19. Summaries of Biblical Truth

Summaries of Biblical Truth

Chapter 18 From time to time inspired utterances rise above the common level even of leading passages of scripture like prominent peaks in a landscape; sometimes they command the cardinal points in the entire horizon of scripture. Some of these scripture summaries seem intended to supply a sort of compendium of divine teaching, brief, comprehensive, easily remembered and suited to the humblest capacity. When found these should be carefully noted and it is well to commit them to memory. The first conspicuous summary is Deuteronomy 6:4, already referred to, as one of the leading passages of scripture. It is not easy to translate so as to preserve the full force of the original. These words form the beginning of what in the Jewish services is termed the shema (“Hear”) and belong to the daily morning and evening services. They constitute the substance of the Jewish creed:

“Jehovah, our Elohim—Jehovah one.”

Here the brevity and terseness rather impart emphasis and suggest a broad, deep meaning, because capable of so many different constructions. The stress mainly falls upon the word “one” which carries the idea of uniqueness as well as unity. Jehovah our God is the alone God—solitary, incomparable, inapproachable. This is not a statement of divine unity as against polytheism, nor of His revelation to Israel as contrasted with other manifestations of Himself; but it means that Jehovah is the one self-existent, independent God, the one Being that is the cause of all and the effect of none. The last letters of the first and last words in this Hebrew sentence are “majascula”—that is written larger than the rest, and together spelling the word ed, or “witness,” and construed by the Jewish commentator as very significant, implying that this is in substance the witness borne by the faithful, and a challenge to Jehovah to bear His witness to them in turn. To convey some idea of the form in which the scribes wrote this brief creedal declaration, a sort of paraphrase may be given:

“GivE heed, O Israel! Jehovah one, our GoD.”

Hence not only the obligation to love such a God with the whole being, but to teach these words unto their children, to bind them for a sign upon the hand and as frontlets between the eyes; to write them upon the door posts and gate posts, to be kept in sight and in mind. The Jews literally kept this command. A small square of parchment inscribed with Deuteronomy 6:4-9, and Deuteronomy 11:13-21, was rolled up, enclosed in a small cylinder of wood or metal, and affixed to the right-hand post of every door in a Jewish house, a small hole being left in the enclosing cylinder, so that as the pious believer passes, he may touch the mezuzah, with his finger or kiss it with his lips, and say, “The Lord shall preserve thy going out And thy coming in,” Psalms 121:8.

Biblical summaries sometimes give the substance of a whole book in one sentence:

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter,” Ecclesiastes 12:13. Here the writer sums up his whole argument. “To fear God and keep His commandments,” literally, “is the whole man,” that is, here is the secret of a complete, well-rounded, symmetrical character. In the previous chapters, the author records five successive experiments in the search of the highest good. All have been failures. He has been looking “under the sun,” and all that is earthly is temporal and human and partial and imperfect. Only when he looked beyond the sun, at that which is eternal, divine, perfect, did he find the missing hemisphere which makes life, being, happiness, complete. Heaven is the complement of earth, the future, of the present; God, of man; the final judgment, the corrective of all present inequalities and iniquities. In the beginning of the book of Proverbs we read that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Here we have the complementary truth, at the ending of Ecclesiastes—that this fear of the Lord is the formative principle giving perfection to character. Man, as “a religious animal,” demands God as his correlative, and without faith toward God and holy obedience is forever incomplete.

Micah 7:18-20 is the grand summary of Divine Grace in the dealing with iniquity. It is at the conclusion of his prophecy, introduced by that august question which we have seen to be a sort of scripture landmark, and an echo of the prophet’s own name “Micah”—“who is Jah!” This summary of Forgiving Grace is in three parts:

1. The grace that Pardons Iniquity; (Micah 7:18) 2. The grace that subdues Iniquity; (Micah 7:19) 3. The grace that performs what it promises. (Micah 7:20) The comprehensiveness of this is apparent: the first is the assurance of mercy to the guilty instead of judgment; the second, of deliverance to the tempted when sins of the past pursue like malignant foes; and the third, of inheritance of covenant promise, when discouragements and difficulties suggest despair. And there is evidently a reference to the three typical stages of Hebrew history: the Passing by the Blood-stained doors; the Passing through the Red Sea; and the Passing over the Jordan.

This is one of the great Scripture landmarks, one of perhaps a score of texts that, like John 3:16, contain the essence of the gospel message in a few words. Here are only about twenty words, and yet they tell us all we need to know about God’s Salvation. For example:

Or it may be put in another form:

God offers Man Salvation; but He only can Save; and We need only to Look. This text is linked with the conversion of C.H. Spurgeon. In the little primitive Methodist chapel at Colchester he heard from an unknown and unlettered man this very message, and that morning he looked and lived.

John 3:16 is another similar summary, “the Gospel in miniature.” Here are at least seven great truths, almost identical with those of Isaiah 45:22.

Romans 5:1-5, Justification: its privileges and results

Another of these “little gospels” illustrates the summaries of truth, Romans 10:8-10. Paul calls it “the word of faith which we preach,” that is its whole substance, and it includes two things: a heart belief and a mouth confession. The belief centers on the resurrection, not the crucifixion, for a dead Christ could not save, and the stress of the New Testament is on the risen one, Romans 4:25; 1 Corinthians 15, etc.

Note also that faith is unto righteousness, but confession is unto salvation, which includes more than justification. When we add testimony to belief, we rise to a higher plane: a faith that constrains to no witness finds no development. To suppress testimony by silence is to stifle the new life.

Observe also how the simple secret of world-wide missions is here hinted: the hearing ear prepares for the believing heart and the believing heart for the confessing mouth; and the confessing mouth prepares for another hearing ear, believing heart and confessing mouth. Here is the hint of a true and endless “apostolic succession” of hearing, faith and testimony; and he who hears and believes not, or who believing, witnesses not, drops out of the succession and knows not the higher “Salvation.”

Paul sums up the work of Christ in one brief sentence: “Who of God is made unto us Wisdom and Righteousness and Sanctification and Redemption,” 1 Corinthians 1:30.

Here at a glance we take in the fourfold work of our Lord for us. He is judicially “made,” or constituted all that these words imply and in the order here given.

1. Wisdom from God—which is the preferable rendering. Paul writing to the Greeks who boasted of their wisdom, declares that Christ is wisdom from God, in comparison with whom the wisdom of this world is foolishness and the princes of this world, nought. He imparts to us knowledge of God and of self and is Himself the truth.

2. Righteousness. He becomes to us an all-sufficient righteousness, justification, giving us a new standing before God, and an imputed righteousness, which gives peace with Him, access to Him, and assurance of glory with Him.

3. Sanctification. In Christ we are assured of a holy state as well as a righteous standing. By the indwelling Spirit, every believer is constituted a temple of God and transformed from one degree of grace and glory to another.

4. Redemption. This expresses the final goal—a resurrection of the body, a complete deliverance of soul and spirit from all the power and presence of sin, and introduction of body and spirit, united, into the perfected home above. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews writes:

“Now of the things we have spoken, this is the sum”—“chief point,” or “crowning point.” He then proceeds to give in forty words the substance of all his argument. “We have a divine High Priest, now enthroned in Heaven, and ministering in our behalf in the true and Heavenly Tabernacle.” The old priesthood was on earth, and the old tabernacle was for a season, but now the type is swallowed up in the antitype and prototype. And this summary comes about the middle of the Epistle, like the capstone of a pyramid with the lines slanting in both directions, toward the beginning and end.

2 Peter 1:16-21 is the grand summary of the evidences of Christianity, which prove to a believer that he has not “followed cunningly devised fables.”

These bear indefinite expansion and are all-comprehensive. The Old Testament portrait of our Lord Jesus Christ leaves no room for candid doubt, the word of prophecy, given as a light in the darkness. The New Testament manifestation of the Deity and glory of the Son of God culminates in the Transfiguration when for the first and only time Christ’s glory was unveiled. Then when the day dawns in a conscious experience of Redemption in the heart, the Day Star rises, the last of the night, and the first of the morning, the darkness being past and the true light now shining. These three forms of proof are closely related: the first is God’s witness to His Son; the second, the actual combined testimony of the Son to Himself and the Father to Him; and the last, the testimony of the believer’s own personal life.

Such summaries have been called “little bibles,” or “little gospels.” And it is recommended to every reader to make his own selection and collection. A few more, beside those already mentioned, may be indicated as a guide.

• Genesis 15:6—Believing, and Imputation of Righteousness

• Habakkuk 2:4—Faith and Justification

• Isaiah 53:6-7—The Sole Source of Salvation

• John 3:36—Believing and Everlasting Life

• John 14:23—Love, obedience and manifestation of God

• John 15:7—Abiding in Christ and Power in Prayer

• Acts 2:38—The Pentecostal Gospel

• Romans 8:1-2—In Christ Jesus justified and made free

• Romans 12:1-2—The Self Presentation and Separation of the Believer

• 2 Corinthians 7:1—The self-cleansing of flesh and spirit

• Galatians 2:20—Crucifixion with Christ and Life in Him

• Php 4:6-7—The Refuge from care in prayer

• Titus 2:11-14—The grace that bringeth Salvation

• Hebrews 12:1-2—The attitude of the Christian Racer

• 1 John 3:2-3—The now and hereafter of saints

• 1 John 5:20—The Knowledge of God and Life Eternal