Scriptures and Power
Mark xii. 24
To be told that they did not know the Scriptures nor the power of God, and that this was the cause of their error, was sufficiently startling to the Sadducees who came to the Master with their question. They were not prepared to be taught anything that they had not already perceived to be in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, much less to have it taught by this Nazarene, who had not been reared in the schools of the rabbis.
It was a new experience to be told that they erred greatly because they knew not the Scriptures nor the power of God. Three things are noticeable: (i) Our Lord did not appeal, as Plato might have done, to arguments for the other life, based on the nature of the soul, or to the processes of nature; but to the Scriptures, which to Him were the ultimate court of appeal. In His conflict with Satan and in His teachings, His supreme appeal was always to the Word of God. (2) That He classes the five books of Moses under one heading and speaks of “the book of Moses” — from which we may infer His judgment that it was the product of one mind, as distinguished from the assertions of modern critics that it is a composite production, in which several hands may be detected. (3) That He discovers an argument for the future life in the present tense which Jehovah used in His first conference with Moses. We should never have thought of the fathomless depth that underlies those simple words, “I AM,” unless He had taken us to the edge and bidden us look into the sheer immensity, blue with distance. It was enough that, two hundred and fifty or three hundred years after the death of the youngest patriarch, God spoke of Himself as being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and Jesus founded on that affirmation the argument that these souls must all be in existence somewhere, since God could not be God of the dead, but of the living. Is He the God of Jacob two and a half centuries after he has been laid to sleep in Machpelah’s ancient cave, then Jacob must be alive. What marvelous depths lie under some of the simplest texts! We pass and repass over them day by day, all unknowing. But we can guess from this instance what mysteries of wonder and beauty Jesus may have unfolded to His disciples during the forty days.
What is there in Scripture that invested it, in Christ’s judgment, with such a unique authority? What are the Scriptures? It would be difficult to find a reply more satisfactory and scriptural than that given by the late Dr. Gordon, of Boston: “Literature is the letter; Scripture is the letter inspired by the Spirit.” What Jesus said of the new birth is equally applicable to the doctrine of inspiration: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” Educate, develop, and refine the natural man to the highest possible point; yet he is not a spiritual man till, through the new birth, the Holy Ghost renews and indwells him. So of literature: however elevated its tone, however lofty its thought, it is not Scripture. Scripture is literature indwelt by the Spirit of God. The absence of the Holy Ghost from any writing constitutes the impassable gulf between it and Scripture. In fine, the one fact which makes the Word of God a unique book, standing apart in solitary separateness from other writings, is that which also parts the man of God from common men — the indwelling of the Holy Ghost.
This is a true witness, and, because of this characteristic, we must say not simply that Scripture was, but that it is inspired by the Spirit of God. The bush burns with fire. The voice of God speaks. The Word gives living force to the words. The words that Scripture utters are spirit and life. As the sun burns in our grates, having been transmitted from unknown millenniums through the coal, which has been described as “fossilized sunlight,” so the Holy Spirit is present in the Scripture, as in no other writing whatsoever. Christ’s perception of this made the Scriptures His constant meditation and final court of appeal.
It should be noticed also that our Lord bases His argument on the very words of Jehovah. It was not enough that the words contained the Word, but that they were the very Word of God. In the same way the Apostle argues for the unity of the spiritual children of Abraham when he lays emphasis on seed as contrasted with seeds, the difference of an s establishing his point. To quote again the writer alluded to above,” Words determine the size and shape of ideas. As exactly as the coin answers to the die in which it is struck does the thought answer to the word by which it is uttered. Alter the language,’ and you by so much alter the thought, ’
The words, therefore, he argues, are all-important in enabling us to comprehend God’s exact meaning. In point of fact, the higher critics themselves bear witness to this by the minute attention which they expend on the text of Scripture. It greatly confirms the argument to notice the stress which Christ lays on the very words of God. Had He said, “I was,” it might have been seriously doubted whether the saints were yet alive. All such questions are put to rest by the majestic “I AM.”
It has been truly said that every revelation of Himself that God makes to man involves a revelation of what man is in his nature and needs. When we learn that Christ is made to us righteousness, we know that we are unrighteous. That He is our Paschal Lamb teaches us that we are in danger of the destroying angel. The name Comforter, given to the Holy Ghost, assures us of our need of one to stand beside us. When, therefore, God describes Himself as God to men who had passed from this earth for centuries, it was conclusive evidence that they were living somewhere, within some warm inclosure of His most blessed and happy-making presence.
There is, therefore, misconception when we speak of the dead, as though death were an abiding-place, a permanent condition. It is a passage, not an abiding-place; an act, not a state; a shadow flung for a moment by the portal through which we enter the other world, where the chalice of life brims over. Instead, therefore, of speaking of the dead, let us speak of those who have died. Up to a certain moment, which was the crisis of a physical change, they lived with us, but the moment after they had passed that change they were as certainly and as intensely living on the other side. Death is birth into the fuller life. The signal-box is vacant, but the operator is elsewhere, carrying out his code.
Considerations like these will greatly mitigate our sorrow for those who are asleep. Ours is the world of the dying and dead, the valley over which death spreads its huge, bat-like wings. Yonder is the world of the living. They live with God, in God, on God, unto God. They drink of the river of water of life near its source. “Sons of God,” “sons of the resurrection,” “equal unto the angels,” “unable to die any more” — such are some of the terms applied to the saints who live on the other side of death by the Master of life. “All live unto God.”
The place of their abode is the chosen house of Him who, though present in space as power, is specially manifested there as love. The restriction placed on the evolution of the spirit’s life in this world, like an iron fence, will there be removed. With God is the fountain of light; in His light they will see light; in His presence they will find fullness of joy; at His right hand pleasures forevermore. What the tropics are to the shriveled flowers of our northern climates, that heaven will be to the puny spirit-life of our present experience.
The fire that burned in the bush has generally been taken to mean the tribulations through which the church passes in this world, and which fail to consume her fabric or rob her of one twig or leaf that belongs to her organically. But surely it is truer to the symbolic teaching of Scripture to regard it as a symbol of the presence of God, who is as fire in the purity and spirituality of His nature, who needs no fuel to sustain His eternal being, and who is willing to stoop to the meanest and most despised of His creatures in tender pitifulness. Abide in Him, and let Him abide in thee; let Him settle down on thee, enveloping thee in the luminous garments of His holy presence, so that thou be inaccessible to death. All that corrupts and disintegrates shall be rendered powerless to harm thee. Thou shalt abide in the secret place of the Most High, and hide under the shadow of the Almighty. Whatever God has promised in the
Scripture He is prepared to make good by His power. “Ye know not the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” It is necessary to know each. Abraham believed that what God had promised He was able also to perform. He looked from the promise to the Promiser, from the world to the eternal power of the Godhead, to which nothing was impossible, not even hard.
This must be our attitude also. In the proper balancing of these two — in the study of the Scriptures, on the one hand, and in the adoring contemplation of God’s power, on the other — we shall find our best preservative against the errors of our age, and may await the time when God will vindicate Himself, fulfilling every promise and prediction of Scripture with the might of His stretched-out arm.
Do you ask how the dead are raised up, and with what body they come?
Do you fear that somehow in the crowd you may miss elect and beloved spirits? Do you question fearfully the ability of such a nature as yours to find consummation and bliss amid such new and wonderful surroundings? Be still and wait; these fears would be annulled if the veil were torn from our eyes and we knew the Scriptures and the power of God.
Not the Scriptures without the power, or you arrive at the dry-as-dust pedantries of scribe and Pharisee. Not the power without the Scriptures, or you drift into the ineptitudes of mysticism and fanaticism. Always combine the Scriptures and the power of God, and is not the commanding proof of the unique position of the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God, that through them, as through no other book whatsoever, the divine power travels and works?