II.  CORINTHIANS

GOD’S YEA; MAN’S AMEN

   ’For how many soever be the promises of God,
   in Him is the yea:  wherefore also through
   Him is the Amen.’—­2 COR. i. 20 (R.V.).

This is one of the many passages the force and beauty of which are, for the first time, brought within the reach of an English reader by the alterations in the Revised Version.  These are partly dependent upon the reading of the text and partly upon the translation.  As the words stand in the Authorised Version, ‘yea’ and ‘amen’ seem to be very nearly synonymous expressions, and to point substantially to the same thing—­viz. that Jesus Christ is, as it were, the confirmation and seal of God’s promises.  But in the Revised Version the alterations, especially in the pronouns, indicate more distinctly that the Apostle means two different things by the ‘yea’ and the ‘amen’.  The one is God’s voice, the other is man’s.  The one has to do with the certainty of the divine revelation, the other has to do with the certitude of our faith in the revelation.  When God speaks in Christ, He confirms everything that He has said before, and when we listen to God speaking in Christ, our lips are, through Christ, opened to utter our assenting ‘Amen’ to His great promises.  So, then, we have the double form of our Lord’s work, covering the whole ground of His relations to man, set forth in these two clauses, in the one of which God’s confirmation of His past revelations by Jesus Christ is treated of, and in the other of which the full and confident assent which men may give to that revelation is set before us.  I deal, then, with these two points—­God’s certainties in Christ, and man’s certitudes through Christ.

Now these two things do not always go together.  We may be very certain, as far as our persuasion is concerned, of a very doubtful fact, or we may be very doubtful, as far as our persuasion is concerned, of a very certain fact.  We speak about truths or facts as being certain, and we ought to mean by that, not how we think about them, but what they are in the evidence on which they rest.  A certain truth is a truth which has its evidence irrefragable; and the only fitting attitude for men, in the presence of a certain truth, is to have a certitude of the truth.  And these two things are, our Apostle tells us, both given to us in and through Jesus Christ.  Let me deal, then, with these two sides.

I. First, God’s certainties in Christ.

Of course the original reference of the text is to the whole series of great promises given in the Old Testament.  These, says Paul, are sealed and confirmed to men by the revelation and work of Jesus Christ, but it is obvious that the principle which is good in reference to them is good on a wider field.  I venture to take that extension, and to ask you to think briefly about some of the things that are made for us indubitably certain in Jesus Christ.