THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

Life, life not in ourselves, but in Christ, that is the promise of the Gospel; and short of "the life which is life indeed" (i Tim. vi. 19), we cannot rest satisfied. Death to sin, forgiveness however absolute and complete, are at best but starting-points. What a man longs after is restored communion with God, that knowledge of God which, as our Lord Himself teaches, is of the very essence of the life eternal (John xvii. 3). Atonement, if it is to be truly deserving of the name, must issue in at-one-ment. And it is perhaps because this old English word has lost its original meaning, as well as for consistency of rendering, that the Revisers have removed it from the only place in which it occurs in our English Bibles, and that Rom. v. 11 now reads : "But we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation." Reconciliation, indeed, the reconciliation of God to man, and man to God, is, as we learn elsewhere, the great message entrusted to Christ's ambassadors (2 Cor. v. 18-20), and the man who accepts it is more than pardoned; there is "a new creation" (2 Cor. v. 17 margin).1

1. Life in Christ.

How beautifully, too, this our new state is brought before us in the revised rendering of Eph. ii. 13, "But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ." Already in ch. i. 7 St. Paul has spoken of the blood of Christ as the causa medians of our redemption — "in whom we have our redemption through His blood." Now he brings that blood before us (and it must be kept in view that in Scripture blood is always conceived of as living, and that therefore by the blood of Christ we must understand not His death, but His life, won through death, in heaven)2 as the abiding condition or power "in" which we draw near.

The truth is so important that it may be well to illustrate it a little further. When, for example, with our ordinary version we are assured that "the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. vi. 23), we do not necessarily think of more than that Christ has worked a work on our behalf, which entitles us to share in eternal life. But when we find that the real rendering of the word is, "the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord," then we realize that this life, so far from being an endowment apart from Christ, can only be enjoyed in living union with Him, and necessarily brings with it all the accompaniments which such a union involves. The believer is "persuaded in ('by,' Authorized Version) the Lord Jesus" (Rom. xiv. 14); he has "his glorying in ('through,' Authorized Version) Christ Jesus" (Rom. rv. 17); in everything he is "enriched in ('by,' Authorized Version) Him" (1 Cor. i. 5).

The duty of Christian forgiveness again is made by St. Paul to rest upon the fact that "God also in Christ forgave you" (Eph. iv. 32), instead of "for Christ's sake," a familiar phrase that now wholly disappears from the Authorized Version. And the same Apostle in one of the most personal of his Epistles can make it his proud claim, "I can do all things in Him ('through Christ,' Authorized Version) that strengthened! me" (Phil. iv. 13), even as he conveys a like assurance to his converts, "my God shall fulfil ('supply,' Authorized Version) every need of yours according to His riches in glory in ('by,' Authorized Version) Christ Jesus" (Phil. iv. 19).

Still other passages where the same preposition has now got its proper force, which have a more or less doctrinal significance, are Rom. v. 21, where the contrast between "sin in death" and "grace unto eternal life" is very instructive; Col. i. 16, 17, where the original creation of all things "in" Christ, as their initial cause, is shown to precede their coming into existence "through" Him, the mediatorial Lord, and their final return "unto" Him as their end and goal; and 1 Tim. iii. 16, where "in glory" marks Christ's state before and at Ascension, as well as after.

There are two Greek prepositions, both of which are ordinarily translated "from,"3 but to the second of which the stronger meaning "out of" can also be assigned, as the Revisers have recognized in at least two important passages, though unfortunately they have confined the emendation to the margin. In John xii. 32 our Lord's claim is not, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me," words which would naturally confine His saving and attractive power to His death; but, "And I, if I be lifted up out of the earth," in which the thought of His resurrection is also included. It is the living Lord, Who has reached His own glory through suffering and death, Who is to exercise a universal sway, in strict conformity with the teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews : "But we behold Him who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that by the grace of God He should taste death for every man" (Heb. ii. 9). And similarly in the same Epistle the real tenor of our Lord's prayers in the Garden is represented as being, not that He should be delivered "from" death, but "out of" death, brought safely, that is, through death into a new life : "Who in the days of His flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him out of death, and having been heard for His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered" (Heb. v. 7, 8).

To return, however, to the great truth of the life of the believer in Christ, we may still cite one or two fresh illustrations which it receives in the Revised Version. A familiar one occurs in our Lord's analogy of the Vine and the branches, for, as we now read, it is "apart from," and not merely "without" Him, the central Vine, that the branches "can do nothing" (John xv. 5). Or, again, in St. Paul's favourite figure of the Body and the members, how much is gained by the substitution of "made full" for "complete" in Col. ii. 10. "In Him," that is in Christ, so the Apostle has just been declaring, "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and," he continues, "in Him ye are made full." It is actually in Christ's own fulness, the fulness just spoken of, that His people are entitled to share. And, once more, it is coming unto Him, "a living stone," that they also, "as living stones," are built up a spiritual house (1 Pet. ii. 4, 5) — the substitution of "lively" for "living" in the Authorized Version quite obscuring the parallelism.

2. Sanctification.

The mention of building up, of a progressive growth in holiness, leads us to ask next, What has the Revised Version to teach us regarding the great doctrine of sanctification?

One thing certainly, constantly lost sight of, is made clear, namely, that sanctification is not so much a consequence of salvation as an integral part of it. It is "in sanctification" rather than "unto holiness" that "God called us" (i Thess. iv. 7), or, more fully, we are chosen "from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth" (2 Thess. iii. 13). "In" the will of God, that is, which Christ has perfectly fulfilled, Christians are included, and therefore sanctified (see Heb. x. 10, margin).

But this is far from saying that sanctification on our part can be realized all at once. The Christian believer, though ideally complete in Christ from the moment of his living union with Him, still knows from practical experience that it is only slowly and gradually that he can hope to apprehend the full privileges and duties of his new condition. And hence it is that the early converts of the Christian Church can be described not as "saved," but as "being saved" (Acts ii. 47),4 or that, writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul can speak of the word of the Cross as the power of God "unto us which are being saved" (1 Cor. i. 18).5 The use of the perfect tense in the revised translation of Eph. ii. 5, "By grace have ye been saved," and the description of the new man as "being renewed" in Col. iii. 10, point in the same direction. While the ever-advancing goal towards which the believer is to press comes out clearly in St. Paul's prayer for his converts "that ye may be filled unto ('with,' Authorized Version) all the fulness of God" (Eph. iii. 19), and in the words of the following chapter, "till we all attain unto the unity (* come in the unity,' Authorized Version) of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown ('perfect,' Authorized Version) man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (ch. iv. 13).

The word rendered "fullgrown" in this last verse is in itself very significant. Literally it means that which has reached the goal, the end, of its existence. No single word in English altogether expresses this. "Fullgrown" is perhaps as literal a translation as possible, and is certainly better than the Authorized "perfect," which is apt to convey an erroneous impression. It is unfortunate, therefore, that the Revisers have not adopted it in 1 Cor. xiv. 20, Phil. iii. 15, Col. i. 28, iv. 12, and James iii. 2, as well as here, and in 1 Cor. ii. 6 (margin) and Heb. v. 14.

But however we describe the new life to which believers attain in Christ, the main point to be kept in view is that it is a "new" life, and not merely a reviving or deepening of the old : "the old things are passed away; behold they ('all things,' Authorized Version) are become new" (2 Cor. v. 17). And the reason of this is that its standard is derived from the heavenly and Divine Jesus, so that "if we have become united with Him by the likeness of His death, we shall be also by the likeness of His resurrection" (Rom. vi. 5). Hence it is that believers receive the right to become "children," and not merely "sons" of God (John i. 12),6 and that we catch the full meaning of sqch a passage as, "We all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18). Believers, as they steadfastly contemplate their Lord, gradually grow more and more like to Him : they are not merely "followers," but "imitators" of Christ (1 Cor. xi. 1; Eph. v. 1; 1 Thess. i. 6), and, in obedience to the working of an irresistible law, "become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. i. 4).

Is it not a similar victory of "the Spirit" in believers which underlies the amended translation of Gal. v. 17? As we read the verse in the Authorized Version, "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the spirit against the flesh : and these are contrary the one to the other : so that ye cannot do the things that ye would," St. Paul would seem to be adding only another to the many passages in which he reminds us that, notwithstanding our best wishes and intentions, sin is ever present with us. But read the last words, as in the Revised Version, "that ye may not do the things that ye would," and we are introduced to the comforting thought of a constraining power within us which prevents us from doing what we might otherwise incline to. The victory now rests with the Spirit, and not with the flesh. Or, as St. Paul states the same truth elsewhere from another point of view : "Him who knew no sin He (i.e. God) made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. v. 21), where "become," not "be made," as in the Authorized Version, lays stress on the gradual but inevitable transformation of those who are vitally united to God in Christ.

Very striking, too, as bringing out the natural evolution of the Christian graces, is the amended version of 2 Pet. i. 5-7 : "In your faith supply virtue; and in your virtue knowledge; and in your knowledge temperance . . ." and so on through the familiar list, where the use of "in" in place of "to" implies not merely a catalogue of the graces, but their necessary dependence upon one another. The last clause, "and in your love of the brethren love," strange and tautological though at first it sounds, has been claimed as teaching no less a truth than that "love, the feeling of man for man as man, finds, and can only find, its true foundation in the feeling of Christian for Christian, realised in and through the Incarnation of the Word."7

3. The Sacraments.

The doctrine of the Sacraments may next engage our attention, and here again the variations in the renderings of familiar texts, though they may not appear at first of great importance, involve far-reaching truths. Thus Baptism is no longer represented as "in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matt, xxviii. 19), as if there were a kind of sacred charm in the mere words, but it is baptism "into the name . . .," as the expression, that is, according to the common Scriptural use of the word, of the whole character of the Triune God, the sum of the whole Christian revelation. The knowledge of God as Father, the spiritual birthright of Sonship, the power and advocacy of the Holy Spirit — all these privileges belong to those who in divinely-appointed rite are incorporated into the Divine Name.8 It is only right, however, to notice that the old translation "in the name" is strongly upheld by many modern scholars, who are able to appeal to the frequency with which the Greek preposition for "into"9 is used for the Greek preposition for "in"10 in late Greek.

In the case of the Lord's Supper, the well-known description in I Cor. xi. supplies us with an alteration which at once arrests our attention. In ver. 27 the Revisers, following the best-supported Greek text, substitute "or" for "and" — "Wherefore whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord." It is hardly necessary to say that no support is thereby given to the Romish practice of administering the sacrament to the laity only in one kind. Any such inference lies wholly beyond the scope of the words, and, as a matter of fact, is disproved by various other statements in this very chapter. But without pressing the new reading unduly, we may at least notice how it emphasizes the truth we are otherwise prepared for, that the two parts of the rite have distinct meanings. The Bread — that is, the Body of Christ — recalls more particularly His Incarnation, apart from His sufferings; for it is noteworthy that our Lord says nothing over the Bread to connect it directly with the thought of an offering for sin;11 whereas the Cup — that is, His Blood — is definitely associated with His atoning work, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood : this do, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me," or, as the same truth appears still more clearly in the account in the First Gospel, "And He took a cup, and gave thanks, and gave to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is shed for many unto remission of sins" (Matt, xxvi. 2 7, 28). "We are not first purified from our sins and then incorporated into Christ. When we have been brought, just as we are, into the communion of His Body, then we are in a position to receive the cleansing action of His once outpoured Blood."12

1 A different side of Christ's work appears in Heb. ii. 17, where another Greek word (ἱλάσκεσθαι) is now rightly rendered "to make propitiation" not "reconciliation."

2 Cf. W. Milligan, The Resurrection of Our Lord, London, 1884, p. 290 ff.

3 ἀπό, ἐκ.

4 τοὺς σωζομένους.

5 Cf. 2 Cor. ii. 15 and the interesting gloss in Rom. xiii. ii 9 "Now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed (ὅτε ἐπιστεύσαμεν)," where the Revisert have inserted the word first to emphasize the contrass between full and final salvation, and the definite moment in the past when belief first manifested itself.

6 Τέκνα points to community of nature as distinguished from υἷοι, which might denote merely dignity of heirship. Cf. Phil. ii. 15; 1 John iii. 1, 2.

7 Bishop Westcott, Expository Times, iii. p. 396.

8 Cf. Acts viii. 1 6, xix. 5. The translators of the Authorized Version have given the preposition (εἰς) its full force in Rom. vi. 3; 1 Cor. x. 2, xii. 13; Gal. iii.27.

9 εἰς.

10 ἐν.

11 In 1 Cor. xi. 24 the word for "broken" (κλώμενον) disappears according to the best reading. Similarly in Luke xxii. 1 9 the words "which is given for you" are, as we learn from the marginal note, of doubtful authority. They may hare formed, with the corresponding words in ver. 20, part of an early tradition, which was afterwards incorporated in the Evangelic text.

12 Mason, The Faith of the Gospel, London, 1888, p. 305.