Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return: 57. There Is No Other Name
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 57. There Is No Other Name
Other Subjects in this Topic:
There Is No Other Name
Well, then, if this is so, what about Israel and the Church? What distinctive place have they? What peculiar part do they play? Why have they had so much more light? And the answer is both simple, and full of suggestion. The light that lighteth every man has been awfully dimmed through sin. That is the common way of saying it. The truth would be put more accurately that through wilful sin men's eyes were dulled and confused and almost shut. The light has never shone a whit less. But continual refusal to walk in it dimmed and dulled the eyes, and weakened the will. And this increased and intensified.
There was a twofold need. And to meet that the nation of Israel was chosen; and when it failed and was set aside, the Church was chosen. The first need was that the light be kept among men, in its purity and clearness and fulness; not lost. Israel, and later the Church, became a repository for keeping the light in the midst of the deepening darkness. The second need was that the light be taken, in its purity and clearness and fulness, out to men in the gathering darkness.
But another question has been waiting eagerly a chance to be asked, and asked loudly. If there be this direct light in every man, where do Christ's suffering and blood-shedding come in? Are these multitudes,—the greater part of the race,—which never heard about Christ, are they, can they be, saved without Christ? And the answer brings out all afresh the wonders of redeeming Love, and the sweep of Christ's death.
All of this light is through Christ, and only through Him. Everything the earth has is through Christ. No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten God in the bosom of the Father, He hath always been the Spokesman, the revealer of the Father-God. [Note: Joh_1:18.] It was He whose breath in Eden gave life to the race. It is He by whom all things pertaining to the life of the earth hold together. [Note: Col_1:16, Col_1:17.] He is our Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer.
It may well be doubted if any of us has yet taken in the immense sweep of the sacrificial death of our Lord Jesus on the cross. It availed, by anticipation, for all the multitudes who came, and moved along, and passed out and up and in, to the future life, before the day when He died. It holds off the time of judgment. And it holds in abeyance the fact of judgment for all the earth. Sin left to itself would have long since burned itself out, and all held in its clutches. In the wondrous patience of God there is a stay of proceedings. He is longsuffering, permitting things to go on, because He is not willing that any should perish, but has done, and is doing, His utmost that none may perish. [Note: 2Pe_3:9.] Our Lord Jesus is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe. [Note: 1Ti_4:10.] None can escape the saving power of His blood, in this limited temporary sense, at least for a time. Because on this account the course of judgment is held in abeyance, that men may come to repentance.
And there's something more wondrous yet. It reveals yet more the patience—unspeakable patience—of God. He who died on the cross keeps life creatively in all men. He is their life in this limited sense. In Him was life and in Him is life. [Note: Joh_1:4.] The blasphemous man who lives in defiance of God, is being kept alive constantly by the gracious power of Him who died. So He gives the man fullest opportunity to accept the sweet light. Not only is the light a gift, coloured blood-red, but the opportunity—lengthened out—of accepting it, is likewise a bit of the gracious gift. In this limited temporary sense, "He is the Saviour of all men." But "specially" is He the Saviour, in the fullest sense that His heart longs to be, of those who humbly, penitently come for cleansing through His blood, and who yield fully to the mastery of His Holy Spirit.
Clearly the passages of Scripture that speak of believing on Christ, with condemnation for those not believing,—these can concern only those who have heard of Christ, and so had the opportunity of believing on Him. It could not be otherwise. God would not condemn a man for what he had never known about, and so could not do. Such a man may be condemned, but not on this ground.
It must be thoughtfully noted that all this has to do with the light these non-Christian peoples have. It concerns only God's part,—His faithfulness to the whole race. The fact of men's sin is not changed one whit thereby, except that it becomes greater, because it is against the light that has come. "Dead in trespasses and sins" is sadly true of the whole race. The terrific arraignment of the first chapter of Romans [Note: Rom_1:18-32.] is true, awfully, sadly, true of all the world, West and East, North and South.
The great difference between non-Christian lands and Christian lands is this,—we in Christian lands have the added floodlight of the Gospel of Christ. And we have the commonly accepted standards of morality that have grown up through that light. These standards compel sin to hide its head, though it is becoming more and more brazen in defying standards. They have no such standards of morality. With them sin is open. That makes a tremendous difference. It gives sin a terrible advantage. And sin never fails to use its advantage. Underneath the surface with us in Christian lands is the same sin, the same in kind, and only restrained from being the same in degree, not by the better morality of the human heart, but only by these outer conventions of society, commonly accepted, and ruling our common life.
There is just one Gospel for all the race. Every one of its notes needs sounding out clearly, and never uncertainly, nor indistinctly. It tells of sin, and its terrible rebellion against a loving, just God, and its inevitable, awful consequences here and eternally; it tells of the desperate evil of the human heart, our utter powerlessness of ourselves unaided to save ourselves; then of the precious blood of the Lord Jesus, that cleanseth wholly from all sin; and of the blessed power of the Holy Spirit, that gives victory over every sin. This is the one Gospel alike for Occident and Orient, for Southern hemisphere and for Northern, for heathen land, and Mohammedan, as for those lands favoured with the floodlight.