OUR TWO-EDGED SWORD
That an identical peril lies at
our door as lay at
So the Holy Spirit turns a
burning searchlight on to that which holds the entire secret of our triumph or
failure. The Scripture is for ever the
critical test; and so the Spirit here says three things about Scripture:- it is living; it is powerful; it is all-searching. For the word of God
is LIVING. The Word comes from life; it contains life; it
imparts life: it never hardens into a seed that has lost its vitality,
it is never a dead letter: it is an
inexhaustible dynamo for ever giving off shocks for life or death. Immense spiritual movements are associated
with the names of Augustine, Luther, Knox, Bunyan, Wesley; and in every case
(as always) the fountain was opened by a Scripture, which, changing one man,
changed Multitudes. Augustine Let us walk
honestly, as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in chambering
and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy.
But put ye on the Lord Jesus
Christ (Rom. 13: 14). Luther- Behold, his soul is puffed up, it is not
upright in him: but the just shall live by faith (Hab. 2: 4).
Knox I give
unto them eternal life ; and they shall never perish,
and no one shall snatch them out of my hand (John
10: 28). Bunyan Him that
cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out (John
6: 37). Wesley He hath
granted unto us His precious and exceeding great promises ;
that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1: 4). The Word is God teaching the soul; only a living
Word can make dead men alive; and, when it is received, it not only makes
alive, but creates rivers of living water.
Consequent on life is power.
The word of God is POWERFUL: it proves
itself operative and efficient (Lange): it has dynamic to lift us from the
lowest hell to the highest heaven. For
it enshrines Christ. The Bible opens
with the Seed of the woman - Genesis; it continues with the blood on the
lintels - Exodus; it unfolds into the slain sacrifice - Leviticus; it foretells
a Saviour - the Prophets; it records His life - the Gospels; it imparts His
Spirit - the Epistles; and it foretells His triumph - the Revelation. Therefore the planted Scripture never fails of
effects and results. The Word of God is
energizing, explosive, compelling action: the Scripture never lies in the soul a dead, inert mass, a mere addition to
previous knowledge: it provokes motion, energy, life: it impels and empowers to
all glorious conduct and holy living. FOR NO WORD FROM GOD SHALL BE VOID OF
POWER (Luke 1: 37).
Scripture is next here described as the sword of the Spirit the word of God is sharper than any TWO-EDGED SWORD,
than any ever made or ever conceived. As
no word of God is obsolete, or impotent, so no word of God is blunt; the
Scripture is edge all over. Our Lord
addresses one church thus:- These things saith he that
hath the sharp two-edged sword (Rev. 2: 12)
proceeding out of His mouth; a double-edged weapon which, in the masses of
apparently conflicting truths, states both, while it cuts away error on both
sides. Speech can be sharper than steel; and Gods speech plays, like an
insinuating blade, into our inmost recesses, knowing us better than we know
ourselves: as a surgeon, in an operation, dissects an anatomy of which the
patient, who possesses it, is largely ignorant, so Scripture cuts its way into
the soul until it is face to face with the real man; it descends, like the
surgeons knife,* where our secrets are.
[*
It has its probing as well as its smiting office
(Alford)
For (we are further told) it is
an internal use to which this two-edged sword is put:-
piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of
both joints and marrow. God, who
made the soul and spirit, the joints and marrow, so speaks as to penetrate what
He has made: His utterance purposely searches into our whole man, so that body
and soul, motive and act, conduct and character, are all sifted and analyzed. It penetrates past all prejudice and illusion
and ignorance and unbelief: our heart, deceitful above all things and extraordinarily
subtle, it lays bare: it pierces hypocrisy, dissipates illusion, strips off
disguise, convicts conscience; equally it detects purity, uncovers
straightness, discloses goodness, and lays bare nobility of character. God has so framed every jot and tittle of His Word that it sifts and winnows every
listening heart.
The consequence is momentous. It is quick to discern - it is a judge, a critic, a
tribunal the thoughts and intents - the affections
and the reason (Westcott) of the heart: it discriminates our mental life, with
a view to passing judgment on it. Gods
Word is able and ready on all occasions to distinguish and decide upon the most
intricate problems of the mind, and the most subtle emotions of the heart; and
it passes divine judgment on these thoughts - emotions,
notions, fancies - and intents - conscious
trains of thought (Delitzsch)
- that are lodged in our inmost soul. The
Word stands over us like a sacrificial knife. As the sacrifice was first flayed, then
dissected and laid open and all nerves and sinews and arteries exposed to view,
so the Scripture pierces asunder soul and spirit, and penetrates secrets never
known or even guessed, and lays them all bare before the eye of God.
So therefore a truth leaps to
light of extraordinary significance. How
we react to Scripture is an instant X-ray photo, revealing the man - on the
point illuminated by the particular Scripture - through and through. The moment an ox in a cattle auction steps on
to the weighing machine, instantly, silently, utterly unconsciously to the
animal, its exact weight, and therefore its value, is indicated on the dial,
for all to see: so the moment a soul comes within hearing of the Word of God,
silently, swiftly, what he is, is marked on the dial of the mind, self-weighed,
self-valued, self-registered.* Our
reaction as we read or hear is what we are: in proportion as we flinch or refuse or disbelieve or disobey or
else ponder and assimilate and accept and fulfil - in that proportion we are
holy or unholy, spiritual or carnal. Our
reaction to Scripture is the critical test of our character.
[* There is no more dread test
for a speaker than for a silent, godly listener to watch how he handles the
Scripture passage with which he is dealing: his heart, with all its lights and
shadows, stands out photographed in his treatment of the Word. This explains why the Scriptures usually
rejected, even among evangelicals, and on a variety of expositional pretexts,
are nearly always the costly and dangerous truths, or the truths which involve
most peril hereafter.]
A further golden truth emerges
of priceless worth. As each word of God,
rejected, makes us less like God, so every word of God, accepted, makes us more
Godlike; and with this two-edged sword in my hand, I am (to some degree) master
of my own heart: with it I can slaughter my own sins. By laying ourselves open to the judging Word,
it acquits or condemns: what is disguised is unveiled: so therefore, by
suffering it as a cautery, we can cut out the cancers
of lust, the tumours of worldliness, the carbuncles of
sin. If we suffer the Scripture to be
our judge, all that is evil will be sentenced, and all that is wrong executed;
and therefore if we judged ourselves, we should not be
judged (1 Cor. 11:
31).* Nothing
is impossible to the man who allows the Scripture to operate in him. Ye have purified your souls, says
the Apostle Peter, in your OBEDIENCE TO THE TRUTH (1 Pet.
1: 22).
[* Our danger the Apostle James (1: 23)
portrays. If
any one is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding
his natural face in a mirror: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and
straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.]
For the Apostle rises at last
into the region of Divine power and imperceptibly makes the written Word merge
into the personal Word. And there is no creature that is not manifest in his sight;
but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes
of him with whom we have to do. The Bible is the book we always shut when we
want to sin, and therefore we know Who dwells in the
Book. The Word of God is the mental
image of God the Word; and Scripture is therefore all that matters, for the
whole Godhead is in it and behind it.
God in the Word can transform
us to the highest. The demands of God in the New Testament, said a
French infidel, are like telling an elephant to fly:
it hasnt the apparatus. But the infidel does not know the power lodged
in the Book. For
it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure
(Phil 2: 13); and lo, as He works, fresh Calebs and fresh Joshuas are
born! He that looketh into the perfect law, the law of
liberty, and so continueth, being not a hearer that forgetteth, but a doer that worketh, this man shall be blessed IN HIS DOING
(Jas. 1: 25).
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OUR
FOUNDATION
A Church that during a war so
largely allows itself to become an annex to the recruiting office and the
Ministry of Propaganda may after the war find itself a rejected Church. Non-conformity has forgotten or despised its
one constructive, constitutive principle, the foundation alike of its theology,
its policy and its discipline - the Word of God. Only the heirs of
It is important to observe in
these days how the Lord (in the Sermon on the Mount) includes the Old Testament
and all its unfolding of the Divine purposes regarding Himself in His teaching
of the citizens of the