It is a fact, astounding as it may seem, that the Church of God, is to this day unknown to Christendom. The Church of God, built by Jesus Christ (Matt. 16:18), the one body (i Cor. 12:), is founded upon the Rock that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16). " the mystery " is referred to in the following passages:Mark 4:11; Rom. 11:25; 16:25; i Cor. 2:7; Eph. 1:9; the whole of the third of Ephesians; also Eph. 5:32 and 6:19; Col. 1:26; 4:3; i Tim. 3:9.Instead of this exhibition of the Church, the mystery, we have sectarianism, not the Church of God at all. This even the world can see, and hence the prevalence of infidelity throughout Christendom to-day, and the progress the world is so rapidly making down to the apostasy of the last days (2 Thess. 2:351 Tim. 4:i; 2 Peter 2:; Jude 17, 18, 19). I trust the reader will turn to all these references, that he may get a clear view of this subject. This appalling condition of Christendom has all resulted from the perversity of human nature, in having its own way, in spite of all the word of God and the example and teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. He"came, not to do His own will, but to do the will of His Father who had sent " Him. Christendom, instead, has gone its own way, in its own will, according to its own wisdom; and hence division instead of unity; human conceptions, instead of God’s word; following men instead of God; some of Peter, some of Paul, some of Calvin, Wesley, or others. Men lost faith in God, and instead of believing in Him, and submitting:to His word as to the gift of the Holy Spirit, "the unction from the Holy one," the One that should lead them into all truth, because they could not see Him they have walked by sight and set up human leaders instead of the divine One. Hence we have the world’s church instead of God’s; sectarianism instead of Christianity.

Laying aside the Old Testament scriptures for the present, though full of Christ in type and symbol, from Abel’s lamb, and Abraham’s sacrifice of his only son to the end of the book,-let us look at "the mystery of the Church " as made known for the first time from the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven, after He had risen from the dead and ascended to glory, through Paul, chosen of God for this special purpose. This truth of the Church which characterizes this Christian dispensation was unknown until revealed through Paul. It was hid in God from eternity until Paul’s day. It is not in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, or even in the Acts. In Matthew the Lord Jesus said "upon this Rock"-Jesus Christ the Son of the living God, – " I will (in the future) build My Church," and not otherwise is it referred to in the Gospels. In Acts, though the assembly of the saints is called "the Church," as elsewhere in our translation, (more properly it should be translated " the Assembly ") Church truth was not then made known. What we have in the Acts is, as it were, only the door of entrance the vestibule of the Church viz., "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:38). "Be it know it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses " (Acts 13:38, 39). This, the forgive-ness of sins and justification by faith, is all that we get revealed in the Acts of the Apostles up to Paul. And this is all that Christendom has to-day or ever has had since the days of primitive Christianity. The Acts gives us the transition stage of progress over from Judaism into Christianity, but not its fulness or completeness. It was chiefly to the Jews though not refused to Gentiles, though the Jewish believers as a rule were "all zealous of the law," and then mixed up Judaism with their faith in Christ. See Acts 21:20.

This is the condition of things to-day in Christendom. It is Judaism and Christianity mixed together; and hence as Paul writes to Timothy of those days- they are "always learning, and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim. 3:7), "Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof "-putting up human leaders in place of the Holy Ghost.

RIGHTLY DIVIDING THE WORD OF TRUTH.

Much of the failure of Christendom is due to the fact that men have so rejected the divine Leader as Teacher, that they have not been able to see a rightly divided Word. They have therefore mixed up the word of the different dispensations, giving to one that which is intended for another, so that they have lost the mind of God as to His things. They have neglected or forgotten Paul’s caution to Timothy:‘ ’Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Tim. 2:15).

In a rightly divided Word we have:

First.-"The glad tidings of the Kingdom."

Second.-The glad tidings of salvation by faith, or justification.

Third.-What Paul calls "My gospel"; the glad tidings of the Church of the living God. " The Mystery of the gospel" (Eph. 6:19). It is this that is unknown to Christendom.

THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM.

This gospel, or glad tidings, was from God to the Jews, as representing all Israel and to them only. It was the good news that their long expected and long foretold Messiah was coming as announced by John the Baptist, and had come as taught by the Lord Himself and His disciples. "We have found the Messias, which is being interpreted the Christ," was said to Andrew (John 1:21), Jesus Himself preached it (Matt. 9:35). After this gospel is preached in all the world then shall the end of the Jewish dispensation come (Matt. 24:41). Israel in unbelief rejected their own Messiah, and handed Him over to Gentile rulers, who nailed Him to the cross in obedience to Jewish clamor. This ended the gospel of the Kingdom for that time. It will however come in again after this Christian dispensation is completed. "God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them (not to convert the world, as the world’s church claims) a people for His name. After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up, that the residue of men might seek after the Lord" (Acts 15:16). Over this restored and rebuilt tabernacle of David, the Lord Jesus will yet reign as the Son and Heir of David and the King of the Jews. Of this restoration, and the glory of Israel on the earth in the latter days, the Hebrew prophets spoke and wrote in the most glowing terms. In the confusion of sectarianism this glory has been commonly claimed for the Church, but this is only one of the many perversions of the word of God that has grown out of the confusion of Christendom. There is no Christian church foretold, except in type, in the Old Testament scriptures. It is " the mystery of the gospel" which was hid in God until revealed through Paul, by the Lord Himself from heaven.

THE GOSPEL, OR GLAD TIDINGS OF SALVATION BY FAITH-JUSTIFICATION.

God had tried man, as of the Adam race, from the beginning; as unfallen in the earthly paradise, and as fallen, up to and through the deluge, through the times of Noah and Abraham, Joshua, Judges, Saul, David and Solomon-all the way to Jesus their own God-promised Messiah; and at every step man had proved a failure, unwilling or unable to meet the requirements of God as to righteousness. In Abraham God set forth all that sectarianism has, even to this day. He believed God and it was accounted unto him for righteousness. This was justification by faith, and Abraham became father to all them that believe.

Besides this teaching set forth in the Gospels and in the Acts, we have it confirmed unto us more completely and fully in the epistles of Paul; and specially in that great letter to the Romans in which he opened up the glad tidings of God to the Gentile world.

All His former dealings with man on the ground of works, doing for salvation, obedience, having failed, because of the depravity of human nature, the ruin wrought by sin-God in His great love and mercy opened up in Abraham a new way of salvation for man; even the forgiveness of sins; pardoning him in mercy, in view of the sacrifice for sin whom He had already prepared in His own counsels to be offered up when the hour should come. Salvation to Abraham, and in his day to all whom God had chosen, was by faith, even as now. "Abraham saw my day and was glad," said the Lord Jesus to the Jews. Abraham believed in the coming Saviour, just as we believe in Him after He has come. He pre-trusted, we after-trusted, so righteousness is imputed in both cases. See Rom. 4:

Christendom then at this day has only what the old patriarchs and prophets had viz., justification by faith-imputed righteousness, a righteousness resulting from the forgiveness of sins. If sins are forgiven by God, the believer is thereby clean from sins and stands before God justified from all things from which he could not be justified* by the law of Moses. *As to justification by faith the principle was laid down to "Abraham, but as a revealed truth with all its consequences,-of freedom from law, known salvation etc., it was not known till after the cross.* This is righteousness, the righteousness which is of God, made by the blood of the cross of Jesus the Christ, and this is salvation. But it is not the gospel or glad tidings of the church; "My Gospel," as Paul calls it, or

"THE MYSTERY OF THE GOSPEL."

After offering the truth of the gospel to the Jews in the Acts, Paul turns away from them fully and completely in the last chapter, after he had partially so done before, and opens up the glad tidings of God to the Gentile nations in his great epistle to the Romans. Rome was then the mistress of the world, and through her he opened up the truth of God to all the nations of the earth. Here we have fully set forth both the ruin and the redemption of man. Man ruined by sin so that "there is none righteous, no not one; none that understandeth, none that seeketh after God, all gone out of the way;" all gone away from God even after they had in the beginning known Him. Now all in sin following their own lusts, appetites and passions until they had become beastly and idolatrous, their ruin is complete. Out of this beastly condition God has made a way of complete redemption by Jesus the Christ, the anointed of God, and His death. He died that we might live, and live to God. " He was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." "In Him" remember, not in ourselves.

The way into the Church is revealed for the first time by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself from heaven, through Paul, to whom the Lord appeared after His ascension and whom He even caught up into the third heaven, into Paradise, when were revealed to him things so marvelous that he could not utter them! To him was thus committed "the mystery of the gospel," and it is fully set forth in his epistles beginning with the sixth of this epistle to the Romans. In the fourth chapter we have righteousness imputed to faith. In the fifth, " Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

But though our sins are forgiven and we are happy in this consciousness, we have still the root of sin in us. It is in our nature as fallen creatures. It is natural for us to sin; yea as natural "as for the sparks to fly upward," We have a nature that cannot be forgiven with the sins. This nature is the root of sin. It is a sin-nature and though our sins may be forgiven, and we happy in the knowledge of it, we may find the fruit of this sin-nature springing up and we become conscious of sinning again and again-until we are led through all the experience of the seventh of Romans, and are ready to exclaim with the apostle "who shall deliver me from this body of death" (Rom. 7:24). Though our sins were forgiven as set forth in the fourth and fifth chapters, we find we need something more than the forgiveness of sins and justification to bring us deliverance from sin. To be delivered, death must have come in; not physical death, not the death of the body, but the end of ourselves as men in Adam, as men in the flesh, as natural men in the earth, over and into Christ, the last Adam, the Head of the new race; God’s new creation by Jesus Christ for an eternity of fellowship with His Son in glory.

" What shall we say then," after our sins are forgiven and we are justified and have peace with God, Paul asks, in the sixth of Romans; "shall we continue in sin, that grace (the favor of God, to forgive us over and over again, day by day, and hour by hour) may abound?"-"God forbid " says he, "how shall we, that are dead to sin" not sins, but the principle -"live any longer therein?" If dead to sin, and the nature judged out of which the sins spring, how shall we live in that to which we have died, and are dead? It is impossible that we should! Our great teacher continuing in this sixth chapter goes on to show us that "our old man is crucified with Christ that the body of sin (not sins) might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin, the principle. For, or because, He that is dead is freed from sin." But free from it in the death of Christ. This for faith. This is deliverance from the body of sin, our old self gone. It is out of Adam into Christ! Delivered from all the sins, and the nature that is the root of them judged; so that "there is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus." Nothing to condemn! sin is forgiven, sin in the flesh set aside, condemned, in the cross of Christ; "as He is so are we in this world" (i John 4:17). All of God, by Jesus Christ.* *There are in the Epistles four expressions which, though related, have not the same meaning; "sins," "sin," "the flesh," and "the old man."

"Sins" are the acts committed,-"the deeds done in the body," for which men are judged. For the believer these are forgiven, through the death of Christ.

"Sin" is the principle, or power, which reigns in the natural man. It corresponds to Pharaoh the king of the Egyptians, from whom Israel was freed. Sin sometimes is closely linked in meaning with "the flesh," as "sin in the flesh," but it is usually the principle which reigns in the sinner. It is never forgiven, but condemned, in the death of Christ.

"The flesh" is the nature of fallen man, so called from the lowest part of his being, the material part. This is always present in the believer, but he is to walk in freedom from it, in the Spirit.

"The old man," is the formerly responsible person in Adam. Paul’s " old man " was what he was before he was saved; what he was in Adam, as contrasted with the new man, what he was in Christ. Our old man is annulled, set aside, by the death of Christ. As Paul has said, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, (the old I, the old man) but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20). Scripture is always accurate in the use of terms, and it is well to grasp the distinctions suggested here.*

In the seventh chapter we have the believer carried out from under the law as a result of the death gone through with in the sixth chapter. In the sixth he is delivered from sin, which came in by Adam, through the death which Jesus, the Christ, bore for him and as his substitute; and now through this death he is also delivered from the law, being dead to that in which he had been held. The law is God’s rule of right for man in the flesh, in Adam, but being dead to that-to faith-in which he was held he is now freed from the law, and is set into full liberty in Christ, He is God’s freed man! Freed from sins, freed from sin, freed from the law! all by Jesus Christ and all the free gift of God to every living soul!

This brings us to the eighth chapter, wherein we get the result of this wondrous deliverance. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus"! Notice the therefore as well as the now. We have come to it by what has gone before in this epistle and hence the " therefore," and this place has never been reached before and hence the "now." The last clause of this first verse of the eighth chapter is an interpolation and does not belong there, but it comes in its proper place at the end of the fourth verse. "For (or because) the law of the Spirit of life (the blessed Holy Spirit) has made me free, or set me free, from the law of sin and death " (ver. 2). "The law of sin is in my members," as we see in the twenty-third verse of the seventh chapter, and the law of death, is the decalogue, or the law of the ten commandments, as we see in the same seventh chapter. "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that you should be married, or united, to another, to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God " (ver. 4). Not by law keeping, but by power from God in virtue of our union with the risen Man in the glory! "When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died" (ver. 9). "And the commandment … I found to be unto death" (ver. 10). "For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me " (verse ii).

By the law of the Spirit of life then the saints are delivered from both the law of sin which is in our members, or in our flesh, or Adam nature; and also from the decalogue. "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, (a sacrifice for sin) condemned sin in the flesh:that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled (or completed) in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" which is the new life. "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin " (ver. 10).

In this eighth chapter, we get the highest round, so to speak, in the Christian ladder. It is new life, new creation, in the Spirit, in Christ, no condemnation, God’s Spirit dwelling in us-children, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ! "The Spirit making intercession for the saints according to God." "All things working together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called ones, according to His purpose." "Foreknown and predestinated, that Christ might be the first-born among many brethren." "He called them, He justified them, or counted them righteous, and He also glorified them." So sure are they of the glory with Christ, that they are here spoken of in the present tense, as though it was already done, which it is, in His eternal purpose.

"What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all (all the saints) how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth (or counts us righteous) who is he that condemneth?" " It is Christ that died, yea rather that is risen again (all for His saints) who is even at the right hand of God (the place of power and authority) who maketh intercession for us." Therefore nothing shall separate us, or can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord! Herein is the consummation of that purpose. This is the standing of the Church of God which is the Bride of Christ, espoused to Him and now awaiting the coming of the Bridegroom. "I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also." J. S. P.

(Concluded in next issue.)