06.03. Lecture 3rd - Fatherhood of God Before Christ
LECTURE THIRD. THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD, AS REVEALED AND KNOWN BEFORE THE INCARNATION. When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son.
I PROPOSE here to raise the question;—To what extent was the fatherhood of God matter of human knowledge, or matter of divine revelation, before the coming of his son Jesus Christ in the flesh? It is a question which necessarily emerges out of the view that has been given of the fatherhood of God, as manifested in the person of the incarnate Son. And it is moreover a question which, in that view, is preliminary to another inquiry, and one that goes deep into the heart of the whole subject, namely this:—Is the relation which God sustains to his son Jesus Christ come in the flesh, his only true and proper fatherhood? and is it by their being made personally partakers, in some sense and to some extent, yet really and truly, of that relation, that angels and men become sons of God? To prepare the way for that ulterior inquiry, for the conducting of which the New Testament, of course, must furnish the principal materials, I intend now to ask—at least that is my main object—what the Old Testament—with the New as throwing light on the Old—says of the fatherhood of God; or in other words, how far, and in what way, before the incarnation of the Son of God, and apart from that event, God was revealed and known as a Father in the ancient church.
Before the Son of God appeared in human nature, the only conception which men could form of a relation of fatherhood and sonship between God and them must have been based on the analogy of the paternal and filial relation among themselves. And there can be little doubt that the analogy is a natural, and so far, a valid one. The relation of son and father on earth is fitted,—and probably, in its original constitution, intended,—to suggest the idea of a similar relation between earth and heaven. The creation or origination of intelligent beings, on the part of the great intelligent Creator, may thus be viewed as analogous to the act by which a human father produces a son like himself. And the Creator’s providence over his creatures may be likened to the human father’s care and tenderness towards his children. Such representations of God, accordingly, are not uncommon even among heathen writers, especially the poets; as might easily be shown by familiar quotations. In considering such representations, however, and especially in reasoning upon them, it is necessary to keep in view an ambiguity of which he analogy admits. God may be called father, simply as having caused his creatures to exist, and not as thereafter sustaining a real personal relation to them. That, I apprehend, is actually all that is meant in not a few of the passages usually cited. But that, it will be at once perceived, is not to the purpose of my present inquiry. It is a mere figure of speech employed to denote the creative agency or act of God. In this sense, paternity, as we have seen, may be attributed to God with reference to mere material things; as when God asks Job (Job 33:28),— “Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?”—as if he meant to assert for himself a fatherhood having the rain and the dew for sons. Obviously, in such a case, it is a merely creative fatherhood that is with such boldness of vivid poetic personification claimed and challenged for the Supreme. With more of prosaic propriety, fatherhood in this sense is attributed to God with reference to his intelligent creatures. Even then, however, as thus restricted, it suggests no idea of any permanent personal relationship. It suggests nothing more than the idea of primeval causation or origination.
It is in this sense, I am persuaded, and only in this sense, that we are to understand the verse of old poetry which Paul so aptly introduced into his speech before the Areopagus at Athens,—“As certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.” *[1] This pregnant saying which, though originally a merely human and heathen utterance, Paul, by quoting it, of course adopts and engrosses as his own, has been supposed to indicate a relation of sonship belonging by a common right to all men, and actually subsisting in the case of all men. But if we look at it in the light of the occasion on which Paul quoted it and the purpose to which he turned it, we may see some reason to question that interpretation or application of it. For what is the use which Paul makes of it in his argument? It is simply to expose the absurdity of rational beings ascribing their origin to what is irrational; or, which comes to the same thing, worshipping in an irrational manner him to whom they ascribe their origin, so as virtually to make him out to be irrational. That is all. That is the apostle’s only object; the sole and single point of his reasoning. Obviously there is no question of present personal relationship raised here at all; no question as to the footing on which men as individuals are with their Maker,—what he is to them and they are to him. There is simply an assertion of a common source or origin, Are we not all his children? If this makes God a father at all, it is in the sense in which an ancestor is held to be the father of all his posterity; it is in the sense in which Abraham is called “the father of many nations.” Our being all God’s offspring, in that sense, sustains the apostle’s argument, and is indeed all that is necessary, or even relevant, to sustain it. Anything else, anything more, would be out of place. We dislike to have our lineage—our parentage in the line of direct and natural ascent—traced up to a gorilla, or a tadpole, or a monade. We think that our being possessed of intelligence affords a presumption in favour of our original progenitor, the primary author of our race, whoever he may be, being himself intelligent as we are. So thought the wisest and best men in heathendom. Paul appeals to their being of that mind. He adopts their logic, and. makes it available for his immediate object, which is simply to expose the inconsistency of idolatrous worship. That is really all. The principle asserted, the ground and medium of the argument, is simply this—that the head, or origin, or father, whether of a long line of descendants, or of a numerous race coming simultaneously into existence, cannot be wholly dissimilar to them in nature; that if they are intelligent he must be recognised as being so, much more; and that he cannot therefore be expected to be pleased with unintelligent worship.
There is no assertion here of any personal relation of fatherhood and sonship. It is merely an argument for community of nature as regards intelligence. It is, in fact, nothing more than an application of the maxim, or axiom, that “like produces like.” It appeals to the same sort of principle which Paul so powerfully brings to bear in another direction on the spiritual identity, in respect of faith, between believing Abraham and all his spiritual children (Galatians 3:1-29, Romans 4:1-25) As he is, so are they; he and they alike being believers. Therefore he is their father, “the father of the faithful.” And they, in respect of their joint possession with him of the common quality or attribute of faith, are his seed. The argument of Paul in his appeal to the Athenians is precisely of the same kind. As you, the offspring, are intelligent, so, it is to be presumed, must he whose offspring you are be intelligent. And he must, therefore, be intelligently worshipped. But all this has nothing whatever to do with the question of the personal relation in which the offspring,—that is, the individual persons composing the offspring,—are personally to stand to him whose offspring they all are. In a way very similar to this, I think another text, often cited or referred to with some confidence, is to be disposed of. Adam, it is said, is declared in Scripture to be, as he came forth from the hand of his Creator, “the son of God,” or “a son of God,” or simply “son of God.” Now, the only authority alleged for that statement is the closing climax of Luke’s genealogy of our Lord; in which, after a long enumeration of an ascending series of fatherhoods, he comes at last to Adam, and says of him, using the very same formula as in all the other cases, “which was the son of God;”—or rather, for the phrase is all throughout elliptical, “which was of God” (Luke 3:38). This mere rounding off of the genealogy of our Lord, as traced by Luke upwards, and not, as in Matthew’s gospel, downwards,—this simple intimation that in Adam the ascending line of human parentage is lost, and that his origin must be ascribed immediately to God,—is often brought forward as if it were not only an express, but even an emphatic assertion of Adam’s proper personal sonship. Nay, it is made, as it would seem, the ground of an argument for “attributing Adam’s creation to the Deity of Christ.” *[2] In reality, there is no idea suggested in this whole pedigree or family-tree but that of descent; son descending from father, until Adam is reached, whose descent is from no human father, but must be said to be of God. There is nothing like real fatherhood and sonship, as a permanent and personal relation, asserted here.
Setting aside, then, those passages in the Bible, as well as those passages in heathen writings, which seem to ascribe fatherhood to God, in the sense simply of origination, or causation, or ancestry,—the question remains, What traces or indications are there, before and apart from the incarnation of the Son of God, of fatherhood in God, properly so called;—of his actually sustaining the paternal relation to his intelligent creatures and subjects, personally and individually? In dealing with this question, I leave out of view the secular literature of antiquity;—for, in truth, it throws little or no light on the subject of my present inquiry. That inquiry is almost altogether a scriptural one;—Was God revealed as a Father to the Old Testament Church? If so, in what manner and to what extent? And of what nature is his fatherhood represented as being?
I. I begin with what I hold to be a material and fundamental fact. So far as I can see, there is no trace of anything like natural or original sonship, either in angels or in men, having ever been accepted in the church as an article of belief. That either angels or men were sons of God from the beginning of their being, is nowhere taught in holy Scripture.
1. I speak first of the angels.
Those of them that fell are never spoken of or referred to as having been before their fall sons of God. Their offence is stigmatized as “pride.” “The condemnation of the devil” is his being “lifted up with pride” (1 Timothy 3:6). It is the offence of a disloyal subject, rather than of a disaffected and undutiful son. They refuse to occupy a subordinate position; to own government by authority of law and judgment. They aspire to the liberty of independence. It is as proud, rebellious subjects, not as ill-conditioned sons, that they disobey, and come under the condemnation of disobedience. And if that be so, then it follows that it is a trial of their obedience as subjects that their faithful brethren stand. They too are tested, not as sons, but as subjects. The trial is, whether they will proudly insist on being their own masters, or meekly consent to be ruled? At any rate, it is only after their trial and its good issue, that the angels who kept their first estate are introduced in Scripture as sons of God.
It is in the book of Job, and there only, that the holy unfallen angels are spoken of or referred to as sons of God. For I suppose it is they who are meant when it is said, twice over, that “the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord” (Job 1:6; Job 2:1). I doubt, however, if, according to Hebrew idiom, this title, as here given to them, can be fairly held to imply more than a mere antagonism or antithesis to the adversary of God, “Satan,” who “came among them.” But be that as it may, there is certainly, it must be admitted, another passage in the book of Job where this explanation will not apply. It occurs at the opening of that sublime address in which—after the sophistries of the three bigoted friends and the noble appeal of the generous Elihu—the Lord himself takes the matter in hand and reduces Job to silence (Job 38:1-7). There that much afflicted but as yet too self-righteous patriarch is thus abruptly challenged: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” Wast thou with me then, as a party to my counsels and my working “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” There can scarcely be a doubt that it is the elect angels who are here meant. And they are called the sons of God absolutely; not merely in the way of contrast to any other parties, or contradistinction from them;—but simply in respect of their own gracious character and standing. This I take to be the only unequivocal intimation of the sonship of the angels which the Old Testament Church ever got. I admit it, or rather I hold it, to be emphatic. But it is so chiefly, as it appears to me, in a prospective point of view, and in its bearing on subsequent scriptural hints and discoveries. For, as I think, it fits in remarkably to Balaam’s prophecy (Numbers 14:17), “there shall come a star out of Jacob;”—and also to that announcement in the very close of the Revelation (Revelation 22:16), “I am the root and offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.” Thus followed out, it suggests large and high thoughts as to the connection of the sonship of the holy angels with that of Christ. And if we take in another text, in which Christ says to “him that overcometh” atThyatira (Revelation 2:28) “I will give him the morning star,”—it may seem probable that some sort of joint fellowship of angels and men in Christ’s sonship is what, by thus connecting together, in so close a verbal relation, the widely separated books of Job and the Revelation, the Spirit intends to teach. For thus we find the title, “morning star,” which is associated with that of “son of God” in the case of the angels, applied to the Son of God himself, and in him also to the overcoming christian.*[3] But anything like such community of sonship could be only very imperfectly taught, if taught at all, to the Old Testament Church, by such a brief notice as that which the book of Job contains. To the men who had simply that, and nothing more than that, the juxtaposition of the titles “morning stars” and “sons of God” could convey little or no clear information. It might rather indeed occasion perplexity. Certainly, however well they might understand the words put into the mouth of God as a most conclusive rebuke to Job, they could scarcely gather from them any distinct idea of the sonship of angels. At all events, they would not be likely to gather from them any idea of the sonship of angels being, as a real personal relation, natural and original. The title must rather, I think, have appeared to them, like the other title “morning star,” to be merely figurative and analogical. And in any view, it belongs to them as having stood the trial which proved fatal to their fellows.
2. As the angels are not represented in the word of God in the character of sons of God by nature and from the beginning of their being, so neither is man.
There is not a hint of sonship in all that is said of Paradise, or of man’s sin and fall there. Nay, I hold that what is revealed of God’s treatment of Adam, in the garden, is palpably irreconcilable with the idea of anything like the paternal and filial relation subsisting between them.
Adam is tried simply as a creature, intelligent and free;—as a subject under authority and law. Not a hint is given of his having violated, when he transgressed, any filial obligation. Nor, in the sentence pronounced upon him, is there any trace whatever of his being subjected to fatherly discipline and correction. All about it is strictly, I should say exclusively, forensic and judicial. It is the legal condemnation of a servant;—not the fatherly chastisement of a son. No doubt, hope of recovery is held out. But it is held out in a way strictly and exclusively indicative of legal judgment and legal deliverance. The deliverer is to prevail over the tempter by becoming himself a victim; a victim to outraged authority; a substitute for those whom the devil has tried to ruin; bearing in his own person the doom impending by a righteous award over them; accepting the curse which the great deceiver has brought upon them; and doing so to the effect of destroying him and emancipating them.
Accordingly, the remedial work of Christ is always represented in Scripture,—in exact consistency with its representation of the evil to be remedied,—as purely and wholly legal, forensic, and judicial. That is its character, so far as it consists in his becoming his people’s surety and ransom. He redeems them from the curse of the law. It is nowhere said that he atones for any filial offence; any offence committed by them as sons against God as their father. If they sinned in that character and relation, their sin, so far as appears from Scripture, is up to this hour unexpiated. Surely that is a conclusion somewhat startling. And yet it seems to me to follow inevitably, and by the inexorable force of logic, from the notion of man’s original relation to God being filial.*[4]
II. The manner in which the expression “sons of God” is used in the Hebrew Scriptures is very vague and indefinite. It is not very often used. And many of the instances in which it is used are such as to indicate that it is little more than an idiomatic way of identifying the godly as distinguished from the ungodly; or Israel as distinguished from the Gentiles. Personal relationship is not really in such instances a relevant thought.
Thus, in the narrative of the breaking down of the wall of division and demarcation between the church and the world which brought on the sweeping judgment of the flood, “the sons of God” are contrasted with “the daughters of men” (Genesis 6:1-22) But it would be unwarrantable to found upon the phrase, as there used, anything more than that those so called were professedly of the number who, when the wickedness of Cain’s race became rampant, separated themselves, and “began to call upon the name of the Lord,” or “to call themselves by the name of the Lord.” In other cases also the phrase “sons of God” is evidently used in the vague analogical sense in which the Jews were wont to apply it,—and in which we too do not object to apply it,—as appropriate to any relation implying benefit on the one side and dependence on the other, with corresponding feelings of endearment on both sides. Thus a master calls his loved scholar his son. So also the pupils of the prophets are called their sons. “And such an one as Paul” appeals to Timothy as “his own son in the faith.” In like manner, when the Lord promises in Hosea (Hosea 1:10), “In the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God,” it seems plain that no new or peculiar relation is meant by the latter phrase, as if it were in contrast with the former. And in the same way, as I apprehend, we must interpret those appeals in Jeremiah and Malachi—the most emphatically paternal in their terms to be found in the Old Testament (Jeremiah 31:20), “Is Ephraim my son? Is he a pleasant child?” (Malachi 1:6), “A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master. If, then, I be a father, where is mine honour? And if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of Hosts unto you, 0 priests, which despise my name.”*[5]
III. The passages in the Old Testament are thus seen to be very few, which even appear to assert a distinct personal relation of fatherhood and sonship between God and his people individually. No doubt, in the Church or nation viewed collectively, the Lord sometimes claims a father’s right of property. Thus he sends an urgent message to Pharoah (Exodus 4:22-23), “Israel is my son, even my firstborn; let my son go that he may serve me.” And he gives this as his reason for bringing the people back from captivity (Jeremiah 31:9), “For I am a father unto Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.” The collective Church, or nation, also occasionally appeals to the Lord on that ground: as in Isaiah (Isaiah 63:16), “Thou, 0 Lord, art our father, our redeemer;” and again (Isaiah 64:8), “But now, 0 Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we are all the work of thy hand.” In these instances, however, though a certain paternity is ascribed to God, as choosing, constituting, redeeming, creating, his people Israel, it is a figurative paternity, having for its object simply “Israel as a spiritual or ideal person;”*[6] not that real fatherhood of which individuals are the objects. Nor is even that most pathetic passage in Jeremiah to the point,—the passage, I mean, in which the Lord puts into the mouth of the repenting people the affecting language of filial tenderness (Jeremiah 3:4), “Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?” For the context plainly shows that it is not the relation of parent and child at all that is referred to, but that of husband and wife; the conjugal relation, not the paternal. The idea suggested—and it could be better understood and felt according to old Eastern manners than according to our modern notions—is that of the faithless young wife casting herself at the feet of her injured husband, pleading her tender years,—and making her plaintive appeal,—as to a sire rather than a spouse,—“My father, thou art the guide of my youth!” Clearly there is here no claim of sonship, properly so called.
IV. In marked contrast with these vague and indefinite modes of speech,—in which ideas of parental authority and filial tenderness are for the most part, as it would seem, merely borrowed to illustrate other relationships,—I notice the clear, exact, and unequivocal precision with which real and proper personal sonship is ascribed to one individual, and to one only.
There is a Son of God revealed in the Old Testament. He is revealed as standing alone and apart. There is not much said of him in that character, it is true; indeed, there is very little. And nothing at all is said of the bearing of his sonship on others besides himself. For this, before I close, I may suggest a probable reason. But a Son of God there is in the ancient Scriptures. And however rare may be the passages in which he appears, and however few the words in which he is described, his sonship is beyond all question not figurative, but true sonship. In the oracle which the second Psalm records, “Thou art my son;”—in the prediction of the eighty-ninth Psalm, “He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father,. . . I will make him my first-born;” and perhaps also in the song of triumph in the ninth chapter of Isaiah, “Unto us a son is given;”—chiefly, however, in the great original oracle;—the sonship of a person is declared.
How far the ancient Church understood the oracle;—whether or not they held this personal and individual Son of God to be divine, or identified him with the Jehovah of their worship, with the promised Messiah;—I am not now concerned to inquire. There has been much ingenious speculation on all these questions; and has been argued with great power that, at least among the later Jews about our Lord’s time, an opinion prevailed admitting the Son to be a divine person, but separating him from the Christ.*[7] Be that as it may, my present object is simply to direct attention to the precision of the language which the Holy Spirit takes care shall be used, when the idea of true and proper personal fatherhood and sonship is to be expressed, as affording a presumption that no such relation is really meant to be asserted when the phraseology of a looser and more indefinite kind.
V. I would only advert in a sentence to one other consideration which seems to me all but decisive in support of my idea of the teaching of the Old Testament on this subject. I mean the very remarkable absence, in the recorded religious experiences and devotional utterances of the Old Testament saints, of the filial element. I may have occasion to touch on this topic again. I notice it now as a fact which cannot well be disputed, and which surely must be allowed to be a fact of great significancy, in relation to our present inquiry. On the whole I am disposed to conclude that, so far as we can gather information or evidence from the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the fatherhood of God was not revealed to the ancient Church, either as a relation common to all his intelligent creatures generally, or as a relation belonging to the obedient angels and believing men specially; that any use made of the analogy of this relation as it exists among men, in the way of applying it to the dispositions and dealings of God, was little more than rhetorical; and that, in fact, there was great reserve maintained on the part of the great revealer with reference to this whole subject. But it may be asked, Does the New Testament afford no materials for helping us in the determination of the question? I am persuaded that it does, in several places. I solicit attention to two passages in particular. The first is in the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is a passage, as I believe, fitted to have great weight with those who, in the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith, are prepared to receive as the teaching of the Spirit, not only what is “expressly set down in Scripture,” but also what, “by good and necessary consequence, may be deduced from Scripture.”*[8] My argument will undoubtedly be based on a process of inferential reasoning; a mode of proof against which some very respectable men, especially in our country, seem to have a strange and unaccountable antipathy. It may be convenient sometimes, when one sees an unwelcome conclusion looming in the distance, to refuse all inferences, and to demand ipsissima verba,—explicit and articulate chapter and verse,—for everything. But we are commanded to “search the Scriptures;” and we are commanded also “in understanding to be men.” To those obeying these commands, in the spirit of them, I do not think my argument will appear very far-fetched. At the close of the tenth chapter, Paul quotes the Old Testament saying, “The just shall live by faith;” and he proceeds immediately, in his glorious muster-roll of the worthies of the olden time, to give instances of “the just living by faith.” He ends his enumeration thus: “These all”— the just living by faith—“received not the promise; God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:39-40.
What is that “better thing” which they, while they “lived by faith,” and when, as the apostle had previously said, they “died in faith,” had not?—which God has provided for us?—which they must share with us if they are to be made perfect? For, it would seem, they cannot be made perfect without it, and they cannot have it apart from us. Is it merely the general blessing of clearer light and fuller joy consequent upon the complete revelation of the gospel plan, through the actual coming of the long-promised Saviour, and the actual accomplishment of the great salvation? Or is it some particular benefit, precise and well defined, which really effects a change in their standing or position?
Let us carry our view forward.
After pondering devoutly the practical appeal in the beginning of the twelfth chapter, founded upon our being “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,” let us approach the august scene presenting itself to our adoring gaze before the chapter ends.*[9] What have we here? A scene at Zion analogous and corresponding to the scene at Sinai of old, with which it is contrasted. It is ideal, spiritual, heavenly,—but not the less on that account revealing real truth. The redeemed of all ages are represented as brought together to meet their redeeming God. Setting aside the locality and the witnesses of which the first of the three verses (ver. 22) speaks; and the mediator and the mediation brought forward in the third; we have the real meeting in the verse which intervenes. It consists of “the general assembly or church of the firstborn which are written in heaven, God the judge of all, and the spirits of just men made perfect.”
Sitting on a central throne is God the judge of all; his people’s saviour, but still their judge; the judge of all. On either side there stands a vast company. Who are these on the one side? “The firstborn written” or registered “in heaven.” They are there in their character of sons and heirs. They are there in full “assembly,” yet in the capacity of a select body, “a church.” The expression “firstborn, registered in heaven,” properly denoting the possession of the filial birthright, describes the position of those referred to elsewhere, when Christ is spoken of as destined to be “the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29). He alone is, strictly speaking, the firstborn. To him belongs the birthright, the right of primogeniture. He is the Son; and, as the Son, the heir of all things. But he shares his birthright, or right of primogeniture, with many brethren. They all accordingly in him become in a sense firstborn;—sons and heirs. And they are registered as such in heaven. The position of believers under the dispensation of the gospel is thus characteristically marked. I can scarcely doubt that it is the entire body of New Testament believers who are mystically, as it were, and by a sublime figure, set before us, as convened, in a universal but select church-convocation, on one side of “God the judge of all.” Who then are they who are seen by the eye of faith standing on the other side? “The spirits of just men made perfect.” I cannot admit that this means merely the pious dead generally. I cannot forget that a particular class of “just men” have been brought prominently out in the very passage of which this magnificent pictorial representation of the gathering together of all the saved is the close. “Just men” have been spoken of, who in the days of old lived by faith and died in faith, who yet were not “made perfect.” There was a certain incompleteness, a certain defect, in or about their spiritual state, while they lived, and when they died. And the defect could not be altogether remedied,—their state could not be thoroughly put right,—apart from Christian believers. It is they, I am satisfied, who are to be regarded as standing alongside of the firstborn registered in heaven, before Jehovah’s awful throne. They are made perfect now. Perfect! in what respect? Surely one can scarcely help drawing the conclusion, in respect of their sharing with the firstborn their privilege of sonship and right of primogeniture, becoming out and out sons, as they are.*[10] The other passage which I mean to adduce is in the Epistle to the Galatians. The consideration of it need not detain us long. I am persuaded, however, that it strongly confirms the view which I have been suggesting of the passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews. In the beginning of Hebrews 4:1-16, Paul draws a contrast between believers under the law and believers under the gospel. Of the former, he thus writes:— “Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all, but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of this world.” Of the latter, “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” It is admitted, or rather strongly asserted by the apostle, that the Old Testament believer is an heir. Being a child of Abraham, in virtue of his having and exercising the same faith that Abraham had and exercised, he really has all the rights of a son and heir in the family of God. But these rights are in abeyance during the period of pupillage or nonage. He cannot avail himself of them. He is not fully acquainted with them. His place in the family is rather that of a servant than that of a son. Such, says Paul, was the position even of the true members of the church before gospel times. But, he adds, their position is now changed. And what effects the change? God sending forth his Son, and the Spirit of his Son. It is very plainly intimated that it is through God’s sending forth his Son, as his Son, that they receive the adoption of sons; and that it is through God’s sending forth into their hearts the Spirit, as the Spirit of his Son, crying Abba, Father, that they realise their receiving the adoption of sons. If sons before, they were so prospectively, and as it were potentially—in posse, rather than in esse. They are sons now really and truly, in a sense and to an effect impossible before. They saw, indeed, the day of Christ afar off, and were glad. They saw his holy person in the spotless lamb; his atoning death in the paschal sacrifice. But they saw him not as the Son of God. And till he is so seen, even believing men cannot receive, so as to realise it, the adoption of sons; they cannot conceive what true sonship really is. It is the manifested sonship of Christ that alone opens up the way for his believing people becoming sons indeed, and having in them the spirit of sonship, the Spirit of God’s very Son, crying Abba, Father.
Now, if such a change was thus effected in the spiritual position of living believers, and in their consciousness of it, is there any difficulty in apprehending the thought of a similar change taking place in the case of the dead? Is there anything incredible in the idea of these grand old worthies— “the just who lived by faith and died in faith”—coming to know their Redeemer as God’s Son and their brother, in a way in which they never could know him, till they saw him “sent forth made of a woman, made under the law?” And what a large accession of holy joy might their new knowledge of him impart! They have never been separated from him since they left the world, for they are one with him. They have known and loved him well. But now they behold a new thing—his sonship in their nature. And beholding that glory of God, they are changed into the same image. The single drawback, the solitary element of inferiority attached to their saved state, is gone. Not in an ideal sense only, but in real heavenly fellowship, they are now on the same footing with Stephen, and James, and the noble army of martyrs, and all the faithful who, falling asleep in Jesus, depart to be with him. The just are made perfect as sons.*[11]
Thus, as it seems to me, the opinion which is suggested by a calm survey of the teaching of the Old Testament on the question,—How far the fatherhood of God was revealed to the Old Testament Church,—is corroborated by what we find in the intimations of the New Testament.
There are two observations which I wish before closing to make on the view which I have ventured to submit. In the first place, I think I can see a reason for reserve, as regards the full discovery of God’s fatherhood, before the coming of Christ. I can see some risk likely to arise from its being prematurely disclosed, and some benefit in its being in a great degree shaded and concealed.
I remarked at the outset that, apart from the incarnation,—and what is seen in the earthly and human life of the Son of the footing on which, as the Son, he is with the Father, and the manner of their mutual intercourse as Father and Son with one another,—all our conceptions of fatherhood in God, as a relation which he sustains towards any of his creatures, must have been simply analogical; based on the analogy of the relation of father and son as it subsists among men. But that analogy is originally inadequate; and, since the fall, it is positively unsafe.
I believe, indeed, that the existence of the paternal and filial relation among men, from the beginning, has reference to the eternal relation of fatherhood and sonship in the Godhead, and to the ultimate development of that relation, in the standing of all saved intelligences. I entirely agree with those who maintain that this forms part, and a chief part, of the image and likeness of God in which man was originally made.*[12] The divine relation is not a mere analogical inference from the human. The human is formed upon the model of the divine, and expressly in order to be its analogical representative. Adam’s being a father, is not the type of God’s paternity. Rather, in the sense of being the mould into which it is cast, God’s paternity is the type of his. In that view, I can conceive of the angels welcoming the introduction on the stage of being of a race meant to exhibit this relation. They could form no idea of it from the manner of their own existence. They had been, so far as appears, simultaneously created; all of them alike in full possession of mature intelligence. They had been all of them simultaneously tried and tested; and the faithful among them had made good their position simultaneously, as the subjects and servants of the Most High. If the reward of their obedience was to be sonship;—especially if it was to be sonship somehow after the model of the relation of the second person to the first in the ever adorable Trinity;—they might well be at a loss to form any notion of a relation so utterly beyond the reach of their own created experience. But now, they see a race of new intelligences called into existence; in whose constitution and history a relation is to be exhibited that may at least be a faint shadow of the divine relation, to some participation in which they are taught, to aspire. They rejoice in the help thus given towards their understanding the relation of fatherhood in which God is to stand to them. But alas! the dawn is soon overcast. Sin comes in; and its blight taints and blasts the earthly relation which should have been the image of the heavenly. It is better for the angels now, that the full discovery of this relation should be deferred till the Son of God himself appears as a creature;—to show what, for the creatures, it really is. The postponement was equally expedient, or rather even more expedient, as regards men. What materials were there in these old times, what materials are there now, for the construction of a notion of fatherhood in God upon the analogy of fatherhood in man? One of the best perhaps of human fathers, since the fall, is Abraham. But was he faultless in that relation? Or shall we take Jacob? or Eli? or David? If the Old Testament Church—if Old Testament believers—had been asked to worship God as their Father, was there no danger of their conceiving of him whom they worshipped, after such unsafe analogies as these?
There is the same danger still. It is urgent. It is the unbelief of the day. I have little hesitation in saying that the merely analogical view of the fatherhood of God lies at the root of much, if not all, of our modern current infidelity. How, indeed, can it fail, unless very carefully guarded, to breed infidelity? It must do so doubly,—in two ways. Human parents, on the one hand, are weak, fallible, selfish, capricious;—holding with unsteady hand the balance of equity;—unreasonably passionate, yet fondly placable. And, on the other hand, they who conceive of God’s fatherhood as like the fatherhood of human parents, are but too ready to reconcile themselves to precisely such a view of God as that which the analogy suggests.
I believe it to be God’s purpose to set aside, to a large extent, if not altogether, all analogical apprehensions of his fatherhood. I believe he means us to look exclusively, or all but exclusively, to the manner of life of his Son Jesus Christ, and to draw our notions of his father hood directly from thence. Here there is no analogy; or, if there is, it is all the other way. It is not analogical reasoning from the human to the divine, but from the divine to the human. There is presented before our eyes the actual working out, in human nature and human experience, of the only relation of fatherhood and sonship which God would have us to realise as possible between himself and us. He would be our father, not as we are the fathers of our children, but as he is the father of his Son Jesus Christ.
I do not urge any question as to the original purpose of God in instituting a relation of fatherhood in man;—or as to how his original purpose might have been served, if the relation had not been practically vitiated by the fall. It might, in that case, have been, within certain limits and under certain cautions and reservations, the source and ground of a pure and sound analogy. And so far as it partakes of the redeeming and renewing grace of the gospel, it may be so still;—and may be so more and more. But God has not trusted to that. He has revealed his fatherhood, not analogically but expressly, in his incarnate Son. And there is divine wisdom in his keeping silence, for the most part, upon the whole subject, until the fulness of the time for that revelation comes. The other observation which I wish to make arises naturally out of this last thought. The divine wisdom in this arrangement is signally manifested in the character and spirit of Old Testament piety, as that was necessarily moulded by it.
I have already noticed the fact that there is little, or I think I may almost say nothing, of the filial element, in the recorded spiritual experiences and spiritual exercises of Old Testament believers. The Psalms entirely want it. The nearest approach to it, perhaps, is that most tenderly suggested analogy (Psalms 103:13): “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” The same sort of analogy is suggested elsewhere; as in Malachi (Malachi 3:17): “I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him;” in Deut. (Deuteronomy 8:5): “Thou shalt consider in thine heart that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee;” and in Proverbs (Proverbs 3:12): “Whom the Lord loveth he correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.” In these instances, the very nearness of the approach to the assertion of God’s fatherhood makes the stopping short of it all the more noticeable. The last instance in particular is, in that view, not a little significant. The verse from Proverbs is quoted in Hebrews (Hebrews 12:6). And the inspired writer, in quoting it, does not scruple to throw it into New Testament form, for the purpose of his inspired New Testament appeal:—“Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.” Fatherhood is in the text, as Paul was inspired to give it. But it is not in the text as it stands in the Old Testament. All that is there is a similitude;—a “like as,” or “so as,” or “even as.” But apart from minute criticism, I suppose it will not be denied, that in Old Testament piety there is not anything like a full recognition—scarcely, indeed, any recognition at all—of that personal relation of fatherhood and sonship which enters so largely and so deeply into the prevailing spirit of Christian devotion. The consideration of this fact might suggest a line of thought and investigation intensely interesting; on which, however, I cannot now enter at any length. I can only throw out a hint or two.
It must, I think, greatly enhance our admiration of the godly men of old, and of their godliness, when we listen to their utterances of praise and prayer, or search the records of their manifold spiritual experiences and deep exercises of soul, to bear in mind how little they were permitted to know of God as a Father. Their close walk with him, their strong trust in him, their fervent desire after him, the warmth of their affection, the poignancy of their sense of sin, the liveliness of their heavenly joy—these and other features of their personal religion must appear, in the view of this condition attaching to it, more and more wonderful the more we examine and reflect upon them. It might be not unprofitable also to inquire, how far that condition may explain some of the peculiarities of their holy aspirations and contendings; the restlessness, the impatience, the dark questionings and misgivings, the passionate outbursts even, which their writings occasionally indicate; the sort of wailing cry for something better which breaks from them; and the eager, intense expectancy of their air and attitude, like, that of children in a strange place, longing to be taken to some unknown home. Again, it might be well to mark, in searching these old books, and specially the psalms and prophetic songs, how marvellously the Holy Spirit has so inspired them, that this absence of what has since been so fully revealed,—which might be supposed to be a drawback,—is in truth the very quality which best fits them for universal use, in all ages of the Church till the end comes. For it is that which makes them most expressive of the groans and sighs of lost humanity; its tossings, strivings, fightings, until it finds its God; its strange vicissitudes of joy, fear, hope, even after it has found him. And then, finally, one might usefully inquire how, in virtue of its very imperfection, the divinity of the Old Testament prepares the way for that of the New; how the knowledge and worship of God, as Creator, Governor, Lord, lays the best and only safe foundation for the knowledge and worship of him as Father; how in this, as in other respects, “the law is our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.”
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[1] * The entire argument to which this quotation from a heathen poet has reference, is in these words:—“God that made the world, and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us; for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.”— Acts 17:24-29.
[2] *See Grinfield’s Christian Cosmos, pp. 34, 35. The writings of this author are often very suggestive. He certainly deserves credit for bringing prominently into view the place which the Son holds in creation, as the original maker of all things, in connection with the place which he holds in redemption, as making all things new. But he rides a hobby, and rides it often to the death. It is extremely difficult to find out what precise use he means to make of what he imagines to be almost exclusively his own peculiar doctrine or discovery as to Christ’s agency in creation. At all events, in the present instance, he builds upon a rotten foundation, though not perhaps more than others have done before. Surely, on reflection, all must see that nothing more than origination is in Luke’s genealogy. It certainly does not carry us beyond the prophetic word in Deuteronomy, “Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee” (Deuteronomy 32:18). This text in Deuteronomy interprets the Old Testament idea of fatherhood and sonship. And to what does it amount? Is it anything more than the relation of mere creatorship and creatureship? Does it go at all beyond ascribing to the Creator, simply as Creator, a right, not of paternity, but of property, in the creature?
[3] *See Note A. [See Below "NOTES TO LECTURE THIRD"] [4] *See Note B.
[5] *See Note C.
[6] *See Note D.
[7] *See Treffrey on the Eternal Sonship, ch. ii. sect. ii. pp. 80-102.
[8] *Confession, chap. i. sect. ii.
[9] *I give the entire passage (Hebrews 12:18-24), to the close of which (Hebrews 12:22-24) I here refer. “For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart. And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:) But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels. To the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect. And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.”
[10] *See Appendix II.
[11] *See Appendix II.
[12]*See Treffrey on the Eternal Sonship, chap. II., sect. v., pages 156, 157.
__________ NOTES TO LECTURE THIRD.
NOTE A. (Page 125.) Job 38:1-7; Numbers 24:17; Revelation 2:28, and Revelation 22:16.
IT is not necessary for my present argument to inquire particularly into the meaning of these remarkable texts, which seem to associate so intimately the filial rank and relation in the spiritual firmament with the ushering in of the morning dawn in the natural heaven. The image of the morning star is as suggestive in a religious point of view as it is poetically beautiful. In particular, as used in these texts taken together, it surely points to the identification of unfallen angels and redeemed men with the second person in the Godhead. Whatever it imports, as descriptive of the bright and blessed effulgence of dawn growing into glorious noon, is common to him and them. He is the morning star. He is so, emphatically and preeminently—himself alone. He avows himself to be so at the very close of his Revelation (Revelation 22:16): “I am the bright and morning star.” But it is not a “starship” belonging to him simply in his original divine nature and condition. It belongs to him as “the root and offspring of David.” It belongs to him in the character and capacity which formed the ground of the riddle that, in the days of his flesh, he propounded to the Pharisees (Matthew 22:45) “If David call him,” the Messiah, “Lord, how is he then his Son.” In that view he shares it with all who own him as David’s Lord, and therefore their Lord also; while they welcome him as David’s son, and therefore also their brother. His “starship,” in a word, is his “sonship.” It is his “sonship” in the process of its development, from earliest streak of morning to fullest blaze of noon.
Hence the association of the two—“starship” and “sonship”—in the holy angels as witnessing our earth’s creation. That, to them, was the dawn of a new day. The Son was then to them as “the morning star,” ushering in a new manifestation of the unclouded glory of God. They are one with him—intelligently and cordially one with him—so far as their natural capacity and their information at the time admit. They are one with him as the Son. But his sonship is only then beginning to be unfolded. It is as the shining of the morning star. It is, therefore, as “morning stars” that they are “Sons of God.” This original idea or image being once recognised, it is not difficult to see how, under Old Testament conditions, it could be only very imperfectly and obscurely developed—as, for instance, in Balaam’s prophecy. Nor is it strange that, even under New Testament light, it should not bulk much in our view. It is a mere figure, indicating little more than the gradual and growing manifestation of the relation in question. That relation, however, is surely thus proved to be the original filial relation of the Son to the Father, now wonderfully shared with unfallen angels and redeemed men.
NOTE B. (Page 128.)
This, as it seems to me, is a sort of experimentum crucis, a testing trial, as regards the notion of the original relation of man to his Maker being filial. As such, it must be fully met and satisfactorily disposed of. Is there any hint whatever in Scripture of the fall being a fall from a filial state? Is the sin which caused it represented anywhere in all the Bible as a breach of the filial relation? Is it possible, upon the supposition of its being so, to construct anything like an adequate scriptural representation of the atonement? Judgment, judicial retribution, the just award of guilt according to strict law strictly administered—these are the ideas, and the only ideas, which underlie the principle of expiatory or propitiatory sacrifice, as all history proves that the human conscience craves for it;—and, as the Bible history reveals that divine love has provided it. But it is all out of place—irrelevant, nay, offensively inconsistent and incongruous—if it is a breach of the filial relation that is to be repaired. In that case, the whole apparatus and arrangement of the Cross, considered as a real judicial transaction,—as the real and actual punishment of the guilty by the substitution of a willing and holy divine victim in their stead,—must be explained away.
I admit that there may remain, even though that meaning is blotted out, a certain power in the Cross to manifest divine love. It may be represented as simply a manifestation of divine love, and nothing more. And the love may be called fatherly love. But it is not really so. In the Cross, thus baldly and barely viewed, we see the Father putting the Son through the experience of fallen men to the utmost extremity of suffering which that experience can involve. For what end? To satisfy justice on behalf of criminals—to expiate their guilt? No. But to encourage lapsed children in their return to their Father. But is such a procedure really needed for their encouragement? Is it, in fact, any encouragement at all? Is it not rather fitted to discourage? Does it not tend to invest the fatherly and filial relation with a very awful and impenetrable gloom, when it comes out that the father cannot receive back his erring children into his favour, otherwise than on the condition of his holy “firstborn” Son becoming a sufferer and a victim on their behalf?
All is clear and simple, if the substitutionary work of Christ is held to have reference to the purely legal and judicial relation as that originally subsisting between God and man. But the introduction of the relation of fatherhood and sonship confounds all. For the two relations cannot be conceived of as originally combined; certainly not in the instance of a race liable to fall, and now actually fallen. They must be dealt with either as guilty subjects, or as undutiful sons. The method of recovery must be adapted to one or other of these two views of their condition.
I would have evangelical thinkers to ponder this alternative well. The looser and broader school of speculators understand its meaning and its bearings very thoroughly.
NOTE C. (Page 130.)
I think these four Old Testament texts— Genesis 6:2, Hosea 1:10, Jeremiah 31:20, Malachi 1:6 —are all that can be supposed to teach a relation of fatherhood and sonship, practically available for personal appeal. I would not wish to weaken the force, or dilute the virtue, of any one of them, as introducing an element that aggravates man’s guilt and enhances God’s forbearance. That the universal corruption ushering in the deluge had its rise in the worldly conformity of those to whom the high title of children or sons of God was in any sense appropriate (Genesis 6:2); that so high a designation should be still within the reach of apostate Israel (Hosea 1:10) ; that the Lord should yearn over Ephraim as “his dear son, a pleasant child” (Jeremiah 31:20); and that he should urge his claim on his people as at least equal to that of a father and a master in an ordinary human household (Malachi 1:6);—all that is most emphatic. By all means the emphasis must be preserved. But there is nothing in it all like the assertion or implication of real and proper fatherhood and sonship, as a relation subsisting personally between God and the individual man. I would not explain away these and similar texts. On the contrary, I would press them into my service. I would especially do so if I were elaborating proof in support of the opinion which I strongly hold, that from the beginning the relation, in the noblest sense of it, was contemplated as the perfection of created intelligence; and that accordingly all nature is cast in that mould, and all revelation points in the same line. At the same time, when alleged as evidence of the relation being known to the Old Testament church,—so as to form any part of its theology or any element of its piety,—such rare and isolated passages are altogether without point and without power. They are merely conventional or rhetorical modes of speech;—conventional, when they simply designate one set of people as distinct from another;—rhetorical, when they are made the ground of complaint, or expostulation, or entreaty.
NOTE D. (Page 131.) The following passages extracted from Alexander on Isaiah (Dr. Eadie’s edition, 1848) have an important bearing on the question now under discussion. The first is from his note on Isaiah 63:16;—“Because thou art our father.” This does not merely mean our natural creator, but our founder, our national progenitor, as in Deuteronomy 32:6. Here, however, it appears to be employed in an emphatic and exclusive sense, as if he had said, ‘thou and thou alone art our father;’ for he immediately adds, as if to explain and justify this strange assertion, ‘for Abraham has not known us, and Israel will not recognise or acknowledge us.’ . . The true sense of the verse, as it appears to me, is that the Church, or chosen people, although once, for temporary reasons, co-extensive and coincident with a single race, is not essentially a national organization, but a spiritual body. Its father is not Abraham or Israel, but Jehovah, who is, and always has been, its redeemer, who has borne that name from everlasting. . . . The strong terms of this verse are of course to be comparatively understood, not as implying that the Church will ever have occasion to repudiate its historical relation to the patriarchs, or cease to include among its members many of their natural descendants, but simply as denying all continued or perpetual pre-eminence to Israel as a race, and exalting the common relation of believers to their great Head as paramount to all connection with particular progenitors; the very doctrine so repeatedly and emphatically taught in the New Testament.” The second passage is from the note on Isaiah 64:7;—“And now, Jehovah, our Father (art) thou, we the clay and thou our potter, and the work of thy hands (are) we all.” ... “The Prophet here resumes the thought of Isaiah 63:16, where, as here, the paternity ascribed to God is not that of natural creation in the case of individuals, but the creation of the Church or chosen people, and of Israel as a spiritual and ideal person. The figure of the potter and the clay, implying absolute authority and power, is used twice before (Isaiah 29:6; Isaiah 45:9), and is one of the connecting links between this book and the acknowledged Isaiah.” . . . “The same plea, derived from the relation of the creature to the maker, is used in Psalms 138:8, forsake not the work of thy hands. (Compare Psalms 76:1; Psalms 79:1). In either case there is a tacit appeal to the covenant and promise in Genesis 17:7; Leviticus 26:42-45; Deuteronomy 7:6; Deuteronomy 26:17-18.” The remarks in this last note of Alexander apply to Jeremiah 31:9. Indeed that text in Jeremiah is conclusive, I think, in favour of the opinion that it is simply Israel, or the Church collective, as an ideal person, that is meant, in the few places where sonship or heirship seems to be implied;—and not at all individual believers realizing personally and practically any such relation.