The Christadelphian February 1874, Robert Roberts

“Renunciationism”

Under this general heading, we group the following items, which though properly “Answers to Correspondents,” may be more conveniently placed by themselves.

Did Jesus Partake of the Memorial Supper?

(W.H.)—Jesus “gave thanks” for the bread (1 Cor. 11:24) and the cup.—(Matt. 26:27.) Why should he give thanks if he were not to partake? When handing the cup to his disciples, he said, “I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine until the day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”—(Mark 14:25.) Why should he say “no more” if he had not drunk at all? Is not 1 Cor. 11:25, an express intimation that he did partake? “After the same manner also, the cup when he had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament, &c.” With what appropriateness can it be called “the Lord’s Supper” (verse 20) if the Lord did not sup?

Why should he not partake of his own supper for which he gave thanks?”

The bread represented his body, and the wine his blood. Is not the personal Messiah part of the one body represented by the “one bread?”—(1 Cor. 10:17.) Is he not the head? and is not the head the principal part of the body? Why should a doubt be raised? Because, presumably, Renunciationism perceives that if the Lord partook of the emblems of his own sacrifice, it is an intimation that he was himself comprehended in the operation and effects of that sacrifice, which is, in fact, the case.

But whatever doubt may be raised with regard to the breaking of bread, none can exist with regard to his eating the passover: “Where is the guest chamber where I shall eat the passover with my disciples? . . . With desire I have desired to eat the passover with you before I suffer.”—(Luke 22:11, 15.) Now, let the significance of the passover be considered: “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.”—(1 Cor. 5:7.) Christ ate lamb’s flesh, representing himself. What is the conclusion? That as an individual he was saved from death (Heb. 5:7) by the anti-typical passover which God, through him, provided. The conclusion based upon his participation in the breaking of bread, is of less weight than that which follows from his undisputed eating of the passover with his disciples.

“No Contradiction”

“You said in 1869 that there was no change in Adam’s nature at the time he transgressed. Now you seem to say there was; I see in the same article (1869) you speak of condemnation ‘running in the blood,’ which looks like the same position you take now. Does not the threat, ‘dying thou shalt die,’ show that Adam was dying?”—(E.C.)

Answer.—Is there any difference in nature between a man in a state of health and a man dying of small pox? No. Both men have the same nature, but it is the same nature in differeut states. So Adam before and after transgression was the same nature, but in two different states—the second state being expressed by the word mortal or subject to death, which is not affirmable of the first. The sentence of death became a physical law of his being; hence it has passed on us who are derived from him. Its passing on us would be incomprehensible on any other principle. God’s sentences are carried out differently from man’s, who has no power beyond mechanical acts. When God decrees death, “we have the sentence of death in ourselves” (2 Cor. 1:9) as Paul expresses it. It is a law “working in our members.” When man decrees death, he has to carry it out with rope or guillotine. This difference has to be kept in view. We bear “the image of the earthy” in its second or condemned state, in which it became “heir” to “ills” unknown to the first. Hence the proverb. When the Dr. speaks of “nature unchanged taking its course,” he means nature unchanged into the spiritual body. He does not mean that the law of death, inoperative before, did not set in. He does not contradict himself. The glib assertion that he does only indicates the superficial thinking of the speaker. “Dying, thou shalt die” is a Hebraism not to be understood according to the English idiom. It occurs in the description of many other acts: e.g., “living thou shalt live;” “running thou shalt run;” “hearing, thou shalt hear,” &c., &c. It expresses both the act and the result as future to the time of speaking. Hence, when it was said to Adam, “dying thou shalt die,” it amounted to an intimation that the “dying” would not commence until transgression. No one having understanding of the Hebrew idiom would suggest that it meant he was dying.

Jesus Made a Curse

“The apostle Paul, in 1 Cor. 12:3, says that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed; yet in Gal. 3:12, he says that Jesus was made a curse for us; will you please explain what he means by the one in Cor.”—(C.F.)

Answer.—The explanation is to be found in the difference between the two words used by Paul in the two places referred to. They are not the same. In 1 Cor. 12:3, the word is αναθεμα, which means dedicated or devoted to evil: cut off for that destiny. In Gal. 3. the word is καταρα, which means a curse proceeding from any source without reference to final effects. Certain classes of Jews and Gentiles held that Jesus, as a felon (which they supposed him to be from the mode of his execution) was an accursed man in the absolute sense; whose end on the cross showed that his miracles and excellent precepts were a delusion, and that he himself was a vile person, given over to everlasting infamy. Some known at Corinth, claiming to be inspired, held this doctrine; and Paul in the verse referred to at once disposes of their case, by saying that no one speaking by the Spirit could hold such a view.

But this is no interference with Paul’s own doctrine (Gal 3:13), that in being hung on the cross, Jesus came, by the will of the Father, under the curse of the law, that he might redeem those who were under that curse by their disobedience. We speak by the Spirit in saying that, in this sense, Jesus was accursed; for it is the Spirit that has said: “He that hangeth on a tree is accursed of God.” We join not the Corinthian blasphemers who said Jesus was dedicated or devoted to evil. In Paul’s letters, notwithstanding occasional appearances to the contrary, there is no contradiction.

“Except a Corn of Wheat,” &c

In Jerusalem, at the Feast of the Passover, some Greeks (Jews or proselytes) having intimated to Jesus, through Andrew and Philip, that they wished to see him, Jesus said, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”—(John 12:24.) This is held to teach the Renunciationist Heresy that Jesus was not a mortal man, but might, without dying, have entered eternal life alone. A consideration of the circumstances under which the saying was uttered, and the things said in the immediate context on the same occasion, will show the fallacy of this contention. The words are parabolic, which will not be denied; and, therefore, must be interpreted in harmony with what the Lord plainly taught on the subject supposed to be treated of. The occasion of the utterance was the inquisitive approach of those who wished to look at him in the light of his well-known claim to be the Messiah. The popular conception of that claim led the people to suppose—like the Renunciationists—that the man truthfully making it would never die (verse 34), and would be manifested at once in kingly glory. Christ’s visitors, without doubt, entertained this idea. He, therefore, at once, meets their premature expectations by uttering the parable in question. The question is, What is the application of the parable to him? He himself gives it in the very next words he spoke: “He that loveth his life shall lose it: and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”—(verse 25.) So far from teaching that he was an exception, he includes himself in the rules of probation to which all stood related. These rules required them to make nothing of the present life except as a means of attaining to the life to come. The way the one is to be used to lead to the other he illustrates by the corn of wheat, which, if it be not sacrificed, will not produce increase. “Much fruit” is the parable; eternal life is the meaning. “A corn of wheat” is the parable; the present life is the meaning. The one must be used to produce the other. Every man shall reap as he sows—bountifully, sparingly, or nothing, according to the sowing.

But suppose we interpret the parable as applying to Christ exclusively, the Renunciationist Heresy is nothing profited thereby. On the contrary, it is destroyed. For, according to that interpretation, the corn of wheat is the natural man Christ, the earthy corruptible flesh-and-blood Son of David, who, as flesh and blood, was incapable of inheriting the kingdom of God.—(1 Cor. 15:50.) Now, except this corn of wheat die, it must remain what it is; for we all know that to be the fact. A grain unsown remains a grain; any change being that of corruption. Therefore, according to this application, apart from death, Christ must have remained an unglorified, corruptible, natural man—an unchanged corn of wheat, which, in process of time, would turn to corruption. What does this prove but the truth?—that as a partaker of our common uncleanness, he had himself to be delivered by obedience, death, and resurrection, apart from which, he must remain a corruptible unproductive “corn of wheat.”

Sin in the Flesh

“What do you mean by ‘sin in the flesh,’ which some speak of as a fixed principle?”—(C.F.)

Answer.—Job, speaking of “man that is born of woman,” says, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” and David, by the Spirit, says, in Psalm 51:5: “Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Furthermore, the annual atonement under the law (Lev. 16.) was appointed even “for the holy place,” because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, besides their “transgressions in all their sins.”—(verse 16.) “Sin in the flesh,” which is Paul’s phrase, refers to the same thing. It is what Paul also calls “Sin that dwelleth in me” (Rom. 7:17), adding, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing.” Now, what is this element called “uncleanness,” “sin,” “iniquity,” &c.? The difficulty experienced by some in the solution of this question, arises from a disregard of the secondary use of terms. Knowing that sin is the act of transgression, they read “act of transgression” every time they see the term sin, ignoring the fact that there is a metonymy in the use of all words which apply even to sin. Suppose a similar treatment of the word death. Primarily, death means the state to which a living man is reduced when his life ceases. Now we read of one of the sons of the prophets saying, “There is death in the pot.” Does this mean there was a corpse in the pot? No, but that which makes a corpse of any living man. “Death” literally meant “that which would lead to death.” Again, “death hath passed upon all men,” means the condition that leads to death. So, “Let the dead bury their dead,” means, “Let those who are destined to be numbered with the dead, bury those who are actually dead.” “Passed from death unto life,” means, “Passed from that relation that ends in death, to that which leads to life.” Adisregard of metonymy and ellipsis in such statements, has led to most of the errors of the apostacy; and is leading some back to them who had escaped.

There is a principle, element, or peculiarity in our constitution (it matters not how you word it) which leads to the decay of the strongest or the healthiest. Its implantation came by sin, for death came by sin; and the infliction of death and the implantation of this peculiarity are synonymous things. God’s sentences are not carried out by hangmen’s ropes and executioners’ axes, but by the inworking of His appointed law. Because the invisible, constitutional, physical inworking of death in us came by sin, that inworking is termed sin. It is a principle of uncleanness and corruption and weakness—the word and experience conjoining in this testimony. For this reason, it is morally operative: for whatever affects the physical, affects the moral. If no counterforce were brought into play, its presence would subject us to the uncontrolled dominion of disobedience, through the constitutional weakness and impulse to sin. The enlightenment of the truth helps us to keep the body under. Still we are not thereby emancipated. Our experience answers to Paul, and leads us to sympathise exactly with his exclamation, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death.” The body of the Lord Jesus was this same unclean nature in the hand of the Father, that deliverance might be effected by God on His own principles and to His own glory. Condemnation has been called a cage; and it has been asked how one prisoner can liberate another? The answer is that God never allows His locks to be forced or His prisoners to be unlawfully set free. The doors must be opened legitimately, and the opening of the prison must be for a reason among the prisoners as in the closing. God accepts no compromise. He provided a prisoner furnished with the key of obedience who could open the door for all who should name themselves after Him.

“The Law Weak Through the Flesh”

Paul says that God by Christ has done “that which the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh.” It is suggested that “the flesh” in this sentence is a periphrasis for the sacrifices offered under the law of Moses. This cannot but be characterised as an extraordinary suggestion, indicative of radical unsoundness in the theory requiring it to be made. While the phrase “the flesh” occurs about seventy times as (beyond cavil) expressive of human nature in its moral tendencies and resources, not once is it employed to define generically the institution of animal sacrifice. That a phrase always used to mean human nature is in a solitary instance to be taken to mean beast nature, is so inherently improbable as to require something exceptionally forcible in the way of proof. The search for proof will dissipate the suggestion entirely. For the phrase is used a second time in the same verse, and has only to be read in the way suggested to make its utter absurdity manifest. Thus: “What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh of slain beasts, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh of slain beasts!”

Then we look at the suggestion in its general relations and find the same evidence of fallacy. For what does Paul’s statement amount to but this, that the law would have been strong but for the medium of its operation being weak: in that it was weak through the flesh.’ The Law was one thing: the flesh another. If we suppose the flesh means the sacrifices, remembering that the sacrifices were a part of the law, we are asked to imagine that Paul meant to say that the law was weak through itself! And then we are forced to suppose that the law would not have been weak if the sacrifices had not formed an element of it; that it would have been strong to give eternal life if there had been no need, by transgression, for sacrifice: a supposition partly true, but rejected by those who suggest that “the flesh” means sacrifices. Discarding the most absurd exegesis proposed, and interpreting Paul’s statement in the light of the evident meaning of “the flesh” as alluding to human nature in its unaided moral resources, it becomes intelligible Its meaning cannot be more intelligibly stated than in the words used by himself in the same context, “The commandment which was ordained unto life, I found to be unto death. For sin (that dwelleth in me—v. 17), taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me and by it, slew me.”—(Rom. 7:10–11.) The inability of the flesh to perfectly comply with the commandments of God was the source of the law’s weakness. If the flesh had been equal to obedience, life would have come by it. This is conclusively evident when we ask how has life come? Is it not by the obedience of one?—(Rom. 5:19.) Obedience to what? To the commandments of God. Does it matter what those commandments are? No. The principle is the same in one or a hundred statutes: in abstaining from forbidden fruit or keeping a feast enjoined. Did not the law form a portion, and the major portion, of the commandments to which Jesus was subject? This cannot be denied in view of the fact that Christ was “made under the law.” His obedience opened the way; and it was obedience rendered “under the law,” and hence all the blessings of the law centered in Christ, who, dying under the law, was, after his resurrection, “the end of the law for righteousness to every one believing in him.”—(Rom. 10:4.) Thus, in the preaching of him, the righteousness of God without the law was manifested (Rom. 3:21), but it was a righteousness developed under the law; for Jesus was born and obedient under the law. He said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfil.”—(Matt. 5:17.) The law would have been “destroyed” if it had been left out of the process by which he “of God, was made unto us righteousness,” &c.—(1 Cor. 1:30.) The flesh did not and could not keep the law: Jesus did, but he was not the flesh, “merely.” He was God manifest in the flesh (the mode of which we need not trouble ourselves with), that the work might be of God and the glory to Him. Thus, “What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God (did) sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (made of a woman, made under the law—Gal. 4:4), and on account of sin, condemned (by his crucifixion) sin in the flesh (that sinned in Adam, whose mortal effects were present in the flesh of Jesus who was thus made sin for us who knew no sin).

This is an appropriate place to introduce the letter of a correspondent who, though never tainted with Renunciationism, held somewhat aloof from the arguments submitted on behalf of the truth, on the ground that (as it appeared to him) wrong positions were taken and contradictions perpetrated, in which both Dr. Thomas and the Editor were involved—but the latter more than the former. He writes:

“I am glad to state that by further examination of God’s abstruse book, I have been brought to the conclusion that it is true that the law could have saved, had it not been for the fact that “the flesh” of no man (Christ excepted) could keep it. I was brought to this conclusion from the following passages:

Rom. 3:19–23: “Now we know that whatsoever things the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God, which is by the faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference, for all (Jew and Gentile) have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

Rom. 7:10–13: “And the commandment which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me and, by it, slew me. Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good, that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.”

Rom. 8:3, 4: “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh. That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.”

Rom. 2:13: “For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.”

Lev. 18:5: “Ye shall, therefore, keep my statutes and my judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the Lord.”

Nehemiah 9:29: “Thou testifiedst against them, that Thou mightest bring them again into Thy law, yet they dealt proudly and hearkened not unto Thy commandments, but sinned against Thy judgments—which if a man do he shall even live in them—and withdrew the shoulder and hardened their neck, and would not hear.”

Ezek. 22:11–13, 21: “I gave them my statutes and showed them my judgments, which if a man do he shall even live in them. Moreover, also, I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them. But the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness; they walked not in my statutes, and they despised my judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them; and my Sabbaths they greatly polluted . . They walked not in my statutes, neither kept my judgments to do them, which if a man do, he shall even live in them.”

Prov. 4:4: “He taught me also and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words; keep my commandments and live.”

Luke 10:25–28: “And behold a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? How readest thou? . . . This do and Thou shalt live.”

Gal. 3:12: “The law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them.”

Rom. 10:5: Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth these things shall live by them.

I care nothing about being wrong myself, but I should have been very sorry if it could be proved that either you or the poor old Dr. was at fault.

I also see that all men are appointed unto death (Heb. 9:27–28), but, nevertheless that God does not punish the child for the father’s sin (Ezek. 18:20), so that dying “in Adam” would not keep us in the grave “eternally,” if we ourselves were righteous.

I am glad that I have at last seen, and been able to renounce all Renunciationist absurdities. For although I rejected it as a whole from the first, nevertheless there were a few things, and very few, that appeared to me to be plausible, and I thought I would embrace them until such time as I could prove them. But they led me into all sorts of erroneous conclusions: “The weakness of the flesh,” being the last that bothered me, and it led me into extra errors. So after bothering my brains both day and night, for a space, I have profited nothing, for it has left me in statu quo.”—(John Martin, Plymouth.)