Man’s Relations to God by John Kennedy — Published by the James Begg Society, paperback, 82 pages, £3.95. Available from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
THE eminent son of an eminent father, Kennedy was minister of the Disruption Free Church in Dingwall for 40 years from 1844. His sermons that are still available bear witness to the excellence of his preaching, which was justly held in high esteem by the godly of his time.
In this welcome reprint, Kennedy explores in four chapters man’s relations to God: (1) man as created, (2) man as fallen, (3) man as evangelized, (4) man as in Christ. He thus follows man from his original state as perfectly created by God under the covenant of works into that state where “already cursed and always sinning, how hopeless his deliverance from the wrath to come!” Yet in this fallen world a way of salvation is made known in the gospel. Kennedy stresses that “Christ is the great theme of the gospel”, that “it is as Christ crucified He is to be preached” and that “if we ever come [to Christ] it must be as sinners”. He goes on, “We cannot exercise faith in Christ unless we realise that we are sinners, nor will we ever seek an interest in Him. It is not a sense of sin which entitles us to trust in Him. We are required to do so whatever be our state of feeling. As an absolute sinner I may trust in Him; but as a whole-hearted sinner I never will.”
“It would be well,” Kennedy continues, “if preachers of the gospel were more impressed with these great facts. If they preached as men who realised that they carried a message from Jehovah; that the Saviour was the Christ and the Son of God; that His death was the only atonement for sin; that the salvation which is by Jesus Christ is full, free and everlasting; and that their hearers are sinners ready to perish; how impossible would they find it to hesitate about requiring faith from all who hear the gospel!”
In discussing the extent of the atonement, the question of who they are for whom Christ died, Kennedy emphasises the divine intention in the death of Christ. “How can the possibility of my salvation be before the mind of God,” he asks, “unless He sees my sins atoned for in the death of Christ?” His analysis of the double reference theory of the atonement was particularly relevant when the book was first published in 1869, for it was the time of the “union controversy”, when the Free Church was negotiating on union with the United Presbyterian Church, many of whose ministers subscribed to this erroneous view of the work of Christ for sinners.
As united to Christ, the sins of the believer are fully remitted; there is “a perfect removal of all that could make him liable to death”. And Kennedy points out: “In connection with the ‘liberty’ into which believers have been called’ there is a tendency to use it for an occasion to the flesh’ (Gal 5:13). This tendency is not in the liberty of their state, nor in the truth of the gospel, but in the old heart. To remove all which it would abuse, would be to take away all privilege and grace. It is a narrow path in which the Christian must walk, between legalism on the one hand, and antinomianism on the other.” Kennedy was a master expositor, not only of Christian doctrine, but also of Christian experience.
As he brings his work towards a conclusion, he exclaims, “How safe in the house of God are these adopted ones! He took them in when they were at their worst. He proclaimed Himself their Father then. His zeal for His own glory, as well as His love to them, requires that not one of them should perish; and makes it certain that all of them shall yet be all that the sons of God should be, that their Father’s love may be gratified, and His name glorious for ever.” And he closes with these majestic words: “Their very groanings, under the burden of corruption, tell that they are sons, and that a Father’s hand is on them. It is the support of a Father’s arm that has kept them from sinking in the deeps through which they have passed. How often would they utterly faint, unless He graciously revived them! These calm moments of renewed peace, these glimpses of the King in His beauty and of the land that is very far off, these free movements in the ways of God, these triumphs over sin in its mighty lustings, and over Satan with his mighty hosts, are surely tokens of a Father’s love – the foretastes of such rest and happiness at last, as shall leave to the child no more to desire, and to the Father no more to bestow.”
It must be said, however, that Kennedy’s attempt to distinguish between God as Father and as Parent is not successful. He was writing in reaction to the books on adoption by R S Candlish and T J Crawford, which he viewed as in different ways needing refinement. Kennedy did not issue his book as a complete exposition of his subject, and a definitive volume on the doctrine of adoption remains to be written.
The book has been completely reset without any change to what Kennedy wrote except for minor corrections to spelling and punctuation. The cover design is rather unattractive with Kennedy’s head perched most incongruously above the roof of his church.
This criticism cannot take away from the excellence of the contents. Here a distinguished preacher and acute theologian brings profound truth out of the deep treasures of Scripture. It is at times demanding reading, but those who wish more than the milk intended for babes in Christ, nourishing though that milk is, and desire to have the solid meat which the more mature should go on to, ought not to omit such a book as this.
K. D. M.