[5] The word rendered "remnant" in the above passage is λοιποῖς, and is from the same root as the word "remnant" in Romans xi. 5, which is λίμμα. Both are from λείπω, to leave.
[6] Here it is not to the outside sinner, but to the professing Church the Lord makes this most solemn and weighty appeal. It is not Christ knocking at the door of the sinner's heart, (true as that is also), but at the door of those in the professing Church. How telling! how suggestive! Oh, may professing Christians ponder it!
[7] The statement in the text, I need hardly say, does not by any means interfere with the eternal stability of divine grace and the perfect acceptance of the believer in all the acceptableness of Christ before God. This is a great foundation truth. Christ is the believer's life, and Christ is his righteousness—the ground of his peace with God. He may lose the enjoyment of it, but the thing itself God has established upon an indestructible basis, and before ever it can be touched the fact of Christ's resurrection must be called in question, for clearly He could not be where He is if the believer's peace were not perfectly settled. In order to have perfect peace, I must know my perfect justification: and in order to know my perfect justification, I must know, by faith in God's word, that Christ has made a perfect atonement. This is the divine order—perfect atonement as the ground of my perfect justification; and perfect justification as the ground of my perfect peace. God has joined those three together, and let not man's unbelieving heart put them asunder.
Hence, therefore, the statement in the text will not, I trust, be misunderstood or misapplied. The principle contained therein may be thus illustrated: If my child does wrong, he may injure himself and grieve and displease me; but he is my child all the while. The apostolic statement is as broad as possible—"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." He does not say whether it is a converted or an unconverted man, and therefore the passage should have its full application. It could not possibly touch the question of pure and absolute grace.
[8] My reader should accurately distinguish between the Holy Ghost coming upon people and the Holy Ghost dwelling and acting in them. The statement in 1 Sam. x. 6 may present a difficulty to some minds. "The Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man." This is not the Spirit producing the new birth, but merely fitting Saul to be an office-bearer. Were it regeneration, it would not merely be the Spirit coming upon, but acting in, a man. Saul the office-hearer and Saul the man are quite distinct, and this distinction must be maintained in reference to many of the characters both in the Old and New Testament Scriptures.
[9] It is to be noted that Saul, though appointed by God's order to Samuel, is nevertheless the people's choice and acclaimed by them as such (1 Sam. x. 24)—God thus selecting for them the man after their heart.—[Ed.]
[10] It was at Gilgal, upon their crossing Jordan, that Israel was circumcised after the forty years' uncircumcision in the wilderness; and to this place Joshua oft led them back after their victories. The meaning of this for us Christians is given in Phil. iii. 3—no self-confidence.—[Ed.]
[11] "Yea, man is born as a wild ass's colt" says Job xi. 12, describing man's natural condition—wilful, unmanageable, unclean. Compare Exod. xiii. 13, and Hosea viii. 9. Saul and Israel were only too manifestly pictured in this unsuccessful search after his father's asses. David was the keeper of his father's sheep. [Ed.]
[12] Faith, waiting on God, allows Him to use what means soever He pleases. It does not ask Him to bless our means, but lets Him use His own.
[13] How often it happens that the child of God or the servant of Christ, harnessed with human devices for his work, finds himself burdened and hampered with these trammels to obedience and faith. Let them be but shaken off, through grace, and the soul cast upon God finds at once the joy and liberty for the service and energy of faith. [Ed.]