BY THE REV. JOHN R. MACKAY, M.A., INVERNESS.*
“The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins.”—MARK ii. 10.
“Whom he hath called.”—ROM. ix. 24.
“Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”—ROM. x. 13.
HAVING, last Sabbath, spoken at some length on the portions of divine truth cited above, I now proceed to say that the three passages in combination suggest the reflection that there are three aspects of Gospel truth, meaning the Gospel in the strict sense, which find extraordinary emphasis in the Word of God. I mean that the emphasis flows from the very heart of the sacred oracles.
(1) Need I say that the first of the above three subjects suggests the reflection that the all-sufficiency of Christ’s power, and the unsearchableness of His riches is the theme of themes in Gospel truth!
The particular instance from which we start is a miracle of healing which Christ in the days of His flesh wrought. Matthew and Luke as well as Mark record the miracle. The utter helplessness of the paralytic on whom the miracle was wrought is brought out in its being said that it took four to bring him to Christ. But Jesus manifested His glory at the time in an altogether unexpected way. He did this by assuming the prerogatives of deity. His claim was that as God in heaven forgives sin, the Son of Man on earth does the same; a claim that had been unjustifiable if He were not essentially one with the Father. Could He demonstrate the validity of this claim? Yes, verily. He, who on His own authority could with success command that impotent person to rise and to take up his bed, might demonstrably without presumption lay claim to divine prerogatives. When the matter was brought to such an issue, Jesus says to the sick of the palsy: “Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thy house.” No sooner was the command given than straightway the hitherto helpless man took up his bed, and in the sight of all walked away with it. It was a most impressive lesson on the subject of the unlimitedness of the Mediator’s grace and power. It was being made evident to everyone whose eyes “the god of this world” did not succeed in blinding, that nothing was too hard for the Lord Jesus. Neither disease, nor plague, nor death itself could stand before him. No, nor guilt, nor consequence of sin. Now this is not, I need scarcely say, a solitary instance in which Christ’s all-sufficiency finds emphasis in the Word of God. One ought rather to say that this divine fulness, this all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ as the sinner’s Saviour is the one all-absorbing theme of the New Testament. What purpose does the rehearsal which Matthew, Mark, and Luke make of Christ’s mighty works serve but to show forth the implicates of the well-deserved title, Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God? Are not the speeches and the signs which the evangelist John also puts on record all meant to bring to light the infinite riches of that grace that visited this earth when the Word, who was and is God, was made flesh and dwelt among us? The great Epistle to the Romans may be regarded as an answer to the question why such a Person should have been at all constituted and revealed as the Son, who was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. (See Romans i. 3-5.)
* This Lecture was delivered on a week-day evening.
How full is the Epistle to the Hebrews of Christ! From beginning to end the theme is the Person, natures, priestly office, and sacrifice of the Mediator of the New Covenant. It was deemed of the apostle Paul an unspeakable additional favour towards himself, because that, together with his own soul, there was given him to preach to others Christ’s unsearchable fulness. If anything can be said to receive special emphasis in the New Testament, it is this incomprehensible fulness which is to be found in Him in whom it pleased the Father that all the fulness should dwell. On account of this fulness is it that we are warranted to say to every sinner whatsoever of the human race that, if he or she only come to Jesus Christ, they cannot fail of salvation, be their guilt what it may.
(2) With this aspect of Gospel truth, to wit, the unsearchable fulness which is in Christ Jesus, an aspect, as we have seen, upon which the divine oracles lay such extraordinary emphasis, must be connected the guilt of those to whom Christ has come near in the Gospel and yet refuse to make Him their confidence.
If there were not an all-sufficiency in Jesus Christ to meet your needs, supposing you to come to Him, you would incur no guilt by refusing to come. But not only is there aggravated guilt lying on everyone that refuses to come to Him, but this aggravated guilt is another aspect of Gospel truth which finds extraordinary emphasis in the Word of God. “This,” says Christ, “is the condemnation that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light.” And again, “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin:” “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin:” “If any man,” says the Apostle Paul, “love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be anathema.” On the whole face of Scripture you will find writ large that as men’s privileges increase, their guilt, supposing them not to put these privileges to good use, also increases. Even those who live in heathendom, having only the starry heavens above and the promptings of conscience within, incur guilt because they refuse to walk according to this light which God has been pleased to leave with them. (Romans i. 18-32; ii. 14-15.) The guilt of Israelites was greater than that of the heathen round about them, when men who had their privileges refused to walk in the light of the Lord. But the guilt of impenitent heathens, and even the guilt of the pre-Christian impenitent Jews dwindles into paleness in comparison with the guilt of those to whom the Gospel is hid. They are reckoned in the Scriptures as trampling under foot the Son of God, as counting the blood of the everlasting covenant a common thing, and as doing despite to the Spirit of grace. And if they continue in that hardness of heart, against them, as against none else, shall the vengeance which Jehovah claims as His own, be executed. For, “how can they escape if they neglect so great salvation?” (Hebrews x. 29-30; ii. 3.) Enough, surely, has been said to shew that the Scriptures, not merely in an incidental or occasional way, but as dealing with a matter that enters into the warp and woof of divine truth, puts extraordinary emphasis on the aggravated guilt of those who to trampling upon God’s moral law add their making light of the Gospel of God’s grace.
(3) But we should not do justice to this subject of the peculiar emphases of the Gospel, if we did not say that the marvel of faith is another theme which in the Scriptures has bestowed upon it an emphasis equally great with that placed upon the two foregoing aspects of divine truth.
That a sinner, who is by nature dead in trespasses and sins, should at all come to Jesus Christ, is extolled in the Scriptures as a great wonder. To bring this out the Scriptures (a) dwell much upon what man is by nature. “Flesh born of the flesh.” “Natural and incapable, as such, of discerning the things of the Spirit of God, of discerning, in a word, the Gospel.” “Dead in trespasses and in sins.” (b) They make much of effectual calling—of the exceeding greatness of the power that works in them that believe. “Ye must be born again.” “No man can come unto me except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him.” “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts.” “For the great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, he hath quickened us together with Christ.” “He called us unto the fellowship of his Son.” Everyone conversant with the Scriptures will recall many other similar expressions. (c) The Scriptures trace this effectual calling to God’s eternal purpose. “Whom he did predestinate, them he also called.” “That the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of him that calleth.” “He called us not according to our works but according to his own purpose.” The impression that one gets in reading the Scriptures is that they cannot sufficiently extol the favour that has been bestowed on that man or woman to whom Christ has become fairer than the children of men. Flesh and blood have not so taught them, but the Father who is in heaven. It is that peculiar favour of which He spake to Moses when He said that “he would have mercy upon whom he would have mercy, and that he would be gracious unto whom he would be gracious.” And this mercy of effectual calling flows from the promise of God, so that thereby, as His mercy is to be built up for ever, His faithfulness shall be established in the very heavens.
For the children of the promise are the true seed of Abraham, a promise traced in the Word of God further back than Abraham. It is a promise of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began. Christ is the Father’s promise to the Church—the Church is the Father’s promise to Christ. In Eve, in Abraham, in Isaac, in Jacob, in David, in Isaiah, Christ is promised to the Church. But the Church was promised to Christ before the world began. The Father’s promise of Christ to the Church could only have been made in time, for before that time the Church had no actual existence, but the Father’s promise of the Church to Christ was before time, and that might well be, as He was set up from everlasting. And Christ rejoices both in the mercy that is shown to every sinner that is drawn to Himself in time, and the faithfulness that is shown towards Himself in that all, that the Father gave Him from everlasting, are being brought to Him. His Church will everlastingly sing of His mercy and of His faithfulness, but, as Calvin puts it, Christ will be the leader in this exercise of praise. We live in times in which comparatively little is heard of effectual calling, and of eternal election. Why is that so? It is because it appears to most such a little, such a natural and easy thing to come to Jesus Christ. But those who are taught of God know that it is a great matter. And they love to see the greatness of it in all that the Scriptures say of man as he is by nature, of the exceeding greatness of God’s power revealed in effectual calling, and of the revelation of the infinite mercy and eternal faithfulness of God that is made in the case of every believer. But whether men extol this marvel little or much, we have said enough, we think, to shew that it is an aspect of Gospel truth which has extraordinary emphasis given it, not in isolated passages, but in the entire texture of Scripture truth. Let us then pray that we may respond not to one but to every emphasis of God’s word. It may be that we cannot reconcile these emphases into an intelligible harmony, but, apart from all such attempts, the authority of the Almighty gives them all the unity that is requisite. (Romans ix. 20.)