IV. Man: Natural, Carnal, Spiritual

IV. Man: Natural, Carnal, Spiritual

HUMANITY AND GOD

A Personal Word

On the first Sunday in the year 1903, a few friends were sitting round the fire after supper talking, as preachers will, of sermons and the work of God. The conversation was very frank and brotherly, and turned finally upon my own work. My friends reproached me for ignoring their oft-repeated entreaties that I would publish a volume of sermons. I replied that it had been a fixed rule of my life to regard an open door as an essential element in a call, and for this I had no call. Then I was asked what I would regard as a call of God. I answered at once and without much thought, “An unsolicited request from Hodder and Stoughton.” The subject dropped, as the condition was thought unreasonable. Within twenty-four hours the request came. No one had communicated with the publishers; and there was only one answer possible.

The sermons selected were preached from notes as a series in the regular course of my ministry; and afterwards at the Southport Convention, and the Northfield Conference. That explains some omissions and some repetitions. An underlying unity runs through the series, yet each sermon had to be practically complete in itself.

It is impossible to make adequate acknowledgment of the sources of my indebtedness. I am sure there is nothing in these pages I have not received. Through an exceptionally busy life I have striven to give attention to reading, and what I have read has passed into the fibre and substance of my work. If I have unconsciously wronged any who have been my helpers and teachers, I shall be sorry to have given so blundering an expression to my appreciation and thanks.

I send forth these sermons deeply conscious of their limitations and imperfections. Two things comfort me—a sentence I read many years ago, “A sharp spear needs no polish”; and the fact that every one of these sermons has been blessed of God to many souls. My only prayer concerning them is, that they may be blessed in print as they were blessed in speech, and that Christ’s Name may be glorified.

S. CHADWICK.

Leeds.

I. Humanity and God

“Ye shall be as God:”—Gen. 3:5.

“Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”—S. Matt. 5:48.

Christ and Satan make their appeal to man from the same basis. They both assume his correspondence with the Divine nature and his capacity for Divine fellowship. God-likeness is recognised as his destiny. Satan prevailed in Eden by assuring man that he should be as God; Jesus opened His ministry with the promise that His followers should be perfect as the Father in Heaven. “Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil,” whispered Satan; “Ye shall be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” is the still larger promise of the Son of God. This coincidence provokes the inquiry, Is it possible man can be as God? Is this a lie on the lips of the Tempter, and mere hyperbole on the lips of Jesus?

It is a presumption in favour of its possibility that it is assumed by such opposite personalities as Christ and Satan.

Antagonism more complete than theirs it is impossible to conceive. They are as light and darkness, life and death, Heaven and Hell. There is no basis of concord between them. The settled policy and dominant motive of the Devil is to malign and slander God; the mission of Jesus is to reveal and glorify God. Yet, slanderer and revealer, maligner and glorifier take common ground as to man’s capacity and destiny. Jesus does not contradict the assertion of Satan, neither does Satan challenge the assurance of Jesus. God is represented in the Book of Genesis as endorsing the statement of the Devil, saying, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil,” and Christ’s promise of man’s conformity with God lies at the very foundation of New Testament teaching. One sought the destruction of man and the other his salvation, but they both seek to prevail by appealing to his instinctive consciousness of a Divine destiny. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to conclude that a basis agreed upon by such antagonists may be accepted as real and sound. Whatever differences there may be in motive there is a common choice of the assumed fact that man may become as God. The appeal of both is to man’s instinct for the Divine.

I. In what sense may man be as God?

There is clearly a radical difference between the promise of Satan and that of Jesus. The scenes of temptation in the Garden and the Wilderness are the key to the Devil’s meaning. To Eve he promised the possession of God-like knowledge; to Jesus, the Last Adam, he offered the possession of God-like power. Knowledge is divine, and power belongeth unto God. There is no wrong in knowing, not even in knowing good and evil. The only evil possible to knowledge is getting it by evil means. Knowledge acquired in the path of duty is a sacred possession, but knowledge gained by disobedience covers with shame. It is intended we shall know, and know even as God knows, but the knowledge of evil that comes by the experience of evil is a knowledge that darkens by enlightening. As man’s eyes open to evil by disobedience, they shut to God. Only the pure can have knowledge of evil and live. The words of Satan had a different meaning on his lips from that they conveyed to the ears of Eve. The way to knowledge is not by transgression but by obedience. It is by willing to do that we come to know.

The proposals to Jesus offer the possession of power that shall secure from suffering, exempt from limitation, and exact service and homage. If a Son of God, why hunger? If a Son of God, why bound by natural limitations? If a Son of God, why serve and toil? Conquer and command! Such a conception of Divine authority and power assumes lawlessness in God. It conceives Him as omnipotent to gratify every desire without reserve or regard. It is not an uncommon conception of the Divine prerogative. God is often envied as a magician of endless resource and power, exempt from all the limitations of law. Even Christian men covet unlimited wealth and flatter themselves with imaginary philanthropies, which simply means that if they had God’s resources they would improve on God’s administration. We often believe that God could do wonders if He would, and we are quite sure we would if we could. There is no lawlessness in Omnipotence. God is the most law-abiding Person in His universe. The God that can wish and it is done, does not exist outside man’s imagination. The power of God we may have, but that power is never capricious, lawless, or self-glorying. The kingdoms of the world and their glory we may possess, but never by bowing to the Devil and going forth to crush and grab. These come by another way, and that way is pointed out to us in the promise of Christ.

God-like possessions are inseparable from God-like qualities. “Ye shall be perfect”: that is the way to divinity’s throne. The correspondence is not in natural attributes but in moral qualities. Perfection is through sonship, and sonship is by spiritual affinity and moral correspondence. The promise of perfection marks the climax of an ethical development which assumes discipleship as a basis. The law is spiritual, and evil cherished in the heart is sin. The soul must be clean. Self-sacrifice is the law of life, and every evil thing must be cut off and cast away. Personal wrongs must be borne in meekness, and a cheerful obedience must be given to commands that may be unjustly imposed. A generous excess over exact requirement must mark the conduct, and beneficence must not be restricted to merit and appreciation. These moral qualities are necessary that we may be sons of our Father which is in Heaven. To those who are thus sons is this promise of perfection. Capacity does not always attain to realisation, but it constitutes an obligation. Correspondence of nature demands correspondence of character. Only they are truly sons who are sons indeed. They shall be as God; not in every conceivable attribute of divinity, nor of equal excellence in degree, but in every moral grace and glory we shall be of one quality with Him. We shall be righteous, merciful, and holy, even as He.

The sum of the Divine character is love. God is love. Love also is the fulfilling of the law. In love man finds the Divine perfection. The Sermon on the Mount is the interpretation of the law in the light of love. The Beatitudes set forth the character based upon and inspired by love. Love sees the spirit behind the letter and obeys. Love sees the mercy of mercilessness in sacrifice, and cuts off the offending limb that the life may be saved. Love suffers all things and is kind. Love delights to bless, and yearns most tenderly over the least worthy. Love perfects all things and is itself the sum of all perfection. “Love is of God, and every one that loveth is begotten of God and knoweth God.” The perfect in love are perfect with the perfection of God.

II. The possibility of God-Likeness is guaranteed in the correspondence of Nature between God and man

That correspondence lies deeper than external similarity. It is a correspondence of Nature that amounts to oneness with God. Many of our difficulties have arisen from regarding the two Natures as dissimilar, if not antagonistic and irreconcilable. We have looked upon God as radically different from ourselves, remote from all that was vital to our humanity, and alien to all the instincts of our nature. He has been feared and shunned as the one who above all others speaks of love, but spoils our programmes and robs us of our pleasant things. It is not that men suspect Him of malice or mocking, but it seems as if, from sheer lack of sympathy and knowledge of our nature, He inevitably comes into human life only to disturb and destroy. Providence has come to be the invariable explanation of hardship and disappointment in trouble and sorrow. Such conceptions need only to be expressed to reveal how false they are. God is not diverse and remote, much less antagonistic. He is nigh at hand and so completely of one nature with man that He shares his sorrow and joy. Of His people it is said: “In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His presence saved them: In His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare them, and carried them all the days of old.”

The sense of this nearness is the great lack of our souls. We have suffered not from the intimacy but from the remoteness of our God. To multitudes He is little more than a shadowy presence somewhere far away in the Heavens. They think of Him dreamily in His glory, and seek His favours in the hour of despair. There can be but little passion for things in the dim distance, and no enthusiasm for a personality wrapped in mystery and awe. With such a conception of God, prayer in its purest exercise is impossible. Even with earthly friendships the length and frequency of correspondence is influenced by the distance it has to travel. It seems impossible to write a short letter when it has to travel six thousand miles, and equally impossible to write very often. God is to many little more than a foreign correspondent dwelling in some far-away, unknown land, to be addressed with restraint, and sought when in need. It makes a tremendous difference when the soul realises that God is not far away but nigh at hand, not a shrouded mystery but a living personality, not an unsympathetic embodiment of power but a loving and tender Father.

Man need never be afraid of finding himself too near to God; and nothing has done more to keep him at a distance than the failure to realise the oneness of God’s Nature with his own. God made man in His own image. That image is not in the machinery of man’s bodily organism. The man is the thinking, willing personality at the back of all that. The power that is behind brain, and nerve, and muscle, that is the man. Call him soul, spirit, or what you please, there is the quality that constitutes manhood, and that is the man God first made in His own image. That is the man in whom lies that which is of the very being of God. The “image” is more than mere likeness; it is a facsimile. Jesus is “the image of God,” “the very image of His substance.” An exact and precise counterpart is the idea it conveys, and man was created the counterpart of God. “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that Thou visitest him? For Thou hast made him but little lower than God, and crownest him with glory and honour.”

The process of creation secured his affinity with the Creator. Man is not the result of adaptation and fusion, but the creation of a vital process. God breathed into him the breath of life, and he became a living soul. This cannot mean less than that God imparted to man of the innermost quality of His own being, and that imparted quality is man’s distinctive nature. Man and God share the same living essence and are of one quality of nature. This does not mean that God is nothing more than a magnified man or that man is a miniature God; but it does mean that God is all that man is, and infinitely more. Whatever is an essential quality of manhood, man may find in his God.

Preaching one day in the open air, I quoted the passage in Genesis about God making man in His own image, when a man interrupted and asked if I would accept an amendment to the text. He suggested that to be true to the facts of the case the passage should read: “And man said, Let us make God in our image, after our likeness.” He denied that God was the Maker of man, and affirmed that man was the maker of God. The objection was greeted with applause. It was not new. I had been accustomed to hear it from secularist platforms in my youth. It is an objection that has the daring and smartness that appeals to a crowd, and has in it just enough truth to make it difficult to answer to an open-air audience. So I promptly accepted the amendment and proceeded to prove he was wrong. Anthropomorphism is not untrue. It is only false when it imposes the limitations of humanity upon divinity, and imparts to God the baser things, which are not the essence but the accretions of our manhood. For, after all, there can be no revelation of personality except through personal consciousness. Consequently man cannot know God except as he finds Him within his own personality. “The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart.” No man finds God in Nature who has not first found Him in his own soul. So the revelation of God to man comes to us through the Man Christ Jesus. God and man meet in the One Person. There is no sharp dividing line. Man and God are not diverse but one.

The definition of this relationship is completed in the revelation of Jesus. God is our Father. That the Fatherhood of God is not something different from human fatherhood is evident from His use of the one to illustrate the other. “Of which of you that is a father shall his son ask a loaf, and he give him a stone? or a fish, and he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he give him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” Jesus revealed God by identifying Him with the life of man. God and man are Father and son. Whatever the mysteries involved, father and son must be of one nature. As the father’s very being lives in the being of his child, so is the very being of God in the being of man. The son proceeds from the innermost depths of the father’s life. Here we find bedrock. Whatever else God may be, He is our Father and we are His children. As the son is of the same quality of nature as the father, so is man of one nature with God. There may be much in the Father beyond the comprehension of His child, but at any rate the child can cling, and looking up into His face can say: “Thou art my Father and my God.” That will do. For the rest we can wait.

This revelation comes to man in his sin. By sin, God’s image in man is defaced but not erased. Mercy arrested the curse which grace removed. The Lamb of God has taken away the sin of the world. The “much more” of the covenant of grace more than repeals the covenant of death. Man’s sonship is redeemed in the blood of the Son. The fact of sin, therefore, does not affect the argument. It leaves the conclusion undisturbed, and only exalts the wonder and glory of God. Sin notwithstanding, the Divine element still remains, and sin destroyed, man is raised to conscious fellowship with the Divine nature. The destruction of sin restores manhood to its true level.

III. That man may be as God reaches its highest certainty in the fact of the Incarnation

God has become man in the person of Jesus Christ. In some quarters that may be challenged; but if there is one thing that is clear in the New Testament, it is that Jesus and God are One. He is God “manifest in the flesh”; “the effulgence of His glory, and the very image of His substance.” What light that sheds upon the essential quality of man’s nature! How real must be the correspondence between God and man, to make it possible without loss of identity or break of continuity for God to become man! The Son of God is truly man in every essential of manhood, yet very God of very God. He is the perfect example of manhood: the last Adam; the truly Representative Man. He is man as man was destined to be.

We have separated the Christ from ourselves even as we have separated the Father, and persist in thinking and speaking of Him as removed from us by a difference in nature. That He has a quality of Sonship all His own is quite true, but He is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, made in all things like unto His brethren. As God is our Father, so Christ is our Brother. We are begotten of the One Father. When we speak of two Natures in Christ we speak of necessity the language of mystery and accommodation, but we are certainly not warranted in dividing the Christ against Himself. To speak of some things as limited to His Humanity, and of others as peculiar to His Divinity, is without warrant and without sense. There is no duality in Him. He is one and indivisible. We have no ground for supposing that His experience of hunger, weariness, and suffering differed in any sense from our own. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmity, and was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” He was one with man. He became man.

Between this man Christ Jesus and God there was no antagonism. He was as truly one with God as He was one with men. He believed and declared Himself to be one with the Father. Here again we have divided to our hurt. As we have separated God from ourselves so we have antagonised Father and Son. A false theology has slandered and caricatured God by representing Him as a relentless Shylock grimly exacting extreme penalty from an innocent Son. The result is that the Son is loved and the Father feared. The unspoken creed of many is summed up in the words: “I love Jesus, but I fear God.”

The story is told of a Christian worker who was shocked at the answer received from a dying widow to the assurance of God’s fatherly care for the widow and the fatherless. The dying woman raised herself upon her bed and entreated: “Do not talk about God. I am afraid of God. I hate God. Every hard and bitter thing in my life has come from God.” Quietly the exhausted woman was allowed to recover strength. Then the Christian began to speak of Jesus. “Ah! yes,” said the dying woman, “He’s different, isn’t He? He was so good and kind I like to hear about Him. I could trust Him.” Different? No, He is not different. And yet what that woman said I have heard in effect a thousand times. It seems a dreadful thing to have to say, but it needs to be said, that Jesus is not better than God. He is not different; they are One. When Philip asked that they might see the Father, Jesus answered out of a grieved heart: “Have I been so long time with you and dost thou not know Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in Me?” No, He is not different. God is not only as good as Jesus, but infinitely transcends all that Jesus revealed of Him, for there is a glory yet to be revealed. We have failed to catch the significance of the fact that the Son is the Father’s gift to the world. He was in the Son. All that it cost the Son to redeem the world it cost the Father. He suffered in the suffering Son. “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.” They were not in conflict, they were not dissimilar; they are One.

As Christ was one with God, so we are called to be one with Christ. Everybody admits that. It is the one end of our calling, the ultimate result of discipline, and the final perfection of grace, that “we shall be like Him.” But He is God, and if He is one with God, then oneness with Him must mean oneness with God. “Ye, therefore, shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

IV. This must be possible because it is necessary

Only the God-like enter Heaven. The necessity for holiness is based on the character of God. “Ye shall be holy, for I am holy”; and without holiness “no man shall see the Lord.”

The change in the Revised Version has been welcomed with a sigh of relief. The promise seems much more hopeful than a command. The imperativeness of that imperative perfection made us shudder. But though the tense is altered the imperativeness remains. The promise is a command. The promise is for present possession and the command for immediate obedience.

This is our high and holy calling in Christ Jesus; this is the Divine purpose in the creation and redemption of man; this is the gracious and glorious end of both providence and grace; this is the imperative demand of the Divine character and the condition of Divine fellowship; this is the crown of man’s perfection and the sum of man’s glory, that we are partakers of the Divine Nature and one with God in the glories of His perfection.

II. Sin and Grace

“Where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly.”—Rom. 5:20.

Sin and grace are the two great words of the Christian Religion. They lie at the very heart of the Gospel of Christ. To fail in the understanding of the one is to miss the meaning of the other. Wrong views of sin always issue in false interpretations of grace. The Epistle to the Romans has come to be regarded as the very core of the Gospel, because it deals so completely with these two fundamental words. The fifth chapter sums up the great exposition in its broadest issues as represented in Adam and Christ. Between these two there is a parallel and a contrast; a parallel in the representative character of their works, and a contrast in the operation and issues of their representative acts. The sin of Adam involved the whole race in ruin; the righteousness of Christ restored men to the justification of life. That is the parallel. Apart from any consent or effort, all men are involved in the curse of the first and the atonement of the second. The act of the one is the act of all, and the results of the act are shared by all. The contrast is set forth in the five times “much more” of the chapter. The disobedience of Adam spread sin over the whole race, the obedience of Christ gathered the sins of all unto Himself. From Paradise there went forth the stream of death; from Calvary there flows the river of life. The grace of God in Christ has cancelled sin and destroyed the works of the Devil. Grace has abounded over sin.

The chapter sums up this teaching in five facts about sin, five facts about Jesus Christ, and five facts about grace.

Concerning Sin:

That sin came through Adam’s transgression; that death came by sin; that Adam’s sin involved the whole race; that this racial guilt did not destroy any man’s personal responsibility; that sin and death obtained universal dominion.

Concerning Christ:

That He stands to the race as its Second Representative and Head; that He died for the ungodly; that He rose again from the dead; that the virtue of His obedience is transmitted to those for whom He died; that through Him is imparted the gift of grace which is His own eternal life.

Concerning Grace:

That in Christ the ungodly are justified freely by His grace; that by fellowship with Him we are made righteous before God; that salvation is of grace and not of works; that as salvation restores to righteousness, so by righteousness man regains his regal dominion in life; that grace abounds beyond the ravages of sin.

Taking the first and third of these sets of facts we have stated the Christian doctrines of sin and grace.

I. The Christian Doctrine of Sin

The Bible always deals with man as a sinful being. The fact of sin explains the process of Divine Revelation and the whole economy of Redemption. The Law came to make sin manifest and to correct man’s transgression. Every part of the sacred ordinances proceeded on the assumption of man’s guilt and his need of cleansing. If man be not sinful, the whole Scripture is without meaning and the Gospel a delusion. The Book that gives unique distinction to man in his creation, tells of his transgression and humiliation. According to its account man failed to attain his destiny. He grasped at divinity by forbidden means and fell from his high estate. The bond of fellowship with the Divine was broken, and from kinship with God he fell to kinship with Satan. His understanding was darkened and his heart hardened. From the realm of the spirit he descended to that of the flesh. The symmetry of his nature was broken and its order reversed. Instead of unity there was conflict within him. That which should have governed became captive, and that which was meant for service assumed control. Confusion took the place of harmony, and chaos succeeded a well-ordered cosmos.

There are many witnesses to confirm this Scriptural account of man’s sinfulness. Every religion deals with man as a transgressor, for whose sin atonement must be made. Every conception of religion begins with the fact of sin. There is absolute unanimity in this in every grade of religious belief and ordinance. Not religion only, but every organisation of human life has to begin by reckoning with sin. Laws are passed, penalties fixed, and prisons built, on the assumption that sin exists wherever men are found.

The development of modern thought has brought confirmation to many phases of Biblical teaching about sin, that were long the sport of unbelievers. The orthodox interpretations of facts may still be despised, but to the facts themselves it bears ungrudging witness. Theological formulae appear under such scientific terms as heredity, solidarity, and the survival of the fittest. They teach no more than the Scriptures have taught from the beginning, but we welcome their testimony to the fact and operations of sin. But if there were no other witness every man would be able to furnish his own. “I have sinned” is so universal, that we are driven to the conclusion that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Many attempts are made to account for sin’s origin in man. Some have contended that it is inherent in nature and inseparable from the flesh. Others urge that it is an incident of his growth, an inevitable stage in the process of his evolution, out of which he will grow as a child passes beyond infantile maladies. According to these there was no fall. At most it may have been a failure to rise, but it is more than likely “the fall was a fall upward.” That is the scientific way of falling! In the Scriptural account man was made a little lower than God and fell; in the scientific account he is made a little higher than the brute, but is rising all the time. In the one, sin is regarded as alien to man’s nature, a foreign element, which is no true part of his manhood; in the other, it is a necessary factor in man’s development from which he may never hope to be entirely free.

The Bible does not concern itself with the fall but with the fallen. It comes not to explain but to emancipate, not to philosophise but to save. It explains only where the explanation is deemed necessary to the salvation. The forgetfulness of this simplicity of Scriptural aim leads to much confusion. Stripped of all accessories of allegorical speech, the simple account is that sin entered through the acceptance of evil by the free will of man. Whatever the circumstances, this is the inner reality—man chose evil. There can be no other explanation of the ultimate fact. Without the free choice there could have been no sin. Evil can become possessed of the quality of sin only when it is man’s free choice. Where there is no choice there can be no sin. After all the searching criticism of the Genesis story, in all its essentials it stands as the only rational and adequate explanation of the evil that is in man, and his consequent need of Redemption.

What is sin?

We are on sure ground when we come to the Scriptures for the answer as to its nature and consequences. St. John defines sin as lawlessness. That is the final definition. It tracks sin to its innermost secret, and comprehends all the facts of its manifold operations. Sin is not an act but an attitude. The offence is not only in the transgression but in the intention; not merely in the violation of law but in the disposition of the heart.

Christ emphasised this in the Sermon on the Mount. Anger is murder in malice and motive. Lust is adultery though it never pass beyond the look of desire. The seat of sin is in the will. Man is judged not by what he does, but by what he wills to do. Intention determines quality. The same words may be a term of affection or a stinging insult. The motive makes all the difference. A blow may be an act of friendly playfulness or a challenge to deadly combat; the heart at the back of the hand settles which it is. There is many a thief who never steals. Lawlessness may stop short of transgression but it is the lawlessness that is sin. Man is not a sinner because he is a transgressor; he is a transgressor because he is a sinner. The sin of lawlessness precedes the act of transgression. Disobedience in act is the effect of which lawlessness is the cause. It is not a question of any one commandment but the disposition of the heart to the Giver of them all.

This definition of sin explains a fact and a passage. The fact is the variation in transgression, and the passage is James 2:10. Sin is the revolt of man against the authority of God; that is the essential fact. Different men carry their revolt into practice by breaking different commandments. The same man rarely, if ever, breaks them all. Indeed men are generally very proud of the commandments they keep, and have no sympathy with men who are vicious on lines where they themselves are virtuous. The drunkard will often boast of his chastity, the immoral man is thankful he is not a thief, and the profane swearer flatters himself that he never lies. As a matter of fact none have any room for boasting. That the drunkard is not an adulterer, the immoral man a thief, and the swearer a liar, is simply an accident of temperament and circumstance. When we go astray we turn “every one to his own way.” Given the conditions of desire and opportunity, the man who breaks one commandment would break any one in the Decalogue. The particular point at which we trespass is a matter of small importance; that we should defy God’s boundary at all is the offence. The sliding scale of society is not recognised in the judgments of Heaven. It is the sin at the back of the sins that does the mischief; the sin in desire, intention, and will. Sin is lawlessness, and lawlessness is sin, whether it assume a virtuous or a vicious form. Man is judged not by his acts but by his heart.

This silences for ever the scorn that has been poured on Adam’s Apple. The significance of an act cannot be measured by the value of the thing that gave the occasion. Moral quality is not affected by quantity. The law is one. It is not a succession of separate and independent precepts, but a unit. When any one point is broken, the whole is broken. He that is guilty of offence in the one point is guilty of all. The whole Decalogue is summed up in the one word Love. The same word sums up God and Duty. To break the least, sins against Love, God, and Duty. Not that sin has no degrees, nor that the man who offends only in one point is as bad as the man who offends in all, but to break at all is to break the whole. One leak will sink a ship, and one sin, whatever its form, separates the soul from God and sinks it in degradation and death.

As sin is the sum of all sins, so death is the sum of all its consequences. “The wages of sin is death.” That something more than physical death is meant, is evident both from the narrative in Genesis, and in the Scriptural use of the word. When man sinned he died. Sin is always followed by death. Men are said to be dead while they live. Sin slays the man made in the Divine image. It separates him from God in whom is his life. Guilt, disorder, and desolation are the marks of the soul’s death. Whatever the laws of heredity, they do not exonerate the sinner from his guilt. God holds the sinner responsible for his sin. Disorder follows alienation from the true Centre of his life: disorder within himself, and disorder in the world. After disorder, desolation. Wickedness lays waste all things beautiful and good. It turns Paradise into a wilderness and Heaven into Hell. It is in the heart and in the world as a loathsome pestilence. Sin is the most terrible thing in God’s universe. We have all sinned. There is none sinless among us. The only prayer that becomes our lips is: “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

II. The Christian Doctrine of Grace

Over against this terrible word sin, stands the greater word Grace. This conjunction of the two defines the limits of our consideration of the word which comprehends the Evangelical faith. Grace goes over the trail of sin, tracks it to its innermost recesses, destroys its power, undoes its mischief, and turns its very weapons to its own destruction. Grace not only conquers, it more than conquers; it not only abounds, it abounds more exceedingly. We are saved by grace. What is grace? There is no definition of grace as there is of sin. It defies definition. It is illimitable, infinite, eternal. It is illustrated but never defined. In this connexion it is the overflowing mercy of God, without regard to merit on the one hand or obligation on the other. We had no claim. Our sin had forfeited every right we ever possessed. God was under no obligation. We had defied His authority, rejected His word, and voluntarily forsaken Him for His sworn foe. But of His mercy He saved us. “God commendeth His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Grace redeemed, delivered, and restored man from the curse and dominion of sin. The overtures did not come from man but from God. From first to last, salvation is of the grace of God.

The Method of Grace

Grace is peculiarly associated with the mediatorial work of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is in the sacrifice of the Cross it finds its highest expression. Grace comes to us through Him. Sin finds its destruction in His death. The Cross is meaningless apart from sin. The Scriptures leave us in no doubt that to save man from sin, it was necessary that Christ should die. His death was vicarious and sacrificial. He was “The Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Sin laid the sinner under the wrath and condemnation of God. It separated from God and destroyed the basis of fellowship, which was identity of life. Before man could be restored, sin’s penalty must be paid. A way must be found by which God could be just, and the justifier of the ungodly; a way by which man could be restored not only to the possibility of fellowship, but to moral and spiritual fitness for it. That problem was solved in Jesus Christ the Eternal Son of the Father. It is the burden of the Gospel that He died for our sins. He gathered unto Himself and bore in His own Person the sin of the whole world. Every sinner may look to the Cross and say, He “loved me, He gave Himself up for me.”

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,

In my place condemned He stood;

Sealed my pardon with His blood,

Alleluia! What a Saviour!

How does the grace of God operate to the abounding over sin?

First of all it secures the forgiveness of sin. The race is pardoned. The obedience of Christ was as truly representative as the sin of Adam. “So then as through one trespass the judgement came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life.” As the Apostle argues in the Epistle to the Corinthians, “One died for all, therefore all died.” The race died in Christ just as truly as the race sinned in Adam. When the First Representative sinned, all sinned. When the Last Representative died for sin, all died. This truth is expounded in the next chapter, and its full significance applied to experience. We died in Christ, therefore we are dead to sin; dead to its claims, dead to its allurements, dead to its dominion. We are free from the law of sin and death, delivered from the curse and penalty of sin; offenders, yet justified freely by His grace. This is the first note of the Gospel. “Be it known unto you therefore, brethren, that through this man is proclaimed unto you remission of sins.” “In whom we have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.”

The ambassadors of the Gospel of grace are sent to proclaim the forgiveness of sin. In the forgiveness of the race every offender is pardoned. Not may be, but is! Without exception and without condition we are sent to tell every sinner that Jesus Christ has made Atonement for the world’s sin, and through Him is preached the forgiveness of sin. That is the Gospel, and it is for sinners. How difficult it is to persuade men that the Good News is not reserved for worthy and respectable people! It is for prodigals, outcasts, wanderers; for every one that answers the description and title of sinner. The Lord came, not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. The Church is sent to the same sort of people, and its one and only message is that God for Christ’s sake has forgiven them, and sends us to bring them back to Him. Every barrier is removed, every obligation met, every sin cancelled, every sinner forgiven; the Gospel is a message of a full, free, and universal pardon, on no other conditions than such as are involved in its acceptance through Christ.

That is not heresy but sound Gospel. Then what is the difference between a saved and an unsaved man? Simply this, that one has accepted his pardon and the other has rejected it. Personal acceptance is the only condition of personal salvation. A man may make the Cross of Christ of none effect, and though racially saved, be personally lost. In the Queen’s Jubilee year, 1887, I was in Edinburgh. Passing over George the Fourth Bridge one day I saw a picturesque procession of civic dignitaries going to the old Cross near St. Giles’ Cathedral. There was a great crowd, and I turned and followed them. After a great fanfare of trumpets, a Royal Proclamation was read declaring the Queen’s forgiveness of all deserters from the Army and Navy. I was not near enough to hear the terms of the proclamation, but I understood that all the deserters now pardoned should report themselves within so many days at the nearest military or naval depôt. I afterwards met two of them going to the Castle. What were they going for? To be pardoned? Nay, they were pardoned already. It had been publicly proclaimed. They went simply to claim the certificate of their pardon; not to beg for it, but to claim it. Is that too strong a word to use of the sinner’s forgiveness? Let St. John answer: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Faithful and righteous! Not compassionate and pitiful! Jesus Christ has secured for us a right which a righteous God cannot ignore. Charles Wesley is very bold, but not bolder than the Apostle warrants, when he sings—

That sinner am I

Who on Jesus rely,

And come for the pardon God cannot deny.

The acceptance of pardon implies return to allegiance, and restoration to fellowship and service. The deserter received his certificate and walked into his place in the ranks. He could not accept, and walk out to lawlessness. Even so are repentance and faith assumed in the act of acceptance. Pardon is granted to every sinner, and awaits only the sinner’s personal claim.

Then as pardon abounds over guilt, so sanctification abounds over the presence and effects of sin in the soul. Forgiveness without cleansing would not cover man’s need. The work of grace must be at least co-extensive with the work of sin. A sacrifice at the right hand of God secures our standing, but unless righteousness be implanted as well as imputed, we should still be in the bondage of sin. The Christ who laid down His life for our sins took it again, that He might impart it to us in the Person of His Spirit. Christ in the Heavens justifies; Christ in the heart saves. Where sin had its seat His throne is established. The will is surrendered, the heart cleansed, the desire changed, and the nature renewed. “If any man be in Christ he is a new creation.” “The blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” Cleansing and Regeneration restore man’s nature to its true order, and death is swallowed up in life.

The restored order in the man secures the restoration of the true order in the world. The new man necessitates a New Heaven and a New Earth. Personal regeneration is followed by social reconstruction.

Sin brought guilt, grace brings justification; sin separated man from God, grace brings him nigh by the blood of Christ; sin darkened the understanding and defiled the heart, grace brings light and knowledge and purifies the heart; sin disturbed the true order of man’s nature and defaced the Divine image within him, grace creates him anew after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness; sin cursed the world, grace restores its peace and beauty; sin brought death, grace brings the gift of life. Wherever sin abounded, grace hath abounded more exceedingly.

There are still the two Adams, and the responsibility of choice still lies with man. We may reject grace and continue in sin, or we may renounce sin and live in grace. Every man elects to be identified with Adam or Christ, to choose sin or grace. No man need continue in sin, for grace has abounded unto complete salvation.

III. Born of the Flesh and Born of the Spirit

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew.”—S. John 3:6, 7.

God is every man’s Father, but it does not follow that every man who is God’s offspring is therefore a son of God. The Fatherhood is often interpreted as if it involved the sonship, but it does not. Even among men, the mere fact of physical parentage is but a small element in the relation expressed by the words father and son. The real meaning signifies a bond of affection and reverence, which is not of physical origin. It is possible to be lineally akin and spiritually alien. Parentage may transmit nothing beyond the essential elements of life, every mental and moral quality being in direct antagonism to those of the parent. There are parents that are not parents, and sons that are not sons. Every feature of the relationship is missing except the physical incident of birth.

The Christ who reveals the Universal Fatherhood of God denies the universal sonship of men. “As many as received Him to them gave He the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His Name.” It was a right bestowed, not a right recognised. Sonship, therefore, is conditioned upon receiving Christ. We are sons of God in virtue of our reception of Him: sons by the adoption of grace not of law. In the Sermon on the Mount men are exhorted to cultivate certain moral qualities to this end, “that ye may be sons of your Father which is in Heaven.” God is their Father, yet they need to become His sons. Thus again, sonship is conditioned upon moral and spiritual correspondence. To the Jews, Jesus bluntly denied the claim of sonship. They said, “We have one Father, even God.” He replied in the startling words, “Ye are of your father the Devil.” It is evident, therefore, that although everything involved in Fatherhood is completely realised in God, the conditions of sonship are not universally realised in man. Just as in human kinship natural relations may be repudiated and natural instincts extinguished, so in our Divine relationship, sonship may become a dead letter by sinful repudiation and spiritual alienation.

Consistently with this teaching, the New Testament sharply divides all men into two classes, the children of God and the children of the Devil. These are variously described, but the classification never varies. There is no intermediate class. The twofold classification is all-inclusive. Every man is sheep or goat, converted or unconverted, saved or lost, a child of light or a child of darkness, quickened into life or dead in sin, a son of God or a child of the Devil. Division so sharp and uncompromising jars upon the susceptibilities of the easy toleration of our times. It lacks accommodation, flexibility, and discrimination. Besides, it creates embarrassments. Men of moral definiteness may be sharply divided, but there are many who can scarcely be ranked with either the distinctly good or the definitely bad. Are not men after all a mixture of good and bad? Many of the irreligious are personally attractive, while some religious people are decidedly repulsive. Unspiritual men are often scrupulously moral, while others zealous in religion are unscrupulously lax in morality. Yet the Lord never wavers in His judgement. He judges by the heart, and at heart every man is of the flesh or of the Spirit.

I. This distinction Christ attributes to the operation of the fundamental and universal law: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.”

All living things come into being by birth. Life cannot be manufactured. The processes of fusion and adaptation can accomplish much, but they cannot produce life. Everything short of life can be attained. The elements of life can be analysed and copied, the forms of life can be imitated so perfectly that the most microscopic examination reveals no difference, but there is no life. The protoplasmic germ can be made up so perfectly that it is impossible to distinguish the natural from the artificial, but out of the one comes life, whilst in the other there is no life. The mysterious element eludes and baffles all human skill. There is no life but by communication from a living parent. Nothing lives that does not come by the gateway of birth.

Parentage determines nature. The propagation of every form of life is limited to its own kind. Life carries its seed within itself; the seed it yields is after its own kind; to each seed is given a body of its own. In the sphere of Nature every seed brings forth after its own kind and no other. This law is never transgressed. The creatures of the sea bring forth after their kind, and every winged fowl after its kind. That which is born of the animal is animal; that which is born of vegetable is vegetable; that which is born of man is man.

Upon this universal law Jesus bases the universal necessity of the New Birth. The spiritual kingdom demands a quality of being not possessed by the natural man. Here again we touch a fundamental principle. Every kingdom demands as a condition of citizenship correspondence with its own quality of life. The realms of music and art are impossible to all who are destitute of musical and artistic gifts. Mathematics are forbidden ground to men who have no capacity for figures and no power of calculation. The man born blind is not more destitute of the sense of light and colour than is the man utterly without conception of the things for which he has no mental faculty. If any man would enter the kingdom of harmony he must be musical; if he would enter the kingdom of art he must have the soul of an artist; if he would enter the kingdom of pure reason he must have the gift of sequence, order, and relation. No kingdom is accessible without affinity for its own peculiar nature and order of life and service. Therefore the first demand of a spiritual kingdom is a spiritual nature. Since “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” Jesus says, “Marvel not, that I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew.” The new birth is the inevitable necessity of universal law.

II. The natural man is disqualified for a spiritual kingdom

Man is born of the flesh and needs to be born again of the Spirit. The term flesh is variously used in the New Testament:

1. Of all living creatures. 1 Cor. 15:39.

2. The substance of the living body. Col. 2:1; 2 Cor. 4:11; Gal. 4:13.

3. The life lived in the body. Gal. 2:20; Heb. 5:7.

4. Natural generation. Rom. 9:3, 5.

5. The animal nature of man without suggestion of depravity. S. John 1:13.

6. The whole of man’s human nature. Rom. 8:3; 1 John 4:2; 1 Tim. 3:16.

7. Ethically of life lived in the power and dominion of the flesh.

In its ethical sense it—

(a)      Is the avenue of evil. S. Matt. 26:41.

(b)      Incites to sin. Rom. 7:18; 13:14; Gal. 5:16–21; Jude 23.

(c)      Makes captive to sin. Rom. 7:14–23; 8:6–8.

(d)      Brings forth death. Rom. 7:5; Gal. 6:8.

When flesh is used as opposed to spirit, it denotes the earthly nature of man apart from Divine influence, and corresponds to S. Paul’s expression, the natural man. It signifies the entire man, sense and reason, without the Holy Spirit. This flesh-born humanity cannot enter the kingdom of God. Its disqualifications are Intellectual, Emotional, and Volitional.

Christ’s condemnation of the flesh is threefold:

1. It cannot see the kingdom of God.

2. It cannot enter the kingdom of God.

3. It chooses evil and darkness rather than goodness and light.

This is confirmed in the teaching of S. Paul. “The natural man,” he says, “receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them because they are spiritually judged.” That is the intellectual disqualification; they cannot see the kingdom of God.

Again, “They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh—for the mind of the flesh is death—because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be: and they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” That is the emotional disqualification; they have neither desire nor appreciation of the things of the Spirit. They cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Then again, writing to the Ephesians of their unregenerate life, he says: “Wherein aforetime ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience; among whom we also once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest.” That is the volitional disqualification. The will enslaved to the lusts of the flesh, captive to the Prince of the power of the air, the unregenerate choose to live according to the course of this world. Children of the flesh are the children of wrath. The passage does not refer to the wrath of God, although that also may be implied. It does not mean that every child comes into the world the subject of Divine displeasure. God is not mentioned in the whole passage. The phrase must be interpreted as similar expressions are interpreted. Children of light, children of darkness, and children of disobedience, are descriptive of the manner and quality of life. So the “children of wrath” sums up in a phrase the characteristics of the life of men dead in trespasses and sins. They are the children of impulse, lust, and passion, following the desires of the flesh and of the mind. All the features of the life of the flesh are gathered up in another Ephesians passage. Writing of the Gentiles who walk in the vanity of their mind, he says, “Being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” Their minds darkened, their souls alienated from God the only source of true life, their hearts hardened, they choose to live according to the passions and lusts of the flesh.

These then are the marks of the flesh. It cannot see the things of the Spirit; it has no love for God or the things of His kingdom; it does not desire either Him or His; it chooses to live for the things of the flesh according to the course of this world; it is enslaved and captive to the god of this world. The derangement of man’s nature by sin has darkened his understanding, depraved his affections, and enslaved his will. In face of these things who can wonder that the first demand of the kingdom of God is that man must be born again? The mind must be enlightened, the heart renewed, and the will emancipated before we can enter the kingdom of Heaven.

The need of this New Birth is universal. If any man might have claimed exemption it was Nicodemus. He was a man of great intellectual refinement, deep religious sensibility, and unimpeachable character, yet it was to him Jesus said, “Marvel not, that I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew.” Culture can never supersede conversion, nor can education dispense with the need of regeneration. To the “scientific mind” this also is foolishness. It resents limitation, and ridicules the idea that it cannot discover things revealed unto babes. But faculties missing at birth cannot be afterwards supplied. Imperfect organs may be remedied or developed, but the sense itself must be born. In the birth “of the flesh” the spiritual is potentially present, but comes to birth only by the operation of the Spirit. A sense missing at birth cannot be supplied by extra cultivation of others. Touch may become wonderfully sensitive, but it cannot give sight. Hearing may be developed to the utmost acuteness, but it cannot give the sense of taste or smell. Neither is it possible to develop a spiritual faculty out of natural endowments. Nature may be educated to the utmost limits of its own powers, but it cannot be educated into something of a totally different nature. There is no process by which a man can be developed out of a horse, or a beast out of a bird. So between the natural and the spiritual there is a great gulf fixed. Even Timothy who from a child had known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make men wise unto salvation, is Paul’s son in the Gospel, having been begotten of him in the Spirit. It is a hard saying for men of great natural attainments, refined sensibilities, and a native consciousness of self-sufficiency, that Regeneration is as necessary for them as for the ignorant and degraded, but it is the simple truth. All are born of the flesh and need to be born again of the Spirit. The necessity is fundamental, therefore universal.

III. What is it to be born of the Spirit?

God has thrown an impenetrable veil over the beginnings and processes of life. That we live we know, but how we live no man can tell. Life is evident to the consciousness, manifest to the senses, but mysterious in its process. So it is with the life that is born of the Spirit. “The wind bloweth where it listeth,” there is the fact; “and thou hearest the voice thereof,” there is the evidence of the fact; “but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth,” there is the mysterious process of the fact. We know that we have entered into a new life, but how the Spirit of God operates upon the soul, enlightening the mind, renewing the heart, subduing the will, creating a new nature, belongs to the hidden things of God. The fact we know, the results are manifest, the method is a solemn mystery.

There are, however, some instructive negative, and one or two positive truths revealed concerning even the process. The children of God are born we are told, “Not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” The negatives are, that no man can become a child of God by natural descent, “it is not of bloods”; or by any refinement, cultivation, development, of the natural man, it is not “of the will of the flesh”; or by any aspiration, resolution, or effort of the soul, it is not “of the will of man.” Ancestry, education, determination, avail not to make a man a child of God. The positive truths are, that it is a birth; by the direct operation of the Spirit of God, through the agency of truth. It is a birth, not a development. It is the beginning of a new life, not the introduction of the old life into new conditions. It is an act of creation by which the man is born again, a new creature in Christ Jesus. The life is begotten in the soul by the Holy Spirit and the vehicle of communication is the Word of God. “Except a man be born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” The water refers not to Baptism but to the truth of which Baptism is the sign. The cleansing is “by the washing of water with the Word.” Regeneration is both a washing and a renewal. The soul is purified by obedience to the truth, “having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the Word of God.”

The nature of the change wrought in man is indicated by its contrast with the flesh. A birth is an emancipation and an enlargement of capacity and opportunity. By spiritual birth man escapes from his imprisonment within the limitations of the fleshly life, and enters a new kingdom with new interests and activities. The intellectual, emotional, and volitional disqualifications disappear. Born of God he begins to know God and to receive the things of the Spirit. His hatred and dread of God give place to love and fellowship. His affections, desires, and feelings are changed from the things of the flesh to the things of God. His will is emancipated. He finds his freedom in surrender to the will of God, and his delight in obedience to that will. His derangement having ceased, his delusions disappear, and order being restored, his whole life moves with the spontaneity of a second nature in the spiritual kingdom. Born of the Spirit he lives in the Spirit, walks not after the flesh but after the Spirit, prays in the Spirit, lives, moves, and has his being in the realm of the Spirit. The new life fills up the lack of the natural man, endues every faculty with its utmost possibility, secures order and harmony throughout the whole being, and restores life to its true relation with God and the universe. By it man becomes a child of God and a citizen of Heaven, which is as far above the life of the flesh, as the life of man is above that of the brute.

The marks of sonship are correspondence and co-operation

“If ye were Abraham’s children ye would do the works of Abraham … ye do the works of your father … ye are of your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do.” Jesus appealed constantly to His works as the proof of His Sonship. “The works that I do in My Father’s name, these bear witness of Me.” “If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do them, though ye believe not Me, believe the works: that ye may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.” To Philip He said, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from Myself: but the Father abiding in Me doeth His works.”

They that are of the flesh do the works of the flesh. They that are of the Spirit bring forth the fruit of the Spirit. Oneness of nature manifests itself in fellowship of sympathy, correspondence of character, and co-operation in service. The sons of God are God-like, and the children of the Devil bear the marks of their father. Every man’s pedigree is declared in his conduct. “In this the children of God are manifest and the children of the Devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.” The child of God purifies himself as He is pure, is holy for He is holy, and dwells in love for God is love. He is born of God, dwells in God, belongs to God, works with God, and is like God. He has become the son of the Father which is in Heaven.

The experiences which accompany regeneration are no essential part of the process, and vary with conditions of temperament and education but the fundamental necessity and the supreme privilege of every man are, that he should be born anew of the Spirit, and by faith in Christ become a child of God.

IV. Man: Natural, Carnal, Spiritual

“Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: and he cannot know them because they are spiritually judged.”—1 Cor. 2:14.

“And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with meat; for ye were not able to bear it; nay, not even now are ye able; for ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal, and walk after the manner of men?”—1 Cor. 3:1–3.

“And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly: and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it.”—1 Thess. 5:23, 24.

The Bible has its own account of man. It does not profess to be exhaustive, scientific, or complete. It is an account consistent with its own special purpose. Scriptural history is recorded as the vehicle of Revelation. Whatever is extraneous to that specific object is omitted without regard to its value to other departments of knowledge. The purpose settles the principle of selection. That purpose from first to last is religious and not scientific. The story of man’s creation is told not to furnish a complete account of the processes by which the worlds were made, but to make plain man’s relation to God. It asserts the fact of the Divine origin of all created things; reveals God as a personality distinct from creation, existing before all worlds, and Himself their Creator; and manifests the unity of God through all the manifold operations. The account is written for the correction of all possible errors concerning God’s relation to the universe. The fact of Divine origin is the answer to the Atheistic interpretation of the world. The distinct personality denies the theory of the Pantheist, who regards Deity as inseparable from the universe, all things being the sum total of Divinity. The unity of the Creator corrects the Polytheism of idolatry which attributes the creation of the various elements to different deities. It was to reveal the Unity, Personality, and Creative Energy of God, that the Bible account was written. It is not a scientific treatise; that lies outside its purpose. Neither is it a complete history; it is a selection of events with a view to a specific object.

But though the Bible is non-scientific it is never un-scientific. Revealed truth can never be out of harmony with anything that is true, and it anticipates all ultimate developments of truth. Every new discovery in the principles and method of the operations of nature sheds new light upon the revelation of the Word, and corrects false conceptions and erroneous interpretations, but there can be no ultimate antagonism between truth scientifically established and truth that has come by revelation. Truth is one, and at the last, truth discovered will confirm truth revealed.

The philosophy of the Bible is just as specific as its account of creation. It does not profess to give us a complete explanation of man’s nature, much less the complete story of his development and history. In a strikingly picturesque and simple way it sets forth his primitive state as neither highly civilised nor barbarously savage. He was placed in a garden in a state of innocency and simplicity, with his final destiny unrealised and unknown. The fact of his probation is indicated by the simple laws by which he was to live. Under the seductive pressure of temptation he snatched prematurely at his destiny and fell under sin. He was not, however, utterly lost even as to his destiny. Grace broke his fall. The promise of redemption and restoration proves him redeemable. No essential part of his nature was utterly lost. God undertook his salvation. The story of the Scriptures is the story of man’s Redemption, Regeneration, Sanctification, and Glorification. It covers the whole distance from his fall through sin to his ultimate restoration through grace.

As the Biblical account of man is specific, so is its terminology peculiar. Non-Biblical philosophies divide man into mind and matter; the Bible divides him into flesh, soul, and spirit. It also classifies man according to this threefold division as Natural, Carnal, and Spiritual. These terms are the subject of much controversy into which we cannot now enter. Our purpose is to understand their Biblical meaning as it bears upon Christian life and experience.

Flesh, Soul, Spirit

The non-ethical use of the word flesh does not here concern us. When S. Paul speaks of his flesh as an active principle opposed to righteousness, he does not refer to the flesh and blood of his natural body. The bodily organism has no moral quality in itself. When ethical and moral qualities are attributed to it, the term is always figurative and special. In Pauline terminology “flesh” is used to denote the principle, or the seat of the principle, which in fallen human nature resists the law; which is in antagonism with man’s higher nature which consents to the law; and which, in the regenerate, wars against the Spirit. The same principle is variously described as “the old man,” “the body of sin,” “the body of the flesh,” and “the body of death.” The explanation of this evil association of the word is not that the flesh is the only occasion of sin, for we read of “sinful desires of the mind” and “the defilement of the spirit,” as well as of the lust of the flesh. But it is so largely through the appetites and passions of the flesh that men are tempted, that the Apostle makes the medium the figurative representative of the principle itself. It therefore stands for the principle of sin in man.

What is the distinction between soul and spirit? Are they separate or identical? Are they separate qualities or simply two aspects of the non-material in man? There are only three passages where the words occur together, and in two of them the third term occurs also. The reference in 1 Corinthians 15:45 is to the Resurrection, and indicates the difference between Adam and Christ, one being made unto the race a living soul, and the other a quickening Spirit. The second occasion is in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, where the Apostle prays for their complete sanctification and entire preservation in spirit, soul, and body, unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The third is Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” This does not mean that the various parts mentioned are distinct and separable quantities, dividing soul from spirit and joints from marrow, but that the interpenetrating power of the Word lays bare the true nature of every part of man.

The terms, like the term flesh, have to be considered religiously rather than psychologically, and there is no warrant to justify the recognition of three distinct elements in human nature. As flesh is used for the seat of the principle of sin, so soul is the region of feeling, affection, impulse; and the spirit is the realm of spiritual consciousness and the shrine of the Divine indwelling. The terms are adopted for practical purposes, body and soul, flesh and spirit, being interchangeable expressions for the nature of man. In soul and spirit the one immaterial principle is distinguished as it is related on the one hand to the world of sense through the body, and on the other to the world of spiritual realities. The soul comes between the higher and the lower elements of our being, and is common to both body and spirit. It is the sphere of our desires and passions, the moral quality of which is determined by their direction. Allied with the flesh they become worldly and sinful, controlled by the spirit they become innocent and holy. The spirit in man is the element which is turned to God and capable of God. Dead or dormant in the unregenerate, it is quickened into life by the Holy Spirit, and when entirely possessed by Him who quickens, man dwells in God and God in him. He knows God, communes with God, discerns God in all things and sees all things in Him.

A Threefold Classification

This threefold distinction in the elements of man’s being leads to a threefold classification of man’s moral and spiritual character. Men are described as Natural, Carnal, and Spiritual. The Natural man or “animal,” as it is always rendered in the margin of the Revised Version, is the man in whom the soul has not been quickened into fellowship with spiritual realities. He is the man Christ speaks of as “born of the flesh,” and whose soul lies in the sphere of sense. He has no discernment of spiritual things and is without the knowledge of God, and as the life of the soul is in the knowledge of God, he is dead to the spiritual realities for which he was created. He is soulish, animal, sense-bound. The spiritual man is born of the Spirit, discerns the spiritual realities, offers spiritual sacrifices, and enjoys spiritual fellowship. He is quickened into a new life, is born into a new Kingdom, judges all things by a new standard, and lives in the flesh a new life of the Spirit.

The Natural and the Spiritual thus correspond to those born of the flesh and those born of the Spirit, upon which is based the decisive classification of the New Testament of all men into two classes. But what of this simple division when a third class is added? We read of some who were sanctified and yet not spiritual, in Christ yet carnal, called saints and yet fleshly. The kingdoms of the flesh and spirit are diametrically opposed, and yet the fleshly has overlapped into the spiritual. The old man lives in the new life. Regenerate men live carnal lives. What can this mean? The Apostle does not say they are flesh, but that they are fleshly. There is a great difference between the earth and things that are earthy, between ground that is stone and soil that is stony. One is the very nature of the thing; it is rock—solid, unrelieved stone. The other is the incidental characteristic of another substance; the ground is soil but the soil is stony. So he says of these regenerate people, that, though they are within the realm of the Spirit, they are fleshly rather than spiritual. Just as some men are in the world but not far from the Kingdom, so these people are in the Kingdom but not far from the world. The Corinthian Christians were born again, but were only “babes in Christ,” and the trend of their lives was still after the old order rather than the new.

That saints should be carnal seems utterly illogical, but it is true to experience and consistent with the laws of all life that the new-born should be babes. The new birth starts impulses and emotions within the soul that seem to be irresistible in their power. The whole current of life is reversed, the old nature is changed, a Divine influence pervades and impels the soul. Old things have passed away and all things become new. The old allurements are loathed, old desires changed, and old ties broken. The whole nature is vitalised with a new energy that sweeps the soul God-ward with a mighty sense of unconquerable life. All things are possible in the thrilling enthusiasm of a new-born soul. The possibility of inward conflict or slackness seems to be lost in the rapture of a new sense of the Infinite. The spiritual life will surely be as natural to the new nature as the fleshly life was to the old. It will be instinctive, automatic, irresistible. After a time the new man is confronted by a resurrection of the old. He has a will that rebels, an old lust that revives, old habits that clutch his soul. Regeneration is only a birth, and a birth is but a beginning. Things of the flesh do not retire without a contest; the new life has to fight for its existence and to conquer before it can be supreme. Sin in believers may be a perplexity to both believers and unbelievers, it may be condemned as illogical and inconsistent, but there can be no doubt of its existence. The seventh chapter of Romans seems impossible after the sixth, but it is the only way to the eighth. The new life, though Divine, needs defence, cultivation, and discipline. Babes in Christ are beset with carnalities.

What are the Characteristics of Babes? They live by impulse rather than by principle, are impressed by externals, contend for non-essentials, and are of feeble digestion. A babe does not reason, has no idea of values, is without sense of proportion, and must be fed with milk. The life is soulish. The same characteristics appear in babes of the spiritual realm. They are dominated by the senses and influenced by carnalities. It is fleshly to walk according to the impulse and desires of the mind. Spiritual babes live on emotion rather than walk by principle, and judge by feeling rather than by faith. What the soul likes counts for more than what God wills. When the feelings are lifted up, the soul rejoices. What the heart desires, that it seeks. “I don’t like it,” or “I do” becomes the unreasoning and unreasoned ground for every judgment and the guide for every choice. Born of the Spirit, they still walk after the flesh.

It is the same childish element in men that is more impressed by externals than by inward realities. These “Babes” elected their rival favourites among the Apostles according to the judgement of the flesh. The preference for Paul, Apollos, or Cephas was purely personal and selfish. The choice was made on grounds of personal gratification. The preacher was preferred because he flattered and gratified the intellectual, emotional, or social qualities. Sugar-plums count for much in the preferences of babes. In worship they are influenced by the sensuous and spectacular rather than by the inward and spiritual. Ritual always appeals to the nursery. The millinery, drapery, processions, and awesomeness of ritual impress those who have no deeper vision. It is meet and appropriate for those who have not yet learned that God is Spirit, and that all acceptable worship is spiritual. The less perception there is of the spiritual, the greater is the demand for the perfection of the carnal. When a service becomes a performance, it ceases to be worship.

The same dependence upon the external is seen in their conduct. They need to have everything carefully labelled. Spiritual men have an anointing of the Holy One and know all things. They are led of the Spirit, and have no need of minute instructions from others. But labels are necessary for nurseries. The rule must be by precept, an unequivocal “Thou shalt,” and an authoritative “Thou shalt not.” They must be told specifically what is right and what is wrong. The things of the conscience are too deep and perplexing for their tender minds; an over-lord must be found to undertake for them. A spiritual instructor is needed to supply the lack of spiritual perception. Tutors and governors are inseparable from our nonage.

Another mark of childishness is the readiness to quarrel over trifles. Nothing is too trivial to become the occasion of wrangling among children, and one is filled with astonishment at the magnitude of the strife over trifles among grown-up people. Sensitiveness is often only petulance and selfishness writ large. Home and Church are often disturbed by the petty jealousies and wranglings of people who ought to know better. The Church at Corinth is not the last of the Churches to be cursed with the carnalities of its people; the writer to the Hebrews makes the same complaint. Men who by their years ought to have been teachers were still at the rudiments of religion, without experience, without sense, and without discrimination, babes who had to be fed on milk. The explanation of their ungrown condition is that they are carnal, and not spiritual. They are babes whose mental and spiritual faculties are undeveloped, overgrown in years and undergrown in character. The Churches are overstocked with overgrown babes, and cursed with the carnalities of Spirit-born people.

From Carnal to Spiritual

The writer to the Hebrews exhorts the babes “to cease to speak of the first principles of Christ, and press on unto perfection.” Let childish things be put away. The childishness can be cured only by the carnalities being uprooted, and they can be uprooted only by the completion of Regeneration in the Entire Sanctification of the man. This is the Divine purpose in man’s salvation: “This is the will of God, even your sanctification that ye abstain from fornication; that each one of you know how to possess himself of his own vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the passion of lust.” “God chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit.” Entire sanctification is the complete sanctification of the entire man. The Apostle’s prayer for the Thessalonians is the most comprehensive statement of this doctrine. It asks for an absolute and unrestricted sanctification “negative and positive, perfect in whole, and perfect in parts, at once consummate and progressive, confirmed for time and for eternity.”

There is a sense in which sanctification is entire in regeneration. It is a mistake to imagine there can be laxity and defect in the work of conversion. To the measure of every man’s light the surrender to God must be without reserve, and the cleansing of the heart from an evil conscience is as entire as justification is complete. “By one offering, He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” At conversion we become the Lord’s and are laid upon the altar of sanctification. That sacrifice must always be entire. No part can be withheld if the offering is to be acceptable, and whatever is laid upon the altar is sanctified. No Christian can live in sin, or knowingly withhold anything from the Lord.

Though sanctification is in this sense complete at conversion, in the purpose of God and the experience of the believer, much is left to be accomplished in the nature of the sanctified. The carnalities need to be purged out. Entire Sanctification completes the work of Regeneration, pervading every part of the renewed nature. The spirit is sanctified wholly; the reason is filled with the all-pervasive presence of God realised in the consciousness. Every faculty of the mind is not only cleansed from defilement, but in every part there is reflected the mind of God. The soul is sanctified wholly; its desires are holy, its passions clean, its thoughts pure, its impulses God-ward, and its delight is in the will of the Lord. The tugging of the old nature with its evil lusts is over. The body is sanctified wholly; its members become instruments of righteousness; it is a temple of God, cleansed, sanctified, and filled with the glory of His presence. The sanctification of the parts is not a separate process. The work is one, and is accomplished in the sanctification of the man. The parts are mentioned to set forth the completeness and entireness of the work of God in redeemed and sanctified man. It is entire, complete, without restriction, and without defect. Every part is cleansed, perfected, and pervaded with the energy of the Divine Presence. The fleshly is eradicated and the spiritual prevails.

In this state of entire sanctification the entire man is preserved without blame. The God that sanctifies, keeps. He that is able to do, is able to maintain what He has done. The words of the Apostle are chosen with the utmost care. He does not pray that they may be kept without fault, but without blame. Many blameless things are faulty, and many faulty things are blameless. A work done from purest love and to the utmost capacity may be full of faults but entirely free from blame. A picture is often hung in the home that has a value apart altogether from the judgement of the Academy. Faultless? Not by a long way. But a pure soul put its best into it, and soul is more than precision. Faultless? Nay, for though the sanctification be entire, it is not final. The glorification is not yet. Until it comes the spirit will be beset with limitations and infirmities, the soul will be hampered in its aspirations, and the body will continue to be an imperfect instrument preventing with its weakness the will of the spirit. Not faultless, but blameless. Without reproach, without condemnation, and in all things acceptable before God!

That is the promise and possibility of grace. The worship of man’s spirit, the desire of man’s heart, the functions of man’s body a blameless, perpetual sacrifice unto the Lord Most High. Blameless, not merely according to the low ideals of mortality, but in the searching light of the eternal at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thought can climb no higher. It is exceeding abundantly, above all we could ask or think. No wonder the Apostle pledges the Almighty to the task. God has called us unto this perfection, and He also will do it. He is faithful, and cannot fail. The prayer is a promise, and God is pledged. When, when shall it once be? Even here and now the promise is ours, and the sanctifying power waits upon our faith.

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