The Bible is a record of the
long history of the conflict between the natural and the
supernatural. That will sound strange to many ears because the
element of conflict is so often ruled out by the explanation or
excuse: 'Well, it is only natural.' 'It is just human nature.'
'You cannot go against nature.' Such arguments may be right if we
accept that 'nature' or the natural is as it should be. So much
depends upon such an acceptance of, and concurrence with, what we
term 'natural'. For one thing, it is the question of what God
calls natural or what man so defines it. But the fact is that
what man calls natural, God calls unnatural; and what God calls
natural, man calls supernatural. The Bible has an immense amount
to say against what man calls natural, both as to its nature and
its abilities. Further, the Bible is constituted on the principle
that God is always trying to lift man from his natural life and
place him on a supernatural level. From a certain time-point the
Bible shows that a 'Fall' from one level to another resulted in
everything becoming unnatural from God's stand point. Recovery
from that 'Fall' has necessitated the intervention of the
supernatural in every respect.
This contrast and conflict is
summed up in one basic and comprehensive statement by the Apostle
Paul: "Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God: ...they are foolishness unto him; ...he cannot
know them" (1 Corinthians 2:14).
In the immediate context of
that statement the Apostle relates it to wisdom, the supreme
wisdom of this world: to power, the supreme strength of this
world: to knowledge; all the accumulated knowledge of this
world's princes: and he shows to what extremes of folly and evil
the outworkings of all this can go. It even resulted in their
"crucifying the Lord of glory".
What a history of conflict
relates to this supreme issue, the natural and the supernatural!
If the conflict raged mainly in the realms of the Judaizers on
the one hand and the philosophers on the other hand in New
Testament times, in more recent times its battleground has been -
and is - the theologians and the doctrinaires. The concentrated
effort of so-called 'Scholarship' has been to eliminate the
supernatural from every part of "the Faith once for all
delivered to the saints". From the Virgin Birth of Christ,
through His miracles, His cosmic supernatural death, to His
bodily resurrection. This has been followed up into the nature of
the Christian life, its inception in new birth; its sustenance
from Heaven, and its consummation in the 'body of glory'.
The place of the supernatural
has been taken by the psychological, the ethical, the humanistic,
the philosophical, etc. Indeed, many have gone as far as to say
that a supernatural Saviour is unnecessary; man is his own
saviour, and his destiny is in his own hands. So the battle
proceeds. God takes a long time, but although
"The mills of God
grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small:
Though with patience He stands waiting,
With exactness grinds He all."
The wisdom and the power of the
natural man is being extended to the ultimate limit, but it is
surely only fools who do not see that the world of the natural
man is getting more and more hopelessly beyond his wisdom and his
power, and it is getting very near to the point where it will
destroy him with a terrible destruction. Only a supernatural
intervention will save this creation at last. God's full and
perfect knowledge has acted on this truth of the supernatural in
every aspect of salvation, redemption and glory. The intervention
of God in this world has always been supernatural because the
natural is fully known by Him to be incompetent.
The
Birth of the Redeemer - Supernatural
Hence the Saviour had to be a
supernatural Saviour in every respect. His birth had to be
supernatural! The whole controversy over the Virgin Birth of the
Saviour has a far greater and deeper significance than a fragment
of a creed or a physiological phenomenon. It is fundamentally
related to the entire method of redemption. It cuts in two and
sets in altogether different realms the humanity which is of man
and that which is of God. "That which is born of the flesh
is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit"
(John 3:6). Jesus Christ, by His very birth, introduces a new and
different 'species', or order of humanity in the essential
basic nature. God is involved in that humanity in a way in
which it is not true of "the natural man" as we know
him. He is a miracle at His very inception, the supernatural
alone accounts for Him. Remove that and you only have a
"Jesus of History", a man - if better - yet only like
all other men in essential being.
The
Works of the Redeemer - Supernatural
What was true of the birth of
Christ was true of His works. We are not concerned with an
argument that Jesus performed miracles, but our concern is to
show that the miracles had a meaning which was more than
themselves. There have been, and still are, works which in a
sense are miraculous, but quite out of relation to Christ. He
Himself said that there would be some who would say:
"Lord... in Thy name we have done many mighty works, but
(said He) I will say unto them... I never knew you." The
phrase "mighty works" is thus used of Jesus, and of
some who had no real relationship to Him. We must therefore
conclude that there is something more in the miracles of Jesus
than themselves. From a consideration of the Scriptures relating
to this matter there seem to be three aspects of the miracles
which lead us to the Divine supernaturalism. One relates to His
person; who He was. The next to the immediate intention of His
works. The third, their abiding significance for all time.
Both the Apostles John and Paul
strongly and categorically affirmed that Jesus Christ was a party
to, instrument, and object of the creation of the world. Their
words are:
"The same was in the
beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him
was not anything made that hath been made" (John 1:2,3).
"In him were all things created... all things have been
created through him, and unto him" (Colossians 1:16).
One of the favourite
designations of God by the Old Testament Psalmists was "The
creator of the heavens and the earth". "The sea and all
that therein is."
The miracles of Christ touched
the creation at every point: sea, elements, earth, bread, wine,
the human body, etc. In this way He was demonstrating that He was
the creator, so that, in this respect, His miracles revealed who
He was as the creator and Lord of creation.
The immediate intention of His
works was to show that God had visited the world to manifest His
rights, authority, grace and glory in it. The repudiation of Him
and His works involved no less a responsibility and consequence
than the casting of God out of His world.
The most substantial and
unanswerable argument for the supernatural in His works is in the
third aspect, the abiding significance. It is John who takes the
matter beyond "powers" and "wonders" to his
unique definition - "Signs". The miracles were signs,
that is, they signified more than the temporal acts. If lame men
were miraculously made to walk, if deaf, dumb, blind, leprous
people were miraculously given faculties and wholeness
organically and constitutionally; and if helpless and hopeless
victims of evil powers were set completely free, all this was
intended to show what centuries of history in every part of the
world have proved, and are still proving, that in and by Jesus
Christ a supernatural salvation has been brought to man
spiritually, morally, mentally and often physically.