WHAT doctrine is that say you, that we may reject and oppose it? It is the current doctrine of this day, which is flooding almost all the professedly Protestant Churches; and a doctrine which the great majority of the professors and preachers of these Churches teach and preach; and which the heart of every unregenerate sinner, instead of rejecting and opposing, receives with delight and imbibes, just as the infant imbibes the milk from the mother’s or the nurse’s breast: the one to the nourishment of the body, the other to the ruin of the soul. It is the doctrine, that “man is a son of God;” which, traced to its ultimate issues, results in “the universal fatherhood of God, and the universal sonship of man;” which is directly opposed to all the inspired revelation of God in His Word—the Bible. It is the doctrine of the devil, who was a liar and a murderer from the beginning: who said to Eve “Ye shall not surely die;” and who now says by this doctrine “Ye have not died, ye are the children of God still; sin has not reigned unto death.”
The Bible clearly shows that, in reference to man, death is threefold, viz., spiritual, temporal and eternal. Spiritual death took immediate effect on the first Adam’s soul as the result of his first sin. Temporal death took effect on his body over 900 years thereafter. Eternal death is the final “wages of sin;” and, but for the provision of sovereign, unmerited grace, would have been so in the case of the first Adam and all his offspring, as certainly as it was in that of “the angels that sinned.” The Bible certainly states that, “Adam was the son of God;” and angels are repeatedly called “sons of God” in the Bible; but the Bible also shows as clearly that sin converted angels into devils, and the first Adam and all his descendants by natural generation into children of the devil. In no instance can such disastrous soul-ruining consequences follow an unwarranted substitution of the present for the past tense, as in the assumption that, because Adam was a son of God by creation, as, according to his status in creation he came perfect, pure and holy from his Creator’s hand, therefore his descendants, “dead in trespasses and sins,” are sons of God without regeneration, the new birth, justification or adoption.
Professor Bruce, F.C. College, Glasgow, says, in his “Apologetics, or Christianity Defensively Stated,” that Christ’s view of man, as indefeasably a son of God, involves that man occupies a most important place in the theory of the universe.” Any sane person, unless wilfully blind, reading “Christ’s view of man” recorded in His own words to those who claimed God as their Father, must conclude that, Professor Bruce is chargeable with the guilt, first, of fabricating a falsehood or lie, and second, of fathering that lie on Christ. In the gospel according to John we read, chap. viii., v. 41, that the Jews said to Christ “We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.” “Jesus said unto them, if God were your Father ye would love me; for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me” (v. 44). “Ye are of your father the devil, and his lusts ye will do” (v. 44), &c. Can language furnish a more antagonistic contrast than Professor Bruce’s false postulate belying “Christ’s view of man,” and “Christ’s view of man” recorded by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and given for a divine foundation to “Christianity Defensively Stated” in “the Scriptures which cannot be broken,” and for promoting “the joy of faith” in the heart of every sinner “born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,” every one of whom is a living member of Christ’s mystical body, the Church “against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.”
This doctrine is soul-ruining, because it “indefeasably” “involves” a denial of the truth that, sin dissolved the relationship between God and man, even as it did in the case of “the angels that kept not their first estate,” and who occupied a higher status than man in creation, which Professor Bruce calls the theory of the universe. Professor Dods in his St. Giles’ sermon calls Peter’s confession that which Christ declared to be a Divine revelation, given to Peter by God the Father, viz., “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Dods says that either theory, i.e., believing or not believing the divinity of Christ “makes good Christians,” thus making, what Christ pronounces a Divine revelation, to be only a philosophical theory. If philosophy or “science, falsely so called,” ever ran mad without bit, bridle or straitjacket, it has done so in the present-day professors of theology; and what can disciples preach but what their masters teach. But again, the doctrine under consideration is soul-ruining, because it believes the doctrine preached by Christ to Nicodemus “except a man” (which “involves” every man), “be born again,” or from above, “he cannot see the kingdom of God.” As in the economy of nature, which is the creature of God, so in the economy of grace. There can be no birth in the one without generation, nor in the other without regeneration; even as in his first Epistle, Peter blesses God . . . “who according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again” literally regenerated us “unto a lively hope.” And Peter shows the foundation of this hope to be “the triumphant resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead;” and its object—for no hope can live without an object—”an incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading inheritance.” The reiterated “amen” to Nicodemus of Him who is The Amen, “the faithful and true witness” is equivalent to the oath of Jehovah, who was in heaven when speaking to Nicodemus as Godman upon earth, and who says “heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away.”
What constituted angels sons of God, and similarly man a son of God by creation, was the love of God filling the heart—the essential centre of life—and thence pervading the entire existence in each with spiritual life and the image of God; but when sin took possession of the heart, it utterly emptied it of divine love, and despoiled the whole being of the divine image simultaneously, neither of which can be restored but by “the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost,” which, “according to the measure of the gift of Christ” restores both simultaneously. And by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, for the sanctification of all with whom He thus deals, He fits them through grace for glory. “Now if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His; therefore, he is not “a son of God.” But the above doctrine is soul-ruining because it ignores, and virtually denies, all need either of the Holy Spirit’s regenerating grace, or His sanctifying grace, resulting from His indwelling.
But this doctrine is soul-ruining because it not only belies the doctrine preached by Christ to Nicodemus, but it also virtually denies that, it was essentially necessary that Christ should come, God’s unspeakable gift, to save self-ruined sinners. Although angels and man are called sons of God in the Bible, as both came relatively perfect, pure and holy from His hand by creation; yet neither angel nor man could “redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him.” “For the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth”—would fail or be awanting—”for ever,” had not God in sovereign, unmerited love and mercy, “according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus,” “when the fulness of the time was come, sent forth His Son,”—His co-essential and co-eternal Son (and He could not be co-eternal were he not co-essential)—”made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” But if they are sons what need have they of adoption, or rather how can they be adopted, for adoption means the place or position of a son? They, therefore, only among fallen mankind are the sons of God who have been adopted into His family and have received the spirit of adoption through Jesus Christ. J. B.