another person though I may know it is myself by the facts, by memory entering into my present consciousness. I am conscious it is the same because my knowledge of the events is by my being in them. If there be an I, one individual soul, it is clear it continues though all memory of the past were lost. The conscious identity is lost as regards the circumstances, the knowledge of it (as in a somnambulist), but the I is the same. Faculties are not I but of I; nor is reason more so than anything else. No doubt God is the supreme Intelligence; but to be a cause this is far from all - there must be a will and action in power.

If, as some of these people assert, eternal life being only in Christ proves that man does not live, is not immortal, it proves that he does not live now. I do not use this at all as a proof that he does live after death, for it does not do that at all, but it shows that the argument proves nothing. Other things may prove that I am alive now and not then, but eternal life being only in Christ does not prove it, because if that showed that a man had not life without it, it would prove that he had not got it now, if not a Christian. If a man has life now without having eternal life, he may have it then; what kind of life it is remains to be proved, and how long it lasts. I have eternal life when I am certainly mortal as to my human existence, when I am not immortal but mortal. The word "eternal" does not therefore apply to my state of existence as man, for I have eternal life when I am mortal - I may be immortal and not have it. The very angels have not eternal life as we have it in Christ; are they therefore mortal or do they not exist? That is the question here. It is clear the decay of the body or system of senses proves nothing, if the soul be distinct in nature. All the argument from eternal life to existence in any shape or duration is perfectly baseless.

219 Life is that which a being enjoys, the position in which he is placed. Hence in man it may refer to that in which he enjoys what is down here, or, as he is in relationship with God, to his enjoying that position. Sin brought in the ruin of both. But we may lose one to keep the other, and save or spare one to lose the other. Literal death closes the enjoyment of what is down here, rather, more exactly, the capacity to enjoy. Being by sin it may involve a great deal more - through redemption it may involve much greater blessing, as leading to a higher enjoyment of the other part of our position - relationship with God.

Sin separated man from God - God was no source of enjoyment at all. Responsibility man could not destroy, but he was cut off by the state of his soul from any enjoyment of God, and responsibility brought only fear; he sought enjoyment in what was beneath him and hated the One to whom he was responsible. Now "life" is employed in both these respects and death too, "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth"; we are "dead in trespasses and sins," being alive.

Death may be used generally for deprivation of capacity of enjoyment, in either or generally involving both, or rather expressing that general idea, because the bringing in of death was judicial separation from God. When once man had taken his own will and lust he was dead as to God, and, though he might enjoy for a while what pleased those lusts, was dead to God; then judicially driven out from the place where life in the world was to be found in the tree of life. He was under death physically, appointed to die, and dead towards God. The law came and proposed enjoyment here, but with God. Verbally the judgment of man and woman in Paradise was only as regards his life, and her giving life, here. Driving out the man was another thing.

220 The life promised in the law was a life of enjoyment with God, but not necessarily out of this world. Man being made for God, the only full enjoyment of life even here is with Him, or we are dead whilst we live. And then actual physical death, closing even enjoyment without God, ushers into the place of judgment in connection with responsibility which is another question, a question of guilt and righteousness not of life, though these may go together. Christ is life and Christ is righteousness for us. So that when I say "the wages of sin is death," it is no doubt physical death, but having lost God it is abiding death to the soul when that is come, so that if it be said "if ye live after the flesh ye shall die," it does end life here but takes in the loss of all enjoyment in the soul. We are without God already, and all is lost, in event, with life here. "If ye mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live," it is not that we may not die physically, but possess the enjoyment of the soul in a higher way too. No doubt it is in the new Creation, but alive here with divine life we shall live that life in its proper sphere.

The whole question is if I consider life down here, or in relationship to God. Only Christ gives us life, the capacity of enjoyment with Him already down here (only in the sphere to which natural life belongs) but we are not, save by faith, in the sphere to which that life belongs and whence it comes.

The Law only proposed life generally, as the result of obedience. Life and incorruptibility were brought to light by the Gospel. We have the life of God, joy in Him, but not in the place to which it belongs, but in the place of ruin to which natural life belongs, though even so now in that state without God. Eternal life, in the thought of God for us, is in the sphere that belongs to it, i.e., the new Creation - likeness to Christ - conformity to His image. So we shall have it when He appears - now we have it having Him as life, but in a sphere foreign to it. Those spared in the millennium have the life and divine blessing on earth with it. Others may partake in the earthly blessing, not having it, and so fall away. But this even, in the spared then, is not its full development; incorruptibility is not then come, though the sphere is peace not combat, and Christ manifested there. In Luke 9 we have Moses and Elias, the disciples, and the cloud besides. Eternal life belongs to a certain sphere of enjoyment, but it is the capacity of enjoyment and has its highest objects now, but is not in its sphere, "This is life eternal to know thee" (the Father) "the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."

221 I feel one has to go step by step in reading John's Gospel and Epistles too. The Epistle goes farther than the Gospel as to the blood of Christ. The first great point is Light and Life. Life being the light of men who do not receive it. Even the lifting up on the cross is that men "should not perish but have everlasting life."

Next from John 13, we have cleansing but with water, and this for companionship with Christ where He is gone - a part with Him who is departed out of this world to the Father. From thence we have the state and life, abiding in Him, and fruit here, and the Holy Ghost. Our place with the Father and with the world, Christ's.

With Pilate again He is on Jewish ground (Psalm 2), King of Israel and Son of God, but the Jews rejected in His rejection. He was their King, but they had "no king but Caesar." In Gethsemane and on the Cross we have the Lord only in that character in which He freely lays down His life that He may take it again. In both it is simply Himself, freely giving Himself and it up. In John 20 we have this present time till Thomas, and then the millennial manifestation after the remnant gathered, and closing with Peter and John's service - the present time and Paul left out.

But note, the eternal life and the cleansing associate themselves. Christ, as come down here, spake that He knew and testified that He had seen; He was the eternal life with the Father and manifested - the Son of man who was in heaven (ho on). Then when the cleansing of John 13 comes, it is that they may have a part with Him going to God as come from Him, going out of this world to the Father, all things put in His hands, when He could have no part with them; He was washing them in view of where He was going. So He has sanctified Himself that we might be sanctified by the truth, the Spirit takes the things of Him and shows them to us, and that is all the Father has, and we "are changed into the same image from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord" - hence "unblameable in holiness before God and our Father at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints," so 1 John 3: 2, 3. Still from John 13, it is our state and position - the revelation of the Father in the Son, so that we know where He was going and the way, and the coming of the Holy Ghost to make us know the things and our connection with Him - our position.

222 We get "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (not the "sins" even of believers), and who baptises with the Holy Ghost. But we must be born again; even the Cross is to "have eternal life" - the eating His "flesh and drinking his blood" to live by Him. We have life and cleansing (by water) for the sphere life belongs to, not bearing sins or justifying, nor redemption by blood; that belongs to the old life and its fruits, or rather ourselves as viewed in it. You have Christ's death for our life, from love to us His sheep, or otherwise He abides alone, but so will have fruit, is loved of the Father because He lays it down that He may take it again But all this just shows what I refer to and mean.

But in the Epistle it is different, not that there is a development of redemption or justification or bringing us to God, but, as fellowship is its subject and down here, although life and its true character in us be its primary subject as that which we have - that fellowship - yet we must bring in the blood of Christ or the unclean would have it, and the guilty, which cannot be. Hence after stating the subject matter and object (1 John 1: 1-4), the apostle speaks of what, from God's nature, we must have to have it; for we walk in the light, as God is, to enjoy it. We walk in the light as God is in it, having fellowship one with another, the blood cleansing us from all sin, not water here, for as he says, "He came not by water only but by water and blood," the fact having been witnessed in the Gospel. It is cleansing and divine favour, forgiveness, here, not propitiation and judicial righteousness, for this compare Romans 4, for we could not have administered forgiveness if there had not been the other - the justifying.

We cannot say we have no sin, nor that we have not sinned, and we have forgiveness on confessing them, and cleansing from unrighteousness. His advocacy to restore communion is that of the righteous One who has made propitiation, but all this refers to fellowship and communion. This is done towards God and according to His nature - the forgiveness is received administratively and actually on confession. And this of course runs through, the sins of all Christians are forgiven as to redemption and judicial imputation.

223 Love was manifested in that He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins, but it refers to what we are fit for, how we are fit for communion before God; and love is perfect in this that "as he is so are we in this world." For the rest, it is what this life is as contrasted with the sinful one, and that the Spirit, the water, and the blood all bear witness that eternal life is not in Adam, but the gift of God, and that in the Son.

I have now to see how life is put forward in the Gospel. First "in him was life, and the life was the light of men" (these last specifically), as here "the light shone in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not."

Chapter 2 is Jewish, when being Son of man He returns.

Then, John 3, we have its nature in us, "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." But it is also practical cleansing by the Word of God (water); then comes the Cross, "must be lifted up," and God "has given." But this introduces heavenly things (the other, even for the Kingdom, as earthly) and in connection with this He testifies what He has seen and heard. It is eternal life and the words of God down here. All things are given into the Son's hand.

In John 4, Judaism is left. The Father is seeking worshippers, and God must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Here it is God's gift, and a Christ, a divine Person, completely humbled, dependent for a drink of water, which He had created, on a rejected stranger, gives living water - the power of life in the Spirit (the law of the Spirit in Christ Jesus), which is in us but springs up to the place of its source, the heavenly relationship known through the Son.

John 5. The Son is acting in power, as and with the Father, and gives life, quickens whom He will - first souls then and now, and in due time will bring up all out of their graves to life or to judgment which is committed to Him as Son of man.

In John 6, it is the incarnate and dying Man, and faith receives and feeds on Him - first, flesh and blood, a dying One known in death (closing relationship with the first man altogether), and then as the Bread come down from heaven to give life to the world, not promises to the Jews or Israel; hence it is always for believers "I will raise him up at the last day." Responsibility as to receiving life is at the end of chapter 5.

John 7. Instead of Christ's showing Himself to the world and giving rest there, He gives now the Holy Ghost to those that believe on Him - the time was not come for the other. This time is characterised by the Holy Ghost "was not yet" (ouk en eti).

224 In John 8, He is the Light of Life, but, as we have often seen, rejected in His words.

In chapter 9 He gives sight and is rejected in His works.

John 10. Here He gives eternal life to His sheep, lays down His life for them, and though the wolf may catch and scatter them, cannot catch them out of His hand. Also it is eternal life - they cannot perish. He and His Father are one - it is a common work and security. Judgment is the Son's only.

John 11 brings in another important element. He is the present power of resurrection and life for us - resurrection going first - here back to mortal life as Jesus was here. Now a life had with Him, spiritual quickening and resurrection from the dead as He is hid in God, and if alive first spiritually, will never die; but I doubt not when He comes not at all, though death is not then yet destroyed, but he who has the power of it bound. This is not positively revealed, but here seems to be found on principle. With a rejected Christ the power of resurrection must come first; hence in Ephesians, when dead in trespasses and sins we are quickened together with Him and raised, and sit in Him in heavenly places, but here Christ is looked at as having been Himself raised as One who had died, descended as to this where we were, and God is the Workman. So that, though impliedly owned, it is another aspect of it than life from Him.

In John 11 we have resurrection and life - His power - death theirs, but in God's mind for them and to gather the children of God.

John 12 closes His then present relationship with the Jews. We have the remnant attached to and separated to Him; then the final presentation to Israel, and the Gentiles, but for that, the Son of Man's glory, He must die. The world is judged, but its prince cast out, and the attractive point for all men set up before their eyes. The blindness of the Jews is then stated; still He was come Light into the world, and believers would not walk in darkness, and His Father's commandment which He fulfilled in His Word was life everlasting.

225 John 13 enters, as said, on the new position He was taking, only.

The beginning of John 14 shows what they had had while He was there.

The beginning of John 15, shows the disciples' relationship with Him while He was there. The Comforter's coming as, in a certain sense, taking His place, is gone into in the latter part of John 14, and at the very end of John 15, and in John 16; only in the beginning of John 15 they are exhorted to hold fast the connection, and abide in it, as are we. But it is responsible position here.

In John 17 the character and form of eternal life is the knowledge of the Father and Jesus Christ as sent of Him; for so He is ever seen in John, though everywhere God in his writings. "The Father" is the guiding word here, and then Christ as sent, though before the worlds.

As regards eternal life. First in its essence and nature it was in the Son with the Father; 1 John 1: 2, so in John 1. "In him was life" - as Man down here, the Person of Christ. He was given to have life in Himself. Life and incorruptibility are brought to light by the Gospel. But "eternal" life was in the counsel of God and promised us in Christ Jesus before the world was. In its full result it is in resurrection glory, "In the end everlasting life," "Springing up into everlasting life." But we have it when we have Christ, "He that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life," "is passed from death unto life." "He is the true God and eternal life." And "whosoever believeth on the Son" was to have "everlasting life." Thus it is essentially in the Son, given us in Christ Jesus before the world. But in counsel this is in glory with the Father, yet intrinsically in Him and received from Him; before we are there we have it.

Then as regards Old Testament saints, the general truth remains. They must be born of the Spirit to have part in the kingdom which they have, "So is every one that is born of the Spirit." But life everlasting is, as far as I am aware, only spoken of the millennial state ad-ha-o-lam (for ever and ever) Daniel 12: 3, and in Psalm 133, simply o-lam (evermore).

The life is in and accompanies Messiah's presence, only we know now that it is in resurrection it is displayed in man, and that we have it now in a glorified Christ. The saints on earth in the millennium will, I suppose, have it in the form in which blessing is brought to them. The foundation is in John 3: 14-16; the moral change and that in communication of life is in John 5 et seq. But the place and character of eternal life is in John 3: 14-16. As with the Father we see it in the eternal Person of the Son. Saints were quickened by the power of it in all times, but it was not brought to light. In Christ incarnate it took its form as regards the purpose of God - it is revealed in Man. But this was not the full purpose in counsel - that was conformity to Christ in glory as Man, through the Cross and triumph over death and him that had the power of it. The fruit will be life ad-ha-o-lam (for ever and ever) for those on earth, but not participation in the glory. The Gentiles will have it then too, as we see in Matthew 25.

226 The testimony as to eternal life before its full revelation in Christ stands, I think, thus. In the New Testament we find it clearly contemplated by the Jews, as in John 5 and Matthew 19: 16. It may have been vague, but was fully before their minds as was the resurrection. As regards the Old Testament, not to speak of its implicit revelation in the relationship of God with Abraham, in Psalm 16, the path of life in resurrection through death is clearly announced, but only as to Christ directly. In Psalm 21, we have not death, but length of days for ever and ever - long life - eternal life. Psalm 16 is more, it goes through death into the divine presence by resurrection. This is governmental and millennial. Then when Judah is Lo-ammi, and God's ways with them then are brought out, Daniel is distinct as to the saints also "They shall wake up, some to everlasting life"; this carries it out, as I judge, to scattered Israel. Matthew 25 extends it to the Gentiles in the earth. The full heavenly character and place in which it resulted in Him, who had come from heaven and went back as Man into it according to the counsels of God, gave eternal life its crown and glory; but it is not the direct force of the thing itself. Yet John, who speaks most of it, always brings it out on earth whether in Christ or the saints. Paul pursues it to the heavenly glory in which alone he had seen Christ.

It is worthy of note how Paul never speaks of eternal life as a present thing. He says many things which involve it as "not I but Christ lives in me," but as he brings us before God justified and in glory, so eternal life is there for him, as for all, in its fulness. He can say in general, "The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." But it is not, as in John, a present living power in us more than a state to which we arrive; for Paul the end is everlasting life - for John, "He that hath the Son hath life." I do not mean difference in doctrine, for there is none, but aspect and apprehension in the Word - one is intrinsic life, the other condition in result before God.

227 Connect these passages, Titus 1: 2 - life promised before the world, then 1 John 1: 1-3 - here it was with the Father and was manifested in the world - what and in whom the life was. Then John 1: 4, 5, life in Him, but this life light distinctively and as such for man, not for angels. It was the display of that in which man was to be in light before God. The old man understood nothing of it. But then 2 Timothy 1: 9, 10, where we find it manifested by the Gospel after He had gone up, life and incorruptibility being brought to light in it. Now, turning back to Titus also, it is manifested by the Word, by preaching, by which Word we are begotten to life. Thus life is eternally in the Son, before the world and promised before it, given us in Him, i.e., is manifested in the second Adam, the power shown in resurrection, and its place in the counsels of God in the glorified Man for ever. The first Adam, however true and real his responsibility bringing in result death and judgment, comes in as to eternal life by the bye. Then Christ undergoes death and judgment for us and enters into the power of life in Himself, but by the action of God, into the new eternal sphere of man's blessedness. Thus life was before the world, will be after it as to its present state. The first man and the world only come in by the bye - between - as the sphere where all is brought out and the work of redemption wrought, for that was in respect of sin, and so God is glorified as to the first Adam, and life is in righteousness according to God. But what a thing eternal life then is!

It is to be remarked that in John 3 eternal life is not connected with being born again but simply the kingdom. It is necessary for that we get a nature suited to have to say to God in whatever way. It is the Spirit's work - a nature suited to know Him. Eternal life is connected with heavenly things, and the lifting up of the Son of man, Son of God. This shows us what eternal life is; it is wholly in Christ (compare 1 John 1) and to us through the incarnation, but necessarily also the death of the Lord Jesus, compare John 6: 33-58. In Him and promised to us (Titus 1) before the world was, but brought into man by the incarnation (for He was in heaven) and we into its place and condition through His blessed death, resurrection and ascension, compare John 6: 62. The Bread from heaven is Christ; then we come into its own proper place by redemption and in resurrection, for redemption in the full sense brings us into heaven. The Kingdom, specially the lower part, does not meet this. No doubt every blessing does for sinful man, but it is not the proper fruit and result of redemption - heavenly things are that - eternal life knows no other place. In Christ thus, who was and is eternal life, risen - here He the Son of man was in heaven. There may be condemnation by rejection here, but entrance into that to which Christ belongs involves for us redemption, death and resurrection. This in its great principle of application is reasoned out in Romans 4 and 8.

228 Further we have the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, that being justified by His grace we should be heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The renewing (anakainosis) of the Holy Ghost is not merely "regeneration" or a new life; it is objective bringing into the sphere we are introduced into by Christ and redemption, the kainos state of things - new creation (kaino ktisis), the neos regeneration is more subjective, essential but subjective and in application does not, that I see, go beyond earthly things, but earthly things with God - the desert now (not Canaan) and the desert to blossom as a rose but not Canaan. So in 1 Peter 1: 22, 23, it is subjection "you have purified your souls in obeying the truth, being born . . . of the Word." No doubt heaven is here full in hope, but the regeneration, the being born is subjective condition. The strongest point of connection, for that is what it is, is in James 1: 18, but it does not in fact reach out of the sphere down here, though the sort of nature for that according to the purpose of God. Peter is "hath begotten again" (anagennesas). In Matthew 19: 28, the regeneration (paliggenesia) is clearly earthly and a state of things. So that what I get in regeneration is a subjective state "born of God," "of the Spirit," "of water," "of the Word," and as a sphere merely, so far as earth, only the foundation of relationship with God.

But the Spirit as shed on us goes farther. Here I have an anakainosis of the Holy Ghost.

229 The whole sphere of relationship is changed and the hope of eternal life comes in. So in Colossians and Ephesians, the palaios anthropos (old man) is put off. This is general, the former man now grown old and rejected, but then we have distinctly the neon and the kainon; here neon is in connection with regeneration and subjective, and kainon new in nature and character, and, brought into a new sphere, its relationships are in question - neos begins, kainos is different, and so lives in a new sphere. Thus, Colossians, we have put on the new - it is a new man now beginning, but it is anakainoumenon into knowledge according to the image of Him that created it. This is the renewing of the Holy Ghost shed on us, anakainosis. The nature is proper - capable - but it is in a wholly new scene and there developed in power. So Ephesians 4 we are ananeousthai in the spirit of our minds. This is subjective again, in contrast with the corrupt old man - what it is - and we have put on the kainon anthropon, one new in character, different, created according to God in righteousness and holiness - neither corrupt nor innocent, but according to the character of God Himself. The sphere is not entered into; he had largely done this, and his object here is character, still it is objective (kata).

The washing of regeneration cleanses subjectively, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit - has Its essential nature and characteristics - but the renewing of the Holy Ghost leads us into the whole sphere of that new state of things into which Christ is entered as risen and now gone up on high. And though we must be born to have life, and have life if born, yet eternal life is only known in redemption, and the scene and state into which redemption brings. Hence though we have put on the new man (kainon) in putting on the risen Christ, yet there is an anakainosis through the Holy Ghost in bringing us into the apprehension of the new creation (kaine ktisis) where all things are new (kaina).

Then in John 3 also, water is no way baptism. Baptism is death, as is evident - our purifying, having done with the nature in which I lived; the water came out of His pierced side and life is in the Son, the second Adam, and that consequent on death as come amongst the first. God has given to us, therefore, eternal life it is said there, and as the water and blood through death testify it to be in the second, risen One, Son of God, so the Holy Ghost is a witness of it. Here again we have what Eternal life is. But the water, though really purifying, the application of the Word, yet is here only by birth not death and resurrection as in baptism, and goes only to the kingdom.

230 "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken to you" - a new nature and moral effect that was produced, and must be, by John 3; but the sphere did not thereby go out of this world - by death and resurrection it clearly does. But the Son of Man coming in in the power of that life which was before the world, and then dying and rising, introduces into the new creation (kaine ktisis). He abode alone while here, but by redemption, and being in Him, we have our place there, and to this the Holy Ghost corresponds.

Note, the Master or Teacher (ho didaskalos, Matthew 10: 24) is no difficulty; Israel was the disciple (ho mathetes), and so he ought to have known - it is the article of contrast quite common.

But there is another point, I think, which comes out from the end of John's gospel. I have said for us it must be by death and resurrection, but in itself it is in Christ, and this leads to another and more intimate apprehension of what it is, though always on this ground.

I have an idea that Colossians, as to the point of progress, takes the ground of John 20, Christ risen breathing on the disciples; as God breathed into Adam the breath of life, so Christ does in the power of His resurrection. It is life in the power of resurrection, by the Spirit communicated, that was associating them with Him in the power of that life. In Colossians we have not the Holy Ghost, but we have "risen with him." In Ephesians we have the Holy Ghost and sealing for the day of redemption; hence purpose and the new Creation. This evidently connects itself with the coming of the Holy Ghost, whether from the Father as putting consciously in the place of sons, or sent by Christ glorified revealing all given to Him as Man. In general the Holy Ghost leads us into knowledge of the purpose of God, length, breadth, depth and height.

The Old Testament saints will clearly have been born again, and have the kingdom. They, as every one else blessed, are clearly dependent on the work of Christ as propitiation, as in Romans 3, "the remission of sins that are past." But there is more in the Cross (as received). It is not the blood on the doorposts the blessed Lord refers to in John 3. There is the recognition of the world being no place (though God may be with us in it, not as in Egypt), but the world recognised as atheos and place of Satan's power, and so Christ, proving it, lifted up out of it. While He was in it consequently He was alone - men by nature were of it. And though born again they get the kingdom; here was more - He, Christ, was alone in His Person that eternal life which was with the Father, and was alone such in the world which was not it in any way. Hence "the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father," "the Son of man who is in heaven." Who else was there? Even had ascended? He was thus alone. He came "eternal life" into this world, but was alone in the out-of-the-world, heavenly condition of relationship and Being in which eternal life consists, which was before the world not only in God but in counsel for us - given us in Christ - manifested in Him alone in the world, and now consequent on His being lifted up and gone out of it into the heavenly place of which He taught, that into which we are introduced in Him.

231 Now in John 6 we have this brought out; not the blessed Lord's death as offered to God, the one ground of all blessing, but the reception of it, entering into it by man. He is the Manna, the Bread which came down from heaven, was not of this world though in it and born of woman. This is expressly stated in John 17, and carried on to the disciples. It is life to the world - Jew and Gentile all merged in sin in nature, and so children of wrath; and here Ephesians joins in chapter 2 - we are there quickened together with Christ and set in Him in the heavenly places. But in John 6 we have the process in the apprehension and reception of Christ - the digesting by faith into the life of our own being. He is first the Bread which came down from heaven to give life. But so only, though really such in power, He remains alone. We have it only in resurrection, a new life and condition of man because in nature he was away from God in nature and wrath - a condition entirely out, away from God, yea, in enmity. Hence as receiving this life we enter into the expression of this, and that in our conscience, in Christ's death and resurrection; we are rejoiced to have a part in death because it is death to the nature and system estranged from God, and have life only in the new condition in Christ. It was in Him in this world not in the old condition in life though entered into it - come down from heaven; but we have it who were of that condition by being delivered out of it, having wholly done with it by death - ceased to exist as to it - and entered as receiving Him dead into the new place.

232 But John 6 takes up not our entering in, though we receive Christ for it, but the full reception by faith of His dying in grace, so that divinely for faith the life-giving One separates us by the end of criminality (death) and atoning redemption, but here in the power of separation absolute, and judicial, from the old; not leaving it, which He could have done, but so no use for us, but by dying to it so that He did so in that which was needed for man as coming under that judicially, and man's ceasing to have to say to it in the only possible way because we were alive in the nature which made it such - death only could end that, besides the putting away of sins. Hence we have eternal life through it in due time - the form of it in that we shall be raised again and conformed to Him where He is gone; but it is not our dying with Him here, though that be true, but our full entering into His doing it in grace, giving Himself in flesh for the life of the world. And this belongs to the character of life He had with the Father before the world was, for He ascends up where He was before.

Nor is there any full truth as to what man is, or God is (in respect of man), or the world is so as to be with God according to the power of Christ's work but by this. He gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us from this present evil world - that, though the truth, is its lowest expression, for He brings us to God according to all God's judgment of good and evil, as glorified in Christ in His death (and so taking man to Him and making him the vessel of the revelation of what He is). Whoever believes on Him has this, but it is only by the death and blood-shedding he has it. The Word has been made flesh that it might be thus. To guard against false conclusions from this as to the term "eternal life," we must remember that the spared of Matthew 25 go away into it; still even then it is those who have received Christ, in His humiliation, in His messengers - will have had shared in the sorrow of a Christ the world rejects. So the 144,000 of Revelation 14 and "the great multitude" of chapter 7, though the matter be not then in hand.

In John 6 we have One in whom is eternal life in nature and being, always in the bosom of the Father as living here, coming down and bringing this new heavenly thing, and dying, giving Himself even to death to close the old thing and set it aside, i.e., to believers, thus while having it in Himself dealing in respect of the world, i.e., of man's condition in it so as to make an end of that, and introduce us in the pure glory into which He is entered according to the worth of that which He has wrought. He has taken flesh, eternal life being in Him, and given it for the life of the world. It is the death we enter into, and receive in our souls, so as to have a part in the eternal life in Him. Hence in the sacraments, figures of this, the first has no connection with union with Christ in its signification; the second has - we are all one Body. Yet it is not so as that in itself, we are thus one with Christ therein risen in figure, but we are all one out of the world as united to Him; the union with the Head is by the Holy Ghost, another truth founded on His ascension, yet supposing His death - being so united we return and see how it all came in, and own death not union. In one sense death goes deeper than union, because all God's moral nature is made good and glorified in it, and the question of sin settled. Union is a special privilege of ours.

233 In a word, Christ is eternal life with the Father, becomes Man and dies, setting aside for us the whole condition of man with God in the world - making cease, as setting it aside - and then takes man up into the new glory purposed, of which He was thus worthy.

The Ways of God

J. N. Darby.

<42038E> 234

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

How thoroughly, after all the history of man's ways, all the failure and ruin, evil brings out the whole nature, character and ways of God Himself! The Cross is just the central proof of this, but the whole history tends to and flows from that.

I adore the perfection of those ways of God which, while revealing in a living Person, i.e., Himself in a living Person, the perfection of blessedness and grace as the attractive power for the heart, and which thus forms it, yet does so in that which by its perfection judges the conscience and makes the work of this Person necessary, so that there is a setting the conscience on the full ground on which the heart is, without which there could not be perfect blessedness. Were it only the perfect enjoyment, alas! man would think something of himself, but as it throws light on his conscience he is dependent entirely on the work which cleanses (has cleansed) it, and thus is in humility, and yet he gains immensely because his moral estimate of things is thus according to the perfection which has judged his conscience. Then his walk is in the nature which has loved this Object, and according to the light in the conscience which He has thrown on it, i.e., "as God is in the light," see 1 John 1.

This connection of conscience and the Object is very blessed.

The World

<42039E> 235

As regards the law and the teachers of the law, the world, as it is, is in no wise save materially the world made by God. God made Paradise and man lost it; and the world grew up as it is as a system formed by the action of Satan on man's lusts and passions, let it be murder or music and civilization, for Cain began both.

Now the way back was wholly closed - man could not return to Paradise. Of this I have often spoken, but the law was the rule for man on earth, but it could not take man back to Paradise, could not carry on a sinner to God in heaven. Man had not been made as man for heaven; the earth was given him, but this the law could not restore - it was given to the first man. Hence now, if we are to be with God it must be a state suited for heaven itself, and partaking of the glory of God. For we rejoice in hope of the glory of God, and in sinning come short of that glory. The law deals with man on earth and applies to him there, but Christ has taken, in virtue of His work, a place as Man in heaven and in glory. He introduces us into that new sphere and heavenly Paradise, into "the holiest by a new and living way." This is a wholly new thing. It shows us, by making us know God, the perfect righteousness and rightness, the perfection of the law as addressed to responsible man on earth as rule of his conduct on earth as the first man. But to bring back the Christian to it is to bring him back from the heavenly position of Christ before God to the impossible condition of the first Adam - sinner on the earth, where there is no way back. They have turned back from the way forward, which is Christ risen and death to the old system, to arrive there.

The law is not made for a righteous man; I must then give up my righteousness to take back the place of unrighteousness out of Christ to apply it.

_______

The certainty of a fact by sight is not belief, because, as far as it is worth anything, it is certainty not belief - nothing to accredit it but perception.

The Wisdom of God

<42040E> 236

The Wisdom of God is a wonderful thing. It must put things in their place or it is not wisdom - that the Cross does. We are sinners - we must come as such; all then is changed. Yet what sin is, what holiness, what hatred, what love, what man, what God, what the world, what its prince, what the Devil, but this by the bye - we come as sinners, then love is there. So Christ always drew out what people were and met them divinely. For surely here is wisdom too. Christ in life, and in death is God suiting Himself to man and drawing man to Himself.

Now philosophy assumed the competency of man, and to make even God the subject matter of its judgment and thoughts. This was necessarily false. It either left God out and all was clearly wrong, or brought God in and it was worse, because God and man were both out of their place - they are both in it at the Cross.

But then further, the saint becomes nothing and God all - Christ all. This is just right, and the very fulness of blessing, to have done with self and have the fulness of God to dwell in and enjoy; and here is the daily process. It is done completely at the Cross. It is brought out practically by all the discipline of God. But then, when we have this place of nothingness as self, there is divine wisdom unfolded to us.

All things were made by Christ and for Christ. All things are to be gathered together in one in Him, and to be reconciled - all to the eternal fulness of God - all that is in heaven and earth. The result is purposed before the foundation of the world, but in the world, in the creatures, responsibility has come in - we are guilty and all is defiled. But it was all ordained before the world to our glory. Christ has perfectly glorified God morally, and brought out what He is as nothing else could have done. Redemption and grace have a glory, and that through perfect separation from evil, and perfect obedience of Man in the midst of evil, which is all its own. Done for us, we have a part in the glory which belongs to it - the glory of God - are the first-fruits of it - the inner circle round the blessed and glorious Centre in which God is displayed in Christ. Then all things will be gathered round as a redeemed and reconciled Creation to the praise of His glory - the glorious result of the hidden wisdom ordained before the world to our glory. Then Christ will be displayed as the Power as well as the Wisdom of God.

237 Finally the great centre, moral centre, is the Cross - Redemption; when in the weakness of the creature, and the fullest effect of the power of evil, and its present effect - death - good triumphed. Its weakness was stronger than the power of what was against it. It was really divine power but in weakness of the creature, at least of what was of the creature, though divinely, for creature it could not be called. Death was the end of the creature in itself, the birth-place of the new Creation as leaving the old wholly behind. I speak of its effect, for none but a divine Person could have done it. It is Christ and He crucified in the lowest place the creature man can be brought to, but Christ, the Wisdom of God and the Power of God. Then we can have a place in the glory itself, the glory of God, because He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption - not power.

We are brought before God and intelligently according to what God is. We are always dependent and subject - that only is our place, as really with God - our blessedness. To be out of it is everlasting and perfect misery; the pretention to power is man's folly in assumed independence, which is sin.

We are of God - that is our nature, and actual condition in Christ Jesus, and He is of God wisdom to us, and righteousness, etc. So that we glory in the Lord. Power remains in His hand; we may be instruments of it hereafter, and spiritually may be vessels of it now, as far as emptied of self.

I have very imperfectly brought out what I would here. The great point is the place Wisdom has now; subjection and nothingness beginning with the Cross for the sinner which is deliverance - being nothing, for the saint Christ being all. We know perfect love. We know the counsels and purpose of God - have Christ's mind, but as a soldier in an army, he does not know the bearing of each act in carrying out the plan in the presence of the enemy, he marches right and left as ordered, it is all he has to do, and perfect wisdom is in each step of obedience, and inward wisdom in restoration, for he is thus in his place with God, and in motive, for it is love to his Commander, confidence in Him as well as obedience. All thus becomes right.

I return for a moment to 1 Corinthians 1 and 2. The Cross is the end of flesh and the world - death to one, the deepest possible shame and ignominy to the other. Flesh is wholly set aside, and now folly written on its wisdom - no flesh is to glory in His presence, "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." Flesh cannot glory before Him - we are to glory in Him, but then the whole being of man in the flesh, morally speaking, has ceased for the Christian. "Of him" (God) "are we in Christ Jesus," and "Christ Jesus is made unto us wisdom of God" (for that is the great subject here) and then righteousness, sanctification, and final deliverance - we glory thus in Him.

238 But then the whole thing is new. There is a plan, a purpose of God for our glory - a purpose before the world. The highest in the world knew nothing of it; if they had, they would not have crucified the Head of it. This is revealed to us by the Spirit; man's heart has not conceived it, but God's Spirit has revealed it. And that is the Spirit the Apostle had, and we have in our place. Then the same Spirit gave the words which were the medium of communication, and the same Spirit enables us to receive it. No one can instruct the Lord, but we have the mind of Christ in whom all this wisdom is. So it is a wholly new sphere and form of Wisdom which is in this purpose of God, the hidden Wisdom, before this world of responsibility and failure and sorrow.

But note it was the princes of this world not knowing it which, as to means, brought about what its accomplishment is founded upon. And note, this is a positive fresh revelation - not anything discoverable by man's mind. A man's spirit knows what is in him and none else; God's Spirit knows what is in His mind and none else. It is purpose that was before man or the world existed, and it is revealed and communicated, not by man's wisdom or words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches.

Note how simply the true wisdom is stated in Ephesians 5, as we see it in Proverbs, "Be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is." Simple obedience and, by singleness of eye, intelligence of what the Lord's will is, is in practice divine wisdom; as to the way of having it, compare Romans 12: 1, 2.

______

Axioms have no evidence - they are principles which contain their own evidence - the statement is another form of the definition or nature of the thing. "A whole is greater than a part" - that lies in the meaning of "whole" and "part"; it is given that form for the convenience of reasoning. So "one is the half of two" is hardly an axiom; it is the meaning of the words. "Two" means two ones, and "half" means a part contained twice. Axioms are only convenient forms of tautology, and so is all mathematics.

Fragments

<42041E> 240

The Blessed Lord ought to have had some object worthy of His giving Himself for. Infinite love, and unmotived love, save what was in Himself, was shown in His giving Himself for us, and this was all perfect as obedience in a given work, but God's glory was, and all fully, made good. This was an adequate object for Him. Lord of all He is, as Man, through it, but this only partially adequate; but God's glory is adequate.

________

The position of Christ is very striking as showing the absolute intrinsic perfectness of His love and obedience. There is an end of man - all that was in man was against - hatred to, God in goodness - so that He has no sustainment from man, only hatred and evil; He turns to God, and then He is forsaken. Broken, and more than broken from man - pressed up to death, He turns to God, and finds forsaking there - He was left alone, repelled by man and, in a certain sense, by God when He turned to Him - was alone, but accomplished all in His own love and obedience, and perfected the work, so that He could say "Therefore doth my Father love me."

_______

As regards the relationship of Christ with God on the earth - He never, save on the Cross, addresses God by that name, always "Father." It was the name He taught His disciples, and taught them to address the Father with. This may be seen in the Sermon on the Mount even; it was the place in which He set the others, He being there, and this was eternal life. The end of John opens it out. The disciples say "Come forth from God"; when twelve years old, He takes also this place. In reference to the Psalms, this is important. On the Cross, though perfect there, He takes the place, "My God, my God!" Christ entering in Spirit into Israel's sorrows was not His relationship with God. This testimony of the Gospels is very remarkable.

________

241 We have thought elsewhere how Jesus, the Son, was humbled, came into the lower parts of the earth, below all things - His very soul brought into the dust of death that He might be above all things. But see also how He was a Servant, that He might be a Son, i.e., as Man He was the Son and owned as such of the Father, but amongst the servants He was the lowest, yea, a reproach of men and outcast of the people, rejected by all the servants, "A worm and no man," put to death as a Servant, as though He had broken the law of which they were the masters, that He might be the First of Sons, "The first-begotten from the dead," having risen out of the law, that in all things He might have the pre-eminence; for just in proportion as we are humbled, we have exaltation of God - ever, ever, ever is this true! Amen.

________

I get three facts, partly helped by the researches of others, as to the period of the blessed Lord's ministry. Before He entered on His public ministry calling disciples away from all to follow Him, but after His baptism by John when He had begun to teach and make disciples and had been back into Galilee - John 1: 43 and beginning of chapter 2 in verse 13 we have a Passover; John, as often observed, not cast into prison (chap. 3: 24). In Matthew 12 we have the corn ripe after a Passover, for they could not eat corn till after it, perhaps after Pentecost even, and John was now cast into prison - had been there some time - he had heard there of His works; chap. 11. It is in Matthew 4: 12 that He hears John is cast into prison - perhaps the same time as John 4. He was then, i.e. Matthew 12 in Galilee. In chapter 14, we have the five thousand people fed; after Matthew 12, but then (John 6) the Passover was nigh; John 7 feast of tabernacles. Then He lingers about in Jerusalem, Jordan, etc., and comes up for the last Passover, i.e. three years and a part of a year.

_______

So far Christ seems to have exercised the office of Priest, before He ascended up on high, in that He confessed the sins to be His on the Cross, i.e., practically, and is so revealed to us in Spirit. But herein indeed the High Priest was rather acting the part of the people. It was on the people's lot, not what was carried within, so that His priesthood office was exercised before God elsewhere; so that, properly speaking, this was not exercised till after His ascension. In Spirit He did as here, so in John 17, but this was a sort of prophetic anticipation. So it was in Spirit we know - the other as in Psalm 38, to be the virtue of what He did, but properly His direct office of priesthood was in - "within the Veil." This was appropriate, only qualificatory for it - He was then teteleiomenos (consecrated - made perfect).

________

242 Alas! how the heart can spring up when set at ease after all manner of dealings with it. Peter, so humbled, so wonderfully restored by exhaustless grace, set at ease, must know what was to happen to John - what shall happen to him? He loved John surely, and it served as occasion to revelation - still the Lord must say "What is that to thee" "and turn back to the "Follow thou me."

I add the Jewish commission to Peter seems to me evident here.

______

It is important to remark, as regards the question of the house, that the Holy Ghost is never said to dwell in the body - not of the individual, but as a whole.

_______

I think we get a measure of characteristic knowledge in Adam in his knowing the beasts. It was subjection of them to him, and, I suppose, the faculty of speech connected with the impressions produced by the animals, and some power of sentiment or apprehension, but there was no abstract reasoning connected with the knowledge of good and evil, nor flowing from the absence of God, which is a source of the widest exercise of intellect on which man prides himself, and which is always false and only ignorance, though it may be dealt with as finding limits.

________

243 Faith alone is absolute certainty - it alone has an absolute motive for believing. I have an adequate motive to determine my assent practically, as my mind must do one or another if indifference is impossible - I may have the anxiety of doubt. I may have sufficient motive to believe, but never absolute. I do not call mathematics certainty, not because I doubt, but because they are not the subject of doubt. I may be ignorant, or I know that diverse forms are equal in quantity. I do not say "I doubt" - I am certain; but I am ignorant - "I know."

_______

Tongues were as plainly language as possible - not always consequently understood by the speaker, though he felt the influence and presence of God, and perhaps certain apprehensions; hence his understanding (nous) was unfruitful. If he could interpret (or another) well - but even the prophets, where there was no question of language, had to search out their own prophecies to have their minds fully fruitful through them.

_______

I am confirmed in the thought of the soul being the seat of I, and the spirit the seat of both intellectual and moral powers (which are to be developed in good and evil) and by the latter of which we are in relationship with God, or capable of being so; but all these are nothing till the will is right by a new nature - nothing but the capacity of error, and misery of a soul separated from God.

_______

I have fully entered, elsewhere, into the place the "ifs" hold in the Word in connection with our journey towards the glory, not with our place in Christ. This made me think that in Ephesians, in contrast with Colossians where a hope is laid up for us in heaven, there would be no "if" in Ephesians, for there we are sitting in heavenly places in Christ - and so it is. We get helps "till we all come" - the "whole armour of God," that we "may be able to stand" where we are, but no "if" as to the result of the course. This difference from the Colossians confirms strongly the general view.

_______

244 The one loaf is better than the twelve.

_______

Note. - The sense of hunger is a necessity - thirst is a desire after some positive drink; there is also anxiety which is met only by the wisdom of Creation which gives repose and confidence.

Christ as suffering - the Bread of life - meets the hunger, meets the necessities of the Church.

Christ exalted - the Giver of the Spirit - believed on, is the Object of the Church's thirst; it thirsts for God there exhibited - the revealing Spirit is the generator. It is an active feeling, a desire of an object, with an Object thirstingly desired.

Moreover He meets also the anxiety of the Church - He guides in it, leads forth, gives us the consciousness of His caring for the Church when we are anxious about it. He is the Shepherd of the sheep, as well as the Food, and Giver and Object of the Spirit.

I feel I have given these thoughts very imperfectly - the subject is wonderful and most blessed.

Testimony

<42042E> 245

As to the testimony or Gospel - there will be always a testimony - prophetic within or evangelic without, for that I apprehend is the universal distinction - until, as to Jerusalem, the times of vengeance, of God's judgment preclude it. It may vary its form, adapt itself (as being of God, it must) to the circumstances and time, but there will always be one until the judgment and blessing arrives. I do not see that the times of vengeance at Jerusalem preclude the testimony in the world at large in general.

As to particular revelations as to it - the everlasting Gospel, it would seem, goes out before the coming of Christ or the destruction of the beast, perhaps before the destruction of Babylon; it applies to heathen, at least to idolaters. The mind of this in Israel is in Psalm 96, the judgment and introduction of the first-begotten is in Psalm 97. Query, if the Gospel of the kingdom be not connected with this, though spoken of more generally - Psalm 2 as a great thesis gives the principles.

The Kingdom of the Father

<42043E> 246

It appears that not only "Kingdom of Heaven," but so far as I find "Kingdom of my Father," or "their Father's Kingdom" is peculiar to Matthew; and it would seem to meet the notion of the Jews expecting Messiah, King upon earth. They would not be subjects of Messiah's kingdom upon earth, but they would have something much better - they were to be sons, and Jesus ascended (refusing to be touched or worshipped by them as King upon earth then in resurrection, in which character He would reign over the Jews and world) to His Father and their Father, His God and their God. Declared, however, Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, they then were not to be reigned over by the Son Messiah, but were to be sons, "Behold what manner of love," etc., therefore in the kingdom of their Father, Jesus appointing a kingdom to them, as the Father to Him, they sitting in His throne as He is in His Father's now. In this then, as a Son, He is with the Father and we with Him as sons in His, i.e., the Father's, kingdom. To the Son shall be given the positive kingdom over all under the whole heaven - we being with Him in the Father's sitting there - He as Son with us, for it is the Son of whom we speak, and we sitting on thrones in His kingdom over the world. It is therefore, I believe, never called "the Father's kingdom" - but "My," "Their" - "Your." It is called "His inheritance in the saints," and so "The Father of glory," "Called to his own kingdom and glory." It exalts us then to a very special place, as to us, in our persons. All shall then be subjected to Him, and the glory will be perfect to Him of redemption as regards us, and therefore with us He, as Son, will be in the Father's kingdom as individuals, while He yet reigns in an undelivered kingdom - His earthly kingdom, in which there are yet things which remain to be subjected. In this we are now upon earth, and therefore it is its patience (see Apocalypse), and this is the force and explanation of the latter part of John 17.

All this is very wonderful, but the glory is all to Him who redeemed us. First it sets also Jesus in a wonderful place, and shows the power and necessity of the resurrection, and that too as regards the saints in the beginning of the millennium; and what force there is in the word "Walk worthy of God who hath called us," etc. And we learn also the force of Ephesians 1 at the end, and also chapter 2; and the Gentiles also therefore are brought in, and this I think proves further, as well as the fact of the bride, the Lamb's wife, that all the saints shall be in it, as does, as it appears to me, every other consideration which I yet notice, little as we deserve it.

247 This, I think, fully explains the passage in 1 Corinthians 15, the delivering up the kingdom to the Father; in fact as to the risen saints it is given up - He holds it now as regards them, though apparently quite otherwise, and this is what Revelation reveals - then they will reign with Him.

The view of the Father's kingdom given above, as brought before us in the passages there referred to, has received abundant confirmation from John 14 which was much opened out to me, in faith as to the subject of it, the other night. It hangs on this - "As I said unto the Jews, whither I go ye cannot come, so now I say unto you." The remedy is, "Ye believe in God" - "He is not present with you, so though ye cannot come and I am gone, believe in me" - this is the position of happiness they are placed in. "Believe in me" - then "I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, ye may be also" this opens out necessarily the position of the Father - this is in the Father's house.

Then comes that which shows that we have no faith save as we believe in what is commonly called "the millennium." We may not know it to be such, but we have no faith in Christ crucified save as we believe in this, for that which gives its value and import to the Cross is the Person, the present personal glory of Him who suffered, His resurrection declaring this; i.e., it is seeing Christ in the glory of the Father and of His Sonship, seeing Him preparing the place now. If that we believe in now be not true, then our faith is false, i.e. if the glory then revealed be not the verification of our present faith, then is our faith false, and in fact it is nothing else. He sitting only now in the Father's throne - necessary to our apprehension of that throne in the place of which we are to be, and therefore which we could not know out of Christ - but our present faith or its Object, is that which gives value to the sacrifice of the Cross; i.e., the faith of the glory (to be revealed) is the only real faith of the Gentile, or rather Church faith - "I go" - "Believe in me" - "I am preparing a place" - "I come again to receive you to myself, that where I am ye may be also." Now what is this "Whither I go ye know and the way ye know?" "I go to the Father," and "I am the Way" - "I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life" - the Life in which you enjoy this. "No man cometh unto the Father," but He went to prepare a place - but He went to the Father - He prepares a place there, with the Father - we know the place, i.e. our present faith is of the place to which He is gone to prepare, even with the Father, but it is where He is we are, i.e., we are sons with Him in the Father's house - sitting in His throne as He sat in His Father's throne, but then not sitting on His Father's throne. He is Son and we are sons with Him in the Father's kingdom, and sitting in His throne with Him in His kingdom as one with Him, as sons, yet seeing the Father in Him - as seeing Him, united yet distinct.

248 The position into which the Lord puts us then is plain as to faith, and as to place, and as to all, save as sitting in the Father's throne which is incident to Himself and makes us know, what otherwise we could not, that throne of the Father in the kingdom of which we are then.

This is all indistinctly put, but will serve as a clue to the apprehension of the Scriptures which is engraven on my heart, and in which, in Christ ministered by the Spirit, I have fellowship - fellowship with the Father and the Son - know where He is gone, and the way, and see the coming glory. If I had not seen Him in the Father's throne, I could not see that throne, and therefore not the place in which I shall be; and He is now gone to it, only revealing the throne to us by now seeing it, for it is by seeing Him we see the Father, though now we (by Him) know the Father - come to Him (as one with Jesus), and know all the glory which is our hope of faith, and therefore, if not verified, falsifying all our hope of faith, i.e., the Father's kingdom - the Son's - and all the glory and blessing of both - we with the Son in the Father's kingdom in blessing - with the Son in His, in association in power as one - and both of them as one with Him.

Such is our fellowship with the Father and with the Son! Lord, realise it to us!

I add here also John 17: 24, with the reason, and this will open up our place.

Note, further, the Father is the Fountain head of love, i.e., it is in the name we, and so alone, really know Love. The Son is the Minister of all power. The Father exercises no power, though He may give it; but He exercises none. Therefore He says, "The glory," i.e., the present glory, i.e., so fulfilled, "which thou hast given me, I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one," and "that the world may know that thou hast sent me."

249 Then He speaks of all that are called - all that the Father had given Him, "I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." So the offices are plain and manifest, distinct though they be combined as they are indeed.

The worship of the Father is then properly in the certainty of love. We look to the Son, even Jesus, for the ordering of providential and all power. Note this well.

The order of this part of John runs thus it would seem - the Lord was not presenting Himself in His own Messiah glory, but declaring the Father's, "I have glorified thee on the earth," and again "I have kept them in thy name"; not that He was not Messiah, but that He claimed acceptance not in His own but in His Father's name.

He presented Himself in the witness of the Son. This was fully brought out in the raising of Lazarus - the quickening power. Here then was the final witness to them. Thereon (chap. 11) from verse 47, is the Jewish national rejection of Him - verse 54, His seclusion from them - verse 56, they inquire for Him - from the companionship of resurrection power He comes out then (just before the Passover showing Himself more or less) and presents Himself prophetically indeed, but as there in reproach and condemnation of the nation that rejected Him, showing what they had refused - their Messiah - in refusing Christ the Son of God.

The testimony of resurrection caused the people to receive Him, and to own Him as sent. Then comes the Gentile power, and for this the necessity of death - what would have been "Beauty and Bands," if not rejected King of Israel, and the gathering of the ammim (people).

Verses 35, 36 (chap. 12), His testimony to the people and hiding Himself - not losing His witness of Messiah, but even then shown and not shrinking from the necessity of His death; verses 37-43, the judicial account of the blindness of the people; verse 44, the great assertion, noted above, declared now that He came, and so declared on His rejection, in revelation of the Father - His word, His revealed glory; then the extent (v; 46), compare verse 36, and therefore (v. 47) "If any one and verse 49, the responsibility in consequence - whatever came of it He spoke the Father's word, believed or not, and showed the Father's glory, seen or not.

250 In chapter 13, we have the distinctive work and office for the disciples, beginning with His sacrifice in love, His service in love though gone to glory - loving to the end - washing the feet and so forward to the close of the Gospel.

There is another thing unfolded in all this, and that is His sitting in His Father's throne is the revelation of the glory of His Person. We know Him in this character now, we are as sons with Him when He is in it as a Man, a Governor over the earthly house, but we here till the establishment of the full order of the kingdom, gathering together in one all things in heaven and in earth in Him - "in him," in the title of His personal glory, His own Sonship with the Father - the association of His own essential unity with Him. This is a most glorious and blessed point of view, and it is in this point of view the Revelation is given - it is Jehovah, but Jehovah in the Son, and yet the throne of God, but the eternal living One in the Person of Jesus, and it is seen accordingly that the Lamb was in the midst of the throne. The Father was seen, i.e. the Father's throne - God's throne - and Jehovah seen revealing God. "The Father," we may say, seen, but seen in the Lamb, the Son; see also Revelation 7: 10, 17, in the Greek. This is a most important and blessed point. Not that they are ever different, but they are distinct - it is "The throne of God and of the Lamb," Rev. 22: 3.

As to the Kingdom of Heaven and of the Father and the Son, developed in the millennial estate, we may further notice as the Kingdom of Heaven is its aspect towards the Jews, so, as regards the Church generally, it is the merged* character of the millennial glory - its suspended estate that is, as then there will be the Son's throne and the Father's throne. So now the Son is sitting on the Father's throne till they are commixed; hence the position of the Church - the earth is the scene of the Son's kingdom, but the Church is to have its portion on His throne in the Father's kingdom, as sons with Him. Hence in the Church on earth we have the apparent anomaly (though the very way of glory), the expecting state, i.e. the Lord sitting on the Father's throne, from which He shall be manifested. So in the Revelation accordingly we have the horns, and seven eyes in the horns of the Lamb. Hence Christ is to be applied to in ministering (the government of) His Church, which are the seven Spirits of God (before the throne as the Object of glory and worship) sent forth into all the earth, quod nota; whence also the second beast as governing the Church or governing Christ (as order in the world too) has horns like a lamb but spake as a dragon, which is plain if we see what the dragon was (Rev. 12); but the position of the Church is most clearly seen by it, and the Revelation much explained. Hence also we see the meaning of the expression "translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son," which see.

{*Rather "mixed" - "suspended."}

The Christian Position

<42044E> 252

There have been three characters in which God has been revealed - God Almighty - Jehovah - "Our Father which art in heaven"; all most important. The first inclusive, and, in one sense essential, attached to the name of God. The others bringing into closer affiance, into closer applicability to, the character of God - names of more direct personal relationship. While the glory is maintained, and the blessedness enhanced of the Lord God, we have these definitely set out in Scripture - to Abraham, the representative of all at Sinai, and in the Lord Jesus "Thy holy child Jesus."

But what I would now notice is that in learning the character of God as "Our Father which art in heaven" - the Christian relationship to Him therefore in the New Testament said "Thee, the only true God" - we are not to lose the others. In truth they were all centred in the Lord Jesus as God manifest in the flesh, and there we learn it, and, in proportion to the measure of the Spirit, exercise the faith in it, though the Father is the specific relationship "Our Father," He in whom we know Him being the Son, but we also know the Lord - He was the Lord. "No one can call Jesus Lord but by the Spirit of God." His Almighty Person indeed is not fully manifested, described until Revelation 4 and 11: 17 - yet He was so. Hence it is manifest we have in presence them all; but see farther in Acts 4, that while our relationship is with the Father and to dwell in the Father's house, still we act on the faith of these also "Lord, Thou art God which hast made," etc. Here we have the sovereign pantokrator (Almighty) - men gathered against the Lord, "For of a truth against thy Holy Child Jesus" - here is the fulfilment addressed as to the Father, as to the realised act, but recognised as being the God who made heaven and earth, etc. It was against Jehovah - it all was - but in fact owned as the present Father. Here also we find the accuracy of the scripture Word, for these two are characteristic in fact, or general subjection - this is personally in relationship, "They shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." It is our duty thus practically to recognise these things, be perfect in them, though specially as children. Jesus shows them, "The same yesterday, to-day and for ever" - "All power in heaven and on earth" - and "The Son, the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person"; here therefore we find it.

253 Now we find the rejection of the Wisdom of God in John the baptist, and in Christ in Matthew 11: 16-19, and then the justification of the children of Wisdom - the thoughts of the Lord upbraiding them for rejection as manifested - His calling the children of Wisdom. Further the comfort of Christ in submitting to the will of God in seeing the counsel of God as to all things, and the call of babes - His actual and moral purpose - upon the trouble, and apparent failure, of the rejection by the world; for His sovereignty and moral character are brought out together, and not one without the other, though the general character also, and the Sovereignty in title of Christ was hence by His coming to the world - all this is wonderfully brought out in the faithful feelings of our Lord's mind at the close of this chapter.

But it leads to something further as to the universality of Christ's work. All Christ's work, as done by Him, must have reference to, must embrace the world - He could take nothing less as His due. The whole was His title - He came as Man to men, and as Son and so heir He had right to all the world. The work of Christ as presented, as what He should expect as the Man of promise, was therefore to have the world. The Heir of the world was the promise - Christ was the seed to whom it was confirmed everyway, therefore, in His responsibility as Man, in His title, and in His dispensation of promise, the world and nothing less was the portion of His work as Man, His title as Son, His inheritance as Heir of promise - in a word, Christ had title to the world, and He came in love - that title He must be conscious of, and He came in love about it, "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world," etc. Hence as present in humiliation, this was true, and when He takes the inheritance in Person it is equally true - He could have no less expectation as then manifested, for the witness of the love, the necessity was such, "God sent his Son into the world." He will have nothing less when He appears. This was shown in Adam also, in the history, see Genesis 2: 18, 19.

But here was the greatest, the grand hinge of Christ's submission, "Though he were a Son," and therefore Heir of all things, "Yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." He came in love - He came in title - and the "world knew him not," and "His own received him not"; "Then have I laboured in vain, saith He, and spent my strength for nought." This was His deep anger against the scribes and Pharisees in the Gospel of Matthew - this His upbraiding in this chapter. He had to bear the rejection of the world, not only in the patience of suffering, but as the disappointment of all the purpose for which He was manifested as alive in the flesh, "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

254 "At that time" - here was His submission - "Jesus answered and said, I thank thee" . . . "for so it seemed good in thy sight"; the sovereign purpose, also the moral rightness, force, etc., and "revealed it unto babes," and the exercise of it - "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." But here was perfect submission under disappointment. He was righteously angry with those who rejected Him for so doing, but then submitting to God, He saw that all things were delivered to Him in heaven and on earth by His Father "Lord of heaven and earth," and called to Him, according to the mind of the Father, those who laboured and were heavy laden. As he says in John 17, "As thou hast given him power over all flesh, to give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him"; that was the summary. But note, there was the general love in which He was manifested, and so the manifestation to, and also dying for all, as sent into the world, Jews and Gentiles joining too in the guilt.

Then the sovereignty of love in giving certain, in spite of universal rejection, to Him as the Church of the risen Christ; for it was Christ, the Anointed One of the Holy Ghost, who loved the Church which He saw in Spirit when rejected by the world, and the exercise of this speciality of love in dying for them, "Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." He learned this before, in His rejection, He could teach it to others and does teach it to others. In the meanwhile the Church was given to Him, on His rejection by the world, as His comfort and fulness in the world, and in the Lordship of all things in heaven and on earth, in which He should be ruling over it when He bringeth the only begotten into the world. This explains too "The fulness of the Gentiles" - this makes us know what "His yoke" means; see Isaiah 50, and read John 12 too.

But the point is, He could come to and for nothing but the world, as present in it, though in dispensation, exhibited amongst the Jews. This is the point in John. The rejection was the point of submission, and He bowed perfectly and simply to the Father, and this is expressed all through; it was His perfectness, and took for salvation such as the Father was pleased to give Him - a wonderful, most wonderful submission! Yet perfect, and in Spirit, in the knowledge of the Spirit, He loved the Church which was to be His as rejected and risen, and actually as Christ - loved, then given to Him actually in the world. This is the due to that, and in John 17, and, bearing their sins, presents them to the Father, whom He thus perfectly serves, as He sees, and is Himself satisfied. Besides perfection, submission as a Man; as humbled He is highly exalted, and all things given Him not only on earth as Messiah, His due in title, but in heaven and on earth, a much larger portion, yet indeed His due as Son - and the Church out of the world in the speciality of devoted love, and kind to Him in the cognizance of it - His companion, the witness of His faithfulness as itself purchased by it, in the glory with Him - glorified with Him, while over the world that rejected Him, He and it reign more gloriously, infinitely far, than if then received. And thus is this scene accomplished, and the Mediatorial exaltation over the world completed, with the speciality of the Sovereignty in the Church added, till God be all in all, He having brought in the blessing, and given the competency, so to speak, to the Persons of the Godhead to enjoy, because the blessing of Their love was fully accomplished through Him, while the work of each in it is manifested and apparent as They are all united in all. The work of the Spirit is manifest herein, for it is to take of the things of Christ, and show them to us - It testifies in the world, and brings believers, or the elect, by faith into the Church as given to Christ, that they may be heirs with Him and of the world. The whole truth is thus brought out, and its principle.

255 Now our Lord teaches us, from having experienced the blessing of submission, and the bright prospect of love which the submission to this Sovereignty brought in, to take His yoke and learn of Him, for He is "Meek and lowly in heart." This is the point of instruction, though it rested on all things as given. No man knoweth who the Son is, and His ineffable dignity and Person, nor the Father, save the Son and He to whom the Son will reveal Him.

It is a wonderful passage! We have given but a rough sketch of it in this. Well may we say "No man knoweth the Son!" No man indeed knoweth Him, nor the Father - that is the point - save He to whom the Son reveals Him. The moral beauty of the passage we have not touched upon. The force of the "Labour and are heavy laden" cannot but be seen.

256 The principle adverted to above, as to the world and the sheep, applies to any man in whom the spirit of Christ dwells, and we can realise it intelligibly if taught of God.

There can be no doubt that a Christian, with Christ's Spirit, desires the salvation of everybody with whom he is brought into intercourse in that Spirit, and seeks it in Spirit; at the same time he may be conscious, knowing that none but God's elect may come in, that this person may prove a very hater of Jesus, and, when he does so, he abhors him utterly, and he endures all things for the elect's sake that they may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. I am quite conscious of the two feelings - in weakness surely - as distinctly and as knowing them to be of God, as I see them in Scripture. The Spirit of God walks in love through the world, but it endures and labours in the consciousness that the elect are the portion which it shall bring in blessing to God. Thus it is said that "Christ loved the Church," not "Jesus," not simply "God," but "Christ," i.e., He, anointed with the fulness of the Spirit in which He entered into and felt with the mind of God, He, as the Bridegroom, and knowing this place in the Spirit in which as risen He was to be, gave Himself for it. The great point is, in seeing our Lord, to recognise the distinction of His acting - of His earnest desire in acting, and in the highest point of acting, acting from Himself, and yet acting in perfect and sole obedience - Christ did in the Spirit and the Person of the Son. He acted aph e(m)autou (from him (my) self) and so laid down His life, yet He did it as tauten ten entolen elabon (this commandment have I received) in simple obedience. He came to do the will of Him that sent Him, not His own; now this was reconciled in suffering. If I willingly put myself in a place of suffering, I put myself into the place of patience or obedience - so did the Lord, and said "Therefore," as a man, "Not my will but thine be done." Different parties have taken up either of these separate from the other, and both have marred Christ, and this is the real point between the Irvingites and anti-Irvingites quo ad hoc, and while both have one end of truth, it appears to me that they neither know the real truth of the matter, and both have fallen into error - one of ignorance, the other by bringing in truth to dangerous approximation, and, in some instances, the line distinctly overstepped, in words of dangerous and mischievous error.

257 Now it appears to me that the Lord Jesus is the central point, as it were, of this question - we are elect in Him in the full character in which He is known, as to all His fulness of office as risen. The Church is united to Him risen, as in the flesh and as being in the world. Thus God loved the world; as acting towards it in Christ, I find the double service - acting in humiliation as a Man, in service to God He gave Himself a ransom for all "Tasted death for every man" - also, as fulfilling the purpose of God in the Spirit, so known in comfort on the rejection of the world, Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, and this is unqualified redemption into glory according to the infallible purpose of God and effectual ministration of it by the Son.

Further, while therefore the testimony of the Spirit goes forth as the truth of God into the world, yet is its specific work, effectual work, exclusively in the elect of God, testifying of Christ effectually and fully, gathering them, uniting them, as life thus to Him and dwelling in them, as so quickened and gathered - a witness to God. It condemns in testimony because of a world-rejected Christ - by it we are saved, in efficacy, because it unites to Christ risen in the testimony of a living faith. The work of God, viewed simply so, was universal and could not but be, while de facto also His holiness shewed all were at enmity too.

The work of Christ, as Man, unto death was individually universal - the work of the Spirit has also its universality of condemning testimony. But looking at them specifically, while God shewed His love to the world, we have the purpose of the Father, the work of the Son having its double aspect, because, though there were some given to Him of the Father, He purchased the world unto Himself. The effectual accomplishment of the Spirit is in the elect; hence in the purpose in 1 Peter 1, the Father and the Spirit are mentioned, for the Son has His own peculiar title (but He might seem really dishonoured in the world which rejected Him) besides His subjection to the Father, though not dissonant from but the very object of the Father's will; and that title is universal, unqualified, and also coincidently in His work perfect in the universality of His love, whence His patience - He has it in His Godhead, as the Father loved the world in His Godhead, though, as the Father, He purposed the salvation of the Church making them therein His manifest children, for, though the purpose of all, Christ continues, so to speak, in His purposing Godhead.

258 The depth of this subject as most blessed, so is most full of the fulness that cannot be reached, while we are filled into it and made the fulness of the Head of the body, and most sanctifying if we receive it in humble reception, enabling us to hold things in simplicity. Hence I say, God loved the world - Christ died for all, so also He loved the Church and gave Himself for it, and the Spirit (the Accomplisher of all individual result) worketh effectually in them that believe.

Note the vast difference of the way of God's dealings in the case of the professing Church and the world at large. To the professing Church which had had the truth and not loved it, God sends strong delusion to believe a lie, whereas to the world at large the Gospel of the kingdom and the everlasting Gospel are sent as a warning and to call men.

Death to Nature

<42045E> 259

My dear brother,

Exaggerations are always dangerous, and, where imagination is at work, deceive to people's cost; but the subject is a serious one. "Dead to nature" is not a scriptural expression, so we must see what people mean and what Scripture says. But deadness to the world and all the flesh is after, is what is wanting among Christians.

As regards natural relationships, they are very carefully maintained in Scripture. The matter stands thus: God established certain relationships - "from the beginning it was not so" (divorce) - " God made them male and female"; sin has come in and spoiled all. A new power has come in, which, while fully recognizing them as of God, and using them as images of the highest spiritual relationships with Christ and the Father, has nothing to do with them - is above and out of them. In general those who say much about them and being dead to nature, do so because they are not. Paul lives alone and says as a rule, "Let every one of you have his own wife." The speaking against it is of Satan.

The Lord had considered the lilies and how God had clothed them; seeking these things as an object is another matter. Adam was to dress and keep the garden when he had no sin, but we need to have our affections on things above by a new power, and need a single eye to it to keep us out of the power of what is corrupted. "All things are lawful to me but I will not be brought under the power of any." They even who had wives must "be as though they had none," for the time is a constrained one.

Nature is of God, but its corruption is not, and it is corrupted, under the bondage of corruption and that is the difficulty. But "dead to nature" is legality; to seek it as it is, is not of the Spirit, though He has given us all things richly to enjoy. My body is of the old creation - my life, as born of God, of the new, and we are left for spiritual exercises in this very way. Nor is the matter therefore so simply spoken of as some would, humanly. It is meant to be a holy exercise, and those who do not spare the body may be satisfying the flesh.

The Apostle speaks for spiritual power and for order, "Every man has his own gift"; but it is a gift. He wills that men marry as a rule, but tells them that the married man cares for the things of the world, that they will have trouble in the flesh, but he spares them.

260 We have died with Christ, our life is hid with Him in God - He is our life. We have been crucified with Christ, yet live, yet not we, but Christ lives in us, and this life lives by the faith of the Son of God. But you will find that when applied it is always in view of certain objects which turn the heart from Christ - "All that is in the world, the lusts of the flesh," etc., are not of the Father. We are dead to sin, to the rudiments of the world. You will further find that these are distinguished, and that the highest Christian state does not contemplate this at all.

In Romans the Christian is looked at as a man alive in this world as we are, but justified, and Christ our life. Here we get "dead to sin," Christ having died to it, and our "old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should no more serve sin, for He that is dead is justified from sin" (not sins), you cannot accuse a man of sin in the flesh if he is dead. In Colossians it goes further. "Ye have died" and here they are risen also, and so are looked at as risen men on the earth; they are dead to the rudiments of the world, are not alive in the world, subject to ordinances. So we are "dead to the law by the body of Christ," in Romans; it is also said, "if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin." But "dead to nature" is, in all that we are said to be dead to, quite unknown to Scripture in word or thought. It falsifies the idea of the bearing of death there.

But none of these is the highest measure taken in Scripture. These think of sin, though of death to it, but never of our living in it. Colossians goes a step further, and on to ground which is fully developed in Ephesians; here man's highest condition in this respect is spoken of, he has not died to anything - he is viewed as dead in trespasses and sins, and then as a new creation, a creation after God. It is just mentioned, Colossians 2: 13. This is fully developed in Ephesians 2, and here note Christ is not viewed as life-giving, but as raised when a dead man, He having descended in grace to where we were, and in an effectual work for us, so that we rise with Him and into the same place. This is referred in 2 Corinthians 5: 14-17, and in the remarkable summary in John 5: 24. All this stands on a different ground from being quickened and having died - we have changed our place and position, are created anew; but if dying to be brought in and dwelt on, people are really in general under law and do not count themselves dead, and if they talk of dying to nature, which Scripture does not, they will soon find to their cost that nature is not dead.

261 I should earnestly press being dead, crucified with Christ; Christ and nothing else our life - not of the world as Christ is not of the world - that the Spirit of God be the source of all our thoughts and desires to live Christ. Death to sin we have, to the world, our old man crucified with Christ, and, if Christ be in us the body dead because of sin. So all that is in the world, the lusts, and pride is not of the Father. But neglecting of the body may be "being vainly puffed up in a fleshly mind," and "dead to nature" does not enter into the sphere of scriptural thought. Who is dead to it, and what is he dead to? Is the new man dead? The question would be: Is nature dead? And that they will soon find it is not. They should not eat nor drink. Now they should not do this save to the glory of God, and, with prayer and thanksgiving, have no motive but Christ in anything, the body of sin being destroyed.

What is specially wanted now is individual devotedness. I dread anything that would weaken that, but "dead to nature" in word or thought Scripture does not know, and in the highest character of Christ, dead to anything does not come in at all, but a new nature in relationship with the Father and with Christ, and in Him sitting in heavenly places. If I talk much of being dead to nature, I am occupied with it. I write briefly and in a hurry, but you will find I believe the principles of Scripture here.

Yours affectionately in the Lord,

August 16th, 1878. J.N.D.

Review of Leckey's Rationalism

J. N. Darby.

<42046E> 262

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

{"History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe." By W. E. H. Leckey, M. A. 2 vols.: third edition. London: Longmans Green and Co., 1866.}

This book is a useful index, on many subjects, by one who has read all sorts of middle age facts, and records his reading. But it is a very superficial or narrow-minded book - not one elevated idea, and all within the narrow-minded circle of his own views. He has not an idea of any energy beyond what he calls rationalism, i.e. the course of events which comes from God knows where, and which he admits, in his last page, has destroyed every noble feeling. The belief in dogma and eternal punishment - his great bugbears - "have produced persecution"; as if the Heathen had not persecuted! If he had said "a priesthood in possession of power" had done so - à la bonne heure. He accounts for it in the Christians opposing circus-games and theatres!

His delight is scepticism, as of all this class - anything as the truth they have no conception of. Now this is folly, for if the Son of God came down to earth, if God became a man, it is a fact, not becomes as taught a dogma; to make it of no importance is evidently false, because it offers an infinite object - affords the highest and most formative motive - implies, especially when enquired into, the deepest moral elements in the relationship of God and man. Am I to worship Him or not? And worship is the highest condition of the soul. Is He to be all to me or not? Is the rejection of Him, and perfect love in Him indifferent? All this, and his judgment of events is very superficial. Thus the excessive corruption, and money oppression, the shocking of conscience before the Reformation is all ignored. It was "progressive enlightening"! Now this is quite false in fact, though that helped through printing, etc. But the Italian enlightened ones were infidels, and then opposed. Providence ordered these things, but he habitually overlooks the principal causes which operated towards the recrudescence of popery, spiritualism, etc. - all is ignored; he sees only his own ideas.

I will come to details:

Volume 1, chapter 34, etc. The whole ground of rationalism is false - here it takes the subjective state of men, not evidence, as the test of truth; see also page 101. But page 102 is mere positivism - "We believe what we have experienced"; but nothing can be more degrading, nor can anything be more illogical, or at any rate unreasonable than this, because it assumes our material experience to be the measure of everything, whereas even our mental experience - our own bodies prove the contrary, i.e., the action of what is not material on matter. A woman faints when she hears her son is crushed - what does that? My heart beats - what keeps it going? Nor is it true that because I believe in devils, that I am "nervously excited" if I adequately believe in other things - he admits it was not so when the Church's power was believed. When all was doubted, then this dread of devils came in; this is to be noted.

263 Rationalism, by Leckey's own account, brought in the fear of devils, i.e., brought men back to fetishism, until it made man disbelieve everything it could not see - a baser thing still; and then I add, the reaction of spirit rapping came in. Man cannot do without the consciousness of another world of spirits; it is part of his nature. Christianity, as to all mythologies and all traditions of what is beyond sight, gives us the truth of it.

Pages 103 to 113. What is "the clear world of reality"? Preconceived notions are avowedly the ground of judgment, with Leckey only preconceived doubts of all but what is seen, which is the least real of all. It is only the incredulous spirit of this age vaunted to the discredit of the credulous of another - and the facts passed over; see his account of the Reformation, and what men call "dogma," i.e., what may be truth. This to them is immaterial. The only important point is the change in the twelfth century, in Innocent III's time, and here we have no research.

Page 176 is weak, and the book superficial though useful as giving an index to one class of facts, and shewing where the present wind blows. But there is no standpoint of judgment at all - that which he takes he has to judge, for the views of this age may be as false as the mediaeval ones, and I have no doubt they are. But truth this class of persons never think of. They will speak of darkness, of superstition, of light in themselves, of conscience, i.e., of "Man's competency to judge good and evil finally" - a strange thing to say in looking at what is in the world, and the variety of judgments - but of truth, of what God is, of what He is revealed to be, even of responsibility, never.

264 For them there is no such thing as "The truth" - it is an evil "to make guilt out of errors of opinion." I understand compassion on ignorance, but surely if I have rejected the true God, and worship Venus, or accept Mahomet as a prophet, there is some moral depravity. If Christ be God adequately manifested, the error which holds Him to be only man is a culpable one. But his argument in this page is weak. What is said does not only prove that supposing miracles should cease, it can be accounted for - it shows, if valid, that there was a reason to expect they would cease; his facts too are wrong. As a history of the aberrations of man and of Christianized man too, on one side, to set up the other it is all very well.

Pages 353-355, "Religion"! but I wait.

Page 390. "A high degree of civilisation always connected with degraded morals, and the fall of national powers," etc.; note this!

Page 388. What religion is: "There are two moral sentiments which seem universally diffused through the human race, and which may be regarded as the nuclei around which all religious systems are formed. They are the sense of virtue, leading men to attach the idea of merit to certain actions which they may perform; and the sense of sin, teaching men that their relation to the deity is not that of claimants but of suppliants." "They co-exist," he says; but classical heathenism was mainly one - Christianity the other. But then he knows nothing but morality, or more or less Catholic or earlier corruption.

Now can anything be more superficial or miserable than this? Which is true? Are both? Or supposing merit to be false, - as, if the sense of sin is true, it must be, for guilt is not merit, nor "striking a balance" anything but the vilest of thoughts, - if the sense of sin is right, is there no answer to it - or what? No goodness in God known? No judgment to fear?

His religion consists of subsisting thoughts in man, without knowing what is true of them, or leaving God wholly out, save supplicating some unknown One. Knowledge of Him, or goodness meeting conscience, to say nothing of righteousness, wholly left out. There is conscience - there is pretention to merit in man - they do co-exist. Priesthood uses both for its false profit. But I cannot conceive anything more superficial, or more total absence of search after truth, than this sentence. I could understand his longing after an answer and not having one, or trying after one and losing himself. He takes what every one sees and leaves it there, but leads every one to some thoughts of God even if false - him to none.

265 Page 396 and following - "The spirit of truth"!

Volume 2, pages 58, 62. Notice this about truth and persecution, "guilt of error" and "cause of persecution" - clergy! "Among the Protestants it may, I believe, be safely affirmed, that there was no example of the consistent advocacy or practice of toleration in the sixteenth century that was not virulently denounced by all sections of the clergy, and scarcely any till the middle of the seventeenth century"! "Persecution among the early Protestants was a distinct and definite doctrine, digested into elaborate treatises, indissolubly connected with a large portion of the received theology, developed by the most enlightened and far-seeing theologians, and enforced against the most inoffensive as against the most formidable sects. It was the doctrine of the palmiest days of Protestantism"! "If man is bound to form his opinions by his private judgment . . . it is absurd to brand honest error as criminal, and to denounce the spirit of impartiality and of scepticism as offensive to the deity. This is what almost all Protestant leaders did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and what a very large proportion of them still do, and it was out of this conception of the guilt of error that persecution arose"!

Page 67. "The axiom that the whole is greater than a part, represents the highest kind of certainty to which we can possibly attain, and no message purporting to be a revelation can be received in contradiction to it. For the reality of such a revelation and the justice of such an interpretation, must necessarily be established by a process of reasoning, and no process of reasoning can be so evident as the axiom"!

Page 68. As to Bayle, he says: "Bayle, like Montaigne and Descartes, was tolerant because he was rationalistic, and was rationalistic because he was sceptical"!

"Different men according to the measure of their faculties obtain some faint glimpses of different aspects of the divine nature, and no one has a right to arrogate to himself the possession of such an amount of perfect truth as to render it unnecessary for him to correct and enlarge his views by comparing them with those even of the most ignorant of mankind"!

266 Pages 84, 85. "The truth is scattered far and wide in small portions among mankind, mingled in every system with the dross of error, grasped perfectly by no one, and only in some degree discovered by the careful comparison and collation of opposing systems. To crush some of these systems, to stifle the voice of argument, to ban and proscribe the press, or to compel it to utter the sentiments of a single sect, is to destroy the only means we possess of arriving at truth"!

See also page 54.

This is all false.

I have not time to go through this book in detail; but it is well to see the true pretension and spirit of the system. Provided there be no certain truth, and universal scepticism they are content, so that he wishes, as far as possible, a child to be left without any impressions, that it may freely form its own judgment. "Exclusive salvation" - "eternal punishment" - are his two great bugbears.

All revelation as a source of truth is for him impossible - all knowledge of God which it is important to maintain as truth - of this I have partly spoken. If political economy prosper, and men go to the theatre, all will be well! Facts are pitched overboard without a pang. I never saw a system so neglectful of facts, while only leaning on them without one binding principle of heart or conscience from them.

Thus, while I admit the folly of Reformation bigotry, to compare, as he does, their persecution (save later in Scotland) with that of popery, is really flagrant dishonesty. Say there was bigotry - no one could deny it - wherever there is a dominant clergy there will be. But we learn how the Church, in leaving and losing its suffering place, and holding the truth at its own cost instead of at the cost of others, has given a handle and a stumbling block to the sceptic for his own destruction. The Cross is its only place.

Leckey cannot get before the third century, or rather the fourth, when corruption was complete, and the Church a disgrace. He is right as to the politician, but the politician is utterly deceived, because a clever political system of religion gets the wind of him. And he ignores the cry of conscience at the Reformation. The powers were glad to use the faith of individuals, not for morals, but to get rid of the Pope's power.

The rationalist denies that dogmas possess an intrinsic efficacy. He is incapable of truth, this man, but he ought to be incapable of self-contradiction. Half his book is to insist on the efficacy of the dogma of exclusive salvation and eternal punishment as the chief agents in the whole mediaeval and early Protestant state of things - witchcraft and all, into the bargain. Besides that the Son of God became, in love, a Man, I must hold it as a fact, i.e., as a dogma, for in Christianity dogmas are all facts, for it to be anything. Is that, if believed, of no efficacy? It alters every thought of God, and makes Him Love. This note, has nothing to do with the spirit of the age, and the clergy, when in power, persecuting to maintain dogmas. This, the Heathen, Mahommedan, Brahminical, and all other clergy have done, but that has nothing to do with the effect of the dogma itself. His argument in pages 389-391, is just Newman's for popery in his book on the Virgin. When he speaks of "dogma," he cannot get beyond "Society" - "different conditions of society" - "all the relations of society" - he knows nothing else.

267 One cannot have a more complete confession of their incapacity as to truth, than his saying, page 438, that "He who is seeking for truth is bound always to follow what appears to his mind to be the stress of probabilities," i.e., there is not, nor can there be known truth. "Probability" is never truth, and can never have the effect of truth - can never be a right ground for duty, though, contrary to what he says, it may for acts in this world, where we might be content with it as to facts and results.

He cultivates suspicion as a principle, not when he knows there is a false influence. See also volume 2, page 58: "The Puritans succeeded in subverting the Catholic rule, when they basely enacted the whole penal code against those who had so nobly and so generously received them!" How when a rationalist's heart gets out, it always beats in favour of popery!

Private judgment is all he cares for, and endless scepticism. I deny private judgment in divine things - it is the formal denial of any communication from God. As between man and man "control" is false; between God and man it alone is true.

For scepticism, see (pp. 63, 64) his praise of Descartes: "He taught men that the beginning of all wisdom is absolute, universal scepticism; that all the impressions of childhood, all the conclusions of the senses, all of what are deemed the axioms of life, must be discarded, and from the simple fact of consciousness the entire scheme of knowledge must be evolved. Like many of the greatest philosophers, Descartes did not pause to apply his principles to practical life, but their influence was not the less great." Think of each man beginning with the "fact of consciousness" for himself! Why he would not know what "consciousness" means! Why he cannot have read Descartes, to begin with! Was there every such folly?

268 See again, volume 2, page 75, how wilfully false, as prejudiced: "The spirit of tolerance soon regained the ascendancy, and when the elements of revolution had been at last consolidated into a regular government, France found herself possessed of a degree of religious liberty which had never been paralleled in any other Roman Catholic country, and which has been barely equalled in the most advanced Protestant ones." Why twenty people cannot meet together without permission!

In page 76 he admits judgment is distorted by will. How then is it to arrive at truth? Is the mass to have done with will? And what becomes of "energy"?

It proves there is no true condition but early Christianity - certain truth from God - imposing on no one - immense energy from earnest love, and suffering for it. Christ said "I am the truth." Was He "venal"? The one thing John especially insists on is "Whom I love in the truth" - for the truth's sake; and the Lord said "Sanctify them through thy truth - thy word is truth." I repeat, early Scriptural Christianity is the only thing that can be justified. Scepticism and persecution man may vacillate between - escape from one into the other, or corrupt by error, and break up all by passion as will surely come, but God declares the truth, and He is Love. "Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ."

When we speak of toleration, we suppose power in the world. It identifies, if it pass beyond the family, the connection of the Church with the world, and all is already false. What had Christ on earth to tolerate, or His disciples? That is the secret of all this - but of that these men are wholly ignorant. It is to be practised, not talked about.

See again volume 2, page 94, the confession "The question, what is truth, has certainly no prospect of obtaining a speedy answer." Surely it has not from reason - it never will. Reason is not conversant with Truth, but with consequences which are never facts but mere consequences. Truth has to do with facts - hence the positivist is right if there be no revelation (though the cravings of a soul and the workings of conscience are facts) - facts seen or facts revealed.

269 Truth is the statement of a thing as it is, on human testimony if the subject of it, on divine if beyond it. It cannot be denied that there may be facts beyond human knowledge; nor can it be denied that there may be a competency to make them known to us - nor that a superior power may act, or facts may act on our hearts and consciences. Conclusions from facts may be true and inoperative. Reason may set aside reasons, error, and so far be useful as to be being open to truth; but this man and his set know only setting aside all conceptions, and reducing the mind to abstract power - an absurdity on the face of it, for there must be education - "Universal scepticism" being the right state. And when he is there, what is he to do? Truth is not to be gained - Reason cannot go beyond mere humanly known facts. Leave God out - Utilitarianism, or selfish baseness is the only motive; passion and force are there, who is to control them? Craving after an unseen world irresistible - Scepticism practically in the mass, and venal degradation have always gone together.

Bring God in - God making Himself known - and you have truth, obligatory truth. I cannot well have the idea of God without thinking so. "The spirit of truth," he tells us "is acknowledging our fallibility," hence never, as I have said, arriving at any truth - and their "weighing all things," "all evidence against, as for" - pretty work for the great body of the people, and where to begin, and men so arriving not at a truth that something is, but at a conclusion that something must be, which has no moral effect on the mind. I must believe, i.e., be certain, as a fact, that something is, for it to have its effect; otherwise there is only prudence, not moral, action.

He has no idea - not believing any truth - that it is evil to shake some thoughts, not others; for example, the supposed duty and affection of a child to a parent, I shake it by "It must not be indulged in till the child can say why." That is the same, according to his view of the spirit of truth, as if I shook his faith in an immoral Jupiter, suckled by a goat, being a god. He seeks not truth, as if there was any, but scepticism as to all. And note here, if the will distorts the judgment, there is more or less guilt in error. And so it is - he admits the fact, and resists the conclusion - for where is guilt, if not in a perverted and perverting will?

270 Volume 2, page 93. We have here the moral effect - the denial of the necessity of correct opinions; he can know nothing but opinions. I wonder whether he believes the difference or the truth of what the Lord says, when all passed their opinions on Him, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in heaven." "On this rock I will build my Church" - the difference of faith and opinion!

"A disposition more value than any particular doctrines," e.g., that Christ was God or was not!

Pages 94, 95. As to children not to be influenced - as to opposition, games cause of persecution, volume 2, page 289 - as to religious growth, volume 1, page 390, but, as I have said, nor does he deny the height of civilisation is always sunken morality. See also, as to "the judgment doubting of all," though taught to doubt of the past; volume 1, page 199.

It is full of self, the influence of the age, that is his theory; but this age is essentially rationalistic, and like all others thinks itself right - for, as to the masses, they are under the influence of the current thoughts and thinkers more than others. I do not deny his present facts, but their value; of course of the Truth and of conversion he knows nothing. At any rate see volume 1, page 203. "Each phase of civilisation has its peculiar and congenial views of the system and government of the Universe, to which the men of that time will gravitate," even Mr. Leckey - and that is all!

"Appropriate civilisation"! Did the true first power of Christianity wait for an appropriate civilisation in those who embraced it? To say that "the world reasserted its empire" is, alas! true, but, as he says that now it is being realised as the confessedly most material, money-loving age going, is a calumny on its nature - an age which he confesses knows no such thing as self-sacrifice.

Where scepticism is a virtue, the search of truth is a folly, for if it be found, I must give up scepticism - but these men are not ashamed to say it is never to be found. I repeat, in the nature of things by reason never can.

I do not now enter on man's fall and ruin - it would be idle when "scepticism is the only right state of mind." He says, volume 2, page 66, "Revelation is to be established by a process of reasoning" (this last may prove denial of it folly on man's ground) but it never can - in the nature of things, revelation must be on evidence. And what is axiomatically true, is only so in mathematics, which cannot apply to anything else than quantity, and in divine and moral things it is the height of folly to apply that. It is not a question of a contradiction of it - that is Leckey's stupidity, because a revelation, to be such, must be the bringing things to the knowledge of man which he is not cognizant of by his senses or faculties (save as condescension may help imperfect apprehensions) and hence no revelation can contradict physical facts, because it does not occupy itself with them. It may bring in God acting by signs, setting aside the operation of physical laws, or making them act by His will for a special object. And if He is the Author of them, that He can do; but He does not reveal anything which contradicts what is not the subject of revelation. "Arguments prove the use of popular language as to the sun's rising," etc. are childish in the extreme.

271 See, Introduction page 17, as to theology. "It predisposes men, in history, to attribute all kinds of phenomena to natural rather than miraculous causes; in theology to esteem succeeding systems, the expressions of the wants and aspirations of that religious sentiment, which is planted in all men; and, in ethics to regard as duties only those which conscience reveals to be such." It is monstrous, though there be truth in it as far as man is concerned, only there is no true religion; the infamies of Heathenism, the imposture of Mahometanism expressed a want - and so did Christianity - none meet any from God; Buddhism - all the same. And all reserved for this age to discourse or discuss, which has, and mark it well, for its part, scepticism or doubting of everything - at least as to the past.

"Knowing the future!" Ah! how well! It is "peace by political economy"; to be sure! It seems all to me singularly superficial. The most direct approach to scepticism I cannot again lay my hand on. But the history is the mere outside, without not only God but even high, conscientious, motives in man, or the pressure of any moral sentiment. "A state of civilisation" explains, not a common external state, but all. If so, what then is man? There is, in none of these men, the sense that conscience can be acted on and elevated. It and Reason can act to judge God! I do not want to suspend the moral faculty, but it is not, in its present state, a competent judge of all - if so why is Mr. Leckey setting right the conscience of "sixty centuries"? See volume 1, page 309.

272 See also volume 2, page 30, how connection with the State is insisted on for the individual and the world. See too page 95, as to what "facts" always are, and see as to causes Julian, pages 289-291.

In result the whole book proves, on its own showing, that each age has had its own peculiar way of judging - never the truth; this age doubts of all, and has found out, not i.e., only its own subjective ground of judgment, that it is incapable - that man is incapable of finding out the truth, and of course thinks itself right; but that is only the particular character of the age. A suicidal book! As to a "whole being greater than its parts," even physical science shows the folly of this reasoning beyond mere extension, for chemists say whenever gases etc. unite, the whole is always less than the component parts, whereas the whole is equal to its parts. This is mere feebleness of human language. I have elsewhere shown that mathematics teach, not that "one is one" as has been said, but that change of form does not change extension - and uses means to show equality when it is in different forms. But in chemistry change of form does change extension - change of form meaning really something else. The repulsive force of certain particles is taken away by combination, we know not how; but it shows the folly of applying one order of ideas to another.

Life in John 3

<42047E> 273

In this chapter, note how prominent the place "Life" takes in this Gospel. Even when the death of Christ is spoken of, it is "That they might have everlasting life." But there it is connected, note, with the proper and essential character of that into which they were brought.

"We speak that we do know and testify that we have seen." "No man hath ascended up into heaven but he who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven." Christ reveals and can reveal, as from and in it, the true nature and holy blessedness of heaven itself; and this His death takes us into. He goes out, with absolute death, to all the evil in this world, in resurrection, in the power of, to us, a new life - to Him, a new state of it - into a heavenly place and condition.

The nature of the life is always the same. So in us, "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit" - is of the nature of its source - as "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," which belongs to the old world. Thus, born of the Spirit, Christ as risen is our life, and we are thus associated with the heavenly things in a nature suited essentially to it, as by a title in which God in heaven is fully glorified; so, "Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption" - Our conversation is in heaven, whence we expect Jesus.

It is true that even the Jewish partakers of the blessing must be born again, because they have to say to God, and their blessings are founded on Christ's death also. But this goes no farther than the prophetic testimony which a master in Israel should have known. It was needed, for the earthly part of the kingdom, that they should stand in relationship to God in truth. It is consequent on that that the Lord speaks of the heavenly things, at least intimates His speaking of them. The Jews did not receive His testimony as to Israel's earthly hopes, and being born again for them. Yet as the Spirit in sovereign grace went whithersoever it listed, so instead of Messiah taking the throne of David then, according to the flesh, the Son of Man was going to be lifted up, and eternal life in Him fully brought to light beyond death.

The new covenant, note, does not go beyond forgiveness - there is no introduction into heavenly places and things.

Repentance

<42048E> 274

There is a very definite difference between repentance and sorrow for sin; in the former the will is identified with the new man and his judgment - in sorrow, even godly sorrow - for often we are merely disappointed in ourselves - this is not always yet the case. I mourn, grieve over my failure, would desire to be free, but would not give up, as to my inmost will, what holds me in bondage. Self has still power on the side of evil, over the will.

But when I repent really, my will is wholly in the new man. I am glad of all that is detected of self - reserve nothing - cling to nothing in my mind - am not loath to give it up. I dislike the thing in my mind - am clean, and see it as unclean in its true light. While it has power over the will, I may know it is so, but I do not so see it. The soul thus is not really set right, even if it has left evil. Godly sorrow will not cherish it, but it has not yet always got free from it; repentance has. It is the new man by itself in power judging the other as a thing disliked and apart - the door, founded in Christ, of renewed communion. It is connected with a just estimate of Christ's purifying sacrifice. The effect of the sprinkled ashes brings the soul into God's presence in the value of that sacrifice.

As regards turning and repentance we have some other passages which throw additional light on it. Thus in Acts 3, we have "Repent and be converted," and in Acts 26, "That they should repent and turn to God." Here I apprehend that "turn" is not simply a change of will, but as in the last case "turning to God." When God turns, He acts on us and turns our will round. This leads us to repentance and judgment of our ways according to God; then there is remission. Here the working of God is not entered on, as it is an address to conscience, and they are called to judge their ways and turn to God. It is the side of the truth addressed to men's consciences.

As to the difference of Acts 2 and 3, one is individual repentance to enter into the Church - the other, the repentance of the nation returning to God. This does not affect the nature of true repentance.

The Lord's Coming and the Church

<42049E> 275

If there be a spiritual coming of the Lord, it was clearly the first coming, for though He came truly in the flesh, He was not so known save spiritually - none could come to Him, as so come in the flesh, save the Father which had sent Him drew them; "It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing, the words that I speak unto you they are Spirit and they are Life." Accordingly He spake and was known in testimony - He was known as the Word by His words, they had the power in which He appeared, to draw to Himself then; "He that heareth my words and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life."

It was only spiritually He was known, though He was manifested in the flesh - it was only in the word which He spake that He was received, for they which believed on Him by miracles He would not commit Himself to. In a word, as it was hearing the word and keeping the word which was the sowing of the Son of Man, so it was not manifestation to men, but veiled, and manifested to be the Person (though men ought to have known Him) only to those whose eyes were opened by His word to see Him through the Father's grace. This is argued in John 6, and its principles opened out in chapter 8. So John came in the spirit and power of Elias, though he was that very, true one of whom the prophets had testified.

The real personal coming, if we should distinguish, of the Lord Jesus, though the same true one then, is then in manifestation clearly the second, when it shall not be merely a revelation to believers of Him; for the point of John 6 is that it was as really so when He was present in the flesh as when exalted and hid with God - but "every eye shall see him, they also which pierced him." It is clear this is far more thoroughly personal, than appearing as the carpenter's son revealed only to those who were drawn of the Father as given unto Him. Christ is spiritually present now; so effectually He was when in the days of His flesh, for He then came not judging or executing judgment, which He must do in Person, but testifying in the word of testimony - spiritually received then indeed in Person in the execution of judgment - the great governing ordinance of God, in which He Himself is honoured in the execution of it.

So also the Church now knows Him, and the glory in spirit; in fact, in respect of this all are on a par, as Jesus appeared so as that they only who were taught of God could know who it was - the Son. So those, amongst whom Jesus was in the flesh, did in moral fact only see the Son as we see Him now, i.e., the moral character of the perception was the same, so that blessed as His presence was, it was expedient for them that He should go away.

276 Nor has the glory of the Son ever been assumed in manifestation at all - Jesus glorified the Father upon earth, and now saith He "Glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." It was the time of the Son's humiliation not His glory - the transfiguration was in part an exhibition of it - God was also glorified in Him in the perfect actings and obedience of the Son of Man. But the Son of God has never as such had, i.e. as regards us, His proper glory - that is reserved solely for His coming, which if it be not personal with this object there is no honouring of the Son in His proper honour. It is the only real personal coming of the Son of God - the fulfilment of the great object of the Father, of God - that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father. To that end judgment was given Him; therefore the Revelation speaks of Him previously as the faithful Witness, i.e., of the Father. The character He gives Himself on earth, and now from heaven, and having wrought our redemption, is "Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him." Here there is properly the personal coming of the Lord; before, He manifested God in the flesh, ascribing the glory to the Father - then all glory is ascribed to Him. If it were by the Spirit only, it would be only what was before, it would not be the proper glory of the Son. What we want is the manifestation of the Son - in the glory of all surely - but precisely and properly in His Person, so that all shall see Him, for the Son's sake, though with the delight and in the glory of the Father, when shall be the manifestation of the sons of God now hid with Christ, i.e., as Christ is in God.

If there be no personal coming in glory of Jesus, specifically in Person as the Son of God, all as it were is lost, though that cannot of course be; but His Person ceases to be the great question of glory, which it is, with the Father - with the divine Being - with the eudokia (good pleasure) - with the I AM (the Jehovah) of glory.

277 His first coming was in witness - though it were indeed the Son; His second coming is in Person, when every eye shall see Him, and the glory of Him who was hidden be known. On the questions solved in this, hinge all, all true divinity - the knowledge of the Son, all rests in this glorious appearing, and the Church is merely just a witness, till that appearing, of the truth of Him (to their own blessing) who shall then be manifested, and they, being also in the truth, believing the truth, with Him in glory.

Let the Church deny this, and it ceases to be a Church - it ceases in its plan and acceptance - it is gone - it must be cut off in its form. God may pass by - He may bear with, as He does daily with all of us, ignorance and slowness of heart; but let the Church deny this - the ground of its existence has ceased - it has ceased to exist in the sight of God. The Spirit has no office in it, for its office is to testify of Jesus, the glory of Jesus as having all things that the Father hath; but if this be not accomplished, His present title is denied - it is a false one. The Church is witness that it is true - a painful, suffering witness, because He has it not now; let her deny that He is to have it, and what is she suffering for? Nothing! She is joined to the world - she has ceased in her existence. Hence also he who denies the voice of the Spirit in the Church ceases to own the witness of the glory, for the Spirit alone can bear witness of the glory - the apostles also bore witness to all that they had actually seen in Him from the beginning - and therefore the Church ceases.

It may be mixed up, i.e., in us, in our ministrations, with our errors, weaknesses, our unbelief may quench it, we may mistake also, as unspiritual men, other things for it, but if it ceases the Church ceases, it exists not. But it has not ceased to exist in the Church - God has not left Himself without witness, let every thing be judged, but let not God be denied.

Herein I think - I speak now of no recent appearances in the professing Church, but of the truth abstractedly by itself (they may, as regards this, be or not be such) - the Evangelicals and Dissenters, and their haughtiness are the infidelity of the Church, and the immediate cause, i.e., in proximate operation, of its cutting off. It is, the professed faith of it, joined the world, and therefore the Church exists no longer. Truth that saves an individual may be casually ministered, but they have no faith as a Church, and therefore, when the truths in which this consists are brought forward and are denied, they can no longer be recognised in such a character - the excision approaches of the Church - such is the position now. It will speedily be carried into manifest effect.

278 The acknowledgment of sin as unto death - of the Cross - of the power of reconciliation in Christ - the atonement - and the testimony of the Word from God, as believing and submitting to God as true in it in Jesus, constitute individual faith saving the soul; a man is a competent member of the Church or a Church. The presence of the Spirit, i.e., the Holy Ghost, and the coming again of the Lord Jesus - His real manifestation in glory due to Him, constitute the faith of a Church - held in humility they are its glory and its hope. Simple apostasy substantially denies all these, as the Roman Catholic rulers.

The three first may be held, and the Church ready to perish, though they be blessed and saving truths; and the holding of them, denying the others, will be for the holders of them in that character a more awful position, as regards the Church, than any other. God expects the reception of His truth from them - holding it (they say "we see") therefore, they not doing so, judgment comes. In fact the Evangelicals are properly so but feeble allies of the Dissenters whom - I speak not of individuals who may yet remain perhaps as saints among them - I abhor. The Evangelicals I rather pity - they are attempting, honestly, I dare say, to join the Church and the world. The Dissenters, very dishonestly as to their own principles, the world and the Church; while the world, poor world, has given up the Church, and the Church under divine guidance is, I trust for His mercy and security as it surely shall be in it, giving up the world. May God, even our Father keep us humble, holy in spirit and conversation, and leaning in faith upon His word as our resting place, and Him in the sureness of His love, and very humble, giving us grace, patience, and that of faith, which is for our profit and blessing, and qualify us for His glory, forgiving us our weakness for Jesus sake, our Lord, and in Him.

Reply to Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen

J. N. Darby.

<42050E> 279

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

{Reply to a lecture entitled "Who is Christ; India asks - Who is Christ?" delivered by Baboo K. C. Sen, on April 9th, 1879, in the Town Hall, Calcutta, before the Bishop of Calcutta; reported in the Indian Mirror (special edition), Calcutta, April 14th, 1879.}

Mr. Sen had no need to tell us he was not a Christian. That the blessed Lord "led a life of perfect self-abnegation," every true Christian owns; it was perhaps the first thing which struck me in Christianity. But if there be self-abnegation, there is a self there to deny - not a sinful self, but a self. Mr. Sen's statements are old workings of the human mind mixed up, as was not unnatural, with Hindoo pantheism. As to Christ it is what was in early Christianity called "Monothelism," or really the Monophysite heresy - one will, or one nature, and a new form of Arianism with what was called the word eudiathetos (well disposed) and prophorikos (set forth) i.e., in God, as a quality or part of His nature or coming forth personally, with this difference, that those who went by these Greek names held He became personal at Creation, not at His birth as Mr. Sen does. I do not at all suppose Mr. Sen borrowed these ideas - probably knew nothing of them; but they show the same workings of the human mind. Our business is with the Person of the Lord.

The system of Mr. Sen is this: "Did not Christ say - Before Abraham was, I am? Did he not say distinctly - Before Abraham was, I am? How then and in what shape did Christ exist in heaven? As an idea, as a plan of life, as a predetermined dispensation yet to be realised, as purity of character, not concrete but abstract, as light not yet manifested. That was the form in which Christ dwelt from all eternity in the bosom of the Father; looking at Himself in this light, the Christ could not but believe in His pre-existence. His earthly life had certainly a beginning but the divine life in Him could not possibly have had a beginning. Holiness assuredly has no beginning; wisdom has no beginning; love can have none; truth can never commence to exist. For these existed through all eternity in God Himself. Whatsoever is good and true is co-eternal with God. Though the human Christ was born, all that was divine in Him existed eternally in God. In fact, Christ was nothing but a manifestation on earth in human form of certain ideas and sentiments which lay before in the Godhead. Let me explain this more fully in two or three words. Before the world was, the Eternal God existed, and in His bosom slept Jesus, or rather the ideal Jesus. Yes, Christ was there with all His disciples, and all His apostles and prophets were there - yea, the whole picture of the economy of Providence in relation to the Christian dispensation."

280 This is mere Platonic idealism.

"It seems to me to be beyond all doubt, that Christ's religion was pure, natural, and perfect idealism. He was not a materialist, but a true idealist. He saw His own Spirit and He saw the divine Spirit also, and in deep communion He found the two identified. He felt He was but a drop lost altogether in the vast ocean of the divinity. Never did He think of Himself. There was no self at all in Him."

Now all this is a denial of the true Christ in both parts of His Being, i.e., the divine and the human. It openly denies His personality as a divine Being existing before the worlds. He all through, as did the Holy Ghost in His apostles, formally asserts His personal existence. For Mr. Sen these were qualities in God - Christ and the Christian Scriptures assert the "He" existed. In Mr. Sen's discourse I read "He existed in Heaven before He had an earthly existence. Did not Christ say that He existed long before Abraham lived?" Here we are merely deluded by words. No one existed - ideas did in God. "In what shape" it is asked, "did Christ exist in heaven? As an idea . . . yet to be realised, as purity of character," etc.; but that is not "I." Now I shall show that Christianity affirms uniformly the existence of Somebody, and His existence before the worlds.

Take this very passage, "Before Abraham was, I am"; not, "holiness was in God." "I" is somebody, not something which existed when "I" did not. "Holiness existed when I did not" is not I existed, and existence in its absolute character, not "I was" but "I Am." "I was" is in time - "I am" is eternal. If Christianity be true, if Christ spoke the truth, He - not "an idea to be realised" - had an eternal existence. And this the Jews felt and took up, stones to stone Him for making Himself God.

"The same was in the beginning with God." Here I find not a quality of God, but some one with God - unity of nature and Being, but distinctness of Person - "He was God," but "He was with God." This Word was made flesh - became a man. But where the unity of the Father and the Son is stated, personal distinction is carefully maintained. "I and my Father are one"; no doubt in the mysterious unity of the Deity they are one, but there are Two who are so. "The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world." He did not send an idea merely. There was a living Person there who said He was sent. Nor was it merely when in this world, that He was sent for He says: "I came forth from the Father, and came into the world; and again I leave the world and go to the Father." "Glorify Thou me with Thine own self, with the glory I had with Thee before the world was." "Lo! I come in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do Thy will, O God." Here we have a Person, an "I" who has an intention, a purpose, and comes to fulfil it. Again "For I came not to do mine own will, but the will of him who sent me." "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not my will but Thine be done." Holiness had not a will which was not to be done, nor love either.

281 All these texts, and a crowd of others that might be quoted and from Christ's own mouth - who, Mr. Sen admits, speaks the truth - proclaim a living, existing One who could say "I," and that before the worlds; not "an idea," but One who existed with God, and who was God, and who was in the Father's glory before the world was - One who could say "I."

That this blessed One did reveal the Father (Mr. Sen says He did not, but only the Son) - that He was holy, pure, the manifestation of divine love, and that He who had seen Him had seen the Father - every true Christian owns; but there was a "Him" to see, who could declare He had been in glory with the Father before the world was. That He and the Father were one, every true Christian owns, but the same verse teaches him there was "He" and the Father.

That "in two thousand years man's intellect," nay, the Christian's as taught of God, "has not fathomed this" is true, and that two thousand more will not suffice the Christian owns, but he knows more. "No one knows the Son but the Father." Now that He has clothed what is divine, in human nature, none can fathom it. The Father we do know by the Son's revelation of Him, "The only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him"; and again, "No one knows the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him," but this is not added as to the Son - Mr. Sen says "He did not manifest the Father but the Son"; the Scripture says "The Son but the Father."

282 But the divine glory of His Being is maintained and secured, when He became incarnate, by the incomprehensibility of His Person. But here too the Father and the Son are carefully distinct. But though I might multiply quotations proving the personality of the Lord before the worlds, this is not quite all - He created the worlds as He upholds them. Thus, in a passage I once had the pleasure of quoting to Mr. Sen, I read: "God . . . has in these last days spoken to us by (his) Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his Person,* and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." Here I have, so to speak, the whole career of Christ, down here to speak to us, and gone up and sat down on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. But it is the same by whom God created the worlds - He upholds all things by the word of His power - He is a divine Person, with divine power, but One by whom God made the worlds.

{*Or substance.}

Nor is this all. We find that He holds His place of glory as Head of Creation because He created all things. I read, Colossians 1, "The Son of his love . . . who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers: all things were created by him and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the Head of the Body, the Church." I add this last that there may be no question as to the Person spoken of. "All things were created by him and for him." Christianity is not Pantheism either. It is not emanation - it is not evolution - though it does tell us far more, it tells us things were created, and that there was a Creator who now upholds all things by the word of His power; and this Creator was the Son.

Nor are these the only testimonies, though Creation be not the proper subject of the New Testament, but Christ and redemption; still as part of His glory it is introduced. I read in John 1, of the "Word who was with God, and who was God" . . . "All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made." Nothing existed but by His fiat. All that had a beginning had its existence by the power of Him who had none, who was when everything that had a beginning began. But it is not simply formal passages which speak doctrinally, but all the teachings of the Scriptures refer to Him as a personal Being. Thus: "Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men." This is said of somebody, and of somebody who was in the form of God, and did something with Himself - came into such a form as to be able to die, as in Hebrews 2. He is "made a little lower than the Angels for the suffering of death." Are "holiness and love," "qualities in God," "ideas," made lower than the angels? The ideas are always the same. It would be wickedness to talk of God's holiness and love being lowered. When Christ humbled Himself to death, the death of the Cross, holiness and love were exalted, at least in their greatest display.

283 So I find in 2 Corinthians 8, "For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that when he was rich, for our sakes he became poor that we through his poverty might be made rich." Can the holiness, love, truth, which Mr. Sen affirms to be "co-eternal with God," be ever anything but what they are in themselves? But here is One who was in the form of God, the very status and condition of divinity, and takes another form and goes down to death, even the same divine Person, never proved more so than in His humiliation, but who became something ("was made flesh"). With a quality that is impossible - it is always the identical idea it was before, if not it is not it. The Word become flesh, did not cease to be the Word, but was what it was not before - became something - and subsequently took manhood into divine glory. Personal identity can change its state and form - ideal identity must remain what it is or identity is gone. But when John said "He that cometh after me is preferred before me for he was before me," he spoke of somebody to whom he was a witness - not of holiness and love.

284 Connected with this is another statement I must notice, in which the system approaches Arianism though not the same; a statement sufficiently obscure, but which will serve to show the untenableness of a system whose birthplace is human imagination mixed with traditional Hindoo pantheism and not divine truth. "The Lord took away," we are told, "if I may use the expression, the lower half of His holy nature, that much of it which related to the moral relationship of Son, and He invested the same with flesh and bones and blood, and sent it into the world. All holiness and truth dwelt in the Father, the eternal fountain-head of all that is true and good and beautiful. It comprehended all manner of holiness. It had in it the germ of all forms of virtue and righteousness. Purity of life dwelt in Him in its fulness and integrity. Out of this substance the Lord took out only one form of purity, that which applies to the Son in His relation to the Father and His brethren, and comprises human duties and virtues, and having given it a human shape, said: Go and dwell thou in the world, and shew forth unto nations divine sonship."

Now, if it be "the lower half" of His divine nature and it was no divine Person but "ideas of holiness, love, truth," etc., then we have a lower kind of holiness, love and truth. He who has seen Christ has not seen the Father, but only "the lower half of His nature." But it was "to teach us Sonship or true loyalty to the Father"! But He was no divine Person before, and had "as much of His power and wisdom and purity, as the Son needed for manifestation on earth . . . . Thus was the Son incarnated, and not the Father"! But there was no one incarnate He tells us, only an inferior part of God, ideas were given a body, and that was the Son, "as much of His power and wisdom and purity as the Son needed for manifestation upon earth." It could not thus be said "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father"; it was only "the lower half," as much specifically as was needed to manifest divine humanity, loyal obedience. We might as well say "My foot is my mind because it obeys it, and by the nervous system is connected with it!" We, Christians, have a Christ who revealed the Father - the only-begotten Son who declared Him - One in whom dwells all the fulness bodily.

There is the same want of all reality in His humanity. Mr. Sen says, "Touch the human, bodily Christ, Christ as a self and a distinct individuality, and it vanishes, so unreal it is." Now the true corporeal existence of the Man Christ is carefully insisted on in Scripture. Not only is it said "The fulness of the Godhead bodily," but the reality of flesh and blood is constantly and formally insisted on as vital. "The word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us," John 1. "He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death." "For both he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren." This goes further, but it introduces what follows, "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death . . . . Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren." He was a real, true man, only knew no sin, and a divine Person incarnate - a perfect revelation of God, and of the Father as only-begotten Son - "All the fulness of the Godhead," or that bodily.

285 But I continue. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life," 1 John 1. He insists on having handled Him; nor had He evaporated to his mind; he insists it was no unreality as to His true bodily human nature. And after His resurrection, in those beautiful and touching words, "Why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have" - He is as much a Man now as ever, though with a spiritual body and glorified. "I see," says Stephen, "the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." God has made Him, whom the Jews crucified, Lord and Christ.

But further. It is insisted on as vital in 1 John 4 that he that "confesseth not Jesus Christ come in the flesh is not of God"; and in 2 John, he that "confesseth not Jesus Christ come in the flesh" is a deceiver and antichrist. The real proper human humanity is insisted on, a divine Person - no doubt the Word made flesh, but partaking of flesh and blood because the children did, only without sin. Mr. Sen will say, "I teach that He took flesh and blood." No doubt. But it is in itself "a volatile, ethereal something which will hardly bear the gentlest touch. Touch it and it evaporates. Touch the human, bodily Christ, Christ as a self, and a distinct individuality, and it vanishes, so unreal it is. The divine idea, the divine life, which is embodied in Christ, that is His substance, that alone liveth and abideth for ever." "He saw Himself abiding eternally in God, before creation and after death. So the life of Christ springs from divinity, and into divinity it goes back. His thoughts and sentiments, His wisdom and light, His energy and vitality emanate from the divine spirit, and return to the divine spirit"; just after this follows what I have already quoted, "How did He exist? As an idea, as a plan of life." Let not the reader be deceived by "He" and "Him." There was no "He," no "Him." There was holiness in God, in the Father, and truth and love and other perfections, but no personal Being who became anything. The Father put "the lower part" of Himself into flesh and blood (yet it was only an idea) and hence Christ! And yet the flesh and blood was unreal, "so unreal that it evaporated at a touch." It is no self, no distinct individuality - touch it and it vanishes! The divine "idea," no Person mark, which is embodied in Christ, that is His substance. Now this is no true Christ at all. Now John boasts that he not only heard and saw Him, but touched Him, and He did not "evaporate" nor "vanish"; he just states the exact opposite to show He was a real bodily Man in flesh and blood, and declares that it is antichristian not to own Him come in flesh.

286 But this is not all. After His resurrection He did not "return into divinity" - He never ceased to be God. It was in flesh He said what Mr. Sen quotes, "Before Abraham was, I am"; but He says to His disciples "Handle me and see that it is I myself," and showed them His hands and His feet saying "I myself" - was formally insisting on His being "a self and an individuality." It is not merely an induction, it is insisted on as a fundamental truth. He returned into the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, but He returned as Man, a glorified Man.

Holiness does not die, an idea does not die, nor does it rise from the dead save metaphorically; but "if Christ," this Person who died for our sins "be not risen, our faith is vain, we are yet in our sins." He was equally a divine Person before, as we have seen - the Word who was, who created the worlds "All things were created by him and for him," and that Word was made flesh. "He was with God and was God," and "made himself of no reputation" - gave up the form of the divine glory to take the form of man - and "In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily."

287 On each point - it is not merely that Mr. Sen is not a Christian - his system denies the Christ of God; He is "an idea in divinity," and He is "unreal, and evaporates in humanity" - I use his own words. He is "an inferior part of the Father," and the inferior part is embodied in a man, not to manifest the Father as the Christian Scriptures positively state, but the Son amongst men to show what men ought to be.

Note also, all love of Christ is lost; I read "The love of Christ constrains us" - "the love of God which was in Christ Jesus our Lord" - but an idea cannot love us, an idea cannot give Himself, for us an idea "returned into the divinity cannot be "the firstborn among many brethren," an idea cannot be the "Heir of all things" having created them, an idea with a shadowy body cannot die for us. All that is said of Christ in His interest in us cannot be said of an idea - it supposes a living Person, divine in His nature but made flesh.

I have spoken of the Person of the blessed Saviour, however briefly and imperfectly, in the main of John's teaching as to Christ. But there is another side of the truth - His work wrought for us; mainly Paul's presentation of Him. For, though all teach the same truths as Paul says, 1 Corinthians 15, yet characteristically John brings down God to us - Paul brings us up, accepted in Christ, to God.

A few introductory remarks as to man's state, in view of Mr. Sen's system may introduce this part of our subject. "Christ's pantheism," we are told, "is the conscious union of the human with the divine spirit in truth, love and joy." As to what man is, we are told, "you cannot resist His influence, you may deny His doctrines, you may even hate and repudiate His name, but He goes straight into your hearts and leavens your lives. He does not care to enquire what doctrine you believe, or what dogma you accept, nor even what sort of life you lead. You may be the basest of sinners. You may be intellectually opposed to many of His doctrines. The truth that is in Christ will perforce overcome and penetrate your souls in spite of your perverseness, and secretly influence your character."

But alas! though with how rich blessing in result, history tells us the falseness of all this. The One whom "every heart must receive" was crucified - He was "The despised and rejected of men . . . we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised and we esteemed him not"; Jews and Gentiles join in crucifying Him; one of His disciples betrays, another denies Him, and all abandon Him. History proves the contrary of Mr. Sen's statements. That conscience may be struck by the perfectness of Christ, a perfectness seen there only - intelligence convinced by proofs, and even the heart weep over innocence, is true - but all this Christ disowns as of no avail; the revelation of God draws out the enmity of the human heart. Faith simply founded on intelligence is counted nothing worth, John 2: 23-25, though the judgment was right. Man must be born anew. Feeling, and just natural feeling is nothing worth when Christ is in question; Luke 23: 27-31. Nor, comes closer home here, does just admiration of Christ's perfectness, and a loveable character; Matthew 20: 16-26; Mark 10: 17-27. We must be born again.

288 And let us now see how Christianity treats this question of man's disposition. "Wherefore," says Isaiah prophetically, "when I came was there no man, when I called was there none to answer." And in the New Testament it is stated doctrinally. Speaking of Christ as the life that was the light of men, "The light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not." If there were some that did through grace receive Him, they were "born of God." And the Lord, John 3: 11, "We speak that we do know and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness." And in verse 19 the secret comes out, "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil"; and again in verse 32, "And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony." So chapter 8: 45, "Because I tell you the truth, ye believe not." And the result is seen in chapter 15: 22-25, and in one word there, "But now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father . . . They hated me without a cause." He came into the world, and "the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came to his own and his own received him not."

The view that Mr. Sen takes of human nature, in relationship to the manifestation of what is divine in Christ, is contrary alike to fact and the testimony of Christianity, and it is still true: with the name of Christ upon them "They see no beauty in Him to desire Him." Money, pleasure, ancient superstitions, power, and a thousand other things attract the heart, not Christ. But this rejection of Christ leads us to another part of Christianity, not the manifestation of what is divine to man specially known in the Person of the Lord Jesus, but what He did for man as a Saviour. Of all this - there is no trace in Mr. Sen's system.

289 Christianity treats man as lost, "enemies in their minds by wicked works," "by nature children of wrath" - the worship of Vishnu, and Siva, of Kali, or even of Sudra and Agni has not proved the contrary, nor the state of Christendom where Christ is professed; all around us, East or West, proves that we have had a bad Creator or that we are a fallen race. To show good in the midst of it does not change - has not changed this. It has been shown in Christ and rejected. Christianity is founded on the rejection and death of its Head. Not that God's plans were frustrated; the Son of Man came, when man's state was fully proved by His rejection, to give His life a ransom. Divine love was shown in the gift of the only-begotten Son, and man's necessity and God's righteous judgment of sin, in that the Son of Man must be lifted up. Nowhere but in the Cross are the infinite love of God and His righteous horror of sin fully shown, both; but in the Cross God's nature was shown - sin intolerable but the sinner loved. "Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us" - hereby know we what sin is, when it was thus dealt with in Him who was made sin for us. But all have sinned, every mouth is stopped, and all the world guilty before God. There is corruption, violence, oppression in the world as a fact - Mr. Sen does not deny it. The motives of men are the opposite of what even Mr. Sen ascribes to Christ, even when there is no open profligacy. Man "must be born again," not in the unreal sense of Brahminism, not with a cord round the waist, but a new and holy life, and a cord round every evil passion, to abide with and have communion with God, "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." Is it fitting, nay! is it possible he should? Can miserable passions be the happy and loving companions for any of a holy Christ? Man must be really and truly born again.

But this is not all. There must be a judicial putting away of all our sins - a purged conscience as well as a pure heart; where the conscience is not purged, the heart cannot be free. It is indeed a felt want whenever the conscience is not hardened, and then even easily awakened - of this Christianity largely speaks. On this, the first of realities, Mr. Sen is wholly silent. There is nothing as to guilt, though he speaks of evil; how should there be, if we also are part of God, which is pantheism? There is nothing in his system that meets the sinner, and sinners we are. He speaks of various wickedness, and of man's estate, and of his own even in a general way, but not a word of what is to meet it. Scripture does - it tells us how "Christ died for our sins," "was made sin, He who knew no sin" - Christ is set forth as "a propitiation through faith in his blood," and as to those who believe, it tells us how "we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins," how "His blood purges the conscience from dead works to serve the living God," how it "cleanses from all sin," how He was "delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification," and that thus "repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name." Thus a moral change, and indeed a new life in us on the one hand, and a righteous forgiveness of all our sins on the other, form the practical basis of Christianity. Is this, or telling people that they "love Christ at bottom, even if they hate His name and reject His doctrine and live in sin," the most true?

290 Christianity, then, where it is real, gives peace in the conscience and purifies the heart by faith.

But we have named another truth which has no place in Mr. Sen's system - the resurrection; and now I speak only of believers though all will be finally raised. There man appears in a wholly new state, out of the whole state and condition of this world and mortality - no sin - all his sins gone for ever in the Cross - he is for ever past death, past the sphere of Satan's power, actually suited for God's presence, not merely spiritually enjoying as the believer does here, but body and all rendered fit for the habitation of glory - what is called by Christ His "Father's house." There He is already entered as Man, glorified with the glory He had with the Father before the world was.

Faith knows its standing now before a holy God, partaking of the life in the power of which Christ lives as risen, when "He had by himself purged our sins," and obtained the glory for us. When the time comes for all to be complete, we shall be like Christ, raised in glory, and with Him for ever where He has gone to prepare a place for us.

291 I have spoken of the work of Christ as affecting ourselves, dying for our sins and purging our conscience. Mr. Sen says: "Of what use is a dead Christ to us?" If He remained dead, as the Apostle teaches us, He would be of none.

"Jesus came down in all His glory from heaven to teach us sonship in true loyalty to the Father" - "To manifest that life was His mission" - and "His beloved Son was one with Him because He was made of divine humanity."

But Mr. Sen sets aside the importance of Christ's death as much as possible - "To that home He would return after finishing His earthly career."

The Lord, after saying He was the "bread come down from heaven to give life to the world," tells us "Except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you," making the realisation of His death essential to having life, for the blood separate from the flesh is the state of death; to which He adds, "What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before." This is the more definite because in the preceding chapter He presents Himself as giving life with the Father, "Quickening whom he will" - here as the Object of faith, incarnate, dead, and going back to heaven, only the last in a new state in which man never was before.

Of this Mr. Sen makes the following: "On the occasion of the Last Supper He commended Himself to His disciples and the world at large as mere bread and wine to be assimilated to the soul, as mere leaven that in time leaveneth the whole mass"! Of this there is not a word in the passage. "As leaven He lives to-day; He is not dead. For two thousand years men have tried to find out the dead Christ under the stone. But the Spirit of God has marvellously rolled away the stone, and Christ is not there. Even for three days Christ would not consent to live on earth as a dead Christ buried under the stone. So the Lord took His Christ unto Himself, and has in all ages discomfited and disappointed those that have searched for a dead Christ on earth. Where then is Christ now? He is living in all Christian lives, and in all Christian influences around us. Of the dead Christ I speak not. Of what use is a dead Christ to us or to our nation?"

292 Now with a great deal of rhapsody, to which it is hard to attach any sense, it is perfectly clear that the object of this passage is to destroy all the importance of Christ's death. Now Christ Himself attaches all importance to His death - "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." He is "the Lamb of God," "Therefore," He says, "now doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again." He gives His "flesh for the life of the world." "Now," He says, "is the judgment of this world: now is the prince of this world cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die." The people would have it that Christ was to abide for ever, and the saying was unintelligible to them, as it is to Mr. Sen. But it is Christ's death which is the means of drawing all unto Him. I may recall the passage already quoted: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." He has "made peace by the blood of his Cross." "For without shedding of blood is no remission."

Why have we so large an account of His death, if it be "of no use"? A living Christ, though much more, was the accomplishment of promise to the Jew - a dying Christ opens the door to every poor sinner. It is not a dead Christ but a Christ's dying which is of use. The Word of God made flesh, and His coming into our place of sin (knowing no sin, but made sin for us), of death, of Satan's power, of God's judgment, and "bearing our sins in his own body on the tree," and glorifying God there in dying - that is of value.

The Cross of Christ is morally the end of man's history, the beginning of God's. There the enmity of man against God was fully shown in rejecting Him in Christ, manifested in goodness; sin and law-breaking being already there, the infinite love of God towards man who did it was manifested there too. The risen Christ takes the new place for man which He has obtained for those that believe - reconciled to God by His precious blood. He came to give His life a ransom for many. He who was the "brightness of God's glory, and the express image of His Person, when He had by Himself purged our sins,* sat down on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens." I have already quoted these passages as to His Person, I repeat them here as to the object of His incarnation: "He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death" - "Through death he destroyed him that had the power of death," i.e., He annulled his power.

{*"Made the purification of our sins."}

293 I should quote the whole of Hebrews 9, and the blessed effect in chapter 10, were I to adduce what applies to this subject; anyone can read it, but "A testament is of no force at all while the testator liveth." "By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption." It is by means of death that we receive the promise of eternal inheritance. I quote further these two passages: "Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment; so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." The veil is rent; and "We have boldness by the blood of Jesus to enter into the holiest." We are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. "For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." He sits continually as Man at the right hand of God until His enemies be made His footstool. Citations might be multiplied, but these suffice to show the place Christ's death has in Christianity.

I close this part of my testimony by citing what is a summing up of the whole course of the blessed Lord. "Christ Jesus, who when he was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." And, note, "He made himself of no reputation" when "in the form of God" - He "humbled himself," being in the form of a man. It was not "an idea" that did this, but One in the form of God, who could say "Lo! I come." It was One who had a mind in Him when in the form of God - not "an idea in the mind" of another.

294 There would be many details to notice, but I have no wish to break the great lines of truth by details. Thus Mr. Sen tells us: "Christ said, There is none good but the Father" - Christ never said so, He said, "but God." But God, Father, Lord, are all confounded in Mr. Sen's discourse. God is the name of a Nature and Being - Father, of a relationship. If we make the difference of Persons, and do not say merely God in the unity of nature, Creation is attributed in Scripture to the Son and the Spirit, not to the Father. Next, Christ is never, by Mr. Sen in his discourse, called "Lord," which is of the essence of Christian truth.

Further, we all existed eternally as much as Christ! "Christ was there with all his disciples, and all the apostles and prophets were there - yea, the whole picture of the economy of providence in relation to the Christian dispensation!" I do not know what "part of Himself" the Father took, for all of us to be incarnate. Mr. Sen says "Christ took only a lower part"; we must have been some bad part, for men are wicked - for we were "all there as well as Christ." What "idea" in God were we?

The thought of a Saviour is wholly lost and absent from Mr. Sen's mind. In result, Christ's divine existence before incarnation was merely "An idea in God" - He did not exist at all! His "remembrance of His pre-existence" is merely trifling with words - there was no "He." "He knew that holiness was in God" - so do I, but that is "all He knew, for that was all there was"! But where "The Father sent the Son," there must be somebody to send.

The humanity of Christ is equally unreal. "Touch it," as Mr. Sen says, "and it vanishes." The real true humanity of Christ is as fully denied as His personal divinity.

The death of Christ is not merely passed over, but carefully made nothing of.

His resurrection and entrance as Man into glory is all left out - the resurrection of that true "human Christ," the same though in a new estate.

All Christianity is denied in what is diligently insisted on as fundamental in the New Testament.

But it will be said: "But Mr. Sen tells us he is no Christian." True! But he professes to give us an account of what Christ was, and it is a false Christ - false in every thing essential to His existence, Person and work - a laboured denial of all that constitutes a true Christ. And let me suggest to Mr. Sen here, that the true Christ, the Saviour, is neither Oriental nor Occidental; as far as He was externally the former, He has been rejected by Orientals and Occidentals. As a Saviour, He came down from heaven and revealed the Father - told what He had seen, and spoke what He knew (John 3), and, rejected by all, died for us to save us, and, as Man, is gone up to heaven where He was before. A heavenly Christ, lifted up from the earth, is alone a Saviour for West and East.

295 Mr. Sen contradicts himself constantly, but into this I do not enter - the subject is too serious to make it a mere debate. He says, "India craves the knowledge of what Christ is," and he gives it a false one suited to local prejudices, and not the expression of eternal Truth.

The Son of Man

J. N. Darby.

<42051E> 296

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

The use of the term "Son of Man" is worthy of closer remark. Christ never calls Himself "the Christ" save to the woman of Samaria, outside Judaism; John 4. He confesses it before the chief priests, that He is the Christ the Son of the Blessed, but then His own testimony is "Moreover" (plen) "I say unto you, Henceforth" (not hereafter) "ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power" - so Stephen saw Him (but that was a vision for one "full of the Holy Ghost") and yet standing - and "coming in the clouds of heaven," i.e., they would from that out only see Him in that way. He calls Himself "Son of Man" continually - it is His name of predilection in the first three Gospels - in John more frequently "Son of God." In John it is used as to the place He has already taken, for He comes into the world, and the Jews are rejected, and His Person as divine while on earth and as to the Cross, see chapter 3; in chapter 4 for His Body given for the life of men and ascending up - Christ on earth; in chapter 5 judgment given to Him because He is such.

Men never call Him "Son of Man," save Stephen as seeing Him in heaven, which after what He said to the Jews is very significant, as is His not being yet set down. Save these cases, the term is used as suffering - as Lord of all - forgiving - in grace seeking and saving what was lost - or coming again in power and glory; as a general rule suffering and rejected, or coming again in glory.

In the Old Testament the name is only used in respect of future glory and power, in Daniel 7 and Psalm 8. The "made a little lower than the angels" of the latter is used in Hebrews as being in order to be able to suffer death.

The term is used in Revelation, "One like unto the Son of man," as judging in the midst of the Churches, and as coming in the clouds of heaven. In one Psalm (80) He is viewed as the future Deliverer of Israel, who is to come.

The "suffering" point, as connected with the term, is very clear in John 12. It is emphatically stated there. In Luke 9 we have it distinctively in contrast with the Christ, and so that the whole blessing is on new ground, and repeated as the grand practical needed truth, verses 43, 44. The remark made above, which is already evident from John 1: 51, reading "henceforth," shows the different use of it in John. Hebrews 2 takes it up most distinctly in doctrine, and unfolds most fully its connection with the interest He takes in men (the seed of Abraham) as such; they are "all of One." Ephesians 1 connects it with the Church or the Church with Him; and 1 Corinthians 15, the bringing about the result by resurrection. And this explains the after-subjection of the Son, for He remains - infinite grace - Son of man; His personal glory and headship remaining, but His kingdom, rule and authority given up, as heretofore seen.

297 This explains the character of John's Gospel also, where the divine nature of Christ and His oneness with the Father is so clearly stated - having taken already the place of Son of man, He is always divine, but always recipient and dependent. It is not the Kingdom but the Person - a divine one - the Son one with the Father, but the Son of man who has taken the subject place, as we have often seen, all through. This is most important in itself, and for the understanding of John's Gospel, and most blessed. The whole of chapter 17 brings it out very strikingly, where He brings the disciples into His own place, and having brought the Son into Man, He brings men to be sons with Him - by Him, but with Him. This is very lovely. And this is His eternal place consequently, only then glorified of course, as He demands in chapter 17, "Glorify thou me."

His Person comes out strikingly in such passages as "The Son of Man who is in heaven." But although John distinctly uses it in the way and for the reason mentioned in connection with His Person - the Man down here, yet "The Son of man who is in heaven" - "That meat . . . which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed" - yet the death and future glory are not lost sight of in connection with it, only it holds fast the Person as a present thing. We have it in chapter 6, and we have it when the Greeks come up, adding that the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die or it abode alone. "The Son of man must be lifted up"; and this goes further than "The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation." In John it is directly connected with God - His nature and Christ's work - yet on the part of man towards God, the other side following under the title of "Son of God." But in John it has a most blessed and revealing character, which is indeed the gist of the whole Gospel, adding "The other Comforter."

298 The absolute unity of His Person, though in a taken nature, is seen in chapter 6: 62, as well as in chapter 3: 13.

It is evident "Son of man," though the predicted, miraculous descendant of Adam by the woman everywhere, is used in the three Gospels in contrast with the Christ (of Jewish promise) according to the promise of Psalm 8 and Daniel, showing He was to suffer, and not then take the place of Psalm 2, but suffer as Son of man in a more dispensational way; whereas in John it is His Person - He who could say "Father," could say it and did say it as Man - a present thing, as remarked before but not developed. See chapter 1: 49, and then verse 51 as following it.

In John the "Son of Man" is first seen in chapter 1 with the Angels of God serving Him as their special object. Then He is "Son of man who is in heaven," but came down from it. He "must be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." This "lifting up" is always in connection with the Son of man.

Then chapter 8, "When ye have lifted up the Son of man, ye shall know that I am he." So chapter 12, "How sayest thou: The Son of man must be lifted up, who is this Son of man?"

After chapter 3, chapter 6 next takes up the Son of man. There He is the One "sealed of the Father," but again "come down from heaven" - His flesh and blood to be eaten (to go up where He was before). If "lifted up" He was to draw all men. This "lifting up" was clearly His death, but His death as "lifted up," and this word seems to me of importance - His death as rejected and cast out of the earth, but thereby connected with heaven, and the Object of faith to the earth, i.e., to men on it as consciously lost then, but no longer of it. Hence connected with the Son of man, and contrasted by the people with Christ (Messiah) abiding as they thought ever, according to the law; as "Christ" and "Son of man" are contrasted in themselves in Luke 9.

"The Son of man must be lifted up" is associated with heavenly things, as with the serpent stricken to death in John 3. Israel even must be born again for earthly promises according to the prophets - for the setting up of the kingdom, of course the Gentile; but loving the world is connected with the Son of man being lifted up, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me." And it is on the rejection of the Jews, as such, for rejecting His word, that He says "when lifted up" they would "know it was he." When too late they would know whom they had rejected. So it was with the altar - it was not in the camp but in the court of the tabernacle, at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation (of meeting). Only in chapter 8, He is the Word, I Am, whom they have rejected. It was one coming from the camp towards the Tabernacle (Heaven) who found the altar the first thing heavenward - so Christ on the Cross, lifted up, the Witness, dying, that we were dead in sin, but find it in grace in a sacrifice for sin. We go further - we enter into the holiest through the rent veil, but here was the meeting place, but it as having done consequently with the world (the first Adam) as Christ had there done with it - He was lifted up from the earth and all became heavenly but judgment, and that is so to us.

299 He is "lifted up" in chapter 3, in connection with dying men, like the brazen serpent, and as introducing to heavenly things; He is "lifted up" in chapter 8 in connection with the utter rejection of the Jews; He is "lifted up" in chapter 12, drawing all men unto Him - the wide sphere of application here below - all this by His death. These are the only cases of the use of the word regarding Christ.

Matthew 12 gives us the turning point very completely. The Pharisees and Sadducees who composed the Jews (and all religious men, ritualism, and self-righteousness, and infidel rationalists) are rejected - no sign given but a rejected Christ in the grave (Jonas), when it would be too late to be connected with the nation in flesh. In a word, death is brought in and the new resurrection state, but death to man and all hopes in man - the fig-tree is cursed. Then chapter 16, the Lord takes His own place in connection with man, not Judaism - "Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?" Peter then owns Him as "The Christ, the Son of the living God." As "the Christ" He is to be proclaimed no more, but still He was the accomplishment of promise - the Seed of David according to the flesh, and Son of God, of the living God (proved in resurrection). This confession of Peter is the whole Gospel, as to the Person, stated in the beginning of Romans 1 - practically in 2 Timothy 2: 8.

The Son of God, accomplishment of promise as the Christ, the Son of David, brings in life in divine power so as to be able to triumph over death. He goes down, as Man, into the full effect as to man's estate of sin, and Satan's power, breaks out in victory, and puts man into a new place beyond it all. The Son of man "made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death," is the Son of the living God in power. On this the Church is built by Christ - the living stones added to the Living Stone. Secondly, as a distinct matter, the keys of the Kingdom - not of the Church, there are none - are given to Peter; the human-built, responsible Church is Paul's work, 1 Corinthians 3, but that is not our subject here. Hence from this point He begins to tell them the fact of His rejection, and death, and resurrection - the wholly, absolutely new footing on which man was set; besides, afterwards, the Son of man should come in His glory - but this is chapter 17.

300 We learn that flesh may keep our state below the revelation we have really received, so as to be an adversary to Christ, for in minding earthly things we are adversaries to Christ, enemies of His Cross - for if we follow the Son of man, the Cross is the path He trod and we tread. Paul stood and started on this ground, "If one died for all, then were all dead," and he knew no man, not even Christ, after the flesh. It is not therefore a passing, as often noticed, from Judaism to the Church, but a passing from man in the flesh to a resurrection manhood through the Cross and death. The Christ-hood living connection with Israel, according to the flesh, being thus gone, and the Son of man taking up man's case, entering into and putting man into a wholly new condition in resurrection beyond death and Satan's power. That, as to the Son of man - but, on His being the Son of the Living God, the Church also is built, His then Christ-hood being then broken down, but this is in connection with the wider place of Son of man. The Church is not built upon His being "Son of man," but on the Son of man being the "Son of the Living God." The "Son of man" is individual and general - its public result and state is in chapter 17, Luke 9, etc.

Note though what is called "The eternal Sonship" be a vital truth, or we lose the Father sending the Son, and the Son creating, and we have no Father if we have no Son, so that it lies at the basis of all truth, yet in the historical presentation of Christianity the Son is always presented as down here in servant and manhood estate, as all through John, though in heaven and One with the Father. "This" - this Person - "is my beloved Son" - He who was as Man there, yet there. In Matthew 3 the whole Trinity is revealed, and we may say for the first time fully. Wonderful grace it is! Hence "No! not the Son," has no difficulty; Mark 13: 32.

Righteousness and Intercession

<42052E> 302

As to the righteousness of God and intercession, the righteousness stands thus: the Glory of God is fully revealed in the face of Jesus Christ - there is no veil now; We have to walk in light as He is in the light. In a word all the glory is revealed and all must be according to its requirements. We are in His presence or out of it. Hence, when we speak of sin, we say, "We have sinned and come short of the glory of God."

It is then according to the nature, fully revealed character of this glory, we have to stand before God. But Christ on the Cross has not only acted consistently with it, as His life even could not do (because He was not yet made sin) though perfectly consistent with it as life, but this glory was there made good. All that God was in glory was made good in a way that would have had no place if sin had not been there - it was in that it was brought out. "Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us."

So the divine Majesty was shown - "It became him for whom are all things and by whom are all things in bringing many sons to glory to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings" "though he were Son." Nothing could show the irrecusable requirements of His Majesty, as the sufferings of the Son when He took this place. So of His righteous nature, and judgment against sin; the Cross gives rise to the same thought. It is made good, as it could nowhere else be. So His truth. "The wages of sin is death." All that God is morally, and note, all there in respect of sin, so as if sin had not been there, they could not have been displayed and glorified, and the Son as Man made sin to this effect. Hence we read, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him." This very glory of God is made good - realised in that which brings us to Him. And now we behold with open, i.e., with unveiled face, the glory of the Lord - Man sitting at the right hand of God - God's righteousness displayed in it. And we, so to speak, it being done for us, and we being in Him, are the making good of the glory of God in righteousness. The sin was the only part we, as our part, had in it; but this, as we have seen, was needed to display it in all its own glory.

We stand in the Universe those in whom the glory and righteousness of God are displayed. So actually the glory given to Jesus will be given to us, and when He appears, we shall appear with Him in glory.

303 Now the intercession of Christ is founded on this being our place. We stand before the glory, in righteousness, in and through Him we are it. But our hearts have to be brought into association with this, in communion. For this Christ, who is that eternal life which was with the Father, is our life, and there is a nature, i.e., we are capable of enjoyment, for we have derivatively the nature, as we have before God the righteousness which is to be enjoyed in love. But we fail. "If any man sin" - now Jesus Christ the righteous is our Advocate according to the excellency of that which places us in that communion. And the soul is exercised by grace and love, in grief as to that which ought to have been joy. But the same affections are in play about the same object - first, as sense of loss and pain, but bringing to the sense of the blessedness of what we have got out of communion with, and attaching us to it intelligently as precious. What led us away was really not valuing it, estimating it, i.e., that into which we were brought we were lightly separated from, not feeling the loss or the value in possessing it, but when separated as to condition of soul, our springs of joy are dried up in the new nature. What has made us lose it is purged, and the same affections are brought into play in grief which ought to have been in joy of communion. When the soul is brought to this, i.e., purified from what made it light about it, and communion valued, it is restored with increased fixedness and capacity of communion.

But what grace is this which has brought us to God Himself! I here only note that the advocacy is exercised according to the perfection of divine communion into which we are brought. So even of priesthood, "Such a high priest became us, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens."

The same truth is brought out as to our future condition and present realisation of it, in Jude: "Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy." So in 1 Peter: "In whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory."

Again what is very immediately in connection with this - Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. All He was involved this resurrection. It was His glory to do it, as Christ had glorified Him, or rather His glory did it - was made good and displayed in it.

304 Now we have to connect the heavenly character of Christ's priesthood with its care of our earthly state, of which it takes account. The way of this in Hebrews is evident - not as the Jewish priests compassed with infirmity while priests, but "tempted in all points like as we are" on earth, sin excepted, and perfect in heavenly glory when exercised on high where He is. But we are connected with both. Such a High Priest became us, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, higher than the heavens, but withal One that can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, as passing through this world of sin and trial. But this shows in a wonderful way our place - "For such a High Priest became us." We are called to association with what is undefiled and higher than the heavens, and yet experience a care which applies to infirmities, weakness and need.

But this, as association, calls up into heavenly things, and identifies us spiritually with them, but at the same time morally with every heart-exercise in which, while it brings us into dependence, the deepest and fullest sympathies are woven into our hearts in One who has been and who is divine in His love and human in His sorrows, and touched with the feeling of our infirmities, in a grace which knows them and was perfect in them.

It is a great thing to have the heart met where it is, and to be taken from where it is to brighter and better scenes where He is who perfectly knows both, but belongs to the highest though He has descended to the lowest for our sakes. And that makes it all sweetness in the sorrows, and yet our hope and life where all is bright in the holiness of God, and the love is found which has been the source of all the grace.

How infinite, how perfect on every side is the grace, not one element wanting up to God Himself, and Him we call our Father!

Note, there are three ways in which the priesthood of Christ is presented in the Epistle to the Hebrews. First, in His sympathy with those He is not ashamed to call His brethren as in chapters 2 and 4; then as that on which the whole religious system depends; thirdly as representing the people - not so much a priestly act but as the High Priest represented the people on the day of atonement, and this introduces the sacrifices.

305 There is however this difference between chapters 2 and 4 as to the priesthood; chapter 2 while showing Christ made higher than the heavens, insists on His being made like unto His brethren - truly a Man in flesh and blood so as to feel as a man for the saints in their trial. Chapter 4 on the other hand specially looks at Him as gone up on high, a High Priest who has gone up through the heavens, and speaks only of "was" as to His suffering being tempted. This was needed to give the place and exercise of His priesthood, the former (chapter 2) to show how He came down, and was Man to be qualified for it. In chapter 5 as in chapter 4 it is the exalted place in priesthood, only again He had, in the days of His flesh, passed through the trial so as to pass thence, fitted in compassion, into the place of its exercise.

The Government of God

<42053E> 306

The government of God, however imperfectly manifested outwardly, is yet exercised at any rate as to His children, and is in result with the world. It is exercised according to His judgment of what is right and what is wrong. He makes good His righteousness in government though all be not yet apparent; and so Job and Elihu reasoned, but not with adequate present witness, of which we can judge, and what modifies it apparently, with all patience and long-suffering it is not "speedily executed." Through this, when His saints err from Him, they must go; He maintains His true character. Hence they are difficultly saved. God must, after His patience, bring the trial which expresses what He is and proves what man is. And when it comes, it sweeps on to its results dragging on men with its stream. How are the righteous to get through this? This is the point, in Peter, of the difficulty - as Lot and Sodom, the just and the ungodly and the sinner in Peter.

But then while the government of God maintains its own principles and respects not persons, and meets His children in an erring path and overthrows them, it maintains His way and overthrows them if they cross it. But then with the saint He goes through this - much deeper into the soul. He does not merely correct the way, but lets His mind in as to the spirit that led to it. The will is broken - we find what we are - the soul, which had gone its own way, finds itself again with God, though sorrowfully, and God is known - the state of the soul is changed, it is not the free exercise of will, but the siftings and subduedness of a soul that has to say to God, and the happiness that accompanies it, though this last way be regained through trial. If there be any motive which has led astray, or any evil, and not merely levity and estrangement of heart from God, any false confidence in the soul, it is judged, of course.

But further. The walk becomes more thoroughly a following of Jesus under the effect of the Cross. This is ever true and simple, deeper and more experimental. We get a striking example of this in Peter. The original starting point of the disciples, as it must be, "Follow me," the one only right path in a world that was wrong, and that the perfection of Jesus. But there was confidence in self, and Peter must go through the dreadfully humbling process of his fall, yet Christ praying for him and watching over him. Self-confidence is broken down and will - he did not go where he would, but bound and led by another. Thus he could serve, as emptied of self-confidence, what was dearest to Jesus - His sheep and lambs, a care He now confides to him - and suffer with Him, just what he could not do before. And now Jesus says again "Follow me." In the measure in which self was judged, experimentally known and judged, he could. The full study of this is a most instructive lesson, and from Jesus' first care, praying for him, full of grace.

Peace

<42054E> 308

The connection and place of peace in Luke, and as to the last or application to us, in John also, is extremely interesting. As soon as Christ is born, the unjealous delight in the divine glory in man's blessing celebrates His birth. They pass over man's fault in putting the Saviour born into the manger, and, filled entirely with the divine thoughts in it, celebrate His praise. And what was this? "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good pleasure in man." That was the result in its own nature of the birth of the Saviour. This presence of the Lord, the fruit of infinite grace, was in itself, if received, peace and blessing - carried it necessarily in what it was in itself - and will produce it finally.

But the Lord was rejected, and as some received Him, He had to say, "Think ye that I am come to send peace on earth; I tell you Nay, but rather a sword. Five shall be in one house, two against three, and three against two."

In the end of Luke, the Kingdom is celebrated, which will indeed bring in peace on the earth. There it is said: "Blessed be the King that cometh. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest." All that God had done on earth had been marred and spoilt by Satan, and as long as these wicked spirits were in heavenly places, thus it must be. But there is war in heaven, and the devil and his angels are cast out, and there is no more place for them. Then there is peace in heaven - Satan is bound. Now there can be peace on earth, and under the Lord's rule there will be peace. But between these two we stand. And in that same Gospel of Luke, the Lord comes after His resurrection and pronounces "Peace" on His disciples. But this was a peace of a far deeper and fuller character, not peace on earth, governmental peace, but peace made with God. He had made peace, perfect peace, so that the soul might enjoy cloudless communion with Him - all that is of the world or of this scene, as alive in it, being shut out. He had brought them, or had done what brought them into this peace by His death, and now He pronounced it. And if we turn to John, this will shine out with the brightest evidence. The Lord had warned His disciples that He did not come to bring peace, but a sword; so that the peace on earth was not there, but the fire already kindled. But He had ineffable peace of soul as not of the world - He was in, and His soul in the unclouded light of His Father's countenance. It was a link between man and God, infinite in blessing (in Him in every sense infinite, and in us objectively and as regards the power of the Holy Ghost, and as being in Him and so in cloudless light with God) no matter what the circumstances. Now Jesus through His death, and as being in Him and He in us, brings us into this blessing - "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you." This is unspeakably blessed.

309 The peace of the Christian is not the same as being justified - "Being justified, we have peace with God." This must be according to His nature; hence completely what He is, which makes it very blessed, and though in us connected with our being alienated and enemies by sin, yet in itself is only measured by what He was before sin existed - the outgoing of His own nature in itself before sin, and we in absolute harmony with its full display and proper nature. Sin has been the means of bringing us to know what holiness, righteousness, love are, but they are all in God - the last is His nature. Thus in seeing what Christ says, we learn what it is. "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." Now His peace was consonance in every way with the divine nature, and the consciousness of communion with it - that it rested on Him unclouded, but that was not by sin put away. It was in itself divine and, though now in a Man, eternal consonance. Now for us, of course, it had to be made - "He has made peace by the blood of the Cross," and this was so perfect, as to the whole nature and character of God, that He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father - is glorified with God in virtue of that work in which He glorified God perfectly and in respect of what we are as sinners, but glorified God perfectly.

Hence we are brought into this - "Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God." It is in the midst of evil no doubt, conflict and warfare around, so that it has the character of peace. Still it is, and this makes it specially to be so, "Peace with God." Not as to the circumstances - that is the "Peace of God keeping our hearts" - a blessed thing, but not so deep and direct as this. This is with Himself - our secret with Him, His with us. I think it will turn to delight in His own glory in heaven, to which it ministers now. But here it has the character of peace with God.

Then we must remember that it is a state of mind in the unclouded consciousness of what God is (but necessarily according to His nature) to us according to the value of Christ's work, and in Him.

310 There is another order of peace from the conformity itself to this nature - a subjective peace, "The mind of the Spirit is life and peace."

______

I note the effects of the power of seeing the glorified Christ more distinctly. It absorbs the heart. "I have suffered the loss of all things, and r do count them but dung," it is not only that we have given them up, but their power is gone; the actual trials on the path become matter of joy - they are the fellowship of His sufferings, conformity to His death. It gives unity of action and perseverance. It gives a heavenly character to the path - the calling is above - confidence and joy in reference to God. It is God's calling and in the blessedest way in Christ Jesus. Christ Himself is the object, but this is united with our being glorified by divine favour resting on us as on Him. "Resurrection from among the dead" - for this too, divine righteousness in Christ Himself can alone be fit or suffice.

Walking Worthy

<42055E> 311

My attention has been drawn to the use of "Walking worthy." In Ephesians we see clearly its connection with the noticed force and character of the Epistle. This treats of the Christian and then of the Church's privileges, and the saint is to "walk worthy of his vocation" here, especially in Church place, and the worthiness to be of that.

In Colossians, where the glory of the Person of Christ is brought out as they were slipping away from the Head - I do not say His headship, but the glory of Him who is Head - they are to "walk worthy of the Lord." It is in this part that God and Father, the Lord and the Spirit are brought out.

In the Thessalonians, who, from being heathens, had been brought to know the one true God, the Father - "The Assembly of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father" having not intermediate and indeed demon powers, but being in direct, immediate relationship with the one true God, they are called to "walk worthy of God who has called us to his own kingdom and glory" - so they were "turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God."

Philippians, in which we have the experimental condition of the Christian, and the Gospel is spoken of as in conflict in the world (Paul being in the bonds of it) they were to "walk worthy of the Gospel." So Paul was "set for the confirmation and defence of the Gospel" - he speaks of the "beginning of the Gospel" - Timothy had served with him "for the Gospel" - the women had "contended with him in the Gospel" - Paul was set "for the defence of the Gospel" - they had fellowship "in the furtherance of the Gospel." So it will be seen that when they are called to walk worthy of it, conflict is also spoken of, for which a right walk was needed, but they were not to be terrified by their adversaries. The true Gospel was as a cause, as a person in conflict in the world - they who stood by it as one they contended along with, were to walk worthy of it. They were "striving together with the faith of the Gospel," contending along with the faith of the Gospel in the world - not "for" the faith, but "with" it, as an associate with it in its conflicts.

There is thus in the three "walkings worthy," I think, a practical difference though essentially the same. In Thessalonians it is the essential measure and its nature - "Worthy of God?" imitators of God as dear children, "Who has called us to his own kingdom and glory." Then the manifestation of what this is in a divinely perfect expression of it in Christ, "Worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing." In Ephesians 4 we have more our own present place in it by the Holy Ghost - "the vocation wherewith we are called" - all our privileges and place being known to us through the Holy Ghost sent down when Christ was glorified - the place we are in in connection with Him glorified now.

Memory

<42056E> 313

Some make the act of knowledge the thing retained; if so, the idea is only a modification of the mind - a man holds it as part of the "I" (ego). What then is immediate perception, or activity continuing? The activity is not an idea. The activity of a faculty need not continue - no activity dependent on will need; nor involuntary either in man, because in man it is the effect of a body acting on the senses, and when it does not act, the effect, but for some other reason, would cease.

That knowledge is retained in a latent state, i.e., when the mind is not occupied with it, is certain. How or what it is, I do not know, nor does anyone else, I think; but that is the whole story. Association is a mere means out of reproduction, i.e., by will, but of the recurring of anything to the mind by a natural chain; only will can use it, i.e., I seek a person's name, etc. - I remember where, with whom, etc., I have seen him, in order to recover the name, but the suggestion is without will.

Imagination and memory are closely connected, i.e., the power of reproduction in the mind's consciousness of scenes, which in memory have been in their own combination present in imagination, the elements in some other. It may be a question, can we remember without association; but I think we can - though it plays so great a part it is difficult to separate it. What is more surprising is, calling up a scene, a passage by will. I say, "I will remember a line of Horace" - "the place I passed my childhood in"; I cannot account for my will being determined here. When I, reasoning on memory, would try to analyse some point, what does determine it? I suspect it is what is best retained fixed in the memory, unless it be determined by the kind of thing which judgment says is most to the point then - what is most familiar to the mind.

But I am not able to analyse memory yet, if ever I do. What the scientists* say is simply nothing. I doubt whether the knowledge which is stored up is rightly called "memory," though the materials of it. When we say "memory," I think we include recalling out of these stores, or the power of doing so, which is the same as saying it is there. It is in this point my analysis is short. Memory is various - I suppose depends on the force of impression. I say "I will make you remember it, i.e., I associate pain with it. "He will remember it but once," this shows it includes recalling it. "It is never out of his mind." I remember vividly people, circumstances, facts, never dates within years without special labour.

{*Sir W. Hamilton, for example.}

314 I suspect memory is much more material than we are aware; hence memoria technica. Like abstraction, our first perceptions are vivid, and of particular circumstances gradually generalised. So Memory. If it be Horace, it is a book, hard Latin, a school, a master, my learning it, gradually referred to what has most struck me in it - having itself formed an undeveloped faculty, a particular kind of taste, etc.

Consciousness

<42057E> 315

I would say a word on consciousness. It is used, I think, in two senses - consciousness, properly speaking, and reflection on "I," or the conscious person. They are so closely connected, it is no wonder; but the difference is important, for I apprehend it is just the difference between a beast and a man in this respect.

The living "I" is always a will in thought or for act, and consciously wills - wills, knowing it wills - so does even a beast. If it wants to get out of a room, it knows it wants it. Will is always conscious of itself, but it does not set about to reflect therefore on itself as I am doing now.*

{*I find Reid makes this distinction.}

This reflective self-consciousness is man's distinctive prerogative, as having a spirit. "I" has the power of using the upper faculty to reflect on the workings of "I." I reflect, but the capacity is in the spirit of man. "There is," says Elihu, "a spirit in man." But how was this before the fall? I mean as to "will." And here I have to remark that I think "will" is used in two ways - intention, the tendency of nature or "I," towards something, and the determination of "I" to go out towards that something, and where this question is raised in a moral ground.

All will is sin, because it is not obedience, i.e., is assumed independence of God, and much more. Now unfallen Adam had no such will as this. It was tested in the tree, and he ought to have said "I can have no will - I obey" - but he distrusted and willed. But in the place where God had set him, as dressing the garden and keeping it, nature was free in the sphere God had given it authority in; and so as to animals. Here God had given authority, and will was in its place while the whole man was subject to God. But he used a will in the sphere of testing obedience and was lost - Christ in the most perfect testing said "Not my will but thine be done." His tendency of nature and "I" to escape suffering was right - that suffering eminently so. He had, being a perfect Man, a will of nature and morally too, but no will which willed when God's will was there. This is commonly, in its grosser form, called "Self-will." It is the determination of "I" to have its own way.

316 Now the determination of Christ's "I" was to have God's will absolutely - that will from heaven down (Psalm 40) was His only motive for acting. He was the obedient Man. We have a will which strives (not merely suffers) and it is checked - right it should be - but that was not Christ's case. His whole moral being was obedience, "I come to do thy will" - "Not my will but thine be done." The desire and intention of nature not to suffer was there, rightly there, but His determination, His only and perfect one, was to do God's will, suffering bring what it might. Save the testing point, there was with Adam no determination of will called for or in posse.

Now consciousness is itself, and, where real, like sense certain of itself. Senses give the certainty of the thing they are conscious of to themselves - adequate for use of what is learned from them by experience, particularly sight.

Memory is according to its vividness and strength. Testimony is according to the testifier. Divine - it is doubly certain - it is necessarily true, and the conviction of its truth where there is belief divinely given.

The Headship of Christ

<42058E> 317

The question has been raised how far Christ gives up the glory and headship spoken of in Ephesians 1, drawn, as in 1 Corinthians 15 and Hebrews 2, from Psalm 8. He gives up the kingdom, that is certain, when He has subdued all principalities and power. His divine glory into which He has taken manhood is immutable, that is also clear. It is a question of His relative place, not His Person. We must, I think, distinguish between our relative place and conferred authority. This last Christ gives up. He is exalted now, but He has not yet taken to Him His great power and reigned, nor is He sitting on His throne yet, but on His Father's. He is become so much higher than the angels, having by inheritance a more excellent name than they - this is His place. Angels, principalities and powers being subject to Him - that is relative authority, though not yet the reign.

We have a place above angels, as united to Him, and as the fruit of redemption, and shall be made like unto Him. All this, I apprehend, continues - "Glory in the Church by Jesus Christ, world without end." It must be in Him.

I see in Ephesians two things - "Exalted him above every name," and "Put all things in subjection under his feet"; just as Adam was quite above the creatures, and besides had dominion over them, which was God's will, not a necessary consequence nor the same thing, only the second Adam has companions though He be anointed above them. This subjection of all things to His personal authority He will give up, not merely the kingdom looked at as a millennial reign, but the "all things" subjected to Him. He has not to put down angels and saints who delight in His glory, but those who oppose it and who are rebellious against God, and the fruit of creature-will and sin; but administrative authority is given up - not only Godhead of course, but, I suppose, personal exaltation remains. I do not mean merely personal preeminence as Son of God, for that too cannot be otherwise. It is not merely the "Son of Man is set," but "This is my beloved Son." But His relatively taken place remains.

Once made a little lower than the angels, He has now passed through the heavens, not merely angels, principalities and powers being made subject to Him, for that is given superiority as Messiah and Son of Man, but, as to the exercise of authority, He gives it up and is subject; but He does not cease, as to His place taken as Man, to be superior to the angels, even when there is no question of His throne, for that is conferred rule - is given up, as we know from Corinthians, and He takes as Man the place of subjection, the perfect personal place - for rule is not. That refers to what is below us, here even to what has to be subjected - "Head over all things," in this sense, is given up. But the raised Son never ceases to be the Centre of the whole company of heaven, and the saints with Him, "the firstborn among many brethren," "the only begotten." As God He of course possesses all things with the Father, but, as to His place as Man, He is not only the Head of all principalities and powers, but far above all principality and power, and by the necessity of His Person and title always will be - it is His place, when righteousness dwells, when it no longer reigns; He is always "Firstborn," when He no longer reigns in His conferred dominion. Though in another sense we shall reign for ever and ever.

318 This subject occurred to me again, and I looked over what I had written above. It is substantially right, and clearer than I had any thought of when I wrote it. One point seems to call perhaps for correction, for its substance came to me as a new idea. That is that "put all things under his feet" (Psalm 8) in Ephesians 1 is taken as the same as "gave him to be Head over all things to the Church." Now I suppose they must be considered as distinct. Putting all things under His feet includes at any rate an acquired dominion which He has not yet, and which He will give up. In 1 Corinthians 15 He is contemplating hostile, or at least unsubdued power - power which is not of and which does not own Him. Hence He reigns, when God puts them under Him, till all His enemies are made His footstool. But all things are not yet put under Him, as we see in Hebrews, and He is on His Father's throne, not His own. But He is personally exalted far above all principalities and powers. These - "And hath put all things under his feet," "And gave him to be Head over all things to the Church which is his body" - are two distinct things. Death is put under Him when the time comes, and it is the last enemy He destroys, but He is not over it as over that which was created by Him and for Him, and which the Fulness will reconcile by Him to itself. Only in Colossians it was the Fulness - in Ephesians the Man is exalted to God's right hand, and given to be Head over all. But the putting "in subjection under His feet," and being "Head over all things to" are distinct things. It is clear that the exaltation above every name is a distinct thing, for that is so now, but I think the putting all things under His feet, and giving Him to be Head over all things are so too.

_______

319 Popish unity attaches Christ to unity, and hence may and does legalise with His name every corruption and evil; Christian unity attaches unity to Christ, and therefore gives it all the character of grace and truth that is in Him - gives it all His excellence.

END OF VOLUME 2

Atonement

J. N. Darby.

<42005E> 68

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

The atonement is laid as the great central ground of all God's ways in righteousness. God is perfect love to us there - He is Love; but then, where no hiding, excusing or patience with sin because of weakness was in question, where One who could bear it was, was made sin, all God was, in His necessary antagonism, horror of, judgment against sin, went out against sin, as such, in Him who was able to bear it. God being glorified, purpose, government, as death or chastening His children, can all come out and have their place.

The worth of that, according to which righteousness is obtained, is such that the purpose of God righteously unites us to Christ, and gives a place where He is in glory like and with Him - we are children, holy and without blame before Him in love. He gives to the Jews a place on earth, and deals with them for the display of His government down here; so with us as His children - God deals with us in chastisement and discipline, but all this supposes righteousness and non-imputation. There could be no government without this - God's forbearance before the Cross was justified by this.

It is evident there are two kinds of righteousness - justice as against evil, and adequate appreciation and even recompense of good. "Vengeance is mine, I will recompense saith the Lord" is a different thing from "The righteous Lord loveth righteousness, his countenance beholds the upright"; though both are abstractedly the just estimate of good and evil.

As regards the former, and the controversy we have had, when God has the character of a Judge, my adversaries are all wrong, because God's righteousness as Judge is in Scripture connected with blood, as in Romans 3; so in the Passover. But as to the principle, no man could ever plead a part in the second dealing of righteousness save Christ Himself, for "all are sinners"; Christ, even as a Man down here, could be accepted as perfectly agreeable to God. But then Christianity, and even Judaism in its figures, goes a great deal further - for grace reigns through righteousness, and sinners were to be justified or accounted righteous.

To be justice, in the common sense of the word, it must be the just estimate of conduct itself, or adequate satisfaction for the fault - thus, a man serves me in a thing, renders due service, I am just in recognising this, I own him in the place wherein he stands; if he owes me money and another pays it, or has done a wrong and another repairs it, he is also clear. In the case of material service, another's doing a man's duty may suffice, though, if the service be owed by the man, I am not bound to accept it; still, in material service, if the service only be due, and the man not in responsible relationship to me, I may be justly satisfied. But in relationships and moral right and wrong, this is not so, I cannot accept another's doing what my son owes me and be satisfied with my son; righteousness here requires the duty to be fulfilled, or is not satisfied. To be atoned for and put away as guilt can be rightly, because the guilt is owned, but not a doing the work or duty so that there should be no guilt. The latter weakens the personal obligation, sets it aside, the former owns and atones for it.

69 But in Christianity there is more, for God is to be displayed, grace reign, and man to be brought to God Himself. Hence the measure is God's glory and in itself unveiled, not man's duty - of this anon. But any attempt to meet responsibility in relationship by another's fulfilling the claims, tends to destroy the sense of guilt in it, and is morally heinous - if another has done my duty, and it is as if I have done it, or better, the claim satisfied, then I have done it as to justice and I am not guilty.

If it does not meet the case thus, the idea turns what is due into a material debt and destroys the moral nature of failure - becomes doing, not conduct. I ask if another's doing my child's duty would in any way affect the relationship of my child to me?

This I see in the figures - reconciliation must have an altar and blood-shedding; wrongs may be repaired toward man or toward God, and so it was ordained under the law, but in questions of obedience and relationship not so. There is guilt, and atonement must come in; omission or commission is all one here. Do I fail in worship to God - can another worship for me? Now all our questions with God are questions of obedience and relationship. But then according to principles I have noticed before, though all be done according to the glory of God, for indeed it is one act - the death of Christ - yet the application of the work to man is different; the brazen altar met man's sin coming as such - the mercy-seat was introduction into the presence of God. It was a golden throne; it was judgment against sin, and righteousness to enter into His presence. So Christ - He was both - He made propitiation for our sins, He is our righteousness in the presence of God in virtue of His sacrifice in which God was perfectly glorified. There is the firmness of God's judgment against sin, and perfect access to Him in light and glory. But then note, it is in either case grace - God acting sovereignly for Himself, and hence all must have the value of that. Our very forgiveness is God's righteousness, "we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins." Hence God shews His righteousness in forgiving - is righteous and justifies, according to this, the believer. God's righteousness is upon all that believe. But we do not think of repaying God now - nor may we now - "if thou hast sinned what doest thou unto him?"

70 The blood of Christ, i.e., the moral power and meaning of His blood-shedding, is the absolute perfection of the divine nature in connection with sin, as putting it away - it leaves no blot, no stain, nothing contrary to its Holiness. It maintains, speaks of, tells out that Holiness, and yet not alone simply, but perfect love in it. It is the acting of God in the perfection of His own nature that is Love; for the spring of God's activity is love because it is His nature - what He is in purpose, will, what shows His nature - but it maintains what is necessary to it, i.e., Holiness, and this at the cost of the perfect devotedness of Christ to it, to both, i.e., to God, and that was perfection in its place too. But Godhead is perfectly, fully revealed, and indeed in nothing else; it is known, Christ knew it, others in some measure, but here it is all displayed, not in what God does in power, i.e., what He produces, but what He is and does in His own nature in the display of Himself. It is an exhaustless theme, as such a display of God, as such alone could be, must be. The Cross of Christ is the centre, as to what is displayed, of all glory - the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him; all the details only bring it out, but into these I do not enter - it is the great thought I desire to dwell in, I should not say "on," though that in mercy and grace and privilege too.

Smiting

<42001E> 71

People have talked much of smiting, but the truth is it is not applied in Scripture to atonement itself. It is no harm that the mind associates atonement with it - nay, it is useful - because it is the great and essential thing of the Cross where Jesus, the Blessed One, was smitten. But atonement was a far deeper and unfathomable act of suffering, and wrath drank into the soul - forsaking, not smiting.

Smiting is used as to the setting aside by death all the Messiah privileges, though we may, and it is all well, associate the other deeper work, done at the same time, with it. It is only used in Zechariah 13: 7, and quoted thence in Matthew 26: 31, Mark 14: 27, and Psalm 69: 26, referring in all to the relative position He took, contrasted with an accepted Messiah - the Shepherd was smitten and the disciples scattered. This is not making His soul an offering for sin, and the Lord laying our iniquities on Him; it refers to His position, and being Shepherd of Israel's faithful ones in this world - He was, in this character, smitten. The effect was the scattering of the sheep, not forgiveness and atonement. Hence we see it applied when they come to take Him, and the disciples fled. No doubt the actual blow was in his death - I speak now of na-chah (to smite) - it is any blow; ne-ga (stroke, plague) is used in Isaiah 53: 8 (margin), when the thing is explained, not na-chah, "For the transgression of my people was the plague, or judgment, stroke upon him." And so we know it was; but this is the explanation, blessed explanation of a fact which had also an outward aspect. Na-chah is the simple act of smiting; ne-ga goes, I think, further. This is seen when both are used as participles, "Yet we did esteem him na-ga (stricken)" - thus absolutely, the plague of God on Him; smitten of (mu-keh)* God and afflicted. The truth was He was made a plague for the transgression of His people. But Messiah was cut off as such, and took nothing, and the sheep that were with Him then as Shepherd were scattered, and hence, as we have said, it is applied already in Gethsemane.

{*Participle of na-chah (to smite).}

But there was, I am persuaded, in the atoning work a much deeper element. The forsaking of God in respect of sin, that no thought of ours can reach, though, blessed be God, it has reached us, for every sorrow was to meet there. I judge it is the want of deep apprehension of what atonement is - of what Christ suffered in His soul for it, which leads to cavils about other sorrows, and the application of passages to them. Every sorrow was there, but there was one which only the spiritual mind can in any sense understand. Isaiah 53 shews that this was the case that, as they esteemed Him outwardly under God's judgment - and He was, in a far deeper sense, for their transgression - "With his stripes they were healed." But by this act, in which atonement did take place, there was, besides the atonement, the setting aside all His earthly Messiahship, and the taking away His life from the earth; and all this the Lord felt and entered into as to the setting aside of the people by their own wickedness.

Cleansing

<42007E> 73

Nothing is more striking than the extreme care as to the defilement of leprosy in Leviticus 14, as to the details.

We find first that the man is cured, he has no longer the disease, the will of sin - he is converted. Then comes the cleansing - first Christ Himself given in humiliation, but in the power of the Spirit according to God known in the Word, in a poor earthen vessel but over running water. All this world's glory and nature - what man knows naturally, from the cedar to the hyssop - all is stamped with death, and the man sprinkled seven times - he comes under the absolutely perfect efficacy of Christ's death; this, outside the camp. It is essential efficacy of Christ's work, what is necessary for him to have to say to God; then he comes into the camp, but he must then be cleansed to have his place, and worship with God's people according to His presence among them, his own conscience and all taint of sin must be purged and removed. He shaves, and washes his clothes and himself with water and so is clean. There is the washing of water, regeneration, a change of condition, of habit and thought according to the Word, in order to his being amongst God's people; the washing of regeneration, not I think merely being born again, though involved in it.

But he is still out of his tent, his regular dwelling among God's numbered people - there he waits seven days; on the eighth, he again shaves all with scrupulous detail, not noticed before, for he is now nearer God, and washes clothes and body again, and is clean - v'taher (and he shall be clean), what had been said of his previous washing, and so he was, but that was cleansing from known sin, cleansing from the evil which he had come to know, what in his previous state affected his conscience, in fact what he was defiled by, so that he could come into the camp. Now he must be cleansed for the sanctuary, according to the purification of the sanctuary - the seven days complete, and a wholly new state and era beginning, which is really resurrection and divine.

Then he brings all kinds of sacrifices, save peace-offerings which are communion. The blood of the trespass is put upon his ear, hand and foot - he is cleansed and consecrated to God in thought, act and walk, according to the value and worth of Christ's blood. He is here before the tabernacle of the Lord - has to do with God in His sanctuary. The blood being thus on him, the oil is put on it - the Holy Ghost is given in consequence and as a seal of perfect cleansing by the blood - and he has to walk and think according to the power of the Spirit as according to the value of the blood. And then the oil is poured on his head - the Holy Ghost is given, that it may lead, guide, give him liberty, communion, and all that He brings by His presence in the soul.

74 Then the sin-offering and the burnt-offering - Christ bearing sin, and Christ offering Himself without spot by the eternal Spirit to God - are offered to Jehovah, and the man is clean. Cured first he was after the sacrifice of the birds - the charged bird gone away into the desert - sins put away when washed clean, and so entered - next, when washed in the camp, clean - next when the offering was offered to God, clean for Him in the sanctuary.

We learn the difference between the efficacy of Christ's works, so that being regenerate by the Word we are clean, and the application of Christ's blood to all we are according to our place in the sanctuary, and its own infinitely perfect nature, so that we are dead to sin, not merely forgiven - a state of heart and conscience, or, when the heart, as risen, goes with the conscience, according to Christ's death unto sin once and now living to God in that He liveth. Then we come before God according to the efficacy of Christ's offering before God, or rather its value to God, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again."

Forgiven, cleansed from what we were, we enter the camp; in it we are cleansed as dead to sin, and the Spirit life, and given to us also - before the Lord according to the value to Him of Christ's offering, and so cleansed to be before Him and for ever, according to what His presence is, and Christ's worth - accepted in the Beloved.

In the consecration of Aaron it is to be noted that there is in no place a carrying of blood within the veil; this is very notable. Yet there was a burning without the camp for Aaron, see Leviticus 8 and 9 - this for the people was wrong; note this, for Christ did indeed and necessarily suffer Himself without the gate, even in respect of that which had no connection with going into the holy place - as the Jewish people and others in the millennium - but He bore the sins of Israel, not merely Himself in that way expiatorily, but as feeling them and bearing them as burden in sympathy, in respect of governmental judgment of a received people. We have seen the same truth in connection with the sufferings of Christ - His distress in connection with Israel as suffering under displeasure in the last day (or any one under law), besides suffering for love and righteousness, and suffering as expiation.

75 Leviticus 16 is thus quite apart on another ground from the consecration of Aaron which was properly Jewish. Chapter 8 gives this regularly in consecrating Aaron in connection with them, in which there was no entering in within the veil, though the bodies of the sin-offering were burned without the camp; and then, in the application, there is the same as to Aaron, but then Aaron should, as to application to Israel in respect of God's dealings, have eaten the goat of the sin-offering which indeed he had not done.

But I question whether chapter 16 did not put Israel in connection with the most holy place in blessing from thence through a priest who had entered in there, though the veil subsisted and none but Aaron went in; and this in connection with judgment for sin - Nadab and Abihu, i.e., the failure of blessing on any other ground in any case. Hence, even on the inauguration day, Moses and Aaron go in and come out - King and Priest - and bless the people, and the glory appears, and then the fire consumes the sacrifice as from within, i.e., its acceptation by God as within, in respect of judgment, is publicly known to the people. This is, I apprehend, the position and doctrine of the Hebrews, only adding the heavenly calling, and abiding peace, and going within, i.e., the contrast of our present place, as we have already seen, but then reserving Israel's place in the last days.

It is evident that a priest, so minded, would have had profound joy in the thought that in virtue of Christ, the grace of God by a sacrifice of perfect reconciliation and expiation, the Israelite who had failed was placed in perfect acceptance with God. The eating of the sacrifice was thus in spirit the sense that one, beloved of God, was brought back morally and according to God's glory, to His favour through the perfect work of Christ.

This is the joy that belongs to our occupation about the fallen, though it be sorrow and humiliation, still, by Christ's coming in between, God is glorified and the heart comforted and lifted up in love. It is another thing to partake of the offerings as the fruit of the land, and free-will offerings all heaved up, or even waved. This is the joy of the fruits of the Spirit of the heavenly country in others, a true and, in one sense, more unmingled joy but less deep. Besides this there was the feeding on Christ properly speaking for oneself, though in communion. This indeed had a double character - priestly and common joy - joy which flowed from and was enjoyed in communion (but which might become mere common natural joy in the things enjoyed, and so profane in what referred to God) this was the peace-offering and what was immediate enjoyment of and with Christ. The Lord give us to know the service of gift - all this belongs to us in Christ.

Faith not Sight

<42008E> 77

The external course of events tells us nothing of what is really going on - that is inside it all. If the external plannings of men or Satan further God's plans they succeed, if not, they come to nothing; but what is really going on is still inside them all. Thus they would not have taken Jesus on the feast day, not to have an uproar, but He was to be the Paschal Lamb and He is taken. The Jews would have often taken Him, but His hour was not yet come; when it was, they take Him - their wicked plans succeed. When the heartless superstition of the Jews had the malefactors' legs broken, what was really doing in the one case was sending the man into Paradise.

To the outward eye what happened to Job were raids of Arabs and Chaldeans - ordinary predatory raids, and a violent storm blew down the house; Satan was in it all, and behind him God arranging the purifying of Job's heart and our instruction in all ages.

The political plans of Augustus, as to the census of the Empire, brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus, and then it was not carried out for nine years, when Cyrenius was Governor.

All we have to do is to discern God's will, and have by faith the courage to do it. All His strength is power to carry us forward. It may seem all to turn out ill, or be a cross - it may be so, but we shall have the result of God's counsels and blessing by the way. Man succeeded in crucifying Jesus because however wicked the act on their part, it was just carrying out God's plans. He knew His Father's will - sought only to glorify His Name - had faithful obedience to act upon it, though to man's eye it was the ruin of everything, every religious hope even, and so it was in man and in flesh, but the birthplace of all counsels in glory, of that new thing in man wherein He will be glorified for ever, that wherein He was glorified in all He is essentially. The outside was wicked men's success, the end too of pious men's hopes - the inside what all blessing that ever was, or could be really and permanently, is entirely founded upon, and that wherein alone God is fully glorified. Christ learned and did His Father's will, Satan's power and man's wickedness were there, triumphed as nowhere else. It was the foundation of all true and eternal blessing.

The Person of the Lord

<42009E> 78

How beyond all our wonder and praise is the Person of the blessed Lord! As an Apostle could say, and more because he knew it better, "Great is the mystery." But in one respect He was one with us all, great as His revelations were. No man knows the Son, yet He lets us see that He is that which no man knows. Who could say but there "God is known in death?" Is it not there love, God's love is known, never known really till known there? Yet it is weakness, and, as to His place as man, the very end of man. But in Himself God is known in love by His being down here with sinful men - by that love reaching even to us. He made Himself of no reputation, emptied Himself - not that He could be other than God - there is the mystery - but as to the form of God He did. Hence having taken the form of a servant, He is always such - receives all. Even when He takes the kingdom, He goes a long journey to receive a kingdom, and, when by His perfection in power He has subdued all, He gives it up to God even the Father. He gives up His own spirit when the time comes, but recommends it to His Father - raises up the temple of His body, but is raised by the glory of the Father - grows in wisdom, speaks what He knows, but He is the wisdom of God; He can do nothing of Himself - is obedient, but He is the power of God, and quickens too whom He will; created all things and upholds them by the word of His power. And this was His perfection, with the whole power of evil against Him, never to go out of the path of dependence and obedience - never to use power by His will. Thus He bound the strong man as in the wilderness - in death how much more even - He could have had, even in dependence, more than twelve legions of angels, but it would not have been obedience fulfilling the Scriptures.

But what an emptying that was when He who was God could come into death, though suffering, though obeying, bring all that God was in His moral perfection into death, and then when it was needed, in man's extremity through sin, in man's weakness, in the place of Satan's power, there glorify it - love, righteousness, majesty, truth, all found glorified there. God is glorified in Him, yet it was in death, and because it was death in all it meant for God; but it was all the power of love, i.e., God, in the emptying. I do not turn to John's writings here, already elsewhere spoken of, where the divine nature of the Lord is so distinct,* where He comes out as God - not genealogic from takes the place of receiving everything. It is contemplation of the wondrous and unsearchable fact I seek, not Adam or Abraham or David - and yet, as made flesh, always proofs which are everywhere where He is.

{*John 5 gives plainly this position of the Lord, chapter 6 is more distinctly as man, still He comes down and goes up again.}

79 But I would weigh some facts in the Gospels as to the manifestation of God in Him. When the blessed Lord had to do with unbelievers whom He knew and had to treat as adversaries, though His being God comes out - save His knowing all men, as yet not judging - what God is does not come out at all; it is only when driven, by the wilful blindness and hostility of the human heart, to speak of things as they are, that forced and driven to the necessity of it, so to speak, the fact of His being God comes out, "Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him, but Jesus hid himself." There is no revelation of Himself in John 8. He does not come to judge, and the woman is not condemned - she is to go and sin no more. He gives divine power to the law, or rather He is, by His word, divine power in the conscience - no grace is in question, and they all go away one by one - divine power in the Word awakes the conscience. He is the Light of the world, and he who follows Him does not walk in darkness. But here there are none such; it is simply the Light shining in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.

But Christ is divine - He can bear witness of Himself, yet He says "as the Father has taught me," as ever, in John, receiving all. Nothing inconsistent with grace, but the simple absence of all contrary to it. He could not contradict Himself, but He is only Light in darkness. As Man He hardly appears here, for that is grace; other cases present themselves where grace is at work. We may first take the woman of Samaria - but here away from Jerusalem, where with the Jews (not the people) He is always in judgment - where the great change of leaving them and having to do with the world, and bringing men to have to do with the Father and with God spiritually, and that by life in the power of the Spirit, are brought out, and where Christ is the rejected Man and feels it, but is thereby thrown into the consciousness that He is the divine Giver of eternal life in the power of the Spirit. But here we have the Lord fully as a Man; the Jachin and Boaz of Christian truth had been set up in chapter 3 - Man or Jew was naught, must be born again, and the Son of Man must be lifted up. God had loved and had given. Christ was a rejected Christ - He left Judea where the Pharisees were jealous and would none of Him. Christ must be a rejected Christ for us to have part with Him - sad thing to say, but so it is - if it die not it abides alone. No doubt He could always quicken whom He would, but without His death we could not righteously see God, and if a man received a new nature without His death, there would be no putting away of the old; we must be risen as well as quickened - a new place as a new life - and that is only by His death. But He was rejected, felt it, afterwards wept over the city, felt it deeply as none of us could feel - we see Him comforted, as rejected by His own to whom He came, by fields white to harvest.

80 He was weary with His journey and sat alone in the world - Oh, wondrous place! The world He had created, but more, into which He was come in love: and here only a weary Man feeling the rejection of His love, but, as to the place He had taken, dependent for a drink of water - He who had made it - upon this poor sin-wearied woman. But He had come where He could only come in grace; salvation was not of Samaria but of the Jews - promises were theirs, but they had rejected all - grace had its work outside, but then it was humiliation and on rejection he must needs pass through Samaria. He submits to human circumstance and conditions - He acts in divine grace. Here therefore where grace, free grace works, we find Him fully Man - a weary rejected Man, bound in spirit on a way He must needs take, and waiting on the kindness of another for a drink of water. Grace is in the humbled and obedient Man - there it is that what God is shines out. It is not "before Abraham was, I am," but "if thou knewest the gift of God," i.e., grace, "and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink." It is not the supreme God forced, so to speak, to say He is so to heartless adversaries without conscience, but God revealed in what He was in a lowly Man, and by His being a lowly Man; and surely if grace is, that is grace.

What heart is in the words! What a need to win the confidence of a weary soul! Yet the simple expression of what His own heart was full of, of God as goodness and brought out, as to circumstances, by the pressure on that heart of the rejection by His beloved people which he was suffering under! How wonderful to hear him saying just then "Salvation is of the Jews!" Perfect owning of God's counsels and ways! But in His rejection in them, grace flowing freely out - the natural expression of what He was full of, but as that was love, love which seeks to bring a weary soul to confidence in God by bringing that love down to lay its wants at the feet of such an one, to win confidence in a love that could do it. "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith" - there He was - "give me to drink" - come even there - "thou wouldest have asked" - He would have given, for He was the giver. What a scene! Such a lowly place! And to learn what God is in it! Yea, what he is by it!

81 There is no feeling like that of the perception of the Person of Christ, and His words and He are one - He was what He said, always. Yet it is thoroughly in human nature I look at Him here, yea, that is the way and here I learn it. With adversaries He is simply God - in grace He is a Man yet God, and only precious as a Man because He is, and, as a Man, dependent. Yet we have seen the Father in Him.

I do not go into the state of the woman, that is another part of the question of the chapter. But He is the object of adoration for eternity.

I turn then to the Syro-Phoenician; here it is "He could not be hid." It was not the flowing out of a pressed heart to sorrow and need, but what God, so to speak, must be where faith is - Himself - He cannot not deny Himself. Still grace rises above all promise and curse, and God is revealed. It is not as in John 4 where the pressure on His heart of the rejection of His beloved people, and all it implied, had brought out what was in that heart; deeper still, the divine overflowings of goodness not meeting promise, but finding its comfort in going out in free grace to need where no promise, no title was - rejected love making new channels for itself; God giving, and hence naturally where need, not where promise was, and giving eternal life and bringing to God in Spirit and in truth, for God, as He is was revealed, and so the Father seeking worshippers. This was John 4, and hence we find the opened heart of the Samaritans wider than promise, knowing more than appropriating pride, own Him as the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

But in the Syro-Phoenician woman it was different; He goes to the borders of His earthly mission, retires to be alone (Mark 7) and would not have it known. Here it is not His own rejection, He labours among the poor of the flock - His mission according to prophecy, and as to Israel the designs of God - He is servant of this mission, nothing more, as to the place He takes; He is not rejected by proud Jerusalem, but sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But He is in His mission, but in His divinely traced, not free path, He goes out of the sphere of active service to the borders of the curse without.

82 Meanwhile moral truths had come largely out; ceremonial observances contrasted in Israel with divine commandments, but, still further, the heart of man, called in question in contrast with all such mere ordinances, lost in importance, not merely in contrast with divine commandment, but in their nature as merely external; God looked at what came from the heart, not what went into the belly - a simple truth, but which for man is hard to learn. God goes to the true nature of things in respect of man - what comes out of the heart - what he is; but what did come out of it? Murders, evil thoughts, all manner of evil, and the Lord had no more to say. Then He leaves this scene of labour, is alone personally - as Man in position He would not have it known; but it was. Then we come to what was known; He goes, as I have said, to the borders of the curse - the place which served Him as an example of hard-heartedness - the people on whom God's curse rested as compared with Israel. What wondrous elements are all brought together here! But He sought to be alone, i.e., out of His sphere of labour; His mission, as a sent one, a servant, He insists on. But a want was there, a want which sought goodness in power, and God was there; the poor woman drawn by it, though purposely repelled to prove her faith (the disciples would have got rid of her - neither owned promise, nor in fact exercised love as above all promise) draws out what is above all promise, what recognizes fully the right to possess where promise was, but appeals to goodness as, after all, reaching over it, fully recognizing man's complete misery and wretchedness without a title - a vile dog, which there was saying everything that was unclean and vile, but appealed to a riches in goodness which could reach in mercy even to that. Could Christ say "No! God is not that"?

No! God was there manifested and faith had all it sought for - it had found Him; there was no need of claim or goodness, but the confession of worthlessness and absence of all title - a need whose resource was in the goodness of God. The Servant who held Himself to His mission, as service He had to do, was after all the God of all grace, and God revealed in Him, and while owning God's ways in Israel, standing alone in the presence of the curse and the absence of all claim, what faith owned, but therein found God and infinite goodness - Israel's servant was God manifest in the flesh, was goodness, above all evil, above all curse, was God and God manifested. What God is is known in His being revealed in Man - being a Man; for that was infinite love.

83 But there was more than the revelation of His Person and the exercise of His power; I turn to another case, Luke 8, the Pharisee and the Sinner. Here we have not the rejected state of man and free grace rising above it all, but actual degrading sin in contrast with human righteousness - a legal condition as man stands in it, and what this blessed One was for sinners. Three hearts - man as he stands in his own righteousness - God's in Man - and the poor and degraded sinner touched by grace and won, in a certain sense unconsciously (i.e., with no dogmatical knowledge) by what was manifested in the Lord, what He was in blessed love first, then forgiveness. The legal man thought to judge, by human competency, if the Lord, this Preacher going about the country, were really a prophet, but he judged according to human righteousness - what man should be for God, but only in an outward way; his own heart, God's heart and light, and even this poor woman's heart unknown - light and love, light and conscience, and love in the heart, i.e., God, alike wholly unknown. God was in his house, in light, as He showed, and love, and he never found it out - despised Him - had no civilities or courtesies for Him - and judged from his own heart - while He was not like it He could be no prophet. Here self-righteousness, divine grace and sin come together in fullest juxta-position and contrast, and divine light which makes all things manifest too, and that in the Person of the lowly Preacher, the Son of God. The Pharisee is wholly blind - says he sees judges from his own heart, and sees neither the manifestation of God in Christ, nor the work of grace in the woman. Light and love are alike wholly foreign to him.

84 The Lord shews fully that He is the light that makes all manifest - knows what is in the Pharisee's heart - knows the woman's sins - and what the Pharisee was thinking of Him and her. But more - His grace, the grace that was in Him had attracted the heart of this poor sinful woman - her need was great, her shame great, her sin deplorable, to no human eye could she turn that would not scorn her but One, and that was God; there her heart found confidence - the more she was distressed and brought low, the more was her comfort in finding that heart; there, in that mercy, her shame could hide itself, for it was grace to her - scorn was not there. But all this, through grace, had won her to hate and own her sin. It was the meeting point of sin and grace, confession of a convicted heart through confidence in goodness in Jesus - sin seen and God seen, and because God was seen in love. Divine sight was there, not blindness, divine love had brought in divine light, so that God and sin in self were both known, and God trusted, and a guileless heart produced because grace was trusted. How deep a work to bring a soul to God, and have sin judged and God known! And then Christ was all - she thought little of Simon and his guests save One, Jesus was there and that absorbed her, she was delivered from her shame even as to all the rest, but not her shame before God. Then a silent heart wept, and washed His feet with her tears. There was boldness in her confidence, yet lowliness and thanksgiving in the boldness, she kissed His feet too, and spent what she had of precious on Him. Then as He had occupied that heart with Himself in grace, He occupies Himself with that heart - He has done with Simon and the rest - to such a heart He must give peace. But first He takes her part in that which shows not only that He knew Simon's heart and all about it, but there was that of which Simon knew nothing - besides blindness as to His Person - forgiveness. God, happily for her, knew all her sins and had forgiven them - wondrous revelation! The grace that revealed love and goodness, had brought forgiveness with it - relief, full and perfect, from God - when sin had confounded the soul before God, was seen as sin because God was seen and in grace, the grace could tell that it was all gone - before God forgiven.

The Person of Christ had drawn - she loved much. The grace of God in Christ had forgiven - of that, of God, Pharisaism knows nothing. The Lord takes up the woman's case in presence of the Pharisee's contempt, and shows what he was - what she was - what God was - what He was in Himself. Then He occupies Himself with the woman alone, "Thy sins be forgiven thee"; their remarks do not arrest Him, "Thy faith hath saved thee - go in peace." He had sounded the Pharisee's heart, sounded and brought to light her's - revealed God's, and conferred forgiveness - confession of sin and forgiveness of sin (and that is the cross for us) are the meeting place of the sinner in truth and God in love. Here again we have God revealed in a Man, but specially in respect of sin.

85 In the first case He does not come to judge, but He is simply with adversaries, and is simply in result "I am." In the woman of Samaria, He is rejected of the Jews and grace flows out giving life, going up to eternal life above, bringing to the Father - God known as a Spirit - and this by grace going out where promise gave no salvation and no claim to righteousness, but sin and need.

In the Syro-Phoenician, where faith comes, grace rises where grace is gone above all barriers - God is revealed to faith, and must be above them all, must be what He is in grace, cannot deny Himself, and faith pierces through all barriers, urged by need to appeal to what God is in Himself, in grace, and He cannot but be what He is, or be kept in by the barriers when that was reached, though He was there in One serving as sent where promise was; still God was there.

Luke 7 goes deeper and Light is there - Pharisaism and sin brought fully to light; the utter and deplorable blindness of Pharisaism manifested what man in self-righteousness is - no perception of God at all, nor of anything in Him. Then to the sinner a deep true perception of what He was as grace meeting need, and hence brought to God according to the power of His presence, and the grace of His nature, He being known, humbled fully before Him, but brought to Him according to what He was, the bond of the heart with Him formed, with Him known, and forgiveness, peace, and salvation received. It is deeper, because it goes into the full moral question of the state of man with God - light in the heart and soul of man as he was.

The case of the palsied man in Matthew 9 is somewhat different. It is not God revealed in His nature of goodness, what He is in Christ for men; it is relative - Jehovah of Psalm 103 manifested in Israel, His ways in Israel in grace, but relative - what He was, of course, but according to promise and prophecy.

86 I do not again enter into the full bringing out of the three hearts in Luke 7: 36 - to end, the Pharisee's, the sinner's looking to Christ, and, blessed be His grace and name, God's own heart already spoken of; light and love were there, neither the least known to Simon - he was blind, thinking he saw. Christ, in whom it is revealed, is the subject of our adoration. I only notice now "Thy faith hath saved thee" - how God owns, as that which He sees in the heart of the poor convicted believer, what He has wrought. Tears and repentance were there, true love to the Saviour, excellent fruits of faith, but faith by grace, gave her Christ; hence faith saved her - God's work in the heart, by which Christ was seen and appreciated. Her heart was thus shown, what God indeed had wrought in it, but in it; but then it was what it was fixed it wholly on another, it was not objectively itself nor reflectively - it knew Christ only. It produced lovely fruits, most lovely, which the Lord owns, but it saved because it saw Christ only. But what is lovely here, that Christ owns, attaches value to what was in her heart, wrought there surely, but was in it; its action on Him as its object gives us to see divine appreciation of the state of the heart thus having Him for its object. He does not say, "Grace has saved thee," though true, "My work, my blood-shedding has saved thee" - that would have been speaking of something in God, of His own work; but He speaks to her of divine value for something in the heart of the poor woman. This is unspeakable goodness, divine tenderness and favour. If it be a wonderful picture in presence of Pharisaism, we have to leave the Pharisaism to itself, as the Lord did, and see the Lord owning what was of God in the heart that turned to Him. The poor, desolate, and lonely woman could go away and say, "I have His approbation on what is in my soul" - the comfort of His approbation, yet thinking of Him still, not of herself, for thinking of approbation, a father's approbation, is not thinking of what is approved, or of self. Faith had saved her, and she could go in peace - she had it from Christ - and her faith in His Person gave divine weight and grace to His words.

The Old Testament

<42010E> 87

The fullest moral teaching of the Old Testament has a peculiar character natural to the character of the then relationship to God, but in that goes most pure and deep, indeed I think has it more fully and deeply than the New - it is that of responsibility, but going to entire integrity and purity of heart. In the New Testament we get far more grace and fruits of love, no doubt the other is supposed or laid as a subjective ground, and out of which divine fruit is to grow, as Christ who was in nature and person holy - was the winning display of love and grace among men; the Holy One came down, He was holy, He lived in grace (of course not ceasing to be holy, I need not say) so holy that He could be in love without stint in the midst of all, and thus go down to the vilest. But the Old Testament looking from Adam upward was to enquire how man could draw near, not the display of God to man in man; I think in the Sermon on the Mount, with the exception of merciful which God showed Himself - and the opposite is hard selfishness and cruelty - it will be found that Old Testament principles in this are pursued to their full inward power, only, I think, with more calmness as became Christ, not so much in requirement and exercise of heart, as in the Psalms, as a model and perfect expression of what it is in its blessedness. The government of God with the Christian applies itself fully to this subjective state, and it is (as it was perfectly so in Christ) that subjective condition in which, as in unhindered communion with God, the other flows forth from Him whom I know in love; see, for example, Colossians 3: 12-14. This is the natural consequence of the distinction of position - the Old Testament was the new life of a sinner with whom the question was "How shall I come to God?"; the Christian is come to God, and is of God then in the world.

Of Cyprian's treatise on unity I have not much to say. It is all declamation, and that is all. Whether Novatian was wrong is a question on which historical facts must be known and judged by Scripture. But Cyprian tells us nothing. There is a good lot of false doctrine as far as it goes, and the visible Church is all episcopal unity - the ark and no safety out of it; that is all, so he says. But there is nothing grave and serious in it; he had his idea, and quotes Scripture and Old Testament as the fathers do.

The Sabbath of the Old Testament

<42011E> 88

Genesis 2: 2, 3. - First mentioned.

Exodus 16: 5, 22, 30. - Given as a gift in grace to the people while under grace before the law.

Exodus 20: 8. - Given as a commandment among the ten; this however associated with the rest of creation, as the whole system was.

Exodus 31: 12, 17. - Given at the close of the order of the setting up of the sanctuary, as a sign of the covenant established by priesthood, in the mercy-seat a perpetual covenant.

Exodus 34: 21. - Given as part of the covenant founded on supremacy and intercession after breach of the law - covenant in connection with their portion in the land by that covenant

Exodus 35: 2. - So imposed in connection with the setting up of the Tabernacle thereon.

Leviticus 19: 3, 30. - The comeliness of their association one with another and with God in the land - all that became them as a nation liable to sin, but consecrated to God there.

Leviticus 23: 3. - Prescribed as the characteristic beginning and sum of all the feasts in which they were called to appear before the Lord in pledge of rest.

Leviticus 24: 8. - The shew bread was to be ordered from sabbath to sabbath.

Numbers 15: 32. - Expressed as an obligation during their journey which this book traces the principle of in the wilderness

Deuteronomy 5: 12. - Ordained in connection with Creation rest, but as a memorial given as a remembrance of the grace of deliverance from Egypt, and thus of rest afforded to servants.

Nehemiah 9: 14. - Remembered as made known to Israel as their special privilege.

Isaiah 58: 13. - Prophecy looks at it as understood as a privilege in grace - my sabbath.

Ezekiel 20: 12. - Given as a sign between God and them - His sabbaths.

Numbers

<42012E> 89

Numbers 3

- 25. The door of the tabernacle of the congregation, i.e., the entrance of the court to get at the tabernacle. The altar is elsewhere said to be at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, there only, the people came. The laver was only priestly washing.

- 42, 43. Those only, I apprehend, who were as such in their fathers' houses unmarried.

- 46. As regards the change of number in Levites and first-born - Israel was numbered the first day of the second month, the people started on the twentieth, and as far as appears, the numbering of the Levites was the very next thing to the numbering of Israel, and of course that numbering was taken. Certainly many things passed between the numbering of Israel and the twentieth day when the camp moved.

Numbers 4

- 3. Host, tzava, as in verses 23, 30, etc.; see Exodus 38: 8, and 1 Samuel 2: 22, tza-va (to assemble by troops); but in Numbers 8: 25, it should be "service" as in verse 23 of this chapter.

- 14, for "censers" read "shovels" or "pans," it is from kha-thah (to remove), as ya-im (shovels) from ya-ga to take away. Which was shovel and which was pan I cannot say, but I apprehend the first were shovels, and the second pans, from the analogy of the word.

NOTE. - The laver is not found in the vessels carried in the desert, and covered with different cloths, and the reason is, I think, evident, and confirms the sense I judge to be that of these ordinances. The laver, though a means of approach, was no manifestation of the divine character which produced a corresponding result in the believer; it was merely a means of the purification of man needed in his drawing nigh to God.

Numbers 6

I take it this chapter applies properly to Israel. The remnant even, though not wilfully, is under the sin of the dead, and must own this to begin again; his first separation is all lost. This has been done by faith in those that owned, as in Acts 2, their guilt in it - they are separate, but the time of separation is not closed, nor the time to drink wine begun. The remnant at the end will enter into this in a peculiar manner, and through deep affliction, because of their long infidelity; still they will have learned their entire dependence on the Lord, and, in the way of repentance, the death of Christ, after long remaining unclean. They will be anew separated to God; when all that is closed, they will have their proper liberty, strength and joy in communion and power. Hence, with this is connected the blessing through the High Priest and His sons at the close of the chapter - Christ, Head of his own family is introduced in that character, as bringing the blessing of Jehovah on Israel, "They shall put."

90 The hair is sign of neglect of self for the Lord, and dependence on Him - power on the head, hence a sign of subjection in him that wears it, but subjection in devoted abstraction from self. Christ will drink the wine with them; it will not then be dependence by faith, the energy of faith in an absent Lord, restraint on self, though power through grace may accompany this strength made perfect in weakness.

- 27. This closes a division of the book. The people and camp are numbered and formed, their purity, and that even in consecration to the Lord, secured.

Numbers 8

Up to the end of this chapter is evidently the establishment of Israel as the people consecrated to God for the journey, and the type of the Levites as having service, but service dependent on the priesthood.

Numbers 9

This chapter presents the case of consecration, not of will, in an individual case hindering the bond of union with the congregation where God was; withal the presence of God for direction in the journey, to stop, to go on, or to abide.

91 Numbers 10

- 11 and 12. On the twentieth day of the second month they leave Sinai and rest in Paran.

- 13. From this verse to chapter 12: 16 is in the journey; it is all we have of detail in journey, for there, in Kadesh in Paran, they refuse to go up to possess. They are ordered to turn to the wilderness by the Red Sea, and then go up presumptuously and are discomfited. All that is said of the journey is in Deuteronomy 2: 1, "we compassed Mount Seir many days." There were thirty-eight years from Kadesh to the brook Zered; Deut. 2: 14. They had been a good while in Kadesh before the Amorites discomfited them; the spies were forty days absent after; after the twentieth day of the second month they had gone to Kibroth Hattaavah Hazeroth, from thence they came to Paran; on the return of the spies they were at Kadesh. Chapters 11 and 12 are in connection with this chapter in the journey; in chapter 13 comes the realisation of promise in hope, and chapter 14 closes completely this portion of the book of Numbers.

The chapter before us is the order of march, different already from what had been instituted, and with more grace also; as chapters 11 and 12 are the failure in the journey, weariness, complaint, discontent and lusting, and then the prophet and priest rising up against the royalty of Him who is face to face with God, Aaron alone as priest making intercession. Thus the Church is in this guilt in refusing the supremacy of Christ as King taking sovereignly in grace whom He will. This is especially against Christ in grace, for this principle is also presented, that Moses, type of Christ in sovereignty and proximity to God, was also type of sovereign grace - he had married an Ethiopian woman. Here the Lord is, where He was with Moses in grace when Israel fell, without the camp, but then He is with Aaron and Miriam in judgment, who claim grace to exalt themselves. Miriam, who is in the position of testimony, for such is the place as prophetess, is covered with sin.

- 36. Here we have another division of the book; the freewill offerings, and charge of the Lord, and the journeying - the two parts of the wilderness life. But the ark went sovereignly forth.

92 Numbers 11

Note, the spirit of Moses had got away from God, not only he says, "How can I bear this people," but when the Lord says "You have despised the Lord among you," Moses says immediately The people among whom I am." All return to the world in heart is really slighting the redemption which has delivered us out of it; but what is really important is this, that Moses as well as the people shows this want of confidence - the thought of want of power in God. God shows that there was not merely in Himself, but in the midst of them, the power in abundance which they had not faith on the one hand to trust, on the other to exercise, for, in order to governing and leading up the people, the Lord takes of the spirit which was on Moses and puts it on seventy elders, who should effect with him this task, and to draw the attention of the whole camp, for Joshua knew of it by the display of power in the midst of it. Such is unbelief!

Numbers 12

How deep the instruction in this chapter! "The Lord heard" - if we knew always how to leave it to Him! "The man Moses was meek" (poor in spirit) "above all the men on the face of the earth" - he left it all there - "The Lord heard." It is all beautiful.

- 10. The Lord, so to speak, spat in her face - how terrible! Yet there was much grace mixed with it all.

- 11. Miriam comes first in speaking against Moses (verse 1) - Aaron is the first to confess, and owns his own fault with her in it. It is the same word in Deuteronomy 8: 2, "he humbled them and proved them, to know what was in their hearts."

Numbers 14

This chapter is the revolt of the people despising the pleasant land, the fear of the difficulties setting aside faith, and in consequence producing a disparaging report of the land itself - they were gathered together against the Lord.

Besides the general instruction, I have this to remark that Caleb just brings in what the rest all leave out - the Lord; and then, note, the effect is the heavenly good and joyful blessing is full before his mind - it is a good land, and the difficulties which absorbed the others disappear. "They are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, the Lord is with us: fear them not." Blessings and heavenly joys cannot sustain faith when the Lord is not looked to. The grapes of Eshcol were forgotten, as though they were not, for the others, and if faith be not in exercise, how should heavenly things be seen?

93 Note too in Exodus 3, we have full grace - here government. There Abraham, Isaac, Israel; hence "My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest," and as we have often noted, the ground of consuming, grace and power comes in, the ground of looking for God to be with us, for He does not impute, but is with us against the sin. Here it is the principles of government there announced, not original absolute grace; hence there is government, judging, chastening. The rest, as far as I am aware, I have noticed elsewhere. But what perverseness, that while they forget the Lord entirely as to the path and difficulties of faith, they remember how to charge Him with bringing them into their present condition when they are discontented with it.

- 32. Shall pasture - be nomads.

- 34. Not "my breach of promise," but my turning against them, my hostility - t'nuati (my hostility, my alteration) only found here and in Job 33: 10, "He findeth occasions against me." They would learn what it was to have God thus dealing in anger with them. It is to be in a position which brings anger and judgment from God; "My turning away and being hostile to them" is "You shall experience what it is to have Me against you."

- 44, presumed, i.e., proudly of their own will, see Deuteronomy 1: 41.

Numbers 15

Here we have grace which after all secures the land and joy and communion therein, the stranger being also admitted to this; error supposed when in enjoyment of the promises and atonement; presumptuous sin condemned; the memorial of the fringe of blue, the marks of heavenly-mindedness in communion, which recalls the commandment and gives force in the conscience to the first deliverance. Blue was next the gold always in the tabernacle.

94 Note how after the various forms of rebelliousness or unbelief, complaining, lusting, self-righteous exaltation of prophetess and priest against the king (who held immediate intercourse with the Lord) and despising the promise, the absolute certainty of the promise in grace, comes in before the apostasy of Kore, in which the perishing comes. After this, it is brought out that priestly grace alone - Aaron's rod before and laid up by the tabernacle of witness from which the righteous judgment had come forth on Kore - could take away the murmuring and lead them through the wilderness. The special place and privilege too of priesthood then comes out most instructively, and here alone, chapter 18: 10, is eating in the most holy place spoken of, which must be communicatively from office; I cannot think it is among the most holy things.

The order of these chapters is very interesting.

- 15. Hak-ka-hal (as for the congregation). Does this make the sojourner a part of the congregation?

- 23. From the day that the Lord commanded (began to command) and onward to your generations.

Numbers 16

Here we have Levites, ministers of service, who will be priests between God and the people, and the famous men who rebel against the authority of Moses. The direct judgment consumes these, and the fire of the sanctuary they would approach consumes them. Korah acted on all the congregation, but Moses in judgment, and Aaron in intercession afterwards, when their hearts rise against the judgment or Moses as cause of it, preserve the people. The supremacy of Christ as Priest is established as being near to God, but thereon the priests, and He especially in the day of atonement, but the priests every day being thus brought nigh, have to bear the iniquity of the sanctuary. This is an important principle, it is not sin against the commandment of the law, but the iniquity of the sanctuary; but the communion of the sanctuary, chapter 18: 10, is theirs, and everything that the Lord takes as His, but this as priests.

95 Remark how for the history of Korah is a point by itself, the coming into the land being fully assured in grace, at the end of the failures in faith of Israel, in the previous chapter. Korah, etc., is positive rebellion against the authority of God in the royalty and priesthood.

Note the contrast between Aaron's formal self-exaltation along with Miriam against grace, sovereign grace, and God's exaltation of the priestly position as alone holding the burden and enjoying the communion and God's food of the sanctuary - all was polluted to all unless cleansed by this consecration; chap. 18: 32. Thus the world, alas! through the Church firstfruits.

Note prophecy and priesthood never reach the place of sovereign grace even in the Church. The Church's own place is in Moses marrying the Ethiopian, and face to face with God, because it enters into the mind of God where Christ is.

Numbers 18

Note the difference of priestly and family communion, all depending on Aaron in verses 9, 10 and 11-13.

Note too, that the first three verses of Leviticus 2 are the ordinary meat-offering, from verse 4 the baked meat-offering - the latter dry, or mingled with oil, was for all the males of the family - the baked ones entirely the priest's that offered it; one was isolated offering in Christ alone, the other was general Church communion.

Note, in passing, the wave-breast was for Aaron and his sons; the heave-shoulder for the offering priest. This, however, would seem to be only in the case of the peace-offerings; the trespass-offerings and sin-offerings were for the males only, the heave- and wave-offerings for all the family, see also Leviticus 10: 14. However, in heave-offerings there seem to be more decided consecration, not for service as presented merely but entirely given up; the Levites were a wave-offering. The heave-offering was an offering of gift, save the heave-shoulder; the heave-offering of dough, Numbers 15: 19-21. Leviticus 7: 14, I apprehend, must be one of the unleavened cakes.

The wave-offering seems rather presented to the Lord, and then to subsist for whatever service or use; the heave-offering to have been more offered to the Lord. It is a common word for everything offered to God and given up, so to speak, to Him.

96 Numbers 19

We have here the provision for defilement by sin, the principle of death in the desert, by death accomplished - long since applied by the power of the Holy Ghost.

This chapter is the restoration of worship. And so it is as to the Spirit, it is not forgiveness as acceptance, but a needed process in which the soul, and defilement on it, is brought sensibly connected with Christ's death by the power of the Spirit to be able first to worship, and then to serve.

It is well to take first the offering in itself in connection with Jehovah and then its application.

In the case of the red heifer the Lord speaks to Moses and Aaron; several are so. Moses receives what is necessary for God as such - the law between Him and man. When Aaron comes in, i.e., is addressed by God as in already, of course it refers to God, but it is priestly service, where we have to say to God. The red heifer was both. Intercourse with God refers to His holy nature (1 John 1) - compare Joshua 5: 15, and the bush - as much as reconciliation, but still this is supposed in it. Here the blood was where the people met God, the efficacy of the great day of atonement is supposed, the individual is restored. Where he meets God, the perfect and abiding efficacy of the blood always is. It is purely a sin-offering all burnt without the camp. There was no imputation, the ashes proved that all that was settled long ago, but the man could not come to the tabernacle, though the blood was there. His communion and worship were interrupted; the sense of the sin, according to the death of Christ, was brought upon Him by the Spirit and Word. Hence the address was to Moses and Aaron; it was necessary according to what God was, but it was also restoration to one who was defiled, the atonement being a settled thing. It was not a simply priestly service. Then it would have been "the priest shall take," etc. Moses and Aaron give the heifer to Eleazar, he represented Aaron, but Aaron received the command, to give it its true and full character. The sprinkling with the water was by any clean person, not a priestly act, but none but a priest could take the blood. It refers to the wilderness, our path here, hence does not go within the veil, though, as burnt outside the camp, having all the efficacy of that which did, based itself on it, only applied to the journeying state, to man with God, not abstractedly to God in His nature. It is the High Priest, but as such, in atonement, he must for the full character of it go within the veil, but that is not the point here. It is a high priestly service, but refers to the administrative restoration in our walk here. Hence we have Eleazar to represent Aaron, but Aaron receives the command; it is not, or only as restoring relation with it as far as the people could go, sanctuary work. That was Aaron's part, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens. It is high-priestly, but not the High Priest's proper place. That meets the eye of God, and represents the people and is perfect once for all. The command to Moses and Aaron meets this, but the work itself, while based on a perfect sin-offering is journeying restoration, based on what is perfect, but applied administratively to restore the man's cleanness, in order to come.

97 We have to consider here the analogy of our walk down here under the government of God, and Israel's place. Peter's epistle connects these two. Query, does Israel, in the millennium even, go further? I suppose not. His place then does rest on Christ having carried the blood within, but his relationship is at the door; they had in the fullest way touched death in crucifying Christ, even if it were atoned for.

The red heifer gives us a wonderful picture of God's estimate of sin in respect not of judgment but of holiness and any defilement. Its starting point and basis is the blood sprinkled seven times where the people met God, but showed that that had been wholly settled. Further the great day of atonement is supposed; there the blood was within the veil, so that God had been perfectly glorified as to sin, and the sins also put away. All that was a settled point, and for the approach of the people the basis laid in the seven times sprinkled blood; the question of personal state and defilement hindering communion remained, and to this the ashes of the red heifer applied. What I here note is, how in this respect, defilement and communion, the least defilement is intolerable to God. Every one that touched was unclean, the priest, the man that gathered the ashes, that sprinkled the water, all that was exposed in the house, the man that touched. Then I have the measure of uncleanness, the death of Christ, the Spirit and the Word, for the water is the Word in the power of the Spirit; the ashes were there, proof that sin as such before God, imputable guilt, was all consumed in the death of Christ, but it was measured by that in the heart. It was God's measurement, the true one of it, the Word discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart, as the eye of God - whatever is not of the life of Christ in us grieves the Holy Spirit.

98 We know, by the ashes, that the sin was all consumed and put away, and that enables us to estimate it as a question of holiness and our state. Thus the death of Christ, sin against His holy grace, the Spirit and the Word, are the measure of sin to the heart, but as we learn first its evil, we learn grace is above the evil and communion is restored - we judge ourselves, not having to be judged for it, and then return into deeper sense of the sunshine of God's favour.

But there is more; the glory of the world, all nature was cast into the burning of the heifer, and, when the water is applied to our souls, all this is gone and we are simply with the sole state of the soul in question with God. There is a natural life in which we live from day to day, even where rightly; here the soul is alone, such as it is, with God, according to what He is - revealed in the Cross, by the Spirit and the Word - and nothing else there. This makes it an absolute searching out, at least as to all that is then in question, as to its then state. We are manifested to God, and there is nothing to veil it, or interrupt the direct revelation of God to the soul, alone itself with God, naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. It is wonderful how there we are in the inner world, and not in the vain show of the fashion of this world which passes away.

Note, the Levites were not washed but only sprinkled. The only other case of the use of the word is the red heifer and Ezekiel from niddah (separation) chapter 36. Perhaps it is because it is only service as offered in life, and not dying and renewal or new nature and life in order to be oneself with God, and that before Himself in heavenly places. The priests were washed.

99 Numbers 20

Moses acted not on the grace, but with "his rod" and "we," and was shut out, which note well, blessed as he was. May our souls be subject to His Word, His blessed Word!

- 14. This is not the same as Deuteronomy 2: 3. This was a proposal to cross Edom at once, but Edom would not consent, and they wander there a long time; at last God says, "Ye have compassed this mountain long enough."

Numbers 21

- 1. The "when" is wrong here; he heard sometime or other, and when they came into his neighbourhood, he attacked them; see chapter 33: 40.

- 13-15. Verses 14, 15 alone present any question. I see no reason why they could not have been written at the time, but my impression is that these two were added when the book was edited. This it surely was, traditionally by Ezra. It may have been by Samuel, or even Jeremiah when found in the days of Josiah, but by divine prophetic care owned by Christ Himself.

These references to Jasher and the book of the wars of the Lord, or legendary songs occur several times. They are appeals to common history as recognising an unexampled wonder, or some alleged right for which their own testimony or faith would not avail - thus Jephthah. It seems to me quite uncertain whether "Is not this written in the book of Jasher" (Joshua 10: 13) is by the author of the book of Joshua. It may be prophetically inserted as a witness to the truth of the account, as a phenomenon patent to all. It may have been a series of received history, a compilation so called, containing a notable number of passages in their history, compiled and added to at various times, just as I avow I do not know the date of the phrase in the book of Joshua. It is added as confirmation, and no change of what was originally written. It is even a question with me if the previous part of the verse be from Joshua. 2 Samuel 1: 18, clearly comes in parenthetically, whatever its source.

100 Numbers 23

In Balaam's prophecies, the first three are the actual state, the fourth is the future.

The ark taken, and the priestly relationship broken, the royalty substituted fails also. Nehemiah does not attempt the crowning of Zerubbabel, there is no re-establishment of the fallen system, the Gentile slavery is acknowledged. What rested on man's responsibility was gone irreparably; but this did not touch what God had substituted in His own sovereignty to maintain communication with His people according to His own fidelity when they were unfaithful. In Samuel ordinance is there, and Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi are there as prophets, and though that closed the canon up to John the baptist, yet we have, even at the end, Anna a prophetess who speaks to all who waited for redemption in Israel. Nor did the unfaithfulness of Israel touch the looking of faith to the resources which were in God, nor to the supply of that which was needful for the present exigencies of His people. This gives a clear idea of the position.

The great principle of the Balaamic history is that God was the unsolicited Guardian and Blesser of His people. The machinations of enemies go on, and that unknown to Israel, who consequently seeks nothing from God, but He is active for His people from His own grace to them, and nothing escapes Him. "Who are these men that come to thee?" says God to Balaam. God began as He did with Satan in Job's case, "Hast thou considered my servant Job?" On the other hand, Balak is in entire and all-perverting darkness. First Israel was forbidden to touch Moab, next he says, "He whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed," and he was seeking to bring the curse on Israel when God had said, "Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee," so that he was just bringing it on himself.

This interest that God takes in His people, for Israel knew nothing that was going on, is of the profoundest interest; it was between God and the adversary, see Zechariah 3, not between God and Israel - then He judges evil.

- 15. See chapter 24: 1.

- 23. Note here it is said concerning Jacob and Israel, "What hath God wrought?"

- 25. Hatred and unbelief think of circumstances, and Balak, having been frightened by the sight of Israel, seeks in the folly of unbelief to withdraw Balaam from the influence of what he dreaded himself, for unbelief never thinks of the thoughts of the Lord, from whom surely the people was not hidden. His perseverance in seeking the curse enlarged the blessing; it is always thus. He does not know God, and God could not merely repeat the blessing already given, thus it is continually developed.

101 Note, after his justification Israel rises up as a lion, and does not lie down until after having seized the prey. When seen in his beauty, having pillaged the nations, he lies down and who shall stir him up? And note verse 16 (chap. 24) when prophecy is brought out he has the knowledge of the Most High, which is not of in verse 4.

It is interesting to see the terms that Balaam uses; "Jehovah" and "Elohim," and only in the two last prophecies when he did not seek enchantments. In the two first he uses only "Jehovah" and "Elohim"; and mark how in verse 3 "Jehovah will come to meet me," and "Elohim met Balaam," and "Jehovah put a word in Balaam's mouth." "How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed, and how shall I defy whom Jehovah hath not defied?" Verse 16, "And Jehovah met Balaam." . . . "Balak said, what hath Jehovah spoken." . . . "Elohim is not a man." . . . "Jehovah his Elohim is with him." . . . "Elohim brought him out of Egypt." . . . "What hath Elohim wrought." . . . "All that Jehovah speaketh that must I do." All this is clearly Jehovistic, though Elohim is used, because Jehovah is Elohim. So in the next chapter, "And when Balaam saw that it pleased Jehovah to bless Israel," we are here clearly on Jehovistic ground - "then the Spirit of Elohim came upon him, and he heard the words of Elohim, and saw the vision of Shaddai . . . "they are like the lign aloes which Jehovah has planted" - he could not go beyond the commandment of Jehovah. Again in verse 16 we have "heard the words of God, knew the knowledge of the Most High, saw the vision of Shaddai." In this last prophecy which is a continuation without his going to meet again or Jehovah's meeting him, but which is introduced by the commandment of Jehovah, it is the distinct assertion that Jehovah, the Elohim of Israel, took the place of - was Shaddai the Almighty, yea Elion, who would order the whole world as He pleased, and of this Balaam warns Balak; compare Psalm 91, "He that dwelleth in the secret of Elion (Most High) shall abide under the shadow of Shaddai." "I," says Messiah, "will say of Jehovah, He is my refuge, my fortress, my Elohim, in him will I trust," i.e., He takes Jehovah, the God of the Jews, for protection, for the shadow of His wings. Hence He is protected by Almighty power - Shaddai. Hence Israel says, "because thou hast made Jehovah even the Most High" (for He is so, above all Elohim) "my refuge, thy habitation," He would be protected, and then in verse 14 Jehovah owns His knowing His name. Now Balaam shows this prophetically - Jehovah, whose name is all through in question, is Shaddai, is the Most High; Elohim, God Himself wrought for Israel, and there was no enchantment against Him, Jehovah met Balaam and declared Himself Shaddai and Elion in favour of Israel, taking the last name when He was setting the world aright in judgment, as He does in the mouth of Melchizedek, adding, "Possessor of heaven and earth."

102 All this makes clear what I have noticed a hundred times for edification before any controversy, "Jehovah" is the name of relationship taken with Israel, as "Shaddai" with the Patriarchs. No man could have given a name used just as frequently as "Elohim," as unknown in point of fact. But God revealed Himself specifically to the Fathers as "El Shaddai;" and they were to walk in the faith of that name, as Jehovah to Moses and Israel, and they were to walk in the faith of that; to us as Father, and so we are to walk. "I am El Shaddai, walk before me and be thou perfect," "Thou shalt be perfect with Jehovah thy God," "Be ye therefore perfect as your Father who is in heaven is perfect." "So ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty" - Jehovah Shaddai.

Numbers 24

- 3. Terrible thing to have the eyes open when we have no part in what we see. But it is a wonderful scene to see this man forced of God to give unwillingly God's testimony in favour of His people, rebellious and perverse as they were. God insisting on His own mind, a true prophet is in the midst of and reproves the people, a false one is forced by, taken by God above them all, and has God's sovereign mind of grace and purpose above them all; he is not fit to reprove them - that is a holy work. But the scene is wonderful - God's mind all blessing. Compare Deuteronomy 9 for testimony in the camp; and note here it was after all their history.

103  - 16. The second point* is added, and points to the latter days and millennium, when the Most High is the name God takes. But further, the first two prophecies are the present relationship and mind of God towards Israel; Jehovah is there in the power of God, a Deliverer who has taken the people to Himself. That was God's present testimony. But in the third we get by the Spirit, Abraham's God (vv. 4 and 9) and so far that closes it - Jehovah their God is God; but the blessing of the Almighty is there. Then in the fourth the millennium and Christ. In one sense the third closes as to Israel and Elohim Jehovah Shaddai's blessing; in the fourth Elohim the Most High takes up the world, the latter days, and "thy people," and Asshur and the ships of Chittim.

{*In the Hebrew.}

- 17. I should think, certainly from Jeremiah 48: 45, that Gesenius is right in his interpretation of kol-b'ney sheth (all the children of Sheth) children of noise, i.e., tumultuous war.

Numbers 26

- 59. For the omission of subject to "bare," see 1 Kings 1: 6 and 1 Chronicles 7: 14, whatever the difficulty connected with it; compare Exodus 6: 16-20. This verse (59) is the greatest difficulty of all as to the counting 430 years of captivity. I do not see that the 430 years of Galatians 3 is so much so, because it must, if strictly taken, refer to Israel's offering, for the covenant was kekuromenen (confirmed), i.e., some forty years after the arrival in Canaan; and the term here "begat to him in Egypt" implies, it would seem, it was one (i.e., Levi himself) who had come down, so that it might have been otherwise. Jacob was one hundred and thirty on coming into Egypt; Gen. 47: 9. Joseph was thirty when he stood before Pharaoh. Jacob came down nine years (seven of plenty, two of famine) afterwards. Joseph was about seven when he arrived in Canaan, seventeen when he was sold. Thus Jacob was 10 + 13 + 9 years from his arrival from Padan to his going down to Egypt, i.e., thirty years, i.e., ninety-eight when he left Padan, and about seventy-eight when he went there; he had remained some thirty-eight after Esau's marriage. It is remarkable these late marriages of the first Patriarchs - Isaac was forty and had no child till he was sixty, Abraham none of promise till he was an hundred. Now Judah was about fifteen when he married and had children then. The moment of transition was the end of Jacob's life; he goes down, sixty-six souls of his family. They were to be as heavenly strangers till then, now to multiply for the earth; they could hardly have been had they so multiplied, they must have settled somewhere as Esau. Yet while at ease and princes, they were yet but a few of them and they strangers in the land, and when oppressed and ill-treated they multiplied and grew. In these were God's ways.

104 Numbers 28

- 2. Query as to this, "for my sacrifices made by fire," and compare Leviticus 3.

- 11. It is no doubt here l'ishshay (for my offerings by fire); but "and" is put in. "Bread" here is "food," there lekhem (food, bread); it may not exclude the min'khah (meal-offering), but the main object is the slain victim. See also Leviticus 21: 6.

Numbers 32

- 19. Both "yonder side" and "this side," are meever (beyond, from beyond).

Numbers 33

As regards this chapter and Deuteronomy 10, the supposed difficulty is the proof, whatever we judge of the position of Deuteronomy 10, that the writer wrote from a knowledge of facts which hindered his supposing any liability to have his account attacked by difficulties which arose from ignorance - the best proof of real competency and integrity.

First I remark that, after two years, arriving at the mount of the Amorites, they failed in going up and compassed mount Seir many days, thirty-seven years; they went backwards and forwards in this neighbourhood. Now we have three journeys backward and forward from Moseroth or Mosera to the Red Sea - Ezion-gaber point, when at length they turned round to go northward by the south of Seir - and from the Red Sea to Mosera.

105  - 31, etc., they go from Moseroth by Bene-jaakan, Horhagidgad to Ezion-gaber. Thence they go to mount Hor, and Aaron dies. It was in that country that Arad attacked them; his destruction is related between Aaron's death in mount Hor and their journey back again to the Red Sea. So that we have the journey from Moseroth to Ezion-gaber by Benejaakan and Gudgodah or Hor-hagidgad, from Ezion-gaber back to Hor, and, in chapter 21, back from Hor to Ezion-gaber before they turned round to go northward the other side of Edom to Moab.

Mount Hor is a district in the western edge of Edom, for the Israelites "pitched in mount Hor in the edge of Edom" before they turned Edom to go northward; but we have, in compassing Edom, a journey from Mosera to Ezion-gaber, from Ezion-gaber to Hor (the same side of mount Hor - more or less on the same identical route) and from Hor to Eziongaber. Now the first time they pass from Mosera by Benejaakan and Hor-hagidgad, i.e., a part of Hor designated by Gilgal. They returned on their steps to Hor by Kadesh. In Deuteronomy we find them going in the inverse direction, as might be expected on their return going from Bene-jaakan to Moseroth, which thus proves the general course of their journeys must have been towards Hor, for on the return journey we know they were going there at the time Aaron died, so that Moseroth is an encampment in the district and neighbourhood of Hor; from the encampment he went up into the mountain itself to die.

Then in Deuteronomy 10: 7, they return, as we have seen they certainly did, by Gudgodah and Jotbatha, which, according to verses 32, 33 of our chapter, is on the road from Mosera to Ezion-gaber, thus: - (see Map overleaf ).[See 42_n&c2a.png] GRAPHIC

The left line through the dots, verses 30-35; the middle line as in verses 36, 37, and Deuteronomy 10. Aaron dies in Mosera in mount Hor where Israel pitched, and would have passed on through Edom but could not; then comes the right hand line. They come back to the Red Sea (chap. 21), pass up the other side of Edom, and cross the Jordan beyond the Dead Sea; now chapter 21 connects itself with chapter 33, compare chapter 21: 10 and chapter 33: 43.

So that it is a great confirmation of the accuracy of the account, and only shows that Mosera is in the district of Hor, and that it was from this station Aaron went up to die. We have the three journeys positively stated, yet no one would have thought in reading, the two verses alone gave the two journeys, and that they returned on their steps, i.e., from Bene-jaakan to Moseroth, and then back by Gudgodah to Jotbatha. Yet the full accounts of Numbers prove they did, and the places in Deuteronomy are found exactly in the order of going and returning. We have positively in Numbers Mosera to Ezion-gaber, Ezion-gaber to Hor (chap. 33), Hor to the Red Sea, i.e. Ezion-gaber, and this by the stations which in Deuteronomy are mentioned, one in the order going to Mosera, and the two others on leaving Mosera in the order coming from towards Ezion-gaber, which we know to have been from Hor where Aaron died.

107  - 4, 5. Two solutions have occurred to me, each side being 2,000 cubits; but that allows nothing for the size of the city thus: - [See 42_n&c2b.png] GRAPHIC

The other, which I suppose must be the meaning, is verse 4, the pomoerium,* and verse 5 the fields round. In verse 5, the pomoerium is reckoned to the city itself, hence not said from the wall; it was merely mikhutz la-ir (outside the city). The only question would be, if the whole would be only 2,000 cubits, but then there is no mention of the second 1,000 by itself.

{*Pomoerion or pomoerium, a space void of buildings within and without the wall of the city.}

The Mystery

<42013E> 108

We may, I suppose, put aside some passages where this word occurs, as furnishing the explanation in themselves, and giving its application to something special.

1 CORINTHIANS 15: 51

"Behold I shew you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." This may have place at the summing up and accomplishment of the mystery of Christ, but it is a special mystery revealed; so 1 Corinthians 4: 1, "Let a man so account of us as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God." So Babylon is called "Mystery"; and the "mystery of iniquity," though it has its connection with the mystery in way of contrast, evidently is another thing apart.

1 CORINTHIANS 2: 6, 7

There is nothing very precise here - it is the character rather of his testimony, and the wisdom which he spake; it was not the public, common-place wisdom wrought out of man's wit, but the wisdom of God in mystery - things which never would have been known but for God's communicating them, and which were of His counsels in Christ, hidden, while His government even was of this age, for a time but revealed by the Holy Ghost to those who are based upon the risen Man, whom God has made the Centre of His counsels and of the mystery. It is this wisdom of this place, these counsels of God before the worlds for our glory, known therefore only by revelation and by the Spirit, and this is what he goes on to speak of to the end of the chapter. Here then "mystery" is not the subject of the revelation, but the character of the wisdom which the Apostle by the Spirit spake.

ROMANS 11: 25

We may also put this aside - it is the special mystery, ancillary to the prosecution of the great mystery, of setting aside Israel as blinded for a time, "in part," until the fulness of the Gentiles was come in. This was a peculiar plan of God, which was not exactly the Church nor the kingdom, but a temporary displacement of the earthly part, not its establishment under the new covenant, nor Messiah, but the setting aside of Israel in part, under blindness, until the fulness of the Gentiles should be come in. Then this preparatory thing being accomplished, the blessing of Israel, as such, would take its course according to the enlarged scope of the counsels of God, which embraced the heavens also. It was a subordinate special mystery, for naturally Israel would have been continued placed under the new covenant, and the Gentiles blessed with God's people; but all this is for the moment set aside, that the Gentiles, as a special thing, according to the counsels of God, to whom all His counsels are known from the foundations of the world, may come in. This then also is a special mystery, though serving in its place to the development of the great mystery of God's will in result.

109 ROMANS 16: 25

We have here the mystery without being told in what it consists, "The preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of (the) mystery, as to which silence was kept in all ages" (in the times of the ages) "but now manifested, and by prophetical Scriptures according to the commandment of the eternal God of ages, made known for the obedience of faith to all the Gentiles; the only wise God through Jesus Christ to whom be glory for the ages. Amen."

Here however we have much, as suits the Epistle to the Romans in which is revealed that "there is no difference, for that all have sinned," that Christ is set forth as the mercy-seat through faith in His blood, the righteousness of God being the only one for all, and upon all that believed, Jew and Greek, i.e., Christ risen - Object of faith and Power of life in resurrection, which was in effect the basis of the mystery. Its result was not stated here, i.e., revealed rather than preached; we have here what is preached as the basis of hope to bring in souls into that which was revealed. Further, we have seen in this epistle a special mystery subordinate and ancillary to this, that is that blindness in part is happened to Israel till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; indeed this was, in a sense, necessary to it - impossible to preach no difference through a risen Christ while the Jews maintained their privileges. The Gentiles brought to light by a risen Saviour - sufficient Object between them and God, without the intervention of the Jews - such is the face of the mystery presented here, and proclaimed to the Gentiles for the obedience of faith. No difference is proclaimed; the unity of the Body is not yet brought out, but we have creation groaning till the manifestation of the sons of God, the joint-heirs of Christ who suffer with Him and will be glorified together. See chapter 1: 16, 17, also verses 2, 3, 4, 5; compare also Acts 15: 7-19.

110 EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS

These still remain and here we have the substance and sum of the mystery.

EPHESIANS 1: 7 - 12

God has made the riches of His grace abound towards us in all wisdom and understanding, "having made known to us the mystery of his will according to his own good pleasure, which he purposed in himself, for the administration of the fulness of times, to head up all things in Christ, those in the heavens and those upon the earth, in him in whom we also have received [our] inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory, who have pre-trusted in Christ."

Here we have evidently the mystery in its general scope according to the counsels of God, that is, to gather together and head up in one all things in Christ, in heaven and in earth, for the administration of the fulness of times; they also among the Jews who had believed anticipatively in Him, and the Gentiles also, being to the praise of the glory of His grace as taking inheritance with Him, and in the meanwhile sealed with the Holy Ghost until the redemption of the purchased possession.

111 EPHESIANS 3: 3, 4, 9

Here we learn that the mystery was made known to him by revelation. It is the mystery of Christ (a Messiah accomplishing the earthly promises of God is no mystery) that was committed to Paul, to make known what was the dispensation of the mystery, hidden during the ages in God, Creator of all things, that thus by the Church might be made known to principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of God, for it was a new thing. Here we have then added that the preaching of the fulness of Christ, and making known the dispensation of this mystery, brought the Church into the position of testimony of the variousness of God's wisdom to the heavenlies.

In Ephesians 5: 32, "This mystery is great, but I speak as to Christ and the Church." Here we have a special part only, that is the union of the Church with Christ, as of His body, His bones and His flesh, which set the Church in its own special and wonderful place when all was headed up in Christ in heaven and earth. It is a special mystery to itself.

EPHESIANS 6: 19

This merely takes up in general the idea of that which was thus specially revealed - the mystery of the Gospel. It was not the good news of evident import, as of old - the accomplishment of promises which belonged to the aion or aionoi of this world, but the mystery which none of its princes knew, or they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

COLOSSIANS 1: 26, 27

In Colossians, after naming Christ as the Image of the invisible God - the headship of creation - the headship of the Church - the reconciliation of all things - the present reconciliation of the Church - comes the ministry of the Gospel to every creature under heaven, and then the ministry of the Church to fulfil the word of God gives i.e., all its fulness, to wit, the mystery hidden from ages and generations, but now manifested to His saints, to whom God has willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you the hope of glory. Here we have another face of this revelation, unknown through the ages - suited to the subject of the Colossians, the bringing in Christ Himself as the fulness, so that they had no need of Judaizing; thus it is "among the Gentiles," Christ is in them the hope of glory. It was the practical realisation of the unity of the Church with Christ, not in the height of its privilege, but in its preservative power, still being really the mystery, i.e., no Messiah accomplishing in person the age, but a Christ among the Gentiles, source and power of hope. This then gives the present power of the mystery here below.

112 COLOSSIANS 2: 2

We have here the mystery of God in which are hid all the treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge - this in order that they should not be going to seek fantastic notions elsewhere, evidently implying both the whole extent of God's counsels, long time hidden, and the position and interest of the Church in them by its unity with Christ, centre of all these counsels.

COLOSSIANS 4: 3

The Apostle here speaks of the mystery of Christ, for which he was in bonds. In general this is the same Gospel of a Christ for the Gentiles according to that which was now revealed, for the first time, of God and formed in part of conscious knowledge, and which was specially entrusted to Paul, that he might make it manifest as he ought to speak. These passages give the just idea of the mystery, that is Romans 16, Ephesians and Colossians, alluded to in 1 Corinthians 2: 7.

There is yet another passage which bears on the same subject, though it treats it in another way, it is:

1 TIMOTHY 3: 14-16

The Apostle speaks of Timothy's conversation in the house of God, the pillar and ground of the truth. The Church is thus in the world, the sustainer of truth, and what is this? The mystery of piety or godliness. And this is what Christ was among the Gentiles - Object of Angels' gaze - believed on in the world, and received up into heaven; in virtue of all which the Church existed. She sustained, as united to Christ and thus the centre and body of the mystery in the world, the knowledge of all that He was to whom she was united. God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of Angels - thus incarnate and owned - preached among the Gentiles (not again a Messiah present among the Jews), believed on (not seen) in the world, received up into glory - thus the necessary Centre of all things - so by counsel also in the accomplishment of this ordained glory which identified itself with that inherent, which found itself, in Him by whom and for whom all was created. The Judaizing Gnostics are again set in contrast by the Apostle. This, I think, quite shows and confirms the force of the expression.

113 REVELATION 10: 7

This passage remains; here there is more apparent difficulty, and that partly from the word musterion. The word etelesthe seems always to mean something brought up to its completeness, hence often necessarily the end of a thing, because, if I am accomplishing a task, finishing it is arriving at the completeness of the task, but if it is something in progress, or which develops itself, then it is its full existence which finishes, if you will, the development. And this word musterion carries its own dissolution, because the moment the subject of it is brought to pass, it ceases to be a musterion - when labours are complete, one ceases to labour; when the work is complete it exists in its perfection - thus teleo may mean "beginning to exist" or "ceasing," because in either case it is the completing of something. But here taking the words chronos ouketi estai (time shall be no longer) I think we must take etelesthe musterion, not as if the subject matter of the mystery had ceased to exist, but that the mystery is accomplished and ceased to be an unaccomplished mystery. It was no longer a mystery spoken of, and only circumstances working out to that which was contained in the mystery as a revelation; this would now take place and be accomplished. This gives its usual sense to mystery, but supposes that God, having only revealed certain things in hope - Christ in us, the hope of glory - His power in the proper exercise of government, so that evil has not been allowed to rise, has not been exercised.

There is also in 1 Timothy 3: 9, the general expression "holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience."

114 It is a striking expression of the state of things in which we are that Christ, not simply works miracles and sets aside the power of Satan wherever he is, but gives power to His disciples to do it - yet John Baptist is put to death and it is not hindered. And He would not do any mighty work in "His own country"; Mark 6.

Note the absoluteness of Christ's gathering out of the world, and being a separative and positive Centre, is shown in this, that He received even those who were with John Baptist. The whole passage has a character of unworldliness which it is well to note in the elements already given. He gathers round Himself - God Himself - as a new gathering to Himself out of a world which is thus judged and left as evil, a way wholly new and divine through it, following Christ (none in and of it), and heaven opened here on Christ, but to us now through the rent veil. All is taking (not the body yet) out of earth and associating it with God on a new footing with Christ and with heaven through the rent veil - oh! what a blessing.

The Humiliation of Christ

J. N. Darby.

<42023E> 166

(Notes and Comments Vol. 2.)

The humiliation of Christ opens out to my mind in a very full and blessed character. The essential being of Godhead cannot change, as is evident - the Absolute, as men speak - and whatever His humiliation, all the fulness of the Godhead (theotetos) dwelt in Him bodily. His emptying Himself (ekenose) applied to the morphe (form). He was in the status, condition of Godhead, of which, not to speak of outward glory, will and acting from His own will (though one with the Father, see John 5) was proper and essential. But the full purpose of His will in free devotedness, and always so, was to give up His own will, and this according to eternal counsels; Psalm 40.

It was not a lowly being, to whom it is evil to have a will of its own, who had none - that would have been nothing; nothingness was the place of nothingness. But He who in His essence could will, gives up His place, or condition as such, and says "Lo, I come to do thy will." It was a divine act, always so, but a divine act of kenosis (making empty). He was thus relative to the Father, not only as Son but as Servant - an immense truth! He gave up, not Godhead - that could not be - but the status and position of it, and came not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him.

Man answered to this place according to the counsels and glory of God, as the angels, the obedient administrators of power, witnesses of a sustained creation, but he who had been made in God's image, and now fallen, was in the condition to be the sphere of the display of all God's moral glory, mercy, grace, righteousness, above all, love, for God is Love; in a word - redemption. Christ was a Man. And now, in the same perfectness, He takes no will, not even of man, not even to eat when He was hungry - He lives by every word out of the mouth of God. He humbles Himself and is obedient even unto death, and that of the Cross - no resistance - no escape, though legions of angels would be ready at His call. He perseveres in submitting to all - a tested obedience, even to death. Not merely obedience in peace, as Adam innocent might, or an Angel (though doubtless they must feel the ruin) but tested by unvarying giving up of self and where evil was.

The Absolute in nature becomes Relative as a Servant in place - and "no man knoweth the Son, but the Father" - but this is revealed; and in this character exalted as Lord above all now. We adore Him as God; we see Him gone down under death as man, yet kenon (emptying) Himself, humbling Himself, laying down His own life what belonged to, what was divine all through. Now the centre of all the sphere of display of the divine glory and of all in which it is displayed; but this is an outward consequence, Philippians 2. But the place of Man and Servant never given up - wondrous truth! Only He rules over all the sphere of His humiliation - heaven and earth are subjected to Him as Man while such subjection is called for - He reigns till all things are put under His feet.

167 But in His own personal place, in which He is in connection with us, or rather we with Him, He never gives up the serving place - He takes it now; John 13. In Luke 12, He takes it in glory, but in the heavenly blessedness connected with us - those His Father has given Him. And finally, when the reigning and subjecting process is complete, and He gives up the kingdom whose power was needed for that, He takes the simple subject place as Man in the eternal blessedness of God - still "God over all, blessed for ever more," One with the Father - but His place as the subject Man perfect, and we with Him. Wondrous thought! The Firstborn among many brethren, metochoi (companions), not, note, koinonoi (common equal sharers) we could not be that, compare Hebrews 2: 14, consequent on verse 11.

God - and no mediatorial kingdom and power - being all in all - His kenosis (emptying) is no more undone than His Godhead. He always was and is Son with the Father - was and is always God; and now is and ever will be Man kenosas heauton (who emptied Himself), it was, and so ever is, His own divine act; only He has a temporary kingdom according to eternal counsels in this character, a kingdom which He gives up. The apostle John enters largely into this; his Gospel is the expression of it, but it comes out elsewhere in connection with the names of God, Light and Love, both of them essential names of God, yet with some difference, for Light has something of quality in it belonging to a person - Love is more absolutely personal. God is purity and manifests all things. But we are light in the Lord; as partakers of the divine nature, we partake of this quality. In 2 Peter 1: 4, we are theias kotnonoi phuseos (partakers of divine nature), not tes (of the), and it is by promise our own state. But we are not love, for Love is sovereign goodness - that we cannot be; we love as partaking of the divine nature too, but we cannot be sovereign goodness.

168 But in Christ's kenosis (emptying) of Himself, and the course of His humiliation unto death, we find this love exercised - it is divine love expressed - we have seen the Father in Him - love brought to need - love active; "Hereby know we love, because He laid down his life for us." So that the revelation of God, that in which His Being acts, according to what He is, was in this way kenosis and self humbling of Christ; only we add "He gave his only-begotten Son," when we speak of it historically in its external action. And Christ, thus the expression of Love, i.e., of God, in the world, God manifest in the flesh, was also necessarily Light in the world - purity, and showing what all was, but showing sovereign goodness to it when thus manifested.

Formally, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ - He was the love of God in the world, and light in it. The darkness comprehended it not. But it was in Man, and it became thus impartitive, the Word of life, "He that hath the Son hath life," they that received Him being born of God; and being cleansed, the Holy Ghost could dwell in them in order to power of realisation. Thus the Apostle prays that they "may be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith," not merely be life and righteousness, but dwell there in the power of the realisation of faith - He who is the expression and revelation of love - that we may be rooted and grounded in it. We dwell in love and in God, or rather here He in us, and thus are at the centre of the display of glory; the more external thing, and so far finite that it is in that which is created, but the display of God's glory in it, though not without love as its source and sustaining, for it is in redemption. Christ thus takes in all - first descended then ascended that He might fill all things - but then the Saints, and this is their wondrous place, are associated with Him personally here, and we "comprehend with all saints"; for they are indeed His metochoi, loved as He is loved, however personally infinitely above them.

Christ has taken this place in the same divine, perfect love, self being gone, that He might put us in the same place with Himself - whom the Father had given Him - and even now, His peace, His joy, the Father's words, the Father's love, and the glory given to them - gone to His Father and our Father, His God and our God - to be with Him where He is; for in emptying Himself and becoming a Man, it was to associate us, the joint heirs in the same place, though ever Firstborn. Hence the Apostle adds "and to know the love of Christ" - not abstract here, "rooted and grounded in love," through His dwelling in our hearts, who is the divine fulness of this love - Himself; but now He has entered into the counsels of actual glory, length, depth, etc. - it is the love of Christ, the actual manifested, exercised love, yet still divine, "it passes knowledge," that we may be thus filled into all the fulness of God Himself, which indeed dwelt in Him bodily; compare 1 John 5: 20.

169 Colossians does not enter on this ground, only touching it in "Christ in you, the hope of Glory." It is blessed to see how the highest being of God is exercised in grace towards any poor sinner. It is there it is, though afterwards perfected in us, see 1 John 4: 12, 13. This has partly led us in this enquiry into the counter part, that "as he is, so are we," because it is thus we enter into and understand it; "we are in him that is true, i.e., in his Son - he is the true God and eternal life."

But the gospel of John gives us large communications on this humiliation of Christ. His Godhead shines in every page of all the gospels, but John, as every one knows, in a peculiar way gives us the Person of Christ - the Word made flesh. Now I have remarked elsewhere the fact of the way in which He is everywhere One with the Father, yet receives all. But it is the direct expression of the truth we are studying - He is God, He is one with the Father, He is I Am. Everywhere He speaks to His Father on a divine footing of unity; "I have glorified thee, now glorify me." But He has taken the form of a Servant, never "now I will glorify Myself." "My Father is greater than I"; "The glory thou hast given me" - yet it was a glory He had - "with the Father before the world was," "Thou hast given him power over all flesh" - "I receive whoever comes, for I came not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me." He finishes the work the Father gave Him to do - it is the Father that sent Him; so chapter 8: 26. But it is in this chapter the Lord says: "Before Abraham was, I am," which the Jews well understood.

In a word His path was "that the world may know I love the Father, and as the Father hath given me commandment, so I do." His divine nature and Godhead shine throughout, but He receives everything - is sent - and has taken the relative place of recipiency and subjection. John 5 has a peculiar character in this respect, and presented at first some difficulty to my mind. "As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, so the Son quickeneth whom he will"; "My Father worketh hitherto and I work," as the Apostle notes, from the Jewish consciousness, making Himself equal with God. But in verse 19 he at once takes the place He is come into. "The Son can do nothing of himself (aph heautou) but what he seeth the Father do." "Whatsoever he doeth, these doeth the Son likewise," and quickening comes as part of this - "The Father loves the Son and shews him all." But He, though He acts with the same divine power as the Father, yet is shown all - does nothing aph heautou; and in verse 26 He hath given to the Son to have life in Himself, i.e., the Son in the form of a Servant down here, and given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is Son of Man. So that we know that it is in this humbled state that this applies.

170 Thus it becomes the clearest exposition of this unspeakable truth, the result of that, when in the form of God ekenose heauton - His own act - divine all through, at every moment. How true it remains "No man knows the Son but the Father"; but we adore Him. He is not ashamed to call us brethren, for now we are ez enos (of one).

But the point my mind rests on is, the kenosis of Himself; the rest is consequence, however blessed; Psalm 45 : 6, 7; Hebrews 1: 8, 9. Christ ekenose heauton, and took upon Him the form of a Servant. Our best delight will be to be hidden behind Him and see Him have all the glory. It is interesting to see that whatever depth the Person of the Lord may give to this, the blessing itself, which has its very character from its adaptation to our state, is enjoyed by the simplest faith, and the more simple the more it is enjoyed. Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith is enjoyed by him in whom He dwells, not by him who can explain it, though it be true it must be enjoyed in order to be able to explain it.

But this humbling of Christ by Himself is divine love, and in exercise - we know God by it. It is Himself in activity, yet in giving Himself up in this unspeakable way. In the Father He remains in essential Godhead, in the Son one with Him in the exercise of it, coming down to serve, the object in which we know God and see the Father. God is objectively before us in the Spirit's power, operative power in us to be able to apprehend, and have the love shed abroad in our hearts so that we dwell in God and God in us.

Judges

<42024E> 172

Judges 10

- 4. Note there is nothing here as to his conquering them, or them being called so after him.

Judges 13

- 25. "At times" is added to avoid the idea of permanent action in "move." It began to strike him, but it was by impulses, as pa-am (to move) implies.

Judges 17, 18

The land was the land in connection with Dan, and especially of Zorah and Eshtaol. Now this was the very part of the land that was captive to the Philistines. There Samson was born and there his doings. The Northern Danites came thence, and set up their teraphim before Samson. It continued as long as the House of God was in Shiloh, a few years after this. Samson judged Israel twenty years. Then there was Eli still in the time of the Philistines; he judged Israel forty years. This image of Micah was there all the time the house of God was in Shiloh; this gives a date. The captivity of the land was the Philistine captivity. There being no king shows nothing but that there were kings elsewhere, compare Psalm 78: 58-61. And note, they were priests to the tribe of Dan, not to the northern part of it; so the men said "To a tribe in Israel." Were it not for verse 31 (Judges 18), one might well suppose verse 30 to be a prophetic, later addition; in this case, "the captivity of the land" might mean the Assyrian. But Jonathan is none the less a near descendant of Moses, and the question is one of interpretation, whether the captivity refers to the Philistines or a later one; if a later, then verse 30 is a prophetic addition. This I think very probable. The Judges, written in Samuel's time or thereabouts, go down to Shiloh. The prophetic addition shows the idolatry to have continued till the captivity. But this in no way affects the question as to Jonathan, or the date of his name.

Ruth

<42025E> 173

What a comfort it is to find such a history as this after the end of Judges - refreshing and pleasant to the heart to see that, in spite of all, God has a people where the sweet and pleasant fruits of His grace show themselves and ripen before Him, plants of His garden though they be in a bleak and lonely world, and cared for by Him though little noticed by the world, and happy to pass through it unheeded by it.

How little Israel at large cared for Ruth or her affairs? But He did, under whose wings she was come to trust. An active faith that brings us, is better than all other that goes on in what is enjoyed. Yet this has its place, compare 2 Timothy 1: 5. But this has its place rather when positive service is over; compare John 19: 26, 27. But how much larger a space in history and in Israel's thoughts did such a scene as Judges 20 take.

Note, it is Jehovah all through this book.

Notice of Lange's "Life of Christ "

<42026E> 174

{The Life of the Lord Jesus Christ: a complete critical examination of the origin, contents, and connection of The Gospels. Translated from the German of J. P. Lange, D.D., professor of Divinity in the University of Bonn. Edited with additional notes by the Rev. Marcus Dods, A.M., 4 vols. Edinburgh: J. and J. Clark, 38, George Street. 1872.}

In page 18 of the preface of this book we have "Christianity, the announcement of the Incarnate Word." It is this assuredly, but this leaves out redemption, and God's righteousness, and our connection with Christ glorified.

Section 1 (27). "We can form no conception of man without God, nor of God without man" - of God without man we can think, for He created him; Man without God morally we can, atheoi en to kosmo (without God in the world) till he has to say to Him. But it is a root principle here. Independent of Him, or not in relationship, he cannot be.

Page 28. Man has to say to God but not (naturally) as a child of the Spirit, and reason knows neither the universal nor the eternal for man is finite; he knows what is infinite only negatively. Reason knows what is under it - subjecta quasi materia - but conscience and responsibility alone are the link of intelligence as to God, and then faith. If He reveals Himself, he is in the infinite and cannot get out of it, but cannot measure it. It is not the subject of measure, because it is infinite. Reason has no capacity to apprehend the eternal Spirit, because my reason is measured by my powers, and the eternal Spirit - God - cannot be, or He would not be God. There is no idea of God. There is consciousness, we have to do with some One supremely above us.

Man's righteousness is measured by the relationships which the law takes up, with God who gave it, and his neighbour. He cannot, unless dwelt in by God, enter into the rule of life which is absolutely universal. I do not deny the sense of beauty may give, at least awaken, the sense of having to say to God otherwise than animals - it did with me. But all the rest here is fancy when a new life is not there, and then sadly vague. Righteousness we may know because man fell into a conscience, not love; no heathen ever knew love in God - agape (love) does not exist in classical Greek. With revelation, what he says is true as Proverbs 8, but what follows is unsatisfactory, and obliges God to man, not having His love free which it is though sure, and dimming righteousness. If He is there, it is unpossessed and separate, and therefore infinite misery.

175 Pages 29-30 is all right in the main. "Man as created" is in a certain sense, in His nature, but the responsible man is confounded with the Man of His counsels. This was the second Man - man surely, but still distinct. "Created after His likeness" is not incarnation, nor incarnation redemption of those lost, and bringing man into union with Himself is never spoken of. But then all about attraction and repulsion is false; God wrestled with Jacob, though He gave him strength to overcome, not Jacob with God, and he halted all his life, and God refused to reveal Himself. There was the process of grace going on in Israel, but it was not Israel who spoke; Isaiah 64: 1. In Christ it ended "Now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father."

There were promises and grace; these he confounds with law. The covenant with the people was the old covenant which ministered to bondage; he confounds all together.

Page 31. "The repulsion" is the state of the fallen nature, which law and even Christ only brings more clearly out. "An excrescence of the nature" - of what nature? Man perverts his nature, and his nature cries out. All this is confusion. Conscience cries out, and he is miserable without the object his nature is made for. Experimentally right, but confusion from making man good, and a want to be good in nature. The result is all a delusion.*

{*This translation is all astray here.}

Page 33. Here again the great mistake "of a more excellent nature" as "the elect who first receive divine life" - "They do not come to God as strangers" - "He sends them" - their original nature the proof of their election! It is curious, the vague absence of truth with some experimentalism of a Christian mind. But he goes on to, not from Christ; and his statement leaves the divinity of the Lord very loose:" Thus He is the One, in the sight of God, by reason of the reality which God hath given Him, in that He hath bestowed upon Him the fulness of His gifts and of His Spirit, that He may communicate them to man." Then what follows is all loose, "The sighs of humanity pleaded with the Spirit of God." "To flesh and Spirit," leaves all vague; it is conscience - or what Spirit?

176 And again the divinity of Christ is, to say the least, very loose, "He was anointed with the eternal fulness of God, thus He was the God-man" (ewigen Göttesfülle denn er war der Gottmensch). And all he then says is really unintelligible or supposes sin in Christ. Where was the "sinful nature of man consumed?" But sinful is not in the original, only Naturlichkeit (naturalness) - a different thought; he has no idea of its proper sinfulness - it is old œon; and verklärt, if "transformed," is gloriously so. This as in Christ is "the redemption of humanity" (Menschheit).

"Choosing members out of Christ's body" is rather strange (p. 37).

Page 38. Note man has the Spirit, "Each individual has the Spirit as a Person"; as to the fact he is a Quaker. So the "Holy Spirit of the divine, human life." Again of Christ, "corresponding in the eternal organism of humanity to the fulness of the Godhead." "The Holy Spirit is in all, in different measure of display in different persons," and here "according to the fulness of what it is" - but this is not God, the Word incarnate. And note here it "streams out from Him" - in Scripture, He received it be-Adam (for men) when He went up on high, redemption being accomplished (Acts 2), otherwise He was alone.

Page 39. "Everywhere pervaded by a gentle breathing of the Spirit, a gale of eternity." "From this head," Christ, "and from His (its) agency is developed the infinitely rich and marvellous organisation of the life of mankind."

Page 41. "The more man develops the inmost depths of his nature, the more does the fulness of the Spirit, the glory of God," etc., "appear in Him."

Page 42. See the curious account of Christ here, and the Church in page 43; it is a kind of mystic Sabellianism.

Page 47. "Christ, head of humanity," as such in its unity. "All made alive in Him, and in this life they form that organic communion which He so fills and animates with His divine fulness," etc. It is monstrous - a strange, unreal illusion. "The God-man develops His life in the organism of the divine-human Church . . . . Nature is elevated till God is all in all!"*

{*The translation here is wholly untrustworthy.}

177 Page 50. We have mysticism falsifying and confounding. Christ's "is a lasting influence which must work till it has attained its end, till at His name every knee shall bow," and see this carried out in what follows - "the regulation of the company" Ordnung der Gesellschaft.

Page 55. We get his delusions again. The third paragraph, "If we contemplate the œon of the natural world of mankind, His life may be designated as the end of the world," is, in the first part, delusion, in the second part Christ's action - his great false principle definitely stated, and indeed the fourth paragraph on into the next page. The Notes developing do not render werdender. He refers to man conscious of himself, being conscious of God. God being mankind which is not brought to a complete thing till humanity is perfected as a whole; it is becoming God, is it not fully yet - developing is unfolding what it is.

Page 58. "The manifestation of God in the flesh" is not God manifest in the flesh. The whole wretched system of reconciliation is unfolded in the next page - it is Irvingite at-one-ment, and with original man, in whom desire after God as a need of heart already was. "Faith and prayer were in Abraham," "His call was an answer to them." Note the question is not of the spiritual development of man, but of the revelation of all that is in God, righteousness, sovereign love, and that to sinners, and so atonement and yet more.

Page 60. All this is confounding the craving of a want feeling emptiness, and positive desire after an object. For this the object must be known, and the subjective desire formed by it. Now the Heathen did not know God, "There is none that understandeth, none that seeketh after God." For all these men man may be developed, his salvation looked at, but God never as God, as such.

Page 72. Atonement is the Irvingite at-one-ment, thus: "Atonement is the central point of His being: in Him divinity and humanity, the spirit and nature, ideality and reality, Jew and Gentile, heaven and earth are re-united." Only he does not quite deny atonement as usually meant, as Irving. But it is the same vagueness as usual.

Page 75. "In His sufferings on the Cross is seen the reconciliation of the world, and by the light of this reconciliation a glory is shed upon all sorrow, upon all that is dark and terrible on earth, as being a dispensation of God's hidden kindness. Judgment is seen in its deep inward union with sin - annulling grace, and the world is illuminated to its very depths by the light of the divine government, glorifying itself in its victory over all evil." "His Spirit glorifies even the Cross, by revealing His victory in the resurrection." But in page 80, we do not know where the atonement is, "If then we contemplate the matter of the Gospel history in the impression it has left on Christian life, in the assurance of the manifestation of God, of the atonement, of victory over death, and of the heavenly glory of Christ and His people, the conclusion is irresistible, that in this definite and full memorial of the Christian Church we behold a sacred memorial to all mankind of the great days and great facts of their re-union with God."

178 Now as against the Strausses and rationalists this is all well to the point, and shows a personal sense of the real import of these things, and so far good, but looked at as doctrine what is "a memorial to all mankind of their re-union with God?" And with "the heavenly glory of His people?" Is it all ideal or real? The abstractedness of certain statements makes them absurd. What is the effect, as a reality, of what they never heard of? Abstract truths are often invaluable, but the way mankind is spoken of by Lange and others, translating into a fancied reality the ideal, makes all false. Thus, that "Christ died for all," was "a propitiation for the whole world," and all mankind thus interested in it, is of all moment, but when as some, Lutherans commonly, they make the world reconciled, all is fatally false. So God was in Christ reconciling, but the world, as so manifested, "knew Him not," and His own rejected Him. Make the abstract truth of His dealings to be an applied fact, all is false. So the Word of God was foretelling and typically symbolising the coming Christ, but when it is made a growing progress in the realising of the ideal, it is all totally false, and this is the system of these men. The reality of sin and of atonement disappears in mere vain fancies.

To be exact we must have the German, it is Versöhnung, and is merely "reconciliation," "at-one-ment." But the system is plain enough in Lange and in a host of others, and where run to ripeness produces the grossest fanatical heresies and evil, as in Mercersburg, Irvingism, a large class of Baptists in America, etc., at this time.

The utter unreality of the whole thing, and thereby the falseness of its ideality may be seen in pages 85, 86, "That line of theocratic Monotheism which forms the key-note in the history of the religious life of all mankind"; and, "The order, then, of the general records of the life of Jesus appears to be as follows: - (1) The New Testament; (2) the Old Testament; (3) the theocracy, especially the Christian Church; (4) the religious life of the human race." This alleged development of religious life in Heathenism, perfected in Christ and so spread forward on the Christian Church, is widespread from Germany as its centre. You may find it in M. Muller, Jowett, Lange, Dormer, Mercersburg writers, and numberless others - it is the fashion. It is simply this: God originally known, men did not like to retain in their knowledge, but the want of a God he could not get rid of; hence idolatry, etc., with a consciousness that could not be got rid of, an agnostos theos (unknown God). And this these foolish philosophers make progressive religious life towards Christ. Hence Lange makes Christianity and Talmudism the proof, but Talmudism is merely man's corruption of a divine, though an imperfect revelation - Christianity either a revelation or historically the corrupted result of what was revealed. And as to the four general records of Christ's life, in what was "the religious life of the heathen, a general record of Christ's life"? They did not know God, nor of course Christ. This the Word of God insists on, both as to intelligence and desire. It is confounding natural conscience and the craving void of a want of what they have not, with the revelation of that which meets that want. The revelation of God in Christ awakens the desire where it reaches the soul, and a man comes to himself, and, God being Light as well as Love, the conscience is brought into action according to what God is, and so is an Anknüpfungspunkt (as entering in, beginning point) for God in the soul; that conscience came by the Fall - the want by man's being driven out from God for whom he had been created in blessing.

179 And remark how revelation drops out of even Lange's idea of testimony. The Gospels are "the direct impression made by His wondrous personality." Now I do not doubt this, but the Holy Spirit and His operation on the disciples is excluded; He was to call to their remembrance whatsoever He had said unto them, and hence it was according to His holy wisdom and purpose. And as to heavenly things, which are the essence of Christianity, they could know nothing but as the Holy Ghost revealed them, see John 14: 26; chap. 15: 26, 27.

180 Page 90. We see the import of much of the idea of a preparatory life of Christ in the sentence "The life of Christ himself was gradually introduced by the consecrations of the lives of many, found in the line of the Old Testament genealogy of Mary." The whole of this is trash. As to "the eye fixed on heroes," "How can you believe who receive honour one of another"? That there were wants in human nature, which nothing meets but Christ, is true, but confounding Christ who meets them, with the want to be met or any false heroes who did not, is false. That there were God-appointed types of Christ in Israel where the revelation of God was is true. Of Scripture, as might be expected, he is very ignorant; I mean, as a scheme.

It is not as to the life of Jesus, His Person, that there is any difference as the rationalists pretend, but all that was dependent on Christ's being in heaven as to our present state in virtue of accomplished redemption, and as to the Church, as His Body, was wholly new. So, as to union of Jew and Gentile.

Then of inspiration we do not find a trace. As to the real difference of the Gospels he sees nothing but "what you must expect," page 100 et seq.

Criticism by the understanding is essentially false. Mere integrity of the text of course may be enquired into, but even here spiritual discernment bears a great part. But God, if it be a revelation, does not present Himself to be judged, but addresses Himself to conscience - judging man. See John 4, and the crisis was not to discern what it was by previous competency, but men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. The whole of this system is false, and connected with the first principles of it.

Page 115. "Jehovah commanded Abraham to offer up Isaac; he was willing to make the sacrifice; but, in the decisive moment, he understood the command as if Moloch had said to him: Slay Isaac." I do not understand if "in the decisive moment" be Lange's own; if so it is as poor as it is false.

Page 117. Note 3 shows the utter falseness of the system in its root, it declaring the incarnation was no humiliation. It was for Lange the result to which divine life in humanity grew - the perfect divine-human, the grand result. But this makes the whole system false, and totally so. It is true that humiliation directly and verbally applies to Him as man, "Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself." Still it is clear that the whole passage (and one sees now why these doctors deny it) is opposing His course to Adam's exalting himself, when a man, to be as God; whereas the Lord, when in Godhead form, emptied Himself (not of Godhead - that could never be), but of the status of Godhead as such, "the form of God," and became as Man a Servant. Now humiliation is properly coming down in the sphere in which one is, but laying aside His status as God is another and a much greater thing ekenose heauton (He emptied Himself). It was laying aside not the nature assuredly, but the state and condition in which Godhead naturally subsisted, and taking another, and in this sense was the greatest act of self-humiliation - a coming down from the status itself, not being lowly in it. It was a positive arrangement of God, "a body hast Thou prepared Me, . . . then said I, Lo, I come to do Thy will O God." Now it was not solely with a view to the redemption of mankind, for all God's glory in redemption was brought out by it, and our being in the same glory with His Son, John 13 and 17. Compare Proverbs 8 and Luke 2, the shepherds' chorus.

181 But He goes back as Man into the glory He had with the Father before the world was. When He had taken humanity it would have been as a failure, or temporary means to be thrown away as no longer of any use. When He took it He took it for ever, that He might bring many sons into the same glory - His metochoi (companions). But He is in the glory He had with the Father before the world was - but He is as Man in it, and such was the wondrous counsel of God that we should be conformed to the image of His Son - the Firstborn among many brethren, bear the image of the heavenly as we had of the earthly. And this is the true place of man with Christ in grace, not His union with us, which Scripture does not know, for "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone." Redemption is blotted out of Scripture by this system.

Page 122. Interpretation here is all mistaken and nonsense, but needs no remark but that Christ being recognised as "the eternal principle of the universe" is panchristism instead of pantheism, and shows indeed where the whole false principle is, and the mischievous evil of it, for He is in and identified there with it, with "this present evil world." He is its Creator, and it is fallen, i.e., man at its head, and so under the bondage of corruption. It is confounding Adam, the responsible man and head, the image of Him that was to come, with Christ the Creator and Saviour, Lord of all as Man.

182 Page 125. In every place revelation and inspiration is entirely ignored - the gospel history is "the reproduction of religious consciousness or impressions." I own the human side which I think a great blessing, but the theory is absurd, for what is it to me, as to the account of Christ, what Peter, or Mark, or Luke felt about it save as mere vessels to communicate on God's part what is to affect my mind? If there be a revelation at all it must be from God, and it is not the effect produced on Mark by the history I want, but the history itself from God.

Page 152 et seq. There cannot be a more complete ignoring of the operation of the Spirit of God than all this, of the passage John 14: 26. That the revelation of the Spirit in Christianity was connected with the personal appropriation of the things revealed is blessedly true and distinguishes it from Old Testament revelation, "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him," and the divinely thirsty soul comes to Christ and drinks; out of his belly flow rivers of living water. The New Testament says "us"; the Old Testament "Not unto themselves but unto us." But to confine it to this, excluding the positive action of the Holy Ghost according to John 14: 26, is to leave us to the profitless uncertainty of man's mind. The whole statement of Christ's sorrows, and the reply as to the difference of the Gospels is written in total ignorance of the truth; as total ignorance, though in a very different spirit, as those who made the difficulties. It is all miserably poor.

Page 181-2. We have here, in fact, true inspiration formally set aside. There are four factors (p. 181), but the Holy Ghost is not among them - "(1) direct remembrance; (2) tradition; (3) written memorabilia; (4) already existing gospels." Then in page 182, we have what he allows of the Spirit, i.e., its moral operation and effect of the Gospel in the heart of the writer, but none direct in the work - that is formally denied, i.e., the doctrine of inspiration of the older theology. It is a mere vital energy in the person. But the truth as to it is as old as John 14: 26; he is an infidel as to inspiration, nor has he one true idea of the import, character, or bearing of the different Gospels. It is emptiness exemplified though he is defending them against rationalists. He says that "the old theology forgets they were continually filled with the Spirit"; they were not always filled with the Spirit, though he always dwelt in them, and further were not always led by the Spirit to write Gospels. The human part is followed with little intelligence, and the divine part denied. But it shows also, what I have not doubted, that in these Fathers also there was no true faith in the Holy Ghost and Word. They represent the falling Church, not the Scriptures given by inspiration of God as our sure resource when the Church was fallen. Origen saw better than Lange's note on page 186. The whole structure of his reasoning is as prosy as it is weak.

183 In page 223, after an immense mass of confusion and weary misapprehension of the spiritual meaning and purpose of the Gospels, we have the evil root of the system brought out and connected with it: "Divine strength partially remains in man," etc., and "The life of Christ after the government of the incarnate Love of God in the depths of Israel's life," whatever that means, entered into the world to pervade it; and all this goes on to realise itself in the four forms in the Church and in the state (military among the rest!) and so in the world. It is deplorable nonsense.

Page 258 is an entire misapprehension of Christianity founded on the false basis of connecting us with an incarnate Christ without redemption. Hence Paul's ministry is set practically aside, and the entire rejection of the natural man.

Inspiration is equally ignored. I believe personal faith as to life and atonement has saved his own soul from the effect of all this, but the system is false, and fatally false in principle and in every part and detail. If "as the incarnate Word, Christianity was perfect from its very origin," redemption formed no part of it. The incarnate Word was perfect ideally and really as he says, and therefore He was rejected and abode alone till His death wrought redemption for believers. We find too what he calls receptivity that is the author's elect ones who from natural qualities received Christ.

So in page 259, we have the fabulous nonsense of the system fully brought out. It is not worth notice in presence of the false teaching, but more complete stuff than pages 259, 26I, could hardly be found. But "redeeming incarnation" is the doctrinal central point, and prophecies were "the beginning of His incarnation."

184 It is useless to go through all the imaginative nonsense of every page, but some points of positive error may be noticed.

Page 273. Here as everywhere, "receptivity" and "dispositions" before grace.

Page 278. The mixture of state and merging the positive communications and operations of the Holy Ghost in a state of suited feeling. Mary is "the climax of the old œon," and pureness the new. All the rest is fancy, but sets aside the true history. The thoroughly Christological view of life and of the world is the essence of error (page 279).

Page 281. Christ "could only have become a prophet by being born again"; this is the effect of making prophecy a state of life and soul, not inspiration - Balaam and Saul disprove it.

Page 282. The second paragraph embodies the full statement of the false principle. The mystical nonsense, but important as reaching the climax of humanity in Christ as human development, may be seen in page 285.

Page 286. "Religion is the first and most general form of the coming of Christ," not the effect of His quickening power. It is a Werden of Christ. All that follows states the false principle, as does what is said as to the Law. This too is connected with Christ taking the nature of man, not the person of a man.

Pages 288, 289. Again the denial of inspiration; and see the use of Isaiah's prophecy, also the abominable statement of the origin of the holiness of Christ's human nature. All that follows is mystical nonsense.

Page 295. Here again denial of inspiration, "Healthy poetry is transformed into a supernaturalistic formula"; this in speaking of Elizabeth's salutation of Mary; Luke 1: 43-45. Openly again in page 296, "We consider Mary the authority for the history of Jesus' childhood."

Page 299. "Christ saved and enriched the world." All is framed on the false system of the denial of the corn of wheat remaining alone till after it had died, and the denial of any real inspiration.

Page 303. He does not even give heed to the Greek text, it is panti to lao (to all the people) not "to all nations." See too the note: "It may here be, once for all, remarked that our view is, that in the realm of primitive Christianity there is for every Christological human disposition a pre-disposing revelation, for every revelation a corresponding human disposition. The God-man could not but be surrounded by a periphery of the God-manlike." See too the mystical notion of the state of the shepherds.

185 The difference of Matthew and Luke is slurred over unreconciled, and the history of the Magi as pure trash as ever I saw. The careful rejection of the real intervention of God, and the way all is made subjective is noticeable here as everywhere, and wearisome to repeat. The question as to Luke is on chap. 2: 39.

Pages 312, 313. Inspiration is here denied again, and true circumcision, as shown in Christ, made to be "civilization of nature."

Pages 314-318. All this is really deplorable stuff. I never read such nonsense in this line of things as this book. There is an absolute ignorance of the mind of God which is painful to read - fruit of ignoring God's action in the statements.

Page 322. Christ "the genius of the new human race"; speaking of Luke 2: 46, 47. So page 332, but the statement he founds on Colossians 1: 15 is wholly false, and the argument none at all, "Christ is the first-born of the new human race, or rather the prince - born of mankind, and of the world."

Pages 323-324. He cannot help introducing his own thoughts, degrading the Lord. He makes, too, by deifying man, everything natural unnatural, while God disappears. I doubt his soundness as to the divinity of the Lord. But the whole is a pack of childish stuff, He never "expressed an ideal of dwelling in the temple"; he degrades everything.

Pages 326-328. As to prophecy all is infidelity. It is not only stupid stuff, but absolutely and in its essence false - the contrary is positively taught in Scripture. There is no trace of apprehension of the divine mind; it is deplorable.

Pages 349-357. The account of John the baptist, though all hollow, needs no comment; that of Christ's baptism by him is false from beginning to end. The meaning of John's baptism was exactly the opposite of Christ's death - led people to receive Him and not put Him to death. If it signified Christ's atoning death in His case, it did so in the others, and they were all Saviours; it did not mean two things, though Christ be expressly excepted by John's remonstrance. And so far from its being to Christ's death, those who had received it were baptised over again to that; Acts 19. Christ threw Himself in with the godly remnant in their first right act, but the Spirit of God takes care to except Him from its meaning as to others. The whole thing is total ignorance of the truth. It was not the law, "the law and the prophets were until John," then the kingdom of heaven was preached.

186 The Lord's baptism by John was at the end of the account of his ministry, as related in the beginning of the Gospels. When he says "I knew Him not, but He who sent me," etc., it refers to John's personal knowledge of Christ in contrast with his prophetic testimony, not to his testimony dependent on the Holy Ghost coming on Him. That only showed He was the Baptiser with the Holy Ghost. He had given a prophetic testimony that He was the Lamb of God (John 1: 29), with the same distinction, verse 31. The testimony, verse 32, was subsequent. This made him competent to say through the prophetic revelation (v. 33) that He baptised with the Holy Ghost, and was Son of God. It is after this the exclamation "Behold the Lamb of God," whereon the disciples followed Christ; He had now publicly taken His place. There was already a previous testimony, verses 15 and 19 to verses 26 and 27 Then the next day that of verse 29. But the turning point of Christ s position is in verses 32-34. But this stands by itself undated, and was what John said after it had taken place, when Christ had left him thereafter.

The object of the chapter as to John is to give all his testimony as to Christ. And in this place the two capital points that He was the Lamb of God, and the Baptiser with the Holy Ghost. This last comes in as a distinct record. This took place after the Lord's baptising John; then the Lord was forty days in the wilderness. And the Lord went on acting, but not in public ministry, and John went on till cast into prison, and the Lord was in Jerusalem and went into Galilee, but did not definitely leave Judea and go into Galilee till John was cast into prison - taken up in Matthew as the next thing after His temptation because this was His public ministry in Israel, so Mark and Luke. This is only in John 4. John is more the personal history of the Lord, and then the giving of the Holy Ghost. Thus John 1: 32-34, though perfectly in its right place, comes in, as to chronology, parenthetically; verses 29, 33 served one the other as to date. As to the date of the event, verses 32-34 may have been, probably was, before verse 19.

187 It is wearisome to wade through pages without any truth at all. What stuff is in pages 357, 358! With the usual denial of inspiration though John says: "He that sent me," etc., "said to me"; and the usual ignorance consequently of the meaning of Scripture. Again what namby-pamby nonsense is page 359, besides just exactly a contradiction of the truth as to John. One phrase, however, I suspect to be misrepresented in the translation, for if not he contradicts himself; he says, speaking of John the baptist, "As the prophet of the Messiah he knew nothing officially of Jesus." It should be, I think, "knew nothing officially of Messiah as the Divine Prophet," i.e., yet.

Page 360 is the same stupid nonsense. How bright the simple record of Scripture is compared with all this! But this ignoring consciousness, now widely spread, is very bad.

Page 361. All this is not only mystical nonsense, but utterly false doctrine; he does not really believe Christ to be God or man; it is a kind of Sin - Being with divinity. It is the most complete folly and nonsense that could be thought of. I suppose He thought Himself possessed of divine intuition! Facts are mere nothings to him; but then besides the root principle of the abominable false doctrine is here too - a really antichristian scheme.

Pages 364-365. The unutterable stuff of this "Christological pantheism," here leads him to fatal error as to the divinity and Person of the Lord. His merging personality in life and life-consciousness, and this connected with inspiration, makes at once a mystical world of folly and false doctrine. The utter falseness into which it runs may be seen by a comparison of page 366 with the passages the sentences allude to. He confounds too temptation from without with lust within, and brings in gross moral ignorance from making Christ a kind of perfect soul of a totally corrupt world imperfectly from creation, while "ideality and reality met in completeness in the Person of Jesus." But was He as God before incarnation? What is "more tempted by sin than any other man"? "Tempted by sin" has indeed no sense; where is the sin the man is tempted by? He confounds trial and lusts. Man has sin that dwells in him; had Christ? All this is ignored. Compare James 1 and Romans 8.

What is "feeling the temptation of the world"? As its soul it may be understood - a divine fulness and an evil world in the same person, which is his dream, would produce this antagonism; but was the world Himself? He was "the principle of the creation of the world" (page 360), then "of humanity," then "of Theocracy," till last of all He became "the life principle of Jesus." The distinction of finiteness and definiteness is false, for what is defined is finite, though it may be used metaphorically. Did He create the world? Who was HE before the incarnation?

188 Page 370. The Cross is degraded by this system. In Gethsemane and Golgotha He was alone, save His Father and God.

Pages 373-374. You may get a specimen here of the man's mind. It helps to account for all the wild fancies in the book. If you want what is equally low and nonsensical, you have only to read the account of the temptation; the pandering to rationalism is deplorable. How much simpler to say, "He was tempted of the Devil!" So God says. How he appeared I do not know, which is indeed not the least consequence; the enquiry spoils its power.

Page 394. All this on "the plan of Jesus" is very bad. Spontaneous perfectness and uniform obedience is lost in a mass of poor ideas. It is really a wretched book with an idea of depth which is only human mind, and worshipping it, and missing wholly every divine apprehension of Christ. How different the divine simplicity of the Gospels! All this planning and arranging of Christ (pages 393-394) lowers Him in every way as a divine Person, as an obedient Man who lived by every word which came out of the mouth of God, and who walked in daylight so did not stumble. There is no true conception here of a single element of His path.

Pages 407-408. This is better than the rest, though an effort to beautify ideally what is much more beautiful simply. We must remember (page 410) that neither Lange nor any of these men ever go into that other world in which alone we are connected with Christ - the world into which He is risen Hence all the conclusions they draw are always and necessarily false; but this page shows great ignorance even of the Old Testament. The second note shows only how low he and such reasoning can go. But it is the effect of not seeing the judgment of man in the flesh, and Christ risen, and the new Creation. The third note (page 411) shows how totally he is unable to meet the difficulties by not seeing the coming of the Lord, and the Church's place. Most of the fourth note is very sad. It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.

189 Page 413 is a very clear statement of the evil principle of the book; so page 414 near the top. It is striking how God is left out even in miracles (page 418). It is "a new higher life stage." I do not think he really believes in the divinity of the Lord; i.e., that He is God; see pages 419 and 470, which convince me that he is not sound.

"The Son of Man anointed with the fulness of the Godhead." When? It confounds incarnation and what happened after His baptism by John - "Jesus and the Christ." I admit of course that He cast out devils by the Spirit of God, and that the Father who dwelt in Him did the works; but the question is His Person, the life realised in the Old Testament, the Angel of the Presence, etc. His becoming man was, as to form and status, a kenosis.

What is "incorporated with humanity"? He abode alone.

I suspect Selbstanschauung is mistranslated "actual vision," and misconceived, and conformed with what follows. At any rate the total falseness of the whole system is fully shown in the last sentence: "Christ Himself exhibits the completed mediation between the unconditioned omnipotence of God and finite conditioned nature - therefore the mediation of miracles." But the resurrection knocks all the argument on the head. No nature process would have raised Lazarus in his body. But the whole of this (page 422, last paragraph) is the false principle of the whole book. Alas! resurrection and all else succumbs to the pestiferous folly of this book. "Clairvoyance by its purity," "Demoniacal possession by its awakening foreboding power," all are a "mediation of the life power of Christ in miracles"; and if you wish to see a specimen of the quintessence of nonsense, you have only to read the pages on resurrection (page 426, etc.).

Page 432. He goes a step further here in uniting Christ and the world.

I read through, but the connection of effect in people with casting out demons, the previous susceptibility of souls for good, spiritualism, which has governed all Lange's thoughts, here the assertion that miracles were by the mediation of moral states, is as miserable as can well be conceived; that sin and Satan's power are connected, and chastisement may be found with a moral ground for it, no one denies. See note 1, page 446, for a specimen of trash.*

{*"We can represent to ourselves Christ's agency which changed water into wine in successive stages. From the history of somnambulism, it is known that in the high degrees of magnetic rapport, all the sensations and tastes of the magnetiser are repeated in the person who is psychically affected by him. Now at Cana there was no circle of magnetised persons assembled round the Lord, but a circle of souls whom His presence had raised to ecstasy in their festivity. What therefore in the department of magnetism may appear as a fact, might here recur with intensified power, and in a more vitalised form (as, for example, the constrained morbid clairvoyance of the somnambulist in the free healthy clairvoyance of the prophet). When therefore Christ calls forth in Himself the intuition (Anshauung) of wine with fresh creative power, when Christ drinks good wine, the others drink it also by means of the psychical connection. But the company that surrounds the Lord is not a mere circle of passive receptive beings. His companions are by faith brought into active harmony with Him. As the branches do not merely receive the sap which the vine conveys to them, but form the wine out of it and with it, so these festive guests, at the moment of their union with the Lord, infused all their plastic life power in order to complete the change. This is the first stage of the immediate operation of Christ. But the second goes into the elements of the beverage which they enjoy. And here we would call to mind the taste of magnetised water, only to indicate again how, in a higher life circle, the same phenomenon may be repeated in a higher key." - Pages 446-447.}

190 Think of the wedding guests become one as branches with the true Vine, with Christ as "principle of the world's transformation," and so the water becomes changed for them into wine! What I wonder at is how men of sense can have had such utterly childish nonsense translated; but this is a phenomenon to be noticed. It was a higher ethical ecstasy, a beautiful but extraordinary state of mind! They were transported by the power of Christ's Spirit from the beginning of the world to the ecstasy of the transformed world! That it was typical figure I believe, but: - I do not go further into the mass of mystical nonsense with which this morally weak man goes on, pages 451-453. The resurrection of the wicked has no place in his system. Miracle I have noticed elsewhere - exclusive of natural means it may be, but the true miraculousness lies in this when God's will, whether powers of nature are used or not, is the cause by immediate power, if without natural means, mediately or by those means of an effect which would not otherwise arise, is produced where natural agencies would not be in activity without God's will at the time - it is a miracle.

191 Pages 476-479. All is wrong here as to parables. Christ uses them both ways. I do not doubt that God formed the imagery of the world in a way adapted to moral use, but to make it part of the form of life is all false - a kind of Platonism.

Page 483. All the statements as to the parables of the kingdom are incorrect, and the interpretation erroneous, while his "susceptible souls" are mixed up with what is really contradictory through his dread of "fatalism," and denial of grace.

Page 491. Here, with the common misinterpretation, we have the evil principle of the whole book. I leave all the parabolic interpretation; but (page 512) we have the natural human heart identified with grace in Christ; in page 515 a difference in man's nature, in man's capacity for salvation - a horrible principle flowing from his rejection of grace. Whence comes it? See too page 523, where "kingdom of the Spirit

means" man's state spiritually by nature," "the mental gift"; so page 524, the unfaithful servant, where the principle comes forth in a frightful shape.

Prophetic Map

<42027E> 192

What I conceive is to be expected as to the map of Providence is very simple, and speedily to be shown. Turkey in Asia to come under the power of Russia, whereby it, in Scripture designation, becomes the king of the North, wherein Gog is identified with it, being brought up out of the North quarters. Turkey in Europe to be made, as far as Philip's power extended, Greece again and perhaps the courts of the Archipelago in Asia.

Austria would probably take hold of the Serbian and Bosnian provinces, which were not part of the Grecian kingdom. Persia will be under the influence of Russia. I have a strong notion of the severance, in a great measure, of the Babylonish provinces from the minor Asiatic, and to be independent of them, though not of the power of the king of the North; Persia may be amused with, but he will not have the possession of some of them, while England will merely offend him on the other side, but it is on the former part I rest as facts as stated.

I think Austria will be dismembered, and change its position.

It would appear to me thus (see Map). [42_n&c2c.png] GRAPHIC

In Ezekiel 38: 6 we have "of the north quarters, with all his bands" under Gog as their head, "chief prince" (or prince of Rosh) Meshech and Tubal.

In Daniel the land of Mizraim does not escape, and then "the Ethiopians shall be at his steps."

We have here then the two component parts of the Gentile portion of the great valley of Jehoshaphat.

It is my opinion that the French will carry the power of Antichrist overrunning the Mediterranean, and I should think Greece, i.e., carrying them along with them, and should find themselves at the point of division just in the Arabian country, i.e., the point of contact, Jerusalem and Judaea as the southerns always have as we know. Russia, the northern Scythian nations, I am disposed to think the Turks also, but do not feel sure the position they will hold (it is as possessing Turkey, i.e., in Asia particularly, they will be king of the North - but see the distinction put between the Assyrian and Gog) Persia or rather Media and Persia - Peres (see Daniel 5) will be in their train, and also, so I interpret, the eastern Ethiopia or rather eastern descendants of Ham, just as the western or southern descendants of Ham will be "at the steps" of Antichrist or the mature apostate body, for they will be judged as Antichrist, Gog and Magog, for coming against the Jews.

193 As to Poland, it seems at present reserved between the two for squeezing out the Jews as it were, as in fact, I believe, they are a mixed race not properly eastern, Scythian nor western; but Sarmatia, southern of internal Africa and China will have, I conceive, no proper part in this great catastrophe. They are included in other descriptions at least as far as I see.

It is to be observed that the Medians and Persians are different races, the former being Japhet, the latter Shem, i.e., Japhet and Shem bore a part in the taking and destruction of Belshazzar in his impiety, and I suspect Shem and Ham were in Babylon, i.e., Shem as ruler and Ham as the mass of the people. However that may be, we know that Ham possessed the southern parts of Euphrates, etc., i.e., we have Ham on the two rivers, the Nile and the great river, and separated by Shem, i.e., Judea formerly theirs in possession in Canaan. Esau and Ishmael holding Arabia - we thus readily account for the nations apparently the same in Antichrist's and Gog's army, in fact it is just what under the circumstances we might expect. I say "apparently," though Cush be mentioned in both; and there were undoubtedly descendants of Cush on both sides, for the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel, etc. So the word "Libyans" in Ezekiel is Phut, a son of Ham, and in Daniel Lebin; I should suppose the same as Lehabim the son of Mizraim.

The annexed form of map will make it plain.

The French, i.e., Western Europe under Antichrist, then will extend their conquests along the Mediterranean, Egypt not escaping. Gog, the chief prince of Magog, will possess himself of the rest of Shem, and therein of the eastern Cush and Phut. They meet naturally, the body of the Jews having come out of both, i.e., east and west (note, Uz was the son of Aram); specially Poland I suspect beginning it in Judea where the valley of Jehoshaphat and all related in Joel and Daniel take place, for there, it is manifest, all the powers of the world will be brought together as they have acted within the limits of God's known providence, and formed the subject of Scriptural statement as to kingdoms, i.e., powers in the world previous to the interposition and restoration of the four great kingdoms with "the power" of Ezekiel, acting as described in Joel; and of other types the Gog and Magog of Revelation includes all and runs over the whole extent of the inhabited earth, not the powers of the earth as in the formative system, for then the system is formed and it is re-action, in God's wisdom and permission, of judgment on those not truly of it, as I am led to believe.

194 The Noachic and Abrahamic earth under Providence so as to leave the will of man to act; see Genesis 10: 1, 2-4, and compare also Ezekiel 38: 13 and Genesis 10: 7. For Daniel 11 compare Genesis 10: 5, 13, also Noachic.

Note, Nimrod was the first gibbor-tzayid (mighty hunter) in the earth; gibbor-tzayid is "prowess," including craft, cunning, i.e., tzayid (hunting). It is an important characteristic word running through Scripture; compare 1 Peter 5: 3, Christ the Chief Shepherd. Compare also 1 Peter 2: 22, and Genesis 6: 4, 11.

There is not a more important chapter in Scripture as to the providence of God than Genesis 10. We may enquire the names of the cities - this city-building is of Cain; see also verse 22. Does not this make part of Asia Minor Shem, though there were Ludim, sons of Ham?

1 Samuel

<42028E> 195

1 Samuel 2

- 25. The arresting prayer in the way of God's governmental anger is not new, see 1 John 5: 16. It is refused in Jeremiah 7: 16; chap. 15: 1. Here the question is merely asked.

1 Samuel 6

Critics have made a difficulty in this chapter about fifty thousand in Beth-shemesh, but it is a blunder. "He smote the men of Beth-shemesh, but the fifty thousand were Be-am (of the people) - Israel, not Beth-shemesh.

1 Samuel 7

This chapter is practically the one which gives us Samuel's own service as judge.

1 Samuel 9

- 1. "Seer" is the term used in common parlance in Samuel's time for prophet; another word is used in Genesis 20.

1 Samuel 10

196  - 8. This is clearly a verse by itself. The previous verse ends the present directions for Saul, and his direction is to "do as occasion serves." Then comes a special direction in case of his going down to Gilgal; nor did he at once take up the kingdom, but went home.

- 9. This verse goes on with what had been closed in verse 7. He takes his place publicly as king only in chapter 11: 15, which goes on, Samuel considering his office as closed, to the end of chapter 12.

1 Samuel 13

- 1. What difficulty there is in this verse I cannot conceive. Saul "was the son of a year in his reign" (see margin) "and he reigned two years over Israel, and Saul chose," etc. "Saul reigned," is the identical expression used in Kings, "and . . . was . . . years old when he began to reign," but, if so, his age is left out - "He reigned (two) years" is the accompanying expression there. He must have been between thirty and forty, for Jonathan his son had command of troops; a younger son forty when Saul died.

- 8 refers clearly to chapter 10: 8.

- 19. "Hebrews" is the regular Gentile word. Abram is called "Abram the Hebrew"; see also Exodus 2: 6, 7, 11, 13, so chapter 1: 16 and 19. There cannot be a doubt that it was the name used by strangers - "the children of Eber."

1 Samuel 21

- 13. Ey-tiv (it please) used for seeming good with nothing to follow.

1 Samuel 23

Note particularly the difference of the strain of David in his last words, and the song when he was delivered from all his enemies and from the hand of Saul - when the Lord had been with him in all his difficulties and trials, and what man was in the enjoyment of all the results of this deliverance and exaltation by the Lord's blessing. The end of blessing here is to recount the failure of man - of trial, the abundant fidelity of the Lord. This is true in many other instances, yet the covenant remains firm and assured; but triumph over sorrow, humiliation in the results of blessing over man in blessing, read again the end of 1 Samuel 2. This is a most important and humbling consideration. How completely the case with Paul, i.e., the Church, but it is in the intimacy of confidence we can treat it - not justify those who are the occasion of it.

2 Samuel

<42029E> 197

2 Samuel 7

- 23. "For you"; one MS. (182), Kennicott, has "for them." I should have suspected l'cha "for thee," "for thyself."

2 Samuel 21

- 1. There is no "then"; the only note of time is "In the days of David."

- 15. The war was rather on the part of Israel against the Philistines. The war was against the Philistines.

2 Samuel 22

- 24. Not iniquity, i.e., indwelling sin, but that which would have been iniquity for him if he had done it; this is the true sense of it.

2 Samuel 23

- 8. It is to be noted that these statements contain no complete recital of the facts, but merely what redounds to the glory of the person named in what happened. "Whom he slew" is a mis-translation; the stood) against eight hundred who were slain at one time. I have some doubt if 474, a good M.S., Kennicott, be not right, "The wise man"; however he is called in 1 Chronicles 11: 11, "Son of Hachmoni"* (margin).

{*"Hachmoni" is "wise" or "a wise man."}

- 11. Shammah is omitted in Chronicles, and his deeds are ascribed to Dodo's son, Eleazar. They were very likely both there, but I should doubt it was the same occasion. This is a foraging expedition for plunder; 1 Chronicles hardly so. The language, however, is nearly identical.

Except Abishai and Shammah, the first twelve were the monthly captains.

198 2 Samuel 24

- 6. Dan-jaan. Dan is evidently not Laish; it was a name known long before, as may be seen by Jor-dan. This is confirmed by the comparison of Deuteronomy 34: 1 with this verse, where we see Dan-jaan was above Gilead, "All the land of Gilead unto Dan." Joshua 19: 47 is evidently an insertion subsequently to complete the history, verses 46 and 48 very apparently coalesce when it is left out. It is one of the proofs of the careful revision of the records under the prophets.

- 9. In Chronicles 1,100,000, but there all the males of Israel - grown men. Here Judah on the contrary given as a whole in round numbers; here formed men of war. In Chronicles I suppose more exactly. Note here the 800,000 were Ish-khayil (valiant men), the sum of the male population was greater, i.e., 1,100,000 without Benjamin and Levi. The men of Judah are taken in general here, they are not given as Ish-khayil; hence in round numbers. In 1 Chronicles 21: 5, the men of Israel are not the Ish-khayil. If this word be sought with a concordance, its force is very plain, as Judges 3: 29; 1 Samuel 31: 12; so with B'ney (sons of, i.e., sons of strength, soldiers).

NOTE. - We say "Come"; the Jewish remnant "How long?" So the saints when speaking of vengeance and judgment. Christ to Israel, man on earth, "How long shall I be with you?" How we see the difference everywhere!

The Last Days

J. N. Darby.

<43001E> 1

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

The term "Last Days" is a word not without importance, as common to both the Old and New Testament - very common in the Old. There it is constantly accompanied with promises. "The mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains"; He would "pour out his Spirit on all flesh"; this last, however, though quoted by Peter as in the last days, is in Joel, "thereupon" or "afterwards," chap. 2: 28. Still it is quite the last days, the Northern army being removed. Still it would be a time of trouble to break them down.

The Prophets having spoken to Israel or Judah, in the last of these days, i.e., in the patient ways of God when really responsible Israel had failed, God spoke in the Son - the Law and Prophets had been till John. Then the Kingdom was announced as to be set up. Thus the last days set in. Till Israel rejected Christ in the world, and even till the glorified Christ was rejected, His return was promised - the closing in in blessing was held out as possible - the Spirit was poured out - Messiah would have come back; so that this was "The last days."

For a moment the blessing and power then eclipsed dispensations, but this soon failed, and prophecies of the last days, as they now concerned the Church, came to it in its turn. Then we read, "In the last days perilous times shall come" (2 Tim. 3); "In the last times some shall depart from the faith" (1 Tim. 4); "In the last days there shall be scoffers" (2 Peter 3); so Jude 18. "In the last time" (1 John 2: 18) is more definite - Antichrist characterises the last time, and there were many already. Antichrist denied the Father and the Son - rejected, or was apostate, from Christianity - and the liar denied Jesus to be the Christ.

There was Christian apostasy and Jewish unbelief, but there are, remark, no promises connected with the testimony of the last days as to Christianity. That day - the day of the Lord - will be darkness and judgment for the Jews - it is "The day of Jacob's trouble," but he will be delivered out of it. Hence there are blessings and promises which accompany it, as we have seen, and both temporal and spiritual ones, but there is no restoration of Christendom. The Remnant of course will go up to heaven to meet the Lord, but the system is for ever cut off and not restored at all - Israel is by grace, though not by the old covenant.

2 What is given us, however, of the last days, or time, in Christianity is its character, not its judgment. The "last time" is denoted by open rejection and apostasy - John giving its ultimate form, "They went out from us." The "last days" then is "the form of Godliness, denying the power," "turning the grace of God into lasciviousness," "scoffing at the Lord's coming."

The "latter times" in 1 Timothy 4 is a more general expression, and not of the final character of evil in the Church, though it may continue to the end - it is husterois kairois (latter times). Though husteros compared with others, is "the last," yet both eschatos (last, uttermost) and hemera (day) are more defined and precise. But the main point is, that no blessing is spoken of as accompanying them.

Numbers 24: 14 and Deuteronomy 4: 30, clear up the expression. Genesis 49 gives the whole history of Israel, as a result, to the end. Ah-Ghareeth Yohm (in the latter days) is the constant expression in the Old Testament; in Jeremiah 23: 20 it is the same.

______

In a certain sense, i.e., as regards man's position here below, the Law or Word creates the way, as noted as to Christ in John; for there is no way in a fallen world whose whole state, in relation to God, is evil. But He can show a new way, which is the expression of His will, in those that are His in this world. It will make them strangers, and so it always has, as we see in the Psalms, and from Abel on. The difference of Psalm 119 and Christ is, that that is a way for the world in it, looking for deliverance - Christ, a heavenly way out of it.

The New Songs

J. N. Darby.

<43003E> 277

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

There is, in a certain sense, no interval between the sufferings of Christ, all His life, and His death. I do not speak at all here of the expiation accomplished by His death, but His suffering as a righteous Man abandoned. Expiation is the efficacy of that death in the sight of God, but that is another subject. In the Psalms we see constantly the righteous Man suffering, and apparently abandoned. Hence, to commit oneself into God's hand, because He has redeemed us, may be during life, indeed is always, yet may be for His taking that Spirit to Him. Christ evidently has refound His Father's countenance and place, at least His confidence, when He said, however deep His suffering, "Into thy hands I commend my Spirit." Death may demand resurrection as proof of the answer to that. But Christ, having passed through death and its bitterness, is the proof to those who walk, surrounded by evil and darkness, that they may commit their souls to God; compare 1 Peter 4: 17, and following, and indeed all from verse 12. And in the end of Psalm 31 it seems, evidently, present deliverance, but it might, as in Christ's case, go on to death. Psalm 32 seems to give the confession of Israel as such, and hence the new song of Psalm 33 is the earthly blessing which follows it; and thus the new song on earth of the people redeemed for the earth in general. This is the general principle.

It would appear from Zechariah 12, that they must "look on" "see" Christ first, but it is evident also from Matthew 24, and several Psalms, there will be preparation for this. Naturally, the meek would inherit the earth, but sooner or later, the meek One having been rejected, they must take their portion with and in the confession of the sin of the rejection of Him. But here it is not union with, and knowledge of the Son of God, one with, and at the right hand of the Father, as we by the unity of the Holy Ghost "sent down from heaven, according to my gospel" - and the mystery hidden from ages, but a Jewish Remnant who favour His righteous cause. Isaiah 53, Zechariah 13, and perhaps Psalm 110 will remain unaccomplished in the hearts of the Jews till He appears.

In Psalm 40 it is still the righteous obedient Man, only He identifies Himself with the sin of the nation, displacing at the same time all their sacrifices, and putting His obedience in the place of them; but He does not go here to the efficacy of His death - we can do that through God's teaching by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Here the new song is in Israel's mouth, as identified with Christ - "In my mouth," after the poor man had cried, "even thanksgiving unto our God." But the effect of His deliverance, in like trouble, was to make these Jews trust in Jehovah; compare the end of Isaiah 50. The effect of Christ's deliverance being known (they would say at least "This was a righteous Man"), the promise to the confession "Thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel," compare John 1 and Psalm 32, is, that from thence he should "See the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man" - here of course. The glory we beheld "As of the only begotten of the Father" (compare Matthew 16 and 17) is another thing, and so indeed is the "Taker away of the sin of the world," "the baptiser with the Holy Ghost," on whom He descending enabled to bear record that He was the "Son of God," though these two are different also, so that in John 1 we have the Son of God presented in three points of view - to the Church, "We beheld," etc. - to the world, and to Israel. This last, the first principle of public testimony, as Romans 1, though not rising up to the privilege of the Church ("We beheld," etc.) will be accomplished when the First begotten, rightful Heir of all is brought again into the world. I say "accomplished," for He has title to claim it now, see Psalm 2; and see also Acts 3, Peter's address to Israel, where he presents Christ as Son thus; compare Acts 13: 33, 34, already cited before; compare also Acts 4: 27, 30, which is in the same connection.

278 Jehovah being about to introduce the Only begotten into the world (compare Psalm 97 and Hebrews 1), Israel having been already finally visited in grace, all the earth is summoned to join in the new song which suits it. The summons is in Israel, but extends to all the kindreds of the people to come up to Jerusalem in Psalm 97. The First begotten is introduced to the confusion of all idols - Zion heard of these judgments (for they are not executed, it would seem, in her), and the new song is invited to be sung in Israel, consequent on the judgment of Jehovah's enemies by Christ. The difference of the songs is, one is deliverance, the other the establishment of judgment and justice - the Lord being "Great in Zion." It is all based, after all, on the identification of Messiah with Israel in Psalm 91; Psalm 92 then identifies the wicked, Jehovah's enemies, and this righteous Man who had made the Lord His refuge. Psalm 100 introduces the heathen; Psalm 101 governs the house; Psalm 102 explains the glory of Messiah's Person, and His cutting off. No truth seems to be wanting to Israel in that day, unless it be the Sonship of Christ as one with the Father. He is recognised as Jehovah; and hence unity in one body by one Spirit with Him, that is the Church's position - but all truth out of unity seems laid before them.

279 Psalm 144 is the claim of Messiah to judge, in making war, man and the enemies of Israel, thus introducing the new song of His triumphal glory in Israel, not as coming from above for the world to rejoice, though the results coincide or concur in the same epoch of blessing.

In result these new songs are Messiah's new glory upon earth, which suppose trial or enemies. And they identify themselves with Him as a righteous Sufferer, or He with them. It is a matter of identification, taking place with them and the owning Him in this place, and, thereon, manifested deliverance, and either, and both having trusted in Jehovah who consequently has delivered.

In the new song in Revelation it is quite another thing. The only new songs in Revelation are in chapters 5 and 14. It would seem the speciality of redemption for the heavens, and for the earth. Indeed it is the only time singing is spoken of - those out of great tribulation ascribe salvation. In chapter 4 there are praises, but it is not said "they sing." In the Old Testament they sing a new song; Psalms 33: 3; 40: 3; 96: 1; 98: 1, and 149: 1.

In Revelation 4 there is the divine intelligence of the Church to all the counsels of God, and the ground of them in the efficacy of Christ's redemption, and the Lamb is above in heaven. In chapter 14 the new song is not given at all - in chapter 5 it is. Being in the fulness of the blessing themselves, as to redemption and intelligence of it, though not yet in the results in the kingdom down here, they understand why the Lamb should be glorified, and that in reference to what He had done for them; this places them utterly debtors, but in a very exalted place. They say "Thou art worthy, for." It was no Jewish association of blessing, however great. It was of God, sovereign in grace, in that He had "bought for himself," such was the worthiness of the Lamb, "from every tongue and nation." The worthiness was in the Lamb, for there was no association of promise or any other.

280 Now in the Psalms, whatever their knowledge of Christ, they are Jews, and look for the deliverance of Jehovah. It is confidence in Jehovah as, after all, not forgetting His people; and Christ was the proof - "This poor man cried and was delivered out of all his distress." He may have died as others who hoped a better resurrection, as Abraham offered Isaac, but "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." What Christ had passed through warranted the faithful in trusting in Jehovah as Jehovah. But then the 144,000, though doubtless trusting in the Lord, were in neither of the cases properly, i.e., neither in mere earthly nor the full heavenly blessing. The song is sung not by those who were around the throne (en kuklo tou thronou) nor on earth; it is sung "before the throne." It is not yet the King on Mount Zion, and the glory of the Lord filling, or now to fill the earth - they are bought from the earth, as first-fruits. They are connected with the Lamb, but not with the Lamb on the Throne, no more than with the King set on Zion, and owned with the Lamb on Mount Zion. It was, as it were, between the two. The song is for them alone to learn. Further, they are first-fruits to God and the Lamb, i.e., from the earth, and they had not their Father's name but His on their foreheads; as to us, He is gone to His Father and our Father, His God and our God. It is not here union spoken of exactly, but concomitancy, companionship. I suppose they have owned Him as the Son of God, like Nathaniel, but had not received, themselves, the Holy Ghost as the Spirit of adoption and unity. It is evident they have owned Christ, before He appears as Son of Man crowned; they are identified with the Lamb, but, as we have seen, on Mount Zion. This difference of the Psalms is of the last importance. It goes in testimony even to the recognition of the Son, but never at all into the place of the Church, and here a reading, too, of the first chapter of the Apocalypse is important - "The testimony of Jesus, what he saw," not "and what He saw." Thus "the Spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus."

Note, standing in testimony "before the God of the earth" does not hinder the sustaining by the hope of resurrection coming in, though it be not the place of the Church properly so called, i.e., as sitting "in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Christ stood before the God of the earth, evidently all His life, yet the hope of resurrection was in His soul, and this is what we find in the first Book of Psalms. The Faithful stands before the God of the earth in Psalm 34 and many others, yet He is sustained in the difficulties, in which faithfulness sets His life, by the hope of resurrection, and of course His hope answered where need is. A fortiori this is true when, as Paul, they were occupied with the heavenly calling, and might suffer; see 2 Corinthians 1, where this is brought out in its full extent, but it is true even of those who stand before the God of the earth. Note, the result may be to be "caught up to heaven" if killed.

281 Further, in the ministry of Peter, and the Church at Jerusalem, have we not the proof that the heavenly power of Christ may descend to the ministration of the kingdom of heaven upon earth (Christ's return is proposed to the Jews) as was the case up to Stephen's death? the identity of the Church with Christ in heaven not being yet the subject of ministry. I have sometimes thought that perhaps the 144,000 on Mount Zion might be raised, though not in the heavenly condition; this would not touch the heavenly hope of sufferers under the beast - they are redeemed from the earth, the condition of Christ during the forty days. For this purpose the special place of the ark on Mount Zion, 1 Chronicles 16 must be studied, when the tabernacle and service were at Gibeon; and then, note particularly, the Psalms there connected. Israel, the end of His demands, mindful of His covenant and promises to Abraham - then the earth summoned according to Psalm 96, and note the place we have seen that in. The Lord was not yet between the cherubim. Then the olam chasido (His mercy for ever) and the prayer for the bringing back of all the scattered; and that is what Christ will do after He appears in glory, see Matthew 24, according to Psalm 106, and then the closing blessing. But this must be studied; and note the phrase at the end of chapter.

It is evident to me that Matthew 24 is properly what happens at the end in Judea - the beginning of sorrows and the great tribulation consequent on the abomination of desolation. There may have been analogous circumstances after the Lord's death, and I doubt not were, which in effect began the sorrows of the Jewish people, but the regular continuous history is at the latter day. I also see that Luke 21, on the other hand, gives the general account of what would historically arrive to them as a people.

A Summary of Psalms

J. N. Darby.

<43004E> 282

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

Psalm 1. The upright, godly, separated Man.

Psalm 2. It is against the Anointed the kings stand up. As set in Zion, He seeth; He breaks the nations in pieces.

Psalm 3. Briefly - in distress, heard out of His holy hill.

Psalm 4. State of confusion, yet the godly chosen.

Psalm 5. Distinguishes the righteous and wicked.

Psalm 6. The deep sorrow of the righteous.

Psalm 7. Again the cry of the righteous Remnant.

Psalm 8. Man, in Messiah, set up by Jehovah.

Psalm 9. The joy of Messiah - the Remnant, in the deliverance. "The Lord dwells in Zion."

Psalm 10. The wicked judged in the Land.

Psalm 11. The righteous are tried; but "the Lord's throne is in heaven," "He is in holy temple," if all the foundations be cast down.

Psalm 12. The generation wholly wicked, but the poor kept.

Psalm 13. The cry, not to be forgotten, answered.

Psalm 14. All men judged, when the atheism of man is proved; but the Lord the refuge of the poor.

Psalm 15. (Jewish) practical righteousness now the standard; such would go into the hill of the Lord.

Psalm 16. Messiah identifies Himself with the saints, and trusts in resurrection.

Psalm 17. Righteous in life, He cries against the men of this world, but has His portion, in resurrection, in God's presence.

Psalm 18. Known in distress from the beginning, and delivered, Israel finds in David, and his seed, the joy of deliverance.

Psalm 19. Revelation of God by Creation and the Law.

Psalm 20. Messiah, seen in trouble; the desire of the faithful for Him; His deliverance, and the King, owned.

Psalm 21. Their joy in the glory of the King answers to Psalm 20; He shall judge.

Psalm 22. Messiah's view of this, His real suffering, under the forsaking. Risen, He gathers the congregation, and the great congregation, and praises among them. The kingdom then is the Lord's. "A seed shall serve him," etc. "They shall come and declare his righteousness."

Psalm 23. What was the Messiah's, is the comfort of His people in the latter day - this, even if death's shadow be on them.

283 Psalm 24. The earth being the Lord's, who are to go into the holy hill? Christ ascends there, as "King of glory," and "the Lord, mighty in battle."

Psalm 25. The passages of the returning heart of Israel to the Lord in their distress.

Psalm 26. The Remnant claim separation from the ungodly.

Psalm 27. The Lord, Light and Salvation - and fear of none; therefore, desire of the Temple for the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire.

Dependence founded on promise.

Psalm 28. Cry, to be not drawn away with the wicked. Confidence in the Lord as strength of Anointed.

Psalm 29. Mighty called to be humble, because of the Lord's voice.

Psalm 30. Entire dependence, not on blessing but on the Lord. Now, thereafter, blessed that they may praise.

Psalm 31. Messiah, so Remnant, in the wicked's net, trusts in the Lord for deliverance. They seemed cut off - but the Lord, when He cried!

Psalm 32. Transgression forgiven.

Psalm 33. Celebration of praise. The nation blessed whose God is the Lord.

Psalm 34. Constant blessing assured through the deliverance of Christ, the poor Man. They begin to teach their children. Note, the deliverance of Christ is here the celebration of Israel, i.e., of the saints there.

Psalm 35. The Lord called on to plead the cause of the Remnant against those that persecute them - some special enemy. They had sorrowed for them, yet they were now against them. Perhaps this is Antichrist; the Jews chasing the now-fleeing Remnant, as in Revelation 11.

Psalm 36. The enemy is now cast down.

Psalm 37. Not to fret against the prosperity of the wicked in that day, for judgment is near, and the meek shall inherit the earth - such as be blessed of the Lord - the righteous, for the Lord helps them.

Psalm 38. The confession of sin, when evil had power over them, i.e., evil from the Lord by trial; and trusting to the Lord to justify, and that against the power of the enemy.

Psalm 39. The confession of discipline and correction. This Psalm and Psalm 38 are under evil owned as the effect of sin.

Psalm 40. Deliverance must be, for Christ is concerned in it. His obedience takes the place of all sacrifice.

Psalm 41. Blessed is he that recognises Him, as Christ confesses the sin, and so righteously relieves. Here they charge the sin, and despise Him for His humiliation, and that, even those next Him. But He is raised up to requite them, and Israel's God is blessed for ever.

Psalm 42. The Remnant, who had gone to the House of God with the rest, are now far away. Being Jews, as acting as such in worship, they are now fled from the persecution and reproach of enemies.

Psalm 43. From a nation (the Jews themselves) now judged, lo chasid (not mercied). All this is hope in God.

Psalm 44. They remember old mercies - have kept the covenant, though smitten to the lowest, killed and accounted as sheep, for the Lord's sake. Therefore, note, the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Yet they are there as Jews; this is a very important point. If not the Bride, the Lamb's wife, they must at least reign with Christ; see 1 Peter 2, 3, 4. Moreover, they clearly suffer with Christ, for they (for the Lord's sake) are killed. This was Christ's suffering, yet they have Jewish hopes and Jewish thoughts.

Psalm 45. Messiah is brought forth royally. His arrows are in the heart of the King's enemies. Jerusalem is presented to Him.

Psalm 46. The "God of Jacob" is the God of the Remnant.

Psalm 47. The peoples called in, on the exaltation of Jacob. God is King of all the earth. God reigns over the heathen.

Psalm 48. What they have heard, they have seen - the kings arrested before Zion, for God is there, and their God for ever and ever - death not for ever and ever. It is the Lord here - "the City of the Lord of hosts"; compare Psalm 10: 16, for the Land. All this is Jewish.

Psalm 49. For all the world really, glory founded in the resurrection, because of death - all human glory and expectation, folly.

Psalm 50. This is an important Psalm. El Elohim, Jehovah has spoken called the earth. God hath shined out of Zion. God pleads with His people. If the nation be lo chasid (not mercied) there are chasidim (holy ones); and these have made a covenant with sacrifice. The heavens declare His righteousness, and the earth is called up that He may judge His people. This the Lord does, not for failures in sacrifices, but moral wrong. But the chasidim, for all that, have made a covenant with sacrifices; are these not Jews? (v. 3). "Our God," is the Remnant; therefore they recognise the covenant by sacrifice. So in verse 4, God has got to the earth. It seems surely Jewish. However, in verse 6, God owns, note, Israel as His people, but judges it as such, quod nota, for it is another important element. The two first verses is the great fact, but from verse 3, it is the prophetic anticipation of the Remnant. "Calling the earth" is the topic. The Remnant are sure He will come and call those who have made a covenant with sacrifice, and yet not call in question the neglect of sacrifices. As to the chasidim, their God was not yet come.

Psalm 51. Confession of sin and of blood-guiltiness, not resting in sacrifices. Jewish desires for the re-establishment of Jerusalem.

Psalm 52. The judgment of the boaster, the mighty man. The poor, in his sorrow, trusts in the mercy of God for ever.

Psalm 53. Things in a mixed state. Israel's salvation is not come out of Zion, but God hath scattered the bones of him that camped against her. All men are judged corrupt.

Psalm 54. Still in the trouble, though delivered in detail.

Psalm 55. In the city the worst evil appears. Their friendly companion has turned against them. He has broken his covenant. This seems, specially, Antichrist, though evil was in them of the city also.

Psalm 56. Still in the trouble, they seek their life - a wandering Remnant.

Psalm 57. The same calamities, but with sight of the glory, and God, his refuge.

Psalm 58. The pride of men set aside - the wickedness of man set aside by judgment.

Psalm 59. The heathen judged in spirit, by recurring to the God of Israel, though surrounding the City - not slain at once, but consumed.

Psalm 60. After all these troubles, they lay hold on the territory of the Land and Edom.

Psalm 61. The Remnant, from the end of the Land, have their refuge in God who secures Messiah's glory.

Psalm 62. The opposition to Messiah, I suppose, of Jews, for they bless with their mouth. All men are vanity, but God is the refuge of the faithful one. Save Psalm 59, these are all addressed to God, so not in Lordship-blessing, i.e., from Psalm 51, the confession of iniquity which begins afresh. From Psalm 45, save the address in Psalm 49 to the world, to Psalm 50, it is "the Lord." Note in Psalm 51 the confession of blood-guiltiness. It would seem to be before the blessing of Jerusalem and Zion; see also Matthew 23.

Psalm 63. The craving of the driven out Remnant after God, according to the Spirit of Christ, specially of Christ Himself. "The King shall rejoice in God" - it is impossible to understand these Psalms, without bringing in Christ and the Remnant.

Psalm 64. Here in presence, still, of the enemy, but not in the wilderness among the apostate atheists, who shall see them. It is still "God," for covenant-blessings are not yet enjoyed. Note, Psalm 51 having owned the bloodguiltiness, all the sorrow is now appealed against as the enemy's work, Christ's Spirit taking part with them, as identified with them, and they in His perfectness - His death being cleansing then, not guilt.

Psalm 65. Puts everything in its place. The purpose of God, and heart of Israel in Zion - all coming there for worship. Iniquities - forgiveness. Blessedness in the man whom God chooses. Judgment, the way of deliverance. Blessing to the earth. It is still "God." Psalms 42-49 are Korah; Psalm 50 is Asaph; from Psalm 51 it is David. Hence "I," or "Christ," with them. The others "us," save Psalms 42, 43, which are specially significant, and Christ with them in the wilderness also, i.e., identifying Himself with them.

Psalm 66. By Israel's example, the peoples called to praise Israel's God, from God's works in them from the beginning, but specially His latter-day works; and this, even as to the Flood being dried, for so He shall do.

Psalm 67. God blessing Israel, His saving health is known among all nations, for He governs righteously. The earth yields her increase.

Psalm 68. God arises before the ark. It is the song of deliverance from Egypt, through the exaltation of Christ, to the proper blessing of Jerusalem restored. The kingdoms owning them - hostile strength laid low. This closes, again. We have, then, the ground of the exaltation of Christ, as Solomon, founded on His appeal to God in His humiliation, for that is the ground of glory.

Psalm 69. Christ pleading His sorrow, makes it the ground of judgment on the nation, comfort to the humble; "For God will save Zion . . . and the seed of his servants shall inherit it."

Psalm 70. In Psalm 69, was what the Jews were, or rather Christ's place among them. Here, they seek after His soul.

Psalm 71. This was Absalom, or, perhaps, Sheba the son of Bichri, or Adonijah himself - the close of Israel's history. God's power was to be shown in him to that generation. It gives place to the full glory of Solomon, for this was the end of the exercise and sorrow.

It is clear from all this that Israel shall be owned, in sorrow and humiliation, before they are fully delivered and set right. But the desires of Christ are not ended (in connection with Israel) till the Solomon-glory.

Psalm 72. The purport and application of this Psalm is obvious, so as not to need comment. It is, however, one of the few which apply to our Lord in His manifestation of righteousness and glory; and it is the end of His desires as Christ. But we must notice only here that, as of others, it is properly and exclusively Jewish, speaking of the bounds of His dominions; and here describes succinctly, but very clearly and fully, the nature and extent of His dominion, which is important. It is the work too of the Lord God, the God of Israel, and relates as to blessings by Christ, so to the whole earth being filled with His glory, as the desire of David. Verse 15 marks a character of millennial glory, properly, as I conceive, human (not like angels, isangeloi) i.e., as to the desire, the prophetic expression of, and Jewish.

Psalm 73. This Psalm is the voice of one of the pious Remnant, particularly as expressed during the latter day - the perception, by the teaching of God, of the explication of the mystery of the "Times of the Gentiles." It has its full development in the last-day inroads of Gog, and is the prophetic answer to the enigma of that. I think, it includes, however, the ungodly selfish Jews.

It appears to me that Psalm 72 ends, as it were, a corporate and definite section of this Book, making a complete libellum in itself (as Revelation to chapter 11) going through the character, promotion of Messiah - His humiliation, mysterious humiliation - His identification with the Jewish people in Spirit, as in the flesh - His exaltation also, in that respect, as Solomon - including the various results and consequences, the relationship in which it placed Him to the world - the repentance of the Jewish people - their thoughts concerning Him - the manifestation of principles to the world by it - and all that has been developed in the previous Psalms. Here we come to the feelings of the individual Remnant, as a people not formed indeed, yet as a people, and therefore in force, and as individual it begins with this prophetic perception, and testimony, as an explanatory verse, "Truly God is good unto Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart," with the secondary subject, "But, as for me, my feet were well-nigh slipped," for he was tried, or tempted to join the world, etc. This becomes the thesis, then, here, and will explain the subsequent Psalms, opening out afterwards, as we shall see, into various important themes, less connected but all founded on the doctrine and revelation of the previous part.

Psalm 91. Note verse 1 is the thesis. "He who dwells in the secret place" - the found covenant, the hiding place, "of the Most High, the Possessor" - he who knows Him in this title, "shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty" - the protection of inevitable power. Helion, the Most High, shall prove Shad-dai (Almighty) to him. What "secret place"? Christ, even Jesus, speaks with His secret knowledge, and says, "I will say of Jehovah, he is my refuge and my fortress," I will take the God of the Jews (knowing Him in His people) for my God. "Most High," and "Shad-dai" were the names in which Elohim was revealed to Abraham. "God," say they, "is Jehovah." "Jehovah Elohey-Israel" was His name. Christ declares He will take the God of the Jews for His God - speaking, of course, as a faithful Man, righteously, upon earth. From verse 3 to 8, the Spirit testifies of what He shall be to Him. It is a right solution, or loving solution of the question. The perception of God, in His people, is faith - as of God in Christ; No man hath seen Him, save He who is of God - even Jesus; compare Psalm 94 and Rahab. This then is the fruit, as it were, of the Spirit. Then the solution of the truth by the thankful declaration of the Spirit in the Jews - God's people - "Jehovah is the Most High." "Because thou hast made Jehovah, who is the Most High" - cast in Thy lot with His despised people - hast owned Him in them, been therein true to Him, not looking to man's greatness, but been in the essence of the truth. "There shall no evil befall thee," etc. Verse 14 is the love and answer of the Father, as Jehovah. The Father's answer and name of power.

Psalm 115: 16. Compare this verse with Deuteronomy 10: 14, 15. Who are "the people that fear the Lord" (v. 13); and the whole purport of the Psalm? See also Genesis 14: 19; also Psalm 24.

Psalm 119: 118. She-ker (falsehood) vanity - false, in the sense of having no reality. Tar-mi-tham (their deceit) - false, in the sense of deceiving another.

Psalm 133: 3. "Life" is here khay-yim ad ha-olam (life for ever). This is, I suppose, blessing on the earth, but must be further enquired into. In Psalm 21: 5 Christ is o-lam va-ed (for ever and ever); in Daniel 12: 2, I'khay-ey o-lam (to everlasting life).

The Proverbs

J. N. Darby.

<43005E> 290

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

It gives a very distinct character to this Book, and to Ecclesiastes, that in this Book it is always "Jehovah"; once only Elohim is used; Prov. 25: 2. In Prov. 2: 17, Elohey-ha, "her God." In Ecclesiastes, "Jehovah" is never used; always Elohim. And we may remark, where it is not "a man," Ha-Adam (the man) is constantly used. This gives a very definite character to these Books.

Proverbs 1

- 18. Violence and deceit.

- 25, 30. Haughty independence of God, and rejection of His word.

Proverbs 2

Wisdom preserves from crooked ways, and corruption.

- 8. That is, God watches over those paths, so as to shelter and guide those who walk there.

Proverbs 3

Wisdom leads in a positively good and blessed way. In all things it is the spirit of subjection, contrasted with self-will.

Proverbs 4

Diligence in attention to the Word, avoiding evil, self-judgment, and single-eyed purpose of heart.

- 19. Compare John 11: 9, and 1 John 2: 10, 11. Obedience and love, i.e., God's will and God's nature; compare John 14: 15.

Proverbs 5

Purity of ways, and pure, divinely ordained affections.

- 23. This passage, which has puzzled commentators, is made very plain by the Hebrew "v" ("and"). Chapter 26: 11, where we have the same form of Hebrew words and "with." "He shall go on in a multiplied course of folly."

291 Proverbs 6

Rashness - sluggishness - insolence of heart. Then subjection of spirit, learning divine wisdom as subject, guarding from the allurements of corrupt lusts, the ways of which are portrayed in the following chapter. Here more, breach of the divine bond of marriage - there, dissoluteness itself.

- 3. The word rah-hav (make sure) is difficult, and, as a verb, rare. The sense would be "insist earnestly" with him, press upon him. We have it as dealing proudly with the ancient, Isaiah 3: 5; the eyes overcoming, Canticles 6: 5; Psalm 138: 3, "Thou strengthenedst me . . . in my soul." The root is "standing up haughtily" - pride. It would seem to require the Hiphil form for the English sense. The moral sense is clear, "to go and get it settled" at once, even if the process be humbling. The connection of the humbling oneself is this: you have undertaken for the man, and now you must go and press upon him to clear you, and get you out of the scrape. This is very humbling, but you are in his hand. Ba-tha b'caph re-eka (thou art fallen into the hand of thy neighbour). The thought is "delivering oneself." I suppose those that have been in the case, know that "going surety" means generally "paying."

Proverbs 8

Note here we have the counsels of God in Christ as Wisdom, having the earth as their scope, rejoicing in the habitable parts of God's earth, and His delight was with the sons of men. This does not touch the Church at all - it is above and outside all this. This will be accomplished in government and blessing in the millennium, when the earth shall be blessed, see Psalms 96-99; nor is this election. The Jews, though earthly, are not properly the object of this chapter - they come in, as Psalm 67, as a means, an occasion because of God's electing love. It is blessing according to God's delight and blessing in Christ - His nature and the outgoing of His heart - His natural blessing. His election is a special thing besides, as an instrument and object of special love, and hence is what He reveals it to be - the Church far up out of sight, so to speak, of all this.

- 30, 31. This is the chain of heavenly joy, down, through Christ, to the creature; see the universe in some sort, in Hosea 2, for Jezreel is at the end. But also Psalm 67 shows it the occasion, because the special object of God in blessing. Matthew never goes out of this, unless in the special exceptional case of chapters 16 and 17. But there, when he speaks of the administration of it, it is the keys of the kingdom of heaven (not of the Church) given to Peter, as was the case as Apostle of the circumcision; see the case of Cornelius. All Paul's ministry, which was directly from heaven, in the world and in the Church, finds no place in this instruction.

292 In this remarkable chapter we have indeed the link in grace between God and Christ, as Wisdom, and men as the object of His delight when He was God the Father's, and this reaches out, in principle, to the state of the tabernacle of God with men as a result. But it is not the special union of the Church, when God could not have His delight in man, when man had rejected Christ the Wisdom of God. Wretched creatures that we are! And the link was to all appearance, and really morally on man's side, completely broken. Doubtless it shall have its fruit and accomplishment, on God's part, in the state referred to in Revelation 21, but now we have an intimity and identity with the Second Man, not displayed amongst men but hid in God. We are mysteriously one with Him, as so hid. This is a peculiar and special place.

Nothing is larger or more strong in thought and delight as to men than Proverbs 8; but the Church is not found there. It is the outgoing of delight in a class, so that wisdom was displayed and delight found in them - not an union by creation and power, introducing into His own blessing as hidden in God and rejected of men, the special delight of God where man had no intercourse with it, and such is the Church and its wondrous place - it is not the Body of Him who is Wisdom.

The link between such a theme of delights to Wisdom, and the guidance through all the details of this world, this miserable world, is very touching. On the other hand, how corruption of the affections is insisted on, as destroying fatally all moral discernment! That and violence are always the two characters of evil.

- 13. Note the form, which divine wisdom takes in us, is "the fear of the Lord." So "the truth, as it is in Jesus." Only we have "the mind of Christ," to guide us, and He has sanctified Himself that we may be "sanctified through the truth." It is full and perfect in our case; not simply a law, when expressed in actual detail. So here, the fruit is blessing in this world. So it is this creation, though men are the great object of it. So "the life was the light of men," which is yet more. It was addressed to them - they to it.

293 - 34. Though hearing, yet there is the desire - attentive waiting on - finding.

Proverbs 9

- 4 and 16. These are the solicitations of evil and of good. But there is a difference in the activity of unfeigned love, which invites us not to selfish enjoyment. Wisdom prepares, and sends out to invite to blessing. The "clamorous woman" sits "on a throne, at the door of her house," and makes the comer the slave of her own lusts.

Proverbs 18

- 1. Perhaps this is, "A man having separated himself, seeks according to his desire, and vexes himself with every (kind of) wisdom."

Proverbs 21

- 4. "The lamp of the wicked is sin."

Ecclesiastes

J. N. Darby.

<43006E> 294

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

Ecclesiastes3

I have not the means yet of clearing up particularly the force of Olam*, verse 11. But the force of verse 2 is stronger than I supposed, "Who knoweth the spirit of a man?" It, which ascends upward, and the spirit of a beast, it, which descends downward to the earth? It is a sad ignorance no doubt, but it affirms very distinctly that man's spirit goes up - the beast's descends downwards to the earth, is lost in the material creation in a way unknown to us. He does not know what becomes of man's spirit neither, but it does go up to what is out of, and above the earth. Ya-da (knew) - acquainted with - the knowledge we have in ourselves - I know - I have the knowledge of the thing in my mind; there is also na-char (recognised); compare chap. 12: 7.

{*Translated "World."}

Ecclesiastes7

- 11. "Wisdom is good as an inheritance" (even as can be compared with) "and it is excellent for those who see the sun."

- 12. "Wisdom is a protection, money is a protection: but knowledge is excellent." "Wisdom causes to live, those who possess it."

The Song of Solomon

J. N. Darby.

<43007E> 295

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

It is clear to me that this Book applies to the Jewish Remnant, or Bride - Christ's receiving it again, or, properly, to Himself, and its discovery of Him, and His excellency, in that latter day of universal blessing. His progressive revelation of Himself to it, and its fuller acquaintance with Him - and so it becomes instructive and clear. It is not, at once, His full assumption of it in His glory, but the making Himself known to it on the Remnant's search after, and growing apprehension and knowledge of Him, till the certainty of His full acceptance of them, as those whom He cares for. I should rather think it meant Ephraim than the Gentiles, but I am not the least satisfied as to this.

It is ever more evident to me that this Book is the restoration of the relationship of Israel with God. She had passed through fiery tribulations, and, set as guardian of fruit in the world, had not kept her own. Now, looking to Messiah and valuing His love, she is being brought back. Then, as the Psalms in sorrow, so this in delight, furnishes the right expressions of feeling as to her connection with Messiah. It begins with the sense of His moral perfections - Himself - and then His love.

Canticles 1

- 7. Ch'ot-yah (veiled) as "one wandering about," not as a modest person. But it is better taken as "one veiled," or, even in the dialects, "languid" and "fainting"; but I rather prefer "veiled," i.e., an immodest woman.

- 8. lo (not) is, I think, somewhat emphatic here.

Canticles 2

- 7. Here, chapter 3: 5, and 8: 4, is not, as in verse 2 and elsewhere, but ha-havah (the love). Were it ray-ah (love, or companion) it would be necessarily "she"; but the feminine of the verb depends on ahavah, and the question must be decided by the sense. I am disposed to think the English version right. The beloved One rests in His love. Note, in each case immediately after, there is a coming up from the mountains, hills, wilderness - the two first times, "the Beloved," the last, the Spouse leaning on Him, and then blessing.

296  - 8. Note, in each case, after the Spouse has had the Bridegroom rest in His love, she sees Him coming, or He is seen coming. Here, and in the following, He is seen gladly coming in power and liberty, with joy, and He invites her, because the time of renewal is come, and she feels she possesses her Beloved. In chapter 3: 6, He comes in royal state and power, in Israel, as king Solomon in the day of his espousals. In chapter 8: 5, she is seen coming up out of the desolation, where she had been, leaning on her Beloved. This is naturally at the close, and we see the results then to follow. This therefore closes with the Spouse's desire that He should come, and turns us back to chap. 2: 8, where we first saw faith looking forward to it. So we return, too, to the vineyards, but Solomon, has the vineyard as Lord of the peoples; the Spouse her own before her.

Canticles 3

- 5. See chapter 2: 7.

- 6. He has Himself been there, returning with every fragrance of grace - and then Israelitish royalty - whence she is brought up leaning on Him (chap. 8: 5), and this verse refers back to chap. 2: 3.

Canticles 5

- 2. Compare this with chapter 3. She meets the watchmen there, too, but there is no chastening, nor is there all the disclosure, and intercourse with others.

Canticles 6

- 3. It is the deep and full sense of what the Beloved is, when not sensibly enjoyed, that brings the soul back unconsciously, perhaps after chastening, to communion with Him.

Canticles 7

- 9. Note there is a change of person here; after "mouth," the Spouse says, "like," etc.

297 Canticles 8

- 4. See Canticles 2: 7.

- 5. See note to Canticles 2: 7. And it was under Christ, really, that Israel is born, and raised up or stirred up - not out of Egypt.

- 12. Compare Canticles 1: 6 - there the state of Israel, before Christ; here, when they are under His care, and associated with Him.

There is evidently in the Song of Solomon, a mental furnishing of the closest affection to meet and form the mind of the Remnant, so that, in Spirit, the instructed ones may rest in His love, with the consciousness that He is yet to come, and must be rightly looked and waited for. This is more than either prophetic acquaintance with circumstances, or what is taught in the Psalms of God's ways or dealings, where they learn dependence and obedience - practical righteousness. It is not only that the excellency of the coming One is seen, but that there is a knowledge of His love. He is to be left to rest in it. This was something brought out in Mary and the alabaster box. Yet we see here, it is in mental consciousness, and learning His love in Spirit, for, as remarked in the notes, there is always His coming spoken of directly after saying He is not to be woke up. This gives profound interest to the Song of Solomon, and a new character to the Remnant too.

There is something in the Song of Solomon analogous to Revelation 22: 17, for first we have the desire of the Spouse, then the assuring testimony of the Bridegroom, and then, Canticles 8, the personal desire of the Bride. For, note, the first three chapters, though there may be answers, are the Bride's expression of her thoughts or feelings. Canticles 6, 7 are the utterances of the Bridegroom. Canticles 8, again, is the desire of the Bride. "My beloved is mine" is on the Bride's part. "I am my beloved's," on the Bridegroom's; so "I am my beloved's, and his desire is towards me."

The Books of Moses

J. N. Darby.

<43008E> 298

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

We may observe this order in these Books, as regards the Jews. After all the prospective announcements in Genesis, we find them formed as a people, in Exodus, delivered out of the land of Egypt, and thus consecrated prerogatively for His name, and the Sabbath given them before the law, etc. - and, I may add, the manna and the water out of the rock, but even so to the rebellious - and dealt with as His people, but also by mediation, as in the conflict with Amalek. Then comes the terms of the covenant as formed, in principle, with the people themselves for their present inheritance; Exodus 19, "If ye will obey . . . then ye shall be a peculiar treasure," etc., "And all the people answered together and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do." Here then was formed the voluntary engagement, on principle, on the Lord's notice. To chapter 23 is then the Book of the covenant enjoined of God, which they again acknowledged, and it was sealed with blood, ratified on the part of God. Then Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and the seventy elders went up into the Mount, and "saw the God of Israel" - but we must take notice that the ten words were spoken to the people themselves, before the people drew afar off and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness.

The subsequent part, all the mystical glory, the tabernacle, and all the furniture, and the priesthood, and the glory, and the order of it, and the ministrations, and the sacrifices formed no part of the covenant entered into, nor the Ten Commandments as engraven on the tables, though they were connected in their own way as hidden in the ark, and given by the Word of God specifically unto them. Not but that sacrifices were recognised, as primarily at the end of chapter 20, and assumptively in chapter 23: 18, but the difference is manifest, as compare verses 20 and 27, and this was partly connected with the sin of their high places. Their complete breach of the covenant, so as to deprive them of the Tables of the Law, and forfeit their own standing as God's people, and consequently their blessings, is recorded in chapter 32. Then they manifested that this was no standing for them, and that it could be but in a Mediator upon forgiveness and intercession, and so accordingly then comes in chapter 34 - the tenor of the covenant made with him and his people, i.e., Moses. It was specially connected with the enjoyment of the Land. The rejection of Christ was involved then, even here. Upon this ground also, indeed, Stephen argues, and compare Acts 7: 51, and Isaiah 63: 10, 11. And we may remark how the unworthy rejection of Moses exalted him over them, i.e., caused them to stand in Him alone as the Mediator, not only as blessed in itself as towards Him, but morally and typically, for their language is almost the same in terms, "As for this (fellow), we know not whence he is."

299 But to pursue our subject - Leviticus then gives us the whole imposed order, as set in the Land upon this foundation, in this, so to speak, anomalous state, and accordingly we have them, in chapter 26, set upon the condition of their obedience in it, and warnings given of the consequences; but you may observe that that which God remembers, on their repentance, is not the covenant of Sinai, nor the covenant of Moses, but His own unchangeable covenant with Abraham, which drew Him back, not to their righteousness, but to His own faithfulness for the sake of their fathers. To this, accordingly, the saints, the watchers of the Lord ever looked. This is it that is expressed in Psalms 105 and 106. As in the beginning of Psalm 105, Psalm 106 gives the utter failure of - rather the acknowledgment and confession of the utter failure of them as standing upon the other ground of the actual covenant, and upon the footing of this unfeigned acknowledgment, as in Leviticus, seeks to be gathered and saved from among the heathen. Psalm 107 is the celebration of the ways of the Lord, as evidenced in the ultimate result in their own land, as detailed in the latter verses. Zacharias speaks in the same spirit, seeing the redemption, or rather viewing the prophet of repentance, the witness of the Redeemer. The Spirit of Christ stands yet upon a higher ground, for it is Immanuel's Land, and, while it supplicates it in weakness, declares it on that higher ground as in Isaiah 63: 16, et seq; compare the preceding verses, for there it is fully Immanuel's Land, for the covenant with Abraham was but the development of that covenant with the Seed, by which, as Heir, in the flesh, of the world, He was to take hold upon it. So that this was Abraham's joy, and therefore, through death, the Gentiles were to be let in (though as an earthly inheritance it circled round the members of the children of Israel, the firstborn) to the inheritance of that better resurrection, in which also they stood, and so Abraham received it in a figure, and rejoiced that he should see His day. It was upon the sacrifice of Isaac that the promise was made to the seed, and Abraham's faith was in the power of the resurrection, as Paul testifies, and it is in the power of the resurrection, as Abraham's portion is in it, that all these mercies are established and assured as in Isaiah 55; compare Acts 13: 34. And it is therefore as "the sure mercies of David." We can see that day spoken of as in Ezekiel, etc.; and compare Romans 1, 2, etc.

300 In Numbers, we have the typical facts and circumstances - all that in the journeys of the children of Israel was morally profitable to the Church, or children of God generally, and developed the dispensation, as the red heifer, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, Moses faithful in all God's house - in a word, all those things which "happened unto them for ensamples, and are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." Accordingly I believe it will be found most of the things so used by the Apostles in warning, and the cautions and exhortations of faith as to the Church, in this wilderness scene, are much taken from this Book. In this point of view, the consideration of Reuben's, Gad's and Manasseh's land on this side Jordan will be interesting.

We may notice this further, in Psalm 78, when all these facts and histories are drawn out as evidence of the failure, or want of right-heartedness of the children of Israel in themselves, and leading them to the exercise of God's power in purpose, as we have said, antecedent to Abraham, when "the Lord awaked as out of sleep," and raises David to feed and rule them (compare Deuteronomy 32) the extreme wickedness of the enemies, and desolation of His people is the occasion of this, which provokes God. They are oppressed, wicked though they be, by one more wicked than they; see the expression of the Spirit's mind in Habakkuk. The enemy, the Gentile, must arrive at this, and then he will be put to a perpetual shame, which is never Israel's portion, though she may have been, by her iniquities, cast off for a time, yet she shall be as a "wife of youth" (though an adulteress), when she was despised. With the Lord, the point in which this will be manifested will be, as universally testified in Scripture "where is now their God" (and shown quoad hoc, after the temporal restoration of the Jews) and then God will answer to their confusion, in Christ.

Here, accordingly, the Book of Deuteronomy then assumes a peculiarly interesting character in this point of view. It is the establishing prerogatively, the children of Israel in the Land, i.e., within Jordan, i.e., as to its terms, by a distinct and definite covenant, in which all their judicial conduct, as then placed, is detailed, and made a covenant of inhabitancy on the part of Moses, who was not allowed to go in. In this point of view, the Book begins at chapter 5, recapitulating there the ten words. It closes at the end of chapter 28. Its results are warned of by Moses to the end of chapter 30. From thence, to the account of Moses' death, after giving the promise of setting in the Land through Joshua, and the deposit of the Law in the ark for a witness. Then (before this, the revealed things of commandment and consequences had been given to "do all," etc.), here the secret things, which would certainly happen, given to Moses as prophet, which were the secret things of God, foreknown evil or good. As to the preceding part, we may notice that, save the fact of Horeb, and the appointment of elders, it all concerns in historical deduction the nations and possession of lands, they had to say to in chapter 4. Then is a general warning to all Israel, on the ground of not making any similitude of God as of one unseen, and promise of restoration on return to obedience on love to the Father. This distribution of the Land this side Jordan to the two and a half tribes (but note all Israel is addressed as going over Jordan) the order, in reason, of all this I am not quite prepared to state.

301 Note also, the manna did not cease till they crossed Jordan. It also introduces the great principle of faith, as respects the Jews having broken the covenant and lost the Land; compare the argument of Paul, "the righteousness of faith speaketh on this wise," etc.

Fragments

J. N. Darby.

<43009E> 302

(Notes and Comments Vol. 3.)

The sorrows of Christ are more purely internal in the Gospels than in the Psalms. We have the history of the contradiction of sinners in the Gospels, but little of His feelings about them; whereas what I may call His own proper sorrows are fully brought out in John 12 and Gethsemane. In the Psalms it is much more His external sorrows. I am not speaking of atonement here. In Psalms 6 and 38 we get sorrows of death on the soul, but, literally, it is not Christ but the Remnant here, however far He may have in Spirit entered into them. It comes no doubt across us, as in Psalm 69, but far the most there is suffering from enemies; so even in Psalm 22, save the first verse which is not merely death - Psalm 102 is more His own sorrow. But in the Gospels we have only His own expressed - His mind as to the rest is not. Psalm 109 refers to enemies, so Psalm 71. Indeed the reference of the godly to his enemies is most frequent. In Psalm 116 again we have death; but save Psalm 102, and a small part of Psalm 69, I hardly know any that directly applies to Christ as this. The Gospels give it fully, as Hebrews 5 also. As a rule these Psalms apply to the godly - the Remnant - with known exceptions.

_______

In Deuteronomy, Moses in reciting the destruction of the Tables and what followed, recounts that Jehovah, in desiring him to come up and receive the Law on the two Tables which he was to make, tells him to make an ark for them, the former are thus supposed presented without ark before the people, but it having been demonstrated that they were incapable of the Law, it is shut up in Christ - afterwards written on their hearts. This gives a very remarkable contrast of the place of the Law after failure, or man being a sinner; before, Moses carries them down to Israel and breaks them in the presence of Israel before their eyes - now. it is provided, in giving it, that it should be shut up in the ark of the covenant, as in fact it is in Christ, though afterwards it may be written in the heart when He owns the people. This analogical testimony, if it be justly understood, is of very great force.

________

Moses could give the Law at Horeb - broken in the golden calf; Elias could preach to bring back Israel apostate under the calves, but he returns, with his own heart broken, to Horeb again. Nothing but the resurrection of Christ can bring in other things for true and lasting blessing. Hearing is good, when the hearing is of grace and power - righteousness effectual, when it is accompanied with the judgment of evil, the putting away of sin by judgment.

________

303 As regards ancient Church traditions, it is wonderful what futile things they are. Beausobre has, I think, clearly shown that, in large measure, they come from the Apocryphal writings, invented to promote some devilish object or another, particularly the famous Leucius Charinus's. The virginity of Mary is treated by the early fathers on wholly other ground, and quite different stories invented at first to maintain it than the bold ground, taken at last, of Church authority. I have very little or no doubt, she had a family by Joseph. They believed brothers were brothers, for centuries, and first gave Joseph a former wife, and then had Mary brought up in the Temple by the priests. Nor did they believe in her perpetual virginity, properly speaking. But Peter's being at Rome, according to the actual tradition, certainly rests on the "Acts of St. Peter," I suppose of Leucius. Origen quotes from them, what afterwards became the belief of the so-called Christian Church. It is a pity Beausobre did not bring together, more soberly, the proofs in order. He affords an excellent clue, and many materials, but in rather a bantering way - just, it is true, for such miserable trumpery, in one sense, but not exactly worthy of dealing with Satan's power, nor so orderly nor plain a conviction as if more solemnly put together. See Beausobre's Histoire, etc., chaps. 2 and 3.

_______

The notion of Catholicity, with the majority of Christians outside it, and the most ancient Churches rejecting it, is simply absurd, as to witness. It is grossly the character, as to Apostolicity. Rome was not founded by an Apostle, though that be not really the force of the word.

The notion that events happening on earth, quite late in historical times, before a public exercised in all matters so as to be tending towards no faith in anything, and going on for three years or more with a public government trial at the end, related in its result by heathen historians of the empire - connecting itself by public facts, from that day on, with the state of that empire - a fact believed by hostile Jews or adverse heathen - should be a myth, is simply ridiculous. But it does prove this, that the eternal, moral, spiritual principles involved in the life and death of Jesus are so immense that they eclipse, so to speak, to a thinking, I do not say converted person, the historical facts, and what does this show? I look upon it as a divine mercy, and proof of goodness, that Christianity is a religion of persons and facts. It is more real, more simple, more divine, deeper yet more accessible. God become a Man! I have not ideas in man's mind about Him, but Himself. It is not what love is in my mind, but God who is Love. So even atonement - not a questionable reconciliation in abstract possibilities, not expiation wrought by love. Yet the principles, in relationship with God in these facts, are so deep and immense that they absorb, specially when He is not really known, the facts in which they are verified.

________

304 Reasoning proves nothing but the justness of a consequence. Truth of facts in not its domain. I do not believe mathematics - the evidence is demonstrative of relations of quantities, of number or form. I may believe (otiosely) an adequate evidence, as many did in the Lord's miracles; John 3. They were right, it was a judgment formed, as to a fact, on adequate evidence. It had the certainty to their minds of a moral demonstration. No man can do "unless"; but it was otiose, and hence raised no question - men call this "certain" sometimes. It is only that from no disposition in the soul, no interest in the question - there is no question raised. So the disciples at the tomb - they saw and believed and went home, "for as yet they knew not the Scriptures that he must rise again from the dead."

Dislike or desire may hinder faith, or desire may dispose - quod volumus. It is too good news. Mary stood at the sepulchre weeping - she loved too much to take it for granted easily. If I say, "Baron so and so has an estate beyond Moscow," you believe me and say, "I dare say." If I say, "You have," you say, "No! I have no relatives, no connections in Russia." Now mathematical truth is the showing equality or inequality of quantities, when form or expression is different, by relations they bear to some common known quantity - save by an abuse of the term it is not faith or belief.

Fragments

J. N. Darby.

<44001E> 1

(Notes and Comments Vol. 4.)

As to presenting Christ or Scripture. It is clear, if we love souls, we shall present Christ; so it was in the Apostles' preaching, though to Jews. They might start from, and reason on their Scriptures which they received. Scripture is what we teach from - have our standard of truth in - not what we teach as a subject, save where there is special occasion.

________

There is this difference between Paradise and the third heaven - the former is the place of delights, the garden of delights with which God surrounds Himself, God's Paradise - the other is approaching God Himself in the Holiest of all, where Christ is gone.

________

I use, but do not reduce myself to the mere import of the forms of speech of the day.

________

How beautifully in John 4 the Lord's perfection, in submission to His Father's will, opens out into the large sphere of blessing into which that submission introduced Him. He had been rejected in Judea - a sore trial and sorrow to Him, as to the beloved people, and had taken His way where "He must needs go," "wearied with the way," and sat, as He was, on the well. Here grace flows forth - such was the effect, in His perfect love, and rejection of promises in His Person, and then His "meat was to do the will of Him that sent Him." This opens, thereon, out for His heart into fields "already white for harvest." And it was more than Jewish promise - it broke forth into life eternal, and, in point of fact, does take up all that was of God in the previous ways of His grace - reaped what they had sown. We have other instances of this, as Matthew 11. Oh, for littleness, and lowliness of heart.

________

2 As regards the names of God, I quote the verses to put them together - Genesis 7: 1; Exodus 6: 3-6; Matthew 5: 48; 2 Corinthians 6: 18; then Psalms 83: 18; 91: 1, 2, et seq.; Genesis 14: 19, 20; and Daniel 4: 34.

_______

It is a sorrowful circumstance that Martha does not weep at the Lord's coming to raise Lazarus; the very Jews do - she does not. There is something sad about her state - yet Jesus loved her.

_________

It is remarkable, all through John, how the divine character of Jesus shines through, but never going out of the human, and place of receiving and obedience. If He and the Father are one, the Father who gives the sheep is greater than all. If He has power to lay down and to take again His life, He has received commandment from His Father; so everywhere.

It is interesting to compare the two characters of Mary who anointed Christ's head in Bethany, and Mary Magdalene, both so attached to the Lord, yet how different as to the way of it - one sitting at His feet, the other rescued by His power from the full dominion of demons. The first does not, that I am aware of, appear after that blessed proof of her instructive understanding of the position of Christ - to the other, who had nothing in the world but Christ, He first reveals Himself after His resurrection, and makes her the messenger of His grace to the disciples; no doubt, in this, she was a figure of the Jewish Remnant.

________

It is very simple, but important, to see that miracles do not necessarily imply the setting aside laws. Man produces previously unknown effects by them - change them he cannot; surely God can. The only difference is that man uses the laws themselves, and force, to produce the effect - God, the fiat of His will. God may act beyond laws, without setting aside any existing ones, because He can quicken and create. But the argument that there are laws, and God would not set aside His own, is perfectly without force.

_________

3 I have found it necessary, in dealing with others, to distinguish between "sitting in heavenly places," and "entering into the holiest." They would have it, the latter did not apply - we were always there. This is a mistake - in Christ, we are sitting in heavenly places always. But we are, in Hebrews, always men on earth, not united to Christ as in Ephesians, but He, a Priest apart on high, and, our conscience being purged, we enter into the holiest boldly by a new and living way. It is another and very blessed thought.

_________

It is well to remark that in John 14, the Spirit is sent by the Father on the intercession of the Son - in John 15 by the Son from His place in glory, in the Father's name - and in John 16 He is here below, Himself, in His own Person, acting.

________

With what deep feeling, in recollection, the Apostle Peter must have said, "Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again, when he suffered he threatened not, but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously"!

________

How exceedingly beautiful is the unfolding of affection in Christ in the beginning of Philippians! Though the Apostle, in writing to the Corinthians, could give God thanks for them, is it quite different from Philippians. He thanks God "always," and "for all the grace shewed to them" (1 Cor. 1: 4) and this is most lovely and instructive; but his heart cannot say "at every remembrance," nor can he say "with joy" (Phil. 1: 3, 4). Oh! why are not Christians always so walking, that their affections and communion should be fresh and unhindered?

________

Besides our actual sins, there are two points of our state connected with our fall in Adam. Our alienation from God in nature and will, and our alienation from God in condition, place or standing - both must be corrected; the former is by having Christ for our life, being born again, but this does not in itself take us out of law - the new nature feels the evil of the old, not only what we have done, but what we are. It is not merely we cannot say we have not sinned, but we cannot say we have no sin - "I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing"; the law is a mere means of discovering this, the remedy is not in dealing with it at all, but my place is altered - in Christ not only I have a new nature, but I have died as in the old - in Him I am not in the flesh at all, I am in Christ who has died and risen again. I have a new nature - that must be - but Christ having died and risen again, and I being in Him, I have a new place too. This is what Romans 7 and 8 teaches us. Baptism is not the sign of life-giving, but of change of place - we arise out of death, but death is the main point here. I do not take verse 2 chapter 8 as an inferential "for"; verse I is the result of what goes before, and stands by itself, verse 2 begins an explanation of the "now" of the whole matter in life. The change of state, as previously the change of place or condition - deliverance, not new life.

__________

4 We must not confound palingenesia and anagennao; palingenesia is a change of state as Matthew 19, and used for a recovery of wealth when fortune has been lost. Anagennao is being born "again," so anablepo, anakainizo, etc., it has the sense of "up" often, but "again" or "back" - the beginning of something new, with the sense of the contrary of what it was before, so analuo, anakampto, anakalupto, etc. The other sense is pretty much our use of "up"; see 1 Peter 1: 3-23; Titus 3: 5.

________

Covenant in no way implies two parties, but the contrary, i.e., in divine things; a mediator does, but there is an object of the covenant, assurance of blessing, and the circumstances of this object may require the interposition of a mediator, righteously to obtain for, qualify, and sustain them. Christ is properly the object of the Abrahamic covenant, but then, for the Church to come in, being guilty, there must be a mediator with God for that; they are brought into the covenant through a mediator, but the covenant is not made with, or properly for them.

5 A covenant is a disposition of God, secured by His binding or obliging Himself; this - man being a sinner - must be by the meritorious death of the Covenanter. In the case of a man's covenant, it seems to me it was conventionally brought to the same point - the authority of God being interposed, and the covenanter bound in this by the same sanction, quod nota.

Diatheke is the divine interpretation of b'rith (covenant) as to these matters, so that in the divine enquiry of it I have no need to search with anxiety for the root or meaning of b'rith (covenant) as to its ordinary human force.

Prophecy

<44002E> 6

Prophecy is direct when the people exist. It is addressed to the people because God cannot but own them, cannot but speak to and reprove them till there is no remedy. When He has said lo-ammi (not My people), then what the Jews call, as to several books Hagiographa (holy writings) khethubhim (writings) begins, as in Daniel; he says nothing to the people - there was no people to say anything to. He is the depository for the people of the purposes of God as to them. But yet more, of what would befall the Gentiles, he could not address himself, properly speaking, to the Gentiles save in the first responsibility of the head, but he reveals and interprets dreams of God about them, and receives instructions himself as to what was to come, what the Gentile beasts would be, and what would befall his people. In the Apocalypse I find this same difference. To the Churches there is a direct address. The Spirit of God recognises the people, however low their state, but, after the Churches, not at all - He talks about the beasts, gives their character and doings, the persecution of the saints, and the resulting position of the saints at the end, but addresses nothing to them. It is as if to them also, on the earth, it was lo-ammi; there is no people on earth to address. The Church is not found there - this is remarkable; see Rev. 22: 16; He testifies therein. "He that hath an ear is to hear what the Spirit saith to the Churches."

It is interesting also to remark, in a time of ruin and partial restoration, how we get the estimate of the ruin with full knowledge of God's ultimate manner of bringing in the final blessing, though owning clearly the present timeliness of service, and, on the other hand, the partial energy of restoration placing on the ground of responsibility, and revealing the circumstances, in connection with what was so restored, of the guilt that brought judgment, and the deliverance. But what I desire to remark is the two things we have to recognise - the Daniel, and Haggai, and Zechariah position, intelligence, and service. The Lord make us capable.

Isaiah

<44003E> 7

The beginning of Isaiah is thus: -

Isaiah 1, the judgment of Judah and Jerusalem, for their iniquity in general.

Isaiah 2, their establishment as the head of nations, connected with the judgment of these last. Israel had been forsaken for their departure from Jehovah. This setting aside man, in his pride and pleasure, must be, for Jehovah judges (Isaiah 3) His own people.

Isaiah 4, they are brought very low, but then there shall be a complete blessing, the glory being in Zion fully sanctified, though by judgment - the Lord's presence being then openly over them, as the cloud in the wilderness. This is complete in itself.

In Isaiah 5 Jehovah enters into an immediate pleading with His vineyard. Christ is distinctly brought in. It is Jehovah, but addressed by the Spirit as the Well-Beloved, and having done all possible for it, and only had wild grapes, as Jehovah He gives it up to the wild boar out of the forest. The various causes, in the ways of Israel, are stated, and the progressive judgments of God detailed. This takes in all Israel, and is thus more historical. The anger of the Lord is kindled against His people, and His hand stretched out. They are smitten and cut off (v. 25), but His anger is still there. This, I think, brings in Babylon, and the kingdoms of the beast, and darkness falls upon them.

But this brings in (Isaiah 6) the revelation of Christ as Jehovah, and desolation rests on the Land, only the people are preserved in the Remnant or holy Seed. We then have Christ in connection with the house of David, but as Emmanuel - God with His people - the Virgin's Son. With this, the passing away of Israel and Syria, and the inroad of, not the Beast, but the Assyrian.

In Isaiah 7 this is discussed more fully. The Land being now Emmanuel's, He is to be the hope and trust of the Remnant. They were not to make conspiracies and seek help elsewhere, but make Jehovah their Sanctuary. Christ's first coming (Jehovah) is then brought in, His rejection, and the shutting up of good in the narrow circle of His disciples (Isaiah 8: 16-18). The nation are left in darkness, still it is not like what seemed less, for Messiah has come in, and, when the nation, in the last days, are in their darkest hour, the full revelation of Messiah in delivering judgment breaks forth. All is here the last scene, from Christ's rejection to the judgment when He comes. Chapter 6 to chapter 9: 7, is thus a parenthesis, introducing the House of David, and Messiah. Then the history of Israel is resumed and taken up, as a whole, from the then attacks of Rezin and Pekah (which are the occasion of all this prophecy) and carried on to Babylon, but with the still outstretched hand to the Assyrian, whose judgment is stated; chap. 10: 33. Christ is revealed as the Heir of the House of David - His character, and then peace in God's holy mountain, and full blessing on the people. Israel is all gathered, and all wars cease.

8 Isaiah 12, the song arises, for Jehovah has done great things, and He dwells in the midst of Zion. This closes the opening of the prophecy. The question of Babylon is then taken up.

In what follows, after Babylon, the Assyrian having been introduced especially, from the end of Isaiah 17 (Damascus) the prophet looks out, in a remarkable manner, to the latter days (chapter 18 being the centre) though partially applicable to the present encouragement. There is a certain mingling of prophecies, which regard the then present time, to bring out a perfect testimony as regards the last day.

It is evident, as indeed it long ago struck me, that the destruction of Babylon, which God had specially set up as the golden head (though many historical successors) had to come in - yet made epoch, because the Jews were delivered, and what God had set up judged, and indeed by one who was God's servant. The world and idolatry were judged. This, Isaiah 13 and 14 give us, and they go to the end, though the present coming judgment is also before the prophet's eyes. The day of the Lord was at hand, the prophet being rapt into the time to come. These two chapters are, in a certain sense, complete. We have Babylon judged - the heaven and earth being shaken. The Assyrian destroyed on the mountains, and land of Jehovah, note, and then the country cleared of its internal possessors, and "Jehovah hath founded Zion."

Isaiah 16 I should judge me-atz (from of old) (v. 13), to mean "from ancient days" - His original, general purpose connected (vv. 4, 5), with the establishment of the throne of the Son of David. But now is the more immediate judgment, I suppose, by Nebuchadnezzar. "From the east," says Ezekiel, if it be the same time. No doubt chapter 15 begins with the impending judgment in view, but the prophetic mind passes on to God's counsels "from of old" (me-atz) returning then, in verse 14, to what was immediate.

9 Isaiah 17 is proof how the object is the last days through present circumstances. Here the Assyrian, not Babylon, is the occasion - the inroads of Shalmaneser, Sargon and Sennacherib, but especially Tiglath Pileser and Sennacherib. But Jacob is brought low at the same time; but in the Remnant there is deliverance and salvation in the lowest estate of Israel, but the Remnant looking to God. The nation judged for leaving Jehovah and trusting its own ways, the multitude of nations come up, but are destroyed. This seems clearly to introduce Isaiah 18, or the condition of Israel in that day - the last days. Egypt comes in for present judgment, probably then by Sargon, but the prophecy evidently goes on thence to the last day.

Isaiah 20. This gives the invasion of Sargon.

Isaiah 21. My impression is that this chapter refers to present or more immediate times - the then fall of Babylon. But we must remember that this was the judgment on the golden head set up by God, and the deliverance of Israel, and, in this sense, a characteristic event in its bearing. Seir is judged, but her judgment has also a special character - she seems to have exulted in the destruction of Jerusalem, when taken by Nebuchadnezzar; see Obadiah and Psalm 137: 7. Its final judgment will be directly from the Lord, see Isaiah 34: 5, and Obadiah, where the Jews seem to take part, as well as the heathen; compare also Psalm 84. Arabia and Kedar come under present judgment, connected with the fall of Babylon.

Isaiah 22. This is a remarkable chapter. It would seem to be (vv. 1-14), the state of the city in Zedekiah's time, and its capture by Nebuchadnezzar, but the end of David's responsible family, and the setting up of the Gentiles, makes this of all importance. Jehovah had no longer a throne upon earth. It is the judgment of Jerusalem by the hand of the Gentiles. Along with this, we have a prophecy (v. 15 to the end) which clearly in its immediate reference, speaks of personages of Hezekiah's time. One is deposed, and another set up, alluding, I apprehend, to the last days - verse 25 referring clearly to "that day" - the last days. The setting aside of Jerusalem would make one understand this, but the combination is remarkable.

10 Isaiah 23. The judgment of Tyre is by Nebuchadnezzar, yet looks out beyond it, in verses 9 and 18. Up to this, it had long been the untouched power of commerce, and its pride. This was judged now, just as the natural pride of man was in Egypt.

Isaiah 24. This chapter is a remarkable witness of this passing on from present to future, and final judgment. When Tyre was taken, after a long siege, by Nebuchadnezzar, the whole land was laid waste - the Land of Canaan - not merely Canaan, as in Isaiah 23: 11, but the Land. Hence it stretches out to a judgment on the whole earth; compare Isaiah 3: 1, connected with Isaiah 2, where the direct subject is Israel, the land, the people, and the priest, but it is connected with the judgment which casts Satan and his angels down, and judges all the kings of the earth, and Jehovah will reign in Zion - the following chapters bringing in the full result; to the end of Isaiah 27, they celebrate the last days.

Isaiah 25. This may have had its primary fulfilment in the fall of Babylon, but it is the setting aside of human power in favour of the needy. The darkness of this world will then be removed, and the resurrection take place, and the rebuke of His people be removed. This is celebrated then in a prophetic way, in which the Lord's ways are unfolded, and His people called upon to hide themselves for a little moment.

Isaiah 26: 19 is in contrast with verse 14. They have wholly perished, but Israel is renewed on the principle of resurrection, as the "sure mercies of David" are cited by the Apostle as a proof of it. Israel has wrought no deliverance, their restoration is power in resurrection. At the same time it is the time of the definite judgment of this world.

Isaiah 27. Satan's power amongst men (viewed here as exercised in the hands of the Gentiles) is set aside, and Israel, though chastised, is purged and blessed; compare Psalm 74. But it is full judgment on Israel. This closes the inward history. The Gentiles judged are those amongst whom Israel had been in captivity - the Beast.

The subsequent chapters take up the last Assyrian inroad. What went before was the prophetic earth, which took the place of Israel or was part of the Land, with just an allusion to the Assyrian in the latter day. Now this latter is the object. God has ordered all His plans, and deals with His harvest with discretion. Here this Assyrian takes Jerusalem, which is in league with death and hell, in contrast with the Tried Stone laid in Zion, which enables the Remnant to wait. Jehovah does His strange work, and (Isaiah 28: 22) it is kalah v'necharatzah (a judgment of destruction determined upon), the decreed consumption of her, remarked on.

11 Isaiah 29. In this chapter, Jerusalem is not taken, but the multitude of nations disappear, who have surrounded and brought her low. The moral ground of the judgment is stated - the darkness of heart they had got into, though they had the word, then all totally changed - the deaf hear the words of the Book - the external power of evil and malice against the feeble just is done away, and Jacob shall now never be ashamed, and spiritual intelligence is their portion. The Assyrian is still the main person.

Isaiah 30. This is also the case in this chapter. God's people's reliance on other strength than His is then judged. They were a shame to themselves in their uselessness to the world. But the judgment is much more the Lord's. The nation is wholly broken up - it is as a broken vessel, of which not a potsherd is left. Two faults are here - first trusting on fleshly strength, and then slighting God's word. Jehovah rises up, in His own rights over it all, to bless His people. Adversity is there, but the Lord gives His word and guidance, and these come in in full blessing. The full judgment of the Lord, coming in glory, is then revealed, and it is joy for the delivered. The Assyrian and the king are judged by power. The voice of the Lord beats down the Assyrian, and Tophet is prepared for both. Verse 18 is very striking; see Psalm 94: 12, 13. In the Psalm it is more Antichrist, or the Beast, than the Assyrian, but the principle is brought out. The Lord leaves full play to chastisement, that pride and self-will may be abased - waits till this is fully carried out (only gives the word, vv. 20, 21) and this, that He may be gracious, and in His own way and that is fully. This principle is striking in this part of the prophecy.

Isaiah 31. Helper and helped shall both fall down together, i.e., man's strength and the Lord's people leaning upon it - for Jehovah will come down and fight for Mount Zion. And the Assyrian, always the "enemy" here, shall be beaten down.

12 Isaiah 32. This chapter, the end of which first led me to see a new dispensation, leads us, after the fall of the Assyrian, to the King enquiring in righteousness, "Who cares for the poor?" Misery would rest on the Jews, till the Spirit was poured out on them, then they would have peace, when judgment would come on the multitude of the Gentiles, and the city be seen laid low. Then peace would be there.

Isaiah 33. The Assyrian (or Gog) is then openly challenged. The Lord arises to take His place, and fills Jerusalem with righteousness and peace. The Remnant are preserved and blessed, when Jehovah takes matters into His own hand, and Zion is the seat of peace and blessing. King - Messiah, is there, and security. They are not shut up. The pride of man is wholly brought low.

Isaiah 34 continues another part of the same but in connection with the Assyrian. It gives the connection of Idumaea and the Assyrian (compare Psalm 83) and records the terrible judgment which will take place in that land, always hostile to Judaea.

Isaiah 35 is the blessing which follows for Israel.

This closes the divine history of the prophecy. Then we have (with the resurrection) the present events which gave the peg on which the prophecy hangs - Sennacherib's invasion. The latter part of the prophecy is the account of the Lord's dealings with Israel (restoring them, and crowning them with glory) in respect of idolatry, and Babylon, and in respect of Christ, with the full results. How simply the folly of ignorance, is the complaint of rationalists that the second part of it is not woes or burdens like the first!

Isaiah 40 to 48 go together. Isaiah 40: 1-8 is, however, introduction. Jerusalem has been sufficiently chastised, and the Lord speaks to her heart. But that is accompanied by this solemn truth - "All flesh is grass." The people, God's own people according to the flesh, come under this designation - "the people are grass." That withers, but this does not hinder their full blessing, only it must be known, "God's word abides for ever," and that is what secures the promises and their accomplishment. This is the introduction. The general statement is then taken up. He that bringeth good tidings to Zion and Jerusalem (for so I am disposed to take it*) is to announce, with energy, God Himself "to the cities of Judah." He "will come with strong hand," with His reward, "shall feed his flock like a shepherd." Then comes the contrast between Jehovah and idols. Princes shall be brought to nothing. He is the Creator of the heavens. Why does Israel distrust Him? The strongest shall faint - "those that wait on Jehovah shall renew their strength." This is the general thesis.

{*See marginal reading.}

13 He then begins, naming the object only descriptively, with Cyrus. He breaks up the nations which serve idols, but Israel is Jehovah's servant, and shall, in the strength of his Redeemer, thrash the nations. The Lord shall refresh the poor and needy - where all was waste, beauty and blessing shall spring up, and the hand of the Lord be thus seen, and the nothingness of idols proved. This goes on from Cyrus to full deliverance.

Isaiah 42 consequently introduces Christ, meek and unknown till He set judgment in the earth, and the isles wait for His law. He was to be a covenant to the people and a light to the nations; so Simeon. Jehovah is thus to be everywhere praised. He rises up now, having long holden His peace, and brings blind Israel by a way they know not, and the idols shall be ashamed - for Israel is blind and deaf, none so much so. He would magnify His Law and make it honourable. But Israel was robbed and spoiled - Jehovah, for that was the cause, had given them up for their disobedience, and His anger had been poured out upon them. But now all was changed. Israel was redeemed called by His name - His; and He would preserve them through every danger, and bring them out from every place, for Jehovah had created them for His glory. He challenges the nations to say what He was doing. But Israel had been a witness of His ways, when there was no strange God there. For their sakes, Babylon would be judged by Him who was the Redeemer of Israel - the Creator, who brought in new things for His glory. The Lord then pleads with Israel, the people He had formed for Himself. But Israel had not served Him, but, on the contrary, wearied Him with their iniquities. He forgave them for His own sake. He had profaned, and given Jacob to the curse. But now He would refresh, and deliver, and calls to Jacob His servant, and His chosen to assure him of it. They should spring up as willows by the watercourses. He then takes up the controversy as to idolatry - the great subject of this portion of the Book - renews the promises to Israel, as his Redeemer - He who can do all things, He who formed Israel for Himself, and then calls Cyrus, by name, to perform His pleasure in rebuilding Jerusalem.

14 The destruction of Babylon is the setting aside the Gentile power which held Israel captive. It is the suppression of idolatry, so that the whole principle of full deliverance is brought forward with the strongest testimony of the place Israel holds, and sovereign grace in Him who can do all things, and who loves and forgives His people. We are beyond the question of the Assyrian here. It is the establishment of Jerusalem by the power of God - Babylon being destroyed and idolatry put down.

Isaiah 46 continues as to Cyrus. He is called by name for Israel's sake. Light, darkness, peace, and evil were His work, and the blessing of Israel is in God's creative power. His word and promise were not in vain. He was the one only God. But His word went also out to the nations. Every knee should bow to Him, and Israel be justified before the Lord. The gods of Babylon fail before the judgment of God - nor would God delay the deliverance of Zion.

Isaiah 47. The judgment of Babylon who had gladly oppressed God's people, when His hand was upon them, is fully stated.

Isaiah 48. The Spirit then pleads with Jacob. God had foretold, lest they should say it was their idol. He had done it at once, lest they should say in human wisdom "I knew them"; but their neck was as brass. God would deliver them for His own name sake. He would judge Babylon. But if Israel had hearkened, his peace would have been as a river. But Jehovah would now deliver, refresh, and guide, only there would be "no peace for the wicked."

This closes the first prophecy to the heart of Israel; the subjects - Jehovah, the one God - Israel, His elect people, and servant, formed for His praise - Babylon and idolatry, their oppressors - Cyrus, their present deliverer, but future deliverance, and Christ Himself, looked forward to, and no wicked allowed, no peace for them. Jehovah and Israel, Babylon and idolatry, are in contrast. Cyrus the present instrument? but Jehovah who had judged Israel for their evil would redeem, and bless now for His own sake.

15 This general judgment and result having been unfolded, Messiah, Christ, must now be more distinctly brought forth, and Israel's relationship with Him.

Isaiah 49 begins the second part of the prophecy. Israel is he in whom God will be glorified. The immediate portion closes at the end of Isaiah 57, and with the repetition of the last words of Isaiah 48, "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked."

But if Israel is to be the seat and vessel of Jehovah's glory, Messiah must at once come in. But He comes in first, with the confession that, perfect as it was with God, His labour has been in vain with Israel. The answer of the Oracle of God is, it is a light thing to restore the preserved of Jacob, He should be a light to the Gentiles, Jehovah's salvation to the end of the earth. In verse 7 the ultimate purpose of God on earth is gone on to. Kings shall own Him - Israel shall be delivered - Zion, never forgotten, will be established in full favour in glory, delivered from the hands of the mighty, and kings and queens become her nursing fathers and mothers. And all flesh would know Jehovah was Israel's Saviour, and where and why was her divorce. And thus He fully enters into the sufferings and work of Christ.

Isaiah 50. Here Jehovah, with no diminished power to save, came, yea called, but there was none to answer. Was His humiliation a motive, when He had come into it, to know how to speak a word in season to him that was weary? Wondrous and touching word! Blessedly submissive - the Lord would vindicate Him! Those who feared the Lord and were in darkness were to wait on Him. Those who kindled their own sparks would lie down in sorrow. This passes on to the latter day, which Isaiah 51 then takes up in the most beautiful way - the appeal of God to the Remnant, and, in the midst of it, the appeal of the Remnant to God, and the promise of full deliverance and judgment of the enemy, and then Isaiah 52 continues, by calling Zion to clothe herself with glory. To the end of verse 14, this deliverance is spoken of. Thus we have the full final deliverance of Israel. In verse 15 in a beautiful progress, we have not the history of rejection, as in chapter 50, but the Lord's mind as to Christ. Messiah is introduced in glory, but as the rejected and despised One, One esteemed the smitten One, but the atonement, wrought in His work, now owned, and thus blessing would come even on the transgressors, and Himself have the glory spoken of before, in verse 13. But the consequence is, he passes directly, as usually in the prophets, to the last days, when its effect in Israel will be accomplished; and the Church is passed over, only Isaiah 54 recognises that more children have been born to desolate Jerusalem than to the married wife. And peace, now restored to Israel, shall abide for ever - never to be taken from her; and her peace shall be great - no enemy shall prevail against her.

16 Isaiah 55 is the call to repentance, but an invitation in grace, so that in principle whoever thirst can come. Promises are established in resurrection. Christ is witness to, and a leader of the various peoples. Pardon is abundant, for God's thoughts are above ours, and His Word is infallible in producing its results.

Isaiah 56 goes, evidently, beyond promise to Israel. It passes on to the last days, and, while assuring the blessing to the Remnant, passes it on to the Gentile. His house shall be "a house of prayer for all nations," i.e., those who have taken hold of Jehovah's covenant. Hence, clearly, Christ could speak of the blood of the new covenant as "shed for many." Here it goes on, no doubt, to the new state of things, but the foundation of it was laid in the Cross. Verses 9-12 are the condition of the nation and their teachers, not the Remnant

Isaiah 57 goes on to what seems forgetfulness, on God's part, in the latter days. The righteous perishes, but this does not awaken the careless - they mock at the righteous, going on with their idols. Their wickedness is then rehearsed. Jehovah defies their confidences, and declares that those that trust in Him shall possess the Land. He had smitten, but now would heal; but "for the wicked" there would be "no peace."

Isaiah 58. Pleading with the ungodly is resumed, for chapter 57 closes one section - their false and formal self-righteousness judged. On a true and upright return of heart to righteousness and God's ways, blessing would flow in as a river, and Jehovah's blessing on His people.

Isaiah 59. His arm was not shortened, nor His ear heavy, but their iniquities had separated them from Him, and their evil state is exposed. From verses 9 to 15 is confession, and then God arises in His own strength, when all is at the very worst, destroys their enemies and acts in the power of the new covenant which is to be for ever. Then follows, in view of the full blessing, and the result of the latter day, a whole development of all that took place connected with Christianity. It begins with putting Jerusalem in glory, as its thesis. But the state of the people is gone into, and the details of judgment and final deliverance, the elect Remnant being the first immediate object. This is the third part more specially connected with the second, as Christ's second coming is with the first - the Remnant taking His character.

17 Note in Isaiah 60, when the lighting up of Jerusalem is come, and the glory of the Lord enlightens her, darkness covers the Land, and gross darkness the different peoples (l'-ummim). Then her light gathers them all to itself. This chapter is the description of the glory. The Gentiles are subservient to this glory, and the days of her mourning are ended, her people all righteous, and they will be blessed and mighty without return of evil, at least her sun going down. Thus chapters 58 and 59 are the time previous to the Lord's appearing, i.e., His pleadings with the people then. Chapter 60 is the effect of that appearing, chapter 59: 16 being the turning point. Chapter 61 brings in, evidently, Messiah and the full blessing, under Him, which goes on to chapter 62. Then chapter 63 takes up "the day of vengeance of our God." Chapter 60 brings in the sovereign re-establishment of Jerusalem in glory, fruit of God's own sovereign power and good pleasure.

Isaiah 61 and 62 show the part of Christ, come in blessing, from His first to His second coming - His interest in Jerusalem.

Isaiah 63, bringing in the vengeance, pleads with the people, and the Remnant with Jehovah, for the great body of the people will be objects of the vengeance - the carcase will be there. The judgment of the peoples, and enemies of Israel is in verses 1-6. Then come the ways of God in goodness, and of the people (vv. 8-10). It is the Spirit of grace in the people (the Remnant) which now recalls it. It turns into the most earnest pleading in faith (v. 15), but passes into the fullest confession, and places the people in Jehovah's hands, as clay in the hands of the potter, and recalls the utter desolation of what, after all, was Jehovah's, if it was His people's, to the end of Isaiah 64. All this is very beautiful.

Then (Isaiah 65) comes the answer of Jehovah. But note the appeal to God is for the people as a whole; God separates and judges the people (so in Sodom). Then God's answer introduces the finding of the Gentiles, and God's patient but useless appeal to the Jews, quoted by the Apostle, and, giving the character of the Jews of old and in the last days, intervenes for the Remnant, sparing because of them, but judging the people, taking them in their own ways and for their own doings, and makes the difference (as Malachi says) between those that sought the Lord, and the rebellious and idolatrous sinners. But, though saving and blessing the Remnant, it is really on the principle of a new creation, as all blessing must be, yet it is accomplished promises to Israel; but when, as a responsible nation, they are judged, verse 17 states, absolutely, the fact of new Creation. Verse 18 takes up, I conceive, the principle as now characterising God's dealings with Jerusalem. Hence we have no setting aside anything. At the end of the millennium, the wicked who rebel are destroyed. How the rest pass into final blessing is not said. It may be as men suppose Adam would have done, had he not sinned. But it is not the substitution of another state of things, setting aside this, though it may merge into better things, just as Christ's reign as Son of man does.

18 Then comes the millennial state, often noticed; compare Isaiah 11 of more extent, and Isaiah 25 which adds resurrection too, as well as the blessing of the Gentiles. This thought of creation characterises this part of the revelation, although physically it is not come yet. For us, at that time too, it will be the new Creation, and never pass away at all, but merge in what is eternal, though the reign over the earth will be given up, so as we have seen as to the earth, though the difference may be greater. The Jewish state is the fruit of sovereign power, not of dealing with responsibility, and a state God has produced for Himself for His praise. Hence in Isaiah 66 when the Jews shall have built the Temple, it is sufficient to say (for they seek to restore the old things, and as a beloved people on that footing) "All those things have been, saith Jehovah." But they, the Remnant, are to rejoice in that which Jehovah creates; the restoration of the old is utterly rejected. Then comes the new birth of the people, in the Remnant, and Jerusalem becomes their joy. Jehovah pleads in judgment with all flesh, idolaters and rebels (Jews and Gentiles are thrown together, but especially Jews) and then those that escape bring in the scattered Remnant from afar, and they will remain before Jehovah, His privileged priests and servants - the carcases of the rebels being there, a witness of judgment, for this is judgment. Isaiah 61 and 62 is simple blessing from Messiah's coming, first and last, but, as we have seen from Isaiah 63, we have to do with judgment and new Creation.

19 The Lord looks to the heart and not to formal worship and sacrifice, so in the Lord's testimony. It is "the poor in spirit" (Isaiah 66: 2) - the same words spoken of Moses in Numbers 11, and Christ's first blessing in Matthew 5.

Then there is another word in Isaiah 61: 10, 11, and in Isaiah 62, "righteousness." That the Lord is their righteousness, as ours, is clear. The prophet says, speaking in the person of the people and Jerusalem, "He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness." Then "the Lord Jehovah will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations."

In chapter 61, Jerusalem's righteousness goes forth. What is righteousness? In verse 10 it seems to be full acceptance according to the mind of God, in a righteous way, as the best robe with the prodigal. So Abel had testimony that he was righteous from his offering. We are the righteousness of God, accepted and acceptable according to God's own mind, what He is - Christ being the ground, in Him only it is known and manifested. But this favour is not only realised, but reflected and manifested in fruits and the manifest state of soul of those enjoying it.

And here I remark that a place in this righteousness can never be had till it is submitted to, i.e., that a man has, consciously, no ground at all to meet God - self is wholly condemned, and sovereign grace alone accepts through Christ; "grace reigns through righteousness." Hence it never is, when the soul is not brought, emptied of self, and judging evil, into the practical reflex of it in the state of the soul. Christ is precious to God, but the honour (time) is for us also. Hence, essentially, the state answers to it; hence the righteousness shines forth - Jerusalem is right in all her thoughts; she judges evil as God does - in God's favour, as He does towards her - reflects it in her state and condition. And so with us, only in a higher and heavenly way. The righteousness is wholly Christ, but we are "accepted in the Beloved"; but He is in us, all to us, and manifested in us. Here, it will be publicly manifested, only when they see will they have it, and be seen in it. We know it is ours in a heavenly way. It will be manifested when we appear in glory; so Phil. 3. Still, by the power of the Spirit, it ought to be shown out now and this is just the assurance of salvation, and its fruits. Only when Christ appears will they know - we now by the Holy Ghost, while He is within, which gives all to us - a full heavenly character, and we shall be glorified with Him then. Only the nations will recognise the rightness of the exaltation of God's people, the people whom He has blessed. For Jehovah, and Christ's glory, will be owned. For righteousness, as I have long ago said, is God's consistency with Himself - He being essentially right. Ours would be consistency with the measure of our place before Him. But He has been perfectly glorified in Christ, and in respect of it, though in perfect holiness, yea, by it in obedience. Then this, i.e., Christ, is our righteousness. Hence God's, the necessary result as displayed in the creature, according to Christ, i.e., as He has entered into it as Man.

Edom

<44004E> 21

As to Edom, there are several points distinctly stated, and, after being made very small, the great judgment falls on the heathen there, and the existence and remembrance of Edom is utterly extinguished. It is stamped with the character of Gentile apostasy, as opposed to Israel, and relentless. It would seem rather that the destruction of Damascus preceded this, and thus the nations, in part at least, found themselves there gathered for destruction.

First, what happens as to Edom is the day of the Lord's vengeance on the heathen, and deliverance of Zion; see Isaiah 34: 1, 2, 6, 8, also Isaiah 63: 4, and 3, context; see also Psalm 83.

Second. It is the day of "all the heathen." For this, and also for the first, see Obadiah 15, and 16, 17; and for the second, see Isaiah 34: 2, already cited, also chapter 63.

Third. When the warnings are given of coming judgments (in Jerusalem) Edom treats it with scorn, i.e., when in the midst of sorrow in Jerusalem. The Spirit of God's own testimony is there for the Remnant - the pride of Edom scorns it (Isaiah 21) and is treated with holy judgment and rebuke, yet in mercy. "Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?" says Edom. "The morning cometh" for the faithful, says the answer of faith, "and also the night" for the scorners. "If ye will enquire, enquire ye." The answer of God is here, "Return, come." The answer is magnificent.

Fourth. Edom escapes out of the hand of Antichrist; Daniel 11.

Fifth. The heathen are employed by the Lord to make Edom small; Jeremiah 49: 14, 15, and Obadiah 1-3.

Sixth. She is found in the confederacy against the Lord's "hidden ones," and thus is ripe for destruction; Psalm 83.

Seventh. She is filled with relentless hatred against the Jews, showing thus her iniquity; Ezekiel 35: 5, 11, 12; Obadiah 10-14; Amos 1: 11, and Ezekiel 25: 12.

Eighth. Israel shall be the means of subduing them, when taken up by the Lord; Obadiah 18; Ezekiel 25:

14, and Isaiah 11.

22 Ninth. The destruction of Edom is total, final, and irretrievable; Ezekiel 25: 12, 13; chapter 35, all of it, especially verses 9, 14. Obadiah 5, 18, Jeremiah 49: 13-18, etc., Isaiah 34: 9, et seq., also the absence of passages in Jeremiah 49, like Jeremiah 48: 47; Jeremiah 49: 39, etc. Obadiah 21; Ezekiel 35; Isaiah 63 and 34, and other passages, show these things result at the end, and at the Lord's coming.

Notes on Isaiah

J. N. Darby.

<44005E> 23

(Notes and Comments Vol. 4.)

Isaiah 1

This chapter ends a division. It is a distinct condemnation of the moral state, then redemption by judgment.

Some find that the direction in Isaiah was to sit still, and the Lord would deliver - in Jeremiah, that whoever went out to the Chaldaeans would save his life. We need spiritual discernment to apply (for there is our part - not to reveal) or understand the testimony, and revelation of the Lord.

- 27. What is the meaning of this? How we pass over Scriptures! Is the b' ("through"; A.V. "with") the means or the character? I have no doubt that Christ's death alone redeems (that is not the question) there alone mishpat (judgment) and tz'adakah (righteousness) are fulfilled for God, but are these general here, as the character of what must be where there is deliverance or redemption, or, as they are produced practically wherever redemption, are they merely characteristic of a supposed redemption wrought of God independently of them, as in the people? This last is only true redemption, but in the former case (for it was only the death of Christ which proved that nothing else would do, and that death must come in, not righteousness in life) it would be while stating the characteristic fact, still leaving it open to man's responsibility to meet the exigency of God's claims on him, only adding mercy which could forgive on repentance. We know it could not be so, and that, from the beginning, God knew Christ's death alone could meet it, and glorified Himself thus; but there would be the dealing with man in government, adding mercy for his full probation supposed. This was formally given to Israel in Exodus 34: 6, 7. John the Baptist, and Christ on the earth, brought this to a crisis, and the full truth of what man is was brought out on the Cross. Man would often take the ground of Exodus 34 now, but it is ground tried and could come to nothing - not to speak of the absolute truth of the Cross.

This verse then would remain true, as characteristic at all events, but is it put as still probationary here, i.e., that left open here as probation? In chapter 49 et seq., we get the result clearly and definitely stated. But this probationary process it will be well to watch through Isaiah. It is, after the Cross, the denial of man's real state, from infidelity to Wesleyanism, though the latter may be guarded individually by individually owning its need.

24  - 31. What is the force of poalo (the maker of it)? Is it poalo or po-°lo (his work)? In sense, "his work"; or, in general, the active man who works? "Maker of it" is difficult - maker of what?

Isaiah 2

This gives the assemblage of the nations to Jerusalem restored, with its consequences in all the earth - the effect of the manifestation of the majesty and day of the Lord on the pride of man.

- 2. Akharith hay-ya-mim (the last days) is general, the end of the days, i.e., of Israel's history under its responsibility, leading in grace to the coming of Messiah, and Messiah Himself in His dealings with Israel in respect of that responsibility, not, I suppose, as finally reigning in glory. But it includes the elevation of Jerusalem to this state of glory - the whole process, till it be fulfilled; so Hebrews 1. I do not think Akharey-ken in Joel 2: 28 (chap. 3: 1 in the Hebrew) is "afterwards," but "thereupon," and refers to the whole statement from verse 17 to 27. Hence Peter (Acts 2: 17) justly and exactly "in the last days," not eschate ton hemeron touton (the last of these days); it is more general. And note, all these dealings are connected with man's responsibility, i.e., Israel's - the manifestation of Jesus, and the then blessing, on power in grace.

- 9. "Humbleth himself." Query as to this. It is reflective, or practically passive. Has shaphel this sense? Shaphel really means "he is low."

Isaiah 3 and 4

The Lord judges Jerusalem, giving her up to judicial misery, but then "the Branch of the Lord" shall come forth - the residue shall be holy, and the glory of the Lord there.

Isaiah 5

This chapter had appeared separate, but I doubt if it be not part of the whole prophecy ensuing - chapters 6, 7 and 8, down to verse 20 inclusive, being in parenthesis. This parenthesis gives, not the instruction as to evil and chastisement by external enemies, but the special instruction as to the glory of Christ, and the judicial blindness of the people. The seed of David connected with the Remnant - thereon desolation of the Assyrian. The Land being withal Immanuel's - but these waters of Siloah being rejected, the waters of the Assyrian mount to the neck. The Lord Himself is the only refuge, the true Prophet, and the children are for signs. The law being sealed up among the disciples, the Spirit waits for a manifestation, in favour of Jacob, of Him who "hides his face." Meanwhile the law and the testimony are the means of judgment to Israel.

25 Having introduced this account of the glory of Christ, the judicial blindness of Israel, the Remnant, Immanuel the Child - this feeble fountain despised, Jehovah, the Hope of the Remnant, a Sanctuary and yet a snare - the testimony is sealed up among the disciples, waiting for the Lord who "hides his face" - the law and the testimony, the means of judgment. The prophet resumes the general course again as to the nations, which he had spoken of as brought up against Jerusalem and the Land, showing that the introduction of Messiah, of whom had been mention in the parenthesis, changes all. For, though the darkness and the dimness be infinitely greater, and they "driven to darkness," than in preceding trials, yet they that walked in it had seen great light. The yoke was broken completely, and the government set on the shoulders of the Child that was to be born to them - no end should be of His blessing on the throne of David. The link of the mind of the prophecy is in chapters 5: 30 and 8: 22. The parenthesis introduces Messiah for its effect on this trouble, showing His rejection, and the truth among the disciples of the great prophet, but then Israel in utter darkness thereon, but the great light not less true in the end. There seems to me to be solid ground for this course of the chapters, and judging the Spirit's mind to be this in the connection.

Note also in these parenthetic chapters, Emmanuel is given as "a sign," and as a sign in grace. The house of David had not only wearied men, but had wearied God also. Ahaz, feeling the proximity of God, shrinks, under the form of piety, from the offered sign, and God takes up the matter in grace as to Messiah, but in the revelation of judgment. All the subjects of fear of Ahaz were nothing at all, but the wickedness of Israel would bring in the Assyrian as the "rod of indignation." All this applied to Judah, for Israel was object of fear, and had been already sentenced, but then this is to engraft the judgments of the latter day on the rejection of Messiah. Chapter 7: 16, connects itself more historically with verse 9. Then, in chapter 8, "the children" are added to the sign to "both the houses of Israel." The resumption of the prophecy in verse 21 terminates in chapter 9: 7, but this identifies itself much more with Judah and the throne of David, though that affects the whole nation, from verse 8. It is more historical for Israel, and, after the miseries of Israel, the Assyrian who had overrun Samaria and menaced Jerusalem, and who was "the rod of indignation," is put in contrast with the Rod of the stem of Jesse, and the effect of the manifestation of the glory of Messiah, the Lord Jesus, is shown.

26 Note the Rod of Jesse, and Branch out of his roots for Israel, and the Root of Jesse for the Gentiles. In the beginning of the Apocalypse He is the "Root of Jesse" only - He has not taken His earthly throne as Son of David - at the end He is Root and Offspring, taking both places.

The recovery of the dispersed is spoken of, after the glory of the rest, and the ensign of the people. Both in chapters 8 and 10, the Spirit reaches out to the latter days, and to the Assyrian of that day. This explains, in a measure, the linking of these passages, because it was necessary to bring in the episode of Messiah as sign (just like the little book in Revelation 10 and 11), to complete the history, and to give the ground of the dealings of God with Israel, and especially Judah, whether in mercy and sovereignty, or in judgment. Chapters 5 and 9, though it reach to Israel, are specially occupied with Judah, though Judah affects the whole land the moment Israel is out of the way, as in the time of the Lord, not then more Galilee, as it is said, than Samaria which was a thing apart. From chapter 9, the "anger not turned away," is generalised historically again; it had commenced specially as to Judah and Jerusalem, in chapter 5: 25. Now it recommences with Ephraim and Samaria. Chapter 12 evidently terminates the prophecy. The Lord is in Zion, and His greatness manifested there.

Recurrence to this quite makes me think it clears up the prophecy much, as to its order.

27 It is evident chapter 5 is the moral, legal, national guilt of Israel, as the following chapter is their sin as regards Christ, both more fully developed after chapter 40. But then in this chapter (5), while the present state of desolation is noticed, yet that is declared not to be the close of judgment. But then he does not continue it, as a present thing, as in chapter 9 from verse 8, and following up to the Assyrian, which closes it, but brings in, in general, the inroad of the nations, bringing in darkness and desolation. But it would apply to the Chaldaean invasion, as well as to any other, not captivity. It is judgment on the Land, and it is purposely not particularised, only the nations from afar are brought up by Jehovah against it. But it would rather apply to the Chaldaeans, and on to the Romans, though as desolating the Land. And, whatever the patience of God, the next chapter goes on to their time. Chapter 9, as I have said, gives detail from the then immediately succeeding time, on to the Assyrian, who closes judgment; chap. 10: 5-25. Chapter 6 is evidently not the law, but a revelation of Jehovah. In chapter 5 Israel is an object of judgment - the whole "vineyard in the fruitful hill." In chapter 7 it is the house of David, Judah, and Jerusalem, and Israel is the enemy with Rezin. It is equally clear that Jehovah, in chapter 6 and in chapter 8: 13, et seq., is Christ. I suppose the same is intimated in chapter 5: 1, but there as having originally planted Israel, not as coming to it revealing Himself, for that is chapters 6 and 8; yet in chapter 8 coming as Man, the Stone of stumbling.

In chapter 5 present judgment, and the darkening of the Land go together - in chapters 7 and 8, Christ and final deliverance. But note, in chapter 5 there is no deliverance - Israel is guilty as brought out by Jehovah, and under the law - in Christ, however much greater the sin, there is.

Note, too, in what follows, Israel is always viewed as God's people not finally delivered from judgment, till the Assyrian is destroyed, but from Rezin and Pekah - is always viewed as God's people with whom He was dealing, and this, after all, is a comfort, and the full power of evil against them is therefore full deliverance. Nor is Babylon seen at all, until she is seen in judgment. Chapter 14 carries it on to the end - the Assyrian without, and Philistia within, being judged after the head of the Babylonish Gentiles, and then the rest in connection with Israel.

28 Isaiah 6

The general mission of Isaiah shows a blessed state, and great preparedness of heart in the prophet. The vision was of the Lord in His holy character. The burning Seraphim were then celebrating it, lowly but exalting Jehovah. The prophet has the fullest sense of this, both for himself and the state of the people. No haste to go but a sense of what he was, and of what the people were, in presence of a holy yet evidently a known God. "Woe is me, I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, and I have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." The effect was subjective, and that was all - the deepest and truest place. But the moment his lips are cleansed by the coal from the altar, and Jehovah says "Whom shall I send, and who shall go for us," he offers himself - "Here am I, send me." This is very beautiful. We are apt to run (I admit the difference of the Gospel) in haste, as soon as interested, and then to shrink before the carelessness or opposition of the world. Here he does not stir till the Lord has fitted him, and calls; then he is His ready servant. Here, consequently, we get the largest scope of prophecy - the fullest scheme of the counsels and intentions of God, in connection with His plans as to His people and His glory.

- 1. "The Lord," so in verses 8 and 11, but in verse 5 it is "the Lord of hosts."

- 6. The veils do not come into question here. I suppose it was from the brazen altar.

- 12, 13. The language of these verses is remarkable, and much stronger than one would suppose; I am not sure that I understand it fully. "And the Lord have removed far" (as in anger or displeasure, as in other places His face) "the Adam" (eth ha Adam) "and hath multiplied forsakings" (derelictions) "in the midst of the Land" or "earth." It seems to identify the dealings of God in the Land with the whole earth, and His actings on man. The Adam (God made eth ha Adam "in his image, after his likeness" - so as a dream, when one awaketh, shall He despise his image) for then shall all the question between God, and man in power and presumption, be centred there; compare Luke 2: 14, for now He, in whom He is well pleased, is on high, rejected of the world, and we are in Him, but the whole world lieth in wickedness. This may be pursued, for the sons are accepted in the Beloved, but, save in mystery in Him, the ha Adam is set aside. "In the midst" (rokhav, breadth) but yet "in it," i.e., I suppose, the Land, there shall be a tenth, a Remnant, and it shall return, and shall be for burning - as Lebanon shall not be sufficient to burn - "shall be to be consumed" for fuel; for her iniquity shall be purged by the Spirit of judgment and the Spirit of burning, and, as the teil-tree or oak, whose root or trunk remains in casting their leaves, so the holy seed shall be the root thereof; compare Romans 11, which is just drawn in Spirit from this, quoad that part of the image.

29 The translators seem to have been misled by the apparent subject matter, but it seems strange they should have gone from so simple a word as l'va-er (eaten; strictly "consumed by burning") though it mean also consumption by browsing. Further we may observe as to this, in application, it is the Spirit of Christ testifying according to the righteousness of judgment, of which fire is the symbol, for even the Remnant shall pass through the fire, but He (who has indeed passed through, so as to bear their iniquities) shall be with them. Thence the word s'raphim (burners), here only, I believe, used. One of the burners came, and touched with a coal from off the altar (typifying the consumption of sin) - the altar of burnt offering - his lips, and he spoke accordingly. He bore about the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus might be manifest in his mortal body. Compare the whole of chapter 27, as we have already referred to the Spirit of judgment and Spirit of burning, ba-ar (he consumed).

The Seraphim I conceive to be the agency of the power of God, according to His character, but here towards the Remnant, for every man's work shall be tried by fire; accordingly when the Lord tries the Churches His eyes are as a flame of fire. The Cherubim were the agency of God; as see observations elsewhere on Revelation. Thus he was qualified to testify, according to this, to the Jews, the special objects of the one and the other. This, accordingly, became accomplished when the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world (amongst the Jews) gathering the wheat and burning up the chaff, etc., for judgment, that they which see might be made blind. But He came for judgment because He came not for judgment, for so it is with man thus left to himself.

Note, the saint takes the message without knowing what it is, for it is of God, and the primary character of the prophet is direct association of mind with Him - it is a trust on the part of God, in which the prophet is separated into His interest from all others. That interest may indeed be the Church, or it may be the judgment of the Churches - but that is another question; it is always God. I have sometimes thought this was the meaning of "Lovest thou me more than these?" "Can you act for me, independent even of your tie to these?" I am sure the principle is necessary for efficient service for Christ in the Church.

30 This chapter specially puts the prophet in his prophetic place, and is deeply interesting as describing it. The prophetic place begins where the Church is withered, as it were. It is the presence of the Spirit of Christ, cognisant, by the knowledge of God's burning judgment, of what the Church ought to be, sensible in all perfect sympathy, as dwelling amongst it, of its state and necessity, and withal of the mind of God toward it, and knowing, therefore being, itself, as a word formed on the standard of God's holiness towards it, the development and depository of His mind towards it. We find it then thus exhibited. It is therefore the mind of God toward the Church, as so cognisant, and the mind of the Church towards God, both in their perfectness as in Romans 8. Here therefore it is exhibited especially in that word, "Lord, how long?" For it knows, experimentally, the mind of God towards His Church in favour, and rests on that.

This chapter is the installation of the prophet in his office. To the end of verse 12, from the beginning of verse 7, is a substantive prophecy; what follows is detail. Verses 7-13 is the Covenant of David, in Christ, as failed in se.

Isaiah 7

- 16. "The land, before whose two kings thou art in fear, shall be forsaken."

Isaiah 8

- 22. The ma-uph (dimness) of this verse, and mu-aph (dimness) of chapter 9: 1 (in the Hebrew 8: 23) and khoshech (darkness) are to be connected, which, I think, clears the sense, specially when the plain application, or exposition, of Matthew be taken, in which, I take it, is a strict application according to the sense of the Spirit, in the prophet, in the passage.

31 Isaiah 9

- 3. "Thou hast multiplied the nation, increased the joy to it."

Isaiah 10

- 6. Up to this, chastisement; now, judgment, but as it is the intervention of God, it is the deliverance of His people, but in a remnant.

- 20-27. Nothing can be more distinct than the elements of the prophecy here, and its bearing is equally important - the Remnant, the calah v'nekheratzah (A.V., a consumption even determined) of the last days - the judgment of the great enemy; in this, the indignation ceasing. It is a deliverance, like Egypt, only Israel has been purged by judgment. Chapter 4: 4, and the anointing has taken its effect, so that it is secure and stable. How rationalists are to be pitied! And Lowth is not much better, indeed never to be trusted. No doubt in Hezekiah's time it cast its shadow before, compare verse 5. Chapter 11 must be read as the same prophecy, i.e., from chapter 10: 25 to 11: 6.

Isaiah 11

This chapter follows the chastisements of Israel as such, and final judgment of the Assyrian, the enemy, as we have seen, of old of Israel and Judah when owned - and is the blessing of Judah and Zion as such, when the Root of Jesse shall be there. Chapter 24 is after the judgment of the different nations, only Jews and Land come in amongst them, as chapters 18 and 24. Hence we have general judgment and general blessing, "the hosts on high," "the kings of the earth" vv. 21, 22) and then the Lord reigns in Mount Zion. Rebellious power is brought down according to God's counsels - blessings for all are in Mount Zion. The evil of darkness over the Gentiles will be then taken away, death is swallowed up in victory for the heavenly people, and the reproach taken off His people everywhere. Israel then meets God with joy, and their own land is subdued under them. Chapter 26 sings the song of these judgments, and their course, and that of the people's and Jews' hearts. The power of the Gentiles is not reviewed, of His people it is, but it is Jehovah's not the people's work, and those that have ears to hear are invited to hide themselves for a little moment, till the indignation be over, for Jehovah is coming out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. Chapter 27 depicts this dealing with the power of evil, and with Israel which He keeps and gathers, but chastises as a people of no understanding.

32 Isaiah 13

- 10. From this verse, Joel 2: 10 and 31; chap. 3: 15; Matthew 24: 29; Ezekiel 32: 7, and Amos 8: 9, I gather the following. The darkening of the sun is not Gog but Antichrist. The tribulation is under Antichrist before Gog, or the Northern army comes up. The people called up against the Jews (apparently, as in unbelief and connected with Antichrist) is Gog or the Northern army. This, and not Antichrist, is the terrible day of the Lord. The agency of the saints is connected with this; see Joel, etc. The sun is put out before this, apparently as in Daniel 11, end. Antichrist is not, properly, the indignation - that is when Gog, or the Assyrian, comes up, and wholly ceases in their destruction; compare Ezekiel 38, 39, and Isaiah 10. It would rather appear that the destruction of Antichrist is connected with the agency of the saints. The sun shall be dark before them, and so the terrible day of the Lord. Antichrist is called "the king," "Lucifer," in the Old Testament scriptures. The Jews against Gog, or the Assyrian, as Zechariah 9, and other passages of scripture.

The chapters from 13 to 21 inclusive are remarkable - a perfect confusion as to the events from which they are drawn, that there may be instruction for the fulness of prophecy to come. First, Babylon and Israel contrasted - the world judged in Babylon, therefore for it generally (v. 11) and the Lord choosing yet Israel, and "set them in their own land," not Judah there (Antichrist viewed herein) but Babylon put before the Assyrian, which we know was long after, and the Assyrian destroyed, in history, first - here, afterwards on the mountains. This purposed on the whole earth, and then, afterwards, the land cleared, Philistia - Zion then viewed as founded. This is a complete scene in itself; there are other details, however, that are general and complete for Israel and the Land.

33 Then we have Moab, which was destroyed by Babylon, is called to send the lamb to the daughter of Zion, and, at the end, a date of three years given. Then Damascus, which was carried captive by Assyria, and, at the close, the destruction of the Assyrian; still verses 7 and 4, the glory of Jacob made them but regard to God. Then we have a nation entirely beyond the limits of the nations in question, beyond the Nile and Euphrates, who take an interest in the Jews, but the Jews are left an entire prey in the midst of the nations. Then Egypt, given into the hand of a cruel king, smitten and healed - Judah a terror to Egypt, and Egypt, Assyria and Israel all one. God will send them a great Saviour. Then as a further detail, the Assyrian seizes on Egypt. Then, no help from Assyria. Then, under the term of "the desert of the sea," the fall of Babylon by Elam and Media - the incredulity of Dumah judged, and Arabia. Then the fall of Jerusalem by Persia and Media - the rulers fled, then found in her bound. Yet the circumstances of the time of Hezekiah, evidently referred to, even persons' names, yet so as to bring out all the glory of the house of David on One who replaces another who has no right there, or whose right the land disallows. In that day, as to the events from which the prophecies flow, they are all extraordinarily jumbled together; as to those to which they tend they cast a perfect light. Tyre and the land (ha-aretz, the earth), present more difficulty, and though of express force, I should feel of wider character.

It is evident that chapters 13 to 26 take up the present state of things universally in the world, as the subject of judgment, and God's dealings as long as Israel was a testimony, were supportable, i.e., that God's judgment could be displayed in it in the midst of the nations. There was no word of judging all alike, as from without, but, when Israel (or Judah) had to be judged, then the consequences of evil must come judicially on all around. The world in general was on the footing of dispersion, whatever changes in detail had taken place. The grand question was, what was Israel's faith when the world rose up against it in the Assyrian? God saved them then, but their iniquity was such, they were not to be purged till they died. So that they were then found guilty for judgment, though God raised up Hezekiah, and, in His then external government, could deliver the city; but in the internal, by the testimony of the prophet, they are declared wholly guilty. Hence, they are given up to the reign of Manasseh, which brought the judgment, being spared during Hezekiah's reign, having with him humbled themselves. How perfect is God's government, as are all His ways!

34 Then these chapters deal with the world as it is, and pass the line of judgment over it all around, and then pass over to the next thing - God's interference to bring about His order and blessing, which is really the next thing after the breaking up the order and existence of nations, among which His people had a place. He despised the rod of His Son, as every tree. The bounds of the people had been set according to the number of the children of Israel, and, hence, the whole system fell together.

But there was another thing to be considered - that which was the instrument of judgment. Hence the judgment, and captivity of Babylon itself, and its rebellious head too, is introduced, and Babylon was outside the dispersion before it, and a principle apart. It was union by the violence of the mighty hunter, and Babel the beginning of his kingdom. (The Assyrian is another power we will speak of afterwards.) Hence Babylon stands out distinct. It was the instrument of judgment on all then, but then for the bringing in of God's judgment. It has to be judged, along with the rest, for God's people are in captivity there. As to details, therefore, we find first, this grand, absorbing power judged alone, and the audacious and blasphemous rebellion of its chief noted, calling down the judgment by which Israel is delivered. (Then the Assyrian falls on the mountains, and Palestine cleared by the Lord.) This is the complete scene of the results at the end.

Then comes the then present breaking up of the subsisting system of which Nebuchadnezzar was, historically, the instrument, passing even over, as we have said, to the last days. God interferes in that day, for that was the true power of judgment. Taking occasion from Damascus (through which quarter consequently, I suppose, the attack will take place) we have the inroad of the nations against Judah (but Jacob is as gleanings left only) to their own destruction, as in Zechariah. Sennacherib is partly an example - I say "partly," because it was not he that took Damascus.

35 Also in chapter 18, we have the additional element, that Israel shall be brought back by some extraordinary intervention of a nation (I have a strong notion it is England) who takes them up, but, having planted them in their own land, they become a prey there of the nations. Still they are brought as, and being, a present to the Lord of Hosts. Then, chapter 21, we have historically Babylon itself taken, and then the daughter of His people spoiled. At the same time the key of the house of David taken from the confident and proud ruler, who is put to shame, and placed in the hands of Him who is chosen of God. Chapter 24 gives the total desolation of the Land, but hence of the earth, and of the world, as that in which alone, as we have seen, hangs the possibility of earthly blessing and stability - the central system of an owned earth in government, and indeed all will be concentrated there in that day, all the nations of the earth; see chapter 26: 9, and compare Revelation 14. The judgment on this occasion reaches to the heavenly powers as well as "the kings of the earth upon the earth." "The Lord of hosts shall reign" - this evidently changes all.

Isaiah 14

This is giving mercy to Israel in the destruction of the Assyrian, compare chapters 15, 16, Micah, and the subjection of all Philistia. Note, in remarking on Babylon, the different things which are assembled in that prophecy.

The subjection of Moab seems to be, according to the statement of the Psalm, the work of Messiah, after the destruction of the adversary, in whose exaltation Israel has rejoiced, or at least was joined with the Assyrian. They are called on to receive the outcasts during the oppression of Antichrist, anticipating his destruction, or showing their folly in not owning it by his destruction.

- 8. Meaz (A.V., "since") seems to mean "from of old."

- 13 and 14 seem to have a special application.

Isaiah 17

I do not see how it is possible, in all this part of Isaiah, from chapter 13 and even before, not to see that the Spirit of God is taking up the great plan of God, and speaking of future coming events, but taking hold of present ones as an occasion, and that connected with the government of God then, which will be fully displayed at the end.

36 Note Damascus was taken by the king of Assyria in the reign of Ahaz; but all this is evidently in the latter days. Moab, however, suffers first from the heathen.

Isaiah 18

We have here the circumstances of the restoration of the Jews, in connection with a protecting nation out of the limits of ancient Jewish associations.

This chapter is full of deep interest. The "swift messengers" (mal'akhim kallim); I have not yet entirely assured myself of what they were. I take the statement to be literal as regards its actual fulfilment. The "rivers of Cush" I take to be not only the Nile but the Euphrates, as if he should say, "I am now speaking of a land or people beyond those in point of distance, which now are the extremities of and affect the Jewish land and people."* Yet a people which is to have extensive empire of influential subjection, and intimately connected with the Jews in their dealings in that day, when Israel is developed in their full history and character, the last act being then accomplished, a people long deferred, as He saith - true, in the Remnant. "Shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? Yea, He will avenge them speedily." And it is the character of prophecy to say "How long?" "How long, O Lord, for ever shall thy fury," etc. And the want of faith in the Jewish people is described by "none to say, How long?" Here then is the sense of m'musshak (drawn out, scattered). It is the same word as "Hope long deferred." A people continually, insultingly, ill-treated, whose hair is plucked off - the same word, passive for active, as "I gave my cheeks to those that plucked off the hair," where our Lord is describing His Jewish humiliation - a people terrible (no-ra) to be revered, wondered at, or feared, from existence forward for ever, i.e., from the time the Lord made them a people; true, in principle, in the beginning, in fact from the time here finally spoken of, commonly translated "from this out" - a nation (now not mentioned as a people because dealt with on general moral principles, and, indeed, judged accordingly) a nation, which has had "line upon line," first by presenting the measure and righteousness of God's judgments, in testimony, if they would hear, and then, "hear or forbear," it came upon them as the exact measure of God's judgments, and such, I apprehend, is the force of chapter 28: 13. The Word, as I find it, is ever a measuring line, and, as the strictness and perfectness of God's judgments must be familiar to readers of Scripture attentively, I understand it still as a line or measure in Psalm 19: 4, and this use of it, is what, I believe, the Spirit of God refers to in Paul, when he speaks of the metron tou kanonos (the measure of the rule, 2 Cor. 10: 13) which ho theos metrou (the God of measure) hath distributed, so I should be rather inclined to read it "had distributed" or "allotted" to him, to a nation then measured, measured, i.e., by the judgments of God (accomplishing His word which they would not receive in truth, and therefore they found here in judgment, as He saith, "Judgment will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet") trodden down, or under foot. Compare chapters 63 and 64, where this is all made the subject of supplication, and much answer given in chapter 65 as regards Christ.

{* Me-e-ver l' (beyond) is always, as far as I see, "on the other side of"; it is a use of me-e-ver, in relative place to.}

37  - 2 and 7. "Whose land the rivers" - I sometimes thought this might mean "above mentioned," but these were only characteristic of the rest, and it is used, I imagine, generally. The nations have made Jacob a prey, as, during the times of the Gentiles, they can have been to one another, but, whoever was dominant, they were subject until this time. They were a prey twice; some might use them well, as the Persians did, still they were a prey, and soon out of their hands - "have made a prey" or "spoiled."

The rest of the chapter describes the Lord's dealing, in that day, as done as a summons and witness to all nations. He then explains the dealings as regards the Jews, when the previous dealing, resulting in their being brought, and their offerings accepted, recognised in all their previous character, is over.

Isaiah 19

We have, here, Egypt, in dissension, given up to a tyrant, and in the terror of Judah, in the blessing of Israel.

38 Isaiah 20

This is an episode as to Egypt, to wit, the inroad and success of the Assyrian.

Isaiah 21

Babylon is taken. Idumaea slights the warning. Arabia is judged.

Isaiah 22

Jerusalem is taken, and Eliakim replaces Shebna, or Christ Antichrist.

Isaiah 23

Tyre is judged.

Isaiah 24

This chapter is not a distinct burthen. It is the Land, and therewith as the earth, of which it is become the centre, the world, and the manifestation of the Lord's glory in Jerusalem.

- 4. This verse seems to preclude the confining it to the Land, for, I suppose, te-vel (the world) is never used but in the one sense, generically. So the Spirit in the Apocalypse, 16: 14, though leaning, as here, on the principal point to which the other was subordinate; so chapter 34: 6.

Isaiah 25

This is a celebration of the glory and blessedness, and what belongs to that day, the proud enemy, Moab being subdued under the Lord.

Isaiah 26

- 9 and 21. "The inhabitants of the earth"; compare Apocalypse 3: 10, "Them that dwell upon earth." Note the difference, too, between 2 Peter 2: 9, where the comparison is with Noah and Lot, who passed through the tribulation, and Apocalypse 3: 10. In Peter, we have rhuesthai ek peirasmou (deliver from temptation) and in the Apocalypse tereso ek tes horas tou peirasmou (I will keep from the hour of temptation). The difference is evident, and confirms the force of this latter, as interpreted, for the deliverance of the faithful Remnant; quod nota.

39 This chapter specially belongs to Judah, and the circumstances connected with that, before the indignation be overpast.

Isaiah 27

- 4. The voice of the vineyard would be, "I have no wall; oh, that I had for myself briars and thorns"! This chapter takes up Israel on the destruction of Leviathan, and, connected with the last verses of the former chapter, closes with the gathering of the scattered gleanings abroad.

Isaiah 28, 29

The double inroad of the nations. First, Ephraim is assailed by the Assyrian, etc., and overwhelmed, yet it was in the day of the Lord's deliverance. At this time scornful men, dwelt at Jerusalem, who said that the scourge would not reach them. But it should overflow the hiding place, and they should be trodden down by it.

There is "a consumption determined upon the whole land," yet unhappy and ignorant Zion the Lord loveth, and, when the learned cannot read His mind because he is unlearned, the Lord knows the thoughts He thinks towards them - thoughts of peace and not of evil - to give them an expected end. Jerusalem, or Zion the lion of God, shall be brought perfectly low, but the Lord shall fight against all the nations, and "they shall be as a dream when one awaketh" and according to His everlasting covenant, "Jacob shall not be ashamed, neither shall his face now wax pale."

Isaiah 30

- 3. We find here details. They seek for help from Egypt in that day, when "in returning and quietness" should have been their strength; therefore the Lord would leave them to the strength of their enemies. But He will wait till they have tasted all this, and then be gracious Himself, for the destruction of the Assyrian shall be the joy of a Remnant. Tophet is also prepared for the king.

40  - 12. "This word" refers, I suppose, to verses 6 and 7.

- 18. Compare chapters 8: 17, and 18: 4. Indeed it is the whole history as chapter 6, and originally at Sinai; Exodus 33: 19. God must retreat into His own sovereignty to spare, though He punish according to our responsibility in government or in righteousness. And faith, founded on righteousness, waits for Him - or even in hope through grace, where divine righteousness is not yet known.

- 20. It would seem from this verse (of those chapters which enter into the detail of Israel in the latter day) that though fed and nourished with affliction, yet they shall leave their teachers, in spite of all who shall guide them in the way.

- 28. "Peoples."

- 33. "For the king also it is prepared." "The king" is mentioned three times in prophecy; here, in chapter 57: 9, and in Daniel 11.

Isaiah 31 and 32

We have here a special introduction of the circumstances of the change of dispensation - the first chapter which, by the grace of my God, opened my ignorant eyes to this serious and all-important subject - things important to us. The Lord is wise, though He is not looked to. The Lord shall fight for Zion, and the Assyrian shall fall, but not by "a mighty man." Then the King, reigning in righteousness, is introduced - His righteous character - and the manifestation of villainy as vile. The city forsaken, Jerusalem trodden down, till the Spirit be poured out on the Jews. Note the synchronism, and a total change of dispensation - all before should be but as an uncultivated fruit, and so it is. Still, blessing should be universal on Jew and Gentile; the city only should be brought low, and the Gentile fruit judged.

Isaiah 33 - 35

This (the King being now introduced) is the judgment of the Assyrian. In his latter approach he spoiled, but had not been spoiled - the circumstances of Zion - the detail of all that had passed, or allusion to it, but the Lord arises. The Remnant are preserved, they see "the King in his beauty," and have their portion now, even to the end of the Land. The Assyrian could not prevail, nor strengthen "his mast"; how could he pass the Lord as a defence? Then there is a great judgment on the nations which has place in Idumaea. It is the day of the Lord's vengeance. His recompenses for Zion. Then the universal joy, and consequence of blessing. Antichrist has nothing to do with all this. The only place he can be supposed to be mentioned is, if it be, where it is added, "Yea, also for the king it is prepared" (gam-hu lammelek). Otherwise it is the historic connection between Israel, Zion, the inroad of the nations, Egypt, the Lord, the Assyrian, the King, and the full joy thereon - their complete deliverance and security - and, in a word, everlasting joy upon their heads, seeing "the King in his beauty," possessing the Land, the desert blossoming, and holiness their way.

41 I also gather from this, that Edom and Bozrah in Isaiah 63, is not the destruction of Antichrist, but that which is spoken of in these chapters, the nations there, after the former had passed, by the coming of Christ with all His saints, from the scene. The controversy with the nations when Zion is taken up - the prostrate, because disobedient, lion of God.

Isaiah 40

The second part of Isaiah begins by the proclamation, of the herald who precedes the Lord, that "All flesh is grass," and that "the people," even the people of the God "is grass." Man and Israel are withered and profitless, but this does not change the certainty of hope, because the Word of Israel's God endures for ever. Then Zion is the scene of blessing - God's strength in judgment, the means - and He will care for His flock. Then His Almighty supremacy is unfolded, in contrast with idols. Israel should remember that He "fainteth not, neither is weary."

He reduces to silence all the heathen and their idols, sending forth the instrument of His power to execute His purpose. Israel had nothing then to fear.

Next, Christ is His Servant in lowliness, and shall be in power. He shall unfailingly accomplish all His purposes. Thus Jehovah will "lead the blind," and who is blind as Israel, having every opportunity and observing nothing? God will glorify His Law and ways, yet Israel is oppressed, for He hath sinned, but God has formed him for Himself - he need not fear, He will deliver, and, in spite of all his failure, he is not to think of the old things, but to count on this faithfulness of delivering grace.

42 Thus, while making grass of man, God acts here in certain delivering grace in His faithful love to His people - acts from His own unchangeable love and faithfulness. Christ, as His Servant, and the Elect One, is the great instrument of this. Israel had been rejected for sin - there was "no peace for the wicked" - but a Remnant would be saved. But, if chosen, they were chosen in "a furnace of affliction." It is grace, and God's own purpose, while sin is shown to be the cause of their condition. Christ, the elect Servant, is introduced - Cyrus and Babylon are brought in, as the first grand sign of deliverance, after the evil and the judgment of the heathen and their idols. Chapter 49 begins, specifically, the case of Christ, and Israel's condition in respect of Him.

This chapter is comfort to Israel, as witness of the power of God. In general it is the comfort of Jerusalem - thus the voice of the Baptist preparing the way of the Lord - the manifestation of the sovereignty of Jehovah. Then the Spirit of prophecy declares "all flesh is grass"; consequently, all the Jewish system falls together, founded in flesh. The Law, also, was "weak through the flesh," "but the Word of our God," says the Spirit in the Jewish Remnant, "shall stand for ever." Then Zion, visited in blessing in the latter days, becomes the messenger of blessing to all the cities of Judah. Christ comes - verse 12 begins His controversy of the nations, in which Israel was the witness of the unity and glory of Jehovah. But Jehovah has to vindicate it Himself.

- 2. Nir 'tzah (is pardoned) is "discharged," satisfaction is made for it.

- 3. Connect kol kore (voice of him that crieth) and verse 6, k'ra (cry). John's crying was bammid-var (in the wilderness), i.e., of the Jewish people. Our Lord came in the street, the city, but did not kara (cry out), though He suffered, for good reason, out of it.

- 6. Note the use of khas'do (the goodliness thereof) - its gracefulness, I suppose. It is doxa (glory) in the Septuagint.

43  - 9. I do not know without examination, but I rather prefer "who bringest good tidings to Zion" - "to Jerusalem."

- 12. Tik-ken (meted out); the same word is used in verse 13 for "hath directed." "Heaven" - the heavens - what is this?

- 27, 28. We see the appeal of Jehovah, in grace, against the incredulity of the people.

- 31. "They that wait on the Lord" are distinguished.

Isaiah 41

Then the "King of Jacob" challenges the nations, and, by the hand of Cyrus (as an example) destroys the power of idolatry. He giveth "good tidings to Jerusalem."

This chapter is judgment on the islands (Gentile nations) by the instrument which God had appointed, as contrasted with Israel.

- 2. "Righteousness," see margin. We have here, and in several other passages, a use of "righteousness" which illustrates and clears up its use in the New Testament, so that Gesenius translates it here and elsewhere "liberatio, salus." It is the interference of God's power here, in consistency with His own character, and in grace towards His people, which therefore necessarily delivers them. "Who raised up righteousness from the east?" God acts to vindicate His own character, and power against evil. It is God's righteousness. Taking Cyrus as a primary fulfilment, God is obliged to vindicate His title against the pride of the heathen, and idols, and false gods. It is His righteousness, but thereby His people are delivered in grace. So, "My righteousness is near; my salvation is gone forth" (chap. 51: 5), and "shall be for ever" (v. 8). In chapter 45: 8, it is God publicly vindicating Himself as He is, so to speak, bound to do in the end, and so righteousness comes forth. So, I believe, "who have obtained like precious faith with us, through the righteousness of our God and Saviour." This connects itself with promises, where they are, because the fulfilment of them is a part of God's righteousness. Hence God fully establishing and vindicating all He is, in the Cross of Jesus, and the blessed Jesus offering Himself up that He might. We come in who, through grace, are quickened together with Him, to be the righteousness of God in Him. He is made unto us righteousness, but it is properly and essentially the righteousness of God, not intrinsically in Him, but brought out into manifestation in that which is done, for so it is, and, here, so as to be the glory of God (which implies display) and salvation to those, however miserable, who come in on the principles on which it acts - which are, indeed, for us by faith, and hence the reasoning of the Apostle in Romans, Galatians and elsewhere.

44 Isaiah 42

The Elect (Messiah) is introduced - the Servant. Thus the Gentiles will wait upon God, and for the Elect's law. Jehovah's power will be manifested against the idols - His, who had long time held His peace. He will manifest His glory to the confusion of all worshippers of idols in the deliverance of Israel, leading the blind. But who so blind as they who saw so many things, and yet not observing? Thus the Lord will magnify the Law. But Israel, robbed and spoiled, had been given up for sin as chastisement, but now the Lord, in sovereign grace (chap. 43) will redeem, and comfort, and declare them, and show, in His dealings with them, that they are His witnesses as of old. And now, also, they shall show forth all His praise, as, indeed, in His way with them, His praise has been shown. But, in fact, Israel had not sought God, but wearied Him with sin. But He, for His Name's sake, thus showing forth His praise in them, forgave them all.

This, and the following chapter give the place of Christ amongst Israel, and the work of God amongst them, notwithstanding their failure.

Isaiah 43

This chapter ends at verse 25. Grace is here eminent as God's praise.

Isaiah 44

Forgiveness and the Spirit to Israel, introducing Cyrus as the deliverer.

On pleading with Israel, the promise of the Spirit is added, which revivifies and encourages them to confess His name, and glory in Him, and thus again becomes the instrument of defiance to the idols, which are vanity, with all their followers. Again the Lord is announced as having redeemed Jacob, and glorified Himself thus in Israel, who confounds diviners, and declares His purpose concerning Jerusalem, and now, of Cyrus as instrument of rebuilding the Temple.

45 Isaiah 45

Cyrus - the testimony of God's purpose to Israel - and Israel of His name.

- 4. He has "surnamed" him, for His love to Jacob, "the servant" and "the elect." Observe here these two names, which confound Israel with Christ, Messiah.

The everlasting salvation of Israel is contrasted with the idols. The escaped of the nations are called on to recognise the hand of God who had foretold all this, and to look to Him as Saviour, for to Jehovah "every knee should bow." This we know also is Christ exalted over every power, and everlasting. Thus using Cyrus, as the expression of it, for those times when judgment had called Israel "not a people" - Israel, elect, a servant, the witness of God against all false gods. If God upon the earth, as of old, eternal, and now, anew, of all His praise, Redeemer and Deliverer, acting in grace, and disposing of instruments as He would, as Almighty, proving it by the prophetic testimony, and the accomplishment of it in favour of His people, by the instruments He had chosen, Israel, the occasion and object, the means of all this display of glory (and that, in grace) is identified with Christ, as Elect Servant (chap. 42), but Israel in contrast with idols. But this Elect Servant is Jehovah withal, and thus, idols being set aside, every knee is to bow to Him. The nations who escape are called to own all this in Jacob, and looking on Him to be saved.

Isaiah 46

Babylon is then summoned on the scene by the prophetic Spirit, and all her fate told; first, in the person of her idols in contrast with Jehovah's faithfulness to Israel. They carried Babylon's helpless gods into captivity, but Jehovah carried, and bore Israel from youth to age. He had made, and would bear them when Moses himself, His faithful servant, failed, feeling they were not his own, his children. It is the contrast of Jehovah with His people, and the impotency of the idols carried into captivity. Cyrus is yet the instrument of the specimen given of this. This, and the following chapter give the judgment on Babylon in similar testimony to chapter 45, i.e., the idolatrous power of the world. "All the world" is a question between Israel and Babylon.

46 Isaiah 47

It is not the idols now, but the pride of Babylon, who thought never to see sorrow.

Isaiah 48

These are the special dealings of God with Israel and the reasons for them.

We have the distinction of Israel - who is unrighteous though making use of the Name of the Lord - prophecy, the means of showing it was God's doing, making shame of idols. But Jehovah acts for His Name's sake. He spares, defers, refines Israel - choosing her in "the furnace of affliction," shows Himself the only God, and executes judgment, doing His pleasure on Babylon. If Israel had been faithful, her peace would have flowed like a river. But Israel will prove, as well as Babylon, that Jehovah is faithful to His Name, that "there is no peace to the wicked, saith the Lord."

This was necessary in judging Babylon - the judgment of Israel, chosen, and saved. Before chapter 45: 25, it was Israel justified, as a whole, in the Lord, and glorying in Him.

Isaiah 49

Up to this, the Lord's controversy with idolatry and Babylon, only Christ (chap. 42) necessarily brought in for blessing. From this, to the end of chapter 57, Christ, Himself, as rejected. We find here the whole plan and ways of God in government, as regards His rejection of Christ by Israel, i.e., the fact of Israel's not being then gathered.

Note how very distinctly we have first Israel, then the blessed Lord substituted for Israel when rejected by them, then, on resurrection, the condition of a new order of things, available at present, but resulting in the re-establishment of Zion.

47 This is a full development of the work of Christ, with a testimony that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. Israel is taken up as a witness, and the Spirit of Christ in them takes up the summons to the isles, and people from afar, to recognise the election of God in Israel, in whom He would be glorified. But then, necessarily, comes in not only the wickedness and idolatry of Israel, but their conduct as to Messiah. He takes up Israel according to this counsel of God, declared in His will, and purpose by the Spirit "in the volume of the Book," but has to declare that if so He has laboured in vain. Thereon the fuller revelation of God, as to His glory. It was a light thing to raise up Israel, He should be a light to the Gentiles, and God's salvation to the ends of the earth, which would be raised up and comforted in Him, scattered Israel brought back, and, notwithstanding all her fears, Jerusalem is blessed according to the immutable and tender love of God, for Jerusalem is the centre of all God's affections, in providence on earth; see Jeremiah and Zechariah. All would be subservient to her blessing.

- 3. This verse requires attention. I apprehend the English translation neglects the Hebrew stops. I call Athnach* a stop. I should think De Wette added words to complete his translation. The question is, can asher-b'ka (literally, "whom in thee") be translated "Thou in whom"? "The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my servant; Israel, thou art he in whom I will be glorified." De Wette translates it: "It is Israel in whom, through thee, I glorify myself," paying attention to Athnach. The English is: Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified. This is the Hebrew: vay-yomer li av-di attah Yis-ra-el asher-b'ka eth pa-ar (And said to me, my servant, Thou, Israel, whom in thee I shall be glorified). I apprehend "In whom through thee" is surely not there. I am not sure that one is warranted in adding "Thou" (art he) "in whom." The importance lies in the question, who is "My servant," here, Israel or Christ the blessed Lord? It is clearly the transition point of Israel, and the Lord, Servant - verse 4 makes that plain.

{*Athnach is one of the Hebrew accents.}

I am not far from suspecting that De Wette's is the right sense, only that he has unwarrantably added "by thee," durch dich. Asher b'ka can hardly be an dem durch dich. Luther's is as the English. If I remember the French, it is in substance as De Wette, if not literally.

48 Isaiah 50

The Lord then demands why He had rejected her. He had come Himself, in Christ, to be in her sorrows, and with equal power to save, and had been rejected, found no man to call when He answered. The humiliation of Christ is most touchingly put forth. Thus the Remnant come to be distinguished, and Christ takes the place of Servant, and though, thereon, Israel was in darkness, and the Remnant, he who obeyed His voice should trust in the Lord - how faithful, we have seen; those who kindled sparks for themselves would, of the Lord's hand, lie down in sorrow. All now hangs on this rejection of Christ, who speaks by His Spirit in the prophet, and presents Himself as Jehovah, but made a Servant in Israel.

Note this chapter contains the humiliation of Christ - His place of subjection in contrast with His divinity. Chapter 53 contains the expiation He accomplished for the people, and for many, in contrast with the exaltation of the Servant, which is other than His being Jehovah, distinctly.

We have here the moral question, of the rejection of Israel by Jehovah, fully tried - what Israel had done in rejecting Jehovah when He came in grace in Jesus, lowly for their sakes, the true character of the humbled Holy One clearly brought out. He is justified by Jehovah. To this is added the consequent exhortation to the Remnant in the latter days, who listen to His voice as the Servant of Jehovah.

Note - the appeal is after the divorcement. This gives it a most important, and deeply interesting character of grace, not developed perhaps, but they are to stand in the name of the Lord, and stay upon their God after this. This is pure grace, resting on what God is.

It is reasoning with Israel upon the circumstances in which Christ's coming placed it - first, the general fact of the rejection, then the nature of Christ's first coming, to the distinction of the Remnant.

- 5. I do not apply the boring of the servant's ear with an awl to the "opening mine ear" (it is fixing the sign or symbol of service, as receiving command, to the post, i.e., the master's house, i.e., marking the constancy of service) though they are both connected with the same subject. I should apply the boring of the ear of the servant (more especially, i.e., therein it was exhibited and fulfilled) to the Lord's willing subjection to death after He took upon Him the form of a Servant, and had identified Himself with His Master's wife's and children's interest (for His Master had given Him a wife and she was His Master's and His, and thus became the tie to the Master) "being found in fashion as a Man, he humbled himself," etc., being unwilling, even though He could (for He must have gone out without His wife) have gone out free - He preferred to subject Himself for His and their sakes. It was love, and the accomplishment of love. The "opening the ear" is, I take it, submission, intelligent submission to His Father's will, not love after He was a Servant, such, I think, as chapters 40 and 52 express it, as saints, and our Lord throughout, especially in John's Gospel; so Matthew 12, but especially in His becoming a Servant. Therefore the Father saith "Behold my Servant"; so compare Isaiah 53, Hebrews 2, and John 12, Ka-ri-tha (Thou hast digged, Psalm 40) seems to make Him a Servant, "ears hast thou digged for me"; compare Ezekiel 16: 3, 21, 35; Hebrew, verses 30, 29, 14, also Isaiah 51: 1, for the word, "Thou hast formed me to be a Servant," was Israel as a witness, as we have seen Him to be the only faithful One actually of Israel, and therefore applicable in principle to Him, though spoken of literal Israel. The ear marked the servitude, as reception of command, "Thou hast formed a body for me," in which I am to be a Servant. And observe it is the Son, as before His incarnation, who says "Ears hast thou digged for me," and accordingly it was in His incarnation He took on Him the form of a Servant, as see Philippians 2. Then pa-thakh ("he opened," Isaiah 52: 2) is generally subjection to servitude. "Behold, saith he, I am thy Servant." When the Lord Jesus had taken the glory (Christhood) upon Himself in behalf of man, man then being apostate, "it became him for whom are all things," etc., therefore, "though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience," therefore He had "the tongue of the learned and knew how," etc., therefore "Behold," "Consider him!" Yigel (he openeth, Job 36: 10) He openeth their ear to discipline, instruction, and the like, to make the mind to understand. Thus, by faith in Christ Jesus we are made to understand the Scriptures, it is an yigel ("He openeth") to us; so of any revelation of God's mind. It is connected, however, with willingness to obey, but concerns the communication of the matter of the obedience. It is the knowledge, the intelligence necessary to obedience - the opposed to "closing the ear" that they should not hear the perception of the will, or at least the communication of God concerning it; so, the Lord, "He that hath ears to hear let hum hear."

50 Isaiah 51

To the end of verse 12 of chapter 52, we have progressive instructions to the Remnant, progressive summons of the Spirit of the help and glory of Zion, reckoned to be possessed by the Remnant as a nation. Verses 7 to 20 are the progressive, or double, interference of God.

The history of Israel, in the Remnant, is thus given, up to their full glory, to the end of chapter 52: 12. First, three addresses to the people, "Hearken unto me" (vv. 1, 4, 7). Those who sought justice - His people - those who know justice. The Remnant thus distinguished and summoned, the Spirit takes up the appeal in the demand for the awakening of "the arm of the Lord" (v. 9), in power, which is another thing, but power is there. It was the Eternal that consoled them. They had forgotten Him. Had He gone to sleep and forgotten? He who neither slumbers nor sleeps, whose power is there - now that Zion is awakened to know it - calls on Zion to awake, for all was mercy now, to awake and clothe herself with beauty and glory, as Babylon had to come down and uncover herself of her false glory. For what were the peoples to oppress the people of the Lord? What had He here? The Lord had consoled His people, and made bare His holy arm in presence of the nations. They should go out from their captivity, and the Lord be their avant and arriere garde. Nothing can be more splendid or lovely than this allocution of the Spirit. It was not, indeed, for Jerusalem to cry what awoke the Lord - it was for her to awake.

The first appeal to the people encourages weakness, by the recollection that Abraham was alone when the Lord blessed and multiplied him. The Lord would comfort Zion. The second recognises them as His people; hence the nations are introduced - Jehovah's righteousness near - His salvation gone forth. And, though the heavens should vanish, His righteousness and salvation should be for ever. The third appeal, not to heed the reproach of men, for they were as a garment moth-eaten, but God's "righteousness shall be for ever," His "salvation from generation to generation."

51 The Lord, thus in relation with, and encouraging His people, awakens the cry that the Arm of the Lord "put on strength." Verse 12 is the answer of Jehovah, who demands how Israel should be afraid of a man, when He comforted her. He calls on Jerusalem to stand up in that, when she had no sons able to comfort her. He had pleaded her cause.

- 15. Compare Jeremiah 31: 35, and Job 26: 12. "Dividing the sea" is not the Red Sea, but raising it into tumultuous waves. So in Job 7: 5, he compares his skin to this - it was split, and broken up, and rough - rugosity - and put away as bad; but compare chapter 26: 12.

Isaiah 52

Jerusalem becomes the holy city, secured from profanation, and He reasons with the insolence of her enemies as against Himself. All this hangs on allusion to their position in Babylon. This celebration of the deliverance of Zion, in connection with the Remnant become a people, demands a full explanation of what leads to it all, and Christ necessarily becomes the great subject. But this is introduced thus. In this account of the compassion of Jehovah for His people, and the glorifying of Jerusalem, He who had taken, and had alone title (from chapter 49: 4) to be called the Servant of Jehovah, necessarily would bear a great and conspicuous part. "Behold my Servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted," etc. But here another principle comes in. The humiliation of Christ served to distinguish, even to the end, the Remnant who listened to the voice of "His Servant." Here the exaltation of Christ is connected, through His humiliation and offering for sin, with the introduction of the Gentiles. "As many were astonished at thee" (for He becomes the Object of the Spirit's thoughts now) for "His visage so marred," "His form more than the sons; of men," "So shall he sprinkle many nations," and "that which kings had not heard, shall they consider." This introduces the following chapter.

52 From verse 13, to the end of the following chapter it is the exalted Servant, with the results of His first manifestation, and the mystery of His first reception fully developed.

In this chapter the Remnant recognise much more the true substitutory character of the sufferings of the rejected Christ, so that they were healed by that by which their sin was consummated. The first verses show their rejection of Him, now confessed as sin; full grace to the nations, and to the people, and to Jerusalem, is the result of this, but not governmental details.

Isaiah 53

This is the rejection of the report, and blindness of Israel to the arm of the Lord; compare chapter 51: 9. For such was Christ before men, for and amongst men, and, as the Remnant declare in the latter day, esteemed nought by the Jew. Yet it was as a vicarious Victim, as they now acknowledge, and, as we, blessed be the God of all grace, acknowledge beforehand, who first trusted (proelpikotas) in Christ.

- 3. The "Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" is the same as "surely he hath borne our griefs, and our sorrows he hath carried them" - kho-li (grief) and mak'o-voth (sorrows). This we know from Matthew is applied to His healing their diseases and sicknesses. The Lord that healed them entered, as Man, into all the sorrows of which they had to be healed. Then came their thinking Him "stricken and smitten of God" - the last word is that used elsewhere for "smiting" - mukeh (smitten of). I think, the hu ("He," verse 5) does not give "yet He." It is much more emphatic. Kholayenu hu nasa (He hath borne our griefs) v'hu m'kholal, etc. (and He was wounded), etc. This gives the force of "and" (vav). He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and He was wounded for their transgressions. They had esteemed the hand of God out against Himself, as under God's displeasure Himself, but "because of the transgression of my people" the stroke (nega, verse 8) was upon Him.

- 6. This is the faith of Israel's Remnant in the latter day (as of us now). It was for the people, but not for that nation only, but being made an offering for sin, the stroke of Jehovah being upon Him, He should see of the travail of His soul, many should be justified, and thus and therefore He should be exalted. Thereon and thereafter, Jerusalem should be exalted, and elect, recognising that she had had more children while she was a widow and deserted, than when a married wife. Now she should inherit the Gentiles, and Jehovah be her Husband - being called as a woman deserted never to be rebuked any more; chapter 54: 9.

53  - 10. "And Jehovah was pleased to bruise him, he put him to grief" (che-cheli). Thus the grief went on up to the Cross - then comes in its full force. "If his soul shall make an offering for sin, Jehovah's pleasure shall prosper in his hand, and he shall see of the travail of his soul." "By his knowledge shall my righteous Servant lead many to righteousness, and he" (hu) "shall bear their iniquities."

- 11. "Instruct many in righteousness" - lead them into it - "and shall bear their iniquities." I suspect the translation here is "by His knowledge" (of Jehovah, God, the Lord) "shall my righteous Servant teach righteousness to the mass" (many), "and their iniquities He shall bear." It is the word and work of the maskilim (strong ones) where the very same word is used. For "Turn many," read "turn the many."

- 12. "He was reckoned among transgressors, and bore the sins of many, and supplicated for the transgressors." That the atonement is fully brought out is very clear - that they were wrong in their estimate of it in unbelief, equally so - that when stricken on the Cross, it was for the transgression of Jehovah's people is clear - but, I think, from verse 4 we see, compared with Matthew, there was an entering into Israel's sorrows which went on to the Cross. The sorrows and grief were not merely the contradiction of sinners, for He bore them and carried theirs. That was added - "they hid their faces from him" (if that be the sense) - "He was cut off from the land of the living" - but the stroke was on Him for the transgression of Jehovah's people. I get the fact - their false estimate of it - His taking their sorrow on Him - their using this to turn away from Him - and atonement.

Isaiah 54

The millennial glory of the Jewish Remnant, noticing the attempt against her.

- 5. "The God of the whole earth," elohe kol ha-aretz; note this.

54  - 13. All her children should be taught of the Lord.

- 14, 15. No power shall be against her, though, indeed, they should gather together against her, but no more by the Lord.

Isaiah 55

The resurrection, security and blessedness of the new Jerusalem, founded on the resurrection of Christ, and therefore now received into the heart by faith, as fully noticed elsewhere.

Christ is here viewed as risen; see chapter 53: 10, and becomes a source of life to "everyone that thirsteth" - calls in grace, establishes the sure mercies of David; see Acts 13: 34. He is a Witness - a Leader to the people. Nations shall run, that knew not, to Him, because the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, had glorified Him.

This it seems to me, however, speaks of Christ in His relationship with Israel, and therefore He adds, "If God" (as such, for it so was) "be glorified in him," the Son of man, "God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him." But here it is resurrection and glory with Israel. We can introduce much more, but this grace, and call by grace, leads to summons to repentance, and "Seek the Lord while near," and the assurance, largeness, and certain accomplishment of the word of promise in blessing, so that this blessing should be to the Lord for a name - He should be known by this.

Isaiah 56

He returns, therefore, in this chapter, specifically, to the Remnant in the latter day, but founded on the basis of grace in Christ, now known, and fully laid and declared in the midst of the sin of Israel, the blindness of her watchmen, i.e., blessing shown in taking away the righteous, the great iniquity of Israel going to the king, debasing herself to hell - God's care of the humble and contrite, and in grace, having seen Israel's ways, He will heal, for He creates "the fruit of the lips." But, again, after Christ fully explained, we have the Remnant, and "no peace to the wicked"; see chapter 48: 22.

This, and the three following chapters, is God's view of what the Jewish Remnant would have been on His precepts, and according to His plan, and what it was in and by its failure. The end of this, however, is in chapter 59, verse 15 to the end; and thereupon, in chapter 60 we enter into the fruit and power of His work in and for His own.

55 Isaiah 57

From chapter 49 to the end of this chapter, we have a complete development of the Messiah, but labouring in vain in Israel, object of much larger counsels - thereon, His humiliation, death, exaltation, saving of many, glory of Israel, and, again, return to the Remnant. "Listen, O isles, unto me," is one of the keys in this, for, in fact, only in Christ can the isles be thus brought in, whether during the absence of Israel (lo-ammim) or when Israel also is gathered, as is supposed here, as to the prophetic import of this; for direct vicarious efficacy is supposed for them in chapter 53, yet warranting call to the Gentiles in virtue of the rights of Christ, "Though Israel be not gathered," quod nota, for here the ministry of Paul, and, after him, of this dispensation, comes in.

And note here, in passing, gifts are not merely Pentecostal, founded on the exaltation of Christ the Man, but connected with the unity of the Body with Christ. For Paul's commission was, distinctively, "Though Israel be not gathered." He became one "born out of due time," as though that was in him only. Peter was not so; he was as if the promises were accomplished, or accomplishing for the Remnant, before the exaltation of Israel among the Gentiles. He had his mission founded on this - Messiah exalted, and the promise of Joel, before the day, accomplished. So, also, he proposes the return of Messiah. Hence it is evident that the mystery of the Church was a properly new revelation, not an accomplishment of promise, as all Peter's service. "God hath accomplished to us their children," as Paul says himself - "according to the righteousness of God our Saviour."

Isaiah 58

We have another prophecy from this chapter to the end of chapter 60. It is properly the spirit of prophecy which speaks of the moral state of the people before Jehovah. If this had not been their then state, it could not have been addressed then to them. So Paul uses it to convict the Jews, as such, but it treats of their latter end when again in their land, "while it is yet called to-day." Thus this chapter charges them with their sins, supposes profession and form of piety, with evil. Whereas, were it true in the Spirit of grace, and real love to the poor of the flock, they would have enjoyed the favour of the Lord, and He would have given them the heritage of Jacob their father.

56 Isaiah 59

The state of ruin (which, after all, in those days will be felt by all) is here accounted for. The Lord's arm was not shortened, His ear not heavy, but their iniquities had separated between Him and them.

In verse 12 the Spirit of prophecy becomes a Spirit of confession, and weighs in sorrow its extent, and so rises (v. 15) into the necessity of the Lord's intervention, for man there was none. Therefore His arm brought salvation, His righteousness sustained Him; compare chapter 51. Thus His glory became, in action, necessarily grace, though in the execution of judgment against the wicked. This makes the difference from glory in grace, in this dispensation. Thus the name of the Lord is known from the West, and His glory from the rising of the sun. The Gentiles will be judged.

The speciality of Jerusalem is then brought out in this deliverance. The enemy comes in like a flood - the Spirit of the Lord lifts up a standard against him, quod nota, for here is a work of the Spirit before the Redeemer comes to Zion. Then the Redeemer comes. Thenceforth the Spirit in the prophet, and in Christ, for it was the Spirit of Christ in them, and the words which Jehovah had put in His mouth (for He whom Jehovah had sent, speaks the words of Jehovah) would not depart out of the mouth of Israel, the Remnant with whom Christ is here identified. The prophet being thus addressed, "nor from his seed" - for such they are accounted, children God had given him, a seed who should serve Him, keeping the words of Jehovah, by Christ, for ever - the Spirit upon them, and Christ's words in their mouth for ever - this was their state.

57 Isaiah 60

We have here not the moral state only, but the glory of Jerusalem as to her own (v. 4) then as to the Gentiles, as to the Lord Himself, her glory, and that everlasting - her people all righteous - the branch of Jehovah's planting, that He might be glorified. She was the place of Jehovah's feet. His sanctuary would be established there, and all woods of cost brought for its embellishment, even from far. He Himself would be her Sun, her everlasting Light. Note it was to be her light. The Gentiles were to come to her rising. The comparison with Revelation 21: 22, is evident in all its parts, but there there is no temple. It is not the place of God's feet - He is the Temple there, and the Lamb.

Notice the difference between the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. 21 and 22) and the Jewish, or earthly, given in this and the following chapter, not only in the difference of immediate glory, but the former is risen in glory (of righteousness and true holiness) - all grace. Most blessed is the account! Read and study it yet! Also put together what is the portion in the city (Rev. 22) with what the city is. Grace and glory be unto Him who has given, and made it! (2 Cor. 1: 20). Nothing can be more blessed than the picture there (Rev. 21 and 22) of matured holiness in grace, and this brought out into accomplishment in itself, and then overflowing in grace towards others. The tincture of grace runs through it all. Adam was complete in that little sphere, so blessed, but then it ended; blessed as it was, there was no flowing out there. It was not the matured blessedness of communion - unity with the fulness of God through grace. In Jerusalem there shall be display of glory, but glory suited to the dealing with them. Righteousness shall be its character. But the Church! The Church knows grace. My God, what hast Thou done in Christ, given in the Cross! What hast Thou given us in the revelation of Thyself! May the secret of God be in our souls! May He be our secret! And, my God, Thou knowest the rest, may I know it, have it! Oh! that I might, may be kept there, and that be kept with me, through grace! That is what I pray for, but I say, "Thy will be done." May the fulness and grace of Christ be exalted!

58 Isaiah 61

Here we have that which especially characterises this dispensation - the Person and character of Him who is the great instrument whereby it is effected, and as were stated accordingly in His teachings, as well as His full manifestation with the fruits as dispensationally shown.

- 10. Christ, in Spirit, speaks in the name of Jerusalem, and His people.

Christ takes up the character of messenger of glad tidings to Jerusalem, to Zion. He is anointed of the Lord Jehovah to this purpose, to comfort thus the mourners. We know that the Lord Jesus cites this up to "Acceptable year of the Lord." He could not yet say "The day of vengeance of our God." But without this distinction, yet made, which involved (as we shall see, further on) the judgment of the mass of the nation, and its new creation, all the results of this message, and interference in grace, are recounted, so as to make "righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations." All will have seen that they are "the seed which Jehovah has blessed" - these mourners, now more than comforted, instruments of praise.

Isaiah 62

In this chapter we have Christ's intercession, His putting the spirit of intercession in the watchmen on her walls (The Lord grant it to the Church - His Church!) and the effect is declared, for He will not cease till all is accomplished, and He sets the watchmen in the same position.

- 8. The oath of the Lord, now revealed, secures the blessing for ever, and this in face of the world.

Note here, there is a Remnant, having the Spirit of Christ viewed as a Jew, who are the Lord's remembrancers till He bless Zion fully.

This chapter calls out the special supplication of the Spirit, as in the prophet, for the Remnant, calling also upon those in whom the Spirit was to exercise this function, on the declaration of the Lord's promise associating it with the coming of Him who should come. In the list of mercied they are brought together - the Remnant, people, city, and Messiah the Lord.

59 Isaiah 63

To verse 6, this chapter declares the manner of its accomplishment - that He found none of the people ready to assist Him, and He trod the wine press of vengeance alone, on the infidel peoples; it would seem that it was of them, not including the Jews. There was ein-ish (no man) with Him, am-mim (of the peoples). So the LXX, kai ton ethnon ouk estin aner met'emou (and of the nations there is not a man with Me), and I think, the reason for their not being called go-im (nations) is evident. From verse 7, this naturally calls out the expression of the continuity of the Lord's love and kindness towards Israel, recapitulating the necessitude of the Lord's love, and calling for exercise of it upon the ground of its former manifestation, drawing out in chapter 64 the earnest intercession of the Remnant in Spirit, i.e., the Jews, with the Lord of its salvation.

- 6. To the end of this verse we have the day of vengeance, in which Messiah, the Lord Jesus, executes vengeance in Bozrah against the peoples, according to chapter 61: 2 - alone, amidst the peoples, in this work.

- 7. This commences another subject - the holy and humble expression of the Spirit of grace and truth in humiliation, acknowledging grace and owning their state and evil, and counting on the favour of God towards His people, while owning all their desert in evil. This goes on down to chapter 64: 12.

Isaiah 64

It is well to note the words "me," and "us," and "them," which are found in this address, showing the manner in which the Spirit of Christ identifies Him with, and yet speaks for and in the people. First, the Lord will count upon His people, for He saw and enters into their affliction. In chapter 63: 15, "Me," for He recognises this grace in confessing their infidelity, and will now confide in Jehovah, whatever their condition, and Christ can say "Me," and "them," and "the people of thy holiness" (v. 18), and therefore demand the intervention of God, notwithstanding the wickedness of the people, for none has known what awaits him who, in confidence works righteousness. Further they would be but as "clay in the hand of the potter" chap. 64: 8. And they present the sorrows of the people, the "holy and beautiful house," "the holy cities," to the eyes of Him who had formerly delivered them Would He yet refrain Himself, yet hold His peace? But this appeal opens out the occasion for the Lord to reveal His definitive judgment, and His ways in general, and how His grace had acted.

60 Isaiah 65

Here we have a distinct revelation of the intermediate operation of God's grace, its reasons and principles. The application of the first two verses, though Paul might well feel willing to stop there, are too well known to need comment. We have then the contrast between the natural people of the Jews and God's elect, with the inheritance now to be fulfilled to these. The identification too would appear of the former with the spirit of infidelity manifested in the latter days, giving them the general corporate character, and their portion whose spirit and infidelity were thus and then manifested under the eye of the prophet, even in those days, and thus therefore applied to their consciences, for their rejection was now beginning.

We have then, first, grace to them "that sought him not," and that "asked not after him" - a nation not named by His name. Inconceivable patience with a rebellious people that walked in the way of their own thoughts! Jehovah then declares His judgment, the judgment He is forced to execute on the iniquities of them and their fathers.

- 8. Here the Remnant is separated. Jehovah acts in His name of might and majesty, and He brings forth out of Jacob and Judah (out of all this evil) for He is supreme, a Seed, an Inheritor, His elect, His servants. Here the names of Jesus are given, attached to the Remnant, and peace and security shall be for His people that have sought Him, for it is not now, as verse 1, for the Gentiles, though grace more wonderful yet, nevertheless, as to His people led to seek Him.

- 11. He reverts to those whom He judges, and contrasts them with the servants, and, as a whole, they are entirely set aside, and His servants called by another name, and God's promises are thus accomplished, and an answer, beyond their thoughts, given to the demand; chap. 64. It was a new creation, and pure grace of the creating supremacy of God, but accomplished all His promises. To the end of chapter 65 this state of things is described - the result of an entirely new establishment and order in heaven and earth. It was a system of secure earthly blessing, and of judgment withal, so that evil was not permitted, God rejoicing in His people and joying in Jerusalem. The actual judgment which introduces it is given in the next chapter.

61 Isaiah 66

The forms of piety will be among the Jews - the House, and sacrifices - but the Lord rejects them all. He looks, in His elect, to a humble and contrite spirit that trembles at His Word. They were despised by those who abused His name, but, from the temple and city they trusted in, the Lord judges them, and Zion then brought forth her children, and was blessed and glorified. The Lord comes to do this (v. 15) - assembles all nations - pleads with all flesh, with "fire and sword" - the slain are "the slain of the Lord."

The end of this chapter presented considerable difficulty - to know who it was that escaped of them - Jews or Gentiles? But there is an intentional mixing, or leaving of the confusion that they have made. I had not sufficiently regarded the persons addressed as "you." There is a residue distinct among the Jews, before the judgment, from the mass, and of the mass others are spared as a residue. But these last were all mingled together, and with the wicked Gentiles also. "Ye" and "your," all through the chapter, designate those who are spoken of as "trembling at God's word," while nothing was decided. Then it is said "your joy," "they shall be ashamed." Then the Lord "renders recompense to his enemies."

- 13, 14. "Ye shall be comforted" - "His servants," see chapter 65: 13. Also "indignation against his enemies."

- 15, 16. All flesh is to be judged.

- 17, 18. The character of the Jews who have turned away, and become enemies. They are known, and the Lord provides for His own glory (they were not witnesses to it, though they said, perhaps, "Let the Lord be glorified") all flesh should come and see it.

- 19. They that are spared of the Jews, who were joined lo the Gentiles (for though two were in one bed, one should be taken and the other left) perhaps Gentiles also, seeing the judgment was on "all flesh," would go and declare the Lord's glory among the Gentiles (but this was not, properly speaking, the faithful Remnant) and the Gentiles shall bring "your brethren."

62  - 22, 23, 24. We have the contrast between the unbelieving Jews and the Remnant, shown again with the force of the terrible judgment of God. The contrast, all through, is between the Remnant and the unfaithful; the assembly of the nations comes in by the bye, to show to them, in judgment, the difference between the faithful and the other Jews - those who mourned in Zion, and those who haughtily joined the Gentiles, and apostate, and despised them. And thus, while Israel failed to be witness, and, on the contrary, joined the Gentiles, and thus left nothing to the faithful who could not lift up the mass, but to mourn and tremble at God's word, God provides for His own glory, and makes the Gentile understand the difference in judging those who were joined to them, and setting up those who, desirous of His glory, were impeded by the evil from accomplishing it, or doing other than mourn. Their brethren were brought - all flesh should come - their "name" and "seed" should remain, and the rest should be an abhorring to all flesh; only some would have escaped to tell the tale of this judgment, and bring up the others scattered far and wide (brethren of the faithful), and cause the Gentiles to come up to see the glory of the Lord, and the distinguished blessing of this residue in Him - the glory they had loved and desired. So, changing heaven for earth, will it be for the faithful Remnant who love the glory of Christ, and mourn, in the Church, as to the Church itself. "You" and "them" these, are the residue, and the other Jews. These other Jews join the Gentiles, and are mingled up in their evil, perhaps, though they have their own proper, and if Gentiles are spared of those with whom they are mingled, it is accidental and of grace by the bye. The Jews spared are forced to be the witnesses of the acceptance, and right judgment of those they had despised, but who are now comforted, and owned of the Lord - the others, transgressors, were an abhorring to all. The Remnant in the Church, which is faithful, which has kept the word of God's patience, will be kept from the "hour of temptation which shall come," etc., and those "who call themselves Jews but are not" shall own that God had loved them - this faithful Remnant.

This chapter is very instructive and solemn too, light being thus shown on it; verses 6-16 are a sort of proclamation - verse 17 resumes the question between "you" and "they." Verses 8-15 of chapter 65 give the revelation of the two classes among the people - chapter 66 gives the consequences - their state in general, and the Lord's ways having been given in answer to the appeal of chapters 63 and 64.

The Assyrian

J. N. Darby.

<44006E> 64

(Notes and Comments Vol. 4.)

And now more particularly for the Assyrian.

The first general threat as judgment on Ahaz, Isaiah 7, is the Assyrian, verses 17 and 20. Immanuel is promised as the Hope of Israel, but the Assyrian is to come up - days, such as had never previously visited the people. In chapter 8 this is opened out. The Land is treated as Immanuel's, but, inasmuch as the people despise "the waters of Shiloah which go softly, and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah's son," the Assyrian reaches to the neck, and fills the breadth of Immanuel's land. And again the Remnant are called upon to trust in the Lord, who should be for a sanctuary, as for a stone of stumbling. Note also the way this identifies the Remnant, connected with Christ, and the whole history of the people of the Jews, and, with this, read Peter's first Epistle, chap. 2: 8, and compare Isaiah 28, and again 1 Peter 3: 14, 15. And clearly in the end of this prophecy, Isaiah 9: 6, we have the Messiah, Christ, recognised by and in Israel on the throne of David, and the glory to come.

But these chapters are important as showing that the Assyrian is the grand enemy whom God has in view, as coming against Israel or Immanuel's land as such. There may be a confederacy with which His people are to have nothing to do, and a covenant with hell perhaps, but the Assyrian is the enemy and scourge, temporally, of the land and people. The rest who are not disciples, a believing Remnant, will be in the state of chapter 8: 21. Further, it would seem clear that, though there has been a special accomplishment, as we have seen (but applied only to Jewish Christians, for the citations are Hebrews, and 1 Peter) yet that the Remnant are treated by Christ, according to the prophetic Spirit, which is the principle of His relationship with the Jews, until He be king (save that He is High Priest, hidden and unknown - like Moses on the mountain - now within the veil, while we know and are united to Him, the Church, the veil being rent, but upon their hearts). But the Remnant are treated, in that day, as His disciples, and the children, which God has given Him, for signs and wonders to both the houses of Israel. And while we have, as above, much higher privileges, and the Christian Jewish Remnant, also, still the passages could be applied to them, as being in a place which the latter-day Remnant will decidedly have also, in which God will view them also, though if losing life here by suffering, surely to be rewarded with it then.

65 But it is evident this prophecy takes in the whole, from the failure of the house of David in Ahaz, across Christianity owned as a Jewish Remnant, or a Jewish Remnant treated as Christ's disciples, on to the time when Christ is owned publicly by, and as born to, the Jewish nation. The law and the testimony is the rule, also remark, though amongst His disciples. Christ is the answer to the Assyrian. Chapter 6 to 9: 7, is all in parenthesis, chapter 6 being the judgment on the people in connection with the Lord's glory morally, and chapters 7, 8, and part of 9, the circumstances connected with the Land - promises, the house of David, and its results. Note also chapter 8: 9, supposes the assembling of all the peoples.

In general, the present judgment is at the end of chapter 5. They have despised the law and the testimony, the Lord has smitten them, but this would not do, and He has brought the nations upon them. In general, verse 30 presents the condition specially set out at the end in chapter 8: 21, 22, etc. But it is resumed in detail in chapter 9: 8, and the history of the stretched-out arm begun with the nations, who commenced their inroads, though the house of David was there, Syrians, Philistines, etc., and all this is pursued again to the Assyrian.

Chapter 10. Up to this His anger is not turned away. But now the Assyrian is "the rod of his anger" (umatteh-hu, and it is a staff), i.e., "the staff that is in their hand which is mine indignation," or "the staff is in their hand, mine indignation." The hu (it) is demonstrative, including the mat (staff) substantive. God sends him against an hypocritical nation, but he boasts himself against Him that hews therewith, and the Lord judges him. Israel leans no more upon him that smote him. The Remnant returns to God (again applied, in Romans, to the Remnant of Israel of that day because they took the character of Remnant then fully). The people that dwelt in Zion were "not to be afraid of the Assyrian,"though he lifted up his rod after the manner of Egypt (to wit at the Red Sea, I apprehend) but the indignation ceases, and the Lord's anger in their destruction. God's rod shall be upon him, after the manner of Egypt, too.

We have here, certainly, the last days, see verses 20, 21. At the same time an inroad of the Assyrian, of which God's people, which dwells in Zion is not to be afraid, and which is terminated by a judgment on the Assyrian, in which the indignation is closed, for he had been the instrument of it. He uses His rod and His staff. In chapter 14, the Lord will yet "have mercy on Jacob." Jacob will have rest, triumph over Babylon, and her king fallen and destroyed. And the Lord will break the Assyrian in His land and on His mountains, that is the purpose purposed on all nations. Compare with this, Nahum 1: 11, 14, specially for the identification, verse 13, and note the final character of this judgment, verses 12, 14 and 9, and also 5, 6, 7 and 8. We see how great and general the day is, though the Assyrian be finally the actor in it.

66 In general, it is the inroad threatened of God, but associated with or preceded by the nations coming up. But at the time that God shows Himself in favour of His people, though he reached even to the neck, it was the character of the Assyrian's inroad, historically, and typically, for in the threats we have read, it is identified with the final deliverance and the ending of the indignation. In Micah, we have a positive application of this to the Lord Jesus. In chapter 5: 4, 5, etc., after speaking of Babylon first, as in Isaiah 14, and spoken of the many nations who are now gathered against Zion, but whom the Lord gathers together as sheaves to the threshing-floor, the Assyrian is singled out, and put in relief; and, showing what had happened to Christ, and how they had been given up in consequence, so that we can have no doubt of its going beyond an historical statement as to Hezekiah. He is the Peace, when the Assyrian comes into the land; and study verse 4. Further the land of the Assyrian is itself attacked and wasted by the leaders of Israel.

We have then to consider Isaiah 28 and following chapters, which open much of the details of this subject. First, in chapter 28, we have Ephraim overflown, but "scornful men" dwelling at Jerusalem, who have "a covenant with death and hell." But they would be trodden down by "the scourge." It is perfectly clear this is not Hezekiah, for the circumstances are the contrary. Chapter 29, God "encamps against Ariel." There are mounts and forts (which Sennacherib was not allowed to make; see Isaiah 37: 33) but the multitude of the strangers would be as small dust and chaff, and, of the nations that distress Ariel, as a "dream of a night vision." God visits from Heaven.

The same general truth is in Micah, only there Zion arises and threshes. Yet, at this time, there is entire incapacity to know the mind of the Lord, or to understand the revelation He had given. Therefore He confounds the wise, and delivers Himself. Here, therefore, we have again the multitude of nations come up against Zion. The sure foundation having been laid there, and he that believeth not making haste, and complete and final deliverance would then be afforded. Jacob would no more wax thin.

67 Hitherto we have only had the multitude of nations, and the condition of Israel - Ephraim overwhelmed - Jerusalem in the hands of scornful men - and the scourge passes through - none that understands, save the Remnant always who believe in the Stone laid in Zion, quod nota.

In chapter 30, they go down for help into Egypt, and after the promise of all deliverance from the Lord, at the close of the most dismal circumstances and rebellion. It is "the Name of the Lord coming from far," to sift the nations, etc. And the Lord's glorious voice shall be heard, and the Assyrian is beaten down who smote with a rod, for the Lord's rod is upon him, as in chapter 10: 24-26. In chapter 31 they go down to Egypt - in chapter 30 it was rather their state of mind, and the counsel they took - here, the act. But all this shall fail - helpers and holpen - and the Lord shall be like a lion surrounded by shepherds. And then shall the Assyrian fall, the Lord's fire being in Zion, and His furnace in Jerusalem purifying the people, but consuming the enemies. Hereupon, in chapter 33, which seems to speak, but not definitely, of the same enemy (the nations are there) we have Zion delivered, and in chapter 39 the nations summoned, and a sacrifice offered in Idumaea, and all the chiefs brought down; compare chapter 63. It is not said that the Assyrian is there, but though he falls, he is said to flee from before Zion. If it be the Northern army, of Joel, he is driven eastward. All nations there, also, are gathered in connection with the Northern army. The same general truth of all nations is found in Zechariah and Zephaniah.

We have yet Psalm 83, where we find Edom and others - Assur joined to cut off Israel from being a nation. In Zephaniah, of which there may have been a partial fulfilment in the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar, we find Assur destroyed, and Nineveh wasted, but this is in that land.

It remains to be enquired if the king of the North, of Daniel 11, be the Assyrian. He will plant his tabernacle, after conquering Egypt, in Jerusalem, on tidings from east and north, and come to his end, none helping.

68 "Tophet is ordained of old." Speaking of the Assyrian, and the king also, they seemed, in general, to be judged together, i.e., nearly at the same time, and in the great uproar of nations, which the Lord quells. Compare, also Isaiah 21 and 22, where, after the taking of Babylon by Elam and Media, the daughter of His people also is spoiled, Elam bearing the quiver and Kir uncovering the shield, when the key of the house of David is laid on Hilkiah's shoulder, to be a glorious throne to His Father's house.

Isaiah 7, 8 and 9: 1-7 require a little more attention. We have the king of Assyria whom the Lord brings up; next, the family of David is despised, and the Lord makes Assyria flow over to the neck, filling the land. There is a general association of the peoples, who will be broken in pieces, but the Spirit of Christ warns His people against a confederacy. They are to sanctify the Lord Himself. He shall be a Sanctuary, but for a Stone of stumbling. The disciples are separated, and the Spirit of Christ in the Remnant waits on the Lord. He, and the children the Lord has given Him, are for a sign. There is darkness and trouble, but then great light, for a Son is born to them; compare Revelation 12. Here the subject is still the Assyrian, and the Son born. There are confederacies in Israel when the peoples come up. Hence, though Antichrist be not excluded from the troubles, the peoples, in general, and the Assyrian, are directly spoken of. We have perfectly the same elements, as elsewhere, as to this prophecy.

Note, also, it is the king of Assyria who takes prisoners the Egyptians and Ethiopians.

Note, further, as to the connection between Isaiah 5 and 10: 8, though Israel and Judah be distinguished, "all Israel" is the subject of the prophecy. In chapters 7, 8, on to 11: 7, we have the house of David parenthetically, in order to introduce the history of Christ, from the infidelity of Ahaz up, going through His rejection and the Remnant to His manifestation in glory, as the Son born to the people in chapter 9: 7 Chapter 6 is the special blinding of the people, in view of the glory of the Lord. Chapter 5: 30 connects, or resumes, with particular details based on the history of Ahaz in chapter 9: 8, going on to the end of chapter 12. The Assyrian and the confederacy of nations is judged, in view of the Son of David - Immanuel; and the Remnant in Judah in chapter 8, in view of the people, and the public results of the manifestation of the Lord, in chapter 10.

69 I return to my earliest, though imperfect, thoughts as to the Assyrian first taking the city, and then, after Christ's coming in, being destroyed on the mountains of Israel. There may be difference of association involved in these two cases. Thus, in Psalm 83, we have Assur joining with Edom, Moab, etc. - the nations surrounding Palestine. This is in the Book which speaks of the general lot of Israel. In Micah, Christ is the Peace when He comes into the Land. In general, the taking of Jerusalem is spoken of in connection with the assembly of the nations, as in Zechariah. The wish, in Psalm 83, will be accomplished, but the manner of it must be sought elsewhere. The judgment of Assur, and the judgment of Edom, are both connected with the judgment of the nations or peoples with Edom, it is clear, see Isaiah 63 and 34, and for the Assyrian, chapter 14. They are connected in a general way in chapter 30: 28, 31.

I conclude that Ezekiel 38, 39, and Isaiah 14: 25 are the same. Both involve the judgment of all the nations. Probably also Isaiah 10: 24 refers to the same period. I suppose, also, chapter 30: 28, 31. If we turn to Joel, we find the Northern army judged, and all nations too.

The question remains, who takes Jerusalem? This is connected also with the assembling of all nations; see Zechariah 14: 2 and 12: 3. It is not the inroad of Gog, as such, for he falls on the open field. Yet the Assyrian is the "rod of God's anger" (and see chapter 31: 8), "and their staff his indignation." We may easily understand that the part of Assyria in this matter is kept out of sight, on account of the early historical application of it to Sennacherib.

It would seem that Jerusalem will be taken by the Northern army. Thus much at least - the king of the North, who overflows and passes over, sets the tabernacle of his palaces in the glorious, holy mountain. Perhaps he had already made his inroad there; Daniel 11: 40, etc. In Joel 2 and 3, they "run to and fro in the city." The Northern army is afterwards removed (chap. 2: 20), when they cry to God. I doubt that Jerusalem is taken after this. Then in Isaiah 28 (and hence to the end of chapter 35, is most important to read on this subject - it is just the detail which is given of this part of Israel's history) Ephraim is overflown. The covenant of the scornful men at Jerusalem, who rule there, do not fear, because their covenant is "with death and hell." Yet the scourge does reach to them, and they are trodden down by it. With this, the Foundation Stone in Zion is revealed, and "he that believeth shall not make haste." This is the Lord rising up to do His strange work; compare Zechariah 14, where the city is taken. The scene then is general. After this, the Lord brings all nations against Jerusalem, Isaiah 29, but to disperse and destroy them. The Lord will defend Jerusalem, Zechariah 12; Isaiah 31: 4, 5; see also Micah 4: 11, 12, and compare verse 12 with Isaiah 30: 28.

70 In chapter 28 we have judgment by the storm not escaped - the tried Foundation laid for the Remnant, but the storm reaching the proud rulers in Jerusalem. In chapter 29 Ariel is brought down, but the multitude of nations is swept away. In chapter 30 the nations are sifted with a sieve of vanity, and the Assyrian is beaten down which smote with a rod. In chapter 31 the Assyrian falls when the Lord defends Jerusalem; so, Zechariah 12, of the nations, but Jerusalem had first been taken. In Psalm 83 we find Assur confederate with all the surrounding nations. Edom helps (Obadiah 11, 12) when foreigners enter into the gates of Jacob, and cast lots on Jerusalem. The king of the North places the tabernacle of his palaces in the glorious, holy mountain between the seas. In Obadiah, the day of the Lord is near on all the heathen, when Edom has so acted at the capture of Jerusalem. Jehovah's feet standing on the Mount of Olives is of the highest interest here, in connection with what has been said as to the closing of the government of the nations when Israel was given up, and the grand system of the image (then instrument of judgment) took its place.

Then the glory of the Lord went there, and the vision disappears. Now the Lord resumes this government, only we find Him there as Man, because the glory has taken the form of Christ. It exists in His Person. This is distinct from the judgment of the beast and false prophet, for which He comes from heaven. Here, He returns into connection with the earth and Israel in judgment. It may be immediately after, but it is distinct. It is not yet "sitting between the Cherubim," nor yet "coming from heaven." This last is the introductory part, as it would seem from Psalm 50, for I apprehend, verses 3, and 5 are the progress towards verse 2. The nations, in general, known before the captivity, will besiege and take Jerusalem - the Assyrian being confederate, and the chief power - Gog, I suppose, behind. The Lord Jesus will then confound them, and destroy them utterly. Gog (who has Assur's land) will then perish on the mountains of Israel. A great slaughter of the confederate nations will take place in Idumaea. The Assyrian and confederates, I suppose, are as a mere screen to Gog, as instruments of whose ambition, also, they act. The king of the North overflows the countries in general, only Edom and Moab escape him, unless we return to the application of this to the wilful king. I suppose the Assyrian will have been for some time "the rod of judgment" on the nation (and be amongst the nations who take the city, if not in person, confederately) but at last, when he comes up, he falls by the judgment of God, and the Jews, being given power, smite the nations, and the destruction takes place also in Idumaea.

71 But it seems to me that the taking of Jerusalem, and the destruction which takes place there, is rather before the confederacy of Assyria and Edom, etc. Whatever may have been the instruments, Psalm 74 speaks largely of what is done there; so Psalm 79. It is in Psalm 83 that we get the confederacy which would cut them off from being a nation. The Assyrian, we have seen, will fall when the Lord appears in favour of Jerusalem. There may be a question raised if Psalm 74 is an enemy from without - of Psalm 79 there can be no doubt. In Isaiah 33 we have the case of an unprovoked attack, or of the Assyrian under His influence, and then, consequently on this, the slaughter of Idumaea, and of other people there, I suppose. The question naturally rises, when does Gog come up? When is this peaceable state of Israel in the Land? First, it is before the final display of the Lord's glory, so as to make the heathen know that He is the Lord, the Holy One, in Israel. Only they are brought out of the nations, and dwelling peaceably, but it is God's land, and God's people, Isaiah 38: 14, 16.

We must consider, I think, the attack of Gog as consequent upon the peace given to Israel in general, after their establishment by divine favour. This proves that God is amongst them. His being so has never hindered the folly of the nations. Then, Israel's sin, often allowed success - now, they will learn what His presence in Israel is.

72 But there is another point. This concerns Israel and the Land, but there are attacks of the Assyrian which concern Zion; thus chapter 10: 24. So that there are the people relieved, and till this attack of the Assyrian, the indignation had not ceased, the Lord's hand was stretched out against them; so see verse 12. So in chapter 31 it is Jerusalem. Zechariah also speaks of Jerusalem, chapters 12, 14 and 9, only there he uses Ephraim also against Greece. It seems evident, from chapters 14 and 12, that the nations come up twice against Jerusalem. They take it the first time, which occasions the Lord's judgments, for His eye is ever there. The second time, He defends its inhabitants, and gives them power. Then it is the Assyrian falls, as also in Isaiah 10: 24. Still he had been, up to that, God's rod of indignation against them.

In Isaiah 28, though passing through Ephraim (so that that is settled by Israel) Jerusalem is trodden down by the scourge, its rulers being scorners. In chapter 29 Jerusalem is besieged and brought low, but the multitude of nations is suddenly destroyed. But the people had no sense of divine things - they were hypocrites. But a very little while, and all is changed, and the terrible one is brought low, and the scorner consumed. This is judgment within also. In chapter 30, both the Assyrian and the king are destroyed - the Jews sought help in Egypt in vain. The Lord, for His Name's sake, now destroys the Assyrian who smote with a rod. In chapter 31, the Lord defends Jerusalem from his attack; note chapter 30: 20. Christ is, after this, set up, chapter 32. It would certainly appear, after this deliverance of Jerusalem, that the general deliverance remains yet to be accomplished. The thought of Idumaea, at the close, will be to take possession of the two countries; Ezekiel 35. We have seen them (Psalm 83) associated with Assur. From Obadiah, it appears that Edom (by whomsoever the taking of Jerusalem may have been accomplished - perhaps Persia and Media, Isaiah 22) was one of the company. After this, the Assyrian is destroyed, and Jerusalem rescued. This confederacy of Edom turns against them; Obadiah 7.

If we suppose that Gog's destruction is not an instantaneous act on his coming up, the arrangement of facts would be easy Israel will certainly be subjected to the oppression of the Gentiles, after their return and apparent prosperity; Isaiah 18 and Psalm 107. When in this state, Russia in possession of Assyria, and so called in the former ante-captivity prophets, comes up to conquer the Land. Meanwhile wickedness prevails at Jerusalem, but there is a testimony. It is the time of the power of the West also. (At this period, save the Remnant, they are trodden down of the heathen. The body accepts, I suppose, Antichrist as a friend.) Jerusalem is taken, and Edom thinks to possess the Land. The scourge treads down at Jerusalem, in spite of the pride of the scornful men who dwell there, who have made lies their refuge. They are still the people of God's wrath, and the Assyrian is the rod of His indignation, and, iniquity being at the full, they are given up. At length the Lord interferes, and destroys, from heaven, the wickedness that rises up against that, and the scorners are consumed. Then, the Assyrian having seemingly all at his disposal, the Lord interferes as King in Zion, and defends it, and destroys the Assyrian, so that there is no more yoke.

73 Daniel 8 would present a difficulty. There, the Assyrian would seem to be a power of a somewhat different character. Query, if he be not the second beast in the Land. It is possible that he may be a power put forward by Gog in the ancient Assyria (see verse 24), who shall do all this, though Gog may come up too. The difficulty is in Ezekiel 38: 17. Where is he spoken of? Compare Psalms 44, 46, 47 and 48, for the deliverance of Zion, and the consequences. The state of the city is in the Psalms which follow from Psalm 51. In Psalm 60 we see their position among the nations, and the lot of the neighbouring countries; see then Psalm 74 (another Book). They do not abandon Zion, though it be desolate. See Psalms 75 and 76, for the judgment, the covenant and Messiah - Psalm 79, Jerusalem taken. Psalms 80, 81, 82 and 83 all refer to this; compare Psalm 85.

On re-reading this, there is no proof that the Assyrian takes the city - it is taken by the nations.

Another important point to remember is, that the dealing with Israel, as to sin, to bring them in heart back in connection with Christ, is different from their deliverance by power. We have seen that in the history of David. He delivers and sets up the ark in Zion - afterwards the altar in grace on Mount Moriah. The order of this, we must examine. The distinction is clear; so Psalm 130 comes in. His feet standing on Mount Olivet is in the connection, I judge, i.e., in power taking Jehovah - judgment, not to bring them to repentance by showing Himself to them. Zechariah 10 closes the public, royal deliverance (as Christ rode in, and was rejected, and then a deeper scene came in) and then, chapters 11 and 12, we have the moral rejection and repentance. It is to be doubted whether the repentance, i.e., on seeing, is not all after the deliverance by power. In Psalms 93-100 we have only deliverance by power. In Isaiah 50-53 we have the voice of God's servant listened to, righteousness sought after. The Lord, indignant, rescuing and setting up Zion, and making His people know His name - His arm made bare, and all the ends of the earth seeing the salvation of Israel's God. But Israel's humiliation before the Cross is subsequent; so, see Psalms 20, 21 and 22 - judgment in 20 and 21, expiation afterwards.

74 In Isaiah 59 we have the confession and state of things which brings in the intervention of the Lord; see also Deuteronomy 32. This would put the destruction in Bozrah before that, seeing which produces the repentance, or, at any rate, before the reflective repentance of Isaiah 53, which knows not deliverance, but forgiveness. On the latter, full blessing comes, as it seems, but the deliverance shuts out the unclean enemies; Isaiah 35: 4, 9. It is with this coming and deliverance, answering to the cry of the ruin of the house, that Isaiah closes. But the cry there is not as to Him they have pierced, but on promises, and as being His people, acknowledging rebellion; see chapters 63 and 64. The answer is the distinction of the Remnant, and appearing in glory for judgment. This distinction, and the notice as to standing on the Mount of Olives, are the data acquired here. The details are noticed for enquiry.

In respect of Zechariah 9, it may be noticed that it has been already remarked that the Lord, in riding into Jerusalem, takes distinctly the Jehovah place, "The Lord hath need of him," and enters, and looks around. So that the deliverance would be by Him as Jehovah, yet as King and Son of Man. And such is the deliverance of Zechariah 9, as see verse 14. Only, of course, "Son of Man" is not seen here, because that goes much farther (see the extent of character taken in chapter 12: 1).

NOTE. - it seems that be-in . . . l signifies "between," and, in English, this makes a most material difference in Daniel 11: 45, for, in this case, the person in question does not enter Jerusalem, but remains without - an element of the utmost consequence for determining who it is. But note it is yam-mim (seas) not yom (sea); in any case, l' is not properly "in."

________

75 Note. We may say Abraham was a son of God, i.e., he will have this title in the world to come, from Luke 20, where the Lord declares that in the resurrection they are children of God, being children of the resurrection, and, I suppose, this would apply to the Old Testament saints.

_________

Though what is called "The eternal Sonship" be a vital truth, or we lose the Father sending the Son, and the Son creating, and we have no Father if we have no Son, so that it lies at the basis of all truth, yet in the historical presentation of Christianity the Son is always presented as down here in servant and manhood estate, as all through John, though in heaven and One with the Father. "This" - this Person - "is my beloved Son" - He who was as Man there, yet there. In Matthew 3 the whole Trinity is revealed, and we may say for the first time fully. Wonderful grace it is! Hence "No! not the Son," has no difficulty.

Born of God

<44007E> 76

Being born of God marks a new nature, and, as shown to us in John 3 the moral necessity of that new nature, from Christ's divine acquaintance with what heaven was. With man on earth, and flesh, there could be no link formed. He came from heaven, and, as Son of Man in heaven, He could say with absolute certainty, that is what must be, what is in a Son of Man that can be in heaven. But being raised (risen) with Him is something more, though it be that life, because it changes the position of the person, and implies the death of the old thing, the old man. Now this is not merely a new life, it is deliverance - the whole condition is changed. Hence it is now revealed salvation. And hence, also, salvation is spoken of as come, and ready to come, because redemption is wrought, and we are partakers of the place and title, into which redemption brings us, in which a risen Redeemer is, and we in Him, but we wait the actual bringing into it which will be our own change or resurrection, for "we shall not all sleep," which is complete deliverance from the whole condition and scene in which we are in flesh - the redemption of our body. We are in it, as in Spirit - our "life is hid with Christ in God." We wait for it, as to actuality in our bodies.

In the Ephesians, though we get the divine nature and presence, without "now" or "then," holy and without blame before Him in love, yet we do not get "being born again," but "being quickened together with him," and "raised up together," putting "off the old man" and putting "on the new man." We are "risen with him," "created again," and the like. Christ, as in the world, spoke of being "born again," a new nature, for He was then, in life, the new thing, but had not wrought redemption. Therefore He says, "If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things," and then goes on to the Cross. Hence He could speak of being "born again," but He could not say "reckon yourselves dead." Now, we do - we say, "I am crucified with Christ," "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God," reckoning Christ dead and now risen again. We receive life in that way, i.e., as dead and risen again, and our place is in Christ thus risen. Thus we are "dead to sin," "crucified to the world," "dead to the Law." To the two former, it is having done with them - the nature and the sphere it belongs to and moves in, under Satan. In the last, the Law does not lose its authority, in itself, but we have died as to the nature to which it applies. We are not in the flesh. Hence, when it is only "born of God," we are in the condition of Romans 7 - the new nature working inwardly, but leading to the discovery of the old and our weakness. When we know redemption, we are delivered and free. Hence it is when we have received "the truth, the gospel of our salvation," that we are sealed. In the beginning of Ephesians I, we have therefore, "before him," as well as "holy and without blame, in love"; and in the end, the same power has raised us up in Christ. The Holy Ghost has sealed us, as in the place where redemption sets us, and makes us have the consciousness of the salvation, of being saved, and is "the earnest of the inheritance." Also we have Him as "the Spirit of adoption."

A New State

<44008E> 78

I am more deeply convinced than ever, by renewed study of Romans and other scriptures, that the view I have insisted on, as to a new nature and place in resurrection, as contrasted with flesh under law, is not only true, but is the great fundamental point on which the Apostle Paul insists as distinguishing Christianity. That, while surely sins are expiated and put away, "all are under sin" is what he is dwelling upon, and that wholly as in flesh, and hence death and a new state come in, through grace, in Christ. Besides the blessed fact of putting away sins, this is the truth of the Romans - righteousness being established by the obedience of Christ as such. But this, too, in contrast with law. Even as to convincing power, he does not say by the law is the knowledge "of sins," for conscience told that, but the knowledge "of sin." "All have sinned," is in the end of Romans 3; so in verses 12-16 is offences under law specially. Both "sins" and "sin" in chapter 4: 7, 8; so verse 25. In chapter 2: 12, is actual sinning, as in chapter 3: 23. From chapter 6, where death is applied, "sin" is the subject.

The details, I have given here, serve as reference, but only show the force of the Apostle's argument. It is well to note them specially. I add, when I have said above, Romans 6, it must be remembered that that is founded on the great truth that we must not look to law, which is individual, but beyond it to the two great heads, Adam and Christ - one of sin, the other of righteousness and life. Only "for that all have sinned" comes in. In Galatians we have only chapter 3: 22, where all are "concluded under sin," where we have help to see what the force of "righteousness" (chap. 5: 21) is, in contrast with "sin."

It is clearer and clearer to me every day that the whole gist of the Apostle's teaching, especially in Romans, is that as the law was correlative with flesh, and so, we being sinful, a ministration not of deliverance but of death, we are brought in Christ into a new condition by the Spirit of life in Him, and that, this being by death, we are free in the new man according to the law of the Spirit of life. That deliverance is not by the law, but by having life in the power of the Spirit in contrast with flesh. The law came in by the bye, to bring clearly out what flesh was, but that Spirit instead of flesh is true deliverance, Christ's death set aside the title of flesh. The whole of Romans 8 is the teaching of this. The new power of life - the Spirit in the power of life - has set me free from flesh and its law of evil, has put me into another existence and life. But that my conscience might be true, and God's righteousness maintained in it, God has condemned sin in the flesh, in a Sacrifice for sin, even the Cross. Thus, Spirit and flesh are fully contrasted, and the law has no place even with either, for judgment has come on flesh, not law which could make no hand of it, and then Spirit replaces flesh. This makes the "fors" of verses 2 and 3 quite plain, which are otherwise difficult, and the whole bearing of the teaching clear.

Fragments

<44009E> 80

I think I have remarked that it is not, cannot be said we are love, though it be said we are "light in the Lord." Love must be sovereign and free in its nature, where true and right. As creatures we love with a motive, but this is another thing. But divine love must, in its nature, be free and sovereign. Hence, even in human affections, it is not said "Wives, love your husbands" - it would, in Christian condition, be out of place. "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee" - that is another thing; but to the husband it is said, "Husbands, love your wives." And though this be in a given relationship, yet it is from the higher position in kindness and grace, and towards the weaker vessel. Hence also we must add to brotherly kindness (philadelphia), love (agape) - a higher principle which connects us with God.

_______

With reference to remarks that have been made, I would say that there is a special work of the Holy Ghost before the second creation, and even in Christ, as on the first, though of a very different kind. All work on the creature in every shape, is immediately of the Holy Ghost. But all the movement (as in Luke 1) and in the forming of Christ in the womb of the Virgin herself was of the Holy Ghost, and so was the Apostle's work. I only refer to the introduction of it here, as a new kosmos (world) of beauty. It is still true as to the individual. All was in the womb till Christ's death and resurrection. I only refer to it generally as remarked by John Bellett. Christ's place in that most lovely picture of the pious Remnant was peculiar, but it is all connected with Christ and His birth in this world, even we may say Zacharias's.

_______

There has been a question of hymns of worship to the Father, but it has raised a question in my mind how far hymns are suited worship to the Father. We sing about Jesus, in whom all unsearchable riches and grace and truth subsist and are come. But can we do that with the Father? I have some doubt of it. I have looked at some hymns addressed to the Father, and after the first words, the hymns all speak of what we are and have got. I doubt that this was merely that the writer was not at the height needed for it. I hesitated as to the possibility of it before - the character of these hymns tended to confirm the thought. In Colossians 3: 16, they read theo (to God); still the heautous (yourselves) has a large place in the thoughts here and in Ephesians 4. But this will require more thought, and is a large and important subject. Divine relationships and the true character of worship, as well as the nature of hymns are involved in it.

81 Note, praise is different from worship. We may celebrate the excellency of some one without worshipping him; see Revelation 5: 9, 10.

________

It is one of those striking facts which one overlooks, but which have their importance in the character and teaching of Scripture, that we have not even the word "justified" in the teaching of any of the Apostles but Paul, save the well-known corrective statements in James. Nor is "righteousness" used by them in what is called the forensic, i.e., judicial sense. We have Paul stating it too in Acts 13. In the gospel, we have "Wisdom justified of her children," "This man went down justified rather than the other" (Luke), "By thy words thou shalt be justified" (Matthew), "He willing to justify himself" (Luke), "Ye are they which justify yourselves," and "The publicans justified God." These are all in the Gospels, otherwise it is as I have said. So we have seen of the Church - Christ naming it as His building - the Acts historically as a fact in the world, and manifest - else only in Paul.

________

Having often spoken of God's dwelling with us only in virtue of redemption, I was led to think of Christ's presence upon earth, and this really throws great light on His sojourn here. He did not dwell in the midst of any one. He came to represent God to men, and the Son of David, the Messiah to the Jews, but only that. It was not taking up His abode with us. That does belong to grace and redemption, Israel historically, and the saint and the Church by the Spirit. But He here presentatively, and alone. The Holy Ghost could dwell and abide in the redeemed when He had accomplished His work and gone up. He was in the way with Israel to the Judge - God was in Him reconciling the world, not imputing their trespasses. This was another thing than dwelling in it as an abode. Hence in John 1 "dwelt among us" is another word eskenose (tabernacled) amongst us, and even this applies, strictly, only to the Apostles. Still it implies that He was sufficiently there for the display of God revealed in grace, which is the capital point. But His Person was all alone, full of grace and truth, and declaring God; His place, even then was on the bosom of the Father.

________

82 It is interesting to see, as to God's way of dealing with us, that His explanations, answers to prayer, all His replies to us, go beyond the occasion of the demand. Thus, in Revelation 17, the whole relationship of the beast with the woman is unfolded when the woman's case is before us. In Daniel 7 we have the whole condition and place of the saints in the answer to the enquiry, what the fourth beast was. So in Psalm 132, the reply in each case goes beyond what is asked; compare verses 13-15 with verse 8, verse 16 with verse 9, and verses 17, 18 with verse 10. So in Matthew 13, the explanation of both tares, and wheat, and fishes goes into the results when what is spoken of in the parable itself is over.

________

One thing makes very clear and distinct the difference between the Body and the House. One could not speak of the "Body of God." Christ, the Glorified Man is the Head, and the Church is His Body. But the House is the House of God - His temple or tabernacle.

Further Note on Isaiah

<44010E> 83

More definitely as to Isaiah. The first four chapters are introductory. Jerusalem being judged, all the earth will smite it, and then the glory be over Jerusalem. Then in Isaiah 5 we have Israel judged as a responsible people in this world, according to the government of God in it, and, in the close of it, smiting within by Jehovah, and bringing on them enemies from without. Isaiah 6 to 9: 7, take up the question of Christ as an introduced subject, as it historically was, into the midst of this history. He being introduced, we have first the general fact of the Assyrian over-running the whole land. Then Immanuel, as the seed in it - a confederacy of nations, but the Remnant, who, associated with the Rejected Stone, wait for the Lord, delivered by the intervention of God in judgment - and the Messiah-reign celebrated. In a word, though chapter 5 closes in itself, chapters 6 to 9: 7, come in parenthetically in connection with Christ, and Isaiah 9: 8 resumes the general history from the time of the prophecy. God's hand is stretched out still. Then the governmental dealing with the people is carried on to the Assyrian at the end, and the blessing of Jehovah in the midst of Zion. Isaiah 13 begins Babylon, which is no part of the general history (i.e., of Israel - God dealing with them as His people) because Judah was in captivity there. The only question is, Who is the king in Isaiah 8: 21? I suppose the evil king, only so noticed in Isaiah; see Isaiah 30: 33.

Note, in passing, Isaiah 7 as an instance of how literal facts are made to assimilate to typical circumstances, though they detail literal prophetic facts. We may remark how this pictures the rebellious people and the world within the limits of mystic Israel, setting up Antichrist in opposition; yet, I doubt not, literal fulfilment.

Isaiah 21 seems to me to give us Babylon in its mystical character at the end, drawn it may be, as the prophecies ever are, from present circumstances. I note it, because we have the prophecy as to Babylon proper in Isaiah 14. This, too, goes on to the end, but gives the actual taking of the city there far more fully; still it goes to the end in the worldly history.

There are three great general facts which enter into this prophecy which is not idias epiluseos (of its own particular interpretation) and which are used to complete the scene, while the final reference is to the latter day. The Assyrian (Israel being owned) Nebuchadnezzar, his inroad, setting up the beast, and times of the Gentiles. His destruction which leads on to the last days, and the restoration of Jerusalem. Isaiah 13 and 14 take up Babylon, representing there the new formed power of one Gentile beast as a whole, and goes on to Jehovah's founding Zion. This was anticipatively represented by Cyrus s action.

84 Moab is then judged as all within the promised Land, and while the main prophecy goes on the establishment of the throne of David (Christ) making allusion to David's history, who sent his parents there, and also to the tribute paid to the kings of Israel, but also to the fugitives of Judah in the last days. The present fate of Moab is also announced, I suppose, from the hands of the Assyrian, but it may be from those of Nebuchadnezzar, as he hesitated whether he should first go against Jerusalem or Ammon, verse 14, but rather, I apprehend, the Assyrian.

Damascus and Ephraim, Isaiah 17, we know to have been the Assyrian, but the chapter goes on in the clearest way, to his doings in the last day. This introduces the general history of Israel in the last day expounded elsewhere.

In Isaiah 19 and 20 we have the judgment of Egypt, and its healing for full latter-day blessing. Here it is again the Assyrian; Isaiah 20: 4. We have then a mysterious Babylon - the desert of the Sea - and Edom, where we know the last judgments are to fall.

Isaiah 21: 16 declares the then present judgment of Edom, as before of Moab. We have then Jerusalem itself judged, and Eliakim, he whom God shall raise up, substituted for Shebna, the false and judged holder of the key of the house of David, or who at least is over the house. Moab, Damascus which introduces, by the figure of Assyria, the inroad of the nations of the last day, come first - they are the clearing of the promised Land. Then the condition of Israel on their return into the Land. Then we come to what is outside - Egypt - and it and the Assyrian are blessed with Israel. Then mystic Babylon, and Idumea, the final judgment of Babylon and of the beast, and hostile power in Idumea. Then the judgment of Jerusalem, but the house of David set up.

85 Tyre, I apprehend, represents the world, perhaps to be accomplished in this place - its gain and merchandise consecrated to Jehovah, though it remain the world; Isaiah 24. Though it be the land as the sphere where all is brought to an issue, yet it takes in the earth, the known formed sphere, as all judged there. The then coming judgments are also noticed, as Isaiah 20, 21, and Isaiah 16: 14.

Chapter 24 clearly unites the thought of the Land and of the earth. Thus in verse 5, we have, one cannot doubt, the Jew order of things, though it may extend further. In verse 16 we begin a series of verses which reach to a wider earth; in verse 17 we have the expression of Revelation, "them that dwell on the earth" katoikountas epi tes ges. Then in verse 18, though the Land is still the scene of judgment, yet "the earth" goes out to the wider sense; verse 21 is clearly so. But it always, I think, contains the sense of those that have had to say to God, and the revelations of His ways, and rejected, oppressed, opposed, or despised, apostatised from the revelation He has made of Himself. There is a wider scene called the world. The earth is a moral thing, "When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness."

The Father's Name

<44011E> 86

As regards the revelation of the Father's Name, and Sonship, Christ being on earth and afterwards, it is clear Christ did reveal the Father's Name, but there was nothing that really entered into the place of sons in the disciples. But more than this - when Christ revealed the Father's Name, He Himself stood in the place of Son as a Man on earth, and it was only supposing the disciples had got hold of it, "Our Father, who art in heaven," the disciples being consciously on earth; for the highest form in which the Son made the Father known was with a Son on earth. In His Person it was the same thing, but His position was only of a Son on earth, with whom the disciples were associated, and, at the utmost, according to His then relationship as on earth, or they would have been above Him on earth, which is absurd.

But now the Son is gone, as Man, into the place of Sonship in glory in the Father's house - the glory He had with Him as Son before the world was - yet as Man there, as Son. With this we now are associated, His Father and our Father, His God and our God, and we are associated with Him as sons in heavenly places, according to the glory He had with the Father before the world was. This again connects the eternal purpose and heavenly glory. But now my object is to compare it with the earthly state of Sonship - relation, which was of man on the earth, as such, with the Father in heaven (as in the Lord's prayer), is, as risen into the new condition into glory, entered, according to full purpose (the perfect thoughts of God in the heavenly relationship), into the Father's house as sons, according to immediate relationship with the divine nature.

This connects itself too with another point, the nature of atonement work, already alluded to elsewhere. We were under responsibility as men - take the Law as a measure. Christ dies for us, bears our sins, and meets that responsibility for us. But the work of the Cross did more. He glorified God there. Hence our portion is with God according to His own nature, in our new one. One was represented by the brazen altar, the other by the blood on the mercy-seat.

I do not say the Father's Name is given up in the former sense, in the note above - the walk on earth, and we cared for by a Holy Father, as so walking. But it now carries us further - we enter as sons into the Father's house where Christ is entered. "I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." The relationship is, in se, the same, for it depends on the Person, but the condition is diverse. The Father loved the Son, and we learn it, and with it, as so loved, the joy He had in the world. But He takes us there, where He is, with Him, and we see Him in His glory as loved before the foundation of the world. And He declares to us the Father's Name as thus revealed, and now dwells in us that we may know it; hereafter, actually with Him in the glory, seeing Him as He is. The Person is shown even when down here - they should have known Him as in the Father and the Father in Him. But the latter is dropped when He comes to the presence of the Spirit, and "I in you, and you in me" is substituted. The personal place unchanged - "I in my Father," its display as on earth, dropped, and we in Him who is in the Father. When mere glory comes, on the other hand, the display only is spoken of - "I in them, and thou in me." By this the world knows - by the former the love is in us. This does not hinder the Father's gracious love to us, as walking down here, being exceedingly precious.

The Throne of Grace

<44012E> 88

Note the expression "Throne of Grace," Hebrews 4: 16. "Throne" is connected with government, and the principles and character of Him who governs. God deals in grace, and governs in grace, but He does so according to His own nature and character - He governs. Israel, on Moses' intercession, was dealt with in grace, but that was not exactly a throne, and Israel was replaced under law. Here God governs a people who walk in this world, but, on the principles of grace, we come boldly to a throne of grace, to obtain mercy and seek grace to help in time of need. The Father takes a positive interest, as from his own heart, in the children, but an "Advocate with the Father" (1 John 2) is not simply "their Father" - that would not do - it is "the Father" "of whom ye say he is your God." The Son has revealed God, necessarily thus as Son. He Himself loves us because we have loved Christ, but it is a revelation of God the Father by the Son - not in the way of a relationship with us, though that be true. But it is a much fuller revelation of God, and in a new way. A child has not an advocate exactly with his father, but "if any one sin, we have an advocate with the Father." We have communion with the Father and with the Son, but it is with God who is Light. On sinning and getting out of communion, the nature of the revelation is not changed to put me under Law and Jehovah, but restoration is needed according to its nature.

Remark, here, that in John, however high the privilege spoken of, the saint is always looked at as in this world.

Note, further, that in Hebrews 4, we have, at the end, three great and important principles for going through the wilderness - the Word, the Priesthood, and the Throne. This is very instructive. The Word searches the thoughts and intents of the heart - all that is working in the mind (desire) and will - as the eye of God. The Priesthood sustains, in grace, in every infirmity and in difficulty and trial. The Throne is perfect grace, but it is a Throne - absolute sovereign power, positive government though in grace, and according to the character and majesty of Him who sits there. We go there "boldly," for all is grace, and the great High Priest is for us with God. Still the Throne rules according to its own principles, though I am sure to find mercy and help there, for He who sits there is sovereign goodness, and can bless righteously and graciously because of the Priest. Our privilege is to go there, but it acts as a throne when we do not, still in connection with the Priest.

Jeremiah

<44013E> 90

Jeremiah gives the judgment of Jerusalem and the Jews in the Land. Ezekiel, the dealings of God with Israel banished, and it is disowning, and His glory leaving Jerusalem and the Temple. He takes the Gentiles, up to the first beast, and resumes them after the last beast, in connection with Israel Daniel takes up the beasts and their history, in connection with the saints and his nation, etc. The Apocalypse takes a further point, and herein connects itself also with Zechariah The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, had been presented to the Jews in Jerusalem as Son of Man, and rejected, and as the Lamb, had taken the throne on high, and become the Lamb in the midst of the Throne. In this character He exercises the power by His Spirit - the seven Spirits sent forth into all the earth, previous to His coming forth to exercise it, either as the King of kings or Lord of lords, or as the Root of David. Revelation 2 and 3 are His judgment of the Church on earth. Therefore the throne in heaven. He governs (by knowledge) the world before taking to Him His power Zechariah takes up Israel and the nations.

Jeremiah 23

- 36. "The living God" - note this.

Jeremiah 25

- 26. This passage, I think, shows that the king of the North, Gog (the king of Sheshach, as I believe) has possession of the regions called "North" in Judaea, by virtue of the system of judgments which come thereon. It is not then his simple inherited possession. "The king of Sheshach" I take to be Gog, not in his original, natural position, but after his having in a great measure possessed himself of the earth, and then upon the putting out of Antichrist, being alone in the earth as against God - the sun darkened, they that are drunken, drunken in the night, see Habakkuk 2 - and so thus, indeed, the king of all the confusion; but it is in the night of his destruction. Of the activity of this, Nebuchadnezzar seems a type - of its being confounded, Belshazzar. I have always thought Nebuchadnezzar, as conquering, to be the type of the Assyrian of the latter day.

91 But it appears to me that there is a point here of new light breaking in - the Gog, the Assyrian, becomes the representative of power over Babylon, when Antichrist is put out, and, though put out by God's mighty ones, he will think it is all to his dominion; see Joel, and the account of the Assyrian in Isaiah. Then, having come against the Jews, he will say, "Where is now their God," setting himself as "the man of the earth" against "the God of the earth," as the other against Antichrist - for the earth is his sphere, power not infidelity and antichristianism, which is the distinctive point of the former. But Antichrist is in fact the inferior power. Isaiah 14: 12, clearly, I think, applies to him, Antichrist, but the passage which I will go into here, seems to embrace a larger scope, and to open out this very position of the last king, as finding his destruction in having all drowned in his person, except the head who shall then see that their power is gone, "none shut up nor left."

We have observed, elsewhere, the distinctness of character in Antichrist and the king of Babylon in this point of view, i.e., the virtual headship of confusion, on the destruction of Antichrist, but who holds it in power (for in this God will vindicate it as between them) but who, then turning that power against God, as having all, touches not them, the Remnant but the apple of His eye. "The king of Babylon" is not, in my opinion, used of Antichrist, which is a most important point, and opens out the whole question, and reflects light on many others; compare the connection in Isaiah 14: 22, 24, 25. Verse 13 shows the other's assumed dominion in his origin. He is not power but popular, the head "of" not "over," in his principles, as Buonaparte said, "I am the representative of the people"; consider also verse 29, et seq. Then Psalm 48: 2, determines, I think, verse 13, and thus the whole matter is made plain. We have also, hence, a very definite understanding of Revelation 16 and 17 and the time of chapter 18: 21, confirming generally the view heretofore taken, the details not being there unfolded; see note on the passage now.

The bearing of this I feel to be sound and interesting, but there is not sufficient scope left for what passes between the destruction of Antichrist and the inroad of Gog, as in Zechariah for example, and Gog and the Assyrian are unduly identified.

92 Jeremiah 27

- 1. I suspect the fault is not in "Jehoiakim" in this verse, but in "Zedekiah" in verse 3 - that it was in Jehoiakim's reign Jeremiah warned the Ammonites, etc. And he did the same, as to Judah, when Zedekiah was king; verse 12. But it is a matter of fact to be enquired into.

- 18. It is deeply interesting to compare this verse with Genesis 20: 7, and John 15: 7. One sees that being a prophet, i.e., having the communication of the mind of God, places one in, and supposes that intimacy with Him which enables to ask and have of Him, and obtain. It produces and implies, in its nature, that kind of confidence, that claim in grace arising from intimacy, that possession of His mind which enables to intercede. Martha was sure Christ was in this position; she did not know, nor realise His intrinsic living power. And note, the Christian, so far as he values his place in Christ, is in this position, "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done"; compare John 16: 26, 27; see also 1 Corinthians 2: 16.

Jeremiah 31

- 30. Note, whatever the inworking of grace, and however complete the forgiveness, the state of Israel in the millennium is one of strict law, only direct and personal.

- 33, 34. I compare these verses, and verses 29, 30, with Isaiah 60: 21, and chapter 65: 19, 20. Only here dying is for his sin - judgment in this world. This would seem to be so in Isaiah 65: 20.

Jeremiah 36

- 18. This is a prophecy of Scripture - the spoken and the written - the same thing. The Epistles were the same - the "I, Tertius," represents Baruch. The form of inspiration was, however, different, and blessedly so. Not less inspiration, but more in the intelligence. We have the mind of Christ. The Holy Ghost, dwelling in the Church, enters into all its circumstances. The prophets studied their own prophecies. The New Testament is "We speak that we do know."

- 28. God's judgments are not set aside by burning rolls of parchment.

93 Jeremiah 46

- 25. "Amon of No" (see margin). Is there any case of pakad (visit) with min (from) having the sense of cutting off? It is curious having el (to) with Amon, and al (upon) with Pharaoh. I am aware el is not usually placed with the name of a god. The Septuagint (i.e., Origen's text) seems to have read b'nah (her son) and to have left out el. Perhaps el has its force of "towards," "as far as," i.e., God's visitation of Egypt would reach as far as to cut off Ammon from Thebes; see Nahum 3: 8, for minno Amon (than No Amon).

Jeremiah 50

- 40. Elohim - used as to Sodom, and nowhere else.

Jeremiah 51

In Isaiah 13 we have "the burden of Babylon," as it appears to me, the whole power of confusion - Babel. Isaiah 14: 25, includes the Assyrian, which was long before the rise, you may say, of Babel, in the literal history on which this is founded. Yet it is here identified with it, as the closing point of power - the "ceasing of indignation." Hence we learn that it is in its full, real exhibition, and closing character that it is here spoken of. Consequently, all necessary to the antitypical circumstances are brought together. The burden is of Babel all through. Confusion is to be put out and confounded. Hence, first we have the army of "kingdoms of nations," with God's sanctified ones, His gibborim - the Lord's host altogether. This is "the day of the Lord" at hand, and destruction from the Almighty; see the same thing, precisely, in Joel. The effect - "the Land is laid desolate" - the sun, moon, and stars, put out. The world (te-vel, whole earth) punished for its evil - pride and haughtiness laid low. A man made more precious than fine gold. This implies the destruction of the army itself, also, dreadfully. The heavens shaken, and the earth removed - a known symbol of the final judgment of the latter day, as in the Lord's hand. Here we have the full, antitypical character of the whole scene of the latter day, in its generic accomplishment - its accomplishment in the world, in which the host of the Lord is gathered, but gathered into punishment because of their arrogancy, saying "my hand," whereas the Lord led them up as "the rod of his anger." But the real instruments are not included in this, the gibborim - the sanctified ones - those whose pride is in His exaltation. That passage is complete.

94 Then we have the typical facts of the destruction of Babylon, as holding the Jews in bondage, in which Antichrist shall keep them, for it is their deliverance, rather Jerusalem's, from the Babylonians, which is then noted, and against them. "For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob," also note verse 2, the people (gomim) bring them to their place, who may be scattered, and, what has never been yet accomplished since Babylon, "they shall rule over their oppressors." Then, when Jacob has "rest," for this is the point of the second part from chapter 13: 17 to chapter 14: 1 (now the terrible day in which Gog is brought into destruction, evidently is past before "the rest") the arrogancy of the proud, the man of the earth is set aside. Hence, in celebrating the fall of the king of Babylon, it includes the whole scene of power of man assumed over the world. It is all one great crisis. Lucifer in this is Antichrist, and it will be found, in every particular, to be the counterpart of Christ, in his assumptions in all the characters of His glory. This was that which was the power of Babylon over the Jews. At the same time there is that which never got hold of Jerusalem, though it thought it got hold of it as a nest The Lord broke the Assyrian on his god - the Lord's mountains, and the yoke is taken off. The Assyrian is the successor of Antichrist, in being alone in power, but does not take Jerusalem, though he oppressed the Land, which is therefore here spoken of. The fall of Antichrist sets Jerusalem free, and in fact the earth. The Assyrian, Gog, who has been brought up "with a hook in his nose," perishes, and the Land is cleared. Thus the whole scene is brought before us, giving, as the subject of the prophet's prophecy is Judah and Jerusalem, Babylon and its proper head, Antichrist, but, lest there should be mistake as to the whole scene, the Assyrian is introduced as destroyed under the circumstances which ensued thereon The order has been spoken of and gone into in another place.

- 8 - 59 - 62. Note, as to Babylon, this makes it plain, whatever judgment may be as to ulterior facts, that the then testimony as to the then Babylon was a testimony as for ever. Zedekiah and Seraiah, and the testimony to be then read in Babylon, clearly apply to the then existing Babylon, and Babylon was to be desolations for ever. I reject no ulterior instruction here. So chapter 25: 12, where, after giving the nations round about up to Nebuchadnezzar for perpetual desolations, at the end of seventy years He gives up the king, nation and land of the Chaldeans, and makes it a perpetual desolation. The destroying mountain is to be desolate for ever, see chapter 51: 26. These are all that are said. Thus of three, two are certainly ancient Babylon.

95 Then as to "from generation to generation" (Isaiah 13: 20) "Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency . . . shall not be dwelt in from generation to generation"; see chapter 34: 10, 17, as to Idumaea, and chapter 51: 8, as to salvation, and Jeremiah 50: 39, as to Babylon. I cannot doubt that Jeremiah 50 and 51 apply to ancient Babylon. Moreover, in the testimony given to Seraiah, it is said, "Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her."

Remarks on the "Antiquity of Man"

J. N. Darby.

<44014E> 96

(Notes and Comments Vol. 4.)

{"The geological evidences of the Antiquity of Man, with remarks on theories of the origin of species by variation." By Sir Charles Lyell, F.R.S. Third edition, revised. London, John Murray, Albemarle Street, London, 1863.}

In reading this book one can only say: Wise people often confound themselves by their too great wisdom - its narrow limits, or endless modifications always suppose it to exist. It is very natural that the unlearned, who have not confused themselves, should be surprised at the learned ignorance of those who have.

Chapter 2. "The deposits of peat in Denmark, varying in depth from ten to thirty feet, have been formed in hollows or depressions in the northern drift or boulder formation hereafter to be described." "Around the borders of the bogs, and at various depths in them, lie trunks of trees, especially of the Scotch fir, often three feet in diameter, which must have grown on the margin of the peat-mosses, and have frequently fallen into them. This tree is not now, nor has ever been in historical times, a native of the Danish Islands, and when introduced there has not thriven; yet it was evidently indigenous in the human period, for Steenstrup has taken out with his own hands a flint instrument from below a buried trunk of one of these pines." "The oak has now in its turn been almost superseded in Denmark by the common beech. Other trees, such as the white birch, characterise the lower part of the bogs, and disappear from the higher; while others again, like the aspen, occur at all levels, and still flourish in Denmark." "The capercailzie is also met with, and may, it is suggested, have fed on the buds of the Scotch fir in times when that tree flourished around the peat-bogs." "The minimum of time required for the formation of so much peat must, according to the estimate of Steenstrup, and other good authorities, have amounted to at least 4,000 years."

Flourishing around the peat-bogs may be, but in general it is not the case. The trees have formed the bog in great part. I distrust all these statements wholly as to the time of bogs being formed. In certain circumstances they form rapidly. But with all his desire for long dates, his authorities only go to 4,000 years, and man does not reach to the bottom. The lowest part was probably formed before trees were there, and then trees helped to form the rest, like a cedar swamp. In Canada another kind of tree always grows when the first growth is cut down. Swamp and bog stuff, and a peculiar grass form bog earth, and then, if trees grew and fell, as they easily do in bogs, or when hewn, they rapidly form a mass of bog, some only being preserved sound. Now thus, on his own showing, the date is, on the shorter chronology, long since the flood.

97 As to the ancient Swiss dwellings, we get another fact. In Eastern, i.e., wild mountainous Switzerland beyond the plateau, there are only stone remains. Page 18. "During the dredging operations on the Lake of Zurich, they discovered a number of wooden piles deeply driven into the bed of the lake, and among them a great many hammers, axes, celts and other instruments. All these belonged to the Stone period with two exceptions, namely, an armlet of thin brass wire, and a small bronze hatchet." Now there may have very likely been a ruder contemporaneous class. Near Berne itself we get into the cold Alpine region. Denmark may have been put as far back in civilization, just as Britain in the time of the Roman conquest - at least as to agriculture. Bronze instruments are not beyond Greek and Marseilles, i.e., long within the time of history.

Page 27. "The most elaborate calculation is that made by M. Morlot, respecting the delta of the Tiniere, a torrent which flows into the Lake of Geneva, near Villeneuve. This small delta, to which the stream is annually making additions, is composed of gravel and sand. Its shape is that of a flattened cone, and its internal structure has of late been laid open to view in a railway cutting, one thousand feet long and thirty-two feet deep. Three layers of vegetable soil, each of which must at one time have formed the surface of the cone, have been cut through at different depths. This upper layer belonged to the Roman period, and contained Roman tiles and a coin. M. Morlot, assuming the Roman period to represent an antiquity of from sixteen to eighteen centuries, assigns to the Bronze age a date of between 3,000 and 4,000 years, and to the oldest layer, that of the Stone period, an age of from 5,000 to 7,000 years."

I feel some doubts as to la Tiniere, as the Rhone fills that valley too, and it is alleged that part was lake in those early times. Further, as vegetable soil is formed at three distinct heights, the dates, and even the formation itself, as alleged, are uncertain. It may easily, or more likely, have been special floods. That a tiny stream, like la Tiniere, should have raised a delta thirty-two feet, I doubt very much. How came a delta to be a "flattened cone"? Why is the Roman period assumed to be that of Augustus? I suppose the coin said nothing. All this is excessively vague. The judgment is only between 5,000 and 7,000 years. So that, with the utmost desire to make it long, it comes to nothing, unless to prove that man is not ancient, even where man seeks to make him so.

98 Again, supposing the data correct, which again I doubt from what I have seen of Yverdon, and the rapidity of present increase, far more from throwing up sand than from the Orbe whose water is very clear - but supposing the Bronze is 3,300 years old, we only get back to a date long since the Flood, at which period there was still the Stone period elsewhere.

As to la Tiniere near Villeneuve, I now know what this little torrential rivulet is. Montreux not Ayn side of the station. But Lyell has taken a testimony in the most credulous way from Morlot. I have it from a member of the Lausanne Society that all rejected his view of the case. He stood alone. A skull, 8 metres deep, which he would put I forget how many thousands of years off, is deeply and distinctly stained with bronze or verdigris, the distinct proof of its bronze or copper date. It is now in the museum at Lausanne.

Page 29. "The old convent of St. Jean, founded 750 years ago, and built originally on the margin of the Lake of Bienne, is now at a considerable distance from the shore, and affords a measure of the rate of the gain of land in seven centuries and a half." "M. Morlot, after examining the ground, thinks it highly probable that the shape of the bottom on which the morass rests is uniform." The judging of the time without knowing the depth is most idle work. "M. Morlot thinks it highly probable"! It is, I should think, highly probable that as it advanced into the lake it grew deeper, and took much longer time to fill up. The vast morass, between Morat, Neuchatel and Bienne lakes, certainly cannot be judged of even as being formed. There is no proof of its not being an abiding state from its mud and the nature of the ground. It is not a delta. It runs along Neuchatel lake where no delta would naturally have been formed, and where the Thiele runs out of Morat, not the Broye into it. The river goes round the hill of Veuilly, and a vast wide plain of moss, or sumpf, goes far into the Canton of Berne, then borders Neuchatel and begins again towards Bienne lake, which I know less, though I have passed up the river in a boat - thus

[SEE PLAN 44_n&c4a.png] GRAPHIC

99 In result we have only the proof that man is not so very ancient. Besides if Bronze was 3,300 years old, in which we have Christianity and the Iron period, it is not very evident why 3,450 years should be for the Stone period, even to the earliest. Chamblon is not above thirty or forty miles from Pont de Thiele in the same valley, with the Lake of Neuchatel between. So that the state of civilisation could not be very different.

Chapter 3, page 37. "The great aim of the criticisms has been to get rid of the supposed anomaly of finding burnt brick and pottery at depths and places which would give them claim to an antiquity far exceeding that of the Roman domination in Egypt. For until the time of the Romans, it is said, no clay was burnt into bricks in the valley of the Nile. But a distinguished antiquary, Mr. S. Birch, assures me that this notion is altogether erroneous, and that he has under his charge in the British Museum, first, a small rectangular baked brick, which came from a Theban tomb, which bears the name of Thothmes, a superintendent of the granaries of the god Amen Ra, the style of art, inscription, and name, showing that it is as old as the 18th dynasty (about 1450 B.C.); secondly, a brick bearing an inscription, partly obliterated, but ending with the words 'of the temple of Amen Ra.' This brick, decidedly long anterior to the Roman dominion, is referred conjecturally, by Mr. Birch, to the 18th dynasty, or 1300 B.C. Sir Gardner Wilkinson has also in his possession pieces of mortar, which he took from each of the three great pyramids, in which bits of broken pottery and of burnt clay or brick are imbedded."

100 These data as to the Nile are altogether too vague to prove anything. A brick, 20 or 30 years off, proves not the date, but that the data afford no ground. For though bricks date back I,400 years before Christ, yet if I find that date, and bricks not used in monuments of very much greater antiquity, it shows that what was not above 2,000 years before Christ may be at that depth, i.e., that the proofs are nil. Babel was made of bricks. So bricks are found in Lower Chaldaea, at any rate as old as Abraham, supposed Chedorlaomer - say 2,000 years before Christ.

Page 40. "It is clear that the Ohio mound-builders had commercial intercourse with the natives of distant regions, for among the buried articles some are made of native copper from Lake Superior, and there are also found mica from the Alleghanies, sea-shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and obsidian from the Mexican mountains." "The extraordinary number of mounds implies a long period, during which a settled agricultural population had made considerable progress in civilisation, so as to acquire large temples for their religious rites, and extensive fortifications to protect them from their enemies."

Page 41. "When I visited Marietta in 1842, Dr. Hildreth took me to one of the mounds, and showed me where he had seen a tree growing on it, the trunk of which when cut down displayed eight hundred rings of annual growth."

101 As to these mounds in Ohio and works in Lake Superior, first it is certain it was not the Stone period, but the metallic tool times, for they are found and copper mines. But further, these copper mine works are found under the same timber forests which are found in Ohio. The timber would only prove moreover, on his own showing, "one generation died out and diversity of species" then having grown up. Nor could it be said that the eight hundred rings were not of the first growth. It is true the first growth after cutting down is mainly of one kind, not however by any means absolutely so. But if the land had been kept cleared, it would not be necessarily so at all, but the contrary. So that all this argument proves will in Sir C. Lyell, and nothing more.

The Santos in Brazil, page 42, I may pass by, saving as remarking how little founded seemingly clear conclusions are.

Page 43. "In one part of the modern delta near New Orleans, a large excavation has been made for gas-works, where a succession of beds, almost wholly made up of vegetable matter, has been passed through, such as we now see forming in the cypress swamps of the neighbourhood . . . . In this excavation, at the depth of sixteen feet from the surface, beneath four buried forests superimposed one upon another, the workmen are stated by Dr. Dowler to have found some charcoal and a human skeleton, the cranium of which is said to belong to the aboriginal type of the Red Indian race. Dr. Dowler ascribes to this skeleton an antiquity of 50,000 years." As to the delta of the Mississippi, we have only Dr. Dowler. If it was the Red Indian he is comparatively modern in America - that is clear, as the Ohio mounds, etc., show. And the islands of mud and forest carried down by the Mississippi made their proofs of no weight whatever, no more than the "canoes of the Clyde."

Page 44. "Professor Agassiz has described a low portion of the peninsula of Florida as consisting of numerous reefs of coral gained gradually from the sea, . . . and calculates that it has taken 135,000 years to form the southern half of this peninsula." Assuming the rate of advance in Florida is no ground to go on. We know not what upheavals may have been, or what has happened in the interval whatever it is. It is a mere guess, and the circumstances even do not appear.

102 In Scotland, it rather appears from Mr. Geikie's remarks on the Roman wall, that the marks of man must have been within sixteen or seventeen centuries, for then it was those parts were under water, which is confirmed by the facts relative to the Firth of Forth. He says, page 52, "Antiquaries have sometimes wondered that the Romans did not carry their wall further west than Chapel Hill; but Mr. Geikie now suggests, in explanation, that all the low land at present intervening between that point and the mouth of the Clyde, was, sixteen or seventeen centuries ago, washed by the tides at high water. The wall of Antonine, therefore, yields no evidence in favour of the land having remained stationary since the time of the Romans, but on the contrary, appears to indicate that since its erection the land has actually risen." "Alaterva, the chief Roman harbour, was on the southern coast of the Forth, where numerous coins, urns, sculptured stones, and the remnant of a harbour have been detected." "At Aithrie, near Stirling, were found two pieces of stags' horn, artificially cut, through one of which a hole, about an inch in diameter, had been perforated." But note, this goes further, for it tends to show an old stone period toward the same time. No doubt the older boats may have been buried before, but they are connected with the same tide-way, the same state of country and river. It is not a Stone-state at the same time in another place, which may be in Switzerland, and is at this moment. But the same general period and state of things includes both. The canoes were raised by a rise taking place since the time of the Romans. He says, page 48, "Mr. John Buchanan, a zealous antiquary, writing in 1855, informs us, that in the course of the eighty years preceding that date, no less than seventeen canoes had been dug out of the estuarine silt of the Clyde at Glasgow, and that he had personally inspected a large number of them before they were exhumed. Five of them lay buried in silt under the streets of Glasgow, one in a vertical position with the prow uppermost as if it had sunk in a storm. Twelve other canoes were found about a hundred yards back from the river, at the average depth of about nineteen feet from the surface of the soil, or seven feet above high-water mark; but a few of them were only four or five feet deep, and consequently more than twenty feet above sea-level. In one of the canoes, a beautifully polished celt or axe of green stone was found."

103 The only thing proved by these data is that they were sunk before the upheaval, perhaps at different times, but we have only a proof, as far as it goes, that in the time of Antonine it had not taken place. The boats might be of a date subsequent to the Romans, only it is to be supposed the different degrees of rudeness marked different dates. But it is just as probable that it took place by the introduction of Roman skill as not. Stags' horns were used for the whale harpoons. And the utmost effort of prolongation only brings the most ancient to 3,400, that is - be it so - the time of the Exodus! But we get another important point here. If this be so, the Stone implement things are not older, perhaps not half as old. Some were 20 feet above the now sea-level, and five feet in sand. Their covering of five feet cannot have taken centuries - they would have rolled. The sand they are in was at the surface - about the year 500 after Christ ("fifteen centuries before our era," he says) they were five feet under it. But we have no proof that they had been even 500 years there. But this is "the Stone-period"!

As regards stone hatchets, etc., consult Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, vol. 1, p. 119, etc. - the plainest proof of the near following of stone and bronze. It is exactly the same as in Europe, perhaps in the then extreme North more rude. And the Swiss remains at Pfahlbauten plainly prove the whole system, and even animals, in great part, to have come from the East.

His data as to Norway are without any solid foundation. In the north it takes "a century for five feet," he says. So he strikes a mean of two and a half feet and concludes 24,000 years. But who says that it was always equal, or always the same from north to south? He says, page 58, "The upward movement now in progress in parts of Norway and Sweden, extends throughout an area of 1,000 miles north and south, and for an unknown distance east and west, the amount of elevation always increasing as we proceed towards the North Cape, where it is said to equal five feet in a century. A mean rate of continuous vertical elevation of two and a half feet in a century would, I conceive, be a high average; yet even if this be assumed, it would require 24,000 years for parts of the sea coast of Norway to attain the height of 600 feet." All this is vague and uncertain to the last degree.

The caves in France confessedly prove nothing. With Desnoyer's facts this goes really further. Sir C. Lyell says, page 62, "That such intermixtures have really taken place in some caverns, and that geologists have occasionally been deceived, and have assigned to one and the same period fossils which had really been introduced at successive times, will readily be conceded." Yes, indeed! But Dr. Schmerling's caves, near Liege, are alleged, but this is only more valid because it is alleged that the drainage system must have changed since the bones came there. They have been washed in, so that in themselves they give no evidence. He says, p. 73, "The great alterations which have taken place in the shape of the valley of the Meuse and some of its tributaries are often demonstrated by the abrupt manner in which the mouths of fossiliferous caverns open in the face of perpendicular precipices 200 feet or more in height above the present streams." "It is more than probable that the rate of change was once far more active than it is now in the basin of the Meuse. Some of the nearest volcanoes, namely, those of the lower Eifel about sixty miles to the eastward, seem to have been in eruption in post-pliocene times, and may perhaps have been connected and co-eval with repeated risings or sinkings of the land in the Liege district." Now this change of valley system is attributed to earthquakes and volcanoes - when these were, we cannot tell - supposing the Deluge had nothing to do with it.

104 As regards the skulls, it is simply evident that they prove nothing. The skulls are some as good, some less so, than ordinary European skulls. Page 65. "One skull, that of a young person, was embedded by the side of a mammoth's tooth. Another skull, that of an adult individual, was buried five feet deep with the tooth of a rhinoceros, several bones of a horse, and some of the reindeer," etc. The Australian gives the same differences living at the same time. All this is operose nihil agendo. It proves that Professor Huxley, in spite of facts, thinks that the monkey-like men are to be looked for farther before Elephas primigenius than that is from us. But he is a regular low Linnaeist. He says, page 89, "Finally, the comparatively large cranial capacity of the Naeanderthal skull, overlaid though it may be by pithecoid bony walls, and the completely human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones, together with the very fair development of the Engis skull, clearly indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock whence man has proceeded need no longer be sought, by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development, in the newest tertiaries; but that they may be looked for in an epoch more distant from the age of the Elephas primigenius than that is from us." But it proves that skulls that are found prove nothing - that like the Nile valley creatures, so man was the same.

105 He says, "The enormous extent of the time over which our knowledge of man now extends." But the proofs as yet go the other way. The only point made, not yet proved, is (Tournal and Christol, south of France) that the mammoth, etc., are found with human remains in undisturbed alluvium; page 59, "Whether the animals enumerated by M. Tournal might not all of them be referred to quadrupeds which are known to have been living in Europe in the historical period seems doubtful."

As regards the bog and peat, it is all idle to judge of the period it takes in the way it has been done. It is the fashion to make the time long. If there were no water it would not grow. If there were, and trees fell as was the case here, it would, I am satisfied, make a very deep mass in fifty years. Next, in the Somme valley, the present was pretty much scooped out. But we get similar deposits fifty feet higher with the same remains. So that geology is at fault here, and its conclusions are necessarily called in question. Page 94. "M. Boucher de Perthes styled these older stone tools antediluvian, because they came from the lowest beds of a series of ancient alluvial strata bordering the valley of the Somme, which geologists had termed diluvium." They were found with bones "twenty or thirty-five feet in depth, in repairing the fortifications of Abbeville." "Thirty miles from Abbeville he found precisely the same in rudeness of make, and the same in geological position, about ninety feet above the river," page 96.

In the Brixham cave the bones, etc., were all "floated in," and, it is stated, when the stream was very much higher. But the flood may very likely have scooped it out here. The only alleged fact is the finding of the "limb of a cave-bear" at Brixham, and a rhinoceros leg-bone near Abbeville, but the mammoth in Silurian is a proof that such may have been long preserved - for ages - and if so, the stream or flood, which filled the cave, may have brought it in in that state. The time of the extinction of the animals too remains unascertained. It is certain their remains, at least of Elephas primigenius, with flesh, skin and hair, so as to be eaten, have been preserved to our days.

106 At Amiens the flints and bones were about 150 feet above the river at Abbeville - the same strata as there, and the same remains. Now this throws all in doubt as to the whole theory of the formation and remains. How come they (the same) at such different altitudes? Could the alleged system of formation be true? The sea had never gained there. Geologists, we are told, have discussed which is most ancient at Abbeville. But if more ancient, how do the strata and contents prove a date when they are the same? This is tripped lightly over with "the history of the valley marking," etc.

The gravel where the molar of Elephas antiquus, if it be so, was found, was only supposed to be a continuation of the same deposit, and referred to human period because of so low a level. At St. Acheul, in this 150 feet high formation, it is not said what elephant's tooth was found, i.e., primigenius or antiquus - the whole molar was primigenius. He says, "In the gravel, at Montiers, Mr. Prestwich and I found some flint knives. Some of these knives were taken from so low a level as to satisfy us that this great bed of gravel at Montiers, as well as that of the contiguous quarries of St. Roch, which seems to be a continuation of the same deposit, may be referred to the human period." "Among the elephant remains from St. Acheul, in M. Garnier's collection, Dr. Falconer recognised a molar of Elephas antiquus, the same species which has been already mentioned as having been found in the lower level gravels of St. Roch. Assuming the lower level gravel to be the newer, it follows that the Elephas antiquus and the hippopotamus of St. Roch continued to flourish long after the introduction of the mammoth, a well characterised tooth of which, as I before stated, was found at St. Acheul at the time of my visit in 1860" (page 143).

He says, "It is certain that ground-ice plays an active part every winter in giving motion to stones and gravel in beds of rivers in European Russia and Siberia. It appears that when in those countries the streams are reduced nearly to the freezing point, congelation begins frequently at the bottom; the reason being, according to Arago, that the current is slowest there. Fragments of such ice rising occasionally to the surface, bring up with them gravel, and even large stones." At St. Acheul we have proofs of ice, so that the Siberian case applies directly. There is no proof, in the fact of their entering, that the legs, before referred to, might not have been washed in now. Their separation from the body proves partial previous dislocation - it is probable that when it was cold on the Somme the gulf stream came by to melt, and it was cold at Brixham too - if separated as now.

107 Further the flint instruments are the same as far as appears - no progress, as elsewhere, according to Sir C. Lyell, for many, many thousands of years - longer before the peat than after. Elephas antiquus is found on high as well as on low lands, but flints not above 100, i.e., 150 feet above sea level. But why not higher, if rain had been there, and they dropped in? "Ice-chisels, flint hatchets, and spear-heads may have slipped accidentally through holes in the ice, and inevitably swept away with gravel on the breaking up of ice in the spring"!

Chapter 9. The only remark I have to make as to the Seine and Oise, which is all vague enough is, that Elephas primigenius and Elephas antiquus and Bos moschatus are all found there - that the latter still exists, and Elephas primigenius has been found with flesh, hair, etc., on, preserved in ice. So that the subsistence of man with them in itself proves nothing. The utmost is the negative evidence of Elephas ant. not having been generally found in late strata. But it is found with Elephas prim. and Bos mosch. Indeed, when human bones have not been found with El. ant. but only with El. prim., which proves nothing, the only ground of proof is the sameness of the deposit. But Sir C. Lyell admits so little examination has taken place, that they cannot "speculate with confidence" on the "sameness of date," page 152. Now this is everything. That the human bones and flint hatchets are there, is very possible - they may probably be so - but then it is not even said that El. ant. was in either locality, nor have we any proof that gravel of the same kind is of the same date. Nay, according to Lyell himself, "sandpits in two adjoining fields, as at Brentford and Ilford, may be separated by thousands of years, yet the same deposit" (page 159) "each containing distinct species of elephant and rhinoceros." But note, these same distinct species are found in one deposit, as "near Chauny and Noyon, besides reindeer, horse, and the musk buffaloe." I only ask, what possible proof have we here of date, from deposit or animal remains?

108 But there are greater difficulties in the way of geological chronology. At Biddenham, two miles from Bedford, we have "higher level gravel, at Bedford lower level gravel." Both very long after the glacial period, both "boulder clay or drift, and Oolite have been cut through." But in the lower and newer we have Elephas ant., and in the higher and older (perhaps it is argued elsewhere, thousands of years, to make man date far back) Elephas prim. and different shells from the lower. Thus the ground taken, for relative dates, from position and remains is totally subverted, or the presence of these extinct mammalia, etc., proves nothing at all. All Sir C. Lyell says on this is, "But we have scarcely as yet sufficient data to enable us to determine the relative age of these strata."

Chapter 10, page 173. He says, "The discovery of the most importance, is the occurrence in a newly discovered cave in Glamorganshire, called Long Hole, of the remains of two species of rhinoceros, in an undisturbed deposit, in the lower part of which were some well-shaped flint knives, evidently of human workmanship. It is clear from their position that man was coeval with these two species." When he speaks of "undisturbed deposit" in the Long Hole cave, it is merely undisturbed in the cave. Nor does he say why "it is clear" that man was coeval. All has been washed in as far as is known at any rate in other caves, and it is not stated to be known in this. In this cave relative position proves nothing. This is "certainly" it is said, "coeval with man." Now, in the same account, the "marine shells strewed above," prove "submergence and subsequent upheaval," so that their undisturbed character is more than doubtful. It may have been quietly, as observed elsewhere, but the state of things is all left vague.

Again page 175. "No proofs seem yet to have been found of the existence of man at the period when the hippopotamus and Elephas ant. flourished at San Ciro. There is another cave called the Grotto di Maccagnone, which much resembles it in geological position, on the opposite or west side of the Bay of Palermo, near Carini. In the bottom of this cave a bone deposit like that of San Ciro occurs, and above it other materials reaching to the roof. In this upper and newer breccia Dr. Falconer discovered flint knives, bone splinters, bits of charcoal, burnt clay and other objects indicating human intervention, mingled with entire land shells, teeth of horses, coprolites of hyena, and other bones, the whole agglutinated to one another and to the roof," etc. Now in the Grotto di Maccagnone there is a bone deposit the same as San Ciro, where Elephas ant. occurs, and in a "newer breccia," as we are told, flint knives, charcoal, burnt clay, etc., are found. Heretofore Elephas ant. was found "coeval with man," i.e., with flint knives, etc. - here they are posterior! And note, it is all washed in "tranquilly" it is said, which is strange, but be it so; but the dates of time are uncertain where the knives are in a subsequent formation.

109 Page 177. As to Sardinia all is too vague to ascertain what the facts are - I do not even understand it. He says, "In the vegetable soil covering the upraised marine stratum, with the older works of art fragments of Roman pottery occur." Are the older works of art in the vegetable soil then? If so, all is confusion and uncertain. Assuming 21.5 feet in a century is all supposition, without any ground whatever. It varies ad infinitum.

Page 183. The cavern of Aurignac proves absolutely nothing. He says, "It was almost filled with bones, among which were two entire skulls, which he recognised at once as human. The Mayor ascertained by counting the homologous bones that they must have formed parts of no less than seventeen skeletons of both sexes, and all ages; some so young that the ossification of some of the bones was incomplete. Scattered through the same ashes and earth were the bones of the following species of animals: cave-bear, brown bear, badger, polecat, cave-lion, wild cat, cave-hyena, wolf, fox, mammoth (two molars), rhinoceros, horse, ass, pig, stag, Irish deer, roebuck, reindeer, aurochs" (European bison). The animals that are there exist, some of them, now, as remarked already, formed with flesh, skin and hair on in ice. You have not even Elephas ant. No one can say the animals may not have been extinct in even historic times. But, though it looks like a burying place, all seems to me a little uncertain. There are seventeen persons, some infants, and about seventy animals, supposed eaten, some as big as elephants and aurochs, and a great depth of charcoal and cinders, and then the bones in some two feet of earth, not the debris of the rock. The style of sculpture is not met, as is evident. It is alleged that there is no proof that the persons buried at Abbeville, etc., had none. But if so, in the style of sculpture there is no proof of date.

M. Lartet speaks of the period of aurochs and finer instruments. He says "in the period of aurochs, a quadruped which survived the reindeer in the south of France, there are bone instruments of a still more advanced state of the arts," but from twelve to fifteen aurochs were found in Aurignac. But another difficulty comes in which shows how utterly uncertain their dates and theories are. The aurochs in Switzerland, where there are no reindeer, abound in lake dwellings, so that here reindeer is before aurochs. But "reindeer are found in the Mount Saleve" (Savoy, near Geneva), which is more ancient than lake-dwellings. In Aurignac we have plenty of both. But reindeer are "found exclusively at Savigne," with an "advanced state of art," and "still more advanced with aurochs at Massat"! "According to this view," says Lyell, page 191, "the mammalian fauna has undergone at least two fluctuations since the remains of some extinct quadrupeds were eaten and others buried at Aurignac." What does he mean? Did races re-appear after extinction? Who ever heard of that? Is it not a total uncertainty of data?

110 Chapter 11. We now come to "the fossil man of Denise comprising the remains of more than one skeleton, found in a volcanic breccia near the town of Le Puy-en-Velay, in Central France." Now the fossil man of Denise is "not beyond Elephas prim." so we have advanced nothing here. Besides the questionableness of the remains, for there was confessedly no rock of the kind in the place, it was alleged to be found by the person who pretended to have found it - "A peasant related to us how he had dug out the specimen with his own hands and in his own vineyard, not far from the summit of the volcano. I employed a labourer to make under his directions some fresh excavations, but all without success."

It is admitted that the Natchez bone, on the bank of the Mississippi proves no more than Abbeville (page 203), and no one can say out of what strata it really came.

Chapter 12. "If the reader remembers what was stated as to the absence or extreme scarcity of human bones and works of art in all strata, whether marine or freshwater, even in those formed in the immediate proximity of land inhabited by millions of human beings, he will be prepared for the general dearth of human memorials in glacial formations. It is natural therefore to encounter a gap in the regular sequence of geological monuments bearing on the past history of Man, wherever we have proofs of glacial action having prevailed with intensity." Now there is no reason why there should be any stoppage of the human remains by the glacial period, more than of animal remains. The abundance of reptile remains in the reptile age shows preservation of fragile fossils, or with Elephas meridionalis.

111 But the whole theory of glacial deposits, which I do not controvert, seems extremely obscure. "Moraines, or mounds of unstratified earth and stones," I can easily understand. Boulder stones, local patches of considerable size where the ice moves. But I read, as in connection with Biddenham gravel-pit, "the boulder clay extends for miles in all directions, and it seems to be 30 or 40 feet thick." How did ice bring this? I do not see at all why the Flood may not have formed often the new drainage system, by which for example the difference of age of the valley of Elephas merid. and Elephas prim. or ant. is proved by Lyell, and thus show the new drainage system where the traits are proved to be subsequent. In Cromer cliffs (page 213) the boulder clay is stated to be from "twenty to eighty feet in thickness." How did ice bring this?

Page 231. "In those regions where glaciers reach the sea, and where large masses of ice break off and float away, moraines may be transported to indefinite distances, and may be deposited on the bottom of the sea wherever the ice happens to melt. If the liquefaction take place when the berg has run aground and is stationary, and if there be no current, the heap of angular and rounded stones, mixed with sand and mud, may fall to the bottom in an unstratified form called 'till' in Scotland, and which has been shown to abound in the Norfolk cliffs." Note "The glacial furrows do not follow the present smaller furrows in Norway," etc. When and where were these formed? Along the Baltic there are "hundreds of miles of boulder." In Scotland the ice furrows follow the present drainage, "always," it is said, "principal but not minor." Why - unless a great flood?

Page 250. "A single elephant's tusk was found in the unstratified drift of the Valley of the Forth in so fresh a state than an ivory turner purchased it and turned part of it into chessmen. The remainder still preserved in the Edinburgh museum shrunk considerably. This boulder clay, under the name of 'the old alluvial cover' is sometimes one hundred and sixty feet thick, and passes for no less than twenty-eight miles almost continuously through the Union Canal." Now what ice brought all this? Elephants' tusks found in it so fresh as to be turned for ivory chessmen - shrunk when in the Museum! "Deers' horns in six feet of clay under boulder"! All this is very unsatisfactory. Partial depositions and pushings by a glacier I understand, but twenty-eight miles is strange, reaching 160 feet deep by a glacier, and where did the elephant's tusk come from? Say it tumbled in - when?

112 Page 264. "Mr. Jamieson after making several measurements with a spirit level, has been led to suspect a rise in the lowest shelf of the Parallel road in Glen Spean of one foot in a mile from west to east." If the parallel road rises, either it was not a lake or the county has risen.

Note, near Ballymena in 1863, four feet down in a bog, a roll of butter in a fibrous envelope, become somewhat like cheese in consistency, was found, and a flint arrow-head near it!

Note too "Marine shells were found in Wales, 1,392 feet above the sea, but drift of the same character 2,300 feet." If this was submergence, why no shells for the last 1,000 feet? "All the system of fauna and flora" is merely tacitly taking up Darwin's system. As to epochs or their length, all is absolutely conjectural. His 21.5 feet in a century is gathered from present changes and, even so, questionable, but that analogy demonstratively wrong, because, where we have proofs of action from the same causes, they are incomparably greater in result, as the Alps, Pyrenees, Andes, Himalayas, etc. No such mountains are ever formed now, admitting sinking and rising. My impression is that there are rocks polished and striated on the Jura above Neuchatel. He says, page 272, "Above 2,500 feet the rocks are rough, and not smoothed as if by ice." Again "The Chilian Andes are overspread with recent marine shells, showing an upheaval of the land during a very modern period."

As to man we are not without data. We trace back his history and civilization to historical and traditional times, and now we are called on, by Sir C. Lyell, to believe that for, say 'thousands of centuries before,' he remained practically an unimproving animal, and this on data of the loosest kind.

Page 312. In his answer to Professor Ramsay, citing the Lake of Geneva, he says, "Had it been the work of ice, it would have been prolonged from the termination of the upper valley of the Rhone towards the Jura." This I question, for the mountains would have turned it - Mount Pelifrier and the Jorat - and to the right far higher and more massive ones. The Gruyere mountains are left out in Sir C. Lyell's map, page 299. So on the left of the Rhone the mountains come into the Lake. They are so steep too that, unless in the valley where Valais and Savoy divide, I should doubt there being boulders at all till near Evian. This rather tends to make more points questionable. Sir C. Lyell surely did not know the ground.

113 Page 315. "At Durnten, on the Lake of Zurich, many organic remains came to light. Among these are the teeth of Elephas ant., the wild bull and red deer." I cannot conceive what the proof of antiquity from Elephas ant. is, where existing animals, or animals existing within historic times are also found. It may have been the first to perish, but we have no proof when.

Page 320. "According to M. Morlot, there was a period when the ice was in its greatest excess, when the glacier of the Rhone not only reached the Jura, but climbed to the height of 2,015 feet above the lake of Neuchatel, and 3,450 above the sea, at which time the Alpine ice actually entered the French territory at some points, penetrating by certain gorges, as through the defile at Fort de l'Ecluse, among others. The geological formations are evidently due to the action of rivers, swollen by the melting ice, by which the materials of parts of the old moraines were rearranged and stratified, and left usually at considerable heights above the level of the present valley plains." Lyell's theory from M. Morlot here, leaves no room for the lake of Geneva having been formed. If the ground at Fort de l'Ecluse had risen, as he speaks of, then the lake might have been formed, or if the Alps subsided and it did not. But this does not answer his theory, because the subsidence was not a glacial but a melting period. Yet the hard rock of the Jura at Fort de l'Ecluse might have done this, as compared with the lake of Geneva!

To have men at the delta of la Tiniere, and a glacier at Morges is a mahrchen (tale, legend). M. Morlot "supposes 10,000 years for the Tiniere delta," page 321. (There must be some blunder in chapter 2, where we have "age.") Is that duration of deposition? If so, it supposes men to be absolutely stationary for 7,000 years, or from 5,000 to 7,000 years. If it be duration, it is 9,800 or 12,000. He says "At the height of 150 feet above the lake, following up the course of the same torrent, we came to a more ancient delta, about ten times as large, which is therefore supposed to be the monument of about ten times as many centuries, or 100,000 years . . . and might perhaps correspond with the era when man and the Elephas prim. flourished together; but no human remains or works of art have as yet been found in deposits of this age"! Wherever can it be? I thought I knew the country. It is "ten times as thick" - "the Roman the same," so that we have 98,200 years for two dates of men's progress, and if proportionately, and that is the assumption, 3 to 5, or 4 to 7, say 38,000 roughly, during which man "flourished with flint instruments of the rudest kind"! Only they have not been found! There is nothing like going far enough. If it be taken as one whole, not divided as the lower la Tiniere, we have man 100,000 years in the same state, unimproved! How all history denies this, I need not say. Where such might be alleged of some thousand years, others have pushed them out.

114 I do not understand these "delta up to the Grande Eau." The Rhone valley has mountains descending, precipitously, right down into the morass of the plain of the river. Slight torrents tumble down the rocks. At Yvorne it first recedes - perhaps the rise there is what he refers to. But no stream here has to do with "a delta near Villeneuve." I have no idea what he refers to.

Chapter 16. I doubt about the whole glacial theory, but the statements connected with "Loess" are absurd. He says "certain loamy deposits, commonly called 'Loess.'" "At the time of the greatest extension of the Swiss glaciers, the Lake of Constance, and all other great lakes, were filled with ice, so that gravel and mud could pass freely from the upper Alpine valley of the Rhine, to the lower region between Basle and the sea, and could always have passed without obstruction, even after the ice had melted." If the Lake of Constance was filled with ice, it is perfectly ridiculous to speak of gravel and mud travelling on the top of it, or on the bottom of it. It rolls off the hill-sides, and goes down with the glacier. That any one can see. But as to its going on below Basle, it is absurd. The water may carry mud, as to mud, "800 feet deep and upwards." The river would have been over Basle and all Alsace, and I know not where else! But "moraines" there could not have been. And note, not only "800 feet thick," but "1,600 high above the sea, covering the Kaisersthal"!

115 The subsidence of the Alps it was brought the mud below Basle, 1,600 feet above the level of the sea, i.e., the river Rhine must then have been more than 1,600 feet higher than now. This descends to about 600 feet around Brussels. He says, "The loess envelopes Hainault, Brabant, and Limburg like a mantle, everywhere uniform and homogeneous in character, filling up the lower depressions of the Ardennes, and passing thence into the north of France, though not crossing into England. It is found on high plateaus, 600 feet above some of the. rivers, such as the Marne; but as we go southwards and eastwards to the basin of the Seine, it diminishes in quantity, and finally thins out in those directions." "If we ascend the basin of the Neckar, we find that it is filled with loess of great thickness, far above its junction with the Rhine." What kind of waterfall then had it into the sea? It is 600 feet high near the Marne, crosses from Belgium to near Dunkirk, and does not come to England! It is not the first glacial period - then it was "continuous land far out north and west," they say (chap. 14). If it had been the time of submergence, the sea would have flowed up the valleys. It is not the second continental state, for then the land was higher and stretched out farther than ever, and it is said the Thames ran into the Rhine, "Ireland, England, and the Continent being united, the Thames was a tributary of the Rhine," page 274.

In the last state, marine shells are found at, say 30 feet above the sea. But when was the loess deposited 1,600 feet high, and "far higher in Hungary"? The whole thing is incredible. Belgium, and on to Dunkirk was a "kind of delta," yet hundreds of feet high! And the Rhine has scooped out at least 800 feet while sinking continually at the mountain end. Where is the loess on lower ground there than the Kaisersthal over Switzerland and the borders of the Rhine? It is, as the French say, "a myth." Some other flood may have done it, gradually sinking in the present drainage system. But this system supposes the Rhine valley to have existed, and to have filled up 300 feet at Brussels and 1,600 feet at Kaisersthal. Yet, he says, "the upper valley of the Neckar has Neckar-mud," when Rhine mud was 1,600 feet high, and Danube mud vastly higher - as if the Rhine mud would not have been there! He says "in the higher parts of the basin of the Danube, loess of the same character as that of the Rhine, attains a far greater elevation above the sea than any deposits of Rhenish loess."

116 They talk of levels, "grand oscillations in the level of the land - changes analogous to those on which we have been led to speculate when endeavouring to solve the various problems presented by the glacial phenomena, to account for the nature and geological distribution of the loess." But the supposition is a regular descent from the Alps to Brussels and Dunkirk. There was no Rhine mud at Tubingen in the basin of the Neckar, but there was Rhine mud at Kaisersthal - with the same drainage system; note, at Heidelberg it is 800 feet above the Neckar! "Southward and eastward of the Seine it thins out," query as to this. The Ganges is no case in point. Page 337. "The sediment thrown down by the Ganges had accumulated at a sufficient rate to prevent the sea from invading that region." It had subsided at the sea-end so that the mud conveyed has filled it up! Of this I see no proof, because if the sea had been that depth there it might gradually fill up, and the water be unfit for marine molluscs.

The loess I dismiss as a system of absurd theory, and far more like the Deluge than anything else. Hence also the "Maestrecht jaw, found 19 feet from the surface, and the Hocht remains of leaves, nuts, fresh-water shells and a human skull," as to which facts fail, as here, but which are avowedly of a much later date.

After all, they conjecture 4,000 to 7,000 years for even the Stone-period. He says, page 373, "An antiquity of 7,000 years at least must be assigned to the oldest of these remains. Between the newer or recent division of the Stone period and the older division, which has been called the Post-pliocene, there was evidently a vast interval of time - a gap in the history of the past, into which many monuments of intermediate date will one day have to be intercalated. Of this kind are the cave in the South of France, in which M. Lartet has lately found bones of the reindeer, associated with works of art more advanced in style than those of St. Acheul or of Aurignac." This is all unintelligible. He intercalates between the recent and the older stone implements more advanced than those of Aurignac.

But to return, page 367, he says, "The numerous plants which are common to the temperate zones N. and S. of the equator have been referred by Mr. Darwin and Dr. Hooker to migrations, which took place along mountain chains running from N. to S., during some of the colder phases of the glacial epoch. Such an hypothesis enables us to dispense with the doctrine that the same species ever originated independently in two distinct and distant areas, if we admit the doctrine of the co-existence of meridional belts of warmer and colder climate, instead of the simultaneous prevalence of extreme cold both in the eastern and western hemisphere." The migration of plants and fauna is only Darwin-theory. Why may they not have been original in Great Britain? The fancy of a cold range across the equator, to have like plants in both tropics according to Dr. Hooker, is a mere dream.

117 As I have already suggested, they are obliged to suppose that the state of the arts remained stationary for almost indefinite periods, so that even the system of river drainage was wholly altered. But he is totally wrong, and Sir Geo. Cornewall Lewis too, as to his Assyrian and Egyptian dates. He says, "Taking into consideration all the evidence respecting the buildings and great works of Egypt extant in the time of Herodotus, we may come to the conclusion that there is no sufficient ground for placing them at a date anterior to the building of the temple of Solomon, or 1,012 B.C." Berosus goes much farther back, 2,234 B.C. This statement as to Egypt is ridiculous. It is useless to notice his ignorance of history in receiving Hanno by an Egyptian king, or refer to conjectural dates connected with it. Suffice it to say he contradicts himself as to dates and delta-remains both in chapter 3. There it is estimated, though these computations are really all nonsense, at 12,000 and 30,000 years, and the flint at 4,000 to 7,000 years, and on upwards. Yet the bones found with them are not found in the delta, and hence the deltas are much more modern, i.e., 12,000 to 30,000 more modern than 4,000 to 7,000 years and upwards. And this is science! He says, "Were we to assume the increase of Nile mud to six inches in a century, the burnt brick met with at a depth of sixty feet would be 12,000 years old. Another fragment was found seventy-two feet deep. Were we to take two and a half inches, it must have been buried more than 30,000 years ago." "Assuming the Roman period to represent an antiquity of from sixteen to eighteen centuries, M. Marlot assigns the oldest layer, that of the Stone-period, an age of from 5,000 to 7,000 years."

Chapter 20. "In pictures on the walls of ancient temples in Egypt, a thousand years or more before the Christian era, the negro and Caucasian physiognomies were portrayed as faithfully, and in as strong contrast as if the likeness of their races had been taken yesterday. I have remarked upon the slight modification the negro has undergone, after having been transported from the tropics, and settled for more than two centuries in the temperate climate of Virginia." I do not see, if the negro do not change at all in a temperate climate, and that their physiognomy is exactly the same in Egyptian monuments as now alleged by these race settlers, what "lapse of time" can do. There must have been some other cause than change of climate and lapse of time. Yet he says, "So long as physiologists continued to believe that man had not existed on the earth above six thousand years, they might, with good reason, withhold their assent from the doctrine of a unity of origin of so many distinct races; but the difficulty becomes less and less, exactly in proportion as we enlarge our ideas of the lapse of time during which different communities may have spread slowly, and become isolated, each exposed for ages to a peculiar set of conditions, whether of temperature, or food, or danger, or ways of living." How long then did it take to make a rock pigeon a fantail or a pouter? It is always to be remembered that we have history, and tradition of men which gives the race an ordered history to a beginning, and these speculations are in the teeth of it; while their long dates there are facts to disprove - such as trees in alleged strata of thousands of years, which prove they were laid there at once The whole thing is a decided failure.

118 Page 386. "But when they had gradually penetrated to remote regions by land or water - drifted sometimes by storms and currents in canoes to an unknown shore - barriers of mountains, deserts, or seas, which oppose no obstacle to mutual intercourse between civilised nations, would ensure the complete isolation for tens or thousands of centuries of tribes in a primitive state of barbarism." First, it is quite simple that what carried them there first, the obstacle having been no sufficient hindrance, would carry them there again. Next, it is contrary to fact, as it is perfectly well known that the pressure of nations was constant, onward, one after another. It is the history of man. Next it supposes that no part would grow civilised, and have means deliberately organised to overcome the obstacles. All the history we have, i.e., all the facts, as does common sense, refute this as having neither facts nor common sense for its foundation.

119 Page 388. "In the very outset of our enquiry, we are met with the difficulty of defining what we mean by the terms 'species' and 'race.' Lamarck proposed it should run thus: 'a species consists of individuals all resembling each other, and reproducing their like by generation, so long as the surrounding conditions do not undergo changes sufficient to cause their habits, characters, and forms to vary.'" The definition of "species" presents no difficulty to my mind. It is that which by regular propagation reproduces itself. How far varieties in a species may be the will of God, and so ordered in nature that they may multiply intermediate forms, is a mere matter of fact, or how far circumstances of climate, or other such, may modify or destroy a species. But where there is continuous reproduction I find a species or kind.

"All resembling each other" is really added to make confusion, because it is a question how far the resemblance is to go. Thus, should cows have horns or not? There may be constant unchangeable features, others seemingly as important, which are not. This is a matter to learn, but where the "seed is in itself, after its kind," I get a species OR race, i.e., the like produced by generation. All the rest, such as "varying their forms," as Lamarck does, throws it on what was changeable and uncertain, and is no criterion at all, so as to lose the form of the true part. It may be convenient for men's bookclassification - a mere arrangement for memory, and each student vary it - but it has nothing to do with the reality of the matter, and hence, as we see, every man has his own arrangements. The progress IS, though not uniform, for the finest reptiles were first formed, and, I think, as perfect fishes, so as to upset Lamarck's notion, yet as a general idea between distinct races true; but "evolving" essentially false. He says, "There has been a progressive advance from brute intelligence to the reasoning powers of man. The improvement in the grade of being, had been slow and continuous, and the human race itself was at length evolved out of the most highly organised and endowed out of the inferior mammalia!" What he imagined is not much matter - here is a sample of it, "By repeated acts of volition, animals might acquire new organs and attributes. In plants, which cannot exert a will of their own, certain subtle fluids or organising forces might operate so as to work out analogous effects"! He adds, "An indefinite lapse of ages."

120 Lamarck's believing in long periods makes amends, with Sir C. Lyell, for all his flaws - the flaws being that proof is wholly wanting. But long time enough may do nobody knows what - make, they tell us, a penguin's wing into a man's arm, that bird being a biped already! Why not? "Thirty or forty centuries are insignificant in the history of a species." How does he prove that? Because in more than that period, "thousands of centuries" if we are to believe Sir C. Lyell, "in the case of the reindeer, Elephas primigenius, and many living species," etc. But they have this significance according to Sir C. Lyell, that neither nature in all that period, nor art since it tried, has been able to produce two races, etc., or one new organ. Pretty strong significance of this at least - that the whole theory neglects facts and is founded on notions!

When he says "Time not being allowed," he is simply denying his own statements, because if time was allowed there would be then the pliancy he denies and not fixity. Nor is this all, as he denies catastrophes as producing "great revolutions of the earth's crust, and its inhabitants." Time, if any time conceivable (for he calls the period, "almost indefinite") would do, has been allowed. Yet species are dying out rather than changing. He says, page 394, "The manner in which some species are now becoming scarce and dying out, one after another, appeared to me to favour the doctrine of fixity of specific character, showing the want of pliancy and capability of varying, which ensured their annihilation whenever changes adverse to their well-being occurred; time not being allowed for such a transformation as might be conceived capable of adapting them to the new circumstances, and of converting them into what naturalists would call new species."

Page 396. "The historical development of the forms and functions of organic life during successive epochs, seems to mark a gradual evolution of creative power, manifested by a gradual ascent towards a higher type of being." "We can scarcely doubt that we should have already traced back the evidence much farther had not our enquiries been arrested by the vast gap between the tertiary and secondary formation." What is this "vast gap between secondary and tertiary" species? How comes the gap, if all is "gradual."

"The mammalia next in antiquity were, for the most part, diminutive, the two largest not much exceeding our common hedgehog and polecat in size, with one exception, the Stereognathus, which may have been a hoofed quadruped and placental, though, as we have only the lower jaw and teeth, and the molars are unlike any living type, such an opinion is hazarded with caution." After all, the discovered quadrupeds (unless perhaps Stereognathus, judged of from half a lower jaw with teeth unlike any) are low in proportion to their age. They are marsupials; so indeed I see he admits.

121 Page 405. "It may be thought almost paradoxical that writers who are most in favour of transmutation (Mr. C. Darwin, and Dr. J. Hooker, for example) are nevertheless among those who are most cautious in their mode of espousing the doctrine of progression."

The reason why Dr. Hooker and Mr. Darwin like transmutation and not progress is because there is nothing of God or of divine order in the former, and they fear the latter because there is order - tends to show an Orderer; transmutation merely arbitrary secondary causes. The progressionist does not, as Sir C. Lyell sees, look for leaps, nor reject them, but he sees in nature order and so finds God, even when he does not think much about Him. He believes in the order, because in the main he finds it. He sees nothing in transmutation but what is low, base and casual. There is another thing, a truthfully constituted mind rejects in it - the absence of proof, or rather the love of theory and man's mind against proofs which nature affords, as Sir C. Lyell admits. He says, "Transmutation, if adopted, will require us to hold that man himself has been derived by an unbroken line of descent from some one of the inferior animals."

Transmutation is a low, physical theory, forcing some feeble tendencies of nature in the face of the effect produced against it by what is universal else. Men see lusus naturae - big leaves in rich ground, poor plants in poor ground, and special causes of all kinds producing natural consequences, modifying ordinary states. This may produce varieties. But they know very well, elms produce elms, and pigs produce pigs, so of all the evidence they have, as Sir C. Lyell admits, and his thousand-century theories only confirm it. Hence a sound mind, a healthful mind supposes such an order, grows into it as a part of his nature formed by what he lives in the midst of, and by which rightly he must be formed. He finds men theorising on species making, and theorising on thousands of centuries to give time for his changes, which even so are belied by the facts possessed, even if there were thousands of centuries. Hence progressionists are indisposed to give up what has been formed in them by uniform evidence. The transmutationist wants to theorise, and the progress system makes folly of his theory, and he does not like it, that is all - of course he does not. No progress leads the progressionist to change one animal into another - that is transmutation. He holds to the truth of species because he sees and knows it is so. He believes it because it is written.

122 Page 410. "Lamarck, when speculating on the origin of the long neck of the giraffe, imagined that quadruped to have stretched himself up in order to reach the boughs of lofty trees, until by continued efforts, and longing to reach higher, he obtained an elongated neck. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simply suppose that, in a season of scarcity, a long-necked variety, having the advantage in this respect over most of the herd, as being able to browse on foliage out of their reach, survived them, and transmitted its peculiarity of cervical conformation to its successors." How perfectly ridiculous all this is about giraffes! Who ever heard there were once short-necked giraffes? Or how came it that we have not long-necked gnus or antelopes from the same cause? All this is trash.

Page 411. "Every naturalist admits that there is a general tendency in animals and plants to vary; but it is usually taken for granted, though we have no means of proving the assumption to be true, that there are certain limits beyond which each species cannot pass under any circumstances, or in any number of generations. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace say that the opposite hypothesis, which assumes that every species is capable of varying indefinitely from its original type, is not a whit more arbitrary, and has this manifest claim to be preferred, that it will account for a multitude of phenomena which the ordinary theory is incapable of explaining." When it is said "it is no more arbitrary" to suppose it may vary and make a new species, than to suppose it may not, the answer is in the paragraph which follows, "Should we find that a variable species can no longer be made to vary," it is ordinary human deduction to say it cannot. It has been tried under all known circumstances and it does not. To assume, "it might under more favourable circumstances, or if more time were allowed" is more arbitrary. All existing proof is that it does not - to assume it might is then more arbitrary than to believe it will not. But hybridisation is a strong proof against it, because out of the deduced species there is no propagation. God has made a manifested barrier, allowing sufficient to show it cannot go beyond its kind so as to form a species. When it is said "community of descent is the hidden bond" - naturalists looking for an unknown plan of creation - I do not know what wise men are seeking after, but every simple one believes in genealogical descent making species, and it is plainly stated in Genesis 1.

123 We must not confound the ascertaining of species by marks and the facts of species by genealogy. The forms determining species are mere guesses of science, whereas true species genealogically has its own constancy - it does not hybridise. Varieties may have been created, arise in many ways; forming species is another thing. Difference of forms is classification, not species. He says, page 439, "Among the fossils brought in 1858 by Mr. Hayden from the Niobrara valley in Nebraska, Dr. Leidy describes a rhinoceros so like the Asiatic species, that he at first referred it to the same, and, what is most singular, he remarks generally of the pliocene fauna of that part of North America, that it is far more related in character to the post-pliocene and recent fauna of Europe than to that now inhabiting the American continent." The fact of the pliocene fauna of Nebraska being more like the living European than American throws the whole matter into question - does not finally prove against any system but makes all doubtful.

Page 440. "We have already seen that a large proportion of the living quadrupeds of Amoorland (34 out of 48) are specifically identified with those at present inhabiting the continent of Europe and the British Isles. We usually know nothing of the geographical varieties of the post-pliocene and pliocene species, least of all, those successive changes of form which they must have undergone in the pre-glacial epoch between the upper miocene and post-pliocene eras."

Page 443. "If mammalia vary, upon the whole, at a more rapid rate than animals lower in the scale of being, it must not be supposed that they can alter their habits and structures readily, or that they are convertible in short periods into new species. Mr. Darwin observes that bats might have made their way to distant islands by flight, for they are often ma with on the wing far out at sea. I have found it difficult to reconcile the antiquity of certain islands, such as those of the Madeiran Archipelago, and those of still larger size in the Canaries, with the total absence of small indigenous quadrupeds." As to change of forms, and animals getting to islands I have no difficulty one way or another. The truth of species remains. No one doubts the existence of varieties, or that they may become more or less permanent.

124 Sir C. Lyell is superficial as a reasoner. Thus as to languages, Hindoos, etc., he says, quoting Professor Max Muller, page 455, "Latin itself, as well as Greek, Sanscrit, Zend (or Bactrian), Lithuanian, old Slavonic, Gothic, and Armenian are eight varieties of one common and more ancient type, and no one of them could have been the original from which the others were borrowed. They have all such an amount of mutual resemblance, as to point to a more ancient language, the Aryan, which was to them what Latin was to the six Romance languages. The people who spoke this unknown parent speech, of which so many other ancient tongues were offshoots, must have migrated at a remote era to widely separated regions of the old world, such as Northern Asia, Europe and India south of the Himalaya. The soundness of this Aryan hypothesis has been called in question on the ground that the Hindoos, Persians, Turks, Scandinavians, and other people referred to as having derived not only words but grammatical forms from an Aryan source, belong each of them to a distinct race, and all these races have, it is said, preserved their peculiar character unaltered from the earliest dawn of history and tradition." It is clear from all authorities they went to India and drove back the original inhabitants as far as the Deccan. In the south they are Turanian, in the north Aryan, save at the two extremities of the Himalayas. Persians are admittedly Zend through Pehlvi. Races are not the absolute question, as the modern Phoenicians preserved the Shemitic language of the former inhabitants but were Hamites. He says, "There can be no question that if we could trace back any set of cognate languages now existing to some common point of departure, they would converge and meet sooner in some era of the past than would the existing races of mankind; in other words, races change much more slowly than languages."

Page 469. "In our attempts to account for the origin of species, we find ourselves still sooner brought face to face with the working of a law of development of so high an order as to stand nearly in the same relation as the Deity Himself to man's finite understanding, a law capable of adding new and powerful causes, such as the moral and intellectual faculties of the human race, to a system of nature which had gone on for millions of years without the intervention of any analogous cause. If we confound 'Variation' or 'Natural Selection' with such creational laws, we deify secondary causes or immeasurably exaggerate their influence."

125 It is well Sir Charles Lyell recognises a law wholly above variation. But I judge he is astray as to language, America and savage Africa apart, of which we really know nothing. The great body of the human race is clearly subdivided into Semitic, Turanian and Aryan. His conclusion from language to organs is a non sequitur. He says, "If mankind began their career in a rude state of society, their whole vocabulary would be limited to a few words, and if they then separated into several isolated communities, each of these would soon acquire an entirely distinct language, some roots being lost and others corrupted and transformed beyond the possibility of subsequent identification, so that it might be hopeless to expect to trace back the living and dead languages to one starting point. In like manner it may be said of species, that if those first formed were of very simple structure, and they began to vary and to lose some organs by disuse and acquire new ones by development, they might soon differ as much as so many distinctly created primordial types." But when he supposes the possibility of "older strata than Cambrian containing organic remains," it is unphilosophical, because we descend, he admits, according to, in the main, a progressive system from man to the lowest mollusc or foraminifera - things long discussed whether plants or animals, i.e., to the lowest degree, i.e., it is to be supposed the bottom of animated life where it joins plants, page 442, "The foraminifera which exemplify the lowest stage of animal existence, being akin to sponges."

But he is very wide astray in saying "a law of development adds moral faculties." "Intellectual" - be it so; but "moral," I deny, because then God comes in, and an wholly other ground of judging. The moment I get God, and moral questions involve man's relationship with Him, I am on other ground. Science is out of court - it may prove a chimpanzee's hair to be like a man's, which is not the case - I say "very well." Tell me that a soul was "development by selection," I say, "you are out of court, that is not a question of science. You are denying what I know to be divine."

126 Page 472. He says, speaking of progression, "It cannot be denied that a theory which establishes a connection between the absence of all relics of vertebrata in the oldest fossiliferous rocks, and the presence of Man's remains in the newest, which affords a more than plausible explanation of the successive appearance in strata of intermediate age of the fish, reptile, bird and mamimfer, has no ordinary claims to our favour as comprehending the largest number of positive and negative facts gathered from all parts of the globe, and extending over countless ages, that science has perhaps ever attempted to embrace in one grand generalisation." Generalisation and progression are well in a general way as an order in creation with variation added, but when "progress" means "derivation," and that beasts are derived from birds - risum teneatis.

Page 474. "Linnaeus compared man and the apes, in the same manner as he compared these last with the carnivores, ruminants, rodents, or any other division of warm-blooded quadrupeds. After several modifications of his original scheme, he ended by placing man as one of the many genera in his order Primates, which embraced not only the apes and lemurs, but the bats also, as he found these last to be nearly allied to some of the lowest forms of the monkeys." Quoting from Professor Huxley, he says, "The gorilla's hand is clumsier, heavier, and has a thumb somewhat shorter in proportion than that of man; but no one has ever doubted its being a true hand. But the most cursory anatomical investigation at once proves, that the resemblance of the so-called 'hind-hand' to a true hand is only skin deep, and that, in all essential respects, the hind-limb of the gorilla is as truly terminated by a foot as that of man. The tarsal bones, in all important circumstances of number, disposition, and form, resemble those of man."

"The foot of Man is distinguished from his hand by -

"1. The arrangement of the tarsal bones.

"2. By having a short flexor and a short extensor-muscle of the digits.

"3. By possessing the muscle termed peronoeus longus."

"The hind-limb of the gorilla, therefore, ends in a true foot with a very movable great toe. It is a prehensile foot, if you will, but is in no sense a hand."

127 The whole of this reasoning on man and apes proves to me only the inclination of Sir C. Lyell and the Simianism of Professor Huxley, and the thoroughly low estimate of the whole lot. Anatomy may show flexors and extensors, etc., and make a hand, but anatomy is not everything, and a "prehensible foot" is not the least a human foot; the anatomy may prove growing analogies, but the end of formation is different. Of course an anatomist thinks anatomy conclusive.

The figures he gives prove the human brain different from the chimpanzee's in form. There may be a hippocampus minor and a posterior cornu of which nobody knows the use but the form as well as the size is quite different. And the figures of both views of the ape cannot be exact - the division of the posterior lobe in one would show the cerebellum which is not seen in the figure of the upper surface. But the forms of man and ape are quite different. He says, "The dissection of an ape, in 1861, fully bore out the existence both in the human and simian brain of the three characters exclusively appertaining to man, namely, the occipital or the posterior lobe, the hippocampus minor, and the posterior cornu."

But further, the discussion on the intelligence, etc., proves that infidelity descends to the brute and nothing else, and that Lyell approves this. Quoting from Professor Agassiz, he says, "The gradations of the moral faculties among the higher animals and man are, moreover, so imperceptible, that to deny to the first a certain sense of responsibility and consciousness, would certainly be an exaggeration of the difference between animals and man. There exists as much individuality within their respective capabilities among animals as among man. This argues strongly in favour of the existence in every animal of an immaterial principle, similar to that which, by its excellence and superior endowments, places man so much above animals." Who in the world ever doubted that man was an animal, that he had animal passions? "Yet the principle exists unquestionably, whether it be called soul, reason, or instinct." What Professor Agassiz says is ridiculous. He confesses that he "cannot say in what the mental faculties of a child differ from those of a young chimpanzee." He asks, "What is the difference between the two?" The answer is that the young child is capable of being a man, and the young chimpanzee remains a chimpanzee with a bigger body and more strength. He says, "The range of the passions of the animals is as extensive as that of the human mind" - be it so - that is man's animal part - a remark as old as Aristotle, and found in Scripture. The brute has a nephesh khay-yah (soul of life) Genesis 1: 30, margin. When Professor Agassiz says, "The gradations of moral faculties are imperceptible," he only shows the state of his own. Man may be reduced to a low moral state, but an ape can never be elevated a step beyond his state of an ape. They speak of "responsibilities" - to whom? They can only in animals speak of those of fear, etc., as regards man, which may be found in man - but conscience towards God they cannot speak of. They reduce man to the animal soul - the psychical soul. The animal never goes beyond passions in his motives - man does. Even intellectually, as has been a hundred times observed, the animal's intelligence is, where not instinct, merely reasoning on means for the present meeting of its wants - a dog seeks the door - an elephant remembers, and connects money and sugar. But man has a creative intelligence within his sphere, so as to produce variety - acts on itself. Of this nothing is seen in the brute. Hence, even in common things, man makes progress on himself - the brute never. Assuming the ideas of these very stupid men, the progress is unconscious, and only material in the animal itself. A giraffe gets a long neck from stretching it in a famine! Did you ever see a man do that? No one denies a man is an animal with animal passions. All these men do is to reduce him to this, which is irrational. There is no sign that an animal refers to God, for we see his conduct governed by other motives; Professors Agassiz and Huxley perhaps do not either - that only proves they have degraded themselves - that, man is capable of doing; an animal not, save materially.

128 I am aware that Lyell quoting Quatrefages says, "Few, if any of the authors cited, underrate the enormous gap which separates man from the brutes." My answer is that on this very point Professor Agassiz has degraded himself by doing so, as is seen in the quotation already given from his "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of North America." He seeks to prove animals have a soul from it. Now Scripture itself states they have - but not that God breathed into their nostrils the breath of life, so that he became "a living soul."

Sir C. Lyell saves his distance further, and tells us Professor Agassiz has not intention to impugn these truths. He says "Professor Agassiz speaks of the existence in every animal of 'an immaterial principle similar to that which, by its excellence and superior endowment, places man so much above animals'; and he remarks, 'that most of the arguments of philosophy in favour of the immortality of man, apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living beings.' The author has no intention by this remark to impugn the truth of the great doctrine referred to." This sparing what not only leaves out God but lowers man - for these wretched infidels are not aware that whatever leaves God out degrades man beyond measure of comparison, for his connection with God has a character which no personal powers can give more or less - this half-approving quotation of what really does so is dishonouring to Lyell himself. What immediately follows leads back to give the probability of a connection by transmutation between Simiae and man - but is he transmuted into connection with God? It is another order of ideas. He says "It is no doubt true that in both" (man and the lower animals) "the identity of the individual outlasts many changes of form and structure which take place during the passage from the infant to the adult state, and from that to old age, and the loss again and again of every particle of matter which had entered into the composition of the body during its growth, and the substitution of new elements in their place, while the individual remains always the same, carries the analogy a step farther."

129 Page 499. "Lund, a Danish naturalist, found in Brazil, not only extinct sloths and armadilloes, but extinct genera of fossil monkeys, but all of the American type, and, therefore, widely departing in their dentition and some other characters from the Primates of the old world. No sooner do we carry back our researches into miocene times, than we begin to discover fossil apes and monkeys north of the Alps and Pyrenees." Supposing fossil apes were found in the tropics, they must be lower than what we have, and would prove nothing. They could not be a progress towards man, for we have the next steps alive, unless it be alleged that man has supplanted the advanced apes and left others like them, but then the theory of the near analogy of the present ones fails. The whole is supposition. It is not progression.

There could not be a greater proof of ignoring what the soul is than the last pages of Sir C. Lyell's book. Quoting from Hallam's Literature of Europe he says, "Every link in the long chain of creation does not pass by easy transition into the next. There are necessary chasms, and, as it were, leaps from one creation to another, which, though not exceptions to the law of continuity, are accommodations of it to a new series of being. If man was made in the image of God, he was also made in the image of an ape. The framework of the body of him who has weighed the stars and made the lightning his slave, approaches to that of a speechless brute, who wanders in the forests of Sumatra. Thus standing on the frontier land between animal and angelic natures, what wonder that he should partake of both."

130 Sir C. Lyell himself then continues, "When we contemplate the many hundred millions of human beings who now people the earth, we behold thousands who are doomed to helpless imbecility, and we may trace an insensible gradation between them and the half-witted, and from these again to individuals of perfect understanding, so that tens of thousands must have existed in the course of ages, who in their moral and intellectual condition, have exhibited a passage from the irrational to the rational, or from the irresponsible to the responsible. One fourth of the human race die in early infancy, nearly one tenth before they are a month old, so that we may safely affirm that millions perish on the earth in every century, in the first few hours of their existence. To assign to such individuals their appropriate psychological place in the Creation, is one of the unprofitable themes on which theologians and metaphysicians have expended much ingenious speculation. The inventors of useful arts, the poets and philosophers of the early stages of the earth's growth, the promulgators of new systems of religion, ethics, and philosophy, or of new codes of law, have often been looked upon as messengers from heaven, and after their death have had divine honours paid to them, while fabulous tales have been told of the prodigies which accompanied their birth. Nor can we wonder that such notions have prevailed when we consider what important revolutions in the moral and intellectual world such leading spirits have brought about. If, in conformity with the theory of progression, we believe mankind to have risen slowly from a rude and humble starting point, such leaps may have successively introduced not only higher and higher forms and grades of intellect, but at a much remoter period may have cleared at one bound the space which separated the highest stage of the unprogressive intelligence of the inferior animals from the first and lowest form of improvable reason manifested by man."

131 And again "It may be said that, so far from having a materialistic tendency, the supposed introduction into the earth at successive geological periods of life - sensation - instinct - the intelligence of the higher mammalia bordering on reason - and lastly the improvable reason of man himself, presents us with a picture of the ever-increasing dominion of mind over matter."

Sir Charles Lyell would fain appear more condescendingly religious, more unprejudiced by infidel science, and admit Archbishop Sumner's reasonings that "the power of progressive and improvable reason is man's peculiar and exclusive endowment," and be above religious men in the largeness in which he can allow philosophy, which, by the bye, is receding from the Socratic change to Cosmogony, but there never was a more, for himself, complete ignoring of the soul - the difference of an immortal soul in connection with God - than in this man.

Progression in God's plan of Creation there seems to be. The large variation of species is a question of fact and degree. Attempted definite classification by phenomena, whose definiteness is allowed to be equally necessary and false, has puzzled scientific men when species is in se plain enough. But he has not an idea beyond "transcendent genius" when his own thoughts come out - "dominion of mind over matter" - a leap in some extraordinary inventor, poet, or prophet" - "progress from unprogressive intelligence to improvable intelligence," but the possession of a soul which is, or is not to dwell with God, never crosses his mind - a difference greater, and of another order, than all the progress and all the leaps in the world. As an animal made for this world, to walk about, or to lay hold on trees, to build by instinct as a beaver or with art as a man, you may find points of progress ad infinitum, great as the difference of man is, and that difference connected with his having a soul, because improvable intelligence connects itself with moral will and lusts, obedience or self and self-satisfying desires. But the possession of a responsible soul having to say to heaven is a wholly different thing in its nature. As I have said, no one doubts the animal nature of man; his more or less likeness to an ape is all well for anatomists, but does not touch the real question or that of which there is no question - and that, Sir C. Lyell ignores. The soul which is the matter in question, if he is to talk of God and religion, he does not suppose the existence of in his own remarks. Now this is not philosophical, to avoid the only point really in question. If he says "this is a religious question, and science cannot treat it," then let science admit its incapacity to treat it. But be honest and own its incapability to treat more than what is material or at least animal, and leave such subjects; for to treat them and leave out the principal point is only its own shame.

132 I add a word as regards the delta of Egypt. I have not the details, but I do not see the force of the argument at all. He says: "The point of time to be ascertained, in every case where we find a monument buried to a certain depth, as at Memphis and Heliopolis, is the era when the city fell into such decay that the ancient embankments were neglected, and the river allowed to inundate the site of the temple, obelisk, or statue." Now, supposing the statue of Rameses not to have sunk at all, it is clear if it was solid ground, then there was a wide extent of delta for the mud to spread over, and it is as well known as necessary that the river, so spreading, leaves an incomparably smaller extent of mud than on the narrower ground. Nor is this all when the borings were made, it must have filled, originally, much faster, for the sea was shallower, and when the sea came up there the pottery was launched down the slope, pushed into the sea, and sank to the bottom. So that the depth proves nothing.

He says: "Were we to assume the deposit to be six inches in a century, the burnt brick met with at a depth of sixty feet would be 12,000 years old!" "If the boring was made where an arm of the river had been silted up at a time when the apex of the delta was somewhat farther south, or more distant from the sea than now, the brick in question might be comparatively very modern. The experiments instituted at the pedestal of the fallen statue of King Rameses at Memphis, in the hope of obtaining an accurate chronometric scale for testing the age of a given thickness of Nile sediment, are held by some experienced Egyptologists not to be satisfactory, on the ground of the uncertainty of the rate of deposit accumulated at that locality. The point sought to be determined was the extra amount of Nile mud which had accumulated there since the time when that statue is supposed to have been erected." Moreover it is believed that the ground is sinking there, and this has to be taken into account. If this be so, till its quantity be estimated, no conclusion can be come to at all. On the whole, the entire theory seems an utter and complete failure. It shows the aim of the writers, their wish, and thus discredits their judgment. All the effects from skulls have issued in entire disproof of the theory - that is clear.

133 Note that Mr. Duckworth, of the Liverpool Geological Society, March 24th, 1861, having examined the drift lands at Amiens and Abbeville, says there is no evidence whatever of any slow or gradual formation; and the impression left upon his mind was that they have been produced by some sharp and sudden catastrophe.

Note also, Mr. Prestwich, of the Royal Society, March 27th, says the tendency of modern rivers is to produce gorges not wide valleys, and existing ones could not, he says, make such as the higher-level gravels exhibit.

The heads in Cornwall are, as far as proved, British in character, without proof of contemporaneity in animal remains.

Note further, M. Elie de Beaumont, in the discussions in the Academy of Sciences, admitting the truth of M. Quatrefage's statement that the man's jaw was found really in the quarries of Moulin Quignon in its own bed, declared that the bed was not older than the turf deposits. It was what he called pente meuble (shifting incline) and that he adhered to the opinion of Cuvier, that man and the Elephas primigenius were not contemporaries.

Lamentations

J. N. Darby.

<44015E> 134

(Notes and Comments Vol. 4.)

Lamentations 2

- 6. The Lord cannot give up His elect, but He can reject and refuse all the ordinances by which He is, in a given dispensation, in relationship with the people - His ordinances. "He hath violently taken away his tabernacle, he hath destroyed his places of the assembly." "The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary." They are called Israel's too, in speaking of other things, but here applied to the Lord. This is a serious point of view as to that which might seem stable because the Lord had appointed it for Himself.

Ezekiel

<44016E> 135

Note, in prophecy, there are the elect people who are to inherit, who tremble at God's word. The Lord appears to their joy.

There is a temple built by the nation which the Lord disowns. The Lord speaks from the Temple.

This affects the nations - it is recompense to His enemies.

The glory appears then on this gathering of the nations.

The Gentiles bring in, thereon, the scattered Israelites.

We have a very clear example in Isaiah 8 of the order of prophetic teaching in its connection with present things, and yet passing, as it must as presenting the mind of God, on into the future fulfilment of His mind, and how far it takes up present things - I mean things connected with Christ's first coming. Israel is judged, in chapter 5, on the ground of what it was first planted by God; in chapter 6 on the ground of the Lord's glory to be revealed. It was not fit for it. But there was another intervention of God after all was lost as to responsibility of Israel. When the ark was lost and Ichabod was written on Israel, God raises up a prophet. Sovereign grace forms a link of grace. And, following on this, in David the ark is brought back, and the house of David becomes a new stay for the people - grace in power, "We are come to Mount Zion." This fails, and in chapter 7 the notion of the Remnant, intimated in a remarkable way in the end of the chapter, is brought forward, and, when the heir of the house of David shows his unbelief and wearies God, the prophetic witness steps in and gives sign or testimony of grace. Emmanuel, God with us, is introduced. Then, in chapter 8, the prophet turns to circumstances, and the state of the people. They were seeking, in human strength and confederacies, to arrest men's hostile power and intrigues. The Lord tells the prophet, and in him the returning Remnant, not to walk in this way. He was to sanctify the Lord of Hosts Himself. Still the Assyrian, the outward hostile power, would come up to the neck. He did in Sennacherib's days then, and will hereafter. But Emmanuel having been brought in, all came to nought, for it was into "Emmanuel's Land" he had come, and they would be broken to pieces, for Emmanuel, God was with them.

But this introduction of Emmanuel, in connection with the Assyrian, necessarily leads him to Christ, God manifest in the flesh, who was their Emmanuel. And we get the instruction of the Remnant, "Say not a confederacy, but sanctify the Lord of Hosts himself, and he shall be for a sanctuary." Then the full bearing of the great question with Israel, Jehovah not only dealing with but come to Israel, is dealt with. "He shall be a stone of stumbling." Then the law and testimony is sealed up in the Remnant, and the Spirit of Christ waits for "the Lord who hides his face from the house of Israel," and thus He and "the children which God hath given" Him are "for signs and for wonders."

136 Now here we are broken off at once as to any pursuing the tree and chain of promise in Israel (though God will fulfil it) because if He is hiding His face from the house of Israel, and hence cannot, even in the Remnant, set it up again, they look to fires of their own kindling, to wizards that peep and mutter. They are without Jehovah. Every people would look to their God - not Israel. Thus they get into the depths of sorrow and irritation instead of repentance. But though thus in far deeper anguish than in the first visitation of Israel, all is trouble and darkness. Yet in this last dominion of Gentile power, light had sprung up in Galilee. There was Emmanuel, who had never been before - the great light had been there, and now the prophet, in the utter extremity of the people (depicted in verses 21, 22), bursts forth into the full consequence of this Emmanuel. He becomes the triumphant Deliverer for final blessing and peace. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts would do it. Thus, on the failure of the last resource of Israel, according to the flesh, in the house of David, God brings in Emmanuel.

He then gives the present needed warnings and encouragements needed by the people. They are to trust Jehovah and to give Him His just place in their hearts, but then the manifestation of Him brings in Christ, and all these purposes and patiences entirely theirs. This is pursued on through the first coming, and the rejection of Israel, on to the second in deliverance and glory, when Israel was at the lowest point. But then, in fact, when the Remnant became disciples, upright as Jews, and His children by grace, and the Spirit, and the law and testimony was sealed up in them, what was to be done? They could not be Israel - Jehovah's face was hid from Israel. The New Testament tells us only exactly, though full occasion and room is left for it here, "The Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved" - this very Remnant.

137 Then note the difference. Israel (as on the great day of atonement) cannot know, till the Great High Priest comes out, whether His sacrifice has been accepted. It may, prophetically, hope so, but waits to see Him whom they have pierced. But we do not. He is not come out, but, on the contrary, set down, for it was the Lord "on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens." But the Holy Ghost is come out, being given to those who believe, and we also do know the acceptance and perfection for ever of those that are His - yea, the veil is rent, and heaven is open to us - yea, we are one with Him. But this is New Testament knowledge by the Holy Ghost. The prophecy shows exactly where it comes in, but passes from the state of the people, when even the house of David had failed, and all were looking to man, Emmanuel being introduced in promise, to the whole history of Israel from that moment to His appearing in glory and triumph for Israel.

The final earthly purpose is held in view in connection with Christ, but the present needed encouragement given with promise - the final blessing being a guarantee for present keeping, for faith. Heavenly things are simply passed over (only God hides His face from Israel), to those that are not earthly connected with them. Other prophecies may give only details, but they all fall into their own place in this plan of God - "Are not of any private interpretation."

Note, in passing, that Isaiah 18 gives the key to the third Book of the Psalms.

Note too, in Jeremiah, how, even in denouncing Israel, and telling all the evil coming on them, the Lord takes notice of and knows all the sorrows of His people. This is fulness of grace.

In Ezekiel, God is on the Throne of supreme majesty - retired into His own place, and visiting according to this His place among men. He comes out of the North (intimating the judgment, I doubt not, of Nebuchadnezzar) but it is still the same thought - judgment in majesty. Hence a terrible word, moral reproof according to the mind and judgment of His Spirit is closed. Ezekiel is dumb, save as God opens his mouth and makes him speak His words. The living creatures sustained here or formed the Throne. Where the Spirit was to go they went.

God is with the captivity, not with the house, and therefore has retired to His sovereign place of the Throne. They are treated as rebellious there, and He visits Jerusalem now in judgment. He acts on it from outside. Hence, too, Ezekiel is son of man and dumb, because it is not the Spirit of God speaking from His place within, but to, in His Majesty without. In Jeremiah, He still begins within - He says he must set his face as a flint; and whoever goes out to the Chaldaeans shall save his life - owns the judgment. God takes His place in purpose in all Israel. As sparing within, judgment must be owned - spiritual sense knows it is over. Hence, after being brought among them dumb, Ezekiel is taken into his house and besieges Jerusalem. Then he is brought to be shown, and declare the state of the judged and God's once place (His own house) upon earth. Here (discriminating the saints) judgment is executed - for what was Nebuchadnezzar? Here the living creatures are full of eyes, as well as the wheels.

138 Next, we may remark that (for God appears more in primeval majesty in Ezekiel than elsewhere, because He is not speaking within but from without) we have the king of Tyre as "the anointed cherub that covereth," and to be destroyed as the covering cherub. Hence it is a creature, however exalted - I suppose Satan fallen (with many others) but a creature here, which had its place connected with the Throne of God - God having set it so and officially anointed. "Covering," alluding to the word has-so-chech constantly used of the cherubim over the ark (consequently denoting what was creature, however used) that it was connected with precious stones, and walked up and down among stones of fire, that which reflects and displays, in its various prismatic beauty through a medium, the pure light of God. Hence the names of the people were on them, and the heavenly Jerusalem has them for foundations. They are divine qualities, not essential Light - that God is. Here he was familiar and at home. Christ secures His people in them, connects them with them as engraved there, and they are basis of the heavenly glory. They were displayed on the fallen cherub, and he was amongst them.

Further he was in the garden of delight of God in Eden, amongst those who had their place in His garden of delights. But he took pleasure in his own beauty and fell - perfect from the day he was created till iniquity was found in him. It was the fallibility of a creature. The beauty and enjoyment, be they what they might, were lost by the internal failure - "He abode not in the truth, for there was no truth in him." How does the blessed Lord Christ shine out in contrast here! How sure a place was "on the breast-plate"! How incapable the creature of standing in any place!

139 Note, the iniquity was found in him - it was "looking at his own beauty." Lord, keep us from this! For how vile to attribute this beauty to ourselves! And yet we should all have this devilish propensity, save as kept. Look at the brightness which is in the stone! We are engraved on it, and call it our own because we are engraved on it and it bears us. Dependence was lost, and what natural quality was became a power of evil.

Here then we have the same general idea of Cherub - one connected with the attributes and qualities of God as a vessel of service, as a creature near to Himself and connected with the Throne. Note in the beginning of Ezekiel they are obedient and dependent - where the Spirit was to go, they went. And they had a place, when God went in the way of visitation.

We have, finally, the living creatures in the Apocalypse. They are, again, connected with the Throne and judgment - not properly counsel. They worship, i.e., they ascribe honour - the elders worship. They are in the circle of the Throne, but it is a sessional Throne in heaven, not an active one. They invite to the opening of the seals, but the Lamb opens them. They own Him in ascribing glory. They are heads of creation in genus. They celebrate the holiness and unchangeableness of Jehovah Elohim Shaddai, night and day. And thereon the twenty-four elders fall down before Him on the Throne unchangeable, and own Him as Creator and for whom all is created. Next, they (one of them) give the vials of wrath (note that was the wrath of God filled up) but do not pour them out in that judgment. They invite, as we have seen, to see the seals open. All this is, as we have seen, before, save that they do not move nor go forth in activity, the Throne being in heaven, for all was associated with the Creation-blessings. For the Jews as a system were so, and failed in that place. Their Sabbath was Creation-sabbath. This makes chapter 5 more important, and to be much studied. One thing we know - that Jesus' name is above every name by divine right, and title of perfect work, too. They say "Amen" to the worship of every creature offered to the Lamb, and to Him that sitteth upon the Throne. The twenty-four elders thereon worship Him who changes not.

140 Note, also, the song, in respect of which the vials are given, in chapter 15, and also verse 7. On the whole, the character of these living creatures seems in principle the same, save, as I have said, the active energy is not there. It is in the Lamb. The horns and eyes, seven spirits sent forth are there, and He comes forth at the close.

All things are cleansed by blood, and all things secured by blood - all things in heaven and earth (which He the Son had made for Himself) are reconciled, "having made peace by the blood of his cross" referring, I apprehend, to the day of atonement. I am not aware that anywhere else it is said egorasas hemas (hast redeemed us, Revelation 5: 9). Hence the importance of this. But I do not think the living creatures come in the company of the enthroned redeemed Church. They are rather the furniture of the Throne itself, on which He that "liveth for ever and ever" sat.

The Apostle sees a throne and thrones, but the living creatures were not there, but, after describing the sea of glass, we get the elders too - they were in the circle and round the Throne. It is with them the ceaseless celebration of God the Creator, Jehovah Elohim Shaddai. There is action with the elders, that is awakened feeling, thrones cast down, a worthiness understood, and spiritually reasoned on - the good pleasure of God understood and delighted in.

As regards chapter 5 nothing very certain can be drawn from so uncertain a text. One thing is clear - they fall down before the Lamb and worship. It is not "they sung," which would make it an act thereupon, but "they sing." The introduction of the Lamb awakens this song. It is certain that all beings are sustained by Christ, and received, and reconciled as to condition by His blood, but I know not that any are redeemed but elect men. If any of these, which I doubt, are in the place of the Cherubim, I should judge it not the Church but those who specially trusted in the throne of Jehovah Elohim Shaddai, who are as much of course redeemed as the rest. The twenty-four elders would be the Church having the mind of Christ. In spite of the absence of grammar in the Apocalypse, the hemas (us) and autous (them) here present serious difficulties. It is to be noted that the living creatures and elders have harps and bowls of incense which are the prayers of others - of saints. I should be disposed much to read with A and Aethiop.: without the "us" (hemas) at all after "redeemed," and make all go on to "them" (autous), or, if there were authority for it, with 44, hemon as in verse 10. Note there is no intercession - they have bowls full of prayers, "which were the prayers." It is not incense added to them. These saints, if this were so, though yet under trial, would be the "them" (autous). The Angels are not in chapter 4, note.

141 The harps only seemed to identify with the song, but if hemas (us) be interpolated or put for hemon (our) it would be all very simple. On the whole, worship or celebration of glory, however, is added as to the Cherubim. They are less mysterious rather in position, but they are in act identified with power, and judgment, and providence, not with Church-intelligence. But then it is not principalities and powers associated (in service) with the Throne in mysterious Majesty. There they are. But the Lamb has perfect power in Himself - the seven horns, and wisdom, and energy of the Spirit - seven eyes. He is in the midst of the Throne, and is now worshipped by them, possessing all power in His Person. They invite these lower down, and see. As to eyes, they are not, in themselves, divine. We read of the "eyes of the Lord." "Seven eyes" is perfect spiritual intelligent energy, but we read of another having the eyes of a man. They are intelligence, Spiritual intelligence, and divine intelligence in their place, perception, and gathering in knowledge, according to their respective capacity. See note on this among the notes on the Psalms.

I doubt much even of the present reformed text, in chapter 5: 9, but am unwilling to tamper with it. There are several questions. First, to whom does "they sing" refer? Is it general, as often in Revelation - on chante. Does it refer to "Saints"? This I hardly think. Do the harps connect themselves with it? Next egorasas to theo hemas (thou hast redeemed us to God) - is this right? Or is hemas (us) to be shut out, so that "Thou hast redeemed" would rest on "them," with "hast made"? Or is it "to our God" as afterwards, with 44? The only analogous passage I know is 2 Samuel 8, and parallel passage, i.e., "redeemed to God" is not elsewhere - "purify to himself a people of possession" or "purchase" we have. In no other case have we living creatures expressing reasons for worship, but as elders we have. It might perhaps come in. They ever do, even in chapter 4. Further the "them" (autous) afterwards makes the saints the natural subject of praise - those whose prayers they have in their bowls, i.e., those still suffering down here, in whose hope they would string their harps. This would much fall in with the whole scope of the Book, as chapter 11. "The accuser of our brethren is cast down which accused them," etc. The omission of "us" has weighty authority, but I am unwilling to tamper with Scripture on uncertain readings. The other "them" seems on the fullest authority, all but unanimous. It is possible that these above, Old and New Testament saints may celebrate their common redemption to God, and specially for the others who seemed in a bad position for it, as left on earth, declare that they would be kings and priests, and reign, whatever their position now. If so, then "them" would lean on "with those coming out of the great tribulation" and after.

142 The cases cited by Bengel, on Revelation 5: 10, to show that autous is used for hemas, prove nothing. He refers to Matthew 23: 37, and Jude 24. The passage in Matthew is "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that . . . stonest them that are sent unto thee." So Isaiah 47: 8, the sitting, the confident who says in her heart; in verse 11 (not 10) auton refers to the pit (bathunos) into which she will fall. In Jude 24 autous is very doubtful, Bengel and Tischendorf alone edit it - Tischendorf on the authority of Vat. Cott. B.S. 3, 5, and some thirty others - Bengel saying, Edd: primae et M.SS. The Vulgate and Beza have humas, hence the more recent ones. Were it there, it would refer to hous and hous in verse 23. There is no hemas before it. Revelation 18: 24, is perfectly simple. It is the historical statement of the inspired author, not the language of the Angel saying "Thee."

Ezekiel, as we have seen elsewhere, leaves out all the operation and history of the beasts, and takes up the nations short of their rising, and being such (the taking of the Throne from Jerusalem) and those after the beasts are done with, and the question is between Israel and the nations. The divisions of Ezekiel seem thus: chapters 1-7 the question was raised on the glory of the Lord in Israel, shown to the prophet; the commission. It was to the nation, the children of Israel. First sent to the captivity of Chebar, for it was general - then to the city Jerusalem, or rather concerning them. "Hear or forbear" - but it involved this siege, representatively the whole nation, then the "mountains of Israel," and an end on the four corners of the Land. Chapters 8-19, the judgments and reasoning with them.

143 Ezekiel 1

In Ezekiel the prophet's place is quite outside Jerusalem, by the river Chebar. He is carried there to see the judgment executed, but the glory of the Lord goes there (it led Nebuchadnezzar in judgment) to judge, and it shows, come what will, His throne on the Cherubim is always there, far beyond its special application, even in the midst of the people. And this is a very important consideration. He has found Himself in the midst of the people in condescending grace and wisdom, but that was but a special manifestation in great favour and for the manifestation of His glory. His people had been unfaithful to it, but that took the seat of the Throne - the Throne, and not Jehovah off His Throne. He led up Nebuchadnezzar there. Hence, the Throne is here so high it is dreadful, not in the near condescendence of grace. It comes, views, judges, and departs. It is terrible when it is thus, with what had been the place of the Throne. At the end of Ezekiel, it becomes again so. And compare the entry, departure, and ascension of Jesus in lowliness, as prophesied, but still the King. To us the Throne is a Throne of grace, but all power is Jesus' in heaven and earth, "Go ye therefore," etc. The glory of God had not, however, left the House definitely as yet, when Ezekiel was carried there; see Ezekiel 8: 6. It is touching to see, even here (see chapter 11) in the midst of judgment, the intercession and sure promise of grace.

- 26. How exceedingly sweet it is, and what a reassuring centre it gives, and most wonderful, that in all the intentionally mysterious and terrible glory of God, a Man is on the firmament above! God has for man, and for all, wide and terrible glories - brightness of surpassing light - but when He reveals Himself, He is a Man however glorious. The heathen seized something of the attribute-glory of God, and their representations of God were Cherubic - the best of them. God, revealed, sits above or between all these, and there as a Man. Were there any idea of God as Man, it was corrupt and sinful man - his known passions and fears.

144 Ezekiel 3

Note much how Ezekiel sees the glory, is sent to Tel Abib, then says nothing, is sent into his house and bands upon him not to go out amongst them only when God opens His mouth with "He that heareth let him hear, and he that forbeareth let him forbear." He has no reasoning with them in the spirit of bringing them back. But note to whatever height the prophet is raised, he never departs from the plain ground of right and wrong obvious to the conscience; see verses 17, 18. High pretensions to prophetic testimony if they depart from the elements of moral truth, instead of bringing high sanctions to them, needed perhaps by the obduracy of man, and for the support of faith in such circumstances, are more than to be suspected.

The character of this prophecy is much to be observed - it is judgment, different from Jeremiah 15. In Jeremiah, God, evil as their ways were, still reasons with their heart - He speaks. It is not said to him, "Thou shalt be dumb." His heart speaks, though He sore afflicted and as afflicted; but the strong hand of God, in His majesty, is on Ezekiel. God wanders about, as it were alone, in Ezekiel, and what can He say in the midst of such a people? If in Spirit He go to Jerusalem, He went alone with the prophet, and, showing him these things in vision, take notice of all the sin which He can no longer hide from Himself, and from the testimony of judgment. It is in the Temple - should He dwell with it, and make a throne along with evil? His sanctuary was defiled; Ezekiel 5: 11, 13.

- 26. How largely the vision that Saul had of the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus Christ opened his mouth, and flowed forth in beseeching grace!

Ezekiel 10

The Cherub of Ezekiel is not properly the government of God at Jerusalem - there we see the Cherubic faces fixed on the ark of the covenant, and made of one piece with the mercy-seat - the tranquil, hidden, righteous Throne of God. Here it is the supreme and sovereign Throne of God in all the world. A Spirit which goes, and actually is manifested by a whirlwind coming out of the North, and visits Jerusalem, where the Lord (not the Cherub) stands on the threshold. He has left the throne. It is nothing less than the government of heaven and earth, or from heaven, the earth if you will. The government was above the heads of the Cherubs, and the throne above the firmament. This was superior, so to speak, to the habitual Throne at Jerusalem, though the same Jehovah. But then the Lord quits Jerusalem, and takes His place in this public and indefeasible sovereignty, of which, while in the rebellion of will, the enterprises of Nebuchadnezzar, etc., even were but the expression. Antichrist, it is true, is another thing - there it is a defiance from the earth, Satan being cast down who gives his throne to the beast.

145 Ezekiel 12

- 6. Twilight - so in verses 7 and 12; used only in Genesis 15: 17. It means, I doubt not, obscurity, thick darkness.

CHAPTER 16

- 22. Whatever progress we make, it is always well to remember this - "The days of thy youth when thou was naked and bare, and wast polluted in thy blood."

- 55. It does not say they will or will not be, nor mean to say anything of it, but that the judgment of Israel would be as the worst of the heathen, as they had deserved it should be, and, if restored, it would be on ground on which Sodom might be, and so it will be. In verse 61, this restoration by grace is spoken of, but, while the grace to Israel is just as sovereign and free, yet God remembers promise to Israel; verse 60. On this ground the Gentile is not. Hence, though equally restored from judgment, they are not on the same footing as Israel then. I hardly think it is merely law here, though that be fully true. It was independent of Israel. The others would be restored, though given to them as daughters.

Ezekiel 18

All that is attempted to be drawn from this chapter in an Arminian sense is without foundation. It is the replacing of the Jewish principle of government, that the "children should die for their fathers' sins," by the declaration that "each should die for his own." We may know, and do know, from other instructions of the Holy Scriptures, the terrible effect of a man's dying in his sins; but it is not directly the subject here, for then a son's soul would have been lost, by the law, for his father's sins, which is monstrous. It is the government of Jehovah which is the subject of the chapter.

146 Ezekiel 20

Note, the elders of Judah are distinguished from the elders of Israel; see chapter 8: 1. But then Israel is looked at as the nation as a whole; compare Ezekiel 37: 16, and the general use of the word "Israel," as Ezekiel 19: 1, 17: 2, and many others.

- 36. This passage used to be a difficulty in connection with the clear evil that was amongst the Jews in the Land in the latter day, but it seems to make both the distinction and circumstances of Israel, and also the bearing of Ezekiel plainer than before - so, ever. In chapter 8 we have the elders of Judah, but not after. Israel is the subject which afterwards is before the prophet; compare also Ezekiel 9, 10 and 11. Particularly too, see Ezekiel 11: 15, 16 and 17, as to our Lord's ministry, and consider the distinction between the power and tribes as other than the Jews, or how far then as a scattered nation; see Zechariah, and Ezekiel 37. Here the "house of Israel" seems to include them nationally, but the house of Israel in Jerusalem, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem are constantly spoken of distinctly while Zedekiah was there. Except the refusal to be enquired of, and consequent judgment in this chapter, none of the statements in Ezekiel are addressed to those concerning whom they are spoken. It still recognises Israel in Jerusalem, and speaks about it till taken, though giving warning concerning the captives; compare Ezekiel 3, 15, 16, 23: 26, 27; 24 and 25: 7. The testimony would be a witness to them in the dispersion, but, when spoken to Israel, was about those in Jerusalem and in the Land.

Ezekiel 22

- 16. Query if the expression in the word ni-khal (shalt be profaned; A.V., "shalt take thine inheritance") has not a double sense.

147 Ezekiel 24

- 1. These dates and those in Ezekiel 20: 1 and 8: 1, seem computed from Jehoiakim's captivity; see Ezekiel 1: 2. Compare also 2 Kings 25: 1.

Ezekiel 28

To understand what is said of the king of Tyre, we must compare chapter 31: 8, 9.

Ezekiel 31

- 11. Read from this verse to Ezekiel 32: 21, and compare Psalm 89: 7. In Isaiah 9, the use of El Gibbor (the Mighty God) does not apply, in its direct force, to the essential deity of Christ, although being in righteousness it must be divine. He must be God, but it is His position not His nature which is asserted. For this we may compare, where the words show the force of the comparison, the passages above cited, and see also El (God) in any dictionary or concordance.

"The Father of Eternity," I confess, presents to me no scriptural or intelligible idea. In a word, these are His offices. His glory we know, who are Christians, who have received the knowledge of who (so far) He is; how too, He is entitled to it, being in very deed "the Son of the living God," "with God," and "God himself." It seems to me a great mistake to refer Isaiah 11: 5, to anything of the essential divinity of His Person, I mean Avi-ad (everlasting Father). It is clear to me that it refers to the characteristics in which He shall be exhibited in the millennial day. Being born to the Jews, they begin to celebrate what He is; compare Isaiah 22: 21. I do not mean but this is a higher and fuller recital that is more simply the Judaic rule. The quotation of Isaiah 55: 3, in Acts 13: 33, 34, opens out the manner of connection of the two. His essential deity, qualifying Him to hold it is another question. By His resurrection life (in which He was declared to be "the Son of God with power") He was enabled to sustain abidingly the guidance and rule (in blessing, as the Fountain of honour and blessing) the government, and the rule of His house. It was in His resurrection life ("living for ever," as Melchizedek) He became Avi-ad. He was the Jehovah of the Jews, and being now manifested amongst them, holding the throne of David, He became and was the Avi-ad - the abiding Source of secured blessing, because of being who He was; compare the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the common use of the word "Father" in the Jewish Scriptures. Neither ad olam (for ever) nor aion express eternity abstractedly; compare the New Testament, and also eis to dienekes ("for ever" - "in perpetuity"). "Head of the millennium" is its concrete form.

148 Ezekiel 33

This is the testimony of righteousness against carnal assurance - a prophet amongst them in the Land. The city was smitten then, and so the kingdom of the beast in the Land; but the subject was the city smitten.

- 24. Note the same principle in this and other passages - the evidence of unbelief or faith, according as proposed by the flesh, or by the Lord, and, on the other hand, that the opposite principles are evidence of unbelief, when the moral circumstances are changed. Thus, here "Abraham was one, and we are many, the land is given us for an inheritance," in the condition of sin and rebellion, was unbelief and wickedness. In Isaiah 51: 2, it is presented as the warrant and assurance of faith, and they are called to lean upon this warrant - that Abraham was but one, and yet blessed and multiplied. Oh! for faith!

On the other hand, when Israel came out of Egypt, it was just their sin and unbelief to say, "Is the Lord among us or not?" Exodus 17: 7. In Micah 3: 11, it is their sin and presumption, to say, "Is not the Lord among us? No evil shall come upon us.

Ezekiel 34

This sets aside their shepherds (see Zechariah 10: 3 - Judah first) and gives David in promise - the Lord being their God.

Ezekiel 35

Seir is here judged. The reproach of famine taken away.

149 Ezekiel 36

The reference to this chapter in John 3, by the Lord, is a distinct proof that the promises here are not fulfilled.

This chapter renews them and plants them in their land - all Israel.

Ezekiel 37

All Israel is restored out of the graves. They are to be put with "the stick of Judah." Israel is to be taken from among the heathen.

- 26. I cannot doubt that the writer had this verse in his mind, when he wrote Hebrews 13: 20.

Ezekiel 38 and Ezekiel 39

Israel is brought out of the nations, and dwells safely, all of them. Gog comes up against the Land, and falls. Israel shall know from that day. Then the captivity is really brought again; see Psalm 126. The heathen know too that He is the Lord. The Spirit here has been poured out upon the house of Israel.

Ezekiel 40

Though the description is the description of the Temple, yet in the beginning of verse 2, he sees "the frame of a city on the south," from the high mountain so that, whatever the arrangement of the measured land, there was a connection between the city and the sanctuary. "He brought me there." As to the mountain, also, the city was alav (above it).

Ezekiel 43

- 17. Whatever the reason, there seem to be steps to the altar, u-ma-a-lotha-hu (and its steps) here, and none allowed in Exodus 20: 26, bh'ma-a-loth (by steps). The reason is given there.

Ezekiel 45

- 15, 17. Note there is no mention of making atonement, in Leviticus, with the peace-offering or the meat-offering - with the burnt-offering (Lev. 1) there is. Indeed, nowhere is there, even with the peace-offering unless in these verses before us, where burnt-offering, and, in verse 17, sin offering are also mentioned. In Hebrews 13: 15, we have evidently priestly service in direct worship. In the Apocalypse, the heavenly priests have surely, in chapter 5, an intercessional or mediatorial character in their service. In chapter 20 they are priests to God and to Christ. In 1 Peter 2: 5, they offer up spiritual sacrifices, where, I apprehend, it is direct worship Wherever, in Israel, an individual priest was a mediator, he represented, I apprehend, Christ - and then the body of priests are saints. If there is associate priesthood, as associate royalty, it is as connected with Christ, in either participatory in His place. But proper worship is the place of the nation of priests, though there may be a greater nearness implied than others. Further, it is with God as God. All can have "an advocate with the Father" - a priest is with God. In Revelation 1: 6 only we have "priests to his God and Father," but I apprehend, in another sense. It is God's relationship to Christ as Man, and God, who is His Father, is viewed towards us as God. We worship also the Father.

150 For many points, this difference of the meat and peace-offering is important. Here alone Kaphar (make atonement) is used with the peace-offerings and meat-offerings, but then burnt-offering, and, in verse 17, sin-offerings are found also, so that it does not affect the general truth.

- 24, 25. I find Pentecost is omitted here, as we have seen, the day of atonement, and the red heifer; as to sacrifices, these omissions are remarkable.

Appearing, Manifestation, and Presence

<44017E> 151

Epiphaneia. Appearing. This word is 'appearance,' not 'revelation' as coming forth from being concealed, though necessarily in nature opposed, but the fact of being seen or visible.

As a verb:

See Luke 1: 78, 79. "The dayspring from on high hath visited us, to 'shine upon' them that sit in darkness."

In Acts 27: 20, it has the same sense. The stars did not 'appear' - 'shine,' Titus 2: 11. "The grace of God . . . has 'appeared.'"

Titus 3: 4. Kindness and philanthropy 'appeared.'

As a Noun:

2 Timothy 1: 10. Grace given before the world, but made manifest (phanerotheisa) by the 'appearing' of Jesus.

2 Thessalonians 2: 8, the 'appearing' of His presence.

1 Timothy 6: 14, the 'appearing' of Jesus, which the only Potentate shall show.

2 Timothy 4: 1. He shall judge the quick, and the dead, at His 'appearing' and His kingdom.

2 Timothy 4: 8. A crown for those that love His 'appearing.'

Titus 2: 13. Waiting for that blessed hope, and the 'appearing' of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

I conclude that it is the fact of His being seen, appearing as the sunshine. Christ has appeared in the world, and He will appear again, i.e., there will be a state of things in which He will not be hid, nor non-existent but to faith, but apparent. But epiphaneia (appearing) is not the act of coming forth as apokalupsis (revelation), but the state of shining forth so as to be visible. That will be true at the instant of His phanerosis (manifestation) and of His apokalupsis, but it will continue to be true after, withal.

Phaneroo. To manifest, or bring to light.

Colossians 3: 4. When Christ, our life, shall be 'manifested,' we also shall be 'manifested' with Him (now it is 'hidden with Him in God').

1 Peter 5: 4. When the chief Shepherd shall be 'manifested,' ye shall receive a crown.

1 John 2: 28. That when He shall be 'manifested,' we may have confidence.

1 John 3: 2. That which we shall be has not yet been 'manifested,' but we know that when He shall be 'manifested,' we shall be like Him.

152 'Manifest' is in contrast with being previously hidden though in existence, though known to be so. It is applied to us only when our life is said to be 'hid with Christ in God.'

Apokalupsis. Revelation.

Luke 17: 30. So shall it be when the Son of Man is 'revealed.'

1 Cor. 1: 7. Awaiting the 'revelation' of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Thessalonians 1: 7. When the Lord Jesus shall be 'revealed' from heaven, in flaming fire taking vengeance.

1 Peter 1: 7. Shall be found to honour and praise at the 'revelation' of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1: 13. The grace brought to you at the 'revelation' of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 4: 13. That when His glory shall be 'revealed,' ye may be glad.

Romans 2: 5. Some read "At the 'revelation,' and righteous judgment of God."

'Revelation' is rather of one who has title to appear in glory, and does so, to the confusion of those who have not owned the glory. Hence it is applied to judgment or glory. It is applied, as occasion of the general deliverance, to the saints, in Romans 8: 19. It is a matter of display of something glorious. Phaneroo, brings to light, and is applied to sin. That which makes all things 'manifest' is light, for all things that can be reproved are made 'manifest' by the light; see 1 Corinthians 4: 5; Luke 8: 17, and Mark 4: 22.

Parousia. Presence.

This word signifies 'presence with' in contrast with 'absence,' and the fact of becoming present after having been absent; see 1 Cor. 16: 17; 2 Cor. 7: 6. For the latter, see Philippians 2: 12, also 2 Cor. 10: 10; the former, but more usually in the New Testament, it is the latter. The two cited are the only two cases, that I am aware of, of the former use. As to the coming of Jesus:

153 Matthew 24: 3, 27, 37, 39. The sign of Thy 'presence' - so shall the 'presence' of the Son of Man be (as lightning) - As the days of Noe, so shall be the 'presence' of the Son of Man - so shall also the 'presence' of the Son of Man be.

1 Cor. 15: 23. They that are Christ's at His 'presence.'

1 Thess. 2: 19. Are not ye before our Lord Jesus Christ, at His 'presence.'

1 Thess. 3: 13. Establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the 'presence' of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints.

1 Thess. 4: 15. We which are alive and remain to the 'presence' of the Lord.

1 Thess. 5: 23. Your body, soul and spirit may be preserved blameless in the 'presence' of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Thess. 2: 1. Now we beseech you by the 'presence' of our Lord Jesus Christ.

James 5: 7. Be patient till the 'presence' of the Lord.

2 Peter 1: 16. Making known to you the power and 'presence' of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 3: 4. Where is the promise of His 'presence'?

2 Peter 3: 12. Looking for and hasting unto the 'presence' of the day of God.

1 John 2: 28. Not be ashamed before Him at His 'presence.'

'Presence' signifies, evidently, His presence in the scene in which our affections, fears, hopes, joys, and sorrows have their place, and may be affected by the fact of His presence or absence. When I say "Here he is," in English, it conveys a person's coming, though literally it affirms the fact of his being present; so parousia. Hence Christ's presence, in the creation, refers to the hopes and affections of the person who speaks of it - in general, His coming into the scene from whence He is now absent. If my soul is in heavenly thoughts, it meets Him there, if in earthly it meets Him there, and it is applied to both.

The Shaking of the Heavens

<44018E> 154

As regards the shaking of the heavens this age (aion houtos) properly began at Sinai. It was true, Noah began power in the earth, in restraining of evil on the earth, from God, but that was the abstract principle by itself. Power might be transferred to Nebuchadnezzar, here below on earth, when raised up to the dominion of the children of men, wheresoever they dwell, on the departure of the glory from Jerusalem; so the 'times of the Gentiles,' and Abraham called out on the ascription of that power by man's heart (given to Noah) to devils as its source - so in Joshua 24 and Paul, "They offer to devils and not to God" - a condition speedily proved to be in force and vigour, in the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon, when given to Nebuchadnezzar. But when Moses was king in Jeshurun, the upright, the Lord came from Mount Sinai, and from His right hand went a fiery law for them, when He spake from earth unto them, and they sat down at His feet, then, through the disposition of angels, receiving the law.

This being the then order of the heavens, and the ministrations of His power - His angels, which excel in strength - then, in its proper order, the aion houtos began (Jehovah so ruled) and manifested itself. The order of Israel would have been the display and beauty of this, and all the world (oikoumene) should have come up to own the beauty of holiness, and the Throne under the Law. Then the Law of God was the law of the earth, but proved in the people He loved (though all the saints were in His hand) and carried on below, in their responsibility, because it was to be a disposition and order of righteousness. All this failed in Babylon, and the angelic powers, the powers of the heavens, became, as we see in Daniel, the exercised administrators of men - providential power among the Gentiles. The oikoumene was persecuted - the seat and order of rule in the heavens unchanged - but "He chargeth his angels with folly, and the stars are not clean in his sight." He spent even the Son of His love in the trial of man under this administration. The righteous angels, His willing servants, but He keeping the Law, made of a woman, made under it, became the rightful Heir of all things, as, indeed, He was the Creator of all things, even the principalities and powers themselves, and having so, by inheritance, a more excellent name than they, and thus the title of all things, by every title, is His - by name, by redemption, by office, by purpose, by headship, by creation.

155 Now, on His rejection, the trial of man closed - though, in grace, there was still trial, testimony by His exaltation and Cross, and, besides that, the sure salvation of the Church. But the heavens were not changed, as to the rule of the world, but all became, on earth, in abeyance as to earthly things, save that, all power His in heaven and on earth, He sends forth, as the "Lamb in the midst of the throne," the seven Spirits of God to do His will, making all things work together for good to them that love God, 'the called according to his purpose,' and ministering the will of His grace. The direct legal administration of angelic blessing, or judgment, was lost with the Law and Throne upon earth - the Lamb's control, to whom all Angels, principalities and powers, are subject, not - and He, hid however in God, the Heavens remain unchanged, but, withal, the power of evil there. The Church, not manifesting the full heavenly power on earth (for man was sinful) by the Holy Ghost, the purpose of God in it has its place, i.e., its heavenly character, and then all, in a further sense, is in abeyance, save the sure accomplishment of the secret purpose of God, who gathers the joint heirs. But the age (aion) is still of the world, and so the Apostle of the Gentiles must call it, though the Apostle of the circumcision might, justly, first propose to the men of Israel, that gospel of the gift of the Redeemer from Zion (to return on their repentance) who should turn every one away from their iniquities. Still, though all things were secretly made to work together for good, and the angels were ministering spirits to the heirs, and, for this, controlling, as agents, whatever was to be controlled, the heavens were unchanged, and not only was man sinner upon earth, and the earth defiled, and the Law slackened and broken, but it was now clearly seen that spiritual wickedness was in heavenly places.

The aion which shook the earth, claimed righteousness on earth, and gave the Law which expected a righteousness from earth - was proved, as regards man on earth, condemnation and death, and therefore was given up, while the Gentile providential economy was therefore let go on to the accomplishment of God's other purposes, while the saints were gathering, by grace, for joint heirs. But though the Church was thereon (specially therefore from the death of Stephen) viewed as heavenly, and known, and knowing itself only there, it was hid there, and did not, in that sense, take its place in the heavens. The heavens were not shaken and changed, though evil was there. Now, before they are, the victory is given to the angelic powers under Michael, the Archangel (the great Prince that stands up for the Jews) and the devil and his angels are cast out by the Lord's power, and in the time of His will. Still the heavens are not properly changed, though cleared. This is still an angelic ministration, but unto angels hath He not put in subjection the world to come whereof we speak, but to man, the Son of Man. That action then is within the period of this age (aionos toutou), and Satan has subsequently peculiar possession, for a short time, of the earth. But then the shaking of the heavens comes, that the Son of Man may come in thunder of His power, His quiescent yet almighty strength, and the Lord's own power be manifested. He whom the King of kings, and Lord of lords shows, the blessed and only Potentate shows, comes forth as Lord of lords and King of kings Himself, and all things in heaven and on earth - the heavens being shaken, and changed as well as earth - are put under man's, even the Son of Man's feet. Then the aion ends, or is changed. This revolution in the heavens, and transfer from creature to Christ, the Son of Man, who is the Lord from heaven's power, is the great revolution that changes all things. Whatever may be secretly and providentially done before this, introduces the great and terrible day of the Lord. Everything is changed. "Yet once more I will shake not the earth only, but also heaven," and this word signifies removing. None, Jew or Gentile, of the princes of this world knew the Lord of glory - this Great One who is to come - or they would not have crucified Him. Therefore, He says to the disciples, "Ye will not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come," though then the end of the aion would come upon them - foolish Israel that rejected Him, indeed their Jehovah that was above all angels; see Isaiah 50.

156 The Church, under the administration of the Holy Ghost, comes in quite specially, being hidden with Christ in God. When He appears, we shall. But Israel is a question between - Israel under this aion and the next. The ruin of this aion is utterly clear to us, in the rejection of the Lord who is to be the Head of the next, whom we own, in whom we, by grace, are proelpikotes (having first trusted) in Christ - not to them, and therefore their trials in the latter day, first looking for the earth, under it when they have rejected the Lord, and therefore thrown, save the preserved Remnant, into the hands of the head of the aion in its worst and concentrated form. But, though grace and testimony may save and deliver them, 'gleaned grapes,' and power preserve them peradventure by flight, the whole changes, and the earth is blessed. The Sun rises with healing and blessing on His wings too, when that great revolution has taken place in the heavens. Then, though judgment and terror may be its first introduction to the wicked, still it is the judgment and manifestation of the Son of Man. It is, whatever the wickedness and pride of man, the age to come (aion mellon) that is come in, for the earth to come (oikoumene he mellousa).

157 Some references to this point will be found in notes on Revelation. It is an important one, and applies itself to much of the order of the divine dealing, and many passages, as for instance, Matthew 24.

_____

Justification of life marks the connection, by resurrection, of the power of life with the setting aside all guilt through Him who is risen.

_______

Note, when the Lord comes, He sets aside Satan's power in the twofold way - as having the power of death, whether by changing and not letting die, or by raising; He has overcome in resurrection, having undergone the power of death - as god and prince of this world, he will cease to be, and be cast out by Christ's reign. This He overcame in the temptation in the wilderness, binding the strong man and spoiling his goods. So He will, as to death, of all, even the wicked. Satan's power, in every sense, will be gone as to them. In the first death, it is not, though his worldly power was. When all power of evil is set aside, good will simply flow - flow, I doubt not, through Him to us as Man, but God will be "all in all."

Morality

<44019E> 158

Morality is in connection with the relationships which God has formed in connection with the first Adam. These relationships God has fully sanctioned, for He formed them, sanctioned, I mean, in Christianity. But Christianity itself is the introduction of a new life, a new power, and of man, thereby, into a new creation entirely outside of all these relationships. This power may cause me to live out of the old creation and its relationships - know no man after the flesh - but sanctions them all as of God; so Paul, for example. By bringing in divine power and light, it has given a moral force to these old obligations, and hence a blessing to the world. But then the maintenance of the old relationships, however happy, is no proof whatever of an introduction into the power of the new. Husband, wife, parent, child, brother, sister are all relationships of the first creation. The order of the world morally depends on them, but one may walk in them all, and not belong to the new creation.

There are other duties which, though of the old creation, only belong to it as fallen, and as far as we know, and I think connected with man's becoming like God, but in evil. Property, and the relationship of master and servant - it is evident that this relates to a fallen state in us historically, but it seems to me to hang on what is divine, though abused by man. In the first place, the earth was given to the children of men, i.e. subjected to them - their title depending on God. But when man had separated himself from God, his will became a separate and wilful centre - he referred all to self, even the whole earth to himself if he could. This was restricted by government, and thus property exists. Hence the condition of property is according to the law of each country's government, and, where the government is absolute, is absolutely to the government. Theoretically so even in feudal law. It depends on the existence of government, or is, otherwise, mere appropriating will or force. Hence morality as to mensâ and thoro differs, as to its terms, not its principle, in each country. The rights of property are limited according to the laws of each country, not so the relationships God created, though laws may interfere with them as to master and servant, i.e., the relationships setting aside engagement, contract between two, etc.

Daniel

J. N. Darby.

<44020E> 159

(Notes and Comments Vol. 4.)

The way in which God is spoken of in Daniel is remarkable, and I note it here. His early first relationship, before the evil is manifested, is "the God of heaven," both to his companions and to the king. This was as natural as it is instructive. God was "the God of the earth" at Jerusalem. "The God of heaven" had given Nebuchadnezzar a kingdom. Daniel 3 is the God of the faithful Remnant. In judgment He is the Most High; Daniel 4. This is found again in Daniel 7: 25. With Belshazzar He is merely God as God. In Daniel 6 He is again with the Remnant; only for Darius, He is "the Living God."

In none of the visions of Daniel is God introduced in any way whatever, which is remarkable - Messiah is. "Ancient of days" stands apart, identifying the supreme Jehovah with Him that comes, verse 22, compare Apocalypse 1: 11-16. In the prayer of Daniel 9, Daniel's faith rises to the true relationship of God with Israel, and we get the name "Jehovah" - so good is confession! And all the chapter proceeds on, and gives the fruits of this relationship at the close, though with the judgment connected with it. But all is connected with promise, blessing, and Jehovah's relationship with His people, though judgment and sorrow may be there.

It may be thought that Daniel 7 introduces God in a vision of Daniel, but it is only so far as to show the secret source from which all judgment flows. The judgment itself is spoken of generally. "Most High" is only spoken of as characterising the blasphemy. Though faith owns Him, in Daniel 9, as Jehovah, yet there is no relationship with Israel, nor can be. The "God of heaven" characterises Him, generically, all through the Book. There is, at most, the mysterious intimation of a time when the Ancient of days will sit in heaven, and then that He will come. But when He comes, we know it is as "Son of Man." In fact we know that it is Christ's coming which destroys the beast; Apocalypse 19. The setting of the thrones - assumption of power in judgment - is only an epoch in the vision of the beasts. The third vision is of the new kingdom - the Son of Man, verse 13.

In the first six chapters of Daniel, we have, first, the faithfulness which keeps apart from all association with the defilement of Babylon. Faithfulness leads to wisdom. Then we have prayer, and, when answered, thanksgiving. Then the historical scheme of Gentilism, and its character. At the end, the God of the Remnant of Israel is owned. Gentilism makes its religion, and persecutes those who do not submit, but God preserves the residue of His people through the fire, and the God of the residue is owned of the Gentile power. It becomes, for the whole Gentile period, a beast - unintelligent. The Most High, the God of the millennium, from Abraham and Melchisedek, is owned, but here the earthly power. Then the final apostate idolatry, and despite of Jehovah, 'the most High God' (for so Daniel speaks of Him, as revealed to Nebuchadnezzar - the Lord of heaven) His sovereignty was despised, and idol-gods praised. Finally, no God allowed, but man set up as God. These are the two closing characters. This results in the whole world being subjected to the God of the residue of Israel who had kept them (Daniel) through the tribulation. The previous cases (Nebuchadnezzar) the general history, though going to the close, these last two the final characteristic. For Daniel, He is now the 'God of Heaven,' though Ruler of all, as Most High.

160 In the first chapter we have what represents the faithful Remnant in the time of the beast's power - the mas-kilim (wise) of the last days. Then the general historical succession of the Gentile powers, and the substitution of Christ's kingdom by judgment, and the exaltation of the mas-kilim. The idolatrous departure from God, unintelligent condition of heart - at the end of the former the God of the Remnant owned, of the latter, the Most High.

Then in the fifth and sixth chapters, the two final characters, idolatrous blasphemy against Jehovah, and setting up as God at the end. The former judged of God, the second leading to the universal recognition of the God of the Remnant.

Daniel 1

- 1. I do not see any difficulty in the chronology of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar takes the city, but leaves Jehoiakim there Daniel goes to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar dreams in the second year. Daniel was three years under inspiration, Nebuchadnezzar not counting till after his father's death. If he took Jerusalem on his way down to Egypt, as is said, Daniel was sent there, and the chronology fits in exactly. In his second year of reign, Daniel would have filled his three years.

161 Thus, Jehoiakim's eleven years were as follows: he reigns three years, served three years (2 Kings 24: 1) rebels after the six years, and reigns for five years harassed by inroads. Jehoiachin reigns three months. Nebuchadnezzar was king in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, so that Jehoiachin, in the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar is taken captive, Jehoiakim reigning seven of those years, and it being the first year of Jehoiachin; 2 Kings 24: 12. Thus: Jehoiakim reigns eleven years. In his third year, Jerusalem is taken, Daniel led away, and Nebuchadnezzar goes on to Egypt. In the first year of Jehoiakim's servitude, Nebuchadnezzar was king at the end. In the second year Nebuchadnezzar dreams. Jehoiakim then rebels, and reigns five years harassed by inroads. Jehoiachin reigns three months, when Jerusalem is taken. In the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar, Jehoiachin is taken captive.

- 1. "Besieged it," closed up against it, besieged it in the sense of shutting up, as was then done.

- 2. Mik-tzath (some) used for 'all,' but here for a part; see Nehemiah 7: 70, and 2 Chronicles 36: 7.

- 3. Par-t'mim (chiefs) Persian as in Zend and Sanskrit, Magnates, Primi.

- 4. Se-pher (book) letters, book-learning; see verse 17.

162  - 5. Mip-path-bag (of dainties - 'of the king's meat'). Persian, pad bah; bah food, and pad lord. Sanskrit, pitri, father.

- 6. Note here the recognition of the distinction; see above, verse 3. Both are noticed in this Book afterwards. If we do not take notice of this distinction, we shall never understand the prophecies, for the whole order of their accomplishment hangs on it - sometimes both, which is the final thing - sometimes one, which has its proper place - and sometimes the other. Elsewhere we shall see the entire importance of this.

- 10. K'ghil-chem (of your age).

Daniel 2

- 1. Nih'y'thah (left, quitted); compare chapter 8: 27. His sleep failed him.

- 4. The language of the Chaldaeans was different from the language of the king. The Chaldaean seems the sacred language.

- 5. "The word is gone forth from me."

- 38. I am disposed to think this passage excludes the sea, as carrying under it the subjection merely of the organised earth to Nebuchadnezzar, the golden head of the image of alienated empire of the world.

Daniel 3

- 8. This is a remarkable expression; compare James. But I note it here that only the Jews are noticed here, and not Daniel. At the same time, I cannot doubt that the great principle of the golden image is brought in. And note the place of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, and where they were (consequently) put, and of Daniel, and of verses 37, 38 of chapter 2, for this is the form and perversion of royal universal dominion. Therefore it is not "the God of the earth" there, nor in chapter 2: 19, but "the God of heaven," quod nota. I have no doubt Daniel stood as the representative of the Jews (Remnant) in such sort, however, that he should be the type of Jesus as so identified with the Remnant. Hence, prophetically, he does not appear in this, though its moral application is left in full force, and the ultimate result will doubtless be brought about in them. Therefore it is "the Most High God." It is also dameh l 'var Elohim (like unto the Son of God - not Adam).

- 14. Hats-da, "Is this designedly" rather than "Is this true"?

Daniel 4

- 34. We have still, in these chapters, only "the king of heaven," "the God of heaven," and "the Most High God," so chapter 5: 23. The Jews being out of Jerusalem, He could not, in dispensation, call Himself "the God of the earth," or "whole earth." But then, being set up in earth, His supremacy over them, "the God of heaven" dealing with them as He would, was shown for the Gentile times, and the infatuation, of the bestial character of the seven times, shown to be from God. We shall see the use of it in the Revelation; see Ezekiel

Daniel 5

- 11. There are times when people become unknown, except in the testimony of judgment.

163 Daniel 6

In this chapter, and chapter 5, we have a distinct break in the Book. Previously, it has been the dreams or open judgment of the Gentiles, though Daniel was the interpreter. Now we have revelations to him, in the character in which we have been noticing, and this so much so that some of the things happened previously, as chapter 7, and also the previous trial was of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, now of Daniel, of which, I think, we shall find the correspondent character of the two - Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel's associates, and Darius and persecution, i.e., Darius mystical and Daniel. One, I think, Gentile or Christian, the other Jewish quoad hoc, though there may be other characters.

Daniel 7

This chapter is evidently, though relative to things on earth, more connected with what the beast was towards God, and in pride, than of Jewish history as to it. He speaks great words against the Most High. He seeks to change times and laws, and they are delivered into his hand. At the same time by reason of that, it is not his general power, but his last evil condition in rebellion, and oppression of the saints who recognise God and His ways, but in reference to the kingdom, not to the Church, properly so called, which does not appear. Hence generally, the saints of the el-yo-nin (heavenly places) shall take the kingdom (no doubt this is true of those who form the Church, but it is not its speciality). Hence we find, in general, the horn makes war with the saints, not merely the saints of the el-yo-nin, but with the saints as such on the earth, and prevails. That is true of those who flee, as of those who go on high. This wearing out the saints of the el-yo-nin may apply to those who come out of the great tribulation.

There are then three points noticed as closing this - the Ancient of days comes - judgment is given to the saints of the el-yo-nin - and, thirdly, the saints possess the kingdom. The Most High, note, has the character of 'Possessor of heaven and earth.' (It is not a question of children with the Father.) Hence we have the historical circumstances of this horn, as relating to the earth, at the end. Ten horns arise out of the kingdom, another, different, arises after, among them, which plucks up three. In chapter 8, on the other hand, we have a Jewish, historical picture. In Revelation, we have nothing of the plucking up of three, because it is not properly there so historical or earthly.

164 I suspect that the passage of Jordan is a type of the ultimate deliverance of the last day, of the whole Remnant, specially exhibited in the Jews. I do suspect, not herein rejecting larger or more general analogies, that the deliverance from Egypt implies their exodus from their present state, when the sea shall be a wall upon their right hand, and a wall upon their left - the two great divisions of powers, Northern and Western, Assyrian and Antichristian, letting them out between them, no matter why God so willed it. But then they only get into a wilderness state with, indeed, many marks of being God's people, and so formally, but not really, heritors of the promises then. On passing Jordan, they were coming into collision here. I pass over the pre-Jordan conquests, because I am sure there is something in them which I do not fully understand. The waters were not so, but the lower stream, which went toward Sodom, failed, and those above were restrained. I believe this to mark the setting aside the Antichristian power, while the Northern is arrested. Also the priests bore the ark - not the custom, but here they did - in the midst of the stream, and this I believe to be the type of the place and office of the saints of the Most High fulfilling their service on behalf of Israel. And, as we have noted, the manna continued until the morrow after, and also then the congregation were circumcised - they that fell in the wilderness were not.

Note here, in Daniel, the 'saints of the Most High,' and 'the Most High,' are not the same. The saints of the Most High are manifestly ton epouranion (of the heavenlies) which clears that passage manifestly.

This and the chapter following give the Western and Eastern horns; Daniel 9, 10 and 11 give the condition of Daniel's people under the power of the Western Empire, and under the power of the Eastern, including the wilful king who is in Palestine. Daniel 12 is the closing result in deliverance.

In the first place, the distinction of Most High (il-la-ya) and heavenly places (el-yo-nin) is manifest - the first being "the Most High," and the other "the heavenlies" (epouranion).

This chapter, I think, plainly opens out, or alludes to, the order of the whole mystery which Ephesians develops, but closing in its Jewish portion. Abraham, the representative of both seeds, having overcome all the enemies that prevailed against worldly Lot, is blessed of Melchizedek, the type of the Son of God in royalty of priesthood, i.e., as He shall be manifested and blessed of the Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth. This is a mystical representation of the great, final blessing. Now, in Jesus, in whom we have received an inheritance, all things in heaven and on earth are to be gathered together in one, and we are made to sit in the heavenlies, or, as the Revelation expresses it, "them that dwell in heaven." Here again, accordingly, we have the "Most High"; compare verse 4, where earthly dominion is judged or spoken of, and therefore obscurely, because the mystery was not revealed - both the heavenly and the earthly people.

165 The visions are verses 2, 7, 13 - three distinct ones of the four beasts, the last great apostate beast, and the bringing in of the Son of Man - a distinct vision from the judgment of the apostate beast, quod nota. Now the kingdom is given to the Son of Man - the Jewish, or earthly title of Christ, the Son. He has the kingdom. The next is, that the saints of the heavenlies shall take the kingdom. We say, 'They shall reign'; compare Ephesians 1, last verse. Verse 21, I understand of these saints, the saints of the heavenlies properly. The next verse contains three periods - as it seems to me, distinct periods, though one in another sense - but all short of the Son of Man's taking the kingdom. What he does is in Revelation also, chap. 13: 6. As far as I see, it is the times and laws, not the saints which are given into his hand. The destruction of his dominion goes on to the end. Verse 27, seems to me the Jewish, earthly dominion. Verse 26 is connected with verse 9, verse 27 with verse 13. The kingdom, under the whole heaven, is given to the am kad-di-shey el-yo-nin (the people of the saints of the heavenly places), i.e., the Jews. They are called so, because they are now brought into union and identity with (as in Ephesians) the kad-di-shey el-yo-nin (saints of the heavenlies), This is so much the case, that it is often difficult to distinguish between the sanctuary and the (glorified) saints, for they become, as it were, the real sanctuary of Christ, where He dwells, His Body, His Temple of which He is the light, when i.e., the people's dominion under the Son of Man is as His - an everlasting dominion. What further sense this may have, I will not say, but I think it fully bears this, and declares the mystery which it was given to the Apostle to reveal, but in terms such as should hold it in unrevealed character till, by the Spirit, the mystery was revealed in and by the ascension of the Lord into heaven, the Son of Man, thus making both one.

166 Looking to the Son of Man's dominion over the Jews, this chapter also, I think, is made, in substance plain.

- 8. 'I considered the horns.' The little horn (the word 'little' - z'e-rah - is different from, but analogous to the "little horn" of chapter 8: 9 - mitz-tzi-rah) here springs up among, but is o-khori (another). And here observe there is no connection with the taking away, or otherwise acting against the Tamid (continual burnt-offering). In chapter 8: 9, the little horn springs up out of one of them, and is not o-khori, but was keren-akhath (one horn) and by it the Tamid was raised up (huram). Ought it not, however, to be translated 'from him' - scilicet, the prince of the host, 'from him the Tamid was lifted away'? Mim-men-nu is 'from,' as causative or abstractive, but always, as far as I see, it means 'from.' Chapter 9: 27 is of quite a different character - yash'bith ze-vakh u-min' khah (he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease). In chapter 11: 31 we have a different word again, v'he-si-ru (and shall take away) the Tamid, i.e., uz'ro-im mim-men-nu (and arms on 'his part'), where mim-men-nu (on his part) I believe again to have been unjustly translated The arms, or seed which shall arise from him, or of which he shall be the occasion or cause, which shall take their rise from him, shall do so and so. It returns to the singular in verse 32, but I refrain from commentary as yet. I reserve the rest for the consideration of the structure of Daniel.

- 9. "Till the thrones were set," not "cast."

- 13. I think it pretty clear the 'Son of Man' presents the Lord as Heir of what belongs to man, according to the counsels of God. Thus here He comes to take the kingdom, and in Psalm 8 headship over all things is given Him. Meanwhile, coming, as He did, to give His life a ransom for many, He had not where to lay His head. He ever takes this name. The disciples own Him to be the Christ, the Son of God, or of the living God. But the proper place of the Son of Man is displayed glory. He has both the kingdom, and headship over all things. But when His glory is in view, the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die. There was a moral necessity for this. But as to the coming of the Lord, its connection with the Son of Man is His appearing, because it is the kingdom and universal headship. It is the natural title of the Lord. His specially receiving us to be joint heirs, is sovereign grace, and to be specially revealed. It is only found in the Gospels, and in Christ's mouth - save the enquiry of the people thereon. It is not in the Acts, nor in the Epistles; it is found in Revelation again. But then such passages as that in Luke 12 are not the less heavenly for that; verses 39, 40 are a warning apart, viewing the disciples as down here. So verse 46 is the effect down here. Verses 37 and 44 are special for the watchers who have their treasure in heaven.

167  - 17. Is there not distinction between the beasts (min ar'a, out of the earth) and the saints of the high places (kad-di-shey el-yo-nin)?

- 18. I cannot understand why, in this verse, and in verses 22 and 25, "the saints of the Most High," is given as the translation of kad-di-shey el-yo-nin (saints of the high places, or heavenlies). It is manifestly the epouranion of the New Testament, which, indeed, is the revelation of this. 'The Most High,' is the character given to God in Abraham, as contrasted with all false deities, which might bear rule on earth, as 'Possessor of heaven and earth.' All power is given to Jesus in heaven and earth, and these are the places where the saints sit down with Him; so in verse 22. In verse 25 we have two distinct words translated 'Most High.' He shall speak great words against the Most High (l'tsad il-la-ya) and then the same word as before, connected with the saints, and in the same sense of course. This I suspect to be the force of Revelation 13: 6. They are always treated as dwelling there - indeed, this seems clear; for the rest, though my mind is clearing up much upon Daniel, I reserve it to fuller opportunity.

Heavenly hopes belong to all saints save those who are to be delivered, and stand before the God of the earth, and that from Abraham on, aye! from Enoch too; but here we have to do with the kingdom. The Church are heavenly saints, but it has a special place. The dying "in the Lord" closes only when He who sits on the clouds is just coming in to judgment; compare verse 22, and Apocalypse 14: 13, 14. But the "dead which die in the Lord" are always saints (el-yo-nin).

168  - 25. The first "Most High" is il-la-ya, the second is el-yo-nin. But note, applied to God, it brings the earth under His jurisdiction, and Him into connection with it. It is His Name of millennial title and government, but it brings the saints into heaven. The knowledge and owning of Jehovah is the secret place of the Most High, not of the Father and of the Son; compare Proverbs 8, where it is Jehovah. But then it shows there will be those who, in God's mind, are associated with Him in His heavenly place of government, who come under the destroying power of the little horn. And this the Psalms and Apocalypse provide for, as Psalms 16, 17, and Apocalypse 6, 15 and 21, perhaps others. Indeed the "God of heaven" is Daniel's natural expression where He was not Jehovah (see the beginning) and, till He takes His place on earth, the saints, by grace, must have this character - they own God when He is not on earth.

Daniel 8

This is not the sad pride of the world, the apostate Gentility against God, and His, as on high. It is the representative or successor of the Grecian monarchy against those who stood as God's authorities and signs on the earth. The first general idea is, that this little horn shall attack and trample on the host of heaven, and the stars. It shall cast down (or out) the truth, shall practise and prosper. Secondly, he shall stand up against the prince of the host. Thirdly, the daily sacrifice is taken away from the prince of the host, the place of his sanctuary cast out or down, not, I think, physically (materially) and the daily sacrifice subjected, for a given period (viz., 2,300 days) to oppression. Only the two former are spoken of as accomplished at the end of the indignation. The king, understanding dark sentences, shall stand up, be powerful, destroy mighty ones and the people of the saints. He shall stand up against the Prince of princes. All that regards the daily is not the least applied to the little horn in the interpretation given, but as all relating to the action of the horn against the saints is, while chapter 7 being a collateral, accessory subject, so here omitted, because the historical type is not explicitly carried out here. The only allusion to it is verse 26, the last words of which might give occasion to further enquiry.

169 It is well to remark that in this chapter, it (the explanation) is declared to be at the end of the indignation, and at the time appointed - the end. In chapter 7, this is not the case - the history and explanation is left open and general, though I doubt not the full accomplishment is at the close. In general, the horn makes war against the saints till the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of 'the high places,' and the time came that 'the saints possessed the kingdom.' Then, there are three characters - great words against the Most High - wearing out the saints of the high places - and changing times and laws. He acts, or speaks, against the Most High, against the heavenly saints, and against the Jewish order. The period, up to which he acts against the heavenly saints, is not stated. He made war with the saints 'until.'

We have here, i.e., in the explanation, what happens in the end of the indignation. The wilful king prospers till the indignation is, I apprehend, fulfilled (ad-kalah, until the completion). In verse 8, we have merely one of the nations which burden themselves with Jerusalem, even all the nations, and act in different ways against the sanctuary, not honouring God in it. Now the staff in the Assyrian's hand is God's indignation. He is sent against the hypocritical nation, and the people of His wrath. I should suspect then that, in their connection with Antichrist, they are filling up the position of indignation. And, till this was done, he prospered; chapter 11: 36. Then the indignation came in the Assyrian fully, and ceased; but there is more to be learned of this. Ta-mam (to complete) is used in this sense, in verse 23, below.

- 9. This has distinct local, or national identity.

- 11. Query is Mim-men-nu, "from him," or "by him"? The last word in the verse, mi-k'dosho (from his sanctuary) would say "from." Surely it is "from him," as in the margin, and not "by him."

Huram (he took away) is distinct; yash-bith (he made to cease) chapter 9: 27.

Why is this Antichrist at all? I do not believe it is. What is there to show it is? Does it appear anywhere that the "place of the sanctuary" is cast down by Antichrist? He sits in it perhaps, defiling it - that is different from throwing it down. Further, this arises out of one of the four kingdoms of the Grecian monarchy, and, as to its explanation specifically, it is "at the time of the end." Next, it is in the last end of the indignation. The indignation ceases (za-am, 'indignation,' in both cases) in the destruction of the Assyrian. The destruction in verse 25, and in Isaiah 30: 30 is not dissimilar, but I cannot identify them, nor do I know as yet that they are identified. It appears to me that it is with the enemies; Psalm 74, O-yev (enemy) and tsor-rey-ka (thy adversaries) - the difference of which, as contrasted with Antichrist, I had noticed, without reference to this at any rate. This is a Jewish, Grecian, enemy I think, and not Antichrist. I should suspect from Isaiah 10: 5, 25, compared with this, and Daniel 11: 36, 44, that Antichrist will continue until the Assyrian comes up against, and he, and his allies, "the enemies," take Jerusalem - the punishment of their union with Antichrist. As soon as this is done, and there is none shut up or left, the Lord takes up the matter, but I have much to learn here yet; for this, we must consult from Isaiah 28 to 35.

170 Observe that, in the explanation of what happens at the end of the indignation, there is nothing about the Sanctuary or daily sacrifice, quod nota. I do not believe this king is Antichrist.

- 11-14. "Yea, he magnified even to the prince of the host, and from him the daily [sacrifice] was taken away," literally "lifted" "was raised up" (he-rim*) as a crown off the head, "and the place of his sanctuary was cast out," rather than "cast down," "and a set time of trouble was appointed to the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression, and it" (the horn) "cast down" (the same as of the sanctuary) "the truth to the ground; and it practised and prospered. Then I heard one saint speaking, and one saint said to the certain saint which spoke," Until when" (how long) "the vision of the daily [sacrifice], and the wickedness which causeth desolation, to give the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? And he said to me 'Until' (or 'during') evening, morning, 2,300, and then the sanctuary shall be vindicated." Note in the end of the chapter, in the explanation, there is nothing given at all as to the sanctuary cast down, nor the daily sacrifice; only he destroys mighty ones, and the people of the saints, and at last stands up against the Prince of princes. But note verse 26; and note, it is just what I had put in a parenthesis, which is left out. All the rest, before and after, is in the interpretation; then verses 13, 14, must be considered, which connect the two.

{* He-rim is the Kh'thiv in verse 11.}

171 These verses calculate the seventy weeks, because its subject then began to exist, abstracting perhaps the seven. I think it very highly probable that the three days and a half, not here noticed, may be the three years and a half, the 1,260 days during which Antichrist shall be in oppressive possession of Jerusalem, Messiah appearing again at the close of that period. This calculation may be stated thus: 490 from 2,300 leaves 1,810. But this goes to the Lord's death. Therefore we must add 33.5 for our Lord's life, that makes it 1,843.5. Sanctuary cleansed. Then there is a further question as to the epoch, i.e., they say the epoch is generally counted four years too late.

I have come to the conclusion that Antichrist is not mentioned in the Book of Revelation, though the formal power that he heads is, but not as such, not him, though it is; and, as this is most important, so it clears up a great deal. So neither is the reign of Christ, which leads us further into the subject and structure of the Book. I do not mean that it is not adverted to, but the saints reign with Him, but they are not the subjects but companions of His reign. And, inasmuch as the saints, as such, are the subject of the Book, this is merely stated as the result, and their happiness in the New Jerusalem stated, and the fact of the subjection and blessing of the world, as connected with it, not the earthly estate as subject - that, you must look for in the prophets, which is the subject of them, the kingdom of the Son. We are to reign with Him, but the blessings are the state in which we are derivatively, not imperially, i.e., New Jerusalem. Nothing can be more important than this, as showing the position in which the saints are taken up in this Book - that it is the very opposite to the coming of Christ, as such, that closes the subject of the Book. It is the saints as spiritual inmates of the Father's kingdom, but in the Son's which is not assumed, but in which they are not when it comes, and therefore in patience among those who have the possession of it, and brought in the New Jerusalem blessing of the Father's kingdom, when the Son with them takes the place; hence see Revelation 11, et seq. There the general view ends, and His taking the kingdom is noticed - the earthly kingdom, etc., and the whole is recognised in the thanks of the twenty-four elders, reward to the saints, and destroying them that destroy the earth - yet the blessings of earthly Jerusalem do not follow. Hence we see the moral difficulties, and the new Jerusalem blessings are the subject of the Book, not the reign of Christ and the personal power of Antichrist. The moment the Son of Man takes the kingdom, the position of the Book ceases, for then the saints are to be His agents in it, and reign with Him. Hence the subsequent part of the Book is the development of the systems which lead up to this. As to the personal Antichrist, the saints are agents of destruction, not themselves destroyed. They have refused the mark of the image, and therefore are not under his reign, but reign with Christ, on his destruction delivering the Remnant (of the Jews) whom he held under thraldom. The comparison of chapter 11: 18, 19, and 21 plainly opens out this part of the subject. The subsequent part, from chapter 11, opens out, in just order, the subject of that in which the saints are involved, the mystic arrangements and progress of evil to that which formed Babylon and the power it rode, and the deliverance of the saints in and out of it, with the agencies of the latter day which developed and set it aside, and then the marriage of the Lamb, and then the bringing of His wife into the house He had prepared for her, as married, in her dignity, as brought by Him into the glory. Blessings may flow from this, and all the nations bring their glory and honour here, but this is not the kingdom of the Son, save as the Throne is the kingdom, therefore it is mentioned as we 'shall reign with Him.'

172 I think we have the intention of the Books, as to their object, thus: Daniel gives the powers that deal with the Jews, especially the last; there is therefore, but inasmuch as the Jews properly were the subject definitely, he who holds the Jews in tribulation, i.e., Antichrist. Therefore in Daniel, we have Antichrist dealing with the Jews. The other prophets give the Assyrian with the Land, Immanuel's Land, though they speak of the Antichrist collaterally or partially.

The Book of Revelation gives the moral operations of Antichrist among and over the Gentiles, as far as he is the chief object, and his destruction. The spiritual, moral Antichrist, the spirit of evil, rules in the Gentile world, and acts against the spiritual, moral body, the Christian believers. The personal Antichrist is opposed to the personal Christ, but anticipatively, i.e., he sets up over Jerusalem, and would show himself as God. The Gentiles, I do not doubt, will be so afraid of the Gog, that they will throw themselves into the hands of the personal Antichrist, and thus be the opponents of the Lord at Jerusalem. The same of the Jews there, as to His power. The Assyrian is the grand opponent of the nation, and is involved in the catastrophe, being found coming up when the Lord has destroyed the Antichrist. He thinks he has found it as a nest, but he knows not the Lord, nor the thoughts of His heart, and is broken to pieces against the Rock of their salvation. Antichrist is against Christ, as the spirit of Antichrist is against those led of the Spirit of Christ, but the Assyrian is looking for power, universal power, earthly power, and this brings him into atheism. The Jews in Christ's hand, when He has taken to Him His power, are the instruments of his destruction in measure, for they destroy each other also, but it is as acting for and with the Jews, the Remnant. The saints who have suffered with Christ during the period of the deceitful power, then in Christ's hand are the avengers against Antichrist. The Christ mystical, Christ and all His Saints, in Daniel, are to look for Antichrist, and the Jews in Revelation for his covert working and forming of the body for judgment - in the prophets, generally, for the Assyrian against the temporal power of God set up in the Jews, of course under the Son on the throne of David; then there is an interesting question.

173  - 12. It appears that here the translation might well be, "And an appointed time of misery, or subjection, to the rule of strangers is set over the daily [sacrifice] because of transgression." The point here is the effect of the transgression; it has nothing to do with the "abomination of desolation," though that may be collaterally included in it, but the continuance of the effect of the transgression which made desolate.

'And an host was given against the daily by reason of transgression' (v'tza-va tin-na-then al-hat-ta-mid b'pha-sha). Unnecessary difficulty seems to have been thrown on this passage, by want of attention to a very ordinary use of the word tza-va (host). It is in the first verse of chapter 10 emeth haddavar v'tza-va ga-dol (the thing was true, but the time appointed was long). It is translated 'the time appointed.' This however, I think, is an imperfect sense of the word. Job 7: 1, seems to give an entrance into the force of the word, 'Is there not an appointed time to man? His days also as the days of an hireling?' So chapter 14: 14, and Isaiah 40: 2, whence I gather that its force is 'an appointed time' of subjection to evil. Further, I believe the force of tin-na-then al (shall be given . . . against) is properly 'to set over.' The translation then would simply be 'an appointed [time] of subject misery,' or 'subjection to the rule of strangers is appointed over the daily, because of transgression,' giving the general subject of the prophecy.

174 The next point I would notice is the calculation of 2,300 days for the cleansing the sanctuary, and here, as I have ever found, extrinsic enquiry obscures Scripture. The Scripture itself affords the basis of the chronology. Four hundred and ninety days, or seventy weeks, were from the going forth of the decree to restore and rebuild; this, taken from 2,300, leaves 1,810. If we take the seven weeks for the period during which the wall, etc., should be rebuilt, then, adding forty-nine years, the close of the period 1859. At any rate Daniel's date is the one to be relied on, for it is the Lord's, for the purpose of the period up to Messiah the Prince. We might have to add twenty-nine years for the period of our Lord's ministry. These questions of detail are not now, however, the point I would rest on at large. In connection with the former word tza-va (host) does ga-dol ever mean 'long' as in Daniel 10: 1?

I cannot help thinking that, while Romanism, and especially popery, have been the Antichristian power during the time of the Spirit's testimony while Christianity, i.e., the Church of God, subsists on the earth, that afterwards other powers will come on the scene, i.e., the civil, imperial power in the empire (in the West, I suppose), and as power in Palestine in the East, which associates itself with the designs of the imperial power of the West, and recognises it, but will act in an independent way in its own sphere - will have its own character, and deceive the Jews, and have the fullest private character of religious iniquity, and Jewish Antichristianism or AntiMessiahship setting up there, and, in fine, acting with the devil's power. This will characterise the Beast, but it is it that will so act. There is another question: What is Daniel 8 in this scene? This will of course end in the denial, not merely of the Father and the Son, but in the full Jewish form of infidelity denying that Jesus is the Christ.

- 24. "The mighty and the holy people" is surely not the sense. It is "And the people of the saints," not "the holy people," see chapter 7: 27. "He shall destroy mighty ones, and the people of the sanctuary." Am kad-di-shey (the people of the saints) is evidently a definite word, as in chapter 7: 27, though there el-yo-nin (the heavenly places) is added, because of its connection with that. This I believe to be Antichrist, strictly in connection with the Jews that act so, but in more general bearings, in the Roman empire. See note above; but, with the exception of its being Antichrist, this note is true.

175  - 26. It certainly appears to me that this is the identity of Grecian, national evil against the Jews, Assyrian or Grecian-Syrian enmity, and, I suspect, while the final enmity is what he explains at the end, the vision includes all. It may be a question, though characteristic, whether the detail of verses 10, 11, etc., applies to the time of the end. The explanation is clearly (v. 19) the end, but it was for many days, identifying, at any rate, the local power as restored to act at the end. Then chapter 7 would be the general statement of the judgment and results; chapter 8 the Grecian or little horn which casts down the sanctuary when the transgressors are come to the full; chapter 9 the appointment of the time to Messiah the Prince - the Anti-Messiah character, in Jerusalem, of the Antichrist. Chapter 11 I believe to be the secular actings of Antichrist, as head of the Roman power. If Antichrist goes down to Egypt, if the king of the South pushes at him, then hears of the attacks from the North and East, and returns, and perishes, with none to help him - he had previously filled up iniquity in Jerusalem - the order would be plain.

I return, after enquiry to the thoughts already expressed on this chapter. It is another hostile power, having its birthplace in the limits of the Grecian empire, which, after many exploits, attacks and oppresses the Jews - has prolonged intercourse with them - is not a mere pagan enemy, but furnished with wisdom of its own kind, not divine indeed perhaps, but Solomonic in its pretension. Policy and craft shall be there, as well as war; finally he shall stand up against the Prince of princes. This is the interpretation, and it is all that is positively prophesied at the end. I cannot doubt that God has so ordered these prophecies as to suit them to the partial accomplishments - say in the time of the Grecian power for instance, and Mahomet, and that we have to use spiritual discernment for the application, only the Lord has taken care that it is perfect, while useable for faith in each time of need. There is nothing here of the abomination of desolation - we are on other ground. It is friendly and deceitful relationships or attacks from without, but connected with this, a time of desolation as to the other state of things. It is not the transgression causing, but the desolation caused, quod nota, though the enemy's pride is noticed. I hold, 'And from him the daily was taken away' ('through him,' not 'by,' if insisted on, but 'from him' I believe correct) 'and the place of his sanctuary was cast down, and a time of distress appointed to the daily, by reason of transgression,' to be the rendering, and, in parenthesis, describing the state of the Jewish sanctuary and worship at that time generally.

176 Hence the enquiry is as to the duration of the desolation - how long the vision of the daily, and the transgression which desolates, to give the sanctuary and host to be trampled on? The abomination is not noticed. It is the transgressors which bring on the desolation here. This enemy will attack and harass, and deceive the transgressing people. It is very probable that, up to the beginning of the last half week, the apostate power will associate with the Jews; Isaiah 28 seems to demonstrate it. This will not save them from the desolator neither, as that passage shows. The earlier attacks are before the taking away the daily, and the placing of the abomination of desolation. That is clear because there are 1,290 days from these latter weeks, and 2,700 of the time of distress - the transgression which gives up the sanctuary and the host to be given up to idolatry, I suppose, according to Isaiah 65 will have been introduced (as in Ahaz's time) along with the sacrifices; see Isaiah 65: 11 and chap. 66: 1-3. Hence distress from the Assyrian, or this horn of chapter 8. Then at the middle of the week, the state of things changes - the daily sacrifice is taken away, and the abomination of desolation set up.

Note in Isaiah 57 we have idolatry and going to "the king," and in chapter 30 the Assyrian and the king plunged into Tophet.

Note also, here, that Isaiah 24 is a signal instance how the narrower objects of prophecy spread out in the divine vision, into larger, for, in a considerable part of it eretz is evidently 'the Land' (and, I doubt not, Palestine is looked at as a centre of gathering) but, to say nothing of intimations of a wider bearing, because it is the true centre of God's earth (compare the connection of Isaiah 2 and 3) verse 21, and the following, clearly show that 'earth' reaches out to 'the world' beyond Palestine. Indeed another thing shows it, because evidently Nebuchadnezzar's inroad gives occasion to much of it. Yet the fall and destruction of Babylon is included in it. It may be alleged indeed that the successes of the Assyrian empire, which began with Sargon, are referred to, for Babylon was conquered, and Esarhaddon reigned there without a viceroy, but this would not alter the great principle, only the argument drawn from supposing it was Nebuchadnezzar.

177 Note, as to oikoumene, besides other passages, it is used for eretz (earth) in Isaiah 24: 1, and for te-vel (habitable earth) in verse 4. It is also used for te-vel in the Septuagint in Psalms 18: 4 (Heb. 19: 5); 92: 1 (Heb. 93: 1); 95: 10 - 13 (Heb. 96: 10-13) - and in Psalm 97: 9 (Heb. 98: 9), where it is translated 'world,' and where, note, eretz answers to ge, and oikoumene to te-vel. So indeed in Psalm 18 (Septuagint) 19 (English). This, in certain reasonings, clearly decides the use of oikoumene in the New Testament.

Daniel 9

This chapter rests on the Mosaic deliverance, and the intercession of Solomon which does not go beyond it, and hence refers to the dealings with Israel, in captivity, for their sins, and looking towards Jerusalem. Thus Daniel, in his prayer (chapter 6: 10) turns towards Jerusalem. And hence it is still the 'holy mountain' of his God, though Israel be captive, His sanctuary that is desolate, verses 16, 17, 19 and 20, and so called (verse 24) by the Angel Gabriel. They are called Daniel's people, and his holy city. Then seventy weeks are determined on them - sixty-nine as is known, to Christ who has nothing, for it is Jerusalem and earth which is in question, and then the people of the prince to come destroy the city and the sanctuary de novo. But this prince then comes in view, and, it would seem, in translating simply, his end that is with a flood. He establishes or enters into covenant for a week, makes the sacrifice and oblation cease, the idols or abominations of him who desolateth are set up, whether you translate ka-naph (wing) 'protection' or 'battlement,' and al (upon) 'because of' or 'upon,' and until all be fulfilled that is decreed, ruin and misery are poured forth upon the desolate.

These then are the relations of God with Israel and Jerusalem, when she is not owned, but still called, in the faith and desire of the saint and the answer of God, 'the holy city,' yet desolate, yet her children also many.

178 It seems to me clear enough that this chapter refers more particularly to chapter 7, or Western power, and chapters 10, 11 and 12 to chapter 8, or North Eastern. Both, note, are in the favourable time of the Persian empire, either Darius the Mede, or Cyrus.

It seems to me that chapter 11: 32-35 can in no way, as some have supposed, apply to the times of Antichrist. Verse 3 I then presents a difficulty, for it would seem to be the success of the forces acting on the part of the king of the North; and so I suppose it must be, primarily. Verse 36 begins properly the wilful king, as he is called. I think I have noticed that he is only introduced here by the bye. But then from that verse, we are clearly in the time of the end, and then we have the time, times and half a time, and the abomination of desolation, and the daily taken away, the date of 1,260 days, and so 1,335 days. He will have accomplished scattering the power of the holy people, and that will be the end. We have the same date for the delivery of the times and laws into the hand of the blasphemous horn of the beast of the seventh chapter. I suppose in chapter 9: 27, we have the same in the form of dividing of the week. In Isaiah 28 we have the scornful men at Jerusalem, on the other hand, making a covenant with death and hell that the scourge may not reach them. Hence, though a sure and tried foundation, and true, blessed be the God of all grace, is laid in Zion, yet when the scourge passes through they will be trodden down by it (there will be a flood - the same word, Isaiah 28: 17, 18, as Daniel 9: 27, as is indeed the 'treading down,' Isaiah 28: 18, compare verses 2 and 3, and Daniel 8: 10) and this, Isaiah 28: 22, is because ka-lah v'ne-che-ratzah (the completion, and that which has been decreed) is to be executed on all the Land. Compare the language in the Lord's judgment at the end of the chapter 30. All these chapters of Isaiah give the fullest illustration of the two parties brought forward in Daniel. Tophet is for "the king," as well as for the Assyrian. I question whether chapter 33 may not introduce Gog, but this is a further question, and compare Micah 5. Chapter 34 would also seem to say it was the Assyrian, comparing Psalm 83 and the history of Sennacherib, with chapter 33: 8.

Note, the horn of Daniel 8 is not strong by his own power, so that though geographically, perhaps, the Assyrian, the latter may remain behind in the judgment of God, and come up after all, finally, as Gog. Psalms 82 and 83 give the Lord rising up to judge those who were called elohim once, but Adam, and the last confederacy in which judgment sets up the name of Jehovah Elion; compare Isaiah 8: 9.

179 Further, we cannot but conclude, I think, from Isaiah 10 and 28 that the consumption decreed falls on Israel, whatever it may involve as to others. If this be so, it would go far to show that, Daniel 9: 27, the consumption decreed was on the same, and sho-mem would be taken in its usual sense of 'desolate.' The consumption decreed - there will be a desolator till the decreed judgment be fully executed on the desolate, the oikos eremos (house desolate) of Matthew 23. If this be so, the question becomes important, if the m'sho-mem ('desolation' or 'desolator,' chaps. 9: 27 and 11: 31) and sho-mem (desolate, chaps. 9: 27 and 12: 11) be not intentionally different in chapters 11 and 12. The abomination of the desolator of chapter 11 being, though generally typical, different from the abomination of the desolate or desolation of chapter 12 - in the former, the violence of the desolator being noticed, whereas in the abomination of chapter 12 the desolate herself is engaged. All through Isaiah, idolatry is marked as stamping the iniquity of the Jews of the latter day. The Lord's testimony as to the unclean spirit, I doubt not, confirms it. Sho-mem, in Jeremiah, is several times used for Jerusalem desolate. M'sho-mem is used in Ezra, for his state, it is true, but I should judge from the passage, in a reflective sense, like etaraxen heauton (He troubled Himself) John 11: 33, margin. In this case the abomination of desolation, of which the Lord speaks, would be that of chapter 12.

It appears to me that this expression, kalah v'ne-che-ratzah refers always to the final judgments. But it would appear here that it was what fell on the apostate body desolator, as well as the Jewish part, for certainly here the marginal reading, as far as I can see, must be right - Sho-mem (desolate) - the other places where this is used are Isaiah 28: 22, and 10: 23. The use of the word may be seen, 2 Samuel 13: 20. As far as I judge, it applies to all, indiscriminately, as done, in the righteousness of His abstract character, as against all inconsistent with that, in the exercise of its power. The difficulty of Daniel 9: 27, seems to me to flow from k'naph (wing). My ignorance of the force of this word bars me from any confidence in interpretation, or I should think the prophetic order ran thus: confirm a covenant with many, one week. In the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and offering (min-khah) to cease, and upon the k'naph (wing) of the abominations of him that desolateth, and even until the consumption, and short work (of the Lord) shall be poured on the desolator, see also Daniel 11: 36, where we find the same principles developed in their actual effects, bringing the things together, as indeed in Isaiah 18: 25; but note this seems to cloud the evidence of the difference of the Assyrian and the antichristian king. This however would need enquiry. This last supposed difficulty is merely a mistake. All this happens in Jerusalem - the Assyrian never enters there.

180 It is well to keep in mind the way in which Daniel is given a sort of mediatorial character, like Moses, the Lord saying, 'Thy people,' as in verse 24, also chapters 10: 14, 11: 14, and 12: 1. It is in verses 15, 16 of this chapter, that, as Moses, Daniel calls them, to the Lord, 'Thy people.' This gives a distinct character to chapters 7 and 8, and to chapters 9-12, which also should be studied.

- 15, 16. Daniel's faith outreaches their sin, and rests on God's faithfulness, so did that of Moses - only here he goes back to Moses and Egypt; Moses also goes back to the fathers.

- 23. Note Daniel stands in a very peculiar place, something analogous to Moses. God says to him "thy people," just as He said to Moses as mediator. Only Daniel stands as representative, and securer of the hopes of the people, in the midst of Israel, and more especially as the witness of God's mind when the Jews were in captivity - Moses, as a deliverer in power. So remark that God gives what is needed to His people at all times. He may not, when sorrow, and captivity, and Babylonish trial, is their place according to His government, give the delivering power which would take them out of it, but He gives fully and perfectly what is wanted for them in it, and that is what they need. A Moses, as such, would have thrown all into confusion in Daniel. A Daniel, in the prosperity of Israel, would have had no place. So he does not even return when the Remnant of the Captivity went back.

Note, in this place, faithfulness in not defiling himself with the Gentiles, among whom he dwelt, was the foundation of all. Then God gives him wisdom, and he is made the depository of the mind of God for Israel, in that state of things. So he confesses and intercedes like Moses, and gets the answer of a better blessing - answering to the Jews' state in grace - than Moses ever got. Babylon to the first year of Cyrus, is his moral position as first placed as a witness there, for he continued longer. Chapter 6 is peculiar. Darius is favourable to the Remnant under God, and yet he sets up to have no petition addressed to any but himself, exclusively of every God. Daniel prospered after Babylon. Chapter 12 is like Revelation 14, God's dealings in the time of the great subject of the previous part of the prophecy.

181 I give here the end of this chapter, "Seventy weeks are appointed to (or for) thy people, and for thy holy city, to stop the transgression, to close sins, and pardon iniquity, and to bring in the righteousness of ages, and to close up vision and prophet, and to anoint the Holy of Holies. And know, and consider [that] from the going forth of the word to restore [return] and to [re-]build, or build again, Jerusalem, to Messiah Prince, seven weeks, and sixty and two weeks, shall return and be rebuilt the street and the fosse, and in trouble of times. And after sixty and two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, and shall have nothing: and the city and the sanctuary shall the people of a prince to come destroy: and its [or his] end with a flood (an inundation), and to the end (of the) war decreed desolations. And he shall confirm covenant with the many one week: and the dividing of the week he shall cause to cease sacrifice and offering, and because of (or upon) the wing (protection) of abominations (there shall be) a desolator, and until the completion, and that which is decreed shall be poured on the desolator."

- 24. First, note that the seventy weeks are determined upon "thy people"; compare verse 7 (there is never in Messiah's interference, anything short of "All Israel," though Judah and Jerusalem may be the scene of it) but this, we may learn, reaches therefore to the end, as Matthew 24, "The end is not by and bye." But the coming of the Messiah is the point of intervention. The coming of Messiah and the end therefore coalesce - the Gentile dispensation being passed over as not concerned in "thy people." This is habitually the case in Old Testament prophecy, being the mystery hidden. We are therefore to speak of all Jewish transactions as consequent on each other, omitting all from one coming to the other, save only the tribulation, of the facts of Jerusalem's destruction, which I believe are taken up in Scripture in the latter day, and then the prophecy proceeds. This opens this prophecy, I think, much.

182 "Seventy weeks are determined on thy people, and upon thy holy city." L'ha-them (in order to complete) is the keri form, from ta-mam (to complete) - so to 'complete' or 'finish.' Then from the going forth of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, which I take of the ordinary decree, seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. It is mere nonsense to talk of seventy, sevens being neither Hebrew nor sense. We have then two persons, 'Messiah the Prince,' and (the people of) 'the prince that shall come' (to wit, Antichrist, the head of the Roman power); but it is not in the first instance 'the prince,' but 'the people of the prince' - they destroy the city and the sanctuary. This was true, but its reality was cut off in Christ. Well! after the sixty-two weeks, i.e., including the previous seven, sixty-nine, to wit, in the last week, Messiah shall be cut off. Afterwards (time is no longer reckoned) the people of the prince to come, the people of Antichrist, shall destroy the city and sanctuary. Then, I believe, comes the mystery of the two princes - Jesus Messiah, the Prince (not owned indeed) did confirm the covenant; compare Romans 15: 8. But this was, in fact, or effect rather, only with the Remnant. He came in His Father's name, and the nation abhorred Him. If another should come, the prince that should come, in his own name (magnifying himself above all) him they would receive. Antichrist then became to the people of the Jews, unbelieving, who would have no king but Caesar, what Jesus was indeed to the remnant people of God. He confirms covenant with the many, one week. I believe it is said, 'covenant,' and not ha-b'rith ('the' covenant), that it may apply to both. I suspect also the word 'many' is introduced, to leave it open, as compare Isaiah 53: 12. But here it more particularly applies to Antichrist, with the multitude of the Jews. But as Jesus, for His people, caused sacrifice and oblation to cease in the midst of the week, so I believe Antichrist, having beguiled the multitude for as long as Jesus was rejected, will, in wilful injury, make all their forms cease - the sacrifice of the restored temple and city - and then he will persecute the Jews bitterly, and shed their blood like water.

Surely there will be also a rebuilding and restoring in the latter day. The expression v'en lo (and not to Him, i.e., He shall have nothing) is most plain for Messiah's labouring in vain. His end - the prince's as well as the people's - shall be with a flood. The accents in Hebrew then give the end of the war, otherwise one might have been tempted to have read 'until the end,' but this flood is indeed a scene of conflict - Jerusalem is encompassed with armies, and, till the end of this, there is a decree of desolations - upon making the offering and the sacrifice to cease. The sacrifice is a matter of continual circumstance, not including burnt offerings. The abominations of the desolator are (set) upon the edge or pinnacle, but note the accents, in Hebrew, read 'upon the wing,' or edge, 'of abominations is the desolator,' quod nota. Indeed it would be in the common translation "abominable things" (shikkutsim), so that the sense must be quite different, I suppose. The common English version is surely the right one, al (upon) being used as "for," "because of," but I should rather take k'naph (wing), etc., as the false protection of Antichrist, the protection of abominations, which indeed was a desolator. Because of that, there was a desolator, i.e., they were given up to him. I apprehend, however, that it is not the protection of Antichrist, but given up to Antichrist because of the other; compare Isaiah 65 and 66.

183 It would appear that the unbelieving Jews would be given up to utter abominations, or it is the recapitulation of all their evil, for the Lord is retrospective in judgment nationally (compare Acts 7, Stephen) and this certainly is included, but our Lord's words seem to imply a return of that evil spirit, and seven worse ones, and 'the last state worse than the first.' And there will be a m'shomem (desolation or desolator) even until the consumption decreed (the technical term for God's bringing things to a conclusion) shall be poured upon the desolator. There will be no desolator, I suppose, after this. The rest of Solomon may not be come, but there will be an end of desolations. The Lord will be the protection (k'naph, wing) of His people in Jerusalem, and take them up for His glory, making Judah His 'goodly horse,' etc. On the whole the difficulty of this passage seems cleared up, though more may be to learn.

"Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city." This is the subject - the thing to be accomplished, to complete or make an end of transgression - to seal up or finish sin - to make expiation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up, or finish the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. The 'making expiation,' if we trust the points it is in Pihel,* and 'anointing the Most Holy,' seem to affix the application to the first coming of the Lord, which did accomplish, in His Person, prophecy, however wide a scene might then open before Him. Besides, if the suffering of the Jews, by which they received at the Lord's hand double of all their sins, be taken as the sense of kapher (to make reconciliation), though I think it forced, then the whole period of tzava (host), I apprehend should be included, and not the seventy weeks in any shape. On the whole then, though it looks out to the future as we shall see, and that especially, the primary object of this prophecy is the Lord's first coming, though that embraces, in its results, the second. But it is also hard to suppose that, if it meant to define the time of the second blessing, there should be no sort of reference to it, if it spoke of the seven weeks as the special period of the evil upon Jerusalem in the latter day, or in which the city should be built, nothing should be spoken of the great consummation, when this, in some shape, is the whole matter of the prophecy, expiation, sealing up prophecy, bringing in righteousness, and anointing the Most Holy - but not a word of anything relating to this, if taken as relation to the latter day.

{* Pthel is the intensive species or conjugation of the verb.}

184 Then comes the period. The last thing mentioned was 'anointing the Most Holy,' or as the original carries it, that we may be aware of the association to M'sho-ah (anoint) (the 'o' being the infinitive) the Most Holy. 'Therefore from the going forth of the decree to Messiah the Prince.' This seems at once to identify and mark the association of the period - anointing, especially, was then. But there were, as it were, two subjects given - the city and the end of the period making an end of transgression, etc. The period is divided therefore with this reference, 'and know and understand, from the going forth of the word or decree to restore,' rebuild 'Jerusalem' (I think this is rather the sense, than the return from the captivity, but it includes the return of the people then) 'to Messiah the Prince, seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. The street shall be built again' (return and be rebuilt - it is the same word as 'restore' before) 'and the trench in trouble,' or strait, 'of times.' There, I apprehend, is the period of the seven weeks, and the city being built. 'After sixty-two weeks, Messiah shall be cut off, and has,' or 'shall have,' 'nothing' - for He had nothing. 'Thou, O Israel, my servant, in whom,' etc. 'Then I said, I have laboured in vain, and spent my strength for nought,' and this relates only to Israel as a nation, the city and people, etc. On the Cross, alone, in that day, from a Gentile, in derision, he received the name of the 'King of the Jews.' There was nothing for Him, 'not to Him' (en lo).

185 Then come the consequences. 'The people of a prince to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.' (This is the general acting of the Roman power all through) and his 'or' the end thereof in a flood,' i.e., the end of this state of things shall be in a complete breaking up of judgment or destruction, or overwhelming of peoples - a flood, a well-known, and very intelligible expression in Scripture - 'and until the end, a war of decreed desolations,' or 'till the end of the war' (at any rate, this end previously spoken of) 'decreed desolations.' All this is 'no time,' for after these things again is true what ought to have been true before, so to speak, as was, in Jesus but not in them, but is now in effect, namely finishing transgression, etc. Messiah the Prince appearing, there were to be sixty-two weeks to this. Now this is the end of the final period of all. The things therefore which coalesce, are Messiah and Messiah, and that is all. The intermediate time is merely generally ad-ketz (until the end).

Remember there are two subjects - the city, and the sanctuary - Daniel's city and sanctuary, and that which we may symbolise by 'anointing the Most Holy.' Now the Anointed, the Messiah, was cut off after the sixty-two weeks, then the city and sanctuary then given up to the people of the prince that should come, and the end of him, or of this desolation there were decreed desolations. Then is the fate of the city and sanctuary. He that endures to the end, the same shall be saved. This same final end, when Messiah shall be revealed, putting an end to the corruption, and destruction of them that destroy the earth.

Then comes Messiah's part. 'He shall confirm covenant with many' or 'fully,' 'one week, and in the dividing of the week he shall make the sacrifice and offering cease. And the abominations of the desolator shall be set up on the high place.'

186 And this will be so, i.e., the prevalence of this hostile power until the ka-lah v'ne-che-ratzah (completion, and that which has been decreed) be poured upon the desolator - the consummation determined. I am certainly of opinion that the person to confirm (hig-bir) is Messiah, Jesus in His first advent. Verse 26 finishes one subject; primâ facie, confirm (hig-bir) would seem to refer to yash-khith (shall destroy) but I think the subject of the prophecy is Messiah, verse 27 being distinct and definite. I have no objection from system to refer it to Antichrist. I have no doubt he will be confederate with the ungodly Jews, as may be seen in notes elsewhere, and that he will set up abomination that maketh desolate. Whether he will do this, and make the sacrifices cease in the midst of a week, might be well settled by this passage, if it meant so, but I do not see this. It does not seem to me to be its subject.

I use k'naph (wing) generally, because I think purposely so used, but my mind at once turns to epi to pterugion tou hierou - on the pinnacle of the Temple, literally 'the little wing of the Temple' - which there seems a known definite expression, and so others, I believe, as Gesenius, compare Matthew 4: 5. However, I am not quite satisfied as to the force of k'naph.

- 26. Clearly not "but not for Himself," but "And shall have nothing," i.e., not take the kingdom and promises.

I apprehend Messiah should have been received at once, on His presenting Himself. We must remember all the witness there was in the hill-country of Judaea, the Simeons, and the Annas, and those 'who waited for redemption in Israel.' So, when He presented Himself as in Nazareth, Samaria, and so as to awaken the enquiry everywhere, when He had, as it is said, told them plainly, they ought to have received Him. If they did not, they would die in their sins. Hence, I apprehend, the moment He came out publicly, the sixty-two weeks were over. The rest of His life was patience, not going on to the time He ought to be received. Hence 'after the sixty and two weeks, Messiah shall be cut off.' There was no time noticed after, because the sixty-two weeks to Messiah the Prince were fulfilled. Hence the time does not count after, to the last week. After the sixty-two weeks, He was cut off, the time of His patience was only grace, and calling out the poor of the flock to know that it was the word of the Lord.

187  - 26, 27. 'And after sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, and shall have nothing, and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, and his (its?) end with a flood, and until the end of the war, decreed' (decree of) 'desolations, and he shall establish' (confirm or enter into) 'covenant with the many, one week, and in the dividing of the week, he shall cause to cease sacrifice and offering, and because of the protection of the idols' (on the pinnacle, the idols of the desolator) 'a desolator, and until the complete destruction and the decree' (all that is decreed that is - ruin or wrath) (it) 'shall be poured out on the desolate.'

- 27. We have here one who confirms covenant with the many one week, and in the midst of the week he causes sacrifice and offering to cease. Specifically, we have here the abomination, not, in general, abominations, idols. I know not if authorities deem it admissible, but 'because of the protection of abominations' seems more natural - k'naph (protection) is 'wing,' I apprehend, in the sense of summit, without a characterising substantive of which it is the summit. 'There is one who desolates.' It is the history of Jerusalem here, not of the horns or hostile powers. We must keep this in mind. Still the agents are marked out, Messiah comes and has nothing (for it is a question of Jews). Then the prince that shall come is pointed out, and supplants, takes the place of Messiah, as to whom en lo (not to Him). And note, Daniel never goes beyond the verge of Gentile domination, under which he was. It is that, including its destruction, which he tells of. This prince then is allied with the mass of the Jews all the week, therefore before the 2,700 commences. There is idolatry, and, in the middle of the work, he stops all sacrifice.

Daniel 10

Paul's comparisons are practically like Daniel's in this chapter. In a measure Paul also like Daniel when the vision came - only Paul's was a heavenly vision; Daniel's on earth, and of a glorious man on earth, but I note it for this. When Paul is caught up to the third heaven, there is no such confusion and terror. He knows not, it is true, if he be in the body or out of the body; he hears things not allowed to man to utter; that we can understand, but there is no terror, no confusion. This characterises heaven and a heavenly state. Glory surely is there - infinite glory - but we are at peace and free there, and that with God Himself. It is a blessed state. Being in Christ (for it was a man in Christ he knew there) what is in God is our rest, and he can rest and does morally in Christ - yea, is glorified in Him. As to the mere glory, we are part of it. But there is no thought of dismay or confusion there, and that is the important point.

188 Daniel 11

In this chapter we have not merely the history of the Grecian successors of the great horn, by the relationships of the ships of Chittim with them; compare Numbers 24: 24. It is neither merely the character of the fourth beast, nor the actings of the great horn of the third, but the intrusion of the fourth into the territories of the third, associated with the consequences of this for the Jews. From verse 29, it is not as the former nor latter affairs regulated between the two, but the ships of Chittim come against the king of the North. This is a general idea (though I do not doubt as to the special circumstance commonly alluded to) thereon he returns, and has intelligence with those that forsake the holy covenant. Thereon comes in the passage which we know to be at the end, and which is, in any case parenthetical; verses 31, 30, and 32 following one on the other, and 'arms' being the nominative to all the acts done in verse 31. The difficulty lies in the words mim-men-nuya-a-modu (shall stand on his part). These 'arms' or 'material power' (see verse 6) shall stand up from him. They shall pollute and they shall take away the daily, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate. It is not 'he,' but 'they.' Verses 32-35 continue the course of 'his' conduct, and the condition of the Jews in general, thence on to the end, of which we have here to notice that there are 'the intelligent, who instruct the many, and, besides the apostates who had forsaken the holy covenant, such as do wickedly against the covenant, who were corrupted by flatteries - that the people fall by the sword, etc., days - that there fall of the intelligent, that these may be tried through them, to the time of the end. These two facts - the separate fact of verse 31, and the condition of the Jews morally, and as to trial through to the end, constitute the revelation as to them in these chapters.

This chapter seems to me as simple as possible, as soon as we apply verses 30-35 to Antiochus Epiphanes, the Romans, and then the general state to the last days - its natural interpretation. Then the king in the last days comes in, naturally, in his place. Chapter 8 is more difficult for me. Still my impression is that it is not Antichrist, though I have nothing against it. My difficulty is the effect of the language. As a mere simple theory, it would make it easy. The force of "standing up against the Prince of princes" is to be considered; but it seems to me more earthly than Revelation 19.

189  - 24. 'He shall enter into the peaceable and fat places,' etc., as in the margin.

- 30, etc. 'For the ships of Chittim shall come,' etc. 'And arms shall rise up from him,' either as a successor, or a constituted lieutenant; see verses 7 and 20. It is not al can-no (in his place); 'And they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall remove' (he-si-ru, they shall remove) - take away, that it ceases to exist, as in Ezekiel 21: 31, 26; this and Daniel 8: 11, are used together. 'And they shall place the idol of the desolator,' or 'that desolateth.' 'And such as do wickedly [as to] the covenant, he shall seduce to apostasy by flatteries' (or favours). 'And the people that know their God shall be strong and act. And the intelligent' (instructed) 'of the people shall cause the many to understand, and they shall fall by the sword,' etc., 'days.' 'And some of the intelligent shall fall, to try by them,' etc., 'to the time of the end.'

- 31. I apprehend this is literally, or rather historically, still Antiochus Epiphanes, or, however, the king of the North who is despised or vile. 'Arms' or 'forces' from him, acting under or for him, take their stand and pollute the sanctuary, etc. Here we have something definite. These do not destroy it - that was the work of another; see Psalms 74 and 83. They do not confirm covenant - they desolate.

Note, the only epoch directly recognised of the Lord, as a division of time, is the "Abomination of desolation, or the last three and a half years." If there be a first three and a half, it does not enter into this part of the subject. It is placed, generally, among "the beginning of sorrows," not being of warning; as reply to the disciples' question, there may of course be special revelation in another point of view.

We must remark here that it is "the forces" (z'roim, literally 'arms'). They, I suppose, who pollute the sanctuary of strength, and remove, or set aside, the daily. It appears to me that this passage opens out the Roman succession to Antiochus Epiphanes, the wilful king among those who typically answered to him, and who was not the king of the North (which he was), nor the king of the South, but held the antitypical place to him.' Hence the introduction of them in verse 35. He it was who brought the Romans into this position. They spring from him providentially, and he represented their final agency, and, to make this clear, it is said 'They shall pollute,' etc. The final accomplishment, I doubt not, shall be in Antichrist. Chapter 8, I conceive to be the literal Northern Antitype to him. Note here, accordingly, though the Romans did so in their original capacity, it is not said, they cast down the place of the sanctuary, for it is not their part in their ultimate character, though the abomination of desolation may be set up, and every dishonour done to the Jews. This also, as compared with chapter 9, seems the secular power of the Roman, Antichristian set, whereas chapter 9 seems to be the Jewish aspect, as holding the place, to their opinions, of Messiah the Prince. Here, he is the king, doing according to his will, laying his hand, etc. There it is about the covenant and the like, though he may be identified in act, in either character.

190  - 33. Ya-vi-nu la-rab-bim (will teach the multitude). The only case, I am aware of, of the dative of persons without accusative of thing; compare Job 6: 24.

Then comes verse 36 - the speciality of revelation, as to the depository of power in that day, the king; see the difference of chapter 12: 6 and 8: 13. It is the concentring of apostate power in an individual, acting in its energy, not merely as in chapter 7 morally rising up, but his acting as an earthly power in this character, or who had this character.

36. 'The' king, not 'this' king. Also compare Isaiah 30: 33, and 57: 9.

The king is mentioned there three times in prophecy - Isaiah 30: 33; chap. 57: 9, and here. In Isaiah 30: 33, it would seem a distinct person from the Assyrian who is there also. In chapter 57: 9, he is named also without explanation, but it is probably, as to the letter, Egypt, see Hosea 12: 1, but that is not the object of the prophecy. 'The king' seems someone recognised in that position, either as the one to whom God had entrusted empire or power in His place, or one whom the Jews have connected with themselves on that principle, and this I suppose to be the case here, and hence called 'the king.' That he may be in possession of Babylon, and the territories of the king of the North, so as to come in in succession here in the subjects this chapter treats of, is highly probable. Also he will seize Egypt, but this is not his principal character, though it takes its place here. He is the king. He prospers - not exists merely - till the indignation be accomplished. But cessation of indignation is not yet restoration; compare Isaiah 10: 5, 25 and chap. 28: 14, 15; compare also chap. 20: 6, and Daniel 8: 19. I cannot doubt that this is the last character of the king who exalts himself above all, but, though characterised thus, it is his actings as a conqueror, specially in the countries bordering on Judaea.

191 Here we have the full character of 'the king' at the end, who, in effect, has fully accomplished verse 31, as we see from chapter 12: 11. He sets aside all true and traditional religion or hope, even as a Jew, of Messiah. But he sets up a false god - he will make a new religion. He will establish his instruments (not named, but connected with eloah mauzzim - the god of forces, A.V.) over the land.

The question then arises, Is it the same as the little horn of chapter 7? He certainly has the same character of self-aggrandisement and blasphemy, and it would seem that he is the wicked one of 2 Thessalonians 2. In Daniel 7: 26, the dominion is considered as his, though he be not the beast, because we are in connection with Jews. It was he persecuted the saints. One would be led to think that the second beast of Revelation 13 is the same personage. The first beast having the public corporate imperial power of the West set up by Satan as the vessel of power, and subsequently object of adoration. God being abandoned, it is no wonder, no more than the emperors did before, only apostasy will do it more decidedly.

It might seem difficult to suppose that he, who set up as God in the Temple, should come to worship another, but it would appear from Daniel 11 that these two features do exist. He exalts himself against the true God, and, though he may act as Darius, for awhile, some sort of religion is necessary for his followers. And he practises with this, though as between himself and God, it is blasphemy. Satan is habitually forced to keep up appearance of worshipping some other known object.

- 45. 'Between the sea and the mountain.'

192 Daniel 12

- 2. Note the interpretation of this verse is confirmed by Matthew 25: 46, and vice versa.

- 3. Note that 'the many' are spoken of at the end of this Book, in this verse, and in chapter 11: 33, 39, and chapter 9: 27.

- 7. The fact that the witness of the two witnesses, of Revelation 11 is not coincident in time with the Beast, and that their sufferings have finished, they have overcome before the time, times, and half a time of this verse, has not been sufficiently applied to the long period. That system requires the coincidence of the testimony and the persecution, whereas here the whole force of their respective characters is that they are not. During their testimony the witnesses bring judgment and death on those who would touch them, though in sackcloth like Elias. Afterwards the Beast reigns, and there are none such. It is not that there may not have been analogous facts - I do not doubt it - but the period of 1,260 days of the Beast is not the period of the testimony. In Revelation 12 joyful triumph, on the close of their trials, accompanies the introduction of the 1,260 days of the woman's flight into the wilderness. This renders the order of the facts clear enough.

193 Note, all the miraculous power of the two witnesses is judgment on the earth, not of the character of evangelic miracles, the powers of the world to come, where all is the power of Jesus, the blessing of the new Creation in power, but judgment on enemies on the earth, either as against those who held the people of God captive, or the professing people of God in apostasy, Egypt and Israel worshipping Baal, away from the Temple. It is not only in their testimony that they stand before the God of the earth, but in all that they do, the judgments that they execute. Moses and Elias acted thus in judgment and severity for the manifestation of the power of God, whereas the miracles of the Apostles in testimony, that which accompanied their ministry, were the exercise and manifestation of the power of Christ in blessing by the Holy Ghost, earnest of the inheritance of the new state of things, where Christ should reign in power of blessing as Head (Son of God) of the new Creation, in the blessing of the Second Adam. This throws much light also on the position of these two witnesses and is exceedingly interesting as throwing light on the two dispensations.

Note too, the tribulation comes after the placing the abomination of desolation. If it be referred to Titus, as some would, and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, then the placing it closed the tribulation. It is merely one among many reasons which show that this application of the passage is impossible.

Note further, the horn is raised up in the 'house of David' (Luke 1: 69, 73), but all the expectation, and testimony of the Spirit of God, is connected with the promise to Abraham when Christ is born, not Moses. Note, too, the Angel only speaks of the fact. The least of the saints recognises the fulfilment of the promise and covenant with Abraham.

- 11. 'And from the time that the daily [sacrifice] shall be taken away' (removed) as in chapter 11 'and the abomination that desolateth' (or 'of the desolate') 'set up' (or 'given') 'a thousand two hundred and ninety days.' It may be well to remark here that 'maketh desolate' has not the same form as in chapter 11: 3. There, it is, I suppose, without controversy, the abomination of the desolate, or, at any rate, a full active sense, M'sho-mem (desolation). In Daniel 12: 11, the form which almost universally has a neuter or passive signification, 'to be desolate,' sho-mem (that makes desolate). At any rate the former is more properly 'desolator,' as I suppose chapter 9: 27, m'sho-mem ('desolator' or 'desolations') the rather because ka-lah v'ne-che-ratzah (the completion, and that which is decreed) are technical words it would seem: see Isaiah 10: 23, speaking of this very time. And note also here that the indignation of Daniel 11: 36 (where we have the same words, ka-lah and v'ne-che-ratzah, and Daniel 8: 19, where the Grecian King at the end is spoken of, is to end in the destruction of the Assyrian (Isaiah 10: 25) who is (v. 5) the 'indignation.'

Hosea

J. N. Darby.

<44021E> 194

(Notes and Comments Vol. 4.)

How profoundly touching are the movements, and appeals, of divine affections, God's affections, which are found in this Book! I know nothing exactly like it in Scripture, if it be not the Lord weeping over Jerusalem.

- 11. 'And shall go up out of the land'; query, if this be not going up to their solemn feasts all together, under one head, from all the territory of Canaan, not out of it; as we say 'from the country.'

Hosea 10

- 10. "It is in my desire, and I will chastise them, and peoples shall be gathered together against them when chastised for their two iniquities." So the Septuagint and Vulgate. Chaldee, "when bound to their two furrows as oxen." Gesenius, in onah (duty of marriage), peccata.

Hosea 11 and 12

I return again, for a moment, to Hosea. How God remembers, adverts to, all the points of contact, of every kind, between Himself and Israel - recalls the moments of grace on His part, faith even on Jacob's! This is true affection. Now Israel floated on, utterly insensible and forgetful, or using these memorials, as Beth-el, Gilead, etc., to connect idolatry with what memory clung to. But how wonderful this is! And how we forget the proofs of most loving grace we have had from God, and go on in idleness of mind! We ought to be, as a present thing, with Him. Then memory is, so to speak, not needed. But God has dealt, and His heart calls to mind when we grow cold and forget, because He loves. This is most noticeable in this and the preceding chapter.

Hosea 14

- 9. We have to remark that all the dealings of God with Israel were not a question of absolute final pardon or clearing, but governmental. As a figure, their redemption, as a nation, was at the Red Sea, and they were brought to God, then took up first Law, and then were put under the revelation there made to Moses, when God's goodness passed before him, and were so governed. Only, as a chosen people, in all their affliction He was afflicted, and His gifts and calling are without repentance. No doubt, to deliver them really, as they were sinful ever, and a 'sinful nation,' Christ must die for that nation, and this they will find out at the end, according to Isaiah 53. But the ways of God, meanwhile, were governmental - pardons and chastisements on the way - I add, till grace is fully known and redemption. The mind may put these together, because sin has deserved judgment and final rejection, and God is not known. Only, in the Psalms there is a provision to sustain faith till redemption be fully known to them.

Joel

<44022E> 196

According to the principle, long ago noted, Joel gives no date, nor reign, and applies in general to the latter days.

Joel 1

We have these notes in the prophecy - first:

- 6. The Land - 'My Land,' whatever its state or divisions. It is Jehovah's Land, and if the people fail in every way, it falls into His hands. It was but entrusted to Israel - the Gentiles have no right but by their (Israel's) sin, and none as against the Lord.

The general subject is, a Gentile 'nation is come up upon My Land.'

13-15. Secondly, the Land is in connection with the Temple, and its service, and this coming up upon the Land is a destruction from the Almighty - the day of the Lord is at hand. All was wasted.

Next, thirdly, this awakens Zion and 'the Holy Mountain.' Jehovah says, 'Zion and My Holy Mountain.' He takes notice of it as His, and calls all the inhabitants of the Land to tremble, for the day of Jehovah cometh. Jehovah utters His voice before His army. He is strong that executeth His word, 'for the day of Jehovah is great, and very terrible; who can abide it?' 'Therefore,' says Jehovah, 'turn to Me.' And the trumpet of alarm becomes (according to Numbers) a trumpet of summons, in Zion, to repentance and humiliation between the porch and the altar. And the Lord is roused to act in favour of His people, on this word (see Psalms 42, 43), 'Where is their God.' He is jealous for His Land, and pities His people. Blessing comes on the Land (Ezekiel 36: 30) and the 'Northern army,' so this nation, as finally explained (compare Daniel 11) at the end, is cast out. The Land is blessed. The children of Zion rejoice. Jehovah is in the midst of Israel, and the people shall never be ashamed.

Afterwards, 'thereupon' (akhare-ken) the Spirit is poured out on all flesh. But before the day Jehovah will have shown signs, and the Remnant will be saved. But, note, these signs are, in general, in heaven, and in earth, and whosoever shall call on the name of Jehovah shall be delivered. But the deliverance is in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and in the Remnant whom the Lord shall call. Verses 28, 29 and 30-32, of chapter 2, whether before or after, go beyond Israel to 'all flesh.'

197 The latter is remarkable, yet makes (though the principle be universal - so cited by the Apostle) the centre of the then actual deliverance, the proper object of the Prophet, Zion, Jerusalem and the Remnant. For, and in chapter 3, the Spirit of the Lord (Christ) goes on to explain it, and what shall arise when 'the Lord shall bring back the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem.' The Lord will judge all the heathen; compare verse 16. Its result for Israel finally - the Lord will dwell in Zion.

The immediate object then (taking occasion from present desolations by plagues of insects) is the Northern army, in connection with the day of the Lord's judgment on Israel, but this, associated with the restoration of Judah and Jerusalem, introduces the judgment of all the heathen, and 'the Lord dwells in Zion.' The destruction affects the Land, but the Lord acts from, and in connection with Zion, and Jerusalem, His Holy Mountain.

Note, not only by faith is faith in Messiah anticipated, but the Spirit is given as seal of faith now; compare Ephesians 1. And this remark is of all importance as to the position of the Church and believers. But the whole of the chapter needs study.

The first chapter, then, concerns the Land (and takes in all the desolators) calls for a fast as to this, from "the elders, and all the inhabitants of the land." The second chapter speaks of that which the Lord had chosen for Himself in it, above all the dwellings of Jacob. "Blow ye the trumpet in Zion." In bringing in this, "the day of the Lord" accordingly appears more specifically in the cry resulting from the other, chapter 1: 15-20. Then the prophetic warning of "the day," to Zion, now involved with the inhabitants of the Land. It is on the people of the Jews from the Lord. This was the alarm - they were to plunder the city, passing through it all like a thief. Then the trumpet of summons, or the call to repentance. When this takes place, appealing to Him against the heathen, His instrument, His rod (of indignation) but now saying in their folly 'where is their God,' then will Jehovah be jealous for His Land, and pity His people, and turn back the Northern army.

Note here, the city is entered and plundered. There is also, on the cry made of the Remnant, the Northern Army sent back. The cry is made on the warning of "the day," and yet the city is entered. Therefore, this passage, as I see as yet, does not determine whether the army turned back be previous to, or consequent upon the taking of the city. Probably, but this is little worth, the nation not heeding the call, the city is taken. But through the course of succeeding troubles, the Remnant, then a nation, do cry, and the subsequent effort comes to nothing, for the captivity of Zion is restored afterwards, as in Psalm 126 - the nation.

198  - 19-27. This, at any rate, is the answer to the cry, and connects Zion with the blessing. But its substance is the temporal blessing of the Land, etc., as delivered from the desolators; chap. 3: 1 [chap. 2: 28].

It seems to me that this rests upon the call and the cry, i.e., the trouble coming in, the summons is to "cry to the Lord." Desolation enough previously had called for it. It is made to the nation. It is answered however, when made; nor is it till the very end, nor the hope, and the Remnant in the midst of trouble and rejection, by grace make it en eschatais hemerais (in the last days); for this is Peter's, or rather the Holy Ghost's interpretation of akhare-ken (thereupon A.V., 'afterward'). It is 'thereupon' (upon the Jewish cry) upon what has gone before, in very deed it will not be but in the last days. The term "in those days" makes this full open. The akhare-ken (thereupon) marks the "whereupon," besides verses 3-5 (30-32 A.V.). There will be signs before "the great and terrible day come" (though the city may have been entered into and taken, as it appears to me, in the latter day - previous, not an absolutely final act) and whoever (a broad fact) calls, according to the previous summons, on the Lord, will be delivered (for there are a people who call, though in the midst of a people who do not) "for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance," and, here the point is let out in result, "the remnant whom the Lord shall call" - is then calling. For, indeed, this deliverance of Zion by a Remnant, and a Remnant really by the Lord for, and so in Zion, turns the "day of the Lord," lowering over the heads of the Jews, awakening by the summons the Remnant, and so averted from the nation, which the Remnant now were, though the residue were cut off, on the heads of the Gentiles, which chapter 4 (3) then describes. All this then is plain, i.e., thus far in order.

199 Joel 2

- 20, 21. We may remark the strong setting of the actings of God to the support of faith, in answer to the actings of men of selfwill. 'His ill-savour shall come up, because he hath done great things' (literally, 'because he magnified to do') ki-hig dil la-asoth, and then in verse 21, 'Fear not, because Jehovah will do great things' (literally 'because Jehovah magnified to do') ki-hig-dil Jehovah la-asoth. 'Hath done,' 'will do' - both. So verse 9, and verse 11 of chapter 3, 'mighty men,' 'mighty ones' (ha-gib-borim). 'The heathen are taken in the net which they laid privily,' is the key to the Book of Joel - the first two chapters, as led of the Lord for His great day against Jerusalem - the third, as the re-action, on intercession by the Remnant, on themselves, so that all are brought in multitudes into the valley of decision.

- 30. This verse begins, I think, a distinct paragraph. The full blessing is unfolded first. It is a new sentence connected with the end of verse 31. Thus the pouring out of the Spirit on all flesh, in its literal and last accomplishment, would be after Jehovah had settled His people in their land. The signs will be before. Its accomplishment, consequent upon the reception of the Remnant, would be on their partaking of the salvation as a sign of favour and blessing.

Note, both in Joel and Zechariah, the restoration and comfort of the Land is made to depend on a primary restoration of Judah and Jerusalem. 'The Land' is mentioned in Joel. The summons of the trumpet for alarm and gathering is in Zion, and then 'Fear not, O Land,' and then, 'Be glad, then, ye children of Zion, for,' etc.; then the promise of the Spirit. 'For in Mount Zion and Jerusalem shall be deliverance.' 'For behold in those days,' consequently the Prophet says, 'when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,' a primary thing, 'then I will gather all nations and plead'; compare verses 8, 16, 17. Accordingly in Psalm 126 we have 'When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion'; then 'Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the rivers in the south.' So I find in Zechariah this anticipative and instrumental restoration of Judah and Jerusalem, as in chapter 8; compare verses 13, 15, also chapters 10, 12, etc.

The same truth I find remarkably brought out in Simon Peter's sermon in the Acts, indeed in his two sermons. First in his address on this very prophecy of Joel, he showing indeed how the Spirit takes up in all accuracy, as must be, its former testimony. In the first instance he addresses himself to the 'Men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem,' and produces this prophecy of Joel as leading their minds to the point, in responsibility to which the Lord now led them. They are then addressed as 'Men of Israel' in respect of the general responsibility of the nation, and its state, by virtue of the death of Jesus. For, though spoken to as men of Judah and Jerusalem, these were Judah and the children of Israel, his companions, so that they were dealt with occasionally, provisionally, as Israel. In Acts 3 they are dealt with entirely as 'Men of Israel.' And it is not 'The Lord added to the Church daily those that were to be saved' (tous sozomenous) - the Remnant; compare the Septuagint - but then 'The priests, and captain of the Temple, and the Sadducees, come upon them,' i.e., the nation, in its representatives, rejected the resurrection, i.e., Jesus as the risen Lord. Hence all the sermon is entirely of this character. It is not a call to be baptised, but a promise, on the repentance of the nation, of the return of Jesus 'whom the heavens must receive till the times of the restitution of all things.' He speaks of the rejection of the Prophet of Moses' likeness, and addresses them as 'Children of the Prophets and of the covenant,' and God, having raised up Jesus, the Prophet spoken of by Moses (verses 22 and 26 are connected) 'sent Him to bless you, in turning every one of you away from their iniquities.' 'Turning away' - afterwards it shall be in power, not witness - 'ungodliness from Jacob.' But it was natural, 'every one of you.' Then came the nation's rejection in the representatives, the priests, captain of temple, etc., Satan having raised up the Sadducees to power, suitably, to reject the resurrection, having ever his angels ready and suited, when God's time comes. This was the nation's rejection of Jesus risen, as before in the flesh - their word to the Apostles, then the Apostles' resolution in faith. Their witness against them (v. 24). In verse 29, the testimony, then again, of the Holy Ghost to them (with them) - its agency amongst them in power - the inability of the chiefs, the Sadducees, to do anything - the Pharisee standing up with counsel - the declaration of the witness of them, and the Holy Ghost. Then Stephen's, whose agency was by the Holy Ghost, not apostolic witness, that they had always resisted the Holy Ghost, as their fathers, and so did now. Then the Church took its other character - death - heavenly - and association with Jesus, as the Church fully called out of the world, the Jews being then left in their order.

201 Joel 3

There is evidently a very wide and solemn judgment which does not come into the accounts of Matthew 24 and 25. We find it, to say nothing of details, in Isaiah 66, and in this chapter - a warrior judgment, general, universal in its character, but dealing with adversaries, nations, not individuals. There are those spared in Isaiah. This mainly relates to the Beast, and Gog, but then to the nations in possession of Immanuel's Land to the Euphrates. The submission of nations or kings, through fear, is not the individual, sessional judgment of Matthew 25 (Psalm 18); compare Psalm 78: 65, though there anticipative. Matthew 25 is a sessional judgment, where the conduct of individuals is enquired into. In the very nations who may have submitted, and been spared as such, I suppose individuals may be judged, just as nations are called Christian now, and so far submit to Christ, but individuals are judged. Open enemies may be destroyed by the Lord coming in power.

It seems to me that this chapter is, in the Hebrew, a true division. First, there is a general statement that the ravages of the nations, prefigured by the insect-caused famine, are set aside by mercies, and the deliverance of God, closing in chapter 2: 27. It is temporal deliverance. He removes the Northern army, the Land is not to fear, blessing is there on repentance, no more reproach of famine, etc. But this is not all. On the repentance of His people, and accompanying this intervention of Jehovah in favour of His people, when He returns to dwell among them, 'afterward' (akhare-ken, 'thereafter') He will pour out His Spirit. Verses 30-32 are also apart, describing the signs that accompany it, ushering in the day of the Lord, a day of judgment and terror, but in which the Remnant, called of the Lord, will be delivered. For the Lord will 'roar out of Zion,' but be the Hope of His people. Verses 28, 29 of chapter 2 (in the Hebrew, chapter 3: 1, 2) are consequent on the Lord's intervention, introduced by their repentance, only the temporal deliverance is pursued to the end previously, to the end of verse 27.

202 I have noticed it already, in a measure, somewhere, but I turn again to this chapter, i.e., Joel 2 (in Hebrew, chapter 3, in part). The temporal answer, on the cry of repentance, closes with verse 27. Verses 30-32 (in Hebrew, chapter 3: 3-5) come before the great and terrible day, and there is deliverance for those who call, and whom Jehovah shall call. The promise of the Spirit comes in as a supplement to what precedes, but evidently consequent on Jehovah's visiting His people. It is akhare-ken (thereafter), 'now,' in the application made by Peter. It is after the intervention of God in favour of His people. We know it had been rejected, still the little Remnant had, in only so much greater faithfulness, owned Him, and so, though not in a temporal kingdom and rest, got the blessing - the spiritual part. And indeed, at the end, it will be only a Remnant, only the rest of the prophecy will then be

The Assyrian is to be distinguished from Babylon. The Assyrian attacks the Land, and comes to nought. In Babylon, the people were in captivity. The Assyrian is therefore, properly, against the Jews or Israelites, as connected with God, not Christ and the Remnant. The first two chapters of Joel describe this army of the latter day come up into, and against the Land, and its wrath. There is more, i.e., as to the saints which I notice not here. Joel is all of what befalls the Land, specially in the last day. There is the alarm and the gathering.

Ezekiel 28 and 39 also fully describe this Northern army. He is noticed too in Micah 5: 5. Ezekiel 31 also, I think, alludes to the same thing. In Isaiah 10 we have a very full account of the same power. In Isaiah 28: 2, we have the same person, and in verse 11. All the following chapters of Isaiah, to the end of chapter 33, describe the same power, and its failure, etc., before Jerusalem, not chapter 34. The account of chapter 36, etc., is, of course, the type of it. I may remark, in passing here, that it would seem that in chapter 30: 33, the Antichristian king also is introduced; the destruction, or furnace, being of all, and therefore, when mentioned, he also is introduced. I would read gam hi lammelek hocan, 'also' (i.e., not 'merely' is it there for the Assyrian) 'it for the king is,' or 'has been,' 'made ready,' 'prepared.' I do not think 'the king' is ever used for Assyria, but the Antichristian power, and gam hi (also it), etc., seems to me to bear out the supposition.

203 I believe the tidings out of the North and East in Daniel 11: 44, to refer to the same Assyrian power. The North and the East are the Chaldeans and Persians. In Ezekiel it is the Northern army; so Joel. These seem clearly (perhaps Turkey, and then all the image save the Roman power) under the Russian power, therefore Northern, to be the great power against the Land, designated Assyrian.

We have one other prophecy (though there are other allusions) to notice definitely - Nahum, Nineveh and its burden. This is, though under a different aspect, yet in many respects the same power. It is not Egypt, and it is not Babylon, nor is it the saints nor the Jews. It is the corporate estate from which the Assyrian is manifested in the Land, as Antichrist is the firstborn of Babylon, and the chief of her strength. The two are shown in a passage, I have omitted to notice - Isaiah 14. And I note here that Assyria is mentioned last, though quite previous in its typical facts, because such was the order of the prophetic mind. The result, as stated in the chapter is remarkable. We may note as to Nineveh, as also of Assyria (therefore it begins, 'Woe to the crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim') that the ten tribes were that with which it had to do. The nations will be involved according to the proportion in which the testimony of God has been amongst them, and hence specially as brought into knowledge or responsibility of the covenant, and hence am-mim (the peoples) though not am-mi (My people) and further, as connected with the Jews or Israelites, hence the expression, which 'have not heard My fame, nor heard My glory.' Hence the typical importance of Jonah's mission to the Ninevites, yet they were not the Land (he ge) nor therefore the Apostasy, nor addressed from the Lord. However, the general testimony, putting the whole te-vel (habitable earth) under responsibility, is well known. Hence too it is, I suppose, stated that there shall be a bridle in the jaws of the am-mim, causing them to err. The goyim (nations) are all sifted. However they are involved in the general judgment as in Isaiah 14. But I doubt whether tes oikoumenes holes (of the whole world) (Revelation 16: 14), is more than those included in our present enquiry. Isaiah 24 sets the general judgment plainly afloat in its current over the whole earth, as in verse 4, but there it is only 'languisheth.' See also Ezekiel, "Them that dwell," etc., "in the isles."

204 I have omitted here references to the Psalms. There the general reference is to the Gog and Magog invasion, which is properly the Jewish one. However, all the heathen are in the net.

Amos

<44023E> 205

This prophecy is Israel, and thence the nation, but commencing "The Lord roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem"; and, at the close, the tabernacle of David is rebuilt, "that they may possess"; but Israel is the nation, see chapter 7: 12. Joel is the Land, Zion, Jerusalem, and the day of the Lord. When it comes to facts, it is Judah and Jerusalem. The Spirit spoken of has connection with what goes on there, because deliverance is there for the Remnant. When different tongues were poured out in the audience of Hellenists of all neighbouring countries, Peter, the Apostle of Judaism, addresses 'men of Judea and inhabitants of Jerusalem.' I will add here Acts 2 is the exaltation of Christ, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, and, consequently, call to personal repentance, for the principle was general. And so 'the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved' (tous sozomenous). Chapter 3 is to Israel - promises the return of Christ on their repentance - they are 'The children of the prophets.' 'The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob' is now the name he speaks in - He hath 'raised up His Son Jesus . . . whom ye denied.' To them first He was sent - rejected, but the opportunity of repentance now offered; but this in passing. Chapter 4 goes further and recognises Christ exalted - addressing the Lord God of heaven, earth and sea, and all in them, and rulers, kings against Jehovah, and against His anointed - fully developed in the latter day.

Amos 4

- 4. "Bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes after three years." I am disposed to think that the direction as to tithes in Deuteronomy is wholly different from that in Leviticus 27 and Numbers 18. In that case they were given to the Levites wholly, and they gave a tenth to the priests. But in the direction in Deuteronomy, they take it up to where God's name is, to eat it there. The object is to centralise their faith in Jehovah, and that in connection with joy and grace. The same principle is strikingly shown in Deuteronomy 16 as Tithe-feasts. And, though a king is referred to, the desired idea is the people walking rightly under Jehovah, with a judge if needed, and a priest. With a view to this, they carried a tithe of their own part of the fruit, and ate it, inviting others - the Levite among them. It was a way of disposing of a part of their produce, in rejoicing, and showing grace before Jehovah. They paid their rent thus to Jehovah for their land, but in joy and gladness, in grace from Him, and with the poor, yet feeding their families with it. They feasted in grace around Jehovah.

206 The tithing of the third year (a special institution of Deuteronomy also, confirming this view of the one already spoken of) was, on the other hand, to be eaten in their own gates, and the poor and the Levite, etc., to be invited. This is only found in Deuteronomy 14 and 26, and in the chapter now before us. It was not the ecclesiastical obligation, but the walk of the people with Jehovah, in joy and grace. Jehovah then blessed them, giving them abundant increase. The same spirit is shown in the year of release; chapter 15 - not to grudge. Compare even what was given to the priests distinctly, in Deuteronomy 18: 4; compare also chapter 26: 10, 11.

But there is still a difficulty connected with it which tends to throw a doubt on the preceding. The firstling of the herd (Exodus 13) was consecrated and sacrificed. It is not among what is given to the priests in Deuteronomy 18. But, in Deuteronomy 15, they are sanctified to Jehovah, and they were to eat them before Jehovah in the place Jehovah should choose, year by year. Yet they were (Exodus 13: 15) sacrificed; so in Deuteronomy 15: 21. They must thus have been a peace-offering. The careful bringing up to the place the Lord should choose is very evident in Deuteronomy.

Micah

<44024E> 207

The special subject of this prophecy is the action of the Assyrian, and its consequence, concerning Samaria. But then, verse 9, it comes to Judah and reaches to Jerusalem, and this is taken up as the judgment of the whole nation. This confirms so clearly that the proper Jewish question is not with Antichrist but with the Assyrian. Antichrist is a speciality in this scene, and not mentioned in this prophecy - he does not concern the Land and Israel, but is of an infinitely deeper moral character, not so much prophetic and national. The Prophet returns to assembling Jacob, all of it, and makes, accordingly, Jerusalem the centre of it, for the Lord lays to His hand there; see chapter 5: 3, 4. Then it is the 'Remnant of Jacob,' etc. (v. 7). Then, chapters 6 and 7, comes the pleading, between the Lord and the nation itself, as to the whole ground of their relation, and what has passed.

Micah 5

- 3. Is not this verse the change of position of the believing Remnant, whom Christ calls His brethren? They had become the Church, and had ceased to be identified with the interests of Israel (though grieving over the nation which had rejected Messiah) but now the Remnant of His, Christ's, brethren return unto the children of Israel, identify themselves again with the nation, and the earthly part of Christ's power takes place.

- 5. In Micah, when it is a question of Babylon, there is no king of the Assyrian - 'This man shall be the peace'; compare Isaiah 10 and 11.

Micah 6 and 7

These two last chapters are a moral address or confession - the whole moral history of Israel till they bow under the chastisement of God. The grace and presence of Christ brought out the full iniquity of chapter 7: 6. This forces the Remnant to look to the Lord as an only resource, and bow until He pleads - the only thing, if in anything fallen, we have to do.

208 Babylon bears a prominent place here; see verse 10, where we find this same cry of Psalms 42 and 43, compare also chapter 4: 9, 10.

Micah 7

- 1, 2. Compare these verses, on to verse 6, with the words of the Lord Jesus in the Gospels - Mark 11: 13, and Matthew 21: 19. "The time of figs was not yet."

- 6. Note that just as the citation of this verse in the Gospels is the proof of the terrible way in which the presence of the Lord brings out evil, as a test of human nature; so the circumstance of 1 Kings 19: 20 shows that His calling requires more absolute devotedness (not more absolute, but absolute) than the very especial and solemn time of Elijah's receiving the message in Horeb. This is a solemn word.

Nahum

<44025E> 209

This prophet does not speak of Israel but once. It is the action on the Assyrian, compare Micah 5.

Nahum 1

- 11-14. This is the important part, as prophecy, and must be compared with Isaiah 10: 25, and chap. 14: 25.

Nahum 2

- 2. I should translate this, 'The Lord hath restored the glory' or 'supremacy,' 'exaltation' 'of Israel.' So Simon renders it, "Restituit gloriam Israel"; so Isaiah 52: 8. Thus the sense is very easy. The judgment is, all through the chapter, on Nineveh, and how so? 'The Lord has restored the glory to Israel,' or 'of Israel.' It is not question of the Beasts at all - that is settled - but with the world externally, with the Assyrian for its head against Israel, and the Lord to decide between them; the result and end of it is here. This verse would then read, 'He hath restored the excellency of Jacob according to the excellency of Israel,' i.e., a prince prevailing with God according to what passed (as the type of this very scene) when he received that name. To the end of Isaiah 12 we have this same judgment and conduct of the Assyrian, without reference to Antichrist or Babylon, which begins as a different subject after that. The deliverance and joy is viewed as complete. Another scene then begins, whose triumphant joy is in chapter 25: 6, 7.

Habakkuk

<44026E> 210

Habakkuk 1

- 11. 'Then his mind' (spirit) 'sprung up' (broke forth or took head) 'and overflowed, and he was guilty' (transgressed) [making] or 'this his power is his god'; compare, as to the language, Isaiah 8: 8, as to the moral character, etc., Isaiah 10: 13, et seq. Zu co-kho le-lo-ho (this his power is his god) - 'transgress, calling his power his god.' 'This, his power is for a god to him.' It is the character of the proud man.

It is the time, I believe, when the Assyrian (Gog), having pursued an ordinary but grasping career of conquest, sets up in pride, rebellious pride against God, thinking to take the Jews, Remnant and Jerusalem, into his power, and to set himself over all the earth, without anyone, Antichrist being now put out, though his march up was during the prevalence of the ungodly Jews. This Book is the consideration of the Jewish saints during this march - the answer to the state of the prevalence of the ungodly Jews, with the terror then of the terrible day on his coming up, and the answer to that in chapter 2; see the notes on Joel.

- 12. It appears to me that this word tzur (A.V., 'O Mighty God'; Septuagint, eplase me, 'formed me') is connected, in sense, with its root, tzur to 'form' or 'make,' and hence the Ordainer of all things is the security of, the Ordainer of His people. Then these senses seem associated with it, forming refuge, and salvation, so Peter says, 'committing their souls to Him, as unto a faithful Creator.' Now it involves the security implied in this, 'formed for Myself' and that, this care of purpose being assured, there is also the 'formed all things,' of course with reference to this purpose. So Paul in Romans 8, 'We know that all things work together,' etc. So Isaiah - the argument, from chapter 41 forwards, runs at length upon this head and subject. Then the kindred ya-tzar (to form) is used, as in Jeremiah 10: 16; see Deuteronomy 32: 15, 18. The force of the words here then becomes very plain and direct, and the reason and application of them becomes obvious, and verse 13 has the reason for them, and also plea for deliverance from them. Compare, as to wickedness within, Jeremiah 12.

211 Habakkuk 2

- 4. Be-e-mu-na-tho (by his faith). The Lord knows the character of the invader, but verse 12 explains the principle in the view of them, of what follows, that the vision (to wit of Messiah's deliverance) must be waited for, and the principle, while the invader seemed to prevail, is very strongly depicted by this word. 'In quietness and assurance,' says another Prophet. Here, confidence and patience, upon the support, therefore steady - the Tzur (Ordainer) was behind all, and to them in it. Nevertheless, the moral direction follows, and is founded on the declarative revelation of after-peace and deliverance, the coming of the Lord, and the thing sure, only to wait for it, be-e-mu-na-tho (by his faith). The Lord had fully judged the person in question, but the trying exercise must come from Him, and they live by faith. The verse gives a contrast of principle very distinctly set forth, and recorded. There is no uprightness but humility in a sinner, and hence boldness.

- 8. This word am-mim (peoples) is one here of marked import. Deuteronomy 33: 3 (but see verse 5) is the only text which produces a difficulty to my mind, as to its use, to wit, of the non-adversaries, as go-i (nations) are the nations not recognised, the nations, not Jews, yet recognised as peoples not cut off, but to be gathered. The spoiling the Chaldeans, i.e., Gog, seems strange, but it is not at all impossible, nor even improbable. The reference to verse 5 is obvious.

Power (autarkeia) and exorbitant dominion are the characteristics of this invader. He is also a propagandist in the intoxication of power in success, for men love successful power, as well as successful liberty, as in the hands of Satan. They cease to have existence as go-i (nations), viewed as a Remnant, i.e., a corporate assumption of individuality, in which, consequently, they are contrasted with the Jews who were not go-i (nations), save, before, they were under God, and after, they were given up (to judgment) by Him. Am-mim (peoples) are the mass of the people, populations. It is immaterial then who these are - they might be Jews or Gentiles. Hence, we have, 'because of bloods of Adam,' of man, and 'violence of land, of city, and dwellers therein.' At first, I had difficulty, because the Assyrian shall not touch Zion, but it is character and conduct, not place - there is no 'the' (ha). It will be found kha-mas (violence) has a genitive of the object of the violence. It is the violence done to land, city, and inhabitants. This is the character of the invader - the transgressor - the proud man.

212  - 15. The character in this verse, and in verse 5, is much to be noted. This invader has intoxicated the nations with successful power, so as to make them a disgrace and a shame in the sight of the sober, not intoxicated as they are. This is not thoroughly fulfilled yet, but it shall be. Power has been the characteristic assumption of this invader, the man of the earth. Hence, the portion of the Lord's power shall be shown against him, i.e., the power of Christ as the Man of God's right hand, 'the right hand of the Lord hath the pre-eminence, the right hand of the Lord bringeth mighty things to pass.' 'The cup of the Lord's right hand shall be turned to him,' given him to drink, i.e., the portion of God's power in the hand of Christ for the Jews. The personal question is with Antichrist, the power question is with Gog, who heapeth to him all the Gentiles, and gathereth all peoples. Antichrist shall not do this - he shall be characterised by principles, though the ten kings shall give their power, till the will of God be fulfilled by him. The end is 'The Lord is in His holy temple; be silent all the earth before Him.' Blessed be His Name! See Psalms 80: 17; 98: 1, and other passages of the 'right hand,' as Psalms 110 and 118: 16, bearing in mind the force of 'His mercy endureth for ever,' as elsewhere noted.

- 17. Is it not rather 'the desolation of wild beasts shall cause terror to thee,' for the reason mentioned also in verse 8?

Habakkuk 3

This chapter is the recall of Habakkuk to the original display of mercies. 'I will remember the days of the years of the right hand of the Most Highest?' 'He doth not forget to be gracious.' It would seem to me from this that Isaiah 63 included Gog, all nations, as well as the personal enemy of Christ, and is the destruction in that character, and not in this, though the nations under him are included; compare Zechariah 12, et seq. and also as to am-mim (peoples) and goiim (nations). This invader heaps and gathers both, i.e., Gog, but he is properly, I conceive, the head and spoiler of the goiim, though he shall seek to gather all the peoples to him too. The actings of the am-mim, as brought out, are under Antichrist, and they are actually in the siege, and take Jerusalem - the people of Europe, etc., who are not nations, but united under Antichrist. It is not their being of that place, or under Antichrist, constitutes them am-mim, but the fact is so, they will lose their characteristic nationality. Gog might heap some such to him, but these are not the embodying of the peoples (am-mim).

213 This Book then is the full description of the conduct and character of Gog, and the position of the Jews in respect of him, and his agency in respect of them, with the result in deliverance - the moral position of the nation, with its results, brought out by the Prophet's pleading in Spirit about, and concerning their estate. The answer is the revelation of Gog, his character, its agency on them, and their deliverance, from God's character - the position, and recognition of the faithful Remnant meanwhile - but it is Gog in his agency on the Jewish nation.

Zephaniah

<44027E> 214

Zephaniah 3

- 12, 17. Note the way in which the due state of the people, and God's thoughts and state are brought out in these verses. The due thoughts and state of the saints, the Remnant, in the ruin of dispensation, and then the character God gives Himself in their joy - the unspeakable grace that is in it!

Zechariah

<44028E> 215

Zechariah 2

- 4. The land of Judah, note; so Habakkuk 2: 16, is the Land - there is nothing about Jerusalem in it; so of Gog, in Ezekiel.

- 8. I know not yet what 'after the glory' (akhar-kavod, see Psalm 73: 24) is. But note there are three things by which they shall know Jesus sent, Christ sent, only manifested in Spirit, was the Sent One, as so often urged in John, for it was the Spirit of Christ which was in them did, as here, signify - manifested in person in Jesus, His making the nations 'a spoil to their servants' - 'many nations joined to the Lord,' and the Lord dwelling in the midst of the daughter of Zion - and the final finishing of the house among the Jews here; chapters 2: 9, 10, 11, chap. 4: 9; chap. 6: 15.

But there is a further point we must notice. The first (chap. 2: 9) is contrasted as servants of the nations, 'Therefore ye shall know' - the second (v. 11, Hebrew 15), 'Thou' (feminine) 'shalt know' - the third (chap. 4: 9) (this one is more remarkable) 'Thou' (masculine) 'shalt know.' It seems to me to include the Person of Christ, in which, as a Man, He shall reap the fruit, among the Jews, in the finishing of His Jewish house (as Zerubbabel, not the Temple - it is a symbolical prophecy) of His being sent. Though if it were in Israel the Lord was glorified, He had before to say, 'Then have I laboured in vain, and spent my strength for nought,' but now His hands finished it. He knew, as a Man, in fulfilment, that He was sent as the Christ of God to the Jews. 'Thou, Jesus, the Seed of David, shalt know,' says the Spirit of Christ in the Prophet, 'that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you.' The Jews also. There is difference. The general deliverance is evidence of the mission - 'Ye shall know' (the fact) 'that the Lord hath sent me.' Zion shall know, by the Lord's dwelling in the midst of her, that the Lord had sent Him unto her. But He shall know that the Lord sent Him to the Jews, rejecting Him as they did, on the finishing of His house. There, I think also, we have evidence, herein, that it was not as 'Jesus,' simply, He is spoken of as sent, but in His divine Person, as justified in Spirit, and so properly, and not as Man. It was recognising Him as the sent Son of God, though He was also Jesus, that was the point of faith. This was what the Lord required. They would have taken Him by force and made Him a King, if that had been what He required. They knew, even the rulers, that He was a Teacher come from God, but He was, and as the God of truth required, as being Truth was bound to, as the Son for the Father's glory was faithful to require - yea! as the only truth of and for blessing, the Freemaker - having this as His full title, 'The Heir of the world,' to require to put forth this title 'The Son of God.' This was made practicable for Jesus by the miraculous conception. He was condemned, showing the Jews' rejection of Him and of the truth, for, as they said, making Himself so. He was so, and this was the point in question. He was rejected by the Gentiles (with the knowledge of this, for they were concerned in it) for being King of the Jews, throwing the utter rebuke upon them - the last grand act of treading them down as Gentile wicked ones, even we by nature - in natural wickedness, till the last great act of presumptuous wickedness be enacted, as described in this Prophet. The death of the Man was pardonable, though the uttermost sin - the rejection of the Son testified by the Spirit, made known in the resurrection, there is no way of pardon for. The Lord keep us loving Him always!

216 Zechariah 3

- 1-7. Note the word omed (standing) and om-dim (those standing); all through this it is a leading word.

- 8. Probably "as observed men," to be observed as types or signs, as 1 Corinthians 10: 6.

Zechariah 4

This chapter appears to me to represent, as far as any partial thing fulfils it, the perfection of the Jewish system or ministration of God with him in that day, as in the hands of Christ Himself. There was one candlestick, the pure bearer of God's light in its perfect, God-formed order. There was the perfect supply of ministering grace from the double witness of divine grace and presence - spiritual grace, and existing power - priesthood, and royalty. In Revelation, the witness of these things is kept up, in disorder, which is the force of the distinction of that passage, 'also shall then the eyes of the Lord,' the energy of His judging power, 'pass through the whole earth,' not the Spirit, nor the providential power of empire; compare Revelation 5: 6, and ante, 1: 8, and post 6; compare also the office of Joshua, in which they, the Jews as a Remnant, are personally represented. The iniquity is removed, and the righteous brotherhood introduced. Here, in the royalty of Christ, the full building of the house is, and I think it involves and must include the gathering of all unto Him, for He could not dispensatively set the earth right in sovereign power, until the source of all order and power, the heavenlies, were set right. But, as regards the nation, etc., below, the priestly office must be exercised towards them before the scene of order is exercised thereon below in the hands of Zerubbabel.

217 Zechariah 5

- 6. We should notice this expression, 'This is their appearance in all the earth'; so in chapter 4: 10, and in Revelation. The anointed ones stand before 'the Lord of the whole earth.' The four chariots of horses are the four spirits, etc., 'before the Lord of the whole earth,' so in verse 3, 'This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth.' I apprehend that the evil in verse 3 marks unrighteousness towards man and God - individual wrong doing. I apprehend this is the abiding principle of divine, righteous judgment when He takes it, for even then the Lord, acting on that which belonged to the Jews, the sinner dying a hundred years old shall be accursed, but the exercise of it will remove them systematically. Chapter 4 is the recognition in the Jews of the principle to which the believing Remnant had borne witness, during the power of evil (as noticed in Revelation). Here is the principle of moral evil which was the real character of the world individually. The ephah and the woman I believe to be the burying the union of the Church in the world. The ephah was the largest measure, and I believe the all-rapacious character of evil is meant in it, and the Church is brought into it. The ephah is their resemblance, but this is wickedness, and it is bound down for ever then however (O Lord, what are our sins!), and built and set in the land of desolation and confusion, out of which the Jews are brought. However, I am sure there is much more in this that I do not understand yet.

I think, too, there must be observed an analogy between the actual efficient power in the previous chapter, the candlestick and the olive trees, and the formal professing Church, the woman in the world, and the two women. I have sometimes thought that, as the removing judgment, the former part of the chapter took the two Tables as against the Jews - the latter, the removal of the useless form (wickedness) of the professing Gentile Church now simply buried in the world. I suspect, however, that the putting the woman into the ephah is putting the Jewish Remnant completely into the world, and settling it in the power of Babylon in that day, as it showed the moral of the previous captivity. There the providence of God was not the least surrendered, and those who, out of the midst of the power of Babylon, came with gifts, and remembered despised Jerusalem (and an unbuilt house) it should be for a memorial to them and a crown. The Branch should be raised up. He should build the Temple, etc.

218 Zechariah 6

- 5. Note, also, there is, I believe, no such thing as the 'Jehovah of all the earth.' It is not a scriptural expression. There is the "God of all the earth," Isaiah 54. Otherwise, it is "King of all the earth" (Psalm 47), and in this Book chapter 14: 9. Otherwise, it is "Lord" (Adon) "of all the earth," from Joshua 3: 13, Micah 4: 13, and here. Hence we shall understand the force of the expression 'O Jehovah, our Adon (Lord), how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!' See the full statement in Micah 4: 5.

- 15. It would appear that b'he-khal (A.V., "in the temple") is simply 'at work at the building of'; see Nehemiah 4: 4, 11 (or 10, 17, English). The ministration of the r'chokim (A.V., "They that are far off") in the service of the Temple, when the Man, whose name is 'the Branch,' should build it, would be further evidence of the truth of the Spirit of Christ; compare Isaiah 4: 2, Jeremiah 23: 5, and chapter 33: 15. The reference to Christ, in His Melchizedek character, is remarkable here. In both passages it is referred to Joshua, and it is he who has exercised for the Remnant of Israel, i.e., Israel, the office of priest, 'who' etc., as here. He is the tzemakh (Branch) Jehovah, and the tzemakh (Branch) David, and the tzemakh tzaddik (righteous Branch) who 'shall execute.' But here He is to sit on His throne - the iniquity removed in one day, and they, the restored Jewish Remnant, shall know the mission of truth.

219 At the end of this chapter closes that prophecy, the order of which, as relating to the latter days, is, I think, now pretty plain. Moreover the distinction of the two prophecies is most important. Hitherto, though leadingly occupied with Judah as the place where it centred in operation and result, the prophecy has been mystical and symbolical, taking it as Church order, building God's, or Christ's house, and hence involves the accomplishment of all the co-ordinate purposes of God, the principles on which He has been governing in the Church, on which it has failed, and the clearing (though not directly, as the sphere of present observation) the heavenlies, wherein the blessings, etc., were of all the earth, Christ's right ordering, in a new state of things, being the great subject, and this is the key to all that prophecy. Nor shall we ever see rightly the blessings to the Jews, till we see them as a part of the great scene of New Jerusalem blessings, as in Hosea, when, which explains what I mean, the Lord 'shall hear the heavens, and the heavens shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn and the wine and the oil, and the corn and the wine and the oil shall hear Jezreel. And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy,' etc.

The prophecies which follow are the literal development of the prophecies to the Jews, as a literal nation, fulfilling the promises of God to them as a nation distinctively known as such, and following on the long-known associations which belonged to them as a nation known in a given place upon earth of old.

Zechariah 7

- 6, 7. 'Hearing the word of prophecy,' not 'fasting in sorrow,' when we have got into its predicted evil, is the way of righteousness.

Zechariah 9

- 1. There shall be no defrauding of Israel then, when man's (Adam's) eyes are toward the Lord, "as of all the tribes of Israel." Israel shall have God's full rest, so I understand it. The word m'nukhatho (his rest) is plain, from Psalm 95: 11 and Deuteronomy 12: 9.

220 Zechariah 11

This manifestly begins a new prophecy.

- 7, 8. This is the reply to Sharezer and Regem-melech, i.e., the people in them.

- 9. This, and the following verse, is the general prophecy of the result suggested by that. Here we have Christ personally brought before us, in connection with these results, and the state in which the restored - a new thought - position of blessing would be through the shepherds, and the wickedness of them that dwell therein. Much of this was exemplified at the first coming of our Lord, but there is much that has not its ultimate accomplishment till all the nations are gathered together in the Land of Israel, and the Jews are restored to their pride, and the Lord act upon them at His second coming.

If the Lord had assumed the shepherd-hood of the Jews in that day, His dominion and care should have been over all the earth. Now this would have embraced all the peoples, but, on His refusing the shepherd-hood, to whom the gathering of the nations was to be, He broke the covenant with the am-mim (peoples), and took the children which God had given Him for His portion, till He be the Jehovah of His people, and King (Solomon) over all the earth. It is a case similar to Numbers 14: 34, though of larger extent. The Jews stood here as the most favoured representatives of the race, and the only difference was, they would not receive Him, as the others did not know Him. The result of this, however, is the position of the am-mim and goi-im (nations) towards Jerusalem, which was, as it were, unhindered, but whose actings would be different towards it, though in intention a mere prey to both. But this distinction was only brought into illustrated action in the last days.

This chapter cannot be understood without a careful examination of John 10.

- 10. Note this expression am-mim (peoples). It opens out a vast field in the chapter; compare the important analogous language in Deuteronomy 33: 3, and Genesis 49: 10. I do not think am-mim is ever used for the children of Israel, but that it has always a definite and distinct meaning. Here we may refer to Deuteronomy 32: 8, and this seems to me to be the point of the Gospel of John - His Sonship, and the world. Yet, as Son, He was Heir as Solomon, i.e., with the Jews.

221  - 11, 12. These give the question of official agency in which He might be rejected, as between Him and the people.

- 13. How various are the instruments by which the Lord does His acts! We see this illustrated here.

This and the following verse give the personal acts, and that which immediately concerned His Person, with the Lord and His purposes - the sure and certain order, both of His willing character, and sufferings, and exaltation, and manifestation as Jehovah. His suffering and judgment in a higher capacity than men, dispersed relationship to the Jewish nation though including it; you may compare Isaiah 49.

- 16. 'Young one' is rather 'cast out,' 'driven out', the word is na-ar (a wanderer).

Zechariah 12

- 10. How plain is the Spirit of Christ in the Prophet here!

Note when 'the Spirit of grace and supplication' is poured on Israel, it is after the deliverance, on the families which remain. The Lord will have destroyed the nations come against Jerusalem - the house of David will have been as God, but the day of the Lord on Jerusalem will have been the taking of the city, etc. It is those that remain in all the Land that will mourn apart, having looked on Him whom they had pierced. These are owned as God's people, but there remains the question: what the condition is of this Remnant before? Here the Psalms come in. There we have the desire of the humble, the poor who commits himself to Jehovah - those that seek Him - the righteous who are tried, etc.; see Psalms 9, 12, and compare Isaiah 51. See also Zephaniah 2: 1, 2, 3; 3: 8, 18, etc.

Zechariah 13

- 5. I think I have noticed in my interleaved Bible, I cannot but think the English translation has missed the sense. It is Christ taking His lowly place, and amongst men, as Man, man's place, and then His rejection by the Jews, and then God's counsel in it as to the Man, His fellow. I hardly see how kik-na-ni (has acquired me) can be 'taught me to keep cattle.' 'And He said' comes in abruptly. 'And He said I am no Prophet; Adam possessed me,' bought me, 'from my youth.' I was a servant to man from the beginning. 'And he said, What are these wounds in Thy hands?' 'Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.' Then the blessed counsel of God comes, in His view of Christ's service and His place as the Shepherd of Israel - the Good Shepherd that lays down His life for the sheep. The Shepherd thus out of the way, through wickedness on the part of the people, in needed grace on God's part, yet smiting the Shepherd for the sake of the flock, His hand falls necessarily on the faithful of the flock itself. They must feel the condition of Israel, the sin in which they are all involved, but to them, living through Him, it is passing through the fire for purifying. Isaiah 1: 25, and Amos 1: 8, and Psalm 81: 14, show, I think, that 'turning the hand upon' is in judgment. The Lord Jesus does not quote this last part, because its force is for the latter days. 'The little ones,' if they had a common lot with Him, had hardly, in any sense, a common lot with the Jewish people after His death, but, though eventually separated, they are acted on together at the close; see verses 8 and 9.

222 These last two chapters are very general.

- 7. "I will turn my hand upon the little ones"; compare Isaiah 1: 25 - verses 8, 9, I apprehend, explain it. He visits to purify. But "little ones" are brought low, become vile. It is the Jews looked at as having to say to God in the Land, but brought low in it. Note it is the word amithi (My neighbour) found only in Leviticus and here. In Matthew the blessed Lord treats it as God's act "I will smite." This seems to me His perfectness.

It has struck me that the force of this, Christ's statement of Himself as humbled, in contrast to all the ecclesiastical and prophetic false assumption of the nation, 'and He said' or 'shall say, not a Prophet am I - a man tilling the ground' (compare Genesis 3: 23) 'am I, for man made me his property from my youth,' i.e., Christ was subjected to the condition and necessities of man from the outset, as the Servant of their good, having come into the sorrow and toil into which man was driven (out of Paradise). Then comes His Jewish rejection - He received His wounds in the house of His friends. Then comes God's part - it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. "Awake, O Sword," etc. Then the consequence, to the Jewish people, of all this, till their millennial reception in verse 9. Then the final result as to all the nations as well as Jerusalem, in the next chapter.

223  - 5. As to the word hik-na-ni (caused me to acquire) it is confirmed, and its force beautifully brought out by comparing Proverbs 8: 22. This is the humiliation of Christ, as connected with the Jews - that His title in His Person, and the glory of the Lord's ways.

- 8, 9. All the resulting history of the Jews is in these two verses.

Zechariah 14

- 1. The, day of the Lord, is always, or involves, earthly judgment.

- 17, 18. "The Lord of hosts." 'Neither shall there be upon them . . . there shall be the plague,' etc., or, neglecting the athnakh, 'shall there not be upon them the plague.'

- 19. After all, I see no proof that khat-tath (sin) means punishment. Proverbs 10: 16 is the only passage that can be reasonably alleged, that I can find. It may perhaps, allude to it, as that which represents, and marks the sin, as 'he shall bear his iniquity,' the proof and force of which would be seeing him lie under the judgment it brought. This is the sense of the word (in two forms) in Lamentations 3: 39 and chapter 4: 6 - bearing the sin on himself in punishment, something as the sense of sin-offering. And, I suppose, it must be so taken here, but so as to charge the measure, and the character of the sin, not merely the fact of punishment. It is governmentally putting the sin upon him, instead of taking it off; compare Lamentations 4: 22.

Malachi

<44029E> 224

Malachi 3

- 1. Ha-Adon ('The Lord,' or 'Master') at the end naturally Jehovah.

- 4. How very striking the difference is between the end of Malachi and Revelation 22: 17, 20, where, though a Book of judgments, the saint, or Church, returns to its relationships. It strikingly shows the difference of the two principles, of the Old and New Testaments, or Law and Grace. Besides the very nature of the development of the relationship itself is different. In Malachi, He returns and discerns between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not. In Revelation, it is the Church, when the Person of Christ is revealed as the Morning Star, whose heart goes out with desire after the Bridegroom, animated by the Holy Spirit Himself.

Gethsemane and the Cross

J. N. Darby.

<44030E> 225

(Notes and Comments Vol. 4.)

The Lord was completely heard and delivered, as regards the trial of Gethsemane, before leaving the garden, and on the Cross before His giving up His soul. And these two trials seem to me to be quite distinct. The prince of this world came, and though he had nothing in Jesus, still He had to go through what death was as the power of Satan to alarm and destroy confidence in His Father. 'This is your hour, and the power of darkness,' said the Lord. Satan had sought to meet Him, and pervert Him as a living Messiah, the Son of God, but the Lord had put him aside, and conquered him with the Word, as the obedient Man; for this was needed for man too. Satan had then sought to divert Him from the path by attractive temptation. The strong man was bound, and, as a living Man, He spoiled his goods - cast out devils - healed all that were oppressed by the devil (as a living Man) 'for God was with Him.' But man was incapable of being blessed in this way, or delivered, for he was a sinner, and morally under Satan's power.

Then the Lord had to meet death, which stood in the way, as sole means of blessing. He must be a dying Saviour, and not a living Blesser, for man could not meet the blessing else, and death came in necessarily, and so he that had the power of death came in in a new form. He is to exercise his full power in hindering the Lord from going through with this dreadful necessity, in which, as Satan, he would exercise the full power that he had against man, and this rested on Christ in Gethsemane. He was looking forward to death, wrath from God was not yet upon Him, though He was looking forward to it, but 'He was sorrowful even unto death' - 'His soul poured out like water,' and the full power of death on it, to the extent of Satan's empire - every human help failing in every way, and treachery and malice hemming Him in, but, above all, Satan's power besetting Him. But He takes nothing from man, nor from Satan, nor complains like Job. He prays - gives Himself to prayer. The effort of Satan to hide God from His soul, to get in between, as he does sometimes with believers, was useless. The distress drives Him to God, being the true sign of the link of the soul with Him. 'Being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly.' And the effect, for the cup (through grace - mighty grace!) could not pass, that He receives it wholly and solely from His Father's hand.

226 The subject of His fear - this dreadful judgment, in which Satan had his power - becomes His glorious obedience, and He presents Himself in the calm of all His life, and with such an evidence of divine power accompanying it, that they go backward and fall to the ground. He delivers Himself up according to the Father's will. Satan is just for nothing in it. This was most glorious. Gethsemane, that place of sorrow, but well-spring of delight and deliverance for us dug in the depths of Christ's soul, was passed.

But another scene was to come - more dreadful, no doubt, but quite different - the wrath of God. It has another character. It is not conflict, and that with the power of evil. It is holiness, justice, dreadful, infinitely dreadful, but not in its nature the terrors and power of Satan. He, who alone could, felt what God was against sin, but nothing, No! nothing - between Him and God. Nothing screened His soul from the judgment of God, before whom He was made sin. It was the immediate wrath of God - dreadful thought! - against sin. It was not to find His Father's countenance, or maintain His look toward Him through all that Satan could command of darkness, but all naked before God Himself. Perfect - yea, perfection itself here to God, He ascribes unclouded praise here. 'Thou continuest holy, Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel,' though He could say, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" Infinitely agreeable (in this, beyond all else) to God His Father, He accomplished the full and perfect expiation of our sins. And here, too, He was heard and delivered, and commends His Spirit to His Father without a cloud, as the One who has lifted up the light of His countenance upon Him. No one takes it from Him - He delivers up His soul - lays down His life, that He might take it again, according to the commandment of the Father.

And Christ can, even in detail, in Gethsemane, exhort His disciples, heal the servant, reason with those who come, and judge their position as of the hour of the power of darkness, put Judas' sin before his eyes, deal with all the fruits of the power of evil as that which He was, in no sort, under - on the Cross answered, His soul delivered by the Father's glory (the God of truth) to His Father, speak peace to the thief and assure him of Paradise, and place His mother, now all was finished, in the hands of John, to whose love He confided her. All was restored in the perfectness of every aspect in which He could look, and be seen with but resurrection, but the full intelligence of His position now, as leaving the world, having done with it, but the power of death and wrath all passed, and in view of this new and peculiar position which makes death ours, His Spirit commended to His Father, death has no more dominion though He dies. The thief does not wait for the kingdom - he goes then into Paradise, i.e., his Spirit with Christ, not in body neither, but his soul apart from his body. Perfect peace and deliverance in that in which He then had to be delivered, He passes through death, in the power of life, in divine favour. Death is conquered, and, in the full light of that triumph, in the light of His Father's countenance, and, in the power of life, victorious over death, using it for Himself for others, He gives up His Spirit to His Father. What could death do there? That was death. It was the exercise of Christ's power in its highest act of triumph, at least short of resurrection. And so for us. And He still does it as not for Himself, as He only has title, for He has life in Himself, we in Him - 'Eternal life, but that life in His Son.' How glorious and perfect is this mystery! How perfect the work wrought! How glorious and perfect He who wrought it! What to have Him as the Object of our thoughts, and living soul's affection - to live by Him, fruit of that very work!

227 The power that delivers Israel will be glorious in its deliverance of man, and he will escape death, and the snare of the fowler, but our portion is - Oh! how different! - to die, so that this place and principle of sin should be no more, in the power of that life which can pass through death - die only to what gave death its power in it (in Christ, for others) in us. Oh! what a blessing for ourselves, for our flesh's nature is sin! How excellent a boon! What a blessed privilege is death! And mark, ours in Christ. It is negatively (in the power of this life) what God is positively, i.e., it is so through this glorious work of Christ - separation from sin. He gives His Spirit, too, up to God. 'In that He died, He died unto sin once: in that He liveth, He liveth unto God.' What a separation needed, because sin was there! But a separation from it, absolute in judgment, and when disowned and judged, such as innocence or ignorance of sin never could have been. But life of divine power must have been there for this. How plainly separation from evil is identified with absolute, perfect justification by Christ! And what force this gives to Romans 6! Note this is, in privilege, our present state by faith.

228 We may note here that Christ commends His Spirit 'to His Father.' All through, as Man, it is confidence in Him, not power acting without Him, though power were there, 'Life in Himself,' but life acting in the Man in confidence in His Father. This adds clearly to the blessing, while showing Christ in His perfect humiliation.

Note here that in the rejection of Christ (Luke 20) and David's Son becoming David's Lord, we get what brings out the position of the two Adams. He does not take the place of David's Son in Israel, according to promise. Nor is it simply His divine title as Jehovah, for it is Jehovah who speaks to Him as rejected as Son of David down here. There He sits 'till His enemies be made His footstool,' but He is Lord as set there by Jehovah. He will rule among His enemies, and He has drunk 'of the brook in the way,' i.e., been humbled to dependent faith on God His Father.

The first man would be 'as God,' exalting himself, and is abased, and, in the full development of man, as Antichrist, he opposes, and exalts himself above 'all that is called God, or worshipped, so that he sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.' And he pretends to mount yet higher, and to set his throne above the stars of God, and be like the Most High, ascending up to heaven. But he will be brought down to the pit. The second Adam 'thought it not robbery to be equal with God,' but emptied Himself, and came down to the form of man - there, was 'obedient unto death,' as Adam was disobedient, 'even the death of the Cross.' And God has highly exalted Him - His act - the Man of creation, but the Man of God's counsels, the Heavenly Man, exalted by God, Heir of all that God in His counsels has given to Man, i.e., all things which this Man has - Creation's God - and inherits as Son. And now all flows, not merely from God as of course it does, but from this Heavenly Man. Life has this character and place, righteousness also. The kingdom hereafter - He is gone there to receive it - the inheritance of all things according to Psalm 8, i.e., the source and centre of the whole condition of all God's ways in man, His place with Himself, on which all else depends, for He has put all things under His feet. The Church is united to Him there by the Holy Ghost, which He has sent down, and the Father in His name.

229 This is the key-stone of all God's ways, His purpose as to all things. And our moral relationship has its character from this - it has the character, standing, and perfection of what God has wrought. It is the Second Man set on God's right hand, the self-humbled One, as the first, or creation man, was the self-exalted, tried in responsibility till Christ's death, and even after, to see if he would own the Exalted One. Then, adversary, shown in principle in the Jews, thereon set aside (and specially in Paul, pattern of Israel's mercy, and witness of sovereign grace, and the Church) and, finally, as Gentiles and as man, in the Antichrist, when the man of the earth will give place to the Heavenly Man now exalted with God, known by faith but then displayed to man, and setting aside all that opposes. Such are the first and second man, or Adam, the self-exalting, and self-humbling One!

Now in Christ Himself we find the distinction between the glory conferred and His own blessedness. He has humbled Himself to the death even of the Cross, and He will be found exalted, having a Name above every name. He will be displayed with crowns of glory, but not, speaking simply, of His divine and unchangeable blessedness. He has a resulting joy of a higher character than displayed reward. When the elders are crowned and on their thrones, they are in a wonderful position for such, no doubt - to have thrones round the Throne, but when 'Holy, Holy, Holy' is pronounced, they leave their thrones, and fall on their faces before Him, and cast their crowns before the Throne - in a higher position when they seize and estimate His glory, than when displayed in their own. So in the way, of course proper to Him, Christ has a part more excellent than the royal display of glory. On the Cross, He has morally fulfilled the whole divine glory, and that as Son of Man. He gave Himself up that everything in God might be perfectly glorified and displayed - not only was He God manifested in love to man, and Man obedient to God, but He gave Himself up - so that God's perfect love, righteousness against sin, majesty against the audacious transgressor, truth in the threat He had made to man, and yet salvation in all its fulness, according to the glory of a God of grace - Righteousness against sin to the uttermost, for the Son suffered and was not spared - Love to the sinner without bounds, for the Son was given - Grace reigning, yet reigning by righteousness, maintaining God's glory, to the utmost, in Holy Majesty, and yet descending to the extreme of ruin, 'made sin,' and under death, because we, worthless ones, were there. God was glorified in Him, and indeed the Son of Man glorified, for what obedience! What a wonder that in Man, God's attributes should be thus glorified, and made good! What devotedness to God! Self sacrifice that God might be glorified! So giving a motive even that the Father should love Him - descend to the uttermost of weakness, yet in that confiding Himself, in death, to His Father's faithful love and glory (to what God was) and raised by it!

230 Thus in the Cross, the Son of Man was glorified, as being One in whom God could be, and God glorified in Him. Then, in answer to this moral glorifying of God, He is glorified in God Himself - not merely display Him in His own glory as Son of Man, which in His times He shall show, but in Himself. And this was the just and necessary consequence. If God be glorified in Him, God must, as the only measure which answered to God's glory made good in Him, glorify Him in Himself, and this without question of the display of it - that would not be in Himself. He would do it immediately, not waiting for the time of displaying the Son of Man in glory. He is glorified in God Himself, as the consequence of God being glorified in Him - a glory and a place enjoyed in se, participating in the infinite delight and excellency of God, as thus exalted, which, however the result of it may be displayed, is above and beyond all display. Such is the glory and blessing of the Son of Man! Wondrous truth! Flowing no doubt, from what He was, as well as from what He had done as to its possibility, still, enjoyed as Man there. It is a wonderful but a glorious mystery, and we shall see Him as He is. Moreover, we dwell in Him, and He in us.

Christ was not only the manifestation of the perfect grace of God towards men (en anthropois eudokia) and that when man was in his sins, the holiness being so perfect, and untouchable by sin, that He could rise up over the sin to deal with the sinner in love, but He was the exhibition of the new Man as God delighted in Him - the divine Life with all its qualities unfolded in the scene of misery in which it was all put to the test, and only shone the brighter for it. 'That Eternal Life which was with the Father, and manifested unto us' (and 'which thing is true in Him and in us, because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth,' and hence we are called to be 'imitators of God as dear children,' for He is our life) and thus we can take delight in all the perfectness of it, objectively, in Him, yet as ours.

231 In Acts 7 we have three very important points: man resisting the Holy Ghost - man full of the Holy Ghost (being redeemed and washed in the Lamb's blood) - and religion, established on earth in connection with Creation, entirely set aside as belonging to the first Creation, into which sin and disobedience had entered. This gave the whole character of man established in relationship with God. The earlier history of resisting the Spirit is given distinctly in connection with Israel - Joseph, Moses. But here it was resisting God, when they had failed under Law, and the Spirit worked in testimony, and that in sovereign grace, proposing, on their repentance, Christ's return when already rejected. On the other hand, we have heaven opened, the Holy Ghost in the believer making him look steadily in (note, it is not heaven opened to man, looking down on the Man of delights, John 1 and Matthew 3: 17, but man filled with the Holy Ghost, in virtue of redemption, looking into heaven on the Son of Man there) testifying to the Son of Man being at God's right hand. This was the great testimony. This brings the Cross, and complete conformity to Jesus. But the resisting the Spirit, the setting aside all carnal ordinances, all power on earth, and then, in contrast, the saint being filled with the Spirit and looking into heaven, and all association of God, religiously, with the earth being set aside is very remarkable.

Note further, in the latter part of Luke 22, when all is brought to a point, and Christ, victorious over Satan, as he tempted the first Adam by will, rejected as delivering man down here, the things concerning Him have an end. So that, brought to the point of death, unless He gave up His work, death, as having the character of judgment and wrath, was in Satan's hand as power, as in God's in righteousness against the sinner. We have this great crisis brought out in three ways - flesh incapable of it, when there was the best intention, for man was there, Satan in malice and power, and God in righteousness. Satan sifts and man fails, cannot go through. If he does not fly off in despair, and still hold on to God, whatever his failure, it is God's grace, and Christ's intercession. Man is worthlessness and failure, with the best of intentions, and Christ perfect grace in the worst of failures. Such is sifted Peter! Flesh breaks down - he is fit to strengthen then, because he knows the flesh good for nothing, and Christ a perfect stay when man, as such, is gone and ruined, and proved worthless.

232 Secondly, we have Christ going through this same crisis, and the whole fulness - blessed be God! - of Satan's power in this way seeking to drive His soul back from accomplishing this terrible work in obedience. He is perfect through it. Being in the conflict, He is only nearer to God. Here we have, not the flesh breaking down at the first shadow of it passing on the soul, but grace going through it in perfect obedience. All entered into with God - all done when man came - it was then but the occasion of obedience.

Thirdly, we have the efficacy of the work itself in the passage of the thief into Paradise - not the kingdom, we are all beyond that so that we leave failing flesh, when Satan is out with the power of death in his hand. Perfect submission and obedience, so that Satan is wholly overcome, and his power in this respect annulled for faith, and the work of going under judgment and wrath so perfectly performed for the sinner, that he goes into Paradise with Jesus immediately. They are the three phases of man in connection with death and the Cross. Another place of man is his active and wilful connection with Satan - in the lowest points a Judas - but of this I have spoken elsewhere, and do not touch here. It is embraced in the words, 'Your hour and the power of darkness.'

I add, it is very difficult to get rid of the esteem of self in respect of others. But it must be rooted out. More than these the Lord recalls, but Peter now no longer pretends to. We must be brought down to a level with others, if we exalt self at their expense. But the effect is to make Christ everything, being ashamed of self. Peter says simply 'Thou knowest that I love Thee.' At present I think any one could (though I would not be behind) love Christ better than I do, but that I love Him, and as to object, Him alone - that He knows. Still how poor what is there! But I have nothing but Him, nor do I want - He knows, and my God knows - anything else. The Father's love is there. What a sense of blessedness!

Love and Light

<44031E> 233

The reason why we are not said to be 'Love,' which God is, but are said to be 'Light,' which He is, is evident. Love is sovereign goodness - a source towards others. God is it, no doubt, but as regards others it is sovereign, and has an object in its exercise, and, outside the Trinity, for the Father loveth the Son, it exists when active on objects which must be inadequate as motive, though thereby glorifying sovereign goodness, and showing it is divine. But purity is a nature perfectly pure, and manifesting this all around it, and we can be purity - it is a subjective state - it is the state and character of a nature. There is nothing of a source, a fons of blessing in it, which we cannot be, though we may walk in love because we are given to be streams where the source is. I do not know if I have sufficiently noticed this, though I have in a measure.

The only thing that is not satisfied in God towards us is Love. Righteousness is - His judgment of sin - all He requires from us, in the exigencies of His holy, righteous character, for Christ is before Him. And it is a wonderful word, if I look at God, there is only Love, 'God was in Christ reconciling' - if I look at myself, only righteousness, I am 'made the righteousness of God in Him.' In Christ, God is love to us, we are the righteousness of God in Him.

The Gospels

<44032E> 234

I see not how we can doubt that Holy Scripture containeth the certain revelation of all things necessary to our salvation, because it is by their revelation alone that their necessity is shown. None can be the author of truth but God. There can therefore be no truth but as coming from Him, and all that He says must be true as it is written, 'Every word of God is pure. He is a Shield unto them that put their trust in Him. Add thou not unto His words lest He reprove thee and thou be found a liar.' The whole authority therefore of any man consists simply in the proof that he speaks the words of God, and it is merely that by Him we believe in God, from whose life we were alienated by the ignorance that was in us through the blindness of our hearts. And therefore of the Son of God Himself, as appearing in the flesh as 'the Apostle of our profession,' it is said, 'He that hath received His testimony hath set to his seal that God is true, for He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God.' To Him indeed 'the Spirit was not given by measure' 'in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,' who is the Object of faith as well as the Messenger of it - the Fulness of truth in Himself, so as that the Spirit given to us does but take of His, whose is all that the Father hath, and show it to us according to the measure of the gift of God. Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift!

When a man therefore comes to me proposing anything of faith, I seek the evidence that he speaks to me the words of God, according to revelation from Him, as Paul says: 'What shall I profit you except I shall speak to you either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine' - diverse methods of communicating the will of God concerning us.

There is one other case we may suppose, where a man, not of God, speaks a truth which comes with conviction to the mind of another, as being a truth of God. But this supposes that other to be enlightened by God already, either as to the truth - as Caiaphas's assertion of the necessity and fitness of our Lord's death, as stated and adopted by John - or where a person, enlightened by conviction as to his own state, receives by providential means, not ordinary but such as have, when enquired into, a warrant for his faith in the truth, a statement of the grace of God applicable to his case. This is by the overruling mercy of Providence. Accordingly the Scripture, being complete (of which I shall mention evidence just now, not for proof's sake, for 'he that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself,' but for instruction to myself, and those to whom it may come) miracles are not to be looked for - they are the authentication of a testimony given by or committed to a person who bears not, in appearance to others, or has not in fact (which must always be the case where it is a revelation in the way of truth to be revealed, and not of the Supreme Glory itself which needs, and can have, no testimony afforded it) the authority to speak in his own name. So He has desired us, in what He has revealed, to try any proposal, of which signs are given as the confirmation, by the truth of His glory, which, in His excellent mercy, He has made known to us. The Lord Himself hath given us a sign - a virgin hath conceived, and borne a Son - God Himself hath been manifested in the flesh in the Person of Immanuel. He hath created a new thing in the earth. Nay! By the energy of His divine Spirit He doth still, by creation, adopt into the number of His sons those that are made new creatures in Christ Jesus, and who have therefore the witness in themselves - the Spirit also itself helping their infirmities, while it witnesseth with their spirit while, in the earthly house of this tabernacle, they groan being burthened, waiting for that building of God which is eternal in the heavens, not made with hands.

235 In writing this there was a tendency of my mind to feel as a giver and not as a receiver, which is practically atheism. Yet, if it may assist myself or others as being true, I leave it. All we have we have received to the glory of God the Father, by His Son Jesus Christ, through the intervention of the Holy Ghost. If I use it not accordingly to all this, I sin against the divine glory, and this even, in humblest acknowledgment of our responsibility of seeking by the means with every diligence and the freedom of the divine gift, in comparing the testimony of our Lord with other divine testimony, we must, while it remains true, ever bear in mind this difference, that while of old, so also after the outpouring of the Spirit, as it was, so it is, 'I have believed, and therefore I speak, we also believe and therefore speak.' Our Lord spake that He knew, and testified that He had seen, and as believers, in their testimony as in their person, manifest that which by the Spirit they have derived from His fulness - He, on the other hand, in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead, bodily in testimony and person, appeared as the Only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, speaking the Father's words, doing the Father's works, and manifesting and revealing Him in His Person.

236 Note in the consideration or execution of the most terrible judgments, and to our mind on the largest scale, the Lord never fails to see the smallest proof and fruit of grace. In the midst of the change of the whole scene, and the establishment of the heavenly place and glory of the Son of Man, and the judgment of all that was Jewish, He takes notice, in grace, of the two mites of the poor widow's simple-hearted and devoted offering to her God. It is a blessed consideration!

Fragments

<44033E> 237

There is a distinct development in 1 John 5: 18-20. As a general truth such is the characteristic of being born of God - such do not sin, and the wicked one has no hold on them, such being their nature. But further, 'We know that we are of God' - derive our nature from, and so are associated with Him. We affirm something about ourselves. It is not abstract as to a nature, but absolute contrast of nature and position as to ourselves - we are of God, the world is lying in the power of evil. But there is objective knowledge too - we know that the Son of God is come - we know Him that is true, and are in Him, even in His Son, and He is the true God. The contrast in verse 19, following on verse 18, is very absolute. It is not merely one born of God will not sin - a general truth - but the fact that we are of God and know it. The whole world is in exactly the opposite state - opposite essentially in condition and state. Besides that, we know the great truth of divine history, and we are in God by Him. Redemption, though clearly stated, is not the great subject of John, but life by resurrection - only we find it in resurrection.

_______

It is remarkable, though nature is spoken of, how mysticism is set aside in 1 John 4. Not only do verses 9, 10, do so positively, but verse 14, and again verse 16, 'the love that God hath to us.'

How exceedingly blessed is the place of Mary, in this respect, that when God is giving testimony to His rejected Son, as Son of God, Son of David, and Son of Man, she gives her testimony too. Her love has its place in doing so, and this is in its place which is very sweet. It comes before Son of David, and Son of Man, though these be God's testimonies because there are earthly glories to come. But she had tasted the power of resurrection in Lazarus, and associates herself in spirit and heart with Christ as the dying One. Not that she knew it by revelation or as knowledge, but she saw in spirit where the enmity of the Jews was tending - as their hatred, so her devoted attachment grew. The hearer of His Word, waiting for His will to go to Him, as He His Father's to come, she holds a very peculiar place here - to her act the Lord can give a voice. She was not, as it would seem, at the sepulchre - she does not come in that line of work. Bethany is neither Galilee nor Jerusalem; it stands entirely alone. It owns death when resurrection and life are there, but as estimating Christ's love in it.

______

238 We have a singular specimen of Jewish, Eastern or Platonic soul's pre-existence notion, in the Book of the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, chap. 41: 9, 10, though the unspotted body is out of the way. It is very likely that the disciples, in John 9, were under the popular, unreasoning influence of this, when they asked, 'Who did sin, this man or his parents?' The Lord's words would merely be negative.

______

Note both 2 Peter and Jude insist on our building up and progress, in presence of the decay of the Church and coming judgment. So that it is, as judging the outward state, a more close entering into relationship with God, in communion with what He is, and His ways in Christ as Lord. We have the precious promises as precious faith, but look forward as called by glory, and so are growing up, but that in the knowledge of God who has called us. We have all things necessary to life and godliness, but it is by that according to which we are called, that there is intelligently a partaking of the divine nature, i.e., a forming of our souls morally into what it is - its likeness. Positive evil we have escaped from.

________

It is perfectly extraordinary how completely similar the Zoroastrian liturgical forms, even to particular collects on particular saints' days, are to the Roman, or Anglican system. Could it have had its origin there by any possibility through Alexandria? See as to Pantanus, and India, and Buddhist influence. The priestly source and everything, getting the prayers said for them, and the priests paid for it, in order to forgiveness. The Mithra (bread-offering), and Heoma (soma, a plant) the Fathers noticed as an invention of the devil to travesty the Lord's supper. But this was a small part. But it shows it was known in the West.

________

239 The only attempt to prove the non-rapture of the Church which might seem to have Scripture to warrant it is that founded on Romans 11: 25, that blindness happens to Israel till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. But it proves nothing whatever, save that blindness is on Israel till the Church be complete. Then Israel's judicial blindness will cease. What the process is by which they are brought to be ready to own Christ, so that He comes (for He does not, till they are) is not spoken of. Other passages enlarge upon it - the sorrows, exercises, awakenings, pleadings which take place before the answer of grace, in the personal return of the Lord, comes. With these passages it proves the contrary of non-previous rapture, for, till the Church is complete, there is blindness, and these exercises of the heart according to Scripture are the proof that blindness is taken away, though the answer be not yet come. 'All Israel,' I think, results naturally enough from the fact that he speaks of blindness 'unto Israel.' In grace he had spoken only of branches broken off from the stock of promise, but, in fact, the nation, as such, was in outer darkness, for a time blindness was on it, the veil on their hearts. When the fulness of the Gentiles should be in, then this, as to the national condition, should be changed.

_______

Note the way in which justification and holiness are mingled with blessed affection when it is in the way of grace - when they are required, this cannot be. It is all very right. But grace will say, 'Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and' - not purify from evil - but 'purify to Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.' Compare Ephesians 5: 25, 26, 27; and Revelation 21: 27.

We may remark that, in the three first Churches of the Apocalypse, there is no mention of the Lord's coming. It is a present dealing spoken of. From Thyatira out, Christ's coming is spoken of till Laodicea - Thyatira, the Jezebel system, being established so that the resource was in looking out of it. In Laodicea, the case is quite changed, Christ knocks at the door, in case any one hears His voice in the midst of that which He is going to spue out of His mouth. The application of the coming is different. To the faithful under the Thyatira state, patience till He came; in the Sardis, as a thief, treating the whole as the world; in Philadelphia, cheering and encouraging the faithful to patience - He would soon be there.

________

240 There are evidently three words to Peter in Matthew 16, not pursuing the chapter further now. The Father had revealed the Person of Christ - the Son of the living God. Christ also gives him a name and place, and, further, the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

________

Note this beautiful circumstance in the heavenly Jerusalem. No one appears there. There is no crowd, no inhabitant. The city itself is the spouse, the Lamb's wife. But it has the glory of God, i.e., the glory of God and the Lamb is so entirely everything that the people are absorbed, as it were lost in the glory which is there, and the description becomes not of people but of the state in which they were. The divine glory was everything - the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb the temple - the Lord God Almighty the light, and the Lamb lightening it. The nations walk in its light - there we find people. In the city is, and there is nothing ever there but divine glory. In the Throne governing the world at the beginning, the elders and myriads of angels, etc., are seen surrounding the Throne - it is another scene.

_______

Note very particularly - to the disciples, who were looking up after Jesus, the Angels' word is, 'Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus shall so come,' etc. Stephen, being full of the Holy Ghost, gazed up steadfastly into heaven, and saw Jesus there, 'the Son of Man standing at God's right hand,' and prays his spirit may be received by Him. In Ephesians, we are sitting there together in Him, and (the Church being filled with, the habitation of God through, the Spirit) the principalities and powers now in turn look down and see the manifold wisdom of God in the Church. And now it becomes us for God's honour, that they should see comely things in us - 'because of the Angels.' Nota bene all this.

______

241 Kurios (Lord) is clearly used, I apprehend, as a proper name, for Jehovah, without the article, in Matthew 27: 10; Mark 13: 20; Luke 1: 15, 58, 76; chap. 2: 9; Acts 7: 49; Romans 4: 8; chap. 9: 28; Hebrews 7: 21; chap. 12: 6; and 1 Peter 1: 25.

______

We may note that Jesus preached, distinctively, the gospel of the kingdom.

________

It is a wonderful witness of the deep and full blessing into which we are brought, that through the Holy Ghost (i.e., God dwelling in us and we in Him) we are brought to know Him and the blessedness into which no creature can enter. God dwells in the light which no one can approach unto - yet we know Him as dwelling there. We know what light is, and we understand that in that essential being and glory He must be unapproachable. Yet it is because we know what it is, He dwelling in us in love, that we know it must be unapproachable - yet know Him there.

So even Christ's present place - no one can ever be there but He. Yet it is our special blessing to know what that place is, and what He is as there, and how He is there, and went there; see John 17 and 13, as well as Hebrews 1 and other passages alluding to Psalm 110.

_______

For justification, we reckon ourselves dead. For practice we have the sentence of death in ourselves. To have this realised we always bear about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, and God delivers us to death, to meet our feebleness, where the desire is sincere, and carry it out. Paul realised this - death worked in him; and power - life - was unhindered in its operation towards and to the benefit of, the Corinthians. So if he suffered, it was for their consolation - if he was comforted, because, by his drawing his comforts immediately from Christ, he could comfort others and bring to them what was in Christ. This way of God's dealings, elsewhere remarked on, is most precious. But then he was not unsustained by them, by the weakest of them, 'Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons, thanks may be given by many on our behalf.' All things for the Church. God allowing the weakness of the vessel to be felt, that divine faithfulness and love, divine consolations might be known. These are experienced in one who held himself dead, and in integrity of purpose, and by the dispensation of God helping him, was made to realise it. So, in the power of these consolations, he could console, and, in the power of the life of Christ, work in others, but then they were helping him by their prayers, and were called to realise, by the ministration of life, the death to all things which gave such unhindered power of and in Christ to the Apostle, and so he saw and owned his hope was the fact that, as they partook of the sufferings they would of the consolation. As for him, his hope was in One who raised the dead. What could Satan and the murderers of this world do?

________

242 Colossians 3: 12 is the formal character of Christ towards others, in the consciousness of relationship - for Christ is the Elect One, Holy and Beloved - what precedes the subjective and objective condition for oneself before God. In the Psalms there is a measure of similarity in this latter part, only no sonship nor clear knowledge of grace, but integrity pleaded, righteousness claimed, only mercy put first as it must be for the Remnant. Hence when we come to dealing with others, we have the sword and judgment instead of grace. The fruit partakes of, but brings out more clearly the character of the relationship. Trust is not the Church's place, but relationship and character. Hence Peter and Hebrews take this ground, not union with Christ, but a Mediator. Here faith in the character of trust and confidence is enlarged upon.

_______

243 We are called upon to know the time of God's visitation morally - to judge the time - to know our adversary in the way with Him. Now the Lord gives a great means of this immediately after He says so; Luke 19: 42-46. The Word of God tells what His house is in His mind. It is a house of prayer, where man is in intercourse with a God of love - where he finds a home with Him, and a refuge in his need and distress. It may have been imperfectly known, but the Lord who knew the Father's heart knew it to be such. To Him it was a house of prayer. So to the spiritual mind - to him who fears God and so has the secret of the Lord - God's house has its character from Himself. Hence it knows by the Word which reveals it, what He would have - what His house ought to be, because he knows what He who dwells there is. The passages in the Word which speak of it have their force and suggest themselves to his mind, give him the clue to judge of the character of the time. It is remarkable how this characterises the Lord. How He draws out from the Word characteristic passages which give the central points of divine truth as what the essence of the Law was, the Son of David being Lord at the moment of His departure, and even the resurrection in connection with faithfulness to promises, and the future millennial glory on earth, in His reply to the Sadducees! But the Word also describes the evil as man's heart produces it, and judges it according to the good the child of God knows, dear to him as knowing God Himself, his Father, as its Source. And thus the state of things is judged, 'It is written, My house is a house of prayer, ye have made it a den of thieves.' Men speak of respect, and a right-minded person is imbued with a spirit of respect, but I am too ignorant, too imperfect in judgment, too evil to know what to respect. The disposition may even deceive me, without the Word of God. Then guided by it, I respect, jealously respect what is of God, with affections which hold to Him, and a submission to what His Word says - what touches that, has the character of evil, is the opposite to respectable. The heart is engaged in its thoughts towards God - the judgment guided by the Word, both for good and in its judgment of evil. Thus the state of things is known, and God's heart and judgment about it.

Review of Aryan Mythology

J. N. Darby.

<44034E> 244

(Notes and Comments Vol. 4.)

{"The Mythology of the Aryan Nations," by George W. Cox, M.A. 2 vols. London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1870.}

Though both are much more learned than I am, Mr. Cox is really carried away by the lady-pleasing flippancy of Mr. Max Muller. Though the research into Vedic myths, as the origin of all, be interesting, it is curious how a couple of sentences in Scripture solve the riddles of volumes. 'The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil.' There is a conscience which is not a revelation, but in its nature contrary to it, and inherent in man, though revelation acts on it, and then man 'did not like,' ouk edokimasan, 'to retain God in his knowledge' in Romans 1, and Plato and Socrates in Romans 2, and all is explained. There was a law, but no revelation proper, till after man's fall. Yet he says, page 10, 'The reason of man is the Divine Reason dwelling in him; the voice of his conscience is the word of God. That these gifts involved a revelation of divine truth, it is impossible to deny.'

Page 72. 'It was impossible that any real fetish worship could arise while man had not arranged his first conceptions with regard to the nature of all material things, or even to his own. If from the consciousness of his own existence he attributed the same existence to all outward objects, he did so, as we have seen, without drawing any distinctions between consciousness and personality. If, however, this earliest state of things was not followed by one which invested outward things with a personal life, if in some way men could believe in a malignant yet unconscious and non-sentient power residing in stones and rocks, there would at once be developed a fetish worship, the most degrading and the most hopeless, which, if expanded at all, could only issue in a polytheism of devils, etc., etc.' None of these mythologists see that it is the want of a God that has made impressions of nature so powerful. Having originally consciousness of God, power and Godhead, and having lost the Being in whom it was, they took effects and signs, and ascribed power to them, and personified them. There may have been the progress referred to - I think it very likely - but it flows from two things, the consciousness of power above and outside them, and their having lost Him in whom it was, in beneficence. And it is evident that the tracing back from what is can only take the elements of what is. But none of their theories, as far as I know, account for the source element - the notion of power above and outside ourselves - its forms and workings in the mind, but not for the thing itself. Yet power is - the poetry and language connected with it is only the form it takes when God Himself is lost.

245 Another element omitted by them, and, in this book, confounded with the divine Spirit, is conscience - the making the difference in ourselves between good and evil - a thing quite apart from the progress formation of mythology.

Thus by the Scriptural statement all is easy to account for, only the starting point for their theories was really fallen man, not created man. It is not a revelation. He says, 'Mr. Gladstone discerns the germs of that nature-worship which was ingrafted on the true religion originally imparted to mankind.' This is all ignorance of truth, and nonsense. Nor does it suppose man created without knowledge of God, in brutish ignorance, but naturally associated with God, and leaving Him. Besides the power of seducing evil is ignored too.

Page 87. 'If Theseus and Sigurd, Phoibos and Achilleus, Odysseus, Oidipous, and Perseus are though different, yet the same, if their adventures or their times of inaction are simply the fruit of an inevitable process going on in all kindred languages, all charges of immorality founded on the character of these adventures fall completely to the ground.' They do not fall to the ground at all; for why did man's imagination turn the natural images into immorality, and be capable of attaching it to their gods? It was darkness, not light. Conscience worked against it.

Page 96. 'The picture drawn by Dr. Dollinger, of the great Olympian deities, may in all its particulars be strictly true. It is possible or probable that ideas utterly foreign to the Greek mind may have been imported from Phrygia, Phoenicia, or Egypt, and that the worship so developed may have embodied philosophical conceptions of nature and of the powers at work in it. But the question which calls for an answer cannot be determined by the most masterly portraiture of the great gods of the Olympos, and Dr. Dollinger's hypothesis does not enable us to answer it. It starts on an assumption for which we have no evidence; and all the evidence furnished by the book of Genesis and still more all that is furnished by the study of language, militates against the idea that man started originally with a conception of God, 'as a pure, spiritual, supernatural, and infinite being, distinct from the world, and exalted above it.' I agree that man had only the knowledge of a Supreme Power, good, and to whom he owed obedience, and Dr. Dollinger goes, as all Christian doctors, too far. But Cox's idea that men thought clouds were living beings and the like is absurd. They went up a hill and were in the fog. Imagination made them such, and the sun and stars more easily, which seemed to have voluntary motion and were out of reach. That imagination, because they had lost God, peopled woods and springs with beings, is quite true; the rest was made by priests and poets.

246 Page 97, note 2. 'In truth, when we speak of the monotheistic faith of the Jewish people, we speak of their faith of their teachers. All the evidence at our command seems to show that at least down to the time of the Babylonish captivity the main body of the people was incurably polytheistic.' This shows when and why revelation came in in mercy. In Gentiles it was a mixture of images with verbic legends of ancestors - in revelation the correction of it by truth as to One God.

There was no revelation before the fall - free intercourse of God with man, and a law, but no revelation properly speaking, no need of one, nor knowledge of good and evil. By the fall man acquired the knowledge of good and evil, and a revelation of the seed of the woman was added in the judgment of the serpent. A simple law, forbidding an act as to what is present, is not a revelation. But God had spoken to man, and present intercourse was natural, and man was to enjoy everything save what tested obedience. God took care disobedience should bring in conscience, and grace gave a revelation. But Noah's position was different. There was the knowledge of good and evil, and horrible evil and monstrous evil already experienced, revelations and judgment executed on evil, and now even put into man's hands. There had been men of renown, and what seems to be in fables, I do not see any trace of idolatry before the flood. It is a pity men do not take the trouble of reading God's account of the matter, even as a history. It accounts for a thousand things they are puzzling their brains about, without pretending to do it as a history, yet meets facts, and the human mind, and the human conscience, so as even thus to give the clearest evidence of the truth. The key fits the wards, and opens all, small as it is.

It is very curious how the coming in of conscience has been neglected or rejected alike by Christians and philosophers. It is not the Spirit of God, nor a revelation - the contrary in its nature. It is the making difference between good and evil, right and wrong, that is without one. Law is only its rule for man. The Spirit acts on it. But that revelation is only given when fallen, opens out a wide field of thought for the natural state of one right with God, and also in grace. What the Law requires is the maintenance of the relationships in which we are according to God, according to the tenor of them. It is the full rule for conscience, but not for the Christian, because he is brought to God, and knows not what man ought to be merely but what God is. Mr. Gladstone is all wrong also, from not attending to Scripture. The fact of Satan's, or evil, power was known to Adam - he was fallen by it, and the natural goodness of God and revelation declared the woman's seed should bruise the serpent's head. And gradually some glimmerings of clearer revelation came in, but the counsels of God in Christ, and eternal life and incorruptibility was reserved for revelation, when righteousness, the foundation of glory, and accomplishing the counsels, was laid in the Cross and by the coming of the Second Man. The first was the responsible man, the Second connected with counsels and promises. The Cross made all righteous.

247 Mr. Gladstone's theory in his 'Homer and the Homeric age' is, that 'all that is evil in Greek mythology is the result not of a natural and inevitable process, when words used originally in one sense came unconsciously to be employed in another, but of a systematic corruption of very sacred and very mysterious doctrines.' Mr. Cox says, 'On the supposition that Greek mythology was a corrupted religious system, it must, to whatever extent, have supplied a rule of faith and practice, and the actions and characters of the gods must have furnished a justification for the excesses of human passion.' 'The power and wisdom of the Homeric gods is great and lofty, while their moral standard is indefinitely low.' Though I do not take up Mr. Gladstone's theory, Mr. Cox's argument has little force, because consistency in the mythology of a poet, or in any, is a blunder. Only the great elements can be taken, and there are other sources of mythology. 'The idea of God' - mixed up with tradition as to man's history and confused with it - the apotheosis in the stars of men, or the stars themselves, and, as is so well known, the generative principle which exercised an immense influence over it, and the renewal of nature when creation was not believed in. But it is only the abstract general idea you get. What it is clothed in, and legends, come from many sources and an unbridled imagination, and Satan's influence over the mind of man by fear and passion. All gods ever run up into one supreme.

248 And, further, Satan being there, though the thought of God was there, yet man's feeling was distrust of God, and He stood as One jealous of man's getting too much blessing - fire was stolen from heaven, so to speak, in getting wisdom by eating the forbidden fruit. The protoplast got it. And all such things must be taken into account. It is the mixture of God, man, ancestors and stars, in one system of thought that accounts for it and its inconsistencies, and generation and imagination peopling natural forces with being, and all this poetically systematised, which is the shape we have it in, Hellenically, and, in a measure, in Hindooism; and, it must be added, priestcraft. The effect of sin too is left out, for no one can deny that the Grecian gods are largely the 'peopled idea' of passions, and that vain and low-minded people gave their own character to their ideal gods - 'thought,' as the Psalm says, 'that I was altogether such an one as thyself.' It was not merely time but the character of the race that formed it. Still the universality of the same mythology essentially shows a common source. Nor do I doubt that, though variously developed, it had an invention of Satan working in man's nature, when he could not destroy the idea of God. Egyptian mythology is clearly the same. Local traditions are another thing. Probably Sabaeism never originally fell in with this scheme. Epiphanius gives a tradition. It began in Livy's time.

There is another element omitted here when diffusion is taken in, viz., Noah's history and the legends connected with it. And, where dispersion is supposed, as it is by Mr. Cox, in page 99, it would hardly be left out, and, while the mythology of each nation would connect itself with local history, general mythology with original history, and we should get the difference between gods and demi-gods, though all might refer more or less simply and clearly to natural phenomena, we should get the great gods common, and the demi-gods more local, though all mixed up through the common imagery. In many respects Egypt seems to me, whatever the reason, to stand apart, though the gods and local demi-gods are there, at any rate gods of special power. But actual nature had more place, and Amenti (Hades) a very much larger place - Osiris and Typhon, good and evil, and conscience. The dead (unless under curse) were called justified. And the slain Osiris, in some respects the chief of all, was judge of Amenti. And Thoth's office in Amenti I am not aware of having anything like. The whole had a more moral turn in this part, though the idolatry was essentially the same.

249 Page 100. 'No claim to the character of historical traditions can be made out for the same incidents when we find them repeated in the same order and with the same issue in different ages and different lands.' This proof of absence of historical fact at the beginning only applies to his own particular facts and nothing else.

Page 101. In his myths about Niobe, Orpheus and Europe, etc., another priest or poet must have deliberately made the myths out of the expressions. Herakles is the sun, loving and beloved wherever he goes! In Phaethon, we have the plague of drought! Perseus slaying Medusa is the sun killing the night! etc., etc.

Page 106. 'The touching truthfulness of the language which tells of the Dawn as the bright being whom age cannot touch . . . We feel that while the "Homeric" poet spoke of a god in human form born in Delos, he thought of the sun rising in a cloudless heaven, and told how the nymphs bathed the lord of the golden sword in pure water, and wrapped him in a spotless robe,' etc., etc. 'All that is beautiful is invested with a purer radiance, while much, if not all, that is gross and coarse is refined, or else its grossness is traced to an origin which reflects no disgrace on those who framed or handed down the tale.'

Well! I should think turning the pure images of nature into corrupt gods like men, the greatest proof of depravity possible.

Page 109. 'The great epic poems of the Aryan race exhibit an identical framework, with resemblances in detail which defy the influences of climate and scenery.' 'The traditions of many, if not most, of the Aryan nations are now known to us through the long toil and vast researches of comparative mythologists, aided by the mighty machinery of the printing press.' It is the want of God, the fulness of Scripture and divine knowledge that makes these things so important, and the printing press a kind of god. To me, all these discoveries make man exceedingly little.

250 Page 190. 'Far from furnishing any warrant for the conclusion that there was a real Agamemnon and a real Achilles, the great German epic' (the Nibelungen Lied) 'justifies a strong suspicion even of the names which are embodied in the oral traditions of a people.' 'If the Homeric poems tell us no more than that there was a king named Agamemnon, and a chief called Achilles, who may never have been at Troy (for Cromwell was not at Scarborough) and that there was also a struggle of some sort, although we know not what, at Ilion, we have before us a barren statement of which we can make nothing.' All the proofs against an historical groundwork are weak, and forget what poetry is - a composition, but a composition sufficiently taken from facts (when not mere odes) to interest those to whom they are addressed. Were they mere histories they would not be poetry. They may be romances where popular feeling has turned history into a romance, and, if odes to gods, meet popular ideas though assumed to exalt them. But where professedly historic, they need not be facts, but based on facts sufficient to meet popular feeling and tradition; and the analogy of Charlemagne and Roland, Mr. Cog speaks of, just proves this, for we have a case where just the same arbitrary treatment of facts is found, and, according to him, the sun brought in and its history. Yet it is proved to be by contemporary history - to have a basis of facts. One could not have a stronger analogy for the character of the Iliad. An anachronism, such as sending Charlemagne to the crusades, disproves nothing. If there had been no Scarborough, no Cromwell, and no war, the tradition could not have existed, and poetry is not mere tradition. It forms its colour and schemes from the time it lives in.

Page 191. This page is utterly false. The conclusion is, or may be, we cannot on sufficient ground for certainty, receive any narratives, especially as they stand. His sun histories contradict each other, but he gets a clue and accepts all. And where tradition and poetry have made a story, you may have many to suit the poets' taste.

Page 193 is equally weak. He says: 'The method by which the upholders of the so-called Homeric history seek to sustain their conclusions may well appall the sober seekers after truth, who see the havoc thus made in those canons of evidence which should guide the statesman and the judge not less than the scholar.' He makes no allowance for the way poetry introduces what connects itself with known local traditions. Who would take the canons of a judge and law for judging of facts in Homer? There may be disproof But no contradictions, after Charlemagne's being a crusader, will prop up his case.

251 Page 195 is all fudge. He says, 'If we are to admit that the historical character of the Iliad is not affected, even though Agamemnon and Achilles may never have met at all, and no Helen may have existed to give cause to the war, then it is clear that all freedom of judgment is gone. But no one can submit to be thus bound, who believes that his powers of thought are given him as a sacred trust, and that, unless he seeks to know facts as they are, he is chargeable with the guilt of wilful blindness,' etc., etc.

Page 199 is a mistake. The statement of 'greater force in ancestors than in living countrymen,' is common poetry in earlier ages, unless all have copied Homer.

Page 200. 'The critics have torn to shreds the historical character of the Iliad.' The historical character of a poem is all nonsense, save as a traditional basis.

Page 209. 'A philosophical analysis has resolved the materials of these great epics into the earliest utterances of human thought, when man first became capable of putting into words the expressions made on his mind by the phenomena of the outward world.' I confess, to me it seems exceedingly stupid this meagre repetition, met only by the multifarious grossness of the Purana and Vedic tales. But note how Mr. Cox himself sees nothing but this life - God does not come in. He has only its toil and its monotony. I have always felt that poetry was only an effort to have a larger sphere for the mind, because it had not the true larger world of faith. But how poor it is! Only it shows what is cannot satisfy man's mind. Besides, be it that Achilles is the sun, and that someone borrowed the legends current to make a poem - the whole details of the Iliad, a man must be very unpoetical to see only a Sun-god in. The pretensions of this page are only this, one source of certain elements of the Iliad has been found, and only the barest skeleton, yea backbone of it - therefore there can be none else! To me it is quite indifferent. But if there is an Iliad and an Achilleis, this is knocked on the head. Ajax is not the sun too.

252 The general uniformity of mythology has long been a settled point with me, and proof how little and poor man is, but this leaves many other questions wholly unsettled, and Mr. Cox is very superficial, and takes much for granted, even as to the origin of language, the connection of names, and idol worship with stars, and a host of other points. Supposing I ask why, if Dyaus be Zeus, he is born in Crete? Mr. Cox gives no answer - Why Nebrod (Orion, Nimrod) and his dog are in the sky? No answer - Why Jupiter is a planet? No answer, or, if there be, one language does not explain it, let it be Sanskrit twice over, nor blunders as to similar words. But then, when his idol Philology is made to explain the growth of morality, it is violating not only revelation but the existing relationships amongst men. I know 'daughter' means a girl who milks, but that may show a daughter was a milkmaid, not that there was no sense of the relationship, and that men grew from milking to know natural relationships. Did a mother not feel what her child was till she could milk the cows? Her sucking child, the fruit of her womb, was what she knew. It is monstrous nonsense, and that is all - a poor hobby, and absence of all thought. He says: 'In the Aryan names for father, brother, sister, daughter, we have the proof that the words existed for an indefinite length of time before they assumed the meanings which we now assign to them, and we are forced to conclude that the recognition of family relations was not the first step in the history of mankind.' Besides, Ormuzd and Ahriman are not Hindoo mythology. The sense of good and evil lies deeper than observation of natural phenomena, though these may be mixed up with it. He says: 'The character of the struggle between Phoebus and Python, Achilles and Paris, Oedipus and the Sphinx, and Ormuzd and Ahriman indicated the fight between the co-ordinate powers of good and evil,' etc.

Page 216. 'A vast number of incidents belonging to the Trojan war, not mentioned or barely noticed in our Iliad and Odyssey, were treated of in epic poems current in the days of the great Attic tragedians. From this vastly inferior literature Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides drew so largely that at least sixty of their known plays are taken directly from it, while only two are taken from the Iliad and Odyssey.' If the tragedians, etc., refer to other poems called Homeric, as Iliads, and for stories connected with Ilion, we have the strongest proof of a consistent tradition that, with various accounts, some events interesting to Greece had happened there. But it is singular that the conviction that no man in any country had a thought beyond the struggle of light and darkness, summer and winter, does not give the idea how utterly low and poor the state was to which man had reduced himself. Besides it is the phenomena turned into fables, not the phenomena admired or observed which we have. The actual history of Ahriman pursuing Ormuzd's beneficent creation, and ruining it, as a fable, has nothing to do with his sun-struggle, though Ahura-Mazdao is to have the upper hand at the end. Nor is his system consistent, for the sun was to die, according to the ideas of men, but he goes to the cave of the Gorgons to fight with the powers of darkness, and so in all the stories.

253 Page 234. 'The myth of the Lykian Sarpedon has a close affinity with that of the Ethiopian Memnon; and in the Ethiopians who fight at Troy we have another people for whom it becomes impossible to find a local earthly habitation. The story explains itself. The tears which Eos sheds on the death of her child are morning dew. The men who follow him are, according to the Herodotean story, exempt from the ills of humanity; and their tables are always loaded with banquets which no labour of theirs has provided. We shall find the Ethiopians dwelling not on the coasts of Asia and Africa, but in the bright Aether, the ethereal home of Zeus himself, far above the murky air of our lower world.' All this is simply ridiculous. I suppose there was something besides Aether in the land of Cush, be it east or west, and men in Tyre and Sidon, let the Greeks call them by what name they will.

The origin of myths is interesting, as showing what man is without God, but to make a myth of everything, and all things nothing but a myth, because of the etymology of words, is to lose the clue to information instead of using it. If Ionians mean 'Men of the East,' the men are not a myth, and I may enquire, why are they called so? That Sanskrit images have been a source of poetry, and an origin of fables! Be it so - I have no objection to it. But to stop there when I have living men before me is stupid. To connect these names with facts, because they are Sanskrit, is the problem. If Argive means 'light,' and Ionians 'dawn,' what does this lead me to is the question? That they are all of Aryan race. There is one probable fact. It may prove Iberians are not, and Lapps and Finns. But to make moonshine of it all, or sunshine, is absurd. The idolatrous part of it is very instructive. But the origin of the Aryan nations, pastoral and having boats (not sails, it seems) before dispersion, leads us up to only recent, and socalled patriarchal times, not to a barbarous state, by the proofs of language. Barbarous nations are known now, but tracing man up to barbarism is pure hypothesis, and aboriginal myths are not barbaric. Indra (the sun) driving flocks (clouds) to pasture, and the marriage of Varuna and Gaia are comparatively civilisation; and what have they before it?

254 I am not master of the Homeric question assuredly, but the Attic tragic poets using other versions than ours proves nothing, save that there were other traditions of an obscure history. If I were making a tragedy of Adam and Eve, assuredly I should not take Milton's Paradise Lost to make it out of. He would take the facts which suited his poetical power, as Homer or others did, and embellish them according to his genius.

Page 254. Speaking of the Iliad, Mr. Cox says: 'The poet closed his narrative with the triumphant outburst of the sun from the clouds which had hidden his glory. He was inspired by the old phrases which spoke of a time of serene though short-lived splendour after the sun's great victory.' Does Mr. Cox think that the poet was thinking of the sun and clouds only in the Iliad, and if not what was he thinking of? The descriptions of countries and kings, exact or unexact, prove he had something else in view, though he may have adapted ill-known legends to it. It may be said, 'This is another poem.' But even this only shows that, as a whole, it is a mixture of local tradition and ancient legends, and the scene is the same, the local scene, gods and all - the mise en scene, and even persons brought into play by Achilles' sullenness, i.e., the plan of the poem, though legends and other things may have been used and that in what enters into its essence and construction.

Page 258, 9. The note to these pages proves, I think, clearly that there was no direct intentional reference to solar legends, even in the Achilleis. It says: 'Paris as the seducer of Helen is indubitably the dark robber who steals away the treasure of light from the sky; but it is difficult to deny that Paris, as fighting for his country, or in the beneficence of his early career, has all the features of Perseus, Oedipus and Telephos. All the Trojan champions are in league with the dark powers of night,' etc.

255 Page 262. 'The attempt to judge the great legendary heroes of the Iliad by a reference to the ordinary standard of Greek, or, rather of Christian and modern morality, has imparted to the criticism an air almost of burlesque. There was doubtless quite enough evil in the character of the Northman and the Greek; but it never would have assumed that aspect which is common to the heroes of their epic poetry.' All this about morality is fudge. The poet colours his facts to suit his hearers or readers, who were very little scrupulous and loved revenge and success, like other passionate barbarians, and all heathens are morally barbarians, and that specially worthless people, the Greeks, above all. Who does not see that Grecian triumph and the degradation of enemies would please Grecian ears? The German character, though liable to such excess as human nature is, is different.

Page 271. The closing remark is perfectly absurd. He says: 'The poems may remain a mine of wealth for all who seek to find in them pictures and manners of the social life of a pre-historic age; but all the great chiefs are removed beyond a criticism, which starts with attributing to them the motives which influence mankind under any circumstances whatever.' As if the poet, whoever he was, did not frame the picture according to the taste of his hearers, whatever legends were employed! He gives them as Grecian chieftains, writing or improvising for Greeks. All this is simple blindness.

Page 312, etc. I see no reason to doubt that the phenomena of the sun, and heaven, and light were a chief source of tales and idolatrous fables, but to find nothing else in any is unspeakably stupid and narrow too, because why did men turn them into these fables? And there are other parts, and sources, and thoughts, partly in man's conscience, partly in deification of ancestors, star-worship, etc. Sabeanism is not the same thing as Ionism so-called. But 'all imagery meaning the rising and setting sun,' is overdoing it.

Page 321. 'The translators raise a vital issue when they say that to us moderns the real interest in these records of a past state of life lies principally in seeing events true in the main treated vividly and dramatically by people who completely understood the manners, life, and above all the turn of mind of the actors in them. If we have any honest anxiety to ascertain facts, and if we are prepared to give credit to a narrative only where the facts have been so ascertained, then everything is involved in the question whether the events here related are true in the main or not.' I am not much concerned in it, but all this is absurd, first, though of course exaggerated to produce wonder - poems or sagas must be suited, if current, to the taste of the times; and next, the removal of poetical facts leaves the question of historical facts simply an open question of probability and proof.

256 Page 327. 'The Vedic hymns bring before us a people to whom the death of the sun is a present reality, for whom no analogy has suggested the idea of a continuous alternation of day and night, and who know not, as the fiery chariot of the sun sinks down in the west whether they shall ever see again the bright face of him who was their friend.' It seems to me absurd to make the working of imagination to be the real thought, as that the sun died when it went down. When these things turned into idolatry and myths, then, of course, all was personified, and filled superstition because God was unknown, and imagination, never faith nor affections, connected with it. How well the Apostle, the Spirit of God says, 'By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, and that the things which are seen were not formed of those which do appear!' Still man's mind constantly ran up into the inalienable thought of God, the testimonium animoe, not indeed Christianoe, but of a divine Being, supreme and only God.

Page 331. 'That sense of sin, which, as distinguished from the transgression of a positive law, can scarcely be said to have been present to the Greek mind, weighs heavy on the spirit of the Hindu, even while his conception of the Deity whom he addresses may be almost coarse in its familiarity.' Why so? He gives us no proof. How does he know?

Page 332. 'The simple utterances of the Vedic poets show even more forcibly that the genuine belief in one almighty Being who is at once our Father, our Teacher, and our Judge, had its home first in the ancient Aryan land. It was a conviction to which they were guided by all that they saw or could apprehend of outward phenomena as well as by the irrepressible yearnings which stirred their hearts. For such yearnings and for such a consciousness in the Hebrew tribes we look in vain, before the Babylonish captivity.' How perfectly what accounts for all the beginning with one true God, which must be if there be one, and turning to idolatry, not discerning, not liking to retain God in their knowledge, is left out here! It is rather a contempt of Scripture for a clergyman, but whence came the yearnings if men began as barbarians, intelligent brutes, and only acquired ideas of God, their original state being that they thought the Sun died out and out every evening? And how then did they make one god of it? Is it not evident that the thoughts of one supreme God still remained in the human mind, though overlaid by idolatry? And how the confession that the Greeks had no idea of sin shows, along with their worthless levity, the progress of demoralisation with that of formal idolatry and anthropomorphism!

257 Page 337. 'The Vedic gods are pre-eminently transparent. Instead of one acknowledged king, each is lord in his own domain; each is addressed as the maker of all visible things, while their features and characteristics are in almost all cases interchangeable. Dyaus and Indra, Varuna and Agni are each in his turn spoken of as knowing no superior, and the objects of their chief care are not the children of men, but the winds, the storms, the clouds, and the thunder, which are constantly rising in rebellion against them. No sooner is one conflict ended than another is begun, or rather the same conflict is repeated as the days and seasons come round.' 'The true religious instinct must point to the absolute rule of one righteous God, and cannot itself originate the idea of many independent centres of action.' That the acknowledgment of one true God turned into the recognition of power in the heavens, Sun and various elements in respect to their influence on the interests of men, is evident. But that Dyaus, Varuna and Indra at first individually supplanted one another, just as Ouranos (Earth), Kronos (Time) and Zeus did, cannot, I think, be questioned - supplanted by more human and grosser forms, as Vishnu and Siva, though these, as all Indian gods, are treated by their votaries as supreme. Brahma was but Brahm - a more intellectual conception.

Page 339. 'If we find that, when examined, the functions of the Hindu and Hellenic deities become, if the expression may be used, more and more atmospheric - if they become the powers which produce the sights of the changing sky - if their great wars are waged in regions far above the abodes of men, the last blow is given to the theory which by the most arbitrary of assumptions finds the root of all mythology in the religious instincts of mankind.' No blow is given at all, still less to the original knowledge of one true God turned into idolatry but never lost, and phenomena made poetry of in connection with idolatry. The instinctive recognition of One Supreme runs through all idolatry. The religious instinct is what remained of this. There is a great want of scope of mind in this book.

258 But this, page 348, upsets the whole argument of the book. He says: 'In India the name Dyaus retained, as we have seen, its appellative force, and as a designation for the supreme God, was supplanted by the less significant Indra.' The Hindus kept the terms as an appellative, he tells us. Be it so - if so, the original and even long preserved idea was not that they were really living persons like themselves, nor could brightness be a person, though the Sun, as seeming to have voluntary motion and life might soon become so, and so he says here. 'If, then, in the names which were afterwards used to denote the supreme God we have words which in all Aryan dialects convey the primary idea of brightness, a clear light is at once shed on the first stages in the mental and moral education of mankind. The profound splendour of the unclouded heaven must mark the abode of the Being who made and sustains all things; and thus names denoting at first only the sky became in the West as in the East names of God.' The bright sky was held to be the dwelling place of Zeus or Dyaus! That the idle, heartless, selfish Greeks soon turned it all into this channel is very likely. And the difference of Hesiod and the Homerics just shows the whole thing. Hesiod's poems are a kind of quiet treatise which arranges the idolatry, for he had naught else as a theory, but when, in sober thought, conscience could have a place, and so God as such have a place according to conscience, Homer, or whoever it is, had to plead men's passions. Hence the gods themselves are brought in to gratify these passions, while keeping up appearances in a supreme though heartless being.

But what a picture of the wretched folly and misery of man does page 363 give. He says, 'We have more than the germ of mediaeval Lykanthropy, and little more is needed to bring before us the Were-wolf or Vampire superstition in its full deformity. That superstition has been amongst the most fearful scourges of mankind; but here, as elsewhere, it is something to learn that a confusion between two words identical in sound, and springing from the same root, laid the foundations of this frightful delusion.' The greatest proof, perhaps, of this folly and misery is the writer's insensibility to it. Why its springing from words should comfort him, it is hard to tell. There it was, whatever it sprung from, and its doing so only proved the power of the devil's delusions over man and his imbecility.

259 Page 369. 'The links which connect the belief of the one race with that of the others may be traced readily enough. The Vedic gods, like the Hellenic, live for ever.' This is a great blunder. The Vedic gods, at any rate, according to the systematised mythology, cease to exist when Brahm goes to sleep again, all is Maia (forgetfulness) - gods and all.

Page 373. 'The idea which the Aryans of India sought to express under the names Brahman and Atman, the Aryans of Europe strove to signify by the name Wuotan. That idea centred in the conception of Will as a power which brought all things into being and preserves them in it, of a will which followed man wherever he could go, and from which there was no escape, which was present alike in the heavens above and in the depths beneath, an energy incessantly operating and making itself felt in the multiplication as well as in the sustaining of life. Obviously there was no one thing in the physical world which more vividly answered to such a conception than the wind, as the breath of the great Ether, the moving power which purifies the air. Thus the Hindu Brahman denoted originally the active and propulsive force in creation, and this conception was still more strictly set forth under the name Atman, the breath or spirit which becomes the atmosphere of the Greeks and the athem of the Germans.' It is astonishing he does not see that this is pantheism. But I suspect his knowledge of Hindooism is very second-hand. He knew no Brahm as distinct from Brahma before.

VOLUME 2

The absurd futility of this book may be a corrective of the evil that is in it.

Page 118 and following. All this is not only morally disgusting, but ridiculously absurd. I have already noticed how this hobby of nature impressions, and human progress from it, is unnatural folly. As if a mother only knew what a mother was by long progress of human nature from physical phenomena! It is too absurd. A cow has more truth than that. And the application of phenomena to these things shows the things were known. In Hebrew none of this is true as to the language. It is only true where man has followed his own thoughts. And words cannot NOW express sacred relations unless sacred relations are there to be expressed. He says: 'The history of words carries us back to an age in which not a single abstract term existed, in which human speech expressed mere bodily wants and mere sensual motions, while it conveyed no idea of morality or of religion. If every name which throughout the whole world is or has been employed as a name of the One Eternal God, the Maker and Sustainer of all things, was originally a name only for some sensible object or phenomenon, it follows that there was an age, the duration of which we cannot measure, but during which man had not yet risen to any consciousness of his relation to the great Cause of all that he saw or felt around him. If all the words which now denote the most sacred relations of kindred and affinity were at the first names conveying no such special meaning, if the words father, mother, sister, daughter, were words denoting merely the power or occupation of the persons spoken of, then there was a time during which the ideas now attached to the words had not yet been developed. But the sensuousness which in one of its results produced mythology could not fail to influence in whatever degree the religious growth of mankind. This sensuousness consisted in ascribing to all physical objects the same life of which men were conscious themselves.' It proves that man had got into materialism - a very important point. But his argument only shows that man was bad, which badness, though he cannot deny it, led to the Mylitta worship he seeks to excuse as simplicity, though admitting that 'No degradation could well be greater than that of the throngs who hurried to the temples of the Babylonian Mylitta.' But his theory would prove that God created man thus bad, and that man formed himself gradually into morality. When he goes on to bring in Moses putting the serpent on the pole in the Desert as Phallic worship, and Eve's temptation to figures of the same source of evil, it is too morally imbecile to deserve any attention, and so in the note to page 116. He says: 'The phallic tree is introduced into the narrative of the book of Genesis, but it is here called a tree of good and evil, that knowledge which dawns in the mind with the first consciousness of difference between man and woman. In contrast with this tree of carnal indulgence leading to death is the tree of life, denoting the higher existence for which man was designed, and which would bring with it the happiness and the freedom of the children of God. In the brazen serpent of the Pentateuch the two emblems of the cross and serpent, the quiescent and energising Phallos, are united.'

261 But the whole book is Sun-godship run mad. But the Lingam is Siva clearly, not Vishnu, so he is every way wrong. But how simply the Fall accounts for all these things! And then the serpent turning himself into life, love making knowledge, eternity is the complete triumph of the enemy over deluded man, and poor Mr. Cox's book is his bible.

But this admission, page 129, that 'time was when human speech had none but sensuous words, and mankind none but sensuous ideas,' while true only of idolatry, yet is the witness how utterly man was fallen. Because if moral ideas are true now, they were always true, yet confessedly man had not one of them. If piety to a father is a sacred duty now, it always was. But it was only the devil or lust, not so much, as I have said, as a cow's feeling for its calf, according to the Rev. G. W. Cox. To say, page 130, that 'The images of outward and earthly objects have been made the means of filling human hearts and minds with the keenest yearnings for divine truth, beauty and love,' and may have been the only way, is really imbecility, but quite worthy of modern rationalism. That the renovation of nature, connected with the Sun's return from the winter solstice was the origin of every sort of corruption, and had the largest part in idolatrous worship and its worst part, is sorrowfully true. But the whole book is excessively superficial, and the pretended inductions often puerile. Even Pantheism in Brahminism is not seen, nor its connection with the innate sense of there being One True God 'who is over all and through' (not 'in') 'all.'

1 Peter, Ephesians, Colossians

<44035E> 262

I have noticed the distinction between the first Epistle of Peter, that to the Ephesians and that to the Colossians, that the first sets the Christian, on the ground of the redemption and resurrection of Christ, as a stranger and pilgrim in the desert towards the inheritance laid up in heaven, which is a hope. The Ephesians place him seated in heaven, in his Head, with whom he is risen; the hope is the whole accomplishment of the purpose of God, made known to the Church, sealed for it by the Holy Ghost. Colossians presents heaven as a hope, but they were slipping away from the Head, but then the Apostle insists that they were risen again with Him, and their life hid there. He brings them back on the ground of their resurrection with Him.

In Peter, it is always His appearing, His manifestation (as he had seen Him go) a salvation ready to be revealed. In Ephesians we have it not, because the saints are viewed in heaven, and united with Him, waiting the inheritance. In Colossians, being risen, His appearing is recalled, but we appear with Him with whom our life has been hidden. This is clear, but now I ask - Is not the position of the enemy of souls also presented accordingly? In Peter he goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour - evidently in persecutions, 'the same afflictions.'

In Colossians the Lord has triumphed over principalities and powers on the Cross, making a show of them openly, and is now raised from the dead. It is the power in which He has taken us up in life hid with Him in God. Triumph is what we have, that life being needed for the position in which the saints are put.

In Ephesians, captivity is led captive. Satan has no power over the saints in heaven, united to Christ their Head, seated there. It is not merely that He has vanquished, triumphed, but the saints are united to Him in the actual condition and title in which He is as having gone up on high, leading captivity captive. In this character, having disposed of Satan, He fills all things. The title of Satan, in virtue of his power over the first Adam, is null and annulled - has only been the occasion of the accomplishment of that work of redemption which, having thereby annulled it, has filled all things in virtue of and according to the power of that redemption. This is a glorious place for the Christ - He fills all things, in virtue and by the power of redemption, with the glory of His Person too, according to the counsel of God the Father. He has united the Church to Him in this place as His Body, but, having received power as Man, power in the Holy Ghost, He distributes, He gives, and places in men that power which, while it builds up the Church He brings to glory, enables the Church to set aside the power of Satan, of the enemy - builds up the Church (positively) as entirely delivered from it, and the vessel of that which He had received as Man, and could place in men in order to the building them up as His Body according to this place into which they were introduced, the fulness of Him who fills all in all.

263 As regards the outward conflict with Satan, remark that we contend with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places where all passes, in Ephesians, and we are called upon, 'having done all, to stand.' We are in possession of our place, and our business is to hold good, and hence, being spiritual, the arms of God are what are called for. The proper service in power is 'building up' according to the stature of the Head, the fulness revealed in the Epistle. Hence it is not gaining ground on Satan as if he was in possession, for we are supposed there above, and the object is to grow up to the fulness. Doubtless we have to gain ground here, but it is positive ground in good that belongs to us without question. The object of the enemy is to turn us away from this by whatever sleight and ruse. Hence in conflict the matter is to stand against the wiles, and having done all to stand. Then we go on with our own proper Holy Ghost work in building up in and to the Head.

In John's Epistle, as in respect of the blessing too, the point insisted on is not the opposition of the enemy, but the nature. Such is the divine nature in the sons - such the devil's nature in the wicked. It is not conflict by faith, against an attack from without.

Note, even in Peter, Satan is supposed defeated by the Cross, as shown in resurrection, and hence, when resisted, flees.

Remarks on "The Origin of Religious Belief"

<44036E> 264

{"The origin and development of Religious Belief," by S. Baring-Gould, M.A. Rivingtons, London, Oxford and Cambridge, 1869.}

The writer has scraped together a good deal of reading, but he has left out God and the truth altogether. He looks for no origin of man or his state, and takes him as a capable wild man of the woods, to be formed, yet his present state as the key to everything normal, and what he is subjectively the measure of what is true objectively. It is an excessively superficial book - an amiable, but unserious, shallow pluming itself on free thinking, but would bring in Christianity, as man would have it, by it. He thinks of everything and knows nothing, and likes giving his thoughts because he thinks well of them.

If ever leaving out God was proved to lead to superficiality and folly, it is this book. A few true ideas, but which come to nothing because all root is wanting. I dare say the man thinks he is right, but it is a few secondary causes strung, most frequently falsely, to general reading, and all that is important left out or forgotten. Not even conscience is admitted, nor man, morally, more than God. People forget, too, that, in forming a system of man, they are denying another; God has given one. But I think it a useful book in this, that it shows the perfect moral mud and folly into which the exclusion of God throws the mind. The passage, through the powers of Nature to Polytheism, is, I believe, just and well enough, but though as Hesiod and Homer may have elaborated, r do not doubt priests concocted it, not a moment. Who made these 'synonyms'? 'The sun a warrior clad in golden panoply, the moon a queen, the stars armies of heroes or spirits'? Who were consulted about everything? In Egypt and India one cannot hesitate. If he left out God before, he leaves out the Devil before, and the progress from one God and mere powers of nature to Polytheism is clear in all religions indeed but in the Vedas, Myths and Puranas. But there was an unknown God in all, behind the actual worship. On the star-worship, he is very weak, and deifying heroes and ancestors. Doubtless there is truth in it, but the verbal source is poor. The whole has little depth. The end is very superficial. All the Indian gods are mortal, and the converse of his statement is sometimes true. He says: 'If it be true that man is made in the image of God, it is also true that the gods man worships are images of himself, but larger, mightier, wiser, better. God is the superlative of man the positive,' page 150.

265 Again, speaking of the 'history of the evolution of the religious idea through its different stages,' he says: 'here one practice is exaggerated, there another, and there again a third has been built up to harmonise the other two. Thus the world is strewn with egg, grub, chrysalis, and butterfly creeds.' This is just about what they are worth.

Again. 'The attribution to the Deity of wisdom and goodness is every whit as much anthropomorphosis as the attribution of limbs and passions.' But why so? He does not tell us.

Page 136. 'Before man can learn to do things right, he must do things wrong. Before he can discover the right path in science, religion, and political economy, he has to flounder through a bog of blunders. The girl strums discords before she strikes harmonies; the boy scratches pothooks before he draws straight lines. The early religious beliefs of the human family are its discords and pothooks, the stages of error of which it has travelled before correct ideas can be attained. At first, then, man is conscious of no existence save his own; he is like the brute, self-centred and self-sufficient; he is his own God. He is Autotheist. His religious thought, vague and undetermined, is roused by the opposition of nature to his will.'

It is curious how false philosophy always is. How, taking man as he is, God is left out, and man is supposed to begin, i.e., to have been created with no connection with, or knowledge of, or relation to God at all. A most absurd and low idea, as if God would have left man, in making him, capable of progress towards, but wholly, absolutely, incognisant of anything but himself, to make out a God as he could! 'Men were in this state' - but how? I may go back to enquire what they would do when they had not God at all, but have no ground or right to assume it was an original state, and there is no experience of men, as such, coming to it. Some glimmerings only of a few, and these wretched, but no people. There are testimonies of dreadful descent. The Vedas have much more of one supreme God than the Mahabharata or the Puranas. Men have gone down, not up, when there was a revelation, and Buddhism is an extreme case, when the misery of men's state was thought only to be met by losing self as an existence with no God - only gods as bad as men.

266 Page 234. If you want to see the destruction of all principle, and all right feeling, everything good, read this page. He says: 'Virtue is the judicious selection of that course of action most conducive to intense and permanent happiness, and the adoption of a line of conduct which is destructive to happiness is vice. As a compound being man can derive happiness from two sources, the animal senses and the mental faculties. If he rejects the nobler spheres of pleasure for those that are baser, he is vicious; if he abandons sensual gratification for intellectual pursuits, he is virtuous, because the sum-total of intellectual happiness is greater than the sum-total of sensual happiness. Virtue is selfishness acting with judgment: vice is selfishness acting ignorantly and blindly. A man gets drunk either because he does not know that intemperance is ruinous to his constitution, or because he has so little acquaintance with the laws of mental perspective as to suppose that a small present gratification is preferable to a great remote happiness, just as a child supposes the apple in its hand to be larger than the apple tree at a distance.'

Again, page 239. 'In the examination of the springs of religious thought, we have to return again and again to the wild bog of savageism in which they bubble up. The recognition of Power uncontrolled by man has been shown to constitute the first religious idea. At that point it could not rest. At certain periods the movement in ideas is slow, and speculation is apparently at a standstill; but such periods are like the stress-points of a water-wheel the movement is slowest because the greatest leverage is being employed, and that point passed, it revolves with accelerated velocity. Through the dim perceptions of a bewildered intellect the primeval man saw confusedly piled up above him an awful Power, terrible in its might, vague in outline, and mysterious in its nature. Wherever he turned his eye it loomed on him, and seemed to threaten him with destruction. At this first stage a great part of mankind still remains, its mind benumbed with fear.' This shows how all truth, if Scripture be truth, is denied, and in all its roots and reality.

In page 248, the converse, of what he says, is true. All idea of infinity is, he says, negation - 'infinite.' Thus: 'A limit is that beyond which the object limited does not spread. But beyond all limits space is. The limit is a negation. Deny limitation to space, and you affirm its infinity. What is finite is therefore a negative idea; and a finite being is a negation of an infinite being!'

267 Page 249. 'There is a distinction between time and duration analogous to that between space and extension. Duration implies something to endure, as extension implies something to extend. But we cannot conceive time devoid of anything to endure in it. As substances are situated in and take up space, so do events occupy time; but we can intellectually annihilate space, whilst time remains indestructible.' This is open to question, indeed he is all wrong here about time with succession limit - 'Am,' i.e., no time or duration, is alone eternal or timeless. Events are in time, but I cannot conceive any length of it without events or measures, i.e., it is finite, save as I negative an end. He says, 'We can conceive eternity stretching far beyond the earliest beginning and the remotest ending.' Conceiving eternity as infinite time is merely human, because we are finite, exist in time. 'Have time, being in eternity,' is nonsense, confounding two orders of idea. He says, 'In the popular sense, for unlimited time employ the word eternity.' Popularly, it may be said, but it is not correct.

Page 252, 'Mr. James Mill, Anal: 1, 262, takes a rose: a determinate mixture of red colour, of a certain fragrance, and of softness of touch and the like, he says, is popularly termed a rose.' But what is the rose beside the colour, the form, and so on?' he asks. 'Not knowing what it is, but supposing it to be something, we invent a name to stand for it. We call it a substratum. This substratum, when closely examined, is not distinguishable from cause. It is the cause of the qualities; that is, the cause of the causes of our sensations.' Whether there be substance or not matters nothing to our argument. As a fact, men, the world all over, do believe in substance.' Mr. Mill is a goose. I think substance is what constitutes a thing to my mind, a distinct cognisable existence, but properly not a person, hence material, not a spirit, though philosophy may so abstract and use it. He is excessively inaccurate. He says: 'Corporeal substance is the essence underlying matter.' Now substance is not essence, nor does substance do well for 'spiritual individualities,' persons, because one spiritual substance is a subjective thing, not a thinking, willing individual.

268 Page 255, he says: 'The theist conjectures a primary spiritual substance, whence all spiritual substances are derived.' Derived! Though there be truth in it, this is dangerous ground.

Page 293. 'Religion and philosophy are inseparable. In the former sentiment predominates, in the latter reason. Religion is the representation of an idea more or less philosophic: it is always the expression of a thought; often it is unconsciously philosophic. The task undertaken by philosophy is enquiry into the fundamental reason of things; and in proportion to the degree of development attained at any given period, does it express the idea of the divinity more or less perfectly.' And facts? The blessed facts? Surely there may be the corruption of a thing made good. The more I read philosophy, the more I despise it.

Time

<44037E> 269

I do not think we have any knowledge of time as time in itself. I measure from one event to another and so enclose periods, but cannot without facts with intervals. Distance is not exactly the same, because I discern it by a sense which sees an interval at one time. All I know of time is 'I am now.' When I compare this with events, I am conscious it is not 'now,' and there is time. As events only proceed from God, 'I am,' to Him, never changes. He is in Himself always. Events come from His will, and are relative not absolute. When I speak of an event before what happened to-day, I look at it as having happened in a 'now' which is not present. This I extend by invented measures.  -  'Infinite' I admit of course we cannot know, though we know it is not 'finite infinite.' But without existence I do not understand time or eternity - but God is. When I begin to count time, I count necessarily from 'now,' for I am now. I then speak of times not finishing in thought. Ante and post make no difference whatever, save by events, and if I look post I must imagine events or I cannot take a step beyond now. The starting point in both is 'now,' and I go on, both ways, from that and cannot finish. Hence when Christ's eternal nature is spoken of it is said "In the beginning," all events and genomena by which time had an existence being supposed - "was the Word." That is existence per se - eternal, i.e., divine. When historical creation is spoken of it is supposed God created, i.e., all genomena egeneto (things made came into being) by One who "was," but it is not stated and this was fitting. Creation being, there must be a Creator. What we wanted to know was Creation. The highest, holiest way of speaking of God was thus saying nothing about Him but that He acted. As to Christ, it was of the utmost importance to know that He was before and eternal.

But all this talk about 'bounded' or 'unbounded space' is a mistake. I know what 'bounded space' is very well indeed - a field is a bounded space because I know what a bound is, being bounded. That I can negative, but I never conceive any negative proposition. I cannot conceive 'not,' for there is nothing to conceive. I can deny a bound when a bound is supposed, but it is no idea of the opposite at all. I cannot conceive all space as a known whole. My only conception of it is that it is not within the limits of my finite conception. But that is what 'infinite' means. But it is no positive idea, for then it is finite - has bounds. If it be said that 'we cannot conceive God,' I answer 'certainly not by an idea.' If I did it must be adequate, and He would not be God. But I do know He is not within the range and capacity of my idea. And that is something very material in our knowledge. When it is said 'He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love,' that is another thing. It is not an idea, but a moral nature morally apprehended, and space, and time, and measures have no place in it at all. It is another order of things. Affections, even human, are not ideas. Past time without a commencement is not possible thought, because when I say 'past,' I have already commenced with the 'now.' I do not see why infinite division cannot be thought of, because the parts are bounded. I remember a teacher of mathematics sought to show by a tangent, an indivisible angle, but he had only to make a circle with a longer radius and division was made. The only idea I have of time is bounded by events which are not 'now.' But as far as without, then I seek to know it. I have no idea of time but the principle of eternity, only contradicted by experience. 'I am' - that is not time as having duration, but in a point, but with a notion excluding bounded time, and so leading up to God who is necessarily 'I AM,' which is the nearest approach to conceiving eternity, which in itself I cannot at all. But I conceive God existing, and never doing anything but existing.

270 I repeat, my only idea of space, save bounded or enclosed space, is practically infinitude, not conceived as so much for then it is finite, but as simply endless, i.e., negatively. I do not say 'existing time' - nothing properly exists in time which exists consciously, i.e., consciousness is not cognisant of time. But I exist in space. Hence I do not begin it here as I do time by 'now.' And I cannot conceive when a body cannot be unless when one is, i.e., I only conceive space as space without measurement, but room where.

'Nothing' cannot become, because there is nothing to become, but that does not say God could not speak and it be made, i.e., create.

Remarks on "The Doctrine of Inspiration"

<44038E> 271

{"The Doctrine of Inspiration, being an enquiry concerning the Infallibility, Inspiration, and Authority of Holy Writ," by the Rev. John Macnaught, M.A. (Oxon). London, Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1857.}

It is perfectly right practically to say, the Bible is infallible, but, strictly, revealed truth cannot be infallible; it is simply, perfectly true. A person is fallible or infallible - God alone is so - He, while He acts in, uses a man, is, and makes the man while so exclusively using him, de facto infallible. But the man is not so. The question is not if Mark or Luke are infallible, but whether what is written be "given by inspiration of God" (theopneustos) - a revelation given of God, so that I can rely on it as given of, coming from Him.

Certainly this man would not convince me of the contrary. He has crammed himself with infidel statements without even enquiring into them for himself. It is imbecile, this book.

Page 21. He says Matthew is at the pains to state that "all the generations" from David till the captivity were "fourteen generations." This Matthew does not do; he says, "All the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations," and that there were fourteen generations from David to the captivity. Here he finds a discrepancy, but it is of his own making. Again he says, 'The Magi asked, "Where is the king of the Jews that has been born?" (i.e. just recently born).' There is not the least trace of this - quite the contrary. And again, "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene," is not given as a quotation, but as said by the prophets in general. It is not said "the prophecy." But he says, 'Christ dwelt at Nazareth that He might be called a Nazarene, and to fulfil the type of Nazariteship.' The italics are his, but he has not even searched and seen that the words are different, Nazoraios and Nazareenos.

Page 34. 'Peter, Acts 1: 18, says, that Judas purchased a field with the reward of iniquity.' But it is not Peter - verses 18, 19 are a parenthesis. The Jews bought it, it was his - the chief priests with his money; ektesato is not 'personally bought' - he gained a field and hanged himself.

272 Difficulties there are, but such a miserable cooking up of unexamined objections I never saw, as in this book.

Page 117. 'Every tyro in Greek knows that an adjective (theopneustos, signifying "divinely breathed") is the term which our translators have paraphrased as equivalent to "given by inspiration of God."' But theopneustos is just 'inspired,' and stronger if anything.

Page 123. 'According to the Old Testament idea, it was with the presence and co-operation of the Holy Ghost that the prophets spoke.' It is not so said, and this is the point; he is not honest here. Did the Spirit co-operate with Chaos? Again, it is quite false to say, 'The novelty was, not in the miracle of Pentecost, but in the extent to which the miracle-working agents were multiplied.'

Page 131. 'It is very remarkable that nowhere do we find the inspired penmen - Jewish or Christian - pronouncing their own writings inspired.' This is a mistake; see 2 Sam. 23: 2, 1 Cor. 14: 37, and 'Thus saith the Lord,' a thousand times - 'The Lord spake unto Moses,' etc. This objection is imbecility.

Page 132. 'Amongst pious Jews and the early Christians, the idea of Inspiration was wholly unmixed with the notion of infallibility, and was, in addition to referring each good thing to God as its giver, simply equivalent to what we mean by any or all the several words good, strong, orderly, wise, clever, inventive, brave, instinctive, holy.' In whom? And from whom? What is the meaning of 'in addition to'? Were they not special endowments? It is all simply infidel exalting of man. When he says the writings of Milton and Bacon were 'written by divine inspiration,' one can only ask, is there any positively revealed truth from God or not? Again, 'In this manner David or Solomon, or Isaiah, or Paul would have spoken of everything as written by divine inspiration, which may with propriety be called a work of genius, or of cleverness, or of holiness. Milton and Shakespeare, and Bacon and Canticles, and the Apocalypse and the Sermon on the Mount, and the eighth chapter to the Romans are - in our estimation - all inspired.' This is equally low and abominable. Nobody denies all great faculties are from God, but what has this to do with a revelation from God? I have no objection to the word if explained. I believe every good thought in us is inspired of God, and the fruit of the Spirit. The question is not there, but whether God has given a revelation, and, further, whether in the Book called Scripture, His action by the Spirit was such that what was given was exactly such as He would have it given, and did give it, in that He guarded the instruments in such sort, in the communication or use of truth they propounded, and used it exactly according to His mind, so that I can receive it as what God has given to me, though (thank God) through men? Is Shakespeare's buffoonery inspired? Or Milton's cannons in heaven? They degrade everything they touch, these men. Reasoning on the word 'inspiration' is merely shirking the question of fact.

273 As to co-operation - with what did God co-operate in Creation? Is truth less important - is His word as really and completely from Him as Creation when it came out of His hand? Sin has corrupted the Creation. Is truth equally lost or never given?

Page 138. 'The Bible is at once fallible, inspired, and containing the very word of God.' How can I tell, if it is fallible? It is no longer divine conviction, but all dependent on competency of human judgment; and whose? Again, 'The mere idea that the volume has some good in it, and is, therefore, in some degree inspired, ought surely to command our reverential study of its contents.' A priori, as of Shakespeare or Milton - for man's taste less, it is ludicrous. 'Some may say if the Bible be, after all, a book with errors in it, I care nought for it. If it lay at my feet, in my path, I would not stoop to pick it up. Not stoop to pick up a fallible Bible! Are then the dialogues of Plato infallible?' etc., etc. I would not stoop to pick up Plato to guide my mind as a revelation from God. The man is imbecile. He says, 'Let the lowliest child or pauper say to me, "Honour thy father and thy mother," and let those words sound in harmony with my inmost being - as they and I are created to be in harmony together - and then those terms, before unintelligible and only gibberish, become to me the very word of God.' This is first nonsense, and he only means God speaks to us in language, and next it confounds revelation and conscience.

Page 160. 'If any reader be inclined to ask, why then interfere with this Bible which, in the hands of the 'Evangelicals,' has been called infallible, and has effected so much good? Our answer is, because we love this blessed Book, and would fain not see it exposed to ridicule by being called infallible; and because we are persuaded that the Bible, in its true character of an inspired but fallible book, will do all its present good work, and a great deal besides, which now this false name "infallible" prevents it accomplishing.' But would it have had this power if it had not been recognised as infallible, as, in short, a revelation from God? Coming from God - call it a good book, will it have the power of bringing God to the heart, conscience, and will, with God's authority? That is the question. He says, 'In this spiritual mine, the veins of precious ore lie embedded in a preponderance of common earth, are for the most part hidden by a deep covering of worthless strata, and must be dug for with assiduity.' This is a grand mistake, for what is its authority then?

274 Again, 'Tell the serious student that the book he has been taught by history to revere is not only a good and holy book, containing the word of God to man, but is the infallible word of God, in which there is no error' (I tell him it is the truth itself, or nothing at all; education of a child is another thing) 'and he can appreciate the singular honour that the wise and the great have so often, and so conspicuously given to the Bible: but, alas! you have told him the Holy Book is infallible; and, before he passes from its first page, he is led to believe that the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them were made in six days, whereas the indelible testimonies of matter, sense, and reason combine to assure him that this earth, with all its populations' (where, and what?) 'that have in its younger days dwelt on it and perished in its ruins, is countless millions of years old,' etc. But he is not so led as to Creation. I believe the earth may have existed millions of years, nor does the Bible contradict it, but admit of it, and proves thus its divinity, for Moses knew it not. He says, 'The fourth day's special product was the sun, and moon, and stars.' But that is not said, but avoided. It is said, "God made two great lights." The sun as a 'body having weight' is not a light. As to 'multitudes of men in this state of mind being habituated until they become dead to all practical sense of religion and spirituality,' that is they judge by physical science of which they are ignorant.

Page 165. 'The authority which we claim for the Bible is, not that the reader should expect to find infallibility or freedom from error in the whole book, or in any part of it, but that he should study it with the same kind of reverence, combined with discriminating judgment of the good and the evil, the wise and the unwise, with which he would listen to a father or a mother whom, though far from infallible, Providence or God had given him as his divinely appointed teacher.' Here we see the importance of distinguishing between infallibility and truth. I believe God only is infallible - but all He has said, or caused to be written, is absolute truth, and comes from the Infallible and because it does. Again, he says it is unnecessary for him to quote the words of Aristotle or Cicero, etc., but he had better do so, and honestly, than thus refer to them. As to 'The best of heathen systems which professes to be derived from Socrates,' how far did it spread? This is idiocy. Did he or Plato, or any of them, know God before 'the foolishness of preaching'? And as to 'Reverence towards the gods, and compliance with the popular custom of sacrificing to the various deities,' what does that mean? Who were they?

275 Page 168. 'It is difficult for anything to surpass the exquisite beauty and calm propriety with which, in the dialogue called the Phaedo, Socrates is represented as dying a martyr to the truth he had taught.' Christ is not, but declares Himself forsaken of God. How comes this? And this to be forgotten of Mr. Macnaught! As to Socrates 'taking leave of his wife, and descanting on the most solemn truths,' etc., he sends her off about her business as unphilosophical. 'The departed not coming before the judges in the deceptive integuments of flesh and body, but stripped of all appearances, that the ordeal might be gone through, not merely face to face, but soul to soul,' was popular conscience long before Socrates, and embodied in Egypt in their religion. Again, 'Good men were, after judgment, admitted to that holy and better world into which Socrates rejoiced to think that he was about to pass.' An apotheosis of men like their heroes or demigods, only without, not merely bodies but, the natural soul, or its parts, which was not derived second or third hand from God through the Dicastai (assessors).

He then goes on: 'It will be manifest how incorrect are the interpretations we often hear put upon those words of Paul, in which he says that Jesus "brought life and immortality to light."' In the first place it is "incorruptibility," not 'immortality.' Resurrection is God's work. The immortality of the soul was held simply because nothing could perish, nor matter either. It was as eternal as God, perhaps distinguished. It seems so, at least in some places, but man found his pride in his own necessary immortality. Speaking of Jesus, he says: 'His conception of the highest aim for man was to witness to the truth, to go about doing good, to be filled with love even of one's foes.' No! Eternal Life was to know the Father, the only true God - to men, no doubt, love.

276 Socrates, and Plato, held that men's souls had existed before, and were treated in the world according to some previous responsibility, only when he came to himself, he held his philosophy, intellect, gave him a title to be freed from it; all the mass might go to purgatory, or to hell and the furies - that was no affair of his. He says: 'Socrates would have annihilated poetry in order to develope man' - Yes! and love to others too; he would have justice and mathematics, and so a title to have only his divine soul left to be with the gods.

Page 172. 'Not only did good old Socrates allow that, for the multitude, there was piety in worshipping gods many and lords many: but the last act of his death-scene shows what a hold the educational prejudices of superstition still retained upon his mind. His last words to his friends were a charge that they should offer, on his behalf, the accustomed sacrifice of a cock to the god of medicine, Esculapius.' Note that this is represented as the right thing - the triumph of true philosophy - by a spectator. It is not a weakness even not overcome. He was to be rescued from the charge of Atheism. As to the Bible being 'distinct and firm in pronouncing on the worship of the one true God as indispensable to virtue and happiness,' it is a tolerable difference between that and philosophy, if God be anything, but that is the great point.

Again, 'As is the deity of a nation, so will be the character of a nation' - and of a man? And if so, what was Socrates?

Page 173. 'This dallying with Polytheism, then, which is so strongly denounced in the Bible, we assert to be a grievous fault in Socrates.' This is really too bad! God is below man in their system. Again, 'Socrates recommends such a community of wives and children as must degrade woman, put an end to the sweetest earthly happiness of domestic love,' etc. What was his religion then, or the connection between his conduct and god? But he says: 'And Socrates looked at Krito, and said, O Krito, let some one lead this woman away to her home. And certain of Krito's attendants led Xanthippe away in the midst of her cries and lamentations: but Socrates sat down on the couch, and began to rub his leg, which he had raised and crossed upon the other, whilst he descanted on the absurdity of that which men call pleasure.' And this, we are told, is dignity in the presence of death!

277 Page 174. 'The last fault of the Academic teaching, which it will be necessary for us to notice at present, is the partiality with which it regarded mankind, and the indifference it manifested as to the propagation of the truth. This partiality is apparent from the kind of life which Socrates represented as most approved by the gods.' But what then was his philosophy worth? Why praise it so at first? As to 'an unnatural disrespect of the female sex, combined with the most atrocious theory of cohabitation,' what kind of holiness is that? Or is mathematics holiness, or sacrificing a cock to Esculapius?

Page 181. 'If at any time God should appear to us as a jealous or a terrible God, or as a consuming fire - it is not because He has changed His nature, but because we are viewing Him through the various media of our different sins and our chilling sense of guilt.' But the Bible says He is a consuming fire, "Our God is a consuming fire."

Page 184. 'It would be vain to speak of John's dream (Apocalypse) in which he saw foreshadowed struggles between truth and error, sometimes seeming doubtful in their issue,' etc. What is he dreaming of, or is it all a dream? Again, 'The sacred volume is full of life and action, from Genesis to Revelation; and in all its action it has principles - eternal principles - of truth and goodness displayed so plainly as to be easy for every pious reader's observation.' But how came the Bible to be all this? All these different writers, yet one collection!

Page 187. 'We are not of the number of those who believe the prophetic portions of Holy Writ to be "anticipated history" as they have been styled . . . . If Edom is named in a prediction, we do not consider that Idumea is destined, by an inevitable fate, to a certain curse; but rather that Edom itself, and every nation which by a similar abuse of opportunities, and by a similar practice of vice, makes itself a spiritual Edom, will, if it continue obstinately in the state of sin in which and against which it has been warned, then be overthrown in some such way as that threatened in the prediction.' But who should have picked out this from all countries, and particular countries for this? If I look, as a man, at it, they were the Jews' enemies, and it was national hostility and prejudice, not a Christian spirit.

278 Page 191. Speaking of the blind man to whom the Lord gave sight, he says: 'Fervent desire, so earnestly entertained that we go to speak with God about it constantly and perseveringly, as did the widow in the parable of the unjust judge, will not change God; but will to a certainty change us and our moral position.' Will that give a man his sight then? And so of prayer, he says: 'We go to state solemnly our wishes at the throne of grace, and to seek there for wisdom in selecting and employing means for the accomplishment of such wishes as we retain when we return from taking counsel with the Lord.' Is that all a man asks for? What nonsense all this is!

Page 199. 'A man may believe Scripture to be fallible, and yet he may - as we ourselves do - believe Jesus to be the anointed Son of God who came into the world and lived and died and rose again in order that we might learn through Him to trust and love God our heavenly Father, and so loving and trusting Him might be accounted righteous.' That is no Scriptural statement; what does he believe of Christ? Again, 'So he may - as we ourselves do - believe the miracle of Mary's virgin conception, simply because it is no more difficult than any other miracle'; that is believing it possible, not true. And again, 'We believe these grand and Christianly consistent points, whilst we gravely, though humbly, think it possible for a good Christian to doubt whether the evangelists were not misled by their own angry recollections,' etc. But he has a made Christ according to his estimate of good and evil, no historical One; and what does he think of His Person? As to his alleged contradictions between Acts 9: 7 and chapter 22: 9, there is no kind of contradiction at all in the passages. The first is: "But the men who were travelling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice" (or 'sound') "but beholding no one." The second is: "But they that were with me beheld the light, and were filled with fear, but heard not the voice of him that was speaking to me."

Page 206. Speaking of the thirty-nine Articles, he says: 'Whatever can be proved by any means, drawn from any source, we are ready to believe; and, above all, whatever can be proved by the most satisfactory evidence of the Scripture, that we shall not be slow devoutly to believe. That is an honest man; I sign a thing because it may be proved, and I interpret that as meaning whatever of it can be. Again, 'I do believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, not merely when they tell me such obvious historical and philosophical truth as that Jesus is the only scheme by which men can and must be saved or brought to true happiness in this life and true fitness for enjoying a future world; but I also believe them, with the most humble and comfortable assurance, when, by the palpable evidence of errors, discrepancies and contradictions, they tell me that, although they contain the Word of God, they yet are themselves fallible, and, like the best of those who wrote them, they have this treasure in earthen vessels.' This is nice and honest too. But of all the low things I ever read, this book is the poorest, and, if it proves anything, proves the divinity of Scripture which can extort from such a mind the confessions it does.

______

279 What a blessed rest it must be, in the divine sense, to God, to see no sin anywhere around Him, and all good according to what He is!

_______

How the atonement effaces previous failings, and gives place to love! When the Lord visits His disciples after His resurrection, their past is gone; He comes in the unclouded unhindered power of "Peace be with you."

The Titles in the Epistles

<44039E> 280

There are but Paul and Peter who name their apostleship at the beginning of their Epistles; and Paul, in supposing the Epistle to the Hebrews to be his, which I do not doubt, does not call himself so there. This title is not found in Philippians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, or Philemon. The character of these Epistles is much more personally fraternal. (He associates also others, but this is not by itself an absolute reason.) But these facts show the title is assumed with a definite purpose and meaning - Paul and Barnabas, and, in result, Paul having mission to the Gentiles, and Peter to the Jews, assume their title when in special exercise of their mission. The others write according to the wisdom and gift of God. This is the case with Paul in the Hebrews, for he had not the place of Apostle with them, and the kind of intercourse with the Thessalonians and Philemon, instead of claiming such a title, rendered it unsuited to the occasion. It was not authoritative revelations, or mandates, or the assumption of this place, as tide and ground of intercourse, but brotherly occasions of tender care or thankful communication. Though the truth he might announce might be the same, and its authority equal, in the cases in which it is used its proper bearing is evident.

He had never seen the Romans, and he was to present himself as the called Apostle of all the Gentiles. Among the Corinthians, he had to exercise this authority to put things in order, and an authority contested. In the Galatians, it was the question in a great measure, though because of the truths which he taught. In Ephesians and Colossians, he is in a definite way the depositary of the great mystery of the Church, as Apostle of the Gentiles, and of Christ in them the hope of glory. The position of Timothy and Titus who were to regulate important things in virtue of his authority make the use of this title evident and clear. Hence the use of it in a revealed Epistle is not to be looked for without a reason, and, generally speaking, Peter and Paul alone are in this place in respect of their scriptural relationships with the Church. The authority does not come simply from Apostleship, but from the will of God acting by inspiration. The manner of address is connected with the bearing of the letter, though that be an instruction for all times, for it is in these circumstances that the ways of God in the Church are fully developed, and the proper Christian relationships, as well as divine truths, unfolded.

Notes on Matthew

J. N. Darby.

<44040E> 281

(Notes and Comments Vol. 4.)

Matthew 1

- 1. The more one weighs this verse, the more one sees the Gospel characterised by it. It is the Heir of promise. Promise sustaining royalty, restoring favour and power, all failed in the flesh, as Christ proved.

- 16. The legal title to the house of David was clearly in Joseph; so Luke 1: 27.

Compare here Romans 1: 3. Yea, as to even this also, we may say Romans 4: 1, for all this ends in death. It is not the declaration of the life in which He lives, though His actual life is spoken of here, but in such terms - it is "of whom was born" (ex hes egennethe).

- 17. Note there is an entire break at the captivity; the computation begins afresh after it, and does not go through continuously as with David. It is from the carrying away captive into Babylon, not from Josias; compare verses 11, 12.

- 18, 19. All this provision is remarkable. It is interesting thus to be let in behind the scenes.

- 20. "Appeared to him by dream" (kat' onar). The end of this verse is a wonderful fact.

Matthew 2

- 1. It should read, "But Jesus having been born in the days of Herod the king"; this would indeed leave the time purposely vague.

- 13. It is the present tense, "appears"; see also verse 19 "appears," and chapter 3: 1, "comes."

- 21. Eis gen Israel (into the land of Israel). All the Lord's history here is as of Israel, the manner of deliverance and all, but of Israel fallen, but in verse 22 it meets the detail of ruin as well as knows the hope; gen (land) has no article here, because Israel, the proper name, is the subject. 'Israel would be a genitive, and the sense different, if it were ten gen Israel. Ten gen ten Israel would not be sense, for separated from gen, and in apposition, Israel is a man's name.

282 Matthew 3

- 3. "A Voice" rather than "The Voice." But it is immaterial, it is a sudden arrest - to the voice heard.

- 7. Pharisees and Sadducees are here thrown together as one unrighteous class. "Generations," or "progenies," but is it not individuals, each a gennema (offspring, product)? "Generation" does not convey it.

- 9. Sovereignty of grace and real righteousness go together - fleshly privilege and the want of it; but "already" (v. 10) .

- 11. "To repentance" - "To the Name of Jesus." Was baptism on ascertained faith, or on profession? Manifest hypocrisy prevented it.

- 12. There is a difference between the axe and the fan. "Already" (ede) the axe was at the root of the useless trees, but the good ones, it might be supposed, would be left there. But when the Lord came, He would thoroughly purge His floor. The floor was dealt with, so to speak, the wheat gathered into a garner of His own, and the chaff burned with unquenchable fire. It cleared the floor, and disposed otherwise of its contents.

- 16, 17. The way in which the blessed Lord, having gone with His poor humbled ones in their first right step, then is owned with an opened heaven in the accepted place which He has obtained for us, I have noted elsewhere. I add here that, on His entering into it as Man in grace, the whole Trinity is revealed in it, the Son Himself in Manhood. It is a wonderful scene, and then in our conflict overcoming for us!

Matthew 4

I think it is a mistake to think that the synoptical Gospels only take a year, and John three. The transfiguration is the turning point - we are historically going on to the close which begins with the blind man at Jericho, i.e., Matthew 16 and 17, Mark 9, and Luke 9. Luke thence to chapter 17 having a mass of unchronological, morally connected instruction. But they all go up from the temptation, with Galilaean work, but undefined dates; the end of Matthew 9 giving a whole lengthened series in three verses, and then events leading to rejection - as mission of the disciples, parables, etc. - then apprising His disciples of what was now coming. There are several points which divide, as to subject, the synoptical Gospels, and all of them, though there be characteristic differences. The blind man at Jericho, I have already noticed. This is in all. The transfiguration is in all. But more particularly there is first the birth of Christ wanting in Mark. The ministrations in Galilee, including the Sermon on the Mount (wanting in Mark) a characteristic part of three Gospels, with, in each, as to details, certain acts characterising His coming. This goes on to practical rejection by the heads, scribes and others being called Beelzebub. The parable of the sower then continuing mercy to the people, and the Transfiguration, which occasions His forbidding them to say He was the Christ. The parable and this make two distinct landmarks. After the Transfiguration it is more instruction to His disciples, only in Luke we have, with additional instruction as to the position of His disciples in the world, the parables which bring out the Gospel for all, and heaven, just as the genealogy was to Adam, after a beautiful, strictly Jewish part, showing the Remnant among them, and this part leads us on to the blind man at Jericho, where His Son of David Emmanuel character is brought out at the end, with the Jews, as at the beginning, and then resurrection. From Luke 9 to 18: 31, we have unchronological bringing out of principles. In John the Jews are treated as reprobates, from chapter 1, and the manifestation of God in the Son amongst men in His various characters, and then in the Holy Ghost, form the subject of the Gospel; chapters 1-3 being preface, and chapter 4 transitive. Matthew 4: 12 and Mark 1: 14 coincide, and then Matthew 8: 14 and Mark 11: 29; Mark giving us first what happened in the synagogue. Matthew 8: 1-4 comes after in Mark. I hold Mark, in general (and Luke) to have the historical order.

283  - 1. Anechthe (was carried up) - led by the thought and energy of One as bearing Him on - borne there in energy; see Romans 8: 14, agontai (are led).

Note in the temptation of Jesus, besides the great and blessed moral instruction of His victory as Second Adam, where the first had failed, of His identification with us in temptation and sorrow, and the means and manner - to wit, the Word, and entire humiliation and obedience - of maintaining His place, not abandoning the place with God of acknowledged Son, but persevering, in the presence of Satan, in that of self-emptying obedience and humiliation, though He were Son - besides all this, and, I doubt not, much more, there is, in what is special in its character in this Gospel, something to learn in His association with the Jews. The order is not the same as in Luke, because He pursues it in a moral progression - natural need - worldly covetousness - and spiritual, false appropriation of promise, or, really rather, distrust of God, and therefore departure from the path of lowly obedience. Here it is not the general moral instruction. He is on Jewish ground introducing the kingdom. He wants Him to show His power, to please Himself. The first answer of the Lord, entire dependence, and therefore confidence and obedience, places Him in Israel's entire dependence in the desert; see Deuteronomy 8 - entire dependence on God, as His people, in exercise (and even in the results of unfaithfulness, for such Deuteronomy considers them).

284 Secondly the promises made to Messiah, but which, while pretending to use, He would have really doubted had He followed the suggestion of Satan. He answers again from Deuteronomy, "Ye shall not put the Lord to the test, as if it was uncertain if He was amongst us." It was really perfect faith, though taking the lowly place of waiting entirely on the Lord - obedient in self-humiliation, just where Israel failed. Nature, and promise, and spiritual pride, alike failing, he offers Him what belongs indeed to the Son of Man, sparing all the suffering of acquiring it, but then as open apostasy, not as cheating Him out of His position by naturally allowable or promised blessings. "All shall be thine, if thou wilt worship me." The Lord takes the place unqualifiedly of man's, of a Jew's obedience, and faithfulness as a Man in owning nothing but the Lord His God. Satan thus baffled in gaining the Faithful One by his devices, He is now to go on in testimony to gather, but, as yet, this faithfulness is proved, but in reality all is gone for Satan by this, for Man thus faithful is indeed the Son of God. Satan's power is broken; he no longer holds captive, as from Eve; man is emancipated from his thrall. He turns to raise the professors of the kingdom against the Faithful. He makes John to be cast into prison. Jesus submits in quiet patience, and retires from the manifestation of the evil. Thus the blessed Spirit often conducts us. He becomes thus the Centre of all the hopes, and light of Israel in its darkest, and most terrible times, according to Isaiah 8 and 9, and commences His own separate testimony, and gathers around Himself a Remnant in blessing; compare the passage in Isaiah - He and the children which God has given Him.

285 The wisdom of the Spirit, in calm holiness, is thus often identified with submission.

Matthew 5

The tendency here was to bind up the law among His disciples whom He begins to call to Himself, and, the testimony to the kingdom being fully given, so as to spread His renown all around, He begins to bind up the testimony. But then I find in the sermon on the Mount, not only in the Beatitudes, blessing or perfection reflected and showing forth in the Person of Christ here below, but, in principles as to the whole sermon, Himself in the two great features noticed heretofore - the perfection of the Law written for He was born under it, and the perfection of His Father shown forth in Him - as He tells us that hatred was murder, and to be perfect as our Father was perfect. Thus the testimony given to His disciples, but before all, of the principles of the kingdom, left from the outset, on its true moral ground, its rejection or reception, and, at the same time, was full instruction to His disciples, as receiving the kingdom, and that in its patience. And note here how the character of the service of the testimony of the kingdom may run on, and inlock itself into a further testimony, and yet not be it, though there may be a mediate ground. The same remark applies to chapters 10 and 24. Here it is seen thus.

The sermon supposes the reception, the possibility of the reception of the kingdom. The Adversary was likewise still in the way, and addresses Himself to the disciples, and supposes the case of the reception by some, and of its rejection by the mass, and therefore the suffering of the faithful for righteousness sake, and for love of Him. He presents, consequently, without going out of the testimony of the kingdom, the case of persons whose reward would be great in the heavens, not only of the faithful who should inherit the earth. He unites them, consequently, together as in one single class. Now those who suffered thus in fact would begin by the testimony, but they were the commencement of the Church, yet still at the beginning in connection with Israel, compare Acts 3, the last verses. At length, the Jews having definitely rejected the testimony, and the testimony to the unity of the Body of Christ having been brought out through Paul, all those who, being the Church, had borne witness to the Jews and to the return of Christ upon their repentance, entered into the simple position of members of His Body, for the Church was such - there, there was neither Jew nor Gentile. This helps us to see how one can be made to leave one thing, and to bear a special testimony or the reverse. Finally John Baptist, the friend of the Bridegroom became His disciple (chapter 11) by faith. Remark also how the Lord associated the disciples with the Prophets before them, and in chapter 23 He says: "I send you Prophets, and wise men, and scribes," and does not speak of the evangelist character of those He sent, but remains always within the sphere of Jewish thoughts.

286 However abidingly true the blessed moral principles of these chapters may be, there is no real understanding them without taking them as addressed to the Remnant in the time in which the Lord spoke to them, and as applied to their position at that time.

- 5-19. These verses are introductory principles.

- 16. To this verse, it is the character and witness of those who belong to the kingdom - then its principles.

- 17. As regards my note, in the New Translation, to this verse, Romans 13: 8 and Galatians 5: 14 may be quoted, not as showing it wrong as to verse 17, but as to its never meaning mere obedience. But I do not think they contradict but rather confirm the thought, for this one commandment itself amounts to a keeping the whole law - filling up the measure of its requirements. It is not, "He who has done this, has obeyed this as law," but "He who has done this, has, in every respect, done all that the law proposes to obtain," just so that a man need be under it. The whole dikaioma of it is accomplished.

-  20-37. Evil done.

- 21, 22. Self subjugation as to impatient violence, passions, and tongue; then in enduring, going into grace, like their Father.

- 37-48. Evil suffered, and character of grace added, as like the Father.

It seems to me clearer and clearer that the teaching of this chapter, whatever the instruction be for us, and it is precious and great, is, in its direct application, simply the characteristics of what those, amongst whom He then came, must possess to have a part, and what part in the kingdom. It would serve for the Remnant in the last day, as verses 5, 11 and 12 for the slain Remnant. Its application in the Lord's time is evident, consequent on His rejection, that is. Verse 20, as long ago remarked, is clear as to the ground it goes upon. All the law and prophets led to was going to be effectuated (genetai, A.V. fulfilled) and carried out into more perfect and full force. Hence, those who set them aside (one of the commandments thus sanctioned by the Lord) was destroying so far what Christ came to make good. It puts no man under the law after Messiah, but it maintains its divine authority up to Him, and He came to fulfil it and the Prophets. A great deal of the law was de facto set aside, but set aside in fulfilling, as sacrifices, etc., circumcision. He was setting up - going to do it - the kingdom of heaven. It was not breakers of the law who would have a part in it.

287 After the first statement of character suited to the kingdom, I think we have clearly the two great principles noted elsewhere - the judgment of what is in man (claim on him for what he ought to be) and then the outgoing of a new nature answering to and manifesting the relationship revealed. Thus, verse 21, violence - verse 27, corruption - verse 33, subduedness of spirit within, the "yea, yea," etc., yielding to wrong without. Then, in verses 43-48, the manifestation of the Father's character in active love. Chapter 6 takes up consequent religious duties, almsgiving, praying, fasting, etc. - they must be with God - to the end of verse 18.

It is evident to me that chapters 5-7 give the character required for entrance into the kingdom, the character which was to mark the accepted Remnant - Jehovah being now on the way with the nation to the Judge; and that chapters 8 and 9 give the other side, grace and goodness come in - God manifest, His character and actings - the new thing which could not be really put into old bottles. Still goodness (in power) but rejected - the Son of Man (not Messiah) who had not where to lay His head. But chapter 8 gives present, temporal goodness, only in new power in exercise - chapter 9, what I may call religious, though the dealing of this goodness with Israel is brought out in signs. As goodness, it goes, in chapter 9, beyond Israel, as it deals in grace with what was excluded in Israel - the leper. It includes sickness, and Satan's power, the elements, all sickness, and that in taking the burden on Himself. But, in conscious rejection, verses 17-20 give Isaiah 53: 3, and the beginning of verse 4; verses 21, 22, the absoluteness of His position, and the state of things, calling for the same in following Him. Storms (with Him in the ship), and Satan's power cast out with a word, and the world, of which he is the prince, rejecting Him, that is the consequence.

288 How evidently, in the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord speaks of those in the midst of evil, and who in fact had a heavenly, divine mind in the midst of it! This is comfort. Yet, though it has its place in such a scene, it cannot have the pride of it. "Poor in spirit" is intrinsic, yet another scene belongs to them. Indeed all refers to another scene, till we come to verse 6. Then we have righteousness, purity, mercy, goodness. Note, the "poor in spirit" have the same place as the "persecuted for righteousness' sake." But it was in the midst of the then evil. But if those so-called were the salt of the earth, what is it all become? What a judgment on the now professing Church!

This chapter is subjective service, outward life; reference to others follows.

Matthew 6

The motives on which to act when doing good or engaged in acts of piety, down to verse 18.

- 18. Good done, referring to the Lord only therein.

- 19. The spring or motive of conduct as to what the heart is set on; confidence in a Father.

- 19-34. Through singleness of eye, and so just motives; confidence in God.

This chapter may, not only to verse 18, but all be considered as a question of our religious state, for it is seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness in contrast with worldly objects and cares.

Matthew 7

Feelings in relationship with others. More particular instructions to them as His disciples, with the consequence of observing His directions.

- 7. Earnestness in seeking, and of purpose, down to verse 14.

289  - 15. Guarded from evil and self-deception by practical fruits; but the tree must be good.

This chapter gives the character of service and relationship to others, the strait gate and fruits showing the truth of heart - all refer to service.

Matthew 8

This chapter gives the whole intercourse of the Lord with Israel up to the end, and its result. Remark, consequently, that we have nothing of the delivered ones here.

First. Divine power in cleansing the leper. Jehovah's goodwill shown, and Judaism recognised - therefore within Israel.

Second. Grace admitting strangers to sit down with Abraham and the heirs of promise. Faith the ground greater than Israel's, "As thou hast believed be it done."

Third. He enters into and sympathises with their position, the infirmities of His own people.

Fourth. Goes elsewhere, having, as Son of Man, nowhere to lay His head.

Fifth. In the troubles of His own disciples, the Remnant, seems asleep, leaving them thus in the storm, but, on their cry, calms it.

Sixth. The unclean spirits driven down furiously to destruction. The unclean, power in grace having delivered very maniacs, ignorantly sink in bondage.

Matthew 9

In this chapter there seems to me more rising of grace above the evil. It is not merely Jehovah's grace to heal, but after all the children of the kingdom cast out, but forgiveness, healing being the proof. He calls sinners - heals faith on the way - raises the dead when they are so - opens the eyes to see - and, in spite of the blasphemy of the Pharisees, has compassion on the multitude, those sheep without a shepherd. It does not end in rushing down to destruction. Hence it leads on to His disciples being spent for Israel, till the return of Christ, if Israel was in the Land. This is clearly sovereign grace. It was not merely present power in Israel; so that these chapters give a double character of His ways with them.

290 He forgives - calls public sinners to follow Him - has done with the old bottles - goes to raise the dead, for such is His journey - heals on the way there also, by faith, those who could not be healed as Israel viewed as of God - raises the dead, for she was not so in God's purpose - opens the blind eyes and unstops the deaf ears. But, in the midst of all this for the people, Israel reject Him. But He sees in the multitude the poor shepherdless sheep, and looks only at the greatness of the harvest, and will have other labourers called forth from the Lord of the harvest into His harvest. In chapter 10 He sends them forth.

In this chapter, we have to do with sins, sinners (in the same goodness in power) but it could not, i.e., His religious ways could not be put into old bottles. Verse 18 to the end is the true working and character of this in Israel. For, though divine goodness reached beyond, as in this chapter, it was still working in; so, in chapter 10, the disciples are sent only to Israel.

Matthew 10

Here the means of grace are carried on for the Remnant that had ears to hear, and that to the end. Chapter 8 was His then present grace, and its results then, though still only in blessing to the Remnant in rejection, but this makes chapters 9 and 10 very interesting. Grace rises over the sin, and forgives, but, as present service, there must be new bottles, the sick Remnant healed on the way, and Israel raised from the dead, and (chapter 10) grace would use the means. In chapter 11, the thing is discussed as we know, and the ground of the change shown. In chapter 10, the whole rejection itself brought out in its full character - the Sabbath and Son of Man, the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost not forgiven, sign of Jonas, and testimony, the unclean spirit, His disciples - not His mother - His owned relationship.

- 20. Here we have the Spirit's work associated with the testimony, going on in grace that rises above present rejection as a nation; quod nota bene. The present rejection is found on the blasphemy in chapter 12: 31, et seq. In Luke this rejection is the ground, and the blasphemy will be found in the disciples' rejection, to encourage them (comp: on 9), and see Luke 11: 15, etc., and chapter 12. Hence, in Luke it is generalised to the state and condition of the world, man, and the saints of the present time.

291 This chapter is extremely remarkable. I think there is a division at verse 15. Up to that is the then present mission. From verse 16 we have more general reflections on their mission looked at as a whole on to the end. Evidently it goes out beyond their then present service. A practical difference is noticed in Luke 22: 35, and we have the same time after His rejection in Matthew 24: 1-14. Compare, for the present service, Luke 10. The Spirit of their Father speaking in them is not more than would take place then. The Father's Name was revealed by Christ to them, and the Spirit would be here, not the seal but the Spirit of prophecy. But the whole passage looks further out beyond their relationship with Israel, but that relationship developed afterwards where Christ was rejected. It is now in view of His rejection - they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub; but grace is working to gather the Remnant.

Matthew 11

This chapter really ends the direct instruction of the Gospel. The Law and Prophets were till John - He was Elias (the kingdom of heaven not come but preached) the lamenting and piping had taken place. Wisdom was justified of her children.

The Lord reproaches the cities where most of His mighty works were done, because they repented not, and told them their judgment, and, seeing the Father's way, and good pleasure, and His own glory, far away and beyond that present scene, as Son, substitutes His own revelation of the Father, as Son whom no man knew, for the past system, and the lowly obedience which characterised the rejected One as the path of peace. What follows is contrast and controversy with the system around, the mysteries of the kingdom, patient grace with the Remnant, the Church He was going to build, the kingdom and that in glory. But in chapters 14 and 15 deeper principles also come in.

- 27. I do not think when alla (but) is used substantially in the sense of ei me (but, except) that it is the same. Ei me supposes already that there is that one of the kind to which the negation generally applies - it is an exception; alla retains its adversative force as to the whole, but something modifies it, in result not the same as. In this verse there is One who knows - "No one else except." So in chapter 12: 4, "But for the priests only" - no one else except. Thus in chapter 17: 8, "They saw no one but" or "except." But in Mark 9, "And suddenly having looked around, they saw no longer any one but" (alla). Here the scene had disappeared, but they saw Jesus alone with themselves. In Matthew 20: 23, it is "Is not mine to give," i.e., all that is desired, only modified by "but" (alla) "to those for whom," etc. He does not give it at all as His will, His patronage, but to those for whom, etc. So Mark 10: 40. In the three, we have "none good but" (ei me) "One." Naturally, mere goodness before His mind, He excludes all but God.

292 Matthew 12

This chapter brings out the final controversy with, or judgment of Israel, uncommonly clearly. They are delivered to the Judge. The old things pass away in the Sabbath by grace, and true liberty. We have first Messiah, like the rejected David, then One greater than the Temple, Jehovah - then present - but grace and mercy come in, and the Son of Man, Lord of the Sabbath, and grace, the power of God in goodness, draws out the opposition of the Pharisees, and Jesus keeps His lowly meek place in Israel, and then the Gentiles trust in Him. Power over Satan is, however, shown, and the Pharisees commit blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. This closes the question as to that generation. They are bad trees, and cannot bring forth good fruit. Such is flesh! Words show the man. As a sign they would only have His death and resurrection, for that generation too late, but the Ninevites and the queen of the South would both be witness against them. The prophet, and the wisdom of God in the King, the Son of David, were both there in a greater than Jonas or Solomon, but no repentance ensued. Then comes the final judgment on the unrepentant nation, to be completely fulfilled in the time of the Antichrist, though largely then. And finally He substitutes His disciples for His natural ties with Israel.

Matthew 13

Note the parable of the Sower comes before the sentence declared to be resting on the people, and the Remnant are then distinguished, and the kingdom of heaven is not mentioned until the judgment on the people is declared, but it is called, in the explanation to the disciples, 'The word of the kingdom.'

293  - 38. It is important to understand that the field is the world, not merely as an ecclesiastical point, but as going out into the whole world beyond Jewish precincts. When Christ sows it is not merely Jewish - there He sought fruit.

- 39. Not 'The end of the world,' but "The end of the age," or rather "completion of."

- 40. "The completion of this age."

- 44. It is the character of the kingdom, though, no doubt, it is Christ that did it. Judaism was not this.

This is a blessed chapter, not simply as unfolding dispensational dealing, but, as showing us in the words of Jesus flowing from His mind on His rejection, the whole scene of God's ways to the end. He, presented to Israel, is rejected. All God's ways at once come out of the treasuries of wisdom in Him. How perfect this is! He was not insensible (see chapter 11) but perfect. The effect of what acted on Him was to bring out, in touching the springs within, all the divine treasures whether of grace or wisdom. As long remarked, He sits on the sea, has left the house and Israel, and brings what is to produce fruit, does not seek it on any plant on earth. Israel is judged, the Remnant owned; they had, too, the things prophets and righteous men had desired to see. Then the first is individual, then the whole external history of the kingdom of heaven, what it had become like, and then the internal, known to divine intelligence - the action of Satan in the field - this does not appear in the net. The former was the positive activity of the enemy, where he had scope for his activity. Gathering fishes is another matter - fisherman's work - the bad a result, not meeting the purpose. We must not confound all these tares positively sown by the devil such as Popery, heresies of every kind, Gnosticism, etc. In the last parables, I cannot for a moment doubt we have the mind of Christ, only in the first two what He was really doing now He was rejected; in the third, the action of His servants in the Gospel. First, the world for what was hid in it - Judaism was not hid but contrasted - and then the Church in its proper beauty. In the fishes, the work of the fishers of men; only a net, not a hook. The tares, previously gathered into bundles, are cast into the fire. In the second case, we have nothing of the good beyond the vessels, In the wheat we have, because it is in the world - they are in glory. The fish had been taken for their own object by the fishermen, and this goes beyond the kingdom in its outward form, even when glorious. This is striking, as showing that the point here is hidden purpose, to be spiritually apprehended, as other Scriptures teach us.

294 We have here the whole course of events of the latter days. First, providential gathering of the wicked in the world, the saints gathered into His garner, i.e., Christ coming to receive the saints. Then the wicked cast into the fiery furnace, the coming to judge the quick, and then the righteous shining like Himself in His Father's kingdom - the heavenly part of the manifestation.

Matthew 14

From this chapter, we have the controversy with the adverse Pharisees, but here a kind of sketch of the whole. The wanton power of evil puts to death what is given up to its power. Christ is Jehovah (Psa. 132) in Israel, but dismisses the multitude - the Remnant being alone on the Sea while He is on high. We have an intimation, I think, of the Church's faith, in Peter's walking on the sea - but they are the Remnant, and at land as soon as He rejoins them, and go forth into the world which once rejected Him, which is blessed and willing.

Matthew 15

This is a remarkable chapter, as, besides continuing the controversy with the Pharisees, we have the relationship with Israel fully maintained, yet on higher ground, and eternal principles, both as to man and God, brought out to light. The state of man's heart is brought into contrast with ceremonial priestly righteousness. Israel judged on this ground according to her own prophets - plants not of the Father's planting, morally speaking, not true children of God, would be rooted up. But the true evil of the human heart, as such, is taught, and then Jesus, who really brought God in grace to man, goes beyond the limits of Israel, and to one accursed according to dispensational view, manifests God's heart, the necessary goodness of God who cannot deny Himself, maintains fully the title of Israel, but recognises faith, blessing the worst of Gentiles, when this was laying hold by grace of what God was. He then, moreover, shows the maintenance of the same grace towards Israel, in spite of its evil, and, I think, on a higher ground, though a smaller sphere, as heretofore noticed - not the administrative blessing of a whole in man, but the sovereign goodness of God whatever man was (verse 7, not 12) but still Jehovah, according to Psalm 132, in Israel. In chapter 16 the judgment of Israel continues, but the Church is substituted for it, and He declares He is to suffer, and not to be announced as the Christ.

295  - 27. How evidently the poor woman gets at what God is, and that He cannot deny Himself, and that outside all promise and dispensation.

Matthew 16

The substitution of the Church, founded on the truth confessed by Peter, brings in the suffering and death of Christ. The first part, however true, they were no longer to announce. I repeat, what I have elsewhere remarked, how the state of the soul may not be up to the height of a revelation really received of God. I repeat it, because it is so important to remember. If He takes up His Cross, we must; and note it is a matter of saving the soul now, not of the kingdom to be set up, the internal realities of life, but the glory of the kingdom is added, and that is in chapter 17.

- 18. Not, 'And I say also unto thee,' but "And I also say unto thee."

Matthew 17

Here the kingdom is essentially in substituting Christ the Son in place of Moses and the Prophets, but it belonged to resurrection testimony.

- 11. "Elias truly comes first and shall restore."

- 14. Note how admirably, from this verse to the end, the whole position of Christ in the world is brought out. We are accustomed to look at the state of this world, sickness, death, Satan's power as a natural condition, but, once the Lord who had created it came into it, its true condition necessarily came out - the opposition of its ruin to the fruits and thoughts of the divine nature. But He was power in goodness there. Sickness is there - He heals it - It was contrary to His nature and heart, who had made the world without these things, and who was in it in grace. He was there as Man, feeling thus for these sorrows. He touched her - the fever was gone - she was well. Blessed manifestation! But there was readiness, universal readiness to help. Many came possessed with devils - with a word they were gone - "And He healed all that were sick." But He felt, and took, bore, all in sorrow on His own heart - divine love in fellowship with man's sorrow!

296 But, for the same reason, He had no place on earth; foxes had holes, and birds of the air their nests - the Son of Man none. How could He in a world departed from God? But He called to follow - Himself, others too. They had excuses. If it were the nearest claim, they belonged to another sphere totally. The rest were dead - leave the dead to them! What a word for this world! What it expressed in Christ's mouth! But He takes them across the waves, and seems asleep. The devil, by God's permission, can raise storms, but they are in the ship with Christ. Their fear was their shame. But a word of His, awake to their cry, settled all. Then we find the world rejects Him because He casts out Satan's power. The sign that that power was there was given. Christ's presence, though it freed when His power was exercised, brought that power of evil sensibly out, and man who cannot get rid of Satan, begs the Lord to go away, to depart out of their coasts. Such is the world's history! In Luke, we have the effect on the delivered one.

- 24. Et seq.: I have spoken elsewhere of the tribute money; I only remark how it is connected with the Sonship brought out in chapter 16, and here, only He brings Peter into it, as indeed He did reveal the Father's Name.

Matthew 18

This is a striking instruction as to the spirit which is to animate those who are to have part in the kingdom and life - lowliness - a thorough judgment of evil in itself - a horror of evil so as to avoid it at all cost - gracious appreciation of what is lowly and little, for that is what God loves - grace towards offenders - still, an unbroken will in evil rejected - and the assembly the place of within and without. But grace characterises the kingdom. That is the mind of God.

- 11. This is a most clear and blessed witness that all infants are saved through Christ.

- 17. "Tell it to the assembly."

297 Matthew 19

This chapter seems to me to give more the grace of the Lord's ways, and what was coming in, the Spirit in which they had to walk, in which He did. Chapter 20, the sounding all the motives of the human heart, and breaking with all that tied to earth and was valued there, only fully sanctioning all that God had established in nature, all that was amiable in His creation. But now there was none good but God, and, while bringing in a power that lifted above and out of all that acted on or kept nature, yet, as I have said, sanctioned all God had originally established. It is remarkable in this respect. The ordinances, as marriage, etc., were good in themselves. If a man wanted to enter into life, he was to keep the commandments. But creation goodness morally was gone. None - no person was good but God. And, if we want to go wholly with Him, we must have done wholly with the world, and break with the system flesh has formed round itself.

In this chapter humility is taught as well as goodness. Verses 6-9 are a kind of warning parenthesis. How to deal with personal wrong in the new state of things is provided for. Judgment of self, and patient goodness with others is the rule, with provision in the Church for obstinate wrong. The whole, in general (save this special ordering within) is the kingdom of heaven, and goes on to consequent place in the regeneration.

In what is first addressed to the young man, we have the external positive responsibility of man, then the fact that none is good but God - the real truth, so to speak - and the judgment of the heart in motives, and hence self-sacrifice. These are the great moral questions, and the difference of law and Christian practice. With this, reward connects itself, and here He speaks of everlasting life.

Matthew 20

Everlasting life is guarded by sovereign grace, the Cross being the present portion, and all according to the predetermined ordering of the Father. All this is a most important unfolding of moral principles, and is the unfolding of the new thing coming in, as it brought man and God to light. What follows is the closing history.

298 Matthew 21

It is impossible not to see how completely, from the blind men of Jericho, it is the presentation of Messiah to Jerusalem - not a work among the poor of the flock, but a final presenting of Messiah, and Jewish. Here, even the Temple is "a house of prayer," not adding "for all nations." The riding in is evident - the cursing the fig tree - and then the details of the controversy. The judgment of the Lord, as the Stone which the builders rejected, closes this. We get details of controversy with different classes afterwards, but this is the sentence of the nation as such.

- 13. Not 'The house of prayer,' but "A house of prayer."

Matthew 22

We here go beyond the judgment of what was, which reaches down indeed to the last day, but does not go beyond requirement from what was, or man, in it. (Only they will be found adversaries.) Here we go on to grace, and the intermediate state, with the present judgment of Jerusalem - Caesar left where he is, and religion disengaged from these questions. The great essential truths the Lord does not disengage, silencing by wisdom, but openly and boldly states the resurrection and its true force, involving abiding life in another state, but apart from earthly ties, and the essence of the law, and then the putting of Christ in the place of Lord on high, in contrast with His Son of David title, Jehovah setting Him at His right hand till His enemies were made His footstool. In a word, it is the new state connected with another world, as contrasted with the old. The point of connection is in the vineyard labourers and marriage feast - one, requirement, on to sending the Son, from the Jews - the other, grace inviting to have part in the Son's festive blessing. Future judgment on the Jews is not part of this last. It turns to Gospel times, and leaves Christ at God's right hand "till" . . . Then all adversaries are judged, just as whoever has not a wedding garment.

Matthew 23

In this chapter we have the Lord's own thoughts and feelings as to the position. It has thus a very solemn and touching character, resulting in the outgoing of His heart as to Jerusalem, though in judgment as it must have been. There are directions for His disciples during the continuation of Moses' seat, and the judgment of the Pharisees who were in it. The Spirit in which the disciples were to walk. All, though the spirit of it may continue, as within Israel. The Scribes and Pharisees tested by their being sent to them like the old Prophets, and the blood of all the slain in Jerusalem would come upon that generation. Her house was left desolate till grace put Psalm 118 into their heart, and into their mouth. But we are wholly among the Jews, and in Jerusalem here, and, as present judgment, by One who loved her - the Jehovah who would have gathered her children.

299  - 39. This though of direct and local, is really of universal application. The flesh receives one come in his own name, and will say, left to itself, 'Let the Lord be glorified.'

Matthew 24

I have nothing particular to add on this chapter, except the increased sense, as coming in after what we have seen, of how Jewish it is. "This generation" still remains the striking expression; but, I think, the following verse points out that it goes further than the mere fact that only some thirty-odd years would elapse before it happened, but not more, and that what seemed a kind of impossibility would take place in spite of all.

- 5. This begins explanation.

- 6, 7. The general character.

- 9, 12. The position of disciples in it.

- 8 and 12. The comment. There is another accompanying circumstance - verse 14 - before the end can come. But there is another aspect in the course of it - verse 15 - with this they have nothing to do but to fly. But, connected with the trouble, there will be false Christs and prophets - before, only prophets, but now Antichrist ruling their will.

- 17. i.e., with the Jews then.

Note how human nature first rests in what is established, just perhaps going to be judged, and then turns to false hopes excitedly trumped up when the power of evil is there. He who looks to Christ is delivered from the former, despised and rejected as He may be. And when the evil day comes, his refuge remains - he is unshaken like that he rests on - has not to seek vain excuses.

300 Matthew 25

- 31. I consider this verse as immediately following chapter 24: 31. All that is between these two verses does not belong to the history of events; it is a practical and hortative application of the truths to the consciences of the disciples. Neither is it the Church properly so-called. They are those to whom the testimony has been entrusted, who await the Bridegroom, who consequently look towards heaven, having received this testimony, and who go out to meet the Bridegroom, and that before the cry which was heard at midnight. They are those who laboured, or who ought to have laboured during the absence of the Master.

All this is true of the Church, inasmuch as she is placed upon the earth, but it is not in regard to the Church that this is said, but in regard to the servant. As to the ten virgins - the similitude of the kingdom of the heavens - it is not simply servants, but what is found, in general, in the kingdom and characterises it. It is the activity, not the service, which is rewarded - but who goes out, who leaves the state of things, who awaits the Bridegroom, and who goes out towards Him. I do not at all say there will not be anything like it when there will be no further question of the Church properly speaking; I believe there will be persons in that state, who will be in advance of the state of things in which they find themselves, but who are not the Church, and who perhaps are called "Saints of the heavenlies." But the kingdom of the heavens will have this character, of having "gone forth to meet the Bridegroom." The parable of chapter 24 supposes the two cases; and the return of the Master does not apply to the rapture of the Church, but to the judgment executed, whether upon the professing Church or upon those who have laboured when the Church shall have been taken away; in both cases they would be, according to their circumstances, established on all that they have done. In general, they are instructions for the interval until the Son of Man comes in His glory. The distinction between the Church and another testimony is not touched. Two of the parables speak of the service during this time - the other, of the activity which precedes the establishment of the kingdom, going forth to meet the Bridegroom. The Master who takes account of the conduct of the servants, always refers (we have often had it) to the time of His manifestation as to result.

301  - 34. Not 'children,' but "blessed" and "the King shall say." And it is not, abstractly, the kingdom of God (for which ye suffer). It does seem to me a clear, definite statement of those who are spared; compare 1 Thessalonians 2: 12, and 1 Corinthians 15: 50, quod nota.

- 46. Though vague, life eternal was a well-known thought with the Jew at this time; compare John 5: 39; Matthew 19: 16, and other passages.

Matthew 26

- 25. There is no note of time; it is "And Judas answering" (apokritheis) "said."

- 26. What a turn to patient suffering!

- 29. Not 'anew,' but "new" (kainon), 'of another kind.'

- 56. The form is that of inspiration. The Spirit is writing about the disciples. Matthew might have said 'We.' In Acts, where Luke joins, it is "We"; there the disciples were the subject.

- 64. Not 'Hereafter,' but "From henceforth."

Matthew 27

- 31. John 19: 4-15, comes in in the middle of this verse. Evidently Pilate was profoundly uneasy, and at last tried to pass it off with gibes against the Jews, but washing his hands of the business - a poor washing! Here the Jews put themselves under the guilt of Christ's death, in John rejecting all their privileges under Caesar's power.

Matthew 28

- 3. It is evident that, in the account here, the main facts are brought together so as to give the relative position of the parties, as to the Jews and disciples, in their Jewish connection, and the Jews' connection with the Romans, not stopping at the linking events according to time.

302  - 18. He is risen, not ascended. This commission seems to have been entirely curtailed and broken in upon by the events. According to God's counsel Jerusalem would have been the centre, and the nations brought in under the ecclesiastical centre of that Holy City. The commandments of Christ upon earth regulated all until the end came of the age, but it was given so generally that the principle was clear to act on. But, as within that circle (till God removes it) the end of the age is come, and new energies, or newly ordered, have taken place by the Apostle of the Gentiles, who was no witness of the life of Jesus and His personal words and ways, but, born out of due time, received all part according to that energy by revelation, so he tell us in Galatians. It was another character of things.

- 19, 20. This text becomes extremely important for the ministry to be exercised in the last days. The age is not then ended. "In the Name" used, which was already revealed in the Lord's life-time, though not thus completed and put together, so to speak. It is not however a ministry which the Jews characterise as its object. But, though all power be given, it is ministry which flows from a risen, not yet from an ascended and glorified Saviour.

In this chapter of Matthew, though often noted in detail, I sum up a little as a whole. First, it is not 'Touch me not . . . I go to My Father and your Father,' but resurrection. The women touch Him, and do Him homage. Then next, the connection with the disciples is Galilee, where the great light had been seen, and where He had been associated with the poor of the flock. Now, all power was given Him in heaven and on earth, but we have no ascension, no personal place, as Son, taken with the Father, but all power given Him, which we have to remember. Hence, it reaches out beyond Judaism, and He sends His disciples to disciple all the Gentiles, "baptising them in the Name," etc. Here we have nothing of salvation nor belief, but, all power being given Him, He is Lord, and they are to be subject to the faith, and then to teach them to do what was commanded. In a certain providential way this has been done, though not universally, and not as really completing this commission. And there is the promise - is to be with them to the end of the age; that is not Church time, but till Messiah came closing the age in this world. Such was the thought they had of it, and in which the Lord speaks, the meaning of it in Scripture. Paul's message was quite different. He is sent to the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His Name. The nature of his commission is quite different, and the twelve gave up the Gentiles to him. They were not up to the height of this commission, whatever may have been historically done. Luke's commission is evidently different - has a moral character - that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His Name, beginning at Jerusalem. They are to wait for power, but there is no "to the end of the age," and He goes up to heaven, and blesses them thence.

303 The Matthew commission was never carried into execution in Scripture, but merely dropped. The Acts are entirely the Luke commission, "repentance and remission of sins . . . beginning at Jerusalem." Nor did they flee from Jerusalem, according to Matthew 10. Then Paul, as often seen, receives the Gentile commission in a new way, from the glory. The Judaism, which harassed him, became practically dominant, and carried out the Matthew commission, only according to his statement in Galatians, it returned to heathenism (in popery) when it returned to Judaism.

The kingdom comes in, in Matthew, by Son of David Emmanuel, but He must be owned Son of God to be received - that they will not. We might (if man were not what he is) suppose His going to heaven then, and the heavenly character of the kingdom set up. But, rejected, the kingdom of heaven takes the form of the parables. Then He takes to Him His great power, and reigns - puts in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.

There was a special presentation to the Jews in Acts 3, in virtue of Christ's intercession on the Cross, but this was rejected. Galilee goes on, "To us a son is born." And so Matthew 10 and 28, and suitably chapter 24 contrasted with Luke 21. Only Matthew 10 is the Jewish part - chapter 28, the Gentile, consequent on it. With Paul's we know the ministry of the Church came. The "Son of Man" is a wider sphere, passing into Psalm 8 from Psalm 2, as Nathaniel, John 1. But He receives the kingdom, too, as Son of Man, Daniel 7, but over all nations. The "Son of God" is a personal name, not a royal name, I apprehend, as to the kingdom, the kingdom which belongs to the Son. It is the religious side ensures the earthly part, as in Psalm 2, the decree as to the exalting of Him who had the throne as given from heaven. This is true as to priesthood even in Hebrews 5: 5.

The Prayers in Ephesians 1 and 3

<44041E> 305

The prayer in Ephesians 1 is, as the counsels and plans of God are unfolded towards us and about Christ as One He is glorifying, and so our inheritance with Him, for the working of God towards us in enlightening us as to our place in these counsels, and the power that brings us into it far above every name and near and like Himself. Wondrous thoughts of God! But Christ Himself (and that is our blessing) is looked at as a Man dead, and we dead in sin, and God raises Him, and us in Him, and sets us all in the highest place of blessing and glory - but it is man dealt with.

The prayer of Ephesians 3 is relationship - the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he sees already every family brought under this Name, and looks for another thing, the capacity to be at the centre as our portion - that God might grant, according to the riches of His glory developed in all this, to be inwardly strengthened with might by His Spirit. We are not heirs here, but are divinely made competent inwardly to be at the centre, and seize it all around. And thus it is Christ (He is the Centre of all) to dwell in our hearts by faith - known there, not merely on our lips, but faith realising Himself in the heart. Now this puts us in the divine centre in its very nature. We are rooted and grounded in love, but that is what God is. So there is a moral capacity to apprehend all that in which He displays Himself; for, dwelling in Him, we can comprehend what He displays, and "he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." Thus the soul can look out in every direction, and all directions, into the display of divine glory. Still this, in itself, would be dazzling, and for the heart cold in a certain sense - the heart though adoringly admiring, would want an intimate object; and here consequently the Spirit, by the Apostle, returns to Christ again, and to "know the love of Christ" - One we know in the depths of the intimacy of His love, yet it passes knowledge for it is divine, and thus we are filled to the measure of the fulness of God. So the "Glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb was the Light thereof." We are brought into the whole sphere thus of the divine glory by Christ, dwelling in our hearts by faith, being our Strength and Capacity through the Spirit; but this puts us at its centre in love, and that love in the endeared intimacy of Christ, yet in the fulness of divine nature, for the love in which we are, and know, passes knowledge.

306 Hence "Glory to him" is looked for in the Church in all ages, according to His power that works in us. That is the practical result; what a place it puts us in as to this!

In the wonderful prayer of chapter 3, I think I see more order than heretofore. Under the name of "Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," every class of being, "every family in heaven and earth" comes. It is not our knowledge, as in chapter 1, of our place as to calling and inheritance, and the power that brings us into it as Christ from death to the throne of God - wondrous translation! - but the whole scene of the display of God's glory under that Name, and Christ the central point; it is under His Father that they hold their place. Then the prayer demands that, according to the riches of His glory, of all the display of Himself as such in this universal sphere, we may be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man to be able to seize it all, but it is by His dwelling in our hearts by faith, who, while loving the saints perfectly, is the Centre of all this glory. Having Christ, who fills all the glory, thus in our hearts, we are capable of reaching out to all this, and this according to that love of which He is the expression and power to us, and He thus dwelling in us we are rooted and grounded in it.

Thus filled with that which is really God as to nature, and the wisdom of God as to understanding, we comprehend with all saints - for, having Christ in our hearts, it is impossible to be separated from them - the whole sphere and display of God's glory, breadth, length, depth, height, and not only so, but, Christ dwelling in us, we know that love which passes knowledge, but, thus apprehending the whole sphere and display of His glory, and the love of Christ which passes knowledge, we are led up to that out of which this flows, and of which this is the display. We are filled into (eis) - to this completeness - all the fulness of God.

Thus we get the internal competency, verses 16, 17 - the intermediate sphere and display, verse 18, and beginning of 19 - leading us to the whole fulness of God in itself. The Apostle then desires that, according to His power that works in us, this same strength, the effect may be produced - Glory to Him in the Church throughout all ages.

307 The preceding remarks are connected with the unsearchable riches of Christ, but further, as to the bearing of parenthesis, i.e., Ephesians 3: 2-21.

Note too in chapter 3, verse 18 resumes morally what precedes. It is not 'That ye being rooted and grounded may,' but "being rooted and grounded in love, that ye may." It is a nominative absolute, and, I think, gives the Apostle's consciousness of what the effect in a soul of what precedes in verses 16, 17, or what the practical reality of such a strengthening and dwelling is.

The connection between the prayer in this chapter and the mystery is striking. God has established Christ as Centre and Head over all things, both in heaven and earth, but the Church is in immediate connection with Him. Being strengthened in might by His Spirit, Christ dwells in our hearts by faith. Thus the Centre, as to Spiritual understanding, is in our hearts that we may comprehend. But the centre of all, as to what characterises the source of the whole plan, is Love - this has made it - that is, God Himself. And we, Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith, are rooted and grounded in love, and thus have the source, the motive centre which makes capable of comprehending - Christ being the revealed Centre as to the counsel, while bringing as He alone does, the love, for He is its manifestation and power. Then, if it is Christ's love, God's love, I must associate all saints, for that is the first circle which that love forms, and itself thinks of Having got this, which is intimate and immediate, I go out into the whole extent of that in which the God of love glorifies Himself - breadth, length, depth, height. But while this gives me the sphere, my soul wants to find the centre for itself, something more intimate, that is a stay for the soul in this vast scene - that is, it knows the love of Christ, One well known, tender, familiar, who serves, One who is ours in grace. Yet it is infinite, passes knowledge. Thus in counsels, nature, and the perfect revelation of love, we are filled up to the fulness of God. Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith, the actual Centre of all, thus introduces us, in understanding and communion, into all.

Note, this is attributed to the One God and Father of all, in an abstract way, in Ephesians 4: 6, and to Christ in the power of redemption, verses 9, 10.

The exhortations of chapter 4 are more especially founded on the end of Ephesians 2 - naturally so, as that is the responsible side of the Church, though not excluding the other character, as verse 4 shows, and also from verse 7 on. Chapter 3 comes in, not only as enlargement of the truth stated in its various bearings, but it brings the other, and more Colossian side of the mystery, in - Christ dwelling in the heart by faith - so that we are able to take it all in, look out at it as from a centre. Hence it looks by this power to the glorifying of God in the Church by this; that naturally brings the Apostle back to the exhortation to make it good now. In chapter 2: 21, 22, we have the Church in the place in which it is to glorify; in chapter 3: 20, 21, we have the power in which they fill this place, and then comes exhortation.

308 Note, too, how in Ephesians 4: 15, the power of that in which Christ is said to have come is looked to be realised by the saint. "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ"; here, "speaking the truth in love" (aletheuontes en agape). And this confirms the connection of "in the truth," and "in truth," as in John. There is no truth in the inward parts but by the Truth and Word of God, which searches the thoughts and intents of the heart, in Christ's, the Truth's, being there. "Hence too the truth as it is in Jesus," putting off the old man, and putting on the new, renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created us.

Note, further, in chapter 4, we have the two parts of verse 12, in verses 13 to 16. The first in verses 13-15; the last in verse 16. Nor is the middle part wanting, for the supply of the joints is the work of the ministry, and this connection is put in its arrangement; verses 13-15 is the main point governed by eis, and the ministry is connected with the edifying of the Body by pros, and so in verse 16. And this shows us what the work of the ministry is. There are permanent gifts used in service in a definite way, but there is a ministry by the supply of every joint. The Body edifies itself by the effectual working in the measure of every part. This makes permanent ministers, and the supply by every joint for the edifying of Body very clear, as to the place it holds. "He ascended up and gave gifts." Here are individuals given a place - some of them antecedent to the formation of the Body - all of them derived directly from Christ, and dependent on Him. But besides, and through this, and with it, there is a Body which, in all its parts, by the operation of the Spirit in each part, edifies itself. A pastor may come in in his place in this ministry, still he has a direct responsible service to Christ.

309 The three measures and principles of good in chapter 4 are the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, the new man created after God, and not grieving the Spirit. Then, as a general and wondrous rule, blessed as it is wondrous, "Be ye imitators of God as dear children." In this last, we have the most perfect expression of a divine walk in the world - following God in the affections of dear children - walking in love. That is the perfect, divine principle, love also to others; but, next, giving Himself, that is absolute and perfect - the giving up, not much by self, but self itself. Then, though there were love, perfect love to others, yet God was Himself objectively before the eyes, an offering and a sacrifice to God, to be a sweet smelling savour to Him. So with the incense, though others might smell the sweet odour, yet all was burned to God. This was the perfectness of Christ.

They were not to grieve the Spirit; that referred to subjective state and walk. Then, when they have had their objective measure of love and light, they are to be filled with it. But then in this we get the sobriety, and the 'beside ourselves.' Verses 15-17, it is sober; verses 18, 19, besides oneself, so to say. Will is gone, and honouring God's goodness, he can give thanks always for all things.

Further, we are light - that is one divine name - partakers of the divine nature. But it is never said we are love, because that is supreme goodness in its essential nature; but we love because we are partakers of it. Light, though intrinsically pure, shines. Love, save as the Father loves the Son, does not necessarily go out of itself, and indeed there it really does not. It delights in itself, when it exercises itself out of itself. It is sovereign, and hence we cannot be said to be it. But light always manifests itself, then other things. Hence, though essential, it is not so properly so as love.

310 Note, too, here besides the order noticed elsewhere in chapter 5: 25, et seq., there is another point. Christ's first act is wholly written Himself. He loved the Church, and gave Himself for it. This is summed up in 'Himself,' but it embraces the whole of Himself. Now this is as is right. The first must be of and within Himself as being divine. It was a divine work, and so absolutely complete within Himself, and hence the love was perfect - He gave Himself; nothing was kept back. It was not a gift of something, but giving Himself. Yet it was love, and a work, we must remember, which had a specific object, which makes it so precious to us, and supposes that divine Person to be a Man indeed too - He loved the Church - for in giving Himself He was Man, though the gift, the thing given and He who gave was divine. But what I note now is, that before any application, any cleansing, or presenting another thing to Himself, He had accomplished by Himself a work - was complete in His own act and work - and that this suited the glory and perfectness of His divine Person.

Note too in this chapter, how, with the most perfect, devoted love, personally exercised and given as blessing, perfect, divine, moral excellency is looked for and wrought out too. He gave Himself. That is perfect love, for indeed the Church was in fact in the sink of this world. He would present it to Himself. There is the perfection of His love and her enjoyment. But between there is what is called for in order to the latter, and divine necessity morally - sanctifying and cleansing by the washing of water by the Word. The divine perfection applied morally, judging all of flesh, all evil, and revealing, requiringly but cleansingly, all good. And so we ought to take things, adore, trust to the love, but look for God's character as equally necessary and to be desired, what must be if it be a divine blessing. The purchase of love, giving Himself, comes first - what is His by perfect grace, He cleanses to have it according to His heart.

There is in chapters 4 and 5, another, and to me an interesting point. The relationships, up to speaking of wives, are with God. So Christ offers Himself for us to God. We have the objective perfectness of motive in God Himself, and so in the character of the work, as well as perfect self-sacrifice for others. But in Ephesians 5, in His loving the Church, it is a love of relationship. He still gave up self in love. He gave Himself for it, but it ends in the perfectness of His own acts, and He presents it to Himself. This is beautifully in its place, and perfect. How perfect Scripture too is! Christ ought to have the Church to Himself.

I am inclined, too, to think that "The fulness of him that filleth all in all," is not simply Godhead, but Christ in redemption. The passage in Ephesians 4: 10, leads me to this. It is redemption - He who went into the lower parts of the earth, and now far above all heavens.

311 I do not know how far I have hitherto accurately remarked on the armour of chapter 6, that we have subjective, objective, active, and dependence.

[END OF VOLUME 4]

Review of "The Revelation of Law in Scripture"

J. N. Darby.

<45001E> 1 {file section a.}

(Notes and Comments Vol. 5.)

{"The Revelation of Law in Scripture," by Patrick Fairbairn, D.D. The third series of the "Cunningham Lectures." Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 38, George Street. 1869.}

Dr. Fairbairn is infected with the desire of setting up man's part in divine things, and so below grace. He works in the boundaries fixed by nature.

Page 15. 'When, in respect to things above nature, God reveals His mind to men, He does it through men, and through men not as mere machines, unconsciously obeying a supernatural impulse, but acting in discharge of their personal obligations and the free exercise of their individual powers and susceptibilities.' As regards Old Testament Prophets, this is not true, and even in tongues in the New, and is bad as really rationalistic. He says: 'It is within the boundary lines fixed by nature, and in accordance with the principles of her constitution, alike in the mental and the material world, that the work of grace proceeds.'

Page 22. 'Man, as surely as he is a rational being, is the end of his own existence; he does not exist to the end that something else may be, but he exists absolutely for his own sake; his being is its ultimate object, consequently all should proceed from his own simple personality.' But relationship with what is? This quotation from J. S. Mill is the poorest sophism. Because the question is not an end out of himself, but in what relationship his perfection consists, or whether there is any. It is not only what may be, but what is. Besides it is deifying egoism - I must not care for my wife, nor for society - for 'man' says nothing really - we must say 'a man.' It denies all affections, or even common or social existence, otherwise it is not his own simple personality. But divine does not become human; for God is One, and lone man not. He says: 'The fundamental principle of morality may be expressed in such a formula as this, "So act, that thou mayest look upon the dictate of thy will as an eternal law to thyself." Thus the divine becomes essentially one with the human.'

Page 30. Referring to my paper 'On the Law,' he says: 'The Law, it is held, had a specific character and aim, from which it cannot be dissociated, and which makes it for all time the minister of evil.' But this is not so - the Law is not 'the minister of evil,' but the Law "worketh wrath."

2 Page 31. 'Distinguishing between the teaching or commandments of Christ, and the commandments of the law, holding the one to be binding on the conscience of Christians and the other not, is plainly but partial Antinomianism; it does not, indeed, essentially differ from Neonomianism, since law, only as connected with the earlier dispensation, is repudiated, while it is received as embodying the principles of Christian morality, and associated with the life and power of the Spirit of Christ.' He here does not even know what he is talking about. It is not law 'as connected with the earlier dispensation,' but law as a principle and system on which man may be placed as contrasted with redemption, grace, and the gift of life. Further, it is not received as embodying the principles of Christian morality, but human morality. God and love having come in, the path of the Christian, as expressed in the life of Christ, goes on much higher ground - not merely maintenance of human relations, however right, but "perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." And, further, he has not an idea beyond amount of requirement and form of obligation of law, whereas the question is: Is law the form of obligation? He avoids, and professedly, defining what law is, i.e., an undeviating course imposed by the authority or power of another, and asks, 'How far has it varied in amount of requirement or form of obligation, at different periods of the divine administration?'

Page 33. 'The Protestant churches generally stand committed to the belief of the moral law in the Old Testament as in substance the same with that in the New, and from its very nature limited to no age or country, but of perpetual and universal obligation.' This supposes a moral law in the New, which is the whole question, and confounds the principle of law and the substance or contents of a law. 'Of perpetual and universal obligation' then brings in the authority or else confounds the relations, consistency with which the Law insists on, with its authoritative insistence on it. This is what he constantly confounds, though forced sometimes to admit the difference, i.e., that there is no formal law in the New Testament. But, besides, a new relation with God is formed in the New Testament, and this changes everything; of this he knows nothing. "Herein is love, not that we loved him, but that he loved us." And "We love him, because he first loved us" - not we ought, must. The Protestant churches have no doubt taken the Decalogue as the grand moral summary under which is all duty, and never really known the Christian position and new creation.

3 Page 34. 'Sin is but the transgression of law; where no law is, there is no transgression. So that when the Apostle again speaks of certain portions of mankind not having the law, of their sinning without law, and perishing without law, he can only mean that they were without the formal revelation of law, which had been given through Moses to the covenant-people, while still, by the very constitution of their beings, they stood under the bonds of law, and by their relation to these would be justified or condemned.' This, 'Sin is but the transgression of the law,' is a most mischievous heresy. Sin was there to take occasion by the commandment when it came. Of this I have spoken. 'No transgression,' no doubt. Hence we have here, 'can only mean.' All the account of man afterwards is as false and as mischievous as can well be. Impossible to conceive anything more bewildered, more complete following of his own thoughts without Scripture, than his view of Adam's position. He says: 'The original standing of our first parents must have been amid'! 'the obligations of law. And the question is what was the nature of the law associated with man's original state? And how far, or in what respects did it possess the character of a revelation?' A child could answer. They were formally forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Dr. Fairbairn tells us that it was 'in something else than what in the primeval records carries the formal aspect of law. It was mainly being created in the image of God.' Think of that being a law! And 'What does this import of the requirements of law, or the bonds of moral obligation?'

Page 37. 'Undoubtedly, as the primary element in this idea, must be placed the intellect, or rational nature of the soul in man; the power or capacity of mind, which enabled him in discernment to rise above the impressions of sense. Without such a faculty, there had been wanting the essential ground of moral obligation; man could not be the subject either of praise or of blame; for he should have been incapable of so distinguishing between the true and the false, the right and the wrong, and so appreciating the reasons which ought to make the one rather than the other the object of one's desire and choice, as to render him responsible for his conduct. In God this property exists in absolute perfection.' God had it always, he says, and so man must.

4 Now all this is excessive ignorance of divine truth, and in the teeth of Scripture, and shows he does not know what law means. It supposes man had the knowledge of good and evil before the Fall, which is false, that he had it to be like God in it. Whereas God says "The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil." God did give a positive law which did not require that knowledge, but required obedience. There had been no harm in eating the forbidden fruit, if God had not forbidden it. It was a formal law, but the thing forbidden not wrong unless forbidden. It confounds a nature producing its fruits with a law, i.e., an imposed rule involving the authority or power of another in its true sense. In page 40, he does not stint to say, 'In the permission accorded to man to partake even of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, though with a stern prohibition and threatening to deter him from such a misuse of his freedom.' It is hard to suppose a greater proof of where moral law-defending leads a man. A permission with a stern prohibition shows a strange state of mind, but the meaning is evident. It was not a simple forbidding as test of obedience, but called for the reflective quality of man's mind to decide, on grounds of judged good and evil, what he ought to do. It is hard to conceive greater error than this part of the book. It shows the author, or his principles, incapable of any real scriptural or right thought on the subject. It is well that the system of Adam's having had the law thus - being only more fully developed at Sinai - should be brought out clear.

Page 38. But, further, the 'destination of man' is this rational development in knowledge. This is false two ways. It was not the destination of man, but something infinitely higher, and his destiny was in the Second Adam not in the first. Hence, in this system, the Second is a perfecter of the first by better motives and power, with 'potential pardon.' This faculty, however, was to 'secure the good he was capable of attaining.'

Then, page 39, he must have a will to choose - not obey. He says: 'For this there must be a will to choose, as well as a reason to understand - a will perfectly free in its movements, having the light of reason to direct it to the good, but under no constraining force to obey the direction.' If there is really a will, he has chosen. But a will to choose is independence of God. Not obligation to obey a will of our own! We have a will, but a will which is not a will to obey absolutely, as Christ, and nothing else is a fallen will. He would have a will to judge for himself on motives, that is, independently of God. If God be thought of, obedience or sin is the only thing. Adam was left free, i.e., not restrained in action and allowed to be tempted. Confidence and obedience (shown by prayer and hearing the Word) were the right path, as in Christ in the desert in opposite circumstances; man failed in both. But the moment he chose when God had spoken he was a lost being. But an image in which one cannot err, and the other can, is no real image of that in which he so can. He says: 'While God never can, from the infinite perfection of His being, do otherwise than choose with absolute and unerring rectitude, man with his finite nature and his call to work amid circumstances and conditions imposed on him from without could have no natural security for such unfailing rectitude of will.' God never chooses.

5 Page 41. His statements as to immortal life are all wrong too. In the divine nature they are results! In man too they are results! Note "eternal life" is not noticed by him. He says: 'Blessedness and immortality are inseparable accompaniments of the divine nature, but rather as results flowing from the perpetual exercise of its inherent powers and glorious perfections, than qualities possessed apart - hence in man suspended on the rightful employment of the gifts and prerogatives committed to him.' Adam was not immortal - certainly a sinner. Now that is true as to bodily death as an effect of sin, but of that he is not speaking, for it would not apply to God. To show, too, how he does not get beyond the first man, the common idea of restoring the image is referred to - 'the restoration to the image of God, in the case of those who partake in the new creation through the grace and Gospel of Christ' - and 'knowledge is the product of illuminated reason.'

Page 43. Adam's state in innocence when fresh and pure is judged of 'from what we still know him to be' (not from Scripture). 'Sin, while it has sadly vitiated his moral constitution, not having subverted its nature, or essentially changed its manner of working.' (No wonder Dr. Fairbairn takes law!) This of course ignores the Scripture that he got the knowledge of good and evil in the Fall. Surely enmity against God is a subversion of our nature - not being possible to be subject to the law of God is an essential change. This is the secret of the mischief - no true sense of sin. He confounds responsibility, which arises from relationships, and in innocence were naturally walked in, with a law which imposes them, or rather conduct which fulfils them or results in punishment inflicted according to it by power. His quotation from Harless is right enough: 'There is something above the merely human and creaturely in what man is sensible of in the operation of conscience, whether he may himself recognise and acknowledge it as such or not. The workings of his conscience do not, indeed, give themselves to be known as properly divine, and in reality are nothing more than the movements of the human soul; but they involve something which I, as soon as I reflect upon it, cannot explain from the nature of spirit, if this is contemplated merely as the ground in nature of my individual personal life, which after a human manner has been born in me. I stand before myself as before a riddle, the key of which can be given, not by human self-consciousness, but by the revelation of God in His word.' But Dr. Fairbairn's inference to Adam's state is a denial of the effect of eating the forbidden fruit. Conscience, save in a figurative sense, is a law, because God has placed it as a monitor, taking care that when sin came in conscience should come in with it. But it is the opposite of true law - nomon me echontes (not having law) is the word. And God describes it by man's becoming "as one of us, knowing good and evil" in himself, i.e., not imposed by authority to which he had to answer as responsible. To apply such a thought to God is absurd. I could say, God was a law to Himself, just meaning He was under none, but that His own perfection made Him always act so and so. As a fact, man has the knowledge of good and evil which is not a law, even so in the sense of a rule, for it may be vitiated, as in Saul and millions else. "I thought I ought." But it is the faculty of making the difference and holding one thing for good, another for evil, making the difference between good and evil in my mind, whatever my rule may be. But you cannot speak of being 'subject and accountable,' when speaking of God. Obedience, conscience, and law, or the rule of conscience, are all distinct things. Obedience refers to authority - law to a rule imposed - conscience to my making a difference between good and evil, right and wrong in myself, if there was no authority, no obedience, no law. For that is as God does. He says: 'We are compelled to regard the absolute standard of right and wrong as constituted by the nature of the Deity.' The nature of the Deity as the absolute standard of right and wrong is all false till I get the Second Man, and supposes evil, as does revealed law after the Fall. For in God I have sovereign love, learnt in Christ's sacrifice, and I have divine purity in a nature which cannot sin. But to make a creature have the nature of the Deity as his absolute standard as such, falsifies duty, because God cannot be in the relations man is in, and duty flows from it. Hence, when the Decalogue is given, there is no revelation of God's nature at all, but simply the obligations of man's towards God and his neighbour. Christianity says, "Be ye therefore imitators of God as dear children" - when we are such, and gives Christ as the pattern - "perfect as your Father" - but He is it first. "God commends his love to us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." In Him were the two poles of perfection. Absolute self-sacrifice (not loving a neighbour as oneself, which is no divine perfection, and cannot be) for us - that is purely divine, no worthy object, but divine goodness; to God - that is absolute human perfection, divine indeed but still of and in a Man. The Law knew nothing of this, but man's duties where he was, but Christ was God manifest in the flesh, and that is our pattern. But he who so walks will have no law against what he does. Of this there is no thought in Dr. Fairbairn's mind.

7 Page 45. 'For what was the law, when it came, but the idea of the divine image set forth after its different sides, and placed in formal contrast to sin and opposition to God?' The Law being 'the idea of the divine image' is mere nonsense, if the Decalogue, as he says, is the grand display of it, for that image is not thought of in it, but man's duties towards God and his neighbour, which in the nature of things cannot apply to God. Much of, indeed all of it, in its nature supposes sin. And even when it is said, "Be ye holy," there is no thought of "as," but only "for," and perfection is "with Jehovah thy God," not "as." That is in principle in Christianity alone, because Christ was come, the Second Man, not the first. It is this that makes it so dreadfully false, and falsifies the nature of law. The first Adam is the history of responsibility in man innocent, and a sinner - the last, the Second Man, the display of God in man, the perfectly obedient Man. He was born under the Law, but He was much more than that - God manifest in flesh, and that is not law at all.

8 Again, 'Strictly speaking, man at first stood in law rather than under law - being formed to the spontaneous exercise of that pure and holy love, which is the expression of the divine image, and hence also to the doing of what the law requires.' But man was under express law at first, and is so spoken of in Hosea 6: 7 and Romans 5, which quotes it.

Pages 46, 47. 'The law of the Ten Commandments was written on Adam's heart on his creation,' etc. This is simple, but well known nonsense. How could "Thou shalt not steal" be a law to Adam? Or "kill," or "lust"? It all supposes sin and a fallen state, and in principle so does every prohibition of evil, and indeed a command to love God. 'Binding to obedience' is all very well - that Adam's law did, but it did not suppose sin. The moment Scripture is owned, which expressly declares that man got the knowledge of good and evil by the Fall, and that this part, if they please to call it so, was acquired then, as Scripture expressly and in terms asserts, "The man is become as one of us," all this falls to the ground. He says 'God had furnished man's soul with an understanding mind, whereby he might discern good from evil and right from wrong; and not only so, but also in his will was most perfect uprightness (Eccles. 7: 29) and his instrumental parts (i.e., his executive faculties and powers) were in an orderly way framed to obedience.'

Page 48. 'Understood after this manner, the language in question is quite intelligible and proper, though certainly capable of being misapplied (if too literally taken), and in form slightly differing from the Scripture representation; Rom. 2: 14, 15.' It is well it is admitted it differs slightly from Scripture representation - if it does, it is wrong, and wrong on a fundamental point; and Romans most assuredly, on which it is said to be built, does not speak of man before his fall. Again, wrong as he is, he is obliged to admit it is not 'properly a revelation of law in Adam.'

Pages 49-51. This is all imagination. 'Man possessed a sense of beauty as an essential ground of his intelligence and fellowship with Heaven. He was therefore to cultivate the feeling of the beautiful, by cultivating the appropriate beauty inherent in everything that lives.' Scripture history of development of art is Cain when he had lost God altogether. Why is this so given? The sense of beauty is of God, and finds it in its place in God's works, as Christ in the lily, not in Solomon. All this, too, makes the first man the object of God's designs and counsels - a fatal error, and a denial of the Cross. He says, 'Man was to trace, in the operations proceedings around him, the workings of the divine mind, and then make them bear the impress of his own'!

9 Pages 52, 53. 'Man had the light of Heaven within him, and of his own accord should have taken the course, which his own circumstances, viewed in connection with the divine procedure, indicated as dutiful and becoming. The real question is, did not the things recorded contain the elements of law? Was there not in them such a revelation of the mind of God, as bespoke an obligation to observe the day of weekly rest, for those whose calling was to embrace the order and do the works of God?' How different the Apostle on entering into God's rest! But note the admission that there ought not to be a law - 'there was no formal enactment binding the observance of the day on man, neither should it have been.' There were, he says, 'the elements of law.' The Sabbath was in no way a law. As Fairbairn justly says, 'law was not required while man was pure.' He would have enjoyed 'the sanctified day' with God, I do not doubt, if he had not sinned, but this just shows law was not the thing, save as test of obedience, till man was a sinner, and then, in fact, could only condemn. I have no doubt having part in the rest of God is the essence of blessing; but that is not the question, but law, and this he admits. it was not, but one of its elements, i.e., a thing law occupied itself about, but not law.

Page 55. 'High as man's original calling was to preside over and subdue the earth, to improve and multiply its resources, to render it in all respects subservient to the ends for which it was made.' This, again, is a totally false statement of man's calling.

Page 57. Speaking of the command respecting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he says, 'it served to erect a standard, every way proper and becoming, around which the elements of good and evil might meet, and the ascendancy of the one or the other be made manifest.' What elements of good and evil? This is talk.

10 Page 59. 'If grace should interpose to rectify the evil that had emerged, and place the hopes of mankind on a better footing than that of nature, this grace must reign through righteousness, and overcome death by overcoming the sin which caused it.' How 'by overcoming the sin'? It was by redemption.

Page 61. Here, again, we have this civilisation process as the purpose of God with innocent man. 'The charge given to man at the moment of creation, would necessarily have involved a continuous rise in the outward theatre of his existence; and it may justly be inferred, that as this proceeded, his mental and bodily condition would have partaken of influences fitted indefinitely to ennoble and bless it.' But what follows is worse, because restoration is made progressive, not a work of redemption. 'The progression had now to proceed, not from a less to a more complete form of excellence, but from a state of sin and ruin to one of restored peace, life, and purity, culminating in the possession of all blessing and glory in the kingdom of the Father.' Revelation of redemption might be progressive, and steps preparatory to it. He speaks of progress from sin to 'restored peace, life, and purity.' It is all a fable. Where is the Flood in this progress? It was a world apart before which ended there, and then the ways of God began, and 'it is the enlightenment and regeneration of the world on the principle of progression'! Really, God had given man up to a reprobate mind, calling Abram out apart. Thus page 63 shows how utterly false the whole system is. The total developed corruption of man without law, and the destruction of the world is ignored - a confirmed promise to one, to which law could not be added, which was the covenant of blessing in contrast with subsequent law, and the world, i.e., man apart from it, being given up. All God's ways are given up for a mere theory and fable.

Page 66. 'As regards the manner in which the call to imitate God's goodness, and be conformed to His will was to be carried out, it would of course be understood that, whatever was fairly involved in the original destination of man to replenish and cultivate the earth, so as to make it productive of the good of which it was capable, and subservient to the ends of a wise and paternal government, this remained as much as ever his calling and duty.' If so, Cain driven out from God did better than Abel. 'Man's proper vocation was not altered by the Fall,'! i.e., civilisation. "All that is in the world is not of the Father, but of the world." The rest of God was wholly lost in the first creation. Sacrifice, with death, was what God now owned. But, for Dr. Fairbairn, the rest of God remains.

11 Page 69. 'Somehow - apparently, indeed, in connection with the clothing of the shame of our first parents by means of the skins of slain victims - they were guided to a worship by sacrifice as the one specially adapted to their state as sinners. Here then, again, without any positive command, there was not law, in the formal sense of the term, but the elements of law,' etc. We have in the clothing of skins, and Abel, not law but death, and covering and acceptance in righteousness by grace through death, the very opposite of law, "for if righteousness came by law, Christ is dead in vain."

Page 70. This is a formal confession that there was no law till Moses. 'To speak of law in the moral and religious sphere - law in some definite and imperative form, standing outside the conscience, and claiming authority to regulate its decisions, as having a place in the earlier ages of mankind, is not warranted by any certain knowledge we possess of the remoter periods of God s dispensations.'

Page 70. 'With the majority of men, conscience and motives failed.' Were there some then with whom it did not fail? It was 'the weakness of our moral nature, the upper part giving way to the lower.' Where is enmity against God, and all concluded under sin? And is flesh lusting against the Spirit this state? Note he quotes it 'the flesh lusts against the Spirit' (sic).

Page 74. 'The melancholy picture drawn near the commencement of the Epistle to the Romans, as an ever deepening and darkening progression in evil, realises itself wherever fallen nature is allowed to operate unchecked. It did so in the primitive, as well as the subsequent stages of human history. First, men refused to employ the means of knowledge they possessed respecting God's nature and will, would not glorify Him as God.' All this progress and 'First' is a simple mistake. The statement is that, having degraded the idea of God in idolatry, God gave them up to degrade themselves.

Page 75. 'Not for many long ages - not till the centuries of antediluvian times had passed away, and centuries more after a new state of things had commenced its course - did God see meet to manifest Himself to the world in the formal character of Lawgiver . . . . A proof, manifestly, of God's unwillingness to assume this more severe aspect in respect to beings He had made in His own image, and press upon them, in the form of specific enactments, His just claims on their homage and obedience!' This is really too bad systematising. God, unwilling to be so harsh as to be a Lawgiver when He had destroyed all the world but eight! At any rate it is a confession there was not a law. Then the separation of Abram from all the world in idolatry, even Shem's family (Joshua 24) is ignored. There is no scriptural recognition of idolatry before the Flood. But if law is a 'painful necessity,' how is it 'God's image, universal and Christian'?

12 Page 76. 'There was no law till Egypt, save blood for blood, and circumcision, but principles of law became manifestations of God's character to attract confiding love.' Was ever such confusion? Were these 'a painful necessity'?

Pages 78, 79. It is remarkable how the statements of Scripture are lost in vague generalities. But that is was 'not to occupy an independent place,' etc., is all false. He says: 'The law could not have been intended - the very time and occasion of its introduction prove that it could not have been intended - to occupy an independent place; it was of necessity but the sequel or complement of the covenant of promise, with which were bound up the hopes of the world's salvation, to help out in a more regular and efficient manner the moral aims which were involved in the covenant itself.' It was not against the promises of God, but it was on a different ground - doing, not faith in what Another had done. It was not to help out 'in a more regular and efficient manner' the promise. It was "added because of transgressions," came in by-the-bye "that the offence might abound," and it is monstrous to say that 'the ground of a sinner's confidence towards God, and the nature of the obligations growing out of it, remained essentially as they were.'

And (p. 80) citing Exodus 3: 6-17, he says: 'When appearing for the purpose of charging Moses to undertake the work of deliverance, the Lord revealed Himself as at once Jehovah, the one unchangeable and eternal God.' 'And as soon as the deliverance was achieved, and the tribes of Israel lay at the foot of Sinai, ready to hear what their redeeming God might have to say to them, the first message that came to them was one that most strikingly connected the past with the future, the redeeming grace of a covenant God with the duty of service justly expected of a redeemed people.' But in Exodus 6 He declares He had not revealed Himself by His name Jehovah. And Sinai made all depend on "IF ye will obey my voice" - was not "of one" (Gal. 3: 16), whereas the promise was a pure promise, dependent on God's fidelity only to the promise confirmed to Christ. This distinction is ignored. Israel's receiving the Law after redemption from Egypt, might show to a spiritual mind that man could in no way have to say to God on this ground, but does not touch the question of the ground on which he was then set, which was his own obedience, and blessing if it was found. In fact it is sovereign grace, and gracious discipline (including millennial government) up to Sinai, and then all was changed. They were to worship there, instead of which they got the Law and fell in the wilderness - for the same acts as before Sinai they were violently smitten. Even Moses, for one fault, could not go in - a sign of its bearing.

13 Pages 83, 84. 'In the personal announcement which introduces the ten fundamental precepts, it is that same glorious and unchangeable Being coming near to Israel in the character of their redeeming God. Redemption carries in its bosom a conformity to the divine order, and only when the soul responds to the righteousness of Heaven is the work of deliverance complete.' It put, as to Israel after the redemption, under the repelling terrors of exclusion from His presence, life before them and blessing on the strict condition of obedience, and in Law this was right (death and malediction if they did not).

Page 85. Quoting Exodus 34: 6, 7, he says: 'It intimates, indeed, that justice could not forego its claims, that obstinate transgressors should meet their desert, but gives this only the subordinate and secondary place, while grace occupies the foreground.' As to Moses - his intercession spared the people for the time, but the revelation of grace would not clear the guilty (just what Christianity does) and the soul that sinned was to be blotted out of God's book, Moses not being able to make atonement for which he had gone up with a 'peradventure.' 'Justice could not forego its claims, but it gives this only the secondary place.' This is not Christianity, nor anything save governmental patience and goodness. Justice never foregoes its claims, cannot, but it is satisfied in Christ, not put in a secondary place, though grace reigns. To Moses governmental goodness was shown, but justice maintained its claims, and no atonement was made - each soul had to answer for itself. There is no sense of sin in this book. He says, citing these verses, 'Was this to act like One who was more anxious to inspire terror, than win affection from men?' 'Win affection from men'! It was said to Moses, who had found grace - if the people approached they died. Was not that terror? Yet, in page 86, he says it is 'a formal, stringent law.' It is not a question if there were promises - there were plenty, but on the strict condition of man's fulfilling the Law and obedience.

14 Pages 87, 88. 'It has ever been the maxim of all judicious and thoughtful commentators on the law of the two tables, that when evil is forbidden, the opposite good is to be understood as enjoined.' 'Opposite good to be understood,' is making a law and adding to God's, and in a general way falsifying it. Yet on this is founded here the introduction of the principle of love, though this is all ignorance of Christianity, because it is only love as duty upwards, or to a neighbour as oneself, the duty of the relationship, not divine goodness known and shown, which depends on none. The good Samaritan is the converse of the question asked, and the exchange of the Decalogue goes no further than love to a neighbour, in one word fulfilling it all (and as this was done in grace, the Law not needed) but neither reach the Christian principle of imitating God and giving up self. Yet he says, 'The Apostles freely interchange the precept of love with the commands of the Decalogue, as mutually explanatory of each other. And thus, in part at least, may be explained the negative form of the ten commandments.'

Page 90. 'The negative is doubtless in itself the lower form of command; and when so largely employed as it is in the Decalogue, it must be regarded as contemplating and striving to meet the strong current of evil that runs in the human heart.' That is, the Law of the Decalogue supposes sin, and could not be in Paradise.

Page 143. "The true import of the Levitical code is not seen on the curt statutes.' 'The occasional access of a few ministering priests into the courts of that worldly sanctuary - an access into its inmost receptacle by one person only, and by him only once a year - how imperfect an image of the believer's freedom of intercourse with God, and habitual consciousness of His favour and blessing!' I have nothing to say to this. 'Imperfect an image of the believer's freedom' was a sign given by the Holy Ghost that they could not go at all; Hebrews 9.

15 Before going further, I state that no Christian doubts that the contents of the Law are good - the Law, holy, just and good. Further, when God acts, He more or less displays His character, what He is, and, as a general principle, there must be goodness and lovingkindness, because these above all characterise Him. Even judgment will put an end to evil, be deliverance from evil, though in itself more purely righteousness. The Cross gives the whole truth fully. But all this is not the question, but what is, as such, Law? It is requirement from man, not the revelation of God. In its dispensation, a God who had delivered may have uttered it, but it is requirement from man of what he ought to do, or prohibition of what he ought not to do. In the Decalogue, save one commandment, or at most two (4 and 5) the latter - i.e., it supposes, and, in eight or nine tenths of it, speaks of sin. Obligation does not rest on law, but on relationship. Law maintains these - so does Christ, but on a different principle. God has formed men in certain relations to Himself and one another. A good nature - and man was so formed - would walk naturally in them, because it was a conscious relationship by Creation itself, and the communications connected with it. I add this, because always true with God, another being - it was needed and existed. Law takes up these relationships, with some other things consequent as facts on the Fall. Hence the Decalogue is not arbitrary, but God's maintenance of the relationships He had placed man in - in the circumstances in which he now found himself. It is a perfect rule for the child of Adam as he is, as a summary of positive duty, including all, we must add, what the Lord cites. But two things make the difference. It is law, not grace - secondly, grace has, though sanctioning all this, changed the relationship. We are God's children in grace, not Adam's. Though in the relationship, the obligation remains. Hence duty, and measure of duty, flowing from, existing in the relationship, the rule and measure is different. Grace says not, 'man must love God' - right, perfectly right, as that is as fact of duty, though hopeless for man in form - but "God loves," and "we" (not 'must') "love him because he first loved us." It is a new nature and a new relationship. Law is addressed to man in flesh, and tells him his duty and no more. Hence useful to judge.

16 Page 148. Quoting Deuteronomy 4: 7, 8, he says: 'Coming expressly from Jehovah in the character of Israel's Redeemer, the Law cannot be contemplated otherwise than as carrying a benign aspect, and aiming at happy results. Moses extolled the condition of Israel as on this very account surpassing that of all other people.' The Law being better to them as a nation than the heathen laws, and gods, has nothing to do with the question. The next class of passages he cites (Psalms 103, 119 and 147: 19, 20) is the renewed man delighting in the revelation of God's will and word, of which the New Testament even in Romans 7, speaks as clearly as these passages. But that is not being under law. The question is treated by Paul as the question of justification, and then of deliverance. But he does not really understand the question, nor any who take up law as he does.

Page 151. 'The people had just been rescued, it was declared, from Egypt, had been borne by God on eagles' wings, and brought to Himself - for what? Not simply that they might acknowledge His existence, or preserve His memory, in the face of surrounding idolatry, but that they might obey His voice and keep His covenant, and so be to Him "a kingdom of priests and an holy nation."' This is a wholly false quotation on the whole point in question. He says they were borne on eagles' wings that they might obey His voice, citing Exodus 19: 4, 6, but verse 5 says "Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice," etc., "Ye shall be," etc., i.e., makes all depend on the people's obedience. This one sentence shows where he is Nor, further, is there a word about 'reflecting His character,; nor 'holy as He is holy.' Holiness was required, because God was holy; 'as' is only in the Gospel.

Page 152. 'If the law had been aught else than a real disclosure of the mind of God as to what He demands of His people toward Himself and toward each other in the vital interests of truth and righteousness, it had been beneath the occasion.' It was the mind of God as to what He demands of His people towards Himself and the neighbour in the interests of righteousness ('truth' is too much - that came by Jesus Christ), but 'demands of righteousness on man' is not the reflection of God's character. So, when the lawyer asks: "Who is my neighbour," He does not say 'everybody,' but changes the whole aspect, and shows One who is a Neighbour towards another in grace, not who was his neighbour, but One acting in love to need - what Christ became in grace. The Law, so given, is treated as a thing come in by the bye, till the Seed came. All the notions founded on this romance of general progress are false. God could only raise the question of man's righteousness, for that was the Law, in a people separated out of the world to Himself - as progress with man, it would have falsified His knowledge of their lost estate (seeking the Lord did not) and that is just the root of this system. Hence it is given to a nation externally redeemed, and the question raised with an 'if.'

17 Page 153. 'It will not do to say, by way of explanation, that in rejecting Jesus they set themselves against the very Head of Theocracy, and so ran counter to its primary design; for it was not in that character that He formally appeared and claimed the homage of men, but rather as Himself the living embodiment of its great principles, the culmination of its spiritual aims.' It was just because the contrary was really true that He was rejected.

Page 155. 'Witsius finds in the precepts of the Decalogue the moral elements of the covenant of works; they only assumed somewhat of the appearance of the covenant of Moses to convince people of their sinfulness,' etc. This is just in the teeth of the Apostle.

Page 157. 'They' (Israel) 'were no more bound to seek righteousness by the law, than the young man was by our Saviour's saying to him, If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.' The Saviour in these words takes the Ten Commandments as the covenant of 'Do and live.'

Page 158. 'The law carried with it the bond of a sacred obligation which they were to strive to make good; and of any other meaning or design, either on God's part in imposing, or on their part in accepting the obligation, the narrative is entirely silent'! This is too bad. Their being a peculiar people depended on obeying His voice! That there were promises which faith could look to, and prophecy which preceded, accompanied, and followed it, is true, but this was not law nor determines its character, unless as being something else. The question is whether really we are to take the New Testament, or Dr. Fairbairn as the divine interpreter. To say that 'life took here precedence of righteousness' is too bad, when an Apostle tells us the righteousness of the Law speaks thus: "He that doeth these things shall live in them." I had rather have Paul than Dr. Fairbairn. The Lord does not say a word of the 'dowry of eternal life' - "all live unto him" - but proves the resurrection. It is a most mischievous perversion. He says, 'It carries in its bosom the dowry of eternal life; so that grace took precedence of law, life of righteousness.' To Abraham, further, it was unconditioned promise, and the uncircumcised was cut off from blessing which remained to others. At the Law, the covenant was absolutely based on the condition of man's obedience as its first principle. All this page is merely contradicting Scripture, and profound moral ignorance as to Scripture truth.

18 So page 163. 'Access continually lay open to them to God.' Quite the contrary. Individual faith in promise might go to God, but the law, tabernacle and all said, Death if you come near. God did not come out - man could not go in. In Christ, God did come out, and - blessed be God - Man is gone in. The Holy Ghost signified this by the veil. We have boldness to enter into the holiest by a new and living way, consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh, and we draw nigh. And even in the sacrifices, they were in contrast with Christ - a remembrance of sins still there - now perfected for ever, never to be remembered.

Page 164. 'The moral barrier raised in defence of the truth by the Decalogue preserved the better portion of the covenant-people from the dangers which in this respect beset them - preserved them in the knowledge and belief of one God, as sovereign Lord and moral Governor of the world.' That God called out Abraham to preserve the knowledge of one God is surely true, that that the Law was given to maintain this, but what was 'the better portion of the covenant-people'? Was it the Law made them so, or sent Paul to Mars' hill? The Law could have preached no such sermon. It had priests (because they could not go to God) not ministry. The captivity of Babylon was what ended Israel and took the throne away. Paul preached Jesus and the resurrection. This was his defence, not his sermon; and he refers not to law but to the judgment of the world by Christ, and resurrection as the proof. That the Jewish system preserved the knowledge of the true God, through grace, by its better portion, I do not deny. And of course, God was known by faith as the Redeemer, the Hope of Israel. It is not the question what Israel had, but what is law? The promise of the woman's seed, and even the promise of Abraham's was before law, and on their faith always rested, where it was more than governmental, where full grace was needed, else Moses and responsibility, and these are never confounded. Psalm 119 is the Law written in the heart (and prophetically, with all the Psalms, belongs to that time) that is on the face of it, and to quote it thus is to confound the new covenant with the old. The 'better portion' had it so written, but that is not law in the sense of Sinai. That was written on stone. All this is simply confounding grace and law, the old covenant and the new. We have other things too.

19 Page 167. 'The want of right views of sin cleaves as a fundamental defect to all ancient philosophy.' Yes, and to all modern philosophy too.

Page 176. Note. 'Phil. 3: 6. That Paul speaks thus of his earlier life from a Pharisaic point of view, is evident from the connection; as he is avowedly recounting the things which had reference to the flesh (v. 4) and which gave him a merely external ground of glorying. It is further evident, from what he says of his relation to the law elsewhere, when he came to a proper understanding of its real import (Rom. 7); and also from the utter want of satisfaction, which even here he expresses, of his former life after the light of truth dawned upon his mind (v. 78).' No doubt, but this is "We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin." It is not only grace but Christianity alone which can speak thus. You never get 'flesh' thus distinguished from 'me' in the Old Testament. It is Christian knowledge learned through the exercises of Romans 7, and only fully, save in despair, or all but despair, when we have the Holy Ghost, through redemption, which Israel had not. Besides, the remark in the note is not true - Paul was blameless as to the Decalogue, save when the tenth commandment came, spiritually understood. So the Lord with the young man.

Page 177. 'The covenant of Sinai - taken by itself, simply as the revelation of law - 'genders to bondage'; Gal. 4: 24. Paul does not say 'taken by itself'; he says it does so. Under age, sons did not differ from servants, had not the spirit of sons. And Dr. Fairbairn has to admit that sons are of 'the covenant of promise alone, not by that of law.' Why then so many words?

20 Page 178. 'The law which could condemn but not expiate their sin, cried for vengeance with a voice that must be heard, and wrath from heaven fell upon them to the uttermost.' It was the rejection of Christ, not the Law which brought vengeance on them. Babylon had done that, though none would come, but it is rejecting the Son which causes the labourers' city to be burned. It was stumbling on the Stone. "If I had come among them," says the Lord, "they had not had sin."

Page 180. Nothing can exceed the inaccuracy of this man's mind. He says: 'There can be no doubt that the law, taken in its entireness, and as forming the most prominent feature in the economy brought in by Moses, however wisely adapted to the time then present, was still inlaid with certain inherent defects, which discovered themselves in the working of the system, and paved the way for its ultimate removal. As an economy, it belonged to an immature stage of the divine dispensations, and as such was constituted after a relatively imperfect form.' The Law in its entireness, here only a 'prominent feature in the economy, was inlaid with certain inherent defects!' Now the Law of God itself had no defect in it. In the next sentence he says it is 'an economy.' Yet 'the institutions and ordinances were associated with it'! And 'a change must somehow be introduced into the divine economy'! What was changed? The Law as a moral thing, for the institutions were only associated with it? All his book is to prove the contrary. It is really teaching the Law, and not knowing what they say, nor whereof they affirm. But it is the natural effect of his system.

Page 181. 'Whatever the contents of law, simply as law, written on perishable materials, it has a merely outward and objective character . . . without any direct influence over the secret springs and motives of conduct.' Well! some say, But how then was it to do so much good to man, save convincing him of sin?

Pages 182, 183. Which is true that 'law supposes the will of man inwardly obstinate, rebellious, averse to all obedience,' or 'the elements of good are all there, though existing in comparative feebleness, and by means of discipline are stimulated'? They talk too of the 'ancient believer.' The question is with man, not with the believer. A new nature delights in law, but it is new.

21 Page 185. Moses did not give 'intimations of its imperfect character,' but plain statements of Israel's wickedness, and of God's way for His own glory.

Page 189. Here the Law is 'considered as a national covenant'! I do not expect him to understand the Psalms or Ecclesiastes. In the latter, Jehovah does not enter - it is man and God, till the last conclusion. In the Psalms, this varies prophetically, according to Israel's place. But all this part which refers to the subject of Hebrews, not Romans, Galatians, and 2 Corinthians 3, I say nothing of. The progress in the Psalms and Prophets, though Dr. Fairbairn understands nothing of their real import, no one doubts. But this has nothing to do with what is 'The revelation of law.' The Psalms contain lovely expressions of faith and confidence in God and Jehovah who governs, but the relation of a child with a father is never found, nor a feeling which distinctively belongs to it. The difference is sensible, and if piety has been nourished by them, Christianity has been Judaised.

Page 212. We have here the excessively low idea of Christianity, cause and effect too of these wretched views, 'a vivifying pulse felt through society, and humanity springing aloft into a higher sphere, a new career of fruitfulness in intellectual and moral action.' 'A real reform' though for, I must say, decency, 'salvation work' is named with 'the better spirit growing out of it.' It is all pleasing the spirit of the age. It was an 'undertaking, for which Christ seemed unfit'!

Page 215. 'The condition of affairs immensely aggravated the difficulty of the undertaking for Him; so that the wisdom, the resolution, the power to carry it into execution, was of God!' Is this really redemption in Christ?

Page 216. 'Not only were the materials for all provided by Christ in His earthly ministry, but the way also was begun to be opened for their proper application and use; and what was afterwards done in this respect by the hands of the apostles was merely the continuation and further unfolding of the line of instruction already commenced by their Divine Master.' This is partially true. Hebrews' truth takes this ground, and in some degree Peter. But then Hebrews puts all into heaven, and shows the contrast much more than the comparison; a veil - but now rent - to show that they could not go in, now that they can; sacrifice - but then repeated, to show sin was not put away, now, not repeated, because it is; and so on. But, as to the Church, and the mystery, the Apostle declares they were wholly hidden, as they must have been. So, when Christ was on earth, He never calls Himself the Messiah, save to the woman of Samaria, and, once morally rejected, tells His disciples not. He is Son of Man, and Son of God. When He takes that character, He is not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and forbids His disciples to go to Samaritans or Gentiles. That He fully owned the Law and the Prophets is quite clear. But all the higher teaching of Christianity was not in the Prophets, as is distinctly affirmed.

22 Page 217. 'Identifying Himself with the Temple, He declared that when He fell, as the Redeemer of the world, it too should virtually fall.' It virtually fell! It is really a romance.

Page 219. 'It was in His memorable Sermon on the Mount that our Lord made the chief formal promulgation of the fundamental principles of His Kingdom.' Principles of His kingdom truly - not of His Church, and chiefly the character of those in Israel who could enter. There is no question of redemption in it, but what characters could enter into His Kingdom - doubtless, if entered, they guide us in it. But Christ was showing the king of people that suited His kingdom; but neither redemption nor the Church. He was in the way with Israel, and righteousness preceded entering.

Pages 220, 221. All this is excessively paltry. 'The difference in the external scenery alone, in the two mounts'! 'Sinai less perfectly a mountain than a lofty and precipitous rock'! The 'Alps unclothed - stripped of all verdure and vegetation,' etc. 'When Galilee was a well-cultivated and fertile region, and the rich fields which slope downwards to the lake were seen waving with their summer produce,' etc., etc.

Page 222. Speaking of the giving of the Law from Sinai, and the Sermon on the Mount, he says: 'The difference between the new and the old is relative only, not absolute. There are the same fundamental elements in both, but these differently adjusted, so as fitly to adapt them to the ends they had to serve, and the times to which they respectively belonged.' What were the 'promises in the law'? Long life in the Land! Let anyone read the Beatitudes and see the spirit looked for in man for blessing (not required as law at all) and put the Ten Commandments beside them, and say if the same fundamental elements 'are in both,' but these differently adjusted.' In the first place there are no relationships referred to. A state of soul is described which the Lord pronounces blessed - nothing is required. There is instruction, warning, no grace announced, but the character described which suited the kingdom, if they would enter, which was just going to be set up.

23 Pages 223, 224. 'Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets, I came not to destroy but to fulfil.' This latter expression must be taken in its plain and natural sense. It means simply to substantiate, by doing what they required, or making good what they announced. 'The law is fulfilled when the things are done which are commanded,' etc. Then if fulfilled, it is not 'putting others under it,' and it is the sense. But he does not see that the Lord all through is describing the previous character among the Jews, to which entrance into the Kingdom should belong. That Christ maintained the authority of Law and Prophets no one doubts, and, as far as fulfilled, they are fulfilled in Him. The question is, Does He put us under the Law as law?

Page 226. 'The kingdom, as to the righteousness recognised and expected in it, was to rise on the foundation of the law and the prophets.' This is exceedingly vague, as his statements are, and hard to take hold of. At any rate, it is not said anywhere, and it is not Christian ground. Now "without law" (choris nomou) righteousness of God is revealed. As to the Decalogue, they are not 'the fundamental statutes of the Kingdom.' This is wholly false. The Law and the Prophets were until John, since then the Kingdom of God is preached. The Sermon on the Mount is Christ's giving to His disciples, when multitudes thronged, the principles of which any of the Jews could enter. There is not a word of redemption, nothing whatever of Christianity as such, nor of Christian doctrine, nor of grace - not one word. The Jews had other ideas. These are His authoritative ones as to what characters suited His kingdom, and nothing more, including the heavenly part in case of persecution, which is supposed even in Daniel. Christ fulfilled the law no doubt - He was born or came under it; that does not say He put us under it after He was risen and no longer under it, having borne its curse. And the kingdom had taken a wholly new form, the King being rejected and hid in God. And as no redemption, no grace is mentioned in the Sermon, but the rock is unquestionably personal obedience. It must be supposed that one may disobey a little and get in, only having a little place! Supposing a great one was disobeyed? If it is said 'shut out,' what is the ground and measure of Christian entrance into the kingdom? That Christ as I said confirms the law and prophets by His authority, for they can by Him be confirmed as they were by the Transfiguration, no one doubts. The whole law in every part is fulfilled - ceremonies in the substance - in Him; and He, not our obedience is the end of the Law for righteousness. Some things might be carried higher, but not broken. It is Christ giving the true character of what He will have for the kingdom, not grace and redemption. But he knows nothing of the different positions in which Christ stood as the Christ or as Saviour. Pages 226, 227 are a mere muddle of contradiction from the false position he has taken.

24 Page 228. 'After so solemnly asserting His entire harmony with the law and the prophets, and His dependence on them, it would manifestly have been to lay Himself open to the charge of inconsistence, and actually to shift the ground which He professedly occupied in regard to them, if now He should go on to declare, that, in respect to the great landmarks of moral and religious duty, they said one thing, and He said another.' But He says nothing of harmony but of fulfilling. What means 'His dependence on them'? One thing is clear - personal righteousness is the ground of entrance into the Kingdom, and, when Christ is dealing with Israel as such, this is the ground He takes, and that He does in Matthew to the end of chapter 12. The disciples were to enquire who in city or village were worthy, and go there, not seek sinners, nor go into the way of the Gentiles or city of the Samaritans. Is this the Gospel? If a Jew had taught against any commandment of God, he was going against God's authority - if it amounted to hating his enemies in given special cases, and, as such, was.

But it imports to give the true character of this Sermon on the Mount for its own sake, and as the stronghold of the legalist. That the Christian can learn there what is pleasing to the Lord, is not the question - that is clearly so from even the Law - but what is its true character, and whether it puts us under law? In Matthew, Christ is seed of Abraham, seed of David, Emmanuel, Jehovah the Messiah come into Israel, sent to the lost sheep there, and first even to the nation, born King of the Jews. It is not, as Luke, first the Jewish Remnant, and then the Son of Man traced up to Adam. It was Jehovah, the Saviour to save His people from their sins, before whose face John went to prepare His way, announcing the axe at the root of the trees, and the kingdom just going to be set up. And even he declared, not for Pharisees and Sadducees. The Lord then by His ministry having attracted the crowds, for chapter 4 gives the whole public ministry of the Lord, gives to His disciples, but in the audience of all, what was the character of those who would have a place in the kingdom. But, save supposing the kingdom announced, there is not a word of Gospel in it. It is those who already there amongst the Jews were fit for the kingdom. So chapter 5: 25, 26, is the history of the Jews. The Lord was in the way with them. If need were, the end of Luke 12 proves it distinctly. And He tells His disciples how they were to behave in taking their place. Every Jew knew there was the olam hoveh (this age) under the law, and olam habba (the coming age) under Messiah. These are the rules for having part in the latter, the Father's name being withal revealed, but the kingdom not set up. He was rejected, and redemption came in, but of this we have nothing here.

25 As to details. It is clear He was not, as Jehovah-Messiah, come to set aside His own law, and His own prophets. He came to fulfil them - not impose on others in continuance, but fulfil them. As I have said, of all the ceremonial part He was the substance and fulfilment. Then as to commandments, personally of course He fulfilled the Law. But even when He says: "But I say," He is not taking up the Law to spiritualise it. In two cases only, He takes up one of the Ten Commandments, murder and adultery, but only as essential parts of His own morality, and given as applying to the state of a man, not his acts, as all through, for this is His subject. And where He seems to change it, yet He fulfils it. Israel was divorced for their sins, yet He returns to God's original institution which was in the Law too, and will own Israel as Ish (man) and Hephzibah (beloved of God) making good God's own institution, when the governmental force of the Law has run its course, from Babylon till He takes His power and Israel has paid the last farthing. And breaking or annulling "one of the least commandments" is the same maintenance of the Law in all its integrity, and "least" is merely fully enforcing it, for if Christ came to fulfil it, he went against it, was going against Jehovah, and the very thing He came for. But the word "least" is merely to answer to "least," for either it gives a measure and he who taught against the least would get in, beyond that not - which is monstrous - or else he who annulled a greater would be less than he, still in the kingdom. But this is not the thought. "Least" echoes "least," and it is maintaining every jot and tittle of the Law, even the smallest, which I fully believe, but to be fulfilled by Christ, not carried on, though many things in it may abide, but it must (genetai) never be set aside, but fulfilled by Christ as God's own word. But to say 'Christ only brought out the true contents of the Law,' is simply ignorance of what Christianity is, for grace and truth came by Him. The Law, as a rule, is what man should be for God - Christianity is what God is for man, and God in Man, and that is our full pattern, and this in general character (not in redemption, and giving up self consequently man's part) - we have in the Sermon on the Mount, far away from Law; chap. 5: 44-48. In this, Christ was in life before redemption. But for us the full character is also what He did in redemption; Ephesians 5: 1.

26 The comment on 'To the ancients' is also quite wrong; Matthew 5: 21 (for I read "to the ancients," but it is only in words there the first time). He says 'Commentators are still divided on the construction here, whether the expression should be taken in the dative or ablative sense - to the ancients, or by them. "It has been said," is clearly what is in the Law, though not all Decalogue. But Christ, though confining Himself to Jewish allusions, Sanhedrim, etc., gives His own full estimate, and, as I have said, takes up the person's state, not relative acts, which the Law did not, though the spiritual man - "We know" - may use the tenth commandment thus. If it was said by the ancients, there might be some ground, but Dr. Fairbairn justly takes it as "to," and I suppose the Lord alluded to glosses when He cited a commandment there is no ground for.

Page 230. "But I say unto you." 'Never on any occasion did Jesus place Himself in antagonism to Moses; and least of all could He do so here, immediately after having so emphatically repudiated the notion.' It has nothing to do with antagonism, speaking of the state and not merely the acts. Nor is it 'clearer light thrown on the meaning of its precepts.' When the Apostle would take up the Law to probe, he does not 'spiritualise' the sixth or seventh, but quotes the tenth commandment. All this is fancy.

27 Pages 232, 233. 'The Decalogue itself, and the legislation growing out of it, were in their form adapted to a provisional state of things; they had to serve the end of a disciplinary institution, and as such had to assume more both of an external and negative character. It was only what might have been expected in the progress of things - when that which is perfect was come - that while the law in its great principles of moral obligation and its binding power upon the conscience remained, these should have had an exhibition given to them somewhat corresponding to the noonday period of the church's history, and the sonlike freedom of her spiritual standing.' All is dreadfully vague. How does 'the law in its great principles of moral obligation, and its binding power on the conscience remain,' when it was 'imperfect, negative and provisional'? Moral obligation was before the Law. The Law comes as a measure and rule of it. If the authority and obligation to obey were not there, the Law could not have been given. The Law does not produce it as a principle, but gives a measure of it in fact, and puts righteousness on the ground of man's accomplishing it. It is the poor man's ignorance of this which falsifies all his views, and it is not merely 'good to be done' scarcely once, and then only as imitating their Father - it is the state of soul. He says, 'The mind is turned considerably more upon the good that should be done, and less upon the evil to be shunned.' The measure of the Sermon on the Mount is perfect purity - no ill-will - a single eye - in a word, a perfect inward state and motive as to man, and then being perfect as to love, as God is, in dealing with others. It has nothing to do with comparative degree.

Page 235. He says the Sermon on the Mount 'places the Christian on a much higher elevation than that possessed by ancient Israel as to a clear and comprehensive acquaintance with the obligations of moral duty.' His mind cannot get beyond obligations of moral duty. Was it the obligation of moral duty made Christ give Himself for us? Yet it is made expressly a pattern for us. The free activity of divine love does not enter his thoughts. No doubt He obeyed in doing it, but was it 'legal duty and nought else'? As to the Sabbath, it was not instituted by law at all. Law took it up. The Lord's word is not 'It was imposed by law,' but "made for man." It was the sign of the covenant with Israel under the Law. At the beginning it was sanctified as God's rest. Man never entered in nature into that, and as he could not in nature, Christ passed the Sabbath in heaven or the grave, and resurrection, the base of our hope, became the base of the Lord's day - earnest of a heavenly rest, not of the earth or nature, and that is most precious; but Creation-rest, or rest of God in Creation is impossible. This was proposed in law. Hence the Lord says, in a passage wholly perverted by Dr. Fairbairn, when they accused Him of breaking the Sabbath, "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." God cannot rest in sin, but grace in the Father and Son can work in the midst of it, and that is our part. And He had just gratuitously made the poor man (whose case represented the poor man under the Law) carry his bed on the Sabbath. What is remarkable is this - under law no new particular institution or system was introduced in the details of Exodus or Leviticus, without introducing and insisting on the Sabbath. The truth is, it is an immense thing - the sign of God's people having part in God's rest - while in the New Testament, the Sabbath is never mentioned but to cast, so to speak, a slight on it. In the Sermon on the Mount it is not mentioned. There is the fact - Christ would not call Himself superior to morality, He does to the Sabbath. He proved they were hypocrites, on their own ground, but what gave occasion to this provoking them in taking pains to slight their respect for this.

28 Nor (p. 237) does the Lord ever refer that I remember, to 'legal authority for the Sabbath.' However wise it may be to give 'one day in seven,' it was never the ground of the Sabbath, but God's rest, God's people then having a part in it. And to rest when God worked, and to work when God rested, and talk of 'one day in seven being due to God' is losing sight of all its import. If it be God's work, we ought to work every day. If it be part in God's rest, we must have it where God's rest is - this is gone in corrupted Creation. Jesus has given it us in Spirit in His resurrection, not as a law but introduced by redemption and death. But 'important interests of men' (p. 236) is all Dr. Fairbairn can see. Therefore 'Its sacred repose must give way to the necessary demands of life, even animal life.' But the Lord was not approving the Pharisees, but making them ashamed of their hypocrisy. Very likely they did right, but the Lord was making no 'enlarged intelligent rule' by it, but appealing to what they did, and was done, in the Temple itself. He never gives any instruction how to keep the Sabbath, only asserts "It is lawful to do good."

29 Page 238. 'The Sabbath yields, it must be observed, only for the performance of works not antagonistic, but homogeneous, to its nature.' What are works of men homogeneous to rest? "Made for man" then belongs to man! Why stone a man for gathering sticks then? But it is not 'for man,' but for One particular Person, the Son of Man is Lord of it to dispose of it. But would He say this of murder, stealing, parents, etc., in a word, of abiding moral obligations? And who is to put the limits? And what are the limits, if he has 'a right to order everything'? 'Made, as the Sabbath was, for man, there necessarily belongs to man, within certain limits, a regulating power in respect to its observance.' Where is it said 'The Lord transferred it from the last day of the week to the first'?

Page 239. 'It is a memorial of the paradise that has been lost, and a pledge of the paradise to be restored.' That is a joyous day, a hallowed rest! And if lost, never to be regained, no return to the tree of life, or entrance into the rest of God. This the Law proposed - Do and live. Christ in death showed it could not be, and a heavenly rest could not be shown by God's rest in Creation, or founded on what ruled on that basis. But it was no 'memorial of paradise lost,' nor does Scripture ever hint, in any shape, at its being 'a pledge of the paradise to be restored.' And how the truth slips out! 'Restored' - what Paradise could be restored? Is heaven and glory, a Paradise restored! He is in the first man on earth, and so looks for what can never be. Resurrection takes us into a new world, life, and scene. It restores nothing. It may be the base of an earthly rest of which the Sabbath was a sign, but that is another thing.

Page 240. 'Not only did our Lord affirm, that 'on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,' but that 'there is none other commandment greater than these' - evidently meaning that in them was comprised all moral obligation.' A summary of law comprises all moral obligation! I refer to it as showing that the free activity of grace never enters into his mind, self-sacrifice never - in a word, what is properly Christian, never. I admit that this comprises it all as mere legal obligation, and all the Law and the prophets hang on them, but not Christianity. If a man walks in the Spirit, he will do it - that is the Christian assertion, but because he is not under law.

30 Page 241. 'Christ affirmed, in connection with the two great comprehensive precepts of supreme love to God, and brotherly love to man, that if the commands were fulfilled, life in the highest sense, eternal life, would certain be inherited.' Now Christ carefully avoids, on the contrary, saying eternal life, though the young man did. And the assertion 'if the commands were fulfilled, eternal life would be inherited,' is very serious. It is "the gift of God through Jesus Christ," and "He that hath not the Son of God hath not life." It shews that he is out of the doctrine of Christianity altogether. When they asked what to do, He says, "This do, and thou shalt live, if thou wilt enter into life." They did ask concerning things to be done. But the Lord takes care to correct one, and assure him that there was none good but God, and the other that a neighbour was not to be looked for, but exhibited in active grace. But to say that 'on fulfilling those commands all right to the possession of life in God's kingdom has been suspended' is very serious, and that, when righteousness is to be attained to ground a title to eternal life, Christ points enquirers to the Law, is really the denial of all Gospel truth. And if 'the revelation of law was comprehensive of all righteousness,' how came it Paul would not have it, but God's instead - not get his own perfected but another instead?

Page 242. "The law made nothing perfect." But he has no idea of the difference between obligation being enforced as founded on relationship, and the sovereign grace of God in redemption which has brought in a new thing, a new life, God's righteousness, and glory its result. It was not 'faulty as to man's relationship,' and speaks of nothing more, but revealed nothing of God's sovereign grace, in God laying a new foundation on what He did, and making that the rule. 'Christ had a mission ruled by the prescriptions of law. The work of Christ as Redeemer neither was, nor could be anything else than the triumph of righteousness for man over man's sin.' This statement is monstrous. Christ's mission ruled by the prescriptions of law! And His work of Redeemer nothing but the triumph of righteousness for man over man's sin! Is it not striking that, in speaking of Christ's work and redemption, no mention of love or grace comes in? It is 'the prescriptions of law,' 'the triumph of righteousness over man's sin'!

31 Page 243. Save the fact of the sinlessness of Jesus, all Dorner's statement is false. He says, 'His spirit was full of peace and undisturbed serenity. He knew Himself to be committed to suffer, even to the cross, and He actually expired in the consciousness of having at once executed the purpose and maintained undisturbed His fellowship with God.' 'Jesus was conscious of no sin, just because He was no sinner. He was, though complete man, like God in sinless perfection; and though not like God incapable of being tempted, nor perfected from His birth, and so not in that sense holy, yet holy in the sense of preserving an innate purity and incorruptness, and through a quite normal development, in which the idea of a pure humanity comes at length to realisation and prevents the design of the world from remaining unaccomplished.' The design of the world was not in Jesus down here, but in Jesus risen and glorified, and Head over all. Here, and till He died, He was alone. He was perfect and, because He manifested God, rejected of men, and redemption was needed if any were to have a part with Him. And is it not singular that he can say 'undisturbed,' when the essence of the Cross was, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me"?

Page 245. 'Could such an one really be subject to the law? Was He not rather above it'? 'When His work of obedience was reaching its culmination, He was ready to perfect himself through the sacrifice of the cross.' As to being under the Law, not a word is needed. He was genomenos hupo tou nomou (born under the Law). Is He now, is the question. It is now we are connected with Him by redemption. 'To perfect Himself' is a very objectionable expression, as is indeed, 'Not in that sense holy.' He was as holy when born as all through.

Page 248. That Christ bore the curse of the Law is unquestionable, but the statement here I reject altogether - 'On what could the stern necessity rest, but the bosom of law whose violated claims call for satisfaction?' Has God no claims, no judgment of sin till He has imposed a law? Scripture is clean and diligently against it. And even with this it is far from all - He glorified God by His death, and obtained glory with God for man, which no satisfaction of claims of law could do. Law never promised it, nor gave a title to it. It is deplorable and low system.

32 Page 250. While holding the main point of a judicial act, and 'the cup that justice mixed,' and the real bearing of our sins, and holding to the importance of holding and expressing it as clearly and positively as possibly can be, it is needed for my peace and God's glory, making the mere curse of the Law, and its violation, the extent and measure of Christ's sacrifice, a most poor and lame statement. It is striking that the thought of a sacrificial victim, or the love of Christ in giving Himself for us, are wholly absent from his thoughts of Christ's death. A vague expression of the display of God's love in Christ is found, but the love of Christ the Victim, He who offered Himself up without spot to God, has no place at all, and, as a doctrine, this absence of all allusion to sacrifice, and only taking the curse of the Law (which is not immediately the idea of a sacrificial victim) makes the whole doctrinally most defective. The burnt-offering is lost - the fullest, greatest character of sacrifice wholly gone, even the meat-offering disappears, and the sin-offering shorn of a vast part of its value, not alluded to at all, no sacrifice, nor the idea of sacrifice, but all that is alluded to only a partial fulfilment of the sin-offering. I repeat, the atoning, propitiatory, vicarious character of Christ's work, in presence of God's judgment of and against sin, His righteous judgment, Christ's bearing my sins there and consequently suffering, drinking the cup, cannot be too firmly held. All the fine-spun theories are only setting aside the truth. If Christ was doing atoning work for my sins, bearing them under the present judicial action of God's righteousness, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, are the most precious words ever uttered. But if it was 'personal state, and pattern of devotedness' merely, or the like, then they are saying that the One Just Man was forsaken of God at the end, and His faith failed when fully tried (a mere blasphemy) and Stephen's death and many a poor saint's is much more perfect and beautiful. But faith knows that they were, in joy, because Christ could only utter them as bearing their sins. Then all is in its place - the Just for the unjust, and they brought to God.

Page 253. 'Whatever distinctly belongs to the Christian Church - whether as regards her light, her privileges, her obligations, or her prospects - it springs from Christ as its living ground; it is entirely the result of what He Himself is and accomplished on earth.' What is 'springing from Christ as its living ground'? Nothing from Christ surely, but from His death, i.e., all relationship between God and the first man, or effort to reclaim him closed, and he treated as lost. For Dr. Fairbairn, it is vaguely 'is and accomplished on earth.' Vagueness itself - as different from Scripture as possible, but beyond ordinances, and the moral law, he is unable to get. The mystery hidden from ages and generations, or even what is heavenly he is ignorant of as the child unborn.

33 Pages 256, 257. Dr. Fairbairn, though he speaks of Paul at the end on the very lowest ground that he takes, the Galatians, never once gets on the ground of Paul's own teaching, and historically gets to the sheet and Cornelius (p. 255) which did not touch the question of the Church. So 'The cycle of Christian instruction on the subject was completed by the explanation given in the Epistle to the Hebrews,' in which neither the Father nor the Church is ever mentioned (save chapter 12, as in heaven in time to come) and where Christians are seen on earth with a Christ (with whom they are not one in heaven) and the question is if a man can approach God, and it is shown how.

Page 264. 'Let a man examine himself (viz., as to his state and interest in Christ), and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.' All right in general as to ordinances. I do not admit his theory as to sacraments, de facto it is true of the Lord's supper; but even here his habits of thought have misled him, and he is as usual inaccurate. If "examine himself" is 'as to his state and interest in Christ,' it could not be "and so eat," but "see if you are to eat," but it is not our question here. No doubt his views of baptism are the Reformation view. But they are surely false. He says it is 'not absolutely originative, or of itself conditioning and producing the first rise of life in the soul, but bringing it forth into distinct and formal connection with the service and kingdom of Christ.'

Page 266. His quotations (Acts 15: 7-9; Rom. 6: 4, 5; Titus 3: 5; 1 Peter 3: 21; John 3: 18 - 36; 2 Cor. 10: 17) have nothing to do with the matter, and do not speak of what he refers to, and those which do he cannot account for.

Page 267. He has no idea of the Gospel beyond 'the word of the kingdom,' and calls it 'the Gospel of Christ's glory.' He says: 'The grand ordinance, which has to do with the formation of Christ in the soul, or the actual participation of the life that is in Him, is this word of the kingdom - the Gospel, as the apostle calls it, of Christ's glory'; 2 Cor. 4: 4.

34 Page 268. It is curious how the work of Christ in redemption is left out in the citation from Hare's 'Victory of Faith' - strikingly so. Thus he adds 'what springs from faith secures the imperishable boon of eternal life.'

Pages 269, 271. Nothing can be more striking in its way than the manner in which the Apostle seeks to put in the strongest contrast, law and grace, law and faith, one being man for God, the other God for man, and the manner in which this book seeks to mix them up. 'The law of faith,' an expression of which the force is evident, makes faith a law because people ought to believe. He cannot deny that Christianity is carefully put in another way, still it is this, and this by the deplorable principle that there is no obedience but by law. So that "this is the work of God that ye believe" is that believing is a law. I admit men are bound to believe, but to make therefore faith itself a law is deplorable ignorance. So that 'The provision of grace and blessing in Christ, and the way in which this comes to be realised in the experience of men, has the essence and force of law' - consequently "worketh wrath" if we are to believe an Apostle. The consequence is natural enough - Christ 'at infinite cost has wrought out the plan of our salvation'!

Review of "The Revelation of Law in Scripture"

J. N. Darby.

<45001E> {file section b.}

(Notes and Comments Vol. 5.)

{"The Revelation of Law in Scripture," by Patrick Fairbairn, D.D. The third series of the "Cunningham Lectures." Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 38, George Street. 1869.}

Page 272. 'The state of spiritual persons substantially the same under the Old Testament and the New'! 'Higher spirituality really in Romans 7'! 'Complicated and delicate relations between Moses and Christ, law and grace, through which the experience of believers may be said to lie.' The Apostle is not very delicate - you are an adulterer if you mix them, he says, and try to have both at a time, to say no more.

Page 273. 'There is a gradation only, not a contrast; and as under the old covenant the law-giving, was also the loving God, so under the new, the loving God is also the law-giving.' If it is a gradation only, there is no full final pardon possessed, so that the person is accepted "perfected for ever." The blood of bulls and goats could not take away sins. Romans 3 does not speak of past remission, but of remission, passing over in forbearance, and justice in doing it now manifested. There could be no remission really of sins but by the blood of Christ, and the righteousness not at all revealed, and, if real remission was by Christ's blood, there was no gradation. There were figures, and governmental forgiveness in details, forbearance (paresis) if you please, but righteousness in it was not revealed at all - it is, at this time. As to 'the transgression of the law being sin,' it is an abominable error against the most important declarations of Scripture. The call to holiness is not law, or if it be, a curse.

35 Page 274. 'St. Paul, in Galatians 5: 13, 14, plainly identifies the love binding upon Christians with the love enjoined in the law.' Galatians teaches exactly the contrary. They wanted to be under law. Paul never showed such anguish as at this, and tells them that walking in love the Law was fulfilled, that they had to walk in the Spirit, and there was no law against it, and if they did they were not under it. The question is not whether the new man 'delights in the law and serves it,' but whether the Christian is under it, and whether it is by it he does love his neighbour.

Page 275. It is quite impossible to read Paul and believe we are under the Law. Nobody dreams we are not to obey, or may steal and murder. The question is, Are we under law? But it is not the Law which is dead. "We are dead to sin by the body of Christ," and that delivers us from sin, not the Law. We are sanctified to obedience. Paul gives no 'colour' to anything, but plainly and largely reasons on the point that the Law has power over a man as long as he lives, but that we are dead. Ephesians 5 merely appeals to the Law to show the importance God attached to that duty, motive and all. He does not say 'There is a sense in which we are not under it,' but that 'we are not under it at all,' and that we are under a curse if we are under works of law. And the passages are not isolated passages, but long reasonings as to the nature of Christianity, salvation, and holiness.

Page 276. 'That covenant of law, as actually proposed and settled by God, did not stand opposed to grace, but in subordination to grace, as revealed in a prior covenant, whose spiritual ends it was designed to promote.' This is bad. Either there are two covenants, the old and the new - "the first" and "the second" - or else it is the promise to Abraham, and then it is declared nothing could be added to it, that the Law had no place at all, came in by the bye, for an extra purpose, and there was an end of it.

Page 277. As usual, we have merely duty to man and God as the whole measure of Christian practice. But I notice it here because it is accompanied with what shows the total ignorance of the truth on these points, which characterises the doctrine of the book, 'that law of God which revealed His righteousness for their direction and obedience.' This betrays the whole system. Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel, because therein the righteousness of God was revealed; Romans 1, so chap. 3: 20, 21, in formal and express contrast with the Law (v. 20). "But now the righteousness of God without the law" (choris nomou) "is manifested"; so verse 26, "To declare at this time his righteousness." It is as plain as possible. And further (p. 278), 'The heart's innate tendency to alienation from God continued still to proceed in the face of the commands and threatenings of law.' This is all ignorance of the essential truth of the Gospel. 'It is this great question that the Apostle chiefly treats in the larger proportion of the passages referred to.' But 'larger' or smaller, does not the Apostle also treat of the Law as to practical godliness, and deliverance from the power of sin? In the Romans this is far more fully developed in chapter 5: 11 to chapter 8. 'It is of the law in this point of view, that he speaks of it as a minister of death - of believers being no longer married to it or under it.' As to being married to it being in its condemning character, it is wholly and utterly false. It is deliverance, not pardon, nor righteousness. It is expressly that we may bring forth fruit to God, we are "to another." A husband has nothing to do with condemnation. It is all the grossest ignorance of the truth. Working concupiscence is not pronouncing condemnation. The motions of sin were by the Law - sin was dead, sin revived; there is nothing of condemnation. And even "dead to law by law" in Galatians, is not to escape condemnation, but that we "might live to God." These quotations and statements on the face of them condemn the whole system. 'The end of the law for righteousness,' he says, 'is its reaching its proper aim in Christ.' This, though I do not insist on it, is also a blunder on the face of it, for Christ makes us reach its proper aim, not it, but I do not agree with the interpretation, but I do not treat it here. Again 'The moral law is done away' - the Law is done away for the sake of having morality by Christ. How our being 'delivered from it that we may be brought into conformity,' etc., proves its 'eternal validity,' is hard to say. It had to be set aside because it could not produce this conformity but the contrary. It required it, but the Law did not make it right (Adam's law did) but required it because it was right, but, being totally unable to effect it, was set aside, i.e., the Law had not any validity. Further, another thing was to produce what it could not do; but it is the common confusion of the writer. How being delivered from a thing can prove its 'eternal validity' is indeed hard to say.

37 Page 280. When he says: 'What was little more than hope before is realisation now,' is promise not law. Next, 'In a prior covenant of grace, it was linked to penalties, which admitted of no suspension or repeal.' Was ever such confusion? There was no covenant of grace. It was life on man's responsibility. Deliverance from Egypt was not only not a covenant of law, but no covenant at all, but a supreme act of power on God's part. All this is a fable. 'It was,' he says, 'educational; and in the same farm only that St. Paul, in various places, in Galatians, Ephesians 2: 14-17; and Colossians 2: 14-23 contended for its having been displaced or taken out of the way by the work of Christ - he refers to the simply moral demands of the law as now, not less than formerly, binding on the consciences of men, to prevent any misunderstanding.' Here he refers to Galatians 5: 13-22. It is a perverseness of mind which is extraordinary. The Galatians wanted to be under law. "Ye have been called unto liberty"; i.e., in grace, not law - Sarah, not Hagar. "Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." How to be got at? "This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." And then, "But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law." This sets, he tells us, 'temporary adjuncts and shows under the law, which maintains all its force as to moral things; Eph. 6: 1-9; Col. 3: 14.' Now here only moral things are spoken of, and we are not under it. We are to walk in the Spirit, and then what the Law condemned will not be there, but by our not being under it at all. Ephesians 6: 1-9 has nothing to do with the Law, good or bad, except the passage already referred to. What Colossians 3: 14, has to say to it must be left to Dr. Fairbairn to find out. The passage speaks of putting off the old man and putting on the new, which is just what the Law had nothing to do with.

Page 282. He is quite right as to 'how the practice was to be secured,' when he says 'the law's precepts could not do it,' for he teaches us it was not to be secured by law but by grace. Sin had dominion under law, and God's method was to make us dead, which put a total end to our connection with the Law, but, besides, adds an infinitely increased measure of godliness - the character of God in redemption. But what follows here is monstrous. He says: 'Now there came the more excellent way of the Gospel - the revelation of that love which is the fulfilling of the law, in the person of the New Head of humanity.' So sovereign love and grace in God and in Christ is fulfilling the Law! Where did the Law require a man to sacrifice himself for another, and bear his curse? Is God's love loving His neighbour as Himself? He says: 'Love was the reason of the law,' but love on a level or upwards, not love downwards, love to sinners, not giving up self. Again, 'Love is the best interpreter of God,' but it is God's free love, not duty, love to sinners. 'The law of eternal rectitude' - but eternal rectitude is not law. It is the gross blunder of not seeing duty or obligation before law, and, in law, authority imposing it. Christ was no 'Head of humanity' till after His death. Perfect as He was, the Corn of Wheat abode alone - no link could be formed; just as Adam was no head of a race till after his fall - nor Christ till redemption was accomplished. But this closed the application of the Law, by the death of its willing Victim, for all those who have part in Him. It is this that Dr. Fairbairn is wholly ignorant of. God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, did what the Law could not do, no doubt, and the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free, and thereby the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in us, but not by applying the Law, but in us who "walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." That is, the Law, which was a specific, well-known system of imposed righteousness, could not produce the effect, and God did it in another way - and that 'proves we are under it'! But even here, we have none of the higher forms of Christianity, but only that what the Law could not do grace did. The counsels of God are not in the doctrinal statements of the Romans at all, but only individual justification and life, save just one link at the very end of them, to secure the believer; chap. 8: 28-30. And here we have nothing to do with law, but God for us - not what we ought to be.

38 It is wearying incessantly to repeat that law is not the good that law proposes, but a form of imposing it on man who will not obey it, flesh not being subject to it. He says: 'Subject to the good' - to what good? It is simply bad in will, but is not subject to the Law of God, nor can be.

39 Pages 284, 285. These pages are just showing that law does not even answer the purpose, or meet the end Dr. Fairbairn proposes, and that the Spirit in His directive influence is Himself a living law. But here, as he states it, he is wrong, for without the written Word it opens the door to all fanaticism. But his principle of then bringing in law is directly against the positive assertion of Scripture - as for example: "If ye be led of the Spirit ye are not under the law" - and only an exhibition of the gross moral confusion of making duty and its imposition by law the same thing.

Page 288. 'This is the love of God, in order that we may keep His commandments - hina tas enlolas autou teromen - not that we do it as a fact, but that we may and should do it as a scope or aim. In so far as these are kept, does the love of God in us reach its proper destination.' He is wrong as to hina; John's use of it is wholly peculiar. The love of God will make us obey, and that is the genuine proof of love, but to say it is 'its destination' is most miserable. "We love him, because he first loved us."

Page 290. 'A condition of righteousness for which the law is not ordained, 1 Tim. 1: 9. Not only not the world at large, but not even the most Christian nation in the world, has as yet approached such a condition.' It is not for a righteous man at all, and for every evil most useful for convicting of sin, and so used lawfully. But 'the world at large, or even the most Christian nation' - what does he mean? His first point is not so and as the Law it works wrath. The second is all well. 'The Law provides what is needed to work conviction of shortcomings and sins,' etc.

The third is very bad. 'The imperfections too commonly cleaving to the work of grace in the redeemed, call for a certain coercive influence of law even for them, and for believers generally the two are thus mingled together. 'Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire.' Godly fear is not law, and fear and trembling, because God works in us in such a warfare, is not law.

Page 297. I do not much note this chapter. But 'The number of those within the Church whose preparation for the kingdom of God had been imperfect,' marks the same ignorance of grace and power. Also 'For centuries there was no specific theological training generally adopted for such as aspired to become her guides in spiritual things.'

40 Page 366. He carefully avoids defining law, but placet . . . quoniam, etc., ante definire quid sit officium (as the whole discussion will be about moral duty, the meaning of the term must be defined beforehand).

I have given in these notes a definition of it. I repeat it in substance. It is the rule of a constant course to be pursued, imposed by competent authority, and in the case of a moral, subordinate being, where another will is or may be in question, and is tested, enforced by sanction expressed or implied. If the nature and the prescribed rule go unquestionably together, then a sanction is not needed. It is a law of liberty. The Law is in the heart; so Christ; so even the Jews under the new covenant. When it is applied to material things, then the constant rule is imposed by power. These variations come from the difference of that to which the rule applies. The truth is, the imposition of a moral law, as to enforcing existing relationships, supposes a resisting will.

When he speaks of the promise, on which individual believers rested, modifying the Law, he introduces a principle which falsifies his book from one end to the other, and destroys the power and value of law. His only resource then is to contravene the Apostle's urgent statements.

Page 368. He is wrong in everything. Referring to 2 Corinthians 3, he says, 'Passing over the two or three earlier verses which call for no special consideration, the apostle, after stating at the close of verse 5 that his sufficiency was of God, adds, "who also has made us sufficient to be ministers," (not, as in the authorised version, "made us able ministers"), that is has qualified us for the work of ministers of the new covenant.' The first verses are all important. They contrast the Law and the Spirit - the very thing he will not do. He is obliged to come back to them, as essential, lower down. It is the whole point of the chapter, verses 7-10 being a parenthesis. But, further, the absence of the article is not 'the sign of a well-known thing,' it is its presence which is - it makes the word characteristic. Paul was a new-covenant minister, i.e., the new covenant characterised his ministry. So, "not of letter but of Spirit." So gramma and pneuma are essentially contrasted. Dr. Fairbairn's remarks here are puerile. He says: 'As letters are but the component parts of words, we may apply here what our Lord Himself affirmed of His words, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life."' Hence without pointing to any contrast between old and new, or outward and inward, we find Justin Martyr saying, in proof of the essential divinity of the Son and Spirit, 'Hear the passage.' No doubt letters compose words, but "Not of letter, but of the spirit" so contrasted is essential contrast. One sees now why he skims over the first verses, because there 'outward and inward' are specifically contrasted - one being writing Christ by the Spirit of the living God on the heart, in contrast with that on tables. I do not hold it to be 'merely Old Testament,' but letter and Spirit - the kind of ministry and work. He uses the Old Testament here, but he is not a minister of letter in it.

41 Page 369. 'A contrariety between Rabbinism and Christianity. Christianity demanded conversion, Rabbinism satisfied itself with instruction; Christianity insisted on a state of mind, Rabbinism on legality,' etc., etc. Rabbinism or Christianity! It is curious how in this contrast Christ and the revelation of Christ (the whole subject of the Apostle) is wholly left out. 'The will of God a state of mind'! Anything but Him. And he does not see, while I agree it is not old in contrast with new, that letter, if more than a history, is always law, or claim outside us. The Apostle is using the Old Testament here, but making the contrast of Christ, whom Dr. Fairbairn leaves wholly out, and Christ graven by the Holy Ghost on the heart, with ink and tables of stone. Glad tidings never can be law, nor law glad tidings. The Law was ordained for life in saying, "Do and live," but man being what he was, when known as spiritual and not till then was death. In Christ, or the Gospel, when known spiritually death - the letter always kills. Paul's ministry could be a savour to death, because to some it was rejected mercy - a rejected Christ. But the Law, spiritually known, and, as I have said, so only indeed, was death in the conscience.

Page 372. He does not know where he is. He says, 'The law, contemplated in the spirit of Rabbinism, is called a ministration of death, because, in its native tendency and operation, certain to prove the occasion of death.' I agree it is as Romans 7, but if 'the law in its native tendency and operation was certain to prove the occasion of death,' it did not want Rabbinism to make it so. It is too powerful for him to get rid of. The criticisms here are immaterial - 'the ministration of death in the letter, should be ministration of death engraved in letters.' Nor do I the least agree with the view of what regards Moses' face; Exodus 34: 34 is, I think, quite conclusive, and indeed the whole passage. Dr. Fairbairn says, 'The shining gradually vanished away, till brightened up afresh be renewed intercourse with Heaven.' But it is immaterial. The Law as given of God, and His glory reflected in it as far as it could be, was a ministration of death and condemnation 'in its native tendency and operation.' And Moses was asked to hide the glory. But the Apostle's or Gospel ministry was righteousness, and the Spirit which was received by the hearing of faith, and the Law is not of faith.

42 Page 374. The Apostle (2 Cor. 3: 8), is clearly speaking of the Spirit, though in His power of engraving Christ on the heart, and giving its true power to the Old Testament in the soul. Dr. Fairbairn would make it 'spirit,' not 'Holy Ghost,' and cites Galatians 3: 5. But there also it is clearly "the Spirit" itself; but of this Dr. F. can know nothing on his system. What is "The Spirit of the living God," verse 3? He says, 'He who ministereth to you the Spirit, points not to the apostle as a minister of the new covenant, but to God or Christ: it is He alone who can minister, in the sense of bestowing the Holy Spirit.' But, "Received ye the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by the hearing of faith?" makes Dr. F.'s interpretation flat nonsense. And what is "The Lord the Spirit "by his own translation?

Page 375. This page is somewhat curious. He says, citing verses 9, 10, 'The law in the letter is here presented in its condemnatory, instead of its killing, aspect. Accordingly on the other side righteousness is exhibited as the counterpart brought in by the Gospel.' The Law, man being what he is, is condemnation as before death. The Gospel brings in righteousness. Dr. F. does not tell us what righteousness, but no matter. One brings death and condemnation - the other, righteousness. Why, that is all - we say. And Dr. F. cannot help it, for there it is. I only remark, it was not Rabbinism. That did not shine in the face of Moses. It was, as given of God, pure, and coming with all the glory it could have as coming from Him; and, further, with all the mercy that could come with it from sovereign goodness - all God's goodness, not being redemption and atonement. The first time Moses came, we hear nothing of his face shining - the Law never got, purely as such, into the camp at all. Now God retired into His own sovereign mercy (on Moses' intercession), speaks to Moses face to face, and then, making him go up again, makes all His goodness pass before him - only He will not justify the guilty, as Moses could not also make intercession for them. It was still law. That is, all-patient mercy, and pardon as a present thing with law maintained, was condemnation and death. There it stands out, with no Rabbinism, no false interpretation, but law, set up by God in the glory it came in from Him, is death and condemnation. If I see the glory in the face of Jesus Christ, it is when He has borne my sins, and though the glory of God in all its brightness is the proof of my salvation and brings me there, that is what Dr. Fairbairn has not seen.

43 Page 376. Here is only to remark the laborious effort to get rid, from his own premises, as what could not be, of what the Apostle formally says was. It was the Law given by God - no mistake - were it not, it could not condemn, nor give death. The glory was shown in the face of Moses. It was not the relationships the Decalogue sanctioned, but the Law which sanctioned them which was done away, and specifically so graven on stones - was not that the Law taking in, no doubt, the whole system, as he has often said that was the centre, for the whole system was what was to be done away - it was not the Law, but law which was established by faith, but not as a system under which man was then put, for the Law is not of faith, and Christianity did establish fully its authority, but showed it was death and condemnation. And Christ bearing the curse, nothing could so seal its authority, and the claim and title of God in it, but did not put us under it, but took us from under it when we were. Now we are delivered from the Law, having died in that in which we were held, are dead to the Law by the body of Christ, the Law ruling only while life lasts. He says: 'The law if viewed in its proper connection, and kept in the place designed for it by the lawgiver.' What was its proper connection and character, if not when given by Moses directly from God, with his face shining? 'Moses declares,' he tells us, 'if the people hearkened to it they should live.' No doubt if - but flesh is not "subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Christ told the young man so, then detected his heart, and, when His disciples wondering said to Him, 'Then no one can be saved,' He assented saying, "With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Ah! When will man believe it? His reason is strange - he says: 'The law could only be the occasion of more certain and hopeless perdition to men.' So that if a man kept a law of perfect love to God, and one's neighbour as oneself, why should not he live? Of course he would! But it could only be the cause of perdition, which the Apostle therefore calls "A ministration of death and condemnation." If it was 'imaged in Moses,' why was it to pass away?

44 As to law being established 'in relation to the antecedent covenant of promise,' it is a useless effort to argue against Scripture. A confirmed promise none can annul or add to. It could not be tacked on to it, says the Apostle; on the contrary, "Cast out the bondwoman and her son."

Page 378. 'The direct object of the veil on Moses' face was to conceal from the view of the people the gradual waning and disappearance of the supernatural brightness of his skin.' Besides what I have said, the whole argument of the Apostle rests on the glory being hid in Moses' case - he veiled it that they should not see to the end of it. There is no veil on the glory of Christ. The rest is all immaterial, though all wrong. Moses was veiled - the glory is not, in Christ the veil is gone, but is on their hearts. When the Jews turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away from their hearts, and the object of the Old Testament clear, just as Moses took it off when he turned to the Lord. It is a most beautiful allusion, and the force of the passage perfectly clear.

Page 380. His remarks on verse 14 are all nonsense. He says 'It was an imperfect state of things and involved a measure of blame; but the blame lay with the people, not with Moses.' Nobody says it was Moses' fault. The people could not bear the Law with the least revelation of God's glory, or that glory so revealed have rested in the letter, and did not see Christ in it. The glory was always, though an imperfect reflection of it, behind the veil, but, the system being legal, the glory of God in any way was intolerable to man - the veil was hence on it - in Christ it is taken away, but rests yet on Israel's heart, who see not the glory of Christ in the Word. But all he says is wrong - the veil is not now on the glory, but on Israel's heart. 'Moses practising reserve,' is all nonsense. Israel could not bear to see, and the entire veiling of the glory is the statement. Now they are blinded, not the glory veiled. What is done away is shown by the open, unveiled face in Christ. No doubt the old covenant is done away, or the veil would still be there. But, alas! it is still sadly on Dr. Fairbairn. As to mere transition, I have no objection to 'not being unveiled to them,' that 'it' (the covenant) 'is done away in Christ.' But that is the Covenant of the Law. I believe verse 7 does refer to verse 6. And katoptrizomenoi, is not I believe a mirror, save in etymology, at all; but seeing fully into the glory as a man sees himself in a mirror, just as he is seen clearly and fully - himself - so we the glory. But on all this I have no contest. But the quotation from Philo (neither would I see mirrored in any other), fully proves the sense I give to katoptrizomai.

45 Page 383. 'The Gospel reveals what He is and has done, and thereby unfolds His glory.' 'What He is and has done, and thereby,' shows Dr. F. has not seized the present glory in which Christ is, as Paul saw Him, as the present thing revealed, result of work though possessed before the world was. He says, 'We are transformed into the same image, namely, of Christ's glory seen in the mirror of His Gospel' - but it is "the gospel of his glory." Paul's doctrine Dr. F. has not an idea of.

Page 386. The sense of ean me as elsewhere, is 'nor in any way but.'

Page 388. This is all delusion too, 'Peter having gone as a sinner to Christ for justification, and still finding himself in the condition of a sinner, had fallen back again upon observances of law for what was needed. Could Christ possibly in such a way be a minister of sin? For, if failing thus to remove its guilt, in behalf of those who trusted in Him, He necessarily ministered to its interests.' Why if Christ failed to justify, did He 'minister to the interests of sin?' The Law failed to justify - did it 'minister to the interests of sin'? Me genoito. It is what Dr. F. is writing against; and if that were all, I agree. The whole thing is plain. If he built again the things he destroyed, he made himself a transgressor in destroying them. If he went back to the Law after Christ, he was wrong in leaving the Law to go to Him, and Christ had made him do it and transgress. That was the horrid absurdity. As to ara, the ancient MSS. have not accents; it is a question of interpretation.

46 Page 389. By law he died to law, but what does 'in the interest of the law he died to it' mean? The Law killed him, but then he was dead to it. Nothing simpler - save me from commentators! But if that were all, he was condemned as well as dead, and the real way of it was he was crucified with Christ. So sin had died, for he, the sinner in flesh, was dead, yet he lived, but not he, but Christ who is risen in him. When will these people understand?

Pages 392, 393. We have now what shows one side of the total failure, in divine truth, of the whole system, where even persons little spiritually enlightened have seen it. He says the Law 'making sin into a transgression so that what was before not a transgression might now become one, is a somewhat arbitrary distinction, as if sin and transgression differed materially from each other.' Clearly the commandment turned sin into transgression. My child may have a bad habit of running out, but if I forbid him it is a transgression, a despising my authority. Thus sin by the commandment became exceeding sinful. It could not if it was not there before it. But there is no excuse here. He owns anomia means lawlessness, but says 'it equals transgression.' But lawlessness does not mean transgression, nor does anomia (lawlessness) mean parabasis nomou (transgression of law). So little is this the case that those who have sinned anomos (lawless) are contrasted with those who have sinned under law, and the result is different - those are said to perish, these to be judged by law. Law cannot create sin, nor God do anything to produce it. But law does produce transgression, and it is positively said "the law entered that the offence might abound," and then to reach out where no law was, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Where no law is, there is no transgression, but he carefully proves that sin was in the world until the Law, and it is his ground for insisting that grace must reach therefore where law was not, taking Adam and Christ, not Moses. Further, there is no real doubt of the sense of charin (for the sake of). He cannot insist on the explanation of the Fathers for the word, when he admits that the passage proves them wrong, so that he does not venture to take it so. The doctrine is what they are all afraid of foolishly. They would have it, 'The law was given, that the Jews might not be allowed to live without check, and glide into the extreme of wickedness,' etc., etc.

47 Page 394. All these things are arguing against the Apostle. He says: 'While the covenant of promise was in a provisional state, travelling on to its accomplishment, the law was needed and was given as an outstanding revelation; but when the more perfect state of things pointed to in the promise entered, the other would cease to occupy the place which had previously belonged to it.' Added for transgressions till the Seed should come, and then no longer under it, says the Apostle - means 'should cease to occupy the place which had previously belonged to it,' says Dr. Fairbairn. As to verse 20, he is substantially right.

Page 397. 'The Apostle had said that the covenant of grace or promise bestowed life.' But he had not said the promise gave life, but "The just shall live by faith," and in the previous chapter he says, "Christ lives in me" - not promise - and when he lives by faith on Him objectively; crucified with Him, not man living by promises. The nearest to it is 2 Peter 1: 4 But this only shows his confusion, the little sense of a real communication of life. It is a figure. What the Apostle is at is, if it could have given life, righteousness should have been by it. Dr. F. says: 'If a law were given which could have given life, means a law which could, or, a law such as could possess the power of giving life.'

Page 399. I doubt the sense of eis, but have no contest on it. He says: 'Verse 22, The eis, for, - for the faith which was going to be revealed - is to be taken ethically, denoting the aim or destination which the law, in this respect, was intended to serve: to the intent, that we should pass over into the state of faith.' But the point of the Apostle is that Christ being come, or faith, we are no longer under it at all, but under another person - the Law being personified. It is not the fact of life or not - they were heirs (believers under law) but no better than slaves who had their bidding to do. But they were under Another now.

Page 401. But here he is all wrong still. He says: 'The heir, during the period of his childhood, because wanting the mind necessary to make the proper use of the inheritance, is placed under guardians and stewards, in a virtual position of servitude, till the time set by his father for his entering on the possession. Of quite a similar nature, the Apostle affirms, was the state of men in pre-Christian times: We too, says he, identifying himself with them, when we were children, were kept in bondage under the rudiments of the world.' It is neither 'the state of men,' nor 'entering into possession.' We have nothing of the inheritance but the earnest. And it is, in either case, heirs - believers; but the Jewish believer under law, and the Christian become a son. Judaism was altogether the rudiments of the world adapted to man alive here - the Decalogue itself even - but the whole system of days, sacrifices, ordinances, so that after the Cross, where the history of the first man was finished morally (at the end of the world) to return to them, when no longer figures, was to return to heathenism; Gal. 4: 8-10. Chrysostom and Theodoret we may leave in the sun and the moon; he says they held the festivals were 'ruled by the course of the sun and moon.'

48 Page 403. If ever a man knew how to ruin the beauty of Scripture, and the force of the Spirit's arguments, it is this man. He says: 'The threatenings of the Law against sin, relate to Gentile as well as Jew; and no otherwise was redemption possible for mankind than by our Lord's perfect submission, in their behalf, to its demands and penalties.' The whole gist of the Apostle's argument is that they, Gentiles, wanted to put themselves under law. The Apostle shows that not only was Christ born a man, for men, of a woman, where sin had come in, but under law to redeem and deliver them that were under it, where they were wanting to put themselves. And all is swamped in Gentiles being under it as much as Jews. It is really deplorable. 'The heart and substance of the requirements of Sinai, or the law, belonged to man as man'! A revelation - and I suppose the Law at Sinai was a revelation - belongs to those to whom it was sent. It was not sent to the Gentiles. So the Apostle says, "The Gentiles, not having law, are a law unto themselves." All this is nothing for the legalist - he must have his theory, and know better than God how to deal with man. Besides, before, there was grace in it, God having redeemed Israel out of Egypt. Had he redeemed the Gentiles too?

Again, 'The spiritual union through faith of the soul with Christ.' Union is not through faith itself; but that is a common error, but one flowing from not believing in the Spirit - one great spring of all this. It is not 'The Spirit of sonship' as he quotes, but "The Spirit of his Son."

Romans 3: 20 says exactly the contrary to what Dr. F. says. Having proved all Gentiles sinners by other proofs - Creation, and the knowledge they had of God - he takes up the Law, and says (so Dr. F. admits, page 409, or rather proves), look at that character, "not one righteous," etc. Now by your own pretensions, what the Law says it says to those under it - there is your mouth, and so every mouth stopped. If the Apostle had told the Jews that the Gentiles had the Law, and so were proved guilty, they would have laughed in his face, so much the rather that he had just been insisting on their privileges, and the chief, the oracles of God, and shown the Gentiles sinning without law, and so perishing, while those under it would be judged by it - a distinction without a difference, and all labour in vain on Dr. F.'s theory. How easy, if only this theory had been set up, to convince the Gentiles and prove them without excuse! But God was too wise and holy to convict them by that which they had not got. God may use it now in wielding it as a sword to the conscience, but not hold guilty under it those that had not got it.

49 Page 404. Citing Galatians 5: 13-15, he says: 'For ye were called for freedom, called that you might be free' - epi with the dative, is the condition characteristic of the thing; but that is no matter. The only pity is that he did not go on to verses 16-18, which upset his whole argument, de fond en comble. He says: 'Though the external bond and discipline of the law is gone, its spirit ever lives, and the law speaks as much as ever to the conscience of the believer.'

Page 405. Romans 2: 13-15, is a parenthetic paragraph by itself. But why add to Scripture. The Word and Spirit say absolutely "Without law" - Dr. F. says, 'Without the written law' - why add 'written'? Law does not bring in justification in the Christian faith - we are justified by faith, not by works of law which bring a curse - but that a man who keeps the Law is justified, of course he is, which a hearer and breaker is not, nothing can be more simple. That any kept it (save the Lord) is another question. The absence of the article in both cases makes it characteristic.

Page 407. 'Law-doing arises from the impulse and energy of the moral faculty, naturally implanted in man,' i.e., in those cases Gentiles acted under conscience not law.

Page 409. 'Whatever the law says concerning sin and transgression, it speaks or addresses to those who are in it; that is who stand within its bonds and obligations . . . . Primarily to them, though by no means exclusively.' But it is carefully proved to be only to Jews, and clearly - and then Dr. F. says, 'but not exclusively.' What a testimony to the system! Paul, the Word as he shows, refers it to Jews. Dr. F. reasons thereupon to show on his reasons why it is to others too. And it is monstrous that the charges of the Law should a fortiori be applied to those who had not the Law to enlighten them. It is impossible to read a greater moral perversion. He says, 'If the law could pronounce charges of guilt on those who had the advantage of its light, how much more (a fortiori) might like charges be brought against those who lived beyond its pale!' And just see the reason, 'What the Law says, it says to those under the Law' (i.e., not to others) 'that every mouth may be stopped.' And to make the absurdity more evident Dr. F. will have 'in order that every mouth may be stopped, Jew as well as Gentile, and Gentile as well as Jew, and all the world become liable to punishment with God,' etc. God has given His law to Jews, that Gentiles, who have not got it, may have their mouth stopped, and all the world become liable to punishment for what they had never heard! Could moral absurdity go further? I agree with "in order that," but it makes his reasoning absurd. Nor does faith in the Person of Christ need such preparation. Itself produces conviction, though the other be most legitimate and useful. Faith in His work it would. But John 16 proves the assertion false, and the reasoning that Gentiles are without excuse. Natural conscience, law, or Christ may all be used. He says: 'Where the law failed to produce conviction of sin, and a sense of deserved condemnation, there also failed the requisite preparation for the faith of Christ, and still continues to do so.'

50 Of course this sets him all wrong (page 410) as to the dioti (because); Rom. 3: 20. "Because" or "therefore" makes little matter. It is a resumption of the whole matter as the Apostle's illatives often are, and the real cause is summed up in the "for" (gar) which follows. His own mind resumes the whole with, "Because" (I tell you all this, applying the Law to those who pretend the most, and to have righteousness, and be justified by it, because) "by works of law shall no flesh be justified"; for just see what it does - it is the means of knowing sin. Does making a man's conscience guilty justify him? Only it is law in principle, and as often shown, continually with the Apostle, because it is a principle, only the exhibition of the principle was essentially at Sinai.

51 Pages 412-414. I have nothing to object to here, save the generalities of the system. Romans 5: 12 to chap. 8, I can consider in its place.

Page 415. Romans 5: 12. The "wherefore" connects itself, I do not doubt, with what immediately precedes, as verses 6 and 11. But it is, as constantly in Paul, a recommencing another part of the subject, or the general principle of what follows. Half his "Fors" (gar) are not immediately illative, but from the state of the general subject in his mind giving a new aspect of it. So "Wherefore" here (dia touto, for this [cause]). The point is to bring not personal faults imputable, but the state of men, to which individual faults have been added, and by law offences. It is not what I have done, but what and where I am - "I know that in me," not "I know all have sinned." One is culpability, the other condition through the head (each adding his own sins). It is clear that Adam's sin is the procuring cause of death, not only it is said in Genesis, but clearly stated here, but that does not decide the sense of eph ho (for that), i.e., whether it is an additional thought, or only refers back. "For that all have sinned" may be in Adam (as Levi paid tithes in Abraham), or it may be what characterises themselves, though not the original cause. "For that" (eph ho) is not the original cause, or causa causans. We are called "to" (epi) sanctification, not the cause of our call, but what is involved in and characterises it. It has nothing to do with Pelagianism. What he says on verse 13, takes the ground he calls Pelagianism. He says: 'Plainly, it is the relation of mankind to Adam in his sinfulness, not their own personal sin, which is asserted to be the procuring cause of death to mankind; and hence the absolute universality of death, the sin that caused it being in God's reckoning the sin of humanity, and the wages of that sin, consequently men's common heritage.'

"Who had not sinned after," etc., is a quotation from Hosea 6: 7. They, like Adam have transgressed the covenant; Israel had - up to the Law they had not, but sin and death were there, all the same, from Adam to Moses, only it could not be specifically put to account (ouk ellogeitai) as transgression, when there is no law (me ontos nomou), no law existing which forbad it. They perished without law (anomos), and in their state, and acts, were without excuse. Law and ellogeitai are the correlatives. Sin was there and death proved it, law not existing - they had not, like Adam, transgressed a covenant, nor like Israel. Dr. F. is simply, as usual, arguing against the Apostle. Why from Adam to Moses only, if it was not a question of law or not? Are there not children now, and under the law of Moses over whom death reigned? All this is theology. Hence, when he says, 'Before the law as well as after it' (page 418), he shows he has got off the Apostle's ground altogether, for he says "until the law," which has no sense but by contrast of law, and makes 'as well as after it' nonsense as to the argument. And the "nevertheless" (alla - 'a strong adversative,' says Dr. F.) proves that it is not 'two reasons, sin and death,' but though sin is not put to account (ellogeitai) no law existing, nevertheless death proved sin was there. Man was ruined and perished in sin, far from God, though there was no law to make specific imputation. They were all guilty and without excuse. The "For that" (eph ho) referring to each is not affected by the question of children more than chapter 3: 23. The rest of this section is partly wrong partly right, but nothing to remark. Condemnation, or judgment, is for sins, not for sin - these are judged according to the deeds done in the body, besides that we are all perishing, ruined, far from God, wrath on us, and just wrath. I do not doubt myself that all children dying, as such, are saved, but by Christ, according to Matthew 18.

52 Page 419. This is a mere sophism arising from taking 'reckoned' in two senses - "reckoned sin" means considered as such, sin reckoned is put to account as such. But in the sense of Dr. F.'s sentence Paul does not speak of it at all. He says: 'Paul is speaking, not of degrees of culpability, but of what might or might not be reckoned sin, and, as such, deserving of death.' Instead of the difference of hamartia (sin) and parabasis (transgression) being merely verbal, it is of immense importance as distinguishing a principle working in us, which transgression (parabasis) can never be; when used for an actual sin, it may or may not be, at least taking parabasis as being parabasis nomou (transgression of law). Sins may be without law (anomos) the Apostle tells us, or under law, en nomo; but hamartia (sin) is used for that which produces (kateirgasato) lust (epithumian). But of all this Dr. F. understands absolutely nothing. Nor is it a question of 'less culpable,' though that be in some respects true (Luke 12: 47, 48), but of particular putting to account where there is no commandment or law. The only question here is, is hamartia (sin) simply the root or evil nature, as in the general argument of this part of Romans, or, this being then the general idea, that there is not putting to account as a forbidden thing, though the thing - sin - be there? More, I apprehend, the latter, but I leave the question there; compare chapter 7: 7, reading "But," not "Nay." It is not here a question of the government of God, as the Deluge, or mark on Cain, but the formal ground of God's reckoning with man. That all are guilty is clear, and have sinned, and will be judged, if not cleansed, in that day when God judges the secrets of the heart.

53 Hodge's statement, 'If there is no sin without law, there can be no imputation of sin. As, however, sin was imputed as men were sinners, it follows there must be some more comprehensive law in virtue of which they were so regarded and treated,' is a mere petitio principii, that there is no sin without law. Indeed there is no logic in the sentence, for he again takes for granted that sin was imputed, but the parts do not hang together. He really is proving that there is a law. His proof is - 'sin was imputed' - the other part should be, 'but no sin is imputed without law, therefore there was a law,' but that is not the other part, but 'there is no sin without law' which proves nothing, but assumes all in question, for all admit there was sin between Adam and Moses. Consequently, the second part is useless, for if sin proves law, there is no need to bring in imputation. Whatever it means, the Apostle says, "It is not imputed where there is no law." The reasoning is this: No sin without law, if no sin otherwise, therefore no law, no imputation, but there is imputation, therefore there is sin, i.e., there is law. But this first begs the question as to sin and law. Next the Apostle's statement is, "Sin was in the world, but no imputation, because no law" (me ontos nomou) absolutely. Further as already quoted, he speaks of sinning (anomos), justly translated "without law," for they perish anomos. Only Hodge, it appears, makes it Adam's sin. But Dr. F.'s answer is none - 'all sinned in Adam.' It is no proof that sin was in the world from Adam to Moses, and since. That is a proof that they sinned out of Adam. But, apart also from them, death has reigned, but if it was for Adam's sin, it was no proof that sin was in the world, unless it were Adam's sin, with Dr. Hodge. It is the fruit of attempting to get out of or into a passage the contrary of what it teaches. Verses 15-17 are an appeal if grace should not be as large as sin, or larger, including offences brought in by law, but reaching out as by one offence to all (though not in result) by one righteousness.

54 Page 420. The middle paragraph is all well; also from verses 13-17 is the parenthesis. The result is this: the Apostle, here speaking of ways and dispensations, is insisting that you must go up to the two heads (the Law only coming in by the bye) that sin was in the world by Adam when the Law was not there, and that the grace and gift by grace must go as wide or wider. And this is used to show that the Law, or a law, must have been there all the time! Whereas the very point as to law is, that all really resting on the two great heads, the Law merely came in by the bye, for a specific object between the two, that object being, Paul says, to make the offence abound. Dr. Fairbairn says not. Paul, making carefully still the difference between the existence of sin and the Law, says the Law entered that the offence might abound, but where sin abounded (which was where every child of Adam was, and not merely under law come in by the bye) grace might much more abound. Certainly it was not to produce sins, but it was in order that (hina - not merely a knowledge of its effect which makes indeed little difference) the offence might abound, and the conviction of sin more clear, and its character worse.

There are three steps in sin, all flowing from confidence lost in God, selfwill and lust, transgression (law) enmity against God, always true, fully proved in Christ's rejection, the refusal of grace itself. It is a mere effort to destroy the Apostle's whole argument. I repeat, sin becomes excessively sinful by the commandment, and must therefore be there before it comes.

Page 421. 'By the very faith which justifies him, the believer is vitally united to Christ,' he says. Faith does not unite to Christ, however death to sin and life in Him is our portion. We cannot expect Dr. Fairbairn to be clear on these subjects. I only note in passing (page 422), 'The law is the revelation of God's pure righteousness'; again, it is man's if fulfilled. And notice another thing running all through, that life is not really life but 'a general effect on the heart.' Hence it leads to 'ultimate perfection in holiness.' This is just Wesleyan doctrine. Romans 6 just shows that the Law being done with, obedience to God remains, or slavery to sin. It put the Law for practice in the strongest light as gone, and showing what takes the place of it, death of flesh or to sin, life in Christ, and obedience to God, in practical righteousness - only there is no 'attaining righteousness' as Dr. F. says. Righteousness has its fruit in holiness. It is all muddy, but no matter. No doubt 'obedience supposes an authoritative rule,' but the Apostle is enquiring what it is when it is not law. And I wholly deny that 'sin is just a deviation from such a rule.' Sin is having a will of one's own instead of obedience. The Law may give the things in which we are to obey, and on certain principles, but obedience is to a person, to God, and righteousness. But if 'I am freed' (Calvin) 'from subjection to the law,' how am I under it? We have had dispensational law in Romans 5: 12, to the end, in chapter 6, death to put an end to sin when not under law, and so free to give ourselves entirely to God, as alive in Christ. And now we come to experimental treating of law in chapter 7.

55 And here it is better to state the great principle of the chapter, to make the details plain. The believer, according to chapter 6, is dead, but the Law has dominion over a man as long as he lives; hence, we having died with Christ are delivered from it. This he illustrates by the law of marriage. You cannot have two husbands (The Law and Christ at once - it is adultery - two authorities, two masters) death has freed us from the first, and we are to Christ risen, not to law. Then we have the experience of the renewed soul under the first, or law, and only under law, in which state sin reigns, and he cannot do good if he would, and looks not for progress but deliverance, and finds it in Christ. Though the two natures still remain, chapter 8 is the state of liberty. Dr. F. would tell us that the reign of sin under law, captivity to it, and impossibility to do good even when we would, is a high spiritual state. What then is a low one? There is no lusting against the Spirit here; when we are led of that, the Apostle tells us we are not under law. Further the state described is "when we were" in the flesh, implying we are not - not, mind, the flesh working in us, but we in it. The Christian state is contrasted in chapter 8, "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." In chapter 7 we are captive "sold under sin" - a high spiritual state, Dr. F. says; in chapter 8 "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free" - a low one, I suppose And what the Law could not do (what we have exclusively described, in chapter 7, in the wretched man) God has done when Christ was made sin, a sacrifice for sin, sin in the flesh is condemned - was then - and we are really free. And note in chapters 6 and 7, we have nothing to do with justification, but death, life, and practice. Let us see the details.

56 Pages 426, 427. All quite true and clear enough; he says, 'The leading object of the apostle in this section (Rom. 7) is to bring out precisely the relation of the believer to the law, with the view at once of establishing it, and of showing that he is not under it (chap. 3: 31; chap. 6: 14), but, on the contrary, is freed from it, or dead to it?' 'But' (page 428) 'what in this connection is to be understood by the law? The law of which the apostle speaks is one that penetrates into the inmost soul, and one's relation to which determines the whole question of one's peace and hope toward God. It is of the law as the rule of God's righteous government that he speaks; the law as the sum of moral and religious duty.' Now it is hopeless to expect Dr. F. to get out of the routine of theology and men, but the Apostle is speaking, and is so all through (though the law of Moses be the grand example) of law as a principle or system of dealing - thus "When there is no law" (me ontos nomou) and "Law came in" (nomos pareiselthen), and very many such passages. Of this Dr. F. does not understand one word, and it is the whole question. He does not speak of "the Law" at all, but of "law."

Page 429. All this page discusses history - Paul, the principle of law. But it is not because 'it presents the terms to which men are naturally bound,' which it does do, but because it presents them under the form of law, and more than that here, not conduct but state. As regards the former and such righteousness of law Paul was blameless, but as forbidding lust, nothing to do with grace at all, but forbidding what man was now in nature - this is the whole matter here. The Law might as well have said to man, a sinner, you must not be a man - for man lusts. Give him redemption and a new nature - then indeed there is deliverance, but without it, death.

Page 430. 'The law holds over men, merely, as such, an indefeasible claim to their fealty and obedience.' An indefeasible claim surely as long as they live. But the Apostle's ground is that they are dead, and the Law only rules a man as long as he lives. We do not live of Adam now. Then we were utterly lawless, or under law; but in Christ to God, and Christ's death, in whom we died, has wholly for faith delivered us - we are not in flesh but in Spirit. But of this, of course, Dr. F. understands not one word, otherwise what he says at the commencement of the page is true, but we have ceased to be children of nature. And all is fair enough, except as to 'believers under law,' whom Paul does not put on the same ground, but exactly the contrary, and very carefully, in Galatians 4, on the very point in question here. It is the same perpetual history of not knowing what law means. The question is not whether we are in a state of mere nature or not, but whether we have the Spirit, or are we under the Law. A man simply in a state of nature is lawless, but a quickened man, an heir, under law is all the same as a servant - thinks, or at any rate feels, he has to make out his own righteousness - has not the liberty wherewith Christ makes free. It is not a question of flesh working in us - that it does, if it lust against the Spirit - but if led of Him we are not under law. Hence it is said, Ye are not in the flesh if quickened, but, "If the Spirit of God dwell in you," and "If Christ be in you the body is dead." This can only be said by the death of Christ. Till then the conscience is under law, and our relationship to God depends, for the conscience, on our state, not on Christ's work, and our being dead, as to flesh, in Him. In verse 6 we have the deliverance from verse 5, and what is that? "We are delivered from the law, being dead," or having died, "in that in which we were held." The Law could not set me free. The experience of verses 14-24 is law, law, law, and I under it. It is not merely Israel, it is the effect of law as such, when we delight in it. It is then not merely the state of fallen nature subject to the Law, for it fancies it can do it. The struggle is when I delight in the Law of God in the inner man, but can never do good - find no means to do it - which is not Christian liberty. It is neither mere fallen nature, nor Christian liberty - is said not to be. Captive, sold under sin, is the opposite of liberty. Delighting in God's law is not fallen nature. Killed and crucified with Christ, is being delivered from law. Believers under the old covenant were not endowed with this.

57 To be in the flesh is not to be in a state of sin, as Dr. F. explains it; he says: 'To be in the flesh is merely to be under the influence or power of human depravity.' He confounds the mind of the flesh, walking after the flesh, with our position before God. It is total ignorance of the whole mind of God, and ignorance of the Apostle here. To be in the flesh is to be on Adam ground before God - the flesh no doubt being evil - in contrast with being in Christ, chap. 8: 1. The mind of the flesh is as bad in a saint as in an unbeliever - worse, if there is any difference - but he is not in the flesh. The Apostle states the difference: "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." The 'men of faith under the old covenant' were not in this sense endowed with the Spirit - the Comforter was not come, nor could He, till there was a Man in glory, even Christ the Lord, and He tells us so. A man could not be in Christ before - there was no Christ to be in. The Prophets gave the promise of the Spirit, but that was not its coming; they studied their own prophecies, and found it was not for them but for us. The ancients saw the things afar off, and embraced them, and were saved by faith, but Prophets and Kings desired to see what the disciples saw, and did not see them. Yet it was even then desirable that the Lord went, and that they did not see Him, for, otherwise, the Comforter could not come, "For the Holy Ghost was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified." What the New Testament calls the Holy Ghost, i.e., as dwelling down here, was not yet come, and they which believed on Him (Christ) would receive. Christ (Acts 2) received the Holy Ghost anew when gone up on high thus to send Him. It was not His gifts for prophecy, and miracles were done before - the Comforter was not come, and what alone gave union with Christ and made the believer cry Abba Father; Gal. 4. "In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you."

58 All this part of his book is simple ignorance in Dr. Fairbairn of Christianity - Christian deliverance. But to be in the flesh is not 'merely to be under the influence or power of human depravity.' We surely are when we are in it. But what the Apostle is teaching is that the Law could not deliver us from it, but the contrary - that the motions of sin were by the Law. And being in the flesh is not 'the working of human depravity,' for this works when we are not in it but in the Spirit, and that it is when the Spirit dwells in us, not merely when it is actually working, but then we are not under the Law; Gal. 6. Hence, when he says, 'It is all one with being under the law,' he is right as to practice, but wrong as to its being the same as the depravity of the flesh, because that remains true of Christians as to the flesh. And he has no idea of law as a principle which the Apostle is insisting on. It is not merely historical, but true of a renewed soul now, when under law.

59 The great object of Dr. Fairbairn is to show the Old Testament believers with a measure of grace under law, and the New Testament believers under law with a measure of grace, only larger - the Apostle's, the absolute contrast of being under law, and having the Spirit as delivered. Romans 8: 9 (by mistake, Galatians in the text) is not true of believers under law in Old or New. They are here free - there (chap. 7) captive; here delivered - there crying to be so. The person described by Paul is under the dominion of the flesh and sin, and the reason of the contrary is given in chapter 6, "Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace." And here, without the Law sin was dead; when the Law came. sin revived and I died. He is not speaking historically - he was born under it - but of Christian knowledge (we know) of what law is. In the Old Testament there was no knowledge of the conflict of flesh and Spirit, nor of two natures. No doubt there was temptation and conflict, but no knowledge of two natures, nor of flesh and Spirit, i.e., "We know" - a technical formula for Christian knowledge. And if verses 5 and 13 be the same, which they are in the main but not exactly, then Paul is, in verse 13, describing (as he clearly is) a state in which he is not, for he says (v. 5) "When we were," which you cannot say when you are. And nothing is simpler, for verse 5 refers to verse 4, where he speaks of having had an old husband and then came a new one. When we were under the first, such was our state. And when he says 'before they come under grace' - do men 'always hate evil and will good' before they come under grace? The Law produces no 'flowers in the human heart' - it is not the sun, it requires but has no heat, and never produced a colour or a flower. He says, 'The law is like the sun by whose light and heat roses and flowers display their fine colours, and emit their fragrant smell; whereas by its heat the dunghill emits its unsavoury steams and ill smell. So the law, which to a sanctified heart is a means of holy practice, doth, in those who are in the flesh, occasion the more vehement motions of sinful affections and lustings.' I ask if the Apostle here ever speaks of the Law as producing anything (not causing surely, but as effect of sin) but motions of sins and death, sin surely being the source not law, but sin by the Law producing evil fruit and nothing else, all manner of concupiscence? Dr. F. tells us so, not the Spirit of God. We are delivered from it - why so, if it produces flowers and fruit? It is all as false as it is ignorant.

60 He confounds quickening with receiving the Spirit. Whereas we never receive the Spirit till when we are quickened, and by faith sprinkled with the blood of Christ. It is a seal put upon a believer, not on an unbeliever, who is the person to be quickened. "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts"; and a multitude of passages, John 7, Ephesians 1, and others.

Page 434. He says: 'There is nothing here' (Rom. 7: 7), 'which does not more or less find a place in the history of every one who has come under the power of the quickening Spirit although some parts of the description belong more to the initiatory, others to the more advanced exercises of the believer, several again to those complex operations, those interminglings of the flesh and the Spirit, of which all believers are at times conscious.' Quickened of the Spirit, yes - but there is not a word of the Spirit in the passage, nor interminglings of it, nor any thought of a soul which has deliverance, not one, nor ever does good. The last of all is a cry for deliverance, and a "Who shall deliver?" Then comes the answer. In Galatians we have not interminglings, but the flesh lusting against the Spirit, but there the man not under law which here he is.

Page 435. 'It is the principle of sin in his own bosom which was naturally at work there.' It is the principle of sin, not the acts.

Page 436. 'Verse 9. Such an experience, of course, belongs to the very threshold of Christian life.' Just so, but redemption and the Spirit unknown.

Page 439, verses 14-25. "We know" is Christian knowledge, as "We know that the Son of God is come" - "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle," and others. "I am carnal" is personal - the consciousness of what one is in flesh. And the whole is the statement by a man who is delivered (v. 25) of what the process is by which we come to deliverance, but the principles at work under the first husband - the Law - and what is the actual experience of no one, for no one has his will actually always right, and never able to do what is right, and that is what is described here. It is the working of the Law on a soul renewed but not delivered, i.e., under law, which will indeed recognise itself when described, but could never describe itself. It is from a delivered state, and by a delivered man that the description is given of the undelivered state. He can quietly describe it - the undelivered man not, he dreads he is lost, i.e., the things pass in his soul, but the effect is different as to how he can look at it. A man out of a morass can describe how a man is in it - in it, he thinks of perishing. Hence what Dr. F. says here is all false. It is not 'a settled believer' that is described as contrast in chapter 8. It is not 'a natural man' either, but a renewed soul, believing perhaps in the Person of Christ, but under law, not delivered. There is no proper conflict, but a man groaning under the folds of a chain which leaves him no liberty of action though he would be free, and may writhe under it. The proof that it is not the state of the Apostle is that he says, "When we were in the flesh," that he could do all things, that as a Christian he was not in the flesh - not if he acted right, mind, but if the Spirit of Christ dwelt in him, if not he was none of His, i.e., it is not the working of flesh but a standing in Christ which makes the difference, the dwelling of the Spirit in us through redemption. Where He is there is liberty - he is not captive to sin (sin is in him) but set free, and flesh condemned in the Cross of Christ. It is not that the statements are taken in an isolated manner - there are none others beyond willing good and never able to perform it, till we come to "Thank God through Jesus Christ" on the cry (the true result) not "How shall I get the victory?" "How shall I make progress?" but "Who will deliver me?" I cannot get free from what I am captive in. The Red Sea was not progress but deliverance. The "We know" is not experience at all, but Christian knowledge.

61 Page 440. 'To wish sincerely what is spiritually good, and to hate what is of an opposite nature, plainly distinguish the regenerated man.' The will and hating do plainly distinguish the regenerate man, but they do not show deliverance but the contrary, and make the man cry out for it. They do not determine the place of the soul - redemption, and the consequent possession of the Spirit does that. It is this there is entire ignorance of. He says: 'What the Apostle says on the other and lower side must be taken in a sense not incompatible with those higher characteristics - must be understood in short of that other self, that old man of flesh or corruption, which was still not utterly destroyed.' There is no need to say 'must be taken of that other self, the old man.' The Apostle says so, "I know that in me, that is in my flesh." But it was when he was in that flesh, which always remained in him, but he was not in Romans 8: 9, where he had the Spirit. It is learning three things by divine teaching under law - no good in me, i.e., in my flesh - it is not I, but sin that dwells in me, for he is renewed - but, thirdly, it is too strong for the I that wills good. Then having learned this humbling lesson, but most useful one, he is cast not on progress but on a Deliverer, and finds all is done. Then comes chapter 8: 1, 2, 3, with all its blessed results, and the Spirit which is not in chapter 7 at all.

62 He says: 'Similar confessions of the dominancy of indwelling sin, and lamentations over it, have often been heard in every age of the Church, from spiritually-minded persons; and are to be regarded as the indication, not of the absence of grace, but of that tenderness of conscience which is the characteristic of a properly enlightened and spiritual mind.' It is this doctrine which has ruined Christianity, and made some, on the other hand, pretend there was no sin any more in them.

Of the presence of indwelling sin - all Christians, not deceived, are conscious - if they are of its dominancy they are not under grace but under law. This is positive; chapters 6: 14; 8: 2.

Page 441. As to 'the relative preponderance of the two counter-forces in the Apostle's representation,' no doubt the I of will had not a relative preponderance. The will was always right, but power none - he did not find at all the means of doing right. All this is mere confusion, and neglect of the statements of the passage, and sorry ignorance of the true Gospel, at any rate in its fulness. One I, the true one, was wholly in good, but he had found no deliverance from the other. Again his conclusion is all wrong. He says: 'Though writing under the clear light of the Gospel, Paul has no fault to find with the law as a revelation of duty, or a pattern of moral excellence.' He does not find fault with the Law. Of course not. It was God's law. As a revelation of duty it was perfect. As 'a pattern of moral excellence,' Christ is the only one - a living Example, not a requirement on stone. But 'required duty' from man could not make God the pattern, and life from Him and the reception of the Holy Ghost does, as in Ephesians, and in the Sermon on the Mount. Christ was God manifest in flesh, and that is our Model - the Law, the child of Adam's rule with God.

63 Page 442. 'So far from there being any contrariety between the scope of the law's requirements and the spirit of the new life, the apostle rejoiced in the higher powers and privileges of this life, because through these the hope had come to him of gaining the victory.' Contrariety of course there is not, but this sentence shows Dr. F. is not out of Romans 7. It is in every way false. We do get the power of victory, but this is by the bye. We rejoice in God - know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge - rejoice in hope of the glory of God, and all the counsels of His grace for the glory of Christ. But the doctrine is just the opposite of that of the chapter. He found he could not gain the victory. Thinking to get rest by victory is bondage, because we cannot get free - we are captive - and, having learned this, we look for a deliverer, and we have this in Christ. And once brought to see that it is not progress, that we cannot get the victory, cannot deliver ourselves, the lesson is learned, and we find it is all done already in Christ, and then, and not till then do we get the victory. The natures remain the same. But instead of being captive and under the dominion of flesh, we are free, and the power of the Spirit is there to keep flesh as dead, because Christ has died, and we are not in it, and we alive in Him, sin having no more dominion, over us. We have flesh down instead of flesh having us down. We may fail, but we have liberty and power in Christ. The natures are not changed, but the state and condition are.

Romans gives none of the counsels of God as to the new man. It is responsibility, state, justification and deliverance. Is it not a singular thing that Dr. F., in speaking of what walk we are called to, only refers to Romans and Galatians, two Epistles where what is fundamental and essential is so fully given, to our infinite blessing, but where resurrection with Christ is never spoken of, and never to Colossians and Ephesians, where it is, and our heavenly place, and its bearing on our walk?

Page 444. I have not much to say here. He says, referring to Romans 10: 5, 'It seems, at first sight, somewhat strange, that the Apostle should here refer to it in the way he does, or that he should represent the way of obtaining life as essentially different from, and in some sort antagonistic to, that under the Gospel.' He does, however, it seems. And no wonder! The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ - that is not law at all. Indeed eternal life is never spoken of in the Old Testament but twice - Psalm 133, and Daniel 12, and both times prophetically. One thing is sure - law and faith speak differently as to righteousness; one was obtaining - the other, a free gift. A law to give life was newer thought. It did not assume men to be dead, but responsible - Christ does hold men to be dead in sin, and already lost.

64 Page 446. It is curious to see the incessant effort to undo what the Apostle is earnestly insisting on, only he cannot mean it from other passages. The Apostle asserts that if circumcised, they were debtors to the whole law - James, that if offending in one point, they were guilty of all. They do insist on law. Dr. Fairbairn lets them down easy, and modifies the obligation by grace. But it is the principle which is in question. As many as are of the works of the Law are under the curse. And the ministry of death and condemnation was 'the law mixed with grace.'

Pages 457, 458. I have not much to say on Ephesians 2: 2-17. The defects are more from understanding nothing, than opposition to the Apostle, as in Romans. He says: 'That this enmity has a certain respect to the hostile feeling and attitude subsisting between Jew and Gentile, seems clear from the reference going before to that antagonistic relationship and its abolition in Christ. The enmity, which Christ destroyed in His flesh, or which He slew through His cross, naturally carries our thoughts up to the great breach in man's condition, and the great work done by Christ to heal it. The Apostle plainly identifies the removing of this enmity with the reunion of sinners to God.' The enmity as produced by ordinances, or middle wall of partition, has nothing to do with healing the breach with God. The Cross did that, too, as to both, but that part of the passage has nothing to do with 'the common alienation which sin has produced between man and God.' So all the end of page 456 is false. The whole view is wrong. So when he says that, 'The apostle represents the system of law as done away, in order that humanity might be lifted out of its condemned and alienated condition, and might be formed into a kind of corporate body with Himself,' etc., it is all mischievously false, but arises from total ignorance of the Assembly or Church of God.

Page 460. Nobody says the contents of the Law are in themselves condemned or abolished. It is their condemnation, or information by law, the law about them as Harless says, and this is absolute. Circumcision is done away, and all dependent on it, and if it be the contents of the Law by the Law's authority, only relatively done away, then all of it relatively remains, or else I am to choose some of it and leave the rest, and then where is its authority? for that is the question. And when he says 'the law is subjectively realised when we have access to God by Christ through the Spirit,' it betrays what the whole is worth. But this is not the point of Ephesians which gives Christian responsibility. That is from chapter 4: 17 as individuals.

65 Page 461. Here again we have the egregiously monstrous statement that law is the revelation of God's righteousness, and we have again 'uniting the divided human family into one new corporate body.' He says: 'The law's relation to men's responsibilities as the revelation of God's righteousness." And, 'That He might reconcile both of us in one body to God through the cross, this was the higher end of Christ's work on earth - the lower, the uniting of the divided human family into one new corporate body.' The book is total ignorance of the doctrine and teaching of Ephesians and Colossians, a laborious argument against the Apostle's statements in Romans and Galatians.

More is not needed. But in page 466 we get an additional proof of the utter vagueness of his idea of the Christian condition, or of the idea of death (in sins) in Ephesians and Colossians. "Having forgiven us" is 'forgiveness secured as a boon ready to be bestowed on every one,' and this 'potentially' as he calls it elsewhere, 'the essential groundwork and condition of this quickening.' He has not an idea of the Christian condition, and not only takes Christianity on its lowest ground but carefully reduces the higher to this. The basis, as I have said, he resists.

All the statement that a seventh part of our time should be devoted to God, as if this was the command, is futile, I am sure it was the fitting time since God ordained it. But the point of the commandment was rest, and God's rest, though made for man, making Christ Lord of it, but religiously it is God's rest, and to make it a shadow (skia) of the Lord's day is to make it a shadow of what is not the substance. Justin Martyr says: How can we rest one day in the week, when we rest from sin every day? This Dr. Fairbairn partially sees, but if it was 'abolished in Christ, as a mere shadow,' who authorised its change to the first day of the week? And what comes of the authority of the Law, if it is abolished, and what it ordains is changed by nobody knows who? I have no doubt that the Sabbath is the shadow of the earthly millennial rest - the Lord's day, of the heavenly by resurrection - but then it is not by law, because as such it is 'abolished in Christ.' Well! He did take away the first, but then why plead its authority? The first day of the week is not law, but New Testament practice on the model of the Lord's own actings after His resurrection, and called the Lord's day. He says: 'In so far as the Sabbath was a shadow of anything in Christian times, it was abolished in Christ; and the day which took its place from the beginning of the Gospel dispensation, and had become known and observed as the Lord's day, was changed from the last to the first day of the week.'

66 Page 477. He says: 'The proper use of the law is a plain, direct, and peremptory repression of corruption and vicious practices' - only it does not repress them. It is then good when applied to the great moral ends for which it was given. But this was to 'repress vicious practices'; but this is its only use! How can it be 'a perfect rule of life'? There is just one condition, a single guiding principle - it is not made for a righteous man, i.e., for a Christian (nomos ou keitai). Law is not made (keitai - a technical word for those subjected to it) - English law has its application (keitai) for Englishmen, not for others, cannot be applied to them - and law (for it is law), but take it as exemplified in the Decalogue, but the only true translation is "law does not apply to," is not enacted for the righteous, cannot therefore direct God's people, it is 'to repress vice or anything contrary to sound doctrine.' This is explained by a ridiculous sentence, that 'it does not apply to the sanctified who have attained the end of the law.' Then they must be perfect, or the Law not, for if it be perfect it would apply till they were. That is, "The Law was not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient," etc., means it does not apply to the perfect because they do not want any law at all, as being perfect. This is satisfactory exposition! Then it is not only to repress and convict, but to bring to a better state. In page 479, he adds 'convict of sin,' which is its only true use at all.

We may see the low ground on which the system is by returning for a moment to page 338. He says: 'Scripture is a book for the sanctification of humanity,' and, page 340, 'The scheme reached its consummation in the appearance and kingdom of Christ.' It is curious how redemption, and the new and heavenly things in Christ practically drop out in the writer's scheme.

67 I add, it is of all importance to distinguish between the contents of a law and the imposition of them by law. But besides a law, as such, of real responsibility cannot go beyond the obligation and moral measure of the person on whom it is imposed as to his nature (not his state and disposition). If a law commanded things which it required the capacity of an archangel to do, they are no test of moral subjection. I do not mean that sinful flesh is de facto subject to the Law, but it must be adapted to man as man, to make it a measure of duty. Duty I may be, through my state, incapable of fulfilling, but the measure of duty as such. Hence legal duty can never be the measure of the display of God.

The Apostle's reasonings are almost always - always save on special dispensational questions - on law having nothing to do with continuance or discontinuance of Sinaitic commands, but of the operation of law as law, and what it becomes to man in sin. The dependence of morality on relationships, i.e., its being the fulfilling of the obligations the relation puts me under, is not considered by the author. He has no idea of a duty till it be imposed - whereas it is never imposed till man is in a state to need it, and consequently cannot perform it. Why command love if love flowed forth spontaneously, and whoever loved by command?

But then the divine Law takes up these relations, and enforces these obligations, and in that sense is in no way arbitrary, not even the Sabbath entirely, because it pointed out a special relationship never yet fully entered into - our entering into God's rest. This became a law, but it was not a law when instituted. The only law which was not founded on the maintaining any existing relationship, was arbitrary, and so simply tested obedience. Hence the contents of the Law existed before law - law recognises them - but law introduces authority external to the relation, imposing the obligation so as to enforce it, not as a relationship which carries it with itself, but as obedience - introduces quite a new element. The relationship, evil being entered, does not maintain itself naturally, but is maintained by authority, supposing the need of such, and a will that has to be controlled as wanting, or likely to be wanting, to the relation which involved the obligation.

68 Note, not only the Law gives no life, but it reveals no object. As creatures it suffices not that we have a nature capable of certain affections, we must have an object suited to and which ever forms them. God alone can create, but has no need of objects. Now the Law gives neither. It says: Thou shalt love God, but who, what is He, save the terror of judgment if disobeyed? A rule, and the consequences of breaking it - that is all. But it gives no nature to enjoy what is blessed, nor any blessed object to be enjoyed, and to form it. Christ is both - revealing God as the only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father.

The Sermon on the Mount and the Kingdom

J. N. Darby.

<45002E> 69

(Notes and Comments Vol. 5.)

It is a great mistake to apply the Sermon on the Mount in its positive statements to the law of the Ten Commandments, as if it was a spiritualising of them. The Law, as a system, is spoken of, taken up in Matthew 5: 17, 18, along with the Prophets. Prophecies, ceremonies, and all that is in the Law, were not set aside, or annulled, but fulfilled, the body was of Christ, and no doubt the Lord fulfilled its behests and precepts. It was to be kept till all was fulfilled. For faith, it was fulfilled in Christ, and, as to practical righteousness, is fulfilled in the Christian; Romans 8. But what the Lord goes then through is the contrast of an internal state of heart with Pharisaic outward formal righteousness. Only two of the commandments are mentioned as of the old times, and a subjective state is contrasted with a mere formal fulfilment of the letter. Duties to God are not entered on (never, I think, in Matthew, for God was revealing Himself in a new way). Man was not to think merely of killing - if one hated his brother, was angry even without a cause, God took notice of it; so of adultery. You have thus the state of the heart judged. So, as to alms, and all else, it is a righteousness which exceeds the righteousness of Scribes and Pharisees, as in verse 20. But in no wise a spiritualising of the Law. As I have said myself, eight out of ten commandments are not referred to. Verse 20 is the key to it; compare Matthew 6: 2, 16. There, of course, you get positive directions.

Matthew 5: 1-16 is the whole character, and state, and position of the disciples as entering into the kingdom; verses 17-20, relationship to foregoing dispensation and revelation - not destroy but fulfil. But then, as instructing them, taking it up on the side of man's responsibility (vv. 19, 20) the difficult point is "these." It is to be remembered that all this was before redemption, and no mention of it in the Sermon. It is the character of the enterers. The rock is obedience. Now this would make it obedience to the Law, but seen as they all were by the Lawgiver who was there, by Christ Himself, who did look to the end of those things which were to be abolished - the spiritual estimate of them by Christ Himself. The one who then in Israel, while the Law was in force, enfeebled any, the least, was the least in the Kingdom. Disobedience, and taught disobedience to the schoolmaster, was not obedience to the Father, nor the way to coming blessing, nor would Pharisee righteousness do. Then (v. 21) He gives not a spiritualising of the Law, but the two great principles of sin at all times - violence and corrupt lust.

70 Verses 25, 26, are Israel's then condition; the reducing it to practice ever (vv. 23, 24). To the second is added the question of divorce, not now to be allowed save in one case. Then the principle of human competency is judged, and mere human righteousness of the law of Talion. Grace takes its place as supreme, above law, in connection with relationship to the Father. The Law and Prophets were fully owned as of Jehovah to be fulfilled, but man's will and power negatived, and grace and the Father in sovereign goodness introduced. This was the Son's place perfectly, and exactly, upon earth. Not that He had not power, but did nothing of Himself - was not making vows. In the first two, the two great principles of evil in man relatively, we have instead of unbroken violence of will, the lowly seeking of forgiveness, to be reconciled in the acknowledgment of fault seeking peace, and this applied to the Jews' then state, Christ being there, their present state the consequence then spoken of. In connection with the other principle, the most thorough self-judgment, plucking out a right eye, cutting off a right hand, at all cost maintaining purity and holiness. This judgment of self to maintain holiness of heart as against sin, as the other, grace in holiness. Then relationship with God and the Father. As regards God, not voluntary promising to Him, as a Jew would, but the just sense of His greatness, and our incapacity to do anything, restraining us; and then grace, not resisting evil in contrast with legal maintaining our rights, to the full measure of the Father now revealed - a total change of dispensation, not the Holy Ghost revealing a glorified Christ, and, sent of the Father, the Spirit of adoption, but the Father fully revealed in the Son in grace. Thus, besides the blessed moral instruction, the fullest dispensational teaching in the revelation of the Father in grace in the Son. But it is wholly Christ on earth, "I have declared unto them thy name."

Verse 25. The Jews were with Jehovah (with Messiah) in the way, the precept being given morally. Here the Father is fully revealed as to His character in love in Christ. Man's ways before God, and the revelation of the Father before men, both in Christ.

71 Thus far subjective. But now the Father's name has been introduced, and is the basis up to the end of Matthew 7: 12. It is the positive activity of divine life - doing righteousnesses, alms, prayer, fasting, all to be with, as if true from, the Father. The incense was all burned to God, however the sweet savour might go forth. They were to trust Him as a Father, and not to be laying up, or having anxiety. Here the Father's name connects itself with what is subjective, still as the consequence of a true and right object. This is chapter 6: 19-34. Note too, though it be the revelation of the Father in the Son on earth, the Father is in heaven though they are on earth, and so viewed, but this sets their treasure in heaven, their motive wholly there, and it is wholly this - God or mammon; compare Matthew 5: 12. When they are the light of the world, the Father's name comes in - it is grace - verses 14-16. Verse 13, it is responsibility and so dealt with. (Note, this is the present difficulty, to unite both, to maintain being the salt of the earth and be light to it in love, to abide as Joshua in the tabernacle, and go with Moses into the camp, though having pitched the tabernacle very far off from it - but that is what we have to do.) Compare the difference of verses 10 and 11, 12 and 9, from what goes before. Hence also in chapter 6, we have reward.

Matthew 7 gives, as before, subject responsibility and self-judgment, in contrast with man's pretention to judge others, though these were profane and reckless men, to whom the rich blessings of grace and truth should not be presented, but all this is not redemption. Then grace in the Father which closes the instruction. The rest is composed of warnings not to deceive one's self or be deceived, and obedience is laid as the foundation, and true wisdom. It remains a strait gate and a narrow way. In sum, the discourse belonged to that time (whatever instruction there be for us) is what Christ was as the Man according to God's heart, and Son of the Father, and they were called so to walk. It does not treat of redemption, nor love to sinners, but of responsibility as then specially developed, and the Father's name and grace - they being on the earth. Do to others, grace doing, what one would wish one's self, reciprocal care loving one's neighbour as one's self. This is the Law and the Prophets. Is not this what they amount to? But the Law is "this" - such is its true character; and the Prophets, not touto (this) but houtos ho logos (this is the word). God is in heaven, but the reward there, if we suffer for Him who came thence, and is there, but Man on the earth.

72 So the prayer. It is Christ's ministry, the manifestation of His mind on earth, and connected with the true Remnant, but with the Father.

The divisions in the Sermon come out more clear to me. It is clearly the characters suited to the Kingdom, and the circumstances and heart-duties of those who are awaiting its establishment in power. Chapter 5: 1-16, the character of those to whom the Kingdom belongs, and who belong to it, even reward in heaven if persecuted. It is a change of dispensation, as far as realised, havo ([the age] to come), and not hazeh (this [age]). Verses 17-37, the connection, and mutual bearing of the new and old, with the spirit engendered by the Law, and the Law itself; but going on to take up the great principles of sin in nature, violence and corruption, and God's power, and our nothingness in connection with it, and so subduedness. Verses 38-48, good in the midst of evil, and that doubly - Christ's life on earth, not resisting evil, and grace, the manifestation of God in Him on earth. This closes one section.

Matthew 6: 1-34, purity of motive, not to be seen of men - as to alms, prayer, fasting, all to be done to God. This world's good, moreover, not to be a motive at all, nor a matter of care - cannot serve two masters - and we are to trust God, and first to seek the Kingdom of God. Subdivided, verses 1-18, 19-34.

Matthew 7, general characteristics, directions, and warnings. Then, note, the name of the Father comes in, when good in grace, as it was in Jesus, comes in; chap. 5: 45. Previous to verse 37, it was, after the first characteristics, contrast with the old system with the Jews; those, also, consequently, who touched the commandments in that state of things, would be small in the Kingdom. This was the moral, not the grace side. The Law and the Prophets were of Jehovah, and were fully owned, and now, as far as they referred to it, to be fulfilled. This Jewish aspect brings in verse 25. They were passing from their dispensation to another, as indeed they expected. But from chapter 5: 43, 45, all is connected with the Father. Verse 38, as said, begins Christ on earth.

I find more than I remembered in 1874. Chapter 5: 1-16 is their character and place, and therefore the Father is brought in at the end. Verses 17-37, contrast or principles in reference to "of old." Verses 38-48, are really Christ in His double character - as Man on earth, and revealing the Father. Hence verse 43 brings in full grace. Then the Father properly begins, or grace, and all from that is relationship with Him, and reference to Him now revealed in Christ. Religious duties, dikaiosune (righteousness). Chapter 7 is general, not special relationships, but truth and discernment in conduct, still in relationship with the Father.

73 The character of the end of chapter 5 is deeply important. After insisting on the subjective state and spirit suited to the kingdom, the putting down of will and unsubdued self, He takes up the principle of the Law, dealing with evil for its repression by the law of Talion, and then introduces the immense principle, known by Christ's coming into the midst of evil - good entirely above evil, but acting in the midst of it - takes notice of it, and as exercised against one's self, but above it, and acting from its own motives, and this is what God does, and here is made known to those born of Him, those connected with Christ. "As their Father," a totally new principle, they are to be like Him - this was the perfect path of Christ - a wonderful privilege, showing what, in this connection, "perfect" means. It is not reached by the evil, save to draw out the good, and make a new created but divine path in this world. It is not righteousness, in the sense of justice, not what presents us to God, but that wherein we are to be perfect like Him. What a place to put us in! But it is not holiness (though largely ministering to it; see 1 Thess. 4) not intrinsic purity though supposing it and inseparable from it, but as above evil and self, goodness, for such is God even our Father, evil would make it impossible - it is goodness in the midst of evil. Goodness in the midst of good is heaven (but, in its highest character, result of redemption, for good and evil are now known - in the Cross, absolutely and perfectly brought to an issue) but in itself, as result. Goodness in the midst of good, all answering to itself, and adoringly capable of enjoying it. This is. grace. Good above evil.

It is as clear as language can make it that verses 17 and 18 have nothing to do, good or bad, with our fulfilling the Law in our walk. Whatever "fulfil" means for the Prophets, it means for the Law. Verse 18 connects it more strongly with that sense than the structure even of the preceding verse. The previous dispensation and revelations of God, He came not to set aside as testimony but to fulfil. They were God's testimony, not for a permanency, but not as such to be made void. The righteousness of God is revealed wholly apart from law, but was witnessed by law and prophets. Whatever the Law and the Prophets put forth as that which God would have, that Christ met in all that concerned Him, for all is not fulfilled yet. Nor will one atom of God's testimony pass away as void in either - all will be made good. Am I to fulfil the Prophets? Yet what is here said of fulfilling, is said of law as of prophets. Whatever is fulfilled it is, here, by what Christ came to do. The righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in us, because we are not under it, by those who walk after the Spirit.

74 Although taking up the Remnant as such, yet I think the Sermon on the Mount, and the tenth chapter must be taken as especially applying to the kingdom as then proposed, and the disciples as then called - a period which practically ended with the destruction of Jerusalem. It may be resumed in a modified way at the end, and doubtless will, but they could hardly pray then, "Lead us not into temptation," for they are in it, and they have been delivered to the Judge. Jehovah will be hardly in the way with them as He was now. Doubtless it will be applicable to them in principle (as to us), but the direct application is to the Remnant then. Only there was suspension, by the Son of Man's not coming then, of the whole thing, the Church coming in then meanwhile.

There is a closing in Matthew 9, as well as in Matthew 12. And note in Matthew 10, the Spirit is spoken of, as in the disciples. But the mission divides in a measure between chapter 10: 15, 16. Matthew 11 and 12 give a much more definite rejection, with its declared consequences as against Israel, and bringing in a new state of things, as the Father and the Son, the Son of man Lord of the Sabbath, and the unclean spirit entering into the generation with seven more, and the like. Up to the end of chapter 10, we get His then presence in grace, and even the mission in grace after He was gone, and passes this last over. Even the same blasphemy of the Pharisees is followed by calling for the prayer for labourers. He raises the dead Israel (Jairus' daughter) as well as on the way heals whoever had faith to touch Him. And, though the effect is intimated in result as the children of the Kingdom being cast out, and the swine rushing headlong into the sea, yet the direct dealings, the subjects of the teaching are grace - the blessing the Gentile who had more faith than Israel, and healing Legion.

75 Chapters 11 and 12, the axe is at the root of the tree. There had been the mourning and the piping. In chapter 10, grace continues to Israel. In chapter 11, the Person of the Son in grace takes the place of His service there, to whomsoever He may reveal the Father, and in Matthew 12, final judgment is on Israel because a greater than Jonah and Solomon was there unheeded. He knows only His disciples through the Word, not His relations in the flesh with Israel. This development of Matthew is very striking. After the Sermon on the Mount, in which what suited the Kingdom and those who would enter into it is stated, and the Father's name manifested to the disciples, we have in chapter 8, Jehovah cleansing but touching the leper. A wonderful testimony - nothing in circumstance like it - and the Gentiles received while the children of the kingdom would be shut out. Still the subject, as noticed, is grace (only for faith). Then Jehovah bearing, as Man, our sicknesses and infirmities, but the Son of man not where to lay His head. Obligation to leave all, even the dead to bury their dead, then storms, but Christ tranquil (asleep to man's eyes) but the disciples in the same boat with Him, and then casting aside Satan's whole power by a word, but the ruin of the possessed swine (Israel) and the easy world getting rid of Him. The whole picture of His presence in grace.

Matthew 9, we have the character of His mission. Again He is the Jehovah of Psalm 103 - forgives and heals what Israel (as we all) wanted, but new wine cannot be put into old bottles. All is grace, but Israel rejects, cannot as such receive, but it is grace. He is come to call sinners. We have then the coming to raise really Israel, and those who had faith healed on the way. Still He has compassion on Israel as sheep without a shepherd, and sends labourers into the harvest, of which I have spoken. My object now is to note the character of grace in all these dealings, though it may with unbelief bring with it judgment.

In Matthew 11, He is Jehovah, there testing John Baptist himself by the adequate evidence He gives of Himself. It is now counsels and judgment - the Law and the Prophets were till John - the Kingdom was going to be set up, and pressing into it with the suffering violence of faith was the path. If they could receive it, it was Elias, but the die was cast - John had mourned but they had not lamented - He had piped and they had not danced. He reproaches the cities because they did not repent, and the Father, as we have said, is revealed by the Son in whom rest and the easy yoke of submissive obedience is found. Then the sign of the covenant dealt with - He is Lord of the Sabbath - He continued in patient grace, but would not be known till He sent forth judgment to the Gentiles. Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost comes in, and then the full judgment of the generation. In chapter 11, then we have the judgment, and the deaf ears of the generation, and the Father and the Son brought in to replace present ministry. In chapter 12, He is paramount to the old covenant as Son of man, and, on the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, the generation is given up to final judgment of the seven spirits worse than idolatry, only those who receive the Word are owned. He is now the Divine Word, not Messiah in Israel, nor Jehovah seeking fruit from His vine. Even here note the Father and the Son, as such, bring in pure grace (Israel being set aside as in John) the Word, responsibility in itself and when the Kingdom is set up. So that judgment applies to it at the end as it did to Israel.

76 The Kingdom of God was present in the Person and power of Christ on the earth. The Kingdom of heaven is presented prospectively (at hand). The establishing heavenly rule with a heavenly character in those that were its children, poor in spirit, converted, becoming as little children, persecuted for righteousness' sake. By the rejection of Christ, the Kingdom became like (homoiothe) such and such, and not only the enemy sowed tares, but the fisherman's net gathered of every kind. But the good seed were the children of the Kingdom, and the object of the net was the good fishes. Next, the Kingdom of the Son of man is when Christ comes and establishes His power on earth. The Father's Kingdom is the heavenly part which is the source of all. So the Lord's prayer, so the explanation of the parable of the tares, introducing both these last - when Christ will drink the wine, be their companion for joy in a new way. Now, as far as Christ was concerned, it was only good seed, and no one entered into the Kingdom by Him but the converted - those whose righteousness exceeded that of Scribes and Pharisees. But in Israel Christ was gathering the wheat into His garner, His fan was in His hand. This testimony of the Kingdom of heaven at hand was to Israel, not to Gentiles, as in Matthew 10. They were not to go to them. The Sower, when Israel was judged, and the other parables in chapter 13, go out beyond this.

77 Then as to the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven; it is as thus presented as coming in, not reward in heaven - that in Matthew 5, is a distinct thing - but the least in the Kingdom (the then prospective Kingdom) was greater in the blessings he enjoyed, His place, than John the baptist.

The Sermon on the Mount is very interesting in connection with Matthew 10 and 24. First Matthew 10 and 24, when they speak of being hated for Christ's sake, do not speak of the final conflicts of the last three years and a half, but of that general mission which could be carried on even when Christ was there, and yet extended beyond it and continued when He was gone. In chapter 10 it applies to Israel alone, the lost sheep of the House of Israel. They were not to go to Gentiles or Samaritans. They were on the ground of the Matthew testimony - the Father's name revealed to them, sent forth from Jesus announcing the Kingdom of heaven's being at hand. Only when brought before kings and rulers of the Gentiles, there is the additional fact of the Spirit of their Father helping them, and the ministry is carried on in the presence of a hostile people. They are Maschilim (the instructed). It is not redemption, or what we call the Gospel, but the proximity of the Kingdom - not Christ's personal ministry, nor is the Holy Ghost presented as the Comforter sent down, though when sent down, He might act in this way. The disciples are placed in the revelation of the Father's name as Christ revealed it when on earth, and their Father's Spirit speaks in them. It is the kind of testimony, or position of rendering it, which is consequent on Psalms 1 and 2. They have to endure to the end. They will not have accomplished their service till the Son of man be come - that brings us to Psalm 8. It is not laid upon the basis of a Son of man suffering, though most of the testimony went on after the fact, and led to all their trials, but they are a Remnant suffering from a hostile and wicked nation, and from perverse and rebellious Gentiles. They are in view of a coming Son of man whom God has made strong for Himself. As to the spirit of the nation - "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." They are for the lost sheep of the House of Israel. Jerusalem is not definitely part of the scene.

78 In Matthew 24, Jerusalem is definitely the centre of the subject. Her house left desolate, and not to see Christ again until she say: Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. We have not the Son of man here, but the Stone which the builders refused become the Head of the corner. Hence the disciples suffer, from the outset there are false Christs. It is not a testimony, though it may be supposed, but they suffer for Christ's name's sake. And the Gospel of the Kingdom is preached in all the world for a witness to all nations, and then the end of the age comes. Then there is a specific time of three and a half years referred to in Daniel, during which Jerusalem is under special oppression through the abomination set up. Those that are in Judaea are to flee to the mountains. It closes with the coming of the Son of man. All Judea is the subject of warning, but the occasion is the abomination of desolation in Jerusalem. To verse 14 it went on to the end. What follows is special, but the tribulation is not confined to Jerusalem, but it is intimated that its focus is in Judaea. The fact of the preaching in all nations is merely a sign of the end.

In Matthew 5-7, we have just these elements as to the character of the Remnant. It is, as often remarked, the character belonging to the Kingdom. But then we have suffering for Christ's sake, and going to heaven as the martyred Remnant will. The Father's name is revealed - redemption in no way taught. The condition of Israel briefly but clearly told us in verses 25, 26. The Law and the Prophets not destroyed. They are salt in the land and light in the world. But here, as in chapter 10, the last trial is not found. It is a matter apart, even in chapter 24. The Lord's prayer is perfectly suited to that time. It goes on to that day; Matthew 7: 22, 23. Even false prophets are warned against, but they are discerned morally, just as the judgment in that day is on the same ground. Hence we have not the Son of man, because the subject is what is morally fit for the Kingdom, and to be applied then that He might not be rejected. He was propounding, as a present thing, the doctrine as to the principle of the Kingdom, only He brings in their consequences. While stating the change both as to Church and Kingdom (the Church by a special revelation, not what Christ was openly teaching) it is remarkable how Matthew keeps on Jewish ground; so there is no taking up to heaven at all.

Jehovah their Messiah was there as Prophet. It would go out to Gentiles (Matt. 8: 11), who would be in the Kingdom of heaven. The Son of man had not where to lay His head. Christ is in the troubles with His disciples, but it passes on to His rejection as then (and from Matthew 13, sowing, not looking for fruit), the definite rejection, yet of Him who satisfied the poor with bread in Israel. The nation judged in its rulers. But God, from His nature, blesses necessarily beyond, where so looked to, and the Remnant according to His own perfectness if not administrative fulness naturally. Then chapter 16, the nation is judged practically, and the Church brought in.

The Spirit's Work

<45003E> 80

We see the Spirit's work in Creation, in the Samsons, Jephthas, Sauls, and even Balaam - then in the Prophets, calling back to the Law, and foretelling Messiah, suffering, and the glories to follow. But here though called the Spirit of Christ, yet it was a divine Person working in a divine way to manifest power, or deal with God's people from without. This went on till John. He was Messiah's forerunner - it was a transition time. Then on Christ, as Man, the Holy Spirit came down as a dove. He was anointed and sealed, but He only - on this to be declared Son of God by John. And then the heavens opened, He anointed, and the Father owning Him as His Son, the Man that was there, the Second Man and last Adam, personally though yet alone. For, except the Corn of Wheat fall into the ground and die, it must abide alone. Even then Christ was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to overcome for us, fully tested here below. Through the eternal Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God. But He was alone. But then, what no heart can tell or fathom, the blessed Son of God, the lowly One, and the Just, was made sin for us, and we can say: He hath borne our sins in His own body on the tree. Now He is risen - all that is passed - that wonderful atonement has been made, in the very place of our sin in absolute and perfect obedience and love to the Father - God perfectly glorified. Sin, death, Satan's power, God's forsaking, and judgment against sin, all passed, and Man owned of God as to His work, and having glorified God as made sin, is passed into the divine glory to begin all afresh in a place, the consequence of redemption, and thence, having in that place received the Holy Ghost, has sent it down to believers - not to man in the flesh, or the world (though the Gospel goes out to them by it) - to associate them with and unite them to Him who, glorified, begins all afresh.

Fragments

<45004E> 81

1 Timothy 1: 5. How very perfect this statement as to the result! In what an atmosphere of blessing it puts us, in contrast with the idle speculations of man's mind! The object of the commission is not idle speculation, but love (God's own nature) enjoyed and active, purity in the affections, a pure heart which sees God - the conscience, with nothing on it, happy in God's presence; and then faith, the spirit of dependence on, and confidence in God. How bright a state in God's presence!

________

The three points of our present walk are very clearly brought out in 2 Timothy 2, in the well-known passage - withdrawal from iniquity, as naming the name of Christ - purifying ourselves from the vessels - association with those (in the path of grace, righteousness, and peace) who call on the Lord out of a pure heart (whom I am thus called to own, as far as manifested, though owning the Lord only knows them that are His). I add then, courage and the Scriptures; and we have the special provision for the last days. The armour of God is for all times - the sense of dependence our security.

_______

The comparison of John 1 and 1 John 1; chap. 2: 1, 2, is full of interest. In John 1, the life is the light of men, but darkness comprehends it not. In 1 John 1, they have seen, looked upon, and handled the Word of life, and show the Eternal Life which was with the Father, and manifested to them; through the Word made flesh become a Word of life to them, they have fellowship with the Father and the Son - the names of grace. Then instead of the light shining in darkness, and the darkness not comprehending it, they are in the light as God is in the light, where responsibility and test comes in. I only touch on the main elements to suggest the ground of what was in my mind - the complete contrast of the Christian's place by redemption, and the world's on the presenting of Christ and His being merely in it. And I add, in chapter 2: 1, 2, provision is made for failure in detail. Jesus Christ the righteous, and the propitiation remain in full force - we are in the light as God is, as to place and title. But darkness in act has necessarily totally destroyed communion, though righteousness remain, and hence He is not an Advocate with God, to restore righteousness, but with the Father, on the footing of righteousness and propitiation restoring communion. Failure is judged according to the light we are in - as God is in it. And hence on the footing of what He accepts as putting away sin, I speak as I am, an ever present now, according to that light. The full enjoyment of the out-flowing of grace in communion is re-established. The whole comparison is full of interest.

_______

82 I think it is remarkable how Paul contemplates the introduction of false brethren from the beginning and distinguishes the sacramental system as distinct from salvation, and man's work contrasted with God's - while Peter does not, save as the fruit of positively false teachers like the false prophets of old; but as an ordinary fruit to be produced, he does not. The Christian work is Christ's work, is of God. He addresses the saints, not merely as positionally and rightly such, but as individually such; nor is any other work recorded or supposed. We may suppose such must have been, and such may have been the case in Lydda, but it is not supposed; they turned to the Lord. Simon Magus he detected, which confirms this. Paul's object, of course, was the same, but, like the fisherman's net, it gathered, and he contemplates its gathering of every kind. He contemplates wood, hay and stubble - branches being cut off - sacramental introduction and privilege - but with many God being not well-pleased. This is remarkable. It is a vast system inaugurated on the earth, which Paul commences - Peter's is a falling one there, but in its nature simply divine operation. I have already considered Matthew 16 in connection with this.

__________

The two 'becames' in Hebrews 2: 10 and Hebrews 7: 26, are striking, as showing the deep truth of God's dealings in respect of Christ, and the wondrous height of our heavenly calling. - "It became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." The majesty of God was such that it became Him, if that Blessed One took up our cause, to make Him pass through the suffering to enter into glory. We can say that it became God, our sins being such, not to pass over them, or our state before Him, and Christ must suffer. Then when our calling comes, a High Priest becomes us who is separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens, for that is our place as called. Another kind of high priest, or place of exercise of his priesthood would not do, for that is our place and condition, called withal to the holy and harmless.

________

83 The first disciples saw and believed, but then fuller light came in. Between that fuller light and Thomas's confession, which represents Israel in the latter day, the difference is evident. In the message by Mary Magdalene, where it was faith by hearing, the testimony is of the Son of God going on high as Man, and placing His disciples in the very same position as Himself: "I ascend to my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God." Thomas's confession of Christ is a remarkable one, owning Christ as his Lord and his God; but he looks up to Him in the divinity and glory of His Person. He is not associated with Him in His own blessed position in relationship with the Father, and the place He has taken as Man before God. This latter is Christ's own communication in grace to the disciples, as giving them part with Himself - Thomas's, his recognition of His glory when it is forced upon him. And this is all in its place.

_______

Note, Paul alone puts baptism, as far as I am aware, on the ground of death and resurrection with Christ. Thus it becomes the means of doctrinally bringing the Christian on to the point where, on the new ground and in a new position, he is united to Christ as Head. In Romans, he only carries it out to the individual position, but in Colossians he uses it not as union, of course, but as that which, by taking out of flesh into what is beyond it, is the inseparable introduction into holding the Head. It is only life, but life hid with Christ in God. But he introduces 'holding the Head' as the necessary and inseparable consequence, only the Holy Ghost is not brought in in this Epistle. The connection is in chapter 1: 18, not the same, but connected, so immediately in Christ. Hence it glimmers though not unfolded, as in chapter 1: 24, 25, and chap. 2: 19.

_______

84 Note in 1 John 5: 18, 19, we have the opposition of the new nature to the whole trinity of evil; whosoever is born of God sinneth not - the will and nature of flesh; he that is born of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not; and, we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.

________

Note the remarkable contrast between John 1: 5, "The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not," and 1 John 2: 8, "The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth." We get the full character of the living Christ in the presence of men brought in by redemption after the Lord's death. In life He was the Light of men, but men were darkness, opposite in nature, and the Light did not dispel the darkness at all. It remained, as before, darkness, and did not comprehend the Light. But redemption came in - there was a new state of things - Christ had overcome the power of darkness, and brought a new condition of men in resurrection into existence, and vivified according to the power and place of this life, which was in the light as God was in the light, and had left the darkness and the whole scene and power of it where it was, behind, the other side of the Cross. Thus those who had received Him, had received light in life in their souls - cleansed by the blood, they walked in the light, and were light. It was not the strange phenomenon of light shining and darkness remaining, but the darkness was passing and already the light shone as light, not in darkness merely. This is an immense change indeed. It is then easy to see how it connects itself with "Which thing is true in him and in you." It shows the relative place of the Gospel and Epistle very clearly, and more, it shows very powerfully the difference between Christ's position and witness on earth, and the light brought in after redemption was wrought, and He was risen. It is a very important comparison.

85 Note how carefully the Kingdom and our portion in Christ are everywhere distinguished when brought together, and both introduced so as to mark the distinction. First, in 2 Peter 1, the transfiguration is the plain manifestation of the glory of the Kingdom, indeed is so said to be in the Gospels, where it is visible and Christ appears with His saints. This is connected with prophecy. It confirms what the Prophets had said as to what the history of this world would end in - was a light in this dark world - but this is contrasted with another thing, the daydawn, and the Daystar arising in the heart. Next, in Revelation 2, we have the promise of Kingdom of Psalm 2 extended to the saints. Here in the full corruption of the Church (popery) the faithful are urged to hold fast, and the end looked at, "Till I come"; then the Kingdom of the rod of iron over the nations given (that is prophecy) but, besides that, the Morning Star, Christ, before the day comes. Then in Revelation 22, as at the beginning, the efficacy of Christ's forbearing known in the heart relationship of the saints, so when all the prophecy had been gone through, Jesus presents Himself as the Root and Offspring of David, the bright and morning Star. As the former He is the Source and Heir of promises, as the Morning Star the Hope of the Church. The Spirit who is down here animating the Church, and the Bride in the sense of her own relationship, looks for Himself to come, and the whole position of the Church meanwhile, as having the Spirit, is unfolded. And so we find it elsewhere. At the end of 1 Thessalonians 4, where it had been declared that those that slept in Jesus, God would bring with Him - this is the manifestation in glory also, which is continued in connection with the day, in chapter 5; our going up to Him, so as to be with Him for ever, which answers to the Morning Star, is unfolded in the intervening parenthesis.

The Soul

<45005E> 86

First, the word psuche is clearly used for "life," as Matthew 2: 20; Matthew 10: 39; Mark 3: 4; Luke 9: 24, 56; John 12: 25, and many other passages. Next, it is used for the general fact of conscious feeling and existence - the activity of the inner man - without defining whence or what it is. In this way, it is used even of God; Matt. 12: 18; Heb. 10: 38. Thus: "With all thy heart, and with all thy soul"; "My soul is exceeding sorrowful"; "A sword shall pierce through thy own soul;" Matt. 22: 37; Mark 14: 34; Luke 2: 35. It is used for persons, as Acts 2: 41, 43; chap. 7: 14. But as "life" and "soul," it is in contrast often, or "life" is used for "the soul" in its higher aspect. The same word is used of what is profited and lost in the same act. Thus: "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it;" Matt. 10: 39, compare verse 28; chap. 16: 25, 26; Mark 8: 35-37 (compare Luke 9: 24-26, and John 12: 25) and Luke 17: 33.

We have then "the soul" used generally for the responsible part, in which we live with God, whose state and movings are expressed in the body's acts, as Matthew 11: 29; chap. 16: 26, and the passages of contrast I have referred to. Matthew 26: 38; Mark 8: 37, and like passages to Matthew; Mark 14: 34; Luke 1: 46 (passage cited from Luke); Luke 12: 23; John 12: 27; Acts 14: 22; Acts 15: 24; perhaps Romans 2: 9; 2 Cor. 1: 23; Heb. 6: 19; chaps. 10: 39; 13: 17; James 1: 21; James 5: 20; 1 Peter 1: 9, 22; 1 Peter 2: 11, 25; 1 Peter 4: 19; 2 Peter 2: 8, 14; 3 John 2. Here we find contrast with Jewish temporal deliverance.

It is contrasted carefully with "body," Matt. 10: 28; Luke 12: 20 (stronger because of verse 19); Acts 2: 27, 31 - practically several of the passages quoted under the last head. Acts 20: 10; compare 1 Kings 17: 21, 22. It is also distinguished as the mere living soul from the higher part in which it is in connection with God, through living in Him by the breath of life from Him; 1 Thess. 5: 23; Heb. 4: 12. Add to this Luke 16, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. It is distinguished from the power of life in Christ in 1 Cor. 15: 45. Its distinct condition in man is originally founded on Genesis 2: 7 - never said of beasts; hence Acts 17: 28. The "souls under the altar" confirm this.

87 "Spirit" is used often for the soul including the higher part. So even of Jesus, "He gave up the ghost" (paredoken to pneuma). This word we must also examine. It is used not uncommonly for the spiritual part of man in contrast with his body, as Luke 8: 55, "Her spirit came again," confirming the clear distinction between the two, as with soul. So where the two latter are also distinguished, spirit, soul, and body. But I think it has another force than "soul," though used in a general way like it, in contrast with "body," as the non-corporeal part of man. "Soul," as connecting itself with its action in the body, though clearly distinct, is more connected with life, and so used for it. "Spirit" is more the active, intelligent consciousness, or the seat of that consciousness, which belongs to the inner man; and just what distinguishes man from the beast is that the latter has merely a living soul connected with an organism, passions, habits, faculties, such as memory, affections; while man has received this state of existence through God's breathing into his nostrils the breath of life - by the spirit of life he became a living soul. Hence in ordinary language the two may be used as one; because of the pneuma zoes (the spirit of life) he has a psuchen zosan (a living soul). The mere animal has a psuchen zosan, but not through a divine pneuma zoes. The mere breath of natural life is organic, and has nothing to do with this. Hence "spirit" is used for this active, intelligent, consciousness. In the Christian it is connected often with the Holy Spirit which dwells in him, as its activities are produced by it, not the soul. The Spirit and its fruit may thus also characterise the state of the soul. This character of the spirit of man, the connection of the term with active intelligent consciousness is frequently found; Matt. 26: 41, "The spirit indeed is willing"; Mark 2: 8, "Jesus perceived in his spirit; chap. 8: 12, "He sighed deeply in his spirit"; Luke 1: 80, "Waxed strong in spirit;" chap. 2: 40; chaps. 10: 20; 23: 46; John 4: 23, 24; chaps. 11: 33; 13: 21; (chap. 19: 30, used in general, so Acts 7: 59). Acts 17: 16; Rom. 1: 9; chap. 12: 11; 1 Cor. 2: 11; chap. 5: 3-5 (used in special manner for activity of the inner man and a power, not intelligent, thus contrasted with nous - proof of the difference of mere mind from the active principle, though usually acting, in the present state of human nature, in it as the present form of its power; so that consciousness, not mind, is essential to it); 1 Cor. 14: 2, 14, 15, etc.; 2 Cor. 2: 13; chap. 7: 1, here through the mind, verse 13; Gal. 6: 18; 1 Thess. 5: 23; 2 Tim. 4: 22; Heb. 12: 23. In Thessalonians and Hebrews, the contrast with body is clear, and in the former with soul also.

Sacraments

<45006E> 89

I think the Sacraments have a larger bearing than I was aware. They are (1 Cor. 10) for the wilderness. One introduces into the wilderness, but it is Christ's death (Romans 6), not ours. Only I thereon reckon myself dead as a consequence - place too in baptism - in the likeness of His. But we have not in Romans 'resurrection with'; and even where we have, as I think, we must say in Colossians 2, no ascension, we seek the things above, in Canaan. Then the manna was for the wilderness only, and the spiritual drink. That is, one brings into, the other sustains in the wilderness. So we show forth Christ's death "till He come." I take my place in the world, consequent on Christ's death - a wilderness. It is not the corn of the Land. But we are all One Body. Here, for myself, I have union with the saints, and my place is in virtue of union with Him, still as down here. We are the Body of Christ, as down here - not as in this world without the Cross, for then I do not know redemption, do not enter into the holiest to worship. I am on earth, but in the consciousness of being member of the One Body, which implies union with Christ. But it is on earth I celebrate it, not in heaven, i.e., not as being there myself. I look at the humiliation as over with Him, but remember Him in it. Note it is not the Passover here; that went with the corn of the Land, Canaan, and circumcision. I am in the fruit of redemption, but in the wilderness, but in the unity of the Body. With the manna we must take in Christ's death, of course, according to John 6. Our service in it is simply owning the preciousness of His death, and till He come. Our state is in resurrection, but we are occupied with, and celebrate His having been once down here, and show forth His death. The question is, Where are we when we celebrate it? In the wilderness. What are we? Members of One Body, united to Christ in fact. In a responsible place in the wilderness, but by redemption, and really united to Christ, or I could not talk of "The Unity of the Body." 1865.

_______

I think of the account of the Passover in Luke we have the sign of the passing away of the old system, and the bringing in of the new. True love to His disciples in, for the last time, eating with them - a token of affection, but He will not eat it any more. Then the Passover cup - fellowship and communion in joy then in it - this He does not take at all. It was now to be fulfilled in the Kingdom of God, and He does not drink this cup. They are to divide it among themselves; He will not drink of it till the Kingdom of God comes. Then He institutes the new thing in His body broken, the remembrance of a new and better deliverance, and the Cross the new covenant in His blood.

Remarks on an "Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent"

<45007E> 91

{Essay in aid of a Grammar of Assent, by John Henry Newman, D.D. of the Oratory. Second edition. London: Burns, Oates & Co., 17 and 18, Portman Street.}

It is striking, to begin with, that in his three acts of the mind, he only speaks of 'doubt,' 'inference,' and 'assent.' He makes 'assent' different from 'inference,' and there he is right. I have often said, an inference is only 'must,' or therefore never really 'is.' Belief of a fact never rests on an inference, but on intuition, sight, etc., or testimony. But a man's disbelieving is not believing the contradictory. Religion is revealed - rather God and His truth; I do not believe it - I do not think there is adequate evidence and do not believe it. But I do not believe there is none. If we put truth instead of revealed religion - and the truth is - this depends on a religion being in question as revealed. Now certain things being presented to me as revealed, my being unable to receive them is not my saying there is no revealed religion. And when truth is presented to me, it must be specific truth (and there can, if it embraces all our relationship to God, be but one) but if truth be presented to me, my disbelief of it, seeing it must be positive, is not saying 'there is none.' According to Dr. Newman there are three modes of holding and three ways of enunciating propositions - each corresponding to each - three mental acts. Taking free-trade as an example, he says: "These three mental acts are doubt, inference and assent. A question is the expression of a doubt; a conclusion is the expression of an act of inference; and an assertion is the expression of an act of assent. To doubt, for instance, is not to see one's way to hold that free-trade is or is not a benefit; to infer, is to hold on sufficient grounds that free-trade may, must, or should be a benefit; to assent to the proposition, is to hold that free-trade is a benefit." "And, in fact, these three modes of entertaining propositions - doubting them, inferring them, assenting to them, are so distinct in their action, that, when they are severally carried out into the intellectual habits of an individual, they become the principles and notes of three distinct states or characters of mind. For instance, in the case of revealed religion, according as one or other of these is paramount within him, a man is a sceptic as regards it; or a philosopher, thinking it more or less probable considered as a conclusion of reason; or he has an unhesitating faith in it, and is recognised as a believer. If he simply disbelieves, or dissents, he is assenting to the contradictory of the thesis, viz., that there is no revelation." This is quite false.

92 But his logic is wholly at fault too, the comprehension of the word wholly left out. In page 6, he says: "We cannot assent to a proposition, without some intelligent apprehension of it; whereas we need not understand it at all in order to infer it. We cannot give our assent to the proposition that 'x is z,' till we are told something about one or other of the terms; but we can infer, if 'x is Y, and Y is z, that x is z, whether we know the meaning of x and z' or no." Thus the "is" is absolute, i.e., x must be all Y, and Y must be all x to be always true. Thus, snow is white, white is a colour, therefore snow is a colour. This is nice logic!

What follows is sufficiently judged further on - the confusion of effect from the thing assented to, and strength in the assent. But further; he says: "The only question is, what measure of apprehension is sufficient. And the answer to this question is equally plain: - it is the predicate of the proposition which must be apprehended. In a proposition one term is predicated of another; the subject is referred to the predicate, and the predicate gives us information about the subject; - therefore to apprehend the proposition is to have that information, and to assent to it is to acquiesce in it as true. Therefore I apprehend a proposition, when I apprehend its predicate. The subject itself need not be apprehended per se in order to a genuine assent: for it is the very thing which the predicate has to elucidate, and therefore by its formal place in the proposition, so far as it is the subject, it is something unknown, something which the predicate makes known; but the predicate cannot make it known, unless it is known itself. Let the question be, "What is trade?" here is a distinct profession of ignorance about "trade"; and let the answer be, "trade is the interchange of goods"; trade then need not be known, as a condition of assent to the proposition, except so far as the account of it which is given in answer, "the interchange of goods," makes it known; and that must be apprehended in order to make it known. There is no reason why our knowledge of the subject, whatever it is, should go beyond what the predicate tells us about it," but a proposition may where it is a complex idea to explain a word, or to render a vague idea definite and clear. Thus, "trade is the interchange of commodities." A child has read a book, and finds "trade," and says, 'What is trade?' "It is the interchange of commodities," is explaining the word by the thing expressed. Or I may say, 'Money is a mere conventional representative,' and, whatever the means employed, bills or gold, trade is really the interchange of commodities - here it pretends to give the real character of the commerce I have seen going on in the world. Otherwise, a proposition relates to something known objectively, say, as Dr. Newman, Lucerne. He states I need not apprehend the subject, and anything more childishly fallacious I never read. I will give his own words. "If a child asks, 'What is Lucerne?' and is answered, 'Lucerne is Medicago sativa, of the class Diadelphia and order Decandria'; and henceforth says obediently, 'Lucerne is Medicago sativa,' etc., he makes no act of assent to the proposition which he enunciates, but speaks like a parrot. But if he is told, 'Lucerne is food for cattle,' and is shown cows grazing in a meadow, then, though he never saw lucerne, and knows nothing at all about it, besides what he has learned from the predicate, he is in a position to make as genuine an assent to the proposition 'Lucerne is food for cattle,' on the word of his informant, as if he knew ever so much more about lucerne. And as soon as he has got so far as this, - he may go further. He now knows enough about lucerne to enable him to apprehend propositions which have lucerne for their predicate, should they come before him for assent, as, 'That field is sown with lucerne,' or 'Clover is not lucerne.'"

93 In the first place Medicago sativa is merely a change of names, and gives nothing at all, unless a genus, if I know botany. The class and order make me know it is a plant, if I have read Linnaeus, but, the subject, lucerne, not being known by sense, the passage, if I knew Linnaeus by heart, tells me nothing save that the predicate supposes, does not state, that a plant with a Latin name exists, but no more. "But if he is told lucerne is food for cattle," he can assent to the proposition on the word of his informant, as if he knew ever so much more about lucerne." And now we see the utter folly of the man - he adds: "And is shown cows grazing in a meadow." How does he know that it is lucerne they are eating? He must know it is lucerne, to make the proposition anything at all to him. Suppose it is clover they are eating, he will call clover lucerne because cows eat it, or he knows somehow lucerne as an object of sense, which is just what Dr. Newman is proving he need not. The proposition must be, 'all that cows eat is lucerne.' Logically he has made the predicate of an universal affirmative universal, instead of particular. "Lucerne is food for cows" only means is one kind of food for cows. Hence, when he sees the cows eating lucerne, he only knows it is a kind of food for cows since they are eating it, but he does not know it is lucerne. If Dr. Newman merely means that seeing cows eating makes him know what the predicate "food for cows" means, it is ridiculous. If it is so, he has only learned that the name "lucerne" is attached to one thing cows eat, but he has no object at all before his mind to which the predicate attaches. If he must see cows eating to know what the predicate means, it is child's play, for then he must be told they are cows, and what eating is, or the predicate is nothing, and he understands that but nothing more of the subject, save the name. Say "Dollum is something cows eat." What do I know about dollum, save that cows eat something men call "dollum." But I should then say, "But what is dollum?" But this child's play is not what Dr. Newman means. For when it is said, "That field is sown with lucerne," it is only when he is told that field is sown with lucerne, if he has not seen lucerne, and known objectively, or now learns by seeing it, he knows no more. We know what lucerne is and hence associate the ideas. But supposing he was told lucerne meant "bread and butter," he would suppose the field, if he assented, sown with bread and butter, for cows might eat that. "Clover is not lucerne," he can know nothing about, unless he knows them both, for cows eat clover, too. It is talking of a known thing, and slily slipping in, "seeing cows grazing in a meadow," which deceives here.

94 Page 13, he says: "Yet there is a way, in which the child can give an indirect assent even to a proposition, in which he understood neither subject nor predicate. He cannot, indeed, in that case, assent to the proposition itself, but he can assent to its truth." "Thus the child's mother might teach him to repeat a passage of Shakespeare, and when he asked the meaning of a particular line, such as 'The quality of mercy is not strained,' or 'Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,' she might answer him, that he was too young to understand it yet, but that it had a beautiful meaning, as he would one day know; and he, in faith on her word, might give his assent to such a proposition - not, that is, to the line itself, which he had got by heart, and which would be beyond him, but to its being true, beautiful, and good." "It is, indeed, plain, that, though the child assents to his mother's veracity, without, perhaps, being conscious of his own act, nevertheless that particular assent of his has a force and life in it which the other assents have not, in proportion as he apprehends the proposition, which is the subject of it, with greater keenness and energy than belongs to his apprehension of the others. Her veracity and authority is to him no abstract truth or item of general knowledge, but is bound up with that image and love of her person which is part of himself, and makes a direct claim on him for his summary assent to her general teachings." Now if he heard his mother say, "Virtue turns vice," he would have no idea in his head, if he did not know what "virtue" is; he might think it meant bad habits, or human nature, or taste, or anything you please, and he would learn nothing of what was meant to be conveyed. If he was sure his mother told him, his only real thought would be, "My mother tells the truth," but that that was true he could not say, he does not believe it. He has no proposition in his mind. And when Dr. Newman speaks of one assent being stronger than another, as when his mother's truthfulness is before him, it is a totally different matter - feeling, caring for, not assenting - and, if the mother was all wrong, would lead astray, because feeling is no real ground of assent, and may influence the heart contrary to the truth. Dr. Newman's mother led him up, I suppose, in Protestantism as true, and, as he now believes, brought him up entirely in error. God may act on feeling, conscience for the truth, then influence and truth go together. But that can be said of none else.

95 Dr. Newman partly distinguishes afterwards between inference and assent, but he has no idea of believing what God has said, simply because He has said it. Quoting from Locke's "Degrees of Assent,"* he says, "Where any particular thing, consonant to the constant observation of ourselves, and others in the like case, comes attested by the concurrent reports of all that mention it, we receive it as easily, and build as firmly upon it, as if it were certain knowledge, and we reason and act thereupon, with as little doubt as if it were perfect demonstration . . . . These probabilities rise so near to certainty, that they govern our thoughts as absolutely, and influence all our actions as fully, as the most evident demonstration . . . . Our belief thus grounded, rises to assurance." When we talk of "belief rising to assurance," with Locke, it is all very well, because it is mere human reason, and, for practical purposes, we must act on what is adequately proved as true though only "exceeding high probability," we have, save what is seen, nothing more. But all this shuts out divine faith. There is no rising to anything, no exercise of the mind to prove, no degree of anything, no possibility of human deceit. If God has spoken, it is the truth. But the whole of his reasoning in the chapter on assent, considered as unconditional, though he separates inference and assent, yet he speaks only of "the facts of human nature as they are found in the concrete action of life," i.e., men are certain enough to act on it, is all true. But on page 169, he insists that assent is "unconditional, and' that in 'subject-matters which admit of nothing higher than probable reasoning."

{*Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book 4, chapter 16.}

96 Page 171. He says, "None of us can think or act without the acceptance of truths, not intuitive, not demonstrated, yet sovereign." But some believe that things exist besides ourselves, "that there is a Supreme Being." He insists our nature is so constituted - so do I. "Nor," he adds, "has any philosophical theory the power to force on us a rule which will not work for a day." Now we have here inference, and, besides that, convictions which flow from "the constitution of our nature," of which we have no doubt (till we reason, and which reason may cast into doubt, rightly or wrongly); I admit all this, but none of this is divine faith. That "England is an island" is no example, because visible. "An island" means what I see, or others do there. He insists (page 179) that all this "does not interfere with the pre-eminence of strength in divine faith, which has a supernatural origin, when compared with all belief which is merely human and natural." But still, it is only because it has its origin in grace and its motions. "The greater certainty is according to appreciation, not intuition, for natural truths are often more clearly perceived!" "The connection of knowledge with truth is more apparent than the connection of faith with the same!" And another author, he quotes, says: "The adhesion of the will is stronger." And again, "The difference of certainty from the difference of motives." This only regards an exterior difference, for every natural certainty, formally looked at, is equal. "There is a transcendant adhesion of mind, intellectual and moral."

97 Page 218. "A man is infallible, whose words are always true; a rule is infallible, if it is unerring in all its possible applications. An infallible authority is certain in every particular case that may arise; but a man who is certain in some one definite case, is not on that account infallible." "I may be certain that the Church is infallible, while I am myself a fallible mortal; otherwise, I cannot be certain that the Supreme Being is infallible until I am infallible myself. It is a strange objection, then, which is sometimes made to Catholics, that they cannot prove and assent to the Church's infallibility, unless they first believe in their own. Certitude, as I have said, is directed to one or other definite concrete proposition. I am certain of proposition one, two, three, four, five, one by one, each by itself. I may be certain of one of them, without being certain of the rest; that I am certain of the first makes it neither likely nor unlikely that I am certain of the rest; but were I infallible, then I should be certain, not only of one of them, but of all, and of many more besides, which have never come before me as yet. Therefore we may be certain of the infallibility of the Church, while we admit that in many things we are not, and cannot be, certain at all."

Infallibility, as I have remarked elsewhere, is wrongly used. Truth cannot be infallible, nor anything actually revealed. It is simply absolute truth. It is more appropriately applied to Scripture, so far as there is an immense mass of truth there which I have not discovered, and I am sure all is true there with divine authority, but this is only used in a secondary way, as Paul says, "The Scripture foreseeing . . . preached before." But God is infallible, i.e., cannot be mistaken or deceived. Infallibility is not simply always speaking the truth, but the impossibility of mistaking, or deceiving, or shortcoming. It involves not mistaking in anything, as well as not deceiving. Now this is part of my idea of God, the true God. If He is not infallible, He is not God, He that is true, to whom all things are open.

Dr. Newman is audacious enough to say, "If I must be infallible to know the Church is such, I must be infallible to know God is such." This is every way false, and savours of blasphemy, and proves only one thing, as is evident from all he says, that he has never known the testimony of God as truth. It would have been impossible for him to use this logic if he had. But that is all it proves. And it is wholly without foundation, for 'know' has a different meaning. When I say, 'I know God is infallible,' though I dislike the expression, 'I know' is merely the intuitive conviction of what God is, not knowledge from proof - it is part of the nature of God, necessary to His nature - a fallible God is not what 'God' means. But I do not know whether an assembly is infallible. It is not so by necessity of nature, so that it is not an assembly if it be not. Nay! no assembly of creatures is or can be. It is the property of a creature to be fallible in itself. God may keep me right through grace, I will suppose, but in the sense it is used of God, I deny that the Assembly of God is infallible. Dr. Newman's argument is bad, because I have the proof that God has promised to keep it from all mistakes. But what has to be kept is not, per se, infallible, and it has to be proved that what is not necessarily infallible is made so in its judgments by Another. Of that I have to judge, and I may make a mistake, and I cannot say absolutely it is infallible. I may be certain, but that proves nothing, because I may be wrong, and it is a thing to be proved. I have not to judge if God be infallible - He is not God at all if He be not. It is a necessary element of Godhead. I do not know God at all, if I think it has to be proved.

98 I see no sign of faith, or moral perception in Dr. Newman; and lowering God in order to exalt the Church, i.e., man, is a sign of deep moral alienation from God.

Corinthians and Philippians

J. N. Darby.

<45008E> 99

(Notes and Comments Vol. 5.)

The whole force of 2 Corinthians 5 is the power of life in Christ manifested in resurrection, and complete in glory, founded on death so as to put a total end to the first man and to sin (He having been made sin), and hence an entrance as out of the first into the new creation where all things are of God. As to this, it is a most comprehensive statement. I would show the principle of this briefly. Beside death and judgment, we have it applied to our course here. All were dead since Christ died for all - they have to live to Him who died for them and rose again. But this goes very far, because Christ Himself, in so far as He came connecting Himself with men in the flesh, disappears. He came under law - Son of David - a minister of the circumcision - of whom according to the flesh Christ came. All this is gone. He died as to this, and died for all - all were dead. Hence the Christian knows no one after the flesh in his new nature; risen in Christ, he has nothing, no connection with the world of Adam the other side of death. That belonged to the life of flesh, and the link is broken in the death of Christ, and the life in which he lives does not belong to it. He is entered into, as risen, and is of the new Creation - the old things are wholly passed away, he is dead, and has no more to say to them. The life he lives belongs to another order of things, and he is entered into them in that life, having died out of the others, or holding himself for dead - Christ having died to and out of it - and risen up from this in a new life, Christ. In this new Creation all things are of God (we the firstfruits of it), all entirely new. Two things are attached to this: we are reconciled to God - we are made the righteousness of God. But how entirely new all this is!

Note, the point of connection between the beginning and end of the chapter is, that the love of Christ being in his heart, the thought of the terror of the Lord urged him to persuade men. Then this love of Christ, i.e., the way it showed itself, brought out the great truth of men's state and their bringing into a wholly new Creation which identifies itself with that power of life with which the chapter begins, while all is grounded, as to righteousness, on Christ being made sin for us. In the beginning, the power of this life, as to death and as to judgment, is remarkably brought out. On the whole, the deliverance is astonishingly developed in this chapter. It is a wonderful chapter.

100 Note further in 2 Corinthians 5, after, as already noted, speaking of our direct positive condition as flowing from divine power in life, bringing us into glory, death being wholly annihilated, he contemplates death for us, as having this life, and it is of course gain. Here oneself (not in an evil sense) is brought in. And this, note, is the motive for our seeking to be acceptable to Him, knowing we shall be with Him in glory, and even our souls, if we die before the glory come. We like to be agreeable to One we love when with Him, besides there is the solemnity as well as the joy of the Lord's presence. But then, in taking up the second part of man's lot - the judgment - we get a distinct difference of the great principle, and the effect, where Christ's love is truly known. In the latter case, a person does not think of himself at all - the love of Christ constrains him, and he thinks of others. Thus responsibility and being manifested before the judgment-seat, and receiving the things done, is kept as solid ground of warning before the soul. And there is the active toil of grace to be acceptable and pleasing to Him. But when judgment comes as terror before his mind as it is, the Apostle only thinks of others through the constraining love of Christ. Perhaps Paul had been accused of being beside himself, but at any rate he distinguishes between his own joy and blessing in rising up to God by the power of the Holy Ghost, and the sober judgment of what was suitable. I apprehend he spoke of his condition as in chapter 4, and even in chapter I, for their sakes, still his doing it thus brought him to the point of responsibility and view of the judgment. But the effect of this on himself, as we have seen, was to urge his love to others. This love in Christ being in the death of Christ had a double effect. He did not know Christ as a living Messiah before His death any more. He was now not his own at all, but Christ's. So if any man were in Christ, he was of and in a new Creation, of which Christ was the first fruits in resurrection, where all things are of God who has reconciled us to Himself by that work. The whole of that is then set out, verses 19-21.

So, how very different the character (also noticed) of Philippians 2 and 3 - the subduedness, readiness to suffer, watchfulness for God's presence and character in the midst of this world, in the first; and the spiritual energy which looks forward to the next, and glory in it, Christ in glory being before his mind to win in the latter. I do not know but the first is the deepest. In the second we win Christ and glory - blessed thing surely - but it is more what we get. In the former, we are like Him, and His love and character are more thought of, and we living in and according to them to His glory. But both are perfect in their place. So most gracious, divine affections come out in chapter 2, but earnest zeal against evil, inconsistent with the glory, in professors in chapter 3. Still, in love, weeping; still chapter 2: 17, 30, enters far more into saintly feelings. We are among the chasidim (saints) on the earth, not thinking with weeping of those who slight the glory.

101 In sum, we have in 2 Corinthians 5, the proper condition of the Christian. First, looking, God having wrought him for it, to having, according to what was divine power in life, what was mortal swallowed up of life. Death had wholly lost its power. Next, if he died, being so wrought, and having the earnest, being absent from the body and present with the Lord, these were his living, active motives as to his walk. Thirdly, as the judgment-seat of Christ was there, the effect of this on him was (and could not be with what went before, that he was wrought for glory), not to make him look on to being manifested, but his being now manifested to God. He was in the light really, walking in it in respect of that judgment, so that all was manifested to God now, before whom he walked, in the glory (for when we appear before the judgment-seat, we shall be in the glory, and glorified, and our hearts judge everything according to the glory - so by faith, now). Then if he did think of the terror he thought of others; it woke up in his heart that love of Christ which had been shown in that which had brought him into that state, and proved all not brought in to be dead, turning it thus downward towards those who had no part in it. A blessed state - upwards, in power over death, to God, all in perfect light - or, according to Christ's own love, downward to sinners! What a chasid (saint) the Christian is, as to his position, by Christ! Nor do I at all say that this latter part is in any way inferior to the other. It takes more out of self into God's own nature. As I have noted as to Philippians 2 and 3, this leads more to God, that to glory delivering from the world. Still he would win Christ. It may be a lowly thing to work out our salvation, but it is in view of God's character, and God works in us. So we are sons of God, followers of His in nature and character. So, in Psalm 16, it is Christ's taking the place of humiliation with the saints, by which he finds Jehovah's presence fulness of joy. Psalm 17 is righteousness, and glory in waking up. So, in Philippians 3, not character but righteousness. But Philippians hardly goes on to the presence of God.

102 Note too the character of experiences in Philippians and 2 Corinthians, and what is practically such in 1 Corinthians. I have already spoken of Philippians, but I return to it here to compare it with the others. It is as walking in the Spirit, and filled with it, being above all that Resh could suggest. Flesh and sin are not at all recognised, thought of, or named, save as once saying "no confidence in flesh," and that is religiously. Hence we find he is not insensible to trial, but, by the wings of faith above it, all distress turns to his salvation. Self is so gone, and he so blessed he does not, for self, know whether to choose life or death, only as it is better for the Church he shall stay, deciding by faith his own trial for life. Careful for nothing, only doing one thing, pressing onward to win Christ and the prize of His calling, rejoicing in the Lord always, able to do all things through Him who strengthens him. Such is experience when laid by in the power of the Spirit. It was not his present engagement in the active service in the conflict, but his rising in the power of the Spirit above it all. In 1 Corinthians we have the Christian at the other extremity. They were going on, as we know, very badly. Paul would not even go there, and deals in earnest warning and reproof. But what is his own position as to them? Confidence in God. "Ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." God is faithful, by whom ye were called into the fellowship (knowledge) of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also shall confirm you to the end that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. From this point he can deal with them as connected with Christ. There is a reality in being a Christian, even when going on badly, though that is never allowed. So in Galatians, where he stood even more in doubt of them because it touched doctrine, "I have confidence in you through the Lord."

Now in 2 Corinthians we have experimental exercised faith in the conflict; not going on badly, yet one trusting in grace for those who did, not rising on the wings of faith above all the trials, but exercise of heart finding God in them; and this too is very precious. The trials are of various kinds. First, violent persecution, so as to despair of life. He had the sentence of death in himself (this is the secret of force in trial) not to trust in self but God who raises the dead; two things, carrying the sentence of death, the Cross on self, God sending it practically, so he says further on, but it is God meeting the man in the putting down of self. This is brought out beautifully in chapter 4: troubled man, not distressed - God is there; persecuted man, not forsaken - God there; perplexed man, not in despair - God there; cast down man, not destroyed - God there. Now this is the whole matter, and then follows the spiritual mind as to it, already quoted.

103 Then anxieties for the Church, could not go to Corinth, could not stay at Troas, no Titus. In Macedonia, without fighting, within fears - doubted as to having sent the Epistle. God comforts those that are cast down. Poor vessel, but rich grace!

Then positive danger from flesh. He goes to the third heaven - a man in Christ there, he can glory, but flesh would glory too - a thorn comes. This he would have taken away, but looks to the Lord. It hindered his work, made his bodily presence weak, speech contemptible, tended to his being despised in preaching. But the Lord was there - flesh, self, was put down, and Christ, strength and grace came in, and he glories in the infirmity. Now all this is power in weakness - weakness felt as to the vessel, which we need, but therein God most blessedly and graciously meeting us, and making Himself better known. It is very instructive and sweet to the soul. How gracious of God, and wonderful!

But further, in 2 Corinthians 5, in turning, after the full positive condition of the Christian, to meet the natural portion of man by the same truth of life in Christ glorified, note that death is spoken of because a Christian may die. Death is not in itself set aside; it is a gain. Judgment is not, as to the Christian, at all. We must all be manifested there to receive the things done in the body. He knows the terror of the Lord, but the only action of this on his mind is to lead him to persuade others. We are always confident if we think of death, because we are formed for the glory into which Christ has entered in the power of life, and have the earnest of the Spirit - it is, if we die, going from the burdening body and being present with the Lord. But judgment we shall never come into. We persuade others because of it - we are manifested to God, that is its present practical effect.

104 In the experiences of 2 Corinthians as in Philippians we see how the fellowship and love of the saints are ministered to, and here connected with a difference in respect of ministry - in Philippians not so, as the Apostle was shut up; a difference interesting in its character. There, "Work out your own salvation, for it is God who worketh in you" - a word important in these days; here, "Death worketh in us, but life in you." Yet still there is the eventual working of grace, and all things, the Apostle himself, are for the Church's, the saints' sake.

I go back to point out that in 1 Corinthians 1, man is put down in himself. The power of God and wisdom of God is in what is foolishness for man. God's folly is wiser than man, and things that are not bring to nought things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. Then the new thing is brought in. "We are of God in Christ Jesus," and all that clothes us and brings us into blessing is in Christ too. "Of him are ye," i.e., of God, "in Christ Jesus," and "He is, of God, made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification." It is in life and competency for blessing, and entering into all - Christ - the new thing. In chapter 2 he will know nothing else but Christ in his ministry, and that in the way it was folly to men, but in this, flesh must be put down. When a great work was to be done, he was in weakness, and fear, and much trembling, and his speech was not with persuasive words of men, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and in power.

Note also in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 there is the having received this ministry (the glory of God in the face of Jesus), we use great plainness of speech. Having received this ministry, we faint not. The revelation of the glory, so that righteousness is in grace for us, and the glory its known place - the glory of God is in righteousness, bringing us then into it gives a ministry as open as the unveiling of the glory. But then it is in a power which, overcoming death and setting Man in glory, hinders fainting, though the vessel be an earthen one. The heart, on the contrary, carries death in this, that the power and glory may be itself, or themselves, alone.

In chapter 4, death, as the utter setting aside of man (as well as atonement in Christ) has a far more important character than we are apt to think. It judges, of course, the flesh as hopelessly bad, but it ends it. It declares, as Christ's death, that no link could be formed with man. Divine, infinite love came down, and, while divine, suited itself to every want and sorrow of man; His whole condition, because the children were in flesh and blood, "he also likewise took part of the same," but remained alone till death. Thus, His death was the solemn declaration that there could be no link between grace and flesh. Hence, as His disciple, we must hate our father, mother, wife, life - all that is a link here - to follow Him; forsake all we have. It may be outwardly, always as regards the new life. It is not in the old relationships, though it respects them as formed of God, and all God's ordinances, but in it we reckon ourselves dead, crucified with Christ - our life only a life which is of Him as risen; He, as risen, is our Life. But having taken our sins and died, they are gone, passed away with the life He laid down. Then, if we are dead with Him, we have not the nature, as in Him, which had to do with sin, the world, law - I am not alive in it at all - I am in Christ, alive by Him as a quickening Spirit. I eat His flesh, drink His blood, realise His death, non-existence as to this world, and so abide in Him, live dia auton (through, by reason of, Him) as He lived dia ton patera (through, by reason of, the Father). How completely this sets aside the old thing! I am dead and gone as to flesh and all it had to say to. Yet, because I am alive, and this only is Christianity, I have to seek to realise it, may at first see only forgiveness by it. But except I eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, I have no life in me. If I do, I am alive in, and by reason of, and for Him. But it is death to all that was connected with nature, because of nature. No doubt it will contend against us, but we are not in it now at all. How immense and total a change is Christ's death to us! Then we have to seek, "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal body.'?

105 I have spoken of chapter 4 as giving the realisation of Romans, our being dead to sin, and so partly of Colossians, only it goes further; but we find the Ephesians and the other half of Colossians, as to our previous state, too, in chapter 5: 14. All were dead, or Christ need not have gone there. It is still practical, but not new position, but here also consequent duty. It does refer, in general terms, and necessarily, to the new Creation, but the point insisted on is the claim of Christ's death - that we should live to Him who died and rose again for us. This is analogous to Romans 6, not as dead with, indeed, and afterwards to live to God as alive in Him, but, as I have said, Christ's claim by death. We were dead, had all died - if we live (which is then a new creation) we are to live to Him who died and rose again. Still it is only life, not "quickened together with him." But it takes up the previous state, as Ephesians, and part Colossians, we were dead - not we have to die, i.e., have died to the old man, in Christ, but it puts us into the sphere of the new Creation, as a man in Christ, but it is not here, any more than Romans, "risen with Christ," and God is referred to as in Romans 6, "All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself" - a new nature and state of things. Remark too how very clearly, in Colossians, the state and ground of it is laid before the walk, in each case. We are dead and risen - "Be not therefore subject," etc., and "Set your affections on things above." "Ye are dead, and your life hid," etc. - "Therefore mortify your members." "Do not lie, for ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new," etc. "Put on . . . as the elect of God, holy and beloved." It is a recognised principle, but the ground work of exhortation comes out singularly clearly here.

106 Chapter 5 is interesting too in this way: after giving the full effect of the new power of divine life in Christ, reaching to mortality being swallowed up in life, it turns and meets the whole case of the full effect of the old thing, death and judgment; death (we having life) is "absent from the body, and present with the Lord" - judgment makes us, knowing the terror of the Lord, anxious to persuade others, the love of Christ constraining us; compare John 5: 24, and Hebrews 9: 27. The power is in "God who raiseth the dead," or has risen, and given us Christ risen, in this power, as Life. It is founded on His being made sin for us, we the righteousness of God in Him; the practical result is, knowing no man after the flesh - living to Him who died and rose for us, and seeking in all to be agreeable to Him. But it meets Hebrews 9: 27, wholly and exactly.

Finally, note well the effect of the full operation of grace, in setting one in a new position, in the power of life in Christ, is to bring one to God. It is not natural conscience or law, but what suits God's presence which is then in question. This gives us, mark, the true sanctifying character of grace - the effect of the full unclouded light of God on the conscience. Hence the Apostle speaks of the terror of the Lord, but note the effect - he persuades men. Any alarm to him is out of the question; he has got there, being always confident by a share with Christ in the glory which is found there. But he sees its effect on man, and persuades them (he sees it, because he has a man's conscience, salutarily, even for himself, as to walk under the influence of this presence) but it has a wholesome and salutary effect upon him, not of uncertainty - he is made manifest unto God; most wholesome and preserving truth! The grace then which has perfectly saved us, and brought us to God Himself, makes the presence and light of God, of Him who is Light, the measure of conscience and of right and wrong for him who is brought to be in it, and know it by grace. Nothing can be a greater proof of the perfectness of his position than that the effect of God's presence, of the terror of the Lord, was to push him to persuade others, the love of Christ constraining him; for this was the true result of all - that he was possessed of this love. God's presence, we have seen, his place by grace, and in holiness, according to glory into which he was brought; but, as to man, it told another tale. The manner of coming there, what was clear to his soul, had passed sentence of death upon all that man was, viewed in the first Adam, for the Christ of his affections, whose love he knew, had died and risen again. If he had known a Christ in association with living men, yet it had been shown there was no possible link between them. He had died for all (borne the sin which made union in the flesh impossible; when the truth had come out - what had been to his mind a Messiah, crowning joy of man in the flesh, was a dying Messiah for what was altogether dead in sin). Now he could only know Him thus - men belonged to Him, if at all, as dead and risen. They belonged to a new Creation, of which He was Head as risen. Old things were gone, all things new, all things of God who had reconciled them to Himself by Christ. Hence he knew these two things - Christ down here, not the culminating blessing of man in the flesh, and the Glory of Israel, but God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and as Man, He who knew no sin made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. We know then God as Love, in Christ, towards us as sinners. That is the way we know Him, active in love, and, if the question of righteousness be raised, we are the righteousness of God in Him. Wondrous result of Christ's death! God known only as Love - ourselves God's righteousness in Christ! God in Christ Love - man in Christ God's righteousness! It is a wondrous salvation, a divine work and wisdom.

108 Returning for a moment to Philippians 3, the more I read it the more clear the setting aside of the first or old man becomes. The Cross being the point of division, the resurrection, the beginning of the new, identified with the acceptance of the atonement. Knowing no man after the flesh is identified with this. Man had, with every advantage, both seen and hated both Christ and His Father - the world was judged - the Son of Man lifted up. This puts the Church too in a peculiar position, because the Man of God's counsels, the Son is not revealed till He come, "The Son of Man be come," "I will raise him up at the last day." Even if received then, this was the portion of him who did so; and the whole statement is connected with eating His flesh, and drinking His blood. Hence, too, the Cross is our portion, if we suffer with Him, for nothing is fulfilled, as yet, save the foundation work and the coming of the Holy Ghost; we are in a suspended time. But the Cross lays the basis of all. Every question of good and evil has come to an issue in it. But the first man is condemned in it - condemned but gone, for faith that is - crucified with Christ. There is an end of man morally, in every sense; judgment not executed. The second Man must take His power for that - Son of God and Son of Man; but morally man's history is closed. It was the "end of the ages." Not only "he that believeth not is condemned already," but he is found to be "dead in sins," and it is a new creation beyond death, sins, Satan's power, judgment, through redemption and a new life. Not merely quickened by Christ, but quickened together with Him out of death, where we were lying, and He came down. The basis is what God is, and God Himself, "All things of God." The Law assumed the first, living, responsible Adam. See Colossians 2 and 2 Corinthians 5: 17. There is the difference of the bringing in of death, man being looked at as living in the old man, which is in the Cross, and seeing we were dead in sins, and a new creation. Romans fully develops the former. It is found also in Colossians 2; 2 Corinthians 5: 14, et seq.; and Ephesians 2 and Colossians 2: 14, the latter. [1874.]

Matthew

J. N. Darby.

<45009E> 109 {file section a.}

(Notes and Comments Vol. 5.)

Emmanuel, Jehovah the Saviour, Messiah, but rejected and cast out, and His presence then in Israel, the Church, and Kingdom in glory take the place of. In Matthew 8, Jehovah to the Jews - grace, for faith, to the Gentiles, and bearing Israel's sorrows - but the Son of man has not where to lay His head - companion of His disciples, though seemingly asleep in the ship. He went with the godly Remnant to John Baptist. But note here, that in Luke it is not "When he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them," but when all the people were baptised, He also is baptised. He throws Himself in among them when so manifested. In the case of the sheep (John 10), He is going out. It is not so marked in Matthew. But this is that it is the Remnant, in contrast with the Pharisees and Sadducees, are accepted - the feeble Remnant that had been astray, now returning, making ready a people - those, the generation of vipers. The Jews rush to ruin - the world will not receive Him. Matthew 9 has been noted. Here we have, as all this is grace, Matthew 8, His Person, chapter 9, the character of His service. When the Pharisees blaspheme the continuation of grace (v. 34) they are taken no notice of; and praying the Lord of the harvest is our path, and, in this mind, He sends out (chap. 10) His labourers in Israel, and it continues. Matthew 10 divides at verse 14; verse 23, "Till the Son of man be come" (Church time, properly speaking, and Gentiles are passed over). Matthew 11 we have had pretty fully, only the testimony of grace is practically closed and rejected, both as to John and Christ, and Christ remains alone as Son unknown, revealing the Father, and to Him the weary are to come, as revealing the Father, and lowly and meek in heart, in obedience Himself. Hence the seal of the covenant is dealt with, the generation disowned and judged - its last estate the power of Satan. Christ disowns His natural connection in flesh with Israel, and owns only those who are His by the Word. This brings in Matthew 13, often spoken of.

In the end of Matthew 13 we find the rejection of Christ by His own country; and, in Matthew 14, the actual cutting off of John by Herod. Then we have the actual presence of Christ Jehovah, the Church viewed as to position, on His return, and His return to the world, i.e., satisfies the poor with bread. Then Peter walks on the water to meet Him out of the ship. Then He is fully received where He was rejected.

110 In Matthew 15, we find the whole moral condition, and ground of relationship with God, reasoned out. Ritual, traditional tradition wholly worthless and vain. All that the Father had not planted would be rooted up. It was the blind leading the blind - both would fall into the ditch. Then the heart of man - what came out of it. Then over and paramount to dispensational curse (Canaan), hardened state (Tyre and Sidon), God's heart beyond mere faithfulness to promise - a beautiful and blessed picture - we have the selfishness of man's heart, disregarding even promise, in the disciples. Then the continuation of grace to the Remnant in God's supremacy above their evil, not twelve - human administrative perfection - but seven, what is spiritual, above failure in man. Then the Church, which Christ builds on the confession of His being the Son of the living God, and the disciples are forbidden to say any more that He is the Christ. (Note Christ is the Builder, and the Church is not built yet.) Then the keys of the Kingdom of heaven are given to Peter, and the power of binding and loosing. The Lord's followers must take up the Cross too, for their souls' sake and for the glory's sake. Then, Matthew 17, the Kingdom of glory is revealed (we have not the going into the cloud, i.e., the heavenly part of it, as in Luke) but the Son of man must suffer. The disciples cannot use the power. Christ will soon go, but till then grace and power are exercised for the need of faith, as before. But He insists on rejection and resurrection. He is Son of the Lord of the Temple, and Peter with Him - but "We will not offend"; He is divine in knowledge, but submits, as a present thing, to Judaism - is divine in power, and disposes of creation, but "That take . . . for me and thee," identifying now the disciples with Himself in Spirit.

In Matthew 18 we find the spirit in which the disciples are to walk on the new ground on which they were set as to judging themselves, their own spirit and towards others; and here we get Christ's presence in the midst of two or three, taking the place of the synagogue as the sphere of discipline, and exclusion from the place of blessing. Finally, the spirit they were to be of developed in forgiveness. I have no doubt the unforgiving servant depicts (though a general principle) the Jewish people rejecting grace in their own spirit.

111 In Matthew 19 we find certain great elements of the principles of the new power brought into the world by redemption, and its connection with nature as God formed it, and man's actual estate, and the world, in which even the Law gets put on its full ground. First, God's natural order is owned and maintained in its binding character. Moses and Law adapted to men was no rule here. From the beginning it was not so. What was in the beginning was of God. That remains good. But a power has come in which takes a man out of the whole course and order of mere nature, vv. 11, 12. Nature is owned, but spiritual power can raise above nature. So children presenting the confidence, and simplicity, and absence of evil lusts as to manifestation, present an object cherished by the Lord. But, in its actual and best forms, nature is really but sin and alienation from God. One comes who outwardly had kept the Law. The Lord first rejects all good in man - "Why callest thou me good? There is none good . . . but God." But there is an ordained way of entering into life (the young man had said eternal life, the Lord not) keeping the commandments. Then the Lord takes the ground of the entire surrender of self, and following Him. This detects the lust which the Law, as spiritual, brings to light. The upright, law-keeping man preferred his possessions to Christ. This tested his heart, his state. It was alienated from God presented in grace in Christ; and this was the real question as to being saved; hence it is impossible with men, but with God all things are possible. Then comes actual dispensational dealings. In the Kingdom - the regeneration, when the new state of things would be come in in power - those who had given up all would be on their thrones, and would have everlasting life, besides a hundredfold for all given up. Only the apparently most forward here might be last in the end, for we must act by grace, not take reward as a motive, though given as encouragement when all was given up for Christ. God does what He will with His own. We must trust Him, and labour. Agreement may get its penny (so dealt God with the Jews) faith gets according to the heart of God, and as He is minded to set people. This parable corrects what might be falsely taken out of the doctrine of reward. Further, it is ordained of God, "Given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father." Christ only took the lowly place, and the Cross, not the patronage in His Kingdom. It was a divine ordinance, and sovereign grace by which any place was attained - not Messiah giving places in His Kingdom, but what belonged to the new, in revelation and eternal counsels of God, founded on the Cross, and in connection with the Father. They must accordingly learn to walk in lowliness. Then Matthew 20: 29 begins the history of the end.

112 The character of Matthew is not only transitional, but it seems to me preparatory, i.e., it looks, though disclosing other things, to the coming in of the Kingdom, and speaks, and gives directions to the disciples on the supposition of its coming in in power, and that as a proximate thing. This is a very important principle; see chapters 10, 18, and even 13 and 15.

Note, the beginning of Matthew is exceedingly interesting too in its order - Messiah, the Christ, and the Kingdom, and this giving place, on rejection by the people, to the Son of man suffering, and the Kingdom in mystery. But first we have the genealogy to David and Abraham. Thereupon we have the two titles of excellency (in connection with Judaism) - Emmanuel, God with us, and then the Christ of promise, the King; and the Gentiles come to own Him in Israel. But thereon, the false king seeks His ruin, and, rejected, He recommences the new history of Israel, as God's Son called out of Egypt, and, on His return, He is a Nazarene from His brethren, and is in Galilee despised. Then John Baptist comes to announce judgment, and the Kingdom, as messenger before the Lord's face, and calls to repentance because the Kingdom was near. Christ then takes place with the godly Remnant, according to Psalm 16, who own God's testimony - though more fit to baptise than be baptised, but thus both He and John accomplished righteousness in their place from God But what profound and touching humiliation! But, in this place, the heavens opened on Him - He is sealed of the Holy Ghost, and the Father owns Him as the Son. Thereon He takes the place of temptation for His people, in the endurance of the Spirit, and use of the Word by which man lives, and binds the strong man, returns and spoils his goods, calls disciples, heals the sick, cleanses lepers, casts out demons, and then, Matthew 5-7, gives the principles of His Kingdom. I add further what is not noticed, in what follows. In Matthew 8 He proves Himself Jehovah in grace, of Himself, yet takes the ground of simple submission to the law of Moses. But then the outgoing of the Kingdom from Israel is evident - there was more faith in a Gentile, and the children of the Kingdom would be cast out, and many come from East and West, and North and South, and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of heaven. He identifies Himself with the sorrows and sicknesses of Israel (as indeed ours) but is utterly rejected, and as Son of man has not where to lay His head, but followed in giving up all and relinquishing every tie. Storms, and all might arise, He could rest in peace, sleeping in the ship - rest among men He had never - and surely His disciples were in absolute safety with Him. Still divine power having delivered those most under the power of Satan, the unclean (figure of Israel rejecting Christ, and rejected) rush headlong into ruin. Such a Christ the country would not have. The Lord was too near them.

113 In the ninth chapter we have Christ, the Jehovah of Psalm 103, who forgives sins and heals infirmities, but receives publicans, in grace and power; ministering in no way to the present pride of the Jewish self-righteousness, and, in not following their ways, shows the serious truth that the new wine of divine power and work could not be put into old battles. Galled to heal the dying daughter of His people, it is shown that whoever has faith is healed by virtue in Him, and then He raises the dead child, as in God's eyes, not dead but sleeping, and to be raised though dead indeed as to state and fact. Verse 27 begins rather another subject. The Lord shows His power to Jewish faith, according to the position He presented Himself in. He gives eyes and tongue to His blind and dumb people. The Pharisees blaspheme, but He continues His work in grace, without taking notice of them, because the harvest was great, and desires the disciples to seek that the Lord of the harvest would raise up labourers, and thereupon He sends out His Apostles into the field (Israel) only as Himself, and then, and authoritatively, securing all they needed, and themselves in it. In this chapter we have therefore a full exposé of the ministry of those sent of the Lord in Israel, as such, from beginning to end - their sufferings, relationships with Gentiles, and effect of ministry, power of the Spirit, or rather inspiration, but all in Israel. It is an important chapter in this respect.

In Matthew 11 He discusses His relationship with John, gives instead of receiving testimony from him (John, coming individually, owns Him on His own testimony) and then the reception, or rather rejection of John and Himself - there was no heart to enter into the testimony of the Lord by them - and reproaches the cities which had seen His miracles with their unbelief. He submits to the sovereignty of the Father in revealing it to babes and hiding it from the wise and prudent - His spirit agreed to it, His soul submitted to it. And thereon His glory opens out to view. It was not simply Messiah, but the same before the rejected Messiah was: All things delivered to the Son by the Father, and no one knew Him, and no one knew the Father but He, and He to whom He should reveal Him. The Jews ought to have received their Messiah, and recognised Him who spake and wrought as never man did; but the truth was, what He was was entirely out of their sphere of apprehension. He alone could reveal the Father. His glory thus shining out, on His rejection, in its true full character, which they did not understand at all, He takes the place of full and tender grace towards need and weariness. In chapter 11 we have the rejected Son of David as Son of man, Lord of the Sabbath, and, in grace, liberty to do good. This broke, as to title, the covenant with the Jews, of which the Sabbath was sign. But He is there in meekness, and unobtrusiveness, till He send forth judgment, and the Gentiles should trust in Him, and the renewed blasphemy of the Pharisees is now depicted in its true colours. Jonah, or rather Nineveh, would condemn the nation; the queen of the south would condemn them. The unclean spirit (of idolatry) which going out had left the house empty, would return with worse ones, and the Jews be worse than ever. And the Lord disclaims all natural tie, and owns only those who do His Father's will which was in heaven. Then He begins the explanation of His service as Sower.

114 Matthew 1

With regard to questions that have been raised: Matthew omits three kings between Joram and Uzziah (Ozias). As regards the pretended confusion through the term Ozias, there is not a shadow of ground for it. In the list in Chronicles there is no kind of similarity in the names.

Matthew makes Joseph take the young child and His mother into Egypt. Luke makes them return to Nazareth in Galilee, when they had presented Him in the Temple. Note, there is nothing to prove the same time. The magi may have come later as is probable, for Herod killed from two years and under, according to the time he had diligently (accurately) enquired - this, or Luke's usual passing over events and time.

115 As to Matthew's and Luke's account of the birth of the Lord - first, in the brief accounts given, we find nothing but what bears on particular points which the Holy Ghost had in view. There is nothing more opposite to the intention of the Gospels than what is called a harmony. They treat different characters of Christ, and what bears on that is given, and all give a very small part indeed of His history. This produces difficulties which are attached to our ignorance of a multitude of connecting links. Often facts having the same moral bearing are put together, especially in Luke, with entire indifference as to date. The moral point is all that is sought. That the event happened before or after, is all one, nay, the historical order is neglected to maintain the moral, or distant events linked together without notice of interval, if bearing morally one on another. This is the general method of Luke, and is invaluable for our instruction. In reading the account in Luke's Gospel of the interval between the ascension and the resurrection, an unbeliever would at once take it for continuing, and that the leading out to Bethany was the day of His resurrection, and the ignorance of Luke, and the absence of inspiration proved by the contradiction of other Gospels. Now, in this case, we have the proof of the contrary at hand. Luke knew perfectly, if we look at him as a human writer, that there was an interval, and so true is this that he is the only one who gives the fact that forty days elapsed before the Saviour left the earth. But the simple truth is, this was not the Spirit's object in the Gospel - it was in the Acts. But we learn here that such a bringing of events together proves nothing of what it is alleged to prove.

Now, as to the passages in question. There is no proof whatever that it was at the time of His birth that Jesus was found of the magi. He had been born at Bethlehem. It is evident that at the time of His birth the star appeared, for Herod had enquired of the wise men the time. The star had disappeared (it is generally supposed it led them - this is a mistake, for they rejoiced greatly when they saw it again). What time elapsed before they set out, no one knows. Time was spent, clearly, in their journey from the East; and Herod, who had exactly enquired of them, slays all "from two years old and under." No doubt he would make assurance doubly sure - still "all from two years old and under." If there was only a month run out, or not, even that seems out of measure: so that nothing would show that they were not returned to Bethlehem at some feast. The only argument alleged is the enquiry where He should be born, but this merely is the natural enquiry on having seen His nascent star, and they would seek Him at His own city; so that He might have been in Galilee and come back. And note here, I have nothing to do with proving this to be true, but merely that it is possible, because, if it is possible, there is no contradiction; if any supposition renders possible that the two accounts subsist, there is evidently no contradiction, for they may in that case have both been true. It is important to remember this. The infidel argument is not that it was not so, but that it could not be so. Now if I prove it could, the argument of the infidel is good for nothing. Now it is clear that Jesus could have gone into Galilee and come back. The "When Jesus was born," in our English translation, is nothing - it is literally, "Jesus having been born."

116 But the truth is, while I see no proof whatever that the visit of the magi was immediate, yet from the universal character of Luke's Gospel, I am disposed to consider probable that all the account of Matthew is left out as not to his purpose, and that when he has shown the accomplishment of the Law in the Temple, he passes over at once to the moral continuation of Jesus' life, without touching on what referred to His position as Jewish King and taking the place of all Israel. When the ordinances were accomplished in the temple, the youth of Jesus begins in Galilee. The royal flight into Egypt had nothing to do with this - it was a parenthesis in His moral history. We have a case exactly analogous in Luke 4: 13, 14. All John 2 and 3, come in between. But this was not the Holy Ghost's subject in Luke. The proof is found in Mark 1: 14, and John 3: 24. Biography is not a gospel. In each Gospel is the mighty and unfailing purpose of the Spirit of God.

Matthew 2

Already in the first two chapters we have the position of the Lord characterising all the Gospel - Son of David and Abraham, for the promises, but Jehovah the Saviour, Emmanuel, but, a Root out of a dry ground, going to Nazareth and a Nazarene; expected in the world where a star appears, but hated and rejected of Israel, and called out of Egypt to begin afresh; His personal position in Israel, and then the general relationship.

117 Matthew 3

- 16. Note there is no revelation of an object to Jesus for His faith, when He begins His ministry or public life before God. He receives power as Man (anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power) the testimony to Him giving the consciousness of being the Object of the Father's delight, or at least the public witness to that of which He was conscious; Luke 2: 49. The testimony was afforded that He was the Object, but no object was presented to Him. He saw the Holy Ghost descending on Him, as did John; and He knew of the voice; John 5: 37. This is a characteristic difference between the Lord's faith and ours. He was witness of, and leaned on, His Father, but we have an object of faith in Him, which occupies and sustains us. His was communion and dependence, ours objective withal, and we need it. He spake what He knew and testified what He had seen (it is what we needed) but it was not a Paul at Damascus, nor a Stephen stoned, nor the twelve accompanying Him as far as Bethany. Whatever association Jesus may put Himself in with us, He has ever His own place. How perfect is it!

I connect verses 16, 17, and John 15: 26, in that we see the Trinity in their respective places in the divine dealings in grace in both; Christianity now, and so far as in Christ personally here - there heaven is opened to Christ when He takes His place among the Remnant, i.e., men wrought in by God. The Holy Ghost descends on Him as Man. He is sealed and anointed, and the Father's voice owns Him Son in whom He is well pleased. There He stood alone. But the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are all revealed, each in their respective place. But He, on whom the Holy Ghost descended and abode, was to baptise with the Holy Ghost. Then we get a new order in this economy of grace. In Matthew, the Son is below as Man, to form man's place in His own Person, not only being Son, but the Father revealed as owning Him, as such, as Man down here, and Man in His Person sealed and anointed - Man with the heavens opened to Him down here, owned of and connected with them. In John 15, the Holy Ghost comes down, sent by the glorified Man in heaven, to dwell in those who believe, by Him who has all power in heaven and earth to reveal, the whole truth of that glory, and where it put man in and out of Christ, the world, and who was its prince, and the Head of the new order and place of man as the fruit of redemption. The Holy Ghost is sent by the glorified Man, the Son. He is the glorified Man, and the Head of economical authority. But He sends Him from the Father. It is not a kind of independent thing, though now the glorified Man, as ever in John - the Father has His own blessed place. The Holy Ghost is sent by Christ - a wonderful place for man! The Holy Ghost, so to speak, takes up the service part, but from the Father - He comes or goes forth from the Father. So, connecting us with Him, He testifies of Christ in this place, but we are in immediate association with the Father. He not only is sent from the Father (para tou patros) but He goes forth (ekporeuetai) from the Father, i.e., besides the economical authority of Christ, we have immediate fellowship with the Father through the Holy Ghost as come from Him. Sending from the Father is Christ's place - a wonderful place! But His going forth from the Father is connected with the Father Himself. It is the glorified Christ, and He is the Truth. So the Spirit, so coming, is the Spirit of truth, and is even said to be the Truth. Men, though informed by the Holy Ghost (John 14) were the personal witnesses of what Christ was down here - a human picture, though divinely given - but the Holy Ghost Himself carries on the service of revealing Christ in glory, as so sent by Him to make Him known; but then this puts us in immediate relationship with the Father. With this we must connect John 1: 33, and Acts 2: 3, and John 7: 39.

118 We may note that it is His public position as Son, not His birth - He is publicly owned - such is His place. The principle of humble but perfect and simple obedience, which follows in the Temptation, is only so much the more remarkable.

I find great beauty and instruction in the connection of the end of this chapter and the beginning of chapter 4. The Lord takes His place with His people, the Remnant then of Israel under the influence of grace, though He stands alone in the present realisation in both cases of the consequence. They, under that influence, go to John, and, though of course He needed no repentance, in Him it was fulfilling righteousness, like John's ministry, as He says, in lowliness, "It becometh us." Yet in that first right step He goes with them; as soon as He takes this place heaven is opened, the Holy Ghost descends on Him, the perfectly applicable Man, and the Father's voice owns Him as the Son in whom He is well pleased. Man, though only then in His Person, is brought into that place. It is His place as Man before God - that into which He brings us; though, for that, redemption must come in. No doubt we shall have it fully in heaven; but this is the position man is brought into, and brought into on earth, manifested in Him before God even His Father. Then He, and still all alone, to deliver us, as all alone there in this place before God, takes our place (at least the place we are brought into when associated with Him) in respect of conflict in this world with the power of evil; only He had to begin and accomplish the work Himself. Still it is the conflict in which we have to overcome, and in the same way. In both respects with God (Father) and with Satan, He takes the place as Man, only perfect, into which we are brought, and in which we have to walk and act. This is most lovely and precious.

119 But besides Christ's standing as the Model of blessing in man, and there overcoming for us, we have, through His taking His place as Man, a full revelation of the Trinity, and that in, and in connection with, man through Christ's becoming one, and His being perfect. He was the Son, the Holy Ghost descends and abides on Him, and the Father's voice then must make itself heard, owning this Man to be His own beloved Son. This is a wonderful development of the counsels of God, and of grace in counsel.

The testimony of John the baptist I have not sufficiently noticed. The general testimony is known - repentance, for the Kingdom of heaven was at hand, and they were baptised, confessing their sins. The spurious righteousness of the Pharisees, and the selfish infidelity of the Sadducees, are alike utterly rejected. God must have realities; all repent, fruits showing the reality. The plea of privilege by descent disowned, however true - the individual state was in question; for God was coming to deal with souls and His vineyard. Sovereign grace withal belonged to Him. He could of stones make real children of Abraham. The axe withal was laid to the root of the trees. It was not warning and forbearance - the time of divine dealing was come. Judgment was there at the door. If a tree did not bear good fruit, it was to be hewn down and cast into the fire. This was individual. But then comes in the revelation of Him that was to judge, the Person whom John preceded; he baptised with water to repentance, but One mightier was coming, He would baptise with the Holy Ghost. This was blessing and liberty, the promise of joy fulfilled, but also, with judgment, sifting, and purifying if true life was there, everlasting punishment if only evil; but, in general, judgment. Power and joy, and judgment. Further, there was that which was not individual; He was going thoroughly to purge His floor, the Jewish floor, gather the wheat, the true Remnant, into His garner - at the time into the Church down here, but really the heavenly garner (the 'here' being temporary, and the calling heavenly) finally in every sense so, and the chaff utterly and finally judged, the difference completely and finally made.

120 Matthew 4

Privilege, trial, in obedience (according to that place), service, and then others called to serve; but here absolute, essential perfection in all. And, in the call, nothing dependent on previous qualification according to man: "Follow me, and I will make you," etc. (v. 19) was the secret of this service and calling. So, "They followed him"; compare John 12: 26.

- 13. Compare Luke 5 and Mark 1. It is to be remarked that Jesus, having left Nazareth, came to dwell at Capernaum, and the four disciples already knew Him from John's baptism and heeded His word. The Lord's walking by the sea was no unusual thing. It is also to be remarked that in Mark the call is before His going into the synagogue, and healing Simon's wife's mother - in Luke, the miraculous draught is after, though, in general, they have the same order of events. The circumstances are quite different. In Luke, the Lord was sitting in the ship after teaching the multitude out of it. Matthew's and Mark's object, and the Holy Ghost's there, was only to give the broad fact itself, that the four disciples left their business of fishing at that time, and followed Jesus in His labour and ministry, which He began at that time formally in Capernaum. I suppose then that Jesus, dwelling at that time at Capernaum, walked by the seaside when they were actually fishing, two of them, the others mending their nets, and that He called them, and they left their nets and followed Him. After this, He went into the synagogue and taught, cast out the demon, went into Simon's house and healed his mother. After this, very likely when He had been preaching some time about Galilee, the multitude were pressing on Him to hear the Word, and He entered into Simon's ship, and told him to thrust out from the shore, and then happened what is related in Luke, and they finally and wholly left all, and wholly attached themselves to Him in His ministry, and did nothing else. In Luke, the account is after preaching in other towns around.

121 Matthew 5

The manner in which the attraction of multitudes gives occasion to the exposition of the principles of the Kingdom is remarkable; and how profoundly new in Israel must that instruction have been! And, as they said, what a character of authority it carries with it! And I add now, does inspiration in the communication of it shine through it! Yet after all, however sweet and perfect are the instructions of the Lord, and surely they are, still it is Himself that has the real attractive power, and which commands the soul.

With this chapter compare Deuteronomy 14 and Galatians 3.

- 12. This verse shows clearly, I think, a heavenly place held out (and in connection with the coming Kingdom) when the Church is not yet thought of, for so verses 17, 18, look to the change of dispensation from O-lam ha-zeh (the present age) to O-lam ha-ba (the age to come) not having yet come. But it is a new position, as waiting for it, the Remnant - disciples as distinct from the multitude. But then the Kingdom of heaven is looked on as carrying the true character of God's children, as revealed in Christ, with it. This is the revelation of it - what suits the Kingdom. Nor is the result in power yet come in (vv. 45-48) but the revelation of the Father's name, through the Son's being there, is very striking. But it is connected with goodness, and secret communion, or prayer at least.

Matthew 6

The prayer taught the disciples by the Lord, is clearly the prayer of the Remnant, but it is not for the Kingdom of the Son of David as such, and supposes, like the Beatitudes, heaven. The Father's kingdom is looked for, which is the heavenly part spoken of in chapter 13, the earthly part being called the Kingdom of the Son of man. It is to be remarked, it is all for the wants of him who prays, and those in like position, as associated in the same place - "Our," no individuality, and no intercession, nor in this the love and power of the Spirit, but common wants, of course perfect in the expression of them. They are contrasted with the Gentiles. But these are everlasting principles of righteousness, not in merely dispensational questions. God's righteousness, not here justifying, but moral principles accordant with His nature.

122 It is also worthy of note, that though the Father is addressed in heaven, yet the petitions in the Lord's prayer refer all to earth. The desires are holy; the utmost desire is that the Father's Kingdom may come. Heavenly influence owned, a heavenly Father's Name hallowed, but no heavenly hope. Heaven is looked to to bring its influence on earth, to give it its character, but no taking man up there (the doxology has no fit sense). It is assumed that God's will is done, and perfectly, in heaven, and it is desired that it may be so on earth. It allies itself perfectly to chapter 24. It is the time evil is in the world (not Adam in Paradise, even in thought), but the desire that it may be gone out of it. Luke is more personal: Father, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; give us our needed food for each day; and forgive us our sins, for we forgive every one indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation. This is personal, as to the Father, and personal need as to us, not a Remnant dispensational thing as Matthew ever. We have His name hallowed (in the personal relationship) His kingdom to come, then for us our personal daily wants met, forgiveness for we forgive, and avoiding being tested by God - a terrible thing, used where humbling and self-knowledge are needed. That is all.

Matthew 7

- 6. This is a very remarkable passage. It is not the largeness and universality of the Gospel, yet always to be observed. There is no reference to the Holy Ghost here, no asking for it; but judgment is in verse 19.

- 19. This verse shows the Lord's words to be preparatory to another state of things, as, indeed, verse 20, too.

- 24, et seq. Doing is the rock here. There is therefore that which is intrinsic, as entering into that which God is setting up - the state of man's heart with God, or in itself rather as seen of Him.

123 The Father is referred to, but the child is on earth, and no question of the Holy Ghost, or Christ at God's right hand, but the Father's kingdom is referred to as coming, and some of them being in heaven; all associated with God revealed fully to the soul, but not the Holy Ghost, nor a rent veil. And if some may be in heaven, the earth is to be inherited. Purity of heart, and goodness without motive, but reference of heart to a Father, and derived from Him. It is perfectly clear that what is said of the Law has nothing to do with our fulfilling it. It is its authority, like the Prophets, whatsoever it said was to be made good, not set aside. Christ did not come setting up another system which condemned that, but made it good, and all it said would be made good in one way or another; but it supposes its passing away when it was fulfilled, and another system, the Kingdom of heaven, set up. Only the principles announced are generally eternal, as connected with man as he ought to be before God, or God's original institutions, though much applies to Israel's then state, passing into the Kingdom, but that which is yet to come.

Matthew 8

In this chapter we have Christ's Person, and in chapter 9, His principles of grace. So, in chapter 11, we have His Person rejected in Israel, as John's, but set up as Son of God who alone could give rest, and in chapter 12, being such, and so setting aside Jewish legalism, it becomes the rejection of Israel. In fact (chap. 11) His rejection opens out grace in His Person. Chapter 12 is in judgment on the nation, but this on the blasphemy of the Spirit. But in chapter 12 He is Son of man; in chapter 11 He is Son of God. Yet He is greater than the Temple in chapter 12. Chapters 8-12 complete the Gospel properly speaking. Chapters 14 and 15 are actual dealings with Israel, according to the principles previously shown. Chapter 13 was His real service - sowing, not fruit-seeking, and the Kingdom as it is. Chapter 17 is in the glory.

- 1-13. Though this be divine, and the second part go beyond the limits of Judaism, it does not go beyond the Kingdom. And note, here we have authority for regarding the coming Kingdom as the Kingdom of heaven, though developed into the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son of man as the heavenly and earthly part.

124  - 2. The Lord shows Himself above the Law in grace, in touching the leper; according to the Law, He would have been defiled in doing it.

- 6, et seq. This grace extends itself to the Gentiles, where there is faith.

- 11. The general truth in this verse is clear - the admission of the Gentiles into the Kingdom of heaven, and the exclusion of the Jews. But the question arises how and when are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob seen in the Kingdom. We must compare Luke 13: 28, 29, which is more general.

- 14. He is still in the midst of the Jews sympathising with them, and bearing their infirmities.

- 19, et seq. He is in the lowest place on the earth, and in order to follow Him there, one has to abandon all alike. He is the Lord who disposes of winds and sea. The end of the chapter shows the condition of the Jews in contrast with the Remnant.

We have here, before the historical dealings with Israel, an introductory display of the power come in, and its effect. It was Jehovah cleansing the leper or leprosy in Israel, and sending the cleansed one to the priests. It was, since it was Jehovah, that which reached over, in power, the limits of Israel, and showed that, while Gentiles would come in from East and West, the children of the Kingdom would be thrust out. Next, He was come down in gracious participation in all their sorrows and infirmities, but hence, withal, having no place amongst men, but in the midst of the tossings and heavings through which those, who were content to identify themselves with this rejected One for His own sake, must pass. They were secure by that very fact in all being in the same boat with Him who was there in divine power and counsels, however low He might be come. This was the place of the Remnant. As to the nations, they would turn Him away, but Israel, left to the power of Satan would rush, as unclean, headlong into destruction. Such is the whole history of the coming of Messiah, Jehovah Jesus. Note here we have not the man sent back to tell of the power which had healed him, for it is the ministry of the Lord which is pointed out, and its course, reception, and effect. Hence this is the moral connection of these events, in order to present the moral history of the Lord's presenting Himself. In Mark 4: 35, we have the historical time of it, I apprehend. This chapter is therefore in a certain sense complete in itself.

125 We have then, in this chapter, very distinctly, first the power in which Jesus was present in Israel as Jehovah Messiah, reaching out to Gentiles, and, rejected, leading to rejection of the children of the Kingdom, and this presence in grace and kindness to all their sorrows. Next, the position in which this rejection would place those who would follow Him - He seeming to neglect them too, but in truth secured by His security as associated with them. Next, the power of Satan nullified by a word, but the effect on Israel as rejecting Him (in the swine) and the quiet influence of Satan by the spirit of the world depriving them for ever of His presence.

Matthew 9

In this chapter it is grace - forgiveness, and reception of sinners made good by power. The result is then taught as to the nation, individual faith, final deliverance, when all was over as to nature. Then, the character of His sight and speech giving power to Israel - and the result in the Pharisees - in the patience of grace. Chapter 8 is more external, this more internal. However He is the Messiah and Jehovah who pardons and who heals upon earth. He was come in grace. He was there in mercy - a Source of joy as the Bridegroom with His friends, but who was going to be taken away from them, and the new things could not suit the old. But He gave life, and meantime those who had faith found it already. He gives sight to the blind, as Son of David to Israel, and, acting in grace, He again passes over the blasphemies of the Pharisees. But the mission of His disciples is a final testing of Israel. The nature of His presence is fully discussed and set forth.

In this chapter we have (as in chapter 8, the Person so acting) the ways of the Lord in Israel, acting in grace as above all sin, forgiveness and healing according to Psalm 103. Then His coming down in goodness to sinners, not requiring them to come up to God in light but coming out to them where they were. But here, note, the veil is yet unrent. The Law required from man what man's conduct ought to be, if he was to subsist as man even on earth in divine acceptance and favour; redemption and the death of Christ rends the veil, and puts away sin for God's presence, and enables us to enter into the holiest by the new and living way, through the veil, but we have to walk in the light as God is in the light, and wrath from heaven is revealed against the whole state of man, enmity against God; sin takes its true character as opposed to God's nature, as the breach of His Law in its acts. The true light now shines. But Christ as alive on earth, and present in Israel, was neither of them exactly. The veil was not rent, nor did He come requiring anything in man as Law rightly did. He veiled His divine glory in flesh, but was Light in the world, and was Love. But it was not God remaining hidden behind the veil where man could not come, but God come down to man in goodness, requiring nothing, but, as above sin, bringing goodness to man in it, and proving by mercy and power to man, under its effects in government, that He was there who could forgive the cause of it too. The Son of man could forgive sins. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them. Still the veil unrent hid God come in grace - hiding Godhead in humiliation to bring grace to sinners. He brings goodness to man, requires nothing. But this, in the power of that which He was bringing in, could not be put in the old bottles of the Law, or of human nature fitting itself for God - ordinances to quiet a troubled conscience, and eke out man's want of intrinsic righteousness. New wine must be put in new bottles. Christianity must be itself. The Bridegroom was there, looking at Messiahship. But besides that, the incoming power could not be attached to the old system - one was trying and ekeing out man, the other revealing God. Next, the Lord was coming really, when He restored it, to find Israel dead. But they were not accounted dead till they had put Christ to death. But He had to bring them really to life by divine power. But, as to dealings on the way, and whoever touched the hem of His garment was made whole, when all human means could not hinder the progress towards death, virtue, divine power, went out of Him. The effect is eyes to the blind to see, the deaf ear unstopped, the dumb mouth opened, the devil's power gone. This brings out the blasphemy of the Pharisees, that He casts out devils by Beelzebub; but judgment is not what we have here (as in chapter 12), but grace, and He, only as seeing the multitude scattered as sheep without a shepherd, is moved with compassion towards them, and the harvest is plenteous, the labourers few. The effect of the perception of evil, and the evil estate, say of the Church (then of Israel) is only to show that grace which is above the evil, for that is what we see here - grace in every case above the evil. And you cannot get a state of things which grace, the grace that is in Christ, is not suited to, and, note, which in grace does not draw out the gracious consideration, and grace in power suited to the need. This is very gracious and very precious. Remark how complete the statement is, and how the grace is above all the evil, for all this is grace.

127 32-39. There is an instructive testimony here to the Lord's ways. The Pharisees attribute the Lord's miracles to Beelzebub, as in chapter 12, but here, instead of telling the end of the nation in judgment, He goes on through the cities and villages, and, seeing the multitude, is moved with compassion, and even sends out His disciples to call to repentance. The evil, the same evil, the one not to be pardoned, was there, but there was still room for the operation of grace, and, while this can have place, He moves on in the sense of man's need (Mark) and His own love. The point of departure is from Himself in service, and while the door is open, His heart is, and moved only by the desolation in which He sees the multitude, through their chiefs' evil. This is instruction for us in these last days. Yea! even when He pronounces judgment, He continues in sovereign goodness, though then bringing out the evil, and ground of judgment, controversially, and showing what was to replace His present rejected service. But here the state of things draws out His love, quod nota.

Matthew 10

The distinction at verses 15, 16, is plainer than ever to me. To the end of verse 15, it is the presence of Emmanuel upon earth, disposing of everything on earth for those He sends out; compare Luke 22: 35-37. From verse 16 the Lord is away, and they are left to the effects of the Cross themselves. In the first fifteen verses we have a divine Person dealing in grace with the Remnant in Israel - seeking them; afterwards, the Spirit with sheep among wolves - hostile, Gentile rulers - three against two, and two against three in one house - hated of all men, and enduring to the end, but cared for, and that by their Father, and not to fear. In the first part, Emmanuel gives power, seeking the Remnant in Israel; in the second, the Son of man is coming. The difference is striking and clear. In chapter 11 is given the Lord's discussion on this state of things, i.e., the presenting of Himself in grace, and its result. John, owned fully by Him, has to come in on the evidence He gives of Himself; what that is is clearly stated - power in goodness, but in humiliation as regards the flesh. Still, the Kingdom of heaven was preached, though not come, and the fire was kindled.

128  - 26, 27. I think this gives a blessed privilege and position of the saints. They are called upon to be open, on the part of God, in grace as to all that comes from Him, when the publicity of everything is only pressed upon the conscience of those that resist the truth, or rather the upright comforted and strengthened with the thought that it will be. It is evidently a desirable, right, and good thing, in the judgment of an upright soul, that all should be in the light, but here we have more.

Matthew 11

The difference between this chapter and Luke 7, is that it is, as the Gospel, more dispensational, and, therein, all important. It is the Father revealed in and by the Son, and the Son a subject Man, instead of the Law and the Prophets till John, and then the Kingdom of heaven preached by the forerunner. In Luke it is subjective, and how any sinner, however great, has part in what God has sent in Christ as a Saviour - our side through Christ.

- 20-30. First, responsibility under the miraculous testimony to the glory of Christ. Next, sovereign grace, but acting in moral fitness though sovereignly. Then, the new place of Christ. No man knew, nor knows the Son, but the Son reveals the Father. He, and He alone, knowing Him as such, i.e., primarily, and as such. Then, those weary and heavy laden, in a world which knows not the Father, are invited to Him, and, secondly, to take His place as the meek and lowly One, that they may have rest. It is the whole change of place, and the new one in its divine and human characteristics - not the Church.

In this chapter we have this character of grace, that it is Christ inviting to Himself not only when sin and the breaking of the Law was there, but when the warning and smiting testimony of the Law had been given, and, as far as man's heart went, rejected. They must now come and find goodness in Him as there was none in them.

129 Note. - Is not the end of this chapter the closing of Israel's history in grace, and chapter 12 in judgment? But this may be looked into further. Chapter 11 is more personal, both as to Christ and as to man. Christ can reveal the Father as Son, and the weary and heavy-laden are invited to Him, as giving rest, and, in taking His lowly yoke, finding it for their souls. Chapter 12 is the more dispensational setting aside of the nation, and what replaces it is them brought out, in chapters 13, 16 and 17, whilst Christ still continues acting in sovereign goodness, as long as He is here. What is in chapter 11 was then and always true, for it was Himself in contrast with the unbelief which rejected Him, saw no beauty in Him to desire Him. Chapter 11 is the separation of the Remnant individually to Christ in Person, when the nation, as a whole, had been deaf to John Baptist and to Christ. Chapter 12 is apostasy and blasphemy in their chiefs, and the final effect in judgment.

Matthew 12

In this chapter the nation is finally judged.

Matthew 13

In the parables of this chapter, the first three of the last six take the Kingdom up simply and wholly before the Son of man has taken His great power to reign, and give what passes in the world. In the explanations to the disciples He has taken it, and the rest of the communications to them is the purpose and mind of God as to it - the result in view, not the external state in time.

This chapter shows the mysteries of the Kingdom, but on the earth, save the garner.

- 24 et seq. As regards the field and the net, note the parables suppose no continuous time and successive generations for the Church or Kingdom. The wheat are the seed originally sown. No time or succession is thought of, nor was the Lord's coming ever put off by an arrangement suited to such a prospect. So (v. 48) it is the one and only haul. The principle is there of the fishermen's work. The angel's is another matter - they occupy themselves with the wicked, as long ago remarked.

130 If we note that the parable itself is the manifested scene on earth, it is evident that that must close with the taking the wheat into the garner. And so it does. The display afterwards, and the execution of judgment is the introduction of the new scene.

Note too, further, that in the parable of the net, there is no manifestation of the just in any way, and this is in full connection with the character of the parables. The first, we have often seen, are the manifestation of the outward appearance of the Kingdom in the world. Hence, at the last, the Son of man sends forth His angels, and gathers out of His Kingdom. It is a display of His power, and the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.

The second series of parables are the Kingdom as seen by spiritual sense - the secret of the Lord, not its display. It is appropriation of what is known to be good. The field is bought to have the treasure; the Church, the pearl of great price is bought, all being given up for it. The good fishes are the only object of the fishermen who know what they are seeking, though they gather a netful of all sorts, and they occupy themselves with these. Hence there is no display, no manifestation of the just. It is what Christ is seeking for Himself The wicked are gathered out, and cast into the fire by the angels; and there the matter ends. Again, in the former, they gather out of His Kingdom, but no mention of the just. In the second series, there is no mention of the Son of man and His Kingdom, but there is of the just. The angels sever the wicked from among the just. These just are left where they are; the wicked are taken away from among them.

- 52. Note here that every scribe instructed into the Kingdom of heaven brings out of his treasure things new and old. The name of Christ, on which the Church was built, was a wholly new revelation of the Father. So, in the manifestation of the Kingdom of the Son of man, Moses and Elias disappear - the Beloved Son, in whom the Father was well pleased (not merely a faithful Messenger) was to be heard. Now Peter was entrusted with the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. What was administered on that ground did not exclude the old things thus. This again, though given in a voice, was the Father's revelation. Individually, Peter in both cases was as yet fully under the prejudices of the Kingdom.

131 Matthew 14

After the presenting Himself, and the principles of His kingdom in the midst of the people, and then, on rejection, declared that He was a server (not a fruit gatherer) and the character of His kingdom as thus set up on His rejection, what follows chapter 13, and on the actual rejection, and death of John Baptist, is the retirement of Jesus, and a testimony against the nation, but of continuous, sovereign goodness to the poor of the flock, whether then or hereafter, as in the double feeding, and then the Church and the Kingdom in glory.

There is also a looking out to the full millennial blessing, not only in the satisfying the poor with bread, but in the looking out to the Gentiles - yet these owning themselves as inferior to the Jews, dogs compared with the children, yet having to say to God in grace, having all their desire in connection with Him.

This chapter brings out distinctly John's rejection (and the apostate king thus) but the Lord still in fact waits on Israel, though appreciating this act; verse 13. But the real bearing of all this, and result, is figured forth clearly in the close of the chapter. This itself connects the present state of the Jews, as rejecting and set aside, with the close of the dispensation. The interval is Christ on high, and the disciples toiling below, but they do not lose their Remnant character on earth. All is willingness on the other side, as those in the ship own His personal glory. The moral history of all this is given in the following chapter, and the manner of introducing the worst of the Gentiles in grace - the Jews being still owned in their place, but this by faith - chapter 11: 22, in outward government. In the close, while still in fact dealing with Israel in Jehovah blessing, it is after rejection.

After the rejection, often remarked, of the Jews on their rejection of Christ in chapter 12, and the sowing and likeness of the Kingdom of heaven in chapter 13, we get the working of the principles of this process of rejection or breach between Messiah and Israel, and then, after the statement or exhibition of the new thing (the Church and Kingdom) the principles of the Church and Kingdom as regards those in it. This makes the middle part of Matthew most clear in order, and interesting. The series begins with verse 54 of chapter 13. He is the carpenter's Son for Israel, rejected in His own country. Chapter 14 begins the active and violent rejection - John is put to death. Christ takes notice of this, and departs into the wilderness. Still, as long as could be, the grace of Christ exercises itself towards Israel, and, in the perfection of His divine and perfect human rights, He satisfies the poor with bread, and "the twelve" is the perfection of human governmental power - as in the twelve tribes of Israel. All this He came to present, knowing He was to be rejected, but sends the multitude away, and takes His priestly character, goes on the storm in which the disciples, the Remnant of Israel, would be, enters the ship, and the wind ceased. Peter's position is apart - the state of the Remnant before Christ gets into the ship, but then He is received where He had been once rejected when He had shown His power over Satan, but Satan his over the unclean. In chapter 15 we get the moral ground of all this breach - God would have real righteousness, the Pharisees, hypocritical outside service, drawing near with lip-service but in vain. All would go into the ditch together - the inside must be clean - but mercy reached on the other hand, in the very nature of God, beyond Israel, to the most reprobate of nations according to flesh, but not on the ground of being Son of David and promises, but of grace. Then Christ, in divine perfectness, not in connection with present Messiah government, feeds the Remnant and poor of the flock, who glorify the God of Israel. In chapter 16, as heretofore remarked, we have the generation rejected, and their spirit warned against, and the Church set up, for faith, on the Christ the Son of the Living God. But here the path was the Cross. He was no longer to be proclaimed Messiah to Israel. But not only the Church built by Christ, but the administration of the Kingdom of heaven confided to Peter. The Son of man was to be not merely as in Daniel, but to suffer, and come in glory. This Kingdom of glory is then shown in the Transfiguration. Elias was come already, had suffered, and so must the Son of man. The reason for His leaving that generation was their unbelief - even His disciples, so that if He were not there they even could not cast out Satan, dispel that evil power which hung on man; with a word He could. There was not in them that nearness to God in which this power was exercised in abstraction from nature, and its force was wanting. However, by faith the mountain could be removed, and so it was afterwards. Then the Lord (who revealed the Father) shows that He and the disciples (Peter) had the place of children (Peter specially represented the Kingdom) with Jehovah. But then, not to offend, they were to take the place of servants and pay tribute. The character in which, for faith, Christ is to be heard is not Son of man nor Christ, though He be both, but Son of God.

133 Thus, from chapter 13: 54, to the end of chapter 15, we have the principles working connected with Christ's then relationship to the Jews, and its being closed; chapter 16 we have the Church, the Kingdom of heaven, and, chapter 17, the Son of man coming in His Kingdom (till then, Son of God to be heard). From chapter 18 we have the principles which belong to the Kingdom of heaven and Church, when they are set up, down to chapter 20: 28.

The order of this chapter is more complete and full than I had remarked. The first parable is not the Kingdom of heaven, though it be "the word of the Kingdom" - it is individual; still the outward effect on the sowing of the word, not the question of grace, or how produced, but the fact and the hindrances, what operates morally, i.e., we have the effect of the word in individuals. Then the Kingdom, the effect of the word in the world, and then God's part in the matter in purpose, or spiritual understanding.

I have not sufficiently noticed, I think, that this chapter comes after the rejection of Israel, on their rejecting Christ and the Kingdom of heaven in chapter 13. Hence we have the apostate King, and, that for which I now notice it, Jehovah, in His beneficence, unchanged according to Psalm 132, satisfying the poor with bread, and perfection of administration in Man - fragments gathered, but the twelve baskets full. Then the intermediate scene. He sends the disciples away, lone as the waves (the Remnant, when He is gone) - He sends the multitude away - goes up on high - is perfect Master of what tosses them - and, with the episode of Peter (which is more Christian place, going out to meet) rejoins the ship, all is calm, and the world that had rejected Him receives Him with joy, and He brings power in blessing.

I pursue the chapters a little. In this chapter, we have the false king, and Jehovah who satisfies the poor with bread according to promise, to be accomplished in the last day (manifested then) when He will gather up the fragments, and make a perfect human order and ministration out of it - twelve - as often noticed. Promises here will be fulfilled, and the Jehovah of old present in power. Then He dismisses the disciples on the sea of this world, while He is on high. Peter comes out of the ship, to walk on the sea where He was. Then they are at land, and the world, which once rejected Him, receives Him gladly. In chapter 15 He goes deeper. It is not promise with a people, but man with God - man's religiousness against God's commandments - hypocrisy contrasted with righteous obedience in what was real. But there was more than commandments - the state of man's heart, and revelation of God's out of reach of all dispensations. Out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, etc. Then we have Tyre and Sidon - models of hardheartedness, and Canaan, the accursed race; what would the Son of David have to say to these? Then faith, working in wants, makes its way through all these things to goodness in God, above and independent of them. He had something for dogs. Dispensational promise is, in itself, maintained, but God is seen in Himself behind and beyond it all, and cannot deny Himself - is revealed in Christ. Evil was out of man's heart - good, above all, out of God's. Then though they glorified the God of Israel, yet we have not the twelve baskets, connected with accomplishing promise, and measured perfection in man - seven baskets, God in His own displayed perfections, above mere human order, One and indivisible, but displayed as the highest sent. This, though recognising promise, evidently goes deeper, bringing us to what man is, and to God.

134 I have been occupied with chapters 14 and 15, for they occupy evidently a special place between the mysteries of the Kingdom, on the judicial rejection of the Jews at the end of chapter 12 (which, note, goes on to the end of the age) and the Church, and Kingdom glory in chapters 16 and 17. The contents are naturally special, for the Kingdom is set forth in chapter 13, after the rejection of Judaism, and the Church, and glory of the Kingdom come after. What is this special place? It is plain that chapter 13 gives the Kingdom of heaven in the peculiar character it assumes when the King is in heaven not manifested, and, as Mark says, it grows and springs up, He, seemingly, knows not how. What then is brought out between this and the revelation of the Church on earth? It is the actual proof of present rejection, and the incapacity of the disciples to avail themselves of His then present power - the moral darkness of the scribes and Pharisees, the intrinsic falseness of their religious principles. But the disciples really got no farther. The Pharisees were not plants of God's planting at all - the disciples, blind in many things as they, were. The Lord is here getting on strong moral ground - what God had planted, and the human heart being the source of evil. Note the force of this - God, not Judaism, nor tradition, was the Source and Guide of good, and man's heart only of evil. But Christ, still in His own place, takes only His service in Israel, but He goes where one of the old accursed race, and of wicked Tyre, has access to Him, and owns Him as Son of David. As such He could not help her, but this brings out that which must go beyond those limits - the goodness of God. This, to faith, He could not deny. Thus, while man's heart, even in the Jew, was only evil, God's was, could not but be, good, to faith. But He had not given up Israel, though all this were true, and the hungry multitude of Galilee are again fed, but the disciples are not now called upon to do it - He takes the loaves and does it Himself. The Remnant is not now the number which was the sign of perfect government in man, but of spiritual or divine perfection - seven, not twelve. It is grace above promise, not simply divine power able to fulfil it.

135 This leads me to say a few words more in detail of chapter 14. The work of rejection begins. John is beheaded, and Jesus retires, but only to find a multitude, and He meets them in grace. He then shows Himself as the Jehovah that was to satisfy the poor with bread, let Him be rejected by the nation as He may. But He expects the disciples to understand and use this power, but they do not - they judge by sight, "Give ye them to eat," "We have five loaves." Then He sends the disciples away while He is on high, and joins them still in the ship, connected, I apprehend, with Judaism which He had left to cross the world by divine power (our part). But Peter cannot - only that he was helped he was sinking - and the Jewish Remnant re-enters the ship, but with Christ. The walking on water was, I apprehend, in principle, Church position - walking simply by faith to meet Jesus, with no known fold, only by faith. When He rejoins the ship they own Him, not as Messiah in a carnal way and expectation, as even the disciples had done, but as Son of God, which was just what the nation would not do, and the disciples practically never did, though God taught individuals so. So the country of Gennesaret, which once rejected Him, now received Him with open arms. It is a divine Person then here, where not only Israel but the disciples could not own, or at any rate profit by His manifestation to Israel. We have then, as noted above, the moral judgment of Israel's state, and of their teachers, but again the disciples are without understanding. Yet in this very chapter, where essential divine principles of sin and grace are brought so clearly out, there is a special recognition of Israel. The Canaanitish woman not only called Him Son of David, but owned Israel as the children and herself as only a dog. The Lord takes this ground, though necessarily owning God to be good to others, and the people glorify the God of Israel.

136 On the whole, we have Israel rejecting the witness of God, Christ present as Emmanuel, the disciples, unable to profit by it, left and rejoined, moral principles of man's heart, and God's overflowing goodness, Israel rejected but owned. But plants must be of God's planting or rooted up. Still the Lord distinguished the disciples as possessed of personal faith (save of course Judas) - plants of the Lord's planting, and, when He now simply leaves the Pharisees, He appeals to that faith. Ignorant as they were of God's ways, and incapable of availing themselves of what Christ was, yet the enquiry addressed to their personal faith brings out the answer, given of the Father, of that on which the Church should be built. They clung to Him, to His Person, when the nation rejected Him, and when even they could not profit rightly by His presence in Israel. But then, when Israel was for the time rejected, this Person became the foundation of every thing. And the Lord who had put the question to draw out this distinctive faith, however prejudiced and buried in traditions even they were, at once recognises the direct teaching of His Father. On this, now Israel was gone, the Church would be built. The contrast of verses 1-5, then 6-12, and what then follows is very striking. Read, in verse 18, "And I also say unto thee," in contrast or addition to the Father's revelation, and also to Peter confessing. He had said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" - Christ says, "Thou art Peter," but this was authority, the really divine (or divinely given) title to give a name. The rest of the verse is a kind of parenthesis. By the revelation of what Christ was by the Father, he partook of the nature of the foundation, as all true believers do, though not distinguished as Peter. But the building of the Church comes out as Christ's new revelation, consequent on the setting aside of all preceding, leading up to the Father's revelation of His Son (to Simon) triumphant by His divine Person and nature over death, whence Satan's power could not prevail against it, though Israel's hopes in flesh were ended by His death, even the disciples'. But the Son of the living God would, on this title, build a Church over which Hades' gates could have no power to prevail. But Christ builds the Church, not Peter, but Peter does administer the Kingdom. Nothing is said to him as to having anything to do with the Church, save a name which shows his confession, put him into connection with it, for, if the Church was built on that truth, and he had confessed it as taught of God, he was (though the Church was not yet revealed or begun) in principle on the footing of it as to his acknowledgment of Christ. Hence they are now charged not to say He is the Christ - the Father has revealed Him in another way. The Kingdom of heaven he was to administer.

137 Matthew 15

This chapter gives a fuller and clearer statement of the great question between man and God, than heretofore noticed. The Word of God was set aside by man's tradition and commandments, and the worship of God too - what was from Him denied, and for gain, and what was to Him false, their hearts far when their lips were near, and there is no true worship not founded on the Word. Then we see how traditions, when educated in them, pervert moral sense - the disciples cannot understand. Next we find what the heart of man does produce, and then how Christ, manifesting God on the earth, and not promises, is the ground on which men can have to say to Him. Tyre and Sidon were typical of hard-heartedness, the Canaanite an accursed race, not only no righteousness but no promises to rest on, but God Himself there, and that, while owning this promise was to others, the woman rests on, goes right to the heart of God revealed in Christ. In chapter 14 moreover, we get the whole scene. After the rejection of the Jews in chapter 12, and the closing the Messiah testimony, the Son of man comes in, for, chapter 13, the Son of man sows, and the Son of man judges. He is passed from Psalm 2 to Psalm 8, as rejected (so all through); John Baptist is actually rejected. The Lord feels it and withdraws, but in grace ministers to the multitude, sends the multitude away, and the disciples (Remnant) on the sea, and goes up to pray, takes His priestly place apart from the disciples, rejoins them on the sea, Peter taking a place of faith outside the Remnant place, and Jesus, all the storm being over, is received with joy where He had been rejected (chap. 8), the world. The Remnant own Him Son of God when He rejoins them. In chapter 16: 13, He formally appropriates the title Son of man - the name He ever gives Himself (He never gives Himself the title of "the Christ," save outside the Jews to the woman of Samaria). But the Church is not built on this (Son of man) but on "Son of the living God," proved in resurrection. The Son of man judges, the Son of man comes in the Kingdom. The Son of man returning in glory to the unbelieving Jews (chap. 26: 64); compare John 1: 49-51. Our Name is specially "Son of God," or "Son and Lord." Thus, Christ Messiah, is rejected, and was no more to be testified of, Luke 9; Matthew 16 and 17; Mark 8 and 9. Then the name He ever takes Himself, i.e., Son of man, passes from Psalm 2 to 8, as in John 1 above and John 12: 23, 24. He must suffer and die to take up this Name fully; God's glory (Heb. 2), as our need, required it. Then He comes again in that Name, judges because He is Son of man. The Son of man comes in His own glory, as well as of the Father and the holy angels; Luke 9. But we come between the rejection and the coming in glory, for in this indeed we come with Him, and the Church is built on the Name of the Son of the Living God, and so is based on the resurrection, belongs to the new world and new creation, is created in Christ Jesus, for it is resurrection proves Him Son of God with power.

138 Matthew 16

Note as to the Church, where, as often remarked, we get the new ways of God introduced on the entire failure of man (proved definitely in Israel) the Church and the Kingdom of heaven are both introduced distinctly, but it is as to their administration and forming that they are spoken of. The first point is the Person of Christ. Every one had his opinion as to Him. Peter had certainty (faith) by divine teaching - the revealing of the Father, not of flesh and blood. This was, that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God. This is the introduction of divine life in the Person of the Son. It was proved in resurrection; the Son was given to have life in Himself, but it was as Son of the Living God. On this rock Christ builds His Church; but the faith of Peter made him of the nature of which the rock was, Christ being the Son of the Living God. The revelation of this to him by the Father, made him partaker of the nature of that which he believed in. He had share and part in this, but no authority or place in the building work, as such. It is not the point here at all. He is a stone, not a builder. Christ is the builder, and here it is a matter of building - "I will build my Church upon this rock," viz., the truth that Christ was the Son of the Living God - on Him. The revelation of it made Simon a stone, a living one - it may be the first that was laid, though in point of time there was no difference. The Father had revealed this immense fact, that nothing is like the new thing - a Man that is the Son of God, the Son of the Living God. This was to be the foundation of the new thing, not merely salvation but an assembly. Christ also ("and I also say" is the right reading) had a right to give names. It is the place of authority, as God named Abraham, Adam named the animals. So Christ named Peter - He had authority to do it, and to call things what they were - God made him such. Adam named them rightly as they were made. Christ constituted Simon Barjona this, gave him this place. The Father had made him for it by revealing who Christ was to him.

139 Note further, Christ here builds the Assembly. Hence it is real; however man may outwardly spoil it, still Christ builds, and secures the building. If it be in the power of the Son of the Living God as life (which was shown in resurrection) what power could the gates of Hades (Satan as having the power of death), the whole power of the adversary, have against it? He had done his utmost, when permitted, in Christ's death (though, in reality, as to Him he did nothing, and had nothing in Him) but the life of resurrection was beyond all of it. Adam could be prevailed against - the Assembly not; one stood in created life, responsible - the other in divine life, victorious over the power that was hostile to it. Hence Peter, in speaking of the Church, as far as he does, speaks of living stones being built up on a Living Stone, a holy temple, a holy priesthood. Hence, though built together, and the priests a company, all are individual stones. It is not a body, nor is the dwelling of the Holy Ghost there spoken of. The divinely-living individuals are brought together. Christ builds - He has not a body here - He is a Builder - He is not a Head.

140 Remark now, for it is with this view that I have particularly referred to it, that here the House (Assembly) to be built, is connected with individual life. It is not the Body, or union, nor the dwelling place of the Holy Ghost - that is Paul's revelation. Individual life by individual faith, the Father revealing the truth to the soul. This constitutes the quality fit for building with, and Christ makes an assembly with these stones. This is the nature of what it is built of when Christ builds, in contrast with flesh, or flesh and blood's thoughts. It is divine life and revelation.

Before I pass on to Ephesians, I add here another system in which Peter is given a place of authority on earth - not the Church at all, but the Kingdom of heaven. The keys not of heaven, not of the Church - there are no keys of the Church, there is a Builder, Christ. Nor are there any persons bound here at all. Anything formally enacted by Peter was warranted and sanctioned by heaven. He had the administration of the Kingdom confided to him. "The key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder," is said of Hilkiah. A housekeeper, or intendant has the keys, and administers, as a trust, the household affairs. Peter did so in the kingdom and with full authority. Though in fact he did let in the Jews, he did let in the Gentiles, a most immensely important act, for it was changing the whole divinely constituted order - an uncircumcised man was received into the Kingdom. Chapter 13 shows us prophetically this would be spoiled, but that was prophecy, this administration. Simon Magus did not escape Peter though he did Philip. Philip admitted him, but he was soon detected when Peter and John came. This was not solely Peter, but the admission of Jews and Gentiles was the full power of the keys. It was not the Body, nor the revelation of the Body. The giving of the Holy Ghost was no way Peter's act. He was anticipated by a witness of God. I do not mean that admission was the power of the keys, but Peter was administering the Kingdom - I should apprehend when Ananias and Sapphira fell dead also - thus, in one sense, binding and loosing would refer to sins, but in judicial administration as on earth. Binding in heaven is the divine sanction.

As to the Church, we have then Paul's revelation, Ephesians 1. Christ is glorified - not merely has and is Life - and the Church is united to Him as His Body. This is not building. No doubt it is in the power of life, but it is more - the Assembly has this character, when being baptised with the Holy Ghost it thereby becomes one Body. It is, even for the individual as for the whole, union by the Holy Ghost, so that he is a member of His Body. Now Christ, on being glorified, could then send down the Holy Ghost as received in righteousness on the right hand of God, and we made God's righteousness in Him. This He did on the day of Pentecost, and the Lord added the Remnant of Jews daily to the Assembly, but the doctrine involved in it was never taught till Paul was called by the revelation - after the Holy Ghost was finally resisted in Israel, and Stephen taken up - that all saints were Jesus Himself. He then, sent to the Gentiles from a glorified Christ, when the Jews had nationally rejected the Gospel, and from heaven, and by the Holy Ghost to every creature under heaven, becomes thereupon a minister of the Church (Assembly) to complete the Word of God. Here it is not divine life contrasted with flesh upon earth, but union with Christ - the Church is heavenly, the Body of Christ sitting in heavenly places in Him. In Ephesians 2 we have another character - the same unity, but Jews and Gentiles builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. This is upon earth, founded on the Cross, but characterised by the presence of the Spirit dwelling in it as a house on earth - as God had been in the tabernacle or temple. He dwelt in this house by the Spirit. Chapter 5 gives us a supplementary instruction on this point - the special and blessed care that Christ takes of the Church on earth as His own Body, and here the true members of His body, known of Him, are spoken of - it is as man's own flesh to himself.

141 In this chapter, the generation is formally rejected, and the Kingdom, and the Church brought in, but the Church, I judge, on earth, only in the power of life against which he who had the gates of death would not prevail. After this revelation, the Lord begins to relate historically to His disciples what, as Son of man, was going to happen to Him, and the portion of suffering and glory with Him, developed in the Transfiguration. The close of the chapter shows another and more intimate reason for leaving not merely the evil of the nation, but the incapacity of the disciples to use the power that was there to surmount the evil, under which they were lying, by faith in Him. The close of the chapter shows the true relationship on the earth of Himself and the disciples with Jehovah, but His acquiescence in condescension with the Jewish nation yet.

142  - 22. Matthew has here the Son of man coming in His Kingdom, to contrast the Transfiguration of chapter 17, or future actual Kingdom of heaven, with the Church mentioned in chapter 16.

- 25, 26. Note how very distinctly life and soul are, as to the reality, contrasted here, making the annihilation theory of its being only life, a nephesh chay-yah (soul of life) mere folly. From this chapter on to chap. 20: 28, we have the substitution of the Kingdom of heaven and the Church (as well as the Son of man) to the terms and evidences of Christ's relationship with Israel, as a present thing proposed. After that, verse 29, commences His own final royal and Jehovah testimony to Jerusalem herself.

- 27, 28. These verses make it evident that it cannot be taken simply as one final judgment of men as raised, for "The Son of man shall come," and some standing there should not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in His Kingdom. Now, be it as alleged, the destruction of Jerusalem, which I do not believe, important as that was, but the Transfiguration; but be it so, the passage refers to it - that is not the final judgment. 2 Peter 1: 16-18, shows it was the Transfiguration as a momentary presentation of the Kingdom as seen on earth. This leads to the sense of "ashamed" in Mark 8: 38, for it is the parallel passage. But this makes it to run over the whole period of the glory of the Son of man, for He rewards every man. Yet it includes His coming in His Kingdom (they say, the destruction of Jerusalem). It is to be remembered the Transfiguration follows in each Gospel. Luke adds nothing more to the passage, save that his language is simpler as to the Kingdom. Matthew 10: 32, 33, is thus very simple. The only difficulty is John 12: 48, where judgment is spoken of as in the last day, at which, it is said, He will raise up those that believe. John only has this expression, as in Martha also, "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." It is a peculiarity of John, that, while he speaks of eternal life far more than others, it is his subject, and in his Gospel treats the Jews always as reprobate, yet he lives in a Jewish sphere of thought more than all, never, till once or twice at the end, speaking of ascension or heaven. "If I will that he tarry till I come," says the Lord. "The last day," I apprehend, was the close of the Jewish "this world," and the bringing in of the "world to come," or state consequent on the manifestation of Messiah. The Church never appears, nor is hinted at in John. Hence, "the last day," goes over from the then time dosing providentially with the destruction of Jerusalem, but really when the Lord comes, Antichrist being the sign of the last days of the present time, for the present time on earth does not close, nor Daniel's weeks, till the Lord comes. Hence the word judging is Christ's word made good against Israel as rejecting Him, when the Lord comes. But, in fact, it will be made good, morally speaking, on every disobedient soul, but the direct application of "the last day" is not made there as it introduces the whole thought and condition of judgment.

143 "The last day" is the last day of something, and what was it to a Jew? Clearly not the end of the world, but the close of the present age. We see in Martha's word that it was a well understood Jewish term - not that I take their thoughts without divine light upon them, but when the Lord uses their language, I take the consideration of their language in with His light by the Holy Ghost upon it. No doubt it is enlarged into more general thoughts, but who can doubt for a moment that the form of Lazarus and the rich man is from Jewish habits of thought? The introduction of the Church opens out, and modifies the use of the language, but does not destroy its first intention. Eternal judgment and resurrection came in rightly, but they were additions to the dealing with men in the world proper to Judaism. "The last day" then is that great change which would take place when the probatory condition of things, and the life of faith would be closed by the incoming of the power of God, and the manifestation of His glory in Messiah. Nor do I believe there is anything more precise in it. Just as the testimony of Messiah (Heb. 1) was in the close of those days, the coming in of the Church has postponed the clearing up of all till that is over. But this parenthetical introduction does not change the reality of the judgment, but explains what seems difficult in fulfilment and expression. So for the Jew, all this time is the time of the High Priest being within the veil on the great day of atonement. They cannot tell the acceptance of the sacrifice till He comes out. We know it by the Holy Ghost being come out thence.

144 In this chapter we have, then, very definitely, the passing away, and non-recognition, warning against what the old had become, and the substitution of the new thing. They could not discern the time, they are distributed into two classes - ritualists and nationalists - the death and resurrection of Christ in result, meanwhile His preaching (both are spoken of, though not here) and He leaves them and warns His disciples against them. Their teaching was leaven. Then comes the confession of His Person, on a new ground. He is Son of man, "I, the Son of man." He takes this place Himself, not Son of Abraham and David, as given at the beginning. Vain opinions disappear before faith, by the revelation of the Father. Simon owns Him not only Son of God - that He was by the second Psalm, as King of Zion - but as born in this world, though divinely, and divinely owned, but He who was Son of man, as of man, and, in the title of Psalm 8, was the true Son having life in Himself, the Son of the living God, the Eternal Son, personally the Son, though Son of man, and as Son of man here. This, though ever true, and nothing else could have been true without it, had never been revealed before. There is one Son, as the ancients said (yet doubly Son) and on this rock He could build His Church, in the power of a life proved in resurrection beyond the power of Satan, which had been wholly destroyed through His death. This was a new ground thus confessed, His Person, and the gates of hell (Hades), the power of Satan, should not prevail against it. Christ would build His Church. This is not Pauline work. Christ builds, and it is not built yet. That is connected with "Son of the living God." Then there was the Kingdom of heaven; this is connected with the Son of man, "His Kingdom." This is administered on earth, and the management of it committed to Peter, and the authority of it confided to him, and what he should establish sanctioned in heaven. Here were the present substitutes for the place He held on earth as Messiah, Heir of promise, and Son of God, as here to be set on God's hill. And hereon He charges them strictly not to say that He was the Christ any more; that was over. From that time he began to tell them plainly of the Cross; it was the only way into the new thing, and they must follow Him in it. Peter stuck to the old, the flesh, not being dead up to the point of the revelation he had really received from the Father, but that was only Satan now, not the things of God but of men, for God had now no more place in this world, known only in the Cross. The world and nature were over. The soul therefore comes in, and what this world is, compared with it. But more: the Son of man, now taking up His Cross, would come in the glory of the Father (Son of the living God, both names being thus taken up) and some standing there would see it before they should taste of death, the Son of man coming in His Kingdom - the actual revelation of the then displayed glory, still as Son of God. And both these are given in the next chapter.

Matthew

<45009E> 145 {file section b.}

J. N. Darby.

(Notes and Comments Vol. 5.)

Matthew 17

The Son of man is here seen in resplendent glory; and now mark another thing - the saints in full association with Him (and in like glory with Him - this is not in Matthew) talking with Him. But, though He thus appears as Son of man, and the saints familiarly with Him, when Peter would associate the Old Testament witnesses with Him, as if alike in that, they wholly disappear. They had been God's witnesses, and faithful as such, but this is the Son of God Himself to whom they bore witness. The bright cloud, the sign of Jehovah's presence in Israel, came over them, as once over the tabernacle (it is the same word as in the Septuagint) and the Voice came out of it, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him." In Luke we hear of entering into the cloud, not here, because it is the substitution of Christ as Son of God (compare Hebrews 1) for all the old testimony, and Jesus remained alone there. But all this belonged to the new state of man, and could not be revealed till that state had effectually begun in the resurrection of Jesus. The present work of Jesus on earth was only, so to speak, a provisional work, as He came to accomplish a far greater one, the atonement, "to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself"; so, as to Elias, one had come (for here it must be another person) in the spirit and power of Elias, who should surely come and restore all things, and he had suffered at their hands, and so must the Son of man, for Son of man He was in nature and Person, though the purposed and official glory was not to come as yet, the Church and Kingdom of heaven was first to take the place of the old covenant. But then the rejection was to rest on the responsibility of man, though God fulfilled His purpose by it; and this follows. Christ continues His grace in spite of all, but the incapacity to use it makes it hopeless to bear with the existing state of things - incapacity even in the disciples. There was no link, by faith, to the power that was present. It is this that closes a dispensation, not the presence of evil in the world - that, where grace wrought, brought the Lord in. But it was separation of heart to God which alone realised this power. Where there is faith, the power and grace is in Christ, whatever the evil and unbelief around. But all this, though it leads to final setting aside of the existing position of men with God, bringing in rebuke of disciples in that relationship, for, as Son of man, His provisional presented place in connection with man's responsibility passed away, yet His personal relationship with the Father could not, and into that, as relationship, He brings us. And this is what, in the most precious grace, He brings us at the end of the chapter.

146  - 8. There is a peculiar beauty in the way in which, Moses and Elias being set aside, Christ rests alone with them, as the One to be heard, because He is presented to be heard, as One who is the beloved Son who wholly, and alone, reveals the Father, and that to the exclusion of all other testimony; and thus telling of Him, as He knows Him, places us in the same relationship. Death and resurrection, however, are necessary for bringing out this.

Matthew 18

We have here the Spirit which characterises the Kingdom, and what belongs to the Assembly, in duty and authority. Unless, as a little child, they should not enter (for it was not yet come) and the most like a little child should be the greatest. What is most opposite to the spirit in which men, accustomed to evil, make as much of themselves as they can - the world. The child is simple, has no consciousness of place or self-importance, and, in the practical sense, is guileless and confiding, unhabituated to evil. Then as to self, the ruthless excision of everything that would be a snare to lead one into this, or to one such little one believing in Christ. Offences there would be, but woe to the world because of it. But Christ did not come to seek what had a place in this world or its esteem. He came to save the lost. These little ones had great value in His Father's sight, were honoured by and present to Him. There Christ's heart could, in a certain sense, find complacency, rest; to Him the spirit of the world was a wearying thing. It is strongly expressed morally in this passage. The application of the parable of the lost sheep is very striking here.

147 Next, if a brother offended, what was to be done? Grace - gain him personally, if possible. If that could not be, take two or three. It would not then be mere personal complaint, but persevering wrong proved. If he would not hear them, tell it to the Assembly; if he would not hear the Assembly, they might treat him as a stranger to it. The direction is to an individual, how to deal with an individual, but, in doing it, the Assembly, as locally constituted, replaces the synagogue. Remark here, we have the Church, as Christ builds it, not yet built, and an assembly, not the Assembly as known to and established by Paul, but a local body, though from other Scriptures we fully learn they act for and in the unity of the Body, as 1 Corinthians. But the assembled two or three to Christ's name, have Christ with them, and here only, as to the Church, have we binding or loosing, not the Keys, they, as we have seen, are of the Kingdom of heaven. Christ's administration from on high, of and by the Word. So, as to prayer here, the agreeing of two or three obtained the request, for Christ still was there. This provision so graciously meets the Church in its ruin, but that has been spoken of elsewhere. It is the element of order before the public body was formed. The unity has not to be given up, but the resource for its practical ruin, as to its full development, is here. We have the general principle that, when two or three are gathered together to His name, Christ is there. Then comes the spirit of forgiveness, though I doubt not that there is allusion to the Jews being forgiven on Christ's intercession, and coming fully and completely under the guilt of rejecting Him by refusing the grace which went out to others after His death. I am not afraid of taking the broad ground of not measure in "as," but principle, just as one not poor in spirit will not have the Kingdom of heaven. I doubt not that grace makes him poor in spirit, still he must be it. This last is the principle of the administration of the Kingdom, and hence is individual. After Peter personally, binding and loosing belongs only to the two or three assembled. Paul may make good his claim in power, but in the orderly administration of what took the place of Israel, this it was. Paul stands alone.

148 The connection of the Kingdom is this, that when the Word which is now the instrument of the Kingdom begets and orders the path of the soul according to the spiritual nature of the Kingdom, it is God's mind to gather them in one around Christ. Then comes the action of the Assembly, having Christ there. The Holy Ghost alone can conciliate individual responsibility to Christ, and His Word, the first claim to it is absolute, with the suited action and walk of the Assembly, and by His individual action in grace and truth, forms them for their common action together. For the Spirit leads according to the mind of Christ. But the Kingdom always is individual, and regulated by the authority of the Word. They are the two things developed in grace - saving the individual, and then gathering together in one.

Matthew 19

In this chapter we have the clear introduction of a principle noticed elsewhere, i.e., a power which does not exist within the sphere of nature at all. Though nature be ruined and corrupt, God owns what He formed of nature, but He has introduced a power which is not of it, and takes us out of the reach of its legitimate action for flesh or the world - "left all." Only in chapter 20 it is shown that this must be taken up on the principle of grace. Where this power is, God does what He will with His own.

- 16, et seq. We have first the Law in its national provisions, and it is, behind God's primary order, suited to the state the people were in. In the beginning it was not so. Then when we get beyond this, we find still amiable, conscientious nature keeping it as a code of outward human morality, and if men did, surely they would see good days. "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments," but in this character it does not reach the soul, nor awaken it to its state at all, leaves it thinking man is good, which is a delusion Hence the Lord comes to test the affections by the revelation of God - by goodness, as contrasted with selfishness in man, and following Christ; his heart was elsewhere. Note the Lord does not take the spirituality of the Law to test evil and conscience, but raises the question of where the affections were, of goodness, and of Himself. The man did really lust, not after another man's, but selfishness ruled and had its object, and this the Lord detects. "There is none good but one, that is God." He leaves the young man's statement as to keeping the Law, even to loving his neighbour as himself, where it is. But entering the Kingdom of heaven raises the question of where the heart is.

149 Note further, with what wonderful perfection the truth of the Lord sets the matter. God's nature, what was from the beginning, fully restored and maintained (vv. 1-9). Then sovereign grace bringing in power which is above nature. These two form the character of Christianity in this respect. In its order, as old as the Creation, God's order; in its exercise of sovereign power, God's power above nature (vv. 10-12). Nature, as uncorrupted practically by the world and its lies, again owned (when corruption is not developed), vv. 13-15. In its actual moral state, as morally developed, none good at all, God only; this detected by lust, when the outward prescriptions of the outward Law, man's perfect rule as he is from God, had been kept. Christ detected this, as contrasted with the objects of lust, and, note, not man improved, but a new Kingdom set up, into which he had to enter, and heaven held out before man - Christ, who came from heaven, being the present test of the affections suited to it down here. The assertion of sovereign, but needed grace, "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." The additional question of reward for labour is then spoken of, but with the careful testimony that all is grace. First last, and last first - goodness in it, but sovereign goodness. Indeed goodness, though not sovereign in a creature, is always free, the heart acting voluntarily, or it is not such. Hence, we are not said to be love in the Lord, though we are light in the Lord. It is free, but in us a duty, "Walk in love." In God properly sovereign. Even Christ, who loved us, identified with obedience, "That I love the Father," and "As the Father hath given me commandment, so I do." Yet He, preserving ever the divine title, whatever His humiliation, could say, "Therefore doth my Father love me" - give a motive to His Father, glorified Him as Man, so that He is glorified with Him.

In this chapter, then, we have the natural relationships God established fully confirmed, as it was at the beginning. God had joined husband and wife, and it could not be broken legally, or by man; but if sin had broken it, then it was not "might be" but "was." But there was the introduction of a power which took above nature. God's order sanctioned, but, as evil was come in, power comes in which lifts out of nature altogether. So with children. That, not as to sin in nature, but as to manifestation, was of God, was not, as to the world, corrupted. Then we get the Law as the way of life. If a man will enter into life, he must keep the Law. But a vast question is behind this. First, none is good but One, that is God - for man, keep the commandments and enter into life (the Lord does not say eternal life). Externally the young man had kept them, but God searches the heart; he was an upright, loveable young man - his heart all wrong - he loved his wealth According to the flesh, who does not? For the Kingdom of heaven, the heart is tested, and the rich man has a poor chance - where his treasure is his heart will be; but the wealth of this world is not in heaven. Nor does the Lord stop short of the principle: "Who then shall be saved?" With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible. But the time will come, the regeneration, when the Son of man, blessed be the Lord, will sit on the throne of His Kingdom; then all will be changed, bringing all things into God's way of ordering them, i.e., right. Then, he who had sacrificed all in this world of disorder, and ruin, would reap the fruit of God's service in God's reward. The Twelve, Christ's followers in humiliation and rejection by the world, would reign with Him, judging God's peculiar people in glory in the Kingdom, and whoever had given up this world for Christ, and what nature tied him to, would have a hundredfold, and inherit everlasting life. But, as the following parable shows, it must be on the principle of confiding in the Lord and grace, not as earning so much. How thoroughly, while there are dispensational effects, man is thoroughly searched out here, and every relationship put in its place! But all dependent on grace where sin is come in, and yet power come in, quite above and out of nature, to act above it and the world, when evil is come in. But though sure reward followed sacrifice of self (for self it is) for Christ's name, yet there may be those who, when earthly things ordered place, were first, who in God's Kingdom would come in last, and those last and despised there would be first in His. And this is true even of religious place according to man. It is grace, and serving according to grace, which makes the difference. This is followed out in the next chapter.

151 Matthew 20

The first sixteen verses of this chapter belong to the subject of the previous chapter; verses 17-28 put the Cross instead of the crown, and warn the disciples of it; in verse 29, we begin, as in all the first three Gospels, the history of the dosing days and scenes of the Lord's life. The parable of the labourers in the vineyard gives the price of grace as contrasted with reward for so much work; these will be rewarded a hundredfold, but it is not so much pay for so much work - that was law - and the young man showed that really man could not stand a moment on that ground. But, as in the answer to Peter, there is reward, but the principle of labour is not so much pay for so much work, but confidence in Him who takes us in to labour. Verse 16 answers to chapter 19: 30, only the former is on the side of grace, the latter in view of man and the religion of the world.

It is to be remarked that all the workmen, except the first, come in under grace. They trusted to "Whatsoever is right," though that grace might be most definitely shown in the last, whereas the first came for stipulated wages. The principle is contrasted in this, long ago noted as the object of the parable, that reward should not enfeeble the sense of grace, while the encouragement of reward is given.

- 22, 23. The second "And be baptised with the baptism that I am baptised with" is better expunged, as we see the body of authority, which retains them, have, which looks like a mere copy from the mind following the use of it in Mark.

- 29, et seq. We cannot too distinctly mark the change in the Gospels which takes place at the arrival at Jericho, and blind Bartimaeus. The Lord is there, Son of David, presenting Himself in prophetic title to Jerusalem in that right, though in the Person of the Son of God. But Psalm 2 gave Him that as part of that truth on earth. He is not the suffering Man, not the divine Healer in grace, though that in Person He could not cease to be, and His deepest sufferings were closing in. He comes in kingly and divine right judging all that was to be judged.

Matthew 22

Note the difference of judgment here on the nation, judging it, and destroying their city, putting an end to the whole dispensation of man under law, and setting aside the people under the old covenant, as rejecting their Messiah, and that on the ground of the refusal of the grace which He presented to them (the grinding to powder comes afterwards, in connection with their antichristian place). This was present judgment by Titus. Then, when the mass are brought in of Christendom, the judgment is individual, fitness for the place they were brought into, the partaking of the Son's joy. What is added shows there would be many such, many called but few chosen. But the judgment is individual.

152 It seems to me that this chapter supposes invitation before Christ's death (v. 3), and after it (vv. 4-7); then (v. 9) to the Gentiles, and the judgment of professing Christendom. Luke (chap. 14) as usually, more generally in principle. But I think it begins after His work is accomplished, when all things were ready, as Matthew 22: 4. Then the chiefs having rejected it, He calls the poor of the flock (Luke 14: 21), then the Gentiles. But save the national exclusion, we have not positive judgment; it is the dispensation of grace. Neither is the city burned up, nor he who had not the wedding garment cast into outer darkness.

Matthew 24

According to the character of the whole Gospel, as notably chapters 16, 17 and 18, this chapter presents, on the general question connected with the end of the age, first, the destruction of the Temple by itself, then the general state of things for the Remnant, and the closing scene; all is on earth. Then the Church, with the position and responsibility of Christians, and then the judgment of the nations in the Kingdom, all of course seen as where responsibility is. It is historico-dispensational. In Mark 13 it is only asked, "What shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled," i.e., destruction. The general character of verses 1-31, Matthew is there, only service is specially considered as ever in Mark 13: 11; then goes on (as in Matthew) straight to the end, and from verse 28 to 37, general warning, not dispensational dealings. In Luke, the times of the Gentiles, not Israel, are the great object; hence the first and second taking of Jerusalem are mentioned, and the abomination of desolation is not. The difference, if not of very great importance, makes the passages clearer, and is interesting as falling in with the characters of the Gospels.

153 The division in this chapter has not been sufficiently noticed. The parenthesis of warning during the absence of the Lord, from verse 32 to chapter 25: 30 has been, and that, at verse 45, the Church or Christian matter properly begins, but not definitely that verses 32-44 are definitely the exhortation, or word to the Remnant, or disciples in the midst of Israel, in view of the Lord's appearing there. It has to do with that generation, and the revelation of the Son of man, and the things coming to pass which concerned Israel. It is thus definitely the warning and exhortation to the disciples, according to what precedes, and then come Church or Christian matters - the general responsibility of Christians in His absence, at verse 45.

- 34. The force of "This generation shall not pass," is strongly confirmed by its use in Luke. The taking of Jerusalem by Titus is distinguished from the end - the times of the Gentiles distinguished from Jerusalem being trodden down; and verse 32 comes in connected with the last times. Verse 28 takes it up generally, but it certainly includes the last days, as contrasted with the taking of Jerusalem by Titus.

It seems to me that the end of this chapter does not go beyond the Jerusalem Church, and hence goes no further than setting the servant over all His goods. The proper character of the Church is first found in the Virgins - they go out to meet the Bridegroom.

- 45, et seq. It seems to me that the parable of the good and evil servant is rightly connected with this chapter. Though it refers evidently to Christendom, it is here taken up in connection with the continued service, i.e., the Christian service is viewed as here pursued through the lapse of time which followed Christ's rejection, linked on with that in which Christ had engaged His disciples; hence can, in principle, go on till He appears for earth.

Matthew 25

- 21 and 23. "Enter thou into the joy of thy lord" - it must be remembered, as I judge, that when it is said the joy of his Lord it is the joy of the Kingdom.

154 Matthew 26

Remark the exceeding beauty with which the beginning of this chapter brings out the good in contrast with evil. The Lord, in perfect peace states what is coming upon Him - in perfect peace. This is inward power and life - communion with God. The chief priests and elders consult together to accomplish the wickedness of their will, but would not have it on the feast day. Their will is accomplished as far as it ministers to the accomplishment of God's purposes, but it is on the feast, for so it should be. Then Christ has the sweet and blessed testimony of attachment to Himself, that He was precious to some, when the disciples, judging (at Judas' instigation) after the sight of their eyes, count it waste, and Judas covenants to deliver Him up. So Mary, by her attachment to Christ, enters into the full mind of God, for value for Him makes everything to be rightly judged, and the very power of evil rising up, without knowledge of its plans and counsels, but guided by divine light, acts so as exactly to meet the thought and purpose of God in His love to Christ, and is approved. The resurrection of Lazarus, the riding in on the ass, the coming up of the Greeks, were God's vindicating testimonies to Jesus, but this is, after Christ's perfectness, the guiding of the disciples; the Christian's mind, perfectly connects it. Satan indeed leads Judas to meet the mind of the chief priests. What a scene it is! But, in such an one, how infinitely sweet to see that there is a soul so guided in it!

- 16. It is to me quite evident, as regards this verse, Mark 14 and John 12, that Matthew and Mark give parenthetically what led Judas to go to the chief priests, and the only question is, did he go directly or four days after? He may have gone off at once, or waited until some good occasion offered. This question hangs on the judgment whether the consultation of the priests was how to use the occasion offered, or whether the offer met their consultations. The days in Mark are quite clear - six, before He had the supper - five, before He goes in - four, before He curses the tree - three, before they see it withered and the discourses take place, and then comes chapter 14 two days before the Passover.

- 57, 58. On the whole, on comparing the Gospels, I think we have two sessions of the chief priests and elders, etc. First, on the blessed Lord's being brought there (to Caiaphas) - He is then questioned and examined, buffeted and ill-treated. When it was day they met formally in council, to give it regularity. There were now no witnesses, but, in virtue of what the Lord had said during the night, they put the question to Himself which He answers affirmatively; on which, their judgment being pronounced, they lead Him away to Pilate. It is only this last part we have in Luke who, on the coming in to Caiaphas, only gives the history of Peter. It is very likely they had retired meanwhile. It was early in the night when He was brought in. He had gone out to Gethsemane at the close of the day. Matthew, as usually, gives it according to the purport of his Gospel; he does not distinguish the morning council at all, but gives Peter's history, after the examination of the Lord, as a distinct history by itself. In Mark, we have the consultation as a distinct thing, as well as the previous examination on the Lord's first bringing in, when they were, I suppose, waiting for the result of the sending the band to take Him; Mark, as usual, having Luke's order, with much of Matthew's materials (as to fact), John 18: 28, gives the simple fact without the council; there is no "Then," save as "Therefore" - it is often wrongly put in in the English version. Matthew 26: 57, 58, shows that the examination was at Caiaphas's, the high priest's, palace.

155  - 64. Note we have, besides the being the Christ, the Son of God, which He was as come among the Jews on the earth, living amongst men, the double position of the Son of man - sitting at the right hand of power - and coming in the clouds of heaven.

- 69. I see no difficulty in what people give themselves much trouble about, in the accounts of poor Peter's denial. Matthew, as indeed Mark, gives the three simply and plainly - by the fire, out in the entry, and third time it is not said where. The first was "a damsel" (paidiske), the second, "the damsel who kept the door" (John 18: 17), hence he (the), but it was not the one who spoke to him at the fire but another, she spoke to the men there. Then, for the thing had spread, those that stood there charged him probably returned into the quadrangle where the fire was, for the Lord looked at him. Mark 14: 69, "And the maid saw him, and began to say again." "The maid who kept the porch" - she said it not to him, but to those who stood by. Luke says just the same, only that chapter 22: 58 is not the porch maid who said it to the men, but one of the men who then said it to him. The last is the same as Mark and Matthew, only Luke only mentions, after his manner, the Lord's turning and looking on Peter. In John, we have but two, chapter 18: 25, 26, after the enquiry as he came in. Here only seeing him in the garden is noticed. I think they are the first and third times. In the three Gospels, his speech betraying him is the third time. Though I believe the Spirit of God wholly guides the statements, yet as a history it is quite probable that John who was, we know, intimate in the house, did not go out into the porch. The only question is: Is the first denial in John meant to be that "the damsel, the doorkeeper" said it at the time Peter came in? Having seen him come in, let in by John, she might very naturally, when he went out into the porch, have pointed him out as a disciple too - when John was not there, far more likely than when he was.

156 Observe in this chapter the divine grace with which the blessed Lord, knowing all the unfaithfulness to be manifested by Peter, and warning him of it, goes in perfect calmness through all that was of the Spirit of grace in what He was doing, and takes Peter into the garden with Him to be favoured with such nearness to Himself. He could not watch an hour, much less die for Christ. But all is grace above the evil, and meekness, and carrying out His own thoughts, i.e., the Lord, with the perfect knowledge of all we are, carries on His own purpose and exercise of constant grace. But, on the other hand, He searches out the heart and lets none of the evil which has produced the unfaithfulness remain unjudged. He proves the heart of Peter, by His repeated questions, till Peter fully judges it, and so restores his soul. This is very instructive to the soul, and a solemn warning, because the carrying on the ministration of grace to us and by us, however a witness of unspeakable goodness, is never in itself a measure of its actual state, though I do not doubt that the neglect of that state tends directly to diminish the blessing. But how full of grace these ways are! And that, as a general rule, spiritual unction in service depends on our spiritual state. There is another point in connection with this - the attractions of the world may have ceased, so that the heart has no taste for them, but this is not all. There is consistency and power in respect of actual conflicts with Satan. I may have ceased in heart to go back after Egypt; it may have lost all attraction for me, but this not enough. I must walk, and especially as to the state of my soul, so as to have power for victory in Canaan.

157 Matthew 27

- 1. The Council meets, when it was day, for form's sake (Mark 15: 1) to give Him up to Pilate. It was then early. He was crucified the third hour (Mark 15: 25), nine o'clock - having been to Herod and back. From twelve to three (verse 45, also Mark and Luke) there was darkness, i.e., sixth to ninth hour; all from six in the morning. Thereafter, He gives up His Spirit, and is laid in the tomb before six o'clock, when the Sabbath came. John's "about the sixth hour" was, I suppose, six o'clock in the morning, counting from midnight; Pilate then brings Him out, and delivers Him up, and at nine o'clock He is actually crucified. His Name be praised!

- 5. It certainly is a very singular thing that Judas cast down the money in the temple (en to nao). He could hardly have been a priest, nor does it follow that he went into the temple (naos) when he threw the money there. But I do not think naos is ever used for the outer buildings, so that he must have gone in where the priests were, before the naos, through intimacy with them on this dreadful errand. But, if so, what a picture it gives us of the evil ways of men! I find no case where naos is used for other than the house.

- 51, 52. We have the double power and effect of Christ's death - the rent veil or free access, and the resurrection.

- 63. It is a striking fact that Christ never announces Himself as the Christ except to the woman of Samaria, out of Judaism. He says at the close, referring to other times, "Because ye are Christ's" - owns it as revealed to Simon Peter, but never presents Himself as such. He forbids the disciples to do it before the Transfiguration. It shows how His Person, or moral claim was ever put forward, though no man knew the Son or received His testimony, yea, had done so many miracles. Nor even does John Baptist call Him the Christ, though it be implied. This is the more remarkable because, as heretofore observed, we have not the heavenly place in connection ourselves either, i.e., High Priest, or Head of the Body. After His rejection, in controversy with the rejecting Jews, He confesses Himself such, and shows that there had been plain adequate testimony that He was so, as is shown in this verse, and in John 10: 25. But we have no presenting of Himself as such.

158 Matthew 28

- 1. The word epiphoskouse (began to dawn) in this verse, and the word egorasan (had brought), Mark 16: 1, have led me to new apprehensions as to the visits of the women to the sepulchre. In the first place, it is to me beyond all controversy that several things, supposed to happen in the morning, happened on, to us, Saturday evening. The Sabbath closed at six, as is known, and from Saturday at six in the evening the women were free to buy their spices, or to do anything else.

First epiphoskouse does not mean solely nor properly "dawn." Luke 23: 54, kai hemera en paraskeue, kai sabbaton epephoske (and it was the preparation day, and the Sabbath drew on). Here the Friday is sabbaton epephoske, translated "drew on." It was the day which preceded the Sabbath. Hence, Matthew 28: 1, Opse de sabbaton te epiphoskouse eis mian sabbaton (In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week) is properly what we call Saturday, but that being Sabbath it was only at the close of it, i.e., when it was over, that they went. However opse and hespera differ - opse meaning "after," and even often "a good while after," see Wetstein on this verse, but it is given as bradion (late). I learn also from Marsh (whose reasonings on the passage are unfounded) that the Syriac has translated Luke 23: 54, and John 19: 31, which is certainly the evening, by the same word, i.e., for epei paraskeue en (because it was the preparation) the same word as Luke, and this word has the natural signification of epiphosko, the Syriac being the Apostles' language.

"And Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid," Mark 15: 47. The Sabbath over, the two Maries and Salome buy spices, i.e., Saturday evening - "bought," not "had bought" - and Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, after this go and see the sepulchre in the end of the Sabbath (opse de sabbaton). It was thus late, sero, bradion, after buying the spices. But Mary Magdalene was absorbed with thoughts of Jesus, and, not resting at all, while it was yet dark comes to the sepulchre, i.e., Sunday morning before day, runs and tells Peter and John who come and examine the sepulchre, and return home. Mary remains, and sees Jesus, and then goes and tells the disciples in general (not 'to go to Galilee' - that was not her message but) that she had seen Jesus, and that He had told her that He was to ascend to His Father and their Father, His God and their God, i.e., their new, divine, heavenly relationship according to His own, through His Person and work.

159 Mark, who relates the message of the angels to the women as to Galilee, states also that He appeared first to Mary Magdalene (of which John gives the detail). Mary Magdalene's occupation of mind is evident all through, and John, to whom she went, gives the detail of this part, in accordance with the subject of all his Gospel. Mary Magdalene did not wait to see anything at the sepulchre. Seeing the stone rolled away, she set off at once to Peter and John - those specially attached to Jesus - to tell them the sepulchre was empty. The risen Saviour appears to her with the message cited. Jesus Himself drew her as an object of affection.

The women in general came to anoint Him; it was all well. It was the manner of the Jews to bury, and they would pay their crucified Lord honour thus. But there is no such hurry with them. They set off early, but are there only at sunrise. The scene with Mary Magdalene was all over. To them angels appear, a gracious but ordinary Jewish intervention on God's part, and Jesus is associated with Galilee - His place of connection with the poor Jewish Remnant. There they would see Him, as indeed they did. They are rejoiced and alarmed at the same time, and go off from the sepulchre, and as they go they meet Jesus, who also tells them to say that they will see Him in Galilee - the same association, and they touch Him; to Mary Magdalene this was not permitted, for He was not returned to take the Kingdom, and be bodily present here yet. The close of Matthew connects itself with this Galilee position.

The only passage here which presents any difficulty is, "They said nothing to any man," Mark 16: 8. But from verse 7 it is evident that, in result, they told the disciples; only in going (fleeing) they said nothing to anyone on the road till they reached the disciples. Matthew indeed does not say they executed their commission. Christ met them in Galilee in a mountain He had ordered them to meet Him in. Note, the last words of this Gospel take up distinctly this Galilee place, and, showing that He had now power given Him far more extensive, sends them out to all nations with a new mission, but the point of contact with His old mission was Galilee - the poor Remnant, and according to Isaiah 8 and 9.

160 I have here omitted Luke, because always in his Gospel he gives the general, broad, moral facts, without occupying himself with the order or connection of them in time. This is universally his character. He is perfectly exact, and gives much additional moral light on many points in this way, but occupied with this. It is not the purpose of the Spirit in this Gospel to narrate historically. He will take from many periods what will bring out, in common, the same truth, or single out one fact which shows it forth, without heeding the other accompanying ones, or name them without reference to their order in time, if their moral order be different, as in the temptation in the wilderness. So he passes over the flight into Egypt, and says, things being accomplished in the temple, He went to Nazareth, because he was not to take up the Jewish character of Christ but the contrary; and hence, when obedience to the Law was personally accomplished, he gets at once into His Nazarene character. It is the same in principle in the history of the resurrection.

The women that followed Him, "who accompanied him from Galilee" (that is their character in general) see the sepulchre, and where they laid Him. Returned, they prepared spices and myrrh. He does not say they bought, nor when they prepared - perhaps they did Friday night as well as Saturday; I doubt it, however, for 6 o'clock the Sabbath began, and it must have been about, if not quite that, when they returned. "And they rested the Sabbath" - but the kai to men gives it a moral character, and not the date after the buying.

So chapter 24: 8-10, we have merely the general fact as to all "the women who came from Galilee" without any detail, and "to the eleven, and to all the rest." "Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and the others with them" told these things to the Apostles. It was the affair of the women - when, and where, or who, to each or to several, or collectively, is entirely passed over. It was not the object here of the Spirit of God. What he does tell us is the fact, and gives it a moral character, and some additional particulars which are not elsewhere, but no details. It is very possible that more than one party of women went to the sepulchre, that, learning from the first party, or through their means, they went down (I see no object in supposing it, however - verses 22, 23, would rather say otherwise, as also verse 1; I do not speak here of Mary Magdalene) but this the Scripture was not concerned to tell us. Each word of what it does tell us bears truth in it for the soul. So verses 23, 24 - it is all put generally together, for we may well suppose that verse 24 refers to Peter and John, though most likely the two that went to Emmaus only heard this as a general report. Verse 12 also is thus given as a confirming fact after the very vague general statement of all the women telling "to the Apostles and all the rest." They were about 120 men and women. These preparatory facts are really introductory almost to the account of the journey to Emmaus, which is also alluded to in Mark. The general effect of the women's statement is given in verse 11. However, there was exception, for instance Peter (it is not "Then Peter," as in English, but "But Peter") arose, and went, and saw, and departed, wondering at what had happened, but as John tells us, for he had no scriptural understanding or faith in the resurrection. See the remarkable confirmation of this character, at the close of this account of Luke, where, verses 43, 44, and 50 seem all continuous, and they are morally. An infidel might say Luke clearly did not know that there were forty days - he supposed He went up to heaven at once. Now Luke is the person who tells us, in the Acts, that there were forty days.

161 Thus, "In the end of the Sabbath," i.e., when ended as obligatory rest - Saturday, at 6 p.m. - Mary Magdalene and the other Mary come to see the sepulchre. They, as soon as the Sabbath was past, bought sweet spices; they had already bought some before the Sabbath. The first who came before sunrise, the first day of the week, to the sepulchre was Mary Magdalene alone. She runs off at once to Peter and John, and they go to the sepulchre, see that Jesus is risen, and go home. Jesus reveals Himself to her, and she goes off to execute the Lord's commission, declaring Christ's going to His Father and their Father. This was on her return. Then the other women come, bringing the spices, and, not finding the Lord, go into the sepulchre, and see two angels who tell them Jesus was risen, and recall His words. They go out of the sepulchre in haste. Their message from the angel is quite a different one from Mary's - the disciples were to go into Galilee, the place where He was connected with the Remnant. They meet Jesus on the way, who gives them the same message. They go and tell the eleven, and all the rest. Mary carried her message to the disciples. In John we have only Mary. She came "While it was yet dark," but Jesus was risen - when the others came, the sun had risen; Mark 16: 2. The first verse there refers to our Saturday evening, Sabbath being ended. Mary Magdalene does not seem to have had anything to do with bringing the spices; her going alone to see after the Lord, took her out of the whole after-scene of spices, and angels, and Galilee. Luke throws, as very often indeed, the whole into a general statement; only note "Then arose Peter" is only in the English, not in the Greek. He says, "The women." Where the moral instruction in grace is expressed, there he enters into details. Matthew gives it historically. Thus verse 1 stands by itself - the evening, as I judge; verse 2 happens before the women come at all, as is evident from all the accounts. Mark 16: 10 refers to Mary Magdalene's case, and to her going to the disciples after she had seen Jesus; John 20: 18. This resumé brings out the case of Mary Magdalene very interestingly, and presents it more clearly than ever. Nor is there any difficulty in the order of events; the only one which might be raised is making chapter 28: 1, the evening of Saturday, but it is certain, though isolated, verse 2 comes after it. When the women came in the morning, even the first of them, the resurrection was passed. Verse 5 also is an account by itself - it assumes the women to be there - more fully given in Mark. The two messages are the great thing.

162 I think it is clear that we have divers visits of the women to the sepulchre. First, as to Mary Magdalene, it is clear she came early, while it was yet dark, and went away without more to Peter and John to tell them. Mark also notices the Lord's appearing first to Mary Magdalene. The angels were there all the time - at least, appeared repeatedly; one sat on the stone as the women came up - one at the right, when they went in - two, in Luke, speaking to others than Mary and Salome, but these give no message, only say He was risen - and two are inside, at head and feet where Jesus had been laid, watching where Mary's heart was. I apprehend Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, and Joanna were much together. Mary Magdalene goes alone, then Mary and Joanna, and then others come up; all these last probably went away together.

163 I take verse 1 to have been our Saturday evening. They came only to see the sepulchre.

Verse 2 begins the whole history of the first day morning, before day, when the angel rolls away the stone, and the keepers are overwhelmed. Jesus, it appears, was already gone. Here the statement as to the women is quite general; to them, whoever they were, it was said not to fear as they sought Jesus; Mark, more definitely, the other Mary and Salome - Mary Magdalene had gone off on seeing the stone rolled away. Jesus Himself met them on the way with the message to the disciples to go and meet Him in Galilee. All this is apart from John and the second part of Mark. The main point is angelic power, and the Galilee revelation of Christ. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, always together, merely appear, in their personal anxiety as to the Lord, Saturday in the fall of the evening to look at the tomb. There was nothing of resurrection here. When Mary Magdalene came, Sunday morning before twilight, the stone was rolled away, and Jesus risen. The history of the rolling away of the stone is given in Matthew 28: 2, and then what the angel says to some of the women, which was clearly, from all accounts, a subsequent circumstance. The stone was gone before even Mary Magdalene came. In Mark, we learn that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, when the Sabbath was over, bought spices in order to go and anoint Him, very possibly after having visited the sepulchre and seen all safe. At sunrise, some of the women (Mary Magdalene had already been there) come to the sepulchre, and find the stone rolled away, and Jesus not there. They go in, find a young man sitting on the right hand, who gives them the message as to Galilee. This we have had in Matthew. Then comes, in Mark, a wholly different part - an appendix - the appearing to Mary Magdalene, who tells it to the disciples. In Luke, we learn that already, on the Friday evening probably, they had bought spices; at least chapter 23: 56 would seem to say they had done this. Mark 16: 1, does not forbid this; egorasan may mean "had bought." It was when the Sabbath was past they were going to use them. Only Mary Magdalene is not in verse 2. It is general "they" the women "come," with which Matthew 28 coincides, and then we have verse 9. In Luke 24 we find the women generally, who, having prepared spices already, come to the sepulchre; he throws them altogether (v. 10). Here, two men stand by them, and here we have nothing of Galilee, nor of the message to Mary Magdalene, but the general truth of His resurrection, as indeed Luke gives ascension from Bethany, not Galilee. Some bought the spices, probably Joanna and the other Mary, but this is very general, and takes in all, but there were others who came. Those who first came with spices went in and saw the angel sitting, and get their message as to Galilee; this was a special case. Others came and were there with them - came up - and the two angels stood there and told them of His resurrection. The vision Mary Magdalene had was quite distinct; all is far more quiet, orderly, and detailed, and there are two angels, sitting where the Lord had lain, who speak to her. All the women did not go into the sepulchre, probably only the other Mary and Salome, and saw one angel sitting; the rest, outside, got the general message of His resurrection which we have in Luke. In Mark, we have, leaving Mary Magdalene out, only the others, i.e., Salome, and Mary who go into the sepulchre, and see one angel sitting there. The other women are only mentioned in Luke. So that we have three sets - Mary Magdalene - the other Mary and Salome - and various other women who came. The first is quite distinct, and sees, on her return, two angels, one at the head, the other at the feet; Mary and Salome go in and see one angel on the right who gives a message as to Galilee; the other women see two angels standing outside, who merely tell them that Jesus is risen. But the object of any of the Gospels, as to any of the women, save Mary Magdalene, was not the details as to them, though there are degrees of communication as to all. I suppose all the women, except Mary Magdalene, met the Lord as they were going away, and told the twelve of what had happened.

164 The last verses of this Gospel confirm the idea of the Lord's speaking in view of a proximate establishment of the Kingdom, or, as overleaping all the interval in which the Jews rejected were left out. They go from the resurrection into Galilee, the place of His intercourse with the Remnant in grace, when the mass would not have Him. Hence this Remnant being accepted (in the disciples), He sends them to the nations and is with them to the end of the age which is to continue.

The result of the whole Gospel is undoubtedly that what is said is said in view of the following establishment of the Kingdom in power, but looking, at the close, to a Remnant slighted and persecuted as followers of a rejected King, and hence overstepping all that went beyond the Kingdom, and taking all in as belonging to "this age."

165 We have a distinct commission, not merely as if the Remnant were seen gathered because the disciples were with Jesus, but that we have in chapter 10 a complete mission to the Jews as such, to the coming of the Son of man. That mission, note, is in the Land. It divides at verse 16, in a general way; what follows going on to circumstances true only after His death.

In this Gospel we have the Kingdom of heaven in chapter 13, consequent on the rejection of the Jews - the Church in chapter 16, and the Kingdom in glory and power in chapter 17. But there are some important remarks connected with it, though I am not quite master of all its hearings. The closing rejection of Israel in chapter 12, on to their final state under Antichrist has been fully noted - Israel looked at as that "generation," i.e., that had to do with Christ in unbelief. But then the Kingdom of heaven is continued from the sowing of the Son of man on the earth. It was not the Christ with Israel, and seeking fruit in His vineyard, but sowing - out of the house - on the seashore; but it was the word of the Kingdom, as Christ preached "Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand." Then the Kingdom of heaven, the King being rejected, takes the form described in the parables, but it was not a direct, but still a continuance of Christ's work when here (like Hebrews 1: 1, and chap. 2: 2). In the tares and wheat, the sowing is by the Son of man, but the field is the world. The first parable is Christ's true work, i.e., bringing what was to produce fruit, but he has no character as the Sower, but the fact. It was an outward thing, then substituted in the world for the outward Jewish thing - the carrying on in the world of the Lord's work in Israel, i.e., sowing (not seeking fruit) with its effect de facto, and then God's mind in it. In chapter 16 it is different; it is the Person of Christ the Son of God (proved in resurrection) and His building the Church on this. The sign of the prophet Jonas (death and resurrection, which was the cutting off of Israel on its own old ground) the only sign given. God had revealed Himself as in nature beyond dispensation, in chapter 15, in the case of the Syrophoenician, but divine grace in love to the people in spite of all. The moral rejection, under law, had been shown in the beginning of chapter 15 - the evil of man, verses 18-20; then God Himself in goodness, in the Syro-phoenician. Then comes the Jonas sign, and the Person of Jesus as Son of God (proved in resurrection, and victory over Satan) and the Church built on that; but this was the Cross here. Then comes the Kingdom in power. This is the Son of man coming in His Kingdom, i.e., in the Transfiguration; compare 2 Peter 1. So that we have the Son of man sowing - the Church, a divine thing - the love of God, the Rock and Builder - and the Son of man, in the glory of the Kingdom, coming.

166 It is further of the greatest importance to remark that the keys given to Peter are not the keys of the Church - Christ builds that - (hence in 1 Peter 2, we have not any one building - in 1 Corinthians 3 we have) but the keys of the Kingdom of heaven, i.e., the outward thing on earth, as we have seen, consequent on Christ's sowing, following up even His earthly sowing, which might or might not produce fruit, and certainly produced in result a mixed thing which could not be mended, had a treasure in it for which Christ took the world, a-gathering of good and bad fishes. Doubtless Peter's authority in establishing it was authenticated in heaven, but the result was not other than what Christ predicted. But then it is evidently personal. The Church the Son of God builds. The being with His disciples to the end of the age has nothing to do with Church matters. It is discipling the Gentiles. It is from a risen Christ in Galilee, not, as in Luke, ascending. It has the world for its field, but to disciple the nations, the Jews not being in question. It is really chapter 13, not chapter 16. In this mission Christ will be surely with those He sends, to the end of the world, even when the Church is gone. So far as the history of Acts goes, and Galatians, the mission to the Gentiles was given up to Paul and Barnabas. At any rate this was an extension consequent on Christ's receiving all power in heaven and on earth (Matthew 10); not the Body of Christ nor the building of 1 Corinthians 3. Matthew 10 goes to the end of the world too, but excludes Gentiles. It is connected with Christ as then present, and will be renewed at the end, when the Church is gone and the Kingdom of heaven, properly speaking, closed. When risen, and having all power in heaven and on earth, the nations were to be discipled. In chapter 10, the starting point was from Christ on earth - the Kingdom was at hand; in chapter 28, the starting-point is Christ having all power in heaven and on earth, now risen, the Jews not included, and the nations are the object. It is the truth of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost - not anything at hand.

167 In chapter 24 the Gospel of the Kingdom is to be preached to "all nations" - "this Gospel" - what Christ preached. This specifically is the extension of chapter 10 to the Gentiles, and then the end comes. Chapter 28 is in contrast with chapter 10, a ministration by itself, and which I suppose fell through; the Gentiles were committed to Paul who brought in the doctrine of the Church. With this mission, baptism was connected, with the Church not. Mark is personal - Luke, as to the Gospel, is clearly Pauline; chapter 24 is more dispensational than Mark 13. We have Christ's coming, and the end of the age. It gives more the external state. It takes up the mission of chapter 10 as existing, and extends it to Gentiles, and looks, all through, more exclusively to the end, though open, as to Jewish ground, to present application. Still it is properly Jewish, reaching out as a witness to the nations, as it will at the end. Hence we have nothing of the Holy Ghost; in Mark we have, because the present service of the Apostles is more in view; this is found in Matthew in chapter 10. Mark 13 is more present service, until verse 14, hence we have the Holy Ghost brought in there, which in Matthew is in chapter 10, where all their service in Israel is in question. Chapter 24 is, as I have said, more prophetic and external, and has the end more in sight all through, though it may have to say "the end is not yet"; verse 9 puts them more amongst the Gentiles than Matthew 10, though the language be very like, and it is the Jews still who "deliver up," and the proper going out among the nations is only with this Gospel of the Kingdom. Chapter 28 is evidently another matter. And remark that in Matthew 10 it is a search for the Remnant among the Jews - "Enquire who in it is worthy"; not so in chapter 28. It may well be there is a break at "Behold I send," in verse 16.

______

I would look a little further into the missions in this Gospel. First, chapter 10, where we know they are sent out to the cities of Israel, and were not to go to the Samaritans or Gentiles; but they would be brought before kings and rulers for Christ's sake, for a testimony to them and the Gentiles. The immediate testing mission seems to me to end with verse 15; verses 16-22 go together, and reach out into what is more general, and in fact guide them when Christ was gone and the Spirit come, but this leads them to the end, "He that shall endure to the end." This it is that gives its importance to the destruction of Jerusalem, that, though it were not the end, yet ended necessarily this mission to the cities of Israel. Thus verse 23 comes in, i.e., they should have acted on it then, but it runs over to the time the Son of man comes. From verse 24 it is general; verse 23 connects itself on, more directly, to verse 13; still the verses 14-22 connect themselves with it as a continuation in fact to the destruction of Jerusalem, and in its contemplated times on to the end. But though verses 14-22 include the history after Christ was gone, the whole applies wholly to ministry among Jews, if it were not speaking as prisoners before the authorities. Next, the mission is to Israel (not the Jews) but to the Remnant. It takes up, like the Sermon on the Mount, those who are worthy, and there peace was to rest, and the Kingdom of heaven was at hand; that was what they were to preach. This part is the then present power of Christ (Emmanuel) there. This testimony therefore is pretty plain. The starting point of this (though it may continue to the end, and have a peculiar character when He was gone - yet only generally intimated) was Emmanuel presented to the Jews, though He may be so before it closes, as the rejected One.

168 In chapter 24, it is not the cities of Israel, but Jerusalem, nor exactly the message of grace with the harvest great, but judgment on the rejecting Jerusalem, as the end of chapter 23 shows, and the sorrows (throes) of the Jews. It answers in character and time to chapter 10: 14-22, with the same declaration: "He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved." But then we have the additional truth that this Gospel of the Kingdom must be preached to all the nations (Gentiles) and then the end should come. This gives the full general history consequent on the rejection of Christ; verse 14 is a special addition, by the bye, so to speak, verse 13 closing the reference to the Jewish testimony; verse 15 then takes up the special case of Jerusalem, and is an instructive sign for those who shall see it when it does come. Verses 4-13 only gave the character of the times as a guidance, and could be applied as soon as the troubles began, but goes on to the end in similar circumstances in Palestine, only the Gospel must go out to the nations as witness before the end could come. Then, as I have said, the special portion of Jerusalem who had rejected Him, and the great tribulation, when the abomination of desolation has been set up, is brought in. Thus verse 5 would apply generally; verse 23 only to the last days. But it is all one class (as chapter 10 also shows), the testifying Remnant; see verses 15, 25; so of the nation, chap. 23. The result will be immediately after the tribulation (vv. 29, 30); and then all Israel is gathered into one. Verses 32-43 refer to the signs and character of the coming of the Son of man, and refer still to the witness character of the Remnant. Verse 45 begins abruptly with Christian ministry and the condition of the professing Church, which is not our subject here. It goes to the end of chapter 25: 30; verse 31 begins then the judgment of the Gentiles according to the way they have received the messengers. In fact, chapter 24: 15-44 is a kind of parenthesis as to what relates to Jerusalem, and the coming of the Son of man there. No doubt chapter 25: 31 refers to chapter 24: 30, as to epoch, but the judgment of chapter 25: 31, refers to chapter 24: 14; verses 15-44 being the specialty of final things at Jerusalem, and therein to chapter 25: 30, ecclesiastical and Christian care of His household - the virgin companions of His marriage, or His servants who had gifts while away. He is back again to the world in verse 31, as He was to the Jews in chapter 24: 30. The term "brethren" is that which belongs to the disciples after His resurrection, and Oh! what grace!

169 Thus in Matthew 28: 10, "Go, tell my brethren," which I quote the rather as it is in this Gospel. It is used also in John as their present state in connection with Him risen before, and in announcing His ascension to His and their God and Father. But this last was to Mary of Magdala attached to His Person - she was not to touch Him as personally back for the Kingdom - He was putting His brethren, then already owned such, with His God and Father in the same relationship with Himself. In Matthew they are to go into Galilee - they hold Him by the feet, i.e., do touch Him, and are allowed to do so, i.e., He is there in this character of association with the Remnant for the earth. Hence they are to meet in Galilee; that which is connected with Isaiah 8 and 9 - the people that sat in darkness, seeing a great light, when the testimony is sealed among His disciples, when God is hiding His face from the house of Jacob, and faith is waiting for Him, when they had stumbled at the Stumbling Stone, but when it goes on to final deliverance, when the disciples are exactly in their present position in Matthew, only in Isaiah applied to the Jews. Matthew goes further, or rather the object is different. It is not now putting the brethren or Remnant, the children which God had given Him, into relationship with His God, His Father, nor making them signs to both houses of Israel till the battle with fuel of fire came. All power is given Him in heaven and earth. His rejection had sent Him into this place of heavenly power over all things, and they were to go and make disciples of the Gentiles, teaching them to observe all that He had commanded, as we have read in Matthew, bringing the Father's, Son's, and Spirit's names as the ground and character of association. It is this I would yet more especially enquire into.

170 Note first, the missions in Matthew, Mark, and Luke have their character from the place and position, and close the scene of Christ's ministry, as in the particular Gospel. Not so in John; there there is no scene or close. It is Himself, a divine Person (though incarnate, and always taking the place He was in towards His Father) and the mission is from His Person, not from resurrection (as Matthew) merely, nor from ascension (as Luke) nor His exaltation from service (as Mark). He bestows peace on them as He had made peace for them, sends them out on this ground, and as His Father had sent Him He sends them, and gives them the Holy Ghost as the power in which they lived and wrought, carrying forgiveness with them (administratively) as He had, on earth. Then Jewish and millennial truth comes after; but verses 17-23 are the present condition and service in grace consequently on accomplished work, and from Himself as he is now (though then there) but all along here (from chap. 13, save chap. 15) as giving them a part with Himself where He is. It is not Bethany nor Galilee, but the Son going to His Father and their Father, His God and their God, and revealing Himself in their midst.

We have, in Matthew, "the end of the age," as previously, and it is dispensational in its character as a question of the age, the Gentiles, Galilee, which is the subject of prophecy, and the Lord's service; He is the prophetic and promised One though the rejected One. It is not, as Mark, preaching the Gospel to every creature (pase te ktisei) and then "he that believeth and is baptised" - a personal question; nor is it ascension, as in Luke, and repentance and remission of sins beginning indeed (as Paul) from Jerusalem, but testimony in grace, calling to repentance, from heaven to all nations. It is not, as John, "as my Father hath sent me, so send I you." Still, though it connects itself with dispensational and prophetic position and dealing, yet it takes up the present exaltation of Christ, and acts from that. Jerusalem is looked at as rejected, as to its state, I mean, Christ having all power in heaven and in earth. Chapter 24 dealt with Jerusalem in the last days, and in judgment, and Christ's return, though as Son of man, this of His present possession of power, but of given power. And the relationships brought out are those of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This refers it to the epoch (not the sphere of labour) of chapter 10: 16-22, where the Spirit of their Father speaks in them. But the service was that of Galilean disciples, not preaching the Gospel that individuals might believe, but discipling the nations (the Gentiles) and teaching them. The fact is that, as far as Scripture history goes, this commission was never acted on. Of Luke's we have the formal history in the Acts, and then Paul and the Church came in. Mark's is general, and in principle its accomplishment stated to have taken place in the same general way. To the end of verse 8 we have the Remnant Galilee character, from verse 9, the heavenly one to gather souls, and save them as Christians. Further, the discipling all nations, and teaching them is a different thing from a testimony to all nations, and then the end coming. That referred to the end as a testimony to be borne before judgment - the Gospel of the Kingdom as Christ preached it. This is a bringing in an order of things consequent upon Christ's having all power in heaven and on earth. As far as anything is at all like it in result, it is Christendom. The Paul service comes by itself, the pillars at Jerusalem having given up the Gentiles to him. He was delivered from the people and from the Gentiles, out of all human ties, to carry the message of and from a heavenly Christ, and found the Church (properly speaking) as a system, in which neither Jew nor Gentile was, here below. We find him with Luke's mission; we find him with Mark's; Acts 20: 21; chap. 24: 18; Rom. 2: 9, 10; Acts 13: 38; Col. 1: 23, etc. And so both, in general, in many places, as Peter, Acts 2, for and really to Jews, having waited for power from on high. At Athens he takes Peter's ground with Cornelius, Jesus' resurrection, judgment given to Christ. This is striking. It is the most elementary of Paul's preachings, not exactly, I think, Matthew's. Though he went to the Gentiles, it was not discipling the nations but gathering the Church to its Head - minister of the Gospel "to every creature under heaven," which last is Mark's; see Col. 1: 23-25. But is not this the present Gospel of Christendom in contrast with Paul's full revelation of the truth, or rather the ecclesiastical estate of Christendom? The evangelical party preach, though generally very muddily, the elementary Gospel of Paul and Peter, but John 3, or Christ's statements on earth still more. This will remain current when Paul's is gone, which needs an ascended Christ, into union with whom they are called. But though a call into union may not have then closed, yet Christ will have all power in heaven and earth, and even be just then about to take possession of it in effect and reign, and the brethren, the preserved Remnant, will disciple the nations, and the knowledge of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, will remain (quod nota, but I suppose the Father and Son as revealed by Christ on earth, and the Holy Ghost as poured out afresh, as the latter rain) and the prescribed ways of the Kingdom as here, though given here as Jehovah being then in the way with them, but it is His mind for their walk. It was a then present commission, but reaches on to the end of the age, but never gets into Paul's Gospel (according to Colossians and Ephesians), which was really a substitute for it. And that is the question now. This really is the basis of the corruption of popery (even as far as Scripture can be alleged for it) and Protestants have never got out of it really, though they have corrected it. But how this makes one feel one is cast upon directions for this time in Scripture!

172 Even Peter's sermons to Jews or to Gentiles (Cornelius) follow in the main Luke's commission, and very distinctly. The only point of connection with Matthew is its beginning in Galilee when speaking to Cornelius. But even this refers to Christ's ministry on earth, and then there is no ascension. Peter dates his commission from the risen Jesus only - from the Prophets declares by Him remission of sins. So Christ is Lord of all, and you have in every nation "he that fears God and works righteousness" - as with Paul at Athens, Christ is to judge. In sum, Peter's Cornelius-sermon is pretty clear; previous (through grace) fear of God and working righteousness is acceptable (dektos) in any nation - Christ's personal ministry beginning from Galilee as a Man anointed with the Holy Ghost and power, resurrection, judgment of quick and dead by Christ, the forgiveness of sins, announced by the Prophets, to be had now by His means. Paul to the Jews preaches more salvation by resurrection, repentance having been preached by John, and remission, and justification from all sins from which Moses' law could not. In Acts 2, while accounting for the presence of the Holy Ghost for which they had been waiting, and giving what led to it up to the exaltation of Christ, he preaches repentance and remission of sins. This, as I said, is Luke's commission. Repentance, remission, and Christ's present return if they repent, is the testimony of Acts 3. Peter to Cornelius does not speak of repentance; he does of remission. Paul at Athens speaks of repentance, and not of remission. In Antioch (Acts 13) it is Luke's mission simply.

173 Thus we have the Luke testimony clearly carried only in fact by Peter, in terms by Paul, including verses 44, 46 - only by both judgment by Christ is added. In Acts 15 we have the visiting the Gentiles to take out of them a people for God's name, according to the Prophets. And we have Peter's ministry in the case of Cornelius, and Paul's and Barnabas's actual work in gathering the Church among the Gentiles, the foundation of it. These were Gentiles on whom God's name was called; and this testimony of Acts 15 is very remarkable. It is an individual calling, purifying their hearts by faith, and so sealed by the Holy Ghost, from which James draws the conclusion that God has taken out of the Gentiles a people for His name, which was to be called on them (Moses being left to his own influence, i.e., you have Jerusalem left to its own influence, and a gathered company of Gentiles left free - save some necessary things) so as to lay ground for the unity of the Body, save its being broken, but Matthew 28 wholly dropped. But then note, if taken up, it is taken up before the end of the age, for the Lord sending them forth says, "Lo, I am with you to the consummation of the age," i.e., the promise in view of this mission ran on from giving it up to the close of the age. As regards the Jews, that age was suspended by the taking of Jerusalem, and in fact the Pauline Church, declined into a Peter state, and far worse had then taken the place of it - declined, I mean, in doctrine, for in practice it was soon the very seal of iniquity. Already in Peter's time, the time was come for judgment to begin at the house of God. But supposing the Church, the Body of Christ, gone, the personal title of Christ, as having all power in heaven and on earth, remains, and the service, whatever the result (shown in Matthew 25) will be discipling the Remnant, and bringing them into association with that Remnant, the brethren. And note, consequently they inherit the Kingdom as blessed of the Father. The age is ended already in verse 31. And He who has had all power in heaven and earth has been with His brethren, still owned such on and for earth, consequent on resurrection, though in John 20: 17, they are led on into better things. This makes the place of this service very clear.

174 This gives additional insight into the Epistle to the Romans. No doubt the doctrine of justification, as we well know, is richly unfolded, and the effect too of the presence of the Spirit, and the power of life in Christ; but as to the form of the Gospel, as to its statement, it is Luke and Acts. It lays resurrection as its starting point, though owning ascension (mentioned only, chap. 8: 34) incidentally. But the Gospel, Christ declared Son of God with power, by resurrection, Son of David withal, then judgment to come (chap. 2: 16), and to the Jew first though not beginning at Jerusalem - that was all over for Paul, the Lord sent him away thence; his testimony was more than Luke's, beginning from a Christ actually in divine glory, and owning the saints as Himself. But here it is resurrection, and in the Gospel to us down to chapter 5: 11, ascension is not spoken of. Even in our place before God, our resurrection with Christ is not spoken of, though in chapter 8 we are assumed to be in Him, and His ascension is also, as noticed, referred to first. But, as to the basis of the Gospel, it is Christ's resurrection, repentance, remission of sins, judgment.

The difference between grace towards us down here as sinners when God is fully brought out, and our being before Him in Christ, from chapter 5: 12, often noticed, comes out thus clearer than ever. The Gospel properly is up to chapter 5: 11. In Ephesians we have the absolute work and counsels of God - a new creation. We are raised up together with Christ. This is the wholly new thing, not only from heaven, but we begin as dead - so Christ - and there is a new creation in Him; no justification, which applies to those who need it, which God's new creation does not, the glorified Body of the glorified Christ, though not yet there, and duty being the showing forth of God, not what suits in a preliminary way to getting into the Kingdom. We are there, in the same power in which Christ is at God's right hand, from death, Himself.

_______

175 I add yet another word as to the commissions. Matthew links on, it is evident, to the Lord's power and service shown in Galilee; specially compare Isaiah 9: 1, where clearly in the desolation and judgment of Israel, and the separation of the disciples, and the Law and the testimony being sealed amongst them, its utter desolation, the light, as distinguishing it from other desolations, is shown to spring up, to have a Remnant just because it was utter desolation. This is applied (Matt. 4: 15), to the Lord's sojourn in Galilee. The Kingdom of heaven is declared at hand, and repentance called for then, according to the prophecy. On the smiting of the Shepherd and the scattering of the sheep as so held together by Him, He tells them that when risen He will go before them into Galilee. Jerusalem having rejected Him, He returns into His own prophetic title in which blessing is to flow from Him. He is to be the Centre and Source, whatever blessing may hereafter be conferred on Jerusalem; hence according to Isaiah, and His service in Matthew, Galilee was the place for this; so chapter 28: 10. But when there it was no longer a Messiah in the flesh presenting Himself the Gospel of the Kingdom to the nation according to the Prophets, and to Jerusalem. All power was now given Him in heaven and in earth, and they were to make disciples to Him all the Gentiles. It was the extension of what was His Messianic power, connected with the title of power over heaven and earth He held as risen, to the whole world. It was not establishing His reign over Israel; He had been rejected there. The Remnant had the testimony sealed to them, Jehovah hid His face from the house of Israel (though to be waited for), and the testimony of Galilee, so rejected, was now identified with all power in heaven and earth, and sent to bring all nations into discipleship. It was power and authority, but of this character, but with the further revelation of what now, Jesus being risen, was necessarily brought out - the common name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost - common yet distinct, and Christ's injunctions were to be the rule of the Gentiles so discipled. With this is connected the promise to be with them "to the end of the age," so that this connects itself with the age and the service rendered till it closes. And we get the important principle that the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is continued "to the end of the age," or at any rate the service which declares it is supposed in duty to continue.

176 Next, Mark, we have the Gospel carried on. Christ had served in the Gospel. Mark's account is the beginning of the Gospel of the Son of God. Here this Gospel of the Son of God, now risen, is carried on, and he who believes and confesses it, in being received into the Church by baptism, will be saved, and he that believes not would be lost. The fate of every creature is attached on hearing it to the preached Gospel. It is a general principle and commission as a matter of life - eternal life and salvation attached to the Gospel of the Son of God, thus sent out by His messengers, and to which the Lord gave testimony by signs. In John it is another thing, as in all the latter part of that Gospel; the Lord puts them in His own place, deriving it from Him only, as He from the Father, "As my Father hath sent me, so send I you." It is intrinsically connected with their position, and that as united to Him. It is derivative identification with Him, not authoritative mission merely here which constituted the commission. Hence, He first pronounces peace, then sends them from Himself, as the Father had sent Him (also He is in the midst of the gathered saints). Hence He breathes on them, and communicates to them the Holy Ghost, not now merely natural life breathed of God into their nostrils, but the Holy Ghost in living power from Him, giving them spiritual competency to take and as taking His place, and thus to effectuate in His name that remission of sins which the Holy Ghost can administer down here in the name of Jesus, as He did as Son of man in His place. There was real administrative forgiveness, as Paul and the Church of Corinth with the incestuous man. It is a living spiritual Church commission, putting them, by receiving one Spirit with and from Him, in the place of service according to what He had accomplished, in His place, only with what He had done and was as risen as its source, but to do it for Him in His place and name looked at as in the Church and the Spring and Source of union, and the Giver of spiritual power; not as sending down in power, externally declaring what He was, Son of man, but spiritual competency from and by Himself who breathed the Spirit, His breath upon them, that they might act by it.

177 In Luke it is different. There is not properly a commission. The Lord first presents to them His real resurrection in flesh and bones, eating before them; then shows how, according to His words, all things which Moses, etc., had written concerning Him were to be fulfilled. Next, He opens their understanding to understand the Scriptures, and how, according to the mind of God there revealed, these things should have been, and the Gospel preached in His name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem. Here then we get thus far the counsels of God as to this matter revealed, and their minds brought to rest on and draw from these counsels as so revealed, and which they now understood; so Paul uses Isaiah 49. It was then intelligence of the mind of God in the Scriptures opened to them by Christ, and His words confirmed, and they acting on this intelligence, and this being their intelligent service. The source from which they acted - "It behoved" (compare chap. 24: 25, et seq., where the Lord expounds, here He opens their understanding). There was a further thing before they acted publicly by this knowledge, namely, power; they were to tarry at Jerusalem (they could not go out of this circle, as it were) till they were endued with power from on high. It is not then properly a commission, but the opening the understanding to understand the Scriptures, and connecting them by Christ's teaching with "the Christ," and then power enabling them to act upon it - this by the Holy Ghost coming down as the promise of the Father.

The same general truth specially as to power, and, further, the return of Jesus, is found in Acts 1. This power we need. The commission in verse 8, or rather what the Lord says is to happen in them so endued with power, has the same character as to order. It recognises the administration first - Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. This is what we find in the blessed Paul's ministry. The Jews first and also to the Gentiles, and the knowledge of the mind of God. From this he both speaks and acts. We have the mind of Christ. He speaks from Christ's glory, and this is what we are led to as the terminus in Luke 24 (knowledge and power) and the power of the Spirit is Paul's whole spring and power (and so for others); only this that while it substantially remains the same in these two points, the beginning at Jerusalem has no place - this had been done. He receives his commission from Christ on high and nowhere short of it, nor does he return there nor go up, but he goes on from the point of starting, Christ's heavenly glory. It is the Just One that is the link with the Jews, the Righteous Jew is maintained, but he is a witness of what he has seen directly from the Lord. It has no other root or connection as such for him; only he receives the Holy Ghost in the Church, because He was there now, and thus the link with the previously existing Church, and its recognition. Hence we have two points in Paul's ministry - the glory of Christ and so universality, and then the one that is in Christ; see Colossians 1.

178 The glory (i.e., the glorification) ended Peter's; it begins Paul's, and the unity of the Church is a fresh revelation.

Thoughts on the Gospel, and Epistles of John

J. N. Darby.

<45010E> 179

(Notes and Comments Vol. 5.)

- Chapter 1. "The Word" - eternal existence - personality - divinity - eternal personality - (what He was) Creator - and "nothing created without Him" (here we begin Genesis) - Life in Him - "That life the light of men" - "The light shines in darkness" - "The darkness" (de facto) "comprehended it not." Note, life was light.

This is the full abstract statement of the nature and personality of Christ, as the Word. Verses 6-13, we have the witness given to it, and its reception or the contrary, and the effect of its reception. How man comes to receive the Lord. Man's state, and how changed. The divine Word and man, and how he receives it. From verse 14, we have quite another subject. The Object of faith, and One, who being made flesh, becomes in His fulness the Source of communication to others of the fulness of blessing in Him. Not what He is, but what He is as made flesh, and fulness in Him, and fulness for others. He is made flesh, is full of grace and truth as a living Person down here as a Man, and of this have we all received. The former part was nature, witness, and how received; this fulness communicable as a source to others, and the Object of their faith, declaring God, withal the only-begotten Son as in the bosom of the Father. This is important in John, for while showing He was I AM, yet we always find Christ personally as Man, the recipient of all from God; we always find Him as made flesh, and speaking as such, whatever that Man might be. "Glorify thou me," not "I will glorify myself." Himself the Object of faith, fulness of grace and truth in Him, of which we have all received, and declaring what God was, as the only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father. The former part testimony (and how received) this grace, as chapters 8, 9 and 10.

It is a wonderful chapter, this first of John. What grace to have it! That He whom none knows but the Father, One with the Father, should come and reveal the Father here! God manifest in flesh, He, the Lamb of God that takes away wholly, finally, the sin of the world which no more will be in it (heaven and earth) before God. Then, that great work being accomplished, He baptises with the Holy Ghost - makes us capable of knowing Him, and of entering into what is heavenly. Then we find Him making Himself a present Centre, and putting His divine fiat on what each one was as knowing him divinely, knowing all before they came, though brought by human means, knowing and pronouncing on what each was before He Himself was known, and thus the prejudiced Remnant owning Him, and His larger but human place, with serving angels, of Son of man, revealed. It is a great thing to say, "Henceforth ye shall see heaven opened," but greater to see Him who is there, as in fact Stephen did; to know Himself, the same here and there - only here God in grace, there Man in glory. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

180 Note here in Peter's case we have no such confession as in Nathanael's (who represents the Remnant for the end) - he came to find the Christ, but was given a name which we know elsewhere was connected with the building of the Church on the rejected Christ's being the Son of the living God. (This Man was the Son of God, besides being the eternal Son of the Father.) But then John does not bring in the heavenly part, but the Son manifesting God down here, and then the revelation of Him at the end. Only we get the Comforter come down, while He is there on high; but here, man baptised with it. But it is His Person - neither Head of the Church, nor Priest, nor Christ, as said elsewhere, but Himself. The second chapter is plain, as often noticed.

John's place is very beautiful, and how close to Christ, though before Him! And how at once, in John, we get the real internal thing in contrast with mere nominal faith, in the third chapter, beginning at chapter 2: 23. The Lord's reply to Nicodemus is infinitely striking and absolute. No circumlocution. Man is not to be taught, but born. It is a wholly new thing, so that a Gentile could have it - it is spirit, though Ezekiel 26 ought to have made Nicodemus know it. But Christ's testimony went further. He spoke of what He knew and had seen, a heavenly Person, and then the whole truth is brought out. It could not be otherwise in John. It is God with man, not dispensational, nor, as to those under law or promise, probatory, but absolute truth, and the truth of men's state as having to say to God. Christ spoke the words of God. But this state is one wholly judged. A man must be born anothen (anew). It is a wholly new thing, but then man was responsible, and so in order to have this eternal life, new (to us) in its nature, but in its full, accepted character, atonement must be, the Son of man lifted up as Man before God, the Son of God given, that love may be known, but to death and wrath - wondrous word! - "Made sin." Then comes, not guilt, which is already supposed in atonement, but responsibility, in connection with the presentation of the Son of God, of Light to men - presentation in grace, but as Light. But the main point is, it is wholly a new thing - in nature, born of the Spirit, and involving death and the putting away of the old, but this in grace, by Christ. But then what He reveals is heavenly, and, as such, no man receives it; where received, it is faith in the Word of God - a great principle. The Word of God is come into this world - all else is man. "He whom God hath sent" is emphatic in verse 34. There is what He has seen, and the Spirit acting in Him as Man, and that not by measure (ek metrou). It is, though in Man, wholly divine and infinite in its source, as absolutely heavenly in its character. This is as blessed as it is wonderful. The Apostles could not say this of heavenly things. The Holy Ghost was there to give divine certainty, words of divine certainty, but they had received the Spirit, that they might know. He took the things of Christ, and showed them to them - did not speak of (from) Himself, but revealed what was in heaven of the Father and of the Son. But it could not be said of them, "What he hath seen and heard that he testifieth" - "We testify that we have seen." When Paul was there, he could not utter what he heard - it was not natural to him, man, as to Christ. This too gives a special character to Christ in ministry. It was not that the Holy Ghost was not divine in certainty in what He revealed by them, but it was acting in, and speaking by them whatever was to be revealed. It was not their own knowledge of the things, as that from which they came, and in which they abode. Besides this, the Father has put everything into the Son's hand. The whole of John brings out the new thing, beginning with chapter 4: 23, 24, and that according to verses 10, 14, adding, at the end, the coming of the Holy Ghost.

181 In chapter 3, the principles on which the new thing rests are stated abstractedly in their nature and truth - born of the Spirit, and the Son of man lifted up (the Son of God given). The connection of both with the Person of Jesus is given in chapters 5, 6 and 7, going on to the Holy Ghost on His rejection. But here men are recognised as dead, and sovereign grace is exercised by the Son. As the Father raises up the dead and quickens them, so the Son whom He will. Death was his state, but he passes from death unto life; hence, Christ being Judge, does not come into judgment. Responsibility is in man, because Life was there and they would not have it. Life was (is) in Christ, and He quickens, as the Father raises up the dead and gives them life. That was then, as now, and He will finally raise both just and unjust - the former to resurrection of life, the latter of judgment. In chapter 6, we have as in chapter 3: 14, the Object of faith, but still the Person of the Lord, but as Man, the Bread come down from heaven, and still to give life; but then, morally and righteously, death must come in that there might be life, for here responsibility stands in the front - in quickening, not at all, He quickens whom He will - only responsibility is referred to there, as we have seen, because life was in Him, and they would not come. But here, though the Bread come down from heaven, they must eat the flesh and drink the blood, or they have no life in themselves - the full recognition of their own guilty state and death in sin, and of the work of grace by Him, in that He had met all God's claim as regards sin. We must know a Christ who has died and shed His blood, or there is no life in us, or to be had. Incarnation will not do, because we are sinners, and the claim of God as against sin is to be maintained in righteousness, and His grace fully known. The result is a heavenly place where He was before. The quickening power of the Son of God become Man, and the embracing His death as the way of life - these are the two great principles before us.

182 In chapter 7, the whole state of things, and the need of His death connected with it, made His manifestation to the world impossible then, and the Holy Ghost is given as an outflowing stream of blessing from the believer meanwhile. In chapters 8 and 9, as often remarked, we have His rejection as to word and work, and then the sheep.

It is to be noted that the life-giving resurrection power comes before the Messiahship and Headship of the Gentiles, in the testimony rendered at the end, and the Messiahship is His royalty, the Gentiles the glory of the Son of man. Only death then evidently had to come in. The whole Gospel thus assumes death, i.e., no spiritual life to be there, and more than that, in a very striking way in chapter 11, in saying, "I am the resurrection and the life." So, from the beginning, they had to be born anew (anothen). The Father raises up the dead and quickens them, the Son quickens whom He will. He comes to give life to the world, only He must die for this. He gives His sheep eternal life. He is the Resurrection and the Life. Yet responsibility, as in chapter 5, is fully maintained as to this, as the Law elaborately develops that principle. Chapter 12 gives, as we have seen, the Son of David and Son of man (for this death) and then, chapter 13, the place He takes on going on high, and the present consequence as having glorified God and finished the work He had given Him to do. From the end of chapter 20, it is after His return. Only in chapter 14 we have both what He was personally on earth, what the disciples really had in having Him, and, secondly, what they would have in consequence of His obtaining the Spirit for them from the Father. All as Man here. Chapter 15 what He was dispensationally on earth (Israel set aside); but from the end of chapter 15, and in chapter 16, the Comforter sent by Him from on high, when exalted, and so here on earth. Chapter 17, the whole status of the disciples as replacing Him on the earth, and finally with Him, and then displayed in glory when He is. It is remarkable, though long ago remarked, how John is occupied with manifestation on earth.

183 Note, in chapter 5, the Spirit begins with the incapacity of man, and in Israel, and rises to the life-giving power of the Son, and judicial authority of the Son of man. In chapter 6 He begins with Jehovah satisfying the poor with bread, and descends to the dying Saviour come down from heaven, and His blood shed, but it is a descent which rises in divine love. In chapter 16, the Holy Ghost convinces the world of sin, not of sins, quod nota.

A word as to the order of chapter 1: we have what Christ is, and what man is; what Christ is abstractedly in Himself, and the effect when this is placed before man. Then, before we have Christ historically as a Source of grace, we find man in a state in which he is of God - born of God - now capable of knowing Him (and note the being born and receiving Christ, or believing in His Name, is all one, because it is by the Word through the power of the Holy Ghost, "Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth"). Then the source of fulness for those born historically - the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth, and of His fulness have all we received. Next, the Object - God revealed by the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father. Collaterally with this, we have the title to take the place of sons, yet He, the only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father. Yet thus, as sons, learning there what the love is, and by His being in us. In chapter 17, we take His place, but we learn what our Father is, and what a Son in His bosom is, in Christ. Thus the Law deals with the responsibility - not with receiving; it is not a Person in whom fulness is. Grace and truth are come by Jesus Christ. But the full responsibility is in verses 4 and 5, 6 and 7.

184 What I have remarked as to God connected with responsibility, and Father and Son when grace is unfolded in the body of the Gospel is found even the first chapter of it, in the introduction. You have God and Light first, as in verse 8, and then from verse 14 actually exercised in grace. His glory is then "As of an only begotten with a father," and this is more fully drawn out in verses 17, 18. Then, when no man had seen God at any time, the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. This indeed lays the foundation of the whole matter. This gives fulness and importance to the distinction, as characterising the Gospel. Note that verse 14 is the source of grace; in verses 17, 18, He is the Revealer and Object, as the Father by Him.

The ground of God's first relationship with man was innocence; the next, sin, in which He has developed all His attributes, and glorified Himself in grace and divine righteousness. Hence it leads to what is heavenly, because it displays God as He is there. In the new heavens and earth, His relationship will not be innocence, nor of course sin, but righteousness. This is through Christ, the last Adam. It is secured in righteousness which is past evil and all its power, but in those who have the divine quality of the knowledge of good and evil. This it is that is marked in John 1, "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." Without that, God could not have set it on and been in relationship with it on the ground of righteousness; but thus He is.

I return to chapter 4. False systems rejected, traditional blessing of no avail, true system left (ground of pride, not truth to conscience - Christ in grace, the test of this). But more, the flesh cannot receive what is spiritual. Then we get God giving, the Father seeking, and man, as often remarked, reached by conscience. But then I had noticed often that "God" is used in John in connection with responsibility, "the Father and the Son" in connection with grace. This must be so far modified as to be confined to the latter applying to the positive and personal objects of grace. We have God's character as Love. God so loved the world - not relationship, save to the Son Himself. It could not be said, "The Father loved the world," for it would be relationship, and yet the world not in it but the contrary, for it rejected the Son. God here is God, as such, in His character and nature. How exquisitely beautiful to see the Lord, rejected by Judaea to whom He came so far, in the measured grace of promise, only giving occasion, in the deep sorrow of His own heart, to the full, divine outgoing of love in itself, and service in the gift and power of eternal life, and His heart, refreshed by the fruits in a poor Samaritan sinner, was to open out on the whole scene of blessing, fields white for harvest, just when He was rejected! How truly He is Man here, yet God to give God's gifts, and to act in love with God's love! And how, if we carry with us this grace, we constantly find this fulfilled with us too!

185 There is a point of much interest, not heretofore noticed, in John 4. The Lord says, "Salvation is of the Jews," yet He leaves Judaea, really driven out by the jealousy of the Pharisees. He abandons God's own institutions, the place in which covenant and law and promises were found (Himself as Minister of the circumcision) and is Himself, as the humiliated Son of God, God manifested in the lowliness of flesh, the Giver and Gift of all blessing, in the power of the Holy Ghost. It is a present thing. Jerusalem and Samaria became alike here. Jacob's well, all traditional descended blessing is nothing; God gives the well of water. He is personally face to face with the sinner to communicate life in power, only to give understanding the conscience must be reached. But though it be in the lowest form of revelation, still He is there, the then present thing, bringing it in His own Person: "I that speak unto thee am he." All our service depends on what we bring; all its true power, that is. And even those farthest from the true institutions of God are nearer the truth than where these are taken as matter of boast. Samaritans, not Jews, call Christ the Saviour of the World. Our emptiness is the place of truth. But what a blessing it is that present power in life is there, when false pretentions on one side, and iniquity and enmity to Christ where God's institutions and promises are, so that hypocrisy makes the heart sick, and throws the true and anxious but unsettled heart into doubt about everything! The Father is seeking, to worship Him. And here it is when those who possess the institutions and promises, the root and fatness of the olive tree, are rejecting the counsel of God against themselves, the heart of the Saviour finds its relief and joy - "meat to eat" even His disciples (as still looking to blessing in the place of promise) knew not of, and "the fields white to harvest." How blessed it is to see, when Jesus was rejected as Messiah, and weary as Man, the former only drives Him into His own absolute fulness in grace, coming out (never weary in service) pure from all inferior elements in its own pureness, and absolute grace bringing in the power of a new life to God! In chapter 3,

You must be born again." Here "The Gift of God." How blessed to see the rest of His heart in the fruit of the actings of His own grace! For that the fields were white for harvest though Israel knew Him not. But no moment could be more solemn than that when God thus (come in goodness) forsook His own institutions, the place where He said salvation was. All was given up, as to man, but only to bring in the power of eternal life in the free gift of God. In this aspect the chapter is one of the deepest import.

186 All divinely founded institutions in connection with man of which Christ could say, "Salvation is of the Jews" - all tradition referred by man to a supposed source of descended blessing which guaranteed their position - "our father Jacob" - wholly set aside; future expectations set aside by a present living Saviour. We may add responsibility, ending in judgment superseded by present gift and salvation - eternal life.

Note in John 6 we have incarnation, death, and ascension to come. But if it be applied to the Lord's supper, we are as much called upon to eat Christ living in incarnation, as we are Christ dying and shedding His blood on the Cross. The only thing we are not called upon to eat is Christ as He is now - the only way they would make us do it as it is now taught. And in truth it is a Christ humbled and dying on which the soul feeds. We shall be like Him as He is, and are transformed into His image by the Spirit in contemplating Him; but feeding on a glorious Christ is wholly unscriptural.

I do not think in John 6: 51, that phage (shall have eaten) is what is past, and ho trogon (he that eats), verse 54, continuous; one is fact without time, the other is character - he who eats. But the latter does suppose it is not done once for all, or it would be, I suppose, ho phagon.

187 I have long ago remarked that the Spirit and the flesh, the Son and the devil, and the Father and the world are in opposition in Scripture, but the opposition between the Father and the world is much more developed than I had remarked. It is stated in 1 John 2, but in chapters 14, 15, 16 and 17 of the Gospel, it will be found brought out in very various aspects. One sees a complete world, so to speak, a stream of blessing flowing down of which the Father is the Source and Spring - a system of positive blessing in relationship with Him, and taking its character from its Source, the whole of which is stamped with that character, of which Christ, as Son, is the immediate Revelation and Centre, which then takes in the saints brought in, in and with Him, and into a whole scene of blessing in the light of the Father's countenance. In these Christ secures us now by the Holy Father's keeping. The world is looked at as a system wholly outside it, having no part in it, distinct, and indeed opposed, being not of the Father. The personal glory connected with this Christ had before the world was. He came into it from the Father, was sent into it, and so are we as of the Father by Him, being not of it as He was not of it. This world is what is grown up from the fall of the first Adam - a system thus connected with man (fallen) but not of God at all, though He may overrule it. But then the Father introduces an entirely new thing by the Son, in connection with a subsistence and a glory which existed before the world ever was. He has this here as Son, but He is thus also, as Man, to set it up - a Second Adam. These chapters should be more studied in this view.

Although not that which is first put forth, on the contrary the solemn closing ground, yet, as opening out the condition of saints, I would refer to what is said at the end of chapter 17, "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee; but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared," etc. Now here the world is put in direct breach with Jesus. He had displayed the Father in the world - they had seen and hated both Him and the Father, thus not really knowing one or the other, yet what they were was manifested, and this they hated. But Christ (the Son) was loved before the foundation of the world. The Father's delight was fully and completely in Him before the world was. Hence, the world having rejected Him, and seen no beauty in Him, the Father and the world were in complete opposition. Christ is taken out of it, and set at God's right hand in the glory He had with Him before the world was; this, on two grounds - His title as Son, and His work. Thus a completely distinct scene is for us, in contrast with the world. We are associated with Him who was the Father's delight before ever the world existed, and is returned into it as Man, so as to bring us into it. Then Christ declares the Name of the Father - puts us into the relationship in which He is as Son - gives us the words the Father gave Him when down here, i.e., all the communications which filled up in blessing and enjoyment the measure of the relationship down here. Thus the joy is full, Christ's joy fulfilled in ourselves. Then the testimony is given. We, thus associated with Him in the Father's delights, are not of the world as He Himself is not of the world. We belong to the other system with the Father, in the Son whom the world has rejected, but who was loved before the world was. We are chosen out of the world, too. Such is our position in the world, and as absolutely not of it, but of the other system of the Son's relationship to the Father who delights in Him. Thus we are sent into it as He was sent into it - the best proof of our not being of it. But how brought practically into a condition capable of this? First, we are to be sanctified by the truth. The Father's word is the judgment of everything that is according to His mind - is the expression of it. All things are put in their true light by it in reference to what He is. But this is not all. Christ has set Himself apart - the Man, as we have seen, exalted into glory which, as Son, He had with the Father before the world was, and this becomes, in its communication, the truth to us. We get not only the truth by the Word, so that all is estimated rightly, but the positive excellency, the affections engaged in all that tells this truth. Christ has sanctified Himself that we may be sanctified through the truth. The Spirit takes these things and shows them to us, and we are in heart associated with those things in which the Father delights, and which are indeed ours, and thus are separated from the world. The bearing of the chapter will thus be clear, however imperfect the expression of it may be.

189 It is remarkable how the Gospel of John refers entirely to earth - Christ on earth, and the saints on earth. It is the Life and Son of God come down here, not the children of the first Adam going up to heaven; and nothing of the Church, while the Jews are wholly set aside; only it is the "Son of man who is in heaven" - the divine life and nature upon earth. The exceptions only confirm the general view. In chapter 3, He alludes to heavenly things - in chapter 6, to the possibility of His ascending with "what and if" - in chapter 13, it is laid down prospectively as the ground and objective measure of washing. The disciples are comforted with it prospectively, chapter 14, and Himself is to be glorified, chapter 17; so chapter 12, and to Mary Magdalene, who is to tell that He is ascending. But all these are to give a character to those on earth, a heavenly character like the Son of man who is in heaven. Even these takings of the Lord up to heaven are used to bring out in them the heavenly thing upon earth. This is beautiful. It is a glorious thing that Adam's children, who belong creatively to earth, should be taken up to heaven, and have their reward there. It is another thing that the eternal life that was with the Father, the Word made flesh, should be displayed in a Man (as an only begotten with a father) and we now, having this life, be so set to display it on earth, being united to Him who is in heaven, quickened with His life, as He on earth was perfectly associated in heaven. Hence the great aim of the close of the Gospel is to place us in the same place as Himself on earth, not to take us out of it. When He comes again, of course this will be the ultimate result, and that He tells them. Hence too, all the close of the Gospel is occupied with showing them that they belong to another system which is not the world, but the Father's, and they are sent into the world as He was, as from that home to bear its character in that relationship, and if He be gone there as Man, it is that having thus set Himself apart as the heavenly Man, we should be found, after Him, as heavenly men upon the earth.

Note too, in Ephesians 1: 21, in connection with what I have remarked as to our association with the Father in a system entirely without the world, in association with Christ, loved before its foundation, not of the world as He is not of the world, and sent into it as He was, brought out in chapter 17, and indeed chapters 14-17, and the Epistle, that as that was for the individuals, so here Christ is raised above all the created powers, not only now but in the whole hierarchy in the world to come, and there it is the Church is united to Him.

190 In John 1 we have already Christ before the foundation of the world (compare what is said of John 17, and Ephesians 1 and 2). The other Gospels give the proving of Adam, or the Jews, by the coming of Christ; not so John - the Jews are treated as reprobates in starting. He came into the world and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own and His own received Him not, but He had been in the beginning before ever the world was, and created it. But we do not receive life from man, or what is born in the world, but of God. And then the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we have received of His fulness, i.e., of Him who was before the worlds. It connects us with what was before the worlds - that eternal life which was with the Father.

The connection, John speaks of, with the Father and which we have seen connects itself with our having a life which, in the Person of Christ, existed before the world was, runs on into the principle of light also. The living God is Light. Of Christ it is said, "In him was life" - in that Word who was in the beginning, and who made the worlds - "And the life was the light of men." As man was made in the image of God after His likeness, so Christ was in nature the Light of men (not of angels as such) He is the Image of the invisible God. But we are born of God, and "He that hath the Son hath life," God having given to us eternal life - quite a different thing from simply being immortal. It is the possession of that divine life which, in Christ, never had a beginning, that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested to us, and of which, in its moral qualities, it is said, "Which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light now shineth." Hence it is said of us, "Ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord." But in us this partaking of the divine life, or nature, is dependent as it is derivative. And though it is a nature which, in se, does not sin and delights in God, as the eye in light, yet we have to walk in the light. We have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ in that life which is from Them (and that through the Holy Ghost) but then "God is Light," and fellowship with Him out of the light is impossible. It is not 'If we walk according to the light' - that is the practical consequence in this world, even when we are not directly enjoying communion, but we walk in the light when we walk with God fully revealed to soul and conscience. It is a real thing in life - we walk, but more than walking according to light. It is a walking in the presence of a fully revealed God, the conscience, and spiritual judgment, and apprehension being in the light as He is - what God is, perfectly seen, and everything by it, and all clear as it is in light and for the soul. If we walk thus with God inwardly, all is judged inwardly, and our life is only the expression of the working of God in power in the life which we have of Him, of Christ in us (wisdom and power). Then temptations lose their force as snares or attractions, because all is judged in the light and according to it, i.e., the communications of the divine nature in us with God Himself as Light, and Object of the affections, Centre of them - as of the city, the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the Light thereof - the phronema (mind) of the Spirit is the active element in us, and this is the true principle of obedience, the divine will being added, and thence a law of liberty. This is the reason why the flesh is not found in the Christian experiences of Philippians. "To me to live is Christ." Temptations to go through are found, i.e., hostile difficulties, but not temptations to enter into.

191 There are still one or two points I would remark in chapter 1. First, this abstract part is light, and while such in se is thus for condemnation by opposition of nature, and speaks of God and light, whereas, verse 14, His actual coming in grace in flesh is grace. Hence we have the Father, and Christ as Son; as we have seen heretofore in chapters 8, 9 and 10, so chapters 3: 19 and 17: 3, and all through, as often noticed. But further, we must look at what Christ was thus abstractly as His divine place no doubt, but also as the Source of blessing for us, when grace does work. He was not only God, so that we know God, but He was with God (pros ton Theon). All He was, a distinct Person, He was towards God. This is an all-important truth, because when incarnate and returned into glory this does not cease, ze to theo (He liveth unto God) here not pros (with) - that "was" (en) in His nature - here the object and end of life, as such, in its purpose, as well as its character; ze (liveth) is the activity of what was, and now in manhood.

Then downwards He is the Light of men specifically and specially. Both thus are true when by grace He is our Life; only we cannot say esmen pros (we are with), but zomen to (we live to) we can; and hence, as is Philippians 2: 15, 16, the same place comes out for us. Then we have life, object, reception from His fulness, and privilege of taking the relationship in which He stands. The first nature is ignorance or opposition; hence a new one in receiving Christ, but this in relationship with the Father. Note, too, light is of "every man," reception "as many as," and they "born of God," not of man's will. Truth is more than light, quod nota. Light is simply that which God is in His nature, which, manifesting everything, is avoided by him who does evil, though and because it is perfect in itself. But truth cannot be separated from grace; it is the entering in of grace, so as to show what everything is indeed, but as grace because it reveals God in goodness, or it would not be the truth. Light does not say "the Father and the Son"; it just shows good and evil with divine authority, but the great truth is, "The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour." No doubt it tells us the truth about our sins, but it tells it me in grace by Jesus coming into the world about them, by the presence of Jesus in grace. It reveals the Father sending the Son in grace, and the blessed perfectness of Jesus in grace here, though our state therewith, but in goodness and attractive power towards us, whatever the result. It does not require - that Law did, which therefore was not truth. It tells, and cannot tell, with Christ in the world, without telling of grace, though, as I said, it tells us the truth about ourselves. If the grace were not there, the truth would not. Blessed truth!

192 I have long remarked that "From the beginning" in 1 John 1, means from the beginning of Christ's path down here. But the importance of this is very great. It is the true beginning, not, I need say, of that which has none, nor, what is important to notice, of the provisional and first presented scheme of creation (though what abides was first in purpose) as to that. In the beginning "was" and then came Creation; this is the historical statement of the Gospel, before declaring what the Word, the Creator, was in Himself, and as made flesh. But here the history, before speaking of the communicated effects in us, takes up exactly what the Gospel has brought out - the manifestation, the first manifestation, of God Himself, of a divine Person as the Beginning and to be the Centre of all that is eternal. God manifest in the flesh then first "was." Jehovah had given a Law, and sent Prophets in connection with the responsibility of man, but now the Son of God appeared. God was manifested, and, as to the Person of Christ, not our connection with Him, the foundation of the new, first purposed glory and system was manifested and began. Christ's Person - His work gives us a portion with Him - was the beginning of the whole system of the revelation of God. God had acted; He was a Creator. God had spoken, and made man a creature responsible; but God, such as He was before there was a creation, or a morality founded on a creature's relationship, was now first manifested. This was the true beginning. Our having part in it was not the beginning - that was by redemption and Christ's work as to righteousness; but it was the beginning of that manifestation of God in the Person of Christ, in which we have part, in its full display in glory, by redemption.

193 It is worthy of remark that 1 John 1 is wholly objective. Further in the Epistle he speaks of life communicated, but he begins with life manifested, and what communion is with, not how. There must be life, and the Holy Ghost, but that is not touched on here. This particularly in the first part; but even in the second, we are in light, not "light in the Lord." Nor is what follows properly subjective, but the discussion of what concerns communion.

Christ is not only eternal life but the Word of Life. All He said was the expression of what He was (John 8). Then it is communicated as a seed of life, spiritually received by faith. We have fellowship in life with the Father and with the Son. Those who had known Him, as the clay on the eyes of the blind man, knowing Him thus personally revealed by the Holy Ghost as the Sent One, became by the Word the instrument of bringing others in. So onward by the Word; we are formed by the Word after Christ; sanctified by the Word; and Christ has now sanctified Himself in heavenly glory, that we might be sanctified by the truth. Now Christ was this beginning of manifestation of God, and of all His counsels as to the new but really oldest thing (for here the world is only by the bye) which He was setting up. His Person was the power and substance of it all, for us, however, it is true, becoming true in us, as in Him, consequent on redemption. It is old as the beginning in Him of the manifestation of God when He was incarnate - new, as introducing it into us by redemption. Then he who keeps His word, i.e., the spring of all his thoughts and inward life is the Word in which all the form and parts and reality of this life in Christ are found, in him the love of God is perfected - the flesh has no part in this, but it is practically out of sight and movement when the Word is kept, and thus the whole being of the believer is in relationship with God in love, and God who is Love being really what is thus communicated, and, there being nought distracting in the mind, the man being morally this, i.e., the Word formed in Him, God's love is revealed perfectly in him. The divine nature communicated enjoys the full perfection of the love which has communicated it, and which has no hindrance in, nay, cannot but reveal itself to, the nature which flows from and is the communication of itself, and able to enjoy, flowing without hindrance when the Word, which revealed it, is kept. The snare of mysticism, which has no place here, is carefully guarded against in 1 John 4.

194 We may indeed, well note in 1 John 1 the exceeding blessedness of life being made an object, so that it should be presented to us in all its source, power, and fulness - that eternal life which was with the Father, and has been manifested to us. Yet it is ours; hence, what qualification (for the Holy Ghost becomes power - a subject not introduced here, where all is treated as life - He has given us of His Spirit) what qualification for communion! And how wonderfully and essentially intimate that communion must be! It is that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested to us, and becomes our life. "He that hath the Son, hath life." Yet it is presented to us in its own perfectness and fulness, objectively in Christ, so that we lose nothing of all its perfect fulness; and note herewith that, in virtue of this, we have a revelation of the Father in the Son livingly, and the Son known in life, and the Father in and by Him. So we have fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ through Him who, in the power of life, reveals the Father, and in whom, as the Object of the Father's delight, we have communion with the Father's thoughts, as with the Son's as so manifesting the Father. All flows from life being presented to us objectively in the Person of the Son.

As to this point - that life is objectively before us in Christ - it is of the highest interest; not only we have it in all its perfectness and proper power, but "As the Father hath life in himself, so he hath given to the Son" as down here "to have life in himself." That eternal life which was manifested, was so in the Person of the Son. God hath given to us eternal life, and that life is in the Son. "He that hath the Son hath life." Hence, in knowing Him, and receiving Him as life, we receive the Son, and in the Son the Father; and this being in a life which has the nature and character of Christ, we have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. The power may be, and is, of the Holy Ghost, but the nature of it is found here. The whole of it lies in seeing Christ as objective Life, and yet our life.

195 There are three points in 1 John 1, but the first is general as to the witness of what God is by the revelation of Him, and communion we have in Christ - "If we say we have fellowship with Him"; "If we say we have no sin"; "If we say we have not sinned." In the first case, "We lie and do not the truth." In the second, "We deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." In the third, "We make God a liar, and His word is not in us." In the first, there is contradiction between our walk and our profession. God being Light, the pretension to communion with Him and a walk in darkness is a practical lie. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves"; it is a judgment we pass falsely on ourselves, self-deceived, and the truth is not in us. Were the power of the truth in us, we should recognise the true character of the principle of darkness in the flesh. The power of life and truth and light are not in us. "If we say we have not sinned," actually "we make God a liar," for He has said we have; and His word, in which He has declared it, is not in us, though we may pretend to receive it outwardly. On the other hand, "If we walk in the light" - the Christian standing - the other parts of that standing are then, "Fellowship together" and "The blood of Jesus cleansing from all sin," so that "In the light as God is in the light," we are pure, though we cannot say we have no sin. We can say that we are cleansed by blood as in the light. And if we confess our sins, He forgives them, and cleanses from unrighteousness (actual sin) though we cannot say we have not committed any. It is the abstract truth, power and position. Verse 6 answers to verse 3, in connection with the revelation of what God is; verse 8 to 7 and verse 10 to 9.

I do not know whether I have clearly pointed out the completeness of the introduction of the Epistle, chapter 1: 1-2: 11. We have first the full blessing of communion with the Father and the Son in life, 'That our joy may be full.' Next, the true character of this communion flowing from the nature of God, and the means and their completeness, which makes it possible for a sinner. Thirdly, the means of its practical restoration, if interrupted by our fault - means, whose employ is founded on righteousness (or the righteous One) before God, and propitiation made for us. In the fourth place, there is the practical character and evidence of the life in us, by commandment, which while maintaining authority (which must be to have what is right, because it is right) yet is perfect liberty, because the thing commanded is true in us as well as in Christ by the communication of life, and of the Holy Ghost as its power and consciousness in communion. The two parts of the evidence are obedience to God's will and love to the brethren. Then the Apostle gives his motive for writing, and proceeds to unfold from chapter 2: 28, the whole condition and character of this life going on through the nature we have received as born of God, and the presence of the Holy Ghost, to dwelling in God and God in us, and the consciousness of it, and the perfectness of love in our position in Christ and as Christ Himself before God. But this is not my subject here.

196 Note the connection in 1 John 3; first, as often remarked, Christ is seen as one Person - God and eternal life, manifested in the Word made flesh. Hence He appears in chapter 2: 28, i.e., is Man (in glory); we are born of Him, verse 29, and so He is God and we sons of God. And as He as Man in the world was not known, as the world did not discern He was the Son, "knew him not," so it does not know us who are sons (children) also. That we are, and here we are in His place in relationship with God as Father, and He being our life we are so completely associated with Him, that we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Thus we are fully like and as Christ, He being our Life, in the presence of God, with the Father, in the house, entered with the Son into the excellent glory. This grace has called us to, as alive in and by the Second Adam, the Son of God, as having eternal life, our calling as associated with Him our life.

What I would now note is that we see how the Apostle turns to the other side of man's position - his responsibility as child of Adam, having shown his place as child of God. "He that hath this hope in Christ," i.e., of being like Him, "purifies himself as he is pure." But there is no limit between this and lawlessness. If he is not in the divine calling to glory of the Second Adam, he is in the absolute selfwill and lawlessness of the first. It is not, of course, transgression of law, but a difference of nature, the being born of God. And this difference enters into the whole force of the passage, for law proves the old man to see whether it is good. This contrasts divine life in the Second Adam - our being really born of God, and Christ Himself our life - with those, as to their nature, the children of the devil. Making an applied rule the question, destroys the whole force of the argument and teaching. The traits of the two families are brought out, not transgression.

197 All hangs here, in John, on Christ's being eternal life, here first manifested, then communicated - He who is, and is not here separated in thought from God, and yet who is our life so that we are associated with Him in unity of place and nature - "True in him and in you"; just as death put away the old thing, and resurrection brought us into acceptance in the Beloved, in the new estate, so we are dead to the old thing and alive according to the new. The difference between Romans and 1 John 3: 9, is that as Romans brings in man as a sinner, it leads him up to the point of death to that, and life to God through Jesus, whilst John speaks of the Life come down from God in its nature becoming our life, and John knows nothing but that as life in one born of God, though he well knows we cannot say we have no sin.

But the character of divine righteousness is very distinct and definite, if we think of Christ. If I keep the law, I fulfil the obligation of a man. But Christ's work, though He did that, was a very different thing. He by His work on the Cross glorified God, which brought Him as Man into God's glory. All that God was, Righteousness, Love, His truth, His majesty wholly compassed by sin (really to be glorified) was perfectly glorified on the Cross. Otherwise, if justice had its way, no love; if forgiveness simply, no justice, but, sin or not, all alike. This was not God - but through the Cross, Christ offering Himself through the eternal Spirit, God was perfectly glorified in the place of sin - what God was. Hence it was divine righteousness, keeping the Law, made good man's place; the work on the Cross made good God's. Hence He enters into the divine glory, and we rejoice in the hope of it. But this is divine righteousness. The difference is very simple. Righteousness is consistency with the relationship in which we stand, and practically, we may say, consistency with the obligation in which we stand to God. Only that in God consequently it has the character of His judging according to this. Now keeping the Law would be man's righteousness, because the Law is the perfect measure of the obligations of man in the relationship in which man stands to God, and, we may add, to his neighbour, as placed in this relationship by God. Christ's keeping the Law would fulfil this obligation - and no more, or it would not be obligation or righteousness; but in offering Himself through the eternal Spirit without spot to God, and dying on the Cross, He glorified all that God is in Himself, His own nature - hence this accepted of God was divine righteousness. Accomplishment of the Law could be no more than a justly measured obligation, measured by the relationship - if it were more, it were not righteousness in it. It is human righteousness consequently. But glorifying what God is is not human righteousness - it is, as to its measure and ground, evidently divine - the righteousness is shown in the conferring of divine glory, according to John 13-17.

198 Note also the connection of 1 John 3: 5, 6, "In him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not." No doubt the whole passage depends on life being Christ, as life in us, on which is founded the assertion, "He cannot sin," for, our nature being of the seed of God, that is impossible; yet Christ is objectively considered here too, and as in Him is no sin, he who abides in Him, whose life, affections, thoughts, dependence, have their existence by and from Him, does nor sin. There is the living abiding in Him, as well as His being our life, or being born of God, in this passage.

Although I have noticed the principle elsewhere, I remark here that though in 1 John 4: 9-19, the Spirit of God shows that the soul looks to the action of God in love to know it, not in us, yet in the end it turns back fully to the way in which we become livingly Christ, so to speak. As He is - we have had identity of relationship through communication of life, and, in result, our being like Him when He appears, declaring we shall see Him "as he is." So here we are "as he is," in this world, founded on the same truth, only known to and realised by the soul now.

199 Though it is not a new apprehension, yet it is worthy of all note - what a place of blessing the comparison of 1 John 4: 12, and John 1: 18! How the revelation of God by the Son, as in the bosom of the Father, is known and realised by His dwelling in us, in connection with a communicated life - with His being our Life (compare 1 John 1: 1, 2, and chap. 2: 8), so that we possess, live in, are acquainted with, enjoy, draw from, and abide in, so that it is the atmosphere of our moral existence, all that God is revealed to be as the Son knows Him, as dwelling in His bosom! (See, too, the effect in John 17: 26.) But what a blessing is this! And how it makes one know what the blessedness of heaven is! For what can be more perfect or sweet, or more absolute, than the knowledge of the Father by the Son as in His Father? 1 John 4: 12 shows it to be in connection with the possession of the very nature of God Himself. "If we love one another, God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us." This love has been manifested to us in Christ (see verse 10, and chap. 3: 16); but it dwells in us, i.e., God who is Love. And it is perfected in us. Remark here that we have "perfected in us," of which I now speak, and "with us," in verse 17, where our position before God is spoken of in connection with the day of judgment, that, through this union with Christ, "as he is, so are we in this world."

But I return to the great principle flowing from the comparison of John 1: 18, with this 1 John 4: 12 - that the perfection manifested in Christ is now our portion through the dwelling of God in us, as partakers of His nature, and so he says, "of his Spirit," not "his Spirit" here. It is a wonderful place, and shows, as I have said, what our heavenly joy is.

Remark too the connection between 1 John 4: 17: "as he is, so are we" as to our position, and chapter 3: 2: "when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." In the latter, He appears, and we are "like him"; in the former, we have boldness, because we are "as he is."

But as we have already seen in verse 12 - how the Epistle of John develops the life in us, of which the perfection was displayed in Jesus! Chapter 3: 16 has struck me in the same sense. How wonderfully does it set us (of course atonement is out of question here) in the same place as Christ, i.e., the very same life unfolds itself in us as did in Him in all its perfection! It displays itself in us in exactly the same traits, qualities, actings, feelings, motives, as in Him, even as giving Himself. He laid down His life for us - well then, we ought to lay down our lives too! This is unspeakably blessed. What a fund of capacity it gives us (through grace) of enjoying Christ who is all this in its perfection! And what a place down here! What a hope - when we see Him as He is! This is an unspeakable source of joy, a character and capacity of joy, which is most blessed and intimate. Nor is this left out in the passage in chapter 4: 17, "as he is," even "in this world." It is before, but it is not simply forensic, as men speak, but we have part in the perfectness of Christ, forensically, because we share His life in fact. It is not this life in us which is the perfectness, but this life in us is the way that we have to say to Him, in whose perfectness we stand before God. Paul tells the same truth in the way in which truth was committed to him, through the power of the Holy Ghost, as He gave the forensic place for it (and so we need it to be freed from law) and then shows its connection with life, as in Romans 6, and end of Galatians 2. He says, "Therefore I endure all things for the elects' sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." Christ could say that, of course, in a sense in which Paul could not, but, as regards the working of the same love, it is the same truth as John gives to us. To him I return, for this communion of life gives us a wonderful nearness, and power of enjoyment.

200 Note as to dwelling in God and God in us, we have it presented in a triple way, and inverse order. First, when the great truth of God's dwelling in us is presented, of which the consequence is that we dwell in Him; thus, "Hereby we know that he abides in us by the Spirit which he has given to us," and again, "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwells in him and he in God." The latter being the consequence of the former. Now the consequence of God dwelling in us is that we dwell in Him. He is our dwelling place, in heart, we are sheltered, protected, at home in God. We abide there as our hiding place and perfect joy. But thus we realise the spirit and power of that in which we dwell, and this realisation gives an active, living character to the dwelling of God in us, so that we are said to dwell in Him first in this case, and He in us because this last is in power and grace. Hence it is said: "If we love one another, God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us." "Hereby we know that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit," and "He who dwells in love dwells in God and God in him." He abides in this power and source of joy and blessing, and thus the power and blessing of Him in whom he dwells is reproduced in him. We have already remarked the astonishing power and reality of this truth, from the comparison of 1 John 4: 12 with John 1: 18. The dwelling of God in us being an answer to the difficulty of having never seen God, as to His manifestation in the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, i.e., in Him in whom the whole love of the Father centres in the most intimate nearness. We may add chapter 2: 5, where observing His word, His love is perfected in us, and thus "we know" we are in Him. The fruit, by His dwelling in us in power and grace, is not followed out, but the responsibility of walking as He walked, for it is specially connected with Christ here, whose Person is identified with God in this Epistle, as manifested in Him; compare chapter 5: 20.

201 Thus, in chapter 4, we have first God - His love manifested for life and propitiation; then His dwelling in us and so we in Him; and thirdly, love perfected with us in placing us as Christ before God, while in the world. As to what we are, there is first nature - we love, therefore are born of God, and know God; next, God's dwelling in power, to fill, quicken, and animate this nature.

There are also one or two points to be noticed in 1 John 5, besides those already seen. We have the Spirit, the water, and the blood, agreeing in the witness, purifying, expiation are come, through the death of Christ to all association with man alive in Adam, and the Spirit too. He witnesses, the water purification by death also, and blood cleansing the conscience by blood. Death is sealed, even in grace, on the first man. Yet it is grace. God has not mended or reformed man in the first Adam - there is death to that - but the witness is that He gives eternal life. It is not derived from the first Adam; the way of having it is by death to that, not by Law - that is no wonder. But grace does not act in leading on what was in man; it acts by death on it and for it. God has given, not wrought in what man had. What He has given is eternal life - new, divine life to be enjoyed for ever with Him. What God has given must be blessing with Him, and it is for ever, but it is not life given to men in man - a life to the fallen Adam in himself This life is in the Son, not in the man who receives it but in the Son. But this puts him in the relationship of the Son, and his life is in Him. The believer has it, but has it in the Son, not an independent eternal life in himself; hence, "He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." Thus, as at the beginning, it is the eternal life, which was with the Father, manifested and communicated, true in Him and in us now; and then, when He shall appear we are to be like Him. How simply Scripture teaches it! But what a wondrous place!

202 Note further in 1 John 1, there is more, as regards fellowship, than the fact of life suited as being from Christ, to give us capacity for fellowship. That eternal life was WITH the Father, as it is said in the Gospel, the Word was WITH God, i.e., we have the Son as Life, personally distinct from the Father. It is that which was with (pros) the Father, which has been manifested. The Father has life in Himself, but here is Life WITH the Father. Hence, when manifested, we see the revelation of the Father in Him, according to that nature in which the Life was, and receiving of this Life we have communion with the Father with whom it was, and with the Son in whom it has been manifested (and so the Father livingly, and in Him; compare John 1 and 14). This is important here as regards the fellowship - it is in Christ manifested down here; nor can anything thus be more intimate than this communion.

Remark, too, that in John it is never, 'Hereby do we know that we believe' - it is not a subjective fact - "we know him," and "are in him."

I return to John 14: 15, 16; it is this - both refer to the point of His going away and their desire to keep Him. This is met by two considerations - If ye love Me do not desire Me to stay, but keep My commandments. Besides, I will, by and on going, pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, who shall abide for ever. Both refer to their anxiety that He should stay as proof of their love, and as taking their trouble away. If it was love, prove it is genuine; trouble would be relieved. Thus, chapter 13, "clean" for heaven - a "part with Me"; chapter 15, to produce fruit. But though on earth, chapter 15 very distinctly points to His removal.

Again, in chapter 13, we have evidently not position but fitness for position - hence, cleansing; in chapter 17, much more position - hence Christ's finished work, not washing, privilege we have. But then we have another enquiry, which suggests itself. We have keeping from evil in the world, and sanctifying by the Word according to the setting apart of Jesus (as exalted). And note, up to verse 24, chapter 17 refers wholly to their place in this world, only their setting apart in it was according to Jesus' setting apart to God - always true, but now fully made good as separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens. In chapter 13, Christ is viewed in His abstract perfection and conferred glory, as gone up, and the disciples washed for a part with Him; whereas, in chapter 17: 1-23, He puts them, representatively, in His place in the world, but in the place of sons with Him who, to Christ, was "Holy Father," with the words, and the Name given and revealed. Hence, first positively in the place in relationship, and then representatively, because verses 6-8 are what He had done. Hence, here note there is not the thought of washing when I look at "come from God" and "gone to God," and "a place with" Christ there. Even though I may not need for any particular thing the washing of the feet at a given moment, yet, as a principle, we need washing, and by Christ, to have a part with Him, for, in any case, there is that, save in the principle of the new nature, which needs washing, and, hence, it is feet not hands, walk not acts; while in chapter 17, it is being kept from evil such as there is in this world - a state of soul preserved according to God from the evils, opposite to His nature and will, around. Hence also progress on towards Christ, in knowledge of what He is by the truth, formed more into all the motives and character which the Word, and the Word revealing Christ, gives. I have a good conscience if I live up to the light which I have acquired in truth of heart, but I may yet need cleansing and purifying into the fulness of what He is, and what is in God's presence. I purify myself as He is pure. He washes my feet when I have picked up defilement, but I need purifying - Christ's washing - as a principle, continually; so we - "He that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, as he is pure," for "We shall see him as he is," i.e., according to chapter 13.

203 Note again, too, in chapter 17, the chapter passes really from verse 6 to verse 24, i.e., Christ passes into glory, and then takes us up there. It is never death or suffering on His part in John - He has glorified His Father, finished His work, and then goes into glory; but verses 6-24 is all on earth. Communications of grace have placed them in relationship with the Father - where He could, as in it - and then with the world in testimony, but explicitly as left on earth when He was gone. As to the unity, no doubt it is founded on divine life and the Holy Ghost, but still, I think, whatever universality in principle may exist, and I admit it, yet the literal application to the Apostles of the first, as contrasted with those through their word, gives, as noticed elsewhere, the thought of absolute unity of counsel, thought, purpose, plan, as living in that glory of the Father's name by the Son, apart from the whole thought of the world, though in it. Whereas, as to those brought in, it was only in derivative communion the unity was according to 1 John 1: 3. Verses 22, 23, bring all into the fully unity. It returns to the perfect unity of the Father and Son in themselves, not introcession, as it is called, one being in the other, to which communion through the connecting power answers in us, because in glory all saints will be one, according to perfect and like grace. This is in manifestation. The Father manifested in His perfect glory in the Son, and the Son in all the saints, so that they have evidently been loved kathos ('as' is not exactly the meaning) He has been loved. But this, of Christ's being in them, makes them perfect in one according to what He is displayed in, yet not apart from the Father being in Him, without which it would not be perfect. Hence we have first, the absolute and essential unity of the Father and the Son, which makes them absolutely One in all that they are essentially, and what flows from it; then mutuality of being in one another, the source and object of joy and blessing in an ineffable way; thirdly, display - the Father in the Son (compare beginning of chapter 14.) To the first answers the wholly absorbed mind and action of the disciples in the power of the Holy Ghost; to the second, that into which all were brought by the Holy Ghost; to the third, the perfect display of glory in all the saints - Christ (in whom the Father was) in them, and here no difference, all appear loved kathos (as) Christ was loved.

204 There is a point in John's Epistle which I had not noticed hitherto, and which is interesting; from the beginning of chapter 3 the Father is not mentioned - it is always God (theos). It is His nature as God. We are children of God (tekna theou). We may remark that in the first chapter, there are the two points; first - "Fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ," then it is stated that God is such, namely, "Light." The following part follows this. Chapter 2 gives relationship with the Father, and the acknowledgment of Him through the Son. Chapter 3 to the end, it is always God. But the way in which Love is introduced is remarkable. The whole doctrine of the Epistle flows from life. The not keeping of the commandments of God is a proof that we do not know Him, but if we do keep them, His love (which is His nature) is perfected in us, flows in us, in its own true nature and character, and in the consciousness of it. Thereon, God being thus known in the obedience of His loved creature, this love flowing forth is necessarily exercised towards the Author - he abides in the light for he walks in the nature of God. Hence, when developed, it is introduced as the fruit of the Father's love, through "We are children of God" (tekna, children, as begotten, not huioi, sons), i.e., born of Him so as to be partakers of His nature through the sovereign bestowal of the Father. Hence he speaks of the love bestowed upon us, because, though the communication of a nature, it is the sovereign love, and bestowal of grace. Hence the world does not know us having this nature, more than Christ who was the manifestation of it in life. Hence the likeness to Him is carried on to perfection. The characteristic development of this nature (manifested in its perfectness in Christ, chap. 3: 16) is then pursued, connected with faith in Christ, as the proof, and the presence of the Spirit as the power of it. The truth in acknowledging Christ is the grand test of false spirits. Hence, as it is the participation of the nature, God alone is spoken of in this part, save in the one testimony which brings men into it; chap. 4: 14.

205 We have seen how the love of God is introduced in chapter 2; His Being, as such, is introduced only in speaking of the love of God, the word of God, the will of God. So that it is a different thing from Himself in His nature, though the first is closely connected with it, so far as revealed in us, and communicated to us. Appearing before God is quite a different thing - there He is judicially viewed as righteous.

In 1 John 2 we have some interesting points not noted. The Father's things in contrast with the world, of which Satan is the prince - brings out the way in which we live in them. The things are 'of' the Father (all that is in the world is 'of the world - an immense system built up to develop and suit flesh, and that by Satan) - "We are of God." "Of God are ye" - partakers of the divine nature. All the Father's things are Christ's, and delivered to Him; they are His glory, and He the glory of them. This nature finds its natural objects in them; the Life is Christ, and the things the things of Christ, for all that the Father hath is His - we born of God, and He our Life. Then the Spirit takes the things and shows them to us. We have an unction from the Holy One and know all things. We do not then look on the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen. Our nature, we have our life and development in these things. The unction of the Holy One has introduced us into them all. Then we have to abide in what we heard from the beginning - no Church-teaching (the Church does not teach - it has heard and believed) no development of it. We are called upon to abide in what we heard from the beginning - but Christ is that. It is truth, but it is a Person who is that truth (as is confirmed further on). Now Christ is in Himself full perfection. The Church can develop nothing, unless it is going to make Christ more perfect. If it has anything else, it is apostate, in principle an Antichrist. But the moment it is Himself who is the whole of what is to be revealed, the very test of faithfulness and of the truth is 'abiding in what was from the beginning.' It is thus a Person, living Truth, holy Truth. The Truth makes us free, but the Son makes us free. There is a Person I am attached to, and who has an absolute claim and authority over me, and all truth becomes, not knowledge that puffs up but, part of my life, for Christ is my Life, and the Object of divine affections in me, because it is in Christ. Christ the Son, my Life! Christ, the Object of it, revealing, as Son, the Father! Yet all this is by the word, the truth, "that which we have heard" (the full consequence of the opposite is Jewish unbelief, and apostasy from Christianity, which is the form of Antichrist), if what we have heard from the beginning remain in us, we remain in the Son and in the Father.

206 But further, the anointing remains in us, and the teaching is personal and immediate. This characterises our state: "They shall be all taught of God." Having the Holy Ghost, we have the divine teaching which is the truth, and being in living power in the Holy Ghost who communicates the Truth (i.e., Christ the Son) we abide in Him. This connection of "Him" and "It" is made certain by what follows, for it goes on, "When he shall appear" - it is all one, if we read "it" or "Him" in verse 27, though I receive "Him" - and all this, remark, addressed to "Babes in Christ," verse 18; verse 28 begins with all Christians again.

207 I have remarked in 1 John 2: 28, 29, and chapter 3: 1-3, how the Lord, looked at as one Person, is spoken of as God and Man alternately; but note, what is so deeply interesting, that we are also entirely associated with Him - not then as one Person, of course, but as partakers of one nature with its consequences - we, as born of God, are sons (teknia, of the family). The world then does not know us, as it did not know Him. What we shall be has not appeared, but this identification of position is so clear that we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him - that cannot but be - "like him, for we shall see him as he is" (compare John 17: 24).

The only thing which we have to do with this world is the way (now I have the heavenly things, it is a wilderness) through and out of it. But there is more, and we say, Exodus 33, "Show me THY way, that I may know thee." "He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." It is the path of God in the desert. This also is Christ. He is the way to the Father - goes before His sheep - we have to walk as He walked. It is the word too which is the expression of His life. "Who art thou? Perfectly that which I have said unto thee." He is the Word, and His words express Himself. This must be if He is the Truth. See John 8: 25-27. Ten archen ho, ti kai lalo humin ("Altogether that which I also say to you"). This passage, I doubt not, means (the chapter, we may remember, speaks of the word of Christ as testimony - chapter 9, of His works) that He was in the principle of His nature, and altogether, that which He also said to them. They could in no other way really understand Him but by His word. He had said they were to believe that He was (ego eimi, I AM), that it was He. "Who art thou?" then say they. "In my nature and Being," answers Christ, "that which my discourse, my word expresses me to be." His word was the expression of Himself. This is the force of ten archen - more commonly with a negative, but also without it - that is, what a thing is altogether, or in its origin and nature. That was His present life and service. He had much to say and judge of them, but that was not His then service. But He that sent Him was true, and He then spoke in the world what He had heard from Him.

208 I think I see in 1 John 1 a difference between "seen" and "heard." All clearly goes together as to the Person of Christ known of the Apostle in the first verse, but then we have the manifestation of eternal life in the Person of Christ, seen by the Apostle, in verse 2. And then after saying that they declared both to them that they might have fellowship, he turns to what he had heard in the fifth verse. Christ was what He spoke, and spoke what He was; ten archen ho, ti kai lalo humin. So "Thy Word" (the Father's here) "is truth." "I sanctify myself that they might be sanctified by the truth." And thus while Christ is the living Word, the written Word gives us divinely the truth. How the written and living Word run into one another is noticed elsewhere, as in Hebrews 4. It is the same, but still in its expression here, the seen Word is more grace for affection (though we have that in the written Word, and so only now, but then, as looking to His Person, One with and the Revealer of the Father) the written Word here, exigence from the nature and authority of God. Hence in the latter case, we have "God," in the former, "Father" - a distinction noticed as running all through John. In Hebrews it is always God; hence the living Word in chapter 4 is scrutinising, not grace. The priesthood goes on with grace there. The Advocate is with the Father for communion, only we must remember that John always sees God and Christ, subsequently to this, in One Person, and passes from one to the other as the same One.

I return again to 1 John 3: 5, et seq: "In him is no sin" is not merely a dogma, important as it is as such, but the blessed rest of the new nature. All around I see and grieve at sin; I know it works in my flesh. My new nature, like Noah's dove, finds no rest, no real rest; in Him I do, "In him is no sin." God is holy, He judges and repels all sin. Angels, as creatures, have been kept; but how could my heart rest there? But Jesus has loved - loves - me, the Man of God's delight, of my delight, and He whom I have learned to love and look to. In Him my spirit can rest - He is sinless. What a comfort! Sins He was manifested on purpose to take away. Blessed be God, He has done it! These hateful things are gone; but in my new nature I can rest in, delight in His Person. Then see how our likeness of Christ is wrought out in full! There are three points of the divine life: practical righteousness like Christ's, love, and confidence through obedience. As to the first, "He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous." Love was known in that "He laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." He says He knew He was always heard. The Father did not leave Him alone, because He always did such works as pleased Him. So "Whatsoever we ask we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things which are pleasing in his sight." What a place we are set in! It is not 'He has no sin,' but "he cannot sin." It is all connected with the divine nature - Christ being our life, and the Holy Ghost with us and in us. Note the connection - "He was manifested to put away," that we might have done with this horrid thing, the fruits of anomia (lawlessness) working in lusts. But "In him sin is not." Then it is a consequence that he who abides in Him does not sin, for there is no such thing in Him. He who sins (is so characterised) has nothing to say to Him; for there is no sin in Him. But then it is a real nature - born of God, does not, cannot, sin but then it is maintained by abiding in . Him, the Source and Perfection of it. It is not independent competency even in that nature. It is obedient, dependent - was so in Christ - and has in us its rest and strength in Christ. What an infinite blessing!

Mark

J. N. Darby.

<45011E> 210 {file section a.}

(Notes and Comments Vol. 5.)

There seem to me three very sufficiently distinct parts in this Gospel, besides the history at the end. First, the general history of His actual ministry in Israel, making them responsible for the reception of Him; this goes down to the end of Mark 5. Secondly, the development of His rejection, on the one hand, by Israel, i.e., of His testimony, and the preparation of His disciples for another order of things, on the other, in which His death consequently and rising again are pressed upon them. This includes His transfiguration as a preparative testimony to them of glory to come. This part closes at Mark 10: 45. Then comes His actual presenting to Jerusalem as King, and His going through the judgment of God with the different classes there - Pharisees, Sadducees, etc. In this comes the warning to the disciples as to their consequent position in testimony as regards Jerusalem, only reaching to the Gentiles. This reaches to the end of Mark 13, His warning to His disciples closing it. Then comes the history of His final rejection, and resurrection, down to the end.

Note in the brief account in the beginning of this Gospel how the Lord is brought forward in the double character of His Person! First, He is Jehovah who comes withal after John; he goes before Him to prepare His way. That is the starting point of truth as to His Person; He who comes after John is Jehovah that was before him. Then we come to details but great truths. He baptises with the Holy Ghost - glorious individual competency to send Him, but for us through the fulfilled work, and glorifying of Man in His Person. But then He is baptised with the baptism of repentance - the first step of His people in the path of grace and truth, now sin was come in. Blessed truth! He, the Holy One, associates Himself with them in their path from the first, to them, needed step on. Then the heaven is opened to Him, the Holy Ghost comes down upon Him (sealed and anointed) and the Father's voice Himself owns Him as His beloved Son. Then He goes to be tempted of Satan, and to overcome for us. Wonderful scene, and wonderful grace! Other most important points I have already noticed, as the work through which we could have it - Christ in His own perfectness, Christ's having no object but being it Himself to heaven, we having it as in the place where heaven is opened to us. But the point I now desired to note was how the two were brought together. It is very striking, and how much flows out of it as to His place and ours! And how He entered into all our difficulties, perfect in all, and a Redeemer!

211 In Mark, after the Lord has taken His place, generally stated at the commencement, amongst men, i.e., the Remnant going right, and Man thus entered into the true full blessing with God, but here alone in His Person, heaven opened, Himself anointed with the Holy Ghost, owned Son with the Father, and the Trinity revealed, and then not the particular temptations but the desert place of Man here tempted by Satan (contrasted with Adam and Paradise) but angels serving Him from God, we have the various characters of His ministry - Mark 1: 14-20, the fact, the time is accomplished, the Gospel of the Kingdom preached, and disciples called of the poor of the flock to be fishers of men; verses 21-28, authority of word, and power over demons; verses 29-34, the fruits of sin, sicknesses of all kinds, as well as devils, disappear at His word; verses 35-39, He is a praying Man, but sent to preach, and again we find demons driven out; verses 40-45, the outcast leper, man's state, a defiled sinner touched and healed. Here He is Jehovah, can say, "I will," yet touching man, and defiled man, undefiled. Mark 2: 1-12, power to pardon sins, as Psalm 103, in Israel, proved by the other part, healing infirmities - here too Jehovah; verses 13-17, the Searcher of and Friend of Sinners; verses 18-22, His mission cannot be mixed up with Judaism, and, further, the Bridegroom was there, it was not the time to fast, but He would be taken away. The Sabbath (sign of the covenant) Messiah being rejected, has lost its Judaical title, and He takes the place of Son of man, and is Lord of it as belonging to man for good in grace, being Heir of all man's titles from God in grace. Chapter 3: 1-6, further, grace is at work, and it is right to do good on the Sabbath, He is there to save, not to kill - they, their enmity drawn out by God being revealed thus, seek to kill, they are Satan's seed. This closes the character of the Lord's mission, and we have then the results. The testimony was in every way spread abroad (verses 7-12), the rumour of it, so that they came from every quarter, and, as ever noted in Mark, the evil spirits forced to own Him, but not allowed to speak. The message is sent out by Apostles whom He chooses, and He gives them power (verses 13-19), but the Pharisees commit themselves to unpardonable sin (verses 20-30), and then (verses 31-35) He rejects His connection with Israel according to the flesh, and owns those who have really received the Word. This effect, and the sowing of the Word, its result in the world, He then enters on. God had set up the truth to give light, and they were responsible to give it out, and all should be made manifest, and their service judged according to what they had received. Then, at the beginning, the personal service of the Lord was engaged, and at the end, at harvest; meanwhile it grew up as of itself. Further, it would be in the world as a great power. They would be tossed about, but the Lord was in the ship with them, and faith should understand and own this, though, for man, He was asleep. But winds and sea obey Him. We have then the general present result - power there to bind Satan wholly, but rejected by the world - the Jews rush to ruin, and the healed and delivered Remnant sent to announce the deliverance received. Then He comes to Israel to save from death, but the real case is death, but faith in the Word saves from the deadly state by the way. Power used by faith. But He will quicken the dead. But a prophet is not received in His own country. This closes the moral history, so to speak. He sends out His disciples, and the enquiry is raised, "Who is He?" But this introduces rejection, in the spirit of murder in the case of John His forerunner. Still He shows Himself the Jehovah of blessing according to Psalm 132, but dismisses the Jews, sends the disciples away alone, and goes up on high; He rejoins the ship and all is calm, and the world, which rejected Him before, receives Him gladly and is healed. Here the ship is rather the Remnant before His presence in Spirit with us - He is in the ship.

212 We then come to another section - the moral question with the Jews (chap. 7), then, deeper, the heart of man, and then the heart of God in supremacy towards even Canaaneans who had no title, promise, or ought save the curse - divine grace meeting need and faith owning its true position. But for this it is God, and not the Son as David, though this He fully owned according to promise. Now His dealing with Israel is taking one deaf and dumb away from the multitude, and opening his ears and tongue in grace; still He is here in divine compassion on the multitude. But it is "I have compassion," not 'Give ye them to eat.' It is not seven but twelve. It is sovereign goodness not promise, and order in power. But His disciples too are dull of heart to understand; they see men as trees walking - they see, but nothing clear as yet. But here too the man is taken outside the town. He is getting out of the mass of Israel in His work of power, not presented to them; and, when Peter owns Him the Christ, charges the disciples strictly not to tell it, and then begins to tell them of the Cross and resurrection - the new starting-point of man. Peter earns the title of Satan, for savouring the things of man, not of God. The Cross and denying self are insisted on, on the double ground of the folly of exchanging one's soul for anything, and the glory to be revealed. This is now shown to the three. Moses and Elias disappear, and Jesus remains alone. The rejection of John is referred to as intimating the rest. But He descends still to man's misery, but, though intimating He was not to remain long with them, shows the same grace and power meanwhile as ever, but returns to the Cross with His disciples. They still cling to the Kingdom, and greatness, and the Lord shows the practical spirit they are to be of, connected with the Cross, and the world utterly hostile - shows judgment to come, and then warns them as to abiding consistency. Judgment would try all in some way, purifying power those consecrated as an offering to God, but if salt lost its savour, nothing could salt it. This they were to have in themselves - separation from evil, with others at peace. We are here, evidently, on wholly new ground. The Lord now shows God's full sanction and maintenance of what He had instituted, and that the creature, as such, was good from His hand, but that the heart of man was wholly departed from Him - none could but He - and for man salvation impossible, but not for God. To this, present blessing and persecution is added. And again He urges the Cross upon them and, in contrast with the Kingdom, the spirit they were to be of. Then commences the last history, and presentation of the Son of David at Jericho and Jerusalem - the power of grace in the place of curse, but judgment in the seat of the Throne and of the Temple. In chapter 10, deliverance to the Gentiles is added to the fact of the Cross. The first is the change in the position of Christ, and the nature of His service in that chapter.

213 In this Gospel I have only to notice what has been long remarked, only strikes me more strongly, how thoroughly it is the exercise of ministry, and characterised by it, and briefly and rapidly brings this out.

214 Mark 1

John the baptist baptised to repentance for the remission of sins. This has led me to dwell more on the Christian character of forgiveness - non-imputation of sin, and the revelation of God's righteousness. It is of moment to keep both clear; a positive, actual present forgiveness, so that my soul knows God has de facto forgiven me, but it is equally important to know what it is to have no more conscience of sins, as perfected in perpetuity (eis to dienekes), Christ having obtained eternal redemption - put, out of the whole condition of alienation and guilt, into a new place of perfect, divine favour. I must come for actual forgiveness as guilty; but in Christianity, where the work is accomplished, and Christ, when He had made the purification (katharismon) of our sins, sitting down at the right hand of God, it is a new creation and no imputation. Now this is known only in Christianity. I do not believe the other, administrative forgiveness, could have been had without atonement, but then it was the dealing of God in His present dealings with men, and so it may be now, as in 1 John 5, James, and 2 Corinthians; in the governmental ways of God. If Christ had been received, no doubt the past had been forgiven. Nor was more as yet revealed; the righteousness of God, for the remission of sins that were past, was not. Men sinned, and divine displeasure was there, and they were forgiven. But now the work that puts away sin has been accomplished, and we know it, and stand in its efficacy as a new creation, our sins being borne and put away, having access into the holiest, and, more, brought to know, and have fellowship with the Father, cry, "Abba, Father." We are brought to God according to this favour and love, and the worth of Christ's sacrifice - a wholly new place. The "baptism of repentance for remission of sins," though it has led us on further, yet did not, I apprehend, go beyond the present dealings of God. No doubt when accomplished as to Israel, it will be based on the same great truth of atonement, but it was brought in as a present dealing with Israel, and so will be, at the end, but then manifestly based on the sacrifice of Christ. But "eternal redemption" is a Christian doctrine exclusively; the veil marked the previous state of things, though there was more than that. Man comes for forgiveness as responsible in his relationship with God, but he finds himself introduced into a new one, unknown till Christ had ascended on high - "made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light."

215  - 16. They were called long before, personally, but this is question of ministry - "The beginning of the Gospel."

- 19. "In the ship" (en to ploio) - "afloat." It is the universal idiom; so eis oikon (in the house); so in English, too, because it is appropriated; so too eis polin (into town), verse 45.

- 21-28. The character, and the position and experience, if I may so speak, though briefly yet therefore more powerfully, has been set before us up to this, and the brief accumulation of characteristic points is what characterises this Gospel, and this character and reservoir of ministry has here been wonderfully, and so perfectly, declared. We now come to its exercise. He took it as presented to Him amongst those among whom He came to minister. He was sent - acted His own way among them. As to His word, it flowed from the source - it was not questions or subtlety of admired genius, but of authority. It gave rest when received. It was the communication of the mind of God, with the consciousness that it came from that source, and was that. He began in ministry from Galilee. This was after the first three chapters of John. It was His public ministry, for then John was not yet cast into prison, and the call of the disciples was to companionship in ministry; they had followed Him from John's baptism. But it was not only the authoritative power of the word over conscience, manifestation of the truth of God, so as thus far to set aside the evil of Satan, i.e., to natural conviction, or more, but the manifestation of power by His word (of authority) over the evil spirits when outwardly manifesting their power over the bodies of men - he was there in their synagogue, and there was no power against him, though the man might hear many things, and exercise his understanding on their reasonings. These two characters of the power of His doctrine are remarkable.

We may note the phrase "Possessed by an unclean spirit'; the unclean spirit was in possession of his mind, and faculties - absorbed by in their source, not merely led by presented temptations, though this was just as morally bad, and ruinous in some sort as to present sin, and responsibility more so. But this was an existing character of Satan's power, and an occasion of the manifestation of Christ's. The power over the intellectual and physical faculties was such, that the man spoke as if it was himself, while in truth it was the demon. This was a different thing from demoniacal prophetic spirit, though that might be connected with the former, and man may be "in the Holy Spirit," in the blessed sense of it. Here "he cried out"; it might be difficult to know which to refer it to - man or demon - but in fact, and really it was the same thing, the man cried, yet it was "by the unclean spirit," and therefore it was really the unclean spirit so using him, and here speaks so, and is as such answered by Christ. The complete possession of him by this evil power is manifest in the identification with all the evil spirits; "What have we to do with thee?" It seems to me, however, the despairing spite of a forced confession. They had, as between them and man, full and conscious possession and they were vexed, and forced out by the presence of the power of a mightier Spirit, and another and mightier Person - a Man, a despised Man - Jesus, the Nazarene. And then the spite, which yet redounded to His glory, for the lower, the more was their inability to contend with the lowest form in which God could be manifested and the new Man act proved. There was a Man with the Spirit of God, for so he is met here - Jesus the Nazarene, the Holy One of God! God indeed, blessed for ever - but here met on his own ground. This was the terrible thing for Satan, met where his power in right was, but by a thought which he could not grapple with - a Man in whom he had nothing, and who in the power of the Spirit had proved an influence over the soul, which trod on the darkness of his kingdom, bringing light in which forced forth the confession of what was tasted and understood then. All he sought was to be let alone; he had nothing to do with, nothing in common with Him, but the full presence of the good continually - yea, I believe ever when in power - forces out the evil of the enemy, because he feels it, and cannot bear it, as the saint is oppressed by his power too. "Jesus, the Nazarene" was the terrible thing. Till He take away the children, he reigned there among them, only increasing the demonstration of his power, but here he was met in the scene of his power by Beneficence which had humbled itself thus. "Jesus, the Nazarene," was the hopeless terror of Satan and his evil: "Eh! what have we to do with thee?" was all he could say - nothing in common, and a power he could not grapple with. "Art thou come to destroy us?" adding, "I know thee." All his knowledge was the consciousness of what was before him - not divine - He was "The Holy One of God" - he knew this wondrous Man - he could not help it - His presence called it out, but doubtless the teaching had not lost its effect there; the reasoning of the scribes produced no such extorting effects. The man had stayed quiet enough in the synagogue till then; if ever Satan's malice had been shown in the midst of them, it was not in saying, "Eh! what have we to do with thee, Jesus, Nazarene?" - there was no Jesus the Nazarene there then. But now he must submit - that, as we have said, was all he could say, save the expression of his spite. This was no holy acknowledgment of the blessed Jesus as the Lord in love, his heart found no refreshment in it. It was no action of His word in grace - His spirit was grieved, and His power repressed it, and subdued it. What a contrast! What a picture! Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Hold thy peace, and come out of him." Who could resist the word? Power against Satan, the adversary, closes all. But what a thing is the human heart to deal with!

217 The unclean spirit in his last expression of vexation and rage tearing the man, with a great cry, came out of hum. It was a wonderful sign of deliverance. They were astonished, saying among themselves, "What is this?" His fame spread abroad.

- 30, 31. Immediately after, with the same disciples alone, yet called, another form of inflicted evil is presented - sickness, violent sickness. It neither repressed His love, nor escaped its exercise - the energy of good in that blessed Minister of the Father, for so He appeared now; on being apprised, He does not avoid the evil, but it flows forth, removing the barrier and unaffected by it, save as evidence of the power which remained unaffected in its display, not the subject of its action, but acting on it. He took her by the hand, and the fever left her. Evil fled before His touch, which, being in power, contracted no evil, and she arose and ministered to them. And (verses 32-34) as we have said, not in self-displaying wonders, but in an overflowing patience of untiring good, allowing no mixed testimony from Satan, He ministered the witness of God's goodness come amongst them.

- 35. Here also we have the dependence of the Lord witnessed in all this. We must modify this by no specious pretext, as if the Lord's prayers were the only untrue ones ever offered among the assembly of saints. His arm was not shortened; He clothed the heavens with blackness, and made sackcloth their covering; He dried up the sea, so that their fish stank; He could do what He pleased, but this state of things is easily and blessedly explicable. The Lord God had given Him the tongue of the learned, that He might know how to speak a word in season to him that was weary. He wakened His ear morning by morning. He opened His ear to hear as the learned, and now, with this early-wakened ear He went forth to hear, and to hold that blessed communion with the Father, where, in a world of evil, alone His soul could find delight and refreshment, and where He renewed the strength of His joy - the conscious ground of His coming forth into the world, and in the apprehensions of His soul all passed in intercourse with His Father. The most blessed, perhaps the most interesting part of all our Saviour's life, and where He brings us in Spirit with Him, into His Father's presence, into His Father's bosom, where He pours all His requests, and passes through the evil in the strength of it. (Oh, it is a blessed portion! Are we to suppose the Saviour the only Man who never had it?) And so to be an example. How, withal, does the Holy Ghost intercede in us? Far different as we are from Him. He had His own portion in, and He loved to be alone with, God, though always the Servant of all. Blessed Jesus! May our hearts follow Thee there! It is a good thing to see Thy perfectness. This was His way in ministry; may it be ours!

218  - 36-38. We see Simon's eager and leading character soon show itself, and, so to speak, the beginning of that intercourse between the servant and his Lord, which was shown afterwards in so many blessed passages between them. He had not scorned to go and lodge with His poor disciple, and though His Father s house and His Father's bosom, even here below, were His natural home, He took all in grace that thus was presented to Him by His poor creatures. He was among them as One that serveth - their Companion, and their Friend - a blessed and meek example. Still to His Father He returned, apart from all - the first, the earliest there. Then, when amongst men, their Servant again, but His therefore in it. Simon, and they with him, followed Him, and having found Him, now beginning to feel the importance of His ministry, expresses it! "All men seek for thee." This (in such a case) was nothing to Jesus. He sought not where He had importance; He had His Father's will to do. He came ever fresh from His Father's heart - the goodness of God manifested in the perfect sympathy of a Man bearing all, come down amongst them. Surely this had connection with this hidden intercourse with the Father (and how does it strengthen - of who has sent us - and that we in our place come forth from Him, in whatever inferior, but at least fully responsible sense), "Therefore came I forth," and what was on His heart, "That I may preach there"; He does not say, "Do miracles." Intercourse with the Father always makes us the servants of men. And what blessed and adoring familiarity with Jesus, does His life give us!

- 39. "And he was preaching in their synagogues throughout all Galilee"; there His ministry began. And this, drawing Him into conflict with Satan, His power shown in casting out devils. We must remark it is ever "their synagogues." He went among a people He was separate from, and that was their state. He was a Servant, but in His own power among them.

219  - 39. "The demons" - those known too well as such - curing and meeting this well-known sorrow.

- 40 et seq. We have then the hopeless and repelling case of leprosy; so noticed under the Law as a characteristic evil, the very type of sin, for which there was no proposed remedy, and whose cure was the act of Jehovah Himself, and to touch which by man was defilement at once, and he who touched set apart with the leper. The priest's recognition of the cure was the recognition of Jehovah. Won by the goodness displayed to all other evil, the leper, who should separate himself from all, and warn them with dust on his upper lip, as unclean, comes to Jesus - a bold step, but who could not be bold with Him. And wretched defilement arrests His love no more than sorrow, danger, and trial. The poor leper fully convinced of His power, and humbled in the sense of his own need and misery, only distrusted his claim on the Lord's attention. He knew, if the Lord was willing to do it, He could cleanse him. But it was more an application of power to his need, suggested by that need, than the excellency of that power in Jesus Himself which occupied him. He said He had power, but power is usually distant and high in man; he came, uncertain of His will, and falling on his knees to Him, and yet after all insensible of the power of Him who really was there. "Thou canst make me clean," was his thought, "if thou wilt." But in meeting with this deadly, and sorrow - bringing evil, there was greater power and greater grace than he thought, which met indeed all the need of his heart, for so God does ever in His grace, but manifested a great deal more in the glory of His Person - that glory which fills all things. Man met in his extremest misery, and God manifested in His highest glory in grace, and all Satan's thoughts more than baffled. For, indeed, this case of the leper was a crowning case in the synagogue - the place to meet God instead of reasoning and the presence of Satan. Authority in the Word, and Satan cast out. Authority over the mind of man by the Word, and Satan cast out by this ministry of the Father in power, going forth in perfect humility into the world, entering withal into the local trials which were consequent on this state of misery, and the Servant of all the crowd about them. And as He was simple, though astonishing all (for He was the Truth and the Lord God, and had no exaltation to seek) so He returns to Him (as one of us might have need) whom He sought ever to glorify, that all might be done with Him - yea, as Man in exercised dependence on Him, and then pursues His work, without reference to the opinion produced by it. "For therefore came I forth," I and He fulfilled it perfectly (His mission). But when thus sought by the most abject, then to accomplish mercy, there was One only could meet the case; who could it be? The great secret burst forth to faith. This crowning act of meeting evil, revealed One who alone could do it unsoiled. "He had compassion and touched" - Ah! who could do) that, and say: "I will"? He stands manifested to the secret eye of faith, though yet hid, perhaps, yea, in one sense, concealing it, or acting in the ordinary train of service to man - "Go show thyself to the priest, and offer what Moses commanded," etc.

220  - 41. We have just here our Lord's way of meeting with our entire and manifested (confessed) wretchedness - "Moved with compassion," that blessed feeling, God - feeling, for it was looking down on the sorrow, but feeling as Man come thus amongst them. Then stretching out that hand of power, and yet to touch the evil in unsoiled purity (which if another had touched but that hand of sin, repelling power, they had been soiled and shut out too by the evil) but He was not repelled. He touched him, and not only that, but communicated to the Man His interest in his sorrow, His meeting exactly his request; but this withal, though it told His heart towards him, was a word of princely, divine power: "I will, be thou clean." The answer of peace, but a divine one. It was Jehovah's act; He had now done and wrought the thing. But He returns to the quietness of existing circumstances, not yet broken down by His death, and to personal insignificancy when it concerned Himself, and sends him forth, charging him to tell no man, but go to the priest, and offer what Moses commanded for a testimony to them, that Jehovah might be glorified, for His power had done it - the leprosy had instantly departed. But he spread it, for His glory could not be hid, so that He could not come openly into town (eis polin; there is no article - in fact any town), but was in desert places, and they went to Him there.

221 Thus the full character of His ministry by word, and against the power of evil was manifested, dosing in the manifestation that He was the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Healer of leprous Israel, in the manifestation withal of compassionate love. He was willing to do it. He had come for the purpose. He was not deterred by their sins. Satan had no right against Him, though Israel might be subject to his power. He would take the diseased by the hand, and touch the leper, and command demons away by a word. And though He might be getting the tongue of the learned, His arm was not shortened at all, that it could not save. That was not the reason of their putting away, but "There was no man." Though His glory was such, He was obliged to be as a Stranger in the city. The leper came, the previous evidence being given (and, as the Remnant, healed was a testimony to the rest) so the paralytic - he was brought and was forgiven.

Mark 2

The exceedingly striking and rapid succession of illustrative facts in all this part of this Gospel is very remarkable. It is not even character, but acting continuously flowing from the energy of the will of God, passing on either at the call of others or evil, finding streams of its own benevolence - a constant activity of blessing suited to God - a manifestation of all this in the world - active goodness displayed of God towards the evil and sorrow, and in help laid on the Mighty, so blessedly expressed by Peter in that very epitome of the Gospel: "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him." This perhaps struck me the most of anything on commencing to read this Gospel; let any one only read the first few chapters with attention to this, and, by the Spirit, he will see how this divinely shines forth - I say "divine" yet was it as anointed of God - but, "For God was with him." Who knoweth the Son but the Father?

222  - 1. He returned after some time, many days, into Capernaum, and it was reported that He was in the house, and then we have a history which, as to the nation, shall only have its accomplishment when He returns. From this verse to verse 12 is a very, a most important character of the ministry of the Lord Jesus - "Power on earth to forgive sins." In verses 14-28, the character, morally and relatively, of His ministry is shown by the circumstances; verses 14-17, 18-22, 23-28. Also, with the character, the reception of His ministry begins to develop itself. This develops itself in chapter 3: 1-6; verse 7 recommences again.

The attractive effect of Jesus' ministry had been shown in the previous chapter, so that He could not come into the city for the attention it had excited. Its vindicated truth, and power on cavil is shown here too, and then the chapter (its fulness having been briefly shown) gives us its reception, and, in a few brief statements, the transition to another economy. John and the Pharisees, the best outwardly, used to fast - first then the Bridegroom was going to be taken away - next, there was no putting a piece of new cloth into an old garment. Again as to another and more apparent form of righteousness, the Lord takes it off Jewish ground altogether. There could not be a more complete setting aside of the Jewish economy, for it was the seal and sign of that covenant as the place of God's rest - "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. Therefore the Son of man is Lord of the sabbath" - the true Lord, as Son of man, of God's rest, into which we shall enter. This took up the whole thing on a higher and deeper ground - God's rest with man - through the Son of man. As the forgiveness (shown to Israel), the principle of grace in calling the publican had been laid as the characteristic basis of His new ways, so the newness of the dispensation in its nature and power, and the fasting in the Bridegroom's absence, and the new and full width and scope of God's rest came out from all this.

223  - 2. "He spake to them the word." This was His business, and His sheep hear His voice. The rest was merely confirmatory or condemnative.

- 5, et seq. "Jesus, seeing their faith, said, Son, thy sins are forgiven thee." This very term was paternal, and divine kindness. Israel was His son, and it was in mercy, and mercy to declared sin - the real great need - for indeed Israel's sin had brought them very low. Become helpless, they were now - alas, for the truth - made slaves to Gentiles instead of princes with God. He was meeting them as their Lord. But reasoning could see no such mercy, no such power in God, in spite of all the evidences afforded of who He was. "Who can forgive sins but God only?" An abstract truth, where there is not the knowledge of the Person of Jesus, is always ruinous. Mercy is not understood in the human heart, nor when the blessed God comes in it. He proves to them His divine character in knowing the thoughts of their hearts. "Why reason ye thus in your hearts?" And then, alluding to Psalm 103, which showed both Jehovah's task of mercy to Israel - that being Messiah's song of praise for the mercy to Israel - what He, Jehovah, was to it, He asks, "Whether is it easier to say thy sins are forgiven thee," or "Arise and walk?"

- 8. "Knowing in his spirit," precludes all doubt as to the divine knowledge by which He perceived their thoughts, as also, "Why reason ye in your hearts?"

They could not understand mercy, nor the divine presence of Jesus, in discussing Him and His Person, but they could apprehend the evidence of that mercy in sensible things - hence miracles not converting, though they may attract attention, but leaving without excuse, as they also confirm and convince. Therefore the "But that ye may know that the Son of man." Here was a great truth of all importance - the divine Person of the Son of man (yet serving in ministry, being such). It was not merely the Messiah supplicating, or praising Jehovah, but the Son of man exercising divine authority, and proving it by divine power in His acts. Moreover (quite another thing) that He was the Son of man was all important. "I say unto thee, Arise," was a word of simple authority. Mercy, divine power met in the Person of the Son of man. Divinely competent, and humanly interested and sympathising, yet God in that sympathy; not merely, as we have said, Messiah claiming, or praising for, but Jehovah in the Person of the Son of man accomplishing these things in mercy, because they were ruined - meeting the very Lord they had to look to for forgiveness of the sin against Him, in deliverance - the consequences of it, yea, in then giving proof of the mercy that was come. This was what was presented to Israel. It was come down - the Son of man on earth was there restoringly, in the power of that mercy, and proved it, and they owned, and had to own they never saw it on this fashion, but they glorified God, and so were attracted and impressed. But it does not appear they apprehended the Person of the Son of God, and this was the whole question of real present deliverance. It was addressed to Israel, a ministry to Israel - while the Church learns the grace and excellency of the Lord in it, the ministry was to Israel.

224  - 10. Note, "Son of man" is the title Jesus gives Himself in this Gospel, too, as in Matthew and Luke. It is true also of John, when He speaks of Himself, but there He speaks constantly of His Father, so as to draw attention to His being Son, and owns it is calling Himself "Son of God." But it is as Son of man He speaks, and this is to be much noted. Still He speaks of Himself as "Son of God." Note too the words "On the earth to forgive," are very material. We are so accustomed to assume Jesus to be the Christ, that we really do not weigh the force of these things; they seem concentrated from inference, or peculiar design, in this Gospel, so as to give us them in their simple power.

- 13-16. This ministration and testimony to Israel ended, He goes forth out of the city by the sea - a time which leads forth to a wider range - and calls, and associates Himself with, that which was even an abhorrence to Israel. He went and taught the multitude, and, passing by, He saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the receipt of custom, called him to follow Him, and went and dined at his house - perfect familiarity with this reprobated character, tantamount in principle to His going forth to the Gentiles, to Jewish feeling the same thing, but He pursues His course of love and grace on His own principles of righteousness (for which in se among men there was not one) but doing His Father's will, and manifesting His Father's name, which was His righteousness. Publicans and sinners were with Jesus and His disciples - such was the company, stranger to them really than to Him. He knew why He had come, separate as John for righteousness, but divine in grace for outcast reprobate sinners. "With the publicans," the Holy Ghost classes them, and indeed the publicans were signs that Israel was lost, and God on their grounds (being wicked) did not interfere. But, in pride, there was no sense of this. Satan addresses himself, in the pride of the Jews, to His disciples, casting the question, for them to answer, on their master. Why not go to Him, if desiring a reason, for instruction or enlightening. But there was an ear which watched His people's temptations; He would lose none of them, and, standing up in their behalf, gave the reply with the simple but unanswerable wisdom of simple truth. Often we see men acting thus; the folly of man's wisdom! But what an answer! But note, it amounted to this - grace was not understood, and this must produce all; otherwise, folly as to God's dealings with sinners. All hangs on this.

225  - 17. "Not to call the righteous, but sinners." There is no "to repentance" in the original. This is important and interesting; not as though the other were not true, but it comes with more decisive and emphatic force thus.

- 18. They then come to Himself as to the point, not of His conduct, but why He was more negligent in what He permitted to His disciples than those who had the character of righteousness, even John. This seemed a fair ground, still total ignorance of the dispensation. They inquire first on the petty consistency of Pharisaism, or in the grosser ignorance of the very testimony John himself gave. As they were ignorant of grace, so were they ignorant of its power, and of joy. The Bridegroom was there; what was a Pharisee then? They cannot fast while they have the Bridegroom with them. How sad the ignorance of human wisdom! When it comes in contact with what God has actually done, it knows nothing of it. But there was a solemn warning to them which they were equally ignorant of - the Bridegroom would be taken away; for, having not understood grace to a sinner (and they were sinners) grace which would let in a poor Gentile too, and resting, even after, on the rotten righteousness of their own nature, and pretended sickness, and turning even John's calls to repentance into a sanction of it, the Bridegroom who was with them, and whose presence or the meaning and joy of it they could not understand, would be taken away from them, the Jews, presuming on their own grounds and righteousness. Still the disciples must partake of this sorrow. So, if Israel turn to go round the wilderness, Caleb and Joshua, though quite separate from the evil, must go round with them. The faithful Remnant may be separate from the evil but cannot be separate from the sorrow. So with the Church, so Daniel in Babylon.

226 Such was the end of His ministry among them. Still the Lord was going, however rejected, to bring in new wine, new cloth, and then the terrible judgment. Their bottles were no good for it. Their dispensation must be broken up, their garments had lost their texture, they could scarce cover them, and could receive terrible judgment - nothing now could be mended by what God was to send by blessing. It was too full of blessing. The new wine He was about to send must be put in new bottles. Such was the solemn judgment on the state of the dispensation under the Lord's ministry, and the effect of this upon it. It was really judged from their reception of it - its state, alas! alas! discovered. It had been His beautiful flock - He spared, at any rate, no pains upon it. But how simple and solemn the judgment on this foolish, wise, self-righteous question put to Him after His answer to the question to the disciples?

- 21, 22. I cannot doubt the genuine application of this is the confinement of the energy of the ministration of the Spirit to the necessities of Jewish forms, though I have seen other interpretations of it. This really closed the discussion on His ministry, presented fully in its character as it had been, as before their eyes, or rather God's estimate of the relation they stood in towards it - their reception, the nation's, of it. The way in which it was presented as a present responsibility is marked from chapter 1: 15, and this was His service, verse 21; verse 38, after prayer and communion with the Source of service, and verse 39. It was His ministry through all its processes of application. Man, God as Man, entered into conflict with Satan, in mercy, but making it His business by testimony to draw men back to God, though His glory, hidden as it was, broke through in so many instances. In chapter 2: 13, He turns to the multitude; so in chapter 1: 44, He sends the man for a testimony to them. Thus rapidly is the varied constancy of His ministry brought before us in this short account. It was a wonderful testimony; the result we have seen. He had been manifested, to faith, as God to the leper, though He might retreat into His obscurity and renouncement in sending him to the priests as a testimony. But, even so, as a necessary testimony of who He was; and He had been manifesting that the Son of man had power on earth to forgive sins.

227  - 23. The general rejection under the ministry was manifest. But there was another point - the sabbath had been given them as a seal and sign of their covenant earthly blessing - creation rest to this people. They held to it for their own glory and righteousness in the flesh. There was nothing evil in what the disciples did. They condemned the guiltless, but the Lord did not here take it up on this ground. The anointed, rejected King of apostate Israel had, in His rejection, a title to rise above the order of the system which rejected Him, in faith in a higher Power and higher hopes - so Christ in Person. They having rejected here the ministry so wonderfully addressed to them, in which the glory of His Person, Jehovah there as a Man touching them in compassion, and they perfectly stupid as to this, He takes His own character and title as Son of man, without reference to them - sorrow and rejection having forced Him to His own place and estimate of where God had set Him. How often is this the case! How actually strengthening the rejection, when God is known, and His thoughts towards us! So Christ.

- 27. "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath." This, after all, was a very wonderful truth. But when we get Christ, truths come out; for He, the God that made, and the Man that takes up the blessings, has a right to teach them. God sanctified it because He rested in it, yet was it made for man. Here was He who made it, and who was a Man. But what a truth! Compare Proverbs 8. If God works and rests, even in His own delight, it is for man. No wonder man is exalted - and, no wonder, degraded and ruined, if he departs from Him. Christ takes this up, and fulfils it, takes up all these rights of man in God, in Himself in righteousness. "The Son of man is" therefore "Lord of the sabbath also." It is not only, then, as God He has gone beyond any Jewish expectation of Messiah visiting them, and in grace, but as Man passing, beyond all Jewish conventional appropriation of it, into the portion of man as of God, and in God's own thought, and entering, as we have seen, by their rejection of Him in that, into the full title and glory of this. The despised, rejected Son of man is not under (His own institutions) but Lord of the sabbath as Man. It was made for Him, as well as by Him as God, and, for the first, being who He is, He is Lord of it. "The Son of man is" - this is a wonderful truth - most wondrous!

228 But the test of doing good was still to be put to them on this. If there was any likeness in them to the God that made the sabbath, and did it for beneficence, and could have no rest while man was in sin and misery, here it was not a sabbath to Him. But they knew not God. But the blessed Lord, if He remedied the sorrow, grieved at the evil, at this utter ignorance of the very character and nature of God which, under the influence of the enemy, they pretended as righteousness and zeal for Him, as afterwards they would even kill His servants to do Him service, because they knew not the Father nor Him.

After all, this is, indeed, a most important and deep - reaching statement of the Lord on this subject, and makes its way through much of the argument on both sides, and clearly throws us entirely on the ground on which Jesus places us on this subject, whatever may be the source, etc., of obligation.

- 28. Even "of the sabbath," which had been made so very central a point of the Jewish religion, and strict traditional observation. Let all the words of this sentence be fully weighed, I cannot sufficiently admire the fulness of their bearings. This sentence also gives us deep and important insight into the term "Son of man," relative to our Lord, as comparing it with Hebrews 2: 9. Who, indeed, can read this sentence, unmoved and unastonished?

Note the end of this chapter, the whole of chapter 3, and almost all chapter 4 (with other matter, as John's message) are introduced in Matthew, see chapters 11, 12 and 13, between what corresponds to Mark 6: 13, 14, or between verses 6 and 7 of Luke 9. It is the phase, in Matthew, of the condemnation of the Jewish estate, and at the same time, in consequence, Christ rendering testimony to John believing for himself, instead of John prophetically rendering testimony to Christ. Hence we learn also that the Holy Ghost, in Matthew, though more consecutive in facts than in Luke, orders the matter according to the intention of the Gospel, i.e., the testimony to, and condemnation of the Jewish estate by reason of their rejection of their Messiah. Mark is the most simply historical of all, and passes with the greater rapidity therefore from fact to fact, for, though brief, nothing gives the events and circumstances, with such striking historic force as Mark, or such a mass of miracles and service of Jesus; see chapters 6: 33, 54-56; 1: 32-38, 45.

229 Mark 3

Although Mark leads us into the same main thought as Matthew, closing with Israel at the end of this chapter as Matthew at the end of the twelfth, and then in each the Sower, yet there is a great difference besides the leaving out the birth, and the like. There is no dispensational development. It is historical, to the same effect of what was then taking place, but no developed principles of relationship, nor what will be true in the last days. You have no Kingdom, as it is now developed, after the parable of the Sower, but we have Christ personally active at the beginning, and, at the end, the harvest. Meanwhile it grows up, as though He knew not how. You have the simple fact that externally it would grow to a great power in the earth. It is much more historical. We have the facts as they then occurred, with their then bearing on His rejection, and Israel's state.

- 2-6. On this rejection, He asserts Himself, and in grace proves Himself Lord of the very seal and sign of their covenant - the sabbath; but earthly rest, when Israel knew not its God even in mercy, there was none. But mercy was taking its place, and would have its way. The Lord was angry, being grieved, but acts now in defiance of all this in their synagogue. It is in the synagogue, He does not shrink from the public avowal of the character in which He had come, and His rejection of their notion of iniquity. Yet, it was done in grace, and an act of grace. He puts the case plainly before them, makes the man stand forth for the solemn adjudication, and manifestation of the character of their God, as in question between them. It was not enjoining strict silence now - they were silent - and He shows publicly the power in which He acted. Would God do good on their sabbath in a world of sin and ruin, or let the ruin stay when He could righteously hinder or remove it? All the man did was to stretch out his hand - often they had done infinitely more - then the instant act of beneficence meets it, and it is publicly healed before them all. God in power, as Christ in service, proved them wrong publicly. But now, as before they rejected, they show their hatred and enmity in their conviction - they would not do good, but they would be active to do evil - not "save on the sabbath," but hold a council on the sabbath how they might destroy Him. And the openest enemies could take counsel together for that - union in opposition to Christ is a well-known truth in Scripture.

230  - 7-12. His character was now fully displayed, His ministry exercised and put in question before man, and man's judgment passed on it, i.e., indeed his own, of enmity against the presence of God in grace come in power for his own mercy. But there was an evil will, hatred against the Lord. Man had rejected Him - His character was settled in the world, publicly settled among the leaders. They had been put upon their trial. They might carry on their schemes in private, for the thing was completely concluded and decided, but their plan was to get rid of Him, as a public nuisance to them - they could not bear His presence. The Lord might order His preservation as His Servant whom He upheld, His Elect in whom His soul delighted, He might exercise the glory of His divine power in ministry, but, as between Him and the body, their position was settled, and the Lord so acted. He departed with His disciples (so Paul we find acting) - they, as His slayers and enemies, pursued theirs, keeping up the credit of their own system, but withal really bent upon getting rid of Him. But while He went away with His disciples, this did not arrest His career of good. There might be trial as between Him and them, which had ceased, but the service to which God pointed His heart and love in doing good, was still all before Him, just because of these things. He pursued it because it was the expression of God's heart to man's need, and displayed God, even His Father. The rest seceded into their own place, left behind, and took their own character; that was all (so must it ever be expected). Divine glory went on on its own errand - all this was behind. He had nothing to do with their consultations, but He pursued His own course clear from them. He went to the sea with His disciples, and a "great multitude" followed Him from Galilee, from Judaea, from Jerusalem, Idumaea, beyond Jordan, and Tyre and Sidon, so that a little ship was His only resource. So much for the mere hindrance of human opposition or malice until God's time was come for greater things! The demons, in like manner, were forced to own His glory when they saw Him, but He would not allow them to tell who He was, leaving it to the testimony of grace, so that it should be real acknowledgment, as of God by grace.

231  - 13-21. Thus labouring, after the public manifestation of the nation's enmity against Him, the Lord now withal takes a public open part in using all formal means for gathering. He calls whom He would, and they came to Him. Such was His power also in this service of ministry - divine power, it was not of man. This was done apart; He went up to the mountain, and called them to Him. It was not for the multitude, but done separately, as in intercourse with the Father, or from it at least - not displaying it to the world but acting efficaciously in Himself. It was entirely between Him and them, calling to Him whom He would, whom He should send from Himself to stand, as sent by Him, before the world, or rather the Jewish people, but before men - first to preach, then to heal, and cast out devils. Of these, in the same sovereignty directed by the ministry of Christ, Peter, James and John held the most distinguished place, each according to his known qualifications, known and thoroughly appreciated by the Lord (though even these, when a further ministry came out, though they seemed to be pillars, made no difference at all - God accepteth no man's person - they added actually nothing. But now the Lord was acting within the Jewish range, though rejected by the rulers and apostates - the nominally righteous, and the lovers of worldly authority), the rest also in their order. This done, the Lord returns to the house. He is now thoroughly and publicly embarked in blessing to Judaism, but in a thoroughly independent mission and calling. He had been rejected and refused by the rulers and religion of the nation, and He must act for Himself; a separate and independent part of which, as its independency, was seen, so the consequences were soon felt or supposed - thus, not only preaching and doing miracles, but sending chosen servants to preach and call men to the same truths which He came to present in His Person, and to teach. This gave it a clear character everywhere, for it was an active step, testifying that all were wrong, and that they must look to Him. On this (and it is no wonder, if one sees the principles they acted on, and He acted on) His friends pronounced Him mad, so that they went out to get hold of Him. And thus called out by the multitudes, which thus roused by their jealousy, the scribes blaspheme, the active enmity of Satan, hopeless where mercy, active mercy comes, is drawn out to discredit what He would do, from feeling what He was doing, though by a charge which contradicted itself and condemned them. Where truth is active in mercy (therefore supposing and charging sin in all) Satan's constant hostility is to be looked for.

232  - 22. His friends might preserve their natural character, and think Him mad, but Jerusalem, the people who had the character of the Lord's people nominally ("who say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie") and as nominally nearest the Lord, really the highest in pride, and furthest from Him, more immediate instruments of Satan, and more deadlily opposed to, because their real character proved by, the presence of righteous grace. So it always is, and hence ecclesiastical wickedness is always much the worst. Others may follow, be open rebels, perhaps be swallowed up, but the gainsaying is the "gainsaying of Kore." Ahithophel is the subject of David's complaint in the Spirit, more than Absalom (see Psalms); and this we have to note. His friends might think it folly, these men knew it was not - they must call it wickedness, and ascribe it to Satan to conceal their own. The scribes, the instructed Jews, who came down from Jerusalem said blasphemously, "He hath Beelzebub." But what meekness, calmness, yet what simple, and clear, unequivocal judgment from God! As wickedness proceeds by the rejection of God, the word of God proceeds in judgment. All is in testimony; therefore the power is viewed as of the Spirit, and the judgment is pronounced on their blasphemy of it. Christ was as a Servant, the Holy Ghost as the power, for He ministered by it, as He plainly testifies. So they - "He casteth out" - it is not "It is all false, he is not the Christ, crucify the Son of man," or "Who is he," but "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub." The act of power is recognised, Jesus here was but a Man, and God is blasphemed in His own act of power, for power was admitted in the Person of the Holy Ghost in Jesus come to manifest power in grace against Satan (for Christ came to suffer) to deliver man by destroying the works of the devil, in this wonderful conflict in man's nature against Him; Heb. 2: 14. For though the Son worked, yet was He only known such by the Holy Ghost, unless one special revelation to Peter, and the Holy Ghost in this sense not yet given; and though the Father that dwelt in Jesus did the works, yet He could not be known but by the Son. These blessed relationships in the divine nature were yet hidden, at least almost completely so to man, and Jesus therefore stood before them as a Man, as Messiah, saying He was the Son of God. But they owned the Spirit, as doing wonderful things aforetime, as a power working in and by Man; this then was veritable blasphemy of God in His known, and even, I may say, national operations, and now in special mercy, and in Him who was working, in the full manifestation of it, for the very wants of burdened Israel, His dear people. How hard is the human heart! What a picture when under Satan! That Spirit had spoken by prophets, had wrought by Moses, for He had put His Spirit within, and had shown many mercies and benevolences, but now He did what He had not done before, for it was in the Person of the Son. The Son of man forgave sins, and cast out devils; the first they disowned and slighted, and the last, which they could not deny - awful word! they ascribed to Satan himself. There was no remedy, or judgment alone remedied this evil. "In danger of judgment" - then would be known in power, not merely by the Spirit, who that Son of man was, the Son of God. They might talk of Beelzebub, to meet the prejudices, and weaken His influence among the people, and account for what they could not deny, but there it was. The Lord, while they threw it on the natural prejudice against this god of the Philistines - the Lord took it up on their real condition with God, and asks: "How can Satan cast out Satan?" It was making Satan good, and not ascribing, when clear good was done, that good to God. This was the fullest and clearest blasphemy, and wilful though blind; for the act of beneficent Satan-chasing power was admitted, and confessed. But these scribes from Jerusalem were to teach the people; but there was no reproach, but an exhibition of the folly on their own statement, and the judgment on the blasphemy - man's folly, on his own reasoning. The blasphemy was Satan's, of which, for his own interest, man became the creature and slave. They said He was destroying Satan's power who was doing that. Alas! for man. When Adam sinned he was disobedient and seduced. Satan manifested the character against him which these now manifested against the Second, and when that Second was exercising the full divine energy of the Spirit to cast Satan out. There was no forgiveness. Now the Holy Ghost is the Servant rather, and the circumstances are different. Christ is above the reproach, save in His servants and people. If it were not Satan against himself, then it was a stronger than he.

234 "But verily I say" - here was the judgment pronounced. It was not ignorance of His Person, but calling the Spirit that was in Him Beelzebub, which was the evil. This point is not then a question of His Person, but of the recognisable power in which He wrought, and it was nearer their conscience, in outward acts of beneficent, Satan-destroying power, to recognise the Spirit than the Son or the Father. These were brought out in the subsequent dispensation - there the irreclaimable state was apostasy, not the irremediable sin, blasphemy, though that might come in as a consequence too. The consummating sin of a dispensation is always sin against that of which it has the light, not merely evil practice, though that leads to it, nor obscurity as to a hope leading to another, as the proposal of the Son of man here, although that proved darkness, nor the ignorance that He was the Son of God, which supposed fresh revelation and showed their blindness. Though these things alone could remedy the state of things, and in the communication of the Father's name gathered a people, the consummating sin was the denial and rejection of the light they had, in ascribing to evil a power and working which, in their own dispensation, they ought to have recognised. And this is applicable to the present dispensation; the Father and the Son are revealed - denying them is an Antichrist, and wherever the liberty of the Holy Ghost to act in what He gives, without further authority, in grace is hindered or opposed it seems to me the principle is there, though perhaps restrained and not bearing all its fruit. There may be many other things evil, but not to this. Things which could alone remedy, which may not exist or be received, hopes which could alone recall, or the rejection of which showed the ruined state of the Church, but did not constitute this opposition of apostasy to the glory of Christ in the dispensation, and therefore did not constitute its fatal and final sin. We may assist the ruin practically, as in Hebrews 6, but it is denying the Father and the Son which constitutes its public actual manifestation.

- 31, 35. In this the Lord clearly passes, on what we have seen (verse 30), to the rejection and refusal of all His natural ties - the cessation of them, that is, to the Jewish people, and the assumption of those who did the will of God, His disciples, into the place of this relationship; this, even while the multitude were all around Him before He went away. It was a testimony also to them, now plainly, openly given, and given on ground which reached the conscience of the lowest (quod nota), when, if listened to, it would in grace bring him on to full principles and their understanding. "For whosoever shall do the will of God" - His disciples, soon they would be there. He might plainly state the great principle of apostasy in the clearest light, but He would, in the rejection of all formal connection with the place where it was found, use the first principle for the simple ones that would draw them out of it. His mother and His brethren were not only a type, though they were that, of the Jewish people, but the principle - it was knowing Israel after the flesh, Christ after the flesh - all this had failed, had apostatised in Jerusalem; the power presented in witness to it had been ascribed to Beelzebub - for Satan will give his own name to the Lord to drive men from Him. Further, this was no particular affection for such or such disciple, though this might exist, but He looked round about them in a circle who sat around Him, and said: Whosoever hears me, and so does the will of God.

235 This chapter closes the general presentation of Christ in this Gospel (as in Matthew 12). We have then the general idea of the Word (as in Matthew 13) and the personal work of Christ at the beginning and end - seed time and harvest - and the general public display and diffusion of Christianity; but all in parables expounded to the disciples, for it was the new things of the Kingdom. He seemed asleep while it was going on, but He was in the ship with His own, and commands the waves. Chapter 5 gives the delivered Remnant, (to become a witness) the Jews, and the world - their relative positions. Then, called to hinder the death of Judaism, faith gets the blessing by the way, but He has to raise from the dead, though kept and owned as alive in a certain sense - has no honour, and can do little in His own country, sends the closing message, and the false king beheads His forerunner. But He is the Jehovah of Psalm 132 in Israel, and full administrative power in Man in His power, dismisses Israel, goes up for intercession, rejoins the disciples, and there is a calm, and the world now receives Him. In chapter 7 Israel is morally judged, man's heart shown, but He reaches out to the Gentiles where there is faith, Israel being owned, but cannot deny what God is in grace for any, if faith reaches to it - a beautiful witness and picture - (this truth came in not in quite so lovely a way - title more than goodness - at once in Matthew 8) but He does open the deaf ear and loose the tongue of Israel, but He takes him now aside out of the multitude. It was grace but not a direct testimony to them. Then you get the seven loaves - divine perfection with Israel in itself, not human administration; the disciples even only get their eyes gradually open; the blind man, too, here was taken out of the town. This closed His association with Israel. They had many opinions - He, the Cross (the living God and the Church have no place here) and so His must follow. The glory of the Kingdom is shown to them in connection with it, but it was not to be told till He was risen from among the dead. Rising "from" the dead is distinctive here.

236 In Christ we have not merely miracles as proof of personal power, but the setting aside evil, universally healing all that were oppressed of the devil, universal setting aside of his power, and his goods seized. Next, they were miracles of deliverance - the power of God. Next, He can give this power. This is met by the spirit of the world; His friends think Him mad - for the unclean spirits who bound man's heart did not - and in the ecclesiastical body wicked malicious opposition - they preferred attributing good to Satan and throwing the people into his hands, to owning Him. Lastly, He rejects connection with Israel, or any, as to the flesh, owning only moral subjection to God.

I do not know how far the beginning of Mark is made clear, as a whole, in the Synopsis, but I give it here with a view to resting somewhat on a particular part of it. Up to chapter 3: 13, we have a picture of the Lord's ministry after the introductory matter. The details thus: John's preparatory ministry with water - Christ to baptise with the Holy Ghost; chap. 1: 1-8. Christ associates Himself with the Remnant being baptised, is anointed and sealed with the Holy Ghost, and owned of the Father; then meets the adversary who held man captive, is tempted in the wilderness with wild beasts (not Adam's place), served by angels (verse 9). Thus (chap. 5: 13) all prepared, and John cast into prison, He begins His ministry, preaches the Kingdom of God at hand, and repentance, gathers round Himself persons who leave all to be with Him. His doctrine with authority - with power, for the demons own Him and are driven out. Next, He heals the diseases of man himself, brought in by sin - it is not exceptional or occasional, the crowds came and were healed. He retires and prays. All men seek Him, but He came not to have crowds, but to accomplish His service - He must go to other cities to preach, He is sent for that. He goes, doing it round the country. Next, He shows that He is Jehovah in the midst of Israel, in mercy - the leprosy, which none but Jehovah healed, and which, if one touched a leper, made him who touched him unclean, He not only can but wills to heal and touches the leper, undefiled but driving away defilement in a grace which the defilement of man did not drive away, but draw. It was in Israel - for by their pronouncing on the leper, the priests were witnesses to themselves, that the power of Him who could heal the leprosy was there in Israel; chap. 1: 14-45. But grace took a more positively developed character. He forgives sins (and proves, according to the government of God in Israel, He can, by healing the paralytic; see Exodus 15: 36, and Psalm 103: 3), He receives sinners, and even makes an Apostle of one; came to call them, as a Physician to the sick, not the righteous.

237 But further, as to His ministry, the disciples cannot fast while the Bridegroom of Israel is there - besides He cannot put the new power into the old vessels of ordinances. The sabbath tells the same story. To an outcast David, and surely an outcast Messiah, where was a Jewish covenant of rest? Freedom was there - all should be for Him. Besides the sabbath was for man, the Son of man, the Heir of all man's rights and blessings from God, and therefore Lord of it. The scene in the synagogue tells the same story as to doing good. How clearly this tells all the characters of His ministry! The Pharisees and the Herodians seek to kill Him, but the crowds from all parts follow Him, so as that He should have a little ship to wait on Him, for He had healed, and the unclean spirits were forced to own Him. He forbids their telling it. This closes the characterising His ministry and service.

Two points I would yet remark; first, the Lord so far from distress or uncertainty in His place with and relationship to God, not only sees the heaven opened, but has the direct witness of the Father, besides the descent of the Holy Ghost, to His relationship with Him, and delight in Him. This was the position in which in the course of His ministry Jesus was certainly set by God, not one of distress, anguish, indignation and anger. This is not true as of God, most surely not as of unbelief in Jesus. He did come into the later state when the hour of the power of darkness came first, and of wrath in substitution afterwards, but His living place of service on earth was in conscious favour, revealed by God the Father Himself, and sealed by the Holy Ghost. That He may have at any time anticipated another state is quite true.

238 Further, Satan attacks Him, as he attacked Adam. This is true, but, led of the Spirit, He freely offers Himself to the attack, as He did to His final suffering from God's hand as a sacrifice on the Cross.

Note, this chapter which closes the relationship of Christ with Israel as in ministry to win the nation, unites the choice of the Apostles with the rejection of the nation. Chapter 4 presents the connection of the responsibility of those who heard with the propagation and witness of what they heard, at the judgment of God which referred to it - that the Lord seemed to let all grow up as it might, but He only watched the time of harvest, and then acted again Himself immediately - lastly, that we are in the same barque with Jesus, foundering in the storm, though He seems to sleep, and as to perfect peace care is out of the question. Chapter 5, I judge, in this respect gives more details on the breaking up of the connection of the Lord with Israel, and its true character on its renewal - a Remnant, under the power of the enemy, healed - Himself expelled, and the healed left behind Him as a testimony. Satan hurries Israel, unclean, to ruin. The child whom He goes to heal, has really to be brought to life, though the Lord looks on it as only asleep. On the way faith, in the woman, heals - a principle which lets in Gentile, Jew, or any.

In following merely the dispensational bearing of these passages, we have the Lord scarce received, as being the carpenter's Son, in His own country, and thereupon He sends out the testimony of His disciples, urgent on the cities of Israel, bringing judgment, if rejected, worse than Sodom. Then the sin of doubting Israel summed up by the violence of Herod against the witness of the Lord as far as it had gone. So that Jesus and His are in the desert, but, the people thronging in their need, He shows His Jehovah power of blessing to the people's need, and, dismissing the multitude, He goes apart to pray (on high) and returns to His disciples walking on the sea. They perceive, and are alarmed, but He gets into the ship, and all was calm, and they astounded, though the previous testimony ought to have sufficed to make Him known. He then brings blessing with Him when He arrives. This all gives us His rejoining the Jews in the latter day. Peter's walking on the sea to meet Him is, on the other hand, going forth to meet Him before He enters the ship. In chapter 7 the moral part of this question is raised, and the pretention of what man was contrasted with the reality of what God was. The heart of man being contrasted with his outward religion which set God's word aside, and then the most distant, dispensationally, from God - a cursed Canaanite, of unrepentant Tyre - if there was that faith which knew how to count on what was in God's heart, overleaped all dispensation, had all it could wish according to the power in Christ only. The heart was reduced fully to recognise not only its need but what it was. After this He opens the deaf ears, returning, I apprehend, to Israel according to the grace in which He had visited (but now unstopping the deaf ears) not at Jerusalem, the rejected nation, but in Galilee, where in outcast Israel the light shone in the trouble and darkness; Isaiah 8 and 9.

239 After the miracle of the seven loaves and the four thousand - proof of His abiding love and care for the poor of the flock - and the obstinate and stupid unbelief of the rulers and leaders of the nation, it seems to me that the condition and unbelief of the disciples comes on the scene. Do you not see, though having eyes? When He did open eyes, it was sometimes only as trees walking, that men saw. He instructs them in His sufferings, and Peter rebukes Him (for He spake it openly, and what was prudence, when things were so?). But the Lord presses the Cross, and confession of the Son of man, in the face of that generation, and then shows the glory. Then the rising "from the dead" (not "of the") puzzles the disciples. The Lord continues to open the real state of things to them as to Elias and John the baptist for example, and the unbelief of the disciples again meets Him, and the question of faith in the people, in whose unbelief as to full power the disciples are here involved, is plainly put. The power of Satan was there, and of old, and the power of the Lord now come in grace, and the man says, "If thou canst . . . have compassion" - for indeed the unbelief of the disciples ministered to that of the poor man. The Lord, in a few plain words, declares the question of power lies in that of faith. The "if thou canst" is "if thou canst believe." "Have you power to believe?" But indeed nearness to God was needed for power. The Lord again presses His rejection on His disciples - this was His ministry, as it were, now. They dispute for greatness. He presses (touchingly identifying Himself with them) lowliness, and the rejection of His name, but anything done for His name to them, done to Him. The spirit of a true disciple is then further and fully developed in lowliness, self-judgment, in hatred of sin at all cost, a judgment would try all - the severe energy of grace be found in every true sacrifice to God (devoted person) - this they were to have in themselves. If THEY had not, where was good to be found? With each other, gentleness and peace.

240 On the whole, the disciples even had not the faith which made available His then manifestation of power. The nation therewith rejected Him. They must therefore take part with Him in that rejection - reject and cut off everything which put a stumbling block in the way, and manifest the energy of grace in self-sacrifice, for the energy of divine judgment would apply to everything. Hence, again and again, in all this part of Mark, He insists on His sufferings and rejection as a central point in all their position, and the implicit reception of the Kingdom as a little child. All these chapters are exceedingly important for the dispositions of relationship.

Mark 4

Chapter 3 closes the direct picture of the ministry of Christ, with His friends counting it folly, the rulers of the people blaspheming against it, and His own renouncing the ground on which Israel stood with Him, and taking that of the Word and its effects. What follows gives a general exposition of what was going on - sowing, not fruit seeking, responsible hearing, the Kingdom with the personal presence of Christ at seed time and harvest, and what the public effect of the sowing would be - not merely letting grow - but seeming overwhelming danger, though Christ was in the ship but as asleep. The whole history of the dealing with Israel, and the service of the Remnant after Israel was gone, and then finding Israel really dead before He reaches it, though He came to it as sick, but everyone who touched Him on the way, with faith, was healed.

His teaching accordingly assumes this character - parable - and giving an account in this way of His ministry, and similar, rather than exercising it (by direct declaration, "The Kingdom of God is nigh," etc.). The transition is now remarkable, His ministry being not merely parabolic but descriptive of ministry, and its effect brought in just when in fact the seed had fallen on the roadside - alas! that it should be so - of the Jewish religious people. But it was now to take its course as ministry. It was not a formal proposal to the authorities - that had been done - but a going forth to sow, a scattering it abroad; it fell where it might. If they had rejected their own proper mercies, no wonder it often proved way-side and stony ground. But this was its character now indeed. The Lord throws it back retrospectively. Their ecclesiastical or national rejection of Him had reduced them to the place in which this could be predicated of them. It assumed this character now, on the cessation of presenting it as their right in promise, from the "Minister of the circumcision," their blasphemy against Him, but they assumed their place under it. He had returned to the sea with this announcement: "The sower went forth to sow." But He announced it now in a parable; it ceased to be a direct national proposal, but he that had ears to hear was to hear. We have this judgment of the matter in verses 9-13.

241 We have in the parables the state and character of the dispensation, with its source, in ministry acting on men's hearts responsibly or efficaciously, not the prophetic history in detail as in Matthew, but its character as ministered.

"He began again to teach by the seaside." He went out there - this general public place as we have often seen before, and, Himself separated from the multitude, tells them how it was. For while He returned to the multitude which was on the shore, we have the additional circumstance that He was separated from them, isolated, not amongst them. He then gives, as we have seen, this character to His ministry - casting forth seed, let it fall where it would - good seed, but often in effect coming to nothing in the heart it was sown in. As to the isolation of Christ, we see it is no mere fancy, for He now begins at "those that are without," quod nota. As to much, it was labour in vain, this sowing. But note, this very fact of sowing, whether by Christ, or similarly since, is entirely a new thing. The Jewish dispensation had properly no sowing ministry, and John the baptist was only to Jews, and therefore was not the true light as not lighting every man in coming into the world. A Jew was a Jew born, and by birth without any sowing at all, and his business was to preserve himself a Jew. The Law was to be kept, and the Prophets only recalled them to the Law (see the last even, Malachi) though they might promise other things which sustained the faith of the elect Remnant when the people would not keep the Law, but departed from God. And even the Lord, as a Prophet, was sent as a Minister of the circumcision, the middle wall of partition in the flesh not yet broken down, but owned by Him as to the Syro-Phoenician woman. But then it was "To the lost sheep of the house of Israel," and this principle really at bottom introduced that principle which let in a Gentile, and recognised a Jew as on Gentile ground, as lost. And this was fully brought out after His death and resurrection, but not in all its light till the mission of Paul after Stephen's death - not of man, nor by man; see Galatians 1, etc. And you may remark that Paul, whenever he mentions his apostleship, always introduces the name of God which Peter does not. But while John the baptist introduced something new, the kingdom of God as coming in, and so was the pivot of the two dispensations - not in, but announcing the Kingdom of Heaven, and therefore the least in it greater than he - still he himself had nothing which went beyond the "floor" of Him that was coming. He stood in the desert, and cried in the desert, for desert the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts had become. But he did not go forth to sow; he came in the way of righteousness, and pointed onward, but sowing is an act of fresh grace, introducing a new seed by which life not there is to spring up. Therefore "Behold the sower went forth to sow." I say an entirely new act of life, bringing goodness, not expecting to find in the field, nor looking for fruit there. It is thus brought out now, for the first time, in parables, for it was, though exercised by the Lord within the old, really a new, to be understood by those to whom He could say "But to you," on the originating principle of the new or Kingdom of heaven, exercised also towards the old, but producing the new, not a similitude of but a principle introductory of, and indeed in fact to be exercised in the Kingdom of heaven. The consequence of this indiscriminate sowing, instead of looking for fruit amongst a supposed righteous people already planted, was that much was lost. First, much remained on the surface, and the devil took it away - it never entered, it was but on the wayside - civil conversation, or speculation on the discourse, perhaps admiring it, was the devil taking the seed away, for He is not speaking of opposition here. Other sprang up immediately, because it had no depth of earth; much of the Lord's sowing in fact did not spring up, had no effect till after His death. One sowed, another reaped. He went forth to sow with tears; a day is coming when He shall return bringing forth His sheaves with Him. Much light affection being attracted for a moment by the promise of association with the wonderful Person, the word springs up, but because there was no deep work, nothing weighed, it reached not the conscience - there was no deep distressing work which made them feel that all was wrong, and obliged them to condemn the whole state of all that was around them. This gives gravity, pain - we hesitate to do it, there is delay - we are right; can we take upon us to say all is wrong until the conscience is brought to a bearing on it? Judgment, in this case, is never pronounced, for it humbles, and we shrink from judgment, in sorrow, and in its weight on our own state. But the sun rose - tribulation sprang up after the seed sprang up, and as they had immediately received for the external satisfaction, they were immediately offended (verse 17) for the discomfort. They had no root at all - they were not in the question in their consciences - there was no life putting them in a position of understanding with God, understanding of themselves and Him. Then the thorns choke the next; cares well understood and groaned over, perhaps justified, but unnecessary, for so giveth He His beloved sleep. It was lost labour, and real selfishness of the flesh. Then there was the deceitfulness of riches - mark that word, for men say they can do good with them - and they gradually come round the affections; habits, ease, consequence, independence of others, and a thousand other principles which choke, because the word is a plant of God, and they cannot grow together. All that is in the world beside is dismissed as "the lusts of other things," thus taking up all, for "after these things the nations of the world seek." These enter in sorrow for us if they do.

243  - 5, 16, 17. Hasty entrance into the joy of Christianity is far from a sign of any true work of God in the heart - there is a deep inwrought sense of alienation which waits for joy till it be given in full personal reconciliation with Him from whom, in ourselves, we are departed by sin unto death. The other is not our own joy - it is a mental view of the joyfulness of the thing as proposed. Such, I believe, may have been felt, and by after experience found to have been false as regards ourselves, and worthless, and the whole internal real work of restoration to God by Christ have taken place afterwards by deep and abiding convictions of sin, righteousness, and judgment. Nevertheless we must remember that the immediate and necessary result of seeing the atonement by faith is peace, and eternal joy, but there is the trial of the soundness of that joy; and it may be immediate, and, if things were in order, would be much more so.

244  - 9, 23, et seq. Hearing is receiving, and what we receive we receive for communication in love. We are answerable according to the measure of what we hear, which is God's measure towards us, and, accordingly, it being given for communication in love, our faithfulness and love is tried by the comparison of what we receive and give. We are unjust towards God and man, if we are not, in life and word, witnesses of whatever grace has been dealt to us. Moreover, whoever has this faithfulness in receiving, increase shall be added to him - confided. "It shall be measured to you." Hence grace, in the parable, is rested on use of the talent without other authority, and so indeed here, the moment I have heard grace receives the word, and, being grace, understands it in grace, as a light lit up in the person, it is true, but to give light; see 2 Cor. 4: 6, where the expression is very clear. It depends on our really having it, the sense of the grace, in our souls, its real value to ourselves, and our understanding of it as grace, i.e., our understanding and having it at all. And thus, he that has, and he only really has grace communicated who communicates in grace, "To him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath." This was true of the Jews who had the oracles, etc., but who indeed had them not, for they did not recognise Him of whom they were conversant. But to the disciples who had, all the glory of the Holy Ghost dispensation of Christ glorified would be given. From the Jewish rulers would be taken away even that which they had. This was a new principle, that what was given was, in its nature, communicative, for it was grace and light, and therefore impelled, and diffused itself, which was not true of Judaism; but, as to them even, what they had, but had not, would be taken away; and there cannot be a more important principle, and as essentially characterising Christian responsibility and grace in this dispensation, and knowledge of, and communion with, the mind of Christ who came as this Light. The love of Christ constraineth us, and, withal, that in spite of opposition, for we also believe and therefore speak. Therefore it is "Take heed what ye hear; with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you." The Lord will deal according to your dealing in this. Such are the principles of confided ministry. If man meddles to authorise, he meddles with the responsibility of grace to Christ, though he may encourage, own, and be blessed and bless, and labour in according to his place, and "To him that hath shall be given: and from him that hath not shall be taken away that which he hath."

245  - 11. Compare Ezekiel 3: 26, 27, and similar passages in that Book.

The term, "He that hath ears to hear" is, in principle, just answerable to "The sower went forth to sow," for, though addressed to Israelites, it is not addressed to them as such in a given position, but in the discrimination of gracious workings in their own minds and souls. "He that hath ears," for then was sowing a word to be received, and it was a solemn matter, for many would slight, and choke, and deceive the word or themselves. But then, in principle, whoever had ears, this being so, it applied to and was for profit too; and here any Gentile, or any, whose ear God opened, came in. And it is as a solemn warning on the sowing of the seed, saying: "All is ruined - God is acting in grace, taking this pains actively before judgment on the objects, 'He that hath ears to hear let him hear.'"

When He was alone came enquiry, and explanation to the disciples, not merely the twelve but those around Him or with Him. And here comes the distinction noticed, not merely of the Apostles but of the disciples, that all else were now looked at as "them that are without"; but to know the mystery was the portion of "those about him with the twelve." To the rest it was all parables. This distinction, and its origin, is important, and sets this matter in a very clear light. There are still "those about him" - what marvellous grace! And "them that are without," alas! We must not be surprised if all be parables to them. Still, after all, we stand on another ground, for, the glory having been revealed, if it be preached really, we say: "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost." There is no veil on the glory now; if there be, it is a mind blinded by "the god of this world, lest the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ should shine unto them." Thus the "within" and the "without" are formed by those who did greater things by Christ than Christ did, because He went to the Father, saying, "Glorify thy Son that thy Son also may glorify thee," having power over all flesh to give eternal life to as many as the Father had given him, Jews and Gentiles. Still, within the limited sphere, answering to what we have seen of the sowing, there was a "within" and a "without," here formed by the testimony on the nation and its effect - the privilege of those within to know how things went on, and the principles of the Kingdom. It was recognised the sowing had produced it, but the recognition proved the constant truth morally, not dispensationally, "all things are done in parables." In fact, from the time prophecy had begun this was the message, and whenever God sends a testimony at all it must be on this principle, or it would not be needed. As to Israel, the Lord was but the filling up of this - God had "yet one Son," and we find accordingly the same separating, electing principle of grace, but introduced suitably prophetically, "Behold, I and the children which God hath given me are," etc.; and this founded on "Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples." His message having been to the nation what is here quoted (though in it was to be a tenth) a message which hung suspended till God had tried everything, even to the gift of His own Son. But there was no remedy.

246 In the testimony to the Gentiles it is the full testimony of accomplished glory meeting the world in its pretences, and therefore, if hid, hid to them which are lost, in whom the God of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not. Here it is the diligent grace of this testimony, but acting within the limits and order of that which was sentenced under the prophecy, and now, all means having been employed, left to its full application - though, even then, the testimony of the Spirit was afforded, as Acts 3, where this special ministry is afforded of His return to that people; chapter 2 being the Gospel for the Church, or bringing it in, chapter 4 what shall be rather; see chapter 3: 18 to the end. This proposal is an extraordinary act of grace, of a very wonderful character; it did not, in fact, finally close in dispersed Israel till the application of the same passage by Paul (Acts 28), and was consummated in their refusal to allow the preaching to the Gentiles, this sowing of seed in grace, as we see (Acts 22: 22), and the sum of which is specially taught in that Epistle which teaches the Church to look up, as of God the Father, to its portion in Jesus and His coming to receive her to Himself; 1 Thessalonians 2: 14-16. In verse 11 of our chapter we have first the distinguishing grace, according to the dispensation of God; and in verse 13 the reproof for the want of spiritual intelligence - they could not discern this first, and so simplest parable, which described the first principle of all that was to be unfolded in all the parables. They were the accounts of the Kingdom in its relation with the Jewish people. How would they enter into them, if they did not understand that primordial principle from which all flowed, and was the connecting link with the old system, and therefore thus addressed to the multitude? The spiritual thoughts which gave the key, while the parable gave the form, were not in their minds; so with types. But the Lord gives the clue, explains it to them.

247  - 21-25. Not only is Mark the Lord's service in testimony, but responsibility is also directly connected with this, as here with the parables, and also in chapter 13 at the end. These verses, connected as they are with what precedes and follows, connect in a remarkable manner hearing with responsibility of communication. The Word has been sown, but men do not light a candle to be put under a bushel. It is sown, not to lie in the ground, but to rise out of it and bear fruit. Nothing was secret but to be made manifest; hence, "Take heed what ye hear." It is a responsibility; "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you"; "To him that heareth"; and this evinced not in its remaining hid in supposed knowledge, but in the fruit bearing witness of effectual testimony ("Holding forth the word of life.") To him that is thus known to hear shall more be given; for this is to have. To hear then is to have, but it is to hear so as to have. The force of the passage is very important, and, when it is acknowledged as a responsibility, very plain.

The good ground brings forth fruit, thirty, sixty, a hundred fold. The word is the seed of one grain; one soul, quickened and vivified by the power of the inwrought word, becomes the living source or producer of an exceedingly multiplied effect, not only of righteousness but of testimony, and of souls brought to righteousness to be the vessels and depositories of grace and truth by the testimony, and themselves to hold forth the word of life. To this the Lord accordingly applies it. First, as to Himself as the Light, and then to those who received it as the instruments of its holding faith. And He said to them an additional principle in this discourse - "Does the lamp come that it should be put under a bushel or under the couch? Is it not that it should be set upon the lampstand?" Such was God's purpose - such would be true of Him, and the glory of His Person, low and hidden and humbled as He had come, emptying Himself for God's glory and man's good. But this was true of evil as well as good; the day would declare it. It was not the intention of God in the good; He would not permit it in the bad. Some might go before in their manifestation, and others follow after, and some good works be manifest, and, if otherwise, could not be hid. All that had ears to hear were to mind this. It may have had its conception and existence in this hidden way, but it would come out. It may be hidden, but it is that it should be manifested. As I said the main truth is Christ's hidden ministry, and Sonship, and glory; but it is the application of a great general principle which is behind the gracious intention as of God, as regards the Lord in verse 21 - gracious, but vindicating, and putting us first under the responsibility of blessing; secondly, security and peace when labouring in the presence of secret hidden evil - craft; and thirdly, the check against all hypocrisy in ourselves. Again the Lord adds, it being given to them to know, "Take heed what ye hear." It is seed to produce fruit. "With what measure ye mete," in diligent use of the word.

248  - 22. apokruphon (secret thing) the nominative to egeneto (takes place) gives the force nearly.

- 24. "Take heed what." Note the force of this! "With what measure," if, as it should seem from its connection with what goes before, applicable to the use of grace in ministry, is deeply material. And see what verse 23 is applied to! Compare Matthew 10: 16, et seq. And see verse 25 introduced as in Matthew 13: 12, and Luke 19: 26; and we may see it used besides in its general application, Luke 8: 18, in connection with this parable. Nor ought we to pass over the force which the use of this in the Sermon on the Mount gives. He, to whom grace is committed, is as much committing an injury, using an evil measure, as the unmerciful, a measure unanswerable to the goodness of God. It is unbelief operating either in regarding the persons of men in fear, or in faithless distrust of God's making good, as it were, the obligation in which we involve ourselves by the avowal of His Word in our hearts. That which we have not in the power of faith for real use, we have not in deed and in truth.

249 What follows is really instruction as to the character of the Kingdom, and its work, and therefore it follows here. But, as it was de facto not addressed merely to the disciples, it is not said "to them," but merely "He said" (verse 30). But they are brought together for the simultaneous instruction of the company on the subject. Yet it was for the disciples' profit, and, while addressed generally, explained apart to His disciples. He describes, having stated the principle - active sowing, and the responsibility in those that received the seed - the apparent character as regarded His care, and the great general public results of this now despised seed sown, as carried on by this ministry which acted by grace in the heart. He being away, the Kingdom of God, instead of being under His immediate and personal ministration, and active power upon earth, would be the way a man sows corn, and rose, and slept, and did not regard it, and it grew, and increased, the earth bringing it forth (apparently) spontaneously, and so really instrumentally - blade, ear, corn, but, as soon as the fruit is come, immediately He interposes again, for the harvest is come (here, again, paresteken, is come, as in 2 Thessalonians 2). So would it grow up in apparent disregard by Christ; but when the harvest was ripened, He would interfere. Moreover, rising from this smallest hidden seed now, it would become greater than all herbs, so that it would be a great corporate system with branches, not merely a plant, and could receive and protect what was foreign to its character and object, like the princes of the earth.

- 33. This, compared with verses 11, 12, is very remarkable. It was adapted to them perfectly, so that he that had ears to hear could receive it; but it was darkness to the wilful and disobedient. To the disciples all was made clear besides in private, for they had, dull though they might be, given up their will to His.

"With many such parables he spake . . . to them"; here we have "to them" again, because He has not been exclusively speaking to the disciples. But they are looked at here, however, as still the objects of the word, not as blasphemers. And to His disciples particularly He solved all things apart.

250 "As they were able to hear it," shows, I think, that though He had begun, on the blasphemy against the Spirit manifested in the rulers and scribes, to speak in parables, yet He continued doing it in mercy, patient mercy (wherein He never failed) to suit it to them, so that whosoever had ears to hear might find what was suitable to them

"He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear." What blessed and patient mercy! How worthy of divine dealing - of Jesus, according to the grace in which He came - acting not according to the good in them but in Himself, yet therefore laying Himself out exactly to meet their circumstances, even under the effects of evil, though, and even when, His conduct was a judgment upon the evil which had produced the effects! How thoroughly worthy of what we have learned in Jesus!

We have now the trials of the little company, and the folly of unbelief, as its principles and its apparent position in what preceded, and that in circumstances which acted as the test of their estimate of their safety, founded on their being identified with Jesus, if they had felt God's concern in His glory, the glory of His Person - the absurdity, if He really came as the Son of God, and if there were divine purposes to be accomplished in Him, and He having all power over evil and Satan here, of supposing that He should be thus lost by an accident, they could not have been thus alarmed. It is a blessed thing to be able thus to trust that though, to our eyes, great and perilous circumstances may arise, and Jesus seem to be asleep, unless He and God's purposes in Him be to be nullified, all His blessing and order towards His people must be accomplished.

It was now late. The shadows of a dark and gloomy night were shutting in on the unhappy people of God, and not only were the rulers condemned, but He leaves the multitude also, and becomes the companion of His disciples in their passing over in the ship they had. He enters, as He was, without rest or further care, into the ship. There were more interests than even the disciples, concerned in the storm which Satan was permitted to raise against the precious Burden of that little ship. All the enmity of Satan against the Church is against Christ and His glory, and that is our comfort as a consequence; for if he could destroy that, then we might sink, not otherwise. But what selfish folly thus to turn to self while Jesus, and all these other ships too, the objects of His care, if He were the Lord, were concerned in the storm. But Jesus was at perfect peace. He was asleep - His power hidden in this apparent removal from and insensibility to all that was going on, in apparent weakness - His power and glory, and that as involved in the circumstances, apparent only to faith. Their word is: "Carest thou not that we perish?" For unbelief is always selfish, and so will be found, and this was pure, wretched, stupid unbelief, seeing who Jesus was. It was, however, merely for His glory, even in them, though for their shame, He rebuked the winds, etc., "And there was a great calm," and their fearfulness and stupidity "How is it that ye have not faith?" Thus too is the Church launched forth to reach the other side, and encounters the storm; and many other interests are concerned of the world in the storm which Satan raises for its destruction, but in it Jesus is, though apparently insensible, and whether for Himself, it or them, we should account our safety in Him. There was nothing to hinder the other ships perishing, for He was not in them, but the blessing of an awakened Jesus shall produce peace for all; and all interests ought to show us that Jesus, whatever the appearances, cannot be lost in what is going on, and is concerned in it. And this applies to all mediately, to us directly, for we are in the ship with Him, or rather He with us. That we perish, is wretched when Jesus (and indeed so many else) was there. What do we think of Jesus, and of what concerns Him? It is astonishing, yet how often the case! We have Him in the ship, and He is perfectly at peace, whatever we are governed by the fear and storm which Satan has raised in his folly, instead of the peace which Jesus in divine wisdom and security gives. Satan makes the storm to destroy Jesus, and we take his power as if he were able to do it, thus owning, and as it were worshipping Him in fear - it having its effect on our mind, not Jesus, who if to man's eye, and really hid from the scene, asleep, is ever nearer them than all that man's care could effect for his comfort and safety. Oh! that we could ever look to Him! But the winds and the sea ever obey Him, when He rises up to rebuke them, and with them the unbelief which credits them more than His power and security, and thus wonders at what manner of man it was. Thus indeed has the Church been launched when Jesus left in it, though apparently asleep, that unhappy and now deserted shore, long the garden of the Lord for beauty and for delights, where He walked and found His delight among men on the earth, we now have Him as He is, His glory still hidden, though by faith we know what it is, and He seems asleep and insensible to all, but He knows the end from the beginning, and no storm troubles and disturbs Him, let Satan, the adversary, do what he will, and terrify us through our unbelief.

252 Mark 5

In this chapter we have an actual blessed display of Christ's power, and an evidence that the quiet influence of Satan is as fatal as the violent power he may display, and deliverance rests not on that but Christ's exercising His power, for the Legion was delivered, and the body of the Gadarenes sent Christ away. So, I apprehend, we have the account of what is consequent upon Christ's coming over, as it were, to the other side of this dispensation - the deliverance of a Remnant. The ruin and destruction of the swine, the filthy ungodly, by the presence of Christ Himself, given up to Satan, and then the Remnant spared, not allowed to go with Jesus, but sent back to say what He had done for him. But as Jesus really left the Jewish people then, so it had its effect then indeed too, for the Remnant were delivered, saved, let them have been the worst of all, it matters not then, and judgment and ruin coming on the Jewish people, the delivered Remnant were sent into all the country (first addressed to their own house, the Jews) to declare what Jesus had done for them. The opposition of those delivered proved nothing. Satan may have the most actual power, short of destruction, over those whom God is going to deliver, and the Lord may permit it, that his delivering power may be manifested for man's help. There cannot be a more instructive moral lesson of the manner and effects of Christ's delivering power moreover than this - its application to an individual soul, from the divine power which has preserved him, from the first thing which the demons did with the whole herd, though man could do nothing of it, to his desire to be with Jesus, and the duty set upon him by Jesus, on his deliverance, is most deeply and fully instructive; and also its effect on the unbelieving world, not themselves the subjects of this deliverance - this, in the view of Satan's power and bondage.

In spite of the rejection of Christ through the disturbance he makes - which Satan makes and is allowed to make, for Christ does not yet bind him, though He may deliver from him, quod nota - they prayed to be let stay there, and they were, but they use this permission to raise prejudice against Christ, and this was not hindered. But, though sent away by the world as Jesus was, because it created disturbance, or Satan did by these swinish enemies, the patient Lord of all grace having delivered from Satan, again introduces the Church, as it were, as the instrument of ministry in the midst of the world out of which He has been compelled to depart, sending it as the witness of what He has done for it. He says "God," and Legion justly says "Jesus." Such is the place of the Church on Jesus' departure from the world - lose this, and it loses the sense of its obligation to Jesus, as we have before noticed. First sent to His house, the Jews, but going in zealous sense of Christ's benefits and glory, throughout the region, then sent (the Church's office), and that as delivered. It is a beautiful picture of this grace. No evidence of grace in answer, without grace changes the heart. Loss of swine is more than deliverance of Legion, and the presence of God, even in deliverance, is painful to them that know Him not. The whole is a most perfect and instructive picture of Christ's brief presence in the world, its operations, and effects, and what they will be. I apprehend too that these two passages give us a picture of the Church in its trials - the storm when Jesus seems asleep, but they are to know that in divine security He is in the ship with them; hence the security of the Church down here in Him, and that in its greatest difficulties, tossed on the sea, cast, a little remnant as it were, among the waves of the sea which it cannot control. Secondly, in its duties - not yet allowed to be with Jesus, but sent back to the Jew as primarily thence (and the world) as an actual consequence to testify what God has done for it, though the world may have already rejected Him that did it. Also, I apprehend him that had been possessed by Legion, and those in the ship to be the Jewish Remnant which became the Church, the nation being condemned. The other ships "with him" (verse 36) might note the place of the other Gentile assemblies engaged in the storm, and brought to rest by the calm, though no further mention of them is made here. I have already noticed the latter day application of the Legion, and abstractedly it would apply to the ship too. Christ secures the elect, separated Remnant, though apparently entirely out of the way and asleep. And so in the Psalms and Prophets the Lord is often called upon to awake. In both instances they come to Him, first in unbelief, then counting His presence only a torment, and begging the Lord not to torment them, and adjuring Him by God not to torment him.

254 And note, we have a fresh instance here of the "possessed by an unclean spirit," and how the Legion of spirits identified themselves so with the man, that he speaks as himself though it be them. If the reading be right we have: "he besought him that he would not send them away." It is called, though many are confessed to be there, and therefore his name, Legion. "And he said to him . . . because we are many"; "And they besought him, saying." It is deeply and solemnly instructive this, and shows the power and complete possession, where Satan has possession. They are his goods, not the saints, though the latter may be tempted, and delivered to him "that they may learn," etc., and their spirit be saved. But he is in the world, and his power, as we see in the Gadarenes, is just as great though it be quiet; so we see in the unhappy Jews. He may, as in Legion, terrify to make men think that is all and remain quiet in their supposed difference (and perhaps just that one be the delivered one, though with the only effect on the world, to cry "Jesus"), therefore to go away and prove themselves the same as the first, only more open confession in him to whom Jesus was, because it was not their deception but "torment me not but I know thee." Look at the Jews, unwilling to go into the judgment hall when they had been accusing the Son of God before Pilate, and the name and nominal righteousness of God just blasphemed before a notoriously bad heathen by such pretence; they had bought His blood, knowing really the sin, seeing too and hating Him, and ready even to kill Lazarus, that the proof might not exist. But they could not go into the undefiling judgment hall to accuse Him. How horrible is the mind of man under this influence! So Judas - he was no Legion, no untamed madman, evil as he was before the Lord. "One of you is a devil," said the Lord.

- 5. Satan's power is paramount to nature, though ordinarily he may act on it, and we may quietly act under him with a reason, or follow our evil bent. But Satan tempting is a very different thing from Satan's power. There is sin in the former, because we follow the bent that God condemns; but the latter is paramount to nature - not sin but misery. This may be seen a little in despair, when the inclination to sin may be quite gone, and the power of Satan, even if used as chastening, much more seen. So here, the natural causes of fear were lost upon the man. The energy in him was paramount to the feelings of the flesh, even in what was connected with the fall. He wandered amidst death and desolation night and day; I do not say he did not feel the death and desolation. He seems to have been miserable, "crying and cutting himself with stones." That may be, still there was the paramount power, yet restrained. Had Satan done the first thing uncontrolled, as he seemed to, and uncontrollable as he was by man - had he done the first thing he did with the swine when permitted, the poor maniac had never seen or met Jesus. But there was a hand that held him in spite of all his power, and the raging display of it. But measured power is more confessed subjection than doing nothing, though it may show power and evil; so Jannes and Jambres - none but God could control that - it was "the finger of God." But Jesus was the manifestation of this power, and they knew Him, and asked His permission. It was He that had restrained them before too the same power. How blessed is this! Though humbling to see where we are, yet what a sight to see where Jesus is, and where He has brought in power! "If God be for us, who against us?" Power manifested in and for us, and that, though with divine power, His own power, yet in circumstance in dependence. Yet our joy is to see it in Him, for evil is, and the permission of its full exhibition, and that absolutely restrained in its highest exercise, uncontrolled apparently, always restrained by the power that now in humiliation for us, and that, by its worst effects in us, absolutely casts it out. There are wonderful truths (of grace); but what is not wonderful in Jesus? But in this state of things, there is no pretension to fellowship with Jesus. It is really a safer, more healthy state of things than being blindly led by lusts, or tranquilly following the world, thinking the possession of pigs in quietness better than the presence of Jesus, though His gracious, powerful deliverance was manifested. Yet how much of this remains in our hearts! There is a despair like Judas, when Satan has possessed us by our lusts against Christ after knowledge of Him in the flesh - that is, of course, a different thing.

256  - 6. It does not appear that our Lord was ever in the country of the Gadarenes before.

- 12. No doubt this, their will, was under divine control, for the purpose of exhibiting the real agency of the evil spirits.

- 21. We have here, I apprehend, the ministry of Christ with the Jewish people (all His ministry on earth was with the Jewish people - He speaks to us from heaven, from an accomplished work, though there may be many analogous circumstances and identical principles, such as the sowing but here with the Jewish people), and here on two principles, saving from death, and revivifying when dead. He was by the seaside, as we have seen before, on the border of Gentile waters as an outcast from the Jewish earth, holding thus His place as not one of them (now) but come to them. But, having passed over again, the Jewish condition is fully before Him. The proposal of the ruler of the synagogue was to come and heal his son, and Jesus went to do it. So He came to Israel, not as dead though found so, though Christ might, and did, and had to speak in vivifying power, but as to be healed. The great multitude were with Him, and they followed Him. He was going to heal this sick little daughter. What He will do when He really comes is to raise dead Israel. He did come to heal her, but she was found dead. But in the way, while the multitude were about Him, while in the way, there was one - this poor woman - one who had spent all her substance on physicians, and was only worse, where there was the sense of evil and ruin, and the discovery that help from man was hopeless, where there was also faith in Jesus while He was in the way in the midst of the crowd which followed, and, in the exercise of personal faith touched though it were but His garment. Thus did she now; and this was the way of their safety - individual believers among the Jews - and virtue went out of Him. The crowd were about Him, but one individual touched Him in the active exercise of faith. Here is the plain distinction as to means. They were saved from death; all was dying around them. The Jewish nation was now witnessed as a body of death. They might crowd around the Saviour (even after the scribes, etc., had blasphemed Him) but there still was not what alone now was of avail - the personal exercise of faith (through grace) and consequent identification with the life and the power that was in Christ. But some did touch Him, and were made perfectly whole. And this, in principle therefore, would apply to the Gentiles, for it is one God who justifies the "circumcision on the principle of faith," and, therefore, the "uncircumcision by faith" - a principle which at once brings them in, as the Apostle argues in the Romans, or rather the Spirit of God. But, in fine, the Lord reaches the one He had set out to visit, and she is actually dead, but He knew the power of life in Himself, and therefore calls it only sleep, and knew it in His sense to be so. But there was the manifest power of death on her, as far as all man's power, or thought, or skill went, and the Lord raised her, saying, "Damsel, I say to thee, Arise," and straightway she stood up and walked. All this paragraph, however, is the instruction of faith in the Lord's intercourse with the Jewish people, though necessarily therefore bringing in the Gentiles "by faith." And the ruler of the synagogue presents to us the exercise of that spirit of faith which watches over the condition of the dear Remnant, which in fact constitutes and is identified in such a mind with the nation. And thus is there exercise of faith which first seeks restoration, recovery, and so life, "so that she may be healed, and may live." Jesus goes with this, and in the way the exercise of individual faith finds His power wasted, ruined, hopeless as to itself, but, through grace, in earnest. Then, this passed - this instructive lesson of the individual energy of hidden faith, ashamed of itself, of its condition, but soon brought out of it and manifested in blessing - it is discovered to this faith which sought Jesus for recovery, and among the Jews, this was answered to see if anything could be found in man for recovery, to act upon; there was nothing - it was dead, whatever thoughts of Jesus might have been in hope before. It was let know to this faith that hope of this sort was gone.

257 Note, Jesus is sometimes found of them that seek Him not, and so with the Gentiles, when those to whom He went as to recover are found past hope. It was an ill-arranged hope, not the faith of the centurion which was Gentile faith not found in Israel, who felt some right in Messiah, but had none for she was dead. Jairus says, "Come and lay thy hands upon her." This was desire indeed, but feeble because it expected something, as having some claim; he was a ruler of the synagogue. And such must for the centurion to bring Christ to heal his servant. Satan soon sends in, on this ground of unbelief, the sentence of hopelessness, "Why yet troublest thou the teacher?" All savoured of Israel, and the world, and its worldly state. How different the centurion! "Thy daughter is dead." Here the Lord steps in at once, and sustains the feeble but faithful faith of the poor ruler, "Fear not; only believe." Thus the need having once fixed on Jesus, raises the character of the faith higher. Jesus must come in in resurrection or not at all now, but He ministers in grace against the machinations of the enemy suggesting it was too late. And then, for it was as yet no public testimony, one may almost say against, or at least closingly to the nation, but confirming the faith of those who leaned on Him, and who were to be witnesses, taking the three Apostles (who afterwards seemed to be pillars) and putting the rest out, He raised her by His word, and taking care for her life, as well as giving it, commanded to give her meat. The calm exercise of saving power in the midst of, or shutting out this lamenting and hopeless unbelief. Thus will His power be shown in the resurrection of the Remnant of that people whom He in vain sought alive. It was pure power, without any help in her, yet ministered to and answered that Gentile faith which had loved her and sought her restoration to health (such we find in Lazarus, such we find, even such we find in Jesus Himself in His resurrection).

258  - 28-34. Nothing could be more beautifully touching than the artless simplicity and thorough confidence as to Him, and humility as to herself, of this poor woman, and the Lord's instant and necessary recognition of the least act of faith. Let the crowd be ever so great, His occupation ever so, to us, absorbing (for He was above all things) or the sorrowful pressure upon His spirit of the circumstances and state of them, He loved the Jewish people. He was alone, but He entered into all things.

- 36. What gracious haste to intercept the effect of the word from sinking the ruler's heart in unbelief. See chapter 9.

Mark

J. N. Darby.

<45011E> 258 {file section b.}

(Notes and Comments Vol. 5.)

Mark 6

We have then the view discussed of the effect of near relationship of mercy on the human heart. We have seen that, viewing after the flesh, it esteems itself, as in the poor ruler, though faithful, and moreover despises what is like itself; why should it be so much more than itself? They may not and cannot deny the wonderful things the Prophet may do, but they do not like the superiority. This was the secret of the position of the Jewish nation, "he knew that for envy they had delivered him." He was the carpenter, the Son of Mary. Why should He be thus distinguished? This was the history then of the unbelief of His country. The Scripture saith, not in vain, the spirit that dwells in us lusteth to envy. He wondered at their unbelief, but "a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." So He found it among His own to whom He came - "They received him not." But His mercy, though astonished and driven back as regards them, only was so to flow forth, thus pent up, on a wider sphere. Still, as we have seen all through this Gospel, with this great object in view, He went teaching, nor was He hindered in His mercy towards the Jews, even in His own country, who were glad to find, and who felt the need of His mercy and power. He healed a few sick folk, not leaving Himself anywhere without witness. Here this scene of ministry ended.

259  - 6. There is nothing more striking than the power of habitual circumstances in rendering null in effect, and so causing unbelief as to the operation of all moral evidence whatever.

- 7. "He gave to them." It ought not to be forgotten this has an authority quite peculiar, and standing on ground above even working miracles, in nature and evidence. The Apostles had it subordinately and partially, and seem thereby to have been distinguished from the most abundant gifts, but they had it as a gift in miracles. Our Lord told them they should do greater things than Himself, but in this they were wholly dependent and subordinate. The Lord gave, they laid their hands on, and the Spirit divided to every man severally as He would. That this was specially apostolic I have no doubt from the twelve at Ephesus who are introduced, I doubt not, as evidence of Paul's being fully an Apostle. Indeed, miracles only minister as evidence to the glory of this authority.

How blessedly, on this rejection of the "Prophet in His own country," does the Lord rise in the widening, and paramount, and therefore patient love still pursuing its purpose, of His glorious Person, and so more glorious character! Yet what could be more glorious than His service, the love of His service - but at least in the manifestation of the Person of Him who served? No wrong nor injury stayed His love. It might be the occasion of overflowing - for the source was inexhaustible - the banks which thus kept or pent it in. "And he calls the twelve to him; and he began to send them out two and two, and gave them power over the unclean spirits." This was much more than a prophet. Who could give authority over unclean spirits, not merely cast them out, though that itself was the Lord's specially hitherto, a new work of deliverance as He did it, but gave others this authority, commands them to take no supply? Yet they lacked nothing. Sends them to remain wherever they were received, for they came with a blessing, and if not, to shake the dust off their feet, for they came with the paramount authority of the Lord, and in His name. It was mercy in the Lord to make this distinction in the present state of the Jewish people (and, we may add, the world). He was claiming now for His own coming in blessing, and warning of the consequences of rejecting the messengers of Him who now showed Himself, in this, the Lord Himself, as they would not receive Him as their Servant and Prophet, after all He had done. If they would not receive Him, as little for their own interest, He must show Himself great to accomplish the purpose of His own love - if rejected, at least the solemn testimony is given against them, but, if so, for others, and in just maintenance of the glory and dignity of His Person.

260 Such was the ministry, the authoritative ministry now sent forth. If the world, or His own people rejected Him, He must act more in the power of His own character; He is thrown back, as it were, upon Himself. But the testimony was in principle still the same, and treated, with this greater evidence, the people all as lost, in a state of ruin. Going forth, thus sent, they preached - this was their business. Though Christ's authority in sending them was shown in His power over all the power of evil which, as the Lord come amongst them, He could give, and His control of providence, in taking care of all that they might want, they preached the same sore-needed errand, that they should repent. The evidence followed, confirming the word, casting out devils, anointing and healing many sick. But, though despised at home, yet His fame went much abroad withal.

But there was another secret brought out by this which altered the case of the Jewish people in position and principle. Herod the king - not of Jerusalem perhaps, but it mattered not as to this - had heard the testimony of John, had recognised his truth and righteousness, had feared even when offended and when he had been seized, because all men took him for a prophet; but, at the instance of his lusts and pleasures, and to save his character with his attendants, he had sacrificed John to those lusts, or to that of others who by them had power over him. This was a gloomy, dark blot in their history - a dark passage (of the same spirit) in this preparer of the Lord's way, and the Lord notices it, and takes it up here as such. The roaring lion had tasted blood, as it were, had found his way to this first victim by the passions of this unhappy people; it would not be long before they satiated it in their Lord's, "Likewise also shall the Son of man suffer of them." It was time to take His own place and character (among this dead people - and He took it in death) and this in grace, blessed grace, but in true and holy, humble glory, never leaving His humiliation, He begins to do. There is a perfection, a divine perfection in the Lord's ministry, and yet divine in Man, which there is nothing at all to be compared to, which has its own divine character, and yet in humiliation - "He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself," Scripture alone can express it, the divine word to man - and is example, and nothing else, which may communicate but derives nothing, but shows itself for all to learn and none to reach, because it is set, and sets itself, as an example, stands forth to be learned and followed, produces itself, and therefore has the stamp of the hidden yet manifested God in it - the more humbled, the more exalted in everything and all that He was, I AM, and yet a Servant of all, and yet serving only so as divine power and divine grace could - who could walk in life through the midst of the evil.

261  - 20. "Herod feared John." What power is there in that word, for it was from his communion with God that that fear came! A man that has communion with God is, though in perfect grace, a fearful thing. And yet what power it has on the conscience, "He heard him gladly." Such was the state of this poor unhappy people - want of simple faith had plunged them in thick darkness. Divine light was to their eyes but the glare (and that of judgment) that dazzled them, or the self judgment of an evil conscience.

- 22, 23. Wine, pleasure, and the pride of circumstances make conscience and the wisdom of the king as folly for the devil to serve himself of.

262  - 24. The bitter, lasting hatred of a guilty woman living in sin and guilt.

- 27, 28. Such was the story of Israel's king, as they had him (now) and Israel's more than Prophet (for "It could not be," etc.) as they had been so were they - the terrible note of preparation, as I said, for what was to follow. Such was his end, and then the scene of this blessed man closed - if in sorrow, through Israel's sorrow, yet glorious as the Lord's faithful and bold witness in righteousness - and now his joy fulfilled hearing "the Bridegroom's voice." He must give willing, though it be in sorrow and compulsion by Israel's sin (and so Christ willing) place as to his heart to One who was greater than he, whose righteous exaltation he delighted in. He was a blessed character, "Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater"; but one wondrous, and humbling, subduing thought, if we look at anything but the blessing and place - we made greater than he! How came the blessed minister and prophet to leave the wilderness? We find that he was in kings courts.

- 29. Besides its direct operation as a ministry ancillary to our Lord's, I cannot but feel that this was a sort of initiation of the blessed Apostles into the service whereunto they were called, while the Lord was with them in the world, keeping them in the Father's name. It is true the energy of the Spirit was poured out upon them, but this was not directly the support of their practical patience and faith; compare Luke

22: 35, 36.

There is one thing strikes my mind more almost than the particular points in this Gospel - the rapid and marvellous succession of characteristic facts and circumstances, so as to present our Lord in the full display and tenor of His ministry in those detailed points which constitute the whole - its power and character. But here I rather desire to note the instruction than what I feel about it, reserving that more for the Lord.

- 31, et seq. The Lord had now to bind up the testimony and seal the law among His disciples, for He and the children which God had given Him (this may also apply to the Church) were for signs and for wonders to both the houses of Israel. They come to Jesus and tell Him all things, and, accordingly, He occupies Himself with them in tender consideration - "Come ye yourselves apart, into a desert place and rest a little." Now, Israel having given Him up, He can spend the gracious care, the leisure of His heart, in caring for His disciples, for they had, with the many coming and going, time "not so much as to eat." "And they went by ship to a desert place apart." But it was not that the people ceased to frequent the Lord, or that He ceased - He could not - to be gracious, but He now stood, as it were, at a distance from them, and dealt with them as at a distance, not as amongst and one of themselves. As He had come and been rejected, He went away - they had to seek Him now - He had sought them; they followed Him, and came to Him out of all the towns.

263  - 34. "And going forth" (i.e., I take it, public from His privacy where He had gone with His disciples). "When he went forth, he saw a great multitude," and where did His soul see them? They might have rejected Him in His humiliation for their sakes when He was getting the tongue of the learned, to speak a word in season, but it was only to rise into the gracious mercy of His own place.

"He had compassion for them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd," and who was it that could have these compassionate thoughts of Israel? Who was afflicted in their affliction? Was His arm shortened, or His ear heavy? His glory might rise above His own, but never above another's, sorrow. These "coming and going," though still showing the Lord was the point of attraction, was not the people pressing on Him to hear the word of God. It was distraction, not service, and He left them to attend to His disciples. His service was now of a different kind, as we have seen, but though their foolishness might have changed this, He served still. When He saw them thus followed after Him there, He had compassion on the multitude - they had none to guide them - His heart was towards them, and flowed out, never restrained for good, it needed but a channel - and in one sense He made it through and, in spite of sin (not of unbelief) in His death. "He began to teach them many things." They now in some measure appeared before His soul, as "the poor of the flock," and He would feed them. Blessed Master! How lovely to have Thy character to rest on, to study, to feed on! Oh, may we feed richly on it, that when we meet Thee, it may be a known Jesus, and the sympathies of Thy Spirit may be with what Thy Spirit hath matured in our hearts - that when we see Thee as Thou art, all the inward depths and springs of Thy character may be known in the glory - the glory be their glory, and have its brightness and beauty from them as its source! For so it will, though the glory be fully and plainly displayed.

264 But thus was His heart, though differing in circumstances, explaining and teaching these poor shepherdless sheep, or those that were really as such - as we have seen all through this Gospel - teaching them "many things." But the disciples, previously full of all they had been doing, though justly communicating to Him as the source and spring of their mission, and authority, and responsibility, can now advise the Lord (verses 35, 36); they felt as men with human estimate and feelings. The Lord was occupied with the moral desolation of these poor people. He felt it too much to have it set aside, or, in one sense, think for Himself of the hour or the want of food. He was teaching them "many things," for His heart was full; He had "compassion on them." But they, with human prudence and feeling (foresight) coming to Him, propose His sending them away. It was late, a desert place, and they would buy themselves victuals which they would want. But if the Lord had kept them, in compassion teaching them, His glory would shine forth in further considerate blessing - the manifest glory in compassion of that Lord whom they, as a nation, had rejected and stigmatised. They had blasphemed the Holy Ghost. He could still work as Son of man among them, though the nation now could not be forgiven thus, at least those guilty ones, until as Son of man He was cut off, was lifted up - then they would know, His disciples indeed blessedly, but they fatally know it was He. Unhappy people! When they had completely resisted the Holy Ghost testifying of this, then other scenes of mercy would open, founded on the union of the Church with that blessed One in glory, and He would say, not for Himself but for them, to the rebellious nation in the person of Saul its agent: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" But now the Son of man, not yet lifted up, was dealing at least with some of the flock (His covenant was not yet broken with the people; Zechariah 11 seems to show that Israel were reckoned united by the Lord, in some sense, after Babylon - now gathered together, but in prophecy viewed apart till they find one head) and satisfying her poor with bread, though through their sin, their rejection of Him their Jehovah and their David, He could not take this His rest for ever, nor dwell there, though the place He had desired. Still He manifested Himself as the One who could do all this that nothing might be wanting to fulfil, and present to the soul all that could reveal and attract in Him, though He should take nothing, though He were He whose enemies should be clothed with shame, and upon Himself His crown flourish.

265  - 37. The Lord, in reply to their proposal to send them away because they had nothing to eat, proposes to the disciples that they should give them to eat. They were to be the ministers of His glory in the time of His glory, and they ought to have reckoned on this, and so acted on it now, for He was the same Lord and Jehovah that could do it, for all through here He acts and speaks in the character of this glory, though hidden - acts in it in proving facts for the multitude, and expects the understanding of it from the disciples, to whom it was given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. But He must prove it to them too. Still He here uses them as the ministers of His glory in the arranging, ordering, and distributing that in which He displays it. Himself thus acting, in principle, in His glory, He gave to the disciples, and they glorified Him before the multitude.

- 42. "And they did all eat, and were filled," and there was abundance over - the evidence of the ample satisfying of the whole company. The whole scene is a little picture of authoritative and instrumental order and blessing, actual blessing.

- 45. Having thus shown His future royal and real Jehovah glory, and called the disciples into action, He shows the circumstances in which they would be left; and as before, when the seed sowing was spoken of, and the secret operation of the word, and other things shown "as if a man slept," the Lord was presented as sleeping, indifferent and inattentive in Providence to the difficulties from without - the storms which would seem to sink the whole concern - so here, when the disciples had been sent forth (not merely the word sown by Him, and left to grow) and in activity, then His absence, and occupation while absent, and return to them, is proposed to us. Accordingly He sends them off, compelled them to get into the ship - ever the picture of their being thus isolated, and cast on the world as confusion but sustained there; so with Jesus Himself, for we have the ship often in this Gospel - they were to go before Him to the other side. He having long "taught many things," and now shown the sign of His glory to the multitude, dismisses them - this is Christ's act. They, the disciples, were to do His bidding, and go by ship across the sea. He does send them away, so was the Jewish nation dismissed, Christ having done everything possible in compassion, and Christ takes His intercessional office on high. And, when it was late, "the ship was in the midst of the sea, and he alone on the land," so is He that land of rest, and yet was His eye not off them. He sees them tormented with rowing, "for the wind was contrary," exceeding difficult to make head against and carry on the ship, and, "about the fourth watch of the night," for thus all night He had let them toil on their way, as to themselves alone, but thus late, and towards morning indeed, "He comes to them, walking on the sea, and would have passed by them." So do saints, thus troubled, lose their sense of Jesus, that they are ignorant, stupefied and affrighted at His return. But, seeing it is so, Jesus reveals Himself, tells them to take courage for it is Himself so known to them by previous intercourse. And He went into the ship, and all was calm. This has a more particular application to the Jewish Remnant, I doubt not, whom He will rejoin as they were first sent forth, but, in its general truth, the whole Church comes in. They were astonished at His presence, and that His presence produced the calm, for they had not understood that witness of His royalty and Jehovah power which they had seen in the waves just before, for their heart was stupefied. Alas! how much is it so! But with Him they passed over, and came ashore in the land of Gennesaret, that world outside Jordan, where Jesus had made the delivered Legion, not allowing Him to depart and be with Him, go and tell how great things God had done for him. Jesus now returns here, and as, when it was question of the sowing of the word, He in apparent neglect had gone there and sent the man forth, not allowing him to return beyond this sea of Jordan with Him, so now He returns thither with His disciples, having displayed not the sowing but the royal Jewish divine glory. Having dismissed the nation, and having finished His intercession, rejoined the Remnant across the troubled waters which to Him, wind and all, are the same, He passes with sure and governing footsteps over them all, and, when He returned to them, the wind ceased. Thus His royal power was manifested with intermediate intercession, but they were dull to understand what He had done before, and all this divine, royal power was grace and blessing for every supply, paramount to trouble, and bringing sure and commanding rest.

267 Note, the intercession of Christ does not necessarily give peace to the Church while He is absent. The wind remains contrary, and they were toiling with rowing, though going and working according to the Lord's will. Nay, often doubtless being in the place the Lord sets us in, and labouring by virtue of His intercession, causes the opposition of the adversary, until He enters in His power, present power, into the ship and the adversary himself is silenced and bound; otherwise, it is toiling against a contrary wind. Opposition, troubles, and also confusion in the world, often trying to the saint, yet good for sifting the saints together, may be the effect of intercession. When the smoke of the incense arose up with prayers of saints out of the angel's hand, the angel took the censer, etc., and there were voices and thunderings and lightnings, and an earthquake; and the seven angels prepared to sound, all for blessing, all to exercise and instruct, but not all for ease or pleasantness. I repeat, a contrary wind and Christ's intercession go together.

- 54. Upon His going forth to the shore again we find Him healing all. When the Lord went forth the former time, He only left a testimony in the midst of them of His saving power, and committed the testimony to his hand, but now there is universal healing, even by the hem of His garment. Thus this order of testimony closed that which was afforded to the nation of His connection with the Jewish people, its replacing by the Church, His connection with it, and His return to the disciples. But things were, as it were, done in parables.

Mark 7

Now the actual terms of the controversy, and the plain state of things in question between Him and the Jewish people is brought out. The Pharisees and some of the scribes coming from Jerusalem are gathered together, and the question of principles, as of two opposite parties, is brought out between them - a question turning on what is ever the hinge of the question between corrupt forms used as glory to the possessors, ordinances, and righteousness as of God, not sanctioned by their authority at the close of a dispensation - tradition and the Word of God. When I say "corrupt," their having been actually instituted of God does not alter the relative position of the question. "Washing of pots and cups, and many such things which they received to hold" - this is the Spirit's estimate, in the lightest way, of what it is all worth. But the Pharisees, for such systems are blind in this, and will always, having honoured themselves, rest on this honour, put it forward on its own ground: "Why do thy disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders?" These things delivered to hold, such harmless things - and why offend, and not submit to reverence and authority in the persons of the elders? It is just self-will and self-exaltation. Such is man's judgment, because he honours himself - the Spirit, ever the authority of God and His Word, and that only, as authoritative direction: "Man lives by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

268 We here find man's religion the form of piety (rejecting the Word of God, its result) and man's heart - the outward and the inward. Then God, absolute grace to the most distant (by faith), Tyre, Sidon, Phoenicia (though come among Jews), and power in grace to open the ear to the Word, and give a tongue to praise, bless and recount received mercies and manifested power.

- 5. This verse is evidence that epeita (then) is used in the most ordinary sense, without reference to interval of time.

Note, in this chapter we have ecclesiastical hypocrisy, and natural wickedness - man's side; and then, God above hardness of heart (Tyre and Sidon) the devil's power, wickedness to a curse and spueing out. And where faith took the place, as such, owning this, God could not but be it, for He was it - and thus, when His people were deaf and dumb, sighing over them He makes them hear and speak. God is above evil. It is a perfect picture - take Gentile, absolute wickedness, or hardened nearness to God.

This chapter is very complete. First, obedience to God contrasted with observances of human will - tradition. Next, the human heart and its state - the real question, not what is external, but the testimony that out of it comes evil. Lastly, that even if in the ways and dispensations of God a limit was placed to those ways in God's dispensatory wisdom - it was the children's bread - yet that God's heart, who was Love, necessarily met the farthest from Him - could not deny itself (He is Love) when a want was presented by faith honestly taking its own place. Where man is in the truth as to himself, God must be in the truth of His love. He will open Israel's ears, and loose his tongue in due time, but He cannot deny Himself when a want appeals to what He is.

269  - 6, et seq. It is a most important principle on an anxious point, for the child of God driven, by the selfishness of an apostate system, to act on his own responsibility - for a child of God dreads selfwill above all things - and when this is pressed on him, if feeble in light and conscience hereon shrinks. Thus, therefore, the Lord puts it in all its apparently gracious force, and judges it. "Why do not thy disciples walk according to the tradition of the elders?" Then, first, they did not. Next, it was an indifferent thing washing their hands before they ate bread - a thing of excellent signification, for what more important than moral purity, or more agreed in as a representation of it? The simple answer was: it destroyed the integrity and importance of the commands of God. If I can add, and a person should do it, the completeness of God's revealed will is questioned, and mixing other things with it like obligation, nullifies the distinctive obligation on the soul of the will of God - the habit of reference, hearty single-eyed reference to the will of God, and taking that as a guide given in mercy, because we were in a labyrinth, to guide us through; add man's, and the whole recognition of the mercy of giving us a guide, because we were wandering in a wilderness where there was no way, is lost. The principle is clear, but the Lord has settled the point. The thing was a thing indifferent - of excellent signification, and commanded by the elders. His disciples did it not - and here is His judgment on those who minded these directions: "In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." It rendered the worship of God vain, produced hypocrisy, for it exalted man in his approach to God, as if he could come with beautifully arranged things for God, instead of a convicted, humbled heart, and, where it was thus arranged, enabled the unconvinced unhumbled to come with the same appearance, expression, and worship, as he who was nullifying the distinctive power of the Spirit of God. And the worship was vain; it was man, petty man's self-exaltation, - even when it might have the form of piety, and it was vain - indeed, in this high worship, the heart was far away. The Lord had taught the neglect of it, and judged the use of it, and solemnly even in indifferent things.

270 Here was the first point: "They teach commandments of men" - their worship is vain. "As it is written" judges all this, and the Lord pronounces on it. His disciples know where to turn to. The next point the Lord takes up, for "No man can serve two masters," is that these things become substitutes for the commandments of God, for the natural man can do man's commandments, but he cannot do God's, and he can acquire more credit from man by the former than the latter. Here is the charge: "Leaving the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men." And what does it come to? Washing of pots and many such things! Now the Lord goes farther, not to make remarks on what they presented, but to show the real force and extent of their ways, and where the principle went and led. "And he said to them: Full well ye reject the commandment of God." Man never learns the commandment of God, thus pretending to be righteous, but, inasmuch as the perfection of guiding truth is in God's commandments - and it must be that therefore or wrong - when man adds as he may call it, he always opposes and makes void God's commandment. It places man always instead of God, and exalts man and not God; now the will of God directs the Spirit, and humbles the flesh, exposing it. The direction of man hides and glorifies the flesh, and these commandments therefore are found to militate in principle against God and His holiness. There is another reason now emerges. This has the character of religion. Now true religion puts a man into immediate relationship with God, detecting his whole state, taking quite out and putting him into the truth before God (to which the Gospel is the answer of grace) but false cannot hear this - it has no reality of relationship with God, and therefore it constitutes an intermediate priesthood which is the consummation of what is false, when the true light has shone. Then by the authority of nearness to God thus reposed in, which, they being priests and the others not, is taken for granted and cannot be entered into, they act in the dark, indulge themselves, and crave from others, or "He that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey." If I be asked: How then do you say of the Jewish priesthood which God Himself appointed? I answer: That is exactly the point. Then God did dwell in the thick darkness, the way into the holiest was not made manifest, the veil was upon God's presence, which is now rent and done away in Christ, and therefore on Christ's death they that come to God are entirely in a new position. They must meet Him in personal responsibility, and that met by the blood of sprinkling, in the shedding of which the veil was rent; so that grace and holiness necessarily go together. The flesh used this, not even for the terror of judgment against sin, but to use God as their instrument of influence, yea, cultivated sin that they might have sin-offerings. Such is its full effect, the real character of priesthood in man's hands. But the principle of all human righteousness leads to this, for it never brings into the presence of God, and the teachers of it flatter, and minister to this, and therefore you will ever find human righteousness, human will, and priesthood go together, as divine righteousness, the divine will, and a divine priesthood in Christ, and all believers in Him, respectively, go together. But here it is rested not on the priests but on the principles and the teachers, which is important for us to see - "Ye say," but it ministered to this. The Lord for conscience seizes on the evidence, the actual evidence of the effect of these principles; but "in vain do they worship me" applies to every form of it. Indeed the Lord ever does this, waits in patience till sin is filled up to judge, and takes hold on the plain manifestation of it to convict, but we are called on, by the knowledge He affords us of the fruits in conduct, to mortify and have done with every root and branch. In convicting others, we may state the principle on the Lord's authority, as in verse 7, and convict the offenders, if we are spiritual, by the plain effects and facts, and that on their own principles and showing, which is needed to convict though not to guide us.

271 Further, we may observe that the guidance of the principle is constant, the conviction, which is by the grosser facts, is occasional, or minds would be continually occupied with evil, and much defiled and infused, and the wicked and infidels can find that out. It is the sign of evil and ruin when the infidel becomes more righteous than the Church (professing); then judgment is near, i.e., when the place of nominal and assumed privilege is more corrupt than natural conscience, so that mere natural conscience can judge it. It cannot then be a witness really to the world, even by profession, and is good for nothing. Here, further, a reproach often made - infidelity and the truest religion, the Lord Himself, seem to, and in a certain sense do, coincide. For the Lord to vindicate His own name condemns what natural conscience condemns, but in the unconverted man in only haughty hatred. The Gentiles and the Lord concurred in pulling down Jerusalem, but they condemned, in careless indifference or dislike, the Lord too, and He wept over what He had to judge. Our part is as plainly as possible to deny the association of the Lord with it, walking in righteousness that it be not blasphemed through them, and to separate not from that only but from all evil, following Him who, when He puts forth His own sheep, goes before them; and we go bearing His reproach. We find from Jeremiah's case that we shall always be treated by those who would have Jerusalem and the abuses, as traitors to Jerusalem. Be it so - we know our Master's mind.

272 Further, the excuse of such things being only abuses is nothing to the point. They are the occasions of the conviction by the Lord of the falseness of their whole principle. They are the effects of adding anything to God's commandment, "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." And the saint with understanding knows, and judges, and rejects the principle, "the tree is known by its fruits," and the Lord has described it here. It is a most deeply instructive, and comforting, though humbling and sorrowful chapter, because it directs and strengthens with the authority of God by His Spirit and word, just where the saint would be anxious and troubling lest selfwill should come in.

Thus the Lord continually deals in watchful, thoughtful grace with His poor but loved truth-seeking disciples, and strengthens their inner man against reproach and condemnation. They know their Master's mind, and are content, and do not wish or need to look beyond it, save in love. It is most exceedingly instructive. Where is the subtle light, avoiding division, of unscriptural and anti-scriptural, in the presence of this passage? What thorough wretched wickedness that is! Here we have the whole principle, from such a simple thing as washing the hands to the fullest result of priestly wickedness - the substitution of themselves for the plain, happy, blessed and honourable duties in which God, in loving-kindness and His supreme will, has placed us; for the devil indeed defiles everything he touches. Note when the Lord would reprove, He speaks within about the things which are evil; when He would separate and judge, from without as a Prophet. But when He speaks, there must be reformation or judgment.

273 But there is a further point, not yet noticed, not only: "Ye reject the commandment of God," but "making the word of God of none effect through your tradition." Not only was a particular, or any particular commandment set aside that they might keep their tradition, but they rendered null, and rejected, nullified the authority of the whole word of God by this. If I break one, I am guilty of all; but in setting up another authority, I displace and render void and null the whole word of God which claims all authority. If another can direct, I am not sole master, and the man is not my servant; and not only is the servant misled but the master is set aside. God's authority, and His revealed will as authority is entirely set aside by one who adds one tittle. If it be only to wash my hands, another can meddle and claim obedience - the word of God is not the sole authoritative rule. God may be patient, but it is entire apostasy from the whole mercy and will of God saving the soul, He in mercy having taken the pains to take it into His hand, and to guide us. So was Paul jealous as to Titus. God, therefore, is jealous of His word, for whenever we get out of it, we get into the darkness and bondage of Satan. It is the only light and guide we have - the fulness and truth of the light of creation being embodied in it in all its clearness as far as an evidence to the conscience and soul. "Many such things," adds the Lord, "ye do." This solution of God's will was found in and by many things as well as tradition. Man, be it under the form of godliness, desires it everywhere, and everywhere to be without God; and the enemy can provide religion for that, as well as anything else, provided it is for nature worship, for nature is just what Satan does provide for, that we may not feel the need of grace, and man then can be zealous for that against the truth, for it is something of his own - ours, not God. The Lord then goes straight to the thoughts and purity of the heart - the plain direction for the whole multitude. He answered the enquiries (and therein us) as to all the principles of judgment against their tradition - a special subject before. Yet the disciples could not understand this plain principle. And here we have the further evidence of the deadly evil of the system, that so entirely does it rest the mind upon what is external that so plain a principle as this is darkened to the mind, even of those who are sincere, and had been led as followers of Jesus with unfeigned intention. They had not sense enough to see that it was not what went into the belly, but what came out of the heart, that defiled a man. There was that which "purged all meats." What a reproof! But the great principle of all Christ's dealings and ministry, the great ground of plain moral righteousness making the real difference, was brought out; at least the great principle on which He rested His controversy with them, for grace they did not understand. And the Lord, by their own petty objection, came now to the direct question of righteousness, and showed how, in their selfish and self-sufficient traditions, they set even their own law aside. The Lord looked, when asked by His disciples, to the heart, and showed what came forth out of it. He had addressed the great principle to the multitude carefully, that all who had ears to hear might hear. The Pharisees had been convicted on the law as it stood, in which they boasted, while the Lord withal judged them Himself. He left them, and turned to Gentile quarters.

274 All tradition, though the tradition of the elders so designated by the word, and so even called by man, for it has authority with him, is called by the Lord "your tradition." Man's religion glorifies man; it is his. God says: "From within, out of the heart, proceed" - what a catalogue there is when God's religion begins! A man, such as he is, can wash his hands, and say "Corban," but it is a terrible thing to see so laid bare - quite another thing. First, it is "tradition of men," then "your tradition." A Mahomedan likes Mahomedan tradition; an Establishment person that of the Establishment; a Roman Catholic that of the Romanists; a Greek that of the Greeks; it is his own, and it has that value to him. Nothing is so dear to a man as the cover of his corruption, or so full of Satan's power as false religion. This is true even in the worst of apostasy, the chief priests and Pilate, the prophet and the beast. Next, if I add anything, God is imperfect in what He has given as a guide - actually, I ever substitute, in fact I must, for the guide is perfect for the man of God, and this is the subtlest substitute of the man of nature. But, if God has been imperfect in one tittle, I can reckon upon Him in none of the rest; but indeed, on the contrary, "in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." The word of God to man, as he is, becomes purely a detective, a pure detective as the light, whereas the traditions satisfy the natural cravings after religion by what the flesh can do, and therefore are the worst securer against, and barrier of light, besides making void the sole authority of God's word, and therefore all of it, as well as rejecting the actual commandment. It is the arranged religion of nature, and therefore the stronghold of Satan; compare verse 21, taking man as he is, the light entering into the heart, and He was the light. They break through Moses, worship in vain, make void the word of God - whereas God's commandment detects man as he is; so of all true religion.

275  - 6. We may observe here that, whereas our Lord with consummate wisdom throws upon the questioners the onus of any difficulty they sought to impose upon Him when it was merely captious, ever speaks with the most unqualified decision when any principle is involved.

- 22. Folly (aphrosune); so often in the Septuagint. "The fool hath said in his heart." He that is uninstructed, I suppose, and disregards both counsel and instruction. It borders therefore, as to both man and God, upon impiety, flowing from groundless independence of will, with no independence of understanding and knowledge. This in act or habit is, I suppose, folly, showing itself in recklessness of conduct - conduct inconsistent with the real relations and obligations under which we are. This as to God, it will be observed, is practical atheism. The Psalms and Proverbs are full of matter connected with this. It is sometimes put for the vile person - Nabal (a fool) but moros is used for that. It is intimately connected therefore with self-confidence and assumption; it may therefore have here moral connection with haughtiness (huperephania) and then we have great light upon Paul's use of it in 2 Corinthians 11. But it does not, nor ought to lose the weight of its simple sense, though this may lead us to the moral sources of it.

- 24, et seq. The Lord had left the Pharisees and their haunts, and came into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon - a country in fact allotted to Israel, but possessed by Gentiles, their enemies amongst the Gentiles. It was really Israel in title, but actually Gentiles, so that He had left what practically constituted Israel now. There He would have been alone, not out of the territory of Israel but away from Israel, standing in the counsel of God as to it, but separate from the state of man in it. But His patient, gracious power had too widely spread His name. "He could not be hid." A woman heard of Him. Thus grace to the Gentile shown by abounding grace to the Jew, while the Lord strictly kept Himself as sent to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But, if unbelief was sadly manifested in Israel, sorrow and Satan had their power over the Gentile also, and there the Lord's compassion had its way. The woman had a daughter who "had an unclean spirit, and coming she fell down at His feet. She was a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by race," one entirely an outcast, a dog. The Lord's heart had not at all left Israel, in spite of all their evil and rejection. "Suffer the children to be first filled; for it is not right to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs" - curs, vile dogs. But she said, "Yea, Lord," or "Nay, Lord; for even the dogs eat of the crumbs of the children, under the table." Most blessed answer! How true - how full of understanding of God's ways! How honouring to His glorious counsels in exalting whom He would, and counting them exalted whom God had in spite of all; though to her own dishonour! What persevering confidence in the character of God, and in Jesus as the minister and exhibition of it! Owning all the dispensations of God actually, yet seeing through them all to the depths of His character of love and grace within, and pleading with Jesus on it, and all through the sense of need. What an instructor, through grace! That is, God having opened His heart in Jesus, but this woman saw through rejection, for the Lord was to be sought here in Israel. How blessedly was He led! How by divine power was she led also! And as the Lord stood the witness of patient love, but in the secret of His own glory, so she brought by being humble and utterly self-abased to the deep and gladdening knowledge of divine dispensations - for God had children there He loved as such - and that yet deeper knowledge, that secret of divine love which gave her power, if one may so speak, over the springs of the heart of Jesus, because it was in the divine nature and perfectness of which He was the witness, and thus He was glorified in His wider and supreme glory. How blessedly, while in perfect obedience here as a Servant to these rebellious Israelites for the Father's sake, did the light break forth, the light of the glory of that Father break forth in Him! Yet what glory (by being utterly self-abased) to be in the position which should draw forth, and be the object on which all the best glory of the humbled Son of man, the Lord Jesus, should shine! This poor outcast woman vindicated His glory when rejected; so every poor, humbled sinner - such is his place, not in exalting himself, but in his humiliation he is the exalter of a rejected Jesus as the displayer (as the object) of His character and glory, otherwise that glory would be lost in His humiliation; but here it is displayed. It is a glorious place - yet the lowest of us of Him. And how do these extremes, the poor manifested sinner and (the drawing forth) the glory of God in its highest character, meet here! May we have real humiliation, even in taking our true place, and, herewith, clear understanding of the dispensations of God, and the glory of God in them in spite of the wickedness of man, while man in them only finds his own glory to prop up and maintain his wickedness, and secure him from the charge of ungodliness on his conscience!

277 The Lord's mercy necessarily flowed forth; had it not, it would have been a denial of Himself. This is the force of faith acting on what the Lord is, according to His mind and will. He is necessarily so manifested, or it would be the denial of Himself. "For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter." She did actively believe His word, the answer of faith, and departed to her house, and found the devil gone out - further witness of power and mercy!

- 31. The Lord returned to this "Galilee of the Gentiles" - His habitual resort after the beginning till the end. "To the sea of Galilee." The Lord is now, in all these particular miracles, the Object of faith; He is sought. This man, I should apprehend, presents the Remnant of the Jewish people that - while a poor Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by nation (that evil and rejected race) could discern the glory of God's love, the position of His people, recognise it in grace in spite of their wickedness, through the glory of the Person of Jesus their Head, the Lord of glory bursting forth in glory on the Gentiles - when He returned to His own people and into their quarters, He finds them deaf and scarce stammering what none could understand. His eye turned to heaven - the resource of every sorrow - and where all glory was understood, the dwelling place of that which made sorrow understood, and He groaned. But if He did, looking to heaven, looked to mercy and lovingkindness, and the groan (for heaven itself produces a groan while we are here below) turned, from an eye that rested there, into deliverance, and "Be opened." Such was the course of His patient love! And when He spake, as heaven drew out His word, and all the evil and wretchedness of His people drew His heart to heaven, power produced relief, the hearing was opened, and the tongue of the poor example of the effects and power of evil spake plain and rightly. Such was the state of that poor Remnant! Deaf actually, and what remained of traditionary knowledge of God was the stammering of an unintelligible, untaught heart - the occasion of sorrow and groan, not the answer of any praise to their God. In all these cases, the Lord charges to be hid, though He refrained from no mercy and deliverance. He was now more hid with God, and not presenting Himself publicly, as before and after.

278 Mark 8

Notice how very perfectly the turning point of the world's rejection of Jesus, and His glory in another sphere is brought out here. The Jehovah satisfying the poor with bread, in the double character of full government and divine perfection of patience, warning the disciples against both parts of Judaism - its religious and its worldly character - the taking the blind man out of the town, and His entire separation from it as a testimony - first on the disciples seeing only obscurely - then the full doctrine of the Cross, the soul's value, and the coming glory consequent on death and resurrection, the flesh in Peter judged only in that, and savouring what is of men being Satan's power.

But although there might be evidence of the deaf and stammering tongue of the happiest in Israel, yet the actual public evidence of the interference of the Lord's power was plain, and blessed, and a seed was sown by the patient grace of the Lord which was to ripen into a future harvest, and the Lord repeats this testimony of His grace. He shall satisfy the poor with bread, in His compassion for the long want of the multitude, for after three days He will revive them. Already had they been so long waiting on Him, and had nothing to eat. The former was when He went forth to them; here He had already had them with Him, these poor of the flock, three days, and had compassion on them then because they were as sheep without a shepherd; here, because they had nothing to eat, and how could they be satisfied with bread from the wilderness? For indeed many had sought Him from far. Such is the character of these blessed heirs - they had come out from their homes to seek Him. He had compassion, but the disciples saw no means of providing. Unbelief never reckons on a past mercy, for a present mercy ends in the boon received to it and therefore is forgotten as to God in it who is the same for ever. Well might the Lord groan over the last of the Remnant as deaf, and their speech worse than none. Yet it stated the difficulty, and that is something for the Lord. Bread in the wilderness is the great point - an old occasion of God's display of Himself in Israel, yet more in the true Bread. In God's hands there is sufficiency and perfection in whatever circumstances, and yet something over, for His riches are unsearchable.

279 There is remarkable difference as to the typical import of this and the former similar miracle. There, the Lord goes forth and finds the multitude, having been previously hid - finds them on His first going forth, and has compassion on them because they were as sheep that had no shepherd; here, they had been three days waiting on Him, and had nothing to eat. Then He is apart from His disciples in the former, praying - they, on His rejoining them go forth to land, and He shows His abundant present power. Thereupon arose the question of tradition and righteousness between Him and the Jews, and, in the Syro-Phoenician, and the deaf and dumb, the great question of the relationship to Gentiles and the Remnant of Israel. Here we have not, as to this, this primary Jewish character, the result of His visit to them at the outset, but a detail of what was consequent on His stay amongst them. Not the first abundant display and more over than originally, but His patience towards this waiting Remnant, supplying enough. There, it was "when it was late" the disciples proposed dismissing them, and the Lord, through their hands feeds them, and leaves abundance in the hands of each of them. It was the picture of His day in Israel. "He taught them many things," and then the different position of Him and disciples took place; here, at the close, on the ground of their having nothing to eat, after the relative way of grace to Gentile and Jew was manifested, sovereign grace, He shows that still He does not despise the Remnant, but will feed them. How this seeking Remnant was to be fed in the wilderness or from it, the disciples knew not. It was no proposal now to send them away. It was not: "Give ye them to eat," but He told them to sit down, thus watching over them. There, the Lord was revealing His sustaining absence after full manifestation in power in which He could minister by others, saying: "Give ye them to eat"; here it was the full compassionate sufficiency of His presence. The former, therefore, would in some sort apply to the condition even of the Jews during this period, but here He goes with His disciples - His compassionate sufficiency, and, on dismissing the nation after satisfying this seeking Remnant, though multitude of the poor, going with the disciples - there is no toiling, or rowing, or fear, or difficulty. As we have seen, after the former, on the one side, tradition ministering to iniquity and clericalism met by the convicting moral righteousness of the Lord Jesus, and thus the nation's resting-place condemned. (His going forth then had led to the full blessing to the world, as on His return.)

280 Here, as with His disciples, the question of a sign is raised - a sign from heaven. Such they asked from Him, such men announced before the great and terrible day, which was now in the Lord's mind and understanding really lowering over their heads. They take now the active enmity of unbelief. But He had come in grace - ample evidence of it had been given; signs from heaven were, in God's mind, signs of judgment preceding that great and terrible day. Every sign of grace had been given on earth, where it had been wanted, and where mercy brought it and produced it, to show there was deliverance in grace. Well might the Lord groan at this generation seeking a sign, rejecting all He had done, and the evidence He had manifested in grace, and asking for what would be signs of judgment. Whatever individuals may be, the public actings constituted before the Lord's eye "this generation"; compare Deuteronomy 32. But God would not minister to their unbelief, though He afforded every ground of faith; He would not meet their evil will which would be satisfied only with their own glory, though He would amply display, notwithstanding their sin, the graciousness of His own sending forth even His Son. It was the solemn pronouncing of divine authority: "Verily I say unto you, no sign shall be given to this generation." The generation was judged. They thus requited the Lord. Their spot was not the spot of His children - "A perverse and crooked generation." The Lord that had pronounced His knowledge of them then, now, after the exercise of indefatigable and unwearied patience, pronounces it in Person, thus come humbled, if anything could turn their hearts. But they were "this generation." What weighty words! A sign, after He had not spared His Son which He yet had! How were they judged! Yet with a groan in spirit, for He came Himself in love, if anything could be done, was the force of this needful judgment thus solemnly pronounced. But how affecting, a judgment so pronounced! It was the righteous judgment of where Love searching, Love itself could find no hope. The solemn utterance of the righteous despair of Love! Why a sign of judgment, when all had failed to avert it? It was too, too hopeless and bad. He left them. It was all that was to be done, for He judged not: for "He came not to judge . . . but to save." But what a judgment it was! He went forth on to the sea again, and the hope of testimony closed on them. He left them. He has only to warn His disciples, with whom He was, against the righteousness and royalty of His own people - the two great things in which Messiah was to be manifested, the most calculated to have a snare, by their Jewish pretention, to His disciples. The Pharisees and Herodians we hear of tempting Him.

281 The Remnant, then, was now distinguished - His companions. And the Lord proceeds to warn them against the nominal position and righteousness of the nation, presented in contrast with Him the righteous One, and their Jewish king, such as he was.

Note, the Sadducees opposed the Apostles, Satan raising suitable instruments against the testimony of resurrection; the Pharisees and Herod against the righteous royalty of Christ, alive amongst them. He warns them against them.

It is not material here to show on what ground He was separating His disciples from all they (the Jews) had to boast of, and warns them against them in their principles. It was leaven - corrupt, fraudulent principles - the sour, corrupted dough, which would corrupt all. But was their state really one of intelligence? Far from it! The patient grace of the Lord had attracted them, and kept them, and they had the saving point of attachment to and love for Christ. But neither did they understand; natural things had power over their hearts. They could see that the Christ that they trusted was averse to the Pharisees, and that He distrusted Herod, but they went no further than what concerned the body, or any distrust as to their evil conduct connected with that. They had taken no bread, and they were to be afraid of the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod. (The Pharisees were the principle of Judaism morally, and therefore at Jerusalem. Herod, over Galilee, witnessed the extent of royalty.) But if they understood not the Lord who cared for them, He understood their hearts, and kept them. They rested on circumstances, not breaking through them to divine power in His Person, and therefore their faith in the miracle ended in each miracle, and was not, as by a supply of the Spirit, a fresh apprehension and planting in the soul of divine power which answered for all circumstances, and was the joy of hope in His glory. They did not understand, for indeed the manifestation of this power had put the Lord at utter variance with the Pharisees and Jewish power, and it was evident how their leaven hindered their apprehension, and others apprehending the glory of Christ's Person, asking a sign just after such special signs. The disciples were to be warned against this, for the glory which it hid was theirs. They did see something of Christ, so as to be attracted to and knit to Him, but their understanding was all dim to be identified with His place. Their hearts too were darkened; they too had eyes and did not see, ears and did not hear. They partook of the darkness that was around; so strong is the effect, even upon the sincere, when the glory of Christ has not full sway, and is not revealed in power over the flesh in what we are akin to; compare Paul's deliverance on the road to Damascus. They did not remember, for it had not been the communication of God to the soul, and therefore they could draw no other conclusions from His power by it. The Person of Jesus was not revealed to their souls by it, though they saw Messiah's power by it, and were attached to Him who was so. Therefore they were, and because they were hardened in heart, and that even as to the analogous circumstance of the supply of bread. If they had had bread, they might have had to feed five thousand, but they understood nothing of all this.

282 The Lord then in the case of the blind man illustrates the double process by which the Remnant of the Jews were delivered from their total natural blindness. It was a thing with which the village (the nation) had nothing to do. He took them by the hand, and led them out, took them when blind, and first leads them forth, for, though they could not see Him, He could lead them, and lead them safely, even the blind, by a way that they knew not. And He led them forth from the crowd, that there He might make them see apart from them. The first effect was indeed to give sight, but all confusion; so with the disciples from Jesus' action on them while on earth. He led them forth, acted on their eyes in a human manner, yet divine power was there, and they saw, but men were as trees walking. All was seen through a medium, which put men in a false position (you would have thought him alone with Jesus) but the man still or now saw the men, but they assumed an exaggerated importance in his mind connected with this very act of Jesus' power. And this will be the effect when the Holy Ghost is not in power - the very persons whom Christ withdraws us from, to have us for Himself, assume an extraordinary importance as connected with religion, when the conscience is awakened by the act of the Lord, but clear sight not acquired. So it was even with the disciples, because religious obligation has more power, and divine judgment is not acquired. But all this is confusion; but when His hand then touches the eyes, then they see all things clearly. The Lord had laid His hand on him before, so that virtue went out, but not on his eyes; when He did that then he saw clearly. The first was the Lord's intercourse with the disciples Himself, the latter, the power of the Holy Ghost - they judged all things. The same is in principle often true of any soul, but Saul is more strictly the pattern properly for that.

283 Though He still exercised the mercy, it was not the Lord's object now to be known by these miracles, for He was now severing and discriminating in a nation that had rejected Him, or rather itself. So afterwards, they should tell no man of Him. They confessing He was the Christ, morally as Son of God in all His grace they had rejected Him. He was not now to take reputation as Christ, when they were morally bad and rejecting the Lord, and had no taste for what was true in it.

- 27, et seq. The scene of ministry was now really closed among the people, and indeed commented on in what preceded, and He now takes up the ground He is upon with His disciples to explain His real position, and what was coming - the deeper truths which belong to them as separated. The language of the Lord was remarkable. "Whom do men say that I am?" All were classed under this title (men) now. A Jew was just a man. Otherwise it was, "Ye, whom do ye say?" It was not moreover ecclesiastical judgment was in question, but the opinion raised. There were various suppositions, as people's minds had been affected by previous instruments of God. There was no faith in His present living power sending His Son, the Christ Himself. This, though there might be possibly in some cases a seed of enquiry sown, came to nothing as regards separation to Himself. They own Him here, not merely as the Prophet, nor, on the other hand, is the point here given by the Holy Ghost "the Son of God," but "the Christ" - a full Jewish recognition as He had come amongst them. This, as we have seen, they were to tell no one, for He had been indeed already rejected, though He had given every proof, and He was to be received not by the bruit of His renown, but by the grace of the Father seen (however dimly by dull eyes) in Him.

284  - 30. This charge seems to occur more frequently in Mark than in the other Gospels.

But owning Him as the Christ was their own glory too. They had Him specially as owned by Him as His. And He began to tell them what was to happen to this their Christ, giving Himself a larger, more humble title, yet a title connected with all His future glory. He began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by all that had authority, learning, or strict religion, and be killed but rise again. The great mystery of a better world, a better life, a new thing that was to come in entirely of God, when man's rejection (of Himself, in his rejection of all that was good and blessed, as sent of God) was manifested. He who came in this character (whose the glory was) Son of man sprung among themselves, yet the true and blessed Offspring of God, sent by Him, and the pattern, crown, and source of all proper human blessedness would find no link in the condition (save their misery) or even religion. Though come according to it, and its brightest crown, learning in the Law, though He was the end of it all, nor righteousness though He was the only righteous One, and He who could alone have been, had there been any good, the very centre, and power, and source, and glory of all this, was rejected in the midst of it, and cast out as One that could have no part. But God had deeper thoughts, and a new thing to bring in, and the disciples having owned Him in the professed suitability of character He came to them, they are, on this being set aside (in man's sin) to know this far deeper, and intrinsically true and necessary counsel of God, one which might be brought about by dispensation, but was above it all, and flowed from the truth of God's own eternal character in relation with men.

285 Our Lord looking towards the Father, and seeing the power and importance of these dealings with the Son of man, and not seeking Himself, speaks openly of His own humiliation and degradation. To Him it was the condemnation of these poor priests, elders, and scribes. He was occupied with the truth, and told it plainly for man to know. It put man really in his place. It was the truth of that which His disciples had to go through - the great and deep, and eternal truth which was breaking out now, through His rejection. But Peter, forward to own Him as Christ, was yet all fleshly in his thoughts of this glory, and, He having said it quite openly, fearing the loss of influence and effect on the minds of the people, in his wisdom began to rebuke Him. It dishonoured his (Peter's) position, and what would the Jewish world say? It would hinder the people believing on Him. So does the truth of God's grace where it is not a savour of life. But Christ's heart was now on His disciples to strengthen and guard this separated flock, for the separation really was made; and, turning and looking on His disciples, He rebuked Peter, calling him Satan, for things must be spoken plainly, and put in their true light now. To exalt the importance of these scribes and Pharisees and priests was to plunge the disciples really into Satan's hands. God and man were at variance, and all the religiousness of men was the stronghold on the mind against God, and to set it up was to endanger the souls of the disciples by that which had the greatest hold on them. It was exalting man, the worst and highest pride of man - religion without God (for He breaks down the conscience - this built up pride, like the offering of Cain), and showed that, as the Lord was entering into the mind of God now in His great purpose, therein man being proved to be clean opposite to God, he was savouring the things that were of men, not those of God, and these were now proved opposite. It was not of Jews; all was now gone. It was God, and man was in question. And, as we have said, if of man, his religion is the worst part, and the strongest shutter - out of his conscience from God. And where we screen the form of religion under plea of not offending men, we are doing the work of Satan, who in this has power over our hearts, savouring what accredits man, and man against God - the cover, in pride, of his apostasy. All these things are of men, and what is man? Wherever in such a question I can say "of man," I can say "Satan," "For thou savourest not," etc. The whole depth of the things of God was in what our Lord had been saying of this discrediting in death, and so the thoughts of hearts were revealed. It is a very solemn and instructive truth. But the Lord was determined to make it plain, and He called the multitude with His disciples, and said to them: "Whoever wishes to come after me, let him deny himself," (there are no saving terms for man in this world - the Son of God is rejected) "and take up his cross, and follow me." He can follow Me in no other way. "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the Gospel's, shall save it." How with what weight and solemnity this comes, when the Lord had just been telling His own portion! But what a change in all His relationship, all that was Jewish upon earth! Yea, it was now man and God, and, if he saved his life, he must be conniving with those who were proved against God to save himself. This was after long patience, and their rejection of Him. It was a plain, moral, human, eternal question - something wonderfully beyond Judaism - what will a man give in exchange for his soul? So only could he follow Jesus (and He was dying for sin) and what would be given in exchange for his soul?

286  - 33. "And seeing his disciples." There is something deeply affecting in these little touches, as giving an insight into our Lord's mind; they seem to abound in Mark's Gospel. Every instance of the Lord's severe reproof has connection with jealous love for the weak ones of His flock. It is this which seems to draw out the urgent denunciation of anyone who would turn them aside from the path of faith. So Paul with Elymas, and the Galatians. It is therefore the perfection of charity. Here it had also other bearings perhaps, and therefore assumes another character. He seems to have waited as to the disciples, till their faith was manifested, and grounded, too, though indifferent to its getting abroad, or perhaps more then as regarded others, quod nota. And it was this which seems now to have occasioned His rebuking Peter thus severely. All the circumstances are to be weighed here, as composing the force of the passage.

Judgment was then passed on the generation altogether, and the glory of Him who announced it, and whose humiliation they had despised, declared as to come. And so foolish was their rejection of Him, be it as Christ, be it as the grace and truth of God come in His own Person, so foolish in their haughty pride, so truly was He all that He spoke of, and could claim their hearts, and secure their happiness, so near was it all to them though they knew Him not. There were some standing there at the moment - for if He announced the humiliation openly for His disciples, so also (this being discredited, and the false glory set up by one of them) must He countervail this sin in mercy to the multitude by the plain testimony to the glory which was His, and to appear, though He took none outwardly from man, because He had taken humiliation for man and for God's glory, and would take the glory for the same too - but some were standing there, who would not taste death, that death which He had spoken of as the portion of His people, till they had seen "the Kingdom of God come in power." All this was a very solemn announcement of a most important change in the position of the Lord towards the people. It was quite new ground, steadily as the history progresses to this, quite new ground to take, whether we look at the intrinsic truth as regards souls, God and man, or the dispensation of the glory connected with the actual rejection and humiliation, and sure and purposed manifestation of the heavenly glory, the glory of His Father, not merely Messiah with Jehovah as He stood in the flesh then, though ever the Son, by which eternal truths and dispensation would come together, and He, as Son of God, as Christ the Lord, and Son of man with attending angels would, to the full vindication of God's character and relationship with man, appear to the manifestation of that glory, and the vindication of the poor and condemned Remnant. It was now ready, as it were, and could be shown, for the rejection had come in, much as might be to be done for the accomplishment of all purposes connected with it. The Kingdom of God would be seen come in power. It was a complete transition this, whatever patience God in His goodness of salvation might have. And, in looking at the circumstances in which it stands, the point of the Lord's history here partly noticed, nothing can be more striking than the connection in verse 33, of Satan, God, and man. The spirit of pride, apostasy and its form, and, in some sort, root, worldliness, is thus so shown in this its very form and character, Satan. It is all adversary; compare the fall, the temptation, Ezekiel 28, the king of Tyrus, and Isaiah 14, Lucifer. We have it in Herod, Acts 12 - a remarkable type of all this. It will be accomplished in the latter day. Out of it we must take Christ's portion, death, so only, for our nature is allied to it. They are "the things of man," though Satan's power, if not. He had none really. And thus we enter into a new - the heavenly; for all that is in the world, etc., our righteousness, knowledge, place of religious approximation to God is all heavenly and immediate, all true and real in the sight of God, in the rending of that veil (to wit, Christ's death and flesh) which opened the holiest, and all that God is and was, no veil being upon Him; compare, for practice, 2 Corinthians 4 and Matthew 5 at the end.

288 The form of apostasy and the love of the world are wonderfully united: "All these things will I give thee"; "Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world." And note how much lighter a thing Peter is thus addressed for here; for He was judging the root in its workings, and that which was fair in the world was now proved. The least sanction of them was to be denounced as Satan. Note, too, how the flesh in Peter rested, not on glorious, divine and saving power in the resurrection, but the rejection by these wretched chief priests. Alas! how often this is so in principle indeed in all unbelief! In verse 27, He was just drawing them out to His real position.

There were, in fact, two judgments passed on the nation; one on the form of righteousness and royalty, which was corrupt and false - the Pharisees and Herod. The second was of that which was in a certain sense legitimate, and this was found in opposition. It was the respectability, and authority, and religious learning of the nation; all proved in opposition to the Lord Jesus. And, as we have said, the Son of man, man, and Satan brought out in their real place and character, their true place. Man's condition, essayed in every advantageous dispensation, having been proved hopeless, his righteousness, and royalty, the two great grounds of Israel's sustainings false, and the authorities which might be recognised, adverse to God. The former warned against, but the accrediting of these therefore, as more dangerous, denounced as "Satan" by the jealous care of the good Shepherd for His little ones.

The rejection of the Lord had made it necessary for Him to declare, to fortify the souls that might be hindered by it, the glory that was His, in which He would come, that there was a time coming when "Woe be to him" that the Son of man was ashamed of And those that were special witnesses to Him, He would now show this glory to, to confirm their faith; compare 2 Peter 1. It was a wonderful sight, if we take the simple fact, not of this world. Oh! how blessed, when this shall be the sight! When it shall not be of this world! My heart sighs for the time. It was not the inheritance here, but the glory with the saints, His personal glory. How blessed when this vile body shall be fashioned like His glorious body! How transporting, and what liberty of glory! My soul does sigh for the time. None can know what it is but by the Holy Ghost. It is not of this world, nor what man conceives or enters into.

289  - 38. Note its connection. And it will be true, not merely of personal confession but of acknowledging our belief in anything which is part of the teaching of the Lord.

Mark 9

- 1, et seq. And surely Jesus was more at home there than in the world, though love, always a stranger till it has wrought its own, its great effects, might make His home the resting-place of His love, where home He had none, save the need and sorrow of those He came to. And though, where love is perfect, this is its conscious and blessed place, yet still is it sorrow, and a burthen, and makes it feel more sensibly a stranger. All this passed apart, apart He conversed with this Moses and Elias, or rather they with Him. It was He was thus transfigured. It was He whose glory filled their minds, though the others - blessed and wondrous grace! - were with Him in it. There Jesus could let His heart dilate itself - there converse at ease. And what a privilege for us, for this is our place in that day; yea, blessed Jesus, now in Spirit, for Thou hast conquered. The glory is ours now, for it is our Head's, and we are one with Thee. There their joy and converse had no restraint, for sin was not there, and Jesus was fully honoured. All owned and reflected His true or real glory, and that glory was in Man there.

The Father's infinite delight drawn out by the presence of Him who was daily His delight, and His saints therein in the same glory with Him. The Father's heart could express and show itself in ineffable complacency and delight, due to Him who had perfectly glorified Him on earth, and fulfilled all His good pleasure, in whom all the fulness was pleased to dwell, by whom, and by whom alone, the divine character had been vindicated and exalted in man (by and in whom it had been dishonoured), and the great mystery of godliness accomplished and displayed, there His infinite oneness with the Father, understood and displayed, the debt due to the Son eternally paid, and that to the joy of the Father by the glory He ever had. Yet the glory He had acquired, and blessedness secure now, and divine ways, and benediction out of the possible reach of the enemy, yet in the infinite joy, and by union, communion even of the creature, there His oneness with the Father known, yet in Him that suffered (yea, that connected with it), and then the reverse of the suffering. There Jesus could speak of His decease without being rebuked. And what blessed ease of conscience do we see the saints to be in with Him! How interested in His ways! How occupied and conversant with them! How familiar with the glory! And in what peaceful understanding is the decease spoken of, yet how plain the fruit of glory!

290 The three Apostles admitted to see this, that they might be pillars, know also Moses and Elias there. Peter proposes to make three tabernacles, i.e., places of meeting, where the communications of God's mind might be found. It was to him a grand thing to see his Master in the same glory as Moses and Elias. There was no abiding sense of who Jesus was, and they were sore afraid - propose to honour them all. This then was the point to which the previous testimony of the Father came. "This is my beloved Son: hear him." And then none was found but Him - more blessed than Moses on the mount, or Elias returning to the same, the hopeless witness of the same evil which Moses had found on his descent. The Father's voice on the holy mount pointing out the Son Himself to be heard. Moses and Elias were alike set aside as to this. Moses might give the Law, Elias might call to repentance, because it was broken (and return in despair to Horeb) but the Father now points to the Son whose rejection and death had been just testified of, as the One for the disciples to hear. This was a great secret, and was to be kept by those who had seen and heard, until the resurrection should be the manifestation of the power and value of His intervention; and sealing up the prophecy should in establishing indeed, yet end the Law, for Jesus' death, in this sense, ended Law and Prophets. It was God's righteousness "without law." It was now Jesus alone with themselves. This was the manifestation of the power and coming of the Lord Jesus. Its effect was to leave them alone with Jesus, to follow Him in patience, as He was, because of the known glory, in hope, and take His word as their guide in every thing. Note, our hearing the Son is in connection with the Father's perfect delight in Him. This is a most blessed truth. To Him all our attention is to be given in the consciousness of His Person, and of the Father's love to Him. This love of the Father to the Son is a blessed point of knowledge, and communication to our souls, and what we know specially.

291 It is not merely Messiah and Jehovah, as in Zechariah, for example, but the Father's love to the Son. The Jews' confidence rested, if it was just, according to the full truth of the word, in Jehovah's reception of Messiah in faithfulness and truth; the Church's was the Father's love to the Son. What a blessed portion! For the word to us, "Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me," and "I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." But this indeed is anticipating what is contained indeed in this word as to the Object but is known in communion only through the blessed power of the Holy Ghost. Jesus received as Messiah, known in communion as Son, the Son, and Jesus, company with Jesus as Son of man in the glory of the Kingdom are the three steps. Here they saw the latter, having owned Him Christ, and the Father's voice testified as to Him. The second, their own communion with Him in that place was known only afterwards, and very specially by Paul's ministry, and also John's. But this was all de facto consequent on His death; meanwhile, He only was to be listened to. The resurrection formed the cardinal point therein, "declared the Son of God with power," and entering on the whole of that new world "whereof we speak," and putting the Church into the place of that communion in redemption which His being on high warranted and effected before God and the Father. It was different from owning Him as Christ, and was to be spoken of only after resurrection. This communion in unity with the Son has special force in that deep identity of interest which gives a confidence and communion peculiarly its own. How blessed is it! See what a common interest there was between the Father and the Son; I mean as doing His Father's will upon earth. What a sense of drawing all from Him, of doing all for Him, whose soul delighted in Him, as He could say, "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee," and then adds, "and these!" What obedience! What knowledge that the Father heard Him always, that it was a delight without flaw in the essence of His own perfectness! And indeed He delights in us in Him, according to His perfectness. What confidence in the heart of Christ, let the circumstances be what they may! It was the expression of His communion, and, in His love to us, His desire of our communion in it. He must, in truth, have loved us wonderfully, to put us in the same place with Christ.

292  - 2. Note their faith of His being the Christ, the Son of the living God, was not founded on this, but the Father's teaching. This rather followed that, and the declaration of His rejection and death, quod nota; for the time is peculiarly, as not commonly nor without purpose, marked. It was, however, only to the three.

- 4. The two who were in glory with the blessed Lord on the mount are of a remarkable character. Not only were they the Law and the Prophets, which testify of and give place to Christ who, Son of God, is to be heard, but Moses stood alone from God with the people when faith had to be implanted in them, and Elias when, as a body, they had abandoned it, so that Elias came back to Horeb on the failure, as far as man could say, of the Law. (Elisha's ministry came from heaven, and was, in its nature, of the risen Christ.) So Christ was there, when all that His testimony, and all that He was connected with dispensationally, was over, but when His rejection here brought in the glory and the Kingdom. Only in Christ it was absolute, and an eternal redemption, but there was no connection in their ministry with what was when it was set up. It acted from God on all that was around them. It was not as the Prophets in the system in which they were. So also they wrought miracles, the Prophets not.

- 9. The reason as to this was stronger than the miracles. Did it include the other Apostles? Possibly it did. It is remarked elsewhere, that they talked of His decease, with which connect verse 2, and previous note. The first apprehensions of both run much together. It was, I suppose, altogether for their, and, through them, the Church's sake, and note verse 12. "From among the dead," is the correct rendering.

293  - 10. "From among the dead" (to ek nekron). Note in connection with the end of the previous verse. This shows clearly the emphasis on the "from among" (ek); they wondered what "rising from among the dead" could mean. The resurrection of the dead they were familiar with.

- 11. There was then a question as to the scribes' teaching as to Elias coming first. We hear in the force of "the scribes in Moses seat" - they had the Scriptures at command, and presented what they contained, as ready scribes; here, perhaps, to object against the truth. Here what they said was the truth. The Apostles readily bring it back to this doubt and difficulty, not being filled, though impressed with the glory. And this was natural, because the difficulty had been put in their minds; Satan using, quod nota, a truth, to make a difficulty. And how easily, when the glory and mystery of God in the suffering of His exalted Son was not understood, could the difficulty be made available! How was John Elias? He said he was not. But God's children are taught of Him, and given understanding. But their thoughts turn back to the point of His being this Person at all, of which the glory seen so strongly was evidence, and this very conviction brought out the difficulty which had been planted in their hearts. This the Lord at once meets plainly. Elias coming first, restores all things. This was entirely a solution on Jewish subjects. Elias, they said, was to come first; so he was coming first; he restores all things. This is a remarkable testimony. The work of Elias is to call back, and, as we have said, he returned to Horeb as the place of the character of his mission. He acted on the Horeb, or Sinai ground; recalled, and returned thither to hear the voice of God - then the answer of supreme grace. And when he is promised it is "Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, the statutes and judgments." Elias comes and takes up Israel for Israel's portion. But Jesus, coming as Son of man, must suffer many things, and be set at nought; that was where He drew back their minds. His heart saw and felt the ruin of all Israel. He was just about to break His staff, Beauty, and He therefore says, "Elias truly cometh first, and restoreth all things" (taking them on their own ground). Then He would appear to them in glory now, the Son of man - a real (not of dispensation merely), a wider character - must suffer, and be set at nought, for things were all in confusion. "But I say unto you that Elias also has come" - now speaking of him who came spiritually as such, as Jesus came then rather spiritually, i.e., only so understood, though really He - "and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed." The ruin of all things, and dreadful, the totally ruined, state of Israel - all Israel - has been shown in him also. They have followed their own will against God and their own mercies, "as it is written of him." This is a very remarkable passage. I am not aware (there may be) of any direct passage, i.e., in open terms speaking of this, but then for this reason it shows a depth of application of Scripture that is most deeply interesting and instructive, and deeply affects my mind. In such case, such passages as Isaiah 59: 15, would have their application, even by Him who saw all things in their principles, and full force according to the mind of God. Then the verses which follow would be the application of God's judgment to them, to which the Prophet passes on at once. What should happen to the Son of man is more precisely spoken of.

294 But the lot of His faithful though despised servant was not disregarded by Him; he was in His mind. It was written of him how honourable he had been noted in God's book. The restoring of all things was then here perfectly Jewish, though in principle, as repentance, it was of all, but in character Jewish and earthly, but applied to the root as to this portion, or possibility of portion in God's blessing - repentance. This itself really was grace - a new principle - for the Law was, "Do this and live"; here, "repent," because they had failed. It was, therefore, as the Apostle argues in Romans, though not yet developed, the righteousness of faith. The Law and the Prophets all went on to this. This really was a hinge to other things. The Kingdom of God was preached. John was soon rejected by the hearts of the sons of men, though coming in a strictly Jewish way. The principle was in John. But it was true Elias would come; he who had despaired and gone to Horeb, though very faithful, would come and restore. So it was written. But it was equally written that the Son of man would suffer, and that they must expect therefore. And indeed Elias had come, and they had fulfilled what was written of him, i.e., he who had come in the spirit and power of Elias. The will of man hitherto had had its full way; for mercy and grace in power, i.e., setting aside evil, had not yet come.

295 This total failure of power against evil (without Him) was then fully manifested, and therein the state of the disciples as well as of the Jews, as to the recognition of His power (for all things were possible to him that believeth) for indeed His power was present there. However, unless to faith, He was away in the glory, as it were. Whether to disciples or to the rest, He had to say of them as a generation, "Oh, faithless, how long shall I be with you?" Their unbelief was driving Him away; even in the disciples was this shown, but still He was with them in power - His glory, and so the scene of their unbelief still, so to speak, fresh in His mind. This presence of His glory from which He was just returning, brought the whole state of the nation before Him, pictured in this scene. His disciples, without faith as to the energy of it, unable to help; the power of Satan cruelly manifested in the young man, and with the misery of the father, the people just running in helpless curiosity, to know what was the power; and where was it without faith in Him? The sufferers miserable, cast only by misery on One they knew not really; they had no faith. "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" And such, though doubtless there be deep instructions in principle in it, such seems the intimation in it, that without the presence of Christ, that unhappy nation could not be delivered from the power of Satan; and this upon His return from the glory. "After the glory hath he sent me" unto you. Then they will receive Him, and receive Him with astonishment, not understanding this manner of God's dealings with Israel. They had not, long as He had been suffering them, learned His way, and interest in them, and power towards them in Jesus - no, not even His disciples who kept HIS commandments and had His testimony. In the sense of this power Jesus returned to them. They did not understand this separation, even from His disciples, and return. He returned, however, whatever His glory may be, in the prosecution of the same mercy as in power to deliver. And this had been Israel's character, too, from a child. It was not merely moral evil was now in question, but the power of Satan. Israel - though it might be there was no deliverance from this - it came to him from a child; One only could do it, and that was proved in resurrection. Yet, though it had often cast him into fire and water to destroy him, it never had after all. Wretched as was the power unbelief held them into - Satan - a superior hand restrained him, and now he was to be cast out. The man, as we have said, cast himself, in the sense of misery, in hope on the Lord. Let what evil would have happened, God's power had not been limited - the being able was in the believing. The Lord, in no wise seeking widespread popular display, but the suitable exercise of the power of God, that the evidence of it might be clear, by a word of power ejected the spirit, and restored the young man. The working of Satan in the presence of Christ all turns to the witness of His superior power. This deliverance, when Christ returned to deliver, was final; for, from the state described when taking seven others, and entering in, the last state was worse than the first. It is only in real abstraction from self to God, real denial, or, rather, abstraction from self and drawing close to God, that God is so known as to have this power identified with His interests, conscious of His glory concerned in it, sensible of the excellency and power of the extent of that glory, and that God is near, and interested in everything because He is God - able to detect the presence and power of Satan, and apply the power of God in judging him, so as that he must recognise the power which detects him, and which walks abstractedly for and with God in the world, and so by His presence with Him can, in the power of this union and communion, act for Him, for His glory is in it.

296  - 14, et seq. His absence was seasonable for the proof - His presence for the timely support of His disciples. Can one doubt that divine wisdom ordered the admission of these to the Transfiguration, and left those to that exercise? And His return to them - and it may be observed that it does not appear by any means that our Lord left them at the foot of the mountain - it was the next day He came to them. Nor does it appear that it was at the foot of the mountain, indeed, He came to the disciples; but if He did, the ground of their wonder was evident, for they looked not for Him then at all. If we are not so gifted as to qualify us for the Transfiguration, perhaps the next best mercy may be anxious exercise, by which our defect of faith may be discovered, and the Lord will doubtless come in aid to His own glory. Yet it is a sad thought, this strange unbelief.

It was the Lord's absence brought the trial of faith, but it was the feebleness of that faith which seems to have occasioned them thus to be left. Thus, often, in daily life does the weakness of faith bring its own punishment by exposing us to the situation in which its defect is evinced.

297 The remark as to the people's wonder - I think just, they did not know what was become of our Lord, absent not with but from His disciples in an unusual way.

- 19. No doubt of the father as well as of the disciples.

- 21, 22. The father's distrust seems partly to have arisen from extreme anxiety increased, no doubt, by the failure of the disciples. But, note, the cause for it is an abiding one, whether painful or joyous; he felt more about himself than the Lord. Here was the germ of unbelief. "Have pity on us"; he was full of the object, not calm reliance on the Lord's power in respect of it. This fills with the sense of the apparent difficulties; we do not see where the "if thou canst" lies. This accordingly is the point our Lord brings the man's mind to; he says, "If thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us." It is not merely uncertainty as to the Lord's seeing right to interfere, for that is consistent, quod nota, with perfect faith. "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst. And the Lord said, I will, be thou," etc. Here is no reference to Him as "Lord," but "If thou canst." The Lord therefore answers, 'The point of its possibility lies in your belief.' The "If thou canst," which was applied to Him, properly rested in others' faith. There is the whole "if," for "All things are possible to him that believeth." The question of ability, etc., is (are you able) to believe? Note, when we are anxious for some immediate object, we may apply for aid to what has the credit of being able to help, without any just faith in that which we apply to. Just faith recognises, so as to have moral power over the soul, the real character of its object, for it dwells upon it, not merely on what one would gain from it; see Hosea 7: 14, and Psalms 78 and 107. And therefore it never reaches anything of willing obedience. "Who is the Lord that I should obey him?" See, when there was some measure of faith really in the case of Jairus, how our Lord anticipated, as observed, the effect of the news of her death, by holding him to the apprehension of the power, not of the difficulty - "all things are possible," etc.; and, God being indeed manifested, the being able is in the believing. The observations here are intimately connected with our seeking spiritual comfort, in our getting ease for ourselves. A burthened soul cannot but seek it, but a truly humbled and distressed soul is led much more to contemplate God, and wait upon Him, as one unworthy, than to seek ease selfishly for itself, faithlessly as regards Him. Such a soul rather wants deeper convictions of sin generally. There may be dealings of God with souls beyond these observations perhaps; see Jonah, the Israelites lusting for meat, and the answer of the three children to Nebuchadnezzar.

298  - 23. The question of power is in believing - "All things are possible to him that believes."

- 24. There was the confession of unbelief which is, so far, recognition, that it acknowledges the duty of faith which could not be but on the existence of the object, but avows a defect of moral ability. It here manifestly, as to occasion, arose from the same undue possession of mind by the anxious, selfish action about his son; nor was there, though he obtained his desire, and so often, that free manifestation of willing grace on the part of the Lord, which is the blessed power of affiance and communion in us. He saw the multitude running together; the instruction and suggestion was given here as to the power of faith, because it was wanting. There was no want of the Lord's doing all for the man He could do; he obtained his desire, but he did not gain that light of the Lord's countenance and acceptance, which others did who believed simply, and looked to the Lord. He did not contemplate it; it was not "According to thy faith be it unto thee," but "Jesus, seeing the multitude running together." It is surely an instructive lesson. The Lord's grace (while we are humbled and warned) shines most brightly.

But while the Lord showed there was abiding mercy, though He had thus to bear with them, He returns to instruct and fortify the poor of the flock, and seal the law among His disciples. Before, He taught them that the Son of man was to suffer and be set at nought; here, further, that He was to be delivered even by those with whom He was then dealing, into the hands of men, and they would kill Him. This was a further step, as in man's sin, so in the strange relationship of things which sin had brought in. The Son of man taking the title in love, and the Head and Glory of man is delivered by those in direct, divine association with whom He came, into the hands of men - those whose nature He had assumed in love, and to their glory, and they would kill Him. Death was to be His portion at the hands of men. But, being killed - here was the wonderful purpose of love and glory which permitted it, even sin and darkness and folly to the uttermost - that, being killed, He would rise again, putting away the sin, and conquering death. But they were quite ignorant of the Word. It was very simple, but it fell in with no previous ideas. It was therefore unintelligible. So ever - the statements of God are very simple, but they are not accordant with what we have received, and they are therefore difficult to the mind. "How is it that ye do not understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear my word." If we hear what God says, there is no difficulty in understanding it. It was not surprising that they should not understand the humiliation (that deep glory) of the Son of man, when they were disputing who should be greatest in a kingdom which they had settled according to their own views, and ideas, and desires for themselves. Yet the resurrection glory was founded on this humiliation. The Cross, if God was holy, must be passed through for it. Yet, what a picture of the heartlessness of man! Just while the Lord was explaining His humiliation, and the new and blessed truth of His victory in resurrection, they were at that time disputing in selfishness as to the portion of each in that Kingdom. What a disclosure of their insensibility and selfishness! The glory of the Kingdom had but aroused it. Anything special for the three, seems to have left them on a par with all the rest, and the Lord's account of His betrayal to death into the hands of men seems to have left them where they were. The Lord, who knows their thoughts, asks them, but there is, at least, the silence of shame. Conscience had begun to work upon it, whether through His discourse or not, but they had disputed enough what they were ashamed to confess. It is before the Lord things assume their true character. But how sad and sorrowful is the picture of man! But the Lord takes the occasion to instruct them further in the spirit and character of His Kingdom - humiliation. He was a good example of it in all patience, for it was done to His Father. Whoever would be first should be last and servant, for it was self, and just so much distance from and want of the Spirit of Christ. Our Lord pursues this character of Christianity, self-humiliation and self-sacrifice, thus entirely brought out by Christ's death, and valuing Him and everything by reference to Him thus rejected would be the great test of this. It was not the vain glory of the world, but the links of God's love; His love rested on such, whoever received one of these despised and, to the flesh, unimportant little ones in His name, received Him, and whoever received Him received not Him - to the eye of the flesh a despised and rejected Man - but Him that sent Him. The glorious links of God's love!

300 Another form of this selfish, human, fleshly aggrandisement among His disciples (in the Church even) then discloses itself through this remark. He did not enlarge and accredit their party - this man that cast out devils in Christ's name; John thought it doubtless well, as he did not go with Christ, but he was casting out devils in Christ's name - the good was done in the power of His name, and no one who could use power in His name could readily speak evil of Him. If they loved the glory of His name, not their own aggrandisement and credit, they would be glad of it, as the blessed Apostle. "Some preach Christ of contention," "yet every way Christ is preached, and therein I do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." And they need not hinder him, they would have plenty of opponents; to bear the name of Christ would turn the world against them, for the question between Christ and the world under Satan's power was fairly raised, and they were to find this on His death which was now before Him, as the very connection of this opposition, the manifestation of this enmity. Whoever was not against them was on their side. "Us" was the word on the Apostle's mind, he had a right, he thought, to use Christ's name to make people go along with them. Christ used it only for good in humiliation, and they would be in this warfare, and have plenty of it; wherever Satan was cast out by that Name, it would be so much force and reinforcement of their service for Christ. If they were looking for the fleshly importance, that was not Christ's name really, and if all the world and Satan's power were against them, whatever validated the power of Christ's name against the power of Satan would be for them - would actually and relatively strengthen their service. It was value for Christ evidently. It was recognised by Him, and so were they identified with Him, that if anyone gave them but a cup of cold water in His name, His name would be recognised - the great test, for indeed the whole mind of God was involved in it, and the moral state of the individual, for it owned God, for the love of Him as humbled, despised, and rejected in a world of sin - the man would not lose his reward, on purpose to put down the false view of man. The Lord had come, completely despised and outcast even to death, on purpose; so all that view, pro tanto, was got rid of for the sake of that very Name which conveyed all that. The kind act was done, and in that act God's view of Jesus and His work was taken. I say pro tanto, for I do not see that it is here brought to a question of salvation; but it was recognised, and not forgotten of God. He owns the truth, and reflex of His grace and truth, wherever He finds it, and acts on the presenting of it to Him. On the whole, the thing they were to value was simply His name - the great test, as He had His Father's - and so entire was, and would be, the opposition, whoever was not actually against them, they might reckon as gain and on their side. On the other hand, whoever should slight this Name in the least - the least and most insignificant believer - he had joined the world and Satan, in this great open conflict, in that in which the Lord was most interested. His feeble weakness showed his malice, and evil malignity, the baseness and cowardly spirit, yet acute malignity of evil, and that just in what was nearest the opposite feeling in the Lord's heart - His tenderness and watchfulness over the feeble, the poor, the weak, the lost; he had touched one of Christ's little ones - it were better a millstone were about his neck. But the real thing was the value of Christ's rejected name; that attached the greatest value to the least thing, to the feeblest. The glory had been brought out in the Transfiguration. His total rejection by the world rested on the mind of Christ - owning Him was owning all that the world had rejected. All hung on the consciousness of how He had come, and been sent, on owning Him.

301  - 38. The point of connection rests "in my name" (verse 37) and so in what follows.

- 40, 41. Remark with what singular beauty the Lord says "us," identifying Himself wholly with the disciples, after rebuking the selfishness of the "us" in verse 38.

I think this holds out in the strongest light the universal opposition of the world to the ministry of the Gospel; on the contrary, the perfect waiting on the weakness of those who, however weak, are willing towards the Gospel, and then, especially in ministers, the obligation of the maintenance of their own consistency in grace, for indeed they are subject to the same liability in stumbling, and the rather as the exercise of service is peculiarly apt to lead their mind off the frame of their own spirit and internal power of grace, and they defraud not only themselves but others.

302  - 42. Christ is everything - value for His name tests all. A cup of cold water for His name's sake, shows value for Christ. So a believing child is of all account; so what would turn us away from Him must be sacrificed, be it what it may. It is now an eternal question. The salt must be kept salt; and the judgment of God will test every thing. It is more testing, but less characteristic than Matthew 18. The principles are the same so far.

But as the Son of man had come to seek, and save what was lost, and His coming had proved how totally lost they were, as the principles of His kingdom were found at total variance with all that was in man, so really as God had set forth all that was attractive, all He had in Him, not merely Jewish hopes but eternal destinies hung on the rejection of and not following Him. He saw also how many things hindered the human heart from coming to Him, how many things got power over it, but if it cost a right hand or a right eye, it was better to enter into life. How solemnly and urgently the Lord repeats it! There was no offence really in Him. If it was in them, better to lose anything here, even what was good and given in nature, than eternal life, and go into Hell, "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." The unquenchable fire is its character, for that is God's judgment, but there is that which belongs to the place, a gnawing which characterises it, and is of them, and ceases not, and is lasting as they, their worm - worse, because theirs. It characterises the place, and as to this judgment of God, it is universal; everyone shall be under its influence. It is His nature, His necessary and blessed nature, on which the stability of all things hangs, which is connected with the very being of God, as God; He could not be so else, but to allow of sin. Our God, blessed be His name, "is a consuming fire"; He allows it not in us - thanks be to Him! It is our joy. He cannot allow it anywhere; "Holiness becomes his house for ever." It is our portion; and what perfect delight and joy to our souls! Our portion for ever! Hence what deep, deep consolation, that God knows everything in us! Then, on the knowledge of this, there is the activity of holiness spoken of here. It is addressed to the disciples only, all this, and is instruction to them - activity in rejecting all outward occasions, and stumbling blocks which nourish and cultivate the flesh, for we have the Spirit already; for, though not said to them when they had, it is said to them on the footing of His death which introduced all the principles of God's holiness, sentenced (though a sacrifice for sin or God by it, as by Christ's life and nature) sin in the flesh, and was that through which, as sin was judged, so we are made partakers of the Holy Ghost.

303 Now fire is just the application of the holiness of God in judgment; "Everyone shall be salted with fire." Christ, having taken our place, was salted with fire, and if our sin was entirely consumed by it, He Himself was therein an Offering made by fire, a Sacrifice of a sweet savour, an Offering made by fire unto the Lord. Coming into a world of sin, He must put Himself here, go on with the sin (at least in others) and go out of it again, i.e., in fact He must put Himself here. It was the only place He could put Himself into - yea, in this wonderful mystery of love, holiness, and wisdom - this mystery of God - of godliness, for sin had come in. But this shows necessarily that sin cannot pass at all, for it was the intervention of God about it. It was the great proof of this. But looking at it illustratively, if He did not escape putting Himself in this position, who shall? God's holiness is certain, and sooner or later vindicates itself, whether as an action or not. Everything is tried, and passes through the ordeal of this holiness; "Everyone shall be salted with fire." God's active, judicial, and, in one sense, avenging holiness, shall try everything. Everyone then shall be salted with fire, every sacrifice, everything offered to God shall be salted with salt - the preserving and enduring savour of grace. The salt of the covenant of our God must be, shall be in every sacrifice, every one offered to God. There is a process of judgment, even for the saints - the fire tries them, but in them it merely purges the evil, chastens them for the inconsistencies, and, removing the soil and hindrance, the new life moves unhindered and unobstructed, healthily, easily, and happily. When that is not, of course, it is mere judgment and condemnation. But every sacrifice, everyone really offered to God, he in grace shall be seasoned with the salt of the covenant of the God of His people. This is according to the measure and character of the offering, i.e., it is qua offering, he may, if careless in walk, undergo, and with the judicial process as another, perhaps more severely because of the position - he is in a nearer position to the consuming fire - but, as an offering, every saint, and in measure as actually offered, is salted with the salt of the savour of God's grace in communion with Him. For the whole of this indeed hangs on being brought completely to God, that all the figures of the Law had their realities now, Christ, the Lamb, the Gehenna of fire, everything. God Himself was revealed; questions had ceased to be Jewish. His rejection by them had rejected all questions into questions between sinful man and God. The last Hope of the Jews having been rejected by their evil nature, when really God, their God, was amongst them, who would have gathered them, and being rejected in His formal character to them as Jews, His character and theirs, as God and sinners, became manifested, and in juxtaposition. Hence the discoveries and truths in the previous passage. And in this nearness no sin could be allowed; the fire of God's holiness, dispensed mercy being rejected, must try everything. They must be salted, consecrated by this. This would be in nothing but judgment of men - unrenewed sinners - everlasting destruction from His presence. But, on the other side, in grace, this nearness to God was the power of real savour, and being spiritual consecration to Him, this consecration had its power in this nearness. There the savour of salt is; and it is impossible, further from God, to enter into the power which is nearer to Him, for the power of grace is of Him, and we are offered so far as the flesh is put down and sacrificed, and we are alive to Him in that we live in our place, and every energy of our mind as servants. This, as regards position; if in that position the flesh rises up, the fire will only, so to speak, burn hotter, because of its inconsistency with the position. Thus, suppose I were in the position of an Apostle - self-sacrifice to God - my work must be in the savour and power of that nearness, and so only could be; but any inconsistency we may expect to meet the fire for, according to the nearness of that holiness.

304 Then as to the Church - the salt of the earth is its position and character. It holds the place of grace, of the revelation of God's unveiled character in the earth. It holds His place. "Be ye therefore perfect as," etc. And so of light to the world. "God is Light." "Ye are the light of the world." Well now, this which was brought out in Jesus, God manifest in the flesh, is good. "Salt is good," but if that which holds this place lose its savour, "wherewith shall it be seasoned." It remains in its position, nor, when really Christian, does it cease to be salt, but it has lost its savour. There is no hope of recovery held out. It is not, as salt, spoken of for its security for heaven, but its savour for earth as a witness, and witness of what the Lord is on earth. Thus the Lord traces, synoptically, the effect of His rejection and the manifestation of deeper principles, which was to be the effect of that rejection. Though short, the statement of principles is of the very deepest possible importance, arising from the full manifestation of God, on the discovered impossibility of any dispensation with man, as such, and the principle of grace therein, brought out and manifested in the Church, and in it in responsibility on the earth; for man, let his security for heaven be what it will, is always responsible on earth - or whatever may strengthen him in that responsibility.

305  - 49. Is it not to be looked on as a promise, though in form and truth a warning? "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit." He had been recommending the putting away, at all cost, the occasion of sin, "For," says our Lord, every one shall be fully counted and purged, and that by judgment, for God will, if possible, mark more decidedly, in His people than in others, that it is and must be "so of a truth" to them, indeed all of grace; and then the reference to the Romans has full application, and many passages in Corinthians may be referred to. The "for" (gar) then is obvious.

Is it not also, for every one will be exercised in the fire of trial? The fire shall try every man's work, and indeed every individual's work in his own soul. "Present your bodies a living sacrifice." "Every sacrifice," i.e., every one devoted to the service of God in the Gospel of His Son - crucified with Christ. This can only be effectual and real in the power of genuine grace. "Salt is good," there seems to be a conjunction here of the instrumental power or means, and the person in whom it operates, as in the parable of the sower: "These are they which are sown," etc. Then of the salt (ye are the salt by the power of the salt in yourselves), "If the salt becomes saltless, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another." This connects it with the circumstances from which the discourse sprung. The result is simple and powerful - "salt in yourselves . . . peace with one another." The more real power of grace there be in us in truth, the more recognition of the Name of the Lord Jesus, the more genuine apprehension of nothingness in ourselves, more of the communion of the power of His Person, and so the more peace among ourselves. When real grace fails, though there be gifts, there will be jealousy and self-seeking even by those very gifts, and the Name which is the bond of power and unity will be disregarded, and division follow. They are most important as substantive directions, but have the utmost connection one with the other. Though peculiarly strong as to ministers, it is, as all other such places, true to all disciples.

306 Mark 10

This chapter continues to verse 45; from verse 46, the Lord enters afresh into Judaea as Jehovah and King, Son of David.

The Lord now put Himself, as it were, close to Judaea, but in contrast with it, outside it, in connection with it but now not within - a picture of His real place in dispensation as we have seen. But though now in principle without the camp, other glory and other revelations having come in, yet still His own mercy and patience unexhausted, the multitude come to Him there, for now they were to go out to Him, and, "as his custom was, he taught them." But this soon brought into question His relationship with the law of Moses. The Pharisees came to Him with this much-discussed question: Was it lawful to put away a wife for every cause? He refers them to their own authority: What says Moses? He permitted a divorce. To the lawgiver first - their own authority - but not their discussions, the question must be taken. But the Lord hereby assumes entirely a new position - a Judge of the Law itself, not condemning it, but accounting for its character in such provisions, and assigning it a temporary place. There could not be a more important principle in His controversy with them, nor one more consistent with, and flowing indeed from the place, which we have seen Him so distinctly assume, of the great moral principles of relationship with God. "Moses, for the hardness of your hearts, gave you this commandment, but from the beginning it was not so." What an account of their dispensation! Its stability and consequence! It hung on principles different from what God had instituted in blessing at the beginning, because of the hardness of their hearts now fully manifested. "Moses gave YOU this commandment, . . . but God made them male and female from the beginning of the creation." He was settling things now according to God's institution of them, not acquiescing in temporary arrangements of dispensation. Taking up God's institution at Creation into His own Person as Second Adam, the law entered; in this light God now returns in this place of Christ to His own thoughts; the hardness of man's heart had exhausted itself in evil, there was no more use in provision, patient provision for it, for the greatest provision, even Christ, had been rejected. God returns to pursue His own thoughts, dispensation being useless. I cannot but think Christ here treats the Jewish Remnant as His father and mother, and the Church as His wife. Thus, turning to this original creation purpose, one founded on deeper and more eternal things than anything in the law, for the dispensation of the Church is the manifestation by the Holy Ghost of that which the Church in the mind of God shall be when united to Christ, when its blessedness is complete. Hence the heavenly Jerusalem is looked at beyond the millennium; Rev. 21. The Church are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones, which is never true of the Jewish people, though, in a general sense, married to Jehovah. It is not a real union, as the union of the Church with the risen Jesus. This is God's act and work, the plan of His new Creation as of His old. But so far from sanctioning Moses' law whoever does it commits adultery, and if a woman (which Moses' law never sanctioned) did it she committed adultery. It was from the nature of the bond of God. And we may add, never had He rejected and given up the Jewish people. They had rejected Him and committed adultery, but He had been ever and unfailingly faithful to them. If He gave them up, it was that they rejected and refused them - this as to their responsibility; He will show His faithfulness in grace much more. As Second Adam the Church was His spouse; as Jehovah they had rejected Him; and, Head of the new Creation, the Church was His Bride. This was now brought out by their rejection of Him. As Second Adam He was never Bridegroom of the Jewish company - as Jehovah He was. They were unfaithful to Him then, not He to them. As second Adam, now just brought out, He takes His own real place. They had now on their lips: "We have no king but Caesar." They were an adulterous generation. All Jewish pride, wisdom, and learning was set aside too. A child, and its simplicity, was what was wanting for, and to enter into the Kingdom of God; "of such is the Kingdom of God." If a man did not come to receive, if he did not come with the simplicity which found the truth there, he could not enter. Man was a mere sinner; good must be found elsewhere. All the learning, and wisdom, and information of Moses and discussions of his principles and meaning, was all just hindrance, unless it brought to the discovery of the utter ignorance, evil, and ruin in all this, because of sin. Then would a man the rather come as a child. Christ had to confound and confute, or reprove and set aside the doctors. He had only to receive the child; what did the child find there? What did he not, in the riches of God's own blessing in the Mediator, in whom all fulness dwelt, in grace and supply to need? This was clearly the way to come. All He had to do here was to warn them of the truth - a truth present circumstances brought into such relief - and then to call, take them in His arms, lay His hands upon, and bless recipients as received. But we have then the question raised on more detailed ground, and the principles on which the conscience rests. Here we have had mind, and knowledge, and pride, contrasted, as hindrances, with the sweet and blessed grace which receives these little ones, that they may receive blessing; now the question of conscience, righteousness and goodness - what was to be found of it in man - or where goodness was to be found, and what temporal advantages and race availed to these - the things to the now position of the Kingdom of God, i.e., its real truth; for to a Jew they were promised blessings. This also was a hindrance. All natural (apparent) advantages were a hindrance. So Christ judged, and teaches, for God's thoughts are not as our thoughts.

308  - 17. And as Jesus went forth into the way, one attracted by the gracious goodness manifested in Jesus, His ways, and His teaching, and His Person, came and running to Him with alacrity - the hasty feeling of the flesh, no sense of His own nothingness, but what was most amiable as a creature, thought he had nothing to do but just to get the instruction required from One so evidently marked by grace, and to sail with full sails in race and willingness, as he was, into the enjoyment of eternal life. He had mistaken the whole matter; his nature was all wrong; the hardness of that did not come into his calculation. Conscience was unawakened - the only real instructor of the state of all things, because, when taught of God, it knows it in itself. "Good Master," saith he, "what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" What a willing mind! would we have said. How encouraging, and amiable! How to be drawn on in such a course! There was ignorance of the first principles of truth now brought to light. He knew nothing and speaking only under the delusion of the enemy, though in the amiableness of the flesh, he knew not himself. The Lord stops him quite short. He came to Him as a Teacher, setting Him up Jewishly as such, in this ardent flow of youth. "Why callest thou me good," says Jesus; thus casting all this hope down in the young man's estimate of himself, and goodness - he must reject it all. It would have been contrary to God. "There is none good but God." Had He answered to the young man's mind and question, Jesus would to him have denied the first principle of truth, the very point the young man needed - we ALL need. The law had said, "This do, and thou shalt live," but it included all. The young man, taking this principle on the assumption of his own goodness (which, if it had existed, could not have wanted the law) not the conviction of sin by it, asks what the good thing is that he should do, seeing Christ's holy wisdom and walk. The Lord, having stated the principle that none was good but God, takes the second table, so-called, and proposes these commandments to him. The young man, anxious to evince his desire to do right, and his avidity for eternal life as proposed as a portion of God for the soul, arrests the Lord with the answer: "All these have I kept from my youth." There was something exceedingly amiable in all this - it may be without knowledge of himself, but this alacrity of heart - the flowers of a weed are often fair, and if they bear no fruit it, as to nature however fallen, God, who has so clothed the grass, He who made it and could look with that separated eye of goodness which could rise over the sin, and separate the creature in His own holiness, could recognise this. His heart was not unaffected by it; looking upon him, He loved him. It was very attractive. It is not to be above sin always to be occupied with the evil; he who lives in his mind in good, will congenially recognise the good handiwork of God, marred and ruined as it may be and is. It was the same thing, the same intimacy with what good was which made the Lord say: "There is none good but God," and love the young man. Nor did the ignorance of his judgment arrest, but rather draw out the compassionate love of the Saviour. Still He did not fail to apply the probe: "One thing thou lackest. He must know his own heart. Of this he knew nothing, and nothing really of God in the claim he had on it. Outward evil to his neighbour he had not committed, and there was no doubt of his natural sincerity. It was the fairest possible specimen of the natural man in the flesh under the law. It had no common term, amiable as it was, with the kingdom of God. That, in discovering the heart, and going deeper than nature's judgment, bringing in God, good indeed, but alone good, found and demonstrated all sinners. There may then be the fairest natural exercises of heart, fulfilling in responsibility that in which we stand related to man, but when it comes to a question of the soul with God, and a heart resting on Him, according to His estimate of things all may be wanting. For this point the Cross is the test. In self-relinquishment, "Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor." The principle of selfishness must be got rid of, and be replaced by love, "And you shall have treasure in heaven." Here the real character of the desires was tried. "And come, follow me"; here, the giving up the glory, honour, judgment of the world entirely closing with this plain truth, taking up thy cross - that is where I am leading hearts here, at least it is all I can put before them. If they prefer Me, it is in following Me they will find this. Thus love, heavenly-mindedness, attachment to Christ, and by and in that giving up and despising the world and its judgment, taking up the cross - these were the things proposed. And the young man, who outwardly was righteous enough - that was not the thing wanting - went away; he was grieved at that, and "went away sorrowful," for he had great possessions. That one thing contained in his heart the opposite of all Christ proposed - love, heaven, Christ despised, and the cross.

310  - 18. This verse seems strange to some minds, but we are apt to take words from Scripture out of connection. The fact is they strike precisely at the moral root of the whole evil in the young man's mind as regards his internal moral judgment, or rather blindness. And see Griesbach's text of Matthew 19: 17: "Why askest thou me about the good? One is good." See note on Psalm 16.*

{*"Notes and Comments," Vol. 3, p. 70.}

There was doubtless gracious acceptance dispensationally. As far as he went, the man was seeking goodly pearls, but he was not prepared to sell all things for a pearl of greater price; it is knowledge of its value when brought before us leads to this - men rest upon the language; see Matthew 19, in thus case, "If thou wouldest enter into life, keep the commandments."

311  - 21. Lo, the fruit of the Lord's love! Does it pre-eminently show (except the coveting, which was a question of the power of grace) the man had kept, in act, all the commandments, and lacked one thing, which one lacking kept him out of the Kingdom of heaven? I see not what they gain by such a testimony as this. It is hardly necessary to observe that it is not "What must I do to be saved?" The force of the passage is as simple and plain as possible. Two things are wanted - apprehension of the Object, and faith in the power of the offerer; they will be found practically identical.

- 27. I cannot doubt the Lord's answer refers to those words among themselves, which drew our Lord's look upon them: "Who then can be saved?" "All things" - what ground does this set it upon? And then recollect, "All things are possible to him that believeth."

The principles of the Kingdom were now coming more clearly out, and its heavenly character; none therefore good but God; heavenly-mindedness, suffering with Christ, and taking up the cross, love to the despised poor, characterising it here. And the disciples were now to be accustomed to this; their Master was now really Jewishly rejected. They must be familiarised with, and instructed in the new principles of the Kingdom. Looking about upon His disciples, He said: "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God!" It is not in the shape of eternal life or salvation it is put here, though both may be involved, because in that light it is pure gift; but here, because of its nature and character, for the actual hindrances acting upon men's minds on its proposal, are noted of God - a warning and deep instruction to His saints. He cannot, and we may say that in every sense, compromise His principles for man's passions; He could not in them be called their God. To a Jew He was their God in riches in their basket and in their store, but their sin - the sin of all men in truth - brought out in His hand deeper truth. The detection of sin by the law then was the last thing the flesh thought of in it. The disciples were themselves astounded with the idea that one with the best advantages, and favoured most, fairest to the eye of the flesh, could hardly enter into the Kingdom they had before them. It baffled their thought, and the Lord answered them to bring down to their apprehension as children, their childish thoughts. Yet in His gracious affection, yet with much deeper rebuke to them - for grace ever rebukes most deeply, for it is not in anger, but puts the pure evil in its true light - "How hardly shall they that trust in riches enter into the Kingdom of God." Now it was evident, though perhaps in ignorance, the flesh still having such influence over their minds, that they did by their astonishment. It gave the cause of the difficulty without modifying the statement, and therefore the Lord adds at once, stronger almost than before: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." It is a strong and solemn statement, and alters the character of the Kingdom wonderfully to men's minds, and stamps it most significantly as contrary to all their thoughts. We have a constant tendency to get practically off this ground. They felt the force of this, that it struck at all human calculations, and said: "Then who can be saved?" The Lord's answer settles the whole question between the flesh, law and grace: "With men it is impossible." There is the whole matter. The most favourable circumstances do not alter this, except in some sense for the worse, because the flesh cherishes them for itself. But then it is not so with God - blessed be His Name - because He can act in creating, changing power, and therefore let us be ever so bad and hopeless, here is our resource, and our hope: "With God all things are possible." There it all rests. It is wholly impossible with man. When God acts, He can do what He pleases. He is wise, holy and powerful to produce His own effects. Here the whole thing rests. It is a change of the very nature of the question - man quite set aside, what he is, what he can do. And then a new thing, God in His own power in grace acting there, what could He not do? How deeply, though as yet little developed, are the principles of the Kingdom brought out in all this passage! There cannot be a more important one as to the nature of the Kingdom - "Who can be saved?" For there it is taught, let a man be ever so lovable, and in all apparent willingness, it comes to nothing when the test is put. Look at that young man, and the solution that it comes to, and all is settled - all to condemn us as ungrateful, and utterly worthless, and to exalt God as alone good, and the only Source of good and blessing to us in our souls. Then, let it be the worst, and He can make them what His own life-giving and communicative goodness produces. So, often we see the last first in this, and first last. The consequences of this principle of grace in the Kingdom then follow here - its introduction into the blessed power of God's grace towards us, and so to the chief of sinners.

[Enough of Mark remains to nearly fill the next part, in which, the Lord willing, it will be continued.]

END OF VOLUME 5

Mark

J. N. Darby.

<46001E> 1

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

Mark 10 (continued from Volume 5)

- 28. The Lord answers the question now proposed, "Lo, we have left all and followed Thee, what shall we have?" "There is no man who has left house," etc., "on account of me, and on account of the Gospel, that shall not receive an hundredfold" in kind even (the Lord in this omits "wife"; there is no promise to give him back this - this stands on other and its own ground) in all the comforts and kindness, and peace, and enjoyments which belong to Christians as such here, with persecutions as from the world, and in the age to come eternal life. Yet there is no mere human standard of purchase as it were, or recompense. There are many who seem to take the lead, and do externally, who shall be last, and last apparently for a time who shall be first. The expression "mothers" shows that it is not in a mere natural sense, yet it is, in the counterpart, enjoyment of actual present things, finding in the Church what really fills the gap an hundredfold, made by these breaches. But, though in love to Christ and the Church, there may be infinitely more than an hundredfold for sacrificing wife, yet that is never made up in counterpart. There is not that made up in the actual enjoyments of the heart in the sources of happiness around, that may perhaps make the sacrifice more blessed, because Christ alone can make it up, but the other thing is not, though that may be more than verified. But in all other things, though with persecution, there is a positive more than making good in all that draws out, and fills up, and satisfies, and enlarges the affections in the relations with all around, besides the world to come, which seals it all with blessing and joy. "But there are first," etc. This encouragement was graciously given to us all, when the effect of the Gospel was stated, and brought to light indeed in the rejection of the Saviour. Such was the portion of the Saviour. He had now fully brought it out, and indeed they had seen how He had been treated and rejected at the seat of the nation's judgment and authority. He had also put it before them, and hence pressing on them the way He was to be treated, and what position He stood in towards the nation, and how He was rejected indeed, and what man was, shown too in Elias.

2  - 30. Does not this imply, as other passages, that Christianity is not an aion (age)? For "the world to come" is, I apprehend, the millennial state.

- 32. "And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem," where His glory was to be cast down to the ground; "And Jesus was going before them," conducting them there; "And they were astonished," how He could lead them thus on to the very destruction He had declared; "And they, following, were afraid." This very courage which led straight on to predicted oppression and disaster, frightened and terrified them; it is its natural consequence, for the flesh shrinks from what is so inconsistent and contrary to its natural feelings. There is something that terrifies nature, because it is what we call unnatural, and to see One in our nature do it distresses us. But the Lord led calmly and peaceably straight on. He knew why, and where, and to what end He was going, and, in patient determination of love and obedience, steadfastly set His face to go there. The Lord, seeing their terror, knowing their condition, speaks openly to them of it all - does not leave them in their affright, but calmly explains all that was coming. His soul was at peace, and able to care, and caring for them, and relieve them by talking to them of it as a clear and settled purpose. And the explanation was clearer, and fuller, and more intimate than before. Before this it had a character just relative to the position they stood in, to the character in which He had just been revealed, as for example, the Transfiguration. But now it was the full detail, on the guilt of the nation, not merely the fact as regarded His glory, but their conduct; this might be now openly exposed, for they had now really rejected Him, and the Apostles felt their position as to this, and therefore it was right to explain it all to them as it stood in the knowledge of the Lord's mind. "Taking the twelve again to Him, He began to tell them the things that were about to happen to Him - that, lo, we go up to Jerusalem." This was what was the source of their fright, when they were silently following Him in the way. This, says the Lord, is my account of the matter. "Lo, we do go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed to the chief priests and scribes" - all this is coming - "And they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles. And they shall mock Him, and shall scourge Him, and shall spit upon Him" - treat Him with every possible indignity - "and they shall kill Him; and after three days He shall rise again." The whole case was now before them, thoroughly weighed by and known to the Lord. Jews and Gentiles were alike to take their own appropriate evil in the dreadful act of man's accomplished rejection of Him, already true in spirit. And the third day He was to show His victory over all the evil they were instruments of. Everything was perfectly weighed. He calmly surveyed, set about, and could communicate it all. Such was the divine counsel. Resurrection was the grand remedy and power of blessing. All the now proved evil had not escaped God's eye. This was the course to be taken. It was most important, too, as laying the foundation of their faith and understanding, when He did rise from the dead. Nothing could be plainer, calmer, and more apposite, or more in facts needful to be communicated. Just a sentence upon all that was in man, in every character, Jew or Gentile, religious, or in power.

3  - 35. Note the terms of this request, as a warning as to the frame of man's spirit "We would" (thelomen, will). There was no faith in this, though perhaps it was formed on what they had verbally heard of the limits of faith; it was strange request. But let us judge ourselves in spirit, not making the Lord and His glory mere servant to our will and unholy presumption. Let us also learn not to judge others. "He that seeketh His glory that sent Him, the same is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him."

The evil, even of the saint's nature, had yet to be manifested in relation to His position in glory, when owned even, which passed by all the solemn and affecting truths just that moment presented, and which ought to have changed, could mere truths and facts do it, the whole position of the human heart. It was really the discovery of its irreparable badness, even when there was an acknowledgment of the glory, the humiliation, and the deep grace in it; and the ruin of man, of themselves, it disclosed, was entirely unfelt and unentered into - took no effect whatever on their heart; they were totally dark and blind to it. Man's heart is so. It must be partakers of them by the Holy Spirit to know them. It is a true portion of the saints that, if we keep the Lord's words, we may ask what we will, and it shall be done unto us. But here was the seeking their own exaltation in His glory, and that in the very face of the testimony of His humiliation. There was the appearance of faith, for it assumed His glory, and that He would be exalted, though He was just speaking of His humiliation. They say that whatever they ask He should do it. This is just the form of faith and promise; yet it was the pure spirit of self-exaltation, re-proved, and the very contrary to the Spirit of Christ. It did not enter into His humiliation, nor was really identified with Him, and sought its own glory, assuming, as we have said, withal the character of faith in His glory, flattering the Lord (had He been susceptible of anything of the kind) at the moment of His trial - a work really of Satan from beginning to end; and the form which the spirit of the world or self-exaltation takes in the saint under a spiritual giver - a suitable occasion for the flesh to make such a request, but the greatest, real insensibility. The Lord, however, in the patience of grace, His own soul now dwelling on what He was going to pass through, still presses this: "Ye know not what ye ask." And the deep self-humiliation, or rather the taking and keeping as His, the low place in which for our sakes, in the manifestation of the divine glory, He had set Himself.

4  - 38. "Ye do not know what ye ask." Note the way to the Lord's glory necessarily. The snare, to our evil hearts, would have been to have taken the occasion to show that though humbled, we had a real title to glory; that it was all voluntary, our own doing, carrying the love of it in our hearts, though we might have relinquished it. But He, whose glory really was what He did, He did in perfectness. What we give up is false, though He may accept the sacrifice. What He laid by was true, and He humbled Himself truly; He had a cup to give them to drink - at least He could lead them to the drinking it, He could lead them to this consequence, and tell them they would have that. But He professed no conferring of favours in His Kingdom. All moral perfectness He had, and this the rather from this very position, for what is true claims not itself outwardly thus - that is, of the world. He came as His Father's Servant, and that place He perfectly held. "To sit on my right hand and my left, is not mine to give, but to those for whom it is prepared." I am a Minister of accomplishing a given work. I can lead you in the renunciation of all things of life. I have a cup to drink, and you shall drink of this cup of self-sacrifice and death. But it is in the spirit of perfect submission and nothingness, that the Father, and He only, may be perfectly glorified. Nothing could exceed the admirable perfectness of this reply, not in mere statement of principles, but in the blessed silent (yet far more eloquent) expression of it in His own conduct. I know not a more beautiful expression of our Lord's perfectness in humiliation, and abstract perfection in the place He had taken in which alone God could be perfectly glorified. How different from "Ye shall be as gods." As the first Adam exalted Himself to be as God, so the Second humbled Himself entirely (even to the death of the Cross) that God, in all His character, supremacy, and glory, might be completely, and finally, and altogether glorified. How fully He emptied Himself, and, just because Himself, never ceased to exist! Therefore the emptying was always absolutely perfect.

5 Then how blessed, as to the suffering, "The cup that I drink, shall ye drink!" Oh, what a privilege to follow Jesus, let it be ever so feebly! And all through grace, and so only blessed too. Yet in that in which He exhibited His own divine perfectness, not merely to follow but to be with Him in it - for we are not speaking of atonement here, but of suffering in it, not the cause or effect of the cup, but of His Spirit in drinking it, in which we have the privilege, according to our measure, of the sufferings of Christ abounding in us. Glorious privilege! And filling up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ, for His body's sake, the Church, and having all, in the certainty of His love, to His glory, and the Father's in it, knowing it is of grace in us, in Him of His will. Yet, in the perfect subjection of that will, suffering in the flesh. "For he that hath suffered in the flesh, hath ceased from sin," whereas the exercise of the will of the flesh is always sin; the subjection of it in suffering for God always righteousness, and, in Christ, being by His will intrinsic righteousness, in us conferred grace; compare Psalm 40. Through the truth, looking at this in communion as an object, we are sanctified.

In these thoughts of the flesh in the two brethren, we have first their own will which Christ did not take, and then their assertion of their own power to go through all He had to accomplish or pass through. This is drawn out by the expression of the Lord in the now consciousness of His approaching sorrow, for He was rejected: "Are ye able to drink the cup," etc., "and be baptised with the baptism" of death in all its weight of suffering, to rise again? They, equalling themselves with Him, say: "We are able." The Lord, in His wondrous grace, equals them with Him by grace. He does not say: "Ye are indeed able," but "Ye shall indeed drink." As we have said, "Ye shall indeed suffer with me"; the reward of glory I leave to the appointment of the Father - it is not mine to give, but to whom it is prepared. The indignation of the ten was, if not so deliberate, not much less the flesh than the wish of the two. It was founded on the same feeling of being first or last. The Lord therefore calls them all, and reminds them this was a Gentile practice, the spirit of the world. It had, in a sense, been forbidden, even among earthly Israel. But here all was contrary, "Whosoever would be great" "among them should be" their "servant." They were a people quite separate, separated by the gulf of death and the Cross from the world; to be great there was out of question, but among them it was to be all different. "He who would be great should be their servant." And in very deed so it is; the lowest is the first in Christianity. Whoever wished to be first should be servant of all. It fulfils itself in the dispensations of God; for this indeed was the very errand of the Son, to come and act on His own principles - of love - in the midst of the world, and not to mix Himself with it, and fall in with its ways. He came in the power, and new principle of love, "to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." He it was they were to follow. Nothing could be simpler, for they were quite a separate people. The darkest sense of need was more to the purpose, in calling out the true and unfailing power of Christ, never failing and never wearied by man's wretchedness, in the effecting the works of divine mercy. And if the Lord came that they which saw might be made blind, He came that they which saw not might see. This poor blind man, in the sense of need, cries for mercy, owning Jesus honestly as the Son of David, less apparent faith than those who spoke of His glory that they might have it for themselves - grace, the grace of the Lord had prepared this man's soul for this occasion, and now the occasion occurred, for God works where we know not. But he was seeking the supply of his wants in the acknowledgment of Jesus' glory. The world rebuked him, but he was in earnest, he wanted the blessing, and he sought it. This man knew what he asked for - the sense of our wants is true knowledge (in asking). On the cry: "Have mercy," Jesus at once stood, and proposed, to this cry of need, the very thing which He had reproved and set aside in the two brethren: "What wilt thou that I should do unto you?" So different are the same words in the mouth of unbelief, a carnal, sordid, selfish claim, and in grace. "What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?" And he received all he desired, and used it to follow Jesus. How different from using the plea of His glory, merely to exalt ourselves! Followed the Lord in simplicity, where the disciples were astonished, and followed trembling!

7 Jesus was now entering by this ancient port of Israel - the sign of God's favour, and the nation's refusal of judgment in its rebuilding - the door of hope to rebellious and apostate Israel. Here He is first acknowledged King, the Son of David, by the blind receiving, in the sense of their misery, sight from Him. The nation's dealing in respect of this title remains to be seen. This was the blind seeing, Israel's true restoration and hope; for who was blind as His servant, seeing many things and observing not? Here the Remnant followed Him - this poor blind man, the first herald of the King of mercy, the Son of David, Jesus.

- 40. "To give; but" (save) "to those for whom it is prepared." For this use of alla (but, or save) see chapter 9: 8. What profound humiliation! To suffer all, but not to have, as it were, a place to give away in His Kingdom! And to avow it! But this is spiritual. He came to glorify His Father, and He was perfect. There is something exquisitely beautiful in all this in the life of Christ, and they are eternal principles.

- 45. He sets the example - "to serve." There is glory in what follows. But what self-devotion it is not "to give," as it were, as rich, but "His life"! It was what He had to give for sin; but what a gift!

- 48. We must look for rebukes in the exercise of faith. It seems to them troublesome and unreasonable; for why? They have not the same spiritual urgency, but true faith. "He cried much more." And the Lord will stop, though man would not; and their minds will be changed then, when they see the Lord has regard to the cry.

- 51. Compare verse 35. This is ever the Lord's word to faith. I suppose faith ever runs parallel with the Lord's will, for faith has its operation in the power of that kingdom which is the fulfilment of the Lord's will; when the request flows from our own will therefore, it cannot be the prayer of faith, and is a mere subjection of God and His counsels to our fallen wills. Accordingly, "We know that whatsoever we ask according to His will, He heareth us." And I am persuaded this knowledge of the divine will and faith run proportionally. It is (not knowledge properly but) in fact the knowledge of faith, and where there is the enquiry of faith, short of the apprehension of the will of God, we pray in truth in implicit subjection to His will, looking for that increase of the Spirit which shall enlighten us in power of conversation. Our personal necessities, however, may, even in this subjection to the divine will, be brought before God; when there is genuine trust in Him, we propose ourselves for mercy. The "What wilt thou" is God's part; the "We will" comes quite wrong from us, and marks want of trust or acknowledgment of the need first of mercy, and we generally, in such case, "know not what" we ask. And hereto the word of man, besides the willingness, applies "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst," and the Lord said: "I will, be thou." The point we should practically enquire into is, Is our will concerned, or is there simple-hearted reliance upon the wisdom, and acknowledgment of the righteousness of the divine counsels and will? If it be our will, we may judge it (and this includes our judgment) to be at variance with the divine counsels, and injurious to our own peace, though it may, as the two disciples had, have a reference generally to, and seeking strong acknowledgment of the object of faith. However, there is a distinction between doing this in ignorance and misled perhaps by others, as here, and wilfully as in the Jews in the wilderness. In the latter case, I conceive the object will be found ever present and personal, and to be real distrust, and love of present gratification.

8 But the exact coincidence of the language of the two disciples, and the Lord's subsequent promise, John 14: 13, and chapter 15: 7, connected too with our Lord's words in verse 3 leads us to the true source of this deeply interesting question. But the just weighing of the several passages in the Gospel of John, fully opens this comprehensive, and all-important truth to our souls.

- 52. See the fruit, when the faith is genuine. The Jew, who recognised the Son of David so coming, received his sight, and followed Jesus to better, perhaps more sorrowful things, but in His triumph speedily in His time.

9 Mark 11

The whole scene, as regarded presenting Himself as the Object of their faith, was really now closed, and the Lord was now to present Himself in the claim of His royal character, and judicial Lordship in the Temple, and to have them all before Him, and to judge them in this capacity. His presenting Himself as a gracious witness was now closed, and He acts on the claim, and makes it good in the need of this manifestation, as before His willing subjection, though He could command all creation to meet the need, that subjection occasioned, of the didrachma. He sends two of His disciples, and takes the ass, "Whereon never man sat," for this royal and entitled Claimant of the throne of Israel to sit upon, "And if any say to you, Why do ye this?" They were to say simply: "The Lord hath need of it." "And straightway he would send it there." Thus knowing and ordering the distant heart, and manifesting how David's Lord had good claim to be David's Son, indeed to be received as such in the title of His own Person and glory, He who did these things by this divine power and ordering was claiming surely in grace, and in no needless untruth, the place of David's Son. All was already subject to Him, to whatever He might subject Himself. This was over several hearts, whoever they were, so that it was not merely knowledge of the owner, but control of their hearts; "and some of those who stood there."

The same divine power was controlling the hearts of the disciples, and the multitude, to give this testimony to the royalty of Jesus, and accomplish the words of the Prophet. "They put their garments upon it, and he sat on it." A new position of the lowly Jesus - yet lovely even in this. "And many strewed their garments on the way." "And they that preceded," inspired to sing the same testimony of Israel, cried saying, as in Psalm 118 as Israel shall say in that day: "Hosanna! Blessed be he that cometh in the Name of the Lord. Blessed be the coming kingdom of our father David." This was really the full language of waiting for the kingdom, and acknowledging the Person of Messiah, and looking up to the heavens as the source of it, saying: "Save now in the highest." Thus was the full testimony given to the Son of David, the Lord Jesus, and the minds of the people, though in will to reject Him, overruled to honour Him with the fullest testimony to the claim in which He came for their own blessing. This must have been before He was rejected.

10  - 8, 9. What glorious disposition of hearts! It was as Lord only He had anything here thus to dispose of.

- 10. "The coming Kingdom." It is manifest that the Lord dispensatorily proposed Himself to the Jews, though He opposed their thoughts concerning it, declaring that a man must be born again before he could see it. To Pilate He clearly avowed His being so; to the Jews He avowed His Person, not His claim.

- 11. How calm and full of heavenly dignity is the Lord's way now! Hated, despised, rejected, and soon to be treated with unresisted scorn and death. The terror of God is now upon them all; and He enters into the city thus in public and unhindered testimony to His Messiahship. His dignity from God, and indeed with the stamp of what was properly divine upon it - thus come, He enters into Jerusalem, and goes on in royal dignity. He enters into the temple. There is no hand raised, no tongue moves against Him; He, and He only is the great Object there. "And having looked round on all things, it being late, he went forth to Bethany" again "with the twelve." The full testimony was given. The judgment was to be as calm as the dignity was manifested. For as He displayed God, had displayed the royal dignity of Him who was rejected, so now they were to be judged. This entrance of the Lord was a blessed testimony to His rejected character, and the hand of God astoundingly displayed in it, placing Him in the judgment place of the nation. He had now surveyed it all. He had long walked in grace as the least, and the last, that He might carry the grace to all, that He might suit it to their need, and meet, and sympathise with all their ruin in blessed grace. Blessed Master! But as far as they were concerned, to their shame and loss, He had "laboured in vain" and spent His "strength for nought," and in vain. And now, this having been exercised till they had rejected it fully, the more fully manifested it, yea, ascribed it to the enemy, though, that it might reach all, He after that still went on, now it was closed; and, in the dignity of His own Person and Messiahship, He was to call them up before Him in judgment. His way is clothed with unresisted and resistless divine dignity, in doing this. First, the weakness and darkness, and impotency of sin and malice shrink into their own place before the light of God beaming forth, that His death and suffering might be manifestly the willing exercise of His grace for them, not their power while divine control and influence emanated from Him, and ordered all for it. Yet, so properly divine was it that He never the least left the simplicity and humility of His character. It was divine testimony to Him such as He always was (out of the mouths of babes, and sucklings even, perfecting praise, to still the enemy and avenger) He came in, and went out in His usual meekness with the twelve, whatever surrounded Him. But what controlling dignity! The Lord guide us, and make us estimate Him, that Blessed One.

11  - 11. There are indicative circumstances in Mark, of the most striking character, as chapters 9: 15, 10: 32, and here in this verse.

- 13. The Lord, in His righteous dispensation, justly looked for fruit. Yet, in the fixed order of His ordinances, "it was not the time of figs." The power of the Lord's coming, as dispensatorily proposed, but in the knowledge of God, suspended during the times of the Gentiles, is key to much of the prophecies. It is that which drew forth the admiration of Paul; as touching the Gospel they are enemies, as touching the election they are beloved.

The Lord returned to Bethany, and, on the morrow, going forth from Bethany, He hungered, for the Lord indeed was subject to all our infirmities - He took them - but so all this was ordered. So the Lord looks for food in that which He has created and planted. He has not created it for no delight to Himself, nor planted it to find no food nor fruit. But, alas! Jehovah could find no food but the offering. Yet, on the other hand, blessed is that, but He did in His own delight and love look for, that He might have complacency and delight in it - fruit in the place and vineyard of His planting. But, alas! when He looked close, how different! There was none; it had leaves, and looked fair at a distance, but had leaves only - "The time of figs was not." The Lord pronounced final judgment upon it; no fruit was to grow on it for ever. And so it was strictly with the Jewish people; as standing as they did under the old covenant, they were hopelessly condemned, they never will be recognised, nor bear fruit ever. The old covenant was not the time of fruit. When grace receives them under the new, Israel shall blossom, and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit, but on this, where it stood in the obedience of man, it never would. It had been indeed fully tried; the fact merely, however, here is pronounced. The application, the Lord's search for good, found no refreshment, or answer there. His answer was in righteous judgment - a judgment utterly fulfilled.

12 And they came to Jerusalem, and He enters then into the temple. Yesterday, the full survey of their condition, and the condition of His Father's, Jehovah's house, had been made, and to-day judgment is to be executed with all the authority, the condemning authority of Jehovah's King, bearing with none of this evil now. Long had grace been patient. He had retired to a distance, to give time for repentance. He being thus manifested (in the way with them) and after John's warnings, but now, this past, with all righteous authority and indignation, at headquarters, there was no more but to get rid of them. What authority in the righteousness of God! "He began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves." This den of thieves! And in Jehovah's house! How free from idolatry! How full of sin! He would sanctify it. He suffered no man to pass through, to carry anything through the temple, making it just a passage for his convenience. He maintained the holiness of God's house, and while He maintained its holiness as Jehovah's house, not the mere convenience of Jewish pride, as Jehovah's house, His Father's house, it had all its wide claim and value in His eyes - a house of prayer for all nations. The holiness of God's house gives it its extension, because it makes it properly God's house, and His claim is over all, and it is a claim of grace. But, while the Lord does this, His judgment and charge on the Jewish people is distinct and conclusive: "Ye have made it a den of thieves." His word too is from Scripture, so that the truth and guilt was plain. It had the force of God's word to them. We have also to note that the title of God, and the moral charge always has its force in the subject it applies to; thus the passage of Isaiah has its accomplishment in the latter day, when the house shall be so as God's house. Yet the claim of God was at least from its utterance by the Prophet. Yet it was then, after all, judgment, when sin had made it impossible (for all tended to the blessed end when Christ shall be there) and the charge was made in Jeremiah's time actually, but as it hung over their heads, so was it accomplished by their hands, and they are charged with it - they had done the thing, i.e., He puts it as a question: Did not their conduct amount to their considering it so? "Ye have made it a den of thieves." How plain, and bold, and unmoved in judgment is the Lord now, for He had taken the pronouncing of judgment in His own hand now. And the Lord applied the testimony of the Prophets now in judgment.

13 The Scribes and Pharisees hear it, only do what Satan does when he can do nought else - seek how he may destroy - for they were acting indeed his part now. They were afraid to act openly, but they sought to do it, or how they might, for they feared Him; the power of His word and ministry had swayed the multitude. They were astonished, if not converted, and, afraid of the effect of open action against Him as to their character before the people, they sought how. Thus Satan, by their love of importance and malice, had this thread of his train laid. All the awe and the power was with Him; no one still touched Him (and doubtless this an important seed for the apostle's future work) when it was late He went out of the city. Thus this day closed in the Lord's manifested but holy, royal judgment, and their desired treachery of secret destruction, showing itself as in their hearts, for they were afraid of doing anything open, for the Lord had, in patient testimony, and real moral power, the upper hand in the glory of righteousness. For the testimony now, and evidence of influence and power, produces not amendment or submission but, in their hopeless opposition, the desire to destroy Him, for they were really in the hands of Satan, as He the instrument of Jehovah's power and its wielder, though as yet it was only morally exhibited, or in human zeal and righteousness externally to them, so as still for responsibility, though in another way from the patient testimony of grace.

- 15. Their recovery was out of question, this was their judgment. What power of righteousness over evil! Still, "Is it not written?"

- 17. The remark may here be made that attention must be paid to the word "people" in the Scriptures, in order to our discernment of the mind of the Spirit in Scripture, as very often the word may represent things which are specially contrasted - the people (laos) and the Gentiles (ethnon).

14 Verses 33 and 34 of the preceding chapter are exceedingly strong as to that which concerned the rejection of Christ. "We go up to Jerusalem." There was the place of God's delight amongst men in blessing, in favour, in divine government on earth, the centre of all connection of God with man upon earth, and the Son of man, the great Centre and Link of it; His presence, after the patient grace of which we have spoken, was the test then of the condition of man and his whole estate. In Judas, man, left to his own way, was shown how, by lust and love of the world Satan had created in money, under the power of Satan in desperate and sad wickedness; looked at as left to himself, it had been good for him had he not been born. The companion and familiar friend of all the blessed manifestation of grace in Christ - his Introducer in holy familiarity into the house of God - he betrays Him, as the wretched, possessed instrument of Satan (yet by his own depraved lust) to the very priests of God, that they might disclose their state by delivering the King of Israel to the Gentiles; and they show their condition, and the condition of the world in their head exercising authority over God's King to reject Him under the title of Head of His own nation, and that at Jerusalem, "For it could not be that a prophet perish away from Jerusalem." But such is the picture exhibited in this statement of the Lord. For, though Christ came abstractedly as the Head of human nature, the Head and Crown of human blessing, yet it was not only blessing, but restorative blessing, if man had been capable of restoration. Thus the character of gracious interference, if man had not been hopeless as to condition, as well as sinful, for the close of all restorative process on responsibility came in in Christ. The law was the perfect direction of man on earth, now at sea through ignorance, and Christ of His pains in taking him up in this condition to remedy evil, and crown the good according to it - made of a woman, the first point, i.e. as Man; made under the law, the second; but even the grace which did it was manifested externally in vain.

In the morning there was the witness of God's judgment of the fruitless fig tree. This was a solemn judgment, really on the Jewish fruitless stock. But as the Lord turned His washing the disciples' feet to a present practical purpose, besides the type, so here to a lesson of how to enter into the power of this "Have faith in God." Such is the great secret - to draw all our thoughts up to Him, and to judge with Him, and act for, and solely from Him (through faith); and there in the accomplishment of His purpose in His power, for there, by its mysterious yet simple connection with the interests of Christ, and the purpose of God, faith introduces us. He does not say here: Faith in the Father, or, Faith in salvation by the Son; it is not of this He speaks properly, though this may be connected with the confidence, and leads in the way of faith, and, save interests with Christ, in understanding. Yet in exercise, it is simply "faith in God." The Holy Spirit, having set us in the ways of God, the place of separate service to Him, in the presence and midst of evil, relies on His intervention for the accomplishment of His own glory in Christ. And we see that this must be, we have faith in God, not in the stability of present things, not in the strength in which they stood before as impenetrable to the truth, but drawn up to God and centred in Him, separated to Him, acting, as it were, for Him and in His name, but in entire dependence, for this is always and specially in faith. It is the present dependence in the highest exercise of its power, the most so, yet therein does all, and for that reason. This faith is the working of the Spirit in us, in all the ways and purposes of God, but it shows itself in simple dependence, because it is the concentration of the soul upon Him.

15 Here was the simple exercise of faith: "Say to this mountain, Be lifted up, and cast into the sea, and doubt not in his heart, but believe that what he says is," it shall be to him. I believe, as I noticed I suppose in Matthew, that there is allusion to all the power and stability of the Jewish polity, even as then, the nation, not only the Remnant or moral state, whence fruit was looked. Note, when judgment against any further fruitbearing is pronounced, the tree withers; quod nota. But this accomplishment is whatever He says, but we must take it simply; anything tentative is not this; the question of false miracles does not here intervene. The next case supposes not the positive, active exercise of faith, but whatever they need, and are asking at God's hand which is now supposed. Then let them believe that they receive it, and it shall be to them. Next, when they are praying, they are under judgment to God in this nearness, if they forgive not. Their souls must be in the frame of the Spirit of Christ; it is not supplication in the Spirit else; clearly they cannot ask in grace with unforgiveness in their hearts - they are not in the way of efficacious request in the Spirit. How far from visiting evil for evil was Christ in His dealings with His rebellious and unhappy people! "Father, forgive them," was His word; His judgment therefore came with all the power of God. This was, on this head, the Lord's manner of putting His disciples in His place, in the exercise of faith in the power of God towards them, and the manner and spirit of it. God would be with them in everything. They had only to have faith in God. Man had been fully proved. They had to cast themselves entirely upon God, and they would find what God was - powerful, faithful, and answering them, as always for and with them, to vindicate His truth with them. It was in mercy forgiving, not man in righteousness of his own with Him. What occasion had the Lord to tell them all this - that faith in God was the only resource; man was no avail! But what perfectness at such a time to say this, when every circumstance was the most opposite to God's appearance in His favour that possibly could be! Now is the time when He assures them, ask what they would, having faith in God and it would be to them. How willingly did He offer Himself! How opposite to the witness of such certainty, were the circumstances! And yet really, how easily could He have had twelve legions of angels! But how then should the word be fulfilled? Here, moreover, it was the faith of service, and position towards God, not the children asking of the Father. And faith in God, after all, only trusts in God's almighty power; but it implies His perfect interest in His children; but this is acted in the power of, not thought of as an object. His children, as such, do trust, not that they are children, but in Him.

16 They came again to Jerusalem, for this conversation was by the way, as to their portion as standing alone, as it were, as separated to God, as the fig-tree's withering had happened within the knowledge of the disciples only; and the Lord stands now before His unsubdued and unrelenting people, having been vindicated, with none of the awe of the previous day's circumstances, but in the simplicity of His own glory in humiliation, for His heart was never changed in it at all, with His disciples. The true and highest glory He receives, exhibits the testimony, and returns to His course of patient, but now judicial, and fast-closing service; His character still the same, its effect by His grace more terrible on its rejecters. He was walking about in the temple, subject to every question, and all their thoughts of Him humbled, whatever evidence He had given of power. The chief priests, scribes, and elders, recovered in a measure from their stupor on His entry into Jerusalem, question Him by what authority He does these things, still under a certain awe - the effect of what they had seen, and respecting Him more from the manifest influence on the people. Who gave Him this authority? But the Lord now no longer answers enquiries, not the desire of faith to learn, but the self-judging question that they knew not, owned not Him, after all, whom God and, for the moment, man also owned. It was the restless effort to get rid of the pressure of facts on their own conscience, but indeed divinely ordered to their judgment. The Lord's answer no longer, as we said, explaining what was onward in mercy, throws them back upon the first testimony connected with His Person, judging them in the first onset before their conscience was hardened; yet therein their judgment now more terrible. "The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men?" Answer this! It was throwing them on what was plain to their consciences as a test, what all the people, unprejudiced by interest, to whom they leaned for influence, believed, even if not receiving Christ. A terrible, but divinely profound question! Yet so simple! Own this, they owned Christ; disown it, they condemned themselves before all, for indeed He was now the Judge. How terrible is the spiritual discernment of righteousness to plain points of conscience! And how it baffles human wisdom and plans! But what a wretched condition really were these rulers in! With all their importance and religious influence, obliged to deny the lowest testimony of God's truth, or condemn themselves; and avowing they did not believe on him whom they were afraid to deny, and afraid to deny him whose testimony plainly condemned themselves, so that their answer brought them into still lower degradation morally really, and to save their position, confessedly in ignorance, and incompetency to determine on the alleged pretensions of religious teachers. But really it was, on the face of it, hypocrisy. It was a perpetual silencer on all their religious pretensions; they were judged, not judges now. There was divine wisdom in the enquiry, for it put the Jews first, and owned ministry presented as a test of their competency to judge, or honesty in owning; their consciences, and state were all judged by it. Thus the three classes of rulers, priestly, governing, and teaching, stood all incompetent, rejected, and, as mere individuals, not able to discern and receive the testimony of God which all the people even acknowledged. They were judged, completely judged. The Lord declined replying to such, or submitting His authority to them. He was there - left them to their own course, and they stood incompetent and self-condemned. Then the Lord began to teach them in judgment.

18  - 23. I believe this also had typical reference and accomplishment, though that be not all; but a great truth is in it besides.

- 24. But there it is as walking in the power of the kingdom. The Spirit distributes to every man, severally, as He will. Yet this word is true; yet must we wait on the Lord's mind, and so the believer will.

- 28. This was a humiliating question to themselves, for He did and had done the things blessedly, and they could not help it.

- 31-33. There is a deeper hardness of men than we are aware of.

Mark 12

- 1-11. How beautiful to see the feeling yet calmness with which the Lord speaks of His mission and rejection, in the parable of the husbandmen!

The Lord does not at all address them here on the ground of His service in grace, which had been rejected and closed at His entry into Jerusalem. It was no explanation to His disciples or the multitude, that a Sower went forth to sow - the ministration of grace, fresh sowing on confessedly fruitless ground, a new work of grace which the Lord was really carrying on, but as One who came, after other messengers, to seek fruit on what was already planted. And this, of course, was the judgment of that people, though long patience had been, and was still shown before the judgment was executed. The judgment here was clear, plain, and solemn, addressed plainly to their consciences, including, for the whole scene was looked at, and declared His own rejection. In plain testimony by the word, His word - for He was still externally in such form of humiliation - yet faith sees the full and clear character of patient and true, according to the truth of God, yet divine judgment, the human rightness and suitedness to situation, yet divine dignity and power in the truth. Everything had been done for the vineyard that could be done. It was, alas! an old story this, but it had been put responsibly into the hands of the husbandmen, and the rightful Owner left it thus in their hands. He who had ordered it, and settled it all at Sinai, and under Joshua, had left it, with warnings too, in the responsibility of the rulers and people to keep up, and dress, and order. He sent His servant in season, that He might receive of the fruit of the vineyard, and they beat him, and sent him away empty. We have two things here - the Jews, specially the husbandmen among them, in their responsibility, not God in His own sovereign grace; every thing however put in perfect order into their hands in arrangement, blessing, and security, and, further, the patience of God's dealings, sending messenger after messenger, doing every thing while possibility remained, till they had rejected and cast out His own Son. The whole ministry of Prophets was there - a ministry of patience with man (whom God had hedged about - but) in his responsibility, and Christ's coming, supremely so. The Sower's grace, as we have said, is quite distinct. This mission of His Son was last to them in this their responsibility. There was further here the distinct charge that they recognised Him as the Heir, as He was, and in their responsibility, and in such must be left to themselves, only with every external advantage afforded, had sought to get the inheritance for themselves by the destruction of the Heir. But the abuse and rebellion of their responsibility did not take it away, but drew on the judgment when all patience in instrumentality was exhausted. There was a Lord of the vineyard - who had surrendered none of His rights, and if He had sent His Son in His great love to them, and in the glory of His own patience, would not leave Him unvindicated. They wished to have the vineyard and all appertaining to it on their own right, in rebellion. It was not merely want of fruit, but active revolt against God's own title, and setting up for themselves against Him, and this in direct question between His Son and them - Him who was appointed Heir of all things. Such was the position of man's will, when the greatest exercise of patient favour put the Holy, Beloved One of God within the reach of their malice. But the Lord of the vineyard could only thereon resume His rights - come and destroy the labourers, and give the vineyard to others. But it was not only an exhibition of the nature and will of man, which their conscience must testify to the truth of, it was the revealed and foretold conduct of the people, especially of the builders. It was clearly their case. It was the stone which the builders rejected, which was to become the Head of the corner. Did they set up to be builders - were they such? Such was the judgment of their own scriptures on them. And this, too, was the Lord's doing. How opposite then were the builders to the Lord's mind! It would be marvellous in the eyes of the people in that day. The whole of Psalm 118 is of remarkable application here. The whole passage is a wonderful judgment on them, and by the use of that very Psalm on them, till that Hosanna be sung, and He becomes, in full sense, the Head of the corner, and the gates of righteousness are opened to Him, and a willing people shall sing that "His mercy" has indeed "endured for ever" - entering by what His supreme grace has wrought into this their morally, and long time actually desolate place, but now the gate of the Lord into which the righteous shall enter. How blessed, and excellent the ways which have purged the sin and evil, yet loved the people, and in full righteousness accomplished all the promises, vindicating His own glory and Name, and only the more exalting the despised Son! Yet in despisal, the witness of infinite grace! These men who ruled, but not of God, could do nothing; they felt they were judged, they disputed, they condemned, but they could do nothing. The hand of wisdom held them fast in their impotency. They would have laid hold on Him, but they feared the people. They knew that He had spoken this parable against them, and, leaving Him, they departed. They take judgment only in their questioning Him. He remains there, and they have to leave Him, ashamed. In what dignified blessedness does the blessed Lord stand forth here in the testimony of what He was, before He gave Himself willingly up, i.e., how does the testimony shine forth in Him! They have to leave Him, completely judged and baffled. They send the Pharisees and Herodians that they might entangle Him in word. As they were baffled in the question of authority, they select certain of the Pharisees and Herodians, strict in their Jewish claims, and apostate in their recognition of the heathen world - all one, if they can entangle Him who came in grace - and they propose the question which tries just these two points. And as the scribes, elders, and chief priests questioned the authority of the King of Israel, and so judged themselves, so these laid bare the woes and sorrows of Israel, without feeling and remorse, in tempting, and to entangle the Blessed One, using their sin with Satan's malice to put down and silence all good and every hope. And they are left just where they were, in the confession of the sin and ruin they had brought themselves into; without more it was a sad and terrible leaving. The Lord has only to do this, and what is our fate? These poor creatures could afterwards, when it served a moment's object and madness, cry aloud in self judgment: "We have no King but Caesar!" Their address was most, to our evil flesh, attractive, had that been in Him whom they tempted, for evil of heart ever in a bad way knows righteousness, and what is upright and good abstractedly, by a conscience bad by the opposite. "Thou art true, and carest for no man, for thou lookest not on the person of man, but teachest the way of God in truth." How far was this from them! How well they knew the good and its blessedness, by a bad conscience! Nothing, in one sense, knows it so strongly. But they were precise in their requisition of an answer, a categoric answer, letting out their evil in apparent simplicity. The Lord knew their hypocrisy, and called for the seal of their present condition, into which the same unbelief that rejected Him had brought them. He was now leaving them in it. They had rejected Him, and this was all they brought out. Often the saint, standing where his own place with God is rejected, has to answer by the admitted evil of another, i.e. when thus tempted - but this is different from the predominant energy and testimony of the Holy Ghost, for He was not to strive nor cry, and He had not, whatever the testimony to Him, left this character, nor would not, nor could not, till He was risen - but in deepest judgment this may often be. They gave, or rendered nothing really to God. The Lord left them now where they had brought themselves - under Caesar. They had brought themselves into the place of ruin, refused the Deliverer - there they were left to pay to Caesar with nothing of God.

21  - 12. Evidently now question of judgment between the Jews and Christ, as two distinct parties. Still the whole is more moral than economic. The principles, eternal principles of the Church substituted for the economic principles of Moses, rather than its economy; as chapter 10: 5, and verses 33 and 44 of this chapter.

- 18. The Sadducees must have their day, for God had so appointed. It was that other form of Jewish worldly evil. They plead Moses - a clear and recognised authority from God. But there was a new world, of which they knew nothing, into which He was now entering. And before Moses had given the commandment, of which they were proud, at all, God had given promises, and revealed Himself in a covenant relationship, and in blessings which the law could not and did not affect. It was all for this world, and to regulate what was fleshly and of the flesh. But they "knew not the Scriptures, nor the power of God." These are the two things needed; if we recognise and own not the power of God, we limit the operation and extent of the Scriptures to our own, and we are astray even in interpretation of them - this is a great, perhaps not an uncommon evil. From God the testimony comes, and He views things in His own light, as to these promises, and accomplishes His own thoughts by His own power. Leave this out, and we are shut up in the puny inferences, results, and measures of our own minds and strength. Here it rested on the very point, not of Jewish integrity, as with chief priests or Pharisees, but, which was the witness of divine power, exactly in its predominance over all the results of what man was. And this was the foundation, and only could be, on the Fall; this, the result of all God's actings, in which He would be glorified, and it was in this that this Blessed One was declared to be the Son of God with power. But He answers them from the Book of Moses, in which they trusted not when it regulated their fleshly or national laws which their vanity took. It was not what Moses said to them (as a mere lawgiver, though of God) but what God said to Moses when laying the foundation of blessing and hope for the people, speaking therefore of Himself, and what He was in grace. How blessedly does the Lord turn to grace, where His own soul was refreshed and at home, from their cavils, in power, in perpetual remembrance of His people, out of the depth and simplicity of His own fulness! God said to Moses: "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." Man might fail, evil acquire power over good, but God remained the God of His people in all the fulness of His promises in the immutability of His own purpose of love. He was not the God of the dead - that were folly, inanity, and impossibility - they were living people to inherit living promises - not a tittle of God's purposes touched, let the apparent course of events and death itself seem to mar all. His purpose remained, in His own security, what it was. How blessedly did this apply to the circumstances the Lord was in! The power of it He evinced in His resurrection, while the great principle of the change of dispensation, and the divine glory was thus brought out. The Sadducees were not the rulers, but the heretics of the nation; they are therefore plainly judged in error, as contrary to the hope, not corrupters of the righteousness, though doubtless they were, of the then Jewish state. It is remarkable the Lord's reference to this great revelation of Himself by God, as the warrant of the doctrine of resurrection; it lay at the very basis of the association of Israel with God - the basis on which their unconditional promises rested - God's name for ever, His "memorial throughout all generations." It could be on no other ground with sinful man than resurrection. It flowed, too, from the nature of things, in the nature of the living God. And the resurrection, the only recognised form and power of this continuous living as a separated spirit, was recognised in no way by them; it was not Abraham if that continued so.

23  - 25. If I understand this argument of our divine Redeemer, it includes this, that those who rise are as the angels in heaven, but God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was God of the promises. But being the God of them, yet not the God of the dead, they being dead, He was the God of them in the resurrection, and this seems His statement, for He introduces God's being their God as a proof that they rise. I am by no means fully informed from Scripture on this subject as yet, but, in His declaration to Moses, He seems to be called thus in reference to the promises made to the fathers, and these promises our Lord therefore seems to make hang, as to their validity, on the resurrection, speaking of the personal interest of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in this declaration. It was in this view a fatal error, for it struck at the root of God's faithfulness to His promises. Indeed now we know that it is the very centre of all our hopes. We may remark the ground of their great error, ignorance of the Scriptures, and the power of God.

- 30. "With all thy heart" (kardias); "with all thy strength" (ischuos); come from, or however are used in the Septuagint (2 Kings 23: 25); dunameos (power) is perhaps nearly equivalent in Deut. 6: 5, where also dianoia (mind) occurs.

- 31. The comparison of the place (Lev. 19: 18), where this is found, with the parable, so called, of the good Samaritan, throws the strongest light on it; with which also compare the Sermon on the Mount.

24 But though, as regards the nation, the Lord might say: "Then have I laboured in vain, and spent my strength for nought and in vain," yet still there was a work with the Lord; and His ministry here, as well as His Person, had its effect, and was owned. We speak not here of disciples who were to be witnesses for the next dispensation, but those who, by the overruling hand of God, were called to own the force of its moral power, though among the rejecting nation. Still it gives us a glimpse into a class - how numerous we know not - not far from the kingdom of God, who were in principles within morally right, though they had not received or seen the kingdom, but who may have been reaped when the harvest was gathered of the Lord's sowing. But they were still within the Jewish sphere - not the separated ones. The Lord was the perfect Discerner and Teacher of truth for Israel, as well as the Prophet of the kingdom that should come. The full display of the truth, of the foundations of their own law, was thus brought out extracted from it all, and presented to the conscience. The conscience of the scribe owned the truth presented, but indeed he went further, for he saw the distinction between that and outward services; how to place the two, and the power of the kingdom he might not know, but the moral difference of a heart aright, in the sight of God, from the mere economy he did understand. And it is a great point, the end of Judaism really, while all God's part in it was exalted and sanctioned in the highest way. It was an admirable termination to the judgment of Israel itself, and the Lord's ministry among them, sanctioning and exalting what God had given them in the law, out of their own mouths, a righteous scribe's mouth. He, Jesus, had the truth and power of the law; they refused to accredit the righteousness which corrupted the forms, and made His Father's house a house of merchandise, in a word, while they had abused the forms. The nation, as between God and them, had been judged in their chiefs, from their unconscientious rejection of John on to Himself who threw them back on that. Their external or national condition, as God's people in the earth, had been judged in this duty to render to Caesar what belonged to Caesar. God left them in their condition there - all of these, by plain important truths directly applicable to their condition in the wisdom of God. Then the Sadducees, in power as the nation - see Acts, when the truth became important and a revealed fact - as deniers of the hope of Israel, for that hope stood in resurrection, and a hope connected with the promises made to the fathers, and that revelation of God on which all their hope stood - the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Here our Lord shines forth as the extractor of all the essence of the law, as God's righteousness in the midst of the apostasy, as well as Founder of other hopes, and so as to claim the conscience of their own scribe, no follower of His. Indeed he seems to have been graciously attracted by the truth, for his mind rested on and repeated the points of the truth with pleasure, at any rate with forms, even though ordained. In doing this, the Lord sustained, too, what was eternal in the law, and passed into all dispensations, as before all, however the effect was produced. And, while He maintained what was excellent there, He carried all that was, and could enter into the dispensation of love, into it with Him in the power that established it in the strength of resurrection on the basis of love. Those that valued this might pass, and did, when power came with it, into the kingdom, yea, to find it there, yea, there only, certainly not in Israel left empty of the Lord; and doubtless there were many that did. It all centred in truth in, and went with the Lord who was now leaving them. This part of the law was concentrated and found in Him. He fulfilled the rest in His own Person in sacrifice. "No man after that durst ask him any question."

25 The Lord, having silenced all His adversaries, now proceeded to show their ignorance, their unbelief in what regarded the excellency of His Person, the incompetency of these scribes, and this publicly and openly, teaching in the temple. "How say the scribes that the Messiah is David's Son? For David himself said, speaking in the Holy Spirit: The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. David himself calls him Lord, and whence is he then his Son?" How blessedly, having taken out the essence and perfection of the law, and that in part from quite a hidden passage, does the Lord turn to that which constituted the change of dispensation, as regarded the Jewish people, providing for the excellency and righteousness of the Lord's Person - His transfer, on their rejection, and His leaving them, on the call of Jehovah, to the right hand of the Majesty on high! The precise applicability was perfect. The scribes had nothing to understand it with; but a great multitude, given liberty of heart and graciousness of subduing truth from the tyranny of scribe-like reasoning and dogmas, heard Him gladly. There was the sway and influence of moral blessedness and care for them. Often, where there is power and grace in some sort, we see this. Nothing was answered Him. He was there before them all in the temple, but His majesty, and the majesty of truth kept them in check and in awe; they were afraid of Him, not He of them. He said to them in His doctrine: "Beware of the scribes." But this warning is not for ignorance, though their ignorance was manifested. The Lord always judges upon plain moral evil; they sought themselves, and were hypocrites; their judgment was short and plain. But the Lord lays His finger upon what all knew, but none would say; but He, the Judge (in the power of the word now), brings all the hypocrisy plainly into light; in the acts where their credit was their external honour, they should receive greater condemnation, for the pretences by which they sought to keep it up. I believe there was reference also here to the vanity of external service. It was a judgment of direct evil, in which the dispensation had closed in them; but it lifted up the veil on the character of the new. The best thing among them was hypocrisy; but God was indeed now looking upon what was real and internal.

26  - 36. The matter of the discourse is merely stated here; in Matthew and Luke the particulars may be gathered.

- 41. Here also the Lord is thinking and judging according to the Spirit of the kingdom of heaven, where the spirit of the offerer solely was noticed in a divine way, not the value of the offering with men externally, as in all that concerned the flesh, even before God, but now properly in His own intimate view of things, not the external and dispensed one. The Lord took pains to show them this, for this was addressed only to His disciples. It was a giving of self, her living; and the eye of God rested on it; the Lord noticed it. It was within all the eye of man noticed. But God was now bringing to light the glory and principle of these hidden things. God's "more" (pleion) was different from all man's. It was morally more, as Abel's sacrifice which was "a more excellent sacrifice" (pleiona thusian).

27 Mark 13

This great principle and contrast is brought out in strong relief, and application to the hope and glory of Israel, in the passage that follows, for the sentence of Israel was now sealed. This one of the disciples rested on the outward form and power of the system. "What stones and what buildings?" The Lord at once gives their sentence: "Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down."

Nothing can be clearer than the Jewish character of this chapter. They were to be taken before councils and beaten in the synagogues; and then we get false Christs in the general history which began at the time. Then we get false Christs again after the specific epoch of the abomination of desolation. In the first case we know Christ is in heaven, but the desire for Him would be natural to Jews - a snare to Jewish Christians - for national deliverance; in the second case we shall be in heaven. In neither can there be application to the (Gentile) Church, as such. In Revelation, as in all prophecy, the Church is seen only in Christ; so the rapture in chapter 12, and the saints are seen in full distinctness in chapter 19. Only before the prophecy begins, their place in respect of the judgments is seen in chapter 4 - kings on their thrones, though owning all glory to be the Creator's, the Almighty; in chapter 5, priests.

- 3. Sitting on the Mount of Olives - that place of judgment, departure, and return - looking over the loved but perverse and rejected city, these disciples, affected at what had been the centre of all their thoughts, being destroyed and made void, ask, "When shall these things be, and what shall be the sign when all these things are going to be fulfilled?" The question here is presented to us by the Holy Spirit in a much simpler form, and affecting the setting aside of the Jewish resting-place.

- 4. It is to be remarked here that the question is only as to "these things," and it is to be remarked that below (v. 11) the presence of the Holy Ghost is spoken of, which is the case neither in Matthew nor Luke, which first attracted my attention here. Thus Mark, I apprehend, up to verse 14, speaks more of the then present time; nor does Mark say the end comes when the Gospel has been preached. In Matthew, the beginning of wars is also distinguished. In Luke the distinction is clearly made; Christ gives them a mouth there. But the destruction of Jerusalem is in view.

28 The first point the Lord noticed was the use Satan made of the rejection of Christ by the nation; many would arise: "saying, I am, and shall deceive many." They were to be aware of deception; next, the murmuring of the distant winds gathering the clouds for God's judgments, wars and rumours of wars. They were not to be troubled; they must be, but the end was not yet. For nation would rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there were to be earthquakes, famines, and troubles in different places; these were the beginnings of this world's throes for the bringing forth of judgment. All this, however, was to direct their progress and conduct in ministry, as the course of events went on. At the rumours they were not to be troubled. But there was another form of difficulty - they would be delivered up to councils, etc., and stand before kings "for a testimony to them; and the Gospel must first be preached to all the nations." This would have that form of trial which arises from enmity - of the father against the son, etc. - in a word, which broke through the closest ties. Here the rule of their service was to be, they were not to premeditate; it would be given them the same hour. They would be "hated of all" for Christ's Name's sake, but whoever endured to the end, in spite of all this, would be saved. This is the statement of a general principle - endurance by the divine power and grace. If it was on earth, and the end of the Jewish scene, the deliverance would be on earth. The point was, going on in patience till the Lord interfered. It runs then thus: "Lest anyone mislead you," "Be not disturbed," "Be not careful beforehand," "nor prepare"; all this was a matter of endurance to the end. This is the leading thought, what is to be guarded against and endurance. As to the time of this, it appears to me to be purposely general, giving the character and circumstances of the ministry, not a prophetic detail; only this, that it is connected with troubles apprehended by those conversant in Judaea or Israel, persons in the circumstances of the Lord's own disciples, the Lord gone, and His judgment not come. The whole period is embraced in one fact, here stated generally - the Gospel must first be preached to all the Gentiles. But this was in a measure, or rather in principle, true before the destruction of the temple, so that it had its application coincidently with the Jewish part of the warnings. But the expression also opens it to the full fact, and thus leaves open the ministration which may take place at the close before the latter day destruction takes place. However the destruction is not the close of the ministry in the land, but another point which the Lord then notices.

29  - 10. Here (unless abstractedly in principle, as in Col. 1: 6) that which is spoken of is not the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus merely; that was not "the end." It is impossible not to see a wider scene in the Lord's thoughts.

The Lord, it appears to me, designedly uses here the term "the end" (to telos). In His mind the true end was embraced, and in fact therefore, verse 10 swept over the whole period, or, at least, it was left open to it all, while all this served for direction to His disciples for their then emergencies, and the Gospel was, in a general sense, preached to all the Gentiles, before that took place which their thoughts rested on and were concerned in, having pretty nearly as great, in point of real power, a greater extent than it has now. Then prophetically, though the fact of verse 10 is stated as a plain simple fact, the whole of what is said supposes, whatever may be done among the Gentiles, the subsistence of a state of things in Judaea such as the disciples were immediately concerned in, and the Jews there. Having given directions for their patient ministry, of which we have seen the extent, including coming before the Gentiles, the Lord then notices what concerns their position in the land - the immediate question. "When ye see the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not" - it was a matter for him that read to consider - then those that were in Judaea were to flee to the mountains. There might be many occupied in testimony in far countries, but those in Judaea were to flee. They were at once, without the least delay, to escape; the door was now closing (in judgment) on unhappy Israel; it was no time of testimony then. "Where it ought not" (hopou ou dei) I believe is purposely left open, as being instruction for ministry for what might happen to them, and when, in its stricter and fuller application, the abomination should be set up in the latter day. It was a time of sweeping and pure judgment; woe to the feeble and helpless woman! The people and place were given up to judgment and sorrow; they had refused mercy. The place of believers, in testimony, was to escape. It was matter of prayer, for the disciples, that their flight should not be in winter; for the ear of their Father and Lord was open to their cry for everything. How sweetly does this come in, in the midst of the terrible giving up to judgment! The Lord was not the least changed; His ear as calmly and as blessedly open to every one that sought, and cried, and believed; though He might be forced to give up a relentless people to relentless judgment, when they would have nothing else as the way of righteousness. He was still the same gracious, prayer-hearing God, nigh to them that called on Him, thinking even of the details of mercy for His people, and ready to make their necessary flight less painful and trying even for the flesh, but His warning easy to be acted upon.

30  - 19. "For those days shall be distress, such as there has not been the like since the beginning of Creation which God created until now, and never shall be." Here the Lord's mind rests on the great accomplishment, and though there may be a partial anticipative fulfilment in that which Scripture does not notice historically - the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans, and those who were in that may have been providentially directed by it - the mind of the Spirit rests clearly on the great final catastrophe of God's house and people and city, that it may be purged by the Spirit of judgment and burning, and the unclean not pass through her any more. It was a giving up to misery; the abomination of desolation brought it in. It might last in the hands of man so or so long - that may be learned perhaps elsewhere - but the days were "distress," and known so to the people at large. The disciples were forewarned, and had the sign of their commencement for fleeing, not then for testimony. If the Lord had not shortened those terrible days, no flesh should be saved. This is a remarkable term even to the evil of their own hearts, and the Spirit of death and evil is amongst them; they would destroy themselves, and so has been seen in Jerusalem, and even elsewhere. This from within and without; but, for the elect's sake who were to be spared after the flesh, these days were shortened. Still, though they be forewarned, and those who had understanding escaped, it is a general scene of confusion coming on the inhabiters of the land (or earth) which might reach all found there, unless God interposed to stop its actual career. As regard the heavenlies, this, in a certain sense, had been no matter, but for the earthly Remnant was all-important for its continuing existence. We have then the elect Remnant of those days especially noticed and brought into view: "For the elect's sake . . . he hath shortened those days. And then if anyone say to you," i.e., in this time of affliction recognised by all, for they were all in it, i.e., the unbelievers. It was not then a subject of prophecy, but of actual trial: "If anyone say to you: Lo, here is Christ, or lo, there, believe it or not." "There will arise," saith the Lord, "false Christs and false prophets." How blessed to have all these forewarnings! And doubtless there will be a Remnant using them, and availing themselves of them in that day, for there will be the earthly things, when the others have had their course - not days of testimony now closed, but vengeance. These false Christs and prophets will give signs and wonders, so as, if it were possible, to deceive the very elect. God may keep them, but that is the only safeguard. For the elect here if fled (at least those of understanding receiving the testimony of Jesus as a Prophet, for the heavenly door is now, I presume, closed) from the place of vengeance, are still in the midst, morally at least, of the trials.

31 The hour of temptation which should come on all the world to try the dwellers upon earth, as Lot compared with Abraham, the heavenly man and family. "But," says the Lord, "do ye beware, lo, I have foretold you all things." For the Lord speaks here in the character of the Prophet of the Jewish Remnant, and so has to be received, not as the glorified Son of God, nor "Son of man who is in heaven"; for these necessarily the associations would be heavenly, not warning to flee and saving flesh; and "Whosoever will not hearken to" this Prophet (for this is as true of Christ as His being Son of God and all else) "shall be cut off from among his people." But in those days, after the tribulation of which the setting up the abomination of desolation was the leading sign to them for getting out of the way, every visible seat of power shall be cast down, and cease to guide and illuminate the world. "The powers which are in the heavens" offer a little difficulty to my mind. It is clear that the whole stability of governance will be shaken. That there may be a public witness in creation of the immense revolution, which is then taking place, is possible, as at the Lord's death. Its general import is plain, not only that the affected earth, but the sources of power will be touched by the divine hand and will; "I will shake not the earth only, but also the heavens." Satan is cast out at this time, but the principalities and powers in heavenly places cease to be the agents of divine ministration, and shake under this great action that transfers it to the hands of the Son of man; for who can stand in the presence of this power, unmoved? The evil was cast out, but the creature could not stand unmoved in the presence and acting of His power. His assumption of it for the subjection and order of the world to come is not that "of this age," not only in respect of evil but also of the instruments of His power. And this change is a mighty one, and introduces the Son of man in His manifested glory in royalty. The casting down of Satan was by predominance in those regions, according to the character of subsisting power. Then, Michael, the archangel, fought, and the dragon fought, and his angels, and his place was not found; but this was a shaking of the whole ministration itself. "And then they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then shall he send forth his angels" (servants of the Son of man) the angels of His power, not the messengers of His grace, to "gather his elect from the four winds, from end of earth to end of heaven." This seems to me to be purposely general, including the title of the place, in the power of which the Lord Jesus comes; compare Psalm 50. The fig tree, the habitual figurative representative of the Jewish people, would afford them the parable of this. When they saw the things He had spoken of, His coming in power, and the whole setting aside of the dispensation, was nigh at the doors. The Jewish (unbelieving) "generation" would not "pass away till all these things take place"; heaven and earth would pass away, but not the despised Son of man's, for He now spoke in the dignity of power. But of that day and hour none but the Father knew. It was not a subject of revelation, for here the Lord acted as a Servant; the kingdom was God's kingdom; what He heard He spake. "Take heed, watch and pray, for ye know not when the time is." It appears to me this was addressed to them as within the Jewish scheme, though it may be true that we may watch, not knowing the day; but that is not exactly our position. It was a day looked for to overtake them here, when there would be trouble, and great affliction, however they might be preserved, not being caught up out of it all to meet the Lord. They were waiting here, with guidance how to pass through the difficulties, and dangers, and that connected with Jewish circumstances and Jewish habits. It was not at all the Holy Ghost's witness of a glorified Jesus, and union with Him to be accomplished in His presence, that where He is they may be. The Lord, however, turns back to the general principle and application of it to ministry. They were to go on thus acting while He was away, absent, "as a man gone out of the country," and this He said not to them only, but to all.

33 The thing of which the day is not known extends, it seems to me, however, withal to this change in the sources of dispensation, the revolution that takes place in the heavens, and this it is that affects the condition of the Remnant here (this Red Sea of heavenly matters) for the casting out of Satan makes their state much worse, for he comes down to earth. But this brings in the day of the Lord. "Unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come whereof we speak," but to Man, in Jesus' Person, then accomplished; and here this revolution takes place.

- 24. It is remarkable that neither here nor in Matthew, though announced at the first, and the occasion of the discourse, is there any hint of the (or a) destruction of Jerusalem. There is great tribulation, and then the coming of the Son of man.

Note, in this chapter, the dispensational character is not nearly so defined and precise as in Matthew; thus, it is not, "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached . . . in all nations, and then shall the end come" (there is no question as to the end of the age) but we have in general, the Gospel must first be preached (compare chap. 16: 15, 20), and, in a part connected with the general testimony, Matthew 10, which goes from Christ till He comes again, as far as Palestine and the Jews are concerned. The end is not spoken of here; verse 24 too is much more general, not so precise, though the same event.

"After that distress"; "but in those days"; the sun put out before the Lord comes, i.e., is seen. No question of the Church here, but of those in Judaea; He gathers the elect after He comes. The troubles come before the day; Joel, compare Rev. 6. The Lord appears for the Jews against the nations; Zechariah. The deliverance is in Zion and Jerusalem; Joel. The sun is darkened before the day; Jerusalem is taken in the day. The lawless one is destroyed "by the appearing of his coming"; but that is only an incident.

It is manifest that Luke was given to write with more explicitness upon the times of this prophecy than Matthew or Mark, whose accounts seem so worded as to bring it all very intelligibly within the destruction of the religious establishment and polity of the Jews, then of immediate and practical importance; as to the full import of it, I have still to receive it. In Luke 21, verses 25 and 26, seem fairly referable to what was after the destruction of Jerusalem, but I do not think I have ever found adequate importance attached to the dissolution of the economy of God's peculiar people - His first great dispensation - in fact, more important than the dissolution of the Gentile economy, though exceedingly parallel, save as that dissolution was attended by the re-admission of the Jews into the privileges of the kingdom, and was life from the dead to the world. I should, however, have been freely disposed to refer this to the dissolution of the Gentile dispensation, were it not for Matthew's "immediately" (chap. 24: 29) (eutheos). Reason indeed may be assigned for Luke's greater explicitness on this subject. Many of the terms are generic, and seem applicable to the dissolution of both fallen economies, and I cannot help thinking that Matthew 24: 27 applies to the Jewish dispensation. Perhaps, in the next verse, our Lord purposely generalises it to suit both cases, for the carcase and the eagles seem clearly the sudden and devouring judgments on a body from which the spirit of life was gone, whatever form it might have. And I think it highly probable that, though obscurely, what followed runs more into the Gentile than the Jewish fulfilment of the statement. But, in those two evangelists, it was merely the glancing of the prophetic mind towards that which to them was not directly to the purpose, and, the dispensations being essentially similar, the terms had their fulfilment in power in that to which their immediate attention was directed, when the dispensations themselves had prepared the way. The larger scene might open, to which their minds were now enlarged, and in which the passage found fuller, and perhaps more literal, application, and which, in its appropriate place, was to be largely revealed. That the Spirit of God did so deal in editing these Gospels, I think quite manifest, for we must remember that, though not fully fulfilled in final results till His second coming, the Lord's coming was, with separate purposes, hidden from ages but made known by the Gospel in various revelation from the day of the angels' song till the day of the fulness of the glory of His kingdom, and that the whole Gentile dispensation forms a sort of parenthesis, necessary indeed to the filling up the whole mind of God, but in dispensation, as to Christ, intermediate between those great events which were held out from the first, and together formed the coming of the Lord - the mystery that that nation, to whom He was to come, and called without repentance, should be dispensatorily rejected, and so the glory of His coming suspended till, by the operations of the Spirit, the Gentile economy should have been given its times, and both, fallen through unbelief, be admitted in grace according to that full salvation which was from the Father of lights with whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning.

35  - 27. This is clearly the Jewish gathering.

- 30. Nor do I, though I think it intended to lead the minds of those to whom He addressed Himself to the immediate exercise of judgment on the Jewish company, by any means deny the truth of its application to the continuance of the Jewish race, till the whole mystery of God was complete, till that mechris hou (until that) should be come, when it should be said: "It is accomplished." Blessed thought that the word of faith which we preach should have the perfect stability of the Father of the everlasting ages! Its force in this full sense is evinced and drawn in the Spirit of prophecy from Deuteronomy 32: 5, 20. The tribulation of the Jews embraced the whole time from their rejection of the Lord as the Messiah, to their acknowledging Him again, till they said: "Hosanna!" from the time they blamed the children, out of whose mouth God perfected it, for saying it.

There seems to be designedly a cloud thrown over the time in this and verse 31; immense importance attaches to the certitude of the event. It is a question of the truth of the word of God; compare 2 Peter 3. It is some great event; it is different from the seventy weeks are determined (nekh-tak; Dan. 9: 24), The Gentile dispensation left this uncertain gap.

- 32. "Neither the Son," compare Rev. 1: 1.

- 33. "Take heed, watch and pray."

- 34. "Leave his house"; the time is the return of the Lord to His house, sometime.

36 Mark 14

- 4. "There were"; this serves here merely to bring out the Lord's answer, and His view of it.

- 8. How infinitely full of grace! There was no understanding in them of the position He was really in.

Could the Lord say of me: What he could he has done? I do fear not; I fear a sad defect of surrender of self to the Lord. If we honour the Lord with what we have, we know nothing of the power or extent of the testimony. The Church has delighted itself, in all ages, with this woman's offering, to her own special honour. Yet is there none on whom my soul rests, or, may not I say Lord, desires but Him. "I count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of" Him, and that thankfully to be given to do so, but what I feel so lacking is the practical.

- 10. Judas had heard Jesus was to suffer, and these things began to have an end, and money had been brought in question. The character of Judas seems brought out upon, and in contrast with that of the poor woman; he was the mere instrument, after all, of filling up the divine counsel. The Lord in all holy and dignified calmness, with perfect knowledge of what was coming, could stamp His seal of testimony to the loving and divinely directed action of this poor woman, and give it its value in the whole world, wherever the good news came that a Saviour had died. God was not unrighteous to forget her work and labour of love. Love to Jesus was His supreme delight. The anxiety and care of sin is just contrasted with the calmness of grace.

- 12. As the Lord could provide for His royal entry, so for the last token of love to His disciples, and, though submitting and meek in all this, we see the perfect power of arranging, ordering, and pronouncing all things for present circumstances, or which should be. The glory of His title and power breaks through and shines through all, and as the rejection of His Person as Messiah was practically complete, and His death as Son of man was drawing nigh, His glory, lost by the unhappy Jews in one, and which gave divine efficacy, shone blessedly forth in all He said and did, as need called it forth, and in a rejected Messiah. There was no longer need for its concealment. There was a Remnant that He knew in the midst of the evil and the rejection, those the disciples knew not, unmanifested persons, to whom it was enough to say: "The Teacher says." A consolation to Jesus' soul, and a timely confirmation to the faith of His disciples, compare the conduct of even Elijah with this, blessed as he was - no broken-hearted retreat to Horeb here, but such a declaration of God's righteousness and truth in the great congregation as left the manifestation of God so on the soul, as that the control of His word was there, though the energy of the Holy Ghost had not manifested them to the world. Yet the Lord never departs out of the simplicity of His course. Then the Lord, when they are gathered opens His heart to them - one of those who eat with Him should betray Him. There certainly was beautiful confidence in their enquiry, for grief often makes humble in bringing down proud confidence in self; we have not been able to hinder the sorrow.

37 Compare Matthew 26: 17, Luke 22: 7, John 13: 1, and Exodus 12: 6, 18. I apprehend that the consideration of the different structure of the days, makes the Last Supper and Passover quite intelligible. Thursday evening, our 13th, is their Friday, 14th beginning. I believe then our Lord ate the Passover on Friday and was offered up on Friday - we know that it was late, night, when He was betrayed, just after the supper; John 13: 30, etc. That was their Friday night. The blessed Lamb of God was offered up, He was crucified the third hour, and the scene closed just after the ninth hour - about three hours within the Friday. I know that learned men say "between the two evenings was 3 o'clock and 6 o'clock," but why? What is their authority? It is remarkable that the unleavened bread was to begin at even, i.e., at 6 o'clock on our Thursday, their Friday, but the Paschal Lamb to be slain between the two evenings. Query whether that be not between the beginning of Friday (our Thursday evening) and the beginning of Saturday (our Friday evening), which was strictly fulfilled in our Lord, and upon this supposition every statement in the Scripture is consistent. The order is just thus then, as: - Thursday, 13th, evening with us - Friday, last Supper; Friday, 14th - Friday, the Crucifixion; Friday, 14th evening with us - Saturday, "rested the Sabbath"; Saturday, 15th - Saturday, the high Sabbath, rested Saturday, 15th evening with us - First day of the week, Sunday, 16th morning with us - First day of the week they came very early to the sepulchre.

Our Thursday night, their Friday, was spent in the judgment hall, they not going into Pilate's, that they might keep the Passover.

38  - 19. In Matthew 26: 25, Judas says, "Master, is it I?" Note the difference of spirit which dictates, and "Although all shall be offended, yet will not I," to Peter. And how traitorous the heart is!

- 20, et seq. There is something very brief and solemn in all this account here. The Lord's mind was full, and the Spirit presents the truth as if it was too weighty and near to say much about it. "One of the twelve, who dips with me in the dish"; all was morally contained in that. "The Son of man goes as it is written . . . but woe to that man . . . good for that man if he had not been born." It is the pith and substance too of the institution which is given. "For many"; this carries it out into a further scene of grace, while verse 25 closes all His present relationship with earth, to be resumed in a future day when His Nazarite separation from them would close.

- 27. But the time was coming when He should smite the Shepherd, and the sheep should be scattered.

- 29, 30. "If all . . . not I"; yet it was no one but he. And our Lord's answer seems strikingly marked.

- 31. I may remark here, in passing, that the evidence from versions from a reading is to be taken with much question, and also of the fathers, especially as quoted by Griesbach. The versions are, it is to be remembered, translations conveying the sense, and not always direct evidence of the words employed. Thus here, the Vulgate gives "amplius" (the more). I am not at all clear that it did not read mallon ek perissou (the more vehemently), and translate it all amplius (the more). Indeed, I believe mallon ek perissou to be of that effect. There are many analogous connections of mallon and perissos. I would remark that, though we are highly indebted for his pains and profitable diligence to Griesbach, his judgment as to Scripture text and sense is, I think, exceedingly low.

- 33. Ton (the) before Petron (Peter) I suspect marks the surname. Let us never pass by the simple fact of the heaviness and distress of our Lord, "the Author and Finisher of faith."

- 35. His soul was truly "full of grief." May our souls be made conformable to His death.

- 36. The answer does not appear, i.e. upon the prayer, but the prayer is full of instruction. In the trials of the saints, when there is pure unfeigned submission to the will of their heavenly Father in outward circumstance, which, on the approach of the trial, connects itself with all the power of the trial, the prayer may not be formed on the purposes of divine counsel, and yet be fully accepted and answered by separation of the circumstances, not from the reality of the trial, but from its power over the will. There was a submission of the will, from the beginning, to the divine will, but patience of its fulfilment, in which the present actings of the will are concerned, is wrought in the soul by the operation of the divine power in answer, and we are heard by reason of fearing (Heb. 5: 7). "All things are possible," in whatever ignorance we may be, is abstractedly an answer to apprehension, if the person in fear has an interest in that will. Faith realises this abstract answer in respect of practical exigency.

39  - 38. "The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh weak," is not given as aphoristic commiseration of them, but as a reason for, and marking the necessity of watching and prayer. Do not rely on the readiness of your spirit, for the flesh in which you walk is weak; therefore watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. There was special allusion and graciously (for the Lord's soul was stayed and prepared for the evil) to Peter's hasty undertaking to suffer with Him, unsustained in spirit by going through it with God; he would soon sink in going through it with man.

- 40. What perfect simplicity of truth there is in this statement! At the moment that the anxiety of redeeming the world by His own obedience unto death weighed upon the Lord's mind, when He was subjecting Himself to His own substitution to wrath for His sheep, to His Father's necessary will in holiness and justice! How do we see the place which the Son of man held upon earth - subjection to the merest present circumstance when salvation is in question!

- 41. He saw His way before Him - that bitterness of distress even to death, in which He had sought the stay of one to watch with Him, was over. They might now sleep; He knew that the hour was indeed come, and He had set Himself to meet it. Observe, our Lord was caused to feel that He was utterly alone in the conflict. His mind had unburthened its load, and He returned to them whom He had left as Man; but they were asleep. He warns them, and returns to that on which His soul was occupied with God, and which could be settled there only, and there only accordingly He finds, so to speak, vent for His soul, till He should have manifested to us the fulfilling of all righteousness for our sakes. When we think of His divine glory, His being the depository of the power of His Father's will, we can but be silent before Him. Observe too for ourselves, the Spirit of God will lead us into timely prayer.

40  - 44. There was something desperately wicked in Judas, after passing such time with Christ. But Satan was with him to carry the flesh through, and it is so with Peter. "The flesh is weak," is another thing as to state, if the roots are the same. It is bad enough, I mean even in effect. The Holy Ghost was not there though "the spirit willing." Satan had entered into Judas; no wonder his wickedness.

- 62. "I am." "And ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven," is an additional testimony; all the truth must now be told.

- 68. The first step was seemingly a little one, merely rejecting the impertinence of a girl, when there was no good in the testimony. It clearly was not the time, but it was all in principle. It seemed at the time as if it made no difference to any, his denial or not; it was merely avoiding the inquisitive intrusion of strangers when inconvenient to himself. So, often, in the world. They would have given no honour to Jesus, had He confessed Him, but the contrary.

How the boldness of nature leads a man into a situation where he is not in the way of grace, and fails to his own sorrow and bitterness of heart! What business had he there if he were not one of them?

- 69. Compare Matthew 26: 71. There was conversation about it going on. How clear the scene!

Query. "The maid again began." It is quite possible that more than three may have spoken even if he only directly denied the Lord thrice. But there is no apparent discrepancy even, save that Matthew says, "Another maid," and Mark, "The maid." Bengel would say both did, but I apprehend it was the maid of the proaulion (entrance-hall) the he thuroros (the door keeper) of John, very likely. The palin (again) seems certainly to belong to erxato (began) in any case. How little poor Peter gained by having the fire, and going out into the porch! It is no use.

41 Mark 15

- 37. There seems to have been something extraordinary in this great voice which He uttered, nor could it I suppose be thought natural at the moment of death. It might show that even on the Cross it was no mere natural dissolution, but that it was finished, and therefore He gave up the ghost.

Mark 16

- 8. It is the general effect on the heart and spirit, the result, which is more presented here than the detail of circumstances. This is evident in verses 14, 15, et seq.

- 9. "And" (or "But") "Jesus having risen" (or "When he had risen") "early the first day of the week, he appeared first," etc.; the breach of continuation is less. No doubt it comes in as a statement apart. Up to this it was merely the fact of His resurrection announced to the women at the sepulchre, who stayed last at the Cross and, watching as it were over His body, were found first at the sepulchre He had left. This introduces His appearances, in a short general recital, to give, after showing their unbelief, the mission of the disciples according to the mind and tenor of this Gospel. The whole thing is a résumé of the unbelief of the disciples, and then, after the Lord's reproaching them with it, their mission. It is not, in any way, a detailed history whose object is to give an account of what passed. This closes with verses 7 and 8. He was to be seen in Galilee in connection with His own mission here, and His association with them. The rest is a testimony by others to them, distinct from this, and which falls on unbelieving hearts; and Christ, in a distinct way, sees them revealingly as to His Person, not in Galilee, and they have a mission to the world for personal salvation, signs of power being attached to their mission. With this His ascension is connected. He took His heavenly place till His return.

- 15. "To the whole creation."

- 20. "Everywhere"; again we have the introduction of the general result, but it is quite general. This mission "unto the world" - to the whole creation - was not from Galilee, but before His ascension, and their execution of it quite general. But note, while the Galilee scene is recognised in the current of Mark's history, there is no account of it. The account we have is of the Bethany close of the blessed Lord's presence here, and the mission thence. As Jewish expectants, there is still unbelief. The mission is not quite Luke's heavenly beginning at Jerusalem. It is from the risen Lord in Person. But it is not at all Matthew's; Matthew and Luke are dispensational - this personal and for simple salvation.

42 Whatever the explanation of the end of this chapter from verse 9, it is evident, I think, that it is an added morsel. I have often noticed that it is the John and Luke aspect of the history which is added in a summary; but the anastas de proi (when He had risen very early) comes in unconnected with any governing noun, rather confirming, I think, its genuineness, but showing it is not a continuous history but added, but its being "Jesus" assumed. It assumes it to be Jesus, mentioned in verse 6, but has not the air of continuity. But while following the Matthew part at first, it takes up the other aspects as what the writer had at heart. Nor is it a connected story, for verse 9 does not directly connect with verse 2; "they" in verse 2 is general. Mary of Magdala came first alone; verse 3 implies there were others engaged in the matter. They bought the spices Saturday, after 6 o'clock, and the two last went at sunrise next morning. It merely gives the general character of the history; they find the angel and flee alarmed, having received the message as to Galilee. Matthew gives the same history with more detail as to the angel; the women are thrown into a lump in verse 5; from Luke 23: 55, and chapter 24: 1, 10, we learn there were several. Then we get the Mary of Magdala account, and the two to Emmaus. Thus verses 9 to 20 is evidently a calm retrospect on the whole scene, and its consequence; verse 19 was forty days after what precedes; and, verse 20, we have the consequence - it professes to be after the apostles generally had gone out, knowing nothing of Paul, quod nota.

Thus verse 9 to 20 detaches itself more and more from what precedes. Its purport has been spoken of elsewhere. But verse I takes up the women in the general Galilean form, and passes from those who had bought the spices Saturday evening, whom it designates by name, to the general thought of the women coming Sunday morning. Mary of Magdala came, we know, before the sun rose; there were the women from Galilee, and others with them; in Luke, all lumped together, three and "others with them" being mentioned afterwards. The other Mary (i.e., of James, etc.) and Salome who came, only Mary of Magdala had gone before them and was alone. These three were at the Cross (query, was Joanna the same as Salome?). He who had alarmed the keepers without, was perhaps the same that peacefully told the women not to be affrighted inside the general excavation of the sepulchre, and showed them the particular place where the Lord had lain. The contrast is purposed in Matthew 28: 4, 5. But Mary of Magdala was alone and apart. Except Jesus' meeting them the account of Matthew and Mark is identical, only Mark gives the effect in their speaking to no one, as they fled to tell the disciples. But in verse 9 we have Mary of Magdala, not mixed up in the general history as in Matthew, verse 1 of this chapter, and Luke; it begins a totally different aspect of the story with anastas (being risen) referring to Jesus, not named here nor in what precedes, not as a person writing continuously, but, taking for granted that Jesus was in question, begins a separate account about Him, not about the women. Verse 1 quite falls in with the statements in Matthew and Luke, giving what the women in general were about in their love to the Lord; but verse 9 repeats "Mary of Magdala" in a quite distinct and separate personal character, and yet vaguely, with nothing of Peter and John, which John, one of them, so clearly and graphically relates. This and the Emmaus disciples are introduced to show the unbelief of the disciples. It is not very easy to reconcile this and Luke, still the transition from unbelief to faith is not unnatural, and, though they spoke of His appearing to Simon, on report, yet they evidently were not prepared to see Him. It is easier to believe death than life. The grace in which the Lord convinces them is most touching. But the whole passage is as if it were a recital of what had happened a good while ago, and added to complete the account left unfinished in the air, and what was known by report or general common information. Yet I do not reject it. The insertion of it may be inspired of God, as giving a general account of what was after the Acts - perhaps through John himself - and this is the way I am inclined to look for it. One thing is clear - verse 20 shows it was written after the dispersion of the twelve from their old local work, and knows nothing of Paul and the Acts, is based on the ascension, not on the Galilee mission, and passes from it to the late general mission of the twelve; verses 15, 16 also give this.

44 The difference noticed at the end of Mark is quite evident. I mean the Jewish meeting with the Lord, and the heavenly one, Matthew having only the Jewish, and Luke the heavenly - Mark both, only verses 15-18 are more general, as is the case with Mark who speaks of the Gospel as we might almost. I have looked through Mark to see how the general strain bears on this. I find first, it contains much more His personal testimony (not His Person) and its authority. The contrast (perhaps from the rapidity of his statement of events) of the Jews with Him, their opposition to His testimony, and display of divine power, more distinctly prominent. It is not the careful presenting Him according to promise, as in Matthew, finally rejected, but His personal testimony, by word and work, brought immediately into collision with their unbelief and prejudices. In the first chapter we have the display of power acting on them, but from chapter 2 we have the opposition, as verses 7, 16, 24; chap. 3: 6, 22, and the rejection of His place among the Jews by birth, already, at the end of chapter 3. Thereupon, the Sower and Christ - peculiar to Mark - personally at beginning and ending. So the testimony is general - a candle not under a bushel. In chapter 5 we have a general idea of the dealings with Israel, then and hereafter, the swine, the woman, and really giving life. In chapter 6 the twelve are not forbidden to go to Gentiles, but John the baptist is put to death. Jehovah satisfies the poor; but He separates from His disciples to rejoin them. In chapter 7, the Pharisees are judged - the whole system judged morally; and what man is shown, and mercy shown to Gentiles; grace makes the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak. In chapter 8, the Remnant is dealt with in sovereign grace, the disciples even understand nothing, the opening the eyes of the blind is wrought outside the town, and gradually; from that the general testimony of rejection, and taking up the Cross to have the glory. Life must be lost to save it.

I have longed to begin and to read the Gospels which remain (Mark and Luke) yet now I find it is communion and glory that my soul desires, not knowledge. Yet should I refuse to learn what is given here, were it only even for others, and I passed on to where my thoughts and hopes are, and where we shall see Him in higher, His own glory, and know as we are known according to His fulness, I feel as if I was coming down to earth again, having known Him in glory, thus to study that Blessed One even on earth, perfect, divine and admirable as all His ways were. But we must take it as it is presented, and leave our minds open for all divine truth, but I so felt, and feel yet, the rays of that divine glory, and where He now is, shine on all the path He trod, until it burst forth again in Him glorified.

45 I return for a moment to the commencement of this Gospel. John the baptist's ministry is called here, I apprehend, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. because it was, whatever its claim, the good news about Him - "the Mightier comes." This ministry of John was the commencement of the testimony, as introducing Him. It was not merely prophecy - they were till now - it was before His face to prepare His way. This was the beginning of the Gospel; it was a special thing. I do not see that the end of Malachi: "Behold I send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord." This is not the Gospel, as here spoken of. As to the reading "in the prophets," it was probably "prophet" or "prophets" and "Isaiah" a gloss, and "Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way," was introduced; otherwise this last is a mere comment or explanation of what follows. The beginning of the Gospel was the voice of one crying in the wilderness. It was according to the prophets, but they were not it, the thing spoken of by them was it. "Behold I send" was a promise in fact to Christ, as representing and interested in Israel. "The voice of one crying" was the beginning of the Gospel. Therefore both are introduced; so that the plan of prophecy, and the beginning of the testimony are all perfectly introduced in their place. As to the critical point, the intention of the Lord in the structure of the passage being evident, it is of comparatively little importance, but may be further searched. The beginning of the Gospel, the good news fully recognised the place where Israel was - in the wilderness. It recognised nothing, not the least, of the state they were in; so ever, they must go out to the testimony. So again ever; this then, and owning that the paths must be made straight; so in all cases, and grace makes the Lord enter into that sorrow and that effect of sin; there His paths are prepared, not in Jerusalem apostate, and we find that those who owned this accordingly believed on Him. The way was repentance for remission, the manner and effect confession. The effect however of this was very general, and made way for Another's righteousness. We know who rejected it and were rejected. But it was a different thing publicly to receive this and to receive Christ; then the claim was more in opposition to their present state, and found its opposition in those who shrunk from the recognition of what condemned them and subverted their importance. I may own the evil I am in; the Holy Ghost alone can effect a confession of what sets aside the evil I am connected with. While all the system is owned, evil and reformation may well pass, but Christ must stand for Himself, and gather, and the flesh cannot bear this , it requires faith, and faith is the gift of God, and the power of the Holy Spirit Himself. But human nature, wearied with evil, is attracted and subdued by a testimony against it, when, to a certain point, note, in such a time public adherence to, and owning the verity of Christ's proposal, are different things; the former requires the public action of the Spirit of God - power - display belongs to a new dispensation. Therefore the interpretations of parables, and symbolic prophecies are ever new revelations of the succeeding dispensation, quod nota.

46 John bore his own character, but he testified to One to come after, "the Mightier." There were two points as to Him, after the character of John was shown forth, the (comparative) excellence and worthiness of His Person (for he does not speak of proper glory here: "He was before me") - and of His ministry or baptism: "I have baptised you with water, but he shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost." Repentance and power are different things; the latter is the Lord's baptism. Fire is not here in question; judgment was not the point, but what characterised His ministry, what He conferred as contrasted with what He convinced of and claimed. Repentance, the return to God in a sense of sin, is a different thing from the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, though He may work in power to produce the former. "With Holy Spirit" is the character of the baptism, therefore no article. We have then the two things fulfilled in Jesus, for He comes in by the door, though perhaps we should say "because," for He only could do it, He was God above all. He is baptised with water (coming in by the door thus among the Jews) and is endued with power, not mediately but immediately. "God anointed" Him "with the Holy Ghost and with power"; I add this, lest any should suppose it might be taken ill, saying: "endued." Though full, personally, with the fulness of the Godhead bodily in incarnation, this is not manifest endowment as entering on ministry, presented before our eyes in service. To the first He submits. He came from the rejected seat of vileness, out even in Galilee. No proximate place acting on the national requisition (it is not said that was a seal - only Judaea and Jerusalem affected by proximity) and connecting as One who knew Israel and the rights of Israel, with the heart of Him who claimed its rights for it, and whose eye rested even on its despised borders. He "came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptised of John in Jordan." The love of the Lord's heart embracing all, even its degraded quarters, but coming, in the degradation of its despised and outcast corners, to submit to the necessity of its testified moral condition as a Servant. He was baptised of John in Jordan; His entrance into its real limits as properly owned of Him. But higher glory was declared on this submission; He sees the heavens opened, etc., and the voice came; "Thou art my beloved Son." This was the recognition of Him as a Man upon earth. At all times the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily, for "in him all the fulness was pleased to dwell." This was not the question, but as a Man He was born of the Holy Ghost, even as to the nature to which the divinity was united, so was He sealed and anointed in it too ("for him hath God the Father sealed"). And note it is not here merely it descended, but on His submission to righteousness He saw it descending. "Straightway ascending up out of the water, he saw the heavens open." It was not only acceptable righteousness on earth, increasing in favour with God and man, but on His submission to the righteousness of God, in the condemnation of Israel, and the baptism of repentance, He sees heaven open. All His ministry is characterised by this. It is not merely: "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen," for that was higher still, even what He had divinely and previously, but His testimony to Sonship as incarnate, Man. And note the anointing or seal is a revelation to the Person Himself for His joy and gladness, as well as a stamp known to God and others. "He saw heaven open, and the Spirit as a dove descending upon him." So was the voice addressed to Him of the Father: "Thou art my beloved Son"; indeed it is its chief character, though it has consequences surely. Yet was a Spirit of meekness and gentleness, as well as purity, for so is ever the Spirit of Sonship, for it goes beyond the difficulties, and trials, and evil upon earth, and its pressure, and sees heaven opened where these things come out, and hears the Father's voice, which overreaches and passes through all these things. It has submitted to the recognition of the full moral evil, a thing much deeper than the national or judicial consequences, far deeper - has owned it with God, fully bowed to the acknowledgment of it, and passes into a clearer and brighter scene, upon the full confession of it, which is beyond, blessedly beyond, all this, where the Father's heart has its play, for the evil is passed and left behind, and the testimony is known in the midst of it, as the place whence it comes rises above it.

48 This then was the character of the Lord's ministry, submission to righteousness in Judaism, but a view and a consciousness opened infinitely higher. The coming of Jesus was a voluntary act to this - "It became him." Testimony to Sonship; and knowledge of the Father's own voice is the proper character of present blessing brought in to those that have a portion in Him.

The recognition by His Father here was at the beginning, rather before the commencement of His ministry. We have that, in verse 14, chapter 1, when fully manifested personally perfect in righteousness, and acceptable in personal relationship; and coming forth now, submitting to all needful to accomplish His counsels, He receives this testimony. The course and accomplishment of His service gives only another occasion of the all-important and blessed testimony, and His patience to death to secure the Father's glory - the final witness of it in power in the resurrection, "according to the Spirit of holiness." This being done, i.e. the submission, with Christ willing, in us needed, and our wondrous grace, and privilege, and Sonship fully declared (the Father, in fact, known to the sons by the Spirit) "immediately the Spirit casteth him forth," putteth Him out from this enjoyed shelter of Sonship into the wilderness (there John cried, there repentance and submission were proclaimed, for there in condition the people were) there we go back, but as sons; compare the groans in Romans and 8. "And he was in the wilderness forty days tempted" of the adversary, "with the wild beasts, and angels," the ministers of God's providence and honour to the (humbled) Son of man "ministered to him" there. This is an important point of the entrance on ministry. Moses passed forty days in intercourse with God, with Jehovah, before he comes down to exercise that ministry in the giving of the Law, and service of the tabernacle, and the passage through the wilderness up to Mount Pisgah; he needed it for that work, and the broken tables (though on God's part most righteous perhaps) needed from this meekest of men another forty days of exercise there. Yet was the place of Jesus, there in the wilderness, far more wonderful, and, when known, glorious than that of Moses. Moses, "as a servant" faithful in all His house, had need to be taken up to see the Lord, that the witness of the power and glory might shine forth with the authority and power of communion.

49 The Law must reflect the glory, and its communicator and mediator, both for competency, and for its bearing on others, have intercourse with and come forth from such a presence into which for the purpose he had been introduced. But this One, the Lord, had ever dwelt there. He was come down interested in those who were the witnesses of a broken law, and a dishonoured God, and utterly ruined man, and the prevailing power of Satan. He must go into the wilderness and meet Satan there - this was the forty days suitable to Him - and in all this be tempted with all that was suitable to withdraw Him from the place of utter humiliation, and service - born under the law, not its mediator, and responsible for the curse for us, which Moses had authoritatively, and with the glorious sanction of Mount Sinai attached. Here, however, it is its briefly but forcibly stated character, as ever in Mark, "He was in the desert . . . tempted of Satan . . . with the wild beasts," the power of ferocious evil, "and the angels ministered to him." The acceptance was not the less as Son of man for the sorrow. Both John and the Lord, as we have said, in the wilderness, but one in the bitterness, though prophet, of judgment and repentance, the Other in the witnessed certainty of Sonship, and consequent trial, and temptation, and desolation, but with an honour due to Him and the heirs of salvation. Glorious as Moses was, and not in trial but in honour, the angels were dispensers. Here, the glory of love brings Him low, as low as possible, alone indeed in these, in the wilderness and in temptation, subjected to the temptations of Satan, but the angels are ministers to Him. It is the same in principle with us. It was not the honour of proposing (as Mediator) what the Lord revealed, and required for blessing, but taking up in divine love the total ruin of the whole, and this by being already in the secret of being a Son Himself, not something given for them to fulfil, but Himself fulfilling in love the need even into which the sons were brought. Having this experimental preparation for ministry as Son Himself, having received the seal and conscious character of Sonship as a witness, thus received in witness to His soul (so only available to us) and as tempted of Satan, what the Father was, and what the world (or Jews) was. Thereon, waiting in patience the appointed time, till the ministry of John was closed, till the enmity of the world had shown what was to be expected, for the Son of man should also suffer of them, in the manifested though not ripened apostasy of Israel, but in the fitting time of service to the Father, everything that would have deterred the flesh, everything that was a guide to the Spirit, the anointed Son, who had been tried of the evil one, enters on His ministry. John's casting into prison might have seemed to have made His service and ministry hopeless, but perfectly separate from and giving no sanction to, nay, having owned the apostasy of, Israel by His baptism by John, He enters exactly at the appointed, needed, and fitted time, when John was set aside, to bear testimony, and minister in the midst of Israel. But indeed, when looked into, and seen on the footing of, and in the midst of the apostasy as to such (however presenting all the good) and the presentation we have of the ministry here, John the baptist presents the Person of Jesus, and what He would do as exalted - baptise with the Holy Ghost, His proper ministry in this sense. It was thus the beginning of the Gospel of the Son of God. The Lord's word was, on John's being delivered up, preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God. That indeed was what was wanting in such a state of things, the truth of the setting aside of the evil state of things, that was to arouse specially to repentance, and to comfort those who sighed for the evil, and perhaps were persecuted for leaving it. When John was put in prison, it was a suited time for this, suited not to the flesh but to the holy testimony of God. The place of the testimony was accordingly full of grace to the nation, extending the full title of the Lord to His people and land, but having all the pride and evil which was associated in man's part of it, and saying: "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye." It was not merely blessing, or blessing to a righteous people, but to a people whose word of address must be simply, universally: Repent and believe this good news. This, to follow Him, called for total separation from interests, and possessions, and all relationships of life. He stood outside all (in mercy) saying: Repent, from God the Father (in Sonship), from Satan, the sum of the condition of things then learnt from apprehensions of mind, learnt personally with the Father, and made in the energy of the Spirit to go forth (cast out) and therefore experience of the temptation of Satan and the wilderness the Spirit led Him into. He goes forth when the evidence of the rejection of His predecessor, and their iniquity in the rejection of testimony was manifested, to bear His witness, and final gracious and patient testimony amongst them, in a word, from God and from Satan - He goes forth in the full force of that, He goes forth into a world which had already proved what it was; but He was fulfilling His own mercy. Into this fellowship His disciples were called; they could not be of the world and in it, nor anywise associated with the world in which the testimony was sent. Efficient, Christian testimony is always, really proceeds from one who has this knowledge, and comes forth from this conscious acceptance by the Father in the power of testimony to Himself, and separation, by temptation of Satan, or according to the measure of that, from all that might be the question in the course of service, or hinder entering into it as sons into a mere wilderness, where he could use all we were not separated from against us.

51 The Gospel of Mark seems to present, as its distinctive characteristic, a vivid picture of the life and conversation of our Lord, and His walk on earth. It is much more than the others, the life and ministry of Jesus. I have heretofore referred to the characters of the three other Gospels; Mark's was then omitted, for I was not prepared to state what was peculiarly to be found of the Lord in it. But this has struck my mind much, and early, on this perusal of it.

Remarks on the First Epistle of John

J. N. Darby.

<46002E> 52

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

The way in which God and man in One Person are united and presented in the blessed Lord in this Epistle, strikes me more and more, so that it is impossible to separate and apply them distinctively; 1 John 5: 20 giving the clue to it. Thus already in 1 John 2: 5, in whom do we know we are? All previously is Christ as such, and His word is spoken of. But "in him" is always "in God" here, nor do I believe that it occurs to the apostle to distinguish them here; in verse 6 it is clearly Jesus Christ, for we are to walk as He walked; and it may be taken to be Christ in verse 5. But being in Christ is not the subject or tone of the Epistle as distinguishing Him. Verses 24, 27 makes "Him" in the last impossible to distinguish. Of what follows I have spoken elsewhere. In verse 28 it is Christ, in verse 29 it is God. In 1 John 3: 1, it is God, "children of God," but in the end of the verse Christ on earth is the same Being; verse 2, it is God again, but like Him, Christ, and we see Him as He is. So 1 John 3: 3, 23, clearly God - Jesus Christ is His Son - but "He gave us commandment" is Jesus Christ Himself. But in verse 24, His commandments are God's, and he who keeps them dwells in Him, and He in him, and He has given us His Spirit. In 1 John 4: 2, He is the Spirit of God. In verse 12, it is clearly so, God dwells in us, and this is connected with His nature. Still it is God Himself, and we dwell in Him; and it is by the Spirit we know, first we dwell in Him, and then He in us. But the source of it is that God dwells in us. Verses 12 and 15 are positive revelations of the word; verse 13 our experimental realisation of it. In verse 16 also, God being Love, he that dwells in love dwells in God and God in him. 1 John 3: 24 is the outward fact, so that the Spirit could be distinguished from evil ones; compare 12: 1, and following; 1 Corinthians 14: 24, 25. But in 1 John 3 the unity of God and Jesus as one Object before the mind is clear. There dwelling in God comes first, and then He in us. But the testimony of the Spirit is here only to Him in us, to guard against false spirits which were at work. In 1 John 4: 17, it is clearly Christ; but it is God and His love which had been spoken of before.

As regards God's dwelling in us, and we in Him, besides 1 John 2: 5, which stands by itself, we have 1 John 3: 23, 24. Obedience, love to one another, and faith in His Son Jesus Christ. But this brings out the practical fact that we dwell in Him and God in us - the dwelling in Him being the state of our souls, when this life is so in existence. Here, His dwelling in us is the strength of His power and presence, which so belongs to us - this, known to us by His Spirit given to us, and, for the moment, the Spirit confines itself to this, guarding us against false spirits.

53 After that, having shown the connection of our new nature with God Himself, in its nature, and therewith the proof of love outside us in the gift of Christ, and God's love to us contrasted with our love to Him, so as to bring us up to Him, in verse 12 we get the great doctrinal fact that God dwells in him who loves. It is not merely a nature, but God Himself dwells in us. We know it "because he hath given to us of his Spirit." But this is experimental, and it is first the consciousness that we dwell in Him. This is connected with love here as with obedience also; chap. 3: 24. If He is in us, who is infinite, and we so small, experimental realisation is necessarily of dwelling in Him. But then we recognise the fact, doctrinally stated, that He dwells in us; and this is active in testimony of grace. Nor was it only those who had seen and known Christ sent by Love - whoever confessed that Jesus was Son of God, God dwelt in Him. It was not special attainment, but the privilege of every Christian; it was so of them all. God dwells in him, and he in God.

In verse 16, he returns to experience, the groundwork of faith in manifested love, knowledge of His nature thus - Love - so that he that dwelt in that, dwelt in Him and God in him. The doctrinal fact then is that God dwells in the believer, but then he dwells in God - infinite in love and being. Then practically God dwells in him, that he should be a living witness, and active in that love. For God gives us to enjoy Himself, and have part in that other blessedness, His activity of love. As to connecting God and Christ as One, see also 1 John 2: 5, 6 - a striking instance. Being in Him, verse 5, is different from abides in Him (menei en auto). It is the fact; abiding is added here too when he speaks of the state, consciousness of it being expressed. Further, verses 7 and 8 speak of the nature of love in us; verse 9 takes up God Himself, its Source, and unfolds its actings in Him, and its enjoyment.

54 In the end of 1 John 2 and beginning of 1 John 3, besides the wonderful bringing together God and Man in the Person of Christ, and our unitedness to Him too, we have the nature of our new life as born of Him - the relationship, children of God, but unknown as He was, and then the result, like Him in the glory; the present practical effect being added.

I am not quite content with "lawlessness" for anomian. It is an exact representation of the word, for "less" is privative as a, but in English "lawlessness" has acquired the sense of active violence and reprobacy. Anomos - it is a man who acts without respect to any law whose authority he owns to bind him.

Note too in 1 John 2: 28, 29, and 1 John 3: 1, 2, the remarkable proof of the way God is seen in Christ, often noticed already, as one great key to this Epistle. In verse 28 He appears - it is His coming - this is clearly Christ, in whom too we abide. He is righteous - so every one born of Him is righteous; here we are children of God - but it is "He." Then 1 John 3: 1, the world did not know whom? God doubtless, whose sons we are (and here not the Father's love) but when did not the world thus know Him? When He was in the form we are - in Christ the Son of God on earth. No wonder it does not know us. He who appears is the same Christ, for we are to be like Him. He was in the world, and the world knew Him not; compare Daniel 7: 9, 13, 22.

In 1 John 1, "That which is from the beginning" notes that the life, though in its source eternal, was looked at as in Man, a new and absolutely original thing. This is very important as to its nature. The life which is our life is an entirely new original thing, as regards Man, for it was "with the Father" from all eternity, but it began in itself in Jesus as shown down here. It is no modification of the old or first Adam.

In 1 John 2, Christ is not a Mediator with God, but an Advocate with the Father, i.e., He restores communion, fellowship with the Father, when practically lost. His advocacy is founded on two things - propitiation for our sins, in that He pleads in grace if we fail, and righteous in His own Person, our righteousness, so that this is the standing in which we are before God. Our place in heaven on one side, and the meeting of our need on the earth on the other.

1 John 1: 6, note, answers to verse 5, verse 8 to verse 7, and verse 10 to verse 9; light, sin and sins being the respective subjects. The structure in the Book is this: the Christian condition, chapters 1 and 2: 1, 2. The full blessing and fellowship, 1 John 1: 1-4. The testing principle of God's nature, and how, being sinners, we have communion, 1 John 1: 5-10. Our maintenance on failure, 1 John 2: 1, 2. 1 John 2: 3-11, the great principles by which we know that we know Him (not doubt, nor acquire the knowledge, but know in spite of, and as detecting false pretensions) having righteousness, obedience to God's commandments, and loving the brethren; but this is based on the great principle of being in Christ, so that we are to walk as He walked. The commandment given by Him when present being now in force, in that, He being our life, what was true in Him is true in us. Then from verse 12 to the end of verse 27, the general condition of all - forgiven, and the particular condition of different degrees of maturity is stated as the ground of the apostle's writing. This in connection with chapter 1: 1-4, i.e., the knowledge of the Father, having the Son and the Father, eternal life, and the reassuring privileges of the weakest.

55 1 John 2: 28, to chapter 4: 6, has a double character of test; 1 John 2: 28, 1 John 3: 23, states, on the ground of abiding in Him, the character of life, and extent of privilege, and its effect, bringing in and reasoning out the tests of righteousness and love of the brethren. (Righteousness seems more connected with abiding in Him; loving, with the new nature.) The second character of test is God's abiding in us proved by the Spirit He has given us. This however has itself to be tested by true confession of Christ, and by hearing the apostles themselves, i.e., now their Epistles.

1 John 4: 7 to chapter 5: 5, is a blessed development of the love of God manifested to the sinner in life and propitiation in Christ, enjoyed and manifested in us in dwelling in God and God in us (true of every one who confesses that Jesus is the Son of God) and perfected with us in giving us to be as Christ in this world, so that judgment is looked at with all boldness since we are as the Judge in that according to which He judges - the righteous Judge is our righteousness (but this in the partaking of the same nature). Verses 6-12 are the witness; three, Spirit, water and blood, somewhat analogous to the three tests. Verses 13-21 are an address of detail as to restoration, under discipline from God, in the power of life in intercession, knowing God hears us. Verses 18, 19, 20 are the whole status of conscious knowledge by the possession of the divine life which is the Son who is also the true God. In Him we are. He is the true One.

56 In chapter 2: 6, " He that says he abides in him ought, even as He (ekeinos) walked, himself (autos) also so to walk." Remark the "He" (ekeinos) where it is not Christ in Person, so that God is revealed in Him, but His walk upon earth - the "himself" (autos) without distinguishing between Him and God; see chapter 5: 20, this last explained.

In chapter 3, being like Christ is presented as the measure of our ways, and, knowing we shall be like Him, we seek now to purify ourselves as He is pure. But then if we do not this, if we fall down under this standard, we sink down into the flesh, and hence into the rejection of all restraint and law. He who errs as man, the evil wandering of human nature, makes himself independent of the restraint and authority of God. Sin is lawlessness, not indeed the transgression of the law, but the casting off of law and restraint. Not only this, he who practises it is of the devil, for the devil sins from the outset of his condition as such. On the other hand, it is in contrast with the life and nature of Christ, slighting all His work, for He was manifested to take them away. In Himself also there is none, so that he that sins has not seen or known Him. But on the contrary, he who bears the fruits of His nature is the righteous man, and that according to the nature, character, and measure of the righteousness of Christ Himself.

Note also that 1 John 1, always speaks of the Son, the Son of God as a distinct Person in such title and such relationship - a divine Person and Being; as it is said: "We are in him that is true," that is "in his Son," but as thus revealing God, and Son as regards the Father. We have the Son. The Father and the Son - the Father sent the Son; and the Son of God, so that being in Him we are in the true, for He is the true God and Eternal Life. We are never called sons (huioi) but children (tekna). And this is of great import and precious too. Huios (son) is a title and position given - most blessed in its place. Tekna (children) a deriving of nature and being from Him whose children we are. We are partakers of the divine nature, as of His family - so to speak, His born children. Having His nature, and so like Him; He is righteous, he then that doeth righteousness is born of Him; we love, we are born then of Him, for He is Love, and so know Him. A son is a relative position and relationship; "children of God" is to be born of Him, derive our nature from Himself in grace. This is by that divine life which is in Christ, which Christ is, being made ours by grace. And hence the Epistle unfolds it all in respect of its moral qualities, not its prescribed honours. Hence, as regards Christ, it is all through difficult to discern when God is spoken of and when Christ, because He is that divine thing which had to be manifested; see chapter 3: 1, where God, and Christ in this world, are spoken of without breach or interruption in the sentence, as the same, and we so far morally the same as that the reason for our not being known is the same. So in 1 John 5: 19, 20, already quoted; compare verses 11, 12. There though Christ be Son and Life, what is naturally and essentially divine is displayed and manifested in Him, and, on the other hand, we partake livingly of this divine nature as born of God, and Christ being our life. It is a wonderful chain of blessing, yet evidently necessary in order that we should enjoy God.

57 Note again in 1 John 2: 13, et seq. the little children, knowing the Father, are brought into an entirely new scene of relationship where all is morally according to what He is, and see all things according to their relationship in grace with Him. It is a kaine ktisis (new creation) of which the Father is the moral spring and key. Things are as they are in the communications between the Father and Christ, and as they are given to Him. All this is according to the nature of God of course, but in a new relationship. Now the word of God is the moral power and witness of this in the midst of things as they are, and this is the living power of the life and witness of those who, entered into the new relationship, become filled with the moral sentiments which belong to it. Christ was this in the world - Son with the Father, and the Word of God. It abides in the young men; hence the opposition with the world, the immense system formed by Satan, its prince, round flesh. Hence the Father and the world are in opposition ever. It is not God, for as men, creatures, it is His world and creation, but the whole condition of it, as built up under Satan, in connection with man's lusts, is the opposite of the Father's displayed blessing. The moral strength and energy of this brings the young men into collision with it. They are in opposition to its prince, here grown up into likeness to Christ: compare John 17: 7, 8, also verse 6, as introducing them, and then verses 14-20 is everything. Then we get more, for the knowledge of Him that was from the beginning is drawn out in another form in verses 17-19.

58 Note the tenses in 1 John 5: 18 and 1 John 3: 9, gegennemenos (begotten) is the state; gennetheis (has been begotten) is the birth, the consequence of which is that he keeps himself.

I add a word on 1 John 4: 7 is "Born of God," for love is of God, and so knows God, for God is Love (verse 8); verse 9, Love manifested in giving life through the Son; (verse 10) in sending the Son to be the propitiation. Not law but grace. Verse 11, we ought to love one another; verse 12, God dwells in us, and so love perfected in us; verse 13, we know we dwell in Him, and He in us by the Spirit given. Our present state, inferring duty (verse 14), "Seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son, Saviour of the world; verse 15, God dwells in every one who confesses Jesus is the Son of God, and he in God; verse 16, We have known and believed the love God hath to us. God is Love. He that dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him. Verse 17, Love perfected with us in being as He is, in this world; verse 18, No fear in love; perfect love casts it out; verse 19, We love (not, we ought to) Him, because He first loved us. (Here first love to Him.) Verses 20, 21, Tests of love, and obedience called for.

We have the nature (then the work in grace which proves it) the dwelling of God in us. The perfectness of testified love, in that we are His, and so boldness in the day of judgment; our relation, not our essential state; verses 7-14 is that.

The connections in 1 John 2: 28, and 1 John 3: 1-9, are interesting. First our blessed place in association with Christ whose Person, God and Man, rejected and glorified, is wondrously brought out, and knowing that we shall be like Him seeing Him as He is, we purify ourselves as He is pure. As ever, it is a glorified Christ after which we are formed here. This is the Object we are looking to and running after. Then we turn down to the lower side of truth, "Whosoever commits sin" is lawless. It is the will of the other, the old man, that is at work, for that is sin, the independent will of the old man which, having lost God, sinks into lust. That is not Christianity. He was manifested to put away our sins, and if we have the eternal life which is in Him, which He is, "in him is no sin," the nature we live by is sinless. Hence, He who abides in, consciously lives by, refers to, confides in, and that continuously as dependent on Him as thus living by Him (see John 6) feeding on Him, does not commit sin; He in whom is no sin is the life in which he lives. This is not law, but life and nature, as the previous part was objective and responsible, with this difference - that was objective and so growing into increased likeness and purifying as He is pure, this a life which does not produce what is contrary to it. We see it is nature and life, for he who sins has not seen or known Him; only abiding in is moral activity. One is progressing in likeness to what He is, the other not doing what is contrary to the nature. Talking of transgression of the law is going clear out of the whole order of thought. It is an identical nature shown in conduct, for He is our life. "He that doeth righteousness is righteous as He is righteous." I do not think "as" is measure but nature. The true nature of the sinner is as the devil's enmity and hatred. And He by whom we live was manifested to destroy his works. Verse 9 makes it clearly the divine nature. "His seed remains in him," "he cannot sin" for that is not the divine nature. The two characteristic marks are then given - doing righteousness, and loving the brethren. This manifests them.

59 In 1 John 4, for the dwelling of God in us, we in God, and God in us, and knowing it, and God Himself, we have two points; first, verses 7, 8, we are born of God and so have His nature and know Him, and are capable of enjoying Him; then verses 12, 13, He dwells in us and we in Him, and we know it by the Holy Ghost, because He hath given "of his Spirit" - a double blessing but identified enjoyment. So Paul, more in grace and dispensationally in Romans 5: 5. In Romans 8, the first part, both are united - Christ our Life, and the presence and power of the Spirit. But this passage gives us the full blessing, the highest indeed, and the manner of it.

Compare also Psalm 119: 165, and 1 John 2: 10, and note the difference of the character of the blessing. In the Psalm, and the legal blessing to the righteous man, there is nothing that makes him fall - and a true blessing it is. But in John, when grace is in question, there is no occasion in us, when we walk in love, to another's fall. It is just the same principle as when the lawyer asked who was neighbour to him. The Lord answered by a parable which showed how we are neighbours to Another.

Man

J. N. Darby.

<46003E> 60

(Notes and Comments Vol. 6.)

If Christ "died for all" (2 Cor. 5: 14) it was because "all had died," otherwise there would have been no need of doing so. I need not go down into a pit where one will perish, if he is not in the pit. That it is not "all have died," i.e., to sin, I think evident from the correspondency of all in the sentence, and further that there those who live are taken as some out of that "all" in what follows. He died for all "that they which live" (hoi zontes, the living; not zontes, living). Hence he does not know even Christ after the flesh, as a living Jewish Messiah, whom as a Jew he would have known. God was in Christ reconciling the world. Nor does he know Christians - "So that we henceforth know no one according to flesh"; "so that if any one be in Christ, there is a new creation" - as belonging to the old creation to which they had died; nor others, for they were dead - their whole history. But if a man was in Christ it was a new creation; he belonged to that in which all things were of God. The whole subject is the promise of life in Christ as triumphant over death. Hence when he applies it, he does not say merely "who died for them," as when he speaks of all, but "who rose again," through the power and fulness of a new thing, for those taken out of death through Christ's going down into it. There was neither Jew, Gentile, sin, flesh, nor anything of the old Adam, or legal estate, but a new creation.

We have man looked at in two points of view in Scripture - alive in the old Adam, as fully in Romans, and referred to in Colossians as past, and as spiritually dead towards God (where, note, death has nothing to do with conscious existence - it is as real when we are alive as when we are dead). In the former case we have died in Christ, reckon ourselves dead, have been crucified with Him. So Romans, Colossians, Galatians and in Ephesians even, "the truth as it is in Jesus" is the having put off the old man. But then the word of God goes further as to this. It treats men as spiritually dead, and their whole existence before God rests on an entirely new life. As above, if one died for all, then were all dead; John 5, but "have passed from death unto life." In Ephesians we have the additional truth of "quickened together with him," and indeed in Colossians 2, adding "having forgiven you all trespasses." But to take here the point of life in itself - it takes a person out of a state of non-existence spiritually before God, and is a new creation. Hence it does not contemplate judgment nor justifying; John 5, "shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life." Hence we find no justifying in Ephesians. We are "created again in Christ Jesus unto good works." It is a wholly new thing before God, which has its own character before God, is of Him; "Of him are ye." It belongs to that new creation in which all things are of God - a holy, blessed, and righteous condition, which is a new creation, wholly of God Himself. That is what subsists in us, "in an earthen vessel," and in conflict. That it might be righteous as regards previous responsibility and ultimate blessing, Christ, the blessed and gracious Lord, died, and, if He is our life, we are also risen together with Him. If we do not come into judgment, it is that Christ bore our sins. We were dead, and He not only has died for all, but, in coming down to the place of death, has borne our sins, so that being raised with Him then we are forgiven. He has accomplished what has put them all away, "Was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification"; so that we are justified by faith. Thus, to get this justification, we are, as alive in sin, baptised to His death, and thus die also to sin, and reckon ourselves dead, are dead, have been crucified with Him, nevertheless live, not we but Christ lives in us. This is the new life, but it is resurrection and life which, as Christ has died, come down to death (where we were) by grace is justification and forgiveness. But this, being death, is not merely sins put away, but life put away, so to speak; "sin in the flesh," therefore we read, "was condemned" (there is no question of forgiveness here, but of deliverance from a nature, "putting off the old man") by God sending "His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin." But it was condemned in death, and hence wholly done with for faith, "That the body of sin," we read, "might be annulled" (katargethe, rendered null and void). Thus it is not only and simply a new life, but sins have been put away, Christ having borne them in His own body on the tree, so that there is no judgment for those who believe, by Christ's word, on Him that sent Him. Sin has been put away (for them) by the sacrifice of Himself. Sin in the flesh has been condemned. The old man is put off wholly (for faith) by death. We are justified from sin which is condemned, but the old man gone - the body of sin destroyed. Thus the new man is clear in its place before God, through the death of the old as to life and the person judicially, because the sins of the old man have been borne and put away, and the old man, Christ having died on account of sins, so that the question has been fully solved in judgment. Sin in the flesh has been condemned, put off and gone. All this is applied practically in Romans 6-8.

62 There is more, because the work of the Lord Jesus Christ has perfectly glorified God as to all this state of sin, and hence the fruits of His grace have a place in the glory of God with Him, "Whom he justified, them he also glorified." He has been made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. It is the point of death and resurrection which connects, as in Romans 6, and Colossians 2 and 3, justification, and being constituted righteous before God, with holiness of walk. We are alive through Christ, that is the new holy nature, but we are dead to sin - "How live in it" says the Apostle - we are out of the place and standing of the old man altogether - are not in the flesh - say, "When we were in the flesh" - but we are alive and in a new place, Christ risen. And this being by death and resurrection - first, Christ's, so that sins are put away, then our death with Him, so that sin, as the old man, is crucified, we are cleared from sins, have put off the old man, in Christ, and have our place, standing, and life, exclusively in Him before God.

The impotency of law to put us in this new position and get rid of sin, is treated in Romans 7. It is impossible there can be any condemnation for those in Christ. First, they are set free (in contrast with chapter 7) from the law of sin and death; secondly, sin in the flesh has been condemned, but by Christ's being a sacrifice for sin, so that that is no ground for condemnation. I am free, as to walk, from the power, from the condemnation and status of it, by Christ's death. But this, note, brings in the Spirit, and hence is the practical condition, and applies itself to practice; see verse 4. My whole status is a new one - righteous through Christ's obedience, set free from the law of sin, and sin in the flesh condemned, but in Christ's sacrifice. But I am passed in that from death unto life. It is to be noted how distinctly this connects responsibility, as to justifying from sin, with the old man, and how wholly it is done away. Acceptance is in the new, and responsibility to glorify Him, but that is another kind and measure of responsibility. If this be true, where is Christianity got to? And, note, it puts responsibility, in the judicial sense, on the side where divine life, eternal life, is not - a point important as to some adversaries of the truth.

63 Note further in Romans 8: 2, though the object be practice, the point stated is not practice, not an actual state, but a position in which a Christian is, all Christians, he is de facto being such, set free - "hath set me free" (eleutherose me). I was a captive - I am not. (It is not the same as "deliver," in "Who shall deliver" (rhusetai).) The ground is laid in Romans 6, in death, and alive through Christ, but here, through redemption, there is the power of the Holy Ghost in life and presence. That is the status of the believer, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus," has made him free from bondage to the old man. Secondly, as regards the old man which still works in us, it has been met as to condemnation by Christ being a sacrifice for sin. It is a holy nature in power, and the condemnation of the old man, condemned on the Cross in Christ's sacrifice. Then we have to walk, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

But further on 2 Corinthians 5. First, the blessed state of the apostle. If beside himself in an ecstatic state, it was not excitement or flesh, but to God; he was lost there. If sober, it was the thoughtful service of love to others; self was in neither. The two parts of the blessedness of God - His own blessedness in Himself - activity in love towards others. But this leads to the state of men and Christians, Christ's love constrained him instead of self. That was shown in death for all, then all were dead, or He need not have died. There was nothing in man towards God at all. This formal work of love led then to living to Him, who had died and risen, those who did live. But thus the whole relationships of flesh were set aside. As to unconverted people, they were dead in sin; as to the converted, how near were they to Christ! Self, flesh, and relationships in it all gone. Even Christ known after the flesh as a Jew, he knew no more thus. He had died, come in that way. That closed the old Creation; Christ was the Head and Centre of the new. If a man was in Christ, he belonged to this new Creation; old things found no place in it - they belonged to the old Creation. But in a risen Christ all was on a new ground. And all things were of God - a new Creation according to Him, and of Him, and He has reconciled us to Himself. How absolutely all is done away of man, a child of Adam! It is not justifying a responsible person, though that be true. But He was dead, and there is a new Creation. Hence we have no justifying in Ephesians; God does not justify His own Creation. Here all is of Him; compare John 5: 24, "Does not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life." And the ministry of reconciliation assumes our being far, and alienated from God - does not touch on responsibility, however true and important in its place, and it is so. It is not Jew near and Gentile not; all is gone - man is dead. All were dead if Christ died for all. It was the activity of God's love - God was in Christ reconciling, not imputing; not man's responsible action towards God, but God's action towards him, and the world all one common alienated thing. And the ground, that it might be in righteousness, Christ made sin for us that we in Him might be the righteousness of God - not man's toward God as responsible, but be God's righteousness in Christ. In his place, the place now his, was displayed God's own righteousness through the work of Christ. The place and acceptance we have is His righteousness. But the old thing is gone, and it is a complete new creation. It is a very remarkable passage.

64 The difference too of Romans, Colossians and Ephesians, already noticed, shows itself in the whole structure of Colossians. Romans is "dead with," and "alive through" Christ; Colossians is dead with and risen with, and Ephesians looks at us as dead in sin, and Christ is first seen, there, i.e., dead; then we quickened with Him, and raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Him, the Holy Ghost being in us. Now all Colossians goes on this ground - it sees the Christian here dead and risen with Christ. Hence he is to set his affections on things above - he is not sitting there. Hence there is a long practical preface in the beginning, which supposes him to be down here, though connecting his walk with the Lord up there; a hope laid up in heaven. It is to be worthy of Him. So, in 'are to be presented "holy and unblameable, and irreproachable" in His sight' time comes in. It is not the standing as in Ephesians 1: 3, without reference to time. And it is added, as if there on the way, "if ye hold fast." Even as heretofore observed, He has triumphed over principalities and powers, meeting all our difficulties, but it is not leading captive, and conferring gifts on those once captives to Satan. Hence, too, in the mystery; it is seen on that side of it, "Christ in us the hope of glory." In this position they were in danger of not holding the Head. In Ephesians it was the assembly the fulness of the Head who filled all in all. Here it is all the fulness in Christ the Head, and we are not, as a whole, His fulness, but complete in Him. Hence the walk too is of the new man - Christ our life, not imitators of God; the new man in Ephesians being after God in his nature. In Colossians he is renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him that created him - not what he is but his state. We are the elect of God, holy and beloved; but both "God" and "we" are objective and apart. The Holy Spirit of God is in us, in Ephesians, and we are not to grieve Him, but imitate God, Christ being the One by whom we know love. We imitate Christ in His walk in Colossians. In Colossians, His word is in us. In Ephesians we are filled with the Spirit. This is full of instruction.

65 In the beginning of 2 Corinthians, I get the experimental realisation of being thus dead (sentence of death and bearing about the dying) and the power of resurrection on his spirit (chap. 4: 12-14), but not further than Colossian ground, and with the sense of the earthly vessel as necessarily of experimental, i.e., as to death; the result in chapter 5.

Note, the resurrection of Christ, and seeking things above, is used for the putting off. We have died with Him. That is our state. But putting on the new, Christ becomes objectively all, and He is in us. "All, and in all." Then we put on, as being chosen and sanctified, and objects of love here; and this is conformity to Christ. Christ being in us, we are to manifest His character; even verses 16, 17, suppose them down here, though in what leads above, for the word comes down here.

Note too, how remarkably complete and perfect is the testimony in 2 Corinthians 5. We have glory by the power of Christ over the principle of death, absolute and complete, first - supposing we are Christians; next, death, which is going to be "present with the Lord"; next, judgment, the terror of which only leads to persuade others (for we are as Christ) and connects itself with our being now manifest to God. The ground of all this is laid in being "in Christ," so that there is a new creation, and we are the righteousness of God in Him.

Notes and Comments Vol. 6, Final Section.

J. N. Darby.

<46005E> 354

Remark, as illustrating other passages, how eternal life is presented as the result of a course pursued, and as a present life given, in the very same passage; Romans 6: 22, 23.

_______

Note that Isaiah 40, in comforting Israel, shows the nothingness of flesh (in Israel as elsewhere) of the nations of idols compared with God. But the power and unweariableness of God secures Israel in grace. He that waits on Him, Jehovah, renews His strength.

Summary of Luke

<46006E> 355

The structure of Luke, though not so systematic in form as Matthew, is yet quite peculiar. We have first the lovely picture of the Jewish Remnant, on to the ministry of John, and the baptism and anointing of the blessed Lord.

Note in Luke when He is baptised, all the people had been baptised. He joins them in this path of God to be with them. When He puts forth His own sheep, He goes before them. We have the distinct difference of associating Himself with the godly Remnant in their divine path however lowly a one, and His taking His sheep as the divine Shepherd, whose own they were, clean out of the fold, going before them. Then His genealogy is traced up to Adam (read: "Jesus Himself began to be about thirty years old [being as was supposed the Son of Joseph] son of Heli, etc.) so, as before, Son of God, and so owned. Luke 3: 23 in Authorised Version is clearly wrong. It should be (being as was supposed Son of Joseph) tou Eli (of Heli). The list begins with Heli not with Joseph. "Which was" is not in the text. He now comes out Son of man. All this is very noteworthy, and, note, full of the Holy Ghost.

Then as such He is tempted and overcomes, and returns to Galilee in the power of the Spirit. But while announcing Himself as the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy, in grace in the midst of Israel, the Spirit of Jehovah upon Him, yet He shows Jehovah's consideration of the Gentiles, so that they would have destroyed Him. He sets aside the demon's power, and heals Simon's wife's mother and, the Sabbath being ended, all manner of diseases, but leaves to preach everywhere. He calls His chief disciples, and Simon, through full conviction of sin, though attracting him by grace; touches a man full of leprosy, and, with a will the leper was not sure of, heals him - grace that came to touch the defiled and banish the defilement. He withdraws and prays, and then, in presence of all, manifests the title to forgive, as a present thing, in the power of healing (Psalm 103). Eats with publicans and sinners, come "not to call the righteous but sinners." The Bridegroom was there - they were not fasting days - He would soon be taken away from the disciples, and then would be fasting days. Besides, the power of His new doctrine could not be put into the old forms of Judaism. But man loves the old things he has drunk of. Tradition is his false delight, not the truth. This brings in the Sabbath, the sign of the covenant with Israel. All is common if the Son of David be rejected, and the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.

356 Again, the hatred of the Jews is called forth. All this is the setting aside of Judaism, and the revelation of the Son of man for sinners, and Gentiles, and all oppressed of the devil. Again, He passes all night in prayer (for praying distinguishes Him in Luke) and chooses the twelve as a company belonging to Himself. There was the company of His disciples, and a great multitude. He does good to all, but distinguishes the disciples formally here. "Blessed are ye poor"; we get the moral instructions that belong to His own. Though still going with the Jews, and giving heed to them, He owns the Gentile, has "not found such faith, no, not in Israel," and raises the dead far away above all promises to Israel as such, or their thoughts in the promised Messiah, though intimations of it are found in the prophets. This awakens universal rumour, and John himself is put upon the ground of faith by what Jesus did in power and grace, being fully owned in his ministry, though the least in God's kingdom was greater than he. The repentant justified God - a remarkable expression; the self-righteous despised the grace. "Wisdom" was "justified of all her children" both in confession of sin, in John's ministry, and confidence in the grace come in Christ's Person. The striking example of this in the account that follows is deeply touching. We have the Pharisee's heart in utter blindness, God's heart, and the convinced and confiding sinner's heart, which just meets exactly the revelation of God's as that did it, the answer of forgiveness, salvation and peace being added Thus the whole moral condition of things is fully brought out.

Note, I see three principles in Luke 5 and Luke 6. First, change of mind instead receiving the righteousness, for here, I suppose, repentance is genuine. "I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." Next, power brought in which could not adapt itself to the old system. Spiritual power, the new wine, could not be put into old bottles. Thirdly, grace, mercy contrasted with forms and sacrifice. The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. In the sermon following, the difference between it and Matthew is, it is less specially dealing with Judaism, giving great general principles in themselves. Matthew is in contrast, "To the ancients" (tois archaiois). But then Luke goes on to full following Christ in His motives and walk; Luke 6: 40. In general in chapters 8 and 9, in Luke, you have the change from Messiah there to the time of the end, and Son of man.

357 Luke 8 stands a little by itself. It is transitional. The disciples are formally distinguished as to the mysteries of the kingdom, which are opened to them; to the rest in parables, that they seeing might not see, and hearing not understand. They were a judged people. With this testimony as to the Word individually received or not, He warns His disciples that He did not light up the truth to put it under a bushel. They were responsible for all they heard, and, if realised, more would be given. But everything would be made manifest. But with this He rejects His natural associations with Israel, and owns those who hear the Word of God and do it. But accompanying Him they would find storms, and He to man's eye seem asleep and indifferent. But they were in the same boat with Him; it was only want of faith that feared. In what follows, we have the, so to speak, public and private state of what was going on. The Remnant delivered, whatever the power of Satan, the rest as unclean swine hurried to destruction, the delivered desiring to be with Him when the world turned Him out, but he was to go and be a witness of the deliverance he had experienced. When Jesus came back to the people they were waiting for Him. Then the private account. He was in the crowd of Israel to heal them as sick, but they were found in the place of death, but, for Jesus, only sleeping. Meanwhile, where, on His way through the crowd one touched Him with faith, she was perfectly healed.

Luke 9 is the turning point of the whole gospel. He sends out the twelve for the announcement of the kingdom everywhere, giving them power divinely to heal, but it was, as a general testimony, final. They were to shake off the dust of their feet if not received, and He, as Emmanuel in Israel, provided for them. The rumour reached too the king through that it had awakened among all, and his conscience even trembled. He takes the disciples apart, but the multitude come, and again He shows Himself to be Jehovah in Israel, satisfying the poor with bread. Again, alone praying, He draws from the disciples the current rumours as to Himself, and their own faith that He was the Christ of God, and forbids them to say it any more, for the Son of man was to be slain, and blessing was to be in resurrection; they too must take up the cross. But not only would the Son of man come in His own glory, i.e., as Son of man, His Father's, i.e., as Son of God, and Jehovah's with the holy angels, but He shows them the kingdom to be set up in all its parts as to man. Mortals on earth, saints with and like Him in glory, and saints within the cloud whence the Father's voice came, and Jesus was now alone to be listened to. Alas! the disciples were asleep as in Gethsemane. Still the incapacity to use His present power (which they had exercised when sent out) makes Him say His departure was at hand, though still Himself perfect in grace and power, but He returns to the point of taking up the Cross. He judges self in all its shapes therewith. He, at any rate, was going to be now received up. He warns others, there must be no looking back. He is on His way up to Jerusalem, and sends seventy on before Him where He was coming, but now avowedly as sheep among wolves, carrying peace, telling them with demonstration of power and goodness that the kingdom of God was come nigh, and, if rejected, to shake off the dust of their feet, but leaving the solemn word that the kingdom of God was come nigh. They returned with joy, but though these powers (miracles) of the world to come prognosticated the fall of Satan, they were rather to rejoice in another thing, that their names were written in heaven where all tended now. He then contemplates the whole scene before His Father, and His own true place in the matter. Blessed those whose eyes were opened to see what was even then there in His Person!

358 Luke 10: 18-24, gives a wonderfully full revelation of all that was in Christ's heart at that moment when He was going away, "Names written in heaven," revelation "to babes," the Son too glorious to be known, which was His true character, the Father known to Him only, and to those He revealed Him to - the then blessing of those whose eyes had been opened to see what they saw by His presence. The rest turns the perfection of law and so of Judaism into grace. Verses 38-42 give the preciousness of the Word of Christ, but goes rather with what follows. But see the exquisite sweetness of the outgoing of Christ's heart in verses 18-24. They were to rejoice having their names written in heaven where He was now going, registered there, though the powers they wielded were those of the world to come, when Satan, fallen from heaven, would be fully bound. Jesus rejoiced in Spirit over the blessing conferred on them by the Father whose good pleasure had been in revealing to these simple ones these things. And then in full love to them, and what they could understand who had received Him as Messiah the Son of God, pronounces blessed those to whom He withal as Son had revealed the Father. It is an exquisite expression of Christ's heart when passing from this world to the Father.

359 Then the Word, His Word and prayer, its blessing, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Then the open Spirit-blaspheming enmity of the nation, and Himself the only Centre; he who was not with Him was against Him. All was brought to a point now. Yet blessing was not in natural relationship to Him, but in hearing the Word of God and keeping it. The generation was judged. The Ninevites and a queen of the South would be a witness against them. The testimony was to go abroad, but singleness of eye gave reception and fulness of light. The Pharisees and scribes and lawyers are then judged. How fully the moral question is raised here, though in the Person of Jesus! The whole of what follows to Luke 18: 34, gives the moral discussion of their state, and all that was in question in His going away, only that Luke 15 and Luke 16 give the fulness and ways of grace that were coming in. From chapter 18: 34, the last events are recorded.

Luke 12 brings the whole state of His disciples, when He had left them, fully out. It was a path of faith, but all would come out, death might come for them as for Him; they were not to fear it but God. The Holy Ghost would be with them to answer when called upon in persecution. He had not come to set things right in the world. Riches were only deceit; where would the soul go? The disciples were not to be careful but to trust. They were a people separate from the nations of the world, but it was the Father's good pleasure to give them the kingdom; they need not fear. But they were to wait for Him to come again; meanwhile to watch and serve, and blessing from Him in rest with Him, and the inheritance would be theirs. Judgment would come on the servant who acted as if the Lord delayed coming. The Lord had come to bring division and trial on the earth, still His baptism (death) would open the floodgates of love. The people were warned that there was plenty to show the time they were in. If they did not agree with Jehovah still in the way with them, they would be delivered up to judgment (and so they have been) till the time comes. Verses 58, 59, are the then judgment of the Jews; verses 45, 46, of the professing Church; verse 48 makes the difference of those who knew His rule.

360 Luke 13 continues the setting aside of Judaism. If they did not repent they would be destroyed as those they spoke of to the Lord. Then the Sabbath, seal and sign of the old covenant, rest of the first Creation, is dealt with, and the character of the kingdom of heaven, as coming in, shown forth. From verse 22 to the end, the matter is brought directly to a point. Nor would restoration come till there was repentance, according to Psalm 118. All this is on the way up to Jerusalem.

As often remarked we have much more the moral development in Luke than dispensational, and so the present time, but the Lord continues to show the setting aside the Jewish system. The Sabbath comes up again, and Jewish hypocrisy is again made manifest, and the Lord acts in divine grace; mercy overrides law. Then the real principles of the kingdom, lowliness and gracious love, in contrast with the spirit of the world; the resurrection of the just would bring the true reward. Lowliness and grace go together. Then we get the invitation to the kingdom-supper, on the remark of one who sat at meat. The Jews (men) would all make excuse (save what grace called) and not taste of it. But the Lord would have His house filled, first from the poor Remnant, then from those outside, the Gentiles. It was grace. Those who would follow Him must break with all for Him, and take up their cross. They must count the cost, and even then, if the salt lost its savour it is good for nothing; chapters 15 and 16 are grace seeking, grace receiving. Man (Israel) a steward out of place, wisdom was to use his Lord's goods for the future, not for the present. The Israelitish system of prosperity being a sign of divine favour was all over, it belonged to a direct government of this world. The Lord opens the other to our view, as telling the true tale.

In Luke 17 the Lord continues the principles which affect the conduct of the disciples, in view of the utter passing away of the system in which they were. First, stumbling blocks would come, as the salt might lose its savour, but woe to him by whom they came. Then with brethren there should be the most constant forgiveness if they turned repenting to them. The least faith would remove the tree by its roots, and plant it elsewhere, for it was faith in all power. But after all, if they had done everything they had just done their duty. But the revelation of God, and goodness in power, centred in Him now, though He still recognised Judaism. But grace reached a Samaritan, and a Samaritan, finding where grace and power was, had no need to go to Jerusalem and the priest. The kingdom was there in His Person. The disciples would desire to see one of those days soon, but the Son of man would finally come as the lightning. It would be as the days of Noe and Lot. All this is the earthly coming, but not wholly Jewish in form as in Matthew. We know Jerusalem is the centre of all then, and the passage applies to the judgment of that people. But wherever the carcase was, there would the judgment fall. But God would surely avenge His elect who should be crying day and night to Him; but what faith would the Son of man find when He came? But He was going first to suffer.

361 We have then the moral question of righteousness, goodness in man, where a lovely character and upright law-keeping were found, and the heart judged in its state instead, and what the world is, and all it has, in view of God's kingdom. With man salvation is impossible, not with God. But if all is forsaken for Christ, there is a hundredfold, and everlasting life. Finally, the Lord takes the twelve to Him to declare plainly to them what was about to take place, in clear and unmistakable terms, resting all, as ever, on His resurrection. Blessing was to be there, not in the living Christ here, precious as that life was and is to us. But they understood nothing of it, such is the power of false religious ideas.

In Luke, as in all three, the last events begin with the blind man of Jericho, and Christ here formally takes the character of Son of David. But there is this peculiar to Luke, that Zacchaeus' story is introduced with Son of man and grace, the case of the blind man being related first, with a very general expression of the neighbourhood of Jericho. It is, as ever in Luke, the moral character of Son of man, not given up though taking, as a last test, the place of Son of David, and Lord. Here we have not the general truth that the humbled publican was justified rather than the pretentious Pharisee, nor no man good, the heart being tested where outwardly the law had been kept; but upright thought and feeling seeking to approve itself to God, dealt with on the ground that the Lord had to do with the lost. The people still go on the ground of their own righteousness, and murmur at His going to a publican's. Christ recognises Zacchaeus' title according to promise; he was a son of Abraham, but salvation was come to his house that day. Promise was true and to be fulfilled, but as taking up sinners. Zacchaeus, who, to approve himself to the Lord, happy at His coming in to him (ill-seen as he was) declares to Him the moral rectitude with which he acted. The Lord passes it all over. He knew no righteousness in Jews, but He did own promise. But that day salvation was come there. The Son of man, that was His real character as a Saviour, was come to seek and to save what was lost. Hence He goes to a publican's and that close to Jerusalem; son of Abraham he was, as other Jews, upright too as other Jews were not, but salvation came to him then as lost. It is a very peculiar case, coming in here. He then brings in responsibility to an absent Lord in His servants, and the destruction or judgment of Jerusalem (His enemies who rejected Him) when He returned. Son of David He was, but He was going to receive the kingdom from the Father on high. Then, as in all the gospels, He formally takes the character of "The Lord." Matthew and Mark never say "The Lord," only "Jesus," but then also, in this place, the Lord says it of Himself, takes formally this character in entering into the city. Luke, speaking more from the present Gentilised, Christian aspect, I think, of the gospel when He was gone, more than once in narration says: "The Lord." John once in Luke 4, when He left Judea to labour, as rejected, in Galilee. In the Acts it is habitually "The Lord," and "Lord Jesus." And owned He must be, if the stones should do it. But, as we have heretofore seen, it is in Luke celebrated as founded on heaven being cleared, and peace there, i.e., after Michael's war. He announces with tears the present destruction of Jerusalem, but, with the authority of Lord, clears the temple. He is less as Son of David, and more as Lord here; Matthew is more on the earth, with what belonged to Him there. The difference in the prophecy is striking; the present interval is there clearly stated. In the answer to the Sadducees, the present state of departed souls, all of them, is given, and the whole tone is different; so Luke 22: 16-19, is present fulfilment.

_________

<46007E> 363

Though Paul brings into heaven, he brings us into heaven, though in Christ, but Christ as being exalted, brought there as Man, while John, though as we have seen not heavenly, is divine.

_________

I am inclined to think that "the fulness of him that filleth all in all" is not simply Godhead but Christ in redemption. The passage, Ephesians 4: 10, leads me to this. It is redemption - He who went into the lower parts of the earth, and now far above all heavens.

Comparison of Luke and Matthew

<46008E> 364

After the lovely picture of the Remnant in chapters 1 and 2, we have salvation made manifest to all, the nation warned, and the Remnant recognised, sovereign grace in electing love, and complete judgment just ready, and the axe laid to the root of the trees; verses 6 - 9. This is important as regards the character of Luke's gospel. It is to be remarked too, that Luke, when replying to the musings of the people, does not speak of Christ's work, only of the active glory of His Person. He baptises with the Holy Ghost, and with fire, power of life, and blessing, and judgment, and then the present judgment of Israel (though the same thing will take place with the professing church). Then in Luke we find immediately the rejection of the testimony by the existing powers in Israel, and Christ traced up not to Abraham and David, or the roots of promise, but to Adam; so that the dealing with Israel continues up to the genealogy. It is a Remnant, a testimony of warning to the nation of immediate judgment, but Christ there, the Baptiser with the Holy Ghost, and judging His floor. The first two chapters were the Remnant when He came - this the testimony of His precursor, and coming judgment, and the testimony rejected. It is after this that we have the Lord owned as Son, the heaven opens, and the Spirit descends, and here manifested as the dependent Man, for it is not only as baptised, but as He was praying that this occurred. And then He is traced up to (Son) of Adam (Son) of God. "Of Eli" is connected with Jesus Himself, I believe ("being, as was supposed, Son of Joseph," being a parenthesis) and here traced up naturally not legally. Even in the expression: "Full of the Holy Spirit" we find the Man.

Then (chap. 4) in the power of the Spirit, as in Person Second Adam, He goes into the temptation, being led of the Spirit, and overcomes. The order is moral, as noticed, as much craving of nature as could be sinlessly, the world, and then spiritual temptation. Here no ministering angels, but the devil departs for a season, i.e., till Gethsemane and the Cross. And He pursues His service in the power of the Spirit. He presents Himself in Nazareth, His natural home on earth as the fulfilment of the coming one in its moral blessing. But, as noticed before, Israel though first addressed dispensationally, is the object of grace not of promise here, and sovereign grace to the widow of Sarepta, and the Syrian leprous man, is held up as the example of God's ways, exciting the wrath of all in the synagogue. Still He continues His ministry of grace, nothing changed by this, going His way unharmed through them. He drives out devils, and heals all under the effects of His power, but goes on, not stayed by the people, to preach the kingdom of God, being sent for that. This gave His ministry as a whole or service.

365 He then by the revelation of His Person in power, bringing the consciousness to man of what he also was, gathers disciples round Himself. They leave all for Him. We have thus the character of His ministry, the power of Jehovah in grace, the leper cleansed yet subjected to an unchanged law as yet. But He is the dependent Man withal, as constantly in Luke, and diligent as such. He withdrew into the wilderness and prayed, away from the multitude, quod nota. Then again, there is forgiveness and power, Jehovah, according to Psalm 103, meeting the faith of man. The receiving of sinners whom He came to call; the unsuitableness of His disciples fasting then, for He was the Bridegroom Himself, and the impossibility of putting divine power in grace into the old bottles of Judaism. As Son of man He is Lord of the Sabbath. The rejected Son of David makes all common. Grace reigns, not Law. It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day. This, as to His ministry, was conclusive as to its place in respect of Israel. We then find Him again the dependent Man earnestly praying, continuing at it all night. When day is come, He chooses the twelve, surrounding Himself with the chosen and constant companions of His ministry; only Judas was there. And then descending to a level place, people from outside Israel being there too, come to hear and to be healed, and then declares (not as in Matthew, the character of the kingdom, and what men must be to enter it, but) the blessedness of the separated Remnant. For in the wider sphere of grace, in the Son of man, Israel is now looked at as morally judged as to promises. Pronounces woe on the contented world, and teaches, to those that hear, the path of the spirit of grace. The blind leaders of Israel could only lead the blind people into the ditch. He leads those who follow Him wholly into the same walk as His own. Self-judgment is for us the first element of truth.

It is well to remark here that perfection is not in nature here, it is connected with teaching or leading. A man is "perfected," not perfect; and having heard what his master teaches, he is, in his mind and thoughts, what his master is, because he has received what is in his master's, and this is the Christian state. Still it looks to realising what Christ was. His word forms us into what He was practically. We live by, and so according to it. We suffer with Him too. Next Gentiles are recognised as having faith such as Israel had not, but we have nothing of their sitting in the kingdom with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is more dispensational; here moral. Then power to set aside death in compassionate love. This brings about the putting John Baptist and Christ into their true place. But the sinners were there who profited by John, and so received Christ; the Pharisees not - they judged crookedly in self-righteousness, or absence of conscience - conscience judges rightly. Of this we have then that most striking example of the Pharisee and the woman. She was a child of Wisdom, and Wisdom's heart and hers perfectly met for eternal peace and rest. The Pharisee had the Lord in his house, and never knew it. The instruction is as beautiful as deep, where man's heart meets God's who is Light and Love; not one trace of either in the Pharisee - simple darkness, man judging - both in Christ and both operative in the woman who, reached in conscience, got into both, or both fully into her heart. The full answer too is given of them through Christ, forgiveness, peace and salvation. It is, in every respect, the heart that clings close to Christ that gets true knowledge. The Lord, even though He reproach us not, is sensible to the neglect of Himself.

366 We see the different tone of the instruction of Matthew and Luke in what follows. There, the Sower is consequent on judgment (chap. 12) of Israel. Here it is merely the real character of His service. Grace, not Judaism, was at work, and the rejection of mother and brethren is merely taking the word as the ground on which He owned relationship with Himself, not natural relationship. Chapter 8 gives some other elements of His power as Son of man, and ministry, without the dispensational order of Matthew, but, with some of the dispensational truth as to the actual state of things, the moral scene is given. The order is, as we have seen elsewhere, historical till chapter 9 and after chapter 18: 34. First, He commands the elements of nature, Satan's power, I apprehend, alarming the disciples in their want of faith, but proving only the perfect calmness of His soul, and His power over it all. Then Satan's power comes out in possession, which man would bind if he could but cannot. A word drives the Legion away; it is the deliverance of man, in fact of the Remnant. Only in Luke (so in Mark) we have details as to the state of man, and the position of the world, the delivered one, and, I doubt not, the Jews given up for the time to their ruin. The man would have been with Jesus when he left the world that would not have Him, but is sent back as a witness of the deliverance of which he had been the object. Besides the great facts of power revealing the Person of Christ, Son of man, we have had, as we have seen, man wholly under Satan's power, whom man cannot bind or deliver from, and then, instead of going with Christ away, he is left as a witness when Christ does. The Jews rush to destruction, so that is, so to speak, Christian ground; what follows is Jewish. Christ is called to go to a dying person; thronged by the multitude in Israel for present benefits, virtue goes out only when touched by faith (this form only in Mark and Luke). He has to raise the dead when Israel is concerned, as with all. It is grace towards Israel, not as in the other judgment where Christianity is in view.

367 I think in chapter 9 we begin a new section quite of this gospel. The result in Christianity and Judaism has been stated. His place as Son of man, and then connection with Judaism and the Law, or rather impossibility of it, and the blessing of the Remnant, had been shown, Judaism being morally set aside as unfit for it. There are no kingdom-parables, quod nota; we shall soon have grace-parables. The Sower there is, which is Christ with the Word, and individual. We are now going to look out to the suffering Son of man. But it begins with His personal and coming glory, and then insists on the Cross. Hitherto it was the gracious Son of man present, and its effect - a Remnant gathered and blessed. Now it is a source of mission, authoritatively requiring recognition. And grace is connected with salvation, and another world, and the cross here. He could bring the dead back here; now He is going to die and go away Himself. Grace and goodness had been manifested too, and that even to Gentiles, to the miserable, to sinners, and power before which all evil disappeared (see chapter 4: 18-21, and chapter 7: 22, 23). Still, with Israel morally set aside, by sovereign grace, chapter 4: 25-27, where it goes over Israel's head to Naaman and to Sidon, and that Israel could not bear. It was grace, and grace is sovereign, and sovereign love. Now, the grace being even greater, He takes another character, higher and lower. Nor could grace confine itself to Jews, for it is God. Nor is He presented, after chapter 3, as Son of God, truly as He was so, save in the temptation by Satan, and by devils whom He silenced. In the first two chapters, in Israel He is. For He had taken the lowly place. The evil spirits could not help owning Him, only He received no such testimony, but Himself, when He begins His own testimony in chapter 4, takes the lowly, but soon to be exalted place of Son of man. In chapter 1: 35, the angel calls Him so as come on earth; chapter 3: 22, He is so owned. So in fact Himself in chapter 2: 49.

368 Christ then in chapter 9 is the Sender of servants, and Giver of power, but follows continually His patient and blessed service. (It was a testing mission to Israel, but its confinement to Israel is not specifically defined as in Matthew.) So He tells the disciples to give them to eat, for they had seen His power with them. They reckon by sight, but He satisfies the poor with bread. But in verse 18 we find Him again the dependent Man, praying, forbids them to announce Him as the Christ of God, telling them the Son of man must suffer. This was the path He was now actually entering on; a suffering Son of man in Him who could show Jehovah's power, and not Israel's Christ, is what now comes before us. And this was to be the disciples' path, and blessing was in resurrection after death. This is evidently a great moral change in the whole position. Besides the folly of losing one's soul for the world, the appearing of Christ in glory is the answer to the Cross. (I note in verse 26, it is not "His" Father's but "the" Son of man's glory in the Father's "Thou in me.") And what constituted the glory of Jehovah now made subservient to the Son of man. This to confirm their faith was to be shewn to some of His disciples. But He went up to the mountain in human dependence, went up to pray. So, constantly, when power is to be displayed through us. In the transfiguration we have much more detail in Luke. In all, the kingdom-glory is revealed, but it is the general fact in Matthew; here more. It was "As he prayed," the dependent and living Man. Many other interesting details are here. Moses and Elias speak of His decease; this is the great point now. Glory brings this in. It is in the counsels of God, but in the intimacy of intercourse (note too it is the same with the disciples on earth). The disciples are asleep (as they were too in Gethsemane). But Moses and Elias go into the cloud where the Father spoke. This revelation of Christ brings on, connected with the unbelief of His disciples, His leaving the world (v. 41) but grace wrought in it even while He was here. But the Lord, in the midst of power which amazed all, insists on His death and the Cross. In presence of this also we have man and the disciples contending for greatness in the kingdom, which in its then form was passing away. This gives occasion to the Lord's exposing self in every form, however subtle, and pressing the paramount claim of the Saviour to nature, however strong the tie. It was only nature, not the power of God to salvation. Note that here the Lord (v. 51) is on His last journey up to Jerusalem.

369 Grace (chap. 10) sends a final message before His face, but carrying judgment with it if rejected; but the messengers must now have their joy in Heaven where Christ was going. And Christ accepts in perfectness His Father's orderings as to it, and gets thus into the sense of the true and glorious secret - He was the Son, and no man could know Him but the Father He was revealing, and none could but He the Father, and that the world would not. He revealed Him to whom He would. Still, blessed the eyes which were given to see what was then seen. Then the Law is morally turned into grace as to man down here. It is not: "Who is my neighbour?" But to whom am I neighbour as the good Samaritan was? Priests and Levites are not grace.

We have in what follows a remarkable mixing up of the principles that should govern His disciples, and warnings of impending judgment. All was changing in His death, and they needed to be taught how to walk, while, though dispensational changes are not systematically taught as in Matthew 13: 16, 17, yet the warnings presently needed for Israel and its leaders are given. First comes the diligent hearing of Christ's word, and prayer, and again the importance of hearing God's word the only relationship He owned now. Chapter 11: 27, 28, this is connected with the attributing His casting out a demon to Beelzebub, and the warning of the bearing of so saying. If it was not Beelzebub, which was absurd as well as wicked, then the kingdom of God was come to them. Then He warns the people, pointing out who was there, the testimony lifted up, the secret of having light or a single eye, and then denounces Pharisees, scribes and lawyers, and the result for that generation. Accumulated guilt would thus far close its career.

370 The first twelve verses of chapter 12 encourage the disciples by various motives in the testimony in the midst of this hostile and evil generation. They were to be in the light with God, not in the plotting darkness of their enemies. Nor were they to fear them; they might kill the body - God's judgment went much farther. Besides the hairs of their head were all numbered by Him by whom a sparrow was not forgotten. Further, if they confessed the Son of man before men, He would confess them before the angels of God. Again, one who spoke of Him in humiliation might be forgiven, but they would speak by the Holy Ghost, and for those who spoke injuriously of Him there was no forgiveness. He was to speak in them in all their answers before rulers when accused. We have then the principles for the world and for the disciples, which do as to one, and should as to the other, govern our minds as to this world, while Christ rejects setting it right, and turns to the condition of the heart. Folly, even on their own ground, governs the world, faith and confidence in God should the Christian. The instruction as to disciples begins at verse 22. Down to verse 31, they are roused to confidence by looking at God's care of everything, and the infinitely gracious truth that we are of value to God. In seeking first the kingdom of God, their need would be met; their Father knew they had need of temporal supplies for the body. Verse 32 goes much further, not that life was something better than raiment, nor that their mere wants their Father took notice of, but the special privileges that belonged to them in grace. They need not fear, it was their "Father's good pleasure to give" them "the kingdom." Then to verse 48, we have heavenly joy for watchers, the inheritance of all things for service, but the judgment of the professing Church, if in heart they said: "My Lord delays his coming." Its portion would be with unbelievers, and judgment according to possessed advantages. From verse 49, we have the then present state of things. The Cross would bring persecutions and conflict, but the fire was already kindled. But then what is outwardly trial and conflict has an inward object and blessing according to God's purpose. A rejected Saviour brought conflict not peace on the earth, but then the love, in which He came alive here, was driven back by the unbelief and ill-will of man. He was straightened till the Cross, the baptism of death, opened the floodgates of divine love in the gospel. Still this would produce division and in families, and a rejected Christ bring out the worst evil of the human heart. From verses 54 to 58, we have the then question in Israel. And if they did not agree with Jehovah thus pleading with them on the way, they would be delivered to judgment till fully chastened, as it is at this day, though Isaiah 40 relents so graciously over them.

371 In the first ten verses of the following chapter, their present judgment is confirmed after the fullest patience and pains of the Dresser of the Vineyard. From verses 11 to 17 grace is affirmed, their hypocrisy shown, and the Sabbath, seal of the covenant, treated as ever by the Lord. Then the character of the kingdom briefly shown. Again, the warning as to the true character of the kingdom, the entrance is narrow, and soon the door would be shut. Many would seek to enter in (not by the strait gate) and not be able. Still the Lord must continue for His allotted time, and a Prophet was not to perish out of Jerusalem. The pride of being near God ecclesiastically is the greatest enemy of the truth and word of God. Often would the Lord have gathered Jerusalem's children, and they would not, now her judgment coming, and they would not see Him any more till ready to receive Him with thanksgiving. The Sabbath, as Israel, is again put in its place, a lowliness of deportment and grace presented as the path of the disciple. The distinct resurrection of the first being brought out, the present rejection of Jerusalem, and introduction of the gospel in the way of grace stated in a parable; so far different from Matthew, that grace to the poor of the flock among the Jews is introduced, not the second appeal to the nation, while judgment passes on those first bidden but more terribly, not dispensationally in destroying the city, but not tasting the supper. Then for all, it is pressed that they must take up their cross - that is the way now. If the cross were lost practically, the salt had lost its savour, quod nota, and savourless salt is good for nothing,

We have then the chapters which bring out distinctly grace and its fruits and bearings. Grace that seeks, and grace that receives. The Good Shepherd, the Spirit, the Father, with the details of bringing back. This goes deeper than all dispensation and Judaism. It is God's nature and joy. Israel, man, who had a stewardship with God, has lost his place, but remains with power over his Lord's goods; his wisdom is to use them for his future hope, not for his present enjoyment. Then the veil is drawn, and the other world brought in, for Jews' blessing in this world was the sign of favour. Eternal moral truth tells another tale. Man's heart had received his good things, and that was over for ever. This is characteristic of Luke - what is moral, and consequently eternal.

372 It is remarkable how Luke opens up general moral principles, and the passing away of Jerusalem in judgment in chapter 17, in the judgment of the latter days. But it is not the substitution of some other dispensational system, but what is essential and moral, and so eternal in its nature. Yet Judaism, as a system, must be judged for that. And even the parables of grace are in contrast with Judaism in their moral nature. The Lord, in chapter 17, opens up many of these moral principles. First, putting no trap before people, so that the weakest should be ensnared. Then comes the spirit of forgiveness. Then that whatever the labour of the disciples, they had only done their duty. The Samaritan stranger recognising God in Jesus is not subject to Jerusalem or Jewish order, but goes in peace having found the Lord in Him, while Jewish order is submitted to as yet, where faith does not rise above it. Next the kingdom of God was there in His Person, but the Son of man would be in His day as a flash of lightning. It would be as in the days of Noe, and the days of Lot; a day of trouble when men must escape judgment at all risks, but God would have His own safe, taking by judgment one of two out of the same bed, or from the same mill. Only that first the Son of man "must suffer many things, and be rejected of" that "generation." It is the judgment of the quick. Jerusalem is not marked in so many words. Wherever the object of judgment was, the Lord's judgment would be - the lifeless form of what should have been living to be owned.

Chapter 18, to the end of verse 34, continues the same moral displacing of Judaism. The first part, verses 1-8, has a special application to the Remnant at the end, but belongs to us all; verses 10-14, is a general truth too, but morally sets aside Judaism also; verses 15-17, the principle of the kingdom - who are to be received; verse 18, the whole principle of man's relationship with God is discussed; verses 28-30, the special answer on giving up all for Christ, and then the Cross fully pressed on them. All these are very important moral principles of the kingdom as it is; verse 35, as in the other gospels, begins the history of the last events connected with Jerusalem. Still the moral setting aside of the system is strikingly apparent all through, as contrasted with the dispensational. We have first the case of Zacchaeus; grace coming where the curse began - the valley of Achor is the door of hope. In Zacchaeus we have one, who in the Jewish point of view and Pharisaism, was the vilest of the vile. The money they could gain, by accepting the subjection of their country to Gentiles, made them their base instruments. Zacchaeus, though in this position, was an upright man, and acted uprightly according to the law, if he failed. He desired also to see Jesus, and so much so as to put himself in a position unfitting for his civil standing, and make the case public. The Lord invites Himself to his house, and we have the desire and uprightness met, but no account taken of them in the salvation. "This day," when Christ came there, "salvation" came to the house. Zacchaeus in honesty of heart would approve himself to the Lord. But the Lord takes account of promises; he was a son of Abraham, but lost, like the rest; but the Son of man was come to seek and save the lost. The Jews' judgment was wrong; Zacchaeus' ground was false, but promise and salvation for the lost were the ground the Lord goes on. It is no question of Israel's recovery, but the general truth of salvation to the lost brought by the Son of man.

373 But nigh to Jerusalem, and some expecting the kingdom at once, He proclaims His own absence; He went to a far country to receive a kingdom and return. And here we have not all rested on their knowledge of the Lord's character, as in Matthew, and, whatever was gained, entering into the Lord's joy, though of different capacity and gift as workmen, but the command to "occupy" till Christ comes - the Christian servant's place - and each has his mina*; the responsibility in the workman is in relief, and one has ten cities, another two, reward according to effectual labour - and "to him that hath shall more be given." This is Christian service. Meanwhile His citizens, the Jews, hated, and sent a messenger after Him, that they would not have Him as their King. On His return, they are judged and destroyed. Yet grace was then at work; He returns to Jerusalem in the end and weeps over it, but it is not Jehovah who would often have gathered, but the then present grace which is in relief. His disciples celebrate Him as Messiah, but with the remarkable cry: "Peace in heaven." The kingdom cannot be till there is peace there, nor can that be till Satan is cast out. Testimony must be rendered to Him, but now peace was hidden from the eyes of Jerusalem, judgment was just coming. All this, though judgment be announced, goes further and wider than Matthew. The cleansing of the temple is briefly stated. The question of His authority is pretty much as in Matthew. In the husbandman and vineyard the responsibility of the Jews is much more minutely gone into. In verses 35 and 36, the Christian hope in the first resurrection is far more fully gone into, and the proof from the last contains an all important element, for the other world is much more before Luke. All here unto Him, not merely saints with whom God identifies His Name. Their part is in a certain sense deduced from, or identical at least with the fact that, for God, though the body be gone, none are dead. He has to do with their living souls, when it is. He then puts the testing question as to Psalm 110.

{*i.e., pound, A.V.}

_________

<46009E> 374

How remarkably, while the highest condition of mere spiritual power and enlightening, where grace and lowly life are not, is shown to be only irreparable danger and ruin, when it is alone, the smallest fruit of life is secured by the testimony of the strongest impossibility of God's for a moment failing in making good His promises, and sustaining in grace, enlightened, and tasting good, and working miracles. I fall away and there is no hope. I fly for refuge to the hope set before me, the word and oath of God secure me.

__________

The more we compare John's gospel and epistle, the more we shall see the contrast of the instruction - life in Christ, light in the world, in the gospel; but Christ, life in the believer (in us) in the epistle. Hence darkness comprehended it not; darkness passing, the true light now shining. The life was manifested; we walk in the light as God is in it. The instruction is very great in this. In Him was life - light perfectly adapted to men - now, which thing is true in Him and in you, for the darkness is passed (passes or is passing) and the true light now shineth. We walk in it as God is in it.

The Lord's Relations

<46010E> 375

MARY

His mother and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleopas,

and Mary Magdalene; John 19: 25.

Mary Magdalene, and Mary mother of James and Joses; Matthew 27: 56.

Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary; Matthew 27: 61, and chapter 28: 1.

Mary Magdalene, and Mary (mother) of Joses; Mark 15: 47.

Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James; Mark 16: 1.

Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less, and Joses; Mark 15: 40.

Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary (mother) of James; Luke 24: 10.

JAMES

Jude brother of James; Jude 1.

James son of Alpheus; Matthew 10: 3.

Judas (brother) of James; Luke 6: 16.

James son of Alpheus; Mark 3: 18, Luke 6: 15.

James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon, Christ's brethren,

and His (Christ's) sisters; Mark 6: 3.

James the Lord's brother; Gal. 1: 19.

On comparing these statements, there cannot, I think, be any doubt that Mary the mother of Jude, James and Joses, and "The other Mary," constantly associated with Mary Magdalene, are the same, nor that Mary the wife of Cleopas is also. Jude is brother of James, and James is son of Alpheus, alleged to be the same as Cleopas, and James Jude) and Joses sons of Mary, I suppose wife of Cleopas. Thus the identity and connection of persons is evident. Mary called "The other Mary," the constant companion of Mary Magdalene, was wife of Cleopas and mother of James, Jude, Joses, and Simon, and these were immediate relations of Christ; whether by Cleopas or Mary does not appear. This does not affect the question as to Mary's having a family after the birth of Christ, nor her living with Joseph, of which I think Scripture leaves no doubt. But further, this would determine that James the Lord's brother is the apostle James the less, because James the Lord's brother is brother of Jude; Mark 6: 3. And James the apostle is Jude's brother; Luke 6: 16; and son of Alpheus. And, I think, from the place James holds in the Acts, and in the Galatians, it is the same James, and not another. For in Galatians it is "James the Lord's brother," and "Certain came from James"; and in Acts "Tell it to James," and James presides, in a sense, in Acts 15. The absence of all addition in the case of James is the natural proof of his being the well-known James.

376 It would have been quite incongruous to introduce the Lord's Name in an epistle, whereas "Jude (the brother) of James" was the distinctive name he had acquired in contrast with Iscariot; Luke 6: 16.

The Cry of Christ

<46011E> 377

The cry of Christ is of wonderful power and character; 2 Cor. 6: 2. His cry was the perfect expression of His nature, of a divine apprehension of evil, death, and judgment - the expression in need of all that God was against sin, when that came before His soul, so that He had the consciousness of that need according to the perfection of His judgment of evil, His sense of need as Man under it, and thus in the perfect claim of what He was in Person, and in glorifying God in His work. Hence God's answer must be according to all this, according to the perfection of this claim in the Person of Christ, and hence salvation, our salvation is just this, the necessity of God's answering Christ according to the claim Christ had, and the cry made to Him. He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. What a wonderful salvation! And how it places us in the intimacy of the Father's acceptance of the Son! Hence in Psalm 22, when heard from the horns of the unicorn, His first thought is: "I will declare thy name unto my brethren," and then He praises, in the joy of the answer, and relationship with His Father into which He enters on the answer, "in the midst of the congregation." His God and our God, His Father and our Father, and all the joy He has in coming, with: "Therefore doth my Father love me," added to His everlasting delight, into the renewed light of His Father's countenance, He puts us in and we sing with Him in it. Our salvation is in the perfectness of God's necessary answer to Christ's cry, according to the claim of Christ, and what God must feel about it, and as to it.

Thoughts on Hebrews

<46012E> 378

It is quite evident how the mysterious character of Messiah is brought out in the beginning of Hebrews, with details therefrom afterwards. It connects at the end of its subject no doubt with the Jews, but only at its end as a complementary part bringing in the millennium. But it is not the Church, but headship over all things with, at best, joint heirs and glory. It is Messiah in His Person, but Messiah glorified. There is a habitable earth to come, but that has been put in subjection to man, and Man takes a heavenly seat and wider sphere. The Son's title, as by inheritance having a more excellent Name, and Creator, I do not enter on here; that is wonderfully brought out in Hebrews 1. But in Hebrews 2 it is Man. Man was made a little lower than the angels (these were a separate creation) but the head of all things in the scene he was set in, the scene where all God's ways are displayed, where the angels learn them, as we read. Nor can there, we may boldly say, be two crosses. Well! man fell, and went down to death, below any creature; for it was its ruin, whereas the lowest was good in its place, and set to be there. And the whole creation under heaven was brought down with him, came down together out of its links and order with God. And, besides, Satan acquired dominion over man, and the creation in general as belonging to him, in death by it. All came down in ruin as a creation, and death the sign of it, and Satan was set up.

Now we see, so is the fact, Jesus made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, coming down to be able to die (though their Creator, and far above them). And as all things had been put under man in purpose, a purpose not even yet fulfilled, and man had brought down the whole creation into ruin, himself sinking into death, death was the point where the Redeemer as Man must meet the case to redeem, and, not exactly restore, but meet the ruin in its lowest and central point where the head of the first creation had got, and so bring about the purpose of Man's headship to God's glory, such as no mere creature indeed could have done. Hence I judge huper pantos (for everything) is "thing" not "man" here. He could not say panton (all things) in this sense, for it was not individual cases, if the creation was taken in; nor was it tou pantos (of everything) as a whole, but in the most abstract form "everything." It could not have been restored as a whole, without restoring it as it was, and the work went far beyond that. But the case was to be met as to everything, and it was. He went down where man went in bringing in the ruin, suffered death for "everything," looked as the centre of the ruin in its head.

379 But this brings in another point; there were persons to be saved, sons to be brought to glory - such was in the purpose. And it became Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things (ruined as they now are) in bringing sons to glory, guilty with, and heirs of him who was the centre of the ruin and guilty in it, in bringing such to glory that He who set Himself as the Head of salvation should, for the majesty of Him for whom and by whom all things are, pass through that which was involved in that majesty in respect of the mediate cause of the ruin, and the responsible cause. For, though He atoned (and that comes afterwards) He associated Himself with them as far as God's glory and their glorifying was concerned. Sinless, and above all the evil, He took all its consequences on Him in suffering even to death. It became God so to deal with Him, He having taken that place. He was brought to the place of glory He was to have as Son of man (with those brought to glory as sons too in grace), through the sufferings. The glory of God demanded that He might be there, bringing withal the many sons with Him. "Bringing" (agagonta) seems most naturally to ally itself with "the leader" (archegon) than to stand between "Him" (auto) and "make perfect" (teletosai). It scarcely affects the point I am upon. For Christ and those He sanctified were all of one, were one set, Man, and men brought (by grace) into the same glory with Him; all were "of one," one sort, not a stranger to them, delivering them as He, suppose, might angels by power if needed, or God any creature, but all one set, all men, and to be glorified together, though One sanctified and the others were sanctified by Him. ; But they were all one set to be thus His "partakers" (metochoi), for here it goes into the way of their getting to be so, in a time yet to come. The "of one" (ex henos) is as abstract as possible. They were in the same nature and condition, when raised to their new place. It is not the state of the nation; for when He said: "My brethren," He was risen (and He never did before) and they were not, but they were all taken to be one with Him, owned as His brethren. Hence, as the children had flesh and blood, He took it. He associates Himself completely with them though, and that He might be in its full effect, He was the Sanctifier, and they the sanctified; compare John 17: 17, 19; the result when gone to glory, in 2 Corinthians 3.

380 Now we have had man in purpose over all the works of God's hands - man fallen, and the creation connected with him sunk down, he having gone down to death. We have seen Jesus, "made a little lower than the angels," taking a man's place that He might die, now crowned with honour and glory. He came down and took this place that He might taste what was the ultima ratio of creation-ruin, and its centre's, i.e., man's place as taking his place in it, but He was withal bringing many sons to glory. And God, for whom all things are, must bring the Captain of their salvation into His glory and perfect place through sufferings. This was in the necessity of God's glory, seeing He was bringing such to glory. Here it is God's majesty, not atonement. If Christ put Himself at the head of such, He must go through what became the glory of Him to whom in glory He was bringing them, and walk the path through which His taking up their cause led Him, as required by the glory of God. For He did not help them by an outstretched hand from on high, but of one with them. Not that He was subject to it Himself; it was "Takes hold of" (epilambanetai). He, the Sanctifier, above it all, becomes a Man to enter into it all, that He may be able to enter into it all, and pass through the deep suffering that became God's glory in it. It was no subjection to it, or He could not have done so; but going through sufferings as became God's glory, because He, in the accomplishment of this glorious purpose, He and the co-heirs were to be "of one."

Now I get to the effect of His work - a second point. He takes the flesh and blood that through death He might destroy Satan's power, his power might be rendered void, deliver the individuals who, as of this creation, dreaded this central witness of ruin, and their ruin as belonging to it itself, the end of what they were. Next, He took it so as to know all the sorrows of those He became High Priest for withal, making propitiation for the sins of the people. (Here it reaches over to what is Jewish in its terms.) Having made this propitiation, having Himself suffered being tempted, He is able to succour those tempted. All this latter part refers to Jewish thoughts naturally, but does not in effect leave out Gentiles, save the expression, "the sins of the people," more particularly shows the branches reaching over the wall of the heavenly calling to future Jewish hopes. "Thy Name unto my brethren" were literally those who had been with Him in His lifetime, but whom He had not called so till then; John 20 and Psalm 22. Yet we come in as sons. "I and the children" again, the Remnant from Isaiah 8 and "I will put my trust in him" from the same, but in the rejection of Israel as a body, as Psalm 22, involved their full rejection of Him. Yet in both, the Remnant specifically owned, only Psalm 22, on atonement and as sons.

381 In Isaiah 8 as a testimony to both houses of Israel, He waiting when Jehovah hid His face from them, so "The seed of Abraham," yet we are it as in Christ. But the position of Christ is very solemnly, though mysteriously, brought out here, how really He was a Man, and to go through the sufferings which led to glory; holy sufferings, but which it became God to make Him pass through to perfect Him in the place of purpose - and for us now in the place of service. It was connected not only with the sons, though that it was, but as taking a place in connection with those by whom, as regards their place as men, their race, the first creation had been brought into the bondage of corruption and ruin in man's death. This passes then into His association with the sons, or theirs rather with Him, for they were being brought to glory, yet such that He took their nature in order to be able to die, and therewith suffer, and be tempted, and so pass into glory with the sons, they like Him as He had been made like unto them in all things, and taken their cup of sorrow, so as to be a merciful High Priest as well as die for them. It is not only their connection with the Remnant of Israel, that they might be connected with Him in glory, but in reference to God's glory, as He for whom all things were, and, as to death, to take up the creation for the purpose of God in righteousness and power, i.e., in redemption, and so under glory, and the sons in the glory. These are the two parts. How the Psalms (Psalms 3-8, showing the two) take up this is evident, only these taking the end of the subject connected with the Jewish Remnant, to begin with, and showing His interest and glory; here taking up His Person, and only bringing them in by the bye as a subsequent collateral event, which had to be made good, yet maintaining the glory of His Person, and mystery of His position all through.

When we get a glimpse of these associations, how it makes us see how little we know, how we have just the ends of some threads, and how it makes one subject to Scripture which came from the mind which knew the whole, and which is a divine revelation, and a revelation to us! What is of, and becomes God, but which is for and becomes us! Christ as Life was the Light of men. But we see it as parts and glimpses of an immense system, but which in the nature of our knowledge we know only in part. I see a ruined creation, I see an exalted Christ, I see man in death, I see Christ become a Man to taste it "for" (huper). I see many sons bringing to glory, and He who created all things, when I look down, not ashamed to call them brethren. He is a Man too, yet He who sanctifies, and they sanctified to be with Him in the glory, so that they were to be all "of one." He is made perfect in this place, and, to this, must pass through sufferings as became God's majesty. What a scene of counsels and ways beyond our thought! Yet the objects of our thoughts as taught of God. There are things "which it is not allowed man to utter." But these are for us when in the body. And I feel more than ever that we must hold fast the truth of Christ's sufferings as an integral part of the truth revealed of what He is, because we are ignorant, and because it is mysterious, and no man knows the Son but the Father. Therefore we must hold very fast what is revealed, for what is revealed is perfect truth for us; though only knowing it in part, if we leave out, in the way of rejecting any of it, all becomes false, for none then is divinely co-ordinated for us. And that it is, as we have it, though it be only knowing in part. It is perfect as a communication by the divine Spirit, not perfect as God knows, nor having anything to do with man's knowledge, but perfect as a communication by the Spirit of God to us for us. So Christ, no one knows Him but the Father, yet He is the perfect revelation of God and the Father, and exactly to man. "The Life was the Light of men," specifically so - a reciprocal proposition. God in His own counsels in glory could not have been that, man would have been incapable of it. Where was mercy, grace, condescension, pardon, righteousness, love to man as shown in Christ, yea in death? Yet God Himself was perfectly revealed. He that had seen Christ had seen the Father - He had declared God. And so instrumentally with the word. But then I must take it as given to us, through the help of the Holy Spirit.

382 I do not complain of the translation: "All of one." It is just right, and the effort to make it precise in that form only makes it false, because it is meant to be abstract. It is not "of God" simply, nor "of sinful man." It is when sanctified, they who are, and He who sanctifies all belong to and are one set, as I have said. It is not in the word "who are sanctified" this is - that only declares the class. I speak of the fact. But it is not by being sanctified they are "of one" - for He sanctifies. And to have this complete association, the sanctifying Son of God took their nature. It could not be without that; yet it was not with the unsanctified ones He was ex henos (of one). It must be Man to say "of one," yet men as men were not "of one" with Him. It is the fact when He can call them "brethren," "children"; when He was a Man, and they were by grace associated with Him, He being a Man, they were all "of one."

383 The question is: "What is Man?" Then comes purpose, and they are brought and associated with Him in the place of purpose, i.e., all men who are brought into this place. He could treat them as such as soon as He was risen, and they were so though in the earthly vessel. Nay, in a certain sense, He could when He was on earth though prospectively, but He was revealing the matter to them, and the Name in which they were afterwards to stand, but it was the heirs of glory He took up to be "of one" with Him; and "of one" is as true now He is in glory as ever, only all is not fully accomplished in the "sanctified." But the "of one" is of infinite value and blessing. But it makes me reject more earnestly than ever His being by birth in the distance they were. It destroys the whole idea, though, without being born as Man, He could not have taken this place, as we have seen.

Note further, they are thus at once, consequently, viewed as "Holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling," for they were sons, brethren bringing to glory. It is not the Church this; that sits in Him, and is His Body, or the habitation of God by the Spirit, but the sons bringing to glory with Him who is crowned with glory. But note verses 6-13 lay the foundation; the application to our state is a practical consequence, for the suffering heirs down here (and so is the order in chapters 1 and 2: 1-4) and this while owning the place of heirs in Hebrews 3: 1, is what is pursued as the subject of the Book. They are in the wilderness, on the road. The priesthood (referring to heaven) begins Hebrews 4: 14; Hebrews 5: 5 is the character of glory which fitted Him (genethenai) as regards God (verse 6, office), verse 7 is what fits humanly for us; verse 8, referring to verse 5, and showing the character of the sufferings, contradictory of the personal individual place as born in this world, His own relationship. Yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered, and was heard as fearing in holy feeling in the suffering, and crying for Himself, and so was made perfect in His place, for a High Priest became us who was higher than the heavens. The calling is carried all through, but the doctrine is for our actual state, and the brethren, sons bringing to glory, are connected with the super-heavenly place. We are associated with Him there, separate from Him here. A Priest separate from sinners was needed, for we were called out from among them; higher than the heavens, because we have, ourselves, to say to God there, as associated with Him.

384 The first thought is man as such - that being that God had already created. "Lord, what is man?" If Christ therefore undertook this counsel of God, He must take up this being. Yet the purpose was, in itself, before the world, and before the fall, the state "One made a little lower than the angels." And, further, Christ, as Son, had a title over all that He had created. All things were created by Him and for Him, but the counsel was to give this dominion to Man. It was to be held by Man, but in this counsel He was going to associate joint-heirs. The first man had been placed over this world in creation, and in the image of God, responsible; and that was not to result in nothing, but indeed in an immense moral development of good and evil, and of grace in redemption. "What is man?" is man abstractedly, but man considered as already made, and made with certain views on God's part. All these elements come into Christ's work here. He was to be Heir in His own title. It was to be in glory and over all He created. It was to be as Man, and though in the Son yet man whom God had created taken up; not in a simply new race which left the old one wholly and simply out of the question. But man was in sin, and that could not be in glory. It must be One whose holiness was inseparable from Himself, One the Object of God's delight, yet to walk in man's place perfectly (learning obedience) and to have no present rejection which should shut Him out (which could not be, seeing He was the Son, yet keeping His commandments, and so abiding in His love) and yet take up the whole case of man, and suffer so as to make good God's glory in that place, never withal losing His place of Son in favour (atonement, when made sin, and as made sin only excepted) yet never so glorifying God, and in fact so accepted as there: "Therefore doth my Father love me."

385 But as Man, and not yet in atonement, He took up the seed of Abraham, the heirs of promise, and it became God to bring Him into the place of glory and perfection through sufferings. For He was really Man, and because, though in a new estate, He puts man into the glory, Object of God's counsels Himself, a Second Adam, but taking up the heirs in the first race, we get this great and wondrous truth: "The Sanctifier and the sanctified are all of one." And therefore He took flesh and blood, because the children God had given Him had it, to die, intercede, associate them with Himself, but in the condition which He was to take as Man in the glory, but to take according to the purpose of God in man. Hence, to have, as Man, man with Him in it, "All of one," He, the Sanctifier Son ran all through it. The Son was Creator (chap. 1); He was Son born in this world, "That Holy Thing," having flesh and blood, Son all through, and revealing the Father's Name to those He had given Him. Yet it was through redemption, in which He was alone, He could bring them in, propitiation made, His own perfect work to glorify God, putting away their sins (and to put away sin). Then He treats them as sons in His own place (John 20) and Sonship took its place in glory as Man, and we - wondrous, unspeakable grace! - with Him. For without this, the Corn of wheat would have remained alone, whatever its personal glory and tide, even by obedience. This makes all the second and fifth chapters plain, and so full of deep and heart-reaching instruction. He suffered being tempted. He learned obedience, was made perfect, i.e., as to His place in glory (ever perfect, though exercised and in exercises) made perfect through sufferings. Oh! it is a blessed thought.

A few more words on Hebrews 2. The thing first contemplated is the habitable earth to come being subject to men, as taking the place of angels. That is the first thought. This He founds on Psalm 8, involving, in the purpose of the Spirit, universal supremacy, but as made a little lower than the angels. This He connects with the Person of Christ made so for the suffering of death, so that Man glorified in power is thought of, and then this is brought down, by the Incarnation for the purpose of death, to Christ entering into the place needed, not only to bring them out of it, but for their complete association in glory finally, but by a more true and complete association that He was a real Man and, entering into their sorrows and place, though perfect in it, suffered for God's glory in it - and in such sort took the place, bringing us into the same with Him as Man and men, that we are all "of one." It is man in contrast with angels, but Christ the Key to the place they are in. But how truly and blessedly "of one" is true, without any new doctrine, is every moment more plain and more real to my soul. The Lord and we are all men, but we men partakers of the divine nature, and in that state "of one"; only He the Sanctifier, and we the sanctified. So He owns us as brethren, and it is in manhood that He is said to be, and the sanctified "of one." It is neither Godhead nor manhood which is the "one" (hen). But He became a Man that we might be all "of one" - hence, go through what stood on that path, for the glory of God.

386 In chapter 2 we get three motives for the sufferings of Christ, taken as a whole. It became Him, the glory of God, seeing whose cause He had undertaken; His association in grace with the sons He was bringing to glory - to sympathise and deliver; thirdly, making reconciliation. The first, verse 10; the second, verses 11-15; the third, verses 15-18. But the three are closely interwoven.

________

<46013E> NOTE.

Not only is it impossible that God could do anything that sin may abound, but, in Romans 5: 21, if He had said where the offence abounded grace did also abound, it would have confined it to those under the law. But He was showing the contrary - that Christ's work reached out beyond, to Adam's in aspect and efficacy. Grace overrode the whole, though it might be rejected.

The Book of Enoch

<46014E> 387

Third edition, revised and enlarged, by Richard Laurence, LL.D., Archbishop of Cashel, Oxford, 1838.

NOTE THE FOLLOWING PASSAGES:

Enoch 37: 2. "When righteousness shall be manifested in the presence of the righteous themselves, who will be elected for their good works duly weighed by the Lord of spirits; and when the light of the righteous and the elect, who dwell on earth, shall be manifested; where will the habitation of sinners be, and where the place of rest for those who have rejected the Lord of spirits? It would have been better for them, had they been never born." Note this last sentence.

Enoch 47: 3. "At that time I beheld the ancient of days, while He sat upon the throne of his glory, while the book of the living was opened in his presence, and while all the powers which were above the heavens stood around and before him."

Enoch 48: 3. "And he" (the Son of man) "shall be the light of nations."

- 5. "Therefore the elect and the concealed one existed in his presence, before the world was created."

- 6. "And has revealed to the saints and to the righteous the wisdom of the Lord of spirits."

- 10. "But in the day of their trouble the world shall obtain tranquillity."

Enoch 50: 1, "In those days shall the earth deliver up from her womb, and hell deliver up from hers, that which it has received; and destruction shall restore that which it owes."

Enoch 61: 4. "The word of his mouth shall destroy all the sinners and all the ungodly, who shall perish at his presence." Query, of "the elect one," or "Lord of spirits."

- 7. "Trouble shall come upon them, as upon a woman in travail."  . . . . - 10 . . . . "For from the beginning the Son of man existed in secret, whom the Most High preserved in the presence of his power, and revealed to the elect."

Enoch 62: 15.  . . . . "Before the Son of man from whose presence they shall be expelled."

It is curious in chapter 64: 1, it is said: "Noah saw that the earth became inclined," which brought on the deluge.

Enoch 88: 102. "Then I grieved extremely on account of the tower, and because the house of the sheep was overthrown."

388  - 103. "Neither was I afterwards able to perceive whether they again entered that house."

Note, this is after having said (v. 92): "I saw, too, that he forsook the house of their fathers, and their tower; giving them all into the power of lions to tear and devour them; into the power of every beast." And then he calls (v. 94) "seventy shepherds" accountable. So that the destruction of verse 103 was under or after the seventy, which itself seems after the Babylonish destruction of the temple.

- 110. "After this, I saw shepherds overlooking for twelve hours." This seems a new vision. He goes back in the same manner (Enoch 89), to the kings, according to Dr. Laurence himself; he says in footnote "The kings of Babylon, etc., during and after the captivity."

Next, as regards the twelve shepherds of chapter 89, I see not how more than twelve are necessarily made out before Christianity. He says: "The first of these was Mattathias, the father of Judas Maccabaeus . . . after him came in succession Judas Maccabaeus, Jonathan, Simon, John Hyrcanus, Aristobulus, Alexander Jannaeus, Alexandra his widow, Aristobulus, Hyrcanus, Antigonus and Herod." Mattathias is doubtful, Alexandra a woman, would not be counted. It would be then connected with Jerusalem, say, Judas Maccabaeus, Jonathan, Simon, John Hyrcanus, Aristobulus, Alexander Jannaeus, Hyrcanus, Antigonus, Herod, Archelaus, and, if we go on to the latter part of Herod, Agrippa when he had Judaea added. We are already, he admits, in fully Christian times. They go up to Herod, under whom Christ was born.

Enoch 92: 11. "During its completion also the house of dominion shall be burnt with fire, and all the race of the elect root shall be dispersed." That is in the sixth week, the Babylonish captivity.

- 12. "In the seventh week, a perverse generation." "During its completion, the righteous, selected from the plant of everlasting righteousness shall be rewarded; and to them shall be given sevenfold instruction respecting every part of his creation." Weeks 8, 9, 10 are all in the vague of ignorance. But we have in the 700 years of the 7th the arrival of Christianity. Of this epoch he speaks with a promise, note, of deliverance: "The righteous . . . shall be rewarded," though a perverse generation had been found in it, the "selected from the plant of righteousness" would be rewarded, i.e., he brings up the hopes of a Jewish deliverance at that time, and then runs off into prophecies which require no attention.

389 On verse 4 of this chapter, "I have been born the seventh in the first week," Dr. Laurence says: "In the mode of reckoning here adopted, it is evident that a day stands for a hundred years; so that consequently a week is made to express a period of seven hundred years." And he adds: "The seventh week closed with the second century of the Christian era."

Note, Dr. Laurence gives, and pretends to give, no proof of a date earlier than Jude, but that Jude quotes it, which is the point in question; he takes this as sufficient and conclusive. Now, I do not admit that it is a quotation from Enoch, as far as we can judge from this translation. These are its words: chapter 2, "Behold he comes with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon them and destroy the wicked, and reprove all the carnal for everything which the sinful and ungodly have done, and committed against him." This is rather foist in, I should say. These are the apostle Jude's words from the Authorised Version: "The Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints" (holy myriads) "to execute judgment upon all; and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard (speeches) which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him."

Now, I should decidedly say that this is not a quotation. The two passages have the appearance of referring to the same prophecy, but the apostle Jude's is far more precise, has far more the character of giving the prophecy as it was. He has far more the stamp of a real and original passage of prophecy. But it cannot be admitted to be a quotation, the differences are far too great. It is not merely citing the sense, for it is far more exactly and elaborately worded. Lucke speaks of it seeming to be the work of a Jewish Christian. He says: "But how much soever the whole makes one disposed to consider die book as the production of a Jewish Christian, I nevertheless hesitate to pronounce any fixed opinion, before the original form of the book is better known, than has been hitherto possible." Laurence says this means interpolation, but he speaks of the character of the author, not of interpolation.

We have seen he brings up his history to the Christian period. Allusions to the Old Testament, particularly Daniel, are constantly found; some, I have noted, seem to me to be such to the New. I should hardly, however, think him a Christian, but a Jew of that period who had known something of what was current among them by hearsay or reading.

390 He ministers greatly to the worship of angels, speaks of Son of man, Son of woman (Enoch 61) and of saints as mediators, intruding into things which he has not seen. Nothing properly Christian is mentioned, nor the law either.

He calls Messiah "the Elect One," as Clement of Rome, and makes Him exist concealed before creation, and Son of man. He would lead the Jews to hopes of deliverance about the time of Christianity.

The fall of the angels is largely gone into by their connection with women. Astronomy, as to sun, moon, and stars, as to which he is very proud, and of course very ignorant. He was, as Laurence observes, in a higher latitude than Jerusalem (his longest day is sixteen hours) and, I think, he speaks in one place of it as "the south." This would lead to suppose he had little knowledge of Christianity, if about the time of its promulgation in Judea. It is impossible to have a greater contrast than between Jude and this stupid book.

He was pretty well acquainted with the Old Testament, many passages being referred to. I judge he would lead to the hope of a Jewish deliverance, but was more concerned to show off the fruit of his imagination. His anxiety to display his notions of astronomy is ludicrous, save the pretension to divinely imparted knowledge.

<46015E>

Remark how the Holy Ghost completely answers in us to the privileges and glories of Ephesians 1; how He makes them good down here. First, answering to verse 4, the power of holiness is His very character, and the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by Him given to us. He is the Spirit of Sonship, so that we cry: "Abba, Father." He is the earnest of the inheritance, and the transforming Revealer of the glory. Even as to the body of Christ, we are baptised by Him into One Body, united to Christ, One Spirit. It shows us greatly how the Holy Ghost, as the Paraclete (Comforter) fills up now in power the whole scope of God's counsels in which we have part.

END OF VOLUME 6