+I. Our state by nature.+--The distance from God here spoken of is
not a local distance, neither is it that which separates us from Him
as an infinite Being. 1. It is legal. Banished by a righteous
sentence and by a sense of guilt and unworthiness. 2. It is moral.
Estrangement. Absence of sympathy. Want of harmony. 3. In both these
respects it is ever-widening. 4. It is miserable and dangerous.
+II. Our state by grace.+--1. The legal barriers are removed by the
blood of Christ shed on the cross. 2. The moral alienation is removed
by the blood of Christ as applied to the believer by the Holy Spirit.
3. The nearness to God thus effected is a valuable privilege. It
includes reconciliation, friendship, communion. Sinner, apply now to
be made nigh. Believer, remember thy obligations.--_G. Brooks._
Vers. 14, 15. _Death a Peacemaker._--The struggle between the
Northern and Southern States of America closed for ever at the
funeral of General Grant. The armies of rebellion surrendered twenty
years before; but the solemn and memorable pageant at the tomb of the
great Union soldier, where the leading generals of the living Union
and of the dead Confederacy stood shoulder to shoulder and mingled
their tears in a common grief--this historical event marked the
absolute conclusion of sectional animosity in America.
Ver. 16. _The Power of the Gospel to dissolve the Enmity of the Human
Heart against God._--1. The goodness of God destroys the enmity of
the human mind. When every other argument fails, this, if perceived
by the eye of faith, finds its powerful and persuasive way through
every barrier of resistance. Try to approach the heart of man by the
instruments of terror and of authority, and it will disdainfully
repel you. There is not one of you skilled in the management of human
nature who does not perceive that, though this may be a way of
working on the other principles of our constitution--of working on
the fears of man, or on his sense of interest--this is not the way of
gaining by a single hair-breadth on the attachments of his heart.
Such a way may force, or it may terrify, but it never, never can
endear; and after all the threatening array of such an influence as
this is brought to bear upon man, there is not one particle of
service it can extort from him but what is all rendered in the spirit
of a painful and reluctant bondage. Now this is not the service which
prepares for heaven. This is not the service which assimilates men to
angels. This is not the obedience of those glorified spirits, whose
every affection harmonises with their every performance, and the very
essence of whose piety consists of delight in God and the love they
bear to Him. To bring up man to such an obedience as this, his heart
behoved to be approached in a particular way; and no such way is to
be found but within the limits of the Christian revelation. There
alone you see God, without injury to His other attributes, plying the
heart of man with the irresistible argument of kindness. There alone
do you see the great Lord of heaven and of earth, setting Himself
forth to the most worthless and the most wandering of His
children--putting forth His hand to the work of healing the breach
which sin had made between them--telling them that His Word could not
be mocked, and his justice could not be defied and trampled on, and
that it was not possible for His perfections to receive the slightest
taint in the eyes of the creation He had thrown around them; but that
all this was provided for, and not a single creature within the
compass of the universe He has formed could now say that forgiveness
to man was degrading to the authority of God, and that by the very
act of atonement, which poured a glory over all the high attributes
of His character, His mercy might now burst forth without limit and
without control upon a guilty world, and the broad flag of invitation
be unfurled in the sight of all its families. 2. Let the sinner,
then, look to God through the medium of such a revelation, and the
sight which meets him there may well tame the obstinacy of that heart
which had wrapped itself up in impenetrable hardness against the
force of every other consideration. Now that the storm of the
Almighty's wrath has been discharged upon Him who bore the burden of
the world's atonement, He has turned His throne of glory into a
throne of grace and cleared away from the pavilion of His residence
all the darkness which encompassed it. The God who dwelleth there is
God in Christ; and the voice He sends from it to this dark and
rebellious province of His mighty empire is a voice of the most
beseeching tenderness. Goodwill to men is the announcement with which
His messengers come fraught to a guilty world; and, since the moment
in which it burst upon mortal ears from the peaceful canopy of
heaven, may the ministers of salvation take it up, and go round with
it among all the tribes and individuals of the species. Such is the
real aspect of God towards you. He cannot bear that His alienated
children should be finally and everlastingly away from Him. He feels
for you all the longing of a parent bereaved of his offspring. To woo
you back again unto Himself He scatters among you the largest and the
most liberal assurances, and with a tone of imploring tenderness does
He say to one and all of you, "Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die?"
(Ezek. xxxiii. 11). He has no pleasure in your death. He does not
wish to glorify Himself by the destruction of any one of you. "Look
to Me, all ye ends of the earth, and be saved" (Isa. xlv. 22), is the
wide and generous announcement by which He would recall, from the
outermost limits of His sinful creation, the most worthless and
polluted of those who have wandered away from Him. 3. Now give us a
man who perceives, with the eye of his mind, the reality of all this,
and you give us a man in possession of the principle of faith. Give
us a man in possession of this faith; and his heart, shielded as it
were against the terrors of a menacing Deity, is softened and
subdued, and resigns its every affection at the moving spectacle of a
beseeching Deity; and thus it is, that faith manifests the attribute
which the Bible assigns to it, of working by love. Give us a man in
possession of this love; and, animated as he is with the living
principle of that obedience, where the willing and delighted consent
of the inner man goes along with the performance of the outer man,
his love manifests the attribute which the Bible assigns to it when
it says, "This is the love of God, that ye keep His commandments."
And thus it is, amid the fruitfulness of every other expedient, when
power threatened to crush the heart which it could not soften--when
authority lifted its voice, and laid on man an enactment of love
which it could not carry--when terror shot its arrows, and they
dropped ineffectual from that citadel of the human affections, which
stood proof against the impression of every one of them--when wrath
mustered up its appalling severities, and filled that bosom with
despair which it could not fill with the warmth of a confiding
attachment--then the kindness of an inviting God was brought to bear
on the heart of man, and got an opening through all its mysterious
avenues. Goodness did what the nakedness of power could not do. It
found its way through all intricacies of the human constitution, and
there, depositing the right principle of repentance, did it establish
the alone effectual security for the right purposes and the right
fruits of repentance.--_Dr. T. Chalmers._
Ver. 18. _The Privilege of Access to the Father._--In the Temple
service of the Jews all did not enjoy equal privileges. The court of
the Gentiles was outside that of the Jews and separated from it by "a
marble screen or enclosure three cubits in height, beautifully
ornamented with carving, but bearing inscriptions, in Greek and Roman
characters, forbidding any Gentile to pass within its boundary." Such
restricted access to God the new dispensation was designed to
abolish. The middle wall of partition is now broken down, and through
Christ we, both Jews and Gentiles--all mankind--have equal access by
one Spirit unto the Father. Observe:--
+I. The privilege of access unto the Father.+--That God is the proper
object of worship is implied in our text, and more explicitly
declared in other portions of the sacred writings. According to the
nature of the blessings desired, prayer may be addressed to any of
the three Persons in the Godhead; but the Bible teaches that prayer
generally is to be presented to the Father through Christ and by the
Holy Spirit. And so appropriate are the offices of the Persons in the
Trinity that we cannot speak otherwise. We cannot say that through
the Spirit and by the Father we have access to Christ, or through the
Father and by Christ we have access to the Spirit. We must observe
the apostle's order--through Christ and by the Spirit we have access
to the Father. Access unto the Father implies:--
1. _His sympathy with us._--God is our Creator and Sovereign, but His
authority is not harsh or arbitrary. He does not even deal with us
according to the stern dictates of untempered justice. On the
contrary, in love and sympathy He has for our benefit made His throne
accessible. He will listen to our penitential confessions, our vows
of obedience, our statements of want. He has sympathy with us.
2. _His ability to help us._--That access is permitted to us, taken
in connection with God's perfections, prove this. He raises no hope
to disappoint, does not encourage that He may repel, but permits
access that He may help and bless.
3. _His permission to speak freely._--There is nothing contracted in
God's method of blessing. We are introduced to His presence not to
stand dumb before Him, nor to speak under the influence of slavish
fear. We have such liberty as those enjoy who are introduced to the
presence of a prince by a distinguished favourite, or such freedom as
children have in addressing a father. We are brought into the
presence of our King by His Own Son; to our heavenly Father by
Christ, our elder Brother. The results of this access to ourselves:
1. It teaches dependence; 2. Excites gratitude; 3. Produces comfort;
4. Promotes growth in grace.
+II. The medium of access.+--Under the law the high priest was the
mediator through whom the people drew near to God. He went into the
"holiest of all, once every year, not without blood, which he offered
for himself, and for the errors of the people" (Heb. ix. 7). Under
the new covenant "boldness to enter into the holiest" is "by the
blood of Jesus" (Heb. x. 19). But as the mediation of the Jewish high
priest, though "done away in Christ," was typical, it may serve to
teach us how we are to come to God. He sprinkled the blood of the
sin-offering on the mercy-seat and burnt incense within the veil
(Lev. xvi.), thus symbolising the sacrifice and intercession of
Christ.
1. _We, then, have access to God through Christ as a
sacrifice._--"Without shedding of blood is no remission" (Heb.
ix. 22). But, "that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,"
we could never, as suppliants, have found acceptance with God.
2. _Through Christ as an intercessor._--"But this man," etc. (Heb.
x. 12). A disciple in temptation cries for deliverance from evil, and
Christ prays, "Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom
Thou hast given Me" (John xvii. 11). A dying saint asks for "an
entrance into the heavenly kingdom," and Christ pleads, "Father, I
will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am"
(John xvii. 24). None need deem himself too unworthy to call on God
who comes to Him through Christ's sacrifice and intercession.
+III. The assistance afforded by the Holy Spirit.+--As we have access
unto the Father through Christ pleading _for_ us, so we have access
unto the Father by the Spirit pleading _in_ us.
1. _The Spirit kindles holy desire._--It is the work of the Spirit to
draw off the hearts of men from the world and raise them to God in
prayer. As in playing on a musical instrument no string sounds
untouched, so without this influence of the Spirit man would never
look heavenward, or his heart fill with desire toward God.
2. _Prompts to immediate application._--Blessings are often desired
but feebly. The Spirit rebukes this hesitancy, and urges on to
immediate application.
3. _Aids in that application._--"Without the Spirit we know not what
we should pray for" (Rom. viii. 26). Our thoughts wander, our
affections chill, the fervour of our importunity flags, unless the
Spirit "helpeth our infirmities."
+Reflections.+--1. _Those who do not enjoy this privilege are highly
culpable._ 2. _Those who do enjoy this privilege are indeed
happy.--The Lay Preacher._
_Access to God, revealing the Trinity in Unity._
+I. The end of human salvation is access to the Father.+--That is the
first truth of our religion--that the source of all is meant to be
the end of all, that as we all come forth from a Divine Creator, so
it is into Divinity that we are to return and to find our final rest
and satisfaction, not in ourselves, not in one another, but in the
omnipotence, the omniscience, the perfectness, and the love of God.
Now we are very apt to take it for granted that, however we may
differ in our definitions and our belief of the deity of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit, we are all at once, there can be and there is no
hesitation, about the deity of the Father. God is Divine. God is God.
And no doubt we do all assent in words to such a belief; but when we
think what we mean by that word "God"; when we remember what we mean
by "Father," namely, the first source and the final satisfaction of a
dependent nature; and then when we look around and see such
multitudes of people living as if there were no higher source for
their being than accident and no higher satisfaction for their being
than selfishness, do we not feel that there is need of a continual
and most earnest preaching by Word and act, from every pulpit of
influence to which we can mount, of the Divinity of the Father. The
Divinity of the Father needs assertion first of all. Let men once
feel it, and then nature and their own hearts will come in with their
sweet and solemn confirmations of it. But nature and the human heart
do not teach it of themselves. The truest teaching of it must come
from souls that are always going in and out before the Divine
Fatherhood themselves. By the sight of such souls, others must come
to seek the satisfaction that comes only from a Divine end of
life--must come to crave access to the Father. So we believe, and so
we tempt other men to believe, in God the Father.
II. And now pass to +the Divinity of the method.+--"Through Jesus
Christ." Man is separated from God. That fact, testified to by broken
associations, by alienated affections, by conflicting wills, stands
written in the whole history of our race. And equally clear is it to
him who reads the Gospels, and enters into sympathy with their
wonderful Person, that in Him, in Jesus of Nazareth, appeared the
Mediator by whom was to be the Atonement. His was the life and nature
which, standing between the Godhood and the manhood, was to bridge
the gulf and make the firm, bright road over which blessing and
prayer might pass and repass with confident, golden feet for ever.
And then the question is--and when we ask it thus it becomes so much
more than a dry problem of theology; it is a question for live,
anxious men to ask with faces full of eagerness--Out of which nature
came that Mediator? Out of which side of the chasm sprang the bridge
leaping forth toward the other? Evidently on both sides that bridge
is bedded deep and clings with a tenacity which shows how it belongs
there. He is both human and Divine. But from which side did the
bridge spring? It is the most precious part of our belief that it was
with God that the activity began. It is the very soul of the Gospel,
as I read it, that the Father's heart, sitting above us in His
holiness, yearned for us as we lay down here in our sin. And when
there was no man to make an intercession, He sent His Son to tell us
of His love, to live with us, to die for us, to lay His life like a
strong bridge out from the Divine side of existence, over which we
might walk fearfully but safely, but into the Divinity where we
belonged. Through Him we have access to the Father. As the end was
Divine, so the method is Divine. As it is to God that we come, so it
is God who brings us there. I can think nothing else without
dishonouring the tireless, quenchless love of God.
+III. The power of the act of man's salvation is the Holy
Spirit.+--"Through Christ Jesus we both have access by one Spirit
unto the Father." What do we mean by the Holy Spirit being the power
of salvation? I think we are often deluded and misled by carrying out
too far some of the figurative forms in which the Bible and the
religious experience of men express the saving of the soul. For
instance, salvation is described as the lifting of the soul out of a
pit and putting it upon a pinnacle, or on a safe high platform of
grace. The figure is strong and clear. Nothing can overstate the
utter dependence of the soul on God for its deliverance; but if we
let the figure leave in our minds an impression of the human soul as
a dead, passive thing, to be lifted from one place to the other like
a torpid log that makes no effort of its own either for co-operation
or resistance, then the figure has misled us. The soul is a live
thing. Everything that is done with it must be done and through its
own essential life, If a soul is saved, it must be by the salvation,
the sanctification, of its essential life; if a soul is lost, it must
be by perdition of its life, by the degradation of its affections and
desires and hopes. Let there be nothing merely mechanical in the
conception of the way God treats these souls of ours. He works upon
them in the vitality of thought, passion, and will that He put into
them. And so, when a soul comes to the Father through the Saviour,
its whole essential vitality moves in the act. When this experience
is reached, then see what Godhood the soul has come to recognise in
the world. First, there is the creative Deity from which it sprang,
and to which it is struggling to return--"the Divine End, God the
Father." Then there is the incarnate Deity, which makes that return
possible by the exhibition of God's love--the Divine Power of
salvation, God the Holy Spirit. To the Father, through the Son, by
the Spirit. This appears to be the truth of the Deity as it relates
to us. I say again, "as it relates to us." What it may be in itself;
how Father, Son, and Spirit meet in the perfect Godhood; what
infinite truth more there may, there must, be in that Godhood, no man
can dare to guess. But, to us, God is the end, the method, and the
power of salvation; so He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is in
the perfect harmony of these sacred personalities that the precious
unity of the Deity consists. I look at the theologies, and so often
it seems as if the harmony of the Father, Son, and Spirit has been
lost, both by those that own and those that disown the Trinity. One
theology makes the Father hard and cruel, longing as it were for
man's punishment, extorting from the Son the last drops of life-blood
which man's sin had incurred as penalty. Another theology makes the
Son merely one of the multitude of sinning men, with somewhat bolder
aspirations laying hold on a forgiveness which God might give but
which no mortal might assume. Still another theology can find no God
in the human heart at all; merely a fermentation of human nature is
this desire after goodness, this reaching out towards Divinity. The
end is not worthy of the method. I do not want to come to such a
Father as some of the theologians have painted. Or the method is not
worthy of the end. No man could come to the perfect God through such
a Jesus as some men have described. Or the power is too weak for
both; and all that Christ has done lies useless, and all the Father's
welcome waits in vain for the soul that has in it no Holy Ghost. But
let each be real and each be worthy of the others, and salvation is
complete. But each cannot be worthy of the others unless each is
perfect. But each cannot be perfect unless each is Divine; that is,
our faith is in the Trinity--three Persons and one God.--_Philips
Brooks._
_The Christian Law of Prayer_--
+I. To the Father.+--1. How honourable! Right of entry to an earthly
sovereign. 2. How delightful! Our pleasures may be graduated
according to the part of our nature in which they have their rise.
The pleasures of devotion are the highest taste for devotion. 3. How
profitable! God is able to bestow all temporal and spiritual
blessings. 4. How solemn! The intercourse of our spirit with the
Father of our spirits. Heart to heart.
+II. Through the Son.+--1. Through His atonement. Legal barriers to
our access must be removed. Have been removed by the death of Christ
as a satisfaction to Divine Justice. He has demolished the wall, He
has constructed a bridge across the chasm, He has laid down His own
body as the medium of approach. 2. Through His intercession. It
perpetuates His sacrifice. The Jewish high priest entering the holy
of holies on the Great Day of Atonement. Amyntas, mother of
Coriolanus; Philippa after the siege of Calais.
+III. By the Spirit.+--1. He teaches us what are our wants. For the
most part we are likely to be aware of our temporal wants. In
spiritual things the greater our need the less our sense of need.
2. He makes us willing to ask the supply of our wants. Aversion to
beg. Aversion to lay bare the symptoms of humiliating disease. 3. He
gives us power to spread our wants before God. One person employed to
write a letter or a petition for another. 4. He inspires us with
confidence to plead with importunity and faith. Confidence in the
Father, in the Son, in the power of prayer.--_G. Brooks._
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 19-22.
_The Church the Temple of God._
+I. Enjoying special privileges.+--1. _A saintly citizenship._ "No
more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints"
(ver. 19). The apostle has spoken of the separation and enmity
existing between Jew and Gentile. The Jew, trained to believe in the
one invisible and only true God, who could not be imagined by any
material form, learned to look with hatred and contempt on the
outcast, lawless Gentile, with his idol deities in every valley and
on every hill; and the intellectual Gentile looked with philosophic
pride on the stern land of the Hebrew and in philosophic scorn on his
strange, exclusive loneliness. They were not only at enmity with each
other, but both were at enmity with God. Now the writer is showing
that by the provisions of the Gospel both Greek and Jew are united as
citizens of one Divine kingdom. They enjoy the same privileges and
are in actual fellowship with prophets and apostles and all holy
souls in all ages and are sanctified subjects of a kingdom that can
never be moved.
2. _A family life._--"And of the household of God" (ver. 19). The
Church is a family having one Father in God, one Brother in Christ,
one life in the Spirit, and one home in Heaven. As in earthly
families, there are diversities of character, tastes, gifts,
tendencies, and manifestations, but all the members of the heavenly
household are bound together by the one common bond of love to God
and to each other.
+II. Resting on a sure foundation+ (ver. 20).--The materials
composing the foundation of the Church are _living_ stones--teachers
and confessors of the truth, "apostles and prophets"; but Christ, as
the one foundation, is the "chief corner-stone." The foundation of
the Church is not so much in the witnesses of the truth as in the
truth itself, and in propagating which truth the first teachers and
confessors sacrificed their all. The truth which produced and
sustained the martyrs is itself immovable. The apostles and
prophets--teachers in the apostolic times--laid the first course in
the foundation of the Church and were careful to recognise and build
only one foundation, united and held together by the one
corner-stone--Christ Jesus. They fixed the pattern and standard of
Christian doctrine and practice. The Christian Church is sure because
the foundation is deep and broad and can never be removed and
replaced by any human structure.
+III. Ever rising to a higher perfection+ (ver. 21).--The image is
that of an extensive pile of buildings, such as the ancient temples
commonly were, in process of construction at different points over a
wide area. The builders work in concert upon a common plan. The
several parts of the work are adjusted to each other, and the various
operations in process are so harmonised that the entire construction
preserves the unity of the architect's design. Such an edifice was
the apostolic Church--one but of many parts--in the diverse gifts and
multiplied activities animated by one Spirit and directed towards one
Divine purpose (_Findlay_). Since the Day of Pentecost, when three
thousand living stones were laid on the foundation, the Church has
been growing in symmetry, beauty, and vastness, and it is constantly
advancing towards perfection. The building, though apparently
disjoined and working in separate parts, is growing into a final
unity.
+IV. Made by the Spirit His glorious dwelling-place+ (ver. 22).--The
Holy Spirit is the supreme Builder as He is the supreme Witness to
Jesus Christ (John xv. 26, 27). The words "in the Spirit" denote not
the mode of God's habitation--that is self-evident--but the agency
engaged in building this new house of God. With one chief
corner-stone to rest upon, and one Spirit to inspire and control
them, the apostles and prophets laid their foundation, and the Church
was builded together for a habitation of God. Hence its unity. But
for this sovereign influence the primitive founders of Christianity,
the later Church leaders, would have fallen into fatal discord
(_Findlay_). The Church is a spiritual organisation, pervaded and
made vital and progressive by the presence and operation of the
Spirit of God. An organ is composed of several instruments--the
choir, the swell, the pedal, the great; and many stops--the diapason,
the flute, the trumpet; and yet it is one. And the Church of God is
one. One Spirit--one breath of wind turned on by one living
Hand--makes all the organ vocal.
+Lessons.+--1. _The Church is the depositary of great religious
privileges._ 2. _God dwells in the Church by dwelling in the heart of
every member of it._ 3. _The Church provides every facility for
worship and service._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._