06.1.4. The Remedy for Man
IV. -- THE REMEDY FOR MAN
SUCH is man, -- such is his way, such are its fruits. Now let us see the remedy. This too has stages, all of God; first a Call, then a Promise, then a Gift, from Him.
First comes a Call, a voice which will be heard, to convince man of his state, saying, "Where art thou?" (Genesis 3:9). A voice which may sound in different ways, but which in all is crying to draw man back again; at first only convicting of sin, yet by this very conviction laying the foundation for man’s recovery; leading man to come to himself before it is too late, that he may come to his Father, and from Him receive another life; and asking, though man oft turns a deaf ear, why we are not with Him, who still loves and yearns over us.
Then comes a Promise, full of grace and truth, touching the woman’s Seed (Genesis 3:15); a promise not to old Adam, for the old man is fallen, and must pay the penalty: -- no reprieve is given to the flesh: the cross which saves us is Adam’s condemnation: -- but a promise to the Seed or New Man, who shall be born, in and by whom man shall regain paradise. And as the promise is not to Adam, so, strictly speaking, there is now no trial of him. What Adam is, has been already proved. Blessed with every gift, through self he spoils all. Man therefore must die, but in the Son of Man man’s line is restored and raised up again. The fall of man, like the fall of the year, by God’s almighty love and wisdom opens the door for broader and richer seed-times. The very grave becomes the cradle of life, and death the way to resurrection. The new man springs out of the old, and from its grave, as a fair flower in spring out of the dark earth. For the Son of Man is indeed true man, though every man is not a son of man. (Note: Man and the Son of Man are not the same. Adam, for instance, was man, but not the son of man. The son of man is the new man, which grows by grace out of the old man. So David says: "What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him?" Again, "Thou preservest man and beast, but the sons of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings." -- Psalms 8:4; Psalms 36:7. Augustine speaks much of this difference, Enar. in Psalm. viii.) In the Son or Seed the curse is overcome. All that rose up in man falls in and by the Son of Man; and all that fell in man is raised again in the Son of Man, the Seed, the heavenly man. The promise cannot fail to this Seed. Unlike the first covenant, which, being of law, needed two parties, the better covenant needs but one, for it is a promise, and is fulfilled by the Promiser. Henceforth blessing stands not on a creature’s will, but on deeper, safer ground, even the Lord’s will. "Thou shalt" now gives place to "I will." If we are heirs, it is "according to the promise" (Galatians 3:29). Nor is the promise all. God adds a Gift: -- "The Lord God made them coats of skins and clothed them" (Genesis 3:21). Again He works, for sin had broken his rest; working, as ever, to restore blessedness; to cover not with fig-leave screens only that part of our nakedness which is before each of us; but to give us, upon us, in token of our state, -- for the skins spoke of death, and so confessed trespass, -- a covering which, while it puts us in our place, as sinful creatures, yet shelters us.
Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps; fire and hail; snow and vapours; stormy wind fulfilling His word; mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars; beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl; kings of the earth, and all people; princes, and all judges of the earth; both young men, and maidens; old men, and children; let them praise the name of the Lord; for His name alone is excellent; His glory is above the earth and heaven.
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There is yet another view of man, which gives us the dispensational fulfilment of the same history. In this view Christ and the Church appear. He is "the Man," who "left father and mother and was joined to His wife." While He slept, she was made out of Him; and they two became one flesh (Ephesians 5:31-32). (Note: Aug. in Psalm. cxxvii. (E.V. 128,) § 11; Enar. in Psalm. cxxvi. (E.V. 127,) § 7. This interpretation is common to all the Fathers.) This is "the woman, which is of the Man," and this is "the Man who is also by the woman" (1 Corinthians 11:12). For Christ is both the woman’s Seed and Lord: the "Man who was not deceived" (1 Timothy 2:14), but who by the woman and for her came under judgment. And in this view the expression here used as to the formation of the woman shadows forth a mystery. For we read "He builded a woman" (Genesis 2:22, Margin); (Note: Heb. banah [H1129]. Hieron. in Amos 9:6.) and of the Church it is often said, that she is "builded." "All the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:21-22). So gifts are "for the building of the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:12), (Note: eis oikodomen, k.t.l.) a building which grows without sound of axe or hammer. Without it the Man is not perfect: the woman is "the filling up of Him that filleth all in all" (Ephesians 1:23). Such is the Church in its relation to Christ: one flesh, one life, one spirit, with Him; bearing His upright form, made like to Him, to be an imitator of God, with a nature more than animal, -- for "among the beasts there was no help-meet for Adam" (Genesis 2:20), nor can His Bride "bear the mark or number of the beast" (Revelation 13:17). For she is one, pure, holy Church; a body of many members, not united by likeness of outward form, -- for the eye is unlike the hand and foot, and some are outward and seen, and some are unseen, -- but linked together by the bond of common life, each in its place and measure completing the body, which is one Church, one "Mother of all living," the Bride, all whose members are encircled in the divine arms, and included in the divine love, which, because it is divine and eternal and almighty, has breadth and length and depth and height enough to hold them all. This is the Church, the woman whose "power is on her Head," and whose Head and Lord is "the image and glory of God" (1 Corinthians 11:7; 1 Corinthians 11:10), formed in the earth to rule all beasts and creatures, and to have "all things put in subjection under His feet" (Hebrews 2:8). This is indeed "a great mystery," when seen as "concerning Christ and the Church" (Ephesians 5:32); and leads to depths where fallen creatures cannot follow, for "no man knoweth the Son but the Father" (Matthew 11:27). But this we know, that in Him we have life; and what we know not now, we shall know hereafter.