The Berean Expositor
Volume 29 - Page 178 of 208
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Things that be of God.
#1.
The glory of God.
p. 39
If the righteousness of God be the irreducible standard according to which all things
acceptable must conform, the glory of God is the goal and object towards which creation,
old and new, must lead. In creation, "The heavens declare the glory of God", and in the
new creation, in all its varied spheres, the glory of God is the ever present goal.
SIN IS THE COMING SHORT OF THE GLORY OF GOD (Rom. 3: 23).
JUSTIFICATION REVIVES THE HOPE OF THE GLORY OF GOD (Rom. 5: 2).
The whole life of the believer should be lived in view of the glory of God
(I Cor. 10: 31), even as, in his original creation, he was made in the image and glory of
God (I Cor. 11: 7). In contrast with the face of Moses which shone with a transient glory,
the light of the glory of God is seen in the face of Jesus Christ (II Cor. 4: 6). Howsoever
many may be the promises of God, in Christ is the Yea and the Amen, to the glory of
God (II Cor. 1: 20), and when at last every knee shall bow--in heaven and earth and
under the earth--and when every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, that too
shall be to the glory of God (Phil. 2: 11).
This is one of the things that be of God which must be kept steadily before the mind if
doctrine, hope and practice are to be scriptural and well pleasing.
#2.
Things that be of men contrasted.
p. 79
When our Saviour rebuked Peter for his attitude towards the great work of the Cross,
He said:
"Get thee behind Me, Satan . . . . . Thou savourest not the things that be of God, but
those that be of men" (Matt. 16: 23).
We may learn some important lessons from this severe rebuke. The "things that be of
God" are most evidently opposite to the "things that be of men", and moreover, these
"things of men" are but the opposition of Satan expressed through human lips. The
words, "Thou savourest", in the original, have nothing to do with incense or offering, but
are an example of the idiomatic use of the verb phroneo, "to think". The word phren,
from which phroneo is derived, originally meant "the diaphragm, the region of the heart,
the seat of the vital and mental powers", so that, although the verb phroneo means
"to think, or understand", it is not entirely removed from the movements of affection, or