All this was but type and shadow of what was one day to become a mysterious reality. What no thought of man or angel could have conceived, what even now pa.s.seth all understanding, the Eternal Son of G.o.d took flesh and blood, and then shed that blood as the blood of the New Covenant, not merely to ratify it, but to open the way for it and to make it possible. Yea, more, to be, in time and eternity, the living power by which entrance into the Covenant was to be obtained, and all life in it be secured. Until we learn to form our expectation of a life in the New Covenant, according to the inconceivable worth and power of the blood of G.o.d"s Son, we never can have even an insight into the entirely supernatural and heavenly life that a child of G.o.d may live.
Let us think for a moment on the threefold light in which Scripture teaches us to regard it.
In the pa.s.sage from Hebrews ix. 15 we read "For this cause Christ is the Mediator of a new covenant, that a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, they that have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance." The sins of the ages, of the First Covenant, which had only figuratively been atoned for, had gathered up before G.o.d. A death was needed for the redemption of these: In that death and blood-shedding of the Lamb of G.o.d not only were these atoned for, but the power of all sin was for ever broken.
The blood of the New Covenant is redemption blood, a purchase price and ransom from the power of Sin and the Law. In any purchase made on earth the transference of property from the old owner to the new is complete.
Its worth may be ever so great and the hold on it ever so strong, if the price be paid, it is gone for ever from him who owned it. The hold sin had on us was terrible. No thought can realise its legitimate claim on us under G.o.d"s law, its awful tyrant power in enslaving us. But the blood of G.o.d"s Son has been paid. "Ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things as silver and gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb without spot, even the blood of Christ." We have been rescued, ransomed, redeemed out of our old natural life under the power of sin, utterly and eternally. Sin has not the slightest claim on us, nor the slightest power over us, except as our ignorance or unbelief or half-heartedness allows it to have dominion. Our New Covenant birthright is to stand in the freedom with which Christ has made us free. Until the soul sees, and desires and accepts, and claims the redemption and the liberty which has the blood of the Son of G.o.d for its purchase price, and its measure, and its security, it never can fully live the New Covenant life.
As wonderful as the blood-shedding for our redemption is the blood-sprinkling for our cleansing. Here is indeed another of the spiritual mysteries of the New Covenant, which lose their power when understood in human wisdom, without the ministration of the Spirit of life. When Scripture speaks of "having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience," of "the blood of Christ cleansing our conscience," of our singing here on earth (Rev. i. 5), "To Him that washed us from our sins in His blood," it brings this mighty, quickening blood of the Lamb into direct contact with our hearts. It gives the a.s.surance that that blood, in its infinite worth, in its Divine sin-cleansing power, can keep us clean in our walk in the sight and the light of G.o.d. It is as this blood of the New Covenant is known, and trusted, and waited for, and received from G.o.d, in the Spirit"s mighty operation in the heart, that we shall begin to believe that the blessed promise of a New Covenant life and walk can be fulfilled.
There is one more thing Scripture teaches concerning this blood of the New Covenant. When the Jews contrasted Moses with our Lord Jesus, He spake: "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, abideth in Me, and I in him." As if the redeeming, and sprinkling, and washing, and sanctifying does not sufficiently express the intense inwardness of its action and its power to permeate our whole being, the drinking of this precious blood is declared to be indispensable to having life. If we would enter deep into the Spirit and power of the New Covenant, let us, by the Holy Spirit, drink deep of this cupa"the cup of the New Covenant in His blood.
On account of sin there could be no covenant between man and G.o.d without blood. And no New Covenant without the blood of the Son of G.o.d.
As the cleansing away of sins was the first condition in making a covenant, so it is equally the first condition of an entrance into it.
It has ever been found that a deeper appropriation of the blessings of the Covenant must be preceded by a new and deeper cleansing from sin.
We know how in Ezekiel the words about G.o.d"s causing us to walk in His statutes are preceded by "From all your filthiness will I cleanse you."
And then later we read (x.x.xvii. 23, 25), "Neither shall they defile themselves any more with any of their transgressions; I will cleanse them: so shall they be My people, and I will be their G.o.d. Moreover, I will make a Covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting Covenant with them." The confession and casting away, and the cleansing away of sin in the blood, are the indispensable, but all-sufficient, preparation for a life in everlasting Covenant with G.o.d.
Many feel that they do not understand or realise this wonderful power of the blood. Much thought does not help them; even prayer does not appear to bring the light they seek. The blood of Christ is a Divine mystery that pa.s.ses all thought. Like every spiritual and heavenly blessing, this too, but this especially, needs to be imparted to us by the Holy Spirit. It was "through the Eternal Spirit" that Christ offered the sacrifice in which the blood was shed. The blood had the life of Christ, the life of the Spirit, in it. The outpouring of the blood for us was to prepare the way for the outpouring of the Spirit on us. It is the Holy Spirit, and He alone, who can minister the blood of the everlasting Covenant in power. Just as He leads the soul to the initial faith in the pardon that blood has purchased, and the peace it gives, He leads further to the knowledge and experience of its cleansing power. Here again, too, by faitha"a faith in a heavenly power, of which it does not fully understand, and cannot define, the action, but of which it knows that it is an operation of G.o.d"s mighty power, and effects a cleansing that does give a clean heart. A clean heart, first known and accepted by the same faith, apart from signs or feelings, apart from sense or reason, and then experienced in the joy and the fellowship with G.o.d it brings. Oh! let us believe in the blood of the everlasting Covenant, and the cleansing the Holy Spirit ministers. Let us believe in the ministration of the Holy Spirit, until our whole life in the New Covenant becomes entirely His work, to the glory of the Father and of Christ.
The blood of the Covenant, O mystery of mysteries! O grace above all grace! O mighty power of G.o.d, opening the way, into the holiest, and into our hearts, and into the New Covenant, where the Holy One and our heart meet! Let us ask G.o.d much, by His Holy Spirit, to make us know what it is and works. The transition from the death of the Old Covenant to the life of the New was, in Christ, "through the blood of the Everlasting Covenant." No otherwise will it be with us.
CHAPTER X.
Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant "I give thee for a covenant of the people."a"ISA. xlii. 6, xlix. 8.
"The Lord shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in."a"MAL. iii. 1.
"Jesus was made Surety of a better covenant."a"HEB. vii. 22.
"The Mediator of the Better Covenant, established upon better promises a The Mediator of the New Covenanta Ye are come to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant."a"HEB. viii. 6, ix. 15, xii. 24.
WE have here four t.i.tles given to our Lord Jesus in connection with the New Covenant. He is Himself called a Covenant. The union between G.o.d and man, which the Covenant aims at, was wrought out in Him personally; in Him the reconciliation between the human and Divine was perfectly effected; in Him His people find the Covenant with all its blessings; He is all that G.o.d has to give, and is the a.s.surance that it is given.
. . He is called the Messenger of the Covenant, because He came to establish and to proclaim ita He is the Surety of the Covenant, not only because He paid our debt, but as He is Surety to us for G.o.d, that G.o.d will fulfil His part; and Surety for us with G.o.d, that we will fulfil our parta And He is Mediator of the Covenant, because as the Covenant was established in His atoning blood, is administered and applied by Him, is entered upon alone by faith in Him, so it is experimentally known only through the power of His resurrection life, and His never-ceasing intercession. All these names point to the one truth, that in the New Covenant Christ is all in all.
The subject is so large that it would be impossible to enter upon all the various aspects of this precious truth. Christ"s work in atonement and intercession, in His bestowal of pardon and the Holy Spirit, in His daily communication of grace and strength, are truths which lie at the very foundation of the faith of Christians. We need not speak of them here. What specially needs to be made clear to many is how, by faith in Christ as the Mediator of the New Covenant, we actually have access to and enter into the enjoyment of all its promised blessings. We have already seen, in studying the New Covenant, how all these blessings culminate in the one thinga"that the heart of man is to be put right, as the only possible way of his living in the favour of G.o.d, and G.o.d"s love finding its satisfaction in him. That he is to receive a heart to fear G.o.d, to love G.o.d with all his strength, to obey G.o.d, and to keep all His statutes. All that Christ did and does has this for its aim; all the higher blessings of peace and fellowship flow from this. In this G.o.d"s saving power and love find the highest proof of their triumph over sin. Nothing so reveals the grace of G.o.d, the power of Jesus Christ, the reality of salvation, the blessedness of the New Covenant, as the heart of a believer, where sin once abounded, with grace now abounding more exceedingly within it.
I do not know how I can better set forth the glory of our Blessed Lord Jesus as He accomplishes this, the real object of His redeeming work, and as He takes entire possession of the heart He has bought and won and cleansed as a dwelling for His Father, than by pointing out the place He takes, and the work He does, in the case of a soul who is being led out of the Old Covenant bondage with its failure, into the real experience of the promise and power of the New Covenant. [6] In thus studying the work of the Mediator in an individual, we may get a truer conception of the real glory and greatness of the work He actually accomplishes, than when we only think of the work He has done for all. It is in the application of the redemption here in the life of earth, where sin abounded, that its power is seen. Let us see how the entrance into the New Covenant blessing is attained.
The first step towards it, in one who has been truly converted and a.s.sured of his acceptance with G.o.d, is the sense of sin. He sees that the New Covenant promises are not made true in his experience. There is not only indwelling sin, but he finds that he gives way to temper, and self-will, and worldliness, and other known transgressions of G.o.d"s law. The obedience to which G.o.d calls and will fit him, the life of abiding in Christ"s love which is his privilege, the power for a holy walk, well-pleasing to G.o.d,a"in all this his conscience condemns him.
It is in this conviction of sin that any thought or desire of the full New Covenant blessing must have its rise. Where the thought that obedience is an impossibility, and that nothing but a life of failure and self-condemnation is to be looked for, has wrought a secret despair of deliverance, or contentment with our present state, it is vain to speak of G.o.d"s promise or power. The heart does not respond: it knows well enough, it is sure, the liberty spoken of is a dream. But where the dissatisfaction with our state has wrought a longing for something better, the heart is open to receive the message.
The New Covenant is meant to be the deliverance from the power of sin; a keen longing for this is the indispensable preparation for entering fully into the Covenant.
Now comes the second step. As the mind is directed to the literal meaning of the terms of the New Covenant, in its promises of cleansing from sin, and a heart filled with G.o.d"s fear and G.o.d"s law, and a power to keep G.o.d"s commands and never to depart from Him; as the eye is fixed on Jesus the Surety of the Covenant, who will Himself make it all true; and as the voice is heard of witnesses who can declare how, after years of bondage, all this has been fulfilled in thema"the longing begins to grow into a hope, and the inquiry is made, as to what is needed to enter this blessed life.
Then follows another step. The heart-searching question comes whether we are willing to give up every evil habit, all our own self-will, all that is of the spirit of the world, and surrender ourselves to be wholly and exclusively for Jesus. G.o.d cannot take so complete possession of a man, and bless him so wonderfully, and work in him so mightily, unless He has him very completely, yea, wholly for Himself.
Happy the man who is ready for any sacrifice.
Now comes the last, the simplest, and yet often the most difficult step. And here it is we need to know Jesus as Mediator of the Covenant.
As we hear of the life of holiness, and obedience, and victory over sin, which the Covenant promises, and hear that it will be to us according to our faith, so that if we claim it in faith it will surely be ours, the heart often fails for fear. I am willing, but have I the power to make, and what is more, to maintain this full surrender? Have I the power, the strong faith, so to grasp and hold this offered blessing, that it shall indeed be and continue mine? How such questions perplex the soul until it finds the answer to them in the one word: Jesus! It is He who will bestow the power to make the surrender and to believe. This is as surely and as exclusively His work, as atonement and intercession are His alone. As sure as it was His to win and ascend the throne, it is His to prove His dominion in the individual soul. It is He, the Living One, who is in Divine power to work and maintain the life of communion and victory within us. He is the Mediator and Surety of the Covenanta"He, the G.o.d-man, who has undertaken not only for all that G.o.d requires, but for all that we need too.
When this is seen, the believer learns that here, just as at conversion, it is all of faith. The one thing needed now is, with the eye definitely fixed on some promise of the New Covenant, to turn from self and anything it could or need do, to let go self, and fall into the arms of Jesus. He is the Mediator of the New Covenant: it is His to lead us into it. In the a.s.surance that Jesus, and every New Covenant blessing, is already ours in virtue of our being G.o.d"s children; with the desire now to appropriate and enjoy what we have hitherto allowed to lie unused; in the faith that Jesus now gives us the needed strength in faith to claim and accept our heritage as a present possession; the will dares boldly to do the deed, and to take the heavenly gifta"a life in Christ according to the better promises. By faith in Jesus you have seen and received Him as to you, in full truth, the Mediator of the New Covenant, both in heaven arid in your heart. He is the Mediator who makes it true between G.o.d and you, as your experience.
The fear has sometimes been expressed that, if we press so urgently the work that Christ through the Spirit does in the heart, we may be drawn off from trusting in what He has done and ever is doing, to what we are experiencing of its working. The answer is simple. It is with the heart alone that Christ can be truly known or honoured. It is in the heart the work of grace is to be done, and the saving power of Christ to be displayed. It is in the heart alone the Holy Spirit has His sphere of work; there He is to work Christ"s likeness; it is there alone He can glorify Christ. The Spirit can only glorify Christ by revealing His saving power in us. If we were to speak of what we are to do in cleansing our heart and keeping it right, the fear would be well-grounded. But the New Covenant calls us to the very opposite. What it tells us of the Atonement, and the Righteousness of G.o.d it has won for us, will be our only glory even amid the highest holiness of heaven: Christ"s work of holiness here in the heart can only deepen the consciousness of that Righteousness as our only plea. The sanctification of the Spirit, as the fulfilment of the New Covenant promises, is all a taking of the things of Christ and revealing and imparting them to us. The deeper our entrance into and our possession of the New Covenant gift of a new heart, the fuller will be our knowledge and our love of Him who is its Mediator; the more we shall glory in Him alone. The Covenant deals with the heart, just that Christ may be found there, may dwell there by faith. As we look at the heart, not in the light of feeling or experience, but in the light of the faith of G.o.d"s Covenant, we shall learn to think and speak of it as G.o.d does, and begin to know what it is, that there Christ manifests Himself and there He and the Fatlier come to make their abode.
[6] For a practical ill.u.s.tration in the life of Canon Battersby, see Note D.
CHAPTER XI.
Jesus, the Surety of a Better Covenant "And inasmuch as it is not without the taking of an oath: by so much also hath Jesus become the Surety of a better covenant. Wherefore also He is able to save completely them that draw near unto G.o.d through Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them."-HEB. vii. 20, 22, 25.
A SURETY is one who stands good for another, that a certain engagement will be faithfully performed. Jesus is the Surety of the New Covenant.
He stands surety with us for G.o.da", that G.o.d"s part in the Covenant will faithfully be performed. And He stands surety with G.o.d for us, that our part will be faithfully performed too. If we are to live in covenant with G.o.d, everything depends upon our knowing aright what Jesus secures to us. The more we know and trust Him, the more a.s.sured will our faith be that its every promise and every demand will be fulfilled, that a life of faithful keeping of G.o.d"s Covenant is indeed possible, because Jesus is the Surety of the Covenant. He makes G.o.d"s faithfulness and ours equally sure.
We read that it was because His priesthood was confirmed by the oath of G.o.d, that He became the Surety of a so much better Covenant. The oath of G.o.d gives us the security that His suretyship will secure all the better promises. The meaning and infinite value of G.o.d"s oath had been explained in the previous chapter. "In every dispute the oath is final for confirmation. Wherein G.o.d, being minded to show more abundantly unto the heirs of the promise the immutability of His counsel, interposed with an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for G.o.d to lie, we may have a strong encouragement." We thus have not only a Covenant, with certain definite promises; we have not only Jesus, the Surety of the Covenant; but at the back of that again, we have the living G.o.d, with a view to our having perfect confidence in the unchangeableness of His counsel and promise, coming in between with an oath. Do we not begin to see that the one thing G.o.d aims at in this Covenant, and asks with regard to it, is an absolute confidence that He is going to do all He has promised, however difficult or wonderful it may appear? His oath is an end of all fear or doubt. Let no one think of understanding the Covenant, of judging or saying what may be expected from it, much less of experiencing its blessings, until he meets G.o.d with an Abrahamlike faith, that gives Him the glory, and is fully a.s.sured that what He has promised He is able to perform. The Covenant is a sealed mystery, except to the soul who is going without reserve to trust G.o.d, and abandon itself to His word and work.
Of the work of Christ, as the Surety of the better Covenant, our pa.s.sage tells us that, because of this priesthood confirmed by oath, He is able to save completely those who draw near to G.o.d through Him. And this, because "He ever liveth to make intercession for them." As Surety of the Covenant, He is ceaselessly engaged in watching their needs, and presenting them to the Father, in receiving His answer, and imparting its blessing. It is because of this never-ceasing mediation, receiving and transmitting from G.o.d to us the gifts and powers of the heavenly world, that He is able to save completelya"to work and maintain in us a salvation as complete as G.o.d is willing it should be, as complete as the Better Covenant has a.s.sured us it shall be, in the better promises upon which it was established. These promises are expounded (ch. viii.
7-13) as being none other than those of the New Covenant of Jeremiah, with the law written in the heart by the Spirit of G.o.d as our experience of the power of that salvation.
Jesus, the Surety of a better Covenant, Jesus is to be our a.s.surance that everything connected with the Covenant is unchangeably and eternally sure. In Jesus the keynote is given of all our intercourse with G.o.d, of all our prayers and desires, of all our life and walk, that with full a.s.surance of faith and hope we may look for every word of the Covenant to be made fully true to us by G.o.d"s own power. Let us look at some of these things of which we are to be fully a.s.sured, if we are to breathe the spirit of children of the New Covenant. There is the love of G.o.d. The very thought of a Covenant is an alliance of friendship. And it is as a means of a.s.suring us of His love, of drawing us close to His heart of love, of getting our hearts under the power of His love, and filled with ita"it is because G.o.d loves us with an infinite love, and wants us to know it, and to give it complete liberty to bestow itself on us, and bless us, that the New Covenant has been made, and G.o.d"s own Son been made its Surety. This love of G.o.d is an infinite Divine energy, doing its utmost to fill the soul with itself and its blessedness. Of this love G.o.d"s Son is the Messenger; of the Covenant in which G.o.d reveals it to us He is the Surety; let us learn that the chief need in studying the Covenant and keeping it, in seeking and claiming its blessings, is the exercise of a strong and confident a.s.surance in G.o.d"s love.
Then there is the a.s.surance of the sufficiency of Christ"s finished redemption. All that was needed to put away sin, to free us entirely and for ever from its power, has been accomplished by Christ. His blood and death, His resurrection and ascension, have taken us out of the power of the world and transplanted us into a new life in the power of the heavenly world. All this is Divine reality; Christ is Surety that the Divine righteousness, and the Divine acceptance, that all-sufficient Divine grace and strength, are ever ours. He is Surety that all these can and will be communicated to us in unbroken continuance.
It is even so with the a.s.surance of what is needed on our part to enter into this life in the New Covenant. We shrink back, either from the surrender of all, because we know not whether we have the power to let it go, or from the faith for all, because we fear ours will never be so strong or so bold as to take all that is offered us in this wonderful Covenant. Jesus is Surety of a better Covenant. The better consists just in this very thing, that it undertakes to provide the children of the Covenant with the very dispositions they need, to accept and enjoy it. We have seen how the heart is just the central object of the Covenant promise. A heart circ.u.mcised to love G.o.d with all the heart, a heart into which G.o.d"s law and fear have been put, so that it will not depart from Hima"it is of all this Jesus is the Surety under the oath of G.o.d. Let us say it once more: Surely the one thing G.o.d asks of us, and has given the Covenant and its Surety to securea"the confident trust that all will be done in us that is neededa"is what we dare not withhold.
I think some of us are beginning to see what has been our great mistake. We have thought and spoken great things of what Christ did on the Cross, and does on the Throne, as Covenant Surety. And we have stopped there. But we have not expected Him to do great things in our hearts. And yet it is there, in our heart, that the consummation takes place of the work on the Cross and the Throne; in the heart the New Covenant has its full triumph; the Surety is to be known not by what the mind can think of Him in heaven, but by what he does to make Himself known in the heart. There is the place where His love triumphs and is enthroned. Let us with the heart believe and receive Him as the Covenant Surety. Let us, with every desire we entertain in connection with it, with every duty it calls us to, with every promise it holds out, look to Jesus, under G.o.d"s oath the Surety of the Covenant. Let us believe that by the Holy Spirit the heart is His home and His throne.
Let us, if we have not done it yet, in a definite act of faith, throw ourselves utterly on Him, for the whole of the New Covenant life and walk. No surety was ever so faithful to his undertaking as Jesus will be to His on our behalf, in our hearts.
And now, notwithstanding the strong confidence and consolation the oath of G.o.d and the Surety of the Covenant gives, there are some still looking wistfully at this blessed life, and yet afraid to trust themselves to this wondrous grace. They have a conception of faith as something great and mighty, and they know and feel that theirs is not such. And so their feebleness remains an insuperable barrier to their inheriting the promise. Let me try and say once again: Brother, the act of faith, by which you accept and enter this life in the New Covenant, is not commonly an act of power, but often of weakness and fear and much trembling. And even in the midst of all this feebleness, it is not an act in your strength, but in a secret and perhaps unfelt strength, which Jesus the Surety of the Covenant gives you. G.o.d has made Him Surety, with the very object of inspiring us with courage and confidence. He longs, He delights to bring you into the Covenant. Why not bow before Him, and say meekly: He does hear prayer; He brings into the Covenant; He enables a soul to believe; I may trust Him confidently. And just begin quietly to believe that there is an Almighty Lord, given by the Father, to do everything needed to make all Covenant grace wholly true in you. Bow low, and look up out of your low estate to your glorified Lord, and maintain your confidence that a soul, that in its nothingness trusts in Him, will receive more than it can ask or think.
Dear believer, come and be a believer. Believe that G.o.d is showing you how entirely the Lord Jesus wants to have you and your life for Himself; how entirely He is willing to take charge of you and work all in you; how entirely you may even now commit your trust, and your surrender, and your faithfulness to the Covenant, with all you are and are to be, to Him, your Blessed Surety. If thou believest, thou shalt see the glory of G.o.d. What Christ has undertaken, you may confidently count upon His performing.
In a sense, and measure, and power that pa.s.seth knowledge, Jesus Christ is Himself all that G.o.d can either ask or give, all that G.o.d wants to see in us. "He that believeth in me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water."
CHAPTER XII.
The Book of the Covenant "And Moses took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words."-EX. xxiv. 7, 8; comp. HEB. ix.
18-20.
HERE is a new aspect in which to regard G.o.d"s blessed Book. Before Moses sprinkled the blood, he read the Book of the Covenant, and obtained the people"s acceptance of it. And when he had sprinkled it, he said, "Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made concerning all these words." The Book contained all the conditions of the Covenant; only through the Book could they know all that G.o.d asked of them, and all that they might ask of Him. Let us consider what new light may be thrown both upon the Covenant and upon the Book, by the one thought, that the Bible is the Book of the Covenant.
The very first thought suggested will be this, that in nothing will the spirit of our life and experience, as it lives either in the Old or the New Covenant, be more manifest than in our dealings with the Book. The Old had a book as well as the New. Our Bible contains both. The New was enfolded in the Old; the Old is unfolded in the New. It is possible to read the Old in the spirit of the New; it is possible to read the New as well as the Old in the spirit of the Old.
What this spirit of the Old is, we cannot see so clearly anywhere as just in Israel when the Covenant was made. They were at once ready to promise: "All that the Lord hath said will we do and be obedient."
There was so little sense of their own sinfulness, or of the holiness and glory of G.o.d, that with perfect self-confidence they considered themselves able to undertake to keep the Covenant. They understood little of the meaning of that blood with which they were sprinkled, or of that death and redemption of which it was the symbol. In their own strength, in the power of the flesh, they were ready to engage to serve G.o.d. It is just the spirit in which many Christians regard the Bible; as a system of laws, a course of instruction to direct us in the way G.o.d would have us go. All He asks of us is, that we should do our utmost in seeking to fulfil them; more we cannot do; this we are sincerely ready to do. They know little or nothing of what the death means through which the Covenant is established, or what the life from the dead is through which alone a man can walk in covenant with the G.o.d of heaven.
This self-confident spirit in Israel is explained by what had happened just previously. When G.o.d had come down on Mount Sinai in thunderings and lightnings to give the law, they were greatly afraid. They said to Moses: "Let not G.o.d speak with us, lest we die; speak thou with us, and we will hear." They thought it was simply a matter of hearing and knowing; they could for certain obey. They knew not that it is only the presence, and the fear, and the nearness, and the power of G.o.d humbling us and making us afraid, that can conquer the power of sin and give the power to obey. It is so much easier to receive the instruction from man, and live, than to wait and hear the voice of G.o.d and die to all our own strength and goodness. It is no otherwise that many Christians seek to serve G.o.d without ever seeking to live in daily contact with Him, and without the faith that it is only His presence can keep from sin. Their religion is a matter of outward instruction from man: the waiting to hear G.o.d"s voice that they may obey Him, the death to the flesh and the world that comes with a close walk with G.o.d, are unknown.
They may be faithful and diligent in the study of their Bible, in reading or hearing Bible teaching; to have as much as possible of that intercourse with the Covenant G.o.d Himself which makes the Christian life possiblea"this they do not seek.
If you would be delivered from all this, learn ever to read the Book of the New Covenant in the New Covenant Spirit. One of the very first articles of the New Covenant has reference to this matter. When G.o.d says, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, He engages that the words of His Holy Book shall no longer be mere outward teaching, but that what they command shall be our very disposition and delight, wrought in us as a birth and a life by the Holy Spirit. Every word of the New Covenant then becomes a Divine a.s.surance of what may be obtained by the Holy Spirit"s working. The soul learns to see that the letter killeth, that the flesh profiteth nothing. The study, and knowledge of, the delight in, Bible words and thoughts, cannot profit, except as the Holy Spirit is waited on to make them life. The acceptance of Holy Scripture in the letter, the reception of it in the human understanding, is seen to be as fruitless as was Israel"s at Sinai. But as the Word of G.o.d, spoken by the Living G.o.d through the Spirit into the heart that waits on Him, it is found to be quick and powerful. It then is a word that worketh effectually in them that believe, giving within the heart the actual possession of the very grace of which the Word has spoken.
The New Covenant is a ministration of the Spirit (see Chap. VII). All its teaching is meant to be teaching by the Holy Spirit. The two most remarkable chapters in the Bible on the preaching of the gospel are those in which Paul expounds the secret of this teaching (1 Cor. ii.; 2 Cor. iii.). Every minister ought to see whether he can pa.s.s his examination in them. They tell us that in the New Covenant the Holy Spirit is everything. It is the Holy Spirit entering the heart, writing, revealing, impressing upon it G.o.d"s law and truth, that alone works true obedience. No excellency of speech or human wisdom can in the least profit: G.o.d must reveal by His Holy Spirit to preacher and hearer the things He hath prepared for us. What is true of the preacher is equally true of the hearer. One of the great reasons that so many Christians never come out of the Old Covenant, never even know that they are in it, and have to come out of it, is that there is so much head knowledge, without the power of the Spirit in the heart being waited for. It is only when preachers and hearers and readers believe that the Book of the New Covenant needs the Spirit of the New Covenant, to explain and apply it, that the Word of G.o.d can do its work.
Learn the double lesson. What G.o.d hath joined together, let no man put asunder. The Bible is the Book of the New Covenant. And the Holy Spirit is the only minister of what belongs to the Covenant. Expect not to understand or profit by thy Bible knowledge without seeking continually the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Beware lest thy earnest Bible study, thy excellent books, or thy beloved teachers take the place of the Holy Spirit! Pray daily, and perseveringly, and believingly for His teaching. He will write the Word in thy heart.
The Bible is the Book of the New Covenant. Ask the Holy Spirit specially to reveal to thee the New Covenant in it. It is inconceivable what loss the Church of our day is suffering because so few believers truly live as its heirs, in the true knowledge and enjoyment of its promises. Ask G.o.d, in humble faith, to give thee in all thy Bible reading, the spirit of wisdom and revelation, enlightened eyes of thine heart, to know what the promises are which the Covenant reveals; and what the Divine security in Jesus, the Surety of the Covenant, that every promise will be fulfilled in thee in Divine power; and what the intimate fellowship to which it admits thee with the G.o.d of the Covenant. The ministration of the Spirit, humbly waited for and listened to, will make the Book of the Covenant shine with new lighta"even the light of G.o.d"s countenance and a full salvation.
All this applies specially to the knowledge of what actually the New Covenant is meant to work. Amid all we hear, and read, and understand of the different promises of the New Covenant, it is quite possible that we never yet have had that heavenly vision of it as a whole, that with its overmastering power compels acceptance. Just hear once again what it really is. True obedience, and fellowship with G.o.d, for which man was created, which sin broke off, which the law demanded, but could not work, which G.o.d"s own Son came from heaven to restore in our lives, is now brought within our reach and offered us. Our Father tells us in the Book of the New Covenant that He now expects us to live in full and unbroken obedience and communion with Him. He tells us that by the mighty power of His Son and Spirit He Himself will work this in us: everything has been arranged for it. He tells us that such a life of unbroken obedience is possible because Christ, as the Mediator, will live in us and enable us each moment to live in Him. He tells us that all He wants is simply the surrender of faith, the yielding ourselves to Him to do His work. Oh! let us look, and see this holy life, with all its powers and blessings, coming down from G.o.d in heaven, in the Son and His Spirit. Let us believe that the Holy Spirit can give us a vision of it, as a prepared Gift, to be bestowed in living power, and take possession of us. Let us look upward and look inward, in the faith of the Son and the Spirit, and G.o.d will show us that every word written in the Book of the Covenant is not only true, but that it can be made spirit and truth within us, and in our daily life. This can indeed be.
CHAPTER XIII.
New Covenant Obedience "Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a holy nation unto Me."-EX. xix. 5.
"And the Lord Thy G.o.d will circ.u.mcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy G.o.d with all thy heart, and with all thy soul. And thou shalt obey the voice of the Lord, and do all His commandments."a"DEUT.x.x.x. 6, 8.
"And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments."a"EZEK.x.x.xvi. 27.
IN making the New Covenant, G.o.d said very definitely, "Not after the covenant I made with your fathers." We have learnt what the fault was with that Covenant: it made G.o.d"s favour dependent upon the obedience of the people. "If ye obey, I will be your G.o.d." We have learnt how the New Covenant remedied the defect: G.o.d Himself provided for the obedience. It changes "If ye keep My judgments" into "I will put My Spirit within you, and ye shall keep." Instead of the Covenant and its fulfilment depending on man"s obedience, G.o.d undertakes to ensure the obedience. The Old Covenant proved the need, and pointed out the path, of holiness: the New inspires the love, and gives the power, of holiness.
In connection with this change, a serious and most dangerous mistake is often made. Because in the New Covenant obedience no longer occupies the place it had in the Old, as the condition of the Covenant, and free grace has taken its place, justifying the unG.o.dly, and bestowing gifts on the rebellious, many are under the impression that obedience is now no longer as indispensable as it was then. The error is a terrible one.
The whole Old Covenant was meant to teach the lesson of the absolute and indispensable necessity of obedience for a life in G.o.d"s favour.
The New Covenant comes, not to provide a subst.i.tute for that obedience in faith, but through faith to secure the obedience, by giving a heart that delights in it and has the power for it. And men abuse the free grace, that without our own obedience accepts us for a life of new obedience, when they rest content with the grace, without the obedience it is meant for. They boast of the higher privileges of the New Covenant, while its chief blessing, the power of a holy life, a heart delighting in G.o.d"s law, and a life in which G.o.d causes and enables us, by his indwelling Spirit, to keep His commandments, is neglected. If there is one thing we need to know well, it is the place obedience takes in the New Covenant.
Let our first thought be: Obedience is essential. At the very root of the relation of a creature to his G.o.d, and of G.o.d admitting the creature to His fellowship, lies the thought of obedience. It is the one only thing G.o.d spoke of in Paradise when "the Lord G.o.d commanded the man" not to eat of the forbidden fruit. In Christ"s great salvation it is the power that redeemed us: "By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." In the promise of the New Covenant it takes the first place. G.o.d engages to circ.u.mcise the hearts of His peoplea"in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circ.u.mcision of Christa"to love G.o.d with all their heart, and to obey His commandments. The crowning gift of Christ"s exaltation was the Holy Ghost, to bring salvation to us as an inward thing. The first Covenant demanded obedience, and failed because it could not find it. The New Covenant was expressly made to provide for obedience. To a life in the full experience of the New Covenant blessing, obedience is essential.
It is this indispensable necessity of obedience that explains why so often the entrance into the full enjoyment of the New Covenant has depended upon some single act of surrender. There was something in the life, some evil or doubtful habit, in regard to which conscience had often said that it was not in perfect accord with G.o.d"s perfect will.
Attempts were made to push aside the troublesome suggestion. Or unbelief said it would be impossible to overcome the habit, and maintain the promise of obedience to the Voice within. Meantime, all our prayer appeared of no avail. It was as if faith could not lay hold of the blessing which was full in sight, until at last the soul consented to regard this little thing as the test of its surrender to obey in everything, and of its faith that in everything the Surety of the Covenant would give power to maintain the obedience. With the evil or doubtful thing given up, with a good conscience restored, and the heart"s confidence before G.o.d a.s.sured, the soul could receive and possess what it sought. Obedience is essential.
Obedience is possible. The thought of a demand which man cannot possibly render, cuts at the very root of true hope and strength. The secret thought, "No man can obey G.o.d," throws thousands back into the Old Covenant life, and into a false peace that G.o.d does not expect more than that we do our best. Obedience is possible: the whole New Covenant promises and secures this.
Only understand aright what obedience means. The renewed man has still the flesh, with its evil nature, out of which there arise involuntary evil thoughts and dispositions. These may be found in a truly obedient man. Obedience deals with the doing of what is known to be G.o.d"s will, as taught by the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and conscience. When George Muller spoke of the great happiness he had had for more than sixty years in G.o.d"s service, he attributed it two thingsa"He had loved G.o.d"s Word, and "he had maintained a good conscience, not wilfully going on in a course he knew to be contrary to the mind of G.o.d." When the full light of G.o.d broke in upon Gerhard Tersteegen, he wrote: "I promise, with Thy help and power, rather to give up the last drop of my blood, than knowingly and willingly in my heart or my life be untrue and disobedient to Thee." Such obedience is an attainable degree of grace.
Obedience is possible. When the law is written in the heart; when the heart is circ.u.mcised to love the Lord with all our heart, and to obey Him; when the love of G.o.d is shed abroad in the heart; it means that the love of G.o.d"s law and of Himself has now become the moving power of our life. This love is no vague sentiment, in man"s imagination of something that exists in heaven, but a living, mighty power of G.o.d in the heart, working effectually according to His working, which worketh in us mightily. A life of obedience is possible.
This obedience is of faith. "By faith, Abraham obeyed." By faith the promises of the Covenant, the presence of the Surety of the Covenant, the hidden inworking of the Holy Spirit, and the love of G.o.d in His infinite desire and power to make true in us all His love and promises, must live in us. Faith can bring them nigh, and make us live in the very midst of them. Christ and His wonderful redemption need not remain at a distance from us in heaven, but can become our continual experience. However cold or feeble we may feel, faith knows that the new heart is in us, that the love of G.o.d"s law is our very nature, that the teaching and power of the Spirit are within us. Such faith knows it can obey. Let us hear the voice of our Saviour, the Surety of the Covenant, as He says, with a deeper, fuller meaning than when He was on earth: "Only believe. If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth."
And last of all, let us understand: Obedience is blessedness. Do not regard it only as the way to the joy and blessings of the New Covenant, but as itself, in its very nature, joy and happiness. To have the voice of G.o.d teaching and guiding you, to be united to G.o.d in willing what He wills, in working out what He works in you by His Spirit, in doing His Holy Will, and pleasing Him,a"surely all this is joy unspeakable and full of glory.
To a healthy man it is a delight to walk or work, to put forth his strength and conquer difficulties. To a slave or a hireling it is bondage and weariness. The Old Covenant demanded obedience with an inexorable must, and the threat that followed it. The New Covenant changes the must to can and may. Do ask G.o.d, by the Holy Spirit, to show you how "you have been created in Christ Jesus unto good works, "and how, as fitted as a vine is for bearing grapes, your new nature is perfectly prepared for every good work. Ask Him to show you that He means obedience, not only to be a possible thing, but the most delightful and attractive gift He has to bestow, the entrance into His love and all its blessedness.
In the New Covenant the chief thing is not the wonderful treasure of strength and grace it contains, nor the Divine security that that treasure never can fail, but this, that the living G.o.d gives Himself, and makes Himself known, and takes possession of us as our G.o.d. For this man was created, for this He was redeemed again, for this, that it maybe our actual experience, the Holy Spirit has been given and is dwelling in us. Between what G.o.d has already wrougbt in us, and what He waits to work, obedience is the blessed link. Let us seek to walk before Him in the confidence that we are of those who live in the n.o.ble and holy consciousness: my one work is to obey G.o.d. [7] What can be the reason, I ask once again, that so many believers have seen so little of the beauty of this New Covenant life, with its power of holy and joyful obedience? "Their eyes were holden that they knew Him not." The Lord was with the disciples, but their hearts were blind. It is so still. It is as with Elisha"s servant, all heaven is around him and he knows it not. Nothing will help but the prayer, "Lord, open his eyes, that he may see." Lord, is there not someone who may be reading this, who just needs one touch to see it all? Oh! give that touch!
Just listen, my brother. Thy Father loves thee with an infinite love, and longs to make thee, even to-day, His holy, happy, obedient child.
Hear His message: He has for thee an entirely different life from what thou art living. A life in which His grace shall actually work in thee every moment all He asks thee to be. A life of simple childlike obedience, doing for the day just what the Father shows thee to be His will. A life in which the abiding love of thy Father, and the abiding presence of thy Saviour, and the joy of the Holy Spirit, can keep thee, and make thee glad and strong. This is His message. This life is for thee. Fear not to accept this life, to give up thyself to it and its entire obedience. In Christ it is possible, it is sure.