opinion, which, while agreeing with the rationalistic one that many of
God's promises in the Old Testament have not yet been fulfilled,
believes that their fulfilment is still to be awaited. If one might do
so without offence, I should call this a species of fanaticism. It is
the error of those who take the Jewish nation as such to be the subject
of prophecy, and hope for its restoration to Palestine, for a revived
Jerusalem, a new Davidic monarchy, even a reign of Christ over such an
earthly kingdom. All this, if we may take the Apostle's word for it, is
beside the mark. Equally with rationalism it loses the spirit of God's
word in the letter. The promises have been fulfilled already, and we are
not to look for another fulfilment. Those who have seen Christ have seen
all that God is going to do--and it is quite adequate--to make His word
good. He who has welcomed Christ knows that not one good word of all
that God has spoken has failed. God has never, by the promises of the
Old Testament, or by the instincts of human nature, put a hope or a
prayer into man's heart that is not answered and satisfied abundantly in
His Son.
But leaving the reference to the Old Testament on one side, it is well
worth while for us to consider the practical meaning of the truth, that
_all_ God's promises are Yea in Christ. God's promises are His
declarations of what He is willing to do for men; and in the very nature
of the case they are at once the inspiration and the limit of our
prayers. We are encouraged to ask all that God promises, and we must
stop there. Christ Himself then is the measure of prayer to man; we can
ask all that is in Him; we dare not ask anything that lies outside of
Him. How the consideration of this should expand our prayers in some
directions, and contract them in others! We can ask God to give us
Christ's purity, Christ's simplicity, Christ's meekness and gentleness,
Christ's faithfulness and obedience, Christ's victory over the world.
Have we ever measured these things? Have we ever put them into our
prayers with any glimmering consciousness of their dimensions, any sense
of the vastness of our request? Nay, we can ask Christ's glory, His
Resurrection Life of splendour and incorruption--the image of the
heavenly. God has promised us all these things, and far more: but has He
always promised what we ask? Can we fix our eyes on His Son, as He lived
our life in this world, and remembering that this, so far as this world
is concerned, is the measure of promise, ask without any qualification
that our course here may be free from every trouble? Had Christ no
sorrow? Did He never meet with ingratitude? Was He never misunderstood?
Was He never hungry, thirsty, weary? If all God's promises are summed up
in Him--if He is everything that God has to give--can we go boldly to
the throne of grace, and pray to be exempted from what He had to bear,
or to be richly provided with indulgences which He never knew? What if
all unanswered prayers might be defined as prayers for things not
included in the promises--prayers that we might get what Christ did not
get, or be spared what He was not spared? The spirit of this passage,
however, does not urge so much the definiteness as the compass and the
certainty of the promises of God. They are so many that Paul could never
enumerate them, and all of them are sure in Christ. And when our eyes
are once opened on Him, does not He Himself become as it were inevitably
the substance of our prayers? Is not our whole heart's desire, Oh that I
might win _Him_! Oh that _He_ might live in me, and make me what He is!
Oh that _that_ Man might arise in me, that the man I am may cease to be!
Do we not feel that if God would give us His Son, all would be ours that
we could take or He could give?
It is in this mood--with the consciousness, I mean, that in Jesus
Christ the sure promises of God are inconceivably rich and good--that
the Apostle adds: "wherefore also through Him is the Amen." It is not
easy to put a prayer into words, whether of petition or thanksgiving,
for men are not much in the habit of speaking to God; but it is easy
to say Amen. That is the part of the Church when God's Son, Jesus
Christ, is proclaimed, clothed in His Gospel. Apart from the Gospel,
we do not know God, or what He will do, or will not do, for sinful
men; but as we listen to the proclamation of His mercy and His
faithfulness, as our eyes are opened to see in His Son all He has
promised to do for us, nay, in a sense, all He has already done, our
grateful hearts break forth in one grand responsive Amen! So let it
be! we cry. Unless God had first prompted us by sending His Son, we
could never have found it in our hearts to present such requests to
Him; but through Christ we are enabled to present them, though it
should be at first with only a look at Him, and an appropriating Amen.
It is the very nature of prayer, indeed, to be the answer to promise.
Amen is all, at bottom, that God leaves for us to say.
The solemn acceptance of a mercy so great--an acceptance as joyful as
it is solemn, since the Amen is one rising out of thankful
hearts--redounds to the glory of God. This is the final cause of
redemption, and however it may be lost sight of in theologies which
make man their centre, it is always magnified in the New Testament.
The Apostle rejoices that his ministry and that of his friends (δι'
ἡμῶν) contributes to this glory; and the whole connexion of thought in
the passage throws a light on a great Bible word. God's glory is
identified here with the recognition and appropriation by men of His
goodness and faithfulness in Jesus Christ. He is glorified when it
dawns on human souls that He has spoken good concerning them beyond
their utmost imaginings, and when that good is seen to be indubitably
safe and sure in His Son. The Amen in which such souls welcome His
mercy is the equivalent of the Old Testament word, "Salvation is of
the Lord." It is expanded in an apostolic doxology: "Of Him, and
through Him, and to Him are all things: to Him be glory for ever."
FOOTNOTES:
[7] For χάριν, (benefit) א^C, B, L, P, have χαράν (joy.) Though
Westcott and Hort put this in the text, and χάριν in the margin, most
scholars are agreed that χάριν is the Apostle's word, and χαράν a slip
or a correction.
[8] Mention may be made here of another interpretation of ver. 17,
modifications of which recur from Chrysostom to Hofmann. In substance
it is this: "The things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the
flesh (_i.e._, with the stubborn consistency of a proud man, who
disposes as well as proposes), that with _me_ (ἐμοί emphatic: _me_, as
if _I_ were God, always to do what I would like to do) the Yes should
be yes, and the No, no--_i.e._, every promise inviolably kept?" This
is grammatically quite good, but contextually impossible.
[9] According to Schmiedel, in the words δι' ἡμῶν ... δι' ἐμοῦ καὶ
Σιλουανοῦ καὶ Τιμοθέου we ought to discover an emphatic reference, by
way of contrast, to Judaising opponents of Paul in Corinth. These are
said to have brought _another_ Jesus (xi. 4), who was _notì_ God's
ἴδιος υἱὸς in Paul's sense (Rom. viii. 32), and in whom there _was_
Yea and Nay--namely, the confirmation of the promises to the Jews or
those who became Jews to receive them, and the refusal of the promises
to the Gentiles as such. It needs a keen scent to discover this, and
as the Corinthians read without a commentator it would probably be
thrown away upon them.
IV
_CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES_
"Now He that stablisheth us with you in Christ, and anointed us,
is God; who also sealed us, and gave _us_ the earnest of the
Spirit in our hearts."--2 COR. i. 21, 22 (R.V.).
It is not easy to show the precise connexion between these words and
those which immediately precede. Possibly it is emotional, rather than
logical. The Apostle's heart swells as he contemplates in the Gospel
the goodness and faithfulness of God; and though his argument is
complete when he has exhibited the Gospel in that light, his mind
dwells upon it involuntarily, past the mere point of proof; he lingers
over the wonderful experience which Christians have of the rich and
sure mercies. Those who try to make out a more precise sequence of
thought than this are not very successful. Of course it is apparent
that the keynote of the passage is in harmony with that of the
previous verses. The ideas of "stablishing," of "sealing," and of an
"earnest," are all of one family; they are all, as it were, variations
of the one mighty _affirmation_ which has been made of God's promises
in Christ. From this point of view they have an argumentative value.
They suggest that God, in all sorts of ways, makes believers as sure
of the Gospel, and as constant to it, as He has made it sure and
certain to them; and thus they exclude more decisively than ever the
idea that the minister of the Gospel can be a man of Yes and No. But
though this is true, it fails to do justice to the word on which the
emphasis falls--namely, God. This, according to some interpreters, is
done, if we suppose the whole passage to be, in the first instance, a
disclaimer of any false inference which might be drawn from the words,
"to the glory of God _by us_." "By us," Paul writes; for it was
through the apostolic preaching that men were led to receive the
Gospel, to look at God's promises, confirmed in Christ, with an
appropriating Amen to His glory; but he hastens to add that it was God
himself whose grace in its various workings was the beginning, middle,
and end both of their faith and of their preaching. This seems to me
rather artificial, and I do not think more than a connexion in
sentiment, rather than in argument, can be insisted upon.
But setting this question aside, the interpretation of the two verses
is of much interest. They contain some of the most peculiar and
characteristic words of the New Testament--words to which, it is to be
feared, many readers attach no very distinct idea. The simplest plan
is to take the assertions one by one, as if God were the subject.
Grammatically this is incorrect, for Θεός is certainly the predicate;
but for the elucidation of the meaning this may be disregarded.
(1) First of all, then, God confirms us into Christ. "Us," of course,
means St. Paul and the preachers whom he associates with
himself,--Silas and Timothy. But when he adds "with you," he includes
the Corinthians also, and all believers. He does not claim for himself
any stedfastness in Christ, or any trustworthiness as dependent upon
it, which he would on principle refuse to others. God, who makes His
promises sure to those who receive them, gives those who receive them
a firm grasp of the promises. Christ is here, with all the wealth of
grace in Him, indubitable, unmistakable; and what God has done on that
side, He does on the other also. He confirms believers into Christ. He
makes their attachment to Christ, their possession of Him, a thing
indubitable and irreversible. Salvation, to use the words of St. John,
is true _in Him and in them_; in them, so far as God's purpose and
work go, as much as in Him. He who is confirmed into Christ is in
principle as trustworthy, as absolutely to be depended upon, as Christ
Himself. The same character of pure truth is common to them both.
Christ's existence as the Saviour, in whom all God's promises are
guaranteed, and Paul's existence as a saved man with a sure grasp on
all these promises, are alike proofs that God is faithful; the truth
of God stands behind them both. It is to this that the appeal of vv.
15-20 is virtually made; it is this in the long-run which is called in
question when the trustworthiness of Paul is impeached.
All this, it may be said, is ideal; but in what sense is it so? Not in
the sense that it is fanciful or unreal; but in the sense that the
divine law of our life, and the divine action upon our life, are
represented in it. It is our calling as Christian people to be
stedfast in Christ. Such stedfastness God is ever seeking to impart,
and in striving to attain to it we can always appeal to Him for help.
It is the opposite of instability; in a special sense it is the
opposite of untrustworthiness. If we are letting God have His way with
us in this respect, we are persons who can always be depended upon,
and depended upon for conduct in keeping with the goodness and
faithfulness of God, into which we have been confirmed by Him.
(2) From this general truth, with its application to all believers, the
Apostle passes to another of more limited range. By including the
Corinthians with himself in the first clause, he virtually excludes them
in the second--"God anointed us." It is true that the New Testament
speaks of an anointing which is common to all believers--"_Ye_ have an
anointing from the Holy One; ye all know" (1 John ii. 20): but here, on
the contrary, something special is meant. This can only be the
consecration of Paul, and of those for whom he speaks, to the apostolic
or evangelistic ministry. It is worth noticing that in the New Testament
the act of anointing is never ascribed to any one but God. The only
unction which qualifies for service in the Christian dispensation, or
which confers dignity in the Christian community, is the unction from on
high. "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with
power," and it is the participation in this great anointing which
capacitates any one to work in the Gospel.[10] Paul undoubtedly claimed,
in virtue of his divine call to apostleship, a peculiar authority in the
Church; but we cannot define any peculiarity in his possession of the
Spirit. The great gift which must be held in some sense by all
Christians--"for if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of
His"--was in him intensified, or specialised, for the work he had to do.
But it is one Spirit in him and in us, and that is why we do not find
the exercise of his authority alien or galling. It is authority
divorced from "unction"--authority without this divine
qualification--against which the Christian spirit rebels. And though
"unction" cannot be defined; though no material guarantee can be given
or taken for the possession of the Spirit; though a merely historical
succession is, so far as this spiritual competence and dignity are
concerned, a mere irrelevance; though, as Vinet said, we think of
unction rather when it is absent than when it is present,--still, the
thing itself is recognisable enough. It bears witness to itself, as
light does; it carries its own authority, its own dignity, with it; it
is the _ultima ratio_, the last court of appeal, in the Christian
community. It may be that Paul is preparing already, by this reference
to his commission, for the bolder assertion of his authority at a later
stage.
(3) These two actions of God, however--the establishing of believers
in Christ, which goes on continually (βεβαιῶν), and the consecration
of Paul to the apostleship, which was accomplished once for all
(χρίσας)--go back to prior actions, in which, again, all believers
have an interest. They have a common basis in the great deeds of grace
in which the Christian life began. God, he says, is He who also sealed
us, and gave the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.
"He also sealed us." It seems strange that so figurative a word should
be used without a hint of explanation, and we must assume that it was
so familiar in the Church that the right application could be taken
for granted. The middle voice (σφραγισάμενος) makes it certain that
the main idea is, "He marked us as His own." This is the sense in
which the word is frequently used in the Book of Revelation: the
servants of God are sealed on their foreheads, that they may be
recognised as His. But what is the seal? Under the Old Testament, the
mark which God set upon His people--the covenant sign by which they
were identified as His--was circumcision. Under the New Testament,
where everything carnal has passed away, and religious materialism is
abolished, the sign is no longer in the body; we are sealed with the
Holy Spirit of promise (Eph. i. 13 f.). But the past tense ("He
_sealed_ us"), and its recurrence in Eph. i. 13 ("ye _were_ sealed"),
suggest a very definite reference of this word, and beyond doubt it
alludes to baptism. In the New Testament, baptism and the giving of
the Holy Spirit are regularly connected with each other. Christians
are born of water and of the Spirit. "Repent," is the earliest
preaching of the Gospel (Acts ii. 38), "and be baptised every one of
you, ... and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." In early
Christian writers the use of the word "seal" (σφραγίς) as a technical
term for baptism is practically universal; and when we combine this
practice with the New Testament usage in question, the inference is
inevitable. God puts His _seal_ upon us, He _marks_ us as His own,
when we are baptised.[11]
But the seal is not baptism as a ceremonial act. It is neither
immersion nor sprinkling nor any other mode of lustration which marks
us out as God's. The seal by which "the Lord knoweth them that are
His" is His Spirit; it is the impress of His Spirit upon them. When
that impress can be traced upon our souls, by Him, or by us, or by
others, then we have the witness in ourselves; the Spirit bears
witness with our spirits that we are children of God.
But of all words "spirit" is the vaguest; and if we had nothing but
the word itself to guide us, we should either lapse into superstitious
ideas about the virtue of the sacrament, or into fanatical ideas about
incommunicable inward experiences in which God marked us for His own.
The New Testament provides us with a more excellent way than either;
it gives the word "spirit" a rich but definite moral content; it
compels us, if we say we have been sealed with the Spirit, and claimed
by God as His, to exhibit the distinguishing features of those who are
His. "The Lord is the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 17). To be sealed with the
Spirit is to bear, in however imperfect a degree, in however
inconspicuous a style, the image of the heavenly man, the likeness of
Jesus Christ. There are many passages in his Epistles in which St.
Paul enlarges on the work of the Spirit in the soul; all the various
dispositions which it creates, all the fruits of the Spirit, may be
conceived as different parts of the impression made by the seal. We
must think of these in detail, if we wish to give the word its
meaning; we must think of them in contrast with the unspiritual
nature, if we wish to give it any edge. Once, say, we walked in the
lusts of the flesh: has Christ redeemed us, and set on our souls and
our bodies the seal of His purity? Once we were hot and passionate,
given to angry words and hasty, intemperate deeds: are we sealed now
with the meekness and gentleness of Jesus? Once we were grasping and
covetous, even to the verge of dishonesty; we could not let money pass
us, and we could not part with it: have we been sealed with the
liberality of Him who says, "It is more blessed to give than to
receive"? Once a wrong rankled in our hearts; the sun went down upon
our wrath, not once or twice, but a thousand times, and found it as
implacable as ever: is that deep brand of vindictiveness effaced now,
and in its stead imprinted deep the Cross of Christ, where He loved
us, and gave Himself for us, and prayed, "Father, forgive them"? Once
our conversation was corrupt; it had a taint in it; it startled and
betrayed the innocent; it was vile and foolish and unseemly: are these
things of the past now? and has Christ set upon our lips the seal of
His own grace and truth, of His own purity and love, so that every
word we speak is good, and brings blessing to those who hear us? These
things, and such as these, are the seal of the Spirit. They are Christ
in us. They are the stamp which God sets upon men when He exhibits
them as His own.
The seal, however, has another use than that of marking and identifying
property. It is a symbol of assurance. It is the answer to a challenge.
It is in this sense that it is easiest to apply the figure to baptism.
Baptism does not, indeed, carry with it the actual possession of all
these spiritual features; it is not even, as an _opus operatum_, the
implanting of them in the soul; but it is a divine pledge that they are
within our reach; we can appeal to it as an assurance that God has come
to us in His grace, has claimed us as His own, and is willing to
conform us to the image of His Son. In this sense, it is legitimate and
natural to call it God's seal upon His people.
(4) Side by side with "He sealed us," the Apostle writes, "He gave the
earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." After what has been said, it is
obvious that this is another aspect of the same thing. We are sealed
with the Spirit, and we get the earnest of the Spirit. In other words,
the Spirit is viewed in two characters: first, as a seal; and then as
an earnest. This last word has a very ancient history. It is found in
the Book of Genesis (xxxviii. 18: עֵרָבוׄן), and was carried, no
doubt, by Phœnician traders, who had much occasion to use it, both to
Greece and Italy. From the classical peoples it has come more or less
directly to us. It means properly a small sum of money paid to clench
a bargain, or to ratify an engagement. Where there is an earnest,
there is more to follow, and more of essentially the same kind--that
is what it signifies. Let us apply this now to the expression of St.
Paul, "the earnest of the Spirit." It means, we must see, that in the
gift of this Spirit, in that measure in which we now possess it, God
has not given all He has to give. On the contrary, He has come under
an obligation to give more: what we have now is but "the firstfruits
of the Spirit" (Rom. viii. 23). It is an indication and a pledge of
what is yet to be, but bears no proportion to it. All we can say on
the basis of this text is, that between the present and the future
gift--between the earnest and that which it guarantees--there must be
some kind of congruity, some affinity which makes the one a natural
and not an arbitrary reason for believing in the other.
But the Corinthians were not limited to this text. They had St. Paul's
general teaching in their minds to interpret it by; and if we wish to
know what it meant even for them, we must fill out this vague idea with
what the Apostle tells us elsewhere. Thus in the great text in Ephesians
(i. 13 f.), so often referred to, he speaks of the Holy Spirit with
which we were sealed as the earnest _of our inheritance_. God has an
"inheritance" in store for us. His Spirit makes us sons; and if sons,
then heirs; heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ. This connexion of the
Spirit, sonship, and inheritance, is constant in St. Paul; it is one of
his most characteristic combinations. What then _is_ the inheritance of
which the Spirit is the earnest? That no one can tell. "Eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the
things that God hath prepared for them that love Him." But though we
cannot tell more precisely, we can say that if the Spirit is the earnest
of it, it must be in some sense a development of the Spirit; life in an
order of being which matches the Spirit, and for which the Spirit
qualifies. If we say it is "glory," then we must remember that only
Christ in us (the seal of the Spirit) can be _the hope_ of glory.