Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

The apostle John, by the Holy Spirit, teaches us that “He that has the Son, has life; he that has not the Son of God has not life.” The person you describe has not the Son of God. Anyone who denies that Jesus is God, has not the Son of God. He is a blasphemer. As for his saying that “God was in Him more than in anyone else on earth,” it is a blinding delusion and deceit of the enemy. If Jesus was not God, it is the merest absurdity to speak of His being a good man or the best man who ever lived, or of God being in Him. For any other than God to speak as Jesus did, would be blasphemy.

We must either confess the essential deity of the Man Christ Jesus or deny Him altogether. There is not the breadth of a hair of middle ground. But, blessed be God, Scripture is plain and emphatic. It claims for our adorable Savior not merely divinity but essential deity. This is demonstrated in a very singular and forcible manner by the fact that in Romans 1, where the apostle is speaking of the testimony of creation, he says, “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, His eternal power and Godhead.” In Colossians 2:9, in speaking of the Person of Christ, he says, “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” In the original Greek of these two passages we have a different word for “Godhead.” In Romans 1:20 the word is divinity. In Colossians 2:9 it is deity. The heathen should have learned that there was something superhuman, something divine in creation, but the Holy Spirit is not satisfied to claim divinity for the Person of Christ but absolute deity. This is magnificently striking.

We cannot understand you, dear friend, when you speak of a blasphemer of Christ as “a good living person, keeping God’s commandments.” What! “A good living man,” yet denying the Godhead of Jesus! “Keeping God’s commandments,” yet blaspheming the Son of His love! Be not offended, dear friend, by our plain language. We must speak plainly. We utterly loathe and abhor the false liberality of the present day, a liberality which can lavish its compliments upon men, but deny the Christ of God. We hold it to be utterly impossible for anyone who lives and dies in the denial of Christ to be saved. Such an one has no Savior unless there is some other way of being saved than by Christ. May God open the eyes of your friend to see his guilt and danger — notwithstanding his “good living” and “keeping God’s commandments” — and to flee by faith to the refuge provided for the lost in the precious atonement of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! We regret having to write in such a way concerning one who “is very near and dear to you,” but we should either write as we have done or leave your letter wholly unnoticed. Our Lord Christ is more to us than all the friends in the world.

In Galatians 5:9 the apostle in speaking of bad doctrine, uses the very same form of words as in 1 Corinthians 5:6, which he applies to bad conduct. But the bad doctrine in question affected the very foundation of Christianity. So also in 2 John 10, the apostle calls upon the elect lady to shut her door against anyone who brought not the true doctrine of Christ. If a man denies Christ we cannot own him or salute him or wish him God speed. To do so would make us partakers of his evil deeds. What is the difference between a teacher of fundamental error and one who knowingly receives him or wishes him God speed? Does the law distinguish between a traitor and one who knowingly conceals the traitor? Could you have fellowship with a man who denies the Person or the work of Christ?

It is very striking to notice how much more alive people are to bad morals than bad doctrine. A person living in scandal is justly rejected, but a man may deny the deity or the eternal Sonship of Christ and be received and honored in the highest circles of so-called Christian society. A man who picks his neighbor’s pocket is justly sent to prison, but a man may blaspheme the Son of God and yet be looked upon as a respectable Christian! How is this? Because man thinks more of himself and his respectability than he does of Christ!

But who would think for a moment of placing fundamental truth on a level with such a question as baptism or the interpretation of a text? To do so would be the very height of folly. If a man holds the truth as to Christ and is seeking to live according to it, we can give him the right hand of fellowship, although we may not agree with him as to baptism or many minor points. Difference of judgment on minor questions is a proof of human weakness, but if that difference be allowed to rise into undue prominence, it is a proof of Satan’s power. When Christ is our absorbing and commanding object, all minor differences soon find their level.