The Lord's Coming. Miscellaneous Writings of C. H. Mackintosh, Vol. II

Volume II
LOIZEAUX BROTHERS
New York

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FIRST EDITION 1898
TENTH PRINTING 1960
LOIZEAUX BROTHERS, Inc., PUBLISHERS
A Nonprofit Organization, Devoted to the Lord’s Work
and to the Spread of His Truth
19 West 21st Street, New York 10, N. Y.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

How much is wrapped up in these few words, “God for us!” They form one of those marvelous chains of three links so frequently found in Scripture. We have “God” linked on to “us” by that precious little word “for.” This secures every thing, for time and eternity. There is not a single thing within the entire range of a creature’s necessities that are not included in the brief but comprehensive sentence which forms the heading of this paper. If God be for us, then it follows, of necessity — blessed necessity — that neither our sins, nor our iniquities, nor our guilt, nor our ruined nature, nor Satan, nor the world, nor any other creature can possibly stand in the way of our present peace and our everlasting felicity and glory. God can dispose of all — has disposed of them, in such a way as to illustrate His own glory, and magnify His holy name, throughout the wide universe, forever and ever. All praise and adoration be to the eternal Trinity!

It may be, however, that the reader feels disposed, at the very outset, to inquire how he is to know his place amongst the “us” of our precious thesis. This, truly, is a most momentous question. Our eternal weal or woe hangs upon the answer. How, then, are we to know that God is for us? In reply to this most weighty question, we shall seek, by God’s grace, to furnish the reader with five substantial proofs that God is for us, in all our need, our guilt, our misery, and our danger — for us, spite of all that we are, and all that we have done — for us, although there is no reason whatever, so far as we are concerned, why He should be for us, but every reason why He should be against us.

The first grand proof which we shall adduce is —

THE GIFT OF HIS SON.

“For 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.)

Now, we are glad, for various reasons, to commence our series of proofs with these memorable words. In the first place, they meet a difficulty which may suggest itself to the mind of an anxious reader — a difficulty based upon the fact that the sentence culled from Rom. viii. 31 evidently applies primarily to believers, and only to such, as does the entire epistle and every one of the epistles.

But, blessed be God, no such difficulty can be started in reference to the all-embracing, and encouraging words of Him who spake as never man spake. When we have from the lips of our blessed Lord Himself, the eternal Son of God, such words as these, “God so loved the world,” we have no ground whatever for questioning their application to each and all who come under the comprehensive word “world.” Before any one can prove that the free love of God does not apply to him, he must first prove that he does not form a part of the world, but that he belongs to some other sphere of being. If indeed, our Lord had said, “God so loved a certain portion of the world,” call it what you please, then verily it would be absolutely necessary to prove that we belong to that particular portion or class, ere we could attempt to apply His words to ourselves. If He had said that God so loved the predestinated, the elect, or the called, then we must seek to know our place amongst the number of such, before we can take home to ourselves the precious assurance of the love of God, as proved by the gift of His Son.

But our Lord used no such qualifying clause. He is addressing one who, from his earliest days, had been trained and accustomed to take a very limited view indeed of the favor and goodness of God. Nicodemus had been taught to consider that the rich tide of Jehovah’s goodness, loving-kindness, and tender mercy could only flow within the narrow inclosure of the Jewish system and the Jewish nation. The thought of its rolling forth to the wide wide world had never, we may safely assert, penetrated the mind of one trained amid the contracting influences of the legal system. Hence, therefore, it must have sounded passing strange in his ear, to hear “a teacher come from God” giving utterance to the great fact that God loved not merely the Jewish nation, nor yet some special portion of the human race, but “the world.” No doubt, such a statement would add not a little to the amazement felt by this master in Israel at being told that he himself, with all His religious advantages, needed to be born again in order to see or enter the kingdom of God.

Do we then deny or call in question the grand truth of predestination, election, or effectual calling? God forbid. We hold these things as amongst the fundamental principles of true Christianity. We believe in the eternal counsels and purposes of our God — His unsearchable decrees — His electing love — His sovereign mercy.

But do any or all of these things interfere, in the smallest degree, with the gracious activities of the divine nature, or the outgoings of God’s love towards a lost world? In no wise. God is love. That is His blessed nature, and this nature must express itself toward all. The mistake lies in supposing that because God has His purposes, His counsels, His decrees — because He is sovereign in His grace and mercy — because He has chosen from all eternity a people for His own praise and glory — because the names of the redeemed, all the redeemed, were written down in the book of the slain Lamb, before the foundation of the world — that therefore God cannot be said to love all mankind — to love the world — and, moreover that the glad tidings of God’s full and free salvation ought not to be proclaimed in the ears of every creature under heaven.

The simple fact is that the two lines, though so perfectly distinct, are laid down with equal clearness, in the word of God; neither interferes, in the smallest degree, with the other, but both together go to make up the beauteous harmony of divine truth and to set forth the glorious unity of the divine nature.

Now, it is with the activities of the divine nature and the outgoings of divine love that the preacher of the gospel has specially to do. He is not to be cramped, crippled, or confined in his blessed work, by any reference to God’s secret decrees or purposes, though fully aware of the existence of such. His mission is to the world — the wide wide world. His theme is salvation — a salvation as full as the heart of God, as permanent as the throne of God — as free as the air — free to all without any exception, limitation, or condition whatsoever. The basis of his work is the atoning death of Christ which has removed all barriers out of the way, and opened up the floodgates in order that the mighty tide of divine love may roll forth, in all its fulness, richness and blessedness, to a lost and guilty world.

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