NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 6
NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 [p. 46] NO. 6
2 Kings 2: 9, 15; Mark 2: 1 - 16
The work of grace is all of God. New wine must be put into new bottles; this is the secret of grace. Some think that they can begin and God will go on, or that God begins and they can go on. No, grace is all of God. We find in Luke 14:17, “Come; for all things are now ready”, and the servant is directed to “compel them to come in”, that is, not merely to come to Christ, but to come into the house, to the supper, to the enjoyment of your reception as brought to God. This is the first work of the Spirit, making you to know your acceptance and to enjoy it. There are two great marks of grace, one, that you are in the favour of God, the other, that you have the power of God to be so superior to yourself that men may see that it is the work of God. Elisha was conscious of his powerlessness here without Elijah, and he asked that when Elijah went away he might have a double portion of his spirit; he received it because his eye was fixed on Elijah taken up. Now he comes out in a new way, he rends his own clothes; he has done with old appearances, done with himself.
In Mark 2, we see that faith, the work of God, brought the palsied man to Jesus. “When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee”. But this was not all. Many do not know the gospel beyond this; they do not get to the “fatted calf”, the making merry with God, which is the first work of the Spirit in the soul. If you are not in favour in the Father’s house, you cannot be in power in the sight of men. If you, through the Spirit, mortify the deeds of the body, you live; you are outside among men in quite a new way, you are superior to all your old tastes and habits, you are like Matthew, free for Christ (Luke 5: 28), and every step you go you drop yourself more and more. You [p. 47] begin as nobody, as a sinner; but when you get to the top, that is to union with Christ, your self is left behind altogether; you belong to Another. No one gets on who does not enter into what is the Lord’s thought about him. Until deliverance is known souls have not an idea of what the Spirit’s thought for them is. The mark of a man who is characterised by the Holy Spirit is his acquaintance with Christ’s present ministry to His own.