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  WRITINGS OF JOHN A MACLEOD
  by John A. Macleod
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A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by John A. Macleod,
compiled for study and devotional reading.

  Chapters: 3

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 00.00. Macleod, John A. - Library
    2. S.     The Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God
    3. S.     The Inspiration of the Scriptures

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  CHAPTER 1: 00.00. MACLEOD, JOHN A. - LIBRARY
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Macleod, John A. - Library S. The Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God S. The
Inspiration of the Scriptures


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  CHAPTER 2: S.     THE DOCTRINE OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD
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The Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God

John Macleod

John Macleod (1872-1948) was Principal of the Free Church of Scotland College,
Edinburgh. This address was published in The Evangelical Quarterly (1941). The
Lord is the true God and an everlasting King. He is the Maker of all things and
as such He is their Lord. They are His work which He has made for Himself. They
belong to His Lordship or Kingdom. They owe their being to His will and word. In
the wide range of derived or created being which all belongs to His realm and is
embraced in His decree there is not only the region of the inanimate or the
merely sentient there is that also of animate and intelligent or spiritual being
which was made to hold fellowship with Him from Whom it has come. Angels that
excel in strength belong to this realm. We also who are of an order that was
made a little lower than they belong to it as well. And we have a closer and
more personal concern with the truth that bears on our race and on ourselves
than we have with what holds good of another, albeit a higher rank of being than
our own.

We each of us as well as the whole race to which we belong are subject to the
sceptre of the Blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords.
Made in His likeness and for His glory we should have our blessedness in Him. In
regard to this we are as much dependent on the Lord for our blessedness as we
are for our very being; and this we are not only as creatures as our first
father was before he fell, but very specially do we depend on Him for the
recovery of blessedness as creatures that have sinned. Sinners have earned the
wrath and curse of God and if they are to be freed from His righteous wrath it
can be only as the outcome of His holy will in gracious intervention. The evil
thing from which we need to be set free takes the shape of war with God. The
very mind or thinking of man as fallen is enmity against Him. It is not subject
to His law neither indeed can be, and so long as the reign of this evil
principle remains unbroken those who are under its sway cannot please God. They
have their wicked quarrel with Him; and cherishing the thought of rebels, they
are not willing to own Him as King or to give Him the glory of His kingly
supremacy. They will not submit to the revelation of His will in Law as the rule
of their obedience. Their quarrel with His royal rights comes out directly in
their self-will which casts off His yoke. They would still, like their first
father, be a God to themselves. And they dare to set up what falls in with their
own pleasure against what He is pleased to make known as His preceptive will.
The intimation of His preceptive will is one of the ways in which the great King
makes it known that He is King. Those that would dethrone or ignore Him by
ruling His authority out of their lives set at nought His will. They say in
effect that their tongues are their own. Who is Lord over them? Thus the virus
that was injected into the race by the tempter at the first is still at work and
men will not yield to the claims of God as He calls for a loyal response in
obedience at the hand of a race that He made to be His subjects and His
servants. This is one side of God’s sovereignty; and it is often overlooked and
forgotten when we speak of the matter. And yet when our attention is drawn to it
we see at once how it belongs to His Kingly glory that it should be His revealed
will that ought to guide the outgoings of our soul in the varied obedience of
life. As a rule among Christian people there is an acknowledgment of this
Kingship even though the best of them have reason to mourn over how far they
come short of the love and the loyalty that should be theirs as their answer to
the righteous claims of God. We see however that even on this side in regard to
the obedience due to his Maker by man as fallen there is a disposition shown by
many to reduce the claim that God makes at the hand of the sinner as though the
sinful disability that man has brought upon himself availed to exempt him from
some share of the full tale of duty for which his Maker calls. This perversion
of truth may take more forms than one. The plea may be put forward that man is
responsible for only what is within the reach and compass of his present power.
When this ground is taken we see how those who adopt it as their starting-point
and yet acknowledge the right of God to call for repentance and faith stand out
for a seriously weakened and watered-down doctrine of the disastrous results of
the Fall on the race of mankind, and they reason that when men are called upon
to repent and believe the Gospel they must have some reserve of power still
inherent in their nature which lays a rational ground for asking such obedience
at their hand. Along this line lies Pelagianism with its diluted varieties and
modifications in Semi-Pelagian Synergism and Arminianism. Those who espouse this
kind of teaching reason from "I must" to "I can." They infer that there is power
when there is duty. The pride of unbroken and unhumbled human nature comes out
in the Kantian ethic that deduces "I can" from "I ought." It forgets that the
disability which comes in the train of sin does not take away from God the right
to ask for the love and the service to yield which He made us in His likeness at
the first. To take this away from Him would be as much as to say that sin has so
far reached its goal as to spoil our Maker of His right to call for full and
unabated obedience at the hand of men who have fallen away from Him. Now the
teaching that finds a place for such a leaven joins issue with the truth that
the Lord is King. It quarrels with the rightful authority that belongs to Him as
Maker and Sovereign.

This, however, is not all. If there are left-hand defections there are
right-hand extremes. For among those who own the truth of the spiritual
bankruptcy of a fallen race there are some who reason that because man as a
sinner is unable, until he is born again, to repent or to believe the Gospel he
is not called upon to do either and it would not be reasonable that he should be
called upon to yield such obedience. It is said to be a mockery of his misery or
it is a suggestion that he is not so lost as not to be able to make his way back
to God. Now it is neither the one thing nor the other. It is not a mockery of
the wretchedness of the sinner which on the part of his fellow in sin would be a
very heartless thing. It is the way that God Himself takes in His Word in
dealing with the many that are called outwardly so many of whom hear and heed
not. For many are called while few are chosen. He bids men make them a new heart
and this is fitted, when they try to comply with the Word and find how
wretchedly they fail to let them see the wickedness and stubbornness of hearts
that will neither tremble nor obey. And at the same time it is fitted to produce
the conviction that such is the grip of spiritual death that nothing else can
loosen it than the new birth from above which gives life to the dead. Such a
method conveys no suggestion that the thing a man ought to do he can do. He
ought to do it and he has to learn that what he ought to do he cannot do and
that this is the pit of hopeless ruin into which his sin has plunged him. It is
a bitter thing to learn this truth but it is a wholesome truth to learn. It is
not we, who are only called upon to echo His Word, but God Himself that bids the
impenitent repent, the unbelieving believe and the dead to do what only the
living can do. In doing all this God is within His own right and He vindicates
the wisdom of the way that He is pleased to take when He brings in sinners
guilty in the court of conscience and makes them feel that they are quite
consciously impotent by reason of the dominion of death over their nature. When
He does this He teaches the truth of spiritual death in the hard school of a
living experience. This is something more than acquaintance with doctrinal
notions. God convinces those whom He thus teaches that they must depend on Him
as God Who quickeneth the dead Who alone can give effect to His own Word of
truth and Who alone can burst the bonds that lie on the person and his powers
over which the apathy of death holds its sway. The subjects of this teaching can
speak of things whose truth they have been made to feel. That our race should be
in such a sad plight is a mystery that we are bound to recognise to be one that
we cannot fathom; and it is folly on our part to try to explain it away by our
proud and empty reasonings. In his pride man the culprit would take as his own
the seat of the Judge and arraign his Judge at his bar as though the roles of
Judge and culprit were reversed. He forgets that He with Whom he has to do is
One that giveth not account of His matters and is not amenable to the judgment
of the creatures that owe their very being to His Kingly fiat. Well would it
become each one of us in things of this kind to hearken to the Voice that spoke
of old at the Bush — "Take off thy shoes from off they feet for the place
whereon thou standest is holy ground." The truth of scripture has a catholicity
of its own, an all-round fulness and symmetry that man with his nibbling cavils
would mar and mutilate. The whole truth as to man’s awful ruin is to be held and
taught subject to no abatement and the full tale of God’s unabridged rights and
claims is at the same time to be held and taught along with it. And so the
two-fold truth that man ought to obey and yet he cannot is to be maintained in
its integrity. There is a lofty superiority to the whittling schemes of man to
be seen in the way in which the Word of God sets forth both sides of this truth
doing full justice to each alike. And in this respect our Reformed Faith in its
fullest confession and expression as it sets forth standard Reformed teaching in
such symbolic documents as the Canons of Dort and the Westminster Confession of
Faith is a true echo of the doctrine of the Word which these notable symbols
undertook to declare and to defend. The sacred rights of Law as an utterance of
the holy will of God are guarded and at the same time unmistakable witness is
borne to the need that there is for the saving operation of God so that man may
be restored to the likeness he has lost. He will only in this way be enabled to
answer the end of his being when he answers the end of his calling in wearing
the yoke of his Redeeming Lord. We are thus brought up to face the question of
what effects this precious result. And this is the other aspect of Sovereignty
which is to be seen not in the authoritative proclamation of the preceptive will
of God the Lawgiver and King but in His decisive will as He appoints things to
be in His eternal decree. This second aspect of His Sovereignty of which we are
now to speak is what is oftenest indicated by the word when in doctrinal debates
it is used of God. Stress is laid in historical and dogmatic discussions on the
disposal of all things according to the purpose of God as that is wrought out in
the field of universal providence. At times the word predestination may be used
in a narrower and at other times in a wider sense. The stress of thought may be
laid on the decree that bears in electing grace on the destiny of the people of
God and its twin decree which bears on the appointed destiny of those that He is
pleased to pass over and to ordain to wrath and to dishonour as the reward of
their sin. In the wider sense of predestination it covers all events so that God
is seen to have preordained whatsoever comes to pass and the regularity of
natural law is due to His appointment as to the necessary action of second
causes according to the nature that He has bestowed upon them and their
consequent appropriate working. In the course of His government in providence He
works out what He has decreed so that these second or subordinate cases have
their field of a proper operation and activity according to the nature of each
of them. Thus events that are contingent fall out contingently and what is
necessary has its own necessity. In the range of this latter category,
paradoxical as it may sound it is necessary that the functioning of the created
will should be free so that if it is to be exercised at all there is a needs be
that it should be free. Thus rational freedom and necessity are found to
conspire sweetly in the production of the actions of free agents. Here there is
a necessity that has in its nature nothing of the character of the compelling
force that overbears rational freedom; and so the predestination of God does not
clash with the responsible freedom with which He has endowed accountable
creatures whom He has put under Law and laid under obligation to honour Him by
obeying it. When a free agent in the exercise of his personal natural
spontaneity takes a course of action it was certain beforehand that he would
take such a course and should be naturally free in doing so. For God Who
appointed before that such a course should be taken, in doing so appointed that
it should be taken by a free agent in the natural exercise of his proper
freedom. Such an appointment does not mar the freedom of the agent or his
responsibility for his act. So far is this from being the case that it made sure
that without any compulsion the action should take place and that it should be
free when it took place. And appointment of this kind lays no kind of blind or
brute necessity upon a free agent which interferes with his native spontaneous
freedom or binds the agent hand and foot to be or to do anything else than he
sees fit to choose for himself. Thus the Sovereignty of God in His purpose of
predestination or preordination is a guarantee beforehand that when the time and
place come for rational accountable action such action shall be taken in the
full tale of its rationality and responsibility. That God has appointed that a
thing should be free is what secures and makes certain that it shall be so. It
makes it certain beforehand; and this certainty does not come in conflict with
the truth of the freedom of the willing agent when he in due course wills to act
and acts as he has willed. It is a mere bugbear that is conjured up when men say
that the predestination of God with its attendant certainty prohibits the free
eventuation of the acts of responsible agents. God has appointed that
responsible action should be that of free agents in the exercise of their choice
as it commends itself to them and as they shall answer for it. To say that the
purpose beforehand to make a being endowed with rational freedom is inconsistent
with the true freedom of that being when made is as much as to say that no truly
free and accountable creature can exist; for to be such a free creature is only
the thought of the Creator Who designed to make such a being. The creature will
is free as it chooses what the person sees to be good for choice. It was made to
be free and the purpose to make it was a purpose to make it what it was meant to
be. There is thus no quarrel between man’s creation as a morally free being and
his freedom, and there is no more of a quarrel between that freedom and God’s
purpose to make beings endowed with such a freedom. Man made in the likeness and
for the service of his Maker was not meant to be a mere piece of automatic
mechanism grinding out irresponsibly thought and desire and — shall we call it?
— volition. In his own sphere he was meant to be an originating centre of
spontaneous and voluntary acts and of an activity that is a reflection on the
plane of created life and being of the supreme and controlling activity of the
will of God our Maker. Thus the Sovereign counsel of God has effect given to it,
and yet it not only does not impinge upon the entire freedom of the will of free
agents, it has in its certainty of execution the pledge that each responsible
creature of His hand shall have all the freedom that is needed for the
responsibility for which He has given it being.

There is then a perfect harmony between the will of a Sovereign God, the blessed
and only Potentate, as effectual and controlling and transcendent, and the will
or freedom of His responsible creatures who take the way that commends itself to
their choice. At one and the same time the will of God is sovereign and supreme
and the will of man is naturally and morally free. Neither has a real quarrel
with the other, though the perverse and rebel will of fallen man has its steady
quarrel from day to day with the preceptive will of the Holy Sovereign of heaven
and earth. The exercise then of the will of the creature leaves him open to the
account that he has to give in. His responsibility is unimpaired. And it is
altogether an oblique view that is taken of the supreme control and certainty of
God’s decretive will when it is seen as if it were in conflict with the
fundamental and undeniable truth that we as a race are amenable to the judgment
in righteousness of the great King Eternal, Immortal and Invisible.

There is no conflict at this point. In a word we may say that as surely as God
is sovereign man is free, and as surely as man is free God is sovereign. In the
sovereignty that belongs to Him He so controls the thoughts and desires and
volitions of His creatures as to carry out through their free and responsible
activity what He has Himself designed. His supremacy sets bounds to the activity
of His creatures so that at the very time and in the very thing in which they
please themselves they are giving effect to His transcendent design. And this is
so even should it be the thought of their heart that they are bent on
frustrating His counsel by doing their own will and pleasure. When their
self-will reaches its highest His controlling hand is above it.

There is of course an important distinction in the meaning we put upon the word
free when we apply it to the ordinary rational choice and activity of every man
in every day life which marks it out from the sense that attaches to it when we
deny the spiritual freedom of the natural man and ascribe freedom in things
spiritual to those only whose spiritual freedom of will has been given back to
them by the touch of renewing grace. On such subjects as fall to be discussed in
this connection we cannot be too careful as to the precise sense in which we and
others use the words that are the coinage of thought. It is the failure to
define our terms and to adhere to the definition if made and accepted that
brings in the confusion that is found so often in the handling of topics in
which ambiguity lurks at every corner, owing to the various shades of meaning
that belong to the same words, as they are used in the dialect of the various
schools of thought. It is one of the benefits that issue from dogmatic or
theological conflict that the combatants are forced by the necessity of the case
to clear their ground and to use their terms with a respectable amount of
self-consistency. In the field of philosophy we may ascribe to man a freedom
that in the contiguous field of theology we deny to him. And when we understand
the terms that we use in these neighbouring realms of thought we see that it is
quite consistent to ascribe to man as a moral agent an inalienable freedom,
while in regard to spiritual service to God his Maker, we deny to him as fallen
the true and holy freedom which was his glory in his unfallen state. Then to do
God’s will was man’s true delight; and such delight he cannot again have in the
will and Law of God until that Law is written on the fleshy tablets of a new
heart as the promise of the New Covenant has been made good to him. By the
misuse of his natural freedom of will man lost both himself and his true
liberty. He is thus without the power to yield the homage of a loyal heart to
the will of God. This being so, he is often spoken of as being destitute of
freedom of will in which usage power and freedom are almost convertible or
interchangeable terms. He is in bondage as fallen to the depravity of his nature
so as not to be able to choose or to will as he should. This inability is
bondage which is the negation of freedom. Yet as he is in possession of
spontaneity of action and makes his own choice, he has a natural freedom that is
enough to leave him responsible for the choice that he makes and the course that
he takes.

It is in regard to the bondage of the will to sin that on the field of history,
discussion took place in the Pelagian controversy. For the Pelagians denied the
truth of the teaching of the orthodox which laid stress on the spiritual bondage
of man as a fallen being. In connection with this denial they had their quarrel
with the sovereign will of God in regard to the dispensation of His grace; and
this quarrel has passed on along the line of their avowed successors such for
instance as the Socinians. In a modified form we find the Semi-Pelagian strain
taking up this teaching and so quarreling with the free and absolute sovereignty
of God’s will in the distribution of His saving favour and salvation. This holds
of the earlier and later Semi-Pelagians so that the Arminians both of the early
seventeenth century and of the Methodist movement, join hands with the first
representatives of their tendency in raising opposition to the freedom and
sovereignty of the love and will of God in the choice of a people who shall reap
the good of His thoughts of saving grace. The criticism that Pelagianism in its
several varieties makes on the truth of the sovereignty of grace, is rooted in
the unhumbled and self-righteous thoughts of men who fail to see that they are
indeed sinners or who have no just or serious sense of the evil of sin and the
righteousness of the doom that is out against it and that lies upon the sinner
because of it. An uncircumcised heart is its source. The objections that an
Apostle had to face recur down the ages. Men will still say "Who hath resisted
His will?" so that they have to be told that it does not belong to the thing
that is made to say to its Maker, "Why hast Thou made me thus?" They need to be
told that God our Maker is our Lord and King, being all that He is and all that
the ideal Lord and King must be. If to be an ideal king among men one must be
wise and just and true and good, these things raised to the height of full
perfection and bearing the stamp of unending immutability belong to the
Sovereign of heaven and earth. If a king to be a king indeed must be good, He is
good. There is none good but one; that is God. If he must be true, He is true.
If he must be just, He is just. If he must be wise He is wise. If he must be
mighty He is mighty. And in all these things He is infinite, eternal and
unchangeable while over and above His wisdom, power, justice, goodness and truth
He is as perfect in the beauty of His holiness as He is in all His other
attributes. Of such a One it is not to be thought that he should not be trusted
even in the dark. Nor should we dare to think of Him and of His ways as though
He were subject to our judgment while as a matter of fact we are subject to His
judgment and not He to ours. Thus in the infinitude of His Being there are
depths that no plumb line of ours can fathom so that it is sheer presumption on
the side of man to take the measuring rod of his own creature mind to measure
the thoughts and ways of One Whose judgments are unsearchable and Whose ways are
past finding out. In these things it is our best wisdom to be clad with true
lowliness of mind for we are dealing with things that are so high above us that
we cannot order our speech by reason of darkness. When such wisdom is shown as
keeps man within his proper bounds he will sit as a little child at the
footstool of God as He speaks in His Word and will say, "I will hear what the
Lord will speak." It is to souls of such gracious docility that those things of
the Kingdom are made known which are hid from the wise and prudent. They are of
such a temper because they have been born from above and this new birth is the
outflow and the token of the high sovereign and distinguishing love of Him Who
in His counsel of peace and purpose of love set them apart from everlasting to
be His own.

It is a fruit of God’s kingly choice that comes out in the efficacious gracious
work of the Holy Ghost. For there is a bond that binds into one scheme or system
the truths of the doctrines of grace. These doctrines are part of one whole.
With God’s sovereign choice goes hand in hand His kingly provision and
destination of the redeeming work of His Son in the effectual working of His
gracious call as He quickens His called ones to newness of life. It is this
working that begets faith; and the conversion or the turning of the sinner to
God is the result of the renewing of his will which has been wrought by the
effectual call. The newness of life thus given is seen in an abiding inclination
of the called ones to new obedience so that the renewal of their will prompts
them willingly to abide in Him to Whom they have betaken themselves and thus
they persevere in the faith and in new obedience. This willing abiding in the
Vine or in the City of Refuge tells of the operation in real grace of the love
that in the purpose of grace sets apart its objects to be vessels prepared unto
glory. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit, so that the new born have
that in them that cleaves to the Lord and His good ways. The outflow of
sovereign choice in electing love is found in the reality of the new life of the
regenerate which beginning at their call shall reach its crown of completion in
the achieved perfection of the subjects of grace here in the kingdom of glory
hereafter.

Before the Pelagian controversy arose what was in substance the system that
called forth the witness of Augustine to the doctrines of grace had been taught
by men like Clement of Alexandria and other Church teachers in whose case their
philosophy gave law to their theology. That philosophy had at its heart a pagan
strain. Along with the earlier philosophic theologians we may take the general
strain of the teachers of the Greek Church who were not given to an Augustinian
type of teaching. The influence of Augustine as one of the recognised and
accepted doctors of the Church told on the Western Churches in such a succession
as we find in the names of outstanding teachers like Anselm and Bernard and so
far as Aquinas, so that there was a definite Augustinian tradition which gave
the Evangelical element to the mixed teaching of the Middle Ages. A Gottschalk
might be condemned and a Semi-Pelagian strain might prevail among the Scotists
and the Franciscans of pre-Reformation days. Yet so great was the authority that
was recognised as belonging to Augustine that when the threads of Mediaeval
Scholasticism were woven into one fabric at Trent, the Council aimed at avoiding
any finding that would come in conflict with the teaching of the great bishop of
Hippo while with equal care it sought to shun any form of words that would
condemn the Semi-Pelagianism which was rampant in the current teaching of the
Church and the Schools. So intellectual acrobats went through their gymnastic
exercises of balancing themselves on the tight rope by coming to noncommittal
findings which kept their doctrine from being too definite on the one side or
the other of debated questions which were open in the Schools. The Augustinian
strain that came out in Jansenius and Baius was a much more emphatic utterance
of the doctrine of grace than the teaching that found acceptance in Lutheran
circles from the later days of Melanchthon’s life onward or in the beginnings of
the Arminian movement in the Reformed Churches. The earlier stage of the
Reformation showed the leading teachers of the Protestant world to be very much
at one as to the gratuitous character of the Gospel salvation. Their movement
was indeed a resurgence of the teaching of the Doctor of Grace. This marked them
out to begin with from the half-way men of the Humanistic Reform. In the main
features of their teaching the first Reformers were at one as to the gracious
character of salvation. They were also at one with the teaching of the line of
the Augustinian witnesses of earlier days except that in the sphere of relative
grace they made a great advance in setting forth the truth as taught by the
Apostles in regard to the free Justification by faith of the believing sinner.
This advance made clear the distinction between grace as it renews the nature
and grace as it rectifies the standing of those to whom it is shown. As things
came about the defence of the truly gratuitous character of the provision of the
Gospel fell to be made by the Reformed as distinct from the Lutheran Churches.
They were in the Augustinian tradition on the subject. In the Church of England
in Post-Reformation days, the first uprising of a type of teaching that came in
conflict with the true teaching of its Confession was firmly repressed and the
Lambeth Articles made plain to the world the strict Reformed orthodoxy of the
leaders of the Anglican Communion in the latter days of Queen Elizabeth. It was
not then to be wondered at that the representatives of England at the Synod of
Dort should join in the condemnation of Arminianism and in the profession of the
Reformed Faith in regard to the decree of God which recognises His holy
sovereignty in the dispensing of His saving favour. The findings of the renowned
ecumenical Synod of the Reformed Churches set forth their faith as it was held
in the great theological age which followed the Reformation itself when the
divines of Western Protestant Europe were thoroughly at home in the kind of
questions that were at issue between their Churches and Rome and in particular
were alive to the meaning of the marked Semi-Pelagian teaching of their Jesuit
opponents who were the foremost champions of the Papacy as they were the keenest
critics of the doctrine of the Reformers. It was no convention of novices or of
weaklings that met at Dort in 1618. They had among their leaders and counselors
some of the foremost divines of their day. And the conclusions at which they
arrived in the avowal of their faith and in the condemnation of error were not
hastily come to. They were the ripe decisions of a generation of Theologians who
were at home in their subject, expert in wielding their weapons and temperate
and restrained in the terms in which they set forth their judgment. Coming as
they did in point of time after the National Confessions and Catechisms of the
Reformed Churches, even after the Irish Articles of 1615, except the documents
of the Westminster Assembly they with these documents of British origin are the
culminating exhibition of our common Reformed Faith when it was called upon to
unfold its inmost genius and essence in self-defence against the revived
Semi-Pelagianism of the early Arminians. Their statements on these subjects put
in short compass the dogmatic teaching of our Churches. Thus the Canons of Dort
say:

Art. 1. "As all men have sinned in Adam, and have become exposed to the curse
and eternal death, God would have done no injustice to anyone, if He had
determined to leave the whole human race under sin and the curse, and to condemn
them on account of sin . . . ."

Art. 2. But "in this is the love of God manifested, that He sent His only
begotten Son into the world that everyone who believeth in Him should not perish
but have everlasting life . . . ."

Art. 3. But that men may be brought to faith, God mercifully sends heralds of
this most joyful message to whom He willeth, and when He willeth, by whose
ministry men are called to repentance, and faith in Christ crucified.

Art. 4. They who believe not the Gospel on them the wrath of God remaineth, but
those who receive it, and embrace the Saviour Jesus with a true and living faith
are, through Him, delivered from the wrath of God and endowed with the gift of
everlasting life.

Art. 5. The cause or fault of this unbelief as also of all other sins, is by no
means in God, but in man. But faith in Jesus Christ and salvation by Him, is the
free gift of God . . . ."

Art. 6. That some, in time, have faith given them by God and others have it not
given, proceeds from His eternal decree . . . . according to which decree, He
graciously softens the hearts of the elect, however hard, and He bends them to
believe; but the non-elect He leaves, in just judgment, to their own perversity
and hardness. And here, especially, a deep discrimination, at the same time both
merciful and just, a discrimination of men equally lost opens itself to us; or
that decree of Election and Reprobation which is revealed in the Word of God . .
. ."

Art 7. But Election is the immutable purpose of God, by which before the
foundations of the world were laid, He chose out of the whole human race, fallen
by their own fault from their primeval integrity into sin and destruction,
according to the most free good pleasure of His own will, and of mere grace, a
certain number of men neither better nor worthier than others, but lying in the
same misery with the rest, to salvation in Christ; Whom He had, even from
eternity, constituted Mediator and Head of all the elect, and the foundation of
salvation; and therefore He decreed to give them unto Him to be saved; and
effectually to call and draw them into communion with Him, by His own Word and
Spirit; or He decreed Himself to give unto them true faith, to justify, to
sanctify, and at length powerfully to glorify them, having kept them in the
communion of His Son; to the demonstration of His mercy and the praise of the
riches of His glorious grace . . . ."

Art. 9. This same Election is not made from any foreseen faith, obedience of
faith, holiness, or any other good quality and disposition, as a pre-requisite
cause or condition in the men who should be elected but unto faith, and unto the
obedience of faith, holiness, &c. And therefore Election is the fountain of
every saving benefit; whence faith, holiness, and the other salutary gifts and
finally eternal life itself, flow as its fruit and effect . . . ."

Art. 10. Now the cause of this gratuitous Election, is the sole good pleasure of
God, not consisting in this, that He elected into the condition of salvation
certain qualities or human actions, from all that were possible; but in that out
of the common multitude of sinners, He took to Himself certain persons as His
peculiar property . . . ."

Art. 11. And as God Himself is most wise, immutable, omniscient and omnipotent;
so, Election made by Him can neither be interrupted, changed, recalled, nor
broken off; nor can the Elect be cast away, nor the number of them be
diminished." This teaching is but an exposition or expansion of the teaching of
the Belgic Confession in what it has to say on the subject. So in brief compass
the Second Helvetic Confession which found so wide an acceptance in the Reformed
Churches says: "God hath from the beginning freely and of His mere grace without
any respect of men predestinated or elected the saints whom He will save in
Christ." So also we find in the Irish Articles which passed through the hands of
James Ussher such words as these: "By the same eternal counsel, God hath
predestinated some unto life, and reprobated some unto death, of both which
there is a certain number known only to God which can neither be increased nor
diminished." This choice these Articles go on to attribute only to the good
pleasure of God Himself. There is no question as to the agreement of the
Westminster documents with the common consensus of the Reformed Churches as they
deal with this matter of Divine Sovereignty and Predestination.


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  CHAPTER 3: S.     THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES
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The Inspiration of the Scriptures

John Macleod

John Macleod (1872-1948) was Principal of the Free Church of Scotland College,
Edinburgh. This address was published in The Evangelical Quarterly (1935). When
we speak of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures we are dealing with one of
the doctrines of the Christian faith. It is from the Scriptures themselves alone
that we can learn at first hand what the claims are that they make in regard to
their own origin and authority. It holds of any of the doctrines of the faith
that if we would know it we are called upon to learn it on proper authority.
That is to say it rests on the statements made in the Bible in regard to it by
Prophets and Apostles. It may pass into acceptance in the Church in currently
professed form as a creed, and as such men may know what it is and discuss it as
the recognized teaching of the Church. But the formulation which it receives in
this shape is not the ultimate basis on which Christian truth rests. It may come
to be as familiar in Christian circles as is the doctrine of the Trinity, and it
may be looked upon as the authentic statement of what the Church holds. There
is, however, something that lies deeper than ecclesiastical formulation and
profession and recognition. To these things no higher authority than that of the
Church attaches. What really matters is that what the Church teaches should be a
true exhibition and representation of what is taught in the Scriptures. The
authority that belongs to the teaching of Scripture rests in turn on the fact
that the supreme author of Scripture is none other than God Himself. In other
words it is because it has been breathed by God and so given by Him that it is
possessed of its rightful infallible and final authority.

Now, in respect to the distinctive quality of Holy Writ as the Word of God we
can learn, as we have said, what it is only from its own statements. There is no
serious question as to the attitude adopted toward the Old Testament by our Lord
and His Apostles. What that was we learn from the New Testament as an authentic
witness to their teaching. The Christian response to this is one of acceptance.
It is because they recognize that our Lord spoke with authority that Christians
are entitled to be called Christians. They acknowledge Him to be the Christ and
as such they accord to Him the submission of their intellect as well as of their
heart. Their acquaintance with Him and His teaching is derived from the witness
of the New Testament Scriptures. These they proceed upon as trustworthy
documents and as they acquaint themselves with their teaching they subject heart
and conscience and understanding to the truth that they open up. So in regard to
what their Lord taught about the Scriptures of which Israel were the custodians
they accept His words as regulative for their thought as surely as for their
faith. This determines the outlook on the Old Testament Scriptures that is
characteristic of historical Christianity. From these same Scriptures of the New
Testament which tell them what Christ taught they learn on an authority which
they recognize as sufficient what the endowment was which He bestowed upon His
chosen representatives as well as the claims that He put forth on behalf of His
own authority. It is as a matter of fact the Christ Who makes these claims that
historical Christendom recognizes as the supreme authority in the department of
Faith and Life; and recognizing Him to be the Christ, the Great Prophet of the
Church, Christians are willing to learn what He had to teach. So they submit
themselves to the authority of the Gospels and as they find in those documents
the message that He delivered they receive it as they receive Him Who delivered
it.

Thus they learn not only what our Lord had to say in respect of Moses and the
Prophets, but also what was peculiar to His own teaching as an opening up of
what had found place in the Old Testament only in cryptic or initial form. The
advance of revelation was like the path of the just which shines more and more
unto the perfect day. The bud hides in its bosom what the warmth of the summer
sun brings to light. The full flower shows more than did the bud. Yet all the
beauty of the full-blown rose was hid in the bosom of the rosebud. So the early
revelation was brought to maturity in the ministry of our Lord. He brought out
to its full development what the former revelation held only in seed or in germ.
The first grey streak that tells of the dawn and that heralds the day is
followed by increasing light until the sun rises and the day has come. So was it
with the progress of gracious revelation. It was given by steps and stages. But
no new step that was taken set aside what had been already given. The first
promise was followed by many more. The Books of the Law were followed by the
Prophets and the Psalms, so that when our Lord came Israel had in their hands
the whole canon of Old Testament Scripture. What that embosomed by way of
prophecy and promise found its fulfillment in His person and coming and work. He
opened up the true sense, so that what many prophets and righteous men desired
to hear and heard not was made known to the generation of Israel which had the
benefit and privilege of His ministry.

Now the writers of the Gospels set down as witnesses credible and trustworthy
the teaching that He delivered. God who at sundry times and in divers manners
spoke unto the fathers through the prophets spoke in the fullness of time
through His Son. The message which He proclaimed His disciples received and the
record of that message we have in the four Gospels which proceeded from the
circle that had heard for themselves and had seen for themselves what the Son of
God did and taught. If from the Gospels we see what the character of our Lord’s
ministry of teaching and working was we learn from them too what His followers
experienced by way of training and equipment for the work that they were to do.
They were to be His witnesses and that this might be the case they must be in a
position to tell what they heard and saw for themselves. During His earthly
ministry they were learners in their Lord’s School. But they were learners who
had very much to unlearn and in the account that they give of the process of
their education they are wonderfully candid as they let us see their own
mistakes and how backward they were in taking in the real meaning of their
Lord’s mission and work. A competent witness, it has been said, needs three
things, capacity, opportunity, and veracity. All these three met in the
witnesses that our Lord chose to testify in regard to Himself. In respect of
their capacity they were plain men of common sense who would never be challenged
as witnesses in any case or court on the ground that they were deficient in
ordinary understanding. The fact that they were so long in their Lord’s company
gave them the opportunity that was needed to fit them to be His witnesses. For
in the years of their fellowship with Him as disciples they had every chance of
seeing and of hearing for themselves. This fitted them to tell, as witnesses, of
the facts about His works and His teaching both. The third requisite condition
for a competent witness is to be found also in their case. They were men of
character and on the score of veracity we cannot name any others whose word we
should sooner take in regard to what had come within the sphere of their own
cognisance. With these three conditions meeting in them we should at once
acknowledge how fit they were to fulfill the function of bearing witness to
their Lord. When further we take note of the risk that they ran in bearing their
witness and the many inducements that they had to be silent and not to provoke
the anger of the men in power and yet they were not silent, this consideration
shows how free they were from self-seeking in taking the course that they did.
All ordinary prudential motives would tell in the direction of bidding them
study their selfish interests and their ease. But in spite of this they could
not hold their peace. In the face of persecution and danger and death they bore
their witness. The facts that they attested we find on record and we may come in
touch through the record of those facts in the Gospels with the Lord whom they
learned to know, to follow and to serve. The disciples who were thus meant to be
witnesses and were trained for that work were meant also to be teachers. Now for
their two-fold office of witnesses and teachers their Lord promised them that
they should have special equipment. In the matter of the witness that they
should bear to His Word He gave them the express promise that when they should
receive the gift of the Holy Ghost He would bring all things to their
remembrance whatsoever He had said unto them and they should bear witness
because they had been with Him from the beginning. Witness given under such
special conditions should be the witness not only of the ordinary powers of
human memory but also the witness of memory divinely reinforced. In that case
their witness should be a positively trustworthy source of information in regard
to what their Lord had done and taught. And such was the witness that was borne
by the Apostles from the time that they received the endowment of Pentecost; and
what held of their spoken word holds good of the permanent record of their
ministry of witness as we have it in the four Gospels.

During the course of their Lord’s ministry on earth His disciples made it quite
obvious that they had much yet to learn that they might understand the teaching
which they heard from Him. It was only by slow degrees that they were set free
from the mistaken ideas that they had learned, from their childhood, to cherish
in regard to the work of the Christ for whose coming their fathers had looked
and in whose coming they themselves as disciples had learned to rejoice. So long
as they were held in the grip of such prejudice they neither entered into their
Lord’s teaching as they should, nor were they in a position to teach their
fellows the full truth that had fallen upon their ears. They were meant,
however, to be teachers, and authoritative teachers, of the full Word of divine
revelation. For this end they needed to have their understanding enlightened and
their judgment cleared. Otherwise they could not be the authoritative expositors
and preachers of a message which was to be proclaimed with great plainness of
speech. If their hearers were to acquaint themselves with the fullness of Gospel
truth it was plain that they as its teachers must know it for themselves. They
must then be delivered from their mistaken thoughts of the truth made known by
their Lord. They knew it as yet not as a whole but in parts. This knowledge was
not enough to furnish them with equipment for their office. So their Lord’s
promise was given them that when the Spirit of truth that He promised them
should come He would lead them into all the truth. So much they knew already. So
much more they failed to do justice to, and so much also was not as yet
disclosed to them. The full discovery had not been given them for they were not
ripe yet for it. So their Lord told them that He had many things to say unto
them which they could not yet bear. These things they were to come to know when
they should be led into the full truth. Once this should happen they were no
longer to be mere babes in this knowledge. They were to be led into it and when
this should come about they would know it in its true setting and they would
know its parts in their true relations to one another and in their proper
proportions. Thus their judgment should be matured. But our Lord’s promises to
the apostles went further. In them the Spirit of their Father was to speak even
when they were only called upon to open their mouths in their own self-defence.
If this was so might it not be reasoned a fortiori that the provision which
should equip them for self-defence would assuredly be theirs when they spoke as
the responsible and authoritative representatives of their Lord? We are not left
to inference here or to our own reasonings from the fitness of things. So close
was their relation to their Lord as His Apostles that those who should hear them
should hear Him, and those who rejected them rejected Him. And again when we see
the claims that an Apostle could make we learn what the endowment was that his
brethren and he enjoyed for the discharge of the ministry of witness and
teaching to which they were called. In this connection it is of interest to take
note of what the Apostle Paul has to say of himself and of his fellows. They
spoke not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth but which the Holy Ghost
teacheth. Not only did they receive the Spirit who is from God that they might
know the things which are freely given us from God. They were to speak these
things in Spirit-given words. Thus he claimed that not only the substance of
their teaching was of authority but also its form. In this we read the
recognized fulfillment in the Apostles of the promise that had been given to
them. Their hearers who heard to profit received from them the word of God, and
in so doing treated it not as the word of man but as it was in truth the Word of
God which worketh effectually in them that believe. And when Paul used his
authority as an Apostle in laying down the law for those in the Church of
Corinth who were prophets or spiritual he made it plain that they were called
upon to recognize that the things which he wrote to them were indeed the
commandments of the Lord.

What Paul thus claimed for his written word held good of the word of his brother
Apostles. Thus also we find John saying: "He that is of God heareth us", while
"he that is not of God heareth not us". And it was thus that men were to know
the Spirit of truth from the spirit of error. The very touchstone that told the
difference lay in this fact, that the final authority of the Apostles should be
recognized.

Such is the position that historical believing Christianity takes up. It accords
to the Apostles what they claim as their own; and it recognizes in their
writings the permanent and final form of the revelation that the Son of God came
to make. He gave so much of it in the course of His ministry on earth and this
we have in abiding shape in the four Gospels. These are the records of what
Jesus began both to do and to teach until the day in which He was taken up. With
this record in our hands we may see what the Apostles saw and we may hear what
they heard. We are as it were looking through their eyes and we are listening as
it were with their ears. They have left us the record of what they heard and saw
to serve as the ground of Faith. They thought their witness worthy of credit and
that it was a sufficient basis for a faith to build upon which receives their
Lord as the Christ, the Son of God. When they indicate the end for which they
wrote they but put on record what their Lord meant them to do. He also meant
that their word of witness should be enough for the faith of His people in all
ages to build upon. Their ministry was derived from Him. He called them; He
trained them; He sent them. The equipment that He promised them He bestowed upon
them. Thus it came about that after He was taken up He fulfilled to them His
promise and in their witness and in their teaching He Himself continued to bear
witness and to teach. What He did in His earthly ministry He continued in His
heavenly. As the result of this continued ministry He enabled His Apostles to
fulfill their oral and their active ministry on earth and to leave an abiding
heritage to those who should believe in Him through their word. This was nothing
less than the prolongation of their ministry of witness and of teaching. Its
concrete embodied form is the Scriptures of the New Testament.

We may be tempted to wish that we had lived in the days in which our Lord was to
be seen and heard, or His Apostles bore first-hand witness in regard to Him.
These were days which many prophets and righteous men desired to see yet saw
not. They were great days indeed. We should not, however, forget that the word
of the Apostles preserves to us their witness, and though curiosity might be
gratified if we could be transported back to the time and land of the New
Testament facts yet we should see nothing but what the Apostles tell us and we
should hear from their living voice no other message than we have in their
written word. We need not then envy them the privilege that was theirs. The same
Jesus of Whom they speak and Whom they knew is before us that we may believe in
Him and know Him as our own. The greatest good that the Apostles themselves got
of the Gospel is the good that is common to all the children of the new birth.
They knew their Lord, and that is the very life of the soul and it is our life
that we should know Him. And we are not to give place to the thought that He has
withheld from us the means of truly acquainting ourselves with Him. Such is the
privilege that the New Testament Church enjoys to the ends of the earth and to
the end of time, when she has those Scriptures which enshrine the ministry of
our Lord, as a personal and direct ministry on earth, and as a real and abiding
and authoritative ministry which is His as the risen and exalted Christ. He
continued to work and to teach through His Apostles and the record of it all is
ours that we may acquaint ourselves with Him, and through a living faith get the
good of the Gospel of His Grace.

Now this record is as authoritative as the spoken word of the Twelve. It shares
with their oral witness and teaching in the quality of final authority. This was
theirs because their Lord spoke through them. They spoke in the words that the
Holy Ghost enabled them to employ. They were inspired men and their message was
an inspired message. God breathed on them and He breathed through them so that
their word was His Word in very deed. They were equally inspired when they wrote
as when they spoke, and the same theopneust character that attached to their
spoken word belongs to their written word also. Such is the claim that they made
for themselves; and that is the claim which their writings still make. Their
word as His Apostles was their Lord’s word, and this is what is meant by the
inspiration of the New Testament. From its pages we learn that our Lord and His
Apostles too regarded the sacred deposit which was in the hands of Israel and
which the New Testament Church as the legitimate successor to the Church of the
Old Testament still holds in her hands as the Word of God given of old by Moses
and the Prophets. It was not the word only of Moses or the word of Isaiah, or
the word of David. It was their word indeed, for they spoke it and they wrote
it. But the word of Moses was the Word of God. The word of Isaiah was the word
of God. The word of David was the Word of God. So in the New Testament we have
the Word of Paul and the Word of John and the Word of Luke. It was not only
their Word, it was the Word of God. Now this brings before us the mysterious
character of Holy Writ. The written and the Incarnate Word are so alike the one
to the other. The Incarnate Word was very God and very Man, and He was the
sinless One. So too the written word is the very word of those who wrote it, and
at the same time the very word of God Who made use of them. They were the penmen
of scripture. They themselves were, to quote the word of Dr. John Duncan, the
"men-pens" of the Holy Ghost. In the fullness of their individuality with all
their gifts of style and expression He made use of them. There is mystery here
without a doubt. It is not, however, a mystery that is unparalleled or
unexampled. We have an illustration of it in the working of the efficacious
grace in which we believe. The Lord, the Holy Ghost, works in the regenerate the
faith of the Gospel and the repentance that is unto life. It is not the Spirit
that believes or repents. It is the believer or the penitent. They exercise
faith. It is the Spirit that works it. They exercise godly sorrow. It is the
Spirit who is its author. He works all and they are the agents in it all. It is
of His inworking and enabling that they repent and believe. But the faith that
they exercise and the repentance by which they turn from sin to God are both the
personal activity of the new-born soul. He worketh all their works in them and
to Him belongs the undivided glory of them. Yet the works are theirs. His
working does not overwhelm or obliterate their personality. It quickens the soul
when dead in sin and it upholds the soul that it has brought alive. In the free
exercise of a will that His grace has renewed they yield themselves in obedience
of faith.

Now to those who hold with us this, the faith of the Reformed Churches, it
sounds simply absurd to hear men describe the doctrine of inspiration as though
it were an impossible thing for a transcendent sovereign God so to use a man in
the full and free exercise of his faculties as an instrument of His own hand for
making known His mind and will. Why, men who play well on an instrument may harp
well or pipe well. The music of the pipe and of the harp may be in perfect
harmony yet the hearer can tell the one from the other. They are both the music
of the players who are pleased to make the one of them the pipe and the other of
them the harp his instrument of music. A man’s writing varies with the pen that
he employs. That pen may be hard or soft. It may be broad or fine and according
to its make will the script be that it is employed to produce. Yet you find men
object to the doctrine of inspiration that there can be nothing in it because we
can tell the style or expression of John or Paul or Isaiah.

It is of the essence of stupidity not to see that God Almighty is not confined
to a dead level of monotony when He is pleased to speak to His creatures in His
written word. To say that inspiration of necessity suppresses the distinctive
features of human expression when men are under its influence is to refuse to
acknowledge that God is able to use men in the full and free exercise of their
distinct individuality. It sets unwarrantable bounds to the power of Almighty
God. Yet men maintain that the doctrine of inspiration which teaches that there
is the concursus of the Divine and the human is an impossibility. They hold that
if the written word is wholly of God it can be only by His express dictation
that this can be secured, or that He brings it about by making the writers so
many machines. They denounce it as mechanical inspiration. They evidently think
that they can tell what God can and what He cannot do in these things. So they
take upon themselves to say that in the case when the written product is wholly
divine it must be the effect of mere mechanical activity of the human writer.

Now in these things it becomes men to be modest and not to claim to know more
than they know indeed. We who hold to the pervasive Divine character of Holy
Writ are not bound to say how otherwise than by mechanical control such a result
is brought about. The mode of the divine activity may, nay must, be to us an
inscrutable mystery. We are not to outstep our bounds and to lay limits on the
free Sovereignty of the Lord God and say - "Thou must do this and Thou must not
do that". It is the bloated pride of an unhumbled heart that will utter words of
such a kind. He gives no account of many of his matters and we dare not summon
Him to our bar before whose bar we must ourselves stand. Men may press us to
define what the inspiration is which brings it about that the words of men are
at the same time, and fully, the words of God. We might answer that we are not
minded to pry into the mysterious mode of the Divine co-agency and controlling
agency in producing the Holy Scriptures: That operation of Divine power is one
that results in a Book which on the one side is altogether the Word of the men
who spoke and wrote it, while on the other side it is wholly the Word of the
Living God Who made use of the writers as His instruments.

We like to consider inspiration as that exercise and just that exercise of
divine controlling and determining power which secures that those who are its
instruments wrote the very Word of God. Men have spoken of guidance and control
and direction and superintendence and suggestion as modes of inspiration. It may
quite possibly be that these words may be competently applied to the character
of its work. But when we go into these things we are going beyond our depth. We
who cannot tell how soul and body co-exist and go to make up our full person are
overstepping the bounds of our province when we speculate as to how God is
working in bringing such a product as Holy Writ into being. Let it be enough for
us to recognize what it is and what it claims to be and leave it with Him to
bring His counsel to pass as seems best to His unsearchable wisdom. A full
inspiration extends not only to the substance but to the form, not only to the
thought but to the expression of Holy Scripture. In other words the inspiration
that is responsible for producing the written Word of God is at once full and
verbal. In the Downgrade controversy in which Mr. Spurgeon took part in his
later years, he said that the attacks that were then so common on verbal
inspiration were but the verbal form of the attack on inspiration. In saying so
he hit the nail on the head. Those who are content to learn their doctrine of
inspiration from the statements, teaching, and phenomena of Scripture itself
will not be slow to acknowledge that the very words, which are but the vesture
of the thought, are God’s chosen Words. Thought and expression are interlinked
and when Paul laid stress on the word "Seed" in his Epistle to the Galatians, or
when our Lord quoted Psalms 110:1-7 to ask how Messiah could be David’s son when
David in the Spirit spoke of Him as his Lord, or when he answered the Sadducees
by referring them to the words spoken from the Burning Bush we are confronted
with Scripture’s own use of Scripture. And this teaches us the stress which it
lays upon the very words that it employs.

Again when men refer to Scripture quotations as not verbally accurate they
forget that the Supreme Author of Scripture is surely free to express Himself as
He pleases. He knows His own thought and how to utter it. May He alone not vary
the expression of His thought, the thought remaining the same, as He sees right?
When we are told that our doctrine of inspiration can hold good only of the
autographs of Holy Writ we might answer that it is the whole aim and endeavour
of a reverent criticism, that is, of the study of Scriptures by believers, to
attain to certainty as to the precise text and the exact meaning of the Word of
God as it was at first given. And the more real our conviction of the truth of
Divine Inspiration the more should be our zeal and diligence in this study.

It is boldly affirmed at other times that if it was the original text that was
inspired we are not entitled to speak of any translation of Scripture, even the
very best, as being the Word of God. The niggling spirit that carps at the
acknowledgment of a good translation as the Word of God in another language
comes in conflict with an obvious feature of Scripture usage; for we find that
the New Testament makes use of a translation of the Old Testament. In this usage
the translation is freely employed and no exception is taken to it as though the
quality of Divine authorship and authority had evaporated in the process of
translation. When again the objection is raised that we are face to face with a
large variety of readings in our oldest manuscripts and that it is inept for us
to hold the inspiration of Scripture seeing that we cannot be sure as to the
exact reading at some points of the original text. Men forget that by the time
when our Lord was upon earth there is no doubt but there were already in
existence a multitude of various readings in the Hebrew Text and the Greek
translation of the Old Testament. There were undoubtedly various exhibitions of
Scripture in the instances in which that translation diverged from a literal
representation of the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament. Now of these things our
Lord takes no notice. So also His apostles. The cardinal controlling
consideration that the Scriptures as the people had them in their hands or had
access to them, were the Word of God is what He and they lay stress upon. And
this is ample warrant for us to follow in their steps. But how often do we hear
men daring to say that when our Lord emptied Himself in His humiliation He
consented to such an abridgment of His knowledge as that He shared in the
limitations and prejudices of His Galilean environment, and so took Old
Testament Scripture at its current valuation? When they say this they think that
they have got rid of His witness to the word which Israel had in their hands.
They imagine that they have put Him out of action as an authoritative teacher in
regard to such matters of criticism and that they have left the ground clear for
exercising the utmost freedom in their handling of the Old Testament. Well, what
have they succeeded in doing? For themselves they have got rid of the note of
authority which sounds through His teaching and they have taken up the position
that the Incarnate Son of God was the victim of nescience, ignorance and local
and provincial prejudice. Would it not be more in keeping with the attitude that
they have resolved to adopt that they should at once deny the truth of His
Incarnation? Their profession of it when they strip His words of final authority
is like the kiss of Judas when his Lord was to be taken and slain. But how does
the case stand in regard to the words that our Lord spoke? Let us but listen to
what He has Himself to say. "I have not spoken from Myself but the Father which
sent Me; He gave me a commandment what I should say and what I should speak. And
I know that His Commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak, therefore,
even as the Father said unto Me so I speak." The quarrel then of those who will
not hear and rest in His words as final is with the Father, who, as He dwelt in
His Son and did the works, gave to His Son in Whom He dwelt the words that He
should speak. We should bear in mind that when the Son came as His Father’s
Servant to do His will He was sent and thus had at once a mission and a
commission. Within the bounds of that commission He kept Himself. When He was
tempted by Satan to turn the stones into bread the tempter aimed at inducing Him
to lay aside that form of a servant in which He had come. This the faithful
Servant would not do. Throughout His ministry He kept a servant’s place and the
Will of the Father was the rule of His service. This held in regard to the very
words that He spoke. When then He spoke of the word which had already been given
as a Scripture that could not be broken the witness which He bore to it is the
very word which His Father gave Him to speak. So all who have recognized Him as
a Son sent as a servant receive His word as final and rest in it.

Whatever endeavours the adversaries by their excursions in the department of
criticism have made to set aside the authority and finality of His witness come
to naught when we are face to face with the claim that He makes to speak the
Father’s words. Let this claim be set aside and He is set aside. When this claim
is acknowledged Christian Faith rests with security in the words that He has
spoken.

It is the very Son of the Father that has spoken the very words which the Father
gave Him to speak. And it is in keeping with the fitness of things in this
situation that when the words of the Father are to be spoken they should be
spoken by His everlasting Word. We see then how vain the attempt is to shake the
authority of our Lord’s witness to Old Testament Scripture and at the same time
we see how the truth that He spoke only the words which the Father gave Him to
speak stamps His every Word with absolute authority. The promises that He gave
to His Apostles were among those words. Those promises we recognize to have been
fulfilled in the subsequent ministry of the Apostles and so the revelation given
once for all in the fullness of the times is preserved in its written form for
all time and is still and will be to the end the abiding possession of all to
whom the New Testament Scriptures have come.

Modern Sadduceism in all its forms has a quarrel with the Divine authority of
the written word. This is so because its animating principle is not the faith
which takes its seat at the footstool of the Son of God, but the unbelief which
carps and cavils at His message. It has made the most of its parade of
objections and difficulties yet Christian believers who have heard the voice of
the Son of God as He still speaks the words of everlasting life have not been
greatly moved. Those of them who have enquired into these matters have learned
to wait for further light to clear up the difficulties that are to be met with
and they do this with all the more confidence and composure of mind because so
many of the difficulties that were the stock in trade of unbelievers in former
days have been already cleared up; and they cherish the confidence that there is
still in store for the Church of God an experience of clearing up in regard to
those difficulties on which unbelief still lays stress. In this connection some
writers on the subject of the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures have put the
cart before the horse. In seeking to state the doctrine of inspiration they
begin at the wrong end. They start with the difficulties and having come to
their conclusions in regard to these they employ those conclusions to modify and
determine the sense in which the clear evidence of the statements of the Bible
itself should be taken. This is not the course that men would take to arrive at
the teaching of Scripture in regard to any other subject, say, sin or salvation.
What is obviously the right course to take is that we should first see what the
witness of the sacred Writings is and when we have taken a conjoint view of that
witness as exhibited in various statements of the Word, then we should put
objections and difficulties into their own subordinate place and not suffer the
impression that they make upon us to override the plain statements on which the
body of our doctrine rests. As we indicated at the outset it is only when we are
agreed as to the fact that Christian Truth is indeed a Divine Revelation that we
come logically to discuss the doctrine of what Inspiration is. When we recognize
the authentic character of our Scripture documents as an exhibition of the truth
which our Lord and His Apostles proclaimed we are warranted in going further
than stating that these documents are in a general sense authentic and
trustworthy; we are warranted too, in holding that they are what they claim to
be, not only a written embodiment of a real Divine Revelation, but a divinely
given record of that Revelation, so that it is indeed God’s own Word which He
has been pleased to commit to writing. In the everyday working of Christian
Faith this is proceeded upon. And when questions are raised about it and we look
into them we find that the working understanding of Christian Faith can be set
aside only by refusing to accept the substantial truth of the claims that our
Lord made for Himself and that His Apostles on His behalf continue to make. For
they continue to make the same claims as He did and these we have in the Word
that enshrines their ministry of teaching and witness. To refuse then to accept
the teaching of Scripture in regard to the claims that it makes to be the Word
of God is to meet its claims not with a loyalty of a Christian Faith, but with
the unbelief that has not yet learned to bow to the authority of Christ, the Son
of God.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-john-a-macleod/
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