NOVEMBER 16TH, 1891

NOVEMBER 16TH, 1891

I hear that a ‘keen critic’ of mine takes exception to the idea of God dwelling among men save in the eternal state, in any other sense than that Christ is reigning. My point was taken from Leviticus 16, that the tabernacle remains among the children of Israel on the ground of the blood being carried into the holiest, and we find in the Old Testament abundant testimony to Jehovah dwelling among them. The last word in Ezekiel is “Jehovah is there”, and I think two ideas are continually presented, viz., Jehovah their God and David their king. Jehovah and His Christ. The two may be in one Person, but they are distinct thoughts, and the association of ideas in each case is distinct.

^[p. 61] I stuck at the point you refer to in the paper. My thought is this, that it is of divine perfection that when a divine Person comes into the place and form of a servant obedience is there; but I cannot carry back the idea of obedience to One “existing in the form of God” — though I see the place relatively of the Father and the Son,^† and it appears to me in Philippians 2 the Spirit of God will not bring in obedience and humbling until He had emptied Himself. There may have been the capability, but I doubt if obedience could be spoken of as characterising a divine Person as such.. .. It is of all importance to maintain that in order to take a servant’s form He emptied Himself.