"Ye are not under the law."--Rom. 6:14.
"Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."--Gal.
3:26.
"Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God."--1
John 5:1.
"By grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of
yourselves; it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any one
should boast."--Eph. 2:8, 9 (1911 Bible and R. V.)
"He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life."--John 3:36.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word and
believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not
come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life."--John
5:24.
"God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He
that hath the Son hath the life."--1 John 5:11, 12.
It is an awe-inspiring thought, a wonderful, blessed reality, that
every real believer on the Lord Jesus has, here and now, _eternal
life_, not simply the promise of it, but the eternal life itself. The
human mind cannot fully take it in, that every man, the moment he is
redeemed from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13), redeemed from all
iniquity (Titus 2:14), redeemed from under the law (Rom. 6:14), and
adopted as a child of God (Gal. 4:4-7), has then and there
_everlasting life_ (John 5:24), a new life that is never, never to
end; a life that will outlast the stars; a life that he will be
consciously enjoying when all the stars shall have burnt out. And yet
when such a life is offered as a gift ("I give unto them eternal life,
and they shall never perish,"--John 10:28) many men will not repent
and accept the gift. Religious prejudice, pride, secret sin, love of
the world,--for what puny trifles do men turn from the greatest of all
gifts, the greatest of all blessings, eternal life! Reader, will you
be among the number who make this foolish, this fatal mistake?
But with some the greatness of this gift, and its blessed reality, are
obscured by the teaching that the believer on Christ has not
everlasting life _now_, but only the _promise_ of it. When God's word
tells us that the redeemed one, the believer on Christ, is not under
the law (Rom. 6:14), is a child of God (Gal. 3:26), _has been_ saved
(Eph. 2:8, 9, 1911 Bible and R. V.), not _will be_ saved, it would be
strange that, after all, the believer should have only a promise for
the beyond and no reality here and now. But God's word goes further
and says, "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ _is born of
God_."--1 John 5:1. _There cannot be birth without new life._ It is
not the old life; that would mean no birth. If, then, the new life is
not _eternal_ life, _what life is it_?
If language can be made to mean anything, God's word makes it plain
that every redeemed man, every believer on Christ, has _here and now_,
eternal life; for God's word tells us, not only that "by grace _have
ye been saved_" (Eph. 2:8, 9, 1911 Bible and R. V.), but it states
plainly, "he that believeth on the Son _hath_ everlasting life" (John
3:36); "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word and
believeth on him that sent me, _hath_ everlasting life and shall not
come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life."--John
5:24. That God's word does not mean that the believer on Christ has
simply the _promise_ of everlasting life, but that he really has the
everlasting life, notice John 5:24, "_Hath_ everlasting life and shall
not come into condemnation, but _is passed_ [here and now] from death
unto life." The Revised Version (the more exact translation) makes it
much stronger,--"_hath passed_ out of death _into life_." What life,
if not eternal life? Before this plain, positive statement of God's
word, the mere promise of eternal life theory cannot stand. But the
fact that the believer on Christ really has now eternal life, is made
plain by other Scriptures. "Whosoever hateth his brother is a
murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life _abiding in
him_."--1 John 3:15. Here we are shown that when one "hath eternal
life" it is "eternal life _abiding in him_"; for there would be no
meaning to the language if no one has eternal life abiding in him.
Again, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the
Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth
my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life."--John 6:53, 54.
The Saviour had just taught in verse 35 what eating His flesh and
drinking His blood meant: "I am the bread of life; he that cometh to
me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never
thirst." Here in verses 53, 54, the Saviour shows clearly that the
eternal life that the believer on Him "_hath_" is "_in_" you--here and
now.
Let the unredeemed reader pause: in a moment, here and now, he can
have _everlasting life_ with God's assurance that he "shall never
perish" ("I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never
perish."--John 10:28). It is a tremendous decision, and it may prove
to be a fatal one, to turn away and not believe on Christ and have as
a present possession eternal life. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he
that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, _hath
everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed
from death unto life_."--John 5:24.
_FOR FURTHER STUDY_:--Some who believe that the redeemed have only the
_promise_ of eternal life, but that they have not eternal life, as a
real present possession, base this belief on such Scriptures as, "In
hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before the
world began" (Titus 1:2), in connection with, "Hope that is seen is
not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we
hope for what we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."--Rom.
8:24, 25. Their thought is, if we live "in hope of eternal life," then
we have not really eternal life as a present possession; that we
cannot hope for what we already have. But Jesus said positively that
the believer "_hath passed out_ of death _into_ life" (John 5:24, R.
V.), and He contrasts the one who "_hath_ eternal life" with those to
whom He says, "Ye have no life _in you_." A man can have eternal life
here, and at the same time hope for it beyond the grave. A man has his
wife and children _now_, and _hopes_ to have them next year; a man
away from wife and children has his life _now_; and yet he lives in
hope of his life (the same life, that part of it not yet lived) with
his wife and children a month from now; an exile from home has his
life now; yet lives in hope of his life (the same life, that part of
it not yet lived) in his native land a year from now. So, the child
of God's, the redeemed man's, citizenship is in Heaven (Phil. 3:20);
he lives in hope of eternal life there; yet it is the same eternal
life (that part of it not lived) that he has here and now.
Another cause of stumbling at eternal life being now the actual
possession of the redeemed man, is that many who claimed to have had
eternal life, also claim to have lost it; and if it had been actually
_eternal_ life it could not have stopped; for then eternal would not
be really eternal; hence, it must have been simply the _promise_ of
eternal life that they had, and they therefore only lost the _promise_
and not really eternal life itself. But Jesus, foreseeing this class
of professing Christians, said that they were never really redeemed,
never really had eternal life: "Many will say to me in that day, Lord,
Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast
out demons? and in thy name done many wonderful works? and then will I
profess unto them, I never knew you,"--Matt. 7:22, 23, not "you were
redeemed, you did have eternal life, but you lost it; it stopped"; but
"I never knew you," and John teaches the same thing in 1 John 2:19,
"They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been
of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they
might be made manifest that they all are not of us." (R. V.)
"There is no such thing as partly saved and partly lost; partly
justified and partly guilty; partly alive and partly dead; partly born
of God and partly not. There are but two states, and we must be in
either the one or the other."--_Wm. Reid, in "The Blood of Jesus."_
To many earnest men it seems dangerous to teach men that when they are
redeemed from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13), and adopted as God's
children (Gal. 4:3-7), they then really have as an actual possession
_eternal_ life, and that they shall never perish, "_hath_ everlasting
life, and shall not come unto condemnation,"--John 5:24; "I give unto
them _eternal_ life, and they shall never perish,"--John 10:28; they
think that such a belief will be a temptation to sin; that it is
liable to lead to presumptuous, wilful sinning. They think it much
safer for men to believe that they have not really the eternal life
itself as an actual present possession, but only the promise of it;
and that by their sinning hereafter they may forfeit that promise and
be lost. They think that this fear of being lost will act as a check,
a safeguard, a restraining power. To the extent that it does, it
produces service from the motive of fear of Hell, fear of losing
Heaven, and not from the motive of love to Christ for having redeemed
them from all iniquity (Titus 2:14). But God's word on this point is
clear: "The love of Christ [_not_ the fear of Hell, nor the fear of
losing Heaven] constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one
died for all, then all died; and he died for all that they who live
should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him who died for
them, and rose again."--2 Cor. 5:14, 15.
The teaching that the redeemed, saved man has now eternal life and
shall never perish, will lead to wilful, presumptuous sinning on the
part of hypocrites, and may lead to indifference and sin on the part
of those who honestly think they are redeemed, saved, but who really
are not; for such are not born again (1 Peter 1:23), and have not the
motive power of love, because really redeemed, prompting their action.
Those who think it is dangerous to teach a redeemed (1 Peter 1:18,
19), saved (Eph. 2:8, R. V.) man, a child of God (Gal. 4:4-7), that he
has here and now, as an actual possession, eternal life, and shall
never perish (John 10:28), shall not come into condemnation (John
5:24), lose sight of five facts in _God's plan with men_:--
First, the redeemed man is born again, born of God, "Whosoever
believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God."--1 John 5:1.
"Therefore if any one is in Christ he is a new creature."--2 Cor.
5:17. This is not a mere theory. All down the centuries since the
Saviour came, there have been multitudes of notable cases where
hardened men and women, deep down in sin, have actually become new
creatures by being redeemed and being born again. Many are now living,
whose names could be given, who are widely known, who were once
notorious in sin, and they are now willingly and gladly wearing out
their lives in God's service, and are living godly lives: and this
change came in their lives, not by a gradual process, but in a moment.
God's word says it is a new birth. There is no other explanation. But
every one who is redeemed is thus born of God (1 John 5:1), and this
new nature will lead one to hate sin, and prompt to a godly life.
Second, the redeemed man is under the new motive of love to Christ
("if ye love me, keep my commandments,"--John 14:15) to prompt him to
a faithful Christian life. On this point James Denny in "The Death of
Christ" says, "The love which is the motive of it acts immediately
upon the sinful; gratitude exerts an irresistible constraint; His
responsibility means our emancipation; His death, our life; His
bleeding wound, our healing. Whoever says, 'He bore our sins,' says
substitution; and to say substitution is to say something which
involves an immeasurable obligation to Christ, and _has therefore in
it an incalculable motive power_." Let the reader note well, that the
purpose of God in saving men through Christ dying of their sins (1
Cor. 15:3) is to _purify the motive power_ and _make it effective_.
"He died for all, that they who live should not henceforth live _unto
themselves_, but _unto him_."--2 Cor. 5:15.
When men live in order that they may retain the promise of eternal
life, that they may attain eternal life hereafter, from fear lest they
should forfeit the promise and not attain eternal life hereafter, they
"live unto themselves." When men live because they already have as an
actual possession, eternal life, and realize that it is eternal, they
live from love, and not unto themselves but "_unto Him_."
And God's plan is effective. "The love of Christ constraineth us" (2
Cor. 5:14), _it does constrain_. Hence, Jesus says, "if a man love me,
_he will_ keep my words."--John 14:23. Again, "If God were your Father
_ye would_ love me."--John 8:42. So important is this fact of the new
motive power and its effectiveness, that the reader's attention will
now be directed to the words of James Denny in "The Death of Christ"
on this subject. That the reader may the better appreciate these
words, his attention is first called to the estimates of Denny's great
work by two of the leading religious editors of the world. The
_Pittsburg Christian Advocate_: "To thoughtful students 'The Death of
Christ' came as one of the most stirring books of the decade if not of
the generation." The _New York Examiner_: "The most important
contribution to the all-important doctrine of the atonement since the
appearance of Dr. Dale's epoch-making book.... Exegetically
considered, it is the most important book published within the memory
of the younger generation of preachers." On the death of Christ for
our sins (1 Cor. 15:3) being the motive power in the Christian life,
and its being effective, Denny says: "The problem before us is to
discover what it is in the death of Christ which gives it its power to
generate such experience, to exercise on human hearts the constraining
influence of which the apostle speaks; and this is precisely what we
discover, in the inferential clause; 'so then all died.' This clause
puts as plainly as it can be put the idea that His death was
equivalent to the death of all; in other words, it was the death of
all men which was died by Him."... "Their relation to God is not
determined now _in the very least by sin or law_: it is determined by
Christ, the propitiation, and by faith. The position of the believer
is not that of one trembling at the judgment seat, or of one for whom
everything remains somehow in a condition of suspense; it is that of
one who has the assurance of a Divine love which has gone deeper than
all his sins, and has taken on itself the _responsibility of them_,
and _the responsibility of delivering him from them_."... "Take away
the certainty of it and the New Testament temper expires. Joy in this
certainty is not presumption; on the contrary, it is joy in the Lord,
and such joy is the Christian's strength. It is the impulse and the
hope of sanctification; and to deprecate it, and the assurance from
which it springs, is no true evangelical humility, but a failure to
believe in the infinite goodness of God who in Christ removes our sins
from us as far as the east is from the west, and plants our life in
His eternal reconciling love."... "An absolute justification is needed
to give the sinner a start. He must have the certainty of 'no
condemnation' of being, without reserve or drawback, right with God
through God's gracious act in Christ, before he can begin to live the
new life."... "_It is not by denying the gospel outright, from the
very beginning, that we are to guard against the possible abuse of
it._"... "To try to take some preliminary security from the sinner's
future morality before you make the gospel available for him, is not
only to strike at the root of assurance, it is to pay a very poor
tribute to the power of the gospel. The truth is, morality is best
guaranteed by Christ, and not by any precautions we can take before
Christ gets a chance, or by any virtue that is in faith except as it
unites the soul to Him."... "If it is our death that Christ died on
the cross, there is in the cross the constraint of an infinite love;
but if it is not our death at all--if it is not our burden and doom
that He has taken on Himself there, then what is it to us?"... "He
who has done so tremendous a thing as to take our death to Himself has
established a claim upon our life. We are not in the sphere of
mystical union, of dying with Christ and living with Him; but in that
of love transcendently shown, and of gratitude profoundly felt."...
"But this can only come on the foundation of the other; it is the
discharge from the responsibilities of sin involved in Christ's death
and appropriated in faith, which is the motive power in the daily
ethical dying to sin."... "The new life springs out of the sense of
debt to Christ."... "It is the knowledge that we have been bought with
a price which makes us cease to be our own, and live for Him who so
dearly bought us."... "But when its certainty, completeness, and
freeness are so qualified or disguised that assurance becomes suspect
and joy is quenched, the Christian religion has ceased to be."...
"This is why St. Paul is not afraid to trust the new life to its own
resources, and why he objects equally to supplanting it by legal
regulations afterwards, or by what are supposed to be ethical
securities beforehand. It does not need them, and is bound to repel
them as dishonoring to Christ. To demand moral guarantees from a
sinner before you give him the benefit of the atonement, or to impose
legal restrictions on him after he has yielded to its appeal, and
received it through faith, is to make the atonement itself of no
effect."... "In any case, I do not hesitate to say that the sense of
debt to Christ is the most profound and pervasive of all emotions in
the New Testament, and that only a gospel which evokes this, as the
gospel of atonement does, is true to primitive and normal
Christianity."
Let the reader consider two statements just here from another great
work, concerning the effectiveness of love as the motive power in the
redeemed man's life (in the writer's judgment no greater work,
excepting the gospel of John [John 20:30, 31], has ever been written
for honest sceptics, than Walker's "Philosophy of the Plan of
Salvation"). "Just in proportion as the soul feels its lost, guilty
and dangerous condition, in the same proportion will it exercise love
to the being who grants spiritual favor and salvation."... "It may be
affirmed, without hesitancy, that it would be impossible for the human
soul to exercise full faith in the testimony that it was a guilty and
needy creature, condemned by the holy law of a holy God, and that from
this condition of spiritual guilt and danger Jesus Christ suffered and
died to accomplish its ransom,--we say, a human being could not
exercise full faith in these truths and not love the Saviour."
Third, those who fear that if redeemed men, God's children, are taught
that they have, here and now, eternal life as an actual present
possession, and that it is eternal, it will be liable to lead them
into presumptuous, wilful sin, lose sight of a third fact. The
redeemed man, the real child of God, can be tempted, can be led into
sin, and some of them do become backsliders, but God's word teaches
that they will be chastised in this life. Let the reader turn back and
read Chapter V. Two Scriptures there quoted make plain the chastening
of God's disobedient children: "Also I will make him my firstborn,
higher than the kings of the earth. My mercy will I keep for him
forevermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed also
will I make to endure forever, and his throne as the days of heaven.
If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments, if they
break my statutes and keep not my commandments, then will I visit
their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes.
Nevertheless, my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor
suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor
alter the thing that is gone out of my lips."--Ps. 89:27-34. Equally
explicit is the New Testament: "Ye have forgotten the exhortation
which speaketh unto you as unto sons. My son, despise not thou the
chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him; for
whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he
receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons;
for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be
without chastening, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards
and not sons. Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh, who
corrected us, and we gave them reverence; shall we not much rather be
in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they verily for a
few days chastened us as seemed right to them; but he for our profit,
_that we might be partakers of his holiness_. Now no chastening for
the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless
afterwards it _yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness_ unto
them that are exercised thereby."--Heb. 12:5-11. So that, the
disobedient child of God will suffer for his sins, not in Hell, but in
this life; and not as a just penalty for violated law, for he is not
under the law ("Ye are not under the law,"--Rom. 6:14), but as
chastening, for correction. It is not a theory merely, for God's word
declares that God's plan works--"It yieldeth the peaceable fruit of
righteousness."
Fourth, those who fear that teaching redeemed men, God's children,
that they have, as a present possession, eternal life and not simply
the promise of it, and who think that the safer course is to teach
them that they have only the promise of eternal life and may forfeit
it by unfaithfulness, lose sight of another fact, that the unfaithful
redeemed one will lose his reward. Let the reader turn back and read
Chapter VI. The Scripture teaching is plain, "If any man's work abide
which he has built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's
work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be
saved, yet so as through fire."--1 Cor. 3:14, 15. He loses his reward
who is unfaithful, but not his eternal life, because it is eternal,
and because he has been redeemed from all iniquity (Titus 2:14).
Fifth, those who, knowing that the redeemed man could not lose his
eternal life, if he has it as a present possession, because it is
eternal, believe that the redeemed have not really eternal life but
only the promise of it and may forfeit the promise by unfaithfulness,
and that it is dangerous to teach the redeemed that they really have
eternal life because it might lead to wilful, presumptuous sin, lose
sight of a fifth fact, that the child of God is not only redeemed
from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13), redeemed from under the law
(Rom. 6:14), adopted as a child of God because redeemed from the law
(Gal. 4:4-7), but that being redeemed, he is redeemed _from all
iniquity_ ("Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he
might _redeem us from all iniquity_."--Titus 2:13, 14). How can God,
because He is just, let the redeemed man, if he is redeemed _from all
iniquity_, be lost? "A young minister was in the habit of visiting an
aged Scotch woman in his congregation who was familiarly called 'Old
Nanny.' She was bed-ridden and rapidly approaching the end of her
'long and weary pilgrimage,' but she rested with undisturbed composure
and full assurance of faith upon the finished work of Christ. One day
he said to her, 'Now, Nanny, what if, after all your confidence in the
Saviour and your watching and waiting, God should suffer your soul to
be lost?' Raising herself on her elbow, and turning to him with a look
of grief and pain, she laid her hand on the open Bible before her, and
quietly replied, 'Ah, dearie me, is that the length you hae got yet,
mon? God,' she continued earnestly, 'would hae the greatest loss. Poor
Nannie would lose her soul, and that would be a great loss indeed; but
God would lose His _honor_ and His _character_. Haven't I hung my soul
upon His "exceeding great and precious promise"? and if He would break
His word He would make Himself a liar, _and a' the universe would rush
into confusion_.' This anecdote reveals the true ground of the
believer's safety. It is as high as the honor of God; it is as
trustworthy as His character; it is as immutable as His promises; it
is as broad as the infinite merit of His Son's atoning blood."--_J. H.
Brookes, in "The Way Made Plain."_
If God, "that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth
in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26), set forth Jesus Christ as a propitiation
through faith in his blood (Rom. 3:25), and then should let one be
lost who had been redeemed from all iniquity (Titus 2:14), would He
not be as unjust in so doing as He would have been had He justified
sinners without Christ dying for their sins (1 Cor. 15:3)?
The blessed fact that the redeemed have as a present possession, here
and now, eternal life, and that it is eternal, makes manifest another
fact, that the redeemed are not unconscious, virtually out of
existence, from death till the resurrection. The new life is eternal;
it continues without cessation or intermission. Their bodies fall
asleep; but their souls are still in conscious existence; it is
_eternal life_. Paul makes this fact clear: "Whilst present in the
body, we are absent from the Lord." "We are confident, I say, and well
pleased rather to be absent from the body, and present with the
Lord."--2 Cor. 5:6, 8. The same conscious life continues; it is
eternal life. Again he makes it clear: "I am in a strait betwixt the
two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far
better: nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful on your
account."--Phil. 1:23, 24. The same conscious life continues, the
eternal life. To depart and to be with Christ he says "_is far
better_." But even this is not the perfect state. It is the soul
without the body, enjoying eternal life with Christ. But God's
perfect being is a being of redeemed soul and redeemed body enjoying
the reward of its labor. The body will not be redeemed until the
resurrection (Rom. 8:23; 1 Cor. 15:42); and the soul, though enjoying
eternal life and with Christ (Phil. 1:23) will receive no reward until
the resurrection,--"Thou shalt be _recompensed at the resurrection of
the just_."--Luke 14:14.
Paul further makes clear the distinction between the body sleeping and
the soul not sleeping, because it has eternal life and is with Christ:
"If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that
sleep in Jesus _will God bring with him_."--1 Thess. 4:14. Their
bodies are asleep; their souls are "absent from the body and present
with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8); but at the resurrection of their bodies,
these "will God bring with him." Then, "at the resurrection of the
just" (Luke 14:14) will "each man receive his own reward according to
his own labor."--1 Cor. 3:8. Let this blessed teaching be a comfort to
some hearts: the redeemed loved ones who have died are "present with
the Lord" which "is far better." Then it is cruel selfishness to wish
them back.
X