Expositions of Holy Scripture: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and NumbersMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Pentateuch -- Commentaries; Bible. Pentateuch -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Our Lord uses this very illustration when He says, 'He that heareth My
Word, and believeth Him that sent Me, hath eternal life, and cometh not
into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life.' That is a great
migration, is it not, from the condition of a corpse to that of a
living man? Paul, too, gives the same idea with a somewhat different
turn of the illustration, when he gives 'thanks to the Father who
delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the
kingdom of,'--not, as we might expect to complete the antithesis, 'the
light,' but--the 'kingdom of the Son of His love,' which is the same
thing as the light. The illustration is probably drawn from the
practice of the ancient conquering monarchs, who, when they subjugated
a country, were wont to lead away captive long files of its inhabitants
as compulsory colonists, and set them down in another land. Thus the
conquering Christ comes, and those whom He conquers by His love, He
shifts by a great emigration out of the dominion of that darkness which
is at once tyranny and anarchy, and leads them into the happy kingdom
of the light.
Thus, then, all Christian men become such, because they turn their
backs upon their old selves, and crucify their affections and lusts;
and paste down the leaf, as it were, on which their blotted past is
writ, and turn over a new and a fairer one. And my question to you,
dear brethren, is, Are you men from the other side, who were not born
where you live now, and who have passed out of the native Chaldea into
the foreign--and yet to the new self home--land of union with God?
2. This designation may be taken as teaching that a Christian should be
known as a foreigner, a man from across the water.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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