Resurrectional Responsibility.
Debate At Essex Hall, London
Between brethren J.J. Andrew and R. Roberts
April 3rd and 5th, 1894
Chairman — Brother Lake.
First Night. (Continued)
Brother Roberts Questions Brother Andrew.
297. God winked at times of ignorance. Would He have winked at times of knowledge? Answer: The question implies no.
298. What would He have done? Answer: Inflicted such punishment as He Himself might deem necessary.
299. Why inflict punishment? Answer: Because He would deem that they deserved it.
300. What is the ground of deserving punishment? Is it not refusing to do the will of God when it is known? Answer: Yes, that is one basis, it is not the only basis.
301. Can you give me any case of a man that will be punished for any other reason than this, that he refused to do the will of God when knowing it? Answer: God punishes the wicked who do not know what His will is.
302. That is making the case worse. Answer: He has done so in the past.
303. You are going the other side of the line, keep on this side, please. Can you give me a case where God will inflict punishment where that element is absent, knowing His will? Answer: Not at the judgment seat, certainly.
304. Is not that the cause of punishment at the judgment seat, knowing the will of God, and refusing to do it? Answer: Yes, for those who are under probation.
305. That is your addition. I am now dealing with a principle of general application. You have laid it down as a general principle applicable to all mankind. Now you seek to circumscribe it. Answer: If I give a general answer without defining the sense in which I use it, you can turn round and say it applies to another case as well.
306. I only wish to see the basis clearly defined, to know whether the reason of punishment is not refusal to do the will of God when you know it? Answer: Yes, for those who are under probation.
307. Were the Gentiles under probation? Answer: Not those who did not enter Christ, certainly.
308. Did He punish them? Answer: Yes, in this life.
309. Then He punishes them without probation? Answer: I have already admitted that.
310. Why does He do so? Answer: Because of their wickedness.
311. Why is wickedness the reason for punishing them? Answer: Because God is righteous.
312. Why does His righteousness call for their punishment? Answer: It answers itself.
313. Because they deserve it? Answer: Oh, yes.
314. Very well, we are discussing the ground of resurrectional punishment. Why do you object to the application of that principle to resurrectional punishment, that men who know God’s will and refuse to do it, will be brought up then? Answer: I do not object to it in relation to those in Christ.
315. I am not speaking of those in Christ, but those who know the will of God, and refuse to do it. Answer: They will not be raised.
316. Do not they deserve it? Answer: They deserve whatever punishment God will give them.
317. Do not they deserve resurrectional punishment? Answer: It is for God to say whether they do.
318. Have you an opinion? Answer: They deserve whatever punishment God may inflict upon them. He has not threatened resurrection to judgment against them and therefore He will not give it them.
319. It says “the wicked shall not be unpunished, they shall come forth to the day of wrath,” “those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.” Answer: And the greater proportion of those who have had a probation have been wicked, and have done evil. “Many are called but few are chosen.”
320. Then comes in the question, why does He discriminate between one class and another? Why bring up some to punishment and others not? Is it not because He winks at times of ignorance? Answer: He brings some to punishment because He has constituted a judgment seat specially for them.
321. Is not Christ the judge of all? Answer: He is judge of all who have been given to him.
322. Has He not power over all flesh? Answer: Dead men are not flesh. He will have power over all flesh when he comes to take possession of his inheritance. That is the sense in which he has power over all flesh.
323. God hath appointed a day in which He will judge the living and the dead? Answer: Those responsible.
324. Why keep out the dead because they are not flesh? Answer: Because power over all flesh has reference to the time when he will exercise power over all men.
325. Will his judgment be brought to bear upon all who are responsible to it? Answer: Of course. His judgment when he comes is of two kinds. First it has relation to his judgment seat when all candidates for immortality will be judged, and secondly, it has reference to the wicked living on the earth.
326. My question relates to those who rise. Will not the judgment be for those who receive and those who reject his words? Answer: Yes, understanding that they are probationary.
327. Can a man be probationary who rejects Christ altogether? Answer: Certainly, there were certain in Peter’s day who denied the Lord that bought them.
328. Did Christ refer to them when he said “He that rejecteth me and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him, the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him at the last day?” Answer: He referred to Jews living in his days.
329. Did he refer to those who once recognized him? Answer: Those who recognized Moses and the prophets, but rejected the Messiah.
330. That is not my question. My question is, will not those who reject Christ altogether be present at his judgment seat to be condemned by him? Answer: Yes, Jews and Gentiles under probation.
331. Can a man who rejects Christ be under probation? Answer: Certainly he can.
332. Give me a case. Answer: The Jews in Christ’s day. Many of them looked forward to Christ appearing, accepted the baptism of John, but when Christ came they were disappointed and rejected him. That did not invalidate the justification which they already had from previous sins.
333. By John’s baptism do you mean? Answer: Yes, and by the sacrifices offered up under the Mosaic law. That brought upon them a special condemnation for rejecting Christ.
334. Let us be clear. If they were justified by the sacrifices of the Mosaic law, what need for the baptism of John? Answer: That was a special justification ceremony.
335. Was it superfluous? Answer: No.
336. Was it necessary? Answer: Seeing that God appointed it, it was.
337. Would it have been necessary if their sins had been forgiven before? Answer: Their sins by John’s baptism were forgiven in the same way that other sins had been previously forgiven.
338. Were they forgiven previously? Answer: They were forgiven in shadow.
339. Were they forgiven at all? Answer: Yes.
340. Then why go to John’s baptism? Answer: Because under the Mosaic law, seeing everything was in shadow, its ceremonies could be repeated time after time.
341. Was John’s baptism substance or in shadow? Answer: It was in shadow, because it presaged Christ’s own death and resurrection.
342. Why was it necessary to go from one ceremony to another? Answer: Because God appointed it.
343. Does God appoint things without reason? Answer: Oh dear, no.
344. Did He send them to John to get remission of sins which were already remitted? Answer: They were constantly sinning.
345. Did they require a sin remitting ceremony each time they sinned? Answer: Certainly, that was required by the Mosaic law, whether they became defiled legally or by actual transgression.
346. Is a man’s baptism vitiated by sinning afterwards? Answer: Not at all.
347. Why not? Answer: Because after baptism he has a high priest, and he goes to God through that high priest and asks forgiveness on the basis of the blood which was applied to him at his baptism.
348. That is a very beautiful answer, but we are getting away from the question. Where is the case of a rejector of Christ being under probation? Answer: Some of Christ’s own followers in his day were under probation, and in consequence of the hard things which he spoke they forsook him, and that means, they rejected him.
349. Then if a man had not followed Christ in the sense of your present explanation, he would not be one, would he, that was under probation? Answer: O yes he would.
350. What is the point of your answer then? Answer: There were the Pharisees.
351. Define it. Answer: At that time it was to be in the Abrahamic covenant.
352. What was? Answer: Probation. Previous to John’s appearing, those who were under probation were in the Abrahamic covenant. They entered that covenant by faith and sacrifice.
353. Was that sacrifice of any value to them apart from their acceptance of Christ? Answer: It was of value to them for the time being. It could not give them eternal life without Christ.
354. It could not give them eternal life without receiving Christ? Answer: No.
355. Would it give them responsibility to the judgment seat then? Answer: Yes.
356. Why? Answer: Because they were in covenant with God. They had been brought into a state of reconciliation with Him.
357. A state of reconciliation to life eternal? Answer: With a view to life eternal, certainly.
358. What was necessary to complete it? Answer: The same that is necessary for us, that they should continue faithful.
359. Must we not recognize Christ first? Answer: Now, certainly.
360. Can we make a beginning without it? Answer: No, we cannot.
361. Can we be under probation without it? Answer: No.
362. How then can those who reject Christ be probationers? Answer: Now they cannot.
363. Could they then? Answer: Previous to Christ’s coming they could be probationers without believing in Christ individually, in the same way that some of his followers were.
364. I am speaking of rejectors. “He that rejecteth me and receiveth not my words hath one that judgeth him, the word that I have spoken shall judge him.” Does not that define the basis of condemnation — the rejection of the authority of Christ? Answer: Yes, in regard to those to whom it was applied.
365. Why do you say that those who know about Christ and believe that he is the Lord of the living and dead, and refuse for their own convenience to be subject to the law of God, to whom therefore Christ has spoken, that they will not be judged by his words? Why? Answer: They have not had a probation for eternal life; they have not been justified from the offense of Adam, and they have not been given to Christ for resurrection and judgment purposes in the future.
366. What is the reason why they are to be exempt from the punishment of a law they know? Answer: Who are the “they” that know?
367. Those who know the will of God and will not obey it. Answer: Outside Christ?
368. Yes. Why are they exempt from the punishment of a law they know? Answer: Because they are born under condemnation to death, and when they die that condemnation takes its effect upon them.
Brother Andrew Questions Brother Roberts.
369. In Heb. 13:20, it says that Christ was brought from the dead by the blood of the everlasting covenant. Was the blood of the everlasting covenant necessary for Christ to be brought from the dead? Answer: With the meaning already defined, yes.
370. If, after the Last Supper, he had died without shedding his blood could he, on scriptural principles, have been brought from the dead? Answer: No, because he would have been disobedient.
371. Then the shedding of his blood was absolutely necessary for his restoration to life? Answer: When properly understood, yes.
372. I will listen to what you have to say about properly understood. Answer: You don’t mean me to make a speech?
373. No. Answer: You had better proceed with the questions. If disobedient, Christ could not have been raised from the dead, and, of course, he could not have received eternal life.
374. You recognize that he was immortalized by his blood? Answer: Immortalized by his blood? No, not as a literal description. It is a figure of speech. It is your figure, not even the Bible’s. Blood is a perishing thing. God immortalized him because of obedience. God required of him that he should suffer a violent death as a vindication of God’s righteousness, and as a foundation on which to offer us forgiveness.
375. Heb. 9:12. “By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place.” Is not that equivalent to saying that he was immortalized by his blood? Answer: I am not here to strive about words; it is facts that are in question.
376. Is not the holy place here immortality? Answer: “Heaven itself,” Paul says (Heb. 9:24).
377. Does it not mean immortality? Answer: Not apart from heaven; it is involved, no doubt.
378. Is not immortality the antitype of the most holy place in the Mosaic law? Answer: It embraces it, but primarily it is heaven itself.
379. Were not the holy and most holy places in themselves heavenly places, that is, heaven-like places? Answer: As patterns of things in the heavens, they were.
380. Are we not now in the heavens in the sense in which it is spoken of in Hebrews and Ephesians? Answer: Perhaps I misunderstand you.
381. Are we not in the heavenlies now, in that we are in the antitypical holy place? Answer: Only in the sense in which we are come to Mount Zion, to an innumerable company of angels. We have become related to them.
382. Did not the flesh separate the holy from the most holy place? Answer: You are now mixing up literal and figurative language. The holy and the most holy were the literal things of the Mosaic tabernacle.
383. I thought it would be sufficient to put the matter concisely. Answer: I do not catch your meaning.
384. Did not the veil which separated the holy from the most holy represent the flesh of Christ? Answer: Yes.
385. Then when he entered into the most holy was he not beyond the flesh? Answer: No doubt.
386. When it says he entered into the most holy by his blood, does it not mean that he entered there on the basis of having shed his blood? Answer: No doubt, understanding that in relation to the will of God.
387. That is the only sense in which I have used the expression. Answer: No, you detached the bloodshedding from its surroundings.
388. I do not. Answer: You seem to do.
389. You have misrepresented me by saying so. Answer: We are liable to mistakes, you know.
390. I used the expression “by his blood” to mean on the basis, or principle of. Answer: To me blood is a passive thing. It does nothing, and therefore to represent it as doing something stultifies my understanding. You must give literal facts.
391. What was the object of his shed blood? Answer: It was to declare God’s righteousness as the basis of reconciliation.
392. That is fully recognized. The question relates to the basis. Did not Christ enter into the most holy place or immortality on the basis of the shedding of his blood? Does not that mean that he could not enter in without? Does it not also mean that the blood cleansed him individually from corruption which was an impediment to his obtaining eternal life? Answer: I do not deny that.
393. Why did you say that Christ did not die for himself, apart from others? Answer: Because you were asking me to consider him in his individual capacity, detached from the human race, and I refuse to consider him in that capacity.
394. Is it impossible to conceive of the Aaronic high priest offering for his own cleansing in the first instance? Answer: No.
395. Then is it not equally possible to consider Christ offering for his own cleansing apart from the cleansing of others? Answer: What is the use of discussing a case that does not exist?
396. It does exist. Answer: His work is the saving of mankind, and you cannot discuss him apart from that.
397. If we have two things presented in type, can we not look at the two things separately in the antitype? Answer: That is a matter of intellectual enterprise; it does not determine the truth of the case.
398. Is it not part of the understanding of this question? Answer: It may be, but you do not help it by introducing it.
399. I do. We both recognize Christ did not commit transgression, and that his blood was not required in regard to himself for anything of that kind. Yet he did shed his blood for himself. What was it then for which he shed his blood for himself? Answer: I have answered that several times, brother Andrew. He was a mortal man, inheriting death from Adam.
400. You have answered it by evading it. Answer: By no means. I have not answered in your precise terms, which conceal meanings.
401. Did he not require to shed his blood to cleanse himself from his own sin nature, and has not God made that the basis by which those in him may be justified from the sin of that nature, and have forgiveness of sins? Answer: I prefer the Scripture description of what was done by the death of Christ. The Scriptures never use the word cleanse in that sense.
402. Never use the word cleanse in regard to physical sin? Answer: Not in that connection.
403. Did not the inanimate things of the Mosaic tabernacle require to be cleansed, justified, or atoned for by bloodshedding? Answer: Yes, as a shadow, doubtless.
404. Was there any moral guilt attaching to them? Answer: You do not require me to answer that, of course?
405. Then it was for imputed guilt? Answer: It was a ritual prophecy.
406. Does it not teach that the sin nature, which in the first instance has no moral guilt, requires bloodshedding in order that it may be cleansed or justified? Answer: Bloodshedding is never spoken of except in connection with actual sin.
407. Transgression, you mean? Answer: I mean to say the Scriptures never give it the merely chemical action that you do.
408. It is not a chemical relation. I express it as it appears to me. Answer: You represent it as being brought to bear upon physical nature to produce physical results. It is always related to moral results. We are justified by faith and are washed from our sins in his blood in the sense of being forgiven because of our faith in it.
409. Do we not read about justification and washing? Answer: I have not denied that.
410. Did not Paul say to the Corinthians, “Ye are washed, ye are justified?” Answer: That is irrelevant to what I have said.
411. It is quite revelant. Answer: No.
412. In Romans 5 we read, “By the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation.” Can that condemnation be taken away without a justification relating to that which brought the condemnation? Answer: Certainly not. When that statement is understood in its full development, there is no difficulty. The judgment was first upon Adam as a person.
413. And did not that judgment bring condemnation upon all his descendants for his offence? Answer: It established a condition of things in which, if posterity ensued, they were necessarily sinners and therefore condemnation became the universal rule, and there can be no remission of that condemnation or forgiveness of sin without a preliminary vindication of God’s authority in the shedding of blood.
414. Are they not under condemnation for the offence of Adam before they do anything themselves, right or wrong? Answer: They are mortal because of Adam’s sin.
415. That is not an answer. Are they not under condemnation for the offence of Adam before they do anything, right or wrong? Answer: God condemns no man for Adam’s offence in the individual sense. Condemnation comes through it, which is a very different idea.
416. Do you deny the statement, “By the offense of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation?” Answer: No, I do not deny it.
417. You do. Answer: No, I explain it.
418. Was not the offence of Adam the ground for condemnation of all men? Answer: Of men that did not exist?
418a. Yes. Answer: Do not charge God with folly.
419. It is scriptural. Answer: Yes, as a matter of terms it may be. You know it is said you can prove anything in that way. You must rightly divide the word of truth.
420. When babies die, do they die under condemnation? Answer: They were not particularly considered in the sentence.
421. Do they not die as a result of that condemnation? Answer: Yes, as a result of the conditions established through it.
422. Are they not “children of wrath,” and do they not die under the condemnation under which they are born? Answer: They are children who would grow up to be men who would provoke God’s wrath by disobedience if they lived, but as babies the wrath is not begun.
423. On what ground do they die? Answer: Because they are mortal.
424. Why are they mortal? Answer: Because of the condemnation to death that Adam brought upon himself through disobedience.
425. What does that mean? Answer: It means that Adam sinned and Adam was condemned to death, and they come from him and naturally partake of the mortal condition established in his nature by the sentence of death.
426. Does it mean they were condemned in him? Answer: Do you mean to say they were individually considered?
427. No, but that he is the federal head of the community, all of whom were in him, and all were condemned. Answer: In the scriptural sense, yes, but not in the sense you are attempting to establish, namely, the sense of every individual being contemplated in the sentence.
428. I did not say so. Answer: You did not make your meaning clear.
End of the First Night of Debate
