(Excerpts
continued…)
Where Is
the Blessedness?
Everybody
who has ever had any acquaintance with the Lord, knows that in accepting Him
there is joy. It is always expected that a new convert will have a beaming
countenance, and a joyful testimony. So it had been with the Galatians. But now
their expressions of thanksgiving had given place to bickering and strife. See
Gal.5:15.
Gal
5:15 But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not
consumed one of another.
Is it not strange that people do not
expect that old Christians will have as much enthusiasm as young converts? that
it is taken for granted that the first joy, and the warmth of the first love,
will gradually die away? So it is, but so it should not be. That which God has against His
people is this, that they have left their first love. Rev.2:4. "The path of
the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect
day." Prov.4:18.
Note that this is the path of the just, and the just are they who live by
faith. When men turn from the faith, or attempt to substitute works for it, the
light goes out. Jesus said, "These things have I spoken unto you, that My
joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." John 15:11. He
gives the oil of joy--the Holy Spirit--for mourning, and that is abiding. The
life is manifested that we might have fullness of joy. 1Joh.1:1-4. The fountain
of life is never exhausted; the supply is never diminished. If, therefore, our
light grows dim, and our joy gives place to a dull, monotonous grind, we may
know that we have turned aside out of the way of life.
Desiring
to Be under the Law
"Tell
me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?" After
what we have already had, there will be no one to come with the objection that
to be under the law can not be a very deplorable condition, else the Galatians
would not have desired to be under it. "There is a way that seemeth right
unto a man; but the end thereof are the ways of death." Prov.16:25. How
many there are who love ways that everybody except themselves can see are
leading them direct to death; yes, there are many who, with their eyes wide
open to the consequences of their course, will persist in it, deliberately
choosing "the pleasures of sin for a season," rather than
righteousness and length of days. To be "under the law" of God is to
be condemned by it as a sinner chained and doomed to death, yet many millions
besides the Galatians have loved the condition, and still love it. Ah, if they
would only hear what it says! There is no reason why they should not hear it,
for it speaks in thunder tones. "He that hath ears to hear, let him
hear."
"What
Saith the Law?"
It saith,
"Cast out the bondwoman and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall
not be heir with the son of the freewoman." It speaks death to all who
take pleasure in the beggarly elements of the world. "Cursed is every one
that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to
do them." To what place shall the wicked bond-servant be cast
out?--"Into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of
teeth." "For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and
all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day
that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave
them neither root nor branch." Therefore, "Remember ye the law of
Moses My servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the
statutes and judgments." Mal.4:1,4. All who are under the law, whether
they be called Jews or Gentiles, Christians or Mohammedans, are in bondage to
Satan,--in the bondage of transgression and sin,--and are to be cast out.
"Every one that committeth sin is the bond-servant of sin. And the
bond-servant abideth not in the house forever; the son abideth forever."
Thank God, then, for "the adoption of sons."
"Two
Sons."
Those
false teachers would persuade the brethren that in turning from whole-hearted
faith in Christ and trusting to works which they themselves could do, they
would become children of Abraham, and so heirs of the promises. They forgot
that Abraham had two sons. I myself have talked with a Jew according to the
flesh, who did not know that Abraham had more than one son; and there are many
Christians who seem to think that to be descended from Abraham, after the flesh,
is all-sufficient to insure one a share in the promised inheritance. "They
which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the
children of the promise are counted for the seed." Rom.9:8. Now of the two
sons of Abraham, one was born after the flesh, and the other was by promise,
born of the Spirit. "By faith even Sarah herself received power to
conceive seed when she was past age, since she counted Him faithful who had
promised." Heb.11:11, R.V. Hagar was an Egyptian slave. The children of a
slave woman are always slaves, even though their father be a freeman; and so
Hagar could bring forth children only to bondage. But long before Ishmael was
born, the Lord had plainly signified to Abraham, who wished that his servant
Eliezer might be his heir, that it was not a bond-servant, even though born in
his house, that He had promised him, but a free-born son,--a son born of a
freewoman. God has no slaves in His kingdom.
"These
Are the Two Covenants."
What are
the two covenants?--The two women, Hagar and Sarah; for we read that Hagar is
Mount Sinai, "which gendereth to bondage." That is, just as Hagar
could not bring forth any other kind of children than slaves, so the law, even
the law that God spoke from Sinai, can not beget freemen. It can do nothing but
hold them in bondage. "The law worketh wrath:" "for by the law
is the knowledge of sin." The same is true of the covenant from Sinai, for
it consisted merely of the promise of the people to keep that law, and had,
therefore, no more power to make them free than the law itself had,--no more
power than they already had in their bondage. Nay, rather, it "gendered to
bondage," since their making it was simply a promise to make themselves
righteous by their own works, and man in himself is "without
strength." Consider the situation:
The people were in the bondage of sin; they had no power to break their chains;
but the speaking of the law made no change in their condition; it introduced no
new feature. If a man is in prison for crime, you can not release him by
reading the statutes to him. It was the law that put him there, and the reading
of it to him only makes his captivity more painful. "Then did not God Himself lead them into
bondage?"--Not by any means; since He did not induce them to make that
covenant at Sinai. Four hundred and thirty years before that time He had made a
covenant with Abraham, which was sufficient for all purposes. That covenant was
confirmed in Christ, and, therefore, was a covenant from above. See John 8:23.
Joh
8:23 And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are
of this world; I am not of this world.
It
promised righteousness as a free gift of God through faith, and it included all
nations. All the miracles that God had wrought in delivering the children of
Israel from Egyptian bondage were but demonstrations of His power to deliver
them and us from the bondage of sin. Yes, the deliverance from Egypt was itself
a demonstration not only of God's power, but also of His desire to lead them
from the bondage of sin, that bondage in which the covenant from Sinai holds
men, because Hagar, who is the covenant from Sinai, was an Egyptian. So when
the people came to Sinai, God simply referred them to what He had already done,
and then said, "Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep
My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people; for
all the earth is Mine." Ex.19:5. To what covenant did He refer?--Evidently
to the one already in existence, His covenant with Abraham. If they would
simply keep God's covenant, that is, God's promise,--keep the faith,--they would
be a peculiar treasure unto God, for God, as the possessor of all the earth,
was able to do with them all that He had promised. The fact that they in their
self-sufficiency rashly took the whole responsibility upon themselves, does not
prove that God led them into making that covenant, but the contrary. He was
leading them out of bondage, not into it, and the apostle plainly tells us that
covenant from Sinai was nothing but bondage.
Further, if the children of Israel who came out of Egypt had but walked
"in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet
uncircumcised" (Rom.4:12), the law would never have been spoken from
Sinai; "for the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not
to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of
faith" (Rom.4:13). Faith justifies, makes righteous; if the people had had
Abraham's faith, they would have had the righteousness that he had; and then
there would have been no occasion for the entering of the law, which was
"spoken because of transgression." The law would have been in their
hearts, and they would not have needed to be awakened by its thunders to a
sense of their condition. God never expected, and does not now expect, that any
person can get righteousness by the law proclaimed from Sinai; and everything
connected with Sinai shows it. Yet the law is truth, and must be kept. God
delivered the people from Egypt, "that they might observe His statutes,
and keep His laws." Ps.105:45. We do not get life by keeping the commandments, but God gives us life
in order that we may keep them.
The Two
Covenants Parallel
Note the
statement which the apostle makes when speaking of the two women, Hagar and
Sarah: "These are the two covenants." So then the two covenants
existed in every essential particular in the days of Abraham. Even so they do
to-day; for the Scripture says now as well as then, "Cast out the
bondwoman and her son." We see then that the two covenants are not matters
of time, but of condition. Let no one flatter himself that he can not be under
the old covenant, because the time for that is passed. The time for that is
passed only in the sense that "the time past of our life may suffice us to
have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts,
excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries."
1Pet.4:3.
Difference
Between the Two
The
difference is just the difference between a freewoman and a slave. Hagar's
children, no matter how many she might have had, would have been slaves, while
those of Sarah would necessarily be free.
So the covenant from
Sinai holds all who adhere to it in bondage "under the law;" while
the covenant from above gives freedom, not freedom from obedience to the law,
but freedom from disobedience to it. The freedom is not found away from the law, but in the
law. Christ redeems from the curse, which is the transgression of the law. He redeems us from the curse, that the blessing may
come on us; and the blessing is obedience to the law. "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk
in the law of the Lord." Ps.119:1. This blessedness is freedom. "I
will walk at liberty; for I seek Thy precepts." Ps.119:45.
The difference between the two covenants may be put briefly thus: In the
covenant from Sinai we ourselves have to do with the law alone, while in the
covenant from above, we have the law in Christ. In the first instance it is
death to us, since the law is sharper than any two-edged sword, and we are not
able to handle it without fatal results; but in the second instance we have the
law "in the hand of a Mediator." In the one case it is what we can do; in the other case it
is what the Spirit of God can do. Bear in mind that there is not the slightest question
in the whole Epistle to the Galatians as to whether or not the law should be
kept. The only question is, How shall it be done? Is it to be our own doing, so that
the reward shall not be of grace but of debt? or is it to be God working in us
both to will and to do of His good pleasure?
Eph_1:9
Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good
pleasure which he hath purposed in himself
Php_2:13
For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
The Glad
Tidings
By E. J.
WAGGONER
(Excerpt- To be continued)
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