Scripture Queries and Answers

Q.-Would you kindly explain through the Bible Treasury the meaning of
“Who shall declare his generation” (Isa. 8)?
“Who shall deliver me out of this body of death” (Rom. 7:24)?
“So then I myself with the mind serve God’s law” (Rom. 7:25).
“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2).
“All them also that love his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:8). Do not all Christians love His appearing?
R. M.
A. (1) Isa. 53:8. Differing interpretations of this clause are by no means wanting. But if the words preceding indicate the wicked travesty of our Lord’s trial before the Roman governor” his judgment was taken away” —so it would appear that the prophet, under the sense of the nation’s overwhelming wickedness in compassing the rejection and death of Jehovah’s Righteous Servant, is led to cry out, “Who shall declare” such a generation as could be so guilty— “for he was cut off out of the land of the living”! (2, 3 and 4). Rom. 7:24, 25; 8:2. The converted or renewed soul—not yet brought into the Christian state of liberty and peace, but nevertheless truly born of God, as were also the Old Testament saints—has a new and holy nature not previously possessed (i.e. when unconverted), and delights in the law of God, yet finding itself powerless for good, because of indwelling sin (ver. 20). To will is present, but to work out the good is not. The body being thus under the power of, and enslaved by this fatal “law of sin and death,” is here called “this body of death,” dead because of sin. Hence the cry, when the soul’s powerlessness is felt and acknowledged, for a deliverer—found in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Looking to self for power has ceased; another is the Object before the soul, and so deliverance is found, and strength. “So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God,” whereas before, as sold under sin, it was no longer “I” but “sin” that dwelleth in me!
Scripture Queries and Answers
Q.-(4) “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2).
(5) “All them also that love his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:8). Do not all Christians love His appearing?
R. M.
A.-(4). So too, no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit, the believer knows himself to be in Christ Jesus, where no condemnation can possibly be. Under a new rule or principle—a law—it is the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus risen. He breathed into the disciples and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” The law of sin and death inherited from Adam has no longer its authority. “Sin shall not have dominion over you.” There is the effective working of a new and living law —a law of liberty and power—so that now the righteous requirement, or demand, of God’s holy law is fulfilled in us who do not walk according to flesh (as once we did), but according to Spirit—the Spirit of God.
(5). 2 Tim. 4:8. The love of His appearing or manifestation in glory is what is in the heart of every Christian. Then shall we be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. There may not be intelligent knowledge of the manner and meaning of the event. But the soul that can say, “We love him, because he first loved us,” delights in His manifestation. And every one that hath this hope on Christ purifieth himself even as He is pure.