II. That no other revelation of that kind and importance has been made, which can with good probability pretend to have thus proceeded from God, so as by Him to have been designed for a general, perpetual, complete instruction and obligation of mankind.—1. Paganism did not proceed from Divine revelation, but from human invention or diabolical suggestion. All the pagan religions vanished, together with the countenance of secular authority and power sustaining them. 2. Mohammedanism an imposture. 3. Judaism was defective. (1) This revelation was not general—not directed, nor intended to instruct and oblige mankind. (2) As this revelation was particular, so was it also partial—as God did not by it speak His mind to all, so did He not therein speak out all His mind. (3) It was not designed for perpetual obligation and use.
Conclusion.—No other religion, except Christianity, which has been or is in being, can reasonably pretend to have proceeded from God as a universal, complete, and final declaration of His mind and will to mankind.—Barrow.
Vers. 13, 14. The Assurance of the Christian Inheritance.—By the first act of faith the whole tendencies of man’s life are reversed. Until then the present has been his world and the earth his place of rest; then, by the inspiration of the cross, a spiritual world draws upon his view, that everlasting region becomes his home, and life assumes the character of a pilgrimage. We need to have the deep assurance of the immortal kingdom in order to live an earnest life in a world like this.
I. The nature of the assurance.—The voices of promises in the Christian’s soul—the longings, aspirations, hopes, rising from the Spirit of God within us—are more than promises; they are earnests, i.e. most certain assurances of the inheritance to come. This inheritance of spiritual life consists of three great elements—love, power, blessedness.
II. The necessity of the assurance.—The inheritance is given, but not reached. Between the gift and its attainment there lies a long path of conflict in which the old struggle between the flesh and the Spirit reveals itself in three forms: 1. Sense against the soul; 2. The present against the future; 3. Steadfast work against the roving propensities of the heart.—E. L. Hull.
The Holy Spirit and the Earnest of the Inheritance.
I. The character of the inheritance.—The teaching of the passage is that heaven is likest the selectest moments of devotion that a Christian has on earth. Heaven is the perfecting of the life of the Spirit begun here, and the loftiest attainments of that life here are but the beginnings and infantile movements of immature beings.
II. The grounds of certainty that we shall ultimately possess the fulness of the inheritance.—The true ground of certainty lies in this, that you have the Spirit in your heart, operating His own likeness and moulding you, sealing you, after His own stamp and image. 1. The very fact of such a relation between man and God is itself the great assurance of immortality and everlasting life. 2. The characteristics that are produced by this Holy Spirit’s indwelling, both in the perfectness and imperfection, are the great guarantee of the inheritance being ours. 3. The Holy Spirit in a man’s heart makes him desire and believe in the inheritance.—A. Maclaren.
The Faith of the Early Christians.
I. The object of their faith.—The Word of truth and the Gospel of salvation. It is the Word of truth. It contains all that truth which concerns our present duty and our future glory. It comes attended with demonstrations of its own Divinity. It is the Gospel of our salvation. It discovers to us our ruined, helpless condition, the mercy of God to give us salvation, the way in which it is procured for us, the terms on which we may become interested in it, the evidences by which our title to it must be ascertained, and the glory and happiness it comprehends.