That the development of the doctrine in question is proceeding rapidly the following extract will show. It is from a paper in circulation called A Brief Account, &c., by C. E. M., written by a teacher in the North, and printed at Leeds, in which eternal life is said to have been never manifested during the lifetime of the Son of God on earth at all. He writes
ETERNAL LIFE is an accomplished FACT EXISTING IN THE SON OF GOD, to receive which you look altogether outside yourself to Him, in whom it is: in the testimony which presents it to you learning also the way in which it has been ACCOMPLISHED FOR YOU. Whereas being born of the Spirit is described as purely wrought in you without any distinct object being necessarily presented to your faith.
The life was manifested. Now what is meant by this?
It cannot only mean that the Person was visible, which we all know He was: He was visible, His words were audible, His ways and acts could be looked at, and His body was such as could be felt to be real. He was truly always the Word of life, but when and how was life manifested? I answer, that life was manifested by overcoming death. When, having suffered death, He appeared among his own, alive by a power quite distinct from the life of flesh and blood which He had given up.
Then, and not before, was “the eternal life, which was with the Father, manifested unto us,” so that they who saw Him could say it was manifested to them and they could bear witness concerning it. That which existed always with the Father, that which existed when as man He walked about Judea and Galilee, was now manifested.
They could now say that they had seen it; they could not say so before; and as the Lord Himself, when risen appeared, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before of God, so it is true of the eternal life that it was manifested, as such, to those who saw Jesus in circumstances which proved that He lived, having overcome death by the power of what He was eternally.
From what we have seen it is evident how different was that which the disciples saw in John 20, from that which the wise men saw in Matthew 2. The wise men saw the infant King of the Jews; the beginning, if you please, of the kingdom of God on the earth: the King who should bring about a new state of things, a state of peace and blessing; but it was that they saw; in that character they worshiped Him. The disciples in John 20 saw eternal life the first time made manifest as such to human eyes.
Observe, as such.
This shows us the object of the teachings of wisdom.
Therefore no dark saying, and we may add no hard saying, ought to be an offence to a disciple of wisdom.
Another teacher in the North, otherwise worthy of love and respect, made the following statement, which we give, as put down by the brother to whom it was made
The Word was made flesh, had you taken hold of the Lord’s hand, you would not have taken hold of “eternal life,” but simply taken hold of a hand of flesh.
As an antidote to these poisonous statements, we add an extract from a letter by a loved and honored servant of Christ in Ireland, which will be helpful, not only as a statement of truth, but as expressing that adoring spirit, which had it more generally existed, would have been a safeguard against these irreverent notions.
Where is there any warrant in Scripture for the distinction between life, and the expression of life? Only conceive a teacher in the Church of God, asking if the Babe in the M anger was an expression of eternal life!
Was it an expression of eternal life, to be hungry weary, and thirsty? to eat, drink, and sleep on a pillow?
We reply with reverence and adoring worship, He who was the eternal life, the eternal Son, the Creator of the Universe, God over all blessed for ever, was the babe in the manger, was hungry, thirsty, weary, sat on the well slept on a pillow, because he was “God manifest in the flesh.” Well might the inspired apostle exclaim: “Great is the mystery of godliness.” Far too great indeed to be made the subject of irreverent discussion. What authority has any one to assert that some things were the expression of eternal life, and some not? If there ever was a moment, ever a scene, ever a circumstance, in the life of our adorable Lord and Savior, in which He was not the expression of eternal life, then what was He?
What becomes of His Divine Person? This blessed and glorious truth is, that in His every thought, His every look, His every word, His every movement, He was the Eternal Life and the expression of it. He expressed what He was, and He was what He expressed (John 8:2525Then said they unto him, Who art thou? And Jesus saith unto them, Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning. (John 8:25)).
If phrases and statements of belief, so derogatory to the Person of the Lord and subversive of the truth, emanate from teachers amongst us, what can be said of the mass of deductive fragmentary teaching, and conversational expressions of belief by saints, only known and heard in their respective local circles, which one cannot avoid hearing of from time to time? The effect must be truly appalling in its blighting results, where affection for, and faith in the Lord is concerned. The words of one of old will find an echo at the present moment in the heart of many a faithful saint of God: “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night, for the slain of the daughter of my people.”
In the hope that God may awaken many a heart to its “first love,” and “most holy faith,” by making manifest what all this is tending to, and what many are unconsciously identifying themselves with, one example may suffice, for the many expressions of this kind in currency; and this is given of a brother who left the Lord’s Table, because the assembly gathering, where he broke bread, had judged that they could have no fellowship with Mr. R.’s teachings. The brother is not a teacher; but he is a very active proselytizing agent and in regular personal communication with the most prominent of Mr. R.’s followers. He said within the last few days
God did not confer Deity and Eternal Life upon Christ until He ascended up on high.
When asked the day following, by the brother to whom he made this declaration, if these were his exact words, he replied, “Yes, decidedly. We are told so in effect in 1 John 5:2020And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. (1 John 5:20).”
A simple unlettered man, also, after hearing the statements concerning Christ not being the manifestation of Eternal Life discussed at a Scripture reading by a leading Evangelist asked, “When then did Jesus begin to be God?”
Beloved reader, while the heart is crushed with sorrow at the irreverent statements in circulation amongst God’s people, there cannot but be praise to God, that He does not allow such things to pass unchallenged.
Attention having been called, by those opposed to these doctrines, to the statement, that the Son of God “had to return to communion with His Father,” in John 4, after His conversation with the woman of Samaria; the expression has, we are thankful to say, been renounced and confessed as wrong, by two of the teachers who had adopted it. But how serious is the confession by one of these, that he had upheld and explained this sentence; and that this should have been known and going on among us for eighteen months. Whilst the other, though it had been brought before him previously only acknowledged it, when faced publicly by his own statement supplied by the writer. Thankful as we are for the acknowledgments that have been made, it is however, to be feared, that unless these dear brethren judge the matter more deeply yet, and see that their thoughts about the Lord and His glory must have been deeply deteriorated during all the time that they held these views, and unless they perceive also the connection between the statements, that our Lord was not manifesting Eternal Life to the woman of Samaria, and, the notions of Eternal Life as taught by Mr. R – they will not be fully delivered in their own souls, but will be still liable to similar thoughts: for they do not fully perceive the ground they have got upon. And this applies also to the author of the letter printed in Be not Deceived.
Were these teachers fully clear it would be with them as the Apostle describes: “Behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter” (2 Cor. 7:1111For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter. (2 Corinthians 7:11)). For this we would still hope and wait and pray; and then they would surely endeavor to disentangle others from this net of the enemy and would abhor the whole thing as his snare.
For all that the Son said and did flowed from the infinite unity subsisting, and the infinite communion between the Father and the Son, so that as He says both of the words and the works they were the Father’s as much as His own, “that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me and I in Him.” Think of any puny mortal saying He had to return to communion (or even to “communing”) after the scene at Sychar! It is really reducing this infinite union between the Father and the Son to our level, the only begotten in the bosom of the Father, in this respect to a mere man like ourselves who have to return to communion (or “communing”) because it has been interrupted (not perhaps by sin) but by other engagements or occupations, our minds being at times incapable of more, through lack of dependence or not having Christ more before the soul.