The question, as a whole, is a difficult question, for one reason: it has to do with God's view of the case; that is, God's objects, God's intentions, God's principles in the manifestation of Himself through the seed of Abraham; and it is testified through Isaiah that God's ways are not as our ways; that "As the heaven is high above the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways." It is difficult for the mind of the flesh to enter into the Divine methods of working, and to realise Divine views and principles of action. It is only after a prolonged spiritual education that we come at this. Paul expresses the idea in a form of words that are unintelligible on the theory propounded last night (1 Cor. 2:12-14): "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God, which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for THEY ARE FOOLISHNESS UNTO HIM, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Now, one thing that distinguishes this disturbing heresy more than another is that it cannot express itself in the words which the Holy Spirit teacheth, but is obliged continually to employ invented phrases, and those invented phrases, I will shew, contain invented fallacies. I will to-night, place the theory of the truth side by side with the theory of this error, and I will explain the theory of the truth in the language of the Spirit; and I will shew wherein the language of the Spirit is destructive of the language -- the artificial and carnal language --which this Renunciationist heresy is incessantly compelled to employ in defining its principles.
I employ the aid of a chart to do it, not because I think a chart proves anything; it is good to illustrate; it cannot demonstrate; but because a chart has been made use of to dazzle your eyes, so to speak, and to sorcerise your imagination, and to implant heresy in your minds -- I thought it well, by the same means to try and undo these mischievous effects; and, today, with the assistance of Brother Shuttleworth, I have sketched out this diagram, in which you will perceive the one submitted to you last night and one not submitted, but which represents the truth, which I will endeavor to unfold tonight.
You also know that Jesus never disconnected himself from the Father in all his discourses. He always set forth the Father as the instigator and operator in all his proceedings. This is his style of language: "I came down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me" (John 6:38). "I am not come of myself" (John 7:28). "The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works" (John 14:10). "I am come in my Father's name" (John 5:43). "I can of mine own self do nothing" (John 5:30). "He that sent me is with me" (John 8:29). "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. How sayest thou, then, Shew us the Father" (John 14:9).
And, therefore, the first idea which I seek, in those words of the Spirit, to impress upon your minds is, that the source, origin, and mover in this whole matter of the appearance, life, and sacrifice of Christ is to be found in that which is represented by the central figure at the top of the diagram, and that we have simply to ask What has been His way and object in the devising of it, and finding it out -- to believe it.
Well, let us go back to the beginning. We find God creating Adam, but not manifesting Himself in Adam, and, therefore, the line from the Central Sun, in the diagram, proceeding towards Adam, is a cloudy line. The first man was of the earth earthy; the second was different from the first. Paul defines them in contrast. While he says the first is of the earth earthy, he says, the second man, who will come into our consideration more particularly, when we come into this part of the chart, is "the Lord from heaven," by the manifestation of God in the flesh through the Spirit, as we learn from other portions of the testimony. The first Adam was merely a mechanism of "natural" life, produced as the beginning or the basis of a plan which God had in His mind from the beginning with regard to this earth which we inhabited. Nothing is of chance. All things are foreknown of the Father, for all things are the work of His hands, and made to work out His ultimate designs. The rule in the working out of His plan on earth is "first that which is natural, afterwards that which is spiritual" (1 Cor. 15:46). Adam is the beginning of the natural, Jesus is the beginning of the spiritual. He is God manifest in the flesh, and not a mere Adam. The Renunciationist heresy makes him a mere man. God-manifestation is denied, though in words professed. We shall see this more clearly as we proceed.
Looking back at the first Adam, we see him for a while in a state of innocence. An attempt was made, last night, to draw a parallel between this period of Adam's career and the probation of the Lord Jesus. But look, brethren, at the great difference. Adam suffered no evil, no pain, no weakness, no grief. His state was a "very good" state. He was no man of sorrows, had no acquaintance of grief, inherited no evil of any kind. But look at the Lord Jesus. From the very beginning, he experienced in himself those results that came by Adamic disobedience. This is sufficiently manifest in the apostolic testimony that he was the subject of "crying and tears" (Heb. 5:7), a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isa. 53:3), made in all things like to his brethren of Adam's fallen stock (Heb. 2:16,17), and finally crucified through weakness (2 Cot. 13:4). But I propose to strengthen this testimony beyond the power of resistance, by reading to you the words of the Spirit in the Psalms, describing the personal experiences of the Messiah in the days of his flesh. That there may be no doubt as to the applicability of what I shall read to the Messiah, I will use only those Psalms which are quoted by the Spirit in the apostles, as applicable to the Lord Jesus Christ and belonging to him. I cannot read all that I have chosen out; it would take too much time. I will give you one or two extracts, and I will give you the references to the other places, with the parts where they are referred to in the New Testament, in order that you may see that Jesus, in the days of his flesh, inherited and experienced the results and feelings that have come by Adam's transgression; from which I will argue, and prove otherwise my argument, that this inheritance extended to mortality itself, and that "free life," so-called, is a myth. First, I will take Heb. 10:4-10. Here Paul applies the 40th Psalm to Christ. Let us be quite sure. ! wish to establish, link by link, all my evidence, as I will undertake to destroy, link by link, the whole chain of sophistry by the which the minds of the brethren are being bewitched and turned aside from the truth Heb. 10:5. "Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou would'st not, but a body hast thou prepared me." Thus the Spirit in Paul says, Christ, in the 40th Psalm, speaks. Very well, now let us go to the 40th Psalm: "I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings." At the 6th verse, we have the words quoted by Paul; and then, at the 11th and 12th verses: "Withhold not now thy tender mercies from me, O Lord; let thy loving-kindness and thy truth continually preserve me. For innumerable evils compassed me about; mine iniquities (the iniquities of his brethren laid on him in their effects) have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head; therefore, my heart faileth me." 17th verse: "But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: Thou art my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, O my God." Adam, in his probation, had not to ask to be delivered, and could not say that innumerable evils had compassed him about. But you will find something more striking in other cases. In the 1st chapter of Hebrews, Paul quotes, as you perceive, at the 8th verse: "Unto the Son he saith" certain things; again, in the 10th verse: "And thou, Lord," and so forth. The things that the Spirit, in Paul, here applies to the Messiah you will find in the 102nd Psalm, from the 1st to the 11th verse: "Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto Thee. Hide not Thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble; incline Thine ear unto me; in the day when I call, answer me speedily. For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth. My heart is smitten and withered like grass, so that I forget to eat my bread. By reason of the voice of my groaning, my bones cleave to my skin. I am like a pelican of the wilderness; I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top; mine enemies reproach me all the day; and they that are mad against me, are sworn against me. For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping, because of Thine indignation and Thy wrath; for Thou hast lifted me up and cast me down. My days are like a shadow that declineth, and I am withered like grass." I quote that to shew that Jesus, in the days of his flesh (as Paul says in the 5th chapter of Heb. at the 7th verse) with strong crying and tears made supplication unto Him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared, and not because he had "free life." I will shew you before I am done, that he had not a free life, but bore our condemnation in his own person, as much as any of us, necessitating his death before he could be purified from the curse. This "free life" is a thing you do not read of in the Scriptures; it is a mere invention; a plausible thing, but a gratuitous thing; an unproved assumption, which is made the starting point of the train of reasoning by which it is attempted to establish this heresy. If the initial fallacy is taken for granted, the false conclusion comes with all the appearance of irresistible logic. But let the initial fallacy be perceived, and the whole argument falls to pieces like a rope of sand.
The fallacy is two-fold. First, it is a fallacy to speak of "life" as distinct from "nature." "Life" is used by the Lord and by the apostles in a way to cover the whole idea of existence; and not as an element of existence to be considered abstractly by itself. Thus the sacrifice of Christ is expressed variously, as the "laying down of his life," "the giving of his body" (Luke 22:19), "the pouring-out of his soul" (Isa. 53:12), or "the offering up of himself' (Heb. 9:25), as the case requires. All these literally mean his submission to death, and not the disentanglement of a so-called "life" from his body for presentation to the Eternal Throne. It was "a body" that was prepared for sacrifice, and not a "life." It was death and not life that was required for the putting-away of sin. But by the incessant iteration of the word "life," as if it were an element separate from being, the Renunciationists bewilder the perceptions of inexperienced minds, and throw them into confusion, which time itself will, doubtless, enable them to recover from, where they are given to reading and thought.
We are not unacquainted ourselves with this elliptical use of the word life -- I mean in ordinary talk. When we say a man's "life" is not worth a week's purchase, we do not mean that the vital energy in his body, considered as an element, is not worth purchase, but the body's possession of vitality is uncertain. So when we say a long life, we do not mean any peculiarity in the vital energy, but that the possessor holds it for a long time. Also, when we say a man's life is in danger, we do not mean that the invisible energy by which God preserves us in being is in danger; for that can never be in danger, because God is the fountain thereof, in Whom we live and move and have our being, and to Him it returns. We mean that the living man's continuance in being is imperilled. It is an elliptical way of expression. There are many other instances. How absurd it would be to construct a theory out of these elliptical expressions, which should assume, in every case, that the "life" was an entity, sustaining relations to length, danger, safety, etc. This is what is done with a few passages of Scripture, in the present case, with results vastly more mischievous, in a spiritual sense, than those led captive by the glamour are aware of.
But, returning to the testimony of the Psalms, which Jesus, by his own lips, said were "concerning him" (Luke 24:44), I will, without further quotation, give you a list of them and the New Testament reference, in each case, where the Psalm is by the Spirit applied to Jesus. You can put them down in pencil and compare them at your leisure: Matt. 21:42 (Psalm 118); Matt. 27:35 (Psalm 22); Heb. 2:12 (the same Psalm); Luke 4:10 (Psalm 91); Luke 23:46 (Psalm 31);John 2:17 (Psalm 69); Acts 1:20 (Psalm 109); Acts 2:25 (Psalm 16).
And please remember that Jesus, in conversation with his disciples after his resurrection, reasoned with them and expounded unto them the things that were written in Moses, and the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning himself. These very words were spoken by him in proof of the fact that he was appointed to suffer. In these things there is Scriptural evidence of the entire dissimilarity between the position of Adam and the probation of the Lord Jesus Christ; and the difference arises from the difference of the position of the two, which I will proceed to illustrate.
Adam's innocence ended with the fall; and here a little dazzle is thrown into the eyes. Instead of taking the simple testimony of the Word that death came, you have it that your life was forfeited -- that your life came under pledge -- that a debt was incurred which the theorists describe as "eternal death," -- and you are asked to look at the third upright line in the Renunciationist diagram, as the "debt" which had to be paid. And by much more of such artificial unscriptural jargon, you are argued into a conviction the very opposite of truth. Has it never occurred to these Renunciationists, that if "eternal death," so called, was the debt to be paid, as they say, and Jesus paid that debt, that the resurrection of Jesus was impossible? I will shew before I have done that our inheritance in Adam is not eternal death; that that which stands in the way of our resurrection by nature, is not our hereditary mortality in Adam, but our personal offences; and that what has brought resurrection is not "free life," but the personal righteousness of God's own anointed, specially provided in our mortal nature that he might open a way out of mortality by obedience, death, and resurrection.
Adam was condemned, and we have the testimony of the Spirit that his condemnation hath passed upon all men. Now what is that condemnation? Is it a condemnation against the nature or against the life in the nature? Which? It cannot be a condemnation against the life in the nature: that is what immortal-soulism says; and, in this respect, the new theory makes an advance towards immortal-soulism. The abstract life in all nature is the same. Men and animals have all one breath. With God is the fountain of life. God is the life of all; and He giveth unto all life, and breath, and all things; and when death happens, the dust returns unto the dust, and the spirit or the life returns to God who gave it. It is not the life that is condemned, for it is not the life that is the sinner. It is the person, the individual, the nature that is condemned, because it was the person, Adam, who was the sinner. Condemnation in Adam means, therefore, that we are mortal in Adam: mortal in the physical constitution -- the organisation. Look at any of us when we are just newly born. Why are we mortal at that moment.'? We have not sinned. "Oh, but we sinned in Adam," says this same theory. Did we sin in the individual sense in him? How could we sin individually when we did not exist? Paul says No. He says death reigned over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression. Why is it we are mortal then? In what sense is the sentence of Adam upon us when we are born? Well, we are Adam's organisation. It is in the organisation that the law of mortality resides. It is in the physical substance that the principle of death is at work. Hence the phrase, "this corruptible." If the substance were not corruptible, "life" would be ours for ever.
Here suggests itself the question with regard to sin in the flesh, which I will enter fully at a subsequent part of the lecture. I will endeavour to make manifest the most unscriptural, the most carnal, and the most untrue and mischievous character of the new philosophy, with which it is now attempted to inoculate the brethren, on the subject of "the flesh." Enough on that point when we come to the cross in the diagram.
"Death reigned from Adam to Moses." This fact is represented by the perpendicular line from the angle where you see the word "fall." The line stands for the posterity of Adam, between these two epochs, without taking cognizance of the flood, because posterity was continued through Noah: therefore, there was no break; death reigned in them all, though not without the light of hope through faith.
Coming down to the time of Moses, we note particularly the fact that God had chosen the "seed of Abraham," according to the flesh, as a nation for Himself, as the basis of the development of the purpose He had conceived in Himself from the beginning, which Paul styles "a purpose of grace," according to the good pleasure of His own will, "not of works lest any man should boast."
What do we find in connection with Moses? A law is given to the chosen nation. This law condemned to death all who disobeyed it in the meanest particular. Those to whom the law was given were, of course, under the Adamic curse; that is, they inherited Adam's mortal nature, because in him when he sinned. This Adamic curse is represented by the horizontal band between "Death reigns," and the cross; the Mosaic curse (for none kept the law in all particulars) is represented by the corresponding band below; the nation of Israel, "the seed of Abraham," between the two. The seed of Abraham, whose nature Paul testifies (Heb. 2:16), Jesus took, are here represented as enclosed between two curses, the curse in Adam and the curse by Moses.
But before we consider how these two curses converge upon the Messiah (represented by the cross) that he might bear them away, let me ask what the law was given for. It was "added (to the promises) because of transgression" truly; but suppose the Jews had been able to keep it, what would have been the result to them? Now here let special attention be given to the testimony of the Word. Paul says, in the 7th chapter of Rom., 10th verse: "The commandment (speaking of the law) was ordained to life." Does that mean eternal life? Yes. This is shewn by what we read at Luke 10:25: "And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him saying, Master, What shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? How readest thou?'And he answering said so and so (recapitulating the chief points of the law). And he (Jesus) said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live." Now there is the word of the Master himself confirming the statement of Paul, that the law given was unto life, if they kept it.
But then how about the Adamic condemnation in such a case? Well, if there had been a Jew who had kept the law in all things, having done the will of the Father from the very beginning of life to the end of his life, he would have been in the very position of the Lord Jesus himself; it would then have been in his power, by dying, to cleanse himself from the Adamic condemnation, and his righteousness would have caused his resurrection from the dead. It is by the righteousness o£ one that resurrection has come (Rom. 5:18; 1 Cot. 15:21); it is not by the "free life" of one. "Free life" is a myth; an invention of the new heresy. Adamic mortality would not be to our "eternal death," if we were ourselves "without spot" of disobedience. God will keep no man in the grave because of Adam's sin, if he himself be individually righteous. Death purifies him from hereditary condemnation (Rom. 6:7; 1 Pet. 4:1); resurrection comes by righteousness (Rom. 5:9). How came it, then, that life could not come by the law, as Paul says, in the 3rd chapter of Gal., at the 21st verse: "Is the law, then, against the promises of God? God forbid; for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law." Let me give the Spirit's answer, Rom. 8:3: "What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God" has done in the way which we shall consider when we come to that point. Here, then, is the Spirit's teaching that the weakness of the law, in relation to the bestowing of life eternal, lay in the incapability of the flesh to keep it,' as Jesus said to his disciples: "The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." This is the teaching of the Word, and the teaching of God's Word is decisive in such matters. You may shake a theory over it, and try to make it of none effect, but there the fact remains.
