24. Recurrence of Thought and Idea
Recurrence of Thought and Idea
Chapter 23
Often where language differs, the conception is essentially one. As we may approach the same “golden milestone” by many roads and from different directions, so we may be led up to the same central truth by a variety of methods, arguments and illustrations. It requires more discrimination to detect this convergence of thought where the words differ than where they agree; and hence the need of training the mental powers to trace the unity of teaching amid diversity of terms, and not depend on the superficial resemblance of language.
One of the most important and pervasive ideas of the Bible is the comparative unimportance of the feelings and the supreme importance of the will in the spiritual life; yet this is seldom referred to in explicit terms; it has to be discovered by the close study of the whole Word of God. Never once will it be found that the emphasis is laid upon what is merely emotional, because it is too uncertain and fluctuating. Feeling is capricious; it depends upon exciting or allaying causes, oftentimes beyond our control. Hence the Scriptures lay most stress upon principles of living, fixed choice of God and goodness which does not like a weather vane veer about with every change of wind.
All the great fundamental movements of the soul in the right direction are treated in reference to volition rather than emotion. Repentance is not so much a feeling of regret or sorrow over sin as a “change of mind,” as the Greek word literally means, a new purpose to abandon sin, and embrace holiness; a new attitude of the whole being, in turning from evil and turning toward God.
Conversion is not a new state of feeling or even affection, so much as a “turning about,” as the word hints, implying a new direction for the daily walk; and obedience is not an impulsive, capricious conformity to a command, but a self-surrender, a principle of submission to another’s authority and control. Prayer is not an approach to God under the influence of warm sensibility and awakened feeling, but a deliberate habit of seeking after Him as the sole source of power and blessing. Faith is an executive act of the will, fixing upon one divine object of all confidence and trust; and even Love, which we most construe as an emotion or affection, is always regarded in the light of the Word as a principle of supreme loyalty toward God and preference for His will, and, subordinately, of unselfish service toward man. So pervasive is this teaching in the Scripture that the reader may safely be challenged to find one case in which stress is laid upon mere feeling. These stirrings of our emotions and sensibilities are not under our control, being so often dependent on bodily health, mental condition, associations, surroundings, and even the changes of weather. God would have spiritual life built upon solid rock, not shifting quicksands. The Scriptural idea of rewards should be carefully studied in the light of the Inspired Word. The principles upon which they are administered by God are absolutely unique; and these alone suffice to accredit the Bible as divine. For example, mark the following laws which govern Rewards:
1. It is not the sphere that determines reward, but the spirit manifested in the sphere: not position but disposition. God Himself distributes the work as He will. Hence all spheres and forms of service are relatively equal in dignity and honor. What He asks is humble and constant obedience to His will wherever He put us.
2. It is therefore not the quantity but the quality of work done that measures reward—not how much, but how well. (Compare Matthew 10:42 and the Widow’s two mites).
3. The will to do, not the ability to accomplish is the determining factor. If there be first a willing mind it is accepted according to that a man hath, not according to what he hath not (2 Corinthians 8).
God Himself assigns the limits of capacity and opportunity. Hence he recognizes and rewards honest intention and purpose, motive, not action. Compare David: “Thou didst well that it was in thine heart.”
4. Not success but fidelity is rewarded. We cannot always command success. A steward is required to be faithful and wise, not successful. Stephen yearned to evangelize but accepted stoning. Paul went to Macedonia because of a vision, but found scourging and a prison cell.
5. Not endowment but improvement. Compare the parables of Talents and Pounds. Taking the two together, we learn, first, that where there is an unequal bestowment, but an equal or proportionate improvement, the reward is equal; second, that where there is equal bestowment but unequal improvement the reward is unequal.
6. The object ennobles the subject, the purpose sanctifies the offering, “The altar sanctifieth the gift.” The higher the aim and the more exalted the end the more valuable the offering. A deed is reckoned not by what is done but by the cause or object to which the service is rendered.
7. Not proud independence but humble dependence. Not the energy of the flesh but of the spirit. Hence all care savors of atheism. We are forbidden to worry: it is God’s cause and service and He will take care of it.
8. God remembers and rewards service so small that we forget it and are unconscious of it (see Matthew 25).
He records and rewards what we regard as trifles, when the motive is holy, unselfish and spiritual. Nothing is insignificant done in His name.
These principles are wholly peculiar to the Scriptural revelation of God’s philosophy of rewards. The conception of covenant is perpetually recurring, and is one of the controlling and interpreting ideas of all Scripture, but it is frequently suggested where other words are employed, such as “vow,” “oath,” “separation,” “agreement,” “fellowship,” etc. The root idea from which all these kindred terms sprung is the same. A special relation between two parties, God and man, of which a vow is the expression and an oath the confirmation; agreement, the equivalent; separation, the condition, and fellowship the exhibition. The God of the Bible is throughout a covenant God, and yet the word “covenant” has passed almost entirely out of Christian thinking. All true blessings God has covenanted to bestow on believers, and on the basis of the covenant, they may rest perfectly assured that all such promises can, must, and will be unfailingly fulfilled; God ever does what He has covenanted to do. There are two great covenants, and two parties, God and man. The Old Covenant shows what man could and could not do; the New Covenant manifests what God can and will do. “The two covenants represent two stages of God’s education of man and of man’s seeking of God.” Many Christians continue to attempt to serve God under the Old Covenant; this results in weakness, doubt, discouragement and failure. It is the duty and privilege of believers to place themselves at once under the New Covenant. This is done by believing themselves in His sight judicially reckoned to be all that God wills them to be, and to receive all that He has promised in Christ. “A single decisive step,” says Andrew Murray, gives the believer “full access into the immediate presence of God, and the full experience of the power of the Spirit.” The idea of Salvation is another of the recurring conceptions of Scripture, but its verbal equivalents are almost countless. Sometimes it appears under the guise of pardon and escape from judgment; again, of justification and acceptance in Christ; and again of sanctification and victory over sin, and deliverance from its power. Peter uses the word of the final consummation at the reappearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so of Holiness. The word seldom appears in comparison to the thought which underlies it. But there are three great conceptions closely linked with it: separation from sin and unto God; spiritual health or wholeness, and conformity to the image of His Son. So of Service. How seldom this word is found! In its proper and spiritual sense perhaps only ten times in all; yet the thought continually recurring in a variety of forms and figures. “Ministry,” “good works” and “alms giving,” “fruit,” “seed sowing,” “burden bearing,” and almost a myriad other forms. How could we learn the lesson of service if we were dependent on the mere recurrence of the word? The word “Faith” is found but once in the Old Testament. “Children in whom is no faith” (Deuteronomy 32:20), where it means faithfulness, or good faith. Yet the thought runs like a golden thread from Genesis 15:6, to the end. Even “believe,” its nearest equivalent, is found only about thirty times, as applied to God, and yet the lesson is perpetually taught of confidence and trust, and associated with the whole history of the race. We might almost say that the two attitudes of believing and not believing are the explanation of all Old Testament history and doctrine. We may draw a line through the entire book, arrange on one side all those who had faith, and on the other, those who had not, and classify the entire contents of the Old Testament Scripture under the two heads of the rewards and results of faith, and penalties and consequences of unbelief. To get these great recurrent ideas of Scripture firmly in mind, and with them as guides search the word, is to find many of the secrets of its unity and harmony.
Peace is another recurrent idea, and the word is found over two hundred times. Yet the conception reappears a thousand, if the equivalent terms are consulted. One of the nearest is rest, which expresses both an aspect and a result of peace. Safety is another equivalent, so is security, quiet, firmness, courage. The thought is but the more eloquently impressive because so many ways are necessary to give it expression, like the faces into which a diamond is ground and polished, each of which adds to its brilliance and radiance.
How recurrent is the idea of Power—the power of God in man! Yet how seldom is it expressed as in Micah 3:8. “I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord.” Sometimes the thought is that of strength to do, courage to witness, patience to endure, boldness to rebuke; but to follow the thought throughout is not only to understand what the power of God in the believer is, but the hundred forms of its manifestation and directions of its utilization. The Holy Indignation of God against sin must be understood only by knowing the whole Scripture. We must examine its whole testimony, under “anger,” “wrath,” “fury,” “indignation,” “displeasure,” “jealousy,” etc.; and all in the light of His immaculate Holiness, who is “of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look upon iniquity” (Habakkuk 1:13). Any one of these words might leave us with the false impression of a passionate being roused at times to a violent anger as terrible as his infinity. But a more general study will show wrath in God to be only another aspect of benevolence, as necessary to His perfections as Love, and itself only the other pole of love. For it is the same holiness that is attracted by the beauty of saintliness and as surely repelled by the deformity and corruption of sinfulness. To master the subject enables us to admire and adore God for the very wrath that at first made Him seem only too much like a man of undisciplined temper and ungoverned passions.
Inspiration is another and very important recurrent idea. It occurs but once in either Testament (Job 32:8, 2 Timothy 3:16). Yet is not the thought of a divine speaker behind all human tongues and pens, a dominant one in the Word of God? Is not the one idea that binds all Scripture in one, gives it uniform, divine authority, and constitutes it the final court of arbitration in all controversy as to truth or duty, the one consistent and all-controlling thought that in many ways, at many times, in many parts, and by many men, the one God spake unto the fathers; and that in these last days He spake finally and fully by His Son (Hebrews 1:1-2). Let that be the recurrent conception, and the whole Word is illumined. We see that each of these sixty-six books is a member of one organic body of Scripture, and each of the forty human writers a mouthpiece of one Divine speaker. We are not left without a sufficient guide in belief and practice, and, if we discover apparent inharmonies and discordances, are prepared to search more deeply for the secret of reconciliation and unity.
Here is another grand illustration of great underlying conceptions absolutely independent of explicit statement. Where in the Old Testament are “life and immortality brought to light” as in the New? David indeed said, “I shall go to him but he shall not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23), but some think this only means that he shall go to the child in the grave. Job declared that his redeemer liveth, and that “in his flesh he shall see God,” but some again think he refers to his confidence that he shall be restored from disease and in a recovered body be vindicated by Jehovah. The references to the future life are confessedly few and occult; yet if we once assume the doctrine, we shall find it everywhere implied and explanatory of otherwise obscure and enigmatical Scriptures. And so of the kindred idea of resurrection from the dead. The word “Discipline” is found only in Job 36:10, and then it does not mean the beneficent influence of sorrow and suffering in educating character. Yet who would be willing to dismiss this ever-recurrent thought from the Holy Scripture, that, like as a father pitieth and loveth and chasteneth his children, so our Heavenly Father, because He loves and pities, afflicts. Let the student take this idea and trace its unfoldings, under such forms as “chastening,” “correction,” “affliction,” “trial,” “sorrow,” “tribulation,” “trouble,” “rebuke,” “reproach,” etc., and see how rich is the body of instruction developed, that could never be gathered by simply following anyone word. The idea of a life beyond death is very seldom explicitly expressed in the Old Testament; yet the Lord Himself argues that an attentive reader may find it pervading it as well as the New (Matthew 22:32). The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the God not of the dead but of the living, and He would not give Himself such a name as expressing His relation to corpses, rotting in their sepulchers, but to believers still living, though their bodies be sleeping.