The Purposes of the Incarnation
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About this ebook
Here is no attempt at defense of the statement of the New Testament that "the Word was made flesh." That is taken for granted as true.
Moreover, here is no attempt to explain the method of the Holy Mystery. That is recognized as Mystery: a fact revealed which is yet beyond human comprehension or explanation.
The scope is that of considering in broad outline the plain teaching of the New Testament as to the purposes of the Incarnation.
Its final limitation is that of its brevity. If, however, it serve to arouse a deeper sense of the wonder of the great central fact of our common Faith, and thus to inspire further meditation, its object will be gained.
CrossReach Publications
G. Campbell Morgan
George Campbell Morgan was born in Tetbury, England, on December 9, 1893. At the young age of thirteen, Morgan began preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Morgan and his wife, Annie, had four boys and three girls. His four sons followed him into the ministry.Morgan visited the United States for the first time in 1896, the first of fifty-four times he crossed the Atlantic to preach and teach. In 1897, Morgan accepted a pastorate in London, where he often traveled as a preacher and was involved in the London Missionary Society. After the death of D. L. Moody in 1899, Morgan assumed the position of director of the Northfield Bible Conference in Massachusetts. After five successful years in this capacity, in 1904 he returned to England and became pastor of Westminster Chapel, London, where he served for the next thirteen years, from 1904 to 1917. Thousands of people attended his services and weekly Friday night Bible classes.He had no formal training for the ministry, but his devotion to studying the Bible made him one of the leading Bible teachers of his day. In 1902, Chicago Theological Seminary conferred on him an honorary doctor of divinity degree. Although he did not have the privilege of studying in a seminary or a Bible college, he has written books that are used in seminaries and Bible colleges all over the world. Morgan died on May 16, 1945, at the age of eighty-one.
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The Purposes of the Incarnation - G. Campbell Morgan
Foreword
The title of this meditation marks its limitation, and indicates its scope.
Here is no attempt at defense of the statement of the New Testament that the Word was made flesh.
That is taken for granted as true.
Moreover, here is no attempt to explain the method of the Holy Mystery. That is recognized as Mystery: a fact revealed which is yet beyond human comprehension or explanation.
The scope is that of considering in broad outline the plain teaching of the New Testament as to the purposes of the Incarnation.
Its final limitation is that of its brevity. If, however, it serve to arouse a deeper sense of the wonder of the great central fact of our common Faith, and thus to inspire further meditation, its object will be gained.
The Incarnation
The whole teaching of Holy Scripture places the Incarnation at the center of the methods of God with a sinning race.
Toward that Incarnation everything moved until its accomplishment, finding therein fulfillment and explanation. The messages of the prophets and seers and the songs of the psalmists trembled with more or less certainty toward the final music which announced the coming of Christ. All the results also of these partial and broken messages of the past led toward the Incarnation.
It is equally true that from that Incarnation all subsequent movements have proceeded, depending upon it for direction and dynamic. The Gospel stories are all concerned with the coming of Christ, with His mission and His message. The letters of the New Testament have all to do with the fact of the Incarnation, and its correlated doctrines and duties. The last book of the Bible is a book, the true title of which is The Unveiling of the Christ.
Not only the actual messages which have been bound up in this one Divine Library, but all the results issuing from them, are finally results issuing from this self-same coming of Christ. It is surely important, therefore, that we should understand its purposes in the economy of God.
There is a fourfold statement of purpose declared in the New Testament: the purpose to reveal the Father; the purpose to put away sin; the purpose to destroy the works of the devil; and the purpose to establish by another advent the Kingdom of God in the world.
Christ was in conflict with all that was contrary to the purposes of God in individual, social, national, and racial life. There is a sense in which when we have said this we have stated the whole meaning of His coming. His revelation of the Father was toward this end; His putting away of sin was part of this very process; and His second advent will be for the complete and final overthrow of all the works of the devil.
1. To Reveal the Father
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him
(Joh 1:18).
He that hath seen me hath seen the Father
(Joh 14:9). This latter is Christ's own statement of truth in this regard, and is characterized by simplicity and sublimity. Among all the things Jesus said concerning His relationship to the Father, none is more comprehensive, inclusive, exhaustive, than this.
The last hours of Jesus with His disciples were passing away. He was talking to them, and four times over they interrupted him. Philip said, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us
. Philip's interruption was due, in the first place, to a conviction of Christ's relation in some way to the Father. He had been so long with Jesus as to become familiar in some senses with His line of thought. In all probability Philip was asking that there should be repeated to him and the little group of disciples some such wonderful thing as they