MAN'S MORAL DISTANCE FROM GOD CAN ONLY BE DISCERNED IN NEARNESS TO HIM

MAN’S MORAL DISTANCE FROM GOD CAN ONLY BE DISCERNED IN NEARNESS TO HIM

The fall of man is admitted by every saint, and also the need and the relief of being saved from the consequences of the fall. The gospel is that faith in Christ saves from the consequences; but the extent of them, or the moral distance of man from God, is very variously and inadequately understood. What that distance is cannot be measured except in proportion as we are consciously near God, as we approach the elevation which He in His grace has assigned to us. While man moves in his level among his fellows, he can at best only detect or refuse what is contrary to man’s feelings and what is offensive to man’s interests and tastes. He must he raised to some higher association and taste in order to discover the imperfection or defects of his own. All education and refinement work for the end of raising man in the scale morally. But however it may advance him, it cannot place him higher than he is, that is, a fallen creature; and instead of disclosing to him what his fall is in the sight of God, it attempts to make him satisfied with literary progress, and the cultivation of ^[p. 380] his powers and tastes in his present state. The grace of God meets a man in all his moral distance, and that distance as it is seen by God. Man may enjoy the light and work of grace many a long day before he sees in any great degree what his fall or degraded state is in the sight of God. It is only as one is consciously raised into a new and higher order, that one can see by contrast the imperfection, or distance between the old order and the new one. It is not as a man raised in the scale by cultivation sees his fellow man who has not been so raised, and discovers what he needs; but it is to see what man is, his motives, desires, tendencies — in a word, all that he is — in God’s mind.

Man condemns and judges of man by conduct, and his conscience winces according as he has a sense of what God requires. It was thus that law exposed sin. Sin was there in man’s heart before the law; the law only discovered it. “I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet”. When it is exposed, then the conscience is affected by it. But as soon as we are in the light of God’s presence, we begin to see ourselves as we are in His sight, though the conduct in no way wounds the conscience. Thus it was with Job. Among men he was perfect and upright, one that “escheweth evil”. God allowed Satan to deprive him of everything, in order that He might prove to Satan the work of grace in Job’s soul. Job, deprived of his property, bereaved of his family, and broken in health, is taught in the presence of God to abhor himself, to repudiate all the hard thoughts he had harboured about God, and all the way in which he had sought to vindicate his own integrity. He exclaims, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes”. He would have gone on for ever defending himself and complaining, had he not been led by grace into the light of God’s presence; and there, for the first time, his estimate of himself is according ^[p. 381] o the mind of God. All the reasoning and legality of the three friends were ineffectual. The teaching of Elihu had failed. It was seeing God which alone produced this great change in him. Almost every man is ashamed of bad conduct, but where there is everything to commend it is not possible for man to condemn himself. Hence it is overwhelming when, with nothing in his conduct to find fault with, he abhors himself. No amount of exercise produced either by the three friends, or by Elihu, had exposed to him his true condition in the sight of God.

Thus also it was with Moses, though in a different way. He had not only seen all the works of God in Egypt, but he had been the channel of them. He had received on the mount the tables of testimony; he was there forty days and forty nights obtaining patterns for the tabernacle, the figure of the true. And yet, after all these many and various displays of the power and greatness of God, it was not until he saw the glory of God, and his face shone with it, that he discovered the extent of man’s moral distance from God. When he was disheartened because of the idolatry of the children of Israel and their perverseness, his cry to God was, “Shew me thy glory”; when he beheld it his face shone, and when he appeared among the people they were afraid to look at him. The glory of God shining on Moses’ face exposed the moral distance between man and God. As in Job’s case no amount of exercise of mind, though brought about in various ways, was effectual in enlightening him as to his real state in the sight of God, so it was with Moses; no amount of the knowledge of the actings or ways of God, however various, or of the beauty and perfection of heaven, had disclosed to him the measure of the distance between man and God. Hence the apostle uses this incident in order to show the difference between law and grace. Under law man could not bear to look at the glory shining on Moses’ face; but now,

^[p. 382] because of the work of Christ, we can with unveiled face behold His glory and be transformed by it.

Isaiah is another example; he was a prophet highly favoured of God. Great communications had been made to him; the vision of God’s purpose had been presented to him, and yet he had never measured his actual condition as a man before God until he saw the glory of God; Isaiah 6. Thus we see that knowledge, however extended or however special, wilt not of itself expose man’s true state before God. When Isaiah sees the glory he exclaims, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips”. Strange words for one so gifted and enlightened! but it needs the brightness of divine glory to throw into contrast man’s moral state.

We have seen that neither exercise of the conscience, as with Job, nor the possession of the greatest power, and even a view of heaven, as with Moses, nor intelligence and gift, as with Isaiah, can impart a true sense of man’s moral distance, but that in every instance the light of God’s presence alone discloses it. Now let us turn to Luke 9. There the Lord in Himself establishes this principle. He is transfigured on the holy mount. He enters into the greatest moral height; but when He comes down from the mount, not only is the worst manifestation of Satan’s power occupying the disciples, but the crowning sin of man in crucifying Him is openly declared by Him. He says, “Let these sayings sink down into your ears: for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men”. No sooner is there disclosed, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the greatest exaltation ever accorded to man, than there is disclosed correspondingly both the present energy of Satan, and the dreadful hostility of man in his natural state to the man thus exalted, the Lord Jesus Christ. The greatness of man’s exaltation in the person of the Lord prepared for the disclosure of the extent of man’s suffering from the power of evil, as well as the ^[p. 383] terrible suicidal evil in himself that should lead him to kill the One thus exalted. We often hear saints say in reply to the warning of another, ‘I do not see anything wrong in it’. The fact is, our motive is never seen except as we are in nearness to God; and instead of trying to get rid of this thing or that, as reformers propose, the only real or correct way is first to see it clearly, as it appears in the brightest light; but this cannot be until we are in the light. It is an immense gain and favour to be in the region where I am truly exposed, for in proportion as I am, the very same scene and power shelters and separates me from that which is exposed in all its hideousness. It is as we possess and enjoy the treasure (see 2 Corinthians 4) that we can carry about in our body the dying of Jesus. That which would mar and counteract it is exposed, and because of it we know that the excellency of the power is of God and not of us, and as we live we are delivered unto death. As the bright side is reached, the dark side is discerned. It is a great thing to see and to accept this principle; it has much practical power. The effort to see evil while one is still in evil is vain; there is no power to expose or escape from it. One is often, I might say, tantalised in seeing good which one cannot attain to. I might long for wings for ever and be no nearer having them, but once I have them I can say, “In vain the net is spread in the sight of anything which hath wings”, that is, one who is literally above it and who sees it. This is what grace does. God sets me in nearness to Himself in Christ; and as I learn my nearness to Him, I am prepared for the exposure of my natural distance from Him, and I am, through grace, morally apart and sheltered from it, at the very moment when I discover it. The greater my height, the greater the enormity of the depth appears; but I am safe from it, rejoicing that I am safe. As a consequence I “rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh”.

Stephen being full of the Holy Spirit, “looked up ^[p. 384] stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus”. He is shown the wondrous height to which God had raised him in Christ, but this only prepares him for the terrible disclosure as to man and evil on the earth.

The council, the heads of his people and of his religion, those who sat in Moses’ seat, the great functionaries of the law, “ran upon him with one accord, and cast him out of the city, and stoned him”. He hands over his spirit to Jesus, but he dies at the hands of man here. He who had just entered into and enjoyed the highest elevation with God, now suffers in death from the terrible evil of man. He whose face was as the face of an angel bears in his body, because of his faithful service, the effects of man’s desperate distance from God and hatred of Him. Stephen first sees and enjoys the height in glory, and then man’s diabolical evil bears down on him. Paul is caught up into heaven; he does not know whether he is in the body or out of the body; he is sensible of, and intelligent as to, the greatness of the scene into which he is introduced. But when he returns to his duties on earth, he discovers the evil principle in man’s nature, not, as with Stephen, by the stones bearing down on him from the hand of man, but by a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him. He experiences the terrible fact that there is a door for Satan through his flesh, and that he requires this disclosure, and this suffering from the power of evil, in order to check and to hinder the tendency of his flesh to be puffed up. He is more elevated than Stephen, and he feels in his own flesh man’s moral degradation, while Stephen sinks under it from the hands of God’s earthly people.

The Lord lead us into the shelter of His holy presence, that we may daily grow in the elevation to which He has raised us, and consequently into moral distance from the old man which is so entirely estranged from the light and perfection in His presence.