The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 90

RE-CREATION

50

Covenant of Works. Theirs is the wearisome toil of rolling the Sisyphus stone up the mountain, even tho it be with the greater energy of the higher life. The Scriptural doctrine of Grace ends this impossible Sisyphus task it transfers the Covenant of Works from our shoulders to Christ's, and opens unto us a new order in the Covenant of Grace in which there can be no more uncertainty or fear, loss or forfeit of the benefits of Christ, but of which Wisdom doth cry, "and Understanding putteth forth her voice, ;

standing in the top of high places," saying that

all

things are

now

ready.

The work

of re-creation has this peculiarity, that

elect at once at the still

half

end

of the road.

way from home, but

like

one

They who has

it

places the

are not like the traveler finished his journey;

the long, dreary, ^nd dangerous road is entirely behind him. Of course, he did not run that road he could never have reached the ;

His Mediator and Daysman traveled it for him and in his And by mystic union with his Savior it is as tho he had stead. traveled the whole distance not as we reckon, but as God reckons. This will show why the work of the Holy Spirit appears more

goal.

;

powerful in re-creation than in creation. For what is the road spoken of, but that which leads from the center of our degenerate hearts to the center of the loving heart of God? All godliness aims to bring man into communion with God; hence to make him travel the road between him and God. Man is the only being on earth in

whom

contact with

God means conscious

fellowship.

Since this

broken by the alienation of sin, at the end of the road fellowship fellowship must be perfect, so far as concerns and contact the man's state and principle. If fellowship is the terminus and- God's grace puts His child there at once, at least so far as his state is concerned, there is an obvious difference between him and the unregenerate for the latter is infinitely distant from God, while the former has sweetest fellowship with Him. Since it is the inward operation of the Holy Spirit that accomplishes this. His hand must appear more powerful and glorious in re-creation than in creation. is

;

we could see His work in re-creation all at once as an accomwe should understand it more thoroughly, and escape difficulties that we now meet in comparing the Old Testament

If

plished fact, the

with the

New

regarding

it.

Re-creation brings to us that which

is

eternal, finished, perfected.

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