The Divine Purpose
‘ f I ^HEEE came a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’ (Matt. iii. 17; Mark i. 11; Luke iii. 22).
Let us read these words as the utterance of the divine mind concerning Him who is called ‘ the Christ of God’ (Luke ix. 20), or ‘the Lord’s Christ’ (Luke ii. 26), or ‘Christ the Lord’ (Luke ii. 11). Let us learn from them also the divine estimate of Him whom man refused to love, who was ‘despised and rejected of men,’ who ‘came unto His own, and His own received Him not.’
That peculiar name, ‘the Christ of God, em¬ bodies in it not so much the thoughts of God as
the thought of God, the summing up of all His thoughts, the one great idea, the root and centre of all others, containing in it that which it will require eternity to evolve: for He to whom that thought pertains is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last. (Rev. i. 8, 11, 17.)
That great thought, thus embodied in the person of the Christ of God, concerns us. It does not name us, nor our earth, and yet it has respect to both; and, in the history of this Christ, our own everlasting history is contained. The right know¬ ledge of Him, then, must be of infinite moment to us. To know Him rightly must be our very life; to know Him wrongly, or not to know Him at all, must be very death.
This great thought of God contains in it all that is worthy of the name of truth; and especially does it contain the highest form of truth, or that which we call wisdom, for wisdom is but the purest and highest kind of truth; and the know¬ ledge of the highest form of truth must bring with it the highest form of light, and peace, and liberty. ‘ We know the truth, and the truth makes us free’ (John viii. 32): for all error is bondage, it may be of the mind, or the conscience, or the heart; all error is darkness and disquietude: it is truth that illuminates and gladdens. The Christ, as the Truth, liberates us, as the Truth He gives peace, as the Truth He enlightens. For Him there can he no substitute to man. The fulness deposited in Him is to he found nowhere else. He only is * the Wisdom of God,’ and it is that Wisdom with which man has to do. He needs it, and it was appointed for him. When Jesus said, ‘ Learn of me,’ He spoke as the Wisdom of God, offering to reveal to us that wisdom in which rest is contained for the weary. For true wisdom is true rest, and divine wisdom is divine rest.
But this wisdom expresses itself in a purpose. That purpose is the result of thought, and the embodiment of this highest wisdom. God’s purpose in regard to man and man’s world is wrapt up in ‘ the Christ of God.’ This is called f the mystery of His will, according to His good plea¬ sure which He hath purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fulness of the times He might gather in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him, in whom we also have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the
4 The Christ of God.
purpose of Him who worketh all things after THE counsel of His own will, that we should he to the praise of His glory’ (Eph. i. 8-12).
God’s purpose, then, takes definite form in Christ, and all the various parts of that infinite purpose are connected with Him. The purpose is, like the Purposer, eternal, but the form of it belongs to time. The first announcement of the purpose was in Paradise, to our first parents; the first visible unfolding of it was at Bethlehem, and seemed nothing but a small fragment of human history, the birth of a poor Jewish child, in a southern village of Palestine, under the open sky. They who saw this did not comprehend it, nor read in it anything great or glorious. They could not have fathomed it, even had they tried to do so; but they did not try, because it seemed too insignificant to touch upon anything but the interests of an obscure Galilean family. Angels might see something of its hidden magnificence; man did not. It was a seed, the growth and fruit of which were to spread over the universe, and reach on into the ages to come; but the seed was unrecognised by human eyes: no one saw in it the greatest of all the great things that had come to pass from the beginning of time. In its undeveloped glory it lay as a common piece of Jewish village-story, none understanding the difference between that birth and any other birth that had there taken place; none reading in it the first visible revelation of Jehovah’s eternal purpose, nor imagining the wonders of grace, and power, and wisdom which were wrapt up in it, and to emerge from it in the fulness of time. Who among the ten thousands of Israel connected with that child the destinies of the universe? And how many, even of believing Israelites, gathered around that stony cradle, to sing the ancient song they knew so well: ‘ Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace ’? (Isa. ix. 6.) His mother might ‘ keep all these things, and ponder them in her heart’ (Luke ii. 19); but how little did even she comprehend the breadth and length, the height and depth, of the infinite plan thus visibly announced! Yet in that cradle was deposited the eternal purpose, and that mother’s arms encompassed that purpose as they clasped the babe on whose history all history was to turn.
It was the sin of man that drew out this great purpose into shape; for always has God made use of human failure for revealing more of Himself and of His truth. There had been a previous failure of creaturehood; but the purpose was not connected with that, nor did that failure draw out any manifestation of God, or any announcement of His purpose. Tor the fulness of the times did that purpose wait, hidden in the counsels of Godhead; yet ready to come forth, when the exigencies of the second race of creaturehood furnished the long waited for opportunity. Now that the instability of creature¬ hood had been twice over demonstrated, the needed deliverance comes; and the purpose of deliverance is embodied in the Child of Bethlehem, the Word made flesh. God becometh man, that man may not only he replaced in his former state, hut lifted up to a higher level, — ‘ made partaker of the divine nature.’ Creaturehood has been twice broken to pieces; now God steps in to accomplish these two things: (1) to lay such a foundation for it that it shall never fall again; (2) to impart to it an excellency such as it could not have otherwise possessed. Both these ends are accomplished by linking together the divine and the human in a way such as could not before have been conceived possible, — by the Son of God becoming bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, that thus we might be members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.
That cwe are His offspring’ (Acts xvii. 28) was always true; but now it is doubly so, — true in a higher sense and form; and thus also is the great truth of creaturehood’s subsistence in God not only more fully manifested, but made a yet truer and more glorious thing; and through the Christ of God we find a newer and more blessed reality in the fact that f in Him we live, and move, and have our being.’ There is nothing here of the mystical dream of ‘ absorption in Godhead; ’ but there is something more real as well as more high and blessed. * I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that Thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved me’ (John xvii. 23).
Thus, in delivering and elevating us He reveals Himself, and brings forth all the glories of His character as well as all the resources of His being. He descends that we may ascend. In descending He manifests Himself, for God cannot ascend; and it is only in descending that He can reveal all His riches of grace and power. It is for man to ascend, and in ascending receive a glory which does not belong to him. It is for God to descend, and in descending to unveil the glory which, but for this descent, would have been hidden not only from man, but from the universe. ‘ Glory to God ’ had been sung before, when the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy; but not till now could ‘ glory to God in the highest ’ be sung by either men or angels.
Thus the purpose of God was to reveal Himself in ‘ the Christ; ’ and in so revealing Himself, to lift up fallen man into blessedness and glory; to bring forth from the ruins of humanity a higher and goodlier order of creaturehood, which by its connection with incarnate Godhead might be secured against the possibility of fall. f Tor as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly’ (1 Cor. xv. 49). And these are words of profound import which declare this process of elevation: f The first Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly ’ (1 Cor. xv. 45-48).
Such are the objects of the divine purpose as taking visible shape in ’ the Christ of God,’ — ‘God manifest in the flesh.’ All truth is here; all wisdom is here; all perfection is here; and in connection with these, ‘the exceeding riches of the grace of God.’ This is ’ the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord ’ (Eph. iii. 11) j the purpose to which the apostle so often refers, — (1) in connection with ‘this present evil age ’ (Gal. i. 4); (2) in connection with ’ the age to come’ (Heb. vi. 5); (3) in connection with ‘the ages to come’ (Eph. ii. 7). Here is the fountain¬ head of all things in heaven and in earth, — the moving, impelling, regulating, controlling spring of all that has been witnessed here in ages past, or that shall be witnessed hereafter, when the full
1 Or more literally, ‘ The purpose of the ages which He made or constituted in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ The expressions, ‘purpose of the ages, ’ and ‘ constituted, ’ are very important and full of meaning, especially in connection with ‘ the Christ. ’ spreading out of the unsearchable riches of the Christ shall take place, in ways and in regions to us unknown, and by us unconceived and inconceivable: for the far -ranging and universe -filling glory yet to come forth from that wondrous centre, is not only something which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, hut which hath not entered into the heart of man.
To bring a fair world out of nothing was God’s creation-purpose, and the first chapters of Genesis reveal its accomplishment. But to bring a fairer and more stable world out of creation’s ruin, a nobler and more perfect race. out of the corruption of that which had fallen, was God’s redemptionpurpose; and of the means to the accomplishment of this, as well as of the accomplishment itself, the whole Bible is the record. The burden of that record is the history of the Christ of God. For ‘Christ is all, and in all’ (Col. iii. 11), — the all, AND THE IN ALL; — containing everything, filling everything; at once the vessel of fulness and the fulness of the vessel; as the Christ, distinct from, yet one with, Godhead; distinct from, yet one with, Creaturehood; God over all, blessed for ever, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; God manifest in the flesh, yet also the man Christ Jesus, who took upon Him not the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham; becoming poor that we might be made rich; emptying Himself that He might fill us; and then ascending up to heaven ‘ that He might fill all things for the
O O
fulness of the universe is His, and the glory of all things, celestial and terrestrial, is the outflowing of the glory of the Christ of God.
Therefore is He called the ‘ image of the invisible God 5 (Col. i. 15), so that he that hath seen Him hath seen the Father; and yet * the first-born of every creature ’ (Col. i. 1 5): ‘ For by Him were
all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him; and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist; and He is the head of the body, the Church: the beginning, the first-born from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell’ (Col. i. 16-19).
Thus ‘ the incarnation ’ is no after-thought; no change of mind; no revocation of one purpose in order to introduce another, because of something that had unexpectedly given way; hut the carrying out of the great original purpose, dating from eternity, wdiose fulfilment or fulfilments, with all the conflicting events (contingencies, as men call them) evoking these fulfilments, were present to the eternal mind from the beginning, in connection with that plan, which assumed and provided for what man calls the unforeseen and fortuitous; nay, whose most important unfoldings are drawn out by that which seems to us especially fortuitous and in¬ capable of being foreseen.
That creaturehood should, by reason of inherent weakness, he incapable of standing alone, does not seem to us at all a likelihood, far less a certainty; and God has, by two successive falls (of angels and men), proved to us, as out of the mouth of two witnesses, the innate helplessness of the creature apart from the Creator. But the divine plan did not require to wait the issue of this double ‘ experiment,’ nor to be guided and moulded by the issue of this double demonstration. It took its shape not from what might or might not become fact, according to human calculation, but from what was known from the beginning to Him who seeth the end from the beginning; with whom there is nothing uncertain or contingent; to Him f of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things,’ whose judgments are unsearchable, and whose ways past finding out (Rom. xi. 33).
‘ There is none good but one,’ and there is none unchangeable or infallible but one; and the God who created all things by J esus Christ f is the God only wise.’ This wisdom, and immutability, and goodness belong not to the creature, but to the Creator. To become partakers of these, the creature must be linked to the Creator by a bond far beyond that of creaturehood; a bond which could only be framed by means of ‘ incarnation,’ — God coming down to us and taking our flesh, that we might be lifted up to Him and made c partakers of the divine nature.’ Thus, and thus only, is creaturehood preserved from any third or future fall, and established for ever, in spite of its inherent helplessness, on a secure, because a divine foundation.
All this is comprehended in that purpose whereby the Christ of God is constituted alike the foundation and the head of the universe — ‘ the beginning and the ending, the first and the last.’
Yet in all this there is no contradiction to the divine declarations concerning ‘ the grace of God ’ The great purpose does not interfere with the fact that * God so loved the world, that He gave His only - begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life ’ (John iii. 16). Some seem to think that they cannot reconcile an eternal purpose regarding f the Christ’ with a love to man the sinner,’ — a love which did not come into being till man fell, nay, the existence of which was contingent upon his sinning. But to reconcile such a purpose and such a love is no more difficult than to reconcile the entrance of sin with the power of a holy Being who was altogether able to prevent that entrance had He willed to do so. And, indeed, almost all the theological or meta¬ physical questions and perplexities with which men have been engaged for ages run themselves up into the one question, Why did a holy and almighty God allow sin to enter the world? The true answer to that one question is the answer to a thousand others. The fact of sin’s existence is the real difficulty and stumbling-block. Admit its existence, and we must admit that its admission was no accident, far less a necessity; and, if neither an accident nor a necessity, it must have been the result of a purpose, founded upon a far wider basis than we can comprehend, — a basis which takes in the bearing of (1) sin repressed or prevented, (2) sin admitted, (3) sin overruled, not upon the one sinner only, or upon the one world where the sin was committed, but upon the universe. The divine purpose regarding the admission of sin for a season, and its subsequent removal by a process of mingled love and righteousness, assumes that the absolute repression or prevention of sin was not the best thing for the universe, or for the glory of the Creator; but that its entrance and ultimate removal were issues infinitely more beneficial to the universe and glorifying to God. The number of smaller but yet glorious ends comprised in and subserved by this entrance and removal, is altogether beyond calculation and conception; and the manifestation of God thus accomplished far outweighs the evils arising from the introduction of sin. But whether we are prepared or not to rest here, and be satisfied with such a solution, we must silence our questionings by divine declarations such as these: — ‘ In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.’
‘ Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent His Son to he the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John iv. 7, 10). ‘God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ ’ (Eph. ii. 4). In so far as man is concerned, that purpose reveals itself in love; and the proclamation which it has made both to earth and heaven is, ‘ God is Love.’ Here let us rest amid our manifold perplexities. There is no doubt now as to this. The coming of the Christ of God has settled all questions as to this; and we may sit down in peace beneath the shadow of the cross, seeing in that cross the great demonstration of the righteous love of God.
That love is not indeed the vague feeling of kindness or good-nature, or indifference to sin, which many ascribe to God. It is something more true, more real; more worthy of God, and more suited to the case of man. It is love whose very nature is abhorrence of sin; love which can only come forth to the sinner in some way consistent with that abhorrence; nay, which carries out its purpose of love in order to show this unchangeable hatred.
j. Tie Divine Purpose. 1 7
This hatred of sin is not mere general dislike of what is evil; but it is that judicial opposition to it, which can only be met or satisfied by the pay¬ ment of the penalty due by the transgressor. Law demands the penalty, but it is satisfied if it is paid by a substitute; for thus all the ends of holy government are completely fulfilled. The law is magnified and made honourable; yet the sinner is delivered, and God can, without encroachment upon righteousness, bestow His forgiving love upon those who had merited only displeasure and condemnation.
This love of God shines in the face of One who is not simply Saviour, but Substitute; of One who, by His suffering the Just for the unjust, has not merely demonstrated the reality of the love, but made it to issue forth, like the pure river of the water of life, from the throne of God, the seat of judgment and holiness.
Such is the divine purpose: the purpose of the God only wise; yet also the purpose of Him who is the ‘ Lord God, merciful and gracious, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.’
In this purpose we discover that which is to be
the foundation-stone, not only for man and man’s
world, but for the universe: for God, in His scheme The Christ of Cod.
for redeeming His Church,1 has taken in the whole range of being, far and near, and made provision for all His vast creation; so that that which is done
1 It may be well here to advert to the exact meaning of the word church. It is not the true translation of the scriptural word IzK^no-lx, which originally signified an assembly of the citizens summoned by the crier (see Liddell and Scott), and is retained in the French 6glise and the Italian chiesa. The English word church is the same as the German Kirclie and the Scottish kirk, which three words come from the Greek, and signify ‘ the Lord’s house ’ or building, as an old Latin writer (about a.d. 840) tells us: ‘ ab ipsis autem Grrecis Kyrch, a Kyrios, et alia multa accepimus; sicut domus Dei, Basilica, i.e. regia a Rege, sic etiam Kyrica, i.e. Dominica a Domino nuncupatin” (see Trench, On the Study of Words, p. 68). Thus the word church signified properly the building, and not the people. Some have objected to our calling the building by the name church; but this is really the proper term, and it is our translators who have erred in giving ‘ church ’ instead of ‘ assembly ’ or ‘ congregation,’ as the rendering of in all
such passages as Eph. v. 25, 26, where Tyndale and Cranmer, following the Greek, give us ‘ Christ the head of the congregation, ’ and ‘ Christ loved the congregation. ’ From these two translators probably it was that the early Scotch Reformers used congregation for church, as in ‘ the Band subscrived by the Lords’ in 1557: we read, ‘ the gospel of Christ and His congregation; ’ and again, ‘ the majesty of God and His congregation and again, ‘the most blessed word of God and His congregation,’ — though afterwards they used the expression ‘ Cliriste’s Kirke.’ In modern times the term ‘ the church ’ has acquired a sort of mystical meaning, and many use it as the synonym for some undefined spiritual personage or being; whereas this word ‘ church, ’ to which so many superstitious ideas (both Popish and Protestant) have been attached, does not occur in Scripture at all, except as the English representation of an incorrect translation of the Greek: and were we to return to the more exact rendering of ‘assembly,’ or ‘congregation,’ or ‘gather¬ ing,’ many false ideas would be dispelled, and some true ones exchanged for them. Let us first go to the Old Testament, and for man bears more or less directly on everything which God has ‘ created and made.’
In what way this is to affect heaven and holy
there we shall find God’s people called by the same Hebrew, Greek, and Latin words as have been rendered church by our translators in the Hew Testament. We can only take a few of these; but they are specimens of a large class: — Hum. xix, 20, ‘ That soul shall be cut off from among the congregation,’ or church, if we accept the word used by our translators in the Hew Testament. In the Septuagint it is Ixxktio’fei, in the Vulgate ecclesia, in Junius and Tremellius congregatio. Deut. xviii. 16, ‘ according to all that thou desirest of the I^ord thy God in Horeb, in the day of the assembly ’ (or church). Deut. xxiii. 1, ‘ shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord,’ or ‘into tjie church of the Lord;’ xxxi. 30, ‘Moses spake in the ears of the congregation (church) of Israel the words of this song.’ Josh. viii. 35, ‘ Before all the congregation (church) of Israel. ’ Judg. xx. 2, ‘ The chief of all the people presented them?- selves in the assembly (church) of the people of God.’ Judg. xxi.
5, ‘ Who is there that came not up with the congregation (church) unto the Lord? ’ 1 Sam. xvii. 47, ‘ All this assembly (church)
shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear.’
1 Kings viii. 14, ‘The king blessed all the congregation (church) of Israel.’ See also 1 Chron. xiii. 2, 4, xxviii. 8, xxix. 1, x. 20;
2 Chron. i. 3, vi. 3, xx. 15, ‘The Spirit of the Lord in the midst of the congregation ’ (church), etc. etc. But see especially Ps. xxii. 22 (quoted by the apostle in Heb. ii. 12), ‘In the midst of the congregation (church) will I praise Thee;’ and ver. 25, ‘My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation ’ (church). Ps. xxvi. 12, ‘In the congregation (churches) will I bless the Lord.’ Ps. xxxy. 18, ‘I will give Thee thanks in the great church. ’ Ps. xl. 9, ‘I have preached righteousness in the great church.’ Ps, lxviii. 26, ‘Bless ye God in the churches.’ Ps. lxxxix. 5, ‘Thy faithfulness in the churches of the saints.’ Ps. cxlix. 1, ‘Sing unto the Lord a new song, and His praise in the church of His saints. ’ From tligse passages we see that the word church in its real sense is an Old Testamept word, and that the apostle took his v Greek name for it from the Old Testament: so that that which we beings or regions beyond earth,, we know not. This we know, that it is written: f Having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile ALL THINGS UNTO HlMSELF; BY HlM, I SAY, WHETHER THEY BE THINGS IN EARTH OR THINGS IN HEAVEN ’
call ‘the church,’ but which the Holy Spirit calls the assembly or congregation, was found among the Old Testament saints; and that it was to the £ church,’ or congregation, or ‘ commonwealth of Israel ’ (Eph. ii. 12), that the New Testament saints were added. Of this, ‘the church in the wilderness,’ as Stephen calls it (Acts vii. 11), was part: it was to this Old Testament assembly that our Lord referred when He said, ‘ Tell it unto the church ... if he neglect to hear the church ’ (Matt, xviii. 17); and His allusion to the ‘ heathen ’ (Gentiles) and ‘ publican ’ shows that He was referring to the church of Old Testament times: ‘ tell it to the congregation ’ is the rendering of Tyndale and Cranmer. It may be that ‘ the church of the first-born, ’ or, as Tyndale renders it, ‘ the congregation of the first-born sonnes ’ (Heb. xii. 23), refers to the Old Testament saints to whom the New Testament ones had come and been made ‘ fellow-citizens with the saints ’ (of the Old Testament); nay, become ‘of the household of God’ (Eph. ii. 19), or rather, as the word olxzTo; generally means in the Septuagint, ‘relations,’ ‘ kinsmen ’ (not servants) by marriage or otherwise. Thus, what is called ‘ the church, ’ or the ‘ assembly, ’ or ‘ congregation, ’ is composed of all saints from the beginning; the New Testament saints being honoured to be fellow -citizens with the ancient saints, — relations of God, as Israel was ( ‘ Ephraim is my first-born ’), and sharers of the glory of patriarchs and prophets: all from the beginning being included in one purpose of election, washed in one blood, clothed with one righteousness, made members of one body (‘ My dead body shall they arise,’ says Christ, speaking by Isaiah of Old Testament saints), stones in one living temple, filled by one Spirit, all eating the same spiritual meat and drinking the same spiritual drink, and heirs of one common glory in the kingdom and city of the Lord, the New Jerusalem, of which they are made ‘ fellow-citizens ’ here. (Col. i. 20). Nay, still further, we know that it is written concerning this ‘ mystery of His will: ’ ‘ According to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself,’ — * that, in the dispensation of the fulness of times, He might gather together in ONE ALL THINGS IN CHRIST, BOTH WHICH ARE IN HEAVEN AND WHICH ARE ON EARTH, EVEN IN HlM ’
(Eph. i. 10).