NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 33
NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 33
Every one admits that there is a distance between God and the sinner. Cain knew there was a distance, but he did not know the nature of the distance. Many are truly converted, turned to God; but they do not joy in God because they do not see that all the distance, and all that caused the distance between them and God, has been removed to His glory. Death, as the judgment of God, is on every child of Adam; nothing can remove death but death. There must be a victim, as Abel set forth, not chargeable with our offence, bearing the judgment of the offence, and at the time of bearing it having a personal excellency, as the type expresses it, “and of the fat thereof”.
[p. 77] Man after the flesh must go in judgment, hence man cannot do anything to retrieve his position, he is entirely a debtor to grace. Conversion, turning to God, is the work of His grace. The gospel is that God has laid help upon One that is mighty, His own arm has brought salvation. He sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law. Peter, in opening the kingdom of heaven to the gentiles, insists especially on the resurrection of Christ. Death is upon every child of Adam, and there cannot be any atonement but by blood, yet there is no new ground until Christ is risen from the dead. “Jesus who was of Nazareth: how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power; who went through all quarters doing good, and healing all that were under the power of the devil, because God was with him .. . whom they also slew, having hanged him on a cross. This man God raised up the third day, and gave him to be openly seen, not of all the people, but of witnesses who were chosen before of God”, Acts 10: 38 - 41. A man altogether to God’s pleasure, who did all His will, has been put to death; for this end came He into the world. He, the Holy One of God, has in death judicially terminated the man who is according to the flesh. Therefore “through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins”. For the awakened soul the great object of faith is the Man Christ Jesus risen from the dead, the Man who not only bore the judgment due to me, but who glorified God where I had dishonoured Him. The man after the flesh has come to an end before God in the cross; and when Christ, raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, is before the eye of your soul, and as you believe in Him, you receive the Holy Spirit, the confirmation of your new position.