Archives for February 2014

We have to look at God’s reactions now both from the standpoint of a man, which is relatively easy to do, and from the vantage point of Deity, which takes considerable conscious effort. Imagine this (once again using human terms): The heart of God was broken by Israel’s flagrant fornications — and this is exactly what the Bible terms her backslidings. This forced God in love to do something to heal her of her wantonness. For her sake God’s love was about to compel Him to use extreme measures.

Looking at the situation from the divine vantage point, logic tells us that God had already reached that extremity an eternity ago, for God’s knowledge is perfect. It is static in the sense that it cannot be added to. There is nothing God knows today that He has not always known. There is no supplementing or changing His awareness. We should not look at this as men see it. If we do, we will stumble at it; the ramifications are too many. We have to disregard our own severe limitations and believe that this our God, is in truth infinite, completely unlimited except by His own love and His own will.

If it is true that God knew beforehand that His love would make Him rescue man from his headlong rocket ride to hell, He also knew from forever what He would do about it. This is what happened: Reacting before man trod the earth, to what would be man’s pitiful and accursed condition, Jehovah set up a plan for man’s salvation. Knowing perfectly the human makeup, which included weaknesses, limited comprehension and lack of knowledge, God determined that His plan would override all these obstacles.

First He would reveal Himself to one selected nation, as we have seen, and then through that nation to all men. He gave this nation, Israel, a Law that put a premium on their acts of righteousness. But it was a hard law, one that no one could observe perfectly although it was merciful in this respect: it allowed for forgiveness of transgressions of the law by means of animal sacrifices.

God had provided in His Law that a lamb could be used as atonement for sin; but this was only a temporary arrangement. The lamb of sac­rifice was symbolic of, and only effective through that one final Sacrifice to which the whole Law pointed. The blood of thousands of animals slain under the Law did not of themselves wash away sins. They were effective only through the blood of the coming Ultimate Sacrifice. The grace of God, even before the Dispensation of Grace, reached back from the cross to the Dispensation of Law and applied the final atoning blood to the sinner.

“Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.” (Heb 9:15 RSV)

It is clear that Jehovah could not accept the sacrifices of the Mosaic Law indefinitely because of the very law that allowed them. The principle of justice (“an eye for an eye” – Ex. 21:24, 25), could not accept as final atonement for sin the slaying of an animal. Although the animal was innocent of sin, it had no knowledge of sin, no will of its own and was in an altogether different category of creation from man. Justice demands like for like, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, a sinless human life for a sinless human life. It was evident that someone had to die for man and that someone had to be a perfect human.

There was yet another area of God’s Law indicating what was needed for man’s deliverance from sin. The Law expressed to them what God’s will was in different spheres of man’s interaction with man, and these interactions were often symbolic of man’s interaction with His God. For example, the Law dealt with an Israelite who because of poverty had sold himself into servitude to a person of an alien nation. The Law presented the possibility of the Israelite’s being redeemed by a third party. Lev. 25:47?49. But the third party or “redeemer” had to meet certain conditions. These conditions were: 1) He must have the necessary resources to buy the indentured person back; 2) he of course must be willing; he could not be compelled to redeem the unfortunate man; and 3) he must be near of kin to the man in bondage.

Looking at this threefold requirement and the provision we considered above, the one for animal sacrifices, we come to a logical conclusion. The ultimate sacrifice had to be related to man and had to be of the same value as the coveted prize for which man was reaching when he was bringing his sacrifices before Jehovah throughout the years. (Heb. 10:1?4) Man sought a pure life, therefore he must bring a pure life symbolized in a perfect sacrifice. The sum of it all is this: The sacrifice had to be a perfect man, and he would have to be willing to die for his less perfect brothers. Where to find him? This was a gigantic require­ment that only a Jehovah could fill.

The Son Revealed

Once again we shall have to look at the situation and translate it in human terms because there is no other way we can perceive it in our limited minds. God searched for the perfect man, but there was no one in the teeming trillions of men who were living then or who would live in the future who even came close to qualifying. God looked “…and he saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no intercessor; therefore HIS arm brought salvation…” (Isa. 59:16) Saving man was impossible, but the love of God works the impossible because that is the nature of divine love. Love accepts as final no decree that is detrimental to mankind except man’s own decision to go to hell in spite of the love that will not let him go. If this seems paradoxical, it is.

God determined that He Himself would bring salvation to man; He would die for the creature He had made. Why? The reason is not readily seen. There is absolutely nothing lovable or lovely about arrogant, lustful, hateful man who dares to oppose the One who made him. We can only say that love drove Jehovah to the outer limits of impossibility and devised a plan that would scale the heights of selflessness – and take an extreme toll of Jehovah Himself in the doing.

It is as though Jehovah said within Himself, “I will go down and save man. I certainly have the will to do it and… ” and there God had to halt. (This of course is pure imagination used to show the obstacles in the way of God’s saving man. God at no time had to stop and ponder His next move.) God was willing, true enough, but He did not have the righteous human life to give as the redemptive purchase price. Justice insisted on a perfect human life.

But Jehovah is not only supreme love; He is also the height of wisdom. Both of these attributes were determined not to leave humanity doomed, so they worked together to bring about man’s salvation.

Text Ref. 9

The Spirit of God (Jehovah) over­shadowed a virgin named Mary and implanted in her womb the first cell of what was to become the body of the Savior of the world. He would be named JESUS. God needed neither male nor female human to produce this cell. He created it out of no preexisting human just as He had formed the first Adam.([i]) This, the second Adam as Paul refers to Jesus (1 Cor. 15:45), was like and also diametrically unlike the first Adam in a number of ways. In this particular area Jesus was like Adam in that His body was created out of no human ancestor or proto­type. This newly created cell was pure, sinless, untainted by man’s inborn depravity.

The cell grew and multiplied and developed as all fetuses do until it was born Jesus Christ the Savior of all men, pure, sinless, untainted. In that body dwelled the Spirit of God not only as He inhabits us, but completely and unerringly motivating and con­trolling Jesus all of His earthly life. Jesus was meeting the demands of the Law under whose dominance He came. He was bringing His willingness, His sinless life, and He was also coming as man’s near kinsman. Here at last was the Ultimate Sacrifice that would atone for the many, many sins of mankind. No one else had the love, wisdom or power to do it.

Someone may say, “Just how was this Man the Son of God since you say that He was God Himself?” That is a very relevant question and, before attempting to answer it, a word of caution is again in order: Do not limit this very complex Person to our greatly restricted mold. Jesus was the Son of God by virtue of His having been begotten by the Spirit of God. The same Spirit, we have seen, inhabited Jesus and gave Him life. Jesus was truly the Son of God and He needed the Father as much as or more than we do. When Jesus prayed to the Father, as He often did, He was not play?acting; nor was He merely going through the motions for our example. He was serious and acutely intense, and He was seeking sustenance for His very life. He was earnestly beseeching the Father for the ability to bear a burden that is unknown to us. We can never experience that burden because we are not immaculate([ii]) sons of God as He was and we are not constrained by love to take on ourselves the loathsome sins that nauseate us.

Paul tells us that in this righteous Being “dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” (Col. 2:9) His was the primacy, the uniqueness of being filled with the Spirit of Jehovah in a way that no one else knew then or knows now. It is evident that while the Son Jesus was praying to the Father, the Spirit of the Father was all the while within Him. Later, on Calvary, when the Father would reject Jesus and withdraw from Him, Jesus would die in the throes of intense suffering.

 

More than once Jehovah attempted to show wayward Israel how great His love was for them. There was no need that One as self-sufficient as He should do this, if it were not for the driving force of the very love He was trying to get them to see.

“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim [Israel]?” He said plaintively; “how shall I deliver thee [up], Israel?…mine heart is turned [draws back] within me, my repentings [compassions] are kindled together.” (Hos. 11:8)

This was the gracious and merciful side of God that had as much need for expression as His righteousness and justice. But there is no conflict between the two, no division within Jehovah.  Whereas any two opposing natures within us can create conflict, at times driving us mad, we must remember one thing in this con­nection: The two apparently conflicting sides of Jehovah are both harmonious facets of the one wholly integrated God. The justice of God is not fighting against the mercy of God. That cannot be. For the sake of putting the situation in humanly comprehensible terms, we at times make them appear to be antithetic. But no facet of God can be opposed to another facet; it would cause a rift within the divine Being. The fact is that Justice worked with its counterpart (not opponent) Mercy, and forged an environment in which man could live.

A God of Balance and Justice

The world is hell-bent (a fitting word!) on doing its own thing, and God will allow them to do so up to a point. While individuals and governments are sating their lusts for power and wealth and glory, God is, unnoticed, easing them slowly and surely onto the track to doom and destruction. This is not because God has suddenly become like the mythical gods of old – petty and vindictive – no; He is the same God He has always been; He is a God of balance and justice.

To be the same God He has always been, He has to show He is a God of justice, that is, wrongdoing must suffer punishment and righteous living must be rewarded. But humanity continually has turned a deaf ear and a cold shoulder to God’s remonstrances. Now, in all justice and righteousness, God has to be the God He has told mankind He is: He is a God of balance, that is, love AND judgment. He has warned them, “For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption…” (Gal 6:8), even while He still offers this assurance, “but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”

What more could we ask of a just, balanced, righteous, evenhanded God?

Yet men and women press on in their sinful ways. God has pleaded with and begged these impenitent sinners – but they have refused to listen, they have rebuffed His efforts at reconciliation. He has whispered offers of peace in their ears at night; in desperation God has thundered it at them, “You must come to me and find rest and peace!” He has always been there trying to tell sinning humanity ever since their fall in the Garden of Eden that they must suffer for their sins. He has sought to drill it into their minds and hearts, ever since that horrible debacle in the Garden, that what a person sows he must reap.

And reap he will whether he is a saint or a sinner. For the saint, however, once he accomplishes his reaping in this life, all reaping will be over. The blood of the Lamb of God (Jesus), has removed his sin and, although the saint has to reap in this life for the sins he has committed in the past, they are no longer around to follow him into the hereafter.

But God is saying at this time the path is not irreversible for individuals who have not yet come to Christ. God is still pleading one-on-one with individual souls to come to Him. Mankind as a whole now seems to be hurtling toward perdition (no longer are they being “eased slowly and surely toward it”), but there is still room at the cross for just one more sinner. If you will reach down deep into your heart, deep into your innermost being and cry out, “Lord, save me; I need you more than anyone or anything in this world!” He will hear you and He will save you. He wants so much for you to ask Him into your life because He will never force His salvation on you.

What more could we ask of a just, balanced, righteous, evenhanded and merciful God?

The loving nature of God looked at the tragedy of man and could no longer be restrained. The creature He had made was on an unswerving track to doom because of the “high and lifted up” divine goodness that was towering over the creature. This goodness and righteousness were ready to fall on the creature and grind him into the dust of hell. Love, however, tower­ing just as high and invincible and every bit as strong and enduring, was yearning over its errant child and eager to save him.

As God beheld adulterous Israel, His heart smote Him (human terminology). That is why God cried out, “How shall I give thee up?” Jehovah was like a man whose emotions were being wrenched by a faithless and undeserving wife whom He dearly loved. Jehovah had lavished much love and care on Israel and she had thrown them back in His face. No one can appreciate the agonies of unrequited love so much as he who has exper­ienced them. Such is the vulnerability of love, even divine love.