Notes on the book of ExodusMackintosh, Charles Henry
Religion
Notes on the book of Exodus
Mackintosh, Charles Henry
Bible. Exodus -- Commentaries
Grace not only saves the soul with an everlasting salvation, but also
imparts a nature which delights in everything that belongs to God,
because it is divine. We are made partakers of the divine nature,
which cannot sin, because it is born of God. To walk in the energy of
this nature is, in reality, to "keep" the feast of unleavened bread.
There is no "old leaven" nor "leaven of malice and wickedness" in the
new nature, because it is of God, and God is holy, and "God is love."
Hence it is evident that we do not put away evil from us in order to
better our old nature, which is irremediable; nor yet to obtain the
new nature, but because we have it. We have life, and, in the power of
that life, we put away evil. It is only when we are delivered from the
guilt of sin that we can understand or exhibit the true power of
holiness. To attempt it in any other way is hopeless labor. The feast
of unleavened bread can only be kept beneath the perfect shelter of
the blood.
We may perceive equal significancy and moral propriety in that which
was to accompany the unleavened bread, namely, the "bitter herbs." We
cannot enjoy communion with the sufferings of Christ without
remembering what it was which rendered those sufferings needful, and
this remembrance must necessarily produce a chastened and subdued tone
of spirit, which is aptly expressed by the bitter herbs in the paschal
feast. If the roasted lamb expressed Christ's endurance of the wrath
of God in His own Person, on the cross, the bitter herbs express the
believer's recognition of the truth that He "suffered _for us_." "The
chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are
healed." (Isaiah liii. 5.) It is well, owing to the excessive levity
of our hearts, to understand the deep meaning of the bitter herbs. Who
can read such psalms as the sixth, twenty-second, thirty-eighth,
sixty-ninth, eighty-eighth, and one hundred and ninth, and not enter,
in some measure, into the meaning of the unleavened bread with bitter
herbs? Practical holiness of life, with deep subduedness of soul, must
flow from real communion with Christ's sufferings; for it is quite
impossible that moral evil and levity of spirit can exist in view of
those sufferings.
But, it may be asked, is there not a deep joy for the soul in the
consciousness that Christ has borne our sins; that He has fully
drained, on our behalf, the cup of God's righteous wrath?
Unquestionably. This is the solid foundation of all our joy. But can
we ever forget that it was for "_our sins_" He suffered? Can we ever
lose sight of the soul-subduing truth that the blessed Lamb of God
bowed His head beneath the weight of our transgressions? Surely not.
We must eat our lamb with bitter herbs, which, be it remembered, do
not set forth the tears of a worthless and shallow sentimentality, but
the deep and real experiences of a soul that enters, with spiritual
intelligence and power, into the meaning and into the practical effect
of the cross.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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