3663 — Has Christ Creative Power?
By A. K.
Did our Lord exercise creative power in the feeding of the multitude, or was all that He did done through angelic ministration? What caused the fall of Jericho's walls? A. K. There are repeated evidences that our Lord exercised creative power. There were doubtless times when angels did work for Him, but the only power they received was in the command that was given to them. Said the Roman centurion, "I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed." Jesus sent His word and healed him. The poor, decaying, corrupt leper said, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean." The cleansing of that leper meant creative power, the absolute renewing of his entire being; and Jesus touched him, and said, "I will; be thou clean." There came to Jesus at another time one sick of the palsy, and Jesus said, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." And the multitude murmured, saying that only God could forgive sins; but in order that He might demonstrate that He had the power of God to forgive sins, He said to the sick of the palsy, "Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house." And creative power restored the incurable of the palsy. It was not angels that said, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," but Christ; and it was not angels that healed the sick of the palsy, but Christ. It was so when the multitude was fed. As the bread left the hands of the Master, it multiplied, and it multiplied in the hands of His disciples, through His own power. The only hope that the poor, sinful soul has is in the creative power of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the reception of His Word. This does not mean that He did not use, at different times and on various occasions — and most occasions, in all probability — the help of angels. He does not do this because angels are necessary, but in order that there may be that blessed and divine coöperation which will make other hearts glad as well as His own. Even so He uses human beings. He could have said to Paul: "Thy sins are forgiven thee. Arise and be baptized." But He wanted Ananias to have a part in it, and He wanted His angel to have a part in it, and so He sends an angel to Ananias, and Ananias tells Paul, and both of them are blessed in Christ in the work which they do, but the power is of Christ. God's army was with Joshua. We learn that by reading the context, when he stood before Jericho. And it was God's army, doubtless, that threw down the walls of Jericho; but the power was of God still. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature," — literally, a new creation.