January 1929
26
T h e
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
Dogs and Hogs
Our friend fails to see that if He were not Deity in bodily manifestation, He could not be sufficient for the whole human race. His death could no more avail to put away sin than the death of any other good man. Only God can deal with our sins. If the Saviour was no more than man, we have but a human Saviour, and that is no Saviour at all. He must indeed be man, it is true, in order to be a suitable substitute for man, but He must also be divine in order to be sufficient for God. Therefore, Jesus is “God manifest in the flesh.” We are asked if we stand for the teaching which has been widely current that Paul, in his Athens sermon, made a serious mistake in using philosophical arguments, and that when he proceeded to Corinth just afterward, he came to see that he must preach only “Christ and Him cru cified.” It seems clear that Paul faithfully preached Christ crucified and risen, from the very first. Moreover, we find sufficient indications, in the sermon at Athens itself, that the Apostle was proceeding to enforce the same mes sage, if his hearers had had the patience to hear him—nay, that he had already preached “Jesus and the resurrection.” One of our exchanges recently touched upon this same matter, and we cull the following comment, with which we perfectly agree: “Is it not hazardously presumptuous—‘wise beyond what is written’-—to conclude that Paul erred in his method at Athens, without any such suggestion, and merely upon the ground of an ingenious theory ? Is it not better to assume that we have here a pattern of addresses to the heathen (like that at Lystra), just as others are patterns of addresses to those already acquainted with the Scriptures? Heathen hearers needed teaching about the Creator and Sustainer of all, and about the folly of idol atry. They received it .in both cases ; and in this instance we are actually able to trace how the Apostle is working up to his Gospel message, in his yearning call to them to “seek” the true God. And as to results, it would be poor comfort for preachers" if they were always to be judged by thèse—-and besides, we do not know that they were less at Athens than at many other places. Anyway, there were several converts.” Pau l’s Failure to Recognize Ananias The 23rd of Acts tells us how Paul, when he was be fore the council, called Ananias, the high priest, a whited wall, and when he was rebuked for reviling a priest, he apologized. He explained that he did not know that Ananias was the high priest. How could that have been ? Some lay this to his defective eyesight. Others sug gest that Paul’s long absence from Jerusalem, or perhaps the seat Ananias occupied, or possibly his failure to have on his distinctive robes, may account for this. Did Paul Blunder at Athens? To V. A.
To W. H. A. E are asked to discuss 2 Pet. 2 :20-22. Here reference is made to some who had “escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Sav iour Jesus Christ It but were again “entan gled therein” and in a worse state than they
were before they professed to embrace Christian teachings. Peter declares that “It is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is returned to his vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (cf. Prov. 26:11). The word “pollutions” suggests that these had fled from the pollutions of heathen life and worship and then fallen back into an even more sensual state. They had received the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour, but it was such a knowledge as had not served to protect them from the temptations of their sensuous nature, so that they should go back to heathenism, denying the Lord, and liv ing a more vile life than ever before. There must be some thing sadly defective with such a knowledge. It is diffi cult to believe that these had experienced the new birth. “They went out from us, but they were not o f us; for if they had been of us they Would no doubt have continued with u s : but they went out, that they might be made mani fest that they were not of us” (1 Jn. 2:19). “The latter end is worse with them than the begin ning.” These words are clearly a citation of our Lord’s teaching in Matt. 12:45, where we are told of the unclean spirit who was cast out of his house and returned to it with seven other spirits more wicked than himself. A tnan, through the impulse of Christian teachings, may sweep out some of the grosser sins from his life and even garnish himself with moralities, but if the Holy Spirit has not come in, the devil may be as much at home as ever, and, when the right moment comes, may invite into the empty house seven other spirits “and the last state of that man is worse than the first.” Peter compares these men to unclean beasts, the dog ánd the hog. It would seem that if he regarded them sim ply as Christian backsliders, he would have used other terms. They were evidently not “lost sheep” who had fallen into “the miry clay” (Psa. 40:2) after having been made “new creatures in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:17). Born- ágain people are not, even though, like Peter himself, they fall into sin, comparable to dogs which eat their own Vomit, or to pigs that have been scoured and immediately tosh back into the filth. The Christian may have fierce struggles with sin, but he will not " wallow” in it. The sheep nature does not take to mud, and the sheep that falls into the mire bleats for help. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. . . . they shall never perish” {fn. 10:27-28).
The God-Man To Y. F. T.
“Many preachers say, ‘God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,’ ” writes one of our subscribers. “If Jesus was God, He could not be a substitute for man.”
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