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CHAPTER TWO
The Eclectic Ecliptic
THE SIN ECLIPTIC AND
THE SALVATION CYNOSURE
The Grace of Space and the Glory of God
Sin is seen as if the sun, and the viewer perceives the sun branded, as it were, against different astral backgrounds as the year progresses, due to the fact that the earth is moving in its elliptical circuit around the sun, so lining up different portions of the universe when if you will, the sun is used to 'sight' them, as if it were the bead for aligning a gun.
Put differently, the ecliptic, the intersection of the earth's orbit with the celestial sphere, the apparent annual course of the sun, is an index to different astral backgrounds as the earth orbits. Like the sun, sin can be lined up against different backgrounds, looking for different features in history which it has had, and in this display a panorama of features becomes clear.
Thus the image being pictured is Sin in Many Backgrounds. In its imaged spree through the heavens, where the earth moves in its annual course, and the sun seems to do so, the solar background gives ever new focus during the year. From this setting, therefore, there comes an outcome of perspectives. This is a book about perspectives, ones that matter most.
Mercifully, this world is not designed in splendour and cast in magnificence of wisdom and generated to provide aesthetic ecstasy, so that sin like some creep in the classroom, should have undisputed power. Quite to the contrary, it is a test, and the results are eternal!
There, for any eye willing to look,
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is the sheer intelligence,
artistry, wit and wisdom, in heights incomparable*1,
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and yet |
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with it is the sloth, the
frenetic fastness of the doomed, |
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There is the sin, which cannot
win and becomes |
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The maestros of magic are mere
dupes to the irrationality of evolutionism*2,
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Thus, to revert to our picture, not only is sin, as if the sun, seen against many backgrounds, but salvation is seen in its dramatic intensity, as the earth moves in its circuit. Indeed, in BC 4, in one of those circuits, suddenly there was a great light, the like of which has never been seen from the days when astronomy was born. It suffused the universe and made the sun look small. Indeed, it eclipsed it, not by casting a shadow, but by the greater light making the sun's light seem shady, overcome by the very intensity of the divine light of the Creator, come not 90,000,000 miles from the earth to cast a distant radiance, but to earth itself to cast out sin and to provide the light long lost to many, in terms available to all.
Then, at that time, God became man, and all the details from Micah, Jeremiah and Isaiah, from Hosea, Ezekiel and Moses, from David and other prophets, were fulfilled in a way that the Opposition, the Satan, the Contender for souls to deprave and deprive them, COULD not close. The Lord, the power, the miracles, the death, the cross, the meaning, the Gospel, the resurrection, the world-wide Gentile proclamation of that Gospel and the refusal of Israel, where it came, to believe in it: all came in their order (cf. SMR Ch. 9).
Indeed, the Lord foretold that background of light which would come and the date of that death-to-sin-sacrifice of the Messiah, in the field of 30 A.D. in the day of Daniel (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4 - Daniel 9:24ff.), and has done all that He said. Thus there has been this light, and it has shone beyond the sun, direct to the hearts of men ever since*4. Christ crucified, yes rather risen, Christ the Redeemer, in Himself once for all the sanction for pardon and the rest from the sovereignty of sin, remains as foretold, and His power and presence by His Spirit continues as hearts light up with His love and rejoice in His radiance.
Having cast the picture, let us see some of these inputs and outcomes, in actual fact in the realm of light, darkness and outcomes.
The Eclectic Ecliptic, the Sinrise and the Sinset
I Sinrise
Here, as in Genesis 1, Romans 5, you see the first dawning of darkness, coming trembling but determined, into the light, arising from the backdrop of Satan pawning power in the universe, where though beleaguered and contained, he has liberty to assail liberty by abusing it, first in himself, and then in any other vulnerable heart, where evil beckons and goodness does not impress itself dictatorially.
Man in the image of God - what a combination! A created thing with the self-determining power of the Creator! but not so absolutely, since this creation, mankind, is not of an absolute type, nor yet of the nature of a spiritual programmee, in the chosen modus operandi. Man in this first state, as made, is free to rove, to obey, to disobey, to violate word of warning and vitiate virtue by its misuse, turning power to pollution and opportunity to obstruction.
HOW, some ask, could this be if he was good, when first made ? There is simply no problem. The species of goodness in the image of God is not a wholly constrained one, since NOTHING constrains God and if it did, THAT would be God. Yet man as a creature cannot totally disregard the engines of his own construction, the limits of his own power, or the danger of confusing the liberty to imagine, with the power to do.
Nor can he totally abuse power to the point of making himself into the increate and eternal God, since what has beginning can only proceed eternally in one direction, the past being null, without the creation, and limited to its arrival.
What then CAN man as created, do ? By virtue of the power of his construction as biblically defined, it is this. He can violate the virtue, clash with the confinement and seek what is not understood, with the energy of imagination and the folly of wilfulness.
But WHY would he so will, being from the creative hands of God, happy and content and well-made in magnificent style and provided with access to the goodness of the everlasting God ?
That facility, to move in either direction, it is the very essence of any degree of self-determination, of liberty. If you could only choose HOW to implement what you ARE, and that were entirely programmatic, then you would not in any sense be in the image of God (a spiritual matter of course, since God is a spirit cf. Great Execrations ... Ch. 6, Let God be God Ch. 2, It Bubbles ... Ch. 9). Evil would be hypothetical or arcane, and only appearance would be contrary to mere methodological militancy.
Such a construct would make of man a meaningless arm of usage, as free of truth as of understanding, subject to slavery, able to inundate with chatter, not to provide truth or thus argue validly for it: and this is so, even if he were given truth from what provided it, which of course is far from the naturalistic case!
In the latter, therefore, he is doubly divorced from truth, both by his own nature and by that of the imaginary universe in view! On this basis, truth in absolute reality does not exist: a relativistic construction is imaged, and hence it is divorced all over again, since even if it had some smuggled being for that model, who would divulge it beyond the limits of the relativistic and conditioned recipient! In sum, that makes a triple remove from truth.
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What then ? In that case, even more starkly, he could not
know this to be true, |
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Any in this situation would be more ignorant than babes, |
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Any in the naturalistic case, would be two further abysses
away from truth. |
This would be self-contradictory; and naturally, this is not the biblical picture, nor is it a rational one since truth is not then available, and all reasoning based in such a premise is mere antilogy; and since we are examining the former, which is uniquely coherent with the latter, we consider instead the arising of sin in a good creation. What is the biblical perspective, and how does it sustain rationality when the other fails ?
Since will and perspective, perception and conception, are not bound, only the systematics which make their work meaningful and their outcome virtuous and sound being installed in this free being, then the operation of this freedom has two empowered outcomes. It may opt for God or not.
That is the nature of the construction, for unlike man in his limits, God in His omnipotence can even create a person whose definitional capacity includes survey of the moral and spiritual scene, with option allowance. Since man's knowledge is not infinite, and wisdom is not illimitable in the creation, which is not the infinite Creator, there is danger. Hence there is warning, as given, and recorded in Genesis 3. That makes the liberty the more total. Ignorance is not the ground of the error of man; it is only an accessory.
Such then is man at the outset, before the sin-rise, stretching its tentacles of darkness into the realms of created light. As to the latter, it was both luminous physically, and illuminative spiritually, as well as defining morally, for God Himself had vital contact with vital concepts. While, however, there is in this situation, much light, it is not exhaustive. There are areas where obedience is required, and knowledge is partial. What IF the rule is broken ? what if the knowledge of good and evil WERE good ? nice to have ? put one in a competitive position rather than subsumed as an underling to the Almighty, it might be asked. Satan the pretender did in fact move in this direction in his soul assault on man (Genesis 3).
What then is the scene ? we ask, before we consider further the scenario.
Not all is declared; some things are implicit. WHY should man obey the One who put him and his powers of reason, liberty and love into existence ? The bond is moral. If this is the entire basis of it all, and that without any limit, then to reject for no reason but desire, this Provider of vital existence on the part of man is not merely stark ingratitude: it is rank stupidity. Such however was the issue confronting Adam and his companion, in the nature of the case.
To proceed without knowing how you work, and in what capacities you can rove ONCE you leave the operational sanctum of your creation, and yet go for all that: it is a type of madness. It is common in man, to this day, in wars, in revolts and rebellions, often not because of oppression, by any ordinary construction, but for the lively desire to have no restraint as individual, race, city, state or ideologue.
There is however always the restraint of the self that did it, that so acted, of the heart that has so moved, and in moving, for such reasons, has limited itself in its very character, changing as it moves. Thus liberty is not uncancellable, any more than is motion uncancellable, when a car hits a pole, or power of motion sustainable, when the wheels buckle and the engine is ruined. Things have outcomes, depending on nature and income.
Liberty moves within the confines of its principles, and the contact of its Principal; for man not being infinite, reality will always contain him, though it need not control him utterly, giving him licence (see Licence for Liberty) in meaningful operative significance. This is the biblical exposure of the matter.
Once more then, HOW did man choose the evil ? It is because the power to do so was integumental, part of his nature in construction, as created by the God who being free, knows its meaning and methods, and how to impart it. In man, this is wrought in the form of a person, where constraint acts on the means of expression and the power of cogitation, so that it all works; but it is not so with the will, so that the working model can take itself off this way or that, morally, aesthetically, spiritually and physically, by self-induced confusion to satiate desire, or mere rebellion.
Man resolved to take himself off morally, in ignoring a warning, intellectually, in bypassing an implication, and spiritually, in sundering from the happy relationship with his Creator.
The test was simple, and is not at this level, the point. It is the FACT of it that matters. When shown an alternative mode of life, and this clearly by a being not authorised, the satan in serpentine format, and hence in the realm of what man was supposed to rule, acting contrary to authority, what then ? Then the mere listening to such a rucus was rebellion, its absurdity as great as expecting a puddle to pound waters from a dam! Even a lamb knows its mother.
Would man move that way, or stay in the mode and model of his creation ? Would his machinating power smash his spiritual resolve ?
Yes it would: or historically, could and then did. But why ?
However, first, let us realise, we have seen HOW. The parameters were set, the powers were given and their operation was merely a function of freedom, contained and not illimitable, but relevant to state of adhesion, of loyalty and realm for rule relative to God on the part of man, or its negation.
WHY then ? It is apparent from Genesis 3, that the sinrise, that awful and awesome advent of sin in the life of man, of contrary clash with the Creator, came with certain inducements operative. First, there is the concept of ignoring the goodness of the Creator, and gratuitously imagining despite evidence (and logic cf. Sparkling Life ... Ch. 4, Barbs 6 -7), that He has evil attributes, or self-seeking ones (Genesis 3:5). This done, there is the option of inane if not insane ambition.
To be AS ONE with God, to have knowledge of good and evil, what ontological height, what weightless liberty, what a majestic connotation! This was the satanic presentation, the sales pitch.
Eve first was seduced (the tree and its fruit representing this knowledge was then seen as an organ of obstruction to an imagined more perfect liberty, more!).
This proved an irresistible attraction. Its fruit had to be seized. The very presence of limit provided an impetus, inducing opposition to it. This however resulted from desire, not design; though the design enabled the desire so to fire if it would. It did not however require it.
To be sure, Satan pointed this out, concerning spiritual ambition, for Eve, but he expressed the irrational surmise, not the cost, which he gratuitously reduced to some confused status, of little concern.
Yet man or woman, it should have been known that this was an error message, since it was to God, not the creation over which man had been given rule, that he was to look. In a way, it was like the little lamb which born from the mother, always from the first near it, produced through it, moves relative to the mother with watchful awareness of its precise bahh-ing intonations, its bodily movements and its ranging in the pasture.
Man however chose otherwise, as man has so often done since, being now born in sin as well as borne along in it, and so the sinrise, in its darkness, smote the light yet more adventurously. The case brings to mind a recent experience in a high cliff by the sea. Here a little lamb was bahh-ing vigorously, and sadly, looking in vain for its mother, and had placed itself under the very beacon at the height of the cliff, above the rolling pastures by the sea, whence a sharp, penetrating wind was blowing. It looked to follow us, having no other place of repose, and being witless of its mother had some hope from us.
Possibly it had earlier moved in a thrust of gambolling, as if air were its medium and pastures its womb; and now lost, it was pathetic. We tried to bring it to the flock and out of the wind, but as we came, the flock went. The lamb therefore was left in a much frequented place of sheep, better out of the wind, while we phoned for the owner.
So does what may be flightiness, lead to disaster.
With man, however, the warning was first given articulately, and directly. It was not misfortune but mischief which had acted to created a lost being. Now born into lostness, from which only redemption can restore him, man is always arguing inanely about God, turning facts on their face and protesting as we see repeatedly*5 in a way which constitutes the most incredible brand of distortion, which if not open deceit, is self-deception at so obvious a level as to be all but inconceivable. Yet, when lost, when the light is lost, darkness does not see. That is its inherent situation; and this is the due result of such loss.
However the test is not with the knowledge of what is not realised, but with the challenge to what is. You do not need to know of a million possible errors, if being set in the right way, you have merely to follow it. On the other hand, if you choose one or more of the million, you do need to know what you are doing, but since you DO know in principle the category of error, the rest is for you to find in illegitimate practice! Such is the case in such a situation as that which painfully developed for Adam, first man, and partner Eve.
Constructed for perspective, man chose a fallacious one through desire.
HOW did the desire come ? It was through three channels. Firstly, it came from a Satanic source, Satan having been made good also, but not by compulsion, and having fallen before. Secondly it came from an act of disposing the will, on the part of man, one which related to an invention of priorities, for which function man had been made able, as part of his personal construction for personal action. In this, he was then fluid at will.
Thus thirdly, it was in the act of disposing of the power to pursue elements in this evaluation, in the way that man was equipped to do at will, that he fell. Able to survey, he did; able to choose, he did. Both survey and choice were evil, not in the former, by nature, but by the nature of the presentation!
Sinrise was an exercise in ingratitude, ignorance, manipulation, inanity and gambling. It was equally a use of a function constitutive to person, inherent in the creation in the image of God, necessary for man to be meaningful, whether the meaning was a mean one, or impelling to worship.
As the Sin of Darkness arose in the spiritual skies, all kinds of light muting, light dispersing, light distorting steps came to occur, as when a car leaves the road, and finds a muddy muddle of mixed events, not clearly known to the driver, whose speed and careering are not good means of achieving wisdom. In man's case, such has been the type of destablised dynamic ever since.
As you turn then from sinrise, to the background which in due course arrives, in the imaginary course of the sun through the heavens, as seen by man, to the annual exposure in diverse settings, sin seen against many backgrounds, there are many results! We look then, now at a day, in the sinset, now at a longer period, as in the ecliptic where issues and spiritual tissues come into the line of sight.
II Sindication - the sin form of Syndication
and Sinplications - the sin form of Implications
Psalm 102, Lamentations, Romans 7 show certain elements of the sin situation, with redress available, as in II Corinthians 1, Romans 8, I Corinthians 10:13.
In Psalm 102 you see the pathos of one dispirited, but courageous, instilled with the dim light of distant stars that seems to bring gloom, and with fiery meteors which challenge safety. The picture changes, in this Messianic Psalm, as we see that the Lord is looking down on the trials and tribulations, the troubled heart of man and has in mind, for a generation to come, an action which as in Isaiah 61, later applied by Christ to Himself as Messiah, is to deliver the prisoner and release the captive. It will predominantly be a declaring of the name of the Lord at that time, in Jerusalem.
Thus there is a sinplication, the trials of the saints, the valley of the shadow of death, the fire of persecution, slander and ill-will; and there is a sindication, as various evils conspire and consort, hard hearts, slack minds, evil ambitions and truancy from truth. Syndicated sin and implications from sin's impact alike belabour the globe with their mess and measured malevolence towards the Lord.
Lamentations, that extra work of Jeremiah's hand from the Lord, that desolatory and downcast, that aghast record of dismantled splendour and ruined citizenry, youth and age alike, certainly has its domain of light as in Lamentations 3:30-41. Yet in the travail of the tragedy which Jeremiah the prophet had fought and wrought so valiantly to avoid, through the preaching of reality to the ears of deafness, there is horror at Jerusalem's awesome and gruesome fall.
In this, there was the default of mercy, before truth, as folly continued till its threadbare suit was mere film. In the midst of this, as always, there is the mercy of God to secure, who in the very midst of such purging of frolicking spiritual insanity (cf. Hosea 9:7) remains the recourse and refreshing of His people.
Thus in Ch. 3 we read (with emphasis added):
"Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him,
And be full of reproach.
For the Lord will not cast off forever.
"Though He causes grief,
Yet He will show compassion
According to the multitude of His mercies.
For He does not afflict willingly,
Nor grieve the children of men.
"To crush under one’s feet
All the prisoners of the earth,
To turn aside the justice due a man
Before the face of the Most High,
Or subvert a man in his cause -
The Lord does not approve.
"Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass,
When the Lord has not commanded it?
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
That woe and well-being proceed?
Why should a living man complain,
A man for the punishment of his sins?
"Let us search out and examine our ways,
And turn back to the Lord;
Let us lift our hearts and hands
To God in heaven."
In fact, Psalm 102 begins to bring a glimmer of what is most clearly seen in Isaiah 52-53, the desolation and the contrast of the Lord's specific, historic, and at that time, coming advent in personal self-revelation and liberation, deliverance and dynamic for His people. You sense the intense empathy and lively solicitude, which breaks like some soaring wave, in the announcement of the divine salvation to come (Psalm 102:18-22). Is He not going to liberate personally by a time of direct involvement!
It is Psalm 22 which shows precisely to what this led, the Cross which careered from the love in heaven to the pierced hands on earth, while Isaiah 61 depicts the results of its triumph, when the task is done. Hosea 13:14 shows the divine resolve and the actual intention to PAY a ransom, to meet the specifications of actual justice on behalf of the loved, the race fallen, so that any might come, and all who come will be paid for (as in Isaiah 53:3-5).
In Romans 7, you see another feature of sin's implicits. Here Paul, perhaps depicting his pre-conversion experience, or even alluding to some moment of weakness (as unusually seen in II Corinthians 1, for example), exhibits the sheer weakness of human will in the storms of sin, and the necessity for the authority and strength of God to be operative (Romans 8:8ff.), starting in the Cross's absolution, and proceeding in the Holy Spirit's power: and this not as some oddity, but in the very core of life, in the mainstream of Christian experience.
Weakness, bewilderment, obfuscation, shame, embarrassment: these are some of the implications of sin, and when these are syndicated with name-calling, slander, sequestration, violence, malevolence, there is an array like an army; and this is only dispersed through the power of the risen Christ, whose bodily competence to rise is one signal of His spiritual omnipotence to help man, so that trouble is not the trouble, but lack of faith in His power so to trouble trouble that it either departs, or one gains strength to 'handle' it. This is the message of I Corinthians 10:13.
III The Scintillating Saviour Swallows Darkness
Isaiah 8-9 speaks here. Light overcomes the darkness which neither encompasses nor comprehends it - John 8:12, 9:5, 12:36.
In John 1:5, the Greek term lambanw means to apprehend, occupy, take possession of, as well as understand. It gives the sense of competence to gain, obtain and understand. In this case, the negative, there is an incompetence on the part of the darkness either to seize the light and squash it, secure it, apprehend it and put it in the stocks of possession, or worse, and even to understand what it is all about. It is naϊf, a vexed thief; it does not know what is hitting it and cannot get it, either to permanently obscure, or allure or see 'what makes it tick'.
It is as blind to it, futile, yet not without negative ambition for all that!
Thus as to the light, darkness does not 'get it', in two ways.
Firstly, the darkness cannot control or seize the light, even the crucifixion merely enacting the supreme sacrificial gift of God as man for man, as man proceeded to ruin his own mercy, and nail his own tender lovingkindness from his Maker, to the tree. The resurrection removed the desecratory and blasphemous battlers from relevance, making them more instruments than parties of power; and their total incapacity to control the corpse, the regal resurrectee or the church which the risen Christ dynamised by His Spirit, sent from the Father (John 15:26) has left the powers of darkness virtuosos of vanity. Monuments to ineptitude, gaunt fluxes of cruelty, paragons of blustering impotence, they are always seeking to dam the flow of truth, to damage the testimony or deploy devastation, from the Roman Empire to the Holy Roman Empire, from the Inquisition to the horrors of Hitler, the machinations of Mao and the sinuous strength of the alien 'ally' of World War II, Stalin.
This triumph of Jesus Christ, being omitted from its national scene by Israel, has left that nation, superbly near geographical to these events, but strangely far spiritually from them, ready for its own desolation. Alas WHAT desolation it has suffered (cf. Daniel 9)! Yet if a youngster being given 100,000 dollars towards a house, throws it in the pond, while pity plays in the heart, so does horror! For Israel the nation, payment has been made for folly; but even now the remorseless mercies of God have pursued her, she is back in her land as foretold (cf. It Bubbles ... Ch. 10, SMR Ch. 9, Appendix A), and the next stage amply foretold (), is her spiritual investment as masses of Israelis will turn to that same Lord whom, earlier, the nation crucified. Then will the joy be in full, when the eye opens and the ear listens, in that nation (cf. Matthew 13:14ff., Romans 11:25ff., Zechariah 12:10ff.).
The second respect in which the darkness does not 'get' the light, is this: that it does not understand it. Both these meanings are implicit in the Greek, and may be applied.
People marvel at self-discipline for no monetary or social reward, self-sacrifice out of mercy and kindness, integrity as a splendid thing and the knowledge of God as the fragrance of beauty and the fulness of truth. They cannot see why it matters, since their 'meaningless' meandering in slit off souls conditions them to inexperience and forges in them a sense of irrelevance. It is themselves however which are irrelevant to grace, while in this state, and their reward for unruly ruin within, this is the excision of the point of vitality. They do not understand.
With little dreams and fiascos in order to avoid the topic of God in its unlimited impact and point, they beguile the time, and are guilefully dismissed from life.
On the road, the highway of holiness, it does not matter how rich your car: if you have missed the track and move fast to Rome or Paris, when Perth-bound, there is mere irony in your dramatic confidence as a driver. It is simply not to the point, because it has missed the point, indeed the very direction!
To the contrary, we see the stark light and clear highway of Christ as in the three passages noted in John 8:12, 9:5, 12:36.
In the first, we learn that there is a light of life. This is obviously the most missing ingredient in man. Alighted on him is a series of gifts, graces and powers prodigious in character, amazing in mentality, expansive in spirit, but he is like a car without steering, or with steering, without driver, or with driver, with a witless one. He has the main thing missing.
In the nature of the case, this must be so. If man were completely programmed, he would be a massively less construction, a mere programmatic heap, an aligned wheel on a car, not the car itself. Since he has been given the massive gift of liberty - assuredly one he cannot create, since he is liberty recipient, infinitely far from liberty creator - then this CANNOT be programmed. It CAN be limited, and it is; it can be subject to mutation, not by chance, but by choice, and it is. It is like the rest of man, sui generis. The almost infantile endeavours to reduce everything to something else, the passion for pathological reductionism, has marred man to the uttermost from Greek philosophy on*6.
Having the light of life, those who believe in Jesus Christ being re-attached to source, do not have the complex and in terms of the outage, insoluble problems which confront the wanderer. Thus He says: "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not alk in darkness, but have the light of life."
Walking in darkness may be challenging, like balancing an elephant on a thimble, to try. It is however a doomed pursuit.
In John 9:5, we find another perspective. AS LONG AS I am in the world, said Christ, I am the light of the world. This implied that when He had finished being crucified, had been resurrected and had stayed to teach 40 days, that the light of this world would no more be so instantly and visibly available. Thus in John 14:30, we find this: "I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do. Arise, let us go from here."
By no means does this turn the whole world over this this powerful miscreant, the 'prince of this world', who assuredly is no prince of peace! It does however leave this world, expert in crucifixion of God as man, to resemble more and more the reality of the absence, like a rudderless ship, or better, one manned by an alien crew.
The power of the Holy Spirit (Luke 24, Acts 2, Ephesians 1:19, 3:16) is to come, and has come; and by this person of the trinity, there is no lack of power, peace, joy, goodness or virtue; but His coming is to hearts, to lives, where light is not banished and where repentance is found.
IV Stingset
I Corinthians 15:54-55
Here is the final revulsion of darkness from light, the final expulsion and terminus of traction.
"So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality,
then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory.""O Death, where is your sting?
O Hell, where is your victory?"
The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
When the resurrection puts the consummation to the creation for those who are the Lord's people, then hell is irrelevant, price of evacuation paid, principle of justice in judgment met, liability to sin removed, sting of sin drawn in Calvary and transmitted faithfully to Christ crucified, so that law is not cancelled (though pictorial presentations are removed only because substantiated), but does not apply; for what has already applied, has no more application (cf. II Corinthians 5:17-20).
No more does this sun of sin, this macabre and dismal orb of mimicking night, have place; for it is replaced by grace, and now the Sun of Righteousness (Malachi 4:2) Himself will be the shining, and no darkness will rule there.
V Cynosure
Galatians 6:14
Now in all of this there comes transition which became transformation and then culmination in Calvary and consummation in the resurrection. What however has been the cynosure, the centre and focus for it all ? It has been the cross of Christ, that metonymic term for all the love and mercy, willingness and readiness to face woe of the Wisdom of God, Jesus Christ, and all the purity demanded as He lived, and all the sin as pure sacrifice He had to bear as He died, and all the power which God deployed in His resurrection and the divine power ever since Pentecost, available to believers for His work, and the humble hearts necessary for its use.
Results, these are one thing, prelude, that is another, but the term 'cross' also serves to maximise the mutilation, to feature the specific, practical and uttermost pollution which was the cost of free pardon for man: paid by Christ.
Here is the cynosure, here is the proof of love, here the terminus of lies, for what false accusation can even Satan bring, when ALL is met in Christ, in His children, ALL their iniquities being laid on Him, and through this exit strategy, brought to the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19ff.).
This is not light but wood; it is not astronomical but anguish of flesh and mind and spirit; it is not theology but penalty, nor deliverance for Him, till after death, but for His people. It is practical, personal and the nadir of horror; and it mirrors sin, so that the very painting of the crucifixion in flesh, becomes the mirror image of sin. He "became sin for us, Who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (II Cor. 5).
This brings to us the eventual dissolution of evil. To guilt, Christ put paid for His people; but now there is the removal of the very sanctuary of vice, the religious premises of pollution and the ground of wrath. The very earth and heavens above it, these have had their day, many have been in the fray, but the time is up, and the flight of the earth through space, indeed this whole realm of created space reaches terminus. The astral flights, the terrestrial plights, all go (Revelation 20, Matthew 24:35). Prodigious was the laboratory test, fascinating the favour in divine love, but the crops are finished, the seed is in, and the people of the Lord have a new heavens and a new earth.
The Cross is the testimony to the love and power of God: NOTHING is too hard for Him, and if the restoration of a human soul and spirit to eternal life is grand, what of this, the new premises for it ? It is like the distinction between engagement and wedding. The former is hard, the latter follows, whatever its grandeur. Yet the new house is no mean thing, far from it!
The very energy in matter has been adequately shown in the atomic bomb; and put this into all of the myriads of created things and you see the exploits of deity; though they are but prelude to the symphony of salvation from sin. It is from THIS Lord, and not some dummy made in the sunken manufacturing units of the demented mind of departing man, that the power has come. It is from this same source that a new heavens and earth in which righteousness dwells is to come. We follow it in the next section.
VI Sinset: Sin's Terminal Episode
This is ontological, not merely in terms of application, but very existence. II Peter 3:11-12.
The world and its works are burnt up - and good riddance! for though the beauty in heart, spirit and grandeur of splendour in the creation is intense, yet the sin-shine is so foul that like a mining town where acrid stench is in the very air, it has to go! Let us hear Peter (3:9-13).
"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night,
in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise,
and the elements will melt with fervent heat;
both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up."Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved,
what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,
looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God,
because of which the heavens will be dissolved,
being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?"Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells."
VII Salvation's Sincerity
II Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:3-8, 22:4-8
with everlasting joy and life, light Isaiah 51:11, 60:19, John 4:14, Revelation 21:7.
II Peter 3:13 has been quoted above, to the effect that according to PROMISE, we expect a NEW heavens and NEW earth. The difference ? It will be one in which righteousness lives: a living righteousness will inhabit it, as the sky, air and stars present a face to us now.
Revelation 21:3-8 makes clear the aftermath, the recourse to the resource of Christ having led on to the new course of heaven and earth, where the missing element, really the missing hand of the mastery of life in the person of its Maker, the missing Spirit, that excised fluency and power natural to man in his original state, and now in his present position, removed: this will be as clear and real as its absence now.
"And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying,
'Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,
and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people.
"God Himself will be with them and be their God.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes;
there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.
There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.'
"Then He who sat on the throne said,'Behold, I make all things new.'
And He said to me,
'Write, for these words are true and faithful.'
And He said to me,
'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.
He who overcomes shall inherit all things,
and I will be his God and he shall be My son.
But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars
shall have their part in the lake
which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.' "
In other words, the IMAGE OF GOD, which man was made to receive, being restored, the kinship is restored and the realities of God become environmental delights, the curse and the earth with it, gone from mind and life. There is no mere formality in this, such as we see is to become normal in the religious follies near the time for the return of the crucified Christ (II Timothy 3, 4). What has been regenerated has the seed of God in it (I John 3:9), and while it is pure deceit to imagine that sin is gone while we await the Lord's return, it would be as furtive and foolish a thing to imagine that sin is the water in which man now wallows, when he has been regenerated.
There is a rule, a righteousness and a reason for it all, a rationale and a spiritual dynamic, and mere mouthing of words does not constitute reality of change and restoration to the Lord by adoption through His Spirit, any more than does E=MC2 constitute an atomic bomb, or even an action in the purlieus of physics, but rather a statement of what is relevant WHEN and IF the appropriate steps are taken for this expression of power to be made to apply!
What prefers darkness, this it is which scripture, the Bible roundly condemns, because here the mercy of God is aborted, and the framework of folly is set up once more, in the very presence of that combination of rebuke and redemption, relating to repentance and regeneration. It is like injecting with marijuana during a drug relief program. You say, This is just what some recommend ? Perhaps, but when pollution becomes purity, and indulgence becomes relief, then will sin become a master of the redeemed. Just as Christ declared this, "If the Son shall make you free, you will be really free" (John 8:30), so He meant; and what He meant, He does. Submission to sin in the presence of the resident Christ is like bowing to receive a knighthood, while preparing a poison pen with which to jab the sovereign.
Some may try this; it is an opportunity for hypocrisy. However, hypocrisy is the nadir of holiness and the antidote to life. The fires of thwarted conscience, or aborted inward awareness, however dim, of remorse, self-reproach, as you see in Lady Macbeth, are by no means less invasive, but if possible more so, than the reproofs of law! When the current mode of time is past, with all the first creation, and the new mode of affairs rules, then the everlasting shame of those who have hated light in the very presence of free pardon and grace, will find its new milieu.
Alas for the doomed; but this is no horrible decree, as Calvin has it, but the necessary result of preferring darkness to light, WHEN that light is the very Christ who, as John 1-3 makes clear, is the criterion and touchstone, the centre and focus for faith (as shown equally in John 15:21-23). It is KNOWING it and GOING the other way which is deadly.
While heaven would be hell, to such, yet for those whose hearts submit with delight to the wonder of the Lord, and find in Him salvation for a life both bountiful and free, God Himself gives them light, and there is an eternity in that axed autonomy, where liberty is itself and not lordly aspiration, which knowing God, knows enough!
"They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. 5There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever."
NOTES
See for example, SMR Ch. 7 as marked.
See Secular Myths and Sacred
Truth Chs. 1 and
7, Wake Up World! ... Chs.
4-6, and
The gods of naturalism have no go!
See
SMR,
TMR,
The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy,
Reason, Revelation and the Redeemer.
and
Isaiah 8-9, from the end of the former to the start of the latter, sets in predictive form, that wonder which swayed and then took the Roman Empire, and later the British Empire, and much in between. It is a double wonder, that it was foretold and that it came as it did, in such power and beauty, with such splendour in the hearts of men, through whom much has been wrought against the tide of selfishness, ignobility, ignominy and shame. Man as innominate is a splurge of folly, pride and self-will; but man as named in the Lord has been not only a butt for imitation, as in Romanism and its vile violences, and the sects in their violence to the Gospel, but an exhibit to the world, till the Lord come, just as He said it would be (Luke 21, 24, Matthew 28:19-20).
As to Isaiah, let us hear him, starting near the end of Isaiah 8:
"To the law and to the testimony!
If they do not speak according to this word,
it is because there is no light in them.
"They will pass through it hard pressed and hungry;
and it shall happen, when they are hungry,
that they will be enraged and curse their king and their God,
and look upward.
"Then they will look to the earth, and see trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish; and they will be driven into darkness."
Chapter 9
"Nevertheless the gloom will not be upon her who is distressed,
As when at first He lightly esteemed
The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,
And afterward more heavily oppressed her,
By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan,
In Galilee of the Gentiles.
"The people who walked in darkness
Have seen a great light;
Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,
Upon them a light has shined."
It proceeds as Isaiah 9 continues, to introduce the Messiah with His power, peace and wonder, overwhelming as deity sent into flesh, whose kingdom will grow, and never be surpassed or finish. Daniel as noted, tells us when it was to come; as it did.
More on Isaiah 9 may be found at Bible Translations No. 8.
This is found as shown, for example in SMR Chs. and 2, 3 and 10, Wake Up World! ... and Secular Myths and Sacred Truth, TMR Ch. 1; and it is shown more broadly in the four volume word, The gods of naturalism have no go!
See Romans 1:17ff..
Turn to the following:
Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 1,
The Defining Drama 2,
Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13,
Secular Myths and Sacred Truth Ch. 1,
The gods of naturalism have no go! Ch. 5.