The Gospel According to Paul # 3

The Gospel According to Paul # 3

(b) In the Matter of Religious Tradition

Then the Lord takes this thing into another realm. I hope you recognize the meaning of the background, the dark background, against which this word "hope" is placed. The Spirit of God through the Apostle takes it into the realm of religious tradition, as exemplified by the Jews. Everything now for them is traced back to Abraham and to Moses. What a lot the Apostle has to say about Abraham and his faith - "Abraham believed" - and then about Moses, and the Law coming in. And here is something of tremendous significance and importance that we must take note, for here we see the particular function that was in view in God's sovereign choice of the Jewish nation. Have you ever thought of it like this? There are many things that could be said about the Jewish nation, their past, present and future, but what comes out so definitely here is their function in the sovereignty of God. It was, and still is, their function, so far as testimony is concerned, that is, the witness of their history. It was to show just one thing. You can have a grand father - I do not mean a grandfather! - and you may have the best religious tradition; but nothing of that is carried over in your heredity, that is, it does not pass into your nature.

What a father was Abraham! What a lot is made of "Abraham our father"! What a magnificent specimen of faith and obedience was Abraham! They were all of the stock of Abraham; as a nation, they derived from Abraham. And what a system was the Jewish system of religion, so far as standard is concerned, a moral, ethical, religious standard. There is nothing that can improve upon it in the religions of the world. What a magnificent system of religious precept was the Jewish religion, which came in through Moses! - not only the ten commandments, but all the other teaching that made up the Law, covering every aspect of man's life. And they were the children of that: yet what do find here? You do not find the faith of Abraham in them, and you do not find the reflection of that great system in them, in their nature. These very people, deriving from such a once as Abraham, and being the inheritors of all those oracles of the Mosaic system, in their natures are devoid of everything that is represented by Abraham, and Moses. These people are still characterized by - what? unbelief, in spite of Abraham; disobedience, in spite of Moses! What could be more hopeless?

Some people have the idea that, if they have a good father and a good mother, that puts them in a very secure position, but human nature does not bear witness to that. There may be advantages in having had godly forebears - some advantages; but it is no final guarantee that you are going to escape all the difficulties and all the conflicts and all the sufferings of getting your own faith. The fact is that parents can be utter for God, they can be the most godly, the most pious, and yet their children can be the most renegade. A strange thing, is it not? The disposition to faith and obedience is not in the blood. Religious tradition of the best kind does not change our nature. It may go back for generations - it does not change our nature. We are still unbelieving and disobedient in nature, however good our parents were. You may have prayed from the beginning for a loved child, from the time that it was the smallest babe; you may have sought to live before it for God: and yet here is that child self-willed, disobedient - everything else.

Hope In A Desperate Situation

How desperately hopeless this situation is! But that is the way in which the Lord establishes a setting for this tremendous thing that is called hope. And so we come to the transcendent solution, and I use that word carefully at this point, for here is something very great. This is an immense mountain, this mountain of heredity; but there is something that transcends the whole, gets above it all; a solution which rises above the whole hopelessness and despair of the natural situation; and that is what is called "the gospel". Oh, that must be good news! Indeed that is why it is called 'good news'! Good news! What is it? There is hope in the most desperate situation!

The Gospel In Eternity Past

Now, if we look at this letter again as a whole, we shall find that the good news, or the 'good tidings', of the gospel is not only in the Cross of the Lord Jesus - though that is the focal point of it, as we shall see in a moment. The good news, or the gospel, is found to be something very, very much bigger even than the Cross of the Lord Jesus! What is that? It is 'the good tidings of God concerning His Son...Jesus Christ our Lord". The Cross is only one fragment of the significance of Jesus Christ Himself.

So this letter, what does it do? It takes us right into the eternity of the Son of God. This is wonderful, if you grasp it. If this gospel does not save you, I do not know what will. Here we are taken right back into the past eternity of the Son. "Whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son" (Romans 8:29). He must have had His Son, the Master Pattern, there in view before ever man was created, the eternal, the timeless, Pattern that the Son was: before there was any need of redemption, atonement, the Cross, the Son was the eternal Patters of God for man. And, mark you, it is so positive, so definite. It is in that tense which means a definite, once-for-all act. "Whom He foreknew, He also foreordained". It is something which was done before time was. That is where the gospel begins.

Yes, you see the Son in His eternity as God's timeless Pattern; and then we have the eternity or timelessness of the redeeming sovereignty. The redeeming sovereignty is included in that. "He foreordained, He called, He justified, He glorified". Now there three remaining things are not subsequent. They all belong to the same time - which is not time at all; it is eternity. It does not say that He foreknew and foreordained, and then in course of time He called and He justified, and He glorified. You see what you are committed to if you take that view. Most of us have been called and justified, but we are not glorified yet. But it says "He glorified", in the once-for-all (aorist tense.)

This must mean, that, when He took this matter in hand in relation to His timeless Pattern, the Lord Jesus, He finished it all in sovereign purpose and intention. It was all rounded off then, so that the marred vessel is an incident in time; a terrible incident, a terrible tragedy, that the vessel was marred in the hand of the Potter; but, for all that, an incident in time. God's counsels transcend all that has come in in time. Dear friend, when the Lord projected the whole plan of redemption, it was not because something had happened calling for an emergency movement to try to save the situation on the spot. He had already anticipated the whole thing, and had got everything in hand to meet the contingency. The Lamb was "slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8). The Cross reaches back over all time, right back to the eternal Son, before times eternal. The Cross goes back there - to "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 4)