1 Corinthians 12:3

THE UNFOLDING OF THE DIVINE REVELATION

“No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the holy Ghost.’

1 Corinthians 12:3

This supreme gift of knowledge of God, though given along with other gifts from the very beginning, was not given at first in perfection. All religions that are religions at all know some truth about God, but they differ very greatly from one another in what they know. We might, indeed, find it difficult to understand how the same Holy Spirit can teach men such different ideas of what God is, were it not that the explanation is plainly set down for us in the Old Testament Scriptures. There are two points in that wonderful story of the revelation of God’s nature: first, the revelation was gradual; second, that at every new revelation there was a sharp crisis, there was a controversy between those who were willing to accept the Spirit’s further guidance and those who refused it. And this was the consequence, that the old religion, which had once been true so far as it went, ceased to be true by rejecting the new light, and became the very enemy of the truth. It is true that all men who worship God anywhere, under whatever name they worship Him, are worshipping God in spirit; and yet it is equally true, and it may be a much more important truth, that he who, having known God as Jove, refuses to accept the revelation of God as Jehovah, if it comes to him with all the difference that the new name implies; or, again, the man who, having known God as Jehovah, refuses if it comes to him to accept the revelation that Jesus is Lord, with all the difference that the new name implies, is, by his refusal, doing despite to the same Holy Spirit which first inspired him to worship at all.

Stories from the ancient history may serve to illustrate St. Paul’s meaning in the text, because the Apostles, just like the old prophets, were calling on their nation to take one new step forward as the Holy Ghost added a new revelation to what had gone before, and the temptation for religious men of their day, as in old days, was to say this: ‘What we have is enough; we know the whole truth about God already through the prophets. We want no more revelation. This Jesus is a deceiver. It is mere blasphemy His making Himself equal to God; He is therefore anathema.’ ‘No,’ says St. Paul. ‘No,’ say all the Apostles; ‘but the same Holy Spirit which led your fathers, even though but a remnant, to accept every revelation of God as it came hitherto will lead you to accept also this final revelation that in Jesus Christ is all the fulness of the Godhead, that He is no deceiver—no, nor no prophet, but the Lord, the Incarnate God, and that with Him the revelation of God is therefore, at last, final and complete.’

I. No new revelation.—We have accepted that teaching; we are Christians. We believe Jesus Christ was the Incarnate God; that the revelation of God in Him was final; since then there has been no new revelation.

II. But there has begun, and there has gone forward in the Church, a process of unfolding gradually the revelation that Christ brought of the Father, of displaying it piece by piece to the world and to the Church, and that Christ foretold would be the case when He said, ‘When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth … for He shall receive of Mine, and shall shew it unto you.’ Take Christ’s revelation and display it to the Church, and this process of displaying in the Church, in this age and in that, of sides of Christianity that the previous ages have disregarded, is a process of extraordinary interest to the students of the Christian faith. For each age seems to have found something in Jesus Christ which fitted especially the age, and its absorption in some one great idea made it more or less indifferent to others. But here, again, more often at the beginning of a new period, the new side of truth just becoming visible has had to fight for its life. It showed first in the heart of some prophet; it has made its way slowly among the few whose hearts and minds, being sincere, are open to new truth; and it has been rejected by that conservative majority of good men, slow of heart to believe the prophetic, which has so often resisted the leading of the Holy Ghost into fresh truth about Jesus Christ. Time would fail to illustrate the process through the Christian centuries.

(a) Take for one example the Reformation. The Reformation was an appeal from ideas of God which had grown up among the people in an unlearned age, and had gradually received the sanction of the Church—an appeal from that authority to Christ. And we believe that that Reformation, in its essence, was the work of the Holy Ghost. But you know at what a cost that was achieved.

(b) Take, again, a question that presses— the criticism of the Bible documents. The Reformation, we say, won for us the liberty to read our Bible for ourselves. Well, we have that liberty, and we thank God for it, whether or no we use the privilege of reading our Bible. But even to-day, if a man happens to be a scholar, and says what he finds in his Bible—points out, for example, that books once thought to be a single whole are composite, or that Leviticus, once thought earlier than Deuteronomy, is later, or that the four Gospels are not simply as they stand, four independent witnesses to Christ, but they incorporate in various proportions earlier documents, there still goes up from certain quarters a cry against what is called the Higher Criticism. Of course there is a bad criticism. There has been much foolish criticism as well as what is good; but, then, what is bad must be met and exposed by what is good. Criticism can only be met by criticism. There is no sense in preaching a holy war against criticism as such. And how ungrateful such a war is, as well as foolish! Consider how vastly more interesting criticism has made the Bible.

(c) In every problem of Christian affairs there is always new light to be won by those who from their heart believe Jesus to be Lord, because as they ponder the sacred record the Holy Spirit takes of the things of Christ and shows them their true meaning. The past century gained much new understanding of Christian philanthropy. I suppose that was the side on which it took hold of the religion of Christ, philanthropy, the love of the brethren. It would be quite impossible now, thank God, for a man who could write a hymn like the hymn ‘How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,’ to be the captain of a slave ship, as Newton was, thinking no harm in slavery, thinking it not anti-Christian. But we have still very much to learn from the social teaching of Jesus, much that we should do well to lay to heart.

The Spirit of Jesus is a Spirit of wisdom as well as of love, is a Spirit of right judgment, and the ideal philanthropy, the true wisdom, is not to empty it of its Divinity. May the Holy Ghost convince us more and more that Jesus is Lord, and may He direct our hearts more and more into the truth as it is in Jesus.

Rev. Canon Beeching.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE HOLY GHOST THE INSPIRER OF FAITH

Why is it that ‘no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost’? The reason is twofold. It is found partly in the understanding of man and partly in his will.

I. The will has an intelligent instinct of its own.—We believe, at least to a great extent, that which we wish to believe; and we wish to believe, most of us, that which will not cost us much in the way of effort or in the way of endurance. We wish this and no more, always supposing us to be left to ourselves with the average human nature and instinct which our first father has bequeathed to us. The Holy Spirit must intervene so far as to restore freedom to the human will, thereby preventing its mischievous action upon the understanding. The greater the practical demands of a given truth, the more needed is the high impartiality of the will; and therefore in no case is it more necessary than in that of believing our Lord’s divinity, which, when it is really believed, leads to so much and demands so much.

II. A second reason is found in the understanding.—If a man was to rise above the prejudices of the time—if he was to see what those words, those acts, that character really meant—if he was to understand how the Cross was as much a revelation of Divine love as the Transfiguration was a revelation of Divine glory, he must have been guided by a more than human teacher; he must have been taught by the Spirit to say, ‘Jesus is the Lord.’

Illustration

‘The Holy Spirit must first work in your heart before you can have truth, or any one real, spiritual thought. Yes, and every time that you have another and another and another good thought, and every time that that thought swells into a desire, or clothes itself in a word, or takes expression in an action, the Holy Ghost has been there: it is and must be all to the praise of the glory of His grace. He was beforehand with you. He was the agent—you the recipient; He was the seed—you the receiver of that seed; He was the peace—you experienced the enjoyment of the peace bestowed. And is not this placing God the Holy Ghost where He ought to be placed—to behold Him as much the first prime cause and mover in the whole spiritual world, as the Father, by His will and mandate, in the material universe? The matter you see was first in the Father’s mind: it took substance at His word, and became matter: equally so the Spirit wills into a man faith: the breathing of the Holy Ghost in the soul removes the chaos, and there is beauty, life, and order. I think it is the only place which He can occupy in the scheme of man’s salvation: to be the all and in all: the Alpha and the Omega.’