Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

Question:

Several questions have come to hand, and as it seems that some have had difficulties about the reply to the question, “When is a person sprinkled with the blood of Christ?” ― I take up the remarks, and questions of Correspondents in detail.

“Then the veil will not be rent for them” (i.e., the Jew). What Scripture can be given for this? etc.

Answer:

The want of understanding as to the place and standing of a heavenly people with God, in contrast with an earthly people before God, is at the root of this question about the veil. We need two things as Christians, in order to stand in the presence of God in the light: 1st, To know how what we have done (i.e., our sins) has been met; 2nd, To know how what we are (i.e., our nature) has been dealt with. The first thing that troubles the conscience is the former. A person finds that his sins are on his conscience, and then learns that they have been met by Christ bearing them on the cross, and putting them away. But this knowledge does not give me rest as to what I am ― for I am still a sinner in nature. Then I am told that I am dead to this sinful nature ― or “sin,” and alive to God through Christ. (Rom. 6.) Thus both acts and nature, tree and fruit are met; I can now stand in the light of God’s presence, within the veil, if you please. Hence you will find that Paul, who alone teaches the doctrine of the Church of God, treats of this double dealing of God with the tree and the fruit ― because he sets us in God’s immediate presence. This is needed for the status of a heavenly people.

Now an earthly people, i.e., the Jew, will not need this. They need to know remission of their “sins” so as to walk happily before God; but they are never called to stand within the veil as Christians. Consequently, you find in the close of the book of Ezekiel, the priesthood is again established between the Lord and His people (chapter 44:15-16). The sacrifices are all renewed, and the feasts, with the exception of Pentecost, which had “fully come,” and had expended all its anti-typical blessing on the Church formed at Pentecost. The Passover and the Atonement are renewed (chapter 45:18-25), and the Tabernacles (Zechariah 14), etc, etc.

Thus you have a nation with a priesthood between it and God, with a divinely ordered ceremonial; but, as I gather, commemorative in its character, because the cross work of the Lord Jesus is past; rather than anticipative, or typical, which was the character of the ritual in the Old Testament.

There is a gate “shut” continually, by which even the earthly prince of the house of David may not enter; “because the Lord, the God of Israel, hath entered by it.” I should mention that there is a prince of David’s house, the Lord’s Vicegerent upon the throne, in the kingdom of Israel, by and by. The Lord Jesus has appeared and set all to rights, but His place is rather on high, in the glorified church; though there may be divine visitations.

Moreover, if you examine 2 Chronicles 3, you will find a “veil” characterising Solomon’s typical reign. It will be the same in the Lord’s, during the kingdom.

An earthly people with a priesthood and ritual do not need the truth of “dead and risen with Christ;” but they do need forgiveness of sins, and the law written upon their hearts, etc, and these they will have. A heavenly people need much more. The total ignorance in most Christians as to these things produces the kind of spurious Christianity you meet daily, which even at its best only admits remission of sins, and a purged conscience. Consequently its followers walk as earthly men, as pious Jews would do, and take part with the powers that be, the wars and fightings, the politics, etc, which the least understanding of the place and standing of the heavenly calling of the Church would judge in a moment.

The veil was rent at the crucifixion of the Lord. Its rending marked ― first, that Judaism of the past was over; secondly, that man had consummated his guilt, and stood face to face with God; thirdly, that God had disclosed Himself in perfect grace; and fourthly, that the sins of His people were swept away by the same stroke for ever. God and man are now face to face. For a saint, he is as white as snow; for a sinner, there he is in the presence of the richest grace of God, convicted by the light of God which reveals it, while it exposes him.

But we must distinguish all these moral truths and facts from a dispensational order of things on earth, to be again set up on the basis of Christ’s accomplished work. Still, I believe that in that state of things a godly Jew will draw near “by faith” into the presence of God, as a saint consciously does now when he knows his sins are forgiven.

You say again, “The paragraph on 1 Peter 1:2, tacitly excludes all believers (except) out of the nation of Israel,” etc. So it does. It is addressed to the elect strangers of the dispensation, and to no one else. But they are now Christians, and occupying the same platform before God as those of the Gentiles who had been called into Christianity. Consequently the blessings of the Epistle are to be appropriated by the faith of those who are Christians; while several passages would only be thoroughly appreciable by one who had been a Jew.