Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Jordan Means “Their Going Down.” Spiritual Meanings and Application of This.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
25. Jordan Means
“Their Going Down.” Spiritual Meanings and
Application of This.
Let us look at the words of the Gospel now before
us. “Jordan” means “their going
down.” The name “Jared” is etymologically akin
to it, if I may say so; it also yields the meaning “going
down;” for Jared was born to Maleleel, as it is written in the
Book of Enoch—if any one cares to accept that book as
sacred—in the days when the sons of God came down to the
daughters of men. Under this descent some have supposed that
there is an enigmatical reference to the descent of souls into bodies,
taking the phrase “daughters of men” as a tropical
expression for this earthly tabernacle. Should this be so, what
river will “their going down” be, to which one must come to
be purified, a river going down, not with its own descent, but
“theirs,” that, namely, of men, what but our Saviour who
separates those who received their lots from Moses from those who
obtained their own portions through Jesus (Joshua)? His current,
flowing in the descending stream, makes glad, as we find in the
Psalms,4930
the city of God,
not the visible Jerusalem—for it has no river beside it—but
the blameless Church of God, built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets,
Christ Jesus our Lord being the chief corner-stone. Under the
Jordan, accordingly, we have to understand the Word of God who became
flesh and tabernacled among us, Jesus who gives us as our inheritance
the humanity which He assumed, for that is the head corner-stone, which
being taken up into the deity of the Son of God, is washed by being so
assumed, and then receives into itself the pure and guileless dove of
the Spirit, bound to it and no longer able to fly away from it.
For “Upon whomsoever,” we read, “thou shalt see the
Spirit descending and abiding upon Him, the same is He that baptizeth
with the Holy Spirit.” Hence, he who receives the Spirit
abiding on Jesus Himself is able to baptize those who come to him in
that abiding Spirit. But John baptizes beyond Jordan, in the
regions verging on the outside of Judæa, in Bethabara, being the
forerunner of Him who came to call not the righteous but sinners, and
who taught that the whole have no need of a physician, but they that
are sick. For it is for forgiveness of sins that this washing is
given.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
