Читать книгу The Second Death and the Restitution of All Things - Andrew Jukes - Страница 10

for Christ's flesh before His Spirit, for all the different dispensations, and for all the types and shadows which for awhile veiled while they revealed God's living Word. Here is the reason for the human form of the Divine Word in Scripture. Had that Word come to us as it is in itself, we should no more have apprehended or seen it than we see God. Had it come to us even in angelic form, only a very few, the pure and thoughtful, ever could have received it. But it stooped to reveal itself to creatures through a creature, and to come to us out of the heart of man in truly human form, so that all men, Gentile or Jew, polished or savage, might through its perfect humanity be able to receive it. God more than any of His most loving servants has become a Jew to gain the Jews, and weak to gain the weak, and under law to gain those under law; because He is love, and love must sacrifice itself, if by any means it can save and bless others. If therefore men are in the flesh, God comes to them in flesh; if they are in darkness and shadows, God comes for them into the shadows; because they cannot comprehend the light, and because the darkness and light are both alike to Him.¹

If this is not the way of His revelation, how, I ask, has He ever revealed Himself? Will any dare to say that He has not revealed Himself? Has God who is love been content to leave poor man in perfect ignorance? Or if He has told man what He is, as most surely He has, how has He done so? Did He, does He, can He, plainly tell out to all what He is? And if He did not, why did He not? Why have men always heard God first speaking in law before a gospel dawned on them? Why must it be so, or at least why does He allow it? Is it a mistake of His, which we must avoid, when we attempt to make Him known; or shall we be wise, if, in doing what He is doing, that is, in revealing Him, we imitate His way of revelation? Surely from the days of Adam, seeing what man is, and our delusions about Him, God must have desired, and we know has desired, to make Himself known; and being Almighty, All-wise, and All-loving, surely He has taken the best method of doing it. Again I ask, how has He done it, how must He do it, man being what he is? Could God consistently with our salvation have done it otherwise than it has been done? To shew Himself as He is would to man be no shewing of Him. It was needful that He should shew Himself under the forms and limitations of that creature in and to whom He sought to reveal Himself, that is by shadows before light, by law before gospel, by a letter before a quickening spirit, in a word, by the humiliation of His