Online Bible 1995 March/ROM-1025.iso/olb/gill/5_200_p.lzh/5_266.TXT

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conversion of them, there will be a general salvation
of them, all Israel shall be saved; but here the spi-
ritual Israel of God are meant, such as God has ap-
pointed unto salvation; who are taken into the cove-
nant of his grace, in which their salvation is secured;
who are his spiritual people, whom Christ saves from
their sins; who are redeemed by the blood of Christ,
and are called by his grace; who believe in him, and
hope in the Lord: these shall be saved: there is a cer-
tainty of their salvation, and not a mere probability
and possibility of it only. It is not they may be,
but they shall be saved; it is the will of God they
should, whose will cannot be resisted; they are the
purchase of Christ, which he will never lose, and the
Spirit is the earnest and pledge of salvation to them:
and it is in and by the Lord they are saved, not in
of themselves; their destruction is of themselves, but
their salvation is of the Lord; and they are saved as
they are in him, and owing to their being in him;
they are chosen in him, and hence spring all the bless-
ings of grace and salvation to them; they are repre-
sentatively in him, as their federal Head; they are
openly in him, in effectual vocation; and they are
justified in him, and by his righteousness, and so
saved; and being in him, there is no condemnation to
them, nor can they ever come into it. They are saved
by the Lord; by the Word of the Lord, as the Tar-
gum; by Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word; by his
obedience, sufferings, and death; by his blood, righte-
ousness, and sacrifice; and by his interceding life, and
that with an everlasting salvation; which is distin-
guished, by this epithet, from a temporal one, and is
opposed to eternal damnation, the desert of sin; it is
the salvation of the immortal soul, and includes in it
grace and glory, which are perpetual and everlasting;
and the duration of it is owing to the perpetuity of
Christ's person, office, and grace: or, with a salvation
of ages, or worlds {a}: ye shall not be ashamed, nor con-
founded, world without end; or, unto the ages of eter-
nity {b}; that is, such who believe in Christ, and are
saved by him, they shall not be ashamed, though the
makers and worshippets of idols will; they shall not
be confounded, neither in this world, nor in the other;
they shall not be ashamed of Christ, his word, and
ordinances, nor of their faith and hope in him, or of
their sufferings for him; they shall not be ashamed in
the resurrection-morn, their vile bodies being fashioned
like to the glorious body of Christ, when others shall
rise to shame and everlasting contempt; nor shall they
be ashamed at the coming of Christ, and when they
stand before him, being clothed with white robes, and
having on the wedding garment; when they shall be
introduced into his own and his Father's kingdom and
glory, into the world of happiness, which will know
no end.
Vet. 18. For thus saith the Lord, that created the
heavens, &c.] These words, and what follow, are the
words of the Son of God, of the Lord the Saviour, in
whom Israel is saved with an everlasting salvation;
and this is said to assure them of it, as well as to dis-
tinguish himself from the gods of the Gentiles, who
made not the heavens and the earth, as he had done;
for by the Word of the Lord, the essential Word of
God, were the heavens made in the beginning; see
Psal. xxxiii. 6. Heb. i. 10: God himself, that formed
the earth, and made it, he hath established it; the Sa-
viour is God himself, truly and properly God, who has
all the perfections of deity in him; and this appears
as from his creation of the heavens, so from his forming,
and establishing the earth; he made the
the earth out of nothing; he formed that
chaos he made into a beautiful order, and prepared, as
the last word{c} signifies, fitted, and furnished it with
every thing convenient for man and beast: he created
it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited; the earth
indeed was tohu when it was first created, Gen. i. 2.
which word is used of the chaos of the earth first
made, here rendered in vain; but then it was not
created to continue so, nor did it continue so; for
though it was first without form, it was soon formed in
a beautiful manner, and fitted for the habitation of men
and beasts, and especially the former; and more espe-
cially for the habitation of the saints, those sons of men,
with whom the delights of Christ were from eternity,
and whom he foresaw would dwell in the habitable parts
of the earth, which was a pleasure to him; and for the
sake of them was it made to be inhabited, and not by
them with the wicked promiscuously only as now, but
when purified, and refined by fire, to be the habitation
of the righteous, with Christ at the head of them; as
will be the case in the thousand-years' reign: I am the
Lord, there is none else; the one Jehovah with the
Father and the Spirit, and there is no other that is the
Creator of the heavens and the earth.
Ver. 19. I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place
of the earth, &c.] In a private whisper, in a muttering
manner, and out of the belly, as the Heathen priests
did; and from out of cells, dens, and caverns of the
earth, from whence the oracles of Heathen deities were
delivered; but in a free, open, clear, and public man-
ner, before multitudes, in the face of all men, or
where there was a great concourse of people: so
Christ delivered the law on Mount Sinai, in an audible
manner, artended with a multitude of angels, and be-
fore all the people; and when here on earth he said
nothing in secret, but openly to the world, in the
synagogues and temple of the Jews, where they re-
sorted in great numbers, John xviii. 20. and ordered
his disciples also to publish on the house-tops what
they heard with their ears, Matt. x. 27: I said not
unto the seed of Jacob, seek ye me in vain; that is, he
never suffered the seed of Jacob, Israelites indeed,
praying Jacobs and prevailing Israels, the true wet-
shippers of him, to seek him in vain; to pray unto
and worship him to no purpose, or without fruit
to themselves; for all such who seek him early and
earnestly, heartily and diligently, and where he may
be found, always find him; he receives them, and not
rejects them; and they receive that from him which
is worth seeking after, and amply rewards all their

{a} \^Mymlwe tewvt\^ salute Seculorum, Pagninus, Montanus, Vatublus;
salvatione seculorum, Cocceius. So Ben Melcch interprets it, this
world and the world to come; everlasting salvation takes in both.
{b} \^de ymlwe de\^ in secula perpetuitatis, Montanus, Vatablus.
{c} \^hnnwk\^ parsvit eam, Musculus; aptavit, instruit, Gataker; ex-
aptavit, Cocceius, Vitringa,