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Pearls of Wisdom
“As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no
pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from
his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will
ye die?” (Ezekiel 33: 11)
God is not particularly concerned about inflicting
punishment on sinners - His purpose is to turn them from their evil
ways in order that they may live, and this is why He has chosen to
regard them as debtors. They owe that which they cannot pay without
perishing, and indeed if God dealt with us as the sinners we are, He
might justly blot us out of existence. But in His forbearance,
choosing not to mark iniquity but to exercise mercy, we are required
to recognize that our life is something to which we are not properly
entitled and that it is only because God Himself has provided One who
had in His own possession the wherewithal, and because that One
determined of His own freewill to use His wealth to pay the debt we
owe, that we can be delivered from the bondage into which we are
born.
This is, of course, an abstract concept and its purpose
is to develop in the minds of those to whom it is made known, that
faith which can appreciate that while God is pleased to show mercy,
He chooses at the same time to uphold the supreme principles of
justice and law. This is what the offer of salvation through
the atoning sacrifice of Christ is able to accomplish.
Could anyone deny that Adam was typically redeemed in
the figure of the animal slain - “The Lamb slain (in figure)
from the foundation of the world”? Therefore does it not follow
that the Antitype died the violent death (not natural death) instead
of Adam and we as “in Adam”? Why, the very fact
that God spared Adam the violent death necessitated the Christ. The
question will then be asked, Why did God place Adam under
condemnation, i.e. concluded Adam and all in him under sin, if He had
spared him from paying the penalty? I reply, The fact that God
spared Adam the violent death did not mean that the price would not
be paid, but that someone else would pay it - as per the figure of
the animal slain for a covering. The debt was due to King Sin.
The condemnation or bondage of Sin under which we were all sold
in Adam is the principle whereby God’s justice is presented.
“No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” We
are born in bondage (Adamic relationship) and we can escape from the
very bondage that we are born in by accepting the redemption from
such. If the condemnation we inherit from Adam be our
corruptible nature, I am at a loss to understand in what sense we are
a purchased possession. If we are not fully cleansed from “Sin”
until we pass through the grave, then Jesus in paying the price only
paid in full for Himself and an instalment for us!!
I understood it to be a biological fact that there is
no connection between the blood circulatory systems of mother and
child, but that when a new life commences, its blood is newly created
in the embryo, from the nourishment of the parent. Thus,
Jesus being begotten by a miracle, neither His blood nor His life
which it sustained, can be the life of Adam.
This does not mean that either Jesus flesh or His blood
or the nature and quality of His life were different from Adam’s
or any other man’s, but that He was a man newly created, from
the Source.
If Jesus was by virtue of His coming from God superior
to mankind in general, a super-human being, then how could He be
“like unto his brethren” and what special honour is due
Him for overcoming?
If He was a ‘God man’ partly Divine and
partly human in His nature, He ought to have overcome and what need
of Him “being made perfect through suffering” for He was
already superior to Adam at the start.
And furthermore such a being would not be any kind of
example for poor humanity to attempt to follow, as such a being could
not be “tempted in all points as we are” for God cannot
be tempted, neither can He sin.
But Jesus was of such a nature like unto His brethren
that He was tempted in all points as we are yet without sin.
He overcame temptation and thus showed by His great
example that it was possible for others to overcome evil and live
sinless lives.
The real test of whether human nature has been changed
is to ask the question, “Was Adam capable of experiencing
temptation and committing sin while he was in his original very good
state?”
The answer is obviously yes, otherwise he could not have sinned.
That disposes of the suggestion that people sin because
their flesh or their nature predisposes them to do so.
The question has been asked, “How did Jesus bear
our sins in His own body on the tree if it was not by bearing our sin
nature?” The answer is that Jesus bore our sins by
suffering the punishment they deserved. Indeed if Jesus did not
bear the punishment of the sins of others, He died in vain.
While Ezekiel 18:20 is intended as a prohibition of the
practice of punishing the innocent instead of the guilty, to use it
for the purpose of discrediting the sacrificial death of Jesus is
blind perversity. Jesus was not punished instead of the
guilty. He voluntarily bore the punishment due to sinners in
order to set them free and show Divine Love.
Matthew 8:17, “He cast out spirits... that it
might be fulfilled... himself took our infirmities and bore our
sicknesses.” Jesus took their infirmities by taking them
from the people He cured, yet He Himself did not take the evil
spirits into Himself. He bore sicknesses like leprosy,
blindness, lameness, the palsy, without becoming leprous, blind,
lame, or palsied, but curing those who had such diseases. In
like manner Christ took upon Himself our sins when God “laid on
him the iniquity of us all,” by removing them from us.
But there is a difference in the manner. A devil,
i.e. a deranged mental state or a disease, could be removed as an act
of mercy pure and simple by the exercise of divine power, whereas
sins could only be removed by transferring the penalty to Himself;
and so He suffered, the Just for the unjust, on the tree, bearing our
sins, i.e. the punishment of them
The facts of creation are basic from the beginning and
founded on adamant principles. The first and foremost being
light. The earth was without form and void, and darkness
covered the face of the deep. And God said, “Let there be
light, and there was light.” There we have the very first
essential, because without light there is no life, and surely life is
what the gospel of God is all about, and if we are taught of God, we
shall have learned that He is the only one that has the power and
authority to cause the light to shine; just to add a quote from the
Lord Jesus in support, “He that followeth me shall not walk in
darkness, but shall have the light of life.” Our own
Apostle writes, “For God who commanded the light to shine out
of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
If Christ did not die the death I was due, then my
baptism into that sacrificial death is a pure absurdity. But
seeing that it is imperative I should be baptized into that death,
then Christ is my substitute.
Indeed, it is on this principle alone that animal
sacrifice can be explained. From Eden to Gethsemane the sinner
died symbolically in the death of the animal slain. Hence
baptism into the sacrificial death of Christ has been indispensable
from Gethsemane to the Kingdom of God.
This was Paul’s mission - to invite men to change
masters - to open men’s eyes, to turn them from darkness (of
mind) to light and from the power of Satan to God, that “they
may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among the sanctified
by faith (which leads) into Christ.” (Acts 26:18).
He invited Sin’s servants to become Jehovah’s servants
upon the principle of purchase; so that in addressing those who had
abandoned the synagogue and temple for the house of Christ, he says
to them, “Ye are bought with a price.” They were “not
their own,” being bought bodily and spiritually; “therefore,”
said he, “glorify God with your body and with your spirit,
which are God’s.” When a man’s body and
spirit become another’s property, all property in himself is
surrendered to the purchaser. All that he used to call his
before he was sold is transferred to his owner; and, if allowed to
retain it, he must use it as the steward of his Lord.
Sin is defined for us in 1 John 3:4 as transgression of
law; in some places it meant sin-offering; it is never used as a
synonym for human nature. Christ was human nature; He was not
sin. He became a sin-bearer in exactly the same way as a
sacrificial lamb under the law became a sin-bearer, i.e., by
suffering the penalty due to the sinner by whom it was offered. He
bore our sins in His own body to the tree when the Lord laid on Him
the iniquity of us all, in the same sense as the scape-goat carried
in its body into the wilderness the sins confessed over its head by
the High Priest on the Day of Atonement. Jesus was made sin for us
when on Calvary He was treated as if He were guilty of sin and
surrendered by His Father to the power of evil as if He had been the
personification of the whole load of sin and wickedness committed by
mankind from Eden onward. But He Himself was ever holy,
harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners morally and physically;
in Him personally was no sin; He never forfeited the Sonship and
harmony with His Father which belonged to Him by birth.”
In the parable of the labourers in the vineyard each
one received a penny, whether he had borne the burden and heat of the
day or had laboured but one hour; so those who are Christ’s at
His coming shall each receive the gift of eternal life - the young
disciple who, at the last hour of the day of salvation, put on the
Lord Jesus, and the veteran who from youth to old age has fought the
good fight of faith; yet the place and position of these in the
glorious Kingdom of God shall differ immensely from each other. And
so the Judge heralds His advent cry: “Behold, I come quickly
and my reward is with me, to give to every man according as his work
shall be.” And all this is in perfect accord with
the apostolic deliverance, “The dead shall be raised
incorruptible.”
In further confirmation of this truth see the words of
our Lord in Luke 20:35,36, “They who shall be accounted worthy
to obtain that world, and the resurrection from amongst the dead,
cannot die any more, but are equal to the angels.” And
Revelation 20:6, “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the
first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they
shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a
thousand years.” In 1 Thessalonians 4:16,17, the Apostle writes
to the same effect; “The Lord himself shall descend from heaven
with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God,
and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive and
remain shall be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the
air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
This teaching of the Apostle is directly opposed to the
doctrine that the dead in Christ rise in mortal bodies; but is in
complete harmony with his glowing words in 1 Corinthians 15:51,52,
“Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we
shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the
last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” As in 1 Thessalonians
4:16,17 two companies are spoken of - “the dead in Christ,”
and “those who are alive and remain” - so here; and both
companies share the same glorious being and destiny; the dead raised
incorruptible, and the living changed while alive; the thus,
together, they meet the Lord in the air. One incorruptible
band, to be associated for ever with the ever-living Redeemer.
Blessed Hope! Transcendent destiny!
So far from having to be tried for his life at the
judgment seat of Christ, the Christian has his name inscribed in the
book of life even now. Else what mean these gracious words “He
that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and 1
will not blot his name out of the book of life, but I will confess
his name before my Father, and before His angels” - Revelation
3:5?
“God sent forth his Son… that we
might receive the adoption of sons” Galatians 4:4,5.
If Jesus was under Adamic condemnation would He not have needed adoption?
Who would dare to say that the only-begotten Son needed
adoption into His Father’s family?
‘When He allowed His murderers to impale
Him to the Cross, Jesus submitted to a condemnation which was utterly
unjust and to a penalty He did not deserve, in order to cancel, by
the surrender of His own life, the debt owed by sinners. He
paid on Calvary the debt incurred in Eden .”
“In Romans 5:15-21 the Apostle gives a sevenfold
reiteration of the fact that, as one sinner closed the door of life
against himself and all in him, so God has provided a ransom in value
equal to the greatness of the occasion.”
Our Opinion of Creeds
We take occasion to express our opinion upon such documents in general, wherever they come from.
No form of faith was ever printed that was not found fault with, either as containing too much, or not enough, to say nothing about the endless disputes upon the wording of this or that proposition. And nothing is more objectionable than repairing and revising a form of faith. Whatever needs this is imperfect or incomplete.
Creeds have been, and are still, among the curses of ecclesiastical experience. History abundantly shews that a form of faith is a bone of contention, and generally fares like a political treaty - is torn up and burnt after much disturbance.
All printed forms of faith are like water, coloured more or less with the channels through which they pass; some are tinged and impregnated with one element and borne with another, the clearness and parity being thereby affected.
If men are not content with the Scriptures, nothing else will please them long, and if they are, nothing else is needful. As disputes will arise, let them be upon the original itself, not upon some secondary and man-framed basis.
To make a separate form of faith insensibly lowers our esteem for the Bible, while it cannot give that reverence to it which we all feel for that great Book. Popish Breviaries, Imitations, Protestant Prayer Books, and Catechisms, are all the out-growth of the creed-concocting propensity, and the prime end of all these is the enforcing of their own diverse notions rather than a search of, and an abiding in, the Inspired Word alone. Business rules are more or less necessary; but give us no form of faith but the Bible. This is sufficient "for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."
Edward Turney
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