Annotations on Passages of the Bible: New Testament
ST MATTHEW.
1. ii. 10 — “When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.” The wise men that sought Christ travelled through a vast howling wilderness, full of pits and drought and serpents, hideous rocks and mountains, even the desert of Arabia, before they had this ‘joy’ of seeing that star; and soon after they enquired of the priests, the star arose — which well represents what commonly is before persons have that joy which arises from the discovery of the Person represented by this star, even Christ, “the bright and morning star.” xxii. 6, compared with ii.
2. ii. ] 1 — “And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshipped Him: and when they had ojjened their treasures, they 2)resented unto Him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrhy’ Gifts proper to be offered to a King and a God: gold, such as was wont to be given to kings; frankincense and myrrh, the chief ingredients of the incense that was offered to God in the Temple. This was a specimen or earnest of the fulfilment of that prophecy, Isa. Ix. 6 — “The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Miilian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the Lord.” [By these ’ gifts,’ too,] the charge of their journey into Egypt was provided for. [See Matt. ii. 13.]
3. ii. 16 — “Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.”] Herod’s slaying all the young children: this was a just punishment of the peoyle of Bethlehem for their treatment of the blessed Virgin and her young child, by inhumanly refusing to entertain her in their houses when her travail came upon her, thereby exposing the life of her child; and not only refusing to entertain the Virgin in travail, but suffering her afterwards to remain in the stable with her child. For this treatment of this Divine infant and His mother, God, by a terrible judgment, destroys their infants, and dreadfully afflicts their mothers. They were inhuman and cruel to the blessed Virgin and her young child, and they are justly punished with the effects of dreadful inhuinanity and cruelty executed on their young children.
4,. V. 8, 9 — “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”] Christians should be first ’ pure,’ then ’ peaceable: ‘James iii. 17 — “The wisdom that is from above i?, first pure, then peaceable;” [c/.] St Mark ix. 29 — “And He said unto them. This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.”*
5. V. 9 — “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”] Because they are therein like Christ, ’ the child of God,’ the Prince of Peace, and the great Peacemaker; and are of a peaceable spirit, as becomes those that are brethren in God’s family.
6. V. 1-11 — “And seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain; and when He was set, His disciples came unto Him: and He opened His mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for My sake.’] In these Beatitudes, Christ seems to have a special design to correct those corrupt notions the Jews entertained of the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom that the Messiah was about to erect. As in ver. 3 He has respect to the expectation they had in the Messiah’s days of enjoying great outward wealth, and being made much of by the Messiah, as more excellent and honourable and worthy than other nations, and so vaimting themselves in these things that should greatly gratify their pride and covetousness; in ver. 4 He has respect to their expectations of great worldly mirth and pleasure and festivity; in ver. 5, He has respect to an imagination that military courage and martial exploits, and fierce revenge on the Piomans, and other “Gentile nations that had injured them, were to introduce their glory under the reign of the Messiah; in ver. 5, (also,) He has respect to their carnal desires of worldly possessions and sensitive appetites, which they hoped would be abundantly gratified in the Messiah’s days; in ver. C, He has respect to their expectation of scenes of slaughter and desolation in the Gentile world, which they expected and hoped to see and have a hand in in the Messiah’s day; in ver. 8, He has respect to those impure and luxurious delights which
* By a slip the reference is given to ver. 30. — G.
usually attend worldly victories, and princes’ courts, and great and flourishing earthly kingdoms, which things they supposed the Messiah would introduce; in ver. 9, He has respect to those desolating wars and bloody battles with which they supposed the Llessiah would set up and ])ropagate His kingdom; in ver. 10, He has still respect to their expectation of nothing but yomps, pleasures, wealth, and triumphs in the kingdom of heaven, or of the Messiah; in ver. 11, He has respect to their expectation of being advanced to great honour, as a kind of priests and princes, under the Messiah their King, having the Gentiles their slaves, and even their kings and great men bowing down and licking up the dust of their feet. That Christ has a design in these Beatitudes to give them right notions of the kingdom of heaven is manifest, for He several times in them makes express mention of the kingdom of heaven, as ver. 3 and ver. 10; and ver. 5 speaks of inheriting the earth, which His hearers doubtless understood of that inheritance of the earth and reigning over the world that is promised to God’s people in the days of the Messiah; and that being comforted which He promises, (ver. 4,) they doubtless understood Him of that ancient prophecy, such as Isa. xl. at beginning, and others, [which] was commonly called among them the consolation of Israel — viz., the comfort that should be introduced by the Messiah; and in the promise (ver. 6) of being filled Christ probably has respect to such promises made in the Old Testament, concerning what God would do for His people in the Messiah’s days: that they should be filled as bowls and as the corners of the altars, (Zech. ix. 15;) that they should be abundantly filled or satisfied with the goodness of God’s house, and that He would make them drink of the river of His pleasures, (Ps. xxxvi. 8, and lxv. 4;) that they should get that which is good, and delight themselves in fatness: Isa. Iv. 2 — “Wherefore do ye spend money for that wliicli is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto Me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” That they should eat when others were hungry, and drink when others were thirsty: Isa. lxv. 18 — “Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, My servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry: behold. My servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty: behold. My servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed.” That they should be satisfied with God’s goodness, and their soul satiated with fatness: Jer. xxxi. 14 — “And I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and My people shall be satisfied with My goodness, saith the Lord;” and that He would replenish every sorrowful soul: Jer. xxxi. 25 — “For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every .-orrowful soul.” That bread should be given them: Isa. xxxiiL 16 — “He shall dwell on high; his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks; bread shall be given him, his waters shall be sure.” That their poor should be satisfied with bread: Ps. cxxxii. 15 — “I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread;” and many other j)arallel prophecies: and in the promise of obtaining mercy, (ver. 7,) Christ probably has respect to such promises made to God’s people in the Messiah’s time, as those in Isa. xlix. 10, liv. 10, and Ix. 10, and in other paralk-l pkices; and in the promise of seeins; God, in ver. 8, Christ probably has respect to such proi)hecies concernini;- the glory of the Messiah’s times, as that then (Jod’s glory should be revealed. Their eye should see the King in His beauty. They should see eye to eye. That they should walk in the light of the Lord, and walk in the light of God’s
countenance, and the like; and God’s being their light instead of the sun: and in the promise of being the children of God, (ver. 9,) there is great reason to think Christ has respect to the many prophecies of the Messiah’s kingdom, that speak of God’s people being then especially owned and treated as His children, His sons and daughters,
7. V. 18 — “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”] The manner and style in which Christ taught, as well as the way in which He wrought miracles, were different from that of other prophets. Other prophets were wont to say, “Thus saith the Lord;’ but Christ used to express Himself thus, “Verily I say unto you,” as became the Lord Himself, the Lord that sent and inspired the prophets, and in whose name they spake and whose word they delivered.
8. vi. 10, 11 — “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.”] The order of these petitions is agreeable to the direction given in ver. 83 — “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall he added unto you.” So here Christ directs, first, to pray for ’ the kingdom of God,’ and then to pray for other things.
9. viii. 21 — “And another of His disciples said unto Him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father”] — i.e., let me stay till my aged father is dead. He was not willing to follow Him yet, and pleads this as an excuse, that his father was old and needed his care; or he was dear to him, and he was loath to leave him while he was alive: but after he should be dead, he would be willing to follow Him.
10. X. 17 — ‘^ But beware of men; for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues.”] To understand how this comes in, and how the particle ’ but ’ connects it with wdiat went before, it must be observed that Christ here explains Himself in what He said in the preceding verse. There He told them that He sent them forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; but, says He, beware of men: these are the wolves that I mean. It is men, and not wolves, I bid you bewire of.
11. xi. 5 — “The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached unto them.” Tv(f)lol ava^Xiirovo-i, Koi ywXol TrepcTrarovcn, Xeirpol KudapifyvTai., kul K(i){f)ul ukovovcl, veKpoi iyeipovrai, kol 7rTO)xol evcvyyeXlopTai.] By the poor seems pretty evidently to be meant “the poor in spirit.” In the last effect here mentioned the poor are evangelised; the manner of speaking and connexion of the words lead us to suppose there is the like relation and opposition between the benefit and character of the subject of that benefit, as in the foregoing effects mentioned, such as between receiving light and darkness, a being raised up and death. The word evayyeXL^ovTao, ‘evangelised,’ implies not only being the subject of the preaching of the gospel, or the telling the good news, but a being encouriiged, refreshed, and revived, and made joyful and happy by it; and between such a benefit and a being poor in spirit, of a broken heart, or heart mourning, humbled, being wretched, miserable, and undone in his own eyes, and despairing in the world and in himself. I say, a being evangelised in the sense mentioned has a like relation to such a qualification of the subject as sight has to blindness, light to darkness, walking to lameness, life to death. The poor’s being evangelised is the last efiect mentioned, it being that which crowns all, representing the main thing which Jesus comes into the world for, the blessed effect that He had respect to in all that He said and did, and the great thing of which the other things here mentioned were but types and representations. In these last words Christ has a plain reference to Isa. lxi. 1. In Luke iv. 18, Christ cites these words thus, “He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.”
12. xi. 30 — “For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”] These words have a relation to the words of the invitation. (Ver. 28.) The invitation is to them that labour and are burdened. A yoke is what is put on the necks of the cattle in order to their labouring, and when Christ says, “My burden is light,” the word ’ burden ’ is the noun of the verb or participle translated ’ heavy burden.’
13. xii. 30 — “He that is not with Me is against Me; and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad.”] The true reason of Christ’s observing this in this place, where He is reproving the Pharisees’ saying, that “He cast out devils by Beelzebub,” is this, that these Pharisees, till now, appeared to exercise that kind of prudence, falsely so-called, which is commonly to be seen among them that count themselves wise and great men, who think it becomes them to let matters of religion much alone, and not to appear forward and zealous, or apt to shew their minds. When Christ appeared working great miracles, with which the multitude appeared much affected, and some appeared zealous to commence His disciples and followers, they thought it their prudence to hold their tongues till Christ proceeded so far in His wonderful works, and the esteem that He gained among the people, that they apprehended themselves in apparent danger of having their glory eclipsed, and of losing the esteem and honour of the people; and then they could bear it no longer. They openly shewed what was in their hearts before — viz., a bitter enmity against Christ, and that truly they had never been indifferent as they appeared
14. xii. 49, 50 — “And He stretched forth His hand toward His disciples, and said, Behold My mother and My brethren! Por whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and niotiier.”] The figure of speech Christ here uses will appear the more natural and beautiful, if it be considered that there were probably then sitting by, not only His male disciples, but also Mary Magdalene and Joanna (the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward) and Susanna, and many other women that were His disciples, who at that time attended Him, ministering to Him of their substance, as seems by Luke viii. 1-3, with ver. 21.
15. xiii. 32 — “Which indeed is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”] The least of the seeds that they used, or that they were wont to sow, in their land.
16. xiv. 24, 25 — “But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.”] This which we are told of Christ shews what He was — viz., a Divine person. For it is spoken of in Job ix. 8, as a property or act of God, “that He treadeth on the waves of the sea.” Christ here not only walks on the waters of the sea, but that when it is tossed M’ith high waves, He treadeth on its boisterous waves. For it is said here that the ship was tossed with waves, and it is said in John vi. 18, that the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew.
17. xiv. 24-27 — “But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying. It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying. Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.”] “What we have here an account of seems livelily to represent what very frequently comes to pass to persons in the affair of their conversion. Christ did not appear unto them till they had been long tossed with a great tempest; the wind arose in the beginning of the night, and it was against them, and they had been rowing all night, and striving to get to the desired haven, and all to no purpose, so that by this time probably they were almost discouraged and just ready to yield the case, and see that it was utterly in vain for them to strive any more to reach their port. Then Christ in the latter post of the night appears to them, and comes to their help, and appears as one above their difficulties, walking in the boisterous waves that distressed and threatened to destroy them, treading them under His feet. So it commonly is with sinners under conviction before Christ appears for their help. They are first made sensible of their danger and brought unto great exercise and distress, and reduced to the last extremity, and to see that they can never reach the haven they seek of themselves. They are brought to yield their case as to their own strength, and then Christ appears as one that is above their guilt, and above all those evils that threaten to swallow them up, as it were treading under His feet those mighty waves that encompass them on every side, that they are ready to sink in, and upon those raging waves that toss them and are ready to overwhehn them. These difficulties the disciples met with were in the night, a time of darkness, as Jacob’s wrestling was in the night, signifying the darkness that persons meet with while under those convictions that are preparatory to conversion; and it is remarkable that the time when Christ appeared was near the breaking of the day, for it was in the fourth watch, which was the last post of the nighc. “Though weeping may continue for a night, yet joy comes in the morning,” It seems to be an emblem of the light that arises to the soul after darkness, when Christ appears. This was the time when Christ arose from the dead, and this was the time when Jacob obtained the blessing after long wrestling. It is also worthy of notice that when Christ first appeared they did not know what it was, they were troubled at the sight, and said it is a spirit, and cried out for fear. So very often, at the first spiritual discoveries that jjersons have after great awakenings and distresses of conscience, they do not know what it is, they fear it is only a delusion, and are terribly afraid to receive it, as has been often seen in the time of the late extraordinary pouring out of the Spirit here in Northampton,
18. xvi. 23 — “But He turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind Me, Satan; thou art an offence imto Me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”] We are not to understand it that Christ here calls Peter, Satan. No; Christ speaks to Satan, that He said, had a hand in the matter, and that influenced Peter thus to think and speak. He speaks to Peter’s indwelling sin, Mhich was as it were the Devil in Peter. It was not an instance in Christ’s severity towards Peter that He thus speaks, but His love and grace that He would not impute what Peter says to himself, but to Satan. He graciously makes a distinction between His disciple Peter and his indwelling corruption, as Paul says, Rom. vii. 20 — “It is no more I, but sin that dwelleth in me.”
19. xvi. 2G.] Preciousness or value of the soul, or anything above other things, will appear by compai-ing it with other things, considering of it either as to be sold for them or to be bought “svith them. If it be considered as to be sold for them, then the preciousness of it above them appears in the unprofitableness of the bargain; if it be considered as to be bought with other things, then its superior value appears by their insufficiency to buy it. The preciousness of the soul is set forth in this verse both these ways, as being more precious than the whole world. It is first set forth by the unprofitableness of the bargain, in case that it should be sold tor the whole world; and next it is set forth by the insufficiency of anything in the world, or of the whole world, to buy it or redeem it; and in that last expression — “What shall a man give?” &c. In the former part is set forth the insufficiency of the whole world to be received, in case that the soul be exchanged for other things. In the latter part is set forth the insufficiency of the whole world to be given, in case other things are to be exchanued for the soul.
20. xvii. 2 — “Aiul was traiisfioureLl before them: and His f cace did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light.”] This denoted who He was — viz., He that was spoken of in Dan. vii. 9, and Ps. civ. 2, lG-18.
21. xvii. 5 — “While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice ont of the cloud, which said, This is Liv beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.”] This cloud was not bright merely as clouds are oftentimes very bright by the reflection of the light of the sun. But there was a more excellent and glorious brightness in it, which is a suitable symbol of the Divine jn-esence, such as, perhaps, was in the Shekinah or cloud above the mercy-seat in the Tabernacle and Temple. Peter, speaking of the glory of this cloud, calls it “the excellent glory.” (2 Pet. i. 17.) Luke says they feared as they entered into the cloud; it was of the appearance of Divine majesty and glory that was in the cloud.
22. xix. 17 — “And He said unto him, Why callest thou Me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”] Probably Christ, who knew what was in man, saw that this young man, though he had no notion of Christ’s being a Divine person, and thought Him but a mere man, yet, thinking Him a prophet, came to Him, trusting in Him for eternal life in a manner that no mere man is to be trusted on, which is the reason why He says that to him, “Why callest thou Me good? there is none good but one, that is, God” — i.e., there is none else who lias a goodness that is to be depended upon but God. For Christ does not find fault simply with any man’s being called ’ good,’ for He, using the same word, calls some men good. Himself, as Matt. xii. 25; so Luke xix. 17-
23. XXV. 12 — “But He answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.”] Kom. viii. 29 — “Por whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren.” To judge of the force of this expression, see Matt. xxv. 12; Deut. xxxiii. 9; Job ix. 21; Ps. xxxi. 7. In Exod. ii. 25 — “God had respect unto them,” in the original is, “God knew them.” Thus the word in the Hebrew, is a kinsman or near friend, and also kindred and affinity, from the verb to know. See Job ix. 21, and Pro v. xii. 10 — ^“‘Pegardeth’ the life of his bear,t,” in the original is, “‘Knoweth’ the life of his beast.”
2-i. xxv. 34 — “Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand. Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”] That this has a special respect to the decree of election may be argued from Mark x. 40, and Matt. XX. 3. See Exod. xxiii. 20.
25. xxvi. 64 — “Jesus saith unto him. Thou hast said: nevertheless, I say unto ycui. Hereafter .shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of iieaven.”] Christ’s answer to the high priest is remarkable. The high priest asks whether He be the Son of God. He replies Yes; but says He, “Nevertheless, ye shall hereafter see the Son of man sitting,” &c. He did not deny Himself to be the Son of man, though He preferred Himself to be the Son of God. He teaches the union of the human and Divine nature. It was wonderful, and what the high priest could not believe, that the Son of God should be arraigned as a criminal before His judgment-seat; and Christ tells him he should see another thing equally wonderful, and that is the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven, sitting the Judo-e of the world, and be brought before His judgment-seat. Nevertheless though “I be the Son of God, yet ye shall see the Son of man, sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”
26. xxvi. 65 — “Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying. He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard His blasphemy,”] Contrary to that law, Lev. xxi. 10. This probably foreboded that the Levitical priesthood was soon to be abolished, their priestly garments to be rent, and they to be divested of the honours and prerogatives of their office.
27. xxviii. 9.] It may be pleasant and profitable to consider the various passions that these women felt in their hearts on this occasion. Christ was a person exceeding dear to them; and they lately had their hearts filled and overwhelmed with sorrow, upon the occasion of the cruel and ignominious death that they with their own eyes had seen Christ put to, (See chap, xxvii. 55, 56.) And they never expected to see Him alive any more; and they had with great art prepared precious ointment to anoint His body, and doubtless were much vexed that they could not have opportunity to do it, by the reason of the Sabbath coming on, till the third day after His death. And now they come very early, — the first day of the week, — greatly engaged in their minds to do it. But when they come there they find the sepulchre empty; they could not find the body of Jesus, as John informs us, and had the sorrow of the disappointment in their design of anointing His body, added to the sorrow for His death; while they stood here disappointed and sorrowful, not knowing what to do, two angels appeared to them and told them that Christ was risen and was alive. This filled them with surprise and joy. For it did not only take away their concern for their disappointment in not finding the body of Jesus in the sepulchre, but brought the unexpected and unspeakably joyful news that Christ, their dear Lord, was, alive again. How suddenly did this turn them from the deepest sorrow to overflowing joy! It is said, in ver. 8.... How eager were they to impart the joyful news to their fellow- disciples, who were sharers in their sorrow for His death; and as they ran, Christ Himself met them, and in a friendly manner saluted them; and what a new surprise was this! Now they see with their own eyes the truth of what the angels had told them. How did it heighten their joy, now to see their dear Lord Himself, whom they had so lately seen put to so cruel a death, and never expected to see more, meet them alive, saluting them in a sweet and cheerful manner! and how do they express their joy and love to their risen Lord! They come and hold
Him by the feet and worship Him. They express their joy, and testify their respect to Him, in the most dear, humble, and adoring manner.
ST MARK
28. vi. 8 — “And commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no scriji, no bread, no money in their purse.’] See Num. xxi. 18.
29. vi. 7 — “And He called unto Him the twelve, and began to send them forth two by two; and gave them power over unclean spirits.”] It was best, on many accounts, that two should go together; but this was probably one end — that their testimony might be valid, for the testimony of two witnesses is true.
30. X. 24-26 — “And the disciples were astonished at His words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves. Who then can be saved?”] The reasons why they were astonished seem to be twofold: (1.) This was contrary to the notions they had of the Messiah’s kingdom, as a kingdom of great temporal wealth and glory. They wondered, therefore, how it should come to pass that riches should exclude men out of it; and (2.) It was very contrary to the notion they had been brought up in among the Jews, who had a high esteem of rich men. They were their scribes and others that were their great men, that were rich, were in highest esteem among them, and supposed to be highest in favour with God. As to the poorer, meaner sort of people, they were low in esteem. In comparison of these they thought none so likely to be advanced as those, and therefore when they hear that those are like to be excluded, they say, “Who then can be saved?” Wherefore Christ greatly contradicted the notions of the Jews in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, in representing a rich man and child of Abraham as going to hell, and not to Abraham’s bosom, but seeing there, afar off, Lazarus, a poor stranger.
ST LUKE.
31. vii. 87 — “And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster-box of ointment.”] This woman seems to have been before a common whore, antl that precious ointment was what she kept to anoint herself with, to render herself agreeable to her gallants, and particularly used to anoint her hair with, which was accounted the syecial ornament of women, and that she now makes use of as a towel to wipe Christ’s feet; and having, now [that] she is brought to repentance, no further use for the costly box in that way, nor the precious ointment that is in it, she breaks the box and pours the ointment on Christ.
82. vii. 41, 42 — “There was a certain creditor which had two debtors; the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Teil me therefore, which of them will love him most?”] Christ plainly intimates that He is the creditor, or that He is the Being against whom sin is committed; for He is the person that forgives the debtor: verses 48, 49 — “And He said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. And they that sat at meat with Him began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also?” And He is the person the debtor loves for forgiveness of the debt: verses 44-47 — “And He turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest Me no water for My feet: but she hath washed My feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest Lie no kiss: but this woman, since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss My feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed My feet with ointment. Wherefore, I say unto thee. Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” And if Christ be the creditor. He is God.
83. viii. 1-3 — “And it came to pass afterward, that He went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God; and the twelve were with Him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto Him of their substance.”] This company of women that followed Christ from city to city, ministering to Him of their substance, is a little image and resemblance of that blessed company of virgins that follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, spoken of in Rev. xiv. 4 — “These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. These were redeeuied from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb.”
34. xi. 24-26 — “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he Cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.”] By comparing these verses with what goes before, it is confirmed that apostasy is one great ingredient or constituent of the unpardonable sin. For it is manifest Christ says this of those same Pliarisces spoken of before, that said He cast out devils by Beelzebub, the j)riuce of the devils. It is more inauifest still by comiJaring what is said in this place with Matt. xii. 22-25. There, speakino; of the unclean spirit being gone out of a m;in, and returning again, &c., He adds, “Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.” It seems there was a time when these Pharisees had much of the connnon influences of the Spirit of God, and the unclean spirit for a season seemed to be gone out of them; and this, ])robably, was a consequence of the awakening they were the subjects of by John the Baptist’s preaching; but, after the illuminations they then had, it seems that their religion greatly degenerated, (though they were still very religious in their way.) They were exceediuLrly lifted up with spiritual jiride, and fell into the condemnation of the devil, and at last into the unpardonable sin. Hence it is manifest that we nowhere in Scripture have any description of the unpardonable sin, but that apostasy is one thing that constitutes it.
35. xiv. 20 — “If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”] We must ’ hate ’ these, considered as an exchange for Christ, or as offered to us as inducements to forsake Christ. In the same manner as a just judge is said to hate gifts: Prov. xv. 27 — “He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house: but he that hateth gifts shall live.” Are we to ’ hate’ father, &c.? It is not meant that the judge should hate gold, or silver, or goods, simply considered, but considered as offered as a purchase and bias of his judgment. And in the same manner as it is said in Cant. viii. 7 — “]Iany waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned,” not that it would be contemned simply and absolutely, but as offered as an exchange for those things which love seeks and desires.
3G. xvi. 8 — “And the Lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”] The meaning i.s, that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light are in theirs — i.e., the children of this world are wiser in the management of their secular affairs to promote their worldly interest, and in contriving and disposing things that appertain to their generation, — that is, to the children of this world, — than the children of light are in the management of special afftiirs for their special interest. That this is the meaning, and not that the children of this world arc wiser in temporal matters than the children of light are in the same matter, is evident by the following, where Christ advises us to be as wise for ourselves in special affairs as the children of this world are in temporal affairs.
37. xvi. 9 — “And I say unto you. Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlastinghabitations.”] i.e., Make to yourselves friends in heaven of your earthly provision and substance; make Cod the
Father, and Christ, and the other inhabitants of the heavenly world, your friends, by bestowing the earthly goods that ye are stewards of upon them, as the unjust steward made himself friends by bestowing the goods that he was steward of upon them. Bestow your earthly goods upon them, by bestowing them on the poor, who are God’s receivers: if it be bestowed on one of the least of Christ’s brethren, it is bestowed on Christ. Then we shall make God and Christ and heavenly angels our friends, which friends will receive us when we fail. It is called the mammon of unrighteousness, because it is that which in time past we have, as it were, stolen and embezzled, and not improved them as God’s stewards, but used them as if they were our own, as the unjust steward embezzled his lord’s goods. It is for the sake of these worldly goods that we have been unjust, as the steward was unjust for the sake of his master’s goods, that he might have them for his own and use them for his own private ends. Sin consists radically in the love of this world, and it is because this world is that which sin or the corruption of nature hath for its object, that it is called the mammon of unrighteousness. It is by our thus usino- the world that we come to be turned out of it, and to be separated from those worldly engagements by death, as the steward was turned out of his stewardship and was deprived of his lord’s goods for his embezzling them. The sin by which man fell at first, and for which our first parents were turned out of the earthly paradise that God had committed to their care as stewards, to dress it and to keep it, was using it as unjustp stewards, putting the goods committed to their care to a use contrary to the owner’s command, and to serve their own private end. This will, therefore, be a wise improvement of the mammon by which we have lost our possession and enjoyment of all things here below, to make ourselves friends of it, “that they may receive us” when we are turned out of our stewardship and taken out of the world. Note, that expression, ‘’ that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations,” thus explained, is a clear proof of the separate state of souls.
88. xvi. 12 — “And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?”] By that which is another man’s is represented this world’s goods. The same with the “unrighteous mammon,” as it is called in the foregoing verse; and by that which is “our own,” is represented the blessings and enjoyments of heaven, the same that is called the “true riches” in the preceding verse. This world’s goods are not our own; they are but lent to us for a little while, and are to be taken from us again presently. We are but stewards of them, according to the foregoing parable that gave occasion to these reflections. So the possessions of the children of Israel in the earthly Canaan are represented as not their own, but only what they improve as God’s tenants and as sojourners with Him, who is their landlord: Lev. xxv. 23 — “The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is Mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me.” So here what we have in this world is represented as not our own, but God’s, and we only as stewards.
KEW TESTAMENT — ST LUKE. 1 io
But heavenly blessings are given to us as our proper inheritance, and that wherein our happiness consists. They are not lent to us, but given to us, never to be taken from us, but to be ours for ever. We are but sojourners with God on earth; but heaven is our proper home. Hence we may see the force of the argument. If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who will give you that which is 3’our own? If you be not fit to have something only committed to your care for a little while, that is quickly to be taken from you again, how nnich less are you fit to be trusted with things for ever; not only to have them lent to you or committed into your hands for a little while, but to have them given finally into your everlasting possession? If you cannot be trusted with something for only a few days, how much less can you be trusted with the eternal possession of a thing?
81). xvi. 16 — “The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.”’] Here I would observe, that when universal terms are used about redemption, they do not prove universal redemption, any more than the universal term here used proves that every man, in a strict and proper sense, did press into the kingdom of heaven since the preaching of John the Baptist. (” Every man presseth into it.”) Christ is not so much speaking of what had already actually come to pass since John’s time, as giving a description of that new dispensation that John began, and shewing wherein it differed from the old dispensation under the Law and the Prophets, as to the much greater numbers that are saved, and the multitudes that, under this dispensation that John’s preaching was the dawning of, flock and press into the ki)igdom of God. The pouring out of the Spirit in John the Baptist’s time, was the beginning of a glorious harvest of souls, that continued from that time to the end of that age, wherein multitudes of all sorts pressed into the kingdom of God.
40. xvii. 87 — “And they answered and said unto Him, Where, Lord? And He said unto them. Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.”] This is an enigmatical answer to their question; but yet by giving diligent heed to this answer, with due care to understand it, together with a diligent observation of events to be determined by it, when and where, Christ’s answer is that these things that He speaks of shall be when and where they shall see the eagles gathered about the dead carcase. Now, the Roman armies bearing an eagle on their ensign, this might naturally lead them to think that the Romans were the eagles Christ spoke of. But what should lead them to think that Jerusalem was meant by the dead body? I answer, Because, when Jerusalem was besieged by the Roman armies, the city was filled with dead carcases. What innumerable multitudes were there that died in Jerusalem during the siege, by famine and by killing one another! When the Roman aimieswere gathered together about Jerusalem, then was it fulfilled that the eagles were gathered together about the dead carcases: or rather, by the carcase He means His own dead body that was killed at Jerusalem. And after this the Jewish nation were like Christ’s dead carcase, and not His living body as the true Church is; for His Spirit thenceforward left that Church and the Temple and typical ordinances of their worship; thenceforward it became as Christ’s dead body. The Church, with its ordinances of worshii, is the body of Christ. The Church, with the presence and Spirit of Christ, is His living body; but when deprived of it, His dead body. The Jews, therefore, killing Christ’s body, killed then their own Church: by this means became a dead carcase and a fit prey for eagles. From the time the Jews killed Christ the Jewish Church was dead and putrified till they became a stinking carcase, before the time of their destruction, and their stink called the eagles together upon them.
41. xix. 12 — “He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.”] Such a representation in this parable was the more familiar to the Jews because this had actually been the case with their late princes, Herod, Archelaus, &c. They, in order to receive their kingdom, left Judea for a season, and went into a far country — to Rome — to be invested with the kingdom by the Roman emperors, and then returned invested and in the exercise of their royal authority. So Christ went into a far country, and a greater city than Rome, to be invested with the kingdom over the Jews and over mankind in this world, His own country, by One infinitely greater than the Roman emperors.
42. ver, 14 — “But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying. We will not have this man to reign over us.”] They sent this message to that superior Potentate that was to invest Him.
43. ver. 17 — “And he said unto him. Well, thou good servant; because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.”] For now the nobleman was returned with kingly authority over the whole country, and had power to dispose of the government of cities.
44. xxi. 31 — ‘■ And in the day-time He was teaching in the temple; and at night He went out, and abode in the mount that is called the mount of Olives.”] By this it is evident that Christ was commonly wont to lodge in the open field — He had not where to lay His head in Jerusalem: He had no friend there to invite Him in, and He had not money to purchase entertainment at an inn, and therefore it was His constant manner to go and lodge at a certain place in the mount of Olives, which was the place where He and His disciples were found when Judas betrayed Him; and therefore it is said in next chapter, ver. o9, that that night “He came out, and went, as He was wont, to the mount of Olives; and His disciples also followed Him.” And hence also John xviii. 1, 2. (See also John viii. with vii. 33.) Hence we may learn that what is spoken of Christ figuratively in Cant. v. 2, “I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved, saying. Open unto me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night,” was often literally fulfilled while He dwelt here on earth, and that He often suffered greatly in being obliged to lodge abroad in the cold and rain.
ST JOHN.
45. i. 9 — “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that Cometh into the world.”] There is not now, ever was, nor will be, any man in the world enlightened but by Jesus Christ. Every man that Cometh into the world, that ever is enlightened, is enlightened by Him; or hereby is meant that this Light is not only to enlighten the Jews, but that it enlightens indifterently every man, let him be of what nation soevlr. It was fit that the true Light, when He came, should be a general light. Moses enlightened only the nation of the Jews, because he was not the true light. See a very parallel expression. Col. i. 23 — “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister.”
46. i. 18 — “No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”] God under the Old Testament gave the images of things the substance and reality of which He gave in the New; and one instance of this was, that Christ so often under the Old Testament appears in human shape. This was an image and an earnest of His incarnation; and it is still God’s manner to give the image and earnest of the glorious things that are to be brought to pass for His Church, and in the spiritual world, before He actually accomplishes them; and it was pleasing to Him to appear in human shape, whose ’ delights were with the sons of men,’ who delighted in the human nature, and in the thought of taking the human nature and a human body; He delighted in a human shape, and in the re.semblance of His future incarnation.
47. ii. 4 — “Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.”] This exiDression, as it was used in those times, carried nothing of disrespect by what was then understood by the expression and the force that words then bore; they were not looked upon as unsuitable to be used towards one most superior. This is evident, because the devil, when through the greatness of his fear he feigned himself a humble and earnest supplicant to Jesus Christ, used this expression: Luke viii. 28 — “What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God Mott High? I beseech thee, torment me not.”
48. iv. 36, 87 — “And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that leapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, Cne scwetb, and another reaicth.’] He that &oweth is Chiist, the ministers of the gospel they do but reap the fruit of Christ’s labours. It is He that has, as it were, ploughed the field and fitted the ground, and sowed the seed, and He waters the seed sown. The Word, Ordinances, and Spirit, are of His purchasing and bestowing, hence ministers are represented as labourers that are sent into the harvest only to gather in the harvest — to gather in souls, the foundation of whose salvation is all already laid by Christ. He that sows is the Owner of the field and Lord of the harvest. Ministers are only labourers and servants sent forth to gather in His hai^est that grows in the field, and springs from seed that He has sowed. He that sows and he that reaps shall rejoice together, as Christ and the seventy did when they returned and told Him of their success: Luke X. 17, 18, 21. (Ver. 37.) This was remarkably verified with respect to Christ and these His disciples, for Christ, when He dwelt on earth, sowed, laid all the foundation of His future Church, but the Apostles and other ministers gathered in the harvest after His ascension.
49. xiii. 10 — “Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not, save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.”] Probably Christ may have some respect to the legal washings of the priests, who, at their consecration, even washed all over: Exod. xxix. 4 — “And Aaron and his sons thou shalt bring unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and shalt wash them with water;” but afterwards were required only to wash their hands and their feet at the laver. (Chap. xxx. 19-21.)
50. xiv. 13 — “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”] Christ speaks especially of those works or miracles spoken of in the foregoing verse, and therefore it is said ’ that will I do,’ and not ’ that will I give.’
51. xvii. 24 — “Also.”] — Query — What doth this particle ’ also ’ refer to? Ans. Christ had before prayed for His own glory. This He began with in ver. 1. This He repeats in ver. 5. And this He speaks of in the verses immediately preceding, 22, 23, He speaks of the glory which God had given. Here He prays that God would not only glorify Him, but the disciples also with Him and in His glory. He here explains His request that God would glorify Him, signifying that He meant not Himself singly, but with His disciples.
ACTS.
52. vii.] Rehearsal of Stephen — to shew how the Jews had of old resisted the Holy Ghost in the revelation and promises made. (1.) Revealed. (2.) The operation of the Holy Spirit to accomplish them within them. Resisted it by Moses and others raised up. Particularly insists on the promises made to Abraham that He would give to his seed Canaan for a possession, and therefore began with account of the promise and the circumstances attending it, — how God called
Abraham from his own country in order to making the covenant with him, and the bestowing of the blessing on him, and the circumstance that rendered the promise wonderful [and] demanded Abraham’s ftiith in resting in it — viz., that for the present God gave him none inheritance in the land, &c., and when he had yet no child — how God confirmed the promise by the seal of circumcision. Next the step God took to the accomplishment of this promise. (1.) Joseph into Egypt to keep them alive in famine, lest Abraham’s posterity should be extinct and so the promise fail. (Gen. xxxvii. 4.) Joseph, the first instrument God worked by, whom they resisted. Next their fathers being buried in Canaan, earnest of fulfilment. Next their miserable state. Next Moses — type of Christ. Next brought in by Joshua — finished in David and Solomon. Never fully accomplished till then. Then God trieth them by settled abode. No longer moving about in a tabernacle. (2 Sam. xii.) And then Stephen observes that notwithstanding God don’t dwell in temples made with hands, that Solomon’s temple was not the true temple of God by the account of their own prophets, whereby he justifies himself in what they accused him of in ver. 14 of chap. vi.
53. vii. 87, 38 — “This is that Moses which said unto the children of Israel, A Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like unto me; him shall ye hear. This is he that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sinai, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us.”] The thmgs which Stephen observes of Moses in these verses serve the more to shew the comparison that he makes of the Jews’ treatment of Christ with their fathers’ treatment of Moses to be apt and pertinent, and to render the application he makes ver. 51 — “Ye stifFnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye” — the more convincing; for here he observes that Moses himself compares the Mes.siah to him, and says that He shall be a Prophet like to him; and besides, their fathers in rejecting Moses rejected Christ, for Moses spake and acted in the name of Christ, and as His messenger and instrument, and Christ was with him in what he did and said, as Stephen observes, (ver. 38,) that Moses was with the angel (i. e., Christ) in Mount Sinai, and spake to Him, and with our fathers, who received the lively oracles to give unto us; so that Moses spake His words, and [so] as that in rejecting Moses they rejected Christ’s own words, and their murmurings against him and opposition to him was really opposition to Christ.
54. viii. 20-22 — “But Peter said unto him. Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.”] By what is here said it is evident that a man may contract fearful guilt, and may undo himself to all eternity by that which he has no great sense of the badness of in the time of it, when he commits it does not seem heinous to him; for Simon, he never seems to have had any great sense of any hurt in his proposal of buying the gift or power of conferring the Holy Ghost with money. He was very bold in his proposal, and in all likelihood it was very unexpected to him to meet with such a rebuke.
55. xiii. 39 — “And by Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.”] This is true in two senses, (1.) The Law of Moses made no provision for the expiation of presumptuous sins: there were no sacrifices appointed for such sins: Num. xv. 80 — “But the soul that doeth ought iDresumptuously, (whether he be born in the land or a stranger,) the same reproacheth the Lord; and that soul shall be cut off” from among his people.” It was so ordered on purpose that man being kept in doubt, and their consciences not fully satisfied about their presumptuous sins, that when Christ came, and the gospel which declared the forgiveness of all sin through Him, ought to be the more joyful tidings. The forgiveness of sin was never fully revealed till Christ came. It is probable that the forgiveness of presumptuous sin had been a matter of great question and controversy amongst their doctors, and therefore Paul tells them that it is by Christ they are justified from those sins. And (2.) the sacrifices of the Law of Moses could not fully take away the guilt of any sin.
56. xvii. 27, 28 — “That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His ofi“- spring.”] Alluding to the darkness in which the heathen world is represented.
ROMANS.
67. i. 32, ii. 1 — “Who, knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Therefore thou art inexcusable, 0 man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.”] It seems to be a mistake of many that the Apostle in what he says of men’s wickeilness, in chap, i., has respect only to the Gentiles, and that in what he says in chap. ii. he has respect only to the Jews. It is true that in the first chapter he evidently has his eye chiefly on the wickedness that prevailed in the world, but that is not his professed design in it, only to describe the sin of the Pagan world, but the wickedness of the world of mankind. It is all unrighteousness and ungodliness, &c. And in the second chapter he has his eye chiefly on the Jews; but it is not his professed design to speak only of them, as appears by his beginning in ver. 1. — The universal terms that he uses in it — “Therefore thou art inexcusable, 0 man,” (not, 0 Jews!) “whosoever thou art” (of mankind, whether Jew or Gentile) “that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doost the same things.” In the last verse of the first chapter the Apostle speaks of the wickedness of mankind in general, and shews how they hold the truth in unrighteousness, as he had said before (ver. 18) — “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness:” and the special design of that verse is to set forth how they are all alilce and all agreed in wickedness, and in the same kind of wickedness, though they all have that light that is sufficient to teach them that those that commit such things deserve the condemnation and wrath of God, and so death and destruction; which they are very ready to acknowledge and declare in the case of others when they see their wickedness, their unrighteousness, covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, &c. I say, though when they see others guilty of such things they can easily see that they are worthy of death, and are forward to express it; yet they do the very same things, and not only so, but they shew plainly that they have just such hearts; they shew a full practical consent to all the wickedness of others that they are forward to condemn and to declare worthy of death. Thus inexorable are they and inconsistent with themselves. Thus the beginning of the II. chapter comes in — “Therefore thou art inexcusable, 0 man, whosoever thou art that jxidgest.” Thou that art forward to condemn others as worthy of death — “for luhereinthou judgest another thou condemnest thyself” — thou art very unreasonable and exceeding inconsistent with thyself, — “for thou that judgest doest the same things,” and shewest that thou hast pleasure in their practice. There is at the same time that you judge them a full practical consent to, and good liking of, the very same practices. So God of old condemned the Jews, for that in this practice they had justified Samaria and Sodom, and were a comfort to them, and yet had judged them. (Ezek. xvi. 51, 52, 54.)
58. ii. 21, 22 — “Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?”] The Apostle, in these verses, seems to allude to these words, in Ps. 1. 16-] 8 — “But unto the wicked God saith. What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? Seeing thou hatest instruction, and casteth my words behind thee. When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedest with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.”
59. iii. 10-18 — “As it is written. There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketb after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre: with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes.”] The passages here quoted out of the Old Testament are to prove these things — (1.) That mankind are universally sinful — that every one is corrupt; that is what is aimed at in verses 10-12. (2.) That every one is not only corrupt, but every one totally corrupt in every part; that is aimed at in verses 18-15, where the several parts of the body are mentioned. (3.) That every one is not only in every part, but corrupt throughout in an exceeding degree, in verses 16-18.
()0. iii. 23 — “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”] I.e., The glory of the reward, as the phrase signifies, (chap. V. 2) — “By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
61. iii. 25, 26 — “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness; that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”] Sins that are past, i.e., that were committed in past ages, before Christ died, as Heb. ix. 15 — “For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” And therefore it follows in ver. 26 — “To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness; that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” Before, the Apostle was speaking of past ages; the righteousness of God in pardoning their sins then committed was not fully declared, then, in the time, but now it is at “this time.”
62. V. 13, 14 — “For until the Law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of Him that was to come.”] There are two things the Apostle would prove in these words, one of which establishes the other. First, he would prove that all mankind were under the law God gave to Adam, that stated “death to be the wages of sin.” This is evident, because that sin, as bringing death, was in the world before there was any other legislation or scheme, giving of law to mankind, besides what was to Adam, viz., in that space of time that was from Adam to Moses. There being sin, therefore, in the world, as bringing death in that space of time, before the giving of the Law by Moses, shews that there was a Law given of God before that time, threatening death that they were under; but this could be no other than the Law God gave to Adam. This proves that Adam was the legal head of mankind; that mankind were under the Law given to him, wherein God threatened death for transgression; and thus God, in this Law given to Adam, saying, “When thou sinnest thou shalt die,” did not only speak to him, though He spoke in the singular number; but in him spoke to posterity also.
Hereby the Apostle projiares the way for the second thing he would prove in these words which he had asserted before, ver. 12 — “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned;” which he mainly aims at the proof, viz., that all mankind sinned and fell in Adam. This is evident by Adam’s being the legal head of mankind, which is the first thing insinuated. For if God, when He spoke to Adam in the singular number, giving him a precept, spoke to him as representing posterity, so it will follow that He spoke to him as representing his posterity in the threatening; and this is further evident by this, that death did not only reign from Adam to Moses, but also reigned over them that had not violated Adam’s law themselves by their actual personal transgression, as Adam had done.
63. vii. 13 — “Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.”] This is to be connected with v. 11, with these words, and by it, (i.e., by the Law,) slew me, and so with v. 10, / found the Law to be unto death, and that with v. 9, when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died, and that with the fifth verse, “For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the Law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.”
6i. vii. 1-i — “For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.’”] Ahab sold himself to work evil, (1 Kings xxi. 20) — “And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, 0 mine enemy? And he answered, I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord.” He did it of choice, he was a wilHng slave to sin, voluntarily submitted and gave up himself to the dominion of this master. JBut the Apostle Paul was sold imder sin as a poor captive against his will, as the context obliges us to understand.
65. vii. 15 — “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.”] In the original it is 6v ytvcba/coi, “I know not,” which confirms that the Apostle here speaks in the name of a true saint, and not in the name of a wicked man. For surely a wicked man knows his sins in the common use of such an expression in Scripture for approve, own, as what is near to him and belongs to him; but the Apostle here speaks of his not knowing sin in that sense, he disowns and renounces it; he does not approve of it as that which he has any relation to, and accordingly it is not in the sight of God appjroved as what belongs to him. That this is the sense is confirmed by v. 17 — “Now, then, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me,” and v. 20 — “Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.”
66. viii. 23 — “And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”] The Apostle, in calling the redemption of saints the redemption of the body, probably has in his eye that passage in Hos. xiii. 14 — “1 will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: 0 death, I will be thy plagues; 0 grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.”
67. viii. 29 — “For whom He did foreknow,- He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren.”] This is the sum of what the elect are predestinated to — viz., to be conformed to the image of His Sou, to be made like His Son, and to have communion with Him in His holiness and in His happiness. They are predestinated to be conformed to His Son in His death; in dying to sin and the world, and in His resurrection by being quickened from being dead in trespasses and sins: also in their bodies being raised. “Christ the first-fruits, and afterwards those that are Christ’s at his coming.” They are conformed to Christ in His justification. When Christ rose, He was justified, and believers in this justification do but yartike with Him in His justification, in v. 84 — “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” They are conformed to Christ in His relation to the Father in His Sonshij), and are made also the children of God, so that they are His children, only He is the first-born among them, as the Apostle here observes. They are conformed to Christ in the Father’s love to Him, and are made partakers with Him in it as members. They are conformed to Christ in His being heir of the world, and they are joint-heirs. They are conformed to Christ in His exaltation and glorification, for He and they shall be glorified together. They are conformed to Him in ascension into heaven; they shall also ascend. They are conformed to Him in the glorification of His body, for their bodies shall be made like unto His glorious body. They are conformed to Him in His enjoyment of the Father in heaven: they by being members of Him partake with Him in His enjoyment of the Father’s infinite love, and in His joy in the Father, His joy is fulfilled in them, and the glory which the Father has given Him, He has given them. They are conformed to Him in His reigning over the world. They sit with Him on His throne, and they have power over the nations, and they shall rule them with a rod of iron, and as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers, even as He received of His Father. They shall be conformed unto Him in His judging the world, for the saints shall judge the world, yea, they shall sit with Christ in judging angels. This glory, this excellency and happiness that consists in the saints being conformed to Christ, is the sum of the good that they are predestinated to, and the whole of their conformity to Christ is what the Apostle has respect to, and not only their being made like Him in conversion and sanctification.
68. ix. 3 — “For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” In the original it is “that myself were ’ anathema ’ from Christ.”] The Apostle’s meaning probably is, that he was willmg that Christ should SO order it that he should in the world be cut off from the society and privileges of His visible people, as an excommunicated person, and also be cut oti’ from the earth by an accursed death at last, dyin.o- under the hidings of God’s face and dreadful fruits of His displeasure for a time, as Christ did; and thus to suffer from Christ for the Jews, as Christ, who was made a curse for us, suffered from God the Father, who was despised and rejected of men, cast out of the synagogue as an accursed person while He lived, and at last died an accursed death for us. As Christ loved us so the Apostle loved his brethren.
69. ix. 4 — “Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the service of God, and the promises.”] The same glory is doubtless here meant, whose departure was lamented when the ark was taken, when it was said by the true friends of Israel, The glory is departed from Israel, meaning the ark and the cloud of glory in which God appeared above upon it, or rather Jesus Christ, with respect to these tokens of His friendly presence.
70. ix. 22, 23 — “What if God, willing to shew His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction; and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared unto glory.”] He does not say to shew His justice or righteousness, for that is as much observed in God’s glorifying and making happy the saints, and much more in some respects. God’s justice is more gloriously manifested in the sufferings of Christ for the elect, than the damnation of the wicked.
71. X. 3 — “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.”] The reason why the righteousness of Christ, from time to time, is called by the name of God’s righteousness, may probably be this, that the grand difference between the righteousness of the two covenants is this, that one is a mere human righteousness, the other is a Diine righteousness, or the righteousness of a Divine Person; and not that one is our own personal righteousness, and the other the righteousness of Another that is our surety. For if Adam had stood, and we had been justified as in the way of the first covenant, we that are the posterity of Adam should not have been justified by our own personal righteousness, but should have been justified as much by the righteousness of another as now under the second covenant. God, in infinite wisdom, hath so ordered things to bring mankind to a greater dependence on God, that mankind should not be justified by their own righteousness, that is, by the righteousness of mankind, but by the righteousness of God, that they should have their happiness, their strength, their wisdom, and their righteousness, and their all in God, that God might not only be the sura of their objective good or good of enjoyment, (but) so (that) He should be the sum of their glory or good of excellency, recommending them to that objective good, and so that God should be all in all: as there is a great disposition in man to seek his good in the creature, and to keep at a distance from God, and in opposition to that universal union and dependence on God which is the aim of the gospel, so there is a strong inclination in men to acquit themselves of guilt, and trust in a mere human righteousness and reject the righteousness of God. That this is the reason why Christ’s righteousness is called God’s righteousness — viz., to set it in a more clear opposition to the righteousness of men — is confirmed from the antithesis in Rom. i. 17, 18 — “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written. The just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” Here the righteousness of God is set in opposition to the unrighteousness of men, and that is implied why the righteousness of One that is above men, the righteousness of God is necessary, because the righteousness of men or a mere human righteousness is insufiicient, or because men have no righteousness or there is no human righteousness. This confirms that the righteousness we are justified by is called the righteousness of God — viz., to set it in the clearer opposition to the righteousness of the first covenant, which is the righteousness of mankind. The righteousness that Christ provided is properly called the righteousness of God, in opposition to the human righteousness of the first covenant, on the following accounts — (1.) That whereas the righteousness of the first covenant was a mere human righteousness, this is a righteousness of a Person infinitely above a mere human person, it is the righteousness of a Divine Person; (2.) It is from His divinity that it derives its value whereby it is sufficient to justify us, and so is fit to succeed in the room of that human righteousness which we have failed of; it is as it is the righteousness of God, that it is of any avail to our justification; (3.) As the righteousness of the first covenant was in man wrought out by man, we have this righteousness not by our works, but wholly and immediately of God, by His gift and imputation, when we have none wrought by us or inherent in us.
The Apostle by God’s righteousness means the righteousness that a Divine Person hath or is the subject of, and is given to believers; and, by God’s rest, the same Apostle means the rest which God or Christ hath, and is also given to believers. (Heb. iv. 5.)
72. xiv. 15 — “But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died.”] That is as much as to say, will [you not in] your meat put yourself as much out of the way as to restrain your appetite, though you thereby expose your brother to be destroyed, for whom Christ put Himself so much out of the way as to die to save him from being destroyed?
I. CORINTHIANS.
73. i. 27 — “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things to confound the things which are mighty.”] God, by this method, shews Satan that His understanding and wisdom is of iniinitely further reach than his. All Satan’s strife and contrivances is to get the powers and honours and riches and wisdom of the world on his side, and to improve them in his interest. God shews that His wisdom stands in no need of such helps; but He knows how to order the meanest and most despicable means, so and so to contrive things with them as to balHe all the policy of Satan and confound all the strength that he has on his side; as a king would shew his superior policy if he should so contrive things as without the trouble of raising armies and fleets, and providing arms and ammunition, or taxing his country and the like, should successfully carry on a war against a powerfid enemy with mighty forces, and should baffle and confound them from time to time, though they lay out themselves to the utmost, by some very inconsiderable means and with very little ado.
74, iv. 6 — “And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be pufted up for one against another.”] That is, above what I have just now written in the directions I have given in this Epistle, how ye should esteem ministers that plant and water, &c.
75. xii. 28 — “And God hath set some in the church, first, apostles; secondarily, prophets; thirdly, teachers; after that miracles; then gifts of healing, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.”] It being so that Christians, in those days, were so generally endued with extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost, it made the case of the Church then very different from what it is now. For, then, those that had these extraordinary gifts became pastors, in the exercise of those gifts, and so far as they were thereby qualified. Thus, any male member of the Church that had the gift of prophecy might do the part of a pastor, so far as the exercise of that gift extended, or in prophesying. So any one that had the word of wisdom or knowledge, or a spirit of revelation, or doctrine, or exhortation, or gift of tongue, might do the part of pastors in the exercise of these gifts. All that had these extraordinary gifts thereby became a kind of extraordinary officers in the exercise of those gifts, and so far as that extended; and, accordingly, used to officiate in the Church. This is evident by this and chap, xiv., and also chap. xii. to Romans. So far as any person had a miraculous gift by the immediate and extraordinary influence of the Spirit of Christ on their minds, so far were they (as Christ, who is the head and fountain of all Church-office power, and therefore when they were in the exercise of that gift) to be submitted to by the Church as if Jesus Christ himself spake and acted. For it was not they, indeed, that spake and acted, but Christ in them. Christ, by giving to them such a miraculous gift, marked out the person for such work in the Church. But it cannot be argued from hence that there are so many distinct standing offices in the Church as there were extraordinary gifts. A spirit of government, or an extraordinary and miraculous qualification for the exercise of that part of the pastor’s office which consists in judging, reproving, rebuking, admonishing, &c.: he that had this gift was authorised to do this part of a pastor s work, and the Church submitted to him herein that they had discerned had this gift. For they had a discerning of spirits — among other gifts of the Spirit — among them. But this no more argues that government was a distinct standing office than that exhorting was; for some that had a gift of exhorting were in the exercise of that gift to do the part of a pastor and no otherwise: Rom. xii. 8 — “Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.”
One had an extraordinary gift of the Spirit in doctrine, another in counselling and exhorting, another in reproving, admonishing, and judging of offenders, but these are only so many parts of a pastor’s office, and may indeed all be referred to preaching and declaring the word of God. All this is confirmed from Rom. xii. 6-8 — “Having then gifts, differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; or ministry, let us wait on our ministering; or he that teacheth, on teaching; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.” The Spirit in Christians, which they had in an extraordinary manner dwelling in them, sometimes directed in judging of offenders. Thus the Apostle, chap. v. 4 — “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, in my Spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,” directs the Corinthians to excommunicate the incestuous in the name of His Spirit.
76. XV. 21-23 — “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that ai-e Christ’s at his coming.”] That is, all that are in Christ. The words import no more. For the Apostle speaks of no more being made alive in Christ than are in Him. The Apostle in these words has respect only to the resurrection of the saints, as is evident by the words that follow in the next verse — “But every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming.” Indeed this resurrection only can well be called a being made alive, for this only is in Scripture called a resurrection to life. (John v. 29; Dan. xii. 2.) This resurrection to life is alone meant by the word resurrection elsewhere, as Luke XX. 85; Phil. iii. 11. And it is this resurrection to life the Apostle evidently has a special respect to in the foregoing verses; and, iiiileed, throiio;hoiit this whole chapter, as appears by verses 1 4t, 17-20, 23, 29-32,’ 35, and all the following part of the chapter, especially ver. 45, taken with the foregoing and following, and compared with those words we are now treating of. Therefore those that would argue from hence that Christ, as the second Adam or as man’s surety procures the resurrection of the wicked as well as of the just, argue without foundation.
77. XV. 29 — “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?“‘] The Apostle uses the third person plural —” What shall they do that are baptized for the dead?” and “why are they then baptized for the dead V because he has a special respect to those heretics themselves that infested the Church of Corinth, and taught that there was “no resurrection of the dead.” They themselves had baptized for Christ, and if Christ be yet dead, what will they do? and if this be what they believe, that Christ is still dead, why should they go to be baptized for the dead? How inconsistently did they act with themselves in it! for if this be the case, their baptism did them no good, “their faith is vain, and they are yet unwashed from their sins.” [Compare] Matt. xxi. 7 — “And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set Him thereon.” The plural number is twice used for the singular. See the original, and compare it with the other evangelists. There are instances also in the Old Testament of the plural number being put for the singular: “Dried up mighty rivers,” whereas it was but one river — viz., Jordan. So Hab. iii. 8 — “Was the Lord displeased against the rivers? was thine anger against the rivers? was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses, and thy chariots of salvation?” And another instance in the New Testament not mentioned before. Matt. xxvi. 8 — “But when His disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying. To what purpose is this waste?” When but one disciple is meant — viz., Judas. Mark i. 21 — “On the sabbath-day,” in the Greek Tot<i (jdj3j3aaiv, in the plural number, is in like manner put for the singular in Matt. xii. 1, xxviii. 1; Acts xiii. 14. See also Matt, xxvii. 44; Gen. xix. 29; Judges xii. 7; Ps. cxxxvii. 1;
1 Sam. xxviii. 13; Gen. xxi. 7; Exod. xxxii. 31; 1 Sam. x. 12; Gen. xxvii. 29. See 1 Sara. xvii. 43 — “That thou comest to rae with staves;” 1 Sam. xxviii. 13; 2 Chron. xxiv. 25 — “And for the blood of the sons of Jehoiada the priest,” when only one son is meant — viz., Zecharias, whom we read of, verses 20, 21. (See Pool, Synop.
2 Chron. xxiv. 25, where are quoted several instances from heathen writers.) Gen. xxi. 7 — “Who would have said this that Sarah should have children suck?” Gen. xlvi. 15 — “All the souls of his sons, and his daughters,” when he had but one daughter — viz., Dinah. (See also ver. 7.) Gen. xxxvi. 25 — “The children of Anak were Dishon.” Gen. xlvi. 23 — “And the sons of Dan; Hushim.”
I add here from Edwards’s “Miscellaneous Notes” MSS. No. 20, a further note on this difficult text: —
78. 1 Cor. XV. 29. — “‘Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead? ‘What folly is it to baptize for persons that are dead, and are not risen again, nor are (ever) to rise! What folly is it to baptize in the name of such! but this is our case if there is no resurrection of the dead. We are baptized in the name of a dead man: but why are we, if He is not risen, not to rise? (The Apostle) in the foregoing verses is speaking of the resurrection of Christ, as from the 16th verse — ‘For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised.’ And if so, surely our baptism is also vain, as in this verse — ‘And why stand we in jeopardy every hour,’ if Christ is yet dead and so to continue.” “It is no objection against supposing that by the dead here, the Apostle has respect to Christ, who, those that he wrote against supposed to be a dead man, that the word is in the plural number, as is evident by Matt. ii. 20, saying, ‘Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life.’ Matt. ix. 8 — ‘But when the multitude saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men;’ also John iv. 38 — ‘I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.’ Where, by other men, Christ means Himself, as seems plain by the context. John iii. 1 2 — ‘If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?’ Here is ‘things,’ when only one thing is intended. It is used in such a sense as here in John xi. 4; Rom. i. 5; Phil. i. 29; Acts v. 41; 2 Thess. i. 5.”
II. CORINTHIANS.
79. iii. 16 —” Nevertheless, when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.’ ] That is, their heart, (shall turn to the Lord — the veil shall be taken away,) in allusion to Moses taking off the veil when he turned away from the people to the Lord. (Exod. xxxiv. 3.3-35.) And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face. But when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him, he took the veil off until he came out. And he came out, and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded. And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’s face shone; and Moses put the veil upon his face again, until he went in to speak with Him. Moses, while absent from the Lord, was blinded, and his head veiled, but when he turned to the Lord, the veil was taken away. So it is with the hearts of men.
GALATIANS.
80. iii. 16 — “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.”] The passage in Genesis here referred to, is doubtless that Gen. xxii. 17, 18 — “That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies: and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.” For the promise made to Abraham that the Apostle is here speaking of,’ is, that all the families of the earth should be blessed, and this is expressly predicted of his seed, in anything that God says to Abraham, nowhere else but there; and the seed that is there spoken of, is spoken of in such a manner that it is most naturally understood not as a noun of multitude, or as containing a plurality, but only an individual, because the singular word possess, and the singular pronoun his, are used — “Thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies,” where the same seed is doubtless to be understood, as in the words immediately following — “And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” It is not usual in Scripture that a singular pronoun is thus annexed to the word “seed,” when it is a noun of multitude. Christ, the seed of Abraham, in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed, is spoken of elsewhere in the Old Testament as a single pronoun, as in Ps. Lxxii. 17 — “His name shall endure for ever: His name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall be blessed in Him: all nations shall call Him blessed;” and the word seed, as used in the Old Testament, is sometimes understood of a particular person. Thus Eve says, on the occasion of the birth of Seth, (Gen. iv. 25,) “And Adam knew his wife again, and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: for God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.” So Hannah says, (1 Sam. i. 11,) “And she vowed a vow, and said, 0 Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thnie handmaid, and’ remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head.” “If thou wilt give thine handmaid seed of men,” as it is in the original, meaning a man child.
81. iii. 14 — “That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit thnrugh ftiith.”] The Spirit from time to time was promised of old by the prophets, as the great privilege of the happy gospel days which they foretold; but the promise was made to the seed or children of Israel and Abraham. See Isa. xliv. 2, 3 —” Thus saith the Lord that made thee, and formed thee from the womb, which will help thee; Fear not, 0 Jacob, my servant; and thou, Jesurun, whom I have chosen. For I will pour water upon him
1G2 ANNOTATIONS ON PASSAGES OF SCKIPTUEE.
that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.” Now the prophet puts the Spirit and the blessing together, as the Apostle does, in this verse. Again, in that great promise of the Spirit, Joel ii. 28- Isa. lix. 20, 21. So, from time to time, the great promises of the“‘Spirit, in other places in the prophets, are to God’s people Israel or Israel’s and Abraham’s posterity. Hence, a being endowed by the Spirit is, by the Apostle, spoken of as evidently being of the sons of God. Rom. viii. 14 — “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God;” and of Abiaham, in this chapter.
82. iv. 21-23 “Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do
ye not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons; the one by a bond maid, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bond woman was born after the flesh; but he of the free woman was by promise.”] These verses might be paraphrased thus, by which the Apostle’s reasoning in them will be understood — “Is God’s giving of the Law to the children, therefore, any way contrary to or inconsistent with the constitution He had before established with Abraham, that was by a free promise t No; by no means. Indeed if the Law that had been given at Mount Sinai could have given life, so that justifying the children of Israel could have been the real design of it, the children of Abraham would have been justified that way, and it would have been inconsistent wdth the preceding constitution of Abraham. But this is not the case, for the design of the Law was not to justify the children of Israel, but, on the contrary, to conclude them under, to prepare them by faith to receive, the promise made to Abraham, &c., and it was not a constitution inconsistent with the preceding gracious constitution with Abraham, but subordinate to it.”
83 V. 17 — “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.”] By this, with the context, it seems that grace in the heart is no other than the Spirit of God dwelling in the heart, and becoming a principle of life and action there, acting and exalting its nature in the exercise of men’s faculties. (1.) By the” Spirit here spoken of, that lusteth again.st the flesh, seems plainly to be meant grace in the heart, or the gracious nature in man or man’s regenerated and renewed part, which is opposite to the flesh or to the corrupt part. For that by the flesh is meant the corrupt nature, is most evident by verses 19-21, and Romans vii. 5-18. By the Spirit, therefore, is doubtless meant the spiritual or gracious nature that is begun in man in his regeneration. Doubtless by the flesh and Spirit, that the Apostle says lust one against another, he means the same as by the “law of the members and law of the mind,” that he says war one against another, in the VII*’’ of his Epistle to the Romans, at the 23d verse — “But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members;” which is further evident in that the Apostle there, in the continuation of the discourse of tlic same things, lie uses the very terms of “flesh and Spirit” so much after the same manner as in this context, as may be seen by comparison, that it is most evident that lie means the very same thing. (2.) That the Spirit si)oken of here, and in other parallel texts, as signifying the gracious or holy nature in the regenerate, is the Spirit of God, seems plain by the context. For no doubt but the same is meant by the Spirit here, as in verses 16, 18-25; but is more clearly evident by the VIII“’ chapter of Romans, where the Apostle is speaking of “flesh and Spirit” in like manner as here, and as we have shewn already by “flesh and Spirit” he there intends the corrupt and the gracious nature. And it is evident that the Spirit there spoken of is the Spirit of God or Christ, by the 9th, lOth, 11th verses, and by the 13th and 14th verses. Those extraordinary principles of operation that Christians in those days were endued with, were called the spirit of the persons that had them, because they were nothing but the Spirit of God dwelling in them, and becoming a principle in them of such a sort of operation. (Sue Note on 1 Cor. xiv. 32.) So the principle of grace or gracious nature that all Christians have, is called the Spirit, because it is nothing but the Spirit of God dwelling in them, and becoming in them a principle of gracious and holy exercises. For the better understanding why the corrupt nature and the gracious or regenerate nature are called “flesh and Spirit,” it is to be considered that man, as he was first created, was endued with two kinds of principles, natural and spiritual. By natural principles, I mean the principles of human nature, as human nature is in this world — that is, in its animal state, or that belonging to the nature of man as man, or that belonging to his humanity,or that naturally and necessarily flow from the inner human nature. Such is a man’s love to his own honour, love of his own pleasure, the natural appetites that he has by means of the body, &c. His spiritual principles were his love to God, and his relish of Divine beauties and enjoyments, &c. These may be called supernatural, because they are no part of human nature. They do not belong to the nature of man as man, nor do they naturally and necessarily flow from the faculties and properties of that nature. Man can be man without them; they did not flow from anything in the human
nature, but from the Spirit of God dwelling in man, and exerting itself by man’s faculties as a principle of action. So that man’s entire nature, in his primitive state, was constituted of “flesh and spirit,” that part of his entire nature that consists in the principles of the mere human nature, or that is the human nature in its perfect animal state, simply and absolutely considered, is flesh. The human nature or humanity, in that animal state in which it is in this world, is often called flesh in Scripture — Gen. vi. 12; Ps. lxv. 2; Isa. xl. 5, 6, and xlix. 26, and lxvi. 16; Matt. xxiv. 22; John i. 14. The human nature, as it is after the resurrection, is not called flesh, being then no longer in its animal state: 1 Cor. xv. 50 — “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” That spiritual nature which he had, consisting in le* ANNOTATIONS ON PASSAGES OF SCRIPTUKE.
those holy principles that he had, was quite a distinct thing, and it was only the Spirit of God dwelling in man, and exerting itsnature by man’s faculties. Man’s natural principles, or those principles of humanity that man had, were in his primitive state very good; because that man’s spiritual principles that he had were to that degree as the Spirit dwelt and acted in him to that degree, that the natural principles were entirely subordinate to them. Then the flesh did not lust against the Spirit. These two natures, or two sorts of principles, were, by an entire, an absolute subordination of one to the other,’ united, so as to be, as it were, one nature. The spiritual principles bare absolute rule, and therefore man was then wholly spiritual, because he lived in the Spirit, and walked wholly in the Spirit, and the flesh was only a servant to the Spirit. But when man fell, then the Spirit of God left him, and so all his spiritual nature or spiritual principles; and then only the flesh was left, or merely the principle of human nature in its animal state. They were now left alone, without spiritual principles to govern and direct them, so that man became wholly carnal, and so wholly corrupt. For the principles of human nature, when alone and left to themselves, are principles of corruption, and there are no other principles of corruption in man but these. Corrupt nature is nothing else but the principle of human nature in its animal state, or the flesh (as it is called in Scripture) left to itself, or not siibordinated to spiritual principles; and so far as it is unsubordinate, so far is it corrupt. When a man is regenerate, then again the Spirit is restored to him, and spiritual principles in a degree; so then again there is “flesh and spirit.” But so little of the Spirit is given, that the flesh, or principles of human nature, are not absolutely and perfectly subject and subordinate, so that the flesh, or the principles of human nature, lust against the Spirit. And this is the reason that these two natures in the saints, the corrupt nature, and the gracious or regenerate nature, are called “flesh and Spirit,” — viz., because the corrupt nature is only the principles of the human nature, (which is often in Scripture called flesh,) yet in great measure not subordinated to spiritual principles. And the regenerate, or gracious nature, is only the Spirit of God dwelling in the heart, and acting and exerting His own natuie by man’s faculties. There are two things that do confirm that, by the “flesh” in this text and parallel places, is meant human nature left in a measure to itself. The first is, that the natural man and the carnal man are evidently synonymous in Scripture. (1 Cor. ii. 14, 15.) There we find natural and spiritual opposed one to another. “The iiaimal msai receiveth ?to the things of the Spirit of God.” “But he that is spiritual judgeth all things;” and then in the next verse but one — viz., in the first verse of the third chapter — we find carnal and spiritual in like manner opposed, and as signifying the same — “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ;” where it is most evident that, by carnal and spiritual, he means the same as he did before by natural and spiritual. 1 would argue thus from it, that if natural and carnal are synonymous, then nature and flesh are synonymous. A natural man is one that has only the principles of human nature; the word yvyLKo; in the original seems to hold forth thus much, and this is the carnal man. And then, secondly, which strengthens this, and is strenotliened by it, is that the Apostle in the same context explains what he means by carnal — viz., walking as men, or, as it is in the original,
according to man. (Chap. iii. 3,) “Are ye not carnal, and walk according to man?” or according to the humanity, or the principles of the human nature in its animal state as the governing principles. To the same purpose is that in 1 Pet. iv. 2 — “That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.” (See note in the place.) Corruption of heart is called “flesh” in Scripture, not chiefly because the corruption of man’s nature in great part consists in the inordinancy of bodily appetites, as appears, because the Apostle in Col. ii. 18 does call the mind fleshly, particularly on account of its being corrupted with the other sort of lusts — viz., the lusts of the mind intruding into those things that he hath not seen, vainly pufte;l up by his fleshly mind. It is therefore not so much on this account that corruption is called flesh, as because it is from human nature left to itself. The Scripture does expressly explain itself as to the meaning of the word natural — that it is being destitute of the Spirit of God, and so having nothing above human nature, (Jude 19) — “sensual, having not the Spirit.” The word in the original is the same that is translated natural in other places. That, by flesh or fleshly, as the words are used in the New Testament, as opposite to Spirit and spiritual, respect is not only had to those lusts or appetites that are aypetites of the body or desires of the objects of the external senses, is evident, because these terms are applied to pride, the most special of all lusts. Col. ii. 18 — “Vainly puflfed up by his fleshly mind.” So 1 Cor. iii. 3, 4 — “For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?” — Coroll. 1. Hence we may learn CiJrist’s meaning in what He says to Nicodemus, John iii. 6 — “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” There are then two natures in man — the flesh, or the mere human nature, and the spiritual nature. The aim of Christ is to inform which nature is of the first generation, and which of the second. By “flesh” Christ does not mean only the body, for there is more born by the first generation than that. — Coroll. 2. Hence we may learn what is the meaning of the word spiritual as it is often used in the New Testament. It is not intended in contradistinction from corporeal; but things are said to be spiritual as relating to the Spirit of God, especially as dwelling in the hearts of the saints. Thus the godly man is called spiritual because he has the Spirit of God dwelling in him, and acting by his faculties, as is evident by 1 Cor. XV. compai-ed with the context, beginning with the tenth verse. (See “Mastricht Theologia de Regeneratione,” p. 661, a.) —
Coroll. 3. Hence we may learn in what sense the body at the resurrection is said to be a spiritual body. 1 Cor. xv. 44< — “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body;” not s;)iritual in opposition to material or corporeal — for a spiritual body in that sense would be a contradiction — but spiritual in this sense that has been mentioned in coroll. 2 — not in opposition to corporeal, but to natural or animal. “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” It is sown with animal faculties and appetites suited to the needs and purposes of the animal, frail, corruptible nature. But when it shall be raised again, it shall be raised without these faculties and appetites; but all the faculties and properties that it shall be endowed with shall be directly suited and subservient to the purposes of the Spirit, of His gracious principle, or of that Divine and holy nature which God hath impacted to His saints. It is evident that the body in its present state is called a natural body, and in its future a spiritual body, with relation to that animal nature that we derive from the first Adam, and that quickening Spirit, or holy and spiritual nature, that we derive from the second Adam, by the following verse: — “But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.”
EPHESIANS.
84. ii. 6 — “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”] The meaning is not, hath made us sit together with one another, but together with Christ; as it is said in the foregoing verse, “He hath quickened us together luith Christ,” as the Apostle goes on in this verse, “He hath raised us up together with Him, and hath made us sit together luith Him in heavenly places.” This is more jDlain by looking at these two verses as in the original, avveoiOTrolrjae tw ‘)(^piaru) — kul.,. ^Irjcrov. It is here evident that the aw with which each verb is compounded has respect to the same thing, and that each one denotes the communion the saints have with Christ, in being quickened and also raised up and set in heavenly places. The import of the original would perhaps have been more naturally suggested to us if the translation had been thus, “He hath jointly quickened with Christ, and jointly raised us up, and jointly set us in heavenly places in Christ;” and when, as in the last cause, there is added “in Christ Jesus,” it is to denote that the saints ascend into heaven, and reign in glory there with Him, and in Him, which more fully expresses the manner in which the saints have communion with Christ in His ascension to heaven, and that dignity and glory that He possesses there, as sitting with Him on His throne.
85. ii. 12 — “That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.”] The first of these things here mentioned is the foundation of all the rest that follow. A being without Christ is the foundation of being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope. And the last thing here mentioned is the sum of all the rest. A being without God in the world is the sum of all evil. A being without Christ, and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of promise, and without hope, are all summed up in being without God in the world.
8G. V. 18 — “And be not drunk with wine, whei’ein is excess; but be tilled with the Spirit.”] The Apostle here seems to have reference to that in Cant. v. 1 — “I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered ray myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk; eat, 0 friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, 0 beloved.” He was afraid that they would misunderstand that as a liberty to Christ’s beloved ones to be drunk with wine; but he explains the meaning of it to them. — Coroll. Hence we may learn the authority of that book of Canticles.
PHILIPPIANS.
87. iv. 8 — “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”] The Apostle in the immediately preceding verses had told them what they should not exercise their thoughts about — viz., outward things, things pertaining to their worldly interests: ver. 6 — “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.” Now he tells them what they should think about — what should be the objects of the greatest exercise of their thouohtfulness and care.
COLOSSIANS.
88. ii. 16 — “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an hulyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days.”] This does not preclude the Sabbath. The word is koprrj “a feast.”
8’J. ii. 20 — “Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?”] This world is not the contrary of the Church.
1G8 ANNOTATIONS ON PASSAGES OF SCEIPTURE.
Christ, after He rose from the dead, was no longer a proper inhabitant of this world, and therefore was no longer subject to the ceremonial Law. So is the Church which is mystical and dead, and risen with Christ. Christ is the representative of the Church, and therefore the Church has communion with Him in this alteration of His state.
90. iii. 9 — “Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds.”] The stops seem here to be wrong made, which make it more difficult to understand the sense. The stop that is made at end of the preceding verse ought rather to have been at the end of these words, “He not one to another.” For this is one of those disuniting sins mentioned, of which the words in this and the two next verses are mentioned as a common reason why we should avoid them — viz., because in the new man the disuniting distinctions by which the carnal world is divided are abolished, and Christ is all in all.
91. iii. 17 — “And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.” Question, Why must we do whatsoever we do in the name of Christ? Answer, Because nothing can be acceptable to God as from us, but in and through Christ, as Heb. xiii. 21, and 1 Peter ii. 5. Therefore when we come to God to do anything Godward we must always bring Christ with us, that what we do may be accepted — that is, we must have a sense of our unworthiness of acceptance in ourselves, and must hope for acceptance on His account. Question, But why can’t what we do be accepted but by Christ? Answer, (1.) We are infinitely ill-deserving creatures, and all our good is nothing when put in the scales with our unworthiness; and then (2.) we are condemned creatures, and it is against the Law that anything should be accepted from us as we are in ourselves. (3.) The third reason why nothing that we do can be accepted but by Christ is, because there is nothing that we do but what is in a sense corrupt, even the holy actions and gracious exercises of the godly are so. They are not merely attended with the exercises of corruption that precede and follow them and are nursed with them, but they are themselves corrupt. Take them as they are in their dimensions and manner of exerting theui, even the exercises of grace in a godly man are manifestations and expressions of corruption; the act most simply and absolutely considered is good, but consider it in its measure and the manner of exertion, and it is an expression of corruption. All the godly man’s acts of love are defectively corrupt or sinfully defective. There is that defect in them that may be called the corruption of them. That defect is properly sin, an expression of corruption, and what tends to provoke the just anger of God; not because the exercise of love is not proportionable or equal to God’s loveliness or to His kindness, but because it is so very disproportionate to the occasion that is given for the exercise of love, considering God’s loveliness and the manifestation that is made of it, or the manifestation and exercise of His kindness and man’s capacity, and the advantages to be sensible of it, and the like, together. A negative expression of corruption may be as truly sin, and as truly odious, and as just cause of provocation, as a positive. Thus, if a man, a worthy and excellent person, should, from mere generosity and goodness, exceedingly lay out himself, and should with great expense and suffering save another’s life or redeem him from some extreme calamity, and when he had done all, that other persons should never thank him for it or express the least gratitude any way, this would be a negative expression of his ingratitude and baseness; but it is equivalent to an act of ingratitude or a base unworthy spirit, and is as truly an expression of it, and brings as much blame, as if he by some positive act had much injured another person, and as it would have been in a lesser degree if gratitude was but very small, bearing no proportion to the benefit and obligation, or if for so great and extraordinary a kindness he had expressed no more gratitude than would have been becoming towards a person that had only given him a sixpence, or had done him some such small kindness. If he had come to his benefactors to express his gratitude, and had done after this manner, he might truly be said to have acted basely, unworthily, and odiously; he would have shewn a most ungrateful spirit, and his doing after such a manner would be justly abhorred by all; and yet the gratitude in that little that there was of it, and, so far as it went, was good, and so it is with respect to our exercises of love and gratitude to God. They are defectively corrupt
and sinful, and might justly be odious and provoking to Him, taken as they are, upon the like account, and would be so, were it not that the sin and corruption of them is hid by Christ. God, as it were, don’t see the odiousness and iniquity of them, and so accepts them for Christ’s sake, which out of Him would be worthy of His detestation. — Coroll. Hence the saints may be sai(i to be rewarded for their good works for Christ’s sake, and not for the excellency of their works in themselves considered. For, as we have shewn, as they are in themselves, they are odious, and might be just cause of provocation. They are not rewardable, therefore, as they are in themselves; they are accepted through Christ, and it is therefore for Christ’s sake that they are rewarded. For God’s rewarding them is a testimony of His acceptance. They are rewarded for Christ’s sake in this sense — viz., that it is for His sake that God looks upon them as fit to be accepted and rewarded.
I. THESSALONIANS.
92. iii. 13 —” To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our
] 70 ANNOTATIONS ON PASSAGES OF SCKIPTUEE.
Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.”] This and these other parallel texts — ver. 14 of chap, iv., and Jude 14 — do plainly shew that the saints are in heaven with Christ before the resurrection.
I. TIMOTHY.
93. i. 9 — “Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers.”] This may be given as a reason why the precepts of the moral Law were not expressed by God to our [first] parents as well as that positive precept of not eating the forbidden fruit. There is not that need of God expressly and particularly forbidding these and other immoralities to one that is perfectly righteous in his nature, either for the making known his obligation, or for the enforcing it, as to one that is of corrupt nature.
God, in His infinite wisdom, never would have seen cause expressly to reveal the moral Law had it not been for transgressions, or man’s disposition to sin.
94. i. 19 — “Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away, concerning faith have made shipwreck.”] It seems that it should rather have been rendered the Faith — that is, concerning the doctrine of the Gospel; for in the original it is Trepl rrjv iriaTLv, and this last agrees with the metaphor of making shipwreck. For herein the gospel, or doctrine of faith, is represented as a treasure committed to their care as a treasure is committed into a ship, and so to the care of the master, to be carried safe to such a port. But they, through their unskilfulness and carelessness, have made shipwreck of it and lost it: or if by faith is meant an inward qualification, doubtless they made shipwreck of it, as Simon Magus did, of whom we are told that he believed when others believed, but never had a true faith; for it is plain by what the Apostle Peter says, he then remained in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity; and it must be such a faith as the stony-ground hearers had, who, at the same time that they believed, had no root in themselves, and so were not true saints; and such a faith as those had of whom we are told that they believed on Christ, but Christ did not commit Himself to them, for He knew what was in man; He knew that what was in them was not true, was not to be depended upon.
95. V. 1 1 — “But the younger widows refuse: for when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ, they will marry.”] It appears probable from ver. ] 5, “For some are already turned aside after Satan,” that the Apostle here has in his eye some particular instance of a strange behaviour of some young widows that had been taken into the number; a regard to which instances very much governs his language, as much as to say, If you take in young widows, no wonder if they, through a wanton disposition, behave themselves as those which you have received of the sort. No wonder if they gad about from house to house, grow idle, trifling busybodies, and are wanton in their behaviour, and marry in a dishonourable manner such as they have first been wanton with. It is probable that in the instances which the Apostle had respect to, or one of them at least, a young widow that had been taken into the number, through her wantonness, had yielded to the enticements of a heathen man, and finally married him, which occasions such a manner of expression as “waxing M’anton against Christ,” and cast off their first faith. “When the Apostle says, “For when they have begun,” &c., the expression imparts no more than this: — There will be danger of such things happening in young widows.
96. V. 17 — “Let the elders that rule well, be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine.”] What the Apostle probably had in view when he used the expression of “double honour” to the elder, was the law that gave a double portion to the elder brother.
97. vi. 19 — “Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.”] A most beautiful expression for the purpose that the Apostle intended it, naturally intimating that they that were rich had much to beat them back and to oppose and hinder their coming at so glorious a prize. The Apostle therefore would have them use those means he here directs to, as an earnest to obtain it, notwithstanding the peculiar difKculties that were in the way of rich men’s obtaining it, if by any means they might violently press through the opposition and reach forward and lay hold of it. The Apostle probably had in his eye what Christ said concerning the difficulty of rich men’s obtaining eternal life, and might possibly have some reference to what he himself had said just before. (Verses 9, 10,) “But they that will be rich fall into temptation, and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil; which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” The original word seems to have very much the same force as our English word “lay hold,” naturally intimating opposition to the obtaining a thing, or danger of missing it. So in Matt. xiv. 30, 31, where we read that when Peter was sinking in the tempestuous sea, Jesus stretched forth His hand and caught him. The word in the original is the same. See also how he uses the same word, (ver. 12,) where the Apostle speaks of fighting the way through to reach this prize, and seems to allude to those that strove for the prize in the Olympic Games.
HEBKEWS.
98. i. 6 — “And again, when he bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him.”] The Apostle has probably here some reference to the XCVIl“‘Psalm, where we have a prophecy of the Messiah’s coming into the world, on which occasion it is said, ver. 7, “Worship Him all ye gods.” But the fact, the event (in which that prophecy was f dfilled) was what was at Christ’s birth, that we have some intimation of in the 11^ chap, of Luke, where we are told that on that occasion there appeared a multitude of the heavenly hosts singing — “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” At that time when the Son of God appeared a poor little infant in a stable and manger, when God said, “Let all the angels of God worship Him,” and then the angels had a great trial of their obedience, greater than ever they had before.
99. ii. 5 — “For unto the angels hath He not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak.”] The renewed state of things brought to pass by Christ, called the new heavens and the new earth, is here called the world to come, although already come in its beginnings. Even as the blessings of Christ’s kingdom and of this new creation are called good “things to come,” a’yada [MeXkovra, (Heb. ix. 11, and chap. x. 1.) Though they were already come in their beginnings, note that the time when Christ came, and offered up Himself, and ascended into heaven, is called the end of the world, (Heb. ix. 26,) avvreXeta tmv alcovwv, the end of ages, the perishing as it were of the old world. So the kingdom of heaven, the new state of things that followed, is called the world to come, the new world, the future or succeeding ages.
100. iii. 1 — “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.”] Not only the Apostle’s brethren, but Christ’s brethren, as in verses 11, 17, of chap. ii. — “Partakers of the heavenly calling.” Not only partakers with the Apostle and partakers one with another, but partakers with Christ in His heavenly calling as an High Priest. “For no man taketh this honour to himself but he that is called of God as was Aaron.” Christians are spoken of in chap. ii. 17 as the brethren of Him who is a merciful and faithful High Priest; and they are not only so, but they are also partakers of His heavenly calling as High Priest. For they also are priests unto God through Him, and as united with Him. (1 Pet. ii. 4, 5, and v. 9; so Rev. i. 6, and V. 10; and Exod. xix. 5, 6; Isa. lxi. 6.) They are priests with Christ as they are partakers of His heavenly calling and His holy vocation, 1 John ii. 20 — “But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.” Believers are followers with Christ in His anointing, as in chap. i. of this epistle, ver. 9 — “Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” They are lartakers with Him in His unction, as the precious ointment that was poured on Aaron’s head ran down to the skirts of his garment. (Ps. cxxxiii. 2.)
101. iv. 4-6 — “For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works. And in this place again, If they shall enter into my rest. Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief.”] That when the Apostle speaks of them who have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, he has a special respect to them that bad received the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost, is evident from this, that the Apostle here has respect to the same persons that he speaks of in ver. 2; but there he is speaking of them that had been the subjects of the laying on of hands, which was a rite used in conferring the Holy Ghost in His extraordinary gifts.
102. vi, 8 — “But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.”] The malice of those apostates and persecutors who committed the unpardonable sin, is with special fitness compared to briers and thorns. (See Cant. ii. 2; Ezek. xxviii. 24; Mic. viii. 4; Ez. ii. 6; Isa. x. 17; 2 Sam. xxiii. 6, 7.)
104. vi. 11 — “And we desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end.”] Here the words “to the end” are not to be joined with the immediately preceding words, “the full assurance of hope,” but with those going before, “°shew the same diligence.” The Apostle, in the preceding verse, had observed the labour and diligence which had appeared in them. He here exhorts that this be continued unto the end, in order to the full assurance of hope. The Apostle is still pursuing the advice he beaan the chapter with, to avoid apostasy and to go on to perfection.
105. Lx. 14 — “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, pmge your conscience from dead works, to serve the living God.”] The Apostle is probably led, when speaking of sins in this place, to make use of the application “dead” works, from allusion to pollutions by dead bodies, to the cleansing from which the ashes of the heifer spoken of in the preceding verse were appropriated. (See Num. xiv.)
106. ix. 26 — “For then must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once, in the end of the world, hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”] At the end of the world — at the conclusion of the ages. So avvTeXeia rwv di(ov(i)v is most exactly rendered, meaning the last of the dispensations God ever intended to give mankind.
107. X. 1-3 —” For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices, which they offered year by year continually, make the comers thereunto perfect; for then would they not have ceased to be
17-t ANNOTATIONS ON PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE.
offered? because that the worshippei’s once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.”] Concerning the argument for the insufficiency of the ancient sacrifices from their being often offered. The wise man argues the vanity of all earthly enjoyments, and that temporal food is not man’s true good from that, that the occasions for eating still return. If a man eats, yet the need of eating returns, satisfaction is not obtained; his need and his appetite remains, the demands of nature are not answered so but that still it continues demanding, so that after a man has repeated his eating from day to day many years, yet he needs and his nature craves as much as when he tir.st came into the world, (Eccles. vi. 7, and also i. 3-9) — “All the labour of man is for his mouth, yet the appetite or (as it is in the original) the soul is not filled,” with the context. The argument is of the same sort with that which the Apostle here makes use of, to shew the vanity of the ancient sacrifices, and their insufficiency to answer tlae end of a true atonement, that they did not satisfy, because the demand of justice still remained, and its appetite returned, as in the other case the demands of nature. They were never able to make the comers thereto perfect: the occasion of offering them returned autumnally; and therefore if Solomon’s argument be good, the Apostle’s is certainly good also.
108. xi. 37 — “They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented.”] “They were tempted,” that is, in the midst of their torments their cruel persecutors added earnest solicitations, persuasions, fair-tempting promises, and the like, if they would desert the cause they suffered for, which was verified in Autiochus Epiphanes.
ST JAMES.
101). ii. 8 — “If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well.”] Probably so called because the law of love was by way of specialty the law of Christ the King of the Church. (See Gal. vi. 2; John xiii. 34, and xv. 12; 1 John iv. 21.)
110. iv. 14 — “Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow: for what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”] Here seems to be an allusion to that vapour in the breath, (that is as it were man’s life,) sometimes while the breath is warm; but as soon as it is cool, vanishes away as it were in a moment. (See Job vii. 7, and Ps. lxxviii. 39.)
I. PETER.
111. i. 4 — “To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you.”] This is probably here mentioned because those that the Apostle wrote this epistle to were strangers scattered abroad, ver. 1, out of their own land — the land of Canaan, not possessing that earthly inheritance of old promised to Israel, and cast out by their brethren according to the flesh for being Christians. (See Dr Goodwin’s Works, vol. i., p. 44.)
II. PETER
112. i. 28 — “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”] That is, it is not men’s speaking their own sense of things or interpreting their own minds, but the mind of God. That which is their sense is not always the sense or interpretaion of Scripture. But that which was the sense of the Holy Ghost, the prophets did not always perceive the meaning of in their prophecies.
I. JOHN.
113. iii. 8 — “And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.”] That is, in God or in Christ, the Person spoken of in the foregoing words eiravTw. The preposition eTTt expresses, not the relation of hope to the subject of it, but to its object, as in many places of the New Testament. It signifies the relation of faith, trust, and hope to this object, as Matt, xxvii. 48 — “He trusted in God;” Luke xi. 22 — “Wherein he trusted;” xviii. 9 — “Trusted in themselves;” Luke xxiv. 25 — “To believe all the prophets,” &c.; Acts ix. 42 — “Many believed in the Lord;” xi. 17 — “Who believed in the Lord;” Acts xvi. 31 — “Believe in the Lord Jesus;” Rom. iv. 24 — “Believe in Him;” Rom. ix. 33 — “BeJieveth in Him;” x. 11 — “Believeth in Him;” 18 — “In Him shall the Gentiles hope;” 2 Cor. i. 9 — “Should not trust in ourselves, but in God;” ii. 3 — “Confidence in you all;” 1 Tim. i, 16 — “Believe on Him;” iv. 16 — “Hoped in the living God;” v. 5 — “Hoyed in God;” vi. 17 — “Hope in uncertain riches;” Heb. ii. 13 — “Trusting in Him;” vi. 1 — “Of faith in God;” 1 Peter ii. 6 — “He that believoth in Him;” iii. 5 — “Hoped in God.”
114. iii. 6 — “Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him neither known Him.”] See 2 Sam. xii.
13 — “For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this tiling before all Israel, and before the sun.” By this it appears that though David was so holy a man, a man after God’s own heart, yet his deed was properly called sin; yea, it was mortal sin — sin that deserved death, as is implied. See also the terms used Ps. li. 1-5, 10, 16. So Job was a man that God gloried in, — that was a perfect and an upright man, one that feared God and eschewed evil; or which is the same thing, one that sinned not. He held fast his integrity to the end and eschewed evil, and made good God’s boast of (his) eschewing evil under his temptations. And yet Elihu, who spoke by inspiration, was in God’s stead, and the forerunner of God, and did not answer as his three friends did, but spoke that which was right, and was not reproved by God, charges him with sinning, Job xxxiv. 87 — “For he addeth rebellion unto his sin; he clappeth Ids hands among us, and multiplieth his words against God,” See also note on 2 Chron. xxxii. 31. It won’t do to go about to solve the argument from these instances with the doctrine of falling from grace. This verse that we are now upon will not allow of that, (see note on latter part of the verse,) and if any should imagine that the kind of operation on the hearts of the saints in the New Testament which the Apostle John calls a “being born again,” is something peculiar to them, and what God’s people, under the Old Testament, were not the subjects of, and that regeneration is a thing peculiar to New Testament times, (though that may easily be disproved — (for) the Old Testament saints were circumcised in heart, and had right spirits renewed in them, &c., and therefore were born again,) yet we have a remarkable instance in one that was said to have followed Christ in the regeneration. — (See Matt. xix. 27, 28) — viz., Peter, who denied his Lord with oaths and curses. He was one that had been born again, and therefore was one of them that Christ called little children, and one that He spoke of: Matt, xviii. 6 — “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea;” whom He called so on the account of their new birth, as it is manifest by the foregoing words, particularly the third verse of the chapter: — “Verily I say unto you. Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,” which is parallel with what Christ says to Nicodemus: “Verily, I say unto you. Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” The Apostle John says, in the latter part of this verse, “Whosoever hath not seen Him, nor known Him,” but Peter had seen and known his Lord, and therefore Christ says to him, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven;” and Christ in His prayer in the XVIP*^ of John speaks of him with others of His disciples expressly as having seen and known Him: ver. 3 — “And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent,” and then says in the 6th to 8th verses, “I have manifested Thy
NEW TESTAMENT — I. JoH.V. 177
name unto the men which Thou cavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou iiavest them Me; and they have kept Thy word. Now they have known that all things, whatsoever Thou hast given Me are of Thee: for I have given unto them the words which Thou gavest Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send Me,” These last words then, by what the Apostle John himself says in this epistle, [shew] that Peter was born of God: chap. v. 1 — “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth Him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him.” So Eccles. vii. 28; 1 Kings viii. 46. So 2 Chron. vi. 36; Prov. XX. 9; John ix. 80, 31, and ver. 20, and ver. 2, 3; Ps. xix. 12, and cxxx. 3. There is sin in the New Testament saints as well as the Old. The wise virgins slumbered and slept; Rom. vii. — “The thing that I hate that I do;” Heb. xii. — “Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us.” James iii. 2. And this’ Apostle John himself in this very epistle several times speaks of those that are born again as liable to sin. It is by the new birth that they become as little children; the Apostle says, chap. ii. 1 — “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous,” And this is a confirmation that the Apostle has not only respect to sins that were committed before regeneration. In the words immediately foregoing, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and his word is not in us.” Again, it is by the new birth by which Christians are born of God, this epistle speaks of the brethren as liable to sin: 1 John v. 16 — “If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death.” And yet in the next verse but one, respects that saying that we are upon: “We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not: but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not,” which confirms that the Apostle means, when he says, “He sinneth not,” is not that he never is guilty of any sinful act. Such exp’ressions in Scripture as this in the text, “sinneth” and “sinneth not,” are not always to be taken for committing a particular act of sin, as that in Job, the draught and heat, &c. By them that have sinned, is not intended them that are guilty of a particular act of sin. That in Eph. ii. 3 — “Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind,” in the original Trotout-Te?, doing the desires of the flesh — that is, making a tracfe of this. 1 Peter iii. 10 — “If thou wouldst see good days, refrain thy tongue from evil, and thy lips that they speak no guile,” It is not meant that to do one good action is the way to be happy, but a man’s setting himself in such a course, making a practice and business of doing good. How often is the wickedness of the king of Israel and Judah expressed by that, “That they did evil in the sight of the Lord.”
115. iii. 6 — “Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.”] The words of the
M next verse are a full confutation of them that from hence would argue sinless perfection. “He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.” There is no more reason to understand the Apostle of committing only one act of sin by the expression “sinneth,” or “committeth,” or “doeth sin,” than to understand of one single act of righteousness, when by the expression, “doth righteousness,” and so to understand the next verse thus: — “He that doeth any righteousness at any time is righteous even as God is righteous,” whereas by doing righteousness the Apostle plainly means practising righteousness, or making that his practice in the course of his life. So there is equal reason when he speaks here of committing sin to understand him of practising sin, or making wickedness his trade or practice. See “doing righteousness,” &c.
116. iv. 17 — “Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as He is, so are we in this world.’] The sense seems to be this — our love is made perfect to give us boldness before Him (that is, before Christ) in another world, even by our being in this world as He is. Like Him in love, then is our love made perfect, when we love one another as He hath loved us. For it is that love that the apostle is speaking of in the preceding verse — “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us,” and what that love is that God hath to us. The Apostle said in the preceding verses (9, 10) — :viz., God’s sending His Son into the world to die for us — and then says, ver. 11 — “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another;” that is, we ought to love one another as God hath loved us, and as Christ hath loved us, and so we shall be as He was, and hereby we shall have assurance, as it follows, ver. 13 — “Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit” — made us to be of the same temper with Himself; and then the Apostle, in verses 14 and 16, further insists on the love of God to us in giving His Son; and in the 17th verse, repeatedly mentions our conformity to Him in this love as what will give assurance, and observes particularly by this it will give boldness at the day of judgment, when we appear before Christ, that in this world we have been like Him, and behaved ourselves as He behaved Himself in the world.
ST JUDE.
117. l-i, 1 5 — “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying. Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are uno-odly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have imgodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”] Inspired writers of the Old
Testament, sometimes, wlicn speaking [of things] recorded in Scripture history many ages after their histories were written, do mention particulars not recorded in these histories; as particularly, Asaph mentions thunder and lightning that there was in the time when Israel passed through the Red Sea, as Ps. lxxvii. 15, and following verses. So David mentions a great shower of rain that there was when God appeared on INIount Sinai. Ps. Lxviii. 8 — “The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God: even Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel” So the prophet Habakkuk mentions thunder that arose at the conclusion of the twelve hours that the sun and moon stood still. See notes on Hab. iii. 11, and we must allow the same to the inspired writers of the New Testament. This prophecy of Enoch is probably the rather mentioned as applicable to those heretics and apostates he speaks of, because they strenuously derided and contemptuously ridiculed [Christ’s servants].
lis. ] 9 — “These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit.”] The Apostle uses this form of expression because he has reference to some spoken of in the Old Testament, that are spoken of as separating themselves. Either Ezek. xiv. 7 or Hosea iv. 14, or is. 10.