Acts 17:30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commands all men every where to repent: 1. Surrounded by the representatives of the great philosophic schools, and with the beautiful objects of Pagan devotion on every side, Paul characterises the error of idolatry as a mark of ignorance. It was a severe thing to say to a people who cherished the past so fondly, and who boasted of their culture; and perhaps not the least irritating thing was that Paul represented his own God — that God so new and strange to his hearers — as tolerating their worship as a matter which in no way concerned His own honour. 2. This raises the difficult question concerning certain things which God has permitted to run their course in past ages, which will not bear the test of even the lowest Christian morality. 3. As we study the Bible history, we see two movements in progress simultaneously. One the natural historic movement; i.e., the progress of a history, like that of Israel, e.g., according to the natural laws under which nations mature, such as climate, soil, migration, conquest. There are those who refuse to see in Biblical history anything more than this. But mothers detect another influence which gives character and direction to the other — the providential movement, the outworking of a Divine purpose. Thus, where the philosopher sees only the migration of a tribe under some physical pressure, the religious historian hears the Lord say unto Abraham, "Get thee out from thy kindred and from thy father's house." 4. Now, our difficulty arises out of the fact that these two movements are mysteriously intertwined; that God's design works itself out through much which, to an educated Christian sense, is cruel and selfish, and by means of men who fall below even the lower types of the social morality of our day. Certainly, if we were called on to select types of devout servants of God, we should not choose Samson nor Barak, nor even Gideon; and yet they are placed in the New Testament among the heroes of faith. Or, there is that horrible business of the Canaanites, which, in some aspects at least, must, I fear, continue to be a puzzle. Take the matter of genealogy — that line which we should naturally suppose would have been kept absolutely pure — our Lord's human descent. And yet it is not so: Judah and Rahab are both in it. Such illustrations show us that, in the Bible, the natural and the providential currents mingle; so that, to human eyes, God's work in history seems discoloured by human passion and infirmity. 5. Now these facts involve difficulties; but we can nevertheless discover, running through them, some straight tracks leading us to three general principles. I. THAT THERE IS A PROGRESS IN THE DIVINE REVELATION IN THE BIBLE, from limited to fuller revelation, from contracted to expanded views of God and truth. Take — 1. The Incarnation. There is a fulness of time which must come before the Redeemer can be revealed; until then there are foreshadowings, types, prophecies. Now, after Christ has come, the same law holds. He plainly tells the disciples, "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now," etc. 2. Immortality. How imperfect its revelation in the earlier Scriptures! 3. Spirituality in life and worship. Is there not a distinct progress from a religion which required the complicated apparatus of altars, etc., to that which intelligently accepts the truth that God is a Spirit? So, too, there is a progress from the morality which must be kept to duty by minute precepts, to the freedom with which Christ makes His disciples free, throwing them upon the guidance of the conscience enlightened by His Spirit. II. But this principle necessitates a second — THAT OF ACCOMMODATION. 1. If we read the Old Testament expecting to find New Testament standards and principles in operation, we shall be constantly disappointed and puzzled. When you read the Book of Judges, for instance, you cannot help saying, "These characters are not for my imitation." You cannot help thinking that there is a terrible inconsistency if you do not recognise the facts of progress in and accommodation of revelation to the actual condition of mankind. You cannot expect the full tide of Christian revelation to fit the moral conditions of Israel before Sinai. And therefore we find that God adapts His revelation to them, giving them symbols and rites. What was the revelation of God in human form but an accommodation? Man would not understand God by hearing that God was a Spirit; and so the Infinite took upon Himself the form of a servant. And there is a glory to be revealed; we might as properly ask why God does not fit us at once to receive its full weight? We know simply that that is not His way; that we could not bear it if it were revealed. 2. But this principle goes farther. God gives temporary sanction to certain things which will not stand the test of Christian morality. There is polygamy, for instance, which the New Testament refuses to recognise. Slavery was incorporated into the Mosaic law. God might have brought the ages of Deborah and Samson up to the level of the Sermon on the Mount, but He did not. He might have worked out His purpose by new methods specially devised; but He took men's crudity — the practice of war, etc. — as they were, and let them work themselves out according to the spirit and methods of their age. 3. Christ recognised this fact clearly enough. "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you." What was Christ's baptism by John but a temporary adaptation to crude religious conceptions? What else did He mean by "suffer it now"? Or do not His words point back to a similar accommodation? "Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time; but I say unto you something better." III. To these we must add a third principle, without which the whole question would be left in worse confusion than before — viz., THAT THROUGH THIS PARTIAL, GROWING, AND ACCOMMODATED REVELATION, GOD IS CONTINUALLY WORKING TOWARDS HIS OWN PERFECT IDEAL. If you once admit this fact of a progressive revelation, the character of the revelation must be judged by its general tendency and outcome. Suppose I give a peach stone to a man who had never seen a peach, and tell him that, if he would plant it, it would yield a delicious fruit; and if, after a few weeks, he should dig it up, and finding the seed just sprouting, should come jeering, and saying, "Do you call that a delicious thing?" you all see what the proper answer would be. Back of the fruit is a long process, and you cannot pronounce upon the meaning or the quality of that process until the tree is grown. Then all becomes plain. So back of the perfect law and manhood of the gospel lies this slow, moral growth of humanity. When you once perceive that the Bible means Christ, that the history recorded in the Bible moves steadily toward Christ, then you may begin to understand that God's toleration and accommodation are simply parts of the process which is to issue in the cheerful subjection of a man in Christ to the perfect law of the gospel. When you want to form a judgment of some great historic man, you read his life backward in the light of his glorious prime. Do you blame his father because he bore with the boy's childish folly, and accommodated his own higher wisdom to the lad's ignorance and crudity? But, with all its accommodations, God's economy is never content to leave the man or the people in the condition to which it accommodates itself. It accommodates itself to raise. Its testimony against sin is clear throughout. There is a very significant passage at the close of Hebrews 11, in which these Old Testament saints are ranked among the heroes of faith: "God having provided some better thing for us, that they, apart from us, should not be made perfect." What does this teach but that God's purpose in the education of men does not fulfil itself in any man or generation of men, but in the whole history of mankind. Finally, we must not leave this subject without alluding to the practical conclusion which Paul draws from God's forbearance in past ages: "But now He commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent." In other words, God's tolerance in the past is a warning against presuming on His forbearance in the present. God bore with the crudeness and ignorance of the men of olden time, in order that men of a later and more enlightened day should have no excuse for claiming His forbearance. A very different conclusion this from that of those who make this Old Testament record a ground of attack upon God's character, and a reason for rejecting His later revelation in Christ. As we in happier times read of those old days, our proper sentiment is that of wonder at the patience of God through all these ages, of admiration at the wisdom of His forbearance, of congratulation that He has provided some better thing for us. 2. This history is reproduced, on a smaller scale, in your individual life. You have had your times of ignorance; and though you have had less excuse than they had, yet how your life has been marked by the forbearance of God! What is the practical result of this forbearance? Has it led you to a true estimate of sin? Has it led you to the Lamb of God, which taketh away sin? or are those terrible words of the apostle verified in you, "Or despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance and long-suffering," etc. (Romans 2:4-6). (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: |
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