Scripture Alone

In Scripture, the river is a great symbol. God’s life-giving force and all the derivatives thereof are captured in the imagery of rivers. Whether it be the life-giving source of the unnamed river in Eden, of which we conclude is representative of God Himself, or whether it be the four heads of the rivers that flow from that source, – Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates – of which these rivers are certainly, in reality and in symbol, God’s all giving sustenance to His creation. “Living waters” throughout the Scripture refer to the life-giving waters of health; for a river is cleansed by the very fact that it flows through rocks and sand, and in the same way a spring coming up from under the ground is cleansed. On the other hand, a slough, or a cistern is stagnant; there is no renewal of the water, no cleansing, no movement within it; in stagnant water algae and sickness flourish. The river is a source of life for the fertile valley; without the river there would be little real-estate for man to grow the food, or feed and water the flocks by which it is necessary for him to be able to live in this flesh. So too spiritually! Without the life-giving force of the Holy Spirit, God’s children would wither and die.

In Genesis we read of the single river (Gen.2:10), of which we have determined to be a symbolic type of God Himself; and then in the very last chapter of Scripture we read that the apostle John was shown, “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”(Rev.22:1) It is clear that these two rivers are the same river. For in the first instance, in the Garden of Eden, the river’s source was in the Garden flowing outward, and in the Garden was the “tree of life”; and, in the second instance, “the throne of God and of the Lamb,” is the source of the river, and we are told that there too was “the tree of life”. Thus, we discern that the “tree of life” is representative of the very Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. To have this symbolic reference to Him as being ‘life itself’ in the very beginning of the Bible and at the very end of the Bible only enforces the purpose for which God has condescended to His greatest creation, man, via His revealed Word. What is this purpose? To show man that He has done something about what has happened to him and his estate. And, this is where the very gloriousness of God’s free grace gospel begins, – with man’s fall.

Man was made perfect; he was a river of pure flowing waters. God created him out of the dust and breathed life into his nostrils; and he became a living soul. (Gen.2:7) But, having been given the ability not to sin, Adam was not given the security of being in Christ. In other words, Adam was responsible for his keeping the works of the law, viz. the ‘Covenant of Works’ by which God placed him under; for all of creation is in a covenant with the Creator. It is absurd, as some ignorantly think, that God created all of His creation without the condition of a “Covenant of Works”; that He made everything ‘free to be’, as it were. This is not the God of Scripture. The God of Scripture is a jealous God, an all-powerful, all knowing, all present God who rejoices in His creation, and a God in whom we praise for these qualities; for if He were not this God of whom Scripture tells us of then we might as well say, “let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.”(1Cor.15:32) God is the beginning and the end. He is eternal and all of history, as we know it, is within His providence; and we praise God for this! So, the fact that God is a God who is pleased to be a generous Father to His creation evidences to us, with the utmost certainty, that Adam was under a ‘Covenant of Works’. In this covenant God gave Adam a probationary time in which he was to keep the covenant; if he were to succeed then he would attain to being to eat freely of the “tree of life”. But Adam failed! And, his failure is the failure of all of mankind. 

So, the river, which once was pure and undefiled, is now poison, sin, and death; we shall call it the “River of Sin and Death”. What once flowed pure and sweet in God’s Garden, now flows into the bitter land of Satan’s empire, the land of the “valley of the shadow of death.”(Ps.23:4) And all of mankind is born into this river; a river filled with misery and death. This river symbolizes all of the history of mankind since the fall of Adam. Imagine this river as all of time and existence in the temporal world, past, present, and until the Lord returns. And into these waters of death enter every living soul. God gives life to His creation in eternity and every man ever born begins as a perfect soul in eternity; a pure spring, as it were, flowing from the decree of God’s good pleasure towards the created world (Jer. 1:5); and, each of these souls, at the very moment of inception, are removed from eternity and enter into time, that is, the River of Sin and Death. And, even though the soul moves from the eternal to the temporal, the soul maintains its eternal nature – not the purity but the eternity only. A soul can never be eliminated from its eternal existence. 

One would like to think that the man in his pre-carnal state would come into the temporal world pure and undefiled by the waters of the River of Sin and Death; that he is born innocent and thus becomes defiled and impure upon entering into the River of Sin and Death. This would make life itself, with all its sin and death, the guilty party in corrupting the new born soul. But, indeed, the fact is that every man born into time is like unto a new streamlet entering into the grand River of Sin and Death. And, this brand-new streamlet, far from bringing the purity of God’s eternal sweetness into the River of Sin and Death, is itself poison and it is only adding to the poisonous water of the vast river to which it is now an additional source. But how can this be? How can a new born soul be turned to poison as soon as it enters into time?  

Scripture teaches that man is guilty of the very sin of Adam before he is ever born. The fact that a man has never committed a sin against God’s 10 commandments is completely irrelevant to his status. There has never been a man conceived in the womb that God has looked upon as being innocent of sin; all men are constituted by God as being sinners, viz. God places them into the category of sinner. (Rom.5:14,19) It can truly be said that there has never been a soul that was born without being in sin: it is true that John the Baptist was born again in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, and this shows the great power of the Holy Spirit to save whom He wants, when He wants, but John was a 6-month old fetus when he leaped in the womb as the Holy Spirit filled his mother. When he was first conceived, he was constituted a sinner like every other man. Scripture is clear that God can save anyone at any time, even a fetus, but the condition of salvation for all souls is that God applies the blood of Christ and gives a regenerate soul to all whom He adopts into his family.(John 3:3) So here is this great River of Sin and Death, and every single man, woman, and child, from their very inception as a two celled fetus is a source of pollution, bringing more sin to the waters. And, as we know, these waters lead to only one destination – eternal destruction, the lake of fire! 

But thanks be to God and His free grace! His character will not allow His creation to be brought down by the devil, sin, and death. God has sent His justifying grace “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom (He) hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past.”(Rom.3:24,25) And in doing this great work of redemption in a peculiar people, God is bringing glory to Himself with every soul that He purifies from the polluted River of Sin and Death. 

God has created a second river! Where the first Adam failed, the last Adam, Christ Jesus has succeeded. Christ has redeemed a people by keeping the perfect law, the “Covenant of Works”, exemplified in the Ten Commandments; our Lord lived a perfect sinless life, He has kept ever jot and tittle of His Father’s law. And, our Lord also shed His blood upon the cross as a propitiation towards God’s hatred of sin. He paid the penalty that was due for every sinner. And by this obedience to the law, and the precious blood of His dear Son shed upon the cross on Calvary’s Hill, God has justified a peculiar people by both declaring them innocent of their sin and declaring them righteous, viz. God has imputed righteousness to the accounts of all the redeemed. Not of their own accord has God declared them innocent and righteous, but by the blood and righteousness of Christ Jesus. By the Lord’s blood are the sins washed away, and by His perfect righteousness are the redeemed now clothed. When God looks upon a Christian, He sees the blood and righteousness of Christ upon them. This in turn has created a kingdom of redeemed souls, a kingdom that spans between both heaven and earth, a kingdom of saints that are now fellow heirs with Christ Jesus, a kingdom of sons who have been adopted into the glorious family of God. This is the second river of which we now speak. 

So, one might ask, where is this river? We’ve already stated that the River of Sin and Death has been polluted and consists of all of the history of mankind from the fall until this very moment. Well, this new kingdom is a river which exists within this River of Sin and Death. It is a river of purity running in the midst of the polluted river; an invisible river, a spiritual river. Our Lord told Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.” (Jhn.18:36) This is the kingdom to which we as Christians belong to. We are not of this world (Jhn.17:16) even as our Lord was not of this world, yet we live in this world. The world is polluted and diseased, but as the apostle tells the Corinthians, we are different, “but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”(1Cor.6:11) In fact, everywhere in the New Testament epistles we Christians are exhorted to come to the realization of the fact that we are now a purified people peculiar unto God through the blood of Christ. By no means are we without sin, this is impossible without the redemption of the physical body, but as far as God is concerned, we are as white as the pure driven snow, within this robe of Christ’s righteousness upon which He has clothed us. And all of His people He has now gathered into one kingdom, which we illustrate as a river of pure water, which we now call ‘The River of Life’ And this River of Life flows within the River of Sin and Death, which runs throughout the entire kingdom of Satan. 

Like the first river, whereas every streamlet that entered into it was polluted and thus added to the overall pollution of the entire mass, not so are Christian saints who now flow into The River of Life. Each saint, who are before their regeneration a poisonous streamlet within the River of Sin and Death, is made into a pure streamlet at the very instant that they enter into the new invisible The River of Life. Never does the pollution of the River of Sin and Death enter into the new river. It is true, of course, as we have already stated, that our physical aspect is not entirely pure, nor can it ever be until the time of eternal glorification, but nevertheless we are told that we have been cleansed by the effectual blood of our Lord and that “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”(2Cor.5:17) So, be our physical state as it may be, we are exhorted to come to the realization that we are spiritual beings, and that God “hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:”(Eph.2:6) And we are now pure waters of God’s redemptive mercy, flowing within this new River of Life; Scripture describes the entirety of the saints as a kingdom, a body, a single loaf of bread, a bride for our Lord, and I now elaborate this illustration to a River of Life. Whatever the metaphor may be, there is but one reason that all saints are separated from the deadly poisonous world, and that is because of the glorious mystical doctrine of the believers’ union with Christ. 

So here we have two rivers, one is bitter and sour, the other is sweet and delicious. One worldly and one spiritual, one godless and one godly. There is the unrighteous and righteous, the sick and the whole, the blind and they that see, the dead and the living, the black and the white, the rot and the salt, the darkness and the light, &ct. 

Each river also has banks on either side of it. The visible River of Sin and Death has for its banks the Law of God, viz. the 10 Commandments. Thus, all in the River of Sin and Death are under the condemnation of God; there is nowhere else for it to flow, it can never leave its banks. Even if there are times when God allows a great flood of sin to come into the world and the river spills onto the plains for a short time, it will always drain back in between the banks of Gods wrath and condemnation. In a like manner, the sweet waters of the River of Salvation has its banks, and these banks are the salvation of Jesus Christ; and these banks can never overspill. All Christian people are contained within Christ and are not subject to spilling out upon the plains. The river in which the saint is a part of is invisible, and the banks thereof were carved in eternity by “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Rev.13:8) 

Another difference of which these two rivers are distinguished from one another is in peacefulness, or the lack thereof. The River of Sin and Death is not a peaceful river. There is constant grief and misery, and even when those in the river feel good about themselves there is always the ultimate destination of judgment and hell which awaits upon their arrival at death. The River of Life on the other hand is full of peace and joy and contentment. Though the River of Sin and Death may, and will, cause tribulation to those in the River of Life, even to as great an extent as causing pain and death, the reality of the River of Life is that we have an unwavering assurance that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”(Rom.8:38,39)

And, I suppose the greatest and final difference betwixt these two rivers of which we will discuss is their destinations. Both will arrive at the great judgment “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” (Rev.20:11-15) This is the eternal fork in the river’s road, as it were. Though there be one destination of judgment, that judgment has two outcomes, “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”(Dan.12:2), “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”(Joh.5:28,29) This judgment is final, and at this moment forward the two rivers are separated from one another forever. 

Scripture reveals to us what the outcome of the great judgment is, and what the final fates of our two rivers shall be. Those in the River of Sin and Death will stand, and then bow at the left hand of our Lord, and will be counted as goats and sent into eternal perdition. And those in the River of Life will stand, and then bow at the right hand of the Lord Jesus Christ; and they will be counted as sheep, and then be led by our great Shepherd into His eternal kingdom. On the one hand there will be “… wailing and gnashing of teeth,”(Mat.13:42) from a furnace of fire; and on the other hand will be the singing of “the song of Moses the servant of God, and the songof the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just andtrueare thy ways, thou King of saints,”(Rev.15:3) from the celestial city prepared for us by God Himself. The River of Sin and Death will terminate in the lake of fire, and the River of Life will never terminate, but rather flow into the glorious kingdom of God where all the saints will enter into the rest of the Lord Jesus Christ and serve the living God eternally, thus fulfilling the reason man was created in the first place – to be able to worship and enjoy God forever.