John Carter - The Speeches in the Acts - Class 5 - The Speeches in the Historical Context and the Calling of Paul as an Apostle

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   Dear brethren and sisters, we shall have only one more class together on this subject, and it may therefore be opportune that we try and gather up a little something of the thread of Acts in order that we may see these speeches in their historical framework, and that perhaps understand why Luke has included them. He tells us of the beginnings of Christianity on the day of Pentecost, after the Lord that commissioned them to go into all the world, that they must begin at Jerusalem, and pass outward to Samaria and to Galilee, and so to all parts of the earth. We have seen the message that was preached through Peter on the day of Pentecost.

2. 0:41

   We have seen also in a second address and enlargement of that message, and in the conclusion of that chapter we find them before the Jewish authorities, and find that the opposition of the Jewish authorities was met by the assertion that this was a development of the Divine plan, and that in Christianity they had the flowering, as it were, of that which was part of their Jewish faith. Great fear came upon the Church in its extension, and as many as heard these things believed.

3. 1:17

   And so Luke passes on in his narrative to tell us of Jewish toleration being established as the result of the Apostles testimony before the authorities and the council of Gamaliel. He tells us of the organization of the Church and of their internal difficulties in the matter of ananiasance of Father, but shows that the Spirit was at work in those days, guiding and directing the infant church in all that was done.

4. 1:49

   When we come to Stephen, we find the beginning of divergent with Judaism. A divergent because of the innate traditionalism of the Jewish people, particularly as headed up in their rulers, and the insistence by the believers in Christ that God required worship in spirit and in truth. And the formalism, the ritual connected with the law were part of a typical system, a schoolmaster system, a tutor slave, that would lead them on to the fullness of the divine revelation. And that had been manifested in one who was the Son of God. And God was really wanting, not a building made of materials, but that the divine purpose was to dwell in men and women. And that was the goal of the divine purpose in calling out men and women in order that he might dwell with them and to dwell in them.

5. 2:49

   Stephen’s activity led to the spreading abroad of the disciples and the carrying of the message. And in this section we are told how Stephen’s testimony bore fruit for the man who became the disciple, the man who became the persecutor of the Christians, in the bitterness and in the zeal of his heart found it difficult to kick against the gourds.

6. 3:17

   And part of the zeal of Paul in putting the Christians to death probably originated in the fact that he wasn’t able to confute the argument that had been advanced by Stephen in his address. And so the man, in the bitterness of his thoughts and the argumentation of his own mind, was being shaped and prepared for the revelation of Jesus Christ on the way to Damascus.

7. 3:49

   And Paul was apprehended in order that he might become the Lord’s ambassador to the Gentiles. And so it was indicated by Luke in this way, that it was the risen Lord who chose his ambassador, and he was directing and guiding the progress of affairs. And the man has now been chosen after the preaching to Judaism, and this to the Jews and the establishment of the Church.

8. 4:19

   The time has now come for the man to be chosen for the extension of the work. We have an illustration of divine ways which we all might take account of, and the fact that although Saul was now chosen, he had to go through a long period of quiet training before the hour struck for him to begin his real work. If he was converted, say, about the year 33 or so, it was a dozen or so years before at last Barnabas went to seek Saul. We can quite understand.

9. 4:55

   So such a zealous man, not without some impetuosity that mark Paul, but at once he thought it was his job to begin and preach Christ. He even thought that because he’d been a persecutor and then had changed, there was in that very fact something that might appeal in his testimony to the Jews, and that they might receive him.

10. 5:19

    But the Lord told him his work lay among the Gentiles. But he was quite a number of years away in Syria and in Silesia, and he was there preaching. All that they heard in Judea was that he who was a persecutor now preached the faith that he had destroyed. But it was all like the trying of his wings.

11. 5:39

    He went away into Arabia first of all to whatever part we do not know. But we can understand that the man must have done some rethinking of his faith. He pleased got to reveal his son in in him, and that revelation of his son in fall could not have been done without some entire reorientation of the thought of the apostle.

12. 6:05

    The old habits of his thought had to be broken down and new habits of thought established. It is true there was revelation, but that revelation through Paul and the visions that he saw, which he tells us about in his letter to the Corinthians, had all to be rethought into the very fabric of his own mind so that the message given through Paul became Paul’s own faith and Paul’s own guiding light. And so it was that that large hearted man Barnabas, who is seen in these very generous attitudes in the Acts of the Apostles, recognize that Saul was the man for the developing situation.

13. 6:50

    When, as the result of the gospel having been spread abroad through the Patodoma Stephen, there had been established in Antioch, in Syria, Antioch on the Arantes, A thriving Christian Church made-up for the most part of Gentile believers. Before that, indeed, as Luke tells us, there had been an official reception of a Gentile through the ministry of Cornelius. I think as we compare the Galatian letter with Acts, we must conclude that Paul had been preaching to Gentiles before. But it wasn’t until there had been an official recognition of the acceptance of the Gentiles through the work of Cornelius, through the work of Peter with Cornelius, that the time was ripe for Paul to enter upon the official ministry of the Lord’s ambassador to the Gentiles.

14. 7:50

    Events were in a formative state, gradually developing, guided along the developments by the risen Lord. It was God’s work proceeding among men. Saw Luke again and again indicates. But Luke has shown what Peter taught in his preaching, and he tells us in a rather more summary way in the 10th and 11th chapters of Acts. The things that he preached unto Cornelius is one of the addresses at which we’ve had no time to look. But you can, if you will, apply yourself to a similar examination of the address of Peter to Cornelius when he went to see him that we’ve endeavour to follow in looking at these other speeches that are recorded. But now that the work, the time has come for the work to be extended to the Gentiles when Paul and Barnabas are on their first missionary journey, sent out by the Mother Gentile church at Antioch on the Orantes.

15. 8:58

    It is therefore fitting that Luke should give us an illustration of the message that Paul gave. He’s given us the illustration of Peter’s preaching. He must now give us an illustration of Paul’s preaching. And in this chapter he gives us the address of Presidium Antioch, where there was a Jewish synagogue, but where there were so many Gentiles interested that the synagogue was crowded by men who were either worshippers at the gate or interested Gentiles who themselves were so moved by the address that they asked Paul to continue his work. And it is evident that Luke regards this episode in Presidian Antioch as something in the way of a watershed. It was something like a turning point, the reception by the Gentiles of the message and the opposition of the Jews. Let Paul to say that God had granted unto the Gentiles this grace and this pardon unto life, and that they would turn onto the Gentiles.

16. 10:05

    But it was a message given to a mixed community. Now we have other addresses of Paul which we shall not have time to look, but Luke finds it necessary, as part of his story, to give us an illustration of Paul’s address to a company of elders. This is part of his teaching, the intimate teaching of a leader of the Christian community to his fellow disciples.

17. 10:33

    And then we are told of Paul’s contact with philosophic thought, of his day in the city of Athens and what happened there. We’ll try next week to gather up the threads of these points to show how they culminate in the events connected with the trial of Paul and the addresses that he gave incidental thereto. But look at this book of Acts.

18. 11:01

    Just note the major divisions as indicated in the analysis that you were given at the beginning, and take each section. Make a note of the events narrated in each section and you’ll see the masterly grasp with which Luke finds his way through the events of those developing days of Christian life, in order that he might show how Christianity came into being, what it was, its relation to Judaism.

19. 11:35

    And it will bring us to what is the climax of the book, the presentation of the Christian case before the bar of the highest authority, in order that it might be determined then the standing of Christian people in the eyes of Roman law. So the events move forward to the trial of Paul.

20. 12:01

    And in this letter, in this book, as we will try and show next week, we shall see that there is an emphasis upon events here, there, and again, all pointing to the circumstances in the life of Paul and of those who preceded him in relation to the temporal authorities. In other words, the larger purpose of the acts in the divine purpose being just for a moment put aside and viewing it from the more immediate purpose, it has to do with the standing of Christianity before the temporal authorities. But of that, more next week.

21. 12:44

    Now there is one interesting thing in connection with this address of Pisidian Antioch. We showed you on the first in the first address that the Galatian cities that Paul visited were those of Pisidian, Antioch, Iconium, Derby and Lystra. That is, this address in the 13th chapter of Acts was given to the same company of people to whom Paul wrote his letter. There is those who received the letter to the Galatians with the people to whom Paul had preached on this occasion there had been defection, a very rapid defection, A defection which moved Paul to the very quick defection which so stirred him that he wrote the letter which we call the letter to the Galatians, which perhaps shows Paul at his most intense in his feeling.

22. 13:39

    It burns and it vibrates, and we don’t understand it unless we catch the very feeling that Paul puts into it because of the defection of these people endeared to his heart, of the first fruits of his first mission among the Gentiles. But if Paul is going to reclaim them to the things that he preached, we must expect then that there would be a correspondence in many respects between the things that he emphasizes in the letter and the things that he preached to them.

23. 14:14

    And it is in a contemplation and a comparison of the letter to the Galatians and what is spoken in this speech, that we find one of those among very, very many, that there are internal evidences to the truth of the Scriptures. For there is an obvious independence between the record in the Acts and the Epistles to the Galatians.

24. 14:39

    Luke doesn’t mention many of these things, although he knew them so well. He’s content to write his narrative with the particular purpose that he has in view. And therefore any correspondence that is seen to exist between the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles is all the more important as showing on the one end the truthfulness of Acts and the truth of the Epistles. Now, although we have several points marked of correspondence between this address and the Galatian letter, we shan’t have time to go into all of them, but we shall just touch on one and going to another with a little more fullness. It has been suggested that the readings for the day, according to a table of readings that the Jews followed in the synagogue, gave Paul the starting point of his address. The lessons for the 44th Sabbath in the year were Deuteronomy chapter 2 and Isaiah 1, and references in Deuteronomy 2 and Isaiah 1 do appear to give Paul the starting point of his address.

25. 15:52

    Now there is no evidence, so far as we know, that these Jewish lessons did exist and were followed in Paul’s day. But so many of the Jewish practices have their roots in a very remote antiquity that it is not impossible that they had this system of readings. Just as it was probable that the reading in Isaiah was the reading for the day when the Lord, by a divinely guided coincidence, stood up for to read in the synagogue of Nazareth.

26. 16:22

    And there was given him the role of the prophet Isaiah, and he unrolled it to the place where it was written, and in words and in cadence as such as they must never have heard from many other lips, read with a meaningfulness the word of Isaiah up to the point at which he closed the roll and sat down in order that he might expound it. And so we’ll await to presidian Antioch for a few minutes, and try and catch the words of Paul, as starting from these two chapters, he traverses the history of his people. Now you will observe that Stephen traversed the history of his people.

27. 17:06

    He made the selections of his events which had particular bearing upon the case that he was presenting. But in all these epistles we find that they were all turning. In all these addresses we find that they turned back to the Old Testament Scriptures. May we remind you again that the Lord gave them the pattern upon which they must work, when, after His resurrection, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

28. 17:36

    And they caught the example of the Lord, and followed it. And their testimony was a reasoning out of the Scriptures concerning what God had revealed He would accomplish, and a matching with the prophecies, the facts of the history of Jesus, thus establishing that God had sent Jesus. The work that Jesus had accomplished had been foretold.

29. 18:01

    And then in the light of the accomplished fact, they had to show the results, the objects, the divine aims that were involved in the work that Jesus had done, which had in fact culminated in His death and His resurrection. And so the central point of their testimony was the work of Jesus Christ with the light shed upon it from Old Testament Scripture, a light that was intensified as they brought to bear upon it the light of the facts connected with Jesus Christ in the accomplished history.

30. 18:39

    Now we’re not going to go through this in detail. It may be that these detailed studies are a little heavy to follow, but having followed those three that we have looked at before, you see what can be done. And now they can be opened up. And now indeed they must be opened up if we would adequately understand the message that was given. And so we’ll touch a little more lightly on some of the higher points in this address.

31. 19:10

    Let us sketch it’s theme. God chose these people and exalted them or nourished them. The word chose and nourished come from the book of Deuteronomy under Isaiah, and Paul says there was a divine work in our history and God brought them up and nourished them. There was a progress in our history as God unfolded His purpose in connection with the history of our people.

32. 19:38

    And so they were brought out of Egypt and delivered as God promised. He nourished them for 40 years in the wilderness. He destroyed seven nations and brought them into the land where they were for 400 years. Now, although God had thus nourished and brought up this people, passing from the childhood of their race onward through youth and on to manhood, an argument develops.

33. 20:07

    With regard to the divine purpose in history, in the Galatian letter he points out that God gave them Saul the son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin. Little personal touch, for Saul himself was a Benjamin knight and is touching back on their race. And perhaps there was added a little more pathos in that illusion, since he was of that of that tribe, because he mentions it to point out that although God had chosen the race to be His people, the problem of Israel’s calamities were to be explained by the fact that it wasn’t upon a flesh basis that men even of Israel’s race were approved.

34. 20:54

    For here was a man ideal from every human point of view, massive in structure, not without a certain physical courage, attractive and goodly to look upon, such as men desire to see in a leader. But he lacked moral courage, and he was sadly lacking in faith. And while they desired a king, and God gave them, gave unto them Saul, he removed him when he had removed him. In other words, God in His guidance of the nation has regard to their responses to Him. And as God had removed soul, so He could for the time being and all the privileges of the nation and bring them into bondage to their Gentiles.

35. 21:47

    But if that was So, what were the principles that were governing God in the selection of men who would and through whom his purpose could be worked out? And so he reminds them that David succeeded Saul. And he emphasizes, as you will have noticed, that he was a man after God’s own heart. And the purpose of God is being worked out, says Paul, through men of the qualities that God desires, men in whom God can be well pleased, men who have those characteristics in which God delights a man after mine own heart. With what a personal touch does God reveal himself. There’s something human about this, and it comes again and again in the revelation concerning God. And we’re quite sure Paul wasn’t unmindful of these little human feelings.

36. 22:48

    Just think of his reference concerning Abram in the letter to the Hebrews. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God. Who would think of attributing to God something being after his own heart, or that God wasn’t ashamed? It’s the figure meiosis, a figure which it is said characterizes the English people where they understate a thing. And when God says he’s not ashamed to be called their God, or when Paul says it of God, it really means God was happy and glad to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because they were men of such faith.

37. 23:30

    And so it is we have this feeling of God’s response to men in whom he delights. I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart. And so Paul is dwelling upon the qualities that are required in men who will have a place in the abiding purpose of God.

38. 23:52

    For he traces from David the fact that the Messiah was of his line. And if it should be that God could reject Saul and choose David, so God could reject all their earthly rulers in order that he might choose another man in whom, in the superlative sense, it could be said he was one after God’s own heart. That’s the theme there that Paul is bringing out. And so this man’s seedeth God according to his promise function of Saviour.

39. 24:29

    And so Saviour is a larger term. And in order that he might be the Saviour, it was necessary that they should be the life of the Saviour upon earth, fulfilled in the conditions and circumstances of the life of Jesus. But while he was born a man, Paul would have them remember that of the while of this man’s seed, the Saviour was the Son of God. And so there was a forerunner before him. As John fulfilled his course, preaching the baptism of repentance to all the people, he testified that one should come after him who was so much greater than himself that he wasn’t even worthy to do the servant’s part of unloosing the latchels of his, the latchets of his sandals. And so Paul says, while he was of the seed of David, he was manifestation of God, our God, the Holy One of Israel, in the midst of his people.

40. 25:30

    Consider His royal majesty. Kings had runners before them, and God was careful to observe that honour was given to those who represented him when Ahab had been proved so faulty, so faithless, so dishonorable, and so disgraced in the contest with Elijah at Carmel. Yet God import the prophet, could be, in the means of his disgrace, to run before him as the runner before the king, in order that the majesty of the position of the Lord’s anointed might not itself be dishonoured.

41. 26:10

    He must have been one of the most unusual sights that ever happened in Israel’s history to see the prophet who had challenged the Baal prophets and disgraced the King, speeding away across Israel on on foot, powered by the Spirit of God before the infamous King, who yet was the Lord’s anointed. How much more than when the Son of God is in the midst of Israel? It was fitting that there should be a forerunner, and John is pictured in the prophetic word as the one who ran before the king.

42. 26:46

    Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. For God was going to be revealed in a theophany such as they’d never known in all their history, in that a child, virgin born, was to be revealed in their midst. Who could bear the name Emmanuel? God with us.

43. 27:06

    And so John came before the royal Majesty to be the royal majesty, to be revealed in their midst, who was raised up to be their Saviour. And so he says, this word of salvation is sent unto you. But he has to show them how this John came before the Royal Majesty to be the Royal majesty, to be revealed in their midst, who was raised up to be their Saviour. And so he says, this word of salvation is sent unto you. But he has to show them how this word was historically exhibited, how this salvation had been wrote out in history. And so he passes in review what had happened in connection with Jesus.

44. 27:57

    They call it Jerusalem and their rulers, because they knew Him not, not yet the voices of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath day, have fulfilled them. And so He would reveal the testimony of the prophets concerning the rejection of the Messiah, and sure that many things had to be fulfilled concerning Him.

45. 28:18

    So they found no cause of death in Him, desire they pilot that He should be slain. And when they had fulfilled. And so emphatic is He about this, that we find in that we find it twice in three verses. But they have fulfilled all that was written of him. They took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre.

46. 28:38

    And now we want to turn aside in a moment to what he has to say in the Galatian letter. But look at this which Paul brings into prominence. They took him down from the tree. Peter referred to the tree, and we read the tree and think nothing at all about it. But suppose we substitute the galas, the gallows, or the execution as block, or anything that indicates the utter shame and indignity of a death that men impose.

47. 29:12

    But here was one that was a public exhibition. It could be nothing more public than a man nailed to a state, not a decorated cross such as Christian art as represented for us. There’s no time to trouble with that. A tree trunk was sufficient A stake. And nailed to that, with the shame of nakedness was hung one whom Paul recognised now to be the Lord of glory, the Son of God.

48. 29:42

    And this bit hard into Paul’s thought, just as the shame of the proclamation that he was the Messiah bit into Israel’s thought. And they spoke of Jesus as the hanged one, as an expression of their utter execration of the man. For a man who came to the gallows was surely shown to be an impostor.

49. 30:08

    How could Israel’s king come to such an end? How could it be that one who was approved of God come to such a shameful end? It seemed to them utterly impossible, and Pilate knew how it hurt them when he wrote over the cross. This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. It was part of Pilate’s meanness, for he knew he was getting a little of his own back because they’d forced his hands. But in his meanness he proceeded, how much it would sting, and so much did it hurt them that they went to Pilate and said, don’t say that, but say He said, if you want to write it, let atenerate the shame of it rebound on him. He said that he was the king of the Jews, and look at him now. But Pilate wouldn’t have that.

50. 30:58

    What I have written, I have written, and there it stands. But if we can enter into the feelings of the Jews concerning what crucifixion meant, and how they felt that the fact that Jesus had been crucified was an utter disproof of his claim, we can see then how this crucifixion of Jesus must needs play a part in the thought of those who believed in Jesus.

51. 31:27

    And they rejoined by saying, This very death, which to you is such a stumbling block, is itself the divine way for men’s salvation. We determine, says Paul, to know nothing among you, the Messiah, Jesus, and him a crucified. 1 And the Christians took the very sting out of it by showing that it was the very instrument for the final rendering of honour and glory to God. For this was a public exhibition. God has set forth, Jesus, Paul could say, writing to the Romans to declare his righteousness.

52. 32:12

    And Jesus had said before at his at his baptism, when John had been clip proclaiming that all flesh is grass and the glory of man is the flower of grass. And when men had gone down into the water confessing their sins, and in turn Jesus stepped down with no sins to confess. And we wonder John said, I have need to be baptized of thee. But sinless though he were as a man mortal as John had been proclaiming a mortal under a dispensation which had its source in the divine decree that man must die because of sin. The race must die, for it’s all bound up in the bundle of life together.

53. 32:56

    There’s a solidarity of the race which the Bible recognises. Therefore Jesus must show God’s righteousness and fulfill all righteousness in the symbolic death. But symbolism isn’t enough. It had to be wrote out indeed, and in blood, which brought him to the cross. It hadn’t to be done in a corner. It had to be done in a way that it was placarded before the eyes of all. And now, if we want to see how Paul presented the cross and what it meant to him, we must turn to the Galatian letter. And so let us there for a minute or two, remembering he’s arguing to reclaim these Galatians.

54. 33:39

    And in the first verse of chapter 3 he says, All foolish Galatians who have bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ have been evidently set forth. There’s a vigor about Paul’s language before whom Christ was placarded, he says, just as the placards on the wall are there with all the vigor of announcement, pressing themselves, as it were, upon the attention of men before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been placarded, crucified among you. As though in bringing the knowledge of the crucifixion of Jesus, he’d done it with such intensity and with such rigor that they’d actually seen him as it were crucified among them. It’s not without its object.

55. 34:32

    Lesson, Brethren and sisters, that Christ crucified must be seen in some vividness, not with a morbid dwelling upon the details of his suffering, but to see his sufferings, and to see them in the light of the Divine reason for them to see the divine purpose and the divine principles that were seen in the death of Jesus. And he says that because he has been giving them a reminiscence in chapter 2 of his preaching among them. In chapter 2 he tells us that even Peter defected. When Peter was at Antioch, he dissembled when some of the Judaizers complained about a meeting with Gentiles. And Paul saw that unless Peter was brought to line, the whole position of his work was at stake. And so he begins to reason with Peter. Verse 11.

56. 35:27

    And when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. And the whole reason for for recounting this is because what he said to Peter, which won Peter back, was the very message that he himself had proclaimed when he was in in among the Galatian cities. It is because of the parallel between what he said to Peter and what he taught them that this account of the meeting with Peter has its relevance.

57. 36:05

    And therefore it is that as he proceeds in his argument, in his recounting of what he said to Peter, Paul forgets his recounting Peter. He’s back again in presidian presidian Antioch, talking to them. Read what commentary you will. You’ll find that all writers with feeling discern that somewhere in this address to Peter in the 2nd chapter, Paul leaves Peter and he’s back in presidian presidian Antioch. But it’s the same message.

58. 36:39

    They differ at which verse the break comes. In fact, it’s gradual and merges into it. But in it he says, verse 16, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. Even we, you Peter, and you Galatians, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. And if it means that we, finding justification in Christ, must have necessity recognised to be ourselves, to be sinners, so be it.

59. 37:23

    And if Paul builds again the things which he destroyed, he would make himself a transgressor. For I says Paul through the law, through his experience of law with its inevitable bringing to light the sinfulness of men. When the law came, he says, when my father said Paul, this is God’s law and we mustn’t do that, you mustn’t do this and you mustn’t do that. And Paul became aware of the impulses in him that were contrary to it.

60. 37:55

    And he says sin sprang to life and he felt that the penalty of the law broken must be, is. And I died. Have you ever watched a child told by its parents you mustn’t do that? And you see the very impulses of human nature welling up and the battle going on. I, I, I warned, but I’d better. Well, it’s in us just the same.

61. 38:19

    We camouflage it and hide it sometimes. But if we’ll analyse ourselves, there’s nothing more searching than the 7th chapter, the letter to the Romans. And Paul says, I through the law, I’m dead to the law. But it was only that he might then come into another relationship, whereby I might live unto God.

62. 38:38

    And now verse 20, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live yet not I, but Christ liveth in me and the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I am crucified with Christ. And your thought goes, as Paul must have vividly portrayed it, to what happened just outside the gates of Jerusalem when Jesus was laid out to be crucified with two others with him. And they were crucified with Christ. And that’s what being crucified with Christ means. And Paul, though not present probably at the scene of the crucifixion yet, had as probably a member of the Sanhedrin, or at any rate closely connected with it, approve the action of his nation.

63. 39:35

    And although he knew they jeered at the man on the cross, he’d approve their jeering. Although they’d mocked him, he’d approve their mocking. And yet now he’d come to realise that there was the dynamic energy of God for men’s salvation in these facts of the crucifixion, and that instead of being in the ring gathered round the cross, he’d got to leave the ring and crossover and to see that what was being done in that man there crucified was such that he must identify himself with it. And you have here the most vivid picture of the idea of representation.

64. 40:19

    For what was Jesus doing there? He’d gone there voluntarily, although they’d arrested him. It sought not to escape. He knew that it was the end that the Father appointed him. We go up to Jerusalem, he says, and the Son of Man will be rejected and be crucified. He hadn’t any illusions about what the end would be, and so clearly did he see it that it would appear that he minted the figure out of the foreseeing of his own death, that if any man would follow him, he must take up his cross and follow me. It was out of the consciousness that the cross was required of him that he could coin this figure of cross bearing. And what is the bearing of the cross? It’s carrying on your back the stake to the place of crucifixion, that there, there you might die, there you might repudiate self, and there your old self might be surrendered. And to do it voluntarily, to take up the cross, is to deny self and say self.

65. 41:35

    Human nature, human nature with all its propensities toward evil, must be reprobated. It must die. And God was right in saying that this nature is unfitted for perpetuation and must die. And God’s honour and God’s majesty, God’s supremacy, could only be upheld by a man voluntarily going to the position where there was a public exhibition of a man voluntarily laying down his life to declare the righteousness of God.

66. 42:11

    And Paul saw that God’s honour was upheld, and he saw that God had set forth Jesus to do this which we couldn’t do ourselves to be acceptable to God, in order that this man, having thus upheld God’s honour. And then God having raised him from the dead because having been obedient, he’d broken the power that death had through sin and therefore could be raised to everlasting life. And God says you can’t do it, but it has been done by my working in him.

67. 42:48

    For God was in Christ in this work of reconciliation. And if you’ll recognise the principles that have been upheld in him, if you’ll identify yourself with him by joining him in crucifixion, in bearing the cross and recognising what it signifies, then God says I’ll accept your identification with him and for his sake forgive you.

68. 43:13

    And thus it is with that circle of thought that Paul can say I was among those around the cross in thought. I thought right was done and that he was an impostor. I jeered and I mocked, but I saw that I was wrong, that Christ was right, that I was opposing God, whereas Christ was obeying God. And I saw that my only way of coming into a living relationship to God was by walking across the patch that separated me to him.

69. 43:53

    Though the swing around might say, what’s he doing? What’s happening to him that is leaving us who are jeering to go himself and join him in his shame and disgrace? But I am crucified with Christ as Paul because it is only in Christ crucified that there has been brought life for men. And therefore, although crucified with Christ, I live.

70. 44:17

    What sort of a life is it? It’s alive, motivated and energized and directed by the Spirit of him who died. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God and Paul, who’s all experienced of the law. Perhaps there’s no other man in Israel’s history had ever experienced it before in his conscious effort after righteousness by the works of the law, came to see that it had no power for righteousness in his life. And it was only by the constraining power of the love that Christ had revealed in bearing these sufferings and coming to the cross to fulfil the well of God. And it was because Paul knew the intensity of the shame of it that it came home to him with such fullness. It was only by that by that, that men could be moved to righteousness, and that’s what he told the Galatians. Hence the correspondence between the two. God raised him from the dead and the promise which God had made to the fathers had been fulfilled. You’ll observe in verse 33 the word again, God has fulfilled the same unto us, their children, in that he has raised up Jesus again, the Revised Version amidst again they again. It’s a reference to his birth which was fulfilled in the Psalm Thou art my son.

71. 45:44

    And the 34th verses is concerning that he raised him up from the dead. They get the compass. You see, there’s the one raising up in birth verse 33, the raising up from death in verse 34, in fulfilling the promises made unto David. And you’ll observe the strict parallel between Paul and Peter, that they both argue that David is dead, and the promise couldn’t refer therefore to David, and must refer to the day to David’s Messiah.

72. 46:11

    And now in the 38th and the 39th verses we have the characteristic doctrine of Paul concerning justification by faith. Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sick sins. For by him all that believe are justified from all things from which he could not be justified by the law of Moses. And the word justified and the word believe are based upon that statement of her backup, which Paul uses so much in his letter to the Romans and the letter to the Galatians. The just shall live by faith.

73. 46:52

    The just shall live by faith. And in the very context of that statement in her backup, which forms so basic a case for Paul, that occurs, the words, Behold, he despises. And wonder of the 41st verse, which shows that the apostle took up that second chapter of her backup and expounded it in all its bearings. And so the word of salvation came to the Gentiles. My time is entirely up.