When God justifies a sinner, He is acting as judge. For God to justify the sinner is the opposite of Him condemning that individual. Every sinner who does not believe on the Lord Jesus is not justified; they are still under condemnation. Either they do not consider their need of salvation, or they are relying on themselves and what they can do to please God and think they can postpone considering this vital matter till some time in the indefinite future. For people to rely on what they can do themselves is a kind of self-justification, which is impossible; it is something like the accused in a criminal court being able to certify himself as innocent.
Saul of Tarsus was coming close to justifying himself, but to have done so would have done him no good if he had passed out of this world to meet the Judge of all the earth before the Saviour met savingly with him; he would have been condemned just as surely as the most careless of sinners in Tarsus or Jerusalem or anywhere else. And no one before or since has been any more successful than this man who was later to become known as Paul the Apostle. It was he who wrote insistently: “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in [God’s] sight” (Rom 3:20). God cannot accept anyone as righteous – not Saul or any other sinner with pharisaical tendencies – as a result of their own efforts to keep the commandments, no matter how successful they might seem to be outwardly.
As Paul wrote later in the same Epistle, the law is weak (8:3). Charles Hodge, in his Commentary on Romans, notes that “the law could condemn sin. What it cannot do is to free us either from its guilt or power. It can neither justify nor sanctify. . . . If men could comply with its righteous demands, the law would pronounce them just. . . . But as they are already under sin, under its guilt and power, the law is entirely impotent to their justification or sanctification.”
Paul goes on to state, “What the law could not do . . . God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”. Paul emphasises that the nature the Saviour took was one, as Hodge goes on, “like to our sinful nature, but not itself sinful. Christ took our physically-dilapidated nature, subject to the infirmities which sin had brought into it. It was therefore susceptible of pain, and weariness, and sorrow.” Christ did suffer, in the place of sinners. He took their guilt upon Himself and suffered the full punishment due to these sinners and so bore their sin away. His whole life was a life of suffering, but especially in the Garden of Gethsemane, at His trials and, above all, on the cross – where, as John Flavel and probably other Puritans have said, “The sufferings of His soul were the soul of His sufferings”. It was in the depths of these soul sufferings the Saviour cried, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Mt 27:46) – words used prophetically in Psalm 22:1.
This is the One, and the only One, whom God has appointed as a Mediator between Himself and sinners – in particular, to represent them before His Father as their High Priest in offering up Himself as a sacrifice to take away sin. And He continues His work as High Priest by making intercession before the throne of God, on behalf of those for whom He made reconciliation. The redemption He worked out is a completed work – He cried on the cross: “It is finished” (Jn 19:30) – so when He makes intercession, He cannot be rejected. In view of all He suffered throughout His life, the Saviour can be touched with a sense of our infirmities. He was tempted in all points as we are. He is therefore a merciful and trustworthy High Priest. He sees the sinners given to Him by the Father as spiritually dead in trespasses and sins, in their natural state. He has compassion on them and is faithful to His undertakings to His Father in the everlasting covenant.
Thus a time comes when He makes intercession for each of them. These are sinners who, as we have noticed, cannot save themselves, for the law is “weak”. They must therefore avail themselves of the divine provision that God has made for sinners in Christ; apart from this God-appointed Saviour, there is no hope whatever for any sinner. How necessary for everyone who hears the gospel to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ”, as Paul and Silas directed the jailor in Philippi. And how necessary to do so with absolute urgency, for our life in this world is totally uncertain.
Here God’s sovereignty and the necessity for His working in the human soul meet with human responsibility, as in the Saviour’s words, “All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me; and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out” (Jn 6:37). Sinners come to Christ because He draws them. They are made willing to come because the Holy Spirit works in their hearts, and the Holy Spirit so works because of Christ’s redeeming work and His intercession for them. They come and they are accepted. They are accepted because of what Christ has done for them.
To say that God accepts them is to say that He justifies them. Before they believed they were under condemnation – condemned to suffer the wrath of God for ever. But now they are trusting in Christ as the One who died for sinners and who, as the exalted Saviour, is freely distributing the glorious gifts of faith, repentance and every other gift. Those who believe are united to Christ – in other words, they are in Christ. And “there is . . . no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). Hodge comments that this “is not to be understood as descriptive of their present state merely, but of their permanent position. They are placed beyond the reach of condemnation. They shall never be condemned.” Rather than being condemned they are justified. God is treating them as if they had never sinned; He has forgiven all their guilt – their liability to condemnation – because of what the Lord Jesus did in their place when He suffered unto death for sin. It is God who has passed this sentence – a judicial sentence – for He has judged the sinner innocent because Christ became this person’s substitute and bore away all his guilt.
We must go further, for God also treats the sinner as perfectly righteous – again on the basis of what Christ did in this world as the substitute for sinners. When Christ, in this world, was made under the law, He kept it perfectly – so that there might be a perfect righteousness to be imputed to the sinner who believes in Jesus – that is, put to his account. Hodge notes, “The justification of believers involves a fulfilling of the law; its demands are not set aside.”1 How wonderful is the provision that has been made for unworthy sinners! How perfectly suitable it is for their needs!
Think of the sinner making his way along the broad way to everlasting condemnation. The Lord arrests the sinner, making him conscious of his sin, his guilt and the condemnation he deserves. He is enabled to look by faith to Christ as the Saviour that God has provided for such as him. At once God pronounces him justified, and that justification can never be reversed. When death comes and he is to pass into the eternal world, he is received into heaven because he has no unforgiven sin to keep him out, and he has a perfect righteousness – not his own but what was wrought out by Christ and imputed to him – that entitles him to a place in eternal blessedness.
Yes, the good works of believers will be acknowledged at the judgement, but they do not form the basis on which they are accepted. They are rather the evidence which will show that all have been prepared for heaven who will gather on the right side of Christ, the righteous Judge. May all who read these pages seek earnestly to “be found in Him, not having [their] own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil 3:9).
1Charles Hodge, Commentary on Romans, Banner of Truth reprint, 1983, p 262.
The Son Learning Obedience1
A Sermon by Charles Bridges
Hebrews 5:8. Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.
A precious text, with unsearchable depths! What a sight is before us! The eternally-blessed God with the humility of a child at school, learning a lesson! What reverence we need in beholding this sight! What an infinite stoop from the glory and worship of heaven! Then what love! Then what obligation!
It is the sight of the Humanity of Christ. Separate from His Godhead, this is a cold abstraction. In union with His Godhead, it is an overflowing fountain of tenderness, grace and love. This Humanity is as essential to the great work of salvation as His Divinity. What, you say, if He had been only man and not God? What, I add, if He had been only God and not man? Let the Christian’s faith rest upon both: “Perfect God and perfect man”.2 Here we see Him as man. The Apostle speaks of what He did in the days of His flesh (v 7). Yet while man, He was not mere man, but the Son; as no other son, yet as a Son learning obedience by the things which He suffered. This deep mysterious subject opens to us three things: (1) His Person, (2) His Lesson, and (3) the School in which He learned it.
1. His Person. “Though He were a Son.” So He was declared from His birth. “That holy thing,” was the message to His mother, “which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God (Lk 1:35). Not that He then began to be so. The name was no mark of His humiliation, but of His fellowship with His Father in the eternal Godhead. Here had been His home from eternity – “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father” (Jn 1:18). This was His own witness: “The Lord possessed Me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old” (Prov 8:22). Hence the reverential enquiry after God: “What is His name, and what is His Son’s name, if thou canst tell?” (Prov 30:4). Hence the obligation long before His coming in the flesh, claiming for Him equal homage with God: “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him” (Ps 2:12). Who of us therefore will not respond to the noble words of the ancient Church: “Thou art the King of glory, O Christ: Thou art the Everlasting Son of the Father?”
But His dignity did not hinder His humiliation. No, it gave all the glory to His humiliation. This is the record: “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but . . . He humbled Himself” (Phil 2:6,-8). Here we see the God of glory in the lowest station of man, learning as a child.
2. His lesson: obedience. There is nothing out of the ordinary course in a son learning obedience. But that such a Son should do so! This is beyond reason; yet it is the testimony of God. It might be said: What need of the lesson? If He were the Son, invested with all the fullness of the Godhead, what obligation could there be for obedience? Truly He was indeed as the “red heifer . . . upon which never came yoke” (Num 19:2). He was in Himself under no yoke. Yet as man He stood in man’s place and took upon Him man’s obligation. He was “made under the law” (Gal 4:4). “Thus it becometh us”, He declares, “to fulfil all righteousness” (Mt 3:15).
He “learned obedience”, the obedience prescribed to Him. He did so in active exercise: “My meat”, He said, “is to do [My Father’s] will . . . and to finish His work” (Jn 4:34); “I do always those things that please Him” (Jn 8:29). He did so in passive exercise: “Not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Mt 26:39); “The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” (Jn 18:11). And this obedience continued without one flaw “unto death” (Phil 2:8). He could challenge His enemies: “Which of you convinceth Me of sin?” (John 8:46) – even His great enemy: “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me” (Jn 14:30).
Now contrast His course with the highest standard of human perfection. Abraham, the man of faith, failed in unbelief (compare Gen 12:1-5, with vv 11-13). Moses, the meekest of “men which were upon the face of the earth” “spake unadvisedly with his lips” (Num 12:3, Ps 106:33). Elijah could stand alone against the autocrat of Israel and his idolatrous people, and yet he quailed before the threatened wrath of Jezebel (1 Ki 19:2,3). Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, as none before or after him, yet he would buy off the Assyrian invasion by selling the ornaments of the temple (2 Ki 18:5-7, 13-16). “Ye have heard”, says the Apostle, “of the patience of Job” (Jas 5:11), but who has not heard of his impatience also? “Every man at his best state is altogether vanity” (Ps 39:5); at his best state, for is there not infirmity in the highest graces of his renewed nature?
But there was no shadow in the obedience of this Son. He was always in union with His Father’s will. There was the same perfection in His manhood as in His Godhead. No sin was there either of commission or of omission. One apostle testifies, He “knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21); another, He “did no sin” (1 Pet 2:22); a third, “In Him is no sin” (1 Jn 3:5). This threefold testimony is as complete as words can make it.
He learned obedience, as He tells us Himself, under His Father’s divine teaching: “He wakeneth morning by morning; he wakeneth Mine ear to hear as the learned” (Is 50:4). Not indeed that the omniscient One needed instruction. Not that He learned to obey as something new; all the graces of obedience were in Him in innate perfection. But He placed Himself in the circumstances which called these graces into exercise, and thus He learned obedience in the exercise of it, as He could not otherwise have learned. Such then was the lesson.
3. The school in which He learned – by the things which He suffered. His outward sufferings were on the surface: “I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not My face from shame and spitting” (Is 50:6). But His inner sufferings – what they were, no tongue of man or angel can tell. It is one of those things of which it must be said, “No man knoweth the Son, but the Father” (Mt 11:27). He was indeed pre-eminent in His suffering as in His glory. Grief with us is always a neighbour, often a visitor. But with Him it was His constant companion. He derived His name from it: “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Is 53:3). He could say with touching tenderness, “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow” (Lam 1:12).
Nor was this sorrow confined to His latter days. It was the mark of the days of His flesh. There was no interval of ease. Every step was endurance, apart from the last act; though, indeed, if there had been ease, the prospect ever before Him of the concluding scene would have made it agony. Trials were continually shifting, never ceasing. Before He could ward off a stroke on one side, the enemy made an attack on the other. Such a weight of endurance! The strongest in his own strength could never have held up under it. Yet “I was not rebellious, neither turned away back” (Is 50:5). No, truly, He went onwards with noble majesty before His disciples, to their amazement and fear (Mk 10:32). “I have a baptism”, He could say at another time, “to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Lk 12:50).
Thus it was the good pleasure of the sovereign Disposer, the only wise God, “in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Heb 2:10).
Now for the lessons to be learned from this holy subject:
- Adoring gratitude. The Son of God schooled by suffering! What wisdom! What gracious consideration of us in this divine work! Why did He descend to learn in this our school, but that He might sympathise with us in all the exercises of this school? And how this thought softens the galling weight of the trial! The Son of God carried the same burden, bore it under the same yoke, was exercised in the same school, learned the same lesson! The dignity of affliction! To be one with the Son under the same Father’s gracious, wise, though often unsearchable, discipline here, after years of knowledge and experience, we long, with the Apostle, to know more and more to the end: “the fellowship of His sufferings” (Phil 3:10).
Now, child of sorrow, look at this “Man of sorrows”. Follow Him every step of His way, from the cradle – I was going to say so, but I remember He had no cradle. This comfort of the poorest of His children was denied to Him. The manger was the rough substitute. It was the same hardness to the end. “Foxes”, He said on one occasion, “have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head” (Mt 8:20).
Travel onward through history to its close. The professing Christian says, I have read it often; I know all about it. Have you read it so often that it has become to you a mere tale, wearisome to hear? Plain proof indeed that you know nothing of it, that you have never read it at all – never, at least, as a Christian with God impressing it on your heart. I seem as if I am looking through a telescope, and yet am unable to fix it so as to get a clear view of the great object. If I did, would you not almost see the impression in the shining of the face? For here is the great secret of God’s transforming work: “We all, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor 3:18).
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Intense desire to imitate. Look at this holy example, and be what you behold. “Consider Him” (Heb 12:3). One great cause of our living so low is the lack of deep, pondering, and spiritual apprehensions of Him. We must study Him if we would know Him, if we would love, enjoy and be conformed to Him. Then indeed we shall receive “of His fulness”, “and grace for grace” (Jn 1:16). The Holy Spirit will perform His own work. “He shall glorify Me” (Jn 16:14). He opens the eyes to behold, the heart to delight, and by His own heavenly pencil copies feature for feature, on our character, grace answering to grace. But how faint is the impression! O for a deeper moulding in variety as in extent, feature answering to feature, until the work of transformation is complete!
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See how the perfection of His obedience covers the imperfection of ours. “By the obedience of [this] One shall many be made righteous” (Rom 5:19). What comparison can there be between the “smoking flax” of our poor beginnings, and the inexpressibly bright flame of His obedience? Who does not see the utter lack of all proportion between them? Yet poor as it is in itself, every act, thought and word is presented before the throne sprinkled with the blood, and perfumed with the merit and intercession, of the Son of God. We are so dissatisfied that we cannot endure the thought of bringing it before God. Yet He looks upon it with infinite delight, as “not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing”. How this view lays us low in humiliation and lifts us up in confidence! The precious work before the throne not only heals the festering of conscience, but invigorates, refreshes and consecrates to the service of God. With “lips touched with a live coal from the altar”, are we ready to respond to the call, “Here am I; send me” (Is 6:5-8)?
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Seek to bear the rich experimental fruits of the school of discipline. How the teaching rod seals the blessing of the teaching law! The lesson may be costly, but rich indeed is the compensation. There must be exercise – painful exercise. If with a will in perfect union with His Father’s will, discipline was, for this blessed Son, the appointed school for obedience, how much more needful must this school be for us, with wills so wayward, so perverse, so rebellious! The schoolboy may revolt from the lesson and break away from the discipline. But is not this the path for his own misery? Do we not find our happiness by losing our will? For surely that will, which is enmity to a God of love (Rom 8:7), must be the greatest enemy to ourselves. Never can we be surprised at any stroke that may fall upon us, so hard is it for us to bend – yet so necessary that we should bend!
If therefore the question is asked in pettish impatience under chastisement, “If I am a child, why am I thus?” the answer is ready, “You are thus, because you are a child, because the Lord loves you, and therefore chastens you.” “For what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?” (Heb 12:6,7). It is not therefore hard, but (as the confession will be brought out) “it is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn Thy statutes”; for “before I was afflicted I went astray; but now have I kept Thy word” (Ps 119:71,67). This, then – let it never be forgotten – is God’s school. It is the stroke that humbles, the disappointment that breaks down the stubborn will, the exercise that weans from a world of vanity and sin. Nor is it for the believer’s interest or comfort to lift up a finger against his Father’s appointments. Bitter they may be to the flesh, but they are wholesome to the spirit.
Rather let his mind be absorbed in the blessedness of knowing that he is in his Father’s hands, who is too wise, too faithful, too kind to appoint anything but what in the end shall be for his happiness and for his glory. Discipline is the finishing school – the training for heaven. It allows one to mourn, not to murmur. There is peace in submission. Even when it tears the flesh, it heals the spirit. Shall the children complain of the course by which their Lord was pleased to learn obedience and to be made perfect for His work? (Heb 5:7, 2:10). Must believers not be content with school discipline until this finishing school shall have fully trained them to dwell for ever with their Father in His heavenly home?
1Taken, with editing, from The Family Treasury for 1860. Bridges (1794-1869) was at this time an Anglican minister in Dorset. He is now best known for his commentaries, including one on the Book of Proverbs.
2From the Athanasian Creed.
The Spirit of Adoption1
3. Love and Communion
James Buchanan
- The spirit of adoption implies a warm brotherly love towards all who are members of God’s family. This new affection corresponds to the new relation into which they have been introduced, and bears some proportion to the sacred, endearing ties by which, as Christians, they are connected with one another. The spirit of adoption points directly to God and consists in supreme love to Him; but it necessarily implies also love to the brethren, for John says, “Every one that loveth Him that beget loveth him also that is begotten of Him”. And: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.”
The intimate connection between the two – I mean between love to God as one’s Father and to one another as brethren – is abundantly proved by the experience of believers, as well as by the express testimony of the Word. If, on the one hand, they experience at any time an enlargement of affection towards God; if they taste most sweetly and see most clearly that the Lord is gracious and have much liberty and comfort in crying to Him, “Abba, Father”, then they shall also feel a corresponding love to all His people, a disposition to forgive as they hope to be forgiven, and a desire to do good unto all men as they have opportunity, but especially unto them that are of the household of faith.
If, on the other hand, they allow their spirits at any time to be ruffled by strife and contention; if, in the heat of undue excitement, they begin to think or speak harshly of one another, and allow the sun to go down upon their wrath, they will feel in the hour of prayer how fatal this unhallowed spirit is to enjoying fellowship with God, how it fetters their freedom and embitters their feelings; and even when they seek to cry, “Abba, Father,” in the spirit of adoption, it infuses into their souls all the discomfort and anxiety of the old spirit of bondage. Hence our Lord’s command to His disciples: “If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift”; and Paul’s exhortation, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, hath forgiven you. Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children, and walk in love.”
- The spirit of adoption implies a disposition to hold communion with God as Father and with His children as brethren in Christ. The spirit of adoption prompts the believer to hold communion with God, for it is by this spirit that he cries, “Abba, Father”. As it leads him to be much engaged in prayer, so it gives a new character to his devotions; they are no longer the expression of an anxious and fearful heart, but the outpourings of a spirit confiding in a father’s wisdom, rejoicing in a father’s love, and committing itself to a father’s care. So long as he was under the spirit of bondage, prayer was felt to be a task, or used only as a form, instead of being a sweet, refreshing privilege; his petitions were dictated by fear more than by faith, and he felt rather as a criminal speaking to his judge, or as a slave to his angry master, than as a child communing with his father.
But now, adopted into God’s family and reconciled through the blood of Christ, he feels a confidence in drawing near to God, such as a child has in speaking to a wise and affectionate parent – a confidence which is only the more tender and deeply rooted in his heart because he has been a rebellious child and is now forgiven. The very recollection of his sins, when combined with a sense of God’s pardoning mercy, will fill his heart to overflowing with love, gratitude and joy. While he is deeply humbled, and ready to acknowledge that he is “no more worthy to be called a son”, he knows that his adoption was an act of sovereign grace – that it was granted, not on account of his own righteousness, but solely through the righteousness of Christ and the redemption of His cross. Thus he can “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that [he] may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need”.
In doing so, he is encouraged by the relation in which God stands to him as his Father in heaven; and by the recollection of those gracious assurances in the Word which are founded on this relation; he remembers the words of Christ Himself: “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly”; “Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him”; and, “If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?”
There is a rich fountain of encouragement to pray in the idea that God is the Father of His people, for if that is so, it assures them that even their weakness and infirmities – indeed, their sins and shortcomings – will not stop Him paying attention to them. On the contrary, “as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him;” and this is His own promise: “I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him”. If this is the relation in which believers stand to God, and these are the feelings with which He regards them when they draw near to Him in the spirit of adoption, they need not be cast down or discouraged by a sense of their weakness and infirmities.
Consider how a father’s heart is touched by the weakness of his child, so that he never deals more tenderly with the child than when he is sick and faint;2 consider how a father is all the more ready to stretch forth his arm to support his child when it is conscious of its weakness and clings to him for fear it should fall; and consider how a father’s sympathy and love are sure to be called forth when an obedient son seeks to serve him and grieves that he cannot serve him better, and the sympathy and love are never more sincerely or deeply felt than when, in the exercise of a wise discipline, he chastens and rebukes the child he loves. Just so God, as the Father in heaven – or rather much more, seeing His love is infinite and unchangeable – will regard the weaknesses and needs, the infirmities and imperfections of His children.
Hear His own gracious words, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” “Is Ephraim My dear son? Is he a pleasant child? For since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him: I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.” With such views of God, and of his relation to Him as a Father, the believer’s communion with Him is sweet; he feels in prayer very much as a child does when he speaks to a father who is both able and willing to help him. Having liberty of access to God at all times, and frequent occasion as well as the richest encouragement to pour out his heart and to spread out his case before Him, he acquires a growing desire for His fellowship, and prayer comes to be his constant habit and his sweetest privilege. He is careful for nothing, but in every thing by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, he makes his requests known unto God; and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep his heart and mind through Christ Jesus.
And just as the filial love which the believer bears to God as his Father is associated with a brotherly love to all His people, so the communion which he enjoys with God will ever be accompanied with the desire to hold communion also with all in every place who belong to the same family, who share in his privileges and partake of his spirit and cherish his hopes, as children of the same Father, who expect the same inheritance. It is the counsel of God to all His children, “See that ye fall not out by the way”, “Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous”.
In token of their common relation and their mutual love, God is pleased to make them sit down at the same table, and to unite in commemorating the riches of redeeming grace. By partaking of the sacred symbols, they profess the same faith and are fed with the “children’s bread”. It is in “the spirit of adoption” that every communicant should approach the table; not in the spirit of bondage, as if it were a task, or a gloomy and uncomfortable service, but in the spirit of adoption, crying, “Abba, Father”. For the sacred symbols represent the broken body and the shed blood of the Saviour, through which we obtain liberty of access and may come boldly to the throne of grace. They point to the “new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh”.
Those who are called to partake of these symbols together, in an act of solemn worship together, should look on each other as brethren – as children of the same Father – seated around the same table, all sharing more or less in the infirmities and weaknesses which still cleave to His children on earth. But they should also remember that they share in the same precious privileges, partake of the same spiritual food and cherish the same everlasting hopes.
1Another extract from a chapter entitled, “The Work of the Spirit as the Spirit of Adoption”, in Buchanan’s book, The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit. Last month’s section dealt with two points: The spirit of adoption implies (1) reverence and godly fear and (2) a lively sense of gratitude and a principle of supreme love to God.
2Buchanan indicates that he had taken this idea from Robert Bolton, an English Puritan.
John Hooper – a Reformation Puritan1
Rev K M Watkins
7. Faithful unto Death
“As thy days, so shall thy strength be” (Deut 33:25). Originally made to the tribe of Asher, the Lord certainly made His promise good in the case of John Hooper. Amidst trials of grievous persecution culminating in a martyr’s death, the final chapter of Hooper’s life showed gospel faithfulness that only the God of all grace could supply.
As 1554 continued, the clouds announcing the imminent arrival of a yet more ferocious storm of persecution were ever darkening. Politically and ecclesiastically, things were moving on apace to re-establish England as a thoroughly Roman Catholic country, with Queen Mary at the helm. In February, Lady Jane Grey, who had been put forward unsuccessfully as a contender for the throne, was beheaded at just 17 years of age, remaining faithful to the Protestant faith to the end. Her husband and father were also executed. In July, a closer alliance with Romanism was forged by Queen Mary’s marriage to Prince Philip of Spain, a country where Rome’s Counter-reformation was to prove so effective in snuffing out the Reformation in its infancy.
The legal reforms under Edward VI were reversed, one by one. In November that included the repeal of the Attainder Act, opening the way for the immediate return from exile of Cardinal Reginald Pole, arch-enemy of Protestantism, who arrived “as papal legate with the specific aim of accomplishing reunion between England and Rome”.2 By the end of November, Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy was repealed, by which England’s divorce from Rome had been effected. Then on November 30, in a staged event in Parliament in the presence of Mary and Philip, Pole granted Rome’s absolution to the realm of England, on the request of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. Two days later, the King and the Cardinal attended mass at St Paul’s, conducted by Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, with Gardiner preaching. Then “the huge congregation, numbering over 15 000, knelt down in submission”.3 England’s return to Rome was complete.
But what of Hooper? Unlike many letters from his friends, news of these discouraging events did not fail to reach him in his prison cell. He was particularly distraught that his friend Henry Bullinger seemed to have forgotten him. This was not so, of course. Bullinger’s letters were being intercepted. But when things were almost at their darkest, eventually a letter from Bullinger arrived. Hooper’s reply on December 114 expressed his delight, but also his realisation that death could not be far off. “They are daily threatening us with death”, he wrote. But Christ had not forsaken him, nor left him in unbelief, for he could add: “which [death] we are quite indifferent about; in Christ Jesus we boldly despise the sword and the flames. We know in whom we have believed, and we are sure that we shall lay down our lives in a good cause.”
At the beginning of 1555, Hooper knew that his time was short. Foxe records a letter he sent to his friends on January 21. He wrote, “Now is the time of trial, to see whether we fear more God or man. It was an easy thing to hold with Christ whilst the Prince and world held with Him; but now the world hateth Him, it is the true trial who be His. Wherefore, in the name and in the virtue, strength, and power of His Holy Spirit, prepare yourselves in any case to adversity and constancy. Let us not run away when it is most time to fight. Remember, none shall be crowned but such as fight manfully; and he that endureth to the end shall be saved.”5
He continued: “Imprisonment is painful; but yet liberty upon evil conditions is more painful. The prisons stink, but yet not so much as sweet houses where the fear and true honour of God lack. I must be alone and solitary; it is better so to be, and have God with me, than to be in company with the wicked. Loss of goods is great; but loss of God’s grace and favour is greater. . . . I shall die then by the hands of the cruel man: he is blessed that loseth this life, full of miseries, and findeth the life of eternal joys. It is pain and grief to depart from goods and friends; but yet not so much as to depart from grace and heaven itself. Wherefore there is neither felicity nor adversity of this world that can appear to be great, if it be weighed with the joys or pains in the world to come” (JF, p 660). Clearly the Lord was sustaining him. His conclusion includes words reminiscent of Samuel Rutherford, who in the next century would be banished to Aberdeen for the Lord’s sake: “I am a precious jewel now, and daintily kept, never so daintily” (JF, p 660).
The next day, 22 January 1555, Hooper was brought before the Council, led again by Gardiner. He was offered mercy, if he would submit to the Pope’s authority. That he could not do. Foxe summarised Hooper’s reply: “Forasmuch as the Pope taught doctrine altogether contrary to the doctrine of Christ, he was not worthy be accounted as a member of Christ’s Church, much less to be head thereof; wherefore he would in no wise condescend to any such usurped jurisdiction. Neither esteemed he the Church, whereof they call him head, to be the catholic Church of Christ: for the Church only heareth the voice of her spouse Christ, and flieth the strangers” (JF, p 648). Hooper said that he was willing for mercy only if it “may be had with safety of conscience, and without the displeasure of God” (JF, p 648). He was told that the Queen would show no mercy to the Pope’s enemies.
After six more days in the Fleet, Hooper was summoned again, on January 28. Hooper was charged on three grounds: maintaining it was lawful for the clergy to marry; teaching that it was lawful to divorce on the ground of adultery; and “for denying the [bodily] presence of Christ in the sacrament, and saying that the mass was an idol”.6
John Rogers, another Protestant minister destined for martyrdom, was examined the same day. Both being sent to prison in Southwark, Hooper encouraged his fellow-sufferer on the way, saying, “Come, brother Rogers! Must we two take this matter first in hand, and begin to fry these faggots?” Rogers replied, “Yea sir, by God’s grace”. Hooper then said, “Doubt not but God will give strength”. The people of the city crowded around, and “rejoiced at their constancy” (JF, p 649).
The next day, 29 January 1555, the Council condemned both Hooper and Rogers. They were to be degraded from the “priesthood” and were sentenced to death. Hooper was taken to Newgate prison, where for six days he was hounded by the Romanists to recant, using alternately feigned kindness and unveiled threats. When they could prevail nothing, they spread false rumours that he had recanted. Hearing the rumours, Hooper wrote an open letter to refute them, saying, “I thank God, I am as ready to suffer death, as a mortal man may be. . . . I have taught the truth with my tongue and with my pen heretofore; and hereafter shortly shall confirm the same by God’s grace with my blood” (JF, p 651).
On February 4, Hooper and Rogers were degraded together in the prison chapel. The proceedings were led by Bonner. First clothed in priest’s garments, they were stripped of these and deposed. Rogers was taken to be burned immediately, at Smithfield in London, where he died in faith, the first of some 300 Marian martyrs. Hooper was to be taken to Gloucester, to be burned there. On hearing this, “he rejoiced very much, lifting up his eyes and hands unto heaven, and praising God that He saw it good to send him amongst the people over whom he was pastor, there to confirm with his death the truth which he had before taught them; not doubting but the Lord would give him strength to perform the same to His glory” (JF, p 652).
When Hooper arrived in Gloucester a few days later, a number of interesting meetings took place. Sir Anthony Kingston, an old acquaintance whom Hooper had faithfully reproved for his sinful life7 and had since become a sound Protestant, pointed Hooper to the Queen’s pardon. Foxe records the exchange (JF, p 654). Kingston said, “Alas, consider that life is sweet, and death is bitter. Therefore, seeing life may be had, desire to live; for life hereafter may do good.”
With “the ever memorable answer”, as Ryle described it,8 Hooper replied, “True it is, master Kingston, that death is bitter, and life is sweet; but, alas, consider that the death to come is more bitter, and the life to come is more sweet. Therefore, for the desire and love I have to the one, and the terror and fear of the other, I do not so much regard this death, nor esteem this life, but have settled myself, through the strength of God’s Holy Spirit, patiently to pass through the torments and extremities of the fire now prepared for me, rather than to deny the truth of His Word.” They parted from each other as brethren in Christ, both in tears – for Hooper, “more tears than he had shed throughout the seventeen months of his imprisonment”.9 Kingston’s aim had not been to trick Hooper into denying the faith; “it was a simple human plea for Hooper to save his life”.10
Another visitor was a blind youth called Thomas Drowry, himself imprisoned for his Protestant faith. After examining the boy, Hooper became convinced of his grace and said, “Ah, poor boy! God hath taken from thee thy outward sight, for what reason He best knoweth: but He hath given thee another sight much more precious, for He hath endued thy soul with the eye of knowledge and faith. God give thee grace continually to pray unto Him, that thou lose not that sight; for then shouldst thou be blind both in body and soul” (JF, p 654). Young Thomas did not lose that sight. Returned to prison, he was held until over a year later, when in May 1556 he followed Hooper in being burned at the stake in Gloucester.
When a Roman Catholic with a wicked life expressed sorrow to see him under sentence of death, Hooper replied, “Be sorry for thyself, man, and lament thine own wickedness; for I am well, I thank God, and death to me for Christ’s sake is welcome”. Hooper’s response reminds us of the Saviour on the way to the cross, who said to the women of Jerusalem, “Weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children” (Lk 23:28).
Likeness to his Master continued when, after a night spent in prayer, the day appointed for execution arrived: 9 February 1555. The sheriffs arrived at his lodging to take him to the place of execution, armed with weapons. “When he saw the multitude of weapons, he spake to the sheriffs on this wise: ‘Master sheriffs,’ said he, ‘I am no traitor, neither needed you to have made such a business to bring me to the place where I must suffer: for if ye had willed me, I would have gone alone to the stake, and have troubled none of you all'” (JF, p 656). One hears Christ saying to those who came to arrest Him in Gethsemane, “Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take Me?” (Mt 26:55).
Approximately 60 years old and limping from the hardships of imprisonment, Hooper was led to the stake. Being forbidden to speak to the people gathered to witness his death – and there were some 7000 of them – he knelt down to pray, continuing in prayer for half an hour. Part way through he was interrupted. They had brought a box which, they said, contained the Queen’s pardon if he would recant. His reply was insistent: “If you love my soul, away with it! If you love my soul, away with it!” And so he returned to prayer.
Part of the prayer was overheard and preserved. Like Elijah before him, Hooper gives us an object lesson in effectual, fervent prayer: “Lord, I am hell, but Thou art heaven; I am . . . a sink of sin, but Thou art a gracious God and a merciful Redeemer. Have mercy therefore upon me, most miserable and wretched offender, after Thy great mercy and according to Thine inestimable goodness. Thou that art ascended into heaven, receive me . . . to be partaker of Thy joys, where Thou sittest in equal glory with Thy Father. For well knowest Thou, Lord, wherefore I am come hither to suffer, and why the wicked do persecute this Thy poor servant; not for my sins and transgressions committed against Thee, but because I will not allow their wicked doings, to the contaminating of Thy blood and to the denial of the knowledge of Thy truth. . . . And well seest Thou, my Lord and God, what terrible pains and cruel torments be prepared for Thy creature: such, Lord, as without Thy strength none is able to bear, or patiently to pass. But all things that are impossible with man are possible with Thee: therefore strengthen me of Thy goodness, that in the fire I break not the rules of patience; or else assuage the terror of the pains, as shall seem most to Thy glory” (JF, p 657).
The one thing Hooper had asked the Gloucester authorities to give him was refused – a quick fire. Civic records show that “little expense was spared in terms of reward and hospitality for those involved”11 – extra wine was procured and a dinner held – but the materials for the fire itself were poor. The wood was green and would hardly burn. Even the gunpowder was damp and failed to explode. The flames were blown by the wind, so that he was scorched rather than dispatched. His torments were extended for more than 45 minutes, causing him to cry out for more fire. But Hooper was enabled to be faithful unto death. Not one word of impatience against the Lord passed from his lips. “Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me; Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” – these “were the last words he was heard to utter” (JF, p 658).
The preface to a recent major biography of Hooper begins with the assertion that “in his own lifetime” he “was respected, even feared, but not much loved”.12 Whatever some thought of him then and think of him now, with this we cannot agree. The fragrance of Hooper’s witness is very sweet, and God’s people will ever love him for it. We do not doubt that he went from the cruelty of the flames to the loving embrace of Christ and was welcomed with a most emphatic, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant”.
A large monument, erected more than three centuries later, in 1863, now stands on the spot where Hooper was burned outside Gloucester Cathedral. Fittingly it records his testimony in these words: “For the witness of Jesus and for the Word of God, not accepting deliverance”. Less fittingly, the statue has him in Bishop’s vestments, which betrays the continued misunderstanding and rejection of this godly man’s Puritanism. We cannot tell how long the statue will stand, but of this we are certain: “The righteous man’s memorial shall everlasting prove”.
J C Ryle rightly said that “Hooper was a leading instrument” in both the “subversion of Popery” and the “introduction of Protestantism”.13 That would be enough to endear him to our hearts, alongside other Reformers. But for ourselves in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, it must be his Puritanism that makes him stand out. When it came to his desire for fully scriptural worship and practice, he was not just one of the English Reformers, he was the one, the Puritan of the English Reformation. In other areas, he was eminent; in this, he was pre-eminent. There was no one like him among the leaders of the English Reformation. Hooper was a Reformation Puritan indeed.
1This article is expanded from the final part of a paper given at the Theological Conference in 2016.
2Pete Sullivan, A Gloucester Martyr: John Hooper and the English Reformation, Country Books, 2004, p 97.
3Sullivan, A Gloucester Martyr, p 98.
4Letter to Bullinger, Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, vol 1, The Parker Society, ed Hastings Robinson, Cambridge, 1846, p 105.
5The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed S R Cattley, London, 1838, vol 6, p 659. Further quotations from this volume are labelled JF.
6Writings of Dr John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester. Martyr, 1555, The Religious Tract Society, nd, p 5.
7See the fifth article in this series, in the August 2018 issue of this Magazine, p 239.
8J C Ryle, Five English Reformers, Banner of Truth reprint, 1994, p 55.
9Ryle, Five English Reformers, p 55.
10Sullivan, A Gloucester Martyr, p 105.
11Sullivan, A Gloucester Martyr, p 115.
12David G Newcombe, John Hooper: Tudor Bishop and Martyr, Davenant Press, 2009, p vii.
13Ryle, Five English Reformers, p 37.