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THE KING’S BUSINESS
without the ship; and to commit your self to the justice o f God without His mercy is like getting aboard the ship without the ocean. It is in the ship of His justice floated upon the ocean of His mercy that we sail into the haven of everlasting rest. Then, Possession and Expression. “ Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of His Son into your hearts.” You become a possessor of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. There is something imparted to you. You be come a partaker o f the Divine nature; and that spirit expresses itself to wards God in the familiar prattle of the nursery, “ Abba Father.” We re gard God as great Creator, Ruler of the Universe, and when we approach Him it is with reverence and adora tion ; but as•children we come with the nursery prattle. We come with the familiar word, and God and His child understand it. Those who are eavesdropping may not be sympa thetic, because they have not partaken of that Spirit; and it is through Jesus Christ in His Incarnation that this im parting of the Spirit of Christ becomes possible at all. “ He that seen me hath seen the Father.” In Christ there is a revelation of the full Fatherhood of God. A gentleman in Boston, in an ad dress to a minister’s meeting, said he represented a settlement work, and the purpose of it was to prepare the way for the coming of God. He said, “ We never use the name o f God, we never use the name of Christ, for that would be an offence; but we prepare the people by living among them. Why, if we spoke o f the Fatherhood of God, some of those boys and girls with drunken parents would have a distorted idea of fatherhood. They know nothing of that except as mani fested by a cruel.drunkard. We stay there in their midst and live father hood, and let them see- what father hood in a Christian character really
your money is on my altar.” It was easy for Thomas to look up into His face, his reason, his conscience, his spiritual being responded, and say, “ My Lord and my God.” “ Born of a woman, made under the law.” We cannot go into that. I be lieve in the virgin birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His Deity hinges on the fact of His virgin birth. Now, the purposes o f the Incarna tion. It has in it three, couplets in the Scripture. First, Redemption and Adoption. “ To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” Second, Pos session and Expression. “ Because you are sons God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father.” Thirdly, Son- ship and Heirship. “Wherefore thou are no more a servant but a Son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” . Redemption and Adoption. The re demption seems to me, is universal. “ The propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Yet the adop tion is limited. “ As many as receive Him, to them gave He power to be come the Sons of God.” “ That we might receive the adoption of sons.” The Greek for that phrase is a single word. It means “ son-placing.” More than taking up a waif on the street and by a process of law adopting him into the family. I believe it would be no straining at that word to trans late it “ son-experience.” “ That we might receive a real son experience.” We become. sons of God through a new birth. “ There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, Like the wideness o f the sea Ana we bless Him for it! But there is a narrowness in God’s justice like the narrowness of the ship on the sea.. To commit- yourself to the mercy without the satisfaction of justice is like committing ypurself to the ocean
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