Oh Fools and Slow of Heart to Believe
From Signs of the Times—March
1, 1869.
Reply to our friend Isaac
Stewart. Continued from our last number.
“Then he said unto them,
O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought
not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?”
Luke 24:25,26.
These words were spoken by our risen Savior immediately after
his resurrection from the dead, to two of his disciples who, although they had
heard a report that he was risen, still lacked a satisfactory evidence that the
joy-inspiring assertion was true; for they still were communing in sadness on
the subject of his sufferings and death. They were disciples of Jesus, and were
by him recognized as such, and if their natural faculties had been made
spiritual by their new birth, it is safe to suppose their hearts would not have
been so slow to accredit the testimony of the witnesses who had announced his
resurrection, or the testimony of the prophets, and the words which Christ had
himself spoken to them before his crucifixion, in which he said he would rise
from the dead on the third day. It seems to us, if their faculties had come by a
spiritual birth directly from God, their recollection would have been less
treacherous, and their hearts less foolish; still there was in them a spiritual
vitality, burning in their hearts, while he talked with them by the way;
although the natural faculty of seeing was strangely defective. That they were
both of them subjects of saving grace, possessing in them an inner man that was
born of God, is clear from the very fact that they were sad at the events which
pleased wicked men and devils, and that their hearts could burn while Jesus
expounded to them the Scriptures. We cannot admit the theory that they were in
their new birth only begotten to a false or delusive hope, and that their
sadness arose from a disappointment of their expectation that Jesus was to have
delivered
Indeed we are unable to perceive any difference between the
condition of these two disciples, experimentally, and the disciples of later
times. If we are not altogether mistaken, there is in all the saints a principle
of spiritual life that is begotten and born of God, which feeds on every word
that proceeds from the mouth of God, and that kindles to a burning flame of
light, love and joy, when Jesus communes with them by the way, even when their
natural eyes are holden [kept from or prevented; Ed.], and all their natural
faculties are as closely holden from perceiving that it is Jesus who thus
communes with them, as were the eyes of these two disciples. The spouse of
Christ is heard to say, “I sleep, but my heart awaketh; it is the voice of my
Beloved that knocketh,” (Song 5:2). All our natural faculties may be locked in
unconscious slumber or stupefied, while at the seat of vitality in the new
heart, the voice is heard, recognized, and its awakening animation confessed.
The Old Testament saints could say in truth, “Verily thou art a God that hideth
thyself, O God of Israel, the Savior,” (Isa. 45:15). God himself, by his Spirit,
shines in the hearts of his saints, to give them the light of the knowledge of
his glory in the face of Jesus Christ. But although this heavenly light shines
in us, the darkness of our natural minds comprehends it not.
We do not understand our Lord as applying his words to the
two disciples, in a reproachful way, nor as charging them with idiocy in regard
to their natural faculties, or intelligence, nor does he use words to them which
may not be with equal propriety applied to us. No idiot can be more slow to
comprehend the things of nature than the Christian’s natural intellect or reason
is to comprehend the things which God is pleased to reveal to the faith of his
spiritual children.
Before we condemn these two disciples, as requiring to be
again begotten and born in order to be wise, or to have a good and vital hope of
immortality, let us enquire if we are not all of us as great fools as they were,
and as slow to believe all that the prophets have written. Let us take our Bible
and sit down and read all that the prophets have said or written, and tax our
intellectual faculties to unseal their spirituality to our understanding, and if
we do not convince ourselves that we are fools and slow of heart to believe,
comprehend and understand them, it will be simply because we are not Christians.
As successfully may we search for the sun at midnight, with a penny taper, as to
search for the sublime spiritualities of the Scriptures by the light of our
natural reason, with all the commentaries and expositions of the learned doctors
who set themselves up as teachers of divinity. Not one of all the heaven-born
heirs of glory has ever received the first correct understanding of the things
of the Spirit, until they had first became fools, that they might be wise. The
wisdom of the world is earthly, sensual and devilish, but that wisdom which is
from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full
of good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Pure from its fountain
in heaven there is nothing deceptive in it, for it is Christ, who of God is made
unto us [his children, the children of wisdom] wisdom and righteousness,
sanctification and redemption. We are all fools and slow of heart to believe
what the prophets have written, and none but Jesus can open the Scriptures to
our understanding, or bestow on us a capacity to understand when they are
rightly expounded. It is not necessary that Jesus, in order to open them to the
understanding of our faith, should stand in our presence, revealed in his person
to our natural eyes, or faculties. Shut up your eyes, and put out all the lights
of intellect, and darken every avenue that brings natural intelligence to the
natural understanding of natural men, and still the Christian’s new heart will
burn within him when Jesus draws near, by his Spirit, unperceived by reason, and
communes with him by the way, for it is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh
profiteth nothing. He says, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit,
and they are life,” (John 6:63). Now that Jesus is ascended up where he was
before, enthroned in glory, to be known after the flesh no more, how often he
draws nigh to his disciples as they journey and are sad; and unperceived by any
reasoning faculty of their nature, by his Spirit, through the gifts bestowed on
his church for mutual edification, or by the outpouring of his Spirit, with, or
without those gifts, makes our hearts burn within us, opens so clearly the
hidden treasures of his word, and beginning at Moses and all the prophets,
expounds unto us in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself, until the
light of eternity breaks into our hearts in the most blessed refulgence of the
glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ.
How lifeless and insipid to the heaven born soul, would even
the Scriptures be, if no Jesus were there. It was the expounding of the things
in the Scriptures concerning himself that set their hearts on fire.
As a fool in nature is one who has no capacity to comprehend
the things of nature, so the term was applied to the two disciples, and may be
to every disciple our Lord, in special reference to the total incapacity of our
natural mind and faculties to comprehend the things contained in the Scriptures
concerning the Lord Jesus, for it was clearly the case with these disciples. It
was their natural eyes that failed to see, and their natural senses which failed
to recognize the person of their risen Lord, while the new man of their heart
was drinking in, feeding and feasting upon the spiritual import of every word.
How striking is this exemplification of the total incapacity of the natural or
outward man to comprehend the things of the Spirit, which things the eye hath
not seen, ear hath not heard, neither have entered into the heart of man; but
God hath revealed them to his spiritual children by his Spirit. For while it is
emphatically declared that the flesh profiteth nothing, and that the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit, and that the things of the Spirit are
foolishness to the natural man, and that the natural man cannot know them,
because they can only be spiritually discerned; it is as positively declared,
that “He that is spiritual judgeth all things,” (1 Cor. 2:15). “But God hath
revealed them [the things of the Spirit] unto us by his Spirit,” (1 Cor. 2:10).
In our experience we see not God or Christ with the natural
eye. “No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the
bosom of the Father, hath revealed him,” (John 1:18; 1 John 4:12). Yet the same
apostle says, “The life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness,
and shew unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was
manifested unto us,” (1 John 1:2). It was not manifest to our natural eyes, but
to the eyes of our understanding, which are the eyes of the new man, which after
God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Flesh and blood cannot reveal
it, neither can it be revealed to flesh and blood, but to the faith of those who
have the faith of the Son of God; otherwise flesh and blood could inherit the
kingdom, or the things of the spiritual kingdom. The Holy Ghost has declared by
the inspired apostle, that “no man hath seen, nor can see,” nor approach unto
him “who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of
lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light,” (1 Tim. 6:15,16) “whom
having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye
rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory,” (1 Pet. 1:8). “This is life
eternal, [not life mortal] that they might know thee, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent,” (John 17:3). Jesus said to Philip, and also
to us, “He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father also.” “I am in the Father,
and the Father is in me.” But since the ascension of our risen Redeemer, no man
has with his natural eyes, or life, or intellectual faculties, ever seen the
Father or the Son; yet all who have eternal life have received a revelation of
both the Father and the Son, to their faith, to the eyes of their spiritual
understanding. Hence they who are born of the Spirit see the kingdom of God;
behold the King in his beauty, and behold the land that is very far off, while
all that nature, even in the saints which are born only of the flesh, remains in
utter darkness; for no man, either saints or sinner, by searching, or by the
light of nature or of reason can find out God. It is therefore unquestionably
true that we are all fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets
have spoken of the things concerning Jesus.
“Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter
into his glory?” This interrogatory was put to the disciples, and to us, that we
may the more fully appreciate the necessity of the sufferings and death of the
Redeemer. If viewed only as seen by men, and decided by human reason, and as
expressed by the disciples, it would seem only as a triumph of the powers of
darkness over the Son of God. To our carnal or fleshly minds it would seem as it
did to the taunting Jews, when they said in derision, “He saved others, let him
now save himself. If he be the Son of God, let him come down from the cross, and
we will believe on him,” (Matt. 27:42). But the question presses home the solemn
enquiry, Was there not a necessity for the sufferings and death of Christ? To
meet and answer this question all that the prophets have spoken, and all that is
written in the books of Moses, and in the Psalms, must be brought to bear upon
the subject, and Jesus, as the only efficient expounder of divine testimony
going before, must open these Scriptures, in their testimony of him. With our
natural senses we see, or read, the account of a man of sorrow, treacherously
betrayed by a professed disciple who was numbered with the apostles, rudely
seized by an armed band of men, led away unresistingly to Pilate, confronted by
a clamorous mob, impeached by false testimony, condemned to die, and led to the
place of execution as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep is dumb before his
shearers, so he opened not his mouth. He was nailed to the cross, and crucified.
Writhing in agony, he cried, “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?” He
dies, and is taken down from the cross and laid away in the tomb, and a guard of
soldiers watch his sepulcher, with a strict charge to keep him there. In the
absence of the Scriptures on the subject, what more natural conclusion than that
implied in the words of the disciples? “We trusted that it had been he that
should have redeemed
But to return to the question, —Ought not Christ to have
suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? Aside from the purpose of
God, and the things written of him in the Scriptures, we confess we can see no
just cause for his sufferings. He was holy and harmless, and separate from
sinners. No guile could be detected in his mouth, or heart. There was nothing
found to justify those who put him to death; they were charged with the crime of
murder in his case, for they hated him without a cause, and with wicked hands
crucified him. Short of the revelation which God has made in the Scriptures, we
boldly challenge the wisdom of men to show any just cause for his crucifixion.
Yet there was a cause, a just, a righteous cause, which we
can only comprehend when Jesus by his Spirit opens our understanding, that we
may understand the Scriptures. Then he says to us, as he said to them, “Thus it
is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the
third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his
name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem,” (Luke 24:47). This settles the
matter, and answers the question. He came down from heaven to do and suffer all
things which were written, and heaven and earth should pass away, but not a jot
or tittle of the Scriptures should fail till all was fulfilled. The Old
Testament Scriptures had foretold of his sufferings and of the glory that should
follow. Moses in his law, and in all the ritual of Judaism, has declared this in
the sacrifices and offerings which were under the law, and all the prophets had
predicted his sufferings, and the Psalms dwelt largely on the same subject. Thus
showing that he was delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God, to be put to death by wicked men and with wicked hands.
Again, it behooved him to suffer and to rise from the dead,
to accomplish the redemption and salvation of his people. It was the will of the
Father; and the Father’s will is the supreme and eternal law and standard of
righteousness. Nothing but right can be entertained in his will, and therefore
nothing in opposition to his will can be right, however it may seem to our
feeble judgment. It was the Father’s will that of all that he had given to
Christ he should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. It
therefore behooved Christ to suffer. It pleased the Father to bruise him; he
hath put him to grief. He has laid on him the iniquities of all his chosen
people, and he was delivered to die for our offences, and was raised from the
dead for our justification. Without this suffering, repentance could not be
granted unto them. The law that they had transgressed knew nothing of repentance
nor of mercy. The transgressor died without mercy; for the law neither required
nor accepted repentance. Its stern decree was, “The soul that sinneth, it shall
die.” Neither repentance nor remission of sins can be consistent with the nature
of the law. In order then to open the prison to them that were bound, to redeem
them from the dominion and wrath of the law, and bring them under law to Christ,
it behooved him to put away their sins by the sacrifice of himself. And having
risen from the dead he is exalted high upon his Mediatorial throne, to be a
Prince and a Savior, to give [not demand] repentance unto
Lengthy as we have made this article, we could extend our
remarks indefinitely, without any fear of exhausting the subject. But what we
have written we submit to our friend Stewart, and to such of our readers as feel
interested.
