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| That in the Books of the Old Testament, Where It is Said that God Shall Judge the World, the Person of Christ is Not Explicitly Indicated, But It Plainly Appears from Some Passages in Which the Lord God Speaks that Christ is Meant.
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Chapter 30.—That in the Books of
the Old Testament, Where It is Said that God Shall Judge the World,
the Person of Christ is Not Explicitly Indicated, But It Plainly
Appears from Some Passages in Which the Lord God Speaks that Christ
is Meant.
There are many other passages of
Scripture bearing on the last judgment of God,—so many, indeed,
that to cite them all would swell this book to an unpardonable
size. Suffice it to have proved that both Old and New Testament
enounce the judgment. But in the Old it is not so definitely
declared as in the New that the judgment shall be administered by
Christ, that is, that Christ shall descend from heaven as the
Judge; for when it is therein stated by the Lord God or His prophet
that the Lord God shall come, we do not necessarily understand this
of Christ. For both the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost
are the Lord God. We must not, however, leave this without
proof. And therefore we must first show how Jesus Christ speaks
in the prophetical books under the title of the Lord God, while yet
there can be no doubt that it is Jesus Christ who speaks; so that
in other passages where this is not at once apparent, and where
nevertheless it is said that the Lord God will come to that last
judgment, we may understand that Jesus Christ is meant. There is
a passage in the prophet Isaiah which illustrates what I mean.
For God says by the prophet, “Hear me, Jacob and Israel, whom I
call. I am the first, and I am for ever: and my hand has
founded the earth, and my right hand has established the heaven.
I will call them, and they shall stand together, and be gathered,
and hear. Who has declared to them these things? In love of
thee I have done thy pleasure upon Babylon, that I might take away
the seed of the Chaldeans. I have spoken, and I have called: I
have brought him, and have made his way prosperous. Come ye near
unto me, and hear this. I have not spoken in secret from the
beginning; when they were made, there was I. And now the Lord God
and His Spirit hath sent me.”1477
It was Himself who was speaking
as the Lord God; and yet we should not have understood that it was
Jesus Christ had He not added, “And now the Lord God and His
Spirit hath sent me.” For He said this with reference to the
form of a servant, speaking of a future event as if it were past,
as in the same prophet we read, “He was led as a sheep to the
slaughter,”1478
not “He
shall be led;” but the past tense is used to express the
future. And prophecy constantly speaks in this way.
There is also another passage in
Zechariah which plainly declares that the Almighty sent the
Almighty; and of what persons can this be understood but of God the
Father and God the Son? For it is written, “Thus saith the Lord
Almighty, After the glory hath He sent me unto the nations which
spoiled you; for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of His
eye. Behold, I will bring mine hand upon them, and they shall be
a spoil to their servants: and ye shall know that the Lord
Almighty hath sent me.”1479
Observe, the Lord Almighty saith
that the Lord Almighty sent Him. Who can presume to understand
these words of any other than Christ, who is speaking to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel? For He says in the Gospel, “I am
not sent save to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,”1480
which He
here compared to the pupil of God’s eye, to signify the
profoundest love. And to this class of sheep the apostles
themselves belonged. But after the glory, to wit, of His
resurrection,—for before it happened the evangelist said that
“Jesus was not yet glorified,”1481
—He was sent unto the nations in
the persons of His apostles; and thus the saying of the psalm was
fulfilled, “Thou wilt deliver me from the contradictions of the
people; Thou wilt set me as the head of the nations,”1482
so that
those who had spoiled the Israelites, and whom the Israelites had
served when they were subdued by them, were not themselves to be
spoiled in the same fashion, but were in their own persons to
become the spoil of the Israelites. For this had been promised to
the apostles when the Lord said, “I will make you fishers of
men.”1483
And to
one of them He says, “From henceforth thou shalt catch men.”1484
They
were then to become a spoil, but in a good sense, as those who are
snatched from that strong one when he is bound by a stronger.1485
In like manner the Lord, speaking
by the same prophet, says, “And it shall come to pass in that
day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against
Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and mercy; and they
shall look upon me because they have insulted me, and they shall
mourn for Him as for one very dear, and shall be in bitterness as
for an only-begotten.”1486
To whom but to God does it
belong to destroy all the nations that are hostile
to the holy
city Jerusalem, which “come against it,” that is, are opposed
to it, or, as some translate, “come upon it,” as if putting it
down under them; or to pour out upon the house of David and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and mercy? This
belongs doubtless to God, and it is to God the prophet ascribes the
words; and yet Christ shows that He is the God who does these so
great and divine things, when He goes on to say, “And they shall
look upon me because they have insulted me, and they shall mourn
for Him as if for one very dear (or beloved), and shall be in
bitterness for Him as for an only-begotten.” For in that day
the Jews—those of them, at least, who shall receive the spirit of
grace and mercy—when they see Him coming in His majesty, and
recognize that it is He whom they, in the person of their parents,
insulted when He came before in His humiliation, shall repent of
insulting Him in His passion: and their parents themselves, who
were the perpetrators of this huge impiety, shall see Him when they
rise; but this will be only for their punishment, and not for their
correction. It is not of them we are to understand the words,
“And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and mercy, and they
shall look upon me because they have insulted me;” but we are to
understand the words of their descendants, who shall at that time
believe through Elias. But as we say to the Jews, You killed
Christ, although it was their parents who did so, so these persons
shall grieve that they in some sort did what their progenitors
did. Although, therefore, those that receive the spirit of mercy
and grace, and believe, shall not be condemned with their impious
parents, yet they shall mourn as if they themselves had done what
their parents did. Their grief shall arise not so much from guilt
as from pious affection. Certainly the words which the Septuagint
have translated, “They shall look upon me because they insulted
me,” stand in the Hebrew,“They shall look upon me whom they
pierced.”1487
And by
this word the crucifixion of Christ is certainly more plainly
indicated. But the Septuagint translators preferred to allude to
the insult which was involved in His whole passion. For in point
of fact they insulted Him both when He was arrested and when He was
bound, when He was judged, when He was mocked by the robe they put
on Him and the homage they did on bended knee, when He was crowned
with thorns and struck with a rod on the head, when He bore His
cross, and when at last He hung upon the tree. And therefore we
recognize more fully the Lord’s passion when we do not confine
ourselves to one interpretation, but combine both, and read both
“insulted” and “pierced.”
When, therefore, we read in the
prophetical books that God is to come to do judgment at the last,
from the mere mention of the judgment, and although there is
nothing else to determine the meaning, we must gather that Christ
is meant; for though the Father will judge, He will judge by the
coming of the Son. For He Himself, by His own manifested
presence, “judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the
Son;”1488
for as the
Son was judged as a man, He shall also judge in human form. For
it is none but He of whom God speaks by Isaiah under the name of
Jacob and Israel, of whose seed Christ took a body, as it is
written, “Jacob is my servant, I will uphold Him; Israel is mine
elect, my Spirit has assumed Him: I have put my Spirit upon Him;
He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry,
nor cease, neither shall His voice be heard without. A bruised
reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not
quench: but in truth shall He bring forth judgment. He shall
shine and shall not be broken, until He sets judgment in the
earth: and the nations shall hope in His name.”1489
The
Hebrew has not “Jacob” and “Israel;” but the Septuagint
translators, wishing to show the significance of the expression
“my servant,” and that it refers to the form of a servant in
which the Most High humbled Himself, inserted the name of that man
from whose stock He took the form of a servant. The Holy Spirit
was given to Him, and was manifested, as the evangelist testifies,
in the form of a dove.1490
He brought forth judgment to the
Gentiles, because He predicted what was hidden from them. In His
meekness He did not cry, nor did He cease to proclaim the truth.
But His voice was not heard, nor is it heard, without, because He
is not obeyed by those who are outside of His body. And the Jews
themselves, who persecuted Him, He did not break, though as a
bruised reed they had lost their integrity, and as smoking flax
their light was quenched; for He spared them, having come to be
judged and not yet to judge. He brought forth judgment in truth,
declaring that they should be punished did they persist in their
wickedness. His face shone on the Mount,1491
His fame in the world. He is not
broken nor overcome, because neither in Himself nor in His
Church
has persecution prevailed to annihilate Him. And therefore that
has not, and shall not, be brought about which His enemies said or
say, “When shall He die, and His name perish?”1492
“until
He set judgment in the earth.” Behold, the hidden thing which
we were seeking is discovered. For this is the last judgment,
which He will set in the earth when He comes from heaven. And it
is in Him, too, we already see the concluding expression of the
prophecy fulfilled: “In His name shall the nations hope.”
And by this fulfillment, which no one can deny, men are encouraged
to believe in that which is most impudently denied. For who could
have hoped for that which even those who do not yet believe in
Christ now see fulfilled among us, and which is so undeniable that
they can but gnash their teeth and pine away? Who, I say, could
have hoped that the nations would hope in the name of Christ, when
He was arrested, bound, scourged, mocked, crucified, when even the
disciples themselves had lost the hope which they had begun to have
in Him? The hope which was then entertained scarcely by the one
thief on the cross, is now cherished by nations everywhere on the
earth, who are marked with the sign of the cross on which He died
that they may not die eternally.
That the last judgment, then, shall
be administered by Jesus Christ in the manner predicted in the
sacred writings is denied or doubted by no one, unless by those
who, through some incredible animosity or blindness, decline to
believe these writings, though already their truth is demonstrated
to all the world. And at or in connection with that judgment the
following events shall come to pass, as we have learned: Elias
the Tishbite shall come; the Jews shall believe; Antichrist shall
persecute; Christ shall judge; the dead shall rise; the good and
the wicked shall be separated; the world shall be burned and
renewed. All these things, we believe, shall come to pass; but
how, or in what order, human understanding cannot perfectly teach
us, but only the experience of the events themselves. My opinion,
however, is, that they will happen in the order in which I have
related them.
Two books yet remain to be written
by me, in order to complete, by God’s help, what I promised.
One of these will explain the punishment of the wicked, the other
the happiness of the righteous; and in them I shall be at special
pains to refute, by God’s grace, the arguments by which some
unhappy creatures seem to themselves to undermine the divine
promises and threatenings, and to ridicule as empty words
statements which are the most salutary nutriment of faith. But
they who are instructed in divine things hold the truth and
omnipotence of God to be the strongest arguments in favor of those
things which, however incredible they seem to men, are yet
contained in the Scriptures, whose truth has already in many ways
been proved; for they are sure that God can in no wise lie, and
that He can do what is impossible to the unbelieving. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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