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T. Austin-Sparks - on Christ

Contents

All Things in Christ

The Centrality and Supremacy of Christ

Christ - All, And In All

Christ Our Life (1940)

Christ Our Life (1964)

Christ and His Bride

Christ in Heaven and Christ Within

Christ in You

Christ the Power of God

The Cleansing of the Temple

The Coming of the Kingdom in Power

Death and Resurrection

The Divinely Appointed Place of Christ

The Face of Christ

The Fulness of Christ

"Gather My Saints Together"

God's Eternal Thought of Sonship

God's Higher Order of Man

The Great Prize

He Ever Liveth to Make Intercession

The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Anointing

"I Will Follow Thee, Lord; But..."

"Looking Unto Jesus"

The Lordship of Christ

The Meaning of Christ

The Meaning of the Anointing

The Measure of Christ

The Momentousness of Jesus Christ

The Nature Of Divine Life

The New Age of the Holy Spirit

The Otherness of Christ

The Power That Worketh in Us

The Pre-eminent Mark of a Life Governed by the Spirit

Proximity to Christ

The Purpose of God

The Rainbow

The Relevance of Christ

The Riches of His Grace

Stripping Down to Christ Alone

The Supreme Importance of Knowing Christ

Titles of the Risen Lord

The Unveiling of Christ in the Heart

The Unveiling of Jesus Christ

The Wonderful Balance in the Life of the Lord

"Ye Are My Friends"

All Things in Christ

We take the Epistles and we think of them as having to do within the building of the Church and the churches, the superstructure of Christianity, and so we take the technique of the Acts and the Epistles as a technique, as a system of doctrine and a system of practice, a system of Christian order, and the Epistles become - and have become for so many and for Christianity in general - a crystallized system of practice, order, form, teaching; and the weakness in the whole position is just this, that that is something as in itself and the Lord Jesus has just been missed and lost.

I wonder if you detect what I mean by that? You see, the Holy Spirit' s way is to take Christ and open up Christ, to the heart, and show that Christ is a heavenly order; not that the Epistles set forth as a manual a heavenly order, but that Christ is that order, and everything in the matter of order has to be kept immediately in relation to the living Person. If it becomes some thing, then it becomes an earthly system; and you can make out of the Epistles a hundred different earthly systems all built upon the Epistles. They will support any number of different systems, different interpretations, represented by Christian orders here, and the reason is that they have been divorced from the Person.

You see, beloved, there are numerous things, numerous subjects, themes, teachings. There is "the kingdom of God", there is "sanctification", there is "eternal life", there is "the victorious life", "the overcomer" or "the overcoming life", there is "the second coming of Christ". These are but a few subjects, themes, truths, as they are called, which have been taken up and developed out of the Scriptures and become things with which people have become very much occupied, and in which they are very interested as things. So certain people hive off around a sanctification teaching, and they are the sanctificationists, and it becomes an "ism". Others hive off; and they are bounded by the hedge of Second Adventism, the Lord's coming, prophecy, and all that. So you get groups like that. I want to say that would be utterly impossible if the Person of the Lord Jesus was dominant.

What is the kingdom of God? It is Christ. If you get right inside of the Gospels, you will find that the kingdom of God is Jesus Christ. If you are living in Christ, you are in the kingdom, and you know, as the Holy Spirit teaches you Christ, what the kingdom is in every detail. The kingdom is not some thing, in the first place. The kingdom, when it becomes something universal, will simply be the expression and manifestation of Christ. That is all. You come to the kingdom in and through Christ; and the same is true of everything else.

What is sanctification? It is not a doctrine. It is not an 'it' at all. It is Christ. He is made unto us sanctification (1 Cor. 1:30). If you are in Christ and if the Holy Spirit is teaching you Christ, then you are knowing all about sanctification; and if He is not, you may have a theory and doctrine of sanctification but it will separate you from other Christians, and will be bringing any number of Christians into difficulties. Probably the teaching of sanctification as a thing has brought more Christians into difficulty than any other particular doctrine, through making it a thing, instead of keeping Christ as our sanctification.

I am only saying this to try to explain... that it is in the School of Christ that we are to be found, where the Holy Spirit is not teaching us things; not Church doctrine, not sanctification, not adventism, not any thing or any number of things, but teaching us Christ. What is adventism? What is the coming of the Lord? Well, it is the coming of the Lord. And what is the coming of the Lord? Well, such a word as this will give us the key: He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be marveled at in all them that believed (2 Thess. 1:10). You see, it is the consummation of something that has been going on in an inward way. How then do I best know that the coming of the Lord draws nigh? Not best of all by prophetical signs, but by what is going on within the hearts of the Lord' s people. That is the best sign of the times, namely, what the Spirit of God is doing in the people of God. But you are not interested in that. You would far sooner know what is going to happen between Germany and Russia, whether these two, after all, are going to make it up and become a great confederacy! How far does it get us? Where has all the talking about the revived Roman Empire got us? That is adventism as a thing. If only we keep close to Him Who is the sum of all truth, and move with Him and learn Him, we shall know the course of things. We shall know what is imminent. We shall have in our heart whisperings of preparation.

The best Advent preparation is to know the Lord. I am not saying that there is nothing in prophecy; don't misunderstand me. But I do know that there are multitudes of people who are simply engrossed in prophecy as a thing whose spiritual life counts for nothing, who really have no deep inward walk with the Lord. We have seen it so often.

I shall never forget, on a visit to the United States, going into one of the big cities where I was to speak for a week. Everything was so arranged that my first message was timed to follow the last message of a man who had had a week before me, and he had been on prophecy for the whole week. I went into the last meeting where he gave his final message on the signs of the time. Notebooks were out, and they were taking it all down, fascinated. It was all external, all objective; such things as the Roman Empire revived and Palestine recovered. You know the sort of thing. Then he finished and they were waiting for some more, and the notebooks were ready. The Lord put it right into my heart that the first word was to be, "And every one that hath this hope set on Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure" (1 John 3:3); to speak on the spiritual effect of that spiritual hope. They were not interested in that. The notebooks were closed, pencils put away; there was no interest as I sought in the Lord to be very faithful as to what all this should mean in an inward way, in adjustment to the Lord, and so on. They were only longing for the meeting to close. When I finished - they hardly waited for me to finish - they were up and out.

The Centrality and Supremacy of Christ

“It pleased God… to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him” (Gal.1:15,16)

1. Everything Tested by Inwardness

Since Paul’s day so very much of Christian activity has been the furthering of a movement, the propagating of a teaching, and the furthering of the interests of an institution.  It is not a movement, nor to establish a movement in the Earth and to get followers, adherents, members, support.  It is not an institution, even though we might call that institution the church. The church has no existence in the thought of God apart from the revelation of Jesus Christ, and it is judged according to the measure in which Christ the Son of God’s love is in evidence by its existence.  It is not a testimony, if by that you mean a specific form of teaching, a systematized doctrine.  No, it is not a testimony.  Let us be careful what we mean when we speak about “the testimony”.  We may have in our minds some arrangement of truth, and that truth couched in certain phraseology, form of words, and thus speak about “the testimony”; it is not the testimony in that sense.  It is not a denomination, and it is not a “non-denomination”, and it is not an “inter-denomination”.  It is not Christianity.  It is not “the work” – oh, we are always talking about “the work”:  “How is the work getting on?” – we are giving ourselves to the work, we are interested in the work, we are out in the work.  It is not a mission.  It is Christ!  “…That I might preach Him.”  If that had remained central and preeminent all these horrible disintegrating jealousies would never have had a chance.  All the wretched mess that exists in the organization of Christianity today would never have come about.  It is because something specific in itself, a movement, a mission, a teaching, a testimony, a fellowship, has taken the place of Christ.  People have gone out to further that, to project that, to establish that.  It would not be confessed; nevertheless it is true, that today it is not so much Christ that is our work.

Now beloved, an inward revelation is the cure of all that.  Am I saying too hard a thing, too sweeping a thing?  The existence of all that represents the absence of an adequate inward revelation of Christ.  If Christ the Son of God’s love is central and supreme in the heart of the believer so much else goes down, it must go down.  Controversies with God will divide, but those artificial things, those things resultant from man’s activity and his projecting of himself, insinuating of himself into the interests of God, those things cannot abide where there is an adequate inward revelation of the Lord Jesus; they cannot be.  These two things are before us:  one, because of the revelation of Jesus Christ in our hearts we have a passion for Him; on the other hand, because of the absence of a

sufficient revelation of Christ in our hearts we are out for other things which we would say are in His interests, and for Him, but which can never, never satisfy God’s heart.  It is the satisfaction of the heart of the Father, which is in view.

Beloved I am speaking about the individual.  I am not justified, and you are not justified, in claiming to be Christians except in the measure in which Christ is manifested in me, in you; and all the force and weight and ingenuity of hell is out against that.  Believers have far more to provoke them to un-Christ-likeness than anyone else in the world.  Believers have far more assaults to churn them up and to make them betray Christ than anyone else.  Hell is dead set against the revelation of Jesus Christ. Everything begins with this, the revelation of Jesus Christ within.

2. Christ - The Unifying Center and Object

As I have said before, if we have any other interest that we are trying to further, something that we call a testimony, perhaps meaning by that a system of teaching, or a fellowship, or a denomination, or the contrary, the opposite, any of these things, well, the history will still be more divisions, it is bound to be.  If it is Christ, only Christ, central and supreme, we have the answer to the Devil; we have the secret of victory, we have the secret of fellowship, we have the power of His resurrection.  Oh, how important it is for us to see that the body represents His victory.  The body is His victory in the sense that it is the reversing of all independence, and that independence of spirit or action is a violation not only of the truth of the body of Christ, but of the power of His resurrection.

3. Our Place in Christ’s Supremacy

It is necessary to carry the work of the cross to the full issue of Christ’s absolute victory in the realm of all principality and power, in the realm of the authority of darkness.  Forgiveness of sins is a great blessing, the atonement for our sins is a great blessing, and to be saved from hell at last and go to heaven is a great blessing.  We would not minimize them for a moment or take from the greatness and grandeur of those things because of the infinite cost with which they were purchased for us, but I say again, it is necessary for us to carry the work of Christ through to its full issue, and its full issue lies in the realm of principalities and powers.  It lies in the realm of the authority of darkness, the jurisdiction of darkness. That is important for the sinner to know, that it is not only a matter of being forgiven his sins and saved from sin, but that the sinner should know that in salvation all the authority, the jurisdiction of principalities and powers, of the adversary, Satan himself, has been destroyed and broken, and out of that jurisdiction, that authority, that rightful hold of Satan, they have been rescued – rescued by Christ in His cross.  It means that Satan has no more power because he has no more right.  His power depends on his right, and his right is based upon the state of things in our hearts, and the cross deals with the state of things in our hearts and destroys or removes the ground of his right, and breaks his power.

Carry it right through.  Now all that is in Christ for us.  Christ in Himself embodies His supremacy over the adversary because in Him there is no one of that ground that that adversary must have upon which to encamp and construct his rightful authority to hold in bondage.  In Christ there is no such ground; Christ is in us when we believe and the authority of Satan is broken because Christ is in us.  Christ being in us there is no ground for the jurisdiction of Satan.  To be delivered not only from sin (let me say it again) but also from the authority of Satan is a tremendous thing.  “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?  It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns?  It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen…” (Rom.8:33,34).  What is the value of that?  The accuser comes along and tries to lay a charge against us.  What is our ground of answer?  Oh, our ground of answer is this:  “It is Christ that died, and is also risen.” That is the way to answer the accusation of the enemy.  Christ has triumphed over sin and over all the ground of Satan’s authority.  You and I can never meet the enemy in ourselves. He would win the argument every time.  But if we present him with Christ, what can he do?  “The prince of this world comes, and has nothing in Me” (John 14:30).  These are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ.  What power does the devil have?  In Christ’s death and resurrection all his power has been destroyed.  “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” (Rom.8:33).

“Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col.1:27).  Do you follow that?  That is the provision God has made, and if only we had a fuller, readier apprehension of Christ we should find that to be the way of victory.  What is it that the Holy Spirit works upon in order to make the victory in us actual?  It is not our struggles to be better.  The Holy Spirit never helps us in a struggle to be better.  We may struggle on forever, and die struggling, and the Holy Spirit will not help us if that is the way in which we think we are going to be either saved or sanctified.  What is it with which the Holy Spirit will cooperate?  It is our faith apprehension and appropriation of Christ as our perfection, as our salvation.  “Oh,” you say, “yes, but we are sinful and there is so much wrong about us; are we to close our eyes to our own faults and sins?”  You are to open your eyes to Christ. Stop looking at yourself and your own sin and get your eyes fixed upon the Lord Jesus as perfection for you to God, and from God to you, and as you take Him by faith – “Not what I am, O Lord, but what thou art” – “I in myself am bad. In me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing, but Lord, You are my salvation, You are my righteousness, You are my holiness, You are my sanctification, I hold on to You for all that” – the Holy Spirit makes that good to us.  It is our appreciation of Christ that is the Holy Spirit’s ground of activity; that is the way of deliverance.

Christ - All, And In All

"And He is the Head of the body, the church: Who is the beginning, the Firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence" (Colossians 1:18).

"Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all" (Colossians 3:11).

There has been a great deal done in recent days to bring the greater magnitudes of the universe within the intelligence of the ordinary man and woman. This means that many people are interested in the explanation of the universe, and, no doubt in particular, of the course of this earth and of the creation and history of man; but we believe that we have the positive and final answer to the inquiry. For us there is but one definite and conclusive explanation of the universe, and that explanation is a Person - the Lord Jesus Christ, with all that is eternally related to Him. However much we read and study we shall never get the explanation of the universe, in whole or in part, until we come to see the place of the Lord Jesus in the eternal appointment of God. The simple but all-embracing words, "Christ is all, and in all," sum up the whole matter from eternity, through all stages of time, unto eternity.

Firstly, then, that "Christ is all, and in all" is

1. The Explanation Of The Creation Itself

This letter to the Colossians makes that very statement in other words. It tells us that "In Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist (hold together)" (1:17). That is a comprehensive statement, and it clearly shows that Christ being all, and in all, is the explanation of the whole creation. Why were all things created? Why did God through Him bring the universe into being? Why does this great universal system exist and continue? What is the explanation of the world? The answer is that Christ may be all, and in all.

The intention in the heart of God in bringing this universe into existence was that, ultimately, the whole creation should display the glory and supremacy of His Son, Jesus Christ; and this one little fragment, "and in Him all things hold together", says quite clearly that but for the Lord Jesus Christ the whole universe would disintegrate, fall apart; it would be without its uniting factor; it would cease to have a reason for being maintained as a complete and concrete whole. Its holding together, its failure to disintegrate and break up, is because of this: God has determined that the Lord Jesus shall be the centre, the governing centre, of this whole universe, and He - God's Son - is the explanation of creation. But for Him, there never would have been a creation. Take Him out, and creation loses its purpose and its object, and need not go on any longer. "Christ is all, and in all", was the thought, the ruling thought, in the mind of God in the creation of the universe.

That may leave you cold in some measure and not get you very far, but I venture to think that what I am now going to say will get you a little further and warm your hearts; for the prospect is this, that when God has things as in eternity past He determined to have them - and He is going to have them so - every atom of this whole universe will display the glory of Jesus Christ. You will not be able to look at anything or anyone without seeing Christ glorified. A blessed prospect!

It is a happy thing when, as a company of the Lord's children, we can be together for hours on end or even days on end; when we are occupied with the Lord as our one common interest and are all taken up with Him. When we have a time like that and go back into the world, what a different atmosphere we find! How chilled we feel! It is a fine thing to meet the Lord in His children and to be shut up to Him like that; but even then it is only in part. But the eternal day is coming when there will be no going back into the world on a Monday morning after a day in the courts of the Lord; when we shall be touching nothing else but the Lord Jesus, and the whole universe will be full of Him - "Christ all, and in all"! That is God's end. That is what He has determined; all displaying the Lord Jesus; all for Him.

We see much that is not the Lord Jesus in one another now; the day is coming when you will see nothing but the Lord Jesus in me, and I shall see nothing but the Lord Jesus in you; we shall be "conformed to the image of His Son": His moral glory will shine out and be displayed; Christ will be "all, and in all." God has determined it, and what God has determined, He will have. This, then, is the explanation of the creation, that Christ may be all, and in all, and among all have the pre-eminence.

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul has a very remarkable statement in this connection:

"For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of Him Who subjected it, in hope, that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now" (8:19-22).

Note what this really says and implies. The creation is possessed by an earnest expectation. This expectation is with groaning as in travail, an expectation of hope - not of the dissolution of the universe, of which certain scientists say so much. Nevertheless the hope and the groaning "hereunto are deliberately put under a reign of vanity - made to be all in vain - until a fixed time and goal. That climax is in two parts: one, the revealing of the sons of God; the other - linked therewith - the deliverance of the creation from the enslavement to corruption.

All this is taken back to eternity past and linked with the Lord Jesus as the Son: "For whom He did foreknow, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29).

In the former passage there is a definite statement and a clear implication. The statement is that the creation was subjected to vanity, and its state is the bondage of corruption. The implication clearly is that there was a definite time when, because of its corruption, the whole creation was brought into a condition in which it was caused to groan and travail unto an end that could not be reached. It is in that connection that there is given room for the whole range and nature of the Satanic interference with the creation with a view to challenging the ultimate Divine purpose m the creation and to frustrating it by bringing in corruption. So universal was that corruption that a sentence of vanity was pronounced upon "the whole creation". The effect of this was, and is, that the creation can never realize the object of its being, save on the ground of holiness and Divine likeness.

Here there comes in also the whole range of "the redemption that is in Christ Jesus"; the universal work which He accomplished by His Cross in the destruction of the work of the Devil, and, potentially, of the Devil himself; with all the sin-destroying and corruption-destroying power of His sinless nature and life, the efficacy of His incorruptible Blood, and the providing of justification and sanctification for all who believe, these by regeneration becoming "a new creation in Christ Jesus" (I Cor. 5:17).

By this means alone can the creation be delivered. When these sons of God are manifested - their number complete - and all who have refused this salvation are dismissed from God's realm, then shall the creation be delivered and its original intention be realized, Christ being all, and in all.

2. The Explanation Of Man

Then, in the next place, as a central part of the creation, we have man. What is the explanation of man? What is the explanation of Adam as the first man? There is one little passage of Scripture which answers that. "Adam... who is a figure of Him that was to come", that is, Christ (Rom. 5: 14). A figure of Him that was to come; that is the explanation of man. God intended that every man entering this world should be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. Multitudes will miss it, but there will be multitudes such as no man can number, out of every tribe and kindred and nation and tongue, who will realize it. What a high calling! What a different conception of man that is from that which is popularly held, and what a thing to be missed! And yet there are many who say complainingly that if they had had their way they would never have come into this world. There have been those who, in an hour of eclipse, cursed the day that they saw the light. Ah, but something has gone wrong there; that is not how the Lord meant it to be, and however much we may have blue days, when we wonder whether really it is worthwhile after all, let us come back to God's thought in our very being. It is our tremendous privilege, the highest honour that could ever have been conferred upon us from the Divine standpoint, that we should have been born.

We do not always feel or speak like that, but we are constantly compelled to bring ourselves back to God's point of view about this and to remember that His purpose is to have a universe peopled with such as are conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ, a people who are a universal manifestation of Christ glorified with the glory of the Father. That is a privilege, an honour, something to be born for! That is the explanation of man.

We can only touch many of these matters lightly, and pass on.

3. The Explanation Of Redemption

Further, this word, "Christ is all, and in all", is the explanation of redemption. Things of course went wrong: God's purpose was interfered with. It could never be finally thwarted, but there was another who did determine that, so far as it was in his power, that universal display of Jesus Christ - that 'all-in-all-ness' of the Lord Jesus - should never be; one who desired to have that for himself - that he should be universal lord of heaven and earth. That interference for a time has made a great deal of difference. It has interfered with man and made him other than God intended him to be. It has spoiled the image.

But there is redemption through the Cross of the Lord Jesus. What is the explanation of the Cross? What is the explanation, on the one hand, of all that atonement, that redemptive work of the Lord Jesus in dealing with sin, and having universal sin laid upon Him, and being made a curse for us, in our place?

And then, on the other hand, as the complement of that, what is the explanation of that Cross being wrought in the believer so that the believer becomes united with Him in the likeness of His death and burial as a spiritual experience? - all that application of Calvary which is so painful, so terrible to pass through: yes, the disintegrating of the "old man", the cutting off of the "body of the flesh", that inward knowledge of the power of the Cross, so terrible to the flesh. What is the explanation? Beloved, it is that Christ may be all, and in all.

Why are we broken? To make room for the Lord Jesus. Why are we brought down to the dust by the Holy Spirit as He works Calvary's death into us? In order that the Lord Jesus may take the place that we in the flesh have occupied. We get wrong sometimes about this application of the Cross. The enemy is always at our elbow to insinuate and suggest the unkindness of God to smash us, to humiliate us, to bring us to nothing, and to say that there is no end to this thing, seeking thus to get us down.

Beloved, the Cross was intended only to make the Lord Jesus all, and in all, for us; and is it not true that, because of the way that the Lord has dealt with us, the way in which He has applied the Cross, planting us into that death and burial, we know Him in a way in which we never knew Him before? Is it not by that way that He has become what He is to us, ever more and more dear to our hearts? The increase of the Lord Jesus in and to us is by the way of the Cross. We know quite well that our chief enemy is ourselves, our flesh. This flesh gives us no rest, no peace, no satisfaction; we have no joy in it. It obsesses, engrosses, constantly struts across our path to rob us of the very joy of living. What is to be done with it? Well, in and by the Cross we are delivered from ourselves; not only from our sins, but from ourselves; and being delivered from ourselves we are delivered into Christ, and Christ becomes far more than we.

It is a painful process, but it is a blessed issue; and those amongst us who may have had the greatest agony along this line would, I believe, testify that what it has brought to us of the knowledge and riches of the Lord Jesus has made all the suffering worth while. So the work of the Lord for us and the work of the Lord in us, by the Cross, is only intended in the Divine thought to make room for the Lord Jesus.

The brazen altar of the Tabernacle, as that of the Temple, was a very big altar. You could get all the other furniture of the whole Tabernacle inside it. Yes, the altar has to be a big one; there has to be a big place for Christ Crucified. He is to fill all things and He is to be the fulness of all things, and there is going to be no room for us in the end. Does that strike you with dismay? Surely not. So the Cross, the work of redemption through that Cross, has for its explanation just this, that Christ may be all, and in all; that in all things He may have the pre-eminence.

This, then, is the explanation of our experiences - why the Lord deals with us as He does; why believers go through the experiences that they do go through; why they go through things that no one else seems called upon to go through; why sometimes they almost envy unbelievers the easy time that so many of them have. This explains the Lord's dealings with Israel in the wilderness. Even after their deliverance from Egypt's bondage and tyranny, there was heart-break and agony. Why this chastening? In the wilderness, they still hark back to Egypt. The work the Lord is doing in them is in order that He may be everything in and to them. If He cuts off their natural supplies, it is only to show what their heavenly supplies are. If He cuts off their natural power, it is that they may come to know the power of the heavens. Whatever He may take them out of or lead them into, is with a view to taking them out of themselves and that He Himself may be all, and in all.

This is the explanation of our difficulties. The Lord knows how best to deal with each one of us, and He does not use standardized methods. He deals with you in one way and with me in another. He knows how to lead us into experiences which are most calculated to bring us to where the Lord is all, and in all.

4. The Explanation Of Christian Growth

What is spiritual growth? What is spiritual maturity? What is it to go on in the Lord? I fear we have got mixed ideas about this. Many think that spiritual maturity is a more comprehensive knowledge of Christian doctrine, a larger grasp of scriptural truth, a wider expanse of the knowledge of the things of God; and many such features are recorded as marks of growth, development, spiritual maturity. Beloved, it is nothing of the kind. The hallmark of true spiritual development and maturity is this, that we have grown so much less and the Lord Jesus has grown so much more. The mature soul is one who is small in his or her own eyes, but in whose eyes the Lord Jesus is great. That is growth. We may know a very great deal, have a wonderful grasp of doctrine, of teaching, of truth, even of the Scriptures, and yet be spiritually very small, very immature, very childish. (There is all the difference between being childish and child-like.) Real spiritual growth is just this: I decrease, He increases. It is the Lord Jesus becoming more. You can test spiritual growth by that.

Then again this word is

5. The Explanation Of All Service

What is Christian service according to the mind of God? It is not necessarily our having a very full programme of Christian activities. It is not that we are always busy in what we call 'things of the Lord'. It is not the measure and amount of our activity and business, not the degree of our energy and enthusiasm in the things of the kingdom of God. It is not our schemes, our enterprises for the Lord. Beloved, the test of all service is its motive. Is the motive, from start to finish, that in all things He may have the pre-eminence, that Christ may be all, and in all?

You know the temptations and the fascination of Christian service; the fascination of being busy, of being occupied with many things; having your programme, schemes, enterprises; being in it, and always at it. There is a peril there which has caught multitudes of the Lord's servants. The peril is that it brings them into prominence, it makes the work theirs; it is their work, their interests, and the more they govern the thing and run it the more pleased they are.

No, there is a difference between going the round of the clock in Christian service as the mere enjoyment of activity, with the fascination of it and all the advantages and facilities it provides for ourselves, and its gratification to our flesh - there is a great difference between that and this, "Christ all, and in all". Sometimes this latter is achieved by our being put out of action; and then is the test, as to whether we are, or are not, quite satisfied to be altogether put out of work if only the Lord can be the more glorified thereby. If only He can come into His own, it does not matter a scrap whether we are seen or heard. We are getting somewhere, in the grace of God, when we are quite content to be put up in a corner, unseen and unnoticed, if thereby the Lord Jesus can come into His own more speedily and fully.

Somehow we have got caught up into this thing and think the Lord can only come into His own if we are the instrument. The rivalry on platform and in pulpit; sensitiveness because one is put before another, because the address of one is given more attention than that of another; the favourable remarks all made in one direction, etc! I know all about it. After all, what are we after? Are we seeking to impress our audience by our cleverness or to make known our Lord? A great difference! Sometimes the Lord gets more out of our bad times than we think, and it may be that when we have had good times He has not got the most. Therein is the necessity for our being set aside, kept weak and humble, that He might have the pre-eminence.

The challenge of service according to God's thought is just this - What are we doing it for? Do we want to be in the work, because we like to be busy? Or is it utterly and only that, by any means, He may come into His own, that God's end may be realized? If He can be all, and in all, by our death as well as by our life, have we come to the place where we truly desire "that... Christ may be magnified in my body, whether by life, or by death"? (Phil. 1:20). That is the explanation of service from God's standpoint.

Of course, this is the explanation of many other things. It is

6. The Explanation Of The Whole Of The Old Testament

We will not tarry to examine in detail how this is so, but just indicate and pass on. What is the old Testament? It is all gathered up in great representations of Jesus Christ. Take the two main ones, the Tabernacle and the Temple. These are comprehensive representations of the Lord Jesus both in His person and in His work, and these occupy, as such, the central place in the life of a chosen people, whose life is bound up with them. The two are one, and while that elect people are in right relationship to that central object, the Tabernacle or Temple: while they give it its place of honour and reverence, and maintain it in its place of highest holiness: while they are true to its spirit, and its laws, and its testimony: though they are amongst all the peoples of the earth the least capable, naturally, of looking after their interests, yet they are the supreme people of the earth; there is not a nation or a people in the earth able to stand before them. They have never been trained in the art of war, they have no long history behind them of arms and military strategy, and are in themselves a defenseless people: yet they take the ascendancy not only over individual nations greater and mightier than themselves, but over a combination of nations; and though all unite against them, while true to that central object they are supreme. That central object is a representation of the Lord Jesus in His person and work. The spiritual interpretation of it is that when the Lord Jesus has His place there is supremacy; there is absolute supremacy when He in all things has the pre-eminence in and through and by His people. "Christ is all, and in all." When that is true in His people there are no forces capable of withstanding them. The secret of absolute supremacy and sovereignty is the Lord Jesus having His place in the lives and in the hearts, in all the affairs and relationships, of His own people; and the gates of Hades cannot prevail then.

Further, it is

7. The Explanation Of The New Testament

And the New Testament brings in little companies, small among the peoples of the earth, despised, cast out, hardly allowed to speak without being bitterly molested, and upon whom eventually comes the organized wrath and hatred of the nations of this world until all the resources of a great iron empire are exploited and put into operation to blot out the remembrance of these humble, despised people. The story is just this, that the empires have broken, the world powers have ceased to be. We go round the world now looking at the relics and ruins of those great empires; but where is that people of the Way of the despised Nazarene? A great multitude that no man can number! Heaven is full of them, and here on earth there are tens of thousands who know and love the Lord Jesus, who are of this Way. The explanation is that God determined that His Son should be all, and in all things should have the pre-eminence. Come into living relationship with God's Son, and men and hell may do what they will - God will reach His end and such a people will be triumphant.

One word more. This is

8. The Explanation Of The Church

What is the Church? God's thought is not Christianity; it is not churches as organized centres of Christianity; it is not the propagation of Christian teaching and enterprise. God's thought is to have a people in the earth in whom, and in the midst of whom, Christ is all, and in all. That is the Church. We have got to revise our ideas. In the thought of God the Church begins and ends with this - the absolute supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ: and what God is always after is to get together those of His people who will most fully realize that thought of His, and be unto Him the satisfaction of His own eternal desire, the Lord Jesus in all things having the pre-eminence, and being all, and in all. He passes by the great institution, the so-called 'Church' and He is with those who in themselves are of a humble and contrite spirit and who tremble at His word, and with whom the Lord Jesus is the one and only object of worship and adoration. Such satisfy the heart of God. Such, for Him, are the answer to His eternal quest.

You notice the word of God says that. Look at it again in Col.3:11: "Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond-man, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all." There they have "put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created Him." Look closely into that and you will find this is the corporate man, the Church, the Body of Christ, "the fulness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:23), and there, in that corporate man, there cannot be Greek and Jew. Note the words. It does not say, where Greek and Jew come together in blessed fellowship. No, you have not got nationalities in the Church; you have got rid of all nationalities, and you have now one spiritual new man, a new creation, where there cannot be Greek, Jew, bondman, freeman. All earthly distinctions have gone for ever - it is one new man. The right arm is not a Jew and the left arm a Greek!

No, they have gone out. In that Church there is one new man - not a combination where Anglicans, Wesleyans, Baptists, Congregationalists and all the rest come together and sink their differences for the time being; that is not the Church. In the Church these differences are not merely covered up for the time being; they do not exist; there is one Body, one Spirit. The Church is this, "Christ is all, and in all". Get that, and you have the Church. Call anything else the Church and let it be without that, and it is a contradiction. Test it by that.

If it is true that the Christian life according to the thought and mind of God is just this, "Christ all, and in all" are you and I true Christians? For we have seen that by the Cross we went out to make room for the Lord Jesus. Now, if we profess to have come by way of Calvary to the Lord, the implication is that we have gone out by that Cross, that Christ may be all, and in all.

What about this? Do we want a little bit of the world? Do we still voluntarily cling to this thing and that thing outside the Lord, because the Lord Jesus has not wholly satisfied us and we must have a make-weight? A worldly Christian is a contradiction in title. To have a little bit of something outside Christ is to deny Calvary and to stand right in opposition to the eternal intention of God concerning Christ. Will you take that responsibility? God determined this from all eternity concerning His Son; and can we profess to belong to the Lord Jesus and yet at the same time it is not true that He is all, and in all to us? If so, there is something wrong, there is a denial, a contradiction. We are opposed to God's thought and purpose. Is it true that He is all, and in all? He will be that if we will go all the way.

Oh! those subtle suggestions that are ever being whispered in our ears, that if we give up this and that we are going to lose, and life is going to be poorer, and we are going to be narrowed down until we have nothing left. It is a lie! That is the thing that is countering God's great thought for us. God's thought for us is that one, no less than His Son, Jesus Christ, in Whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form, should be our fulness. All the fulness of God in Christ for us! You never attain to that by rejecting Him. Life must be much less than it need be if you are not going all the way with the Lord; and what obtains in the matter of our consecration to the Lord, our entire and complete abandonment to Him in our life and our complete cut with all that is not of the Lord, obtains in the realm of service. This flesh loves to sport itself in Christian work, and tells us that if we are going to be dependent upon the Lord we are going to have an anxious time. But a life of dependence upon God can be a life of continual romance. It is there that we make discoveries which are a constant wonder.

You may be nearly dead one minute and in the next the Lord gives you something to do and you are very much alive, dependent upon Him for every breath you breathe. But thus you come to know the Lord. Then after that experience you are just as helpless and dead again for a while, but you remember that the Lord did something. Then He does it again; and so life becomes a romance; yet no one would ever guess you were depending on the Lord for your very breath. It is a very blessed thing to know the Lord is doing it, when you could not do it at all; it is, humanly, naturally, impossible, but the Lord is doing it!

Follow on, beloved, in the matter of the Church. Apply the test. I am not speaking judgingly, censoriously, nor do I intend to be discriminating in a wrong sense, but let me be faithful - for us, our fellowship must be where the Lord Jesus is most honoured. Our fellowship must be where God gets His own most fully, where Christ is all, and in all. We must not be tied by traditions, by things which make the claim and take the name. Where the Lord is most honoured, that is where our hearts must be; where everything else is made subservient to this one thing, Jesus Christ all, and in all. That is God's thought of the Church, and that must be the place where for us is the gravitating of our hearts. The place where God is going to register His testimony and bring the impact of that testimony upon others will be found where the Lord Jesus is most honoured; and you may take it that where there are hungry ones you will not be at a loss for an opportunity of ministry if you are fully in accord with God's purpose concerning His Son.

Everything Living

Remember that everything in relation to the Christian is experimental. Everything in relation to the Lord Jesus is essentially experimental. It is not only doctrinal. This is not a matter of creed. It is not that we accept certain statements of doctrine or creed, and by that fact alone are brought into relationship to the Lord Jesus. We are not made Christians by the acceptance of doctrinal statements or orthodox creeds, or things about the Lord Jesus. The Church is not constituted on that ground at all, though the Church stands for certain things. Experience has to be wrought in the life and you have to become a part of it and it has to become a part of you. It is not sufficient to believe that Christ died on the Cross. That has got to come down here into our lives and become an experience, a mighty, operating force and factor in our beings. The Church is not set up on a basis of doctrinal statements. You cannot gather people together and say this is perfectly sound, we will constitute our Church upon this basis. You cannot do it.

The Church is that in which the truth has been wrought, in which it has been made experimental. Creeds cannot hold you together when hell rises to split you. No, the most ultra-fundamental creed has not succeeded in holding people together. The unity of the Spirit is a thing inwrought. Unless that is so there is nothing that can stand against the divisive, schismatic spirits that are abroad. Everything must be experimental, not merely doctrinal, not credal. Now that is where you get to God's reality. It is one thing to sing hymns about Christ being all, and in all, to look at it as an objective thing and agree with it; but it is another thing to be brought experimentally to the place where the truth actually works. There are many who will say today 'yes, that is right, Christ is all, and in all', and tomorrow morning, when you touch them upon some trifling thing where their preferences are involved, you find that Christ is not all, and in all. We have to come to it through experience. May the Lord give us grace for that.

The final appeal I make is that we all should seek anew the enthronement of the Lord Jesus as supreme Lord in our hearts, in every part of our life, in all our relationships; that if there is anything we have been holding back, we should let go; if we have had any reserves, we should break now; if we have been less than wholly committed to Him, from now this should be no more, but He should be all, and in all, from this time. That should be our understanding, our undertaking with the Lord. Will you do it? Ask the Lord to break even every tender tie that is in the way of His being all, and in all. Are we prepared for that? The Lord give us grace.

Christ and His Bride

"Christ... loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Eph. 5:25-27).

The Father appointed all things for His Son. Those 'all things' were to be the joint inheritance of His Son and His Son's bride, the Church. That comes out very clearly in the New Testament. That bride was in the race of mankind, created as we are told in the book of Genesis. That bride would have to be of a certain order, a certain character, a certain kind, to be suitable to that Son. She would have to be a very special bride, she would have to be made for Him most suitable.

Then we have the story of Adam and Eve, and we know what happened through their surrender to Satan. Something spiritual happened in them, a change took place in their very nature. God had made them, firstly, for union with Himself; then for communion with Himself; and then for likeness to Himself; and in dependence upon Himself; leading to the last thing, absolute and implicit faith in Him. Those are the five things which characterise the Church according to God's mind - (1) union with God, vital union, the union of one life; (2) communion with God, intercourse, fellowship, oneness of mind; (3) likeness to God, in His own image and after His likeness, taking character from Him, He giving His character and His nature to the Church; then (4) dependence upon Him so complete that there is no life apart from Him. (It is one of the great tests of marriage union - and I should say, taking it from a man's standpoint, a most difficult one - for a wife to be absolutely dependent upon a man for every penny. There is a revolt against that in our times: but God meant it to be like that with His Church - just absolute dependence, having nothing apart from Him, drawing everything from Him.) And that means (5) perfect faith in Him. Those five things must characterise the bride of Christ.

Now the thing that happened when Satan carried the day with those two changed all that. It broke the union; it brought an end to the communion; it marred the likeness and made impossible its full expression; independence came in - for theirs was an independent act: Satan had tempted them to act on their own, without any relationship to God at all - and that all meant that faith in God was destroyed. It was something that happened in the nature. It was not just an act, but something that entered into their very nature; and so that is how we find the race.

Now the Lord lays His hand upon one and another of those who are to form that bride. He brings them to the place where they have to make this decision and take this position - 'I die to all that which happened long, long ago; I die to broken union, to interrupted communion, to spoiled likeness, to all independence and unbelief. I repudiate it, I put it all away; I say that belongs to a creation which I hate, and I want that to be done with, dead and buried. In Christ union is restored, communion begins again, the likeness, conformity to the Son, is taken up by the Holy Spirit; I am from this time utterly and wholly dependent upon the Lord, not to live unto myself but henceforth "unto him who for their sakes died and rose again" (2 Cor. 5:15), and henceforth my faith is in Him.'

"Christ loved the church," and He gave Himself, for one thing, to purchase her; for the other thing, to effect that death of herself, on her behalf. We cannot kill ourselves, but the Lord Jesus has done it for us. He has died to all that other condition for us, and has risen to all this thought of God for us. So that in His death we died to all that happened in Eden, and in His resurrection we rise to all that God ever intended that bride to be. "Christ... loved the church, and gave himself up for it... that he might present the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing."

That brings us to this further stage, that we are together as the Church, as the bride, on resurrection ground, and ours is no longer an independent life, even as Christians. We are dependent upon one another in Christ, because Christ has committed Himself to the Church, and we come into a greater fulness of Christ in a related way with one another than we should if we were just isolated individuals; we get a greater fulness of Christ in our fellowship together. So we need the Church, because Christ comes to us in the Church, and this dependence upon the Lord is shown by our spiritual dependence upon one another, upon fellowship, upon the communion of the people of God. In Christ we are one, providing Him with what the Father ever intended Him to have - a glorious Church.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1949, Vol 27-1

Christ in Heaven and Christ Within

The Need For Balance

"Which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places" (Eph. 1:20).

"To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27).

"What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin" (Rom. 6:1-6).

"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:1-2).

"Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, Who is even at the right hand of God, Who also maketh intercession for us" (Rom. 8:33-34).

We feel the importance of saying a word with regard to Christ in heaven and Christ within the believer, that is, what is objective and what is subjective. It is tremendously important that we should keep a proper balance of truth. A very great deal of our trouble is because of there being an unbalanced emphasis upon some aspect of truth. It is good to know the truth, and it is good to rejoice in it, but it is just possible that even truth may get us into trouble. There are many perils lying in the direction of truth, even spiritual truth; and there are not a few of the Lord's people who have fallen into those perils. It is not that they suffer from want of light, but they are suffering very much because they have not got their light properly adjusted and balanced. Thus it becomes very necessary for us to get things in their right perspective and proportion. Preponderance on any one side will always lead to spiritual injury, and very often to disaster. The history of many instrumentalities which have been raised up and used by the Lord is eventually the sad story of a loss of power and effectiveness because of striking an unbalanced emphasis, of putting some side of truth in a place out of proportion to that which is complementary to it.

Complementary Truths

It is not just a matter of being all-round, that is, of having everything and being in everything; but in the constitution of a body we find that one law is balanced by another. All the laws, of course, are necessary, and it is important to give due place to every function in our bodies; but there run parallel laws and functions, one balances the other. There is that which is complementary to something else. These two things are, as it were, twins, running together, and to over-emphasize or over-develop one means to throw the whole order out, and to bring about quite serious limitation and weakness, and to make things far less effective than they should be.

So it is in spiritual matters. There are always balancing truths. There is one thing, but there is something which goes with it, and which keeps it in its right measure, and causes it to fulfil its purpose and to serve its end most effectively. There is this order in the Divine creation - one thing is necessary to another to make that other fulfil its purpose to the full. That is where balance has to be observed and maintained.

The Adversary Using God's Work Against Him

Then we must remember that the adversary is always wanting to use God's own work and God's own truth against God Himself. That fact is made very clear in the Scriptures, and we may observe it in experience and in spiritual history. This line of action is more successful for the adversary than perhaps any other, because the result is that he immediately prejudices God's work and God's truth. He closes the door to the acceptance of what is of God simply by using it against God, and one of his most successful methods is that of securing an over-emphasis or an unbalanced apprehension of Divine truth. You will see what I mean as we go on.

A Peril With Every Blessing

So that with every Divine blessing there is a peril. Wherever there is something which is really from the Lord, that has linked with it its own peculiar peril.

Now these are merely general observations, as leading up to this brief meditation along the specific line of what is objective and what is subjective as to the work of the Lord Jesus for and in the believer. We will look at both of these separately very briefly, seeing what the blessing is and what the perils are.

The Objective Side

We take the objective side first, the Lord Jesus presented to us as in heaven. We know that He is there, and we know that a very great deal is said in the Word about His being there; but why is He there? In the first place: How did He get there? Now you will notice if you look into the Word that whenever the heavenly side of the ascension of the Lord Jesus is presented, that is, whenever the matter is looked at from above, it does not speak about His going up or His ascension, but it speaks about His being received up. In the first chapter of the Book of the Acts it is recorded that as the disciples were looking up into heaven after the Lord Jesus had been taken up from among them, two angels appeared and said to them: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into heaven? This Jesus, Who was received up..." (The Authorized Version says "taken up"). That is an angelic, or a heavenly, standpoint, and the word "received" represents something more than just the fact that He ascended to heaven. It carries with it this fact, that it would be impossible for the Lord Jesus to be received in heaven if He had not perfectly accomplished the work which He came from heaven to do. In effect, heaven would have been closed to Him; heaven would have had to say to Him, 'But You have not done the work; there can be no reception until You have'. But it was because He had perfected the work which He came to do, and there was nothing more to be added to it, that heaven received Him, and it was a great reception! Psalm 24 gives us some idea of what that reception was: "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory will come in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle." You see, it implies the work that He has done by His Cross, in overthrowing all His and our enemies, meeting all the demand of human need in the matter of salvation, perfecting our salvation. And so He is received up, and is at the right hand of God; and the right hand is always in Scripture the place of strength and honour. He is at the right hand of God because the work which He came to do was finished. That is, our salvation has been perfected by and in the Lord Jesus. There is nothing whatever for Him to add to it. That is the most elementary thing to say, and yet it is so foundational. So many of the Lord's people have not yet entered into the joyful appreciation of that - that the Lord Jesus really has given the last stroke and the last touch to our salvation; that when heaven received Him, heaven set its seal to the perfected work of His Cross; and that He is there in possession of a salvation which has not still to be accomplished but which is final, full, complete, utter.

Perfect Salvation When We Believe

Our salvation rests upon our faith acceptance of that, not of anything subsequent to that. In the day in which we believe in the Lord Jesus on the ground of the perfection of the work of His Cross, we receive perfection of salvation, and enter into all that salvation to its very last degree. We shall never - though we were to live for centuries on this earth, - we shall never in Christ be one little bit more perfect than we are in Him in the very moment that we believe. All that is made good to us in the day that we believe. There are no questions, no hazards, no risks, the thing is settled, it is ours; full and complete in Christ. The Blood of the Lord Jesus has dealt with the whole sin question, root and branch, once and for all, for us. The question of condemnation has been for ever settled. You cannot have anything more utter than this - NO condemnation! "There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." It does not say: 'There is no condemnation to those who have faithfully been going on with the Lord for years'. It says: "to them that are in Christ Jesus." And when are you in Christ? You are in Christ the moment that you believe in relation to His work on the Cross for your salvation, and in that very moment you enter into the place of NO CONDEMNATION, and freedom from condemnation cannot be more complete than that.

The tremendously important thing is for us to have that settled in our own hearts. We are saved, we are forgiven, we are delivered from condemnation. In Christ we are perfect. He is our perfection, and that perfection of His is ours through faith. The people who have the purest, clearest, fullest heart-grasp of that are the happiest people, the people who know joy. The people who have not grasped that are disturbed people, they have not the fullness of joy, they are always afraid, anxious, worrying about their salvation, doubting; and the enemy plays many tricks with people who have not settled that once and for all.

Now that is the blessed truth of what is objective in salvation for the believer as in Christ. I am so glad that He is in heaven "far above all" with this matter. If He were here in this world I might think that anything could happen: but He is not, nor is He in any realm where anything can happen; He is beyond all happenings in the matter of salvation. That salvation of ours in its perfection has been put beyond the reach of anything that can throw a doubt upon it, or raise a question about it - beyond the touch of anything that can bring it into uncertainty.

The Perils Of The Objective Apprehension

But there are perils associated even with that blessed truth, because it is only one side of the truth. It is the first side; it is the thing which must come first, but it is only one side, and therefore it is just possible to make salvation one-sided by putting all the emphasis upon that and not giving due place to the other side.

1. The Peril Of Shallowness

What are some of the perils? Well, we begin with the simplest, the peril of superficiality, of shallowness. What Christ has done for us may be a matter of very great joy and rejoicing and satisfaction; but contentment in that realm and with that side alone may just prevent that deep work which is necessary, which comes by the complementary side of the truth of Christ's work, the subjective. Thus it is found that many people, who are rejoicing to the full in the finality of their salvation in Christ, are living very much upon the surface, and not learning a very great deal about the deeper realities and fuller meaning of Christ. That is the first and perhaps the simplest form of peril.

2. The Peril Of Delayed Maturity

Closely related to this is the peril of making the Christian life static, settled, where it has reached the point of accepting all the objective truth by faith and staying there, and not going on beyond that in spiritual experience. The truth is there, but it is objective, external, although there is great joy, and assurance in the heart; but the Christian life has stopped with that, it has settled down. That is a very real peril, and you find it marking a great many of the Lord's people. Their attitude is, "I am saved, nothing has to be added or can be added to my salvation; I need have no more doubt of my salvation, I am accepted in Christ, and I am perfect in Him; what more do I need? I just rest upon that and enjoy that day by day." Well, that is very good, but you see it can bring a check, so that you live on one side of things, and the whole of the Christian life stops there.

3. The Peril Of Contradiction

There is a further peril into which some fall who have apprehended in a very true and blessed way the greatness of the salvation which Christ has accomplished as theirs. Because they know that the question of salvation is eternally settled, and there is no room whatever for any doubts or fears, and nothing can ever alter the fact; and that their salvation does not rest for a moment upon anything that they are or do, but upon what He is and has done, - all of which is undeniably true; nevertheless, because they are perfectly sure and have no doubts whatever, there is found a lack of sympathy and they become hard, cold, and legal. Sometimes they become cruel, and too often inconsistencies arise in the life; that is, their attitude says in effect, "I am saved, it does not matter what I do, I shall never be lost." They would never dream of saying that in so many words and yet very often it works out that way, that their very certainty of salvation opens the door for inconsistencies and contradictions in their lives which never reach their conscience, simply because they say they have no more conscience of sin, that the conscience has been once purged, and so one should never be troubled with conscience again; salvation is absolute, nothing can touch it. Subtly, imperceptibly, without their reasoning or thinking, that attitude does creep in and you find with some that if you bring home to them certain things in their lives which you see to be glaring inconsistencies they will hardly believe them, they will possibly repudiate them, or simply say, "well, nothing alters the fact of my salvation." Life is thus thrown into an unbalanced state, and the peril comes right in with the very fact of the fullness and finality of salvation.

4. The Peril Of Truth Taking The Place Of Life

There is another peril; it is that of making progress a matter of truth rather than of life. Progress, of course, is recognized as necessary. No true believer would sit down and say, "Well, now there is no more progress to be made." But for many who have so strongly taken up the position upon the objective work of the Lord Jesus in its perfection, the matter of progress is not a matter of life, it is rather a matter of truth; that is, to know more rather than to become more. Thus you find that a very great many who are in that position have advanced tremendously in their knowledge of truth, but they know a great deal more than they are, and somehow or other their own spiritual growth in Christlikeness has not kept pace by any means or in any proper proportion to their progress in the knowledge of things about Christ. That is a danger which comes in with this very thing of which we are speaking.

5. The Peril Of Missing The Prize

Then this further peril - that of giving less importance to the prize than should be given to it. Salvation is not the prize. Salvation never was a prize. You can never win or earn salvation; it is a free gift. But to settle down with salvation in its fullness and its finality means for a great many a failure to recognize that there is a prize - that of which the Apostle Paul spoke when he said: "I press on towards the goal unto the prize of the upward calling..." (Phil. 3:14). There is something more than salvation, something related to the Lord's full purpose in glory, something related to the ultimate full manifestation of the Lord in His people; and that is not simply that they are saved people, but that they have attained (and Paul uses that word) unto something. Paul was never in fear of losing his salvation. When he said: "Lest... after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected" (I Cor. 9:27), he was not thinking of losing his salvation, but he was aware that there was something that he could miss; he could fall short of something, that which he called "the prize"; and he related to its attainment a growth in his spiritual life: "Not that I... am already made perfect." If we settle down in the attitude that says, "My salvation is perfect, complete, and final in Christ. Nothing can be added to it and I rejoice in that" - this may well mean that we give less importance to the prize than we ought to give.

So you see there are perils which come in with what is perhaps the greatest of the blessings.

The Subjective Side

That does not cover all the ground, but it must be enough on that side for the moment. We turn just for a moment to the other side - Christ in us, or the subjective work of Christ. What does Christ in us mean? We know from the Word that it means conformity to the image of Christ. Paul uses the phrase: "Until Christ be (fully) formed in you" (Gal. 4:19). In salvation we have everything as to our own perfection in Him. When we receive Christ we receive within us potentially all that is in Him as to His present character - not only His position but His character, mark you. It is not WHERE He is but WHAT He is. It is not now what He possesses but what He IS. He possesses our salvation, but we know what He is, and "when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is" (I John 3:2). So that all that He has given to us potentially when we believed is there to be developed; and, as Paul says, Christ is to be fully formed in us, and we are to be conformed to the image of God's Son. That is a very wonderful thing. It is: "Christ in you, the hope of glory." Christ in us means that eventually we shall be like Him to the full. But this is not the FACT of our being saved, this is the OBJECT of our being saved. This is not salvation in its fundamental and initial meaning; this is salvation in its outworking to its full meaning, the image of Christ, God's Son.

Identification With Christ

How do we accept that? We accept that by recognizing the second side of Calvary's work. The one side - the objective - is what Christ has done for us, apart from us, in His own Person. We accept this other side of conformity to His image - the subjective by accepting that Christ not only did that FOR us but AS us, that is, representatively. We come to Romans 6 and recognize that when Christ died we died, when Christ was buried we were buried, when Christ was raised we were raised. That is His representative work. Now we accept all that in simple faith at the beginning; but, mark you, that does not become operative in any full measure until the objective side has been settled. There must be a settlement, definitely, positively, finally, that our salvation in Christ is perfect and complete, before there can be any full measure of the out-working of Christ in our hearts. The Lord must have that basis upon which to work.

This is where the danger comes in with a great blessing. Oh! it is a great revelation, a wonderful unveiling, that God has chosen to make us like Christ - not only to save us with a perfect salvation so that the question of sin and condemnation is answered finally and for ever, but to conform us to the image of His Son; what a revelation, what a blessing! Yes, but God cannot do that second thing until the first thing is settled, because it is in that realm that there is unspeakable peril. What is the peril? It is this.

The Peril Of The Subjective Apprehension

If the Lord were to get to work to empty us of ourselves in order to make room for the Lord Jesus; to show us ourselves in order to show us the Lord Jesus; to make us to know what we are in ourselves in order to make us know what Christ is in us; to make us know our weakness in order to make Christ's strength perfect in it; to make us know our foolishness in order to make Christ as our wisdom, perfect in us; if He were to start to do that and the question of our salvation were not settled, the devil would jump in at once and use God's very work against us, and when the Lord was dealing with us to make room for His Son, the devil would begin to say: "You are under condemnation, God is against you, these very dealings of God with you are proofs that your salvation is not certain." And so it is with a great many in whom the Lord begins to work out things. They allow the enemy to jump in and take hold of the very work of God and turn it against God, by bringing up doubts in their hearts as to their salvation.

Do you see that? So often that is done, and the peril is there, running right alongside of the greatest blessing all the time. It is thus that the enemy tries to use God's truth against God.

Now the subjective side of God's work demands for its effective outworking that we are settled once and for all as to our salvation; that comes first! If you have only the one side; the objective, and all your emphasis is upon that, you may be shallow and you may not grow spiritually. If you dwell only on the subjective, you become introspective and begin to doubt your salvation; your eyes are always turned in upon yourself, and the result is that you begin to look for something in yourself that can commend itself to God; and therein lies a denial of the perfect work of salvation accomplished by the Lord Jesus. You see it is an undermining and undercutting of the whole of the work of Calvary. These two things must go together. On the one hand - fully and finally in Christ we are as perfect in the hour when we believe as ever we shall be. On the other hand - all that is in Christ is going to be made, not THEORETICALLY true, but ACTUALLY true in us by the Holy Spirit. But the second demands the first, and we must keep the balance. We must rejoice always in the fact that our names are written in heaven, that we are saved with a perfect salvation; but, on the other hand, we must remember that there is something that the Lord wants to do - not to make salvation true, but to make the image of Christ an inward thing. That is the outworking of salvation.

So this balance is necessary, and we must give equal emphasis. If we over-emphasize the subjective we take something from the glory of Christ. If we over-emphasize the objective we take something from God's purpose. It is a matter of the work of God in Christ, and the purpose of God in Christ: and these two things must both have their place.

May the Lord give us understanding, so that we come into a place of rest and are delivered from the perils which lurk in the vicinity of every Divine blessing.

Christ in You

"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this is the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people: and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more" (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

"Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body didst thou prepare for me; in whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hadst no pleasure: then said I, Lo, I am come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God. Saying above, Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein (the which are offered according to the law), then hath he said, Lo, I am come to do thy will. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:5-10).

"To whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ" (Colossians 1:27-28).

"I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me" (Galatians 2:20).

That portion in Jeremiah has its fulfilment now in Christ. It concerns the new covenant which the Lord said was to be altogether different; not according to the covenant which He made with Israel when He brought them out of Egypt, but something within them, written in their hearts. We know that the Lord Jesus Himself is the embodiment of all the terms of the covenant, and that covenant is sealed with His own blood. "Christ in you" means that all that that covenant contains becomes an inward thing, an inward power, an inward revelation of God. "Christ liveth in you", said the Apostle, and the mystery which God has been pleased to reveal is: "Christ in you, the hope of glory."

There is one comprehensive and all-embodying truth which, if it really gained the complete mastery of our hearts and dominated our whole consciousness, capturing our will, our hearts, and our minds, would really revolutionize everything, just as the new covenant represents a revolution from the old covenant. The great truth which embodies everything is this: that God has determined that nothing which is not Christ shall remain, and He is working toward that end, on the one hand to rid this universe of everything that is not Christ; on the other hand to fill this universe with that which is Christ. That means that God does not accept or recognize anything whatever that is not Christ. Then again, it means that God puts His seal upon what is Christ, and it is all a matter of the measure of Christ. It is a tremendous thing when that really does come to our hearts with the force and the power which it really does represent. It explains everything of God's dealings with us. It gives us the key to our problems. It sets us at once upon the highway of God's own purpose.

If it should be felt that the world is really becoming more and more full of evil, and not of Christ, we will explain that seeming contradiction later.

But we begin here, and we notice the significant setting of this in the letter to the Colossians. The first thing in the Colossian letter is the matchless presentation of the Lord Jesus. There is nothing in all the Word of God to compare with the first chapter of this letter as an unveiling of the Lord Jesus, that is, in any one part. From eternity Christ is seen in and through creation, all things unto Him, by Him, through Him, Christ in sovereignty governing all things, controlling all things. Gather it all up into one fragment, a universal fragment: "That in all things he might have the pre-eminence." There is the universal and eternal Son of God! And then, all that, as in a Divine secret, is brought right down and it is said: "Christ IN YOU, the hope of glory". All that in you - the Church. It is THAT Christ that is in you. He who created all things is in you IN YOUR RELATEDNESS TO THE CHURCH. He for whom all things were created is in you THUS, He who upholds all things is in you THUS. He in whom all things consist, hold together, is in you corporately, as in His Body.

The second thing is this: that the letter goes on, "seeing that ye have put off the old man... and have put on the new man" (3:9-10). What does that mean? That all that is not Christ is put aside, is repudiated, and all that is Christ is put on, is brought in. So that God's intention concerning His Son as universally pre-eminent is going to be realized by His being put on on the part of believers, who, as the third chapter says, have been "raised together with Him". This, the Apostle says, is the meaning of baptism (Colossians 2:12).

Christ is not a second personality or power, to come along to reinforce US, to vivify US, to strengthen US, for us to use in life and in service, and that He should make US something. That is not the thought, and that is not the angle of Scripture at all. And yet, how almost universally, perhaps largely unconsciously, that is what is happening. Christians are wanting to be made something, even as Christians; and Christian workers and the Lord's servants are, though perhaps unwittingly, wanting to be made something as workers; and they want Christ to reinforce THEM, come behind THEM, and make THEM something as His servants and in His service. That whole system of things is diametrically opposed to the truth. The truth is that Christ shall be all, and that we decrease that He may increase; that He should be the primary Personality, and that the impact and registration of any life and any service should not be: 'What a good man he was!' or 'What a good woman she is!' or 'What a fine worker!' but: 'What a presence of Christ! What a testimony to Christ! What an expression of Christ! What a sense of Christ! What a reality of Christ!'

The next thing I am going to say may be difficult to accept, just as it is difficult to say, and yet faithfulness demands that things like this should be said. There is going to be a tremendous surprise one day over this matter. There is a tremendous amount of energy, and activity, and machinery, and zeal and devotion in the work of the Lord, in the service of the Lord, which seems to be producing something quite big, and carrying on something quite extensive. It is not for us to judge, but it is for us to lay down laws and recognize those laws, or, rather, recognize laws that are laid down by God. When eventually all work, all service, all activity, is weighed in the balances, which will determine what abides for ever or passes away for ever, all that which was MERELY human energy for God will go; all that which was merely man's enterprise for the Lord will go; all that which was in any way out from man himself, even though in devotion to God, will go. Only that which was the energy of Christ, the wisdom of Christ, the power of Christ, will remain. God is not using your energies and my energies. He is calling upon us to use the energies of Christ. God cannot set His seal upon anything that is of man. God's seal only rests upon that which is of His Son, and we must not say that because a thing is big, extensive, and SEEMS to be a great work for God, that it necessarily is such. What we have got to be quite sure about is that that thing is not being carried on by the momentum of man, or the momentum of organization, the momentum of machinery, the momentum of human zeal and energy for God nor by the momentum of a programme, but that it is being energized by the Holy Ghost, that it is Christ Himself who is the life and the power of that thing. In so far as human personalities, energies and all that kind of thing are the mainspring, we may be sure that in the end there is going to be a good deal that goes. That can be seen as you look back over the history of things which claimed to represent God.

The object of saying this is not for one moment to cast a cloud of suspicion or doubt over anything, but it is to emphasize this truth, this basic truth. It is along the line of jealousy for Christ. Nothing will remain in this universe eventually but what is Christ, and we must recognize that everything for God's ultimate purpose is bound up with and in Christ, and it IS Christ. We shall only come to the end which God has fixed as we know how to draw upon Christ for everything. We shall be established as we live by Christ, the work will be established as it is out from Christ, as we do it out from Him.

We have often spoken of this same thing in the direction of the candlestick all of gold, as mentioned in the prophecies of Zechariah. We must remember that the wrought gold is the Lord Jesus. It is only a typical way of saying that He was made perfect through suffering. The gold is refined and perfected in its purity in the fire. That is what happened with Him. Perfect, yet perfected through suffering. The candlestick of pure gold is what Christ is, and inasmuch as it is a candlestick, it is the vessel and the instrument of the Testimony, the life, the revelation, the unveiling. The vessel of the Testimony, then, is what Christ is, and the Testimony can only be upheld and maintained in clearness by what Christ is. We in ourselves cannot maintain the Testimony. The Testimony of Jesus will be maintained in us just in so far as we conform to His image. To put that in another way: just in the measure in which Christ has supplanted ourselves - "no longer I, but Christ". God has a gold standard, and He never departs from it. God's gold standard is His Son, and He never deviates one little bit from His Son.

This change from Christ in heaven to Christ in you is just with that object in view. It is that, Christ being in you, everything else shall be brought down under Christ, and that Christ should take the ascendency in us just as He has taken universal ascendency in heaven, and it is that taking of ascendency which is the conforming to His image. "No longer I" is a very inclusive statement, for that "I" is many-sided. There is 'I like' and 'I will', 'I think' and 'I want'. And then the opposites, 'I don't like', 'I will not', 'I do not think', 'I do not want'. And 'I' is much more comprehensive than that. Conformity to His image simply means that that is ruled out, and oh! what a business that is! While we have all accepted the final and the full abolition of the 'I', by no means have we attained unto that. We are very often in some way or another up against that 'I', and the question again is whether it is going to be Christ or 'I'. But the very fact that the Holy Spirit makes a conflict of it shows that the thing is active, and that something is going on. We need to ask definitely that the Lord will keep that active, and that He will make these crises much more acute.

Sometimes we have to ask ourselves, as we see personal desires being followed out, likes being served, preferences being manipulated, and it becomes so patent that there is something which is quite natural ruling decisions and making the plans: Where is the Cross, and where is the Holy Spirit working by the Cross? Therefore, you and I need to ask the Lord more every day to make these crises acute, that we shall have no blind spots on this matter, thinking that it is for the Lord when it is really for ourselves. Any measure of that 'I' is countering God's end, and anything that is done, even though it be by a most devoted soul, for the Lord on that basis is bound to have in it that element which will limit its ETERNAL value.

The thing which is going to be wholly, utterly abiding, eternal, must be utterly Christ. It may, therefore, be necessary for a course of reduction to be followed by the Lord. The thing may seem small and it may seem to be very limited according to the world's standards. What is going on can hardly be seen on the surface, but God is working right down at the bottom to build from the foundation, slowly, steadily, surely, and every fresh fragment that God adds to that work is sifted, purged, tested. It is as though God puts in something and then, before He adds to it, He tests it, proves it, tries it, sifts it, until the thing is, in its absolute purity, all of Christ and is established.

That seems to be God's way with something that is going to be wholly of Christ. You can have, if you MUST, to gratify the old human desires to SEE, to POSSESS, to KNOW, to DO, to be active, something bigger. But when you look on toward the end, it will just be tested as to what is of Christ. All the other is waste. You have plenty of Scripture to bear that out. I am only putting my finger upon a central law. Is it not true that God has determined to have nothing in this universe eventually but what is Christ, and all else will be removed for ever?

There is another way of looking at it. It is a glorious prospect to know that the universe will be filled with Christ, and God is going to have His end. When the Lord gets hold of a life utterly, and when the Cross has really entered into that life, so that that life can say: "I have been crucified with Christ", nothing passes, nothing gets through that is not Christ. God keeps intensely short accounts with that life. God is alive to everything concerning the first Adam. That is the meaning of: "He that hath the seven spirits of God". That phrase means the perfection of spiritual vision. Go back to the prophecies of Zechariah and you remember it speaks of "seven eyes". That means that the Lord Jesus, who has the seven spirits of God, is alive to everything, takes in everything, comprehends everything. Nothing escapes Him. Especially is that perfection of perception related to the things that would be a menace to His ultimate purpose, and in all that we do He knows exactly where the point is which marks the end of what is of Himself and the beginning of us. We do not know, but He does, just where these things overlap, and He is letting nothing pass.

That represents a challenge to us! We have been seeing that God, for His own satisfaction in relation to His own ultimate purpose, must have a candlestick all of gold, a vessel which represents what Christ is in an utter sense, That means a deep cost, a great measure of suffering. That is the challenge which comes to us. Until the Lord reveals it with a heavenly light we do not see how big the difference is between self and Christ. When the Lord does a thing it is eternal.

Are our hearts set upon God having that which is wholly of Himself? That means 'I' crucified! No longer I, but Christ! And that means that Christ in us is the basis of our conformity to His image, until we partake with Him of His own nature - pure gold. It is something to face seriously before Him. It brings to us a challenge, but surely it also brings to us a glorious possibility! What Christ is can be made good in us!

This is what God is doing in the groaning creation. It does not appear to be so, for, to all appearances the 'fullness' seems to be evil. Do you remember a very illuminating phrase in Genesis 15:16: "The iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full"? The context shows that Israel's exodus and occupation of the Promised Land waited upon the Amorite's full cup of iniquity. "Amorite" is a representative name for all the nations then occupying the land. When that cup of iniquity was full God emancipated Israel. The exodus synchronized with a condition in the world. The filling of the land with what was of God required the enemy's extension of his evil nature to its limit; then God acted.

We need say no more. The end time will be marked by 'iniquity abounding'. The rapture of the Church will take place - as its exodus - when "the man of sin is revealed", when the cup of iniquity is full. We are living at a time when there is a positive landslide of moral iniquity. It is called 'the new morality', but it is not morality at all, it is 'non morality'. Look at your map of the world and note how minute is the area of the United Kingdom. It is almost lost in the great areas of the world countries. And yet, in this so small country, four hundred millions of pounds are spent annually on gambling. There is a corresponding expenditure on alcoholic drink, to say nothing of the iniquitous drug business. No wonder that the nation is fighting for economic survival, and has lost its place of honour in the world. Perhaps the worst feature is that governments legislate for these things, and thereby largely condone or recognize them.

If this is true of such a fragment of the world, what of the whole world situation? God is taking account of this. He is causing the simple facts of His salvation to be made known on a scale unprecedented in the world's history, and when the whole world has had its opportunity "then shall the end come". Two things are UNMISTAKABLY evident: the world-encircling by the simple gospel of salvation as never before, and the headlong rush of iniquity to 'fill up the cup'. There is a third feature: it is the ripening of saints by suffering unto the grape-harvest. These three things are the "work in the groaning creation".

Christ Our Life (1940)

"When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3:4).

If we ask what is the very essence and heart of Christianity and the Christian life, the answer is that God has summed up and centred all things in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. This means that Christianity is not a number of things as in themselves, such as beliefs, doctrines, dogmas, practices, forms, rites, orders, or virtues. It is not salvation, regeneration, sanctification, power, life, joy, peace, etc, as things; it is just Himself, and Himself as resident within those who have received Him as Who and What He is. He is the total of all that is necessary for God's glory and satisfaction, for which we were created. Nothing can be had or known as an "it", apart from the Person. If we have Him and live by Him, we have all.

Failure to realise this inclusive fact in a living way is the reason for every kind of weakness, failure, and disappointment, both in life and in service. We may be craving for or striving after an "it", whatever that "it" may be, but God will never depart from His position in relation to His Son. Many people have striven with such soul intensity after an it as to have become psychic or occult, and they have got an "it"; but it is not from God, and the end will prove that to be so.

Adam, at the beginning, was ensnared into a deception in this very way. He had all things in God and by an abiding in God, a life of dependence and trust, the "all things" were to be enjoyed and ever enlarged. But the suggestion came that he could have the seat and spring of things in himself and "be as God". To this idea he fell; and while he gained (?) that immediate object of "knowing good and evil", his gain has been his curse ever since, and untold loss has come with it. The "Last Adam" (God's Son), to rectify the matter for a new race of "believers", accepted a life of voluntary and absolute dependence upon God, confessing that "of Himself" (lit: "out from") He could do nothing. He proved that such is a position and life of Divine strength, peace, joy, and ascendancy. He thus 'destroyed the works of the Devil', and by His life of obedient dependence and trust received all things as His inheritance of "all things". But 'Christ in us is the hope of glory' (Col. 1:27), and a life of absolute dependence upon Him means victory, ability, fulness. But it will ever be Himself, and we shall be kept strictly to this, ever knowing our own weakness and futility.

It is because God has established this as the unalterable law of life that He will cause everything else manifestly to fail, so far as eternal satisfaction and fulness are concerned.

As we move toward the end there will be a cutting off increasingly of things, and a resolving of all into a matter of HIMSELF.

We do not realise how much, how deeply, how subtly good things can take the place of Himself until they are removed. Let our work, our interest, our meetings, our ministry, our power to do, our opportunity to do, yes, our everything on the outside be taken away, so that we are alone and helpless; then will come the supreme test as to what the Lord Himself is to us. Is not this the trend of everything today? More and more we are having outward things brought into limitation - things, men, movements, places, activities! Antichrist is on the horizon and will represent a fulness and ability, a wealth and a power by self-energy (the source of which is Satanic), and secretly or openly many will make a comparison between the fulness which he offers and represents, and the apparent smallness and weakness of what is of Christ. Many hearts will be drawn away, many will faint. The supreme test for all will be here - if it is not already the case. Antichrist may first overawe by his display of power and terror, and then carry away by what he offers. In the suffering and trial which this will mean, the whole issue will hang upon what the Lord is to us. God must press this issue, because in His new world order which will be imminent at such a time, the one all-inclusive feature will be that "Christ is all in all", and this not as a doctrine or as something merely objective, but a reality wrought into the very being of His people.

We have to test the nature of our stimuli. Is it work, enterprises, activities, movements, churches, societies, teachings, people, missions, etc., or is Christ Himself our life and satisfaction? Our chief lesson is to live Christ. Do we need sustenance and satisfaction? He says, "I am the bread of life". To every need His answer is I am that; not, I give that.

So Paul links the two things together - the appearing of Christ with the utterness of Christ as our life: "When Christ - who is our life - shall be manifested..." Let us "hear what the Spirit saith"; let us see what the sovereign acts of God are saying; let us look to our foundations. Is it just the Lord Himself before and beneath and above all things?

Are we satisfied with Him, apart from what He does or is able to do for us?

It is out of His being our all-in-all that every value in life and service will issue, and if He is, then the values will be spontaneous, the fruit will just be there without effort or machinery.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Sep-Oct 1940 Vol. 18-5

Christ Our Life (1964)

One of the main objects of the Holy Spirit with the children of God is to get them spiritually and experimentally into Christ as risen and exalted, and into the risen and exalted life of Christ.

The present phase of things is particularly marked by a cutting off from things, men, and movements, with a view to utter attachment to the Lord Jesus Himself. Antichrist will soon be made manifest, and will probably come along the line of a great united world-movement of human improvement and moral and social uplift under the name of "Christianity", but without regeneration; a great thrust of 'humanism'; a full development of the principal sinindependence of, and superiority to, Godthe true God.

Multitudes will be drawn away after him, and to refuse to be included in such a movement will bring a stigma and ostracism upon those who so refuse. The Lord is preparing for Antichrist by seeking to make the Lord Jesus more completely the life of His own than has been their experience.

Work, enterprises, activities, movements, churches, societies, teachings, people, etc., have been and are the life of many. They must have the stimulus of a programme, a scheme, a place to occupy.

Teachingas suchmay bring to confusion and provide no living way through. Work may lead to exhaustion and disappointment. Movements may become marked by merely human features and be spheres of dissension.

Thingsall of themwill disappoint sooner or later, but the Lord abideth and never fails. The measure of attachment to the Lord can often be the measure of attachment to some interest, either a person, or persons, or place, or movement, or piece of work, and when these break down, faith in the Lord is shaken, and a dark period of eclipse of faith is passed through.

What we must learn supremely is to attach everything to the Lord Himself, and to come to a full appreciation of Him. The Lord must be life for the spirit to make it strong; not interests and merely objective concerns. Otherwise we shall only stand up strongly when there is the appeal of some outward occasion, crisis or emergency.

The Lord must be life for our minds so that truth is not for us either abstract or merely true things, but life and power.

The Lord must be the life of our bodies. Natural weakness or strength is not the criterion. Healing as a 'truth' or as something in itself can become legal bondage and a 'bugbear'. It is the Lord Himself our life, whether to remain cumbered about with infirmities or to be set freewhichever will serve most His glory. It is not so much the natural condition as the transcendence and accomplishment of the Lord.

In the days of terrific pressure which are now upon the Lord's people everywhere; days when the enemy takes less 'off-time' than ever; days when it is more perilous for believers to take 'off-time', there is only one thing adequateit is that the Lord should be known in absoluteness as our lifeour very life.

The exhortation of Barnabas to the converts at Antioch may be a very timely and salutary word for us at this time: "He exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord" (Acts 11:23).

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, 1931, Vol. 9-2, republished in Jan-Feb 1964 Vol. 42-1.

Christ the Power of God

"But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God..." (1 Corinthians 1:24).

"For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2).

In many ways the explanation of Christ being the power of God consists in the fact that He is Christ crucified. This second reference by Paul to his emphasis on Christ crucified is immediately linked with the reminder that Christ is the power of God and largely the explanation of it.

The whole subject of spiritual power is most important. So many Christians find themselves involved in a continual struggle to live up to what they know to be God's standard. For them Christianity is a manner of life composed of various rules and regulations. They know what ought to be and what ought not to be, and they therefore struggle to attain to this level of living. Their consciences play a large part in this constant effort, and for this reason they suffer many fears and fail to experience the promised joys. Life for them has become a strenuous business, fraught with much disappointment and many failures. They may from time to time have a sense of attainment and success, with much resultant gladness, but with the fluctuating emotions of the soul, things seem to collapse and go all wrong. So it is that people find the Christian life burdensome; they long to know real victory, true deliverance and the joy of the Lord, whereas they experience the ups and downs of a constant struggle. The Christian life depicted in the New Testament seems so different from their actual experience that the Devil is never slow to pounce in with his suggestions that a life of constant victory is quite impossible, so that all their hopes are but unreal dreams. Satan wants God's people to despair of knowing His power.

But there is an altogether different life, different because it is based on the entering into something already completed in Christ; not something to be attained to but rather that which has already been accomplished. It is not a standard to be lived up to, but a Person to be lived with. It is impossible to measure the vast difference between these two kinds of life. The former is one of self effort and defeat, while the other consists in enjoying the reality of Christ the power of God.

We must beware of thinking in terms of advanced or special doctrines. Scriptural teaching is not departmental or sectional. We may hear of 'higher truth' or 'advanced teaching', as though there were something special reserved for the few. So there arises the idea of 'higher life' with 'higher teaching', as opposed to being a simple believer, content with 'the simple gospel'. I want very emphatically to contradict any such notion. Wherever you look in the New Testament you will never find any support for this idea. It is true that we have to face the call for overcomers, but surely the 'overcomer' in the book of Revelation is only the ripe and full product of the work of Christ on His cross; it is only Christ in His fuller manifestation and expression. Overcomers are made possible because Christ is "the power of God". Just exactly as in the commencement of salvation, so in its triumphant consummation, everything is linked with the Lamb slain and the blood of the Lamb.

Nobody should make a special kind of 'Overcomer' teaching, for this is what God intended Calvary to mean for every believer. God had spiritual victory as His thought when He first forgave us our sins, and in His mind this is to be the normal development of every Christian's life. Every movement forward, however, is related to the cross, and there is a sense in which there is not one step forward in the spiritual life which is not preceded by a step backward. What I mean is this, that there has to be some undoing before there can be any upbuilding. The Christ who is the power of God to us is the crucified Christ who progressively applies the cross to us also, so that being released from the flesh which so holds us back, we may advance in the realm of the Spirit. So spiritual progress is not conditioned by special teaching but by ever deeper experiences of the inworking of the cross of Christ.

This being true, we must recognise that everything is bound up with the Person, and must never be regarded merely as spiritual truth. Everything is bound up with Him. It is Christ who is the power of God - Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This explains the working of the gospel, which surely is that Christ crucified is revealed in the heart of the sinner who believes. We are not constituted gospel preachers because we have read somewhere the historic facts that Christ was crucified, raised from the dead and ascended, but because God has revealed in us not just facts but a Person in relation to the facts and the facts in relation to the Person. This, then, brings me back to what I said at the beginning, namely that the life of struggling and failing in self effort is really due to a failure to appreciate the wonder and power of Christ crucified.

When the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts He brings Christ in the completeness of His finished work on the cross, and then proceeds progressively to conform us to Christ. Do you realise that the Christ in you is not an imperfect Christ? When the Lord Jesus wrought His Calvary work He not only dealt with the matter of forgiveness but He went right on to the perfection of redemption, finally reaching the throne as the great Overcomer. In Him, the Person, the whole ground of spiritual experience is covered and completed. There is no experience that can ever come to you or me which makes impossible the reaching of God's end, for Christ has already met and overcome it. So we are not to struggle in vain attempts after perfection, but to co-operate with the Holy Spirit as He seeks to make good in us the power of Christ's finished work on the cross. It is Christ in you who is the hope of glory. Anything less or anything else will bring no hope of glory but rather despair.

I would like to close on this positive reminder that the Holy Spirit has been charged with and has accepted full responsibility for the conforming of us to Christ. But we must recognise that power in relation to the Holy Spirit is not just an impersonal force but is vitally connected with Christ, and especially on the basis of the cross. For us the power of the Holy Spirit is inseparably bound up with the Person of Jesus Christ and depends on our willingness to accept the implication of union with Him in His cross. When the Lord was discussing this cross with Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, the word rendered 'decease' should really be 'exodus' (Luke 9:31). Doubtless, then, we can correctly say that Christ's cross is a deliverance, a way out. It is the way out from condemnation, an elementary truth for the Christian but none the less a precious and important one. It is the way out from the power of sin. How can I escape from the bondage of sin which threatens me and seeks still to make me a slave even though I am a forgiven sinner? Only by death-union with the Lord Jesus, for it is His death which has made the escape, the exodus for all who trust in Him. Such trust involves the appropriation by faith of the power of that death as I am led into it in practical ways by the Holy Spirit.

In addition we notice that the Scriptures say that Jesus accomplished this exodus. It was an accomplishment on His part, something which He achieved. When we recognise this to be the nature of that death, we get a different conception from that of His just being killed, merely being crucified by men, and realise that this was a mighty work which He completed. He voluntarily took upon Himself all those powers which produce man's failures, defeats and bondage, and then broke through them all and accomplished a perfect way out by His triumphant death upon the cross. So it is for us to recognise that all our problems and enemies have been dealt with by the Lord Jesus in His cross. The Holy Spirit is given to us as the Spirit of His triumphant victory, full of energy and power to bring our besetting weaknesses to that grave where Christ has brought them, so that we may be freed for the will of God. I cannot master my sins but Christ has done it, and can draw me into the power of His delivering death. I can claim my share in the exodus. And this is not just coming into the light of some new doctrine, but sharing the power of a Person. It makes all the difference whether we are trying to deal with our troubles doctrinally or in the power of that Person.

Christ's death is also the way out from the bondage of law. You can have Christian law just as much as you can have Mosaic law; you can be in bondage in Christianity just as much as men were in Judaism. Christianity can be made into an imposed system just as much as Mosaic law was, and there are many Christians today who live under the fear of the 'Thou shalt' and the 'Thou shalt not' of a legalistic conception of the Christian life. You can take the Bible as God's standard for your life and try to fulfil it and yet still be burdened with a sense of constant failure. It is God's standard, and it is a very exhaustive one which leaves no part of the practical life untouched, but those who make the effort to try to live up to it only end in disillusion. No, it is not just a matter of a Book but of a Person, the Person who did live up to that standard, absolutely fulfilling every least demand with the most perfect success, so satisfying God to the full. By His death He has delivered us from the bondage of legal demands. This same Person now lives in us by His Holy Spirit, seeking to work out that perfect will of God not on the basis of some binding instructions from without but as a living force within. We have the law written in our hearts. To be in Christ is a matter of life and not of legalism.

CHRIST, and Christ crucified, is the power of God to bring deliverance from sin, from the flesh, from the law and from the world. "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world" (Galatians 6:14). Paul was not glorying that he could enjoy so much of the world and yet have a clear conscience, but was enthusiastic about having been delivered from the world. For believers the only possible way of staying in this world is to know that they no longer belong to it. Not that we can deliver ourselves. No, it is much too strong for us. But in this matter, as in all others, the cross of Christ has made a way out for us. Alas that some Christians seem to want to hold on to as much of the world as they can without losing their peace of mind, giving up the minimum and holding on to all that they can without having their conscience too disturbed. This is not a powerful life, nor is it a glorious one. The glory of true fellowship with Christ crucified is the rich satisfaction of those who know the delivering power of the Christ and the new fullness of life in the will of God.

The Cleansing of the Temple

Reading: John 2:13-22.

It is doubtless known to you that on two occasions the Lord cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem. The first occasion was that of which we read in this passage in Johns Gospel. The second, and the last occasion, is mentioned by the other writers of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. John does not repeat in his record that occasion, and they do not touch upon the first occasion. John wrote so long after the other three that doubtless he knew what they had written, and therefore much of what he wrote was supplementary. He knew what they had left out, and puts in a very great deal that they had not recorded. This is one of those things peculiar to Johns Gospel.

There is a significance about the fact that the Lord Jesus cleansed the Temple twice. Perhaps the significance attaches, in the first place at least, to His having done it at the commencement of His ministry, and at the close, for John puts this cleansing very early in His public life. The record of the second instance comes right at the end, amongst the final scenes of His life in Jerusalem; and that He should have made it one of His first activities in Jerusalem, and one of His last, carries with it a meaning which is not far to seek, and the significance of which lies very near the surface.

It would say to us that the Lord had His Fathers House very much in view from the beginning, and that all His life activities were in that direction. We may say that foundationally His life and ministry had to do with the House of God, and that He never departed from that early position which He had adopted. Right at the end He came back to it. We are told that He was moving to and fro between Jerusalem and Bethany, and in that final week of His life, one evening He went into Jerusalem and into the Temple and looked round on all things, and then went out to Bethany without doing anything. But the next morning He went in and evidently put into a very definite and strong form of expression the results of His having taken account of the situation, and purged the Temple once more.

His life here on earth, then, was bounded, we may say, by His relationship with and attitude towards His Fathers House. If it be true that the Fathers House was set in His vision in a very definite relationship in His life from start to finish, and that His life at both ends is found in relation to that House, then it is important to notice what His attitude towards His Fathers House was as to His spirit. He was consumed by a great devotion and passion for the House of God. His life, as represented by this twofold activity, from beginning to end was a life bounded by zeal for Gods House, intense and fervent, so that it could be said that it consumed Him.

For what did that zeal exist? What was it in relation to the Fathers House that was consuming Him? What was the nature of His devotion? Clearly it was the holiness of His Fathers House; its absolute sanctity, its perfect cleanness, its complete separation from the influences and orders of this world, and from all personal interests and elements. Those things are represented by what was taking place here on both of these occasions. A worldly system had crept in, and it was being pursued for personal ends. All such things in His mind were unholy and vile. It was the holiness of His Fathers House which was the character of His consuming zeal.

Then one more thing is seen in this attitude towards His Fathers House, and that is His assuming authority over it. There is here a foreshadowing of that word in the letter to the Hebrews: But Christ as a Son over Gods house.... He is speaking of this Temple as: My Fathers house. He is the Son of the Father. What is His place in it as the Son of the Father? It is the place of absolute authority: A Son over Gods house.... And here He assumes His authority in the House of His Father, and His authority is to deal with everything that is out of harmony with that House. That is the position with which we meet immediately as we read of these instances.

Then, as it always is with John, the thing is never left there in the realm of earthly, temporal history. John never leaves things with the illustration or the type, because John is not on the earth. The other three may be giving us historic records, but John is not just doing that. John always gets out of the merely historical, earthly, and carries things through into the realm of the universal, the spiritual. He shows us what is not shown elsewhere, and gives us a meaning related to this thing which we do not find elsewhere.

We could imagine John perhaps reading the narrative of one of the other apostles, or through the oral Gospel (as it was called) having the whole thing repeated to him, and he would say: I wonder why they missed out that first cleansing of the Temple! I wonder why they did not put that in! They have overlooked that, and it is very important; I must put that in! And so he would put it in, and in his mind there would be this far greater connection, and he would put down what the Lord Jesus said, not only what He did, as the larger significance of His act. He follows through, as you notice with this: The Jews therefore answered and said unto him, What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. We are not sure whether the Lord Jesus was purposely throwing dust in their eyes, speaking enigmatically. They took Him up as speaking of the Temple which He had just cleansed, but He was not meaning that, and this is where John gives a comment of such tremendous importance: they thought that He spoke of the Temple at Jerusalem, but he spake of the temple of his body. What has happened with the follow-through? Everything has been transferred to Himself. He has taken it all over in His own Person. The Temple is not this Temple outwardly, about which they were thinking. The Temple of God was Himself.

You notice how all the way through the Gospel of John things are transferred to Christ. It does not matter where you touch a thing that belongs to the Jewish system, it is transferred to Christ every time. In chapter 4 the Temples in Samaria and in Jerusalem are mentioned, and John adds: Neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem.... You see He has come, and so here everything is transferred to Christ. He takes the place of the Temple; He possesses the whole thing in His own Person. Of course they could never understand, because they would not accept Him. He speaks of the Temple of His body and says: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

That is the value of Johns record, and, remembering that that stands right at the beginning of His life, it is of tremendous importance that the Lord Jesus has come, and has come in relation to the House of God, and the zeal for His Fathers House is consuming Him. He is the embodiment of all that that House means. It is all gathered up into Himself. It is transferred to Christ.

We now have a fuller revelation of that truth, and with our fuller revelation in the Epistles we know two things.

We know now fully how Christ is Gods Temple. We have come to see the full meaning and value of the fact that God was in Christ making reconciliation of the world unto Himself, and that all that that Temple in type stood for was Christ. In Him is all the value of shed and sprinkled Blood. In Him is all the value of Mediatorship, Priesthood. In Him is all the value of the provision for the Lords people. In Him is every thing that was in that Temple in type. He is that to the full. God is only found by us in Christ.

Then we have another aspect also of the one revelation, and that is that Christ has constituted the House of God by uniting with Himself a company called His Body; the church, which is his body; Whose house are we, says the writer of the Hebrew letter. The Body of Christ is now constituted corporately the House of God, Gods Temple.

That truth is familiar to us, and we only mention it on the way to the thing which is central to this consideration.

Note now these other factors as they are in Johns Gospel.

In the first place, when you recognise Christ and His members as constituting Gods House, you see that this House  Christ and His members  is constituted upon the basis of resurrection, that sonship relates thereto. Christ as a Son over Gods house. What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? In other words: By what authority are you taking this position over the Temple? You virtually establish yourself as Master of the House of God! On what ground? The answer is: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. He is saying: My authority is a spiritual authority, and it is on the ground of resurrection. Sonship and authority are here closely related to resurrection from the dead.

Do you catch the suggestion in His declaration: Destroy this temple and... I will raise it up? He is speaking of Himself as though He were two: His body, and His power over His own body to raise it up! It is Christ within a Temple, in the power of resurrection. Paul gives us the larger explanation when He says: The exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead.... The Temple which we are is brought into being as the dwelling place of the Lord of life, by reason of our spiritual resurrection from the dead.

What does all this amount to? It means this, that authority in Christ, and the very constitution of His House, the Temple, the Body of Christ, is upon the basis of Christ having met all His enemies, and all their destructive power, and all the power of death, having overcome them, and brought into being something which they had sought to wipe out of existence. In other words, as Mark says about this thing: The chief priests and the scribes sought how they might destroy him. He says: In three days I will raise it up. What does that mean? That destruction is destroyed, that death is vanquished, and that if there is something raised upon that basis, if that is the nature of the existence of the very thing, it in its very existence testifies to the absolute supremacy of the Lord Jesus over all powers to destroy, and over all workings of death.

Gathering that all up together for an immediate application to us, it means this, that if we are really, livingly, spiritually joined to the Lord Jesus as a part of His Body, we are of that Temple of which He said: I will raise it up; that is, we are with Him on the ground where nothing can destroy, and where death has been itself robbed of its power to overcome this thing. We stand (and we must learn how to stand in the good of this great spiritual reality) by our very risen union with the Lord Jesus, on the ground of authority over death, of power over destruction. That is one of the great factors, if it is not the greatest of the factors, of which faith has to lay hold. Day by day we are called into the conflict which rages by reason of the challenge to that position, the challenge to our position in union with Christ in absolute victory over death.

We are not referring merely to physical death, but death as a power; and the Temple, the House, exists because Christ has conquered death, and because the power of destruction has been broken. Our attitude has to be, in solid faith, continually: Death for us is vanquished, and destruction is destroyed. In many ways every day we shall be confronted with the necessity for affirming our position on that ground. But that is, after all, by the way.

The point which is especially in our heart is this: This House of God is the place, the sphere, in which Christ, in His authority as Son over Gods House, confronts everything that is not in keeping with that House. This is something which we must continually bear in mind. That House demands that everything shall be in keeping with it. Holiness becometh thy house. The Lord Jesus has assumed the authority in the House of God, to deal with everything unholy. He is no less zealous now than He was when He was on the earth. There is no less zeal about Him for the House of God now than there was then. Surely we can say there is infinitely more. At least we can say this, that His relationship to the Temple in Jerusalem is only an illustration. He knew quite well that that no longer represented the House of God. He knew quite well that it had passed out of that sphere where it truly was the House of God. The very words with which John introduces this fragment are: The Passover of the Jews was at hand. That was always called Jehovahs Passover in the days when the thing was right. It was the Lords Passover, but here John says The Passover of the Jews.... In the same way this Temple was no longer the Lords House in reality.

The Lord is acting towards this Temple in representation of His attitude towards that spiritual House which was coming in with His own Person, and His attitude towards the spiritual House is with no less consuming zeal. It can be said of Him now: The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; as He assumed the authority as a Son of the Fathers House to deal with everything out of keeping with that House. That is His position now. Christs authority, Christs very position as the Son over Gods House is in the first place to deal with everything out of keeping with that House. Just as He confronted all the flesh, and arrested all the traffic of the world in that Temple, so He stands in the way of that in the spiritual House.

The point is this: It is one thing to have a teaching and a doctrine, and a system of truth about the House of God, and get off scot-free. It is quite another thing to come spiritually in a real and living way into that truth; and if you do you will never get off scot-free. These are two realms.

One realm is, after all (although it may not be in the architecture of marble stone, in material things), a structure of teaching, a structure of truth, of doctrine about the House of God, and that may all be still outside of the Spirit. It may be thought a lot of, and its holiness may be talked about, just as much as ever Jews talked about the Temple in Jerusalem. It might even be grieved over, just as the Jews go to the Wailing Place now and wail over the departed glory; and still it may be an objective system of truth, and there may be no impact, no challenge, and all manner of inconsistencies be got away with in that system, so that there are terrible contradictions.

But there is another realm. It is the realm where every bit of this truth lives, and if we come into the living reality of the House of God we are going to find that there is One established there in authority, Who challenges and meets everything that is out of keeping with the House. Mark says: And he would not suffer that any man should carry a vessel through.... I can see Him; not only capsizing those tables, and scattering that money, but arresting a man carrying something to do with that merchandise, and saying: Take that outside! and the man, under the compulsion of that divine authority, slinking away. Wherever He saw a man carrying something to do with this thing He said, in effect: Take it out! It does not belong here!

The Lord Jesus will confront us, if we come into this livingly. It is a terrible thing to come into spiritual truth. The glory is another side; it is a great privilege; but it is a terrible thing to touch anything in Gods House with the hands of flesh; to bring in what does not belong there as of this world, as of ourselves. He stands there to meet it. The Corinthians met it: For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep. Holiness becometh thy house. It is good that it should be so. It is very blessed that the Lord Jesus should have this matter in His own hands, to deal with these things.

Perhaps you ask the question: Why are you saying all this? It means this, that you and I want to have the testimony maintained in life. It is not worth having something that is only a system of truth and does not work. We want to be at the place where the thing lives, but, oh! what that involves! We cannot gather round this and say: This is beautiful truth! No! This is awful; this is terrible for the flesh! We cannot be in anything of that kind and any bit of our flesh get off free. We are simply going to be ground to the last fragment in the realm of our flesh if we come into that which is wholly of God. We must be prepared for that. It is a part of the very living character of this thing.

Then it prepares a way for so much more. It brings us into the place of authority in Christ. If He is there as the Son over Gods House, and we are sons in Gods House, by that very relationship we come into that authority of Christ. What is our authority? That no power of Satan can work on us, because there is no ground for him to take. Authority is not a phraseology, a tone of voice, an assertive manner. Authority is a state of heart, a state of life. Authority is that the testimony is living, because the ground of death has been destroyed. Resurrection in Christ means that the death ground has been put away.

When you seek to have things like that, what do you expect? You will get (whatever you expect) what He got! Then the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might destroy him. If we give ourselves to the matter of the holiness of Gods House, the purity, the cleanness of Gods House, the absolute consistency of everything for the testimony, to have things living, what shall we meet? We shall meet an attempt from the devil to destroy us! If we have touched something that is evil, something that is out of keeping with the House, and we have sought to put that right, we shall get a kick back from the devil every time; and we shall find that every effort to clean things up in the House of God is a thing which is set against our very life. You cannot be devoted to this, and have the zeal of Gods House eating you up, without having a great determined purpose of the enemy to destroy you.

In some place there may be something that is evil which has come into the House of God, and you seek to have that thing cleaned up. It is not long before you meet something as the return of that upon yourself, and you feel that you are a marked man, or a marked woman. It is not easy to try and get things according to Gods mind. The enemy hates that.

The Lord give us grace to receive this word. Holiness becometh thy house. How are we going to be an instrument, a voice for the Lord? It is this: If thou take... the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth. If you cut clean in between what is of the Lord and what is not, and have things in complete separation unto the Lord: Thou shalt be as my mouth. It is worth anything to be the Lords mouth in this world to His people. That requires that there shall be an uncompromising attitude toward anything that is not in keeping with the Lords House spiritually. The Lord bring us into the place where everything is holy. Holiness becometh thy house.

Is your home a holy place? Is your meal table a holy place? Is the conversation a holy thing? Could hungry, needy children of God come to your home and get spiritual help? Or are you discussing things that are not helpful, not building up; things which may be real, may be actual, but there is nothing to be gained by discussing them? Are you only talking about all the generalities of daily life? Is your home a house of Bread, or is it a house of criticism, a house of scandal, a house of gossip? Holiness becometh thy house; and that relates as much to our domestic life as the Lords children, as it does to our being in the assembly.

You will have a testimony if you look after the Lords things. You will be the Lords mouth if you seek the things which are according to the Lords mind. Your testimony will only be destroyed if things are out of keeping with the truth which you teach or accept. The Lord bring things into a very living state with us.

The Coming of the Kingdom in Power

Reading: Matt. 16:28; 17:1-7.

Though we are familiar with this incident of the transfiguration of Jesus, I have always had a feeling that we have not really grasped strongly enough the significance of it. We view it objectively as something that happened in the life of our Lord here, perhaps the most wonderful thing, and we leave it there and fail to realize that there is a tremendous challenge in it, and that it means something of very great importance and significance in the economy of God. Furthermore, we fail to realize that this is the focal point of all the Scriptures. From the beginning of the Bible up to this point, and from this point onwards, everything past and future meets here, is focused upon this, and this therefore contains that which is of tremendous account. The Lord Jesus said with emphasis, “There are some of them that stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” Pentecost was the fulfilment of that, but the transfiguration was the meaning and nature of that. The two go together — the transfiguration and the coming of the Holy Spirit as He came on the day of Pentecost.

A Kingdom Trio

Now, in order to get right to the meaning of this, let us note that it says — and Jesus was always very deliberate and quite calculated in what He did, there was nothing casual about Him in word or in deed — “Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart.” Peter and James and John more than any others of the disciples of our Lord were those who had the great Kingdom complex. They were looking for the coming of the Kingdom. They had all the Jewish concept of the Kingdom and all the Jewish expectation of the Kingdom, and from various ejaculations of theirs it is quite clear that they were thinking in terms of the Israelitish kingdom coming in relation to Jesus. “Lord, dost thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). That is their mentality, their expectation, their hope. We can say this trio was a Kingdom trio in mentality and concept and expectation. It was as though all this system of truth or teaching about the Kingdom was focused upon and gathered up into those three men.

An Object Lesson of the Kingdom

And Jesus took them deliberately apart up into the high mountain and was transfigured before them. They were the spectators of this. They were the ones who had this unique experience. Jesus was giving them an object lesson of the Kingdom. If you look at all the features you will see how truly that was so. Jesus had said — “the Son of man coming in his kingdom”. That is the first significant thing. “The Son of man in his kingdom”. That is relationship to man, that is man being brought in according to God. This Kingdom is the Kingdom which God intended man to have, to be man’s Kingdom. It is the Kingdom of the Son of man as representing man according to God’s mind.

The Kingdom for Man

And so at once we are taken right back to the beginning of the Bible, and we see what God intended regarding the first man — to give him the Kingdom. “Thou makest him to have dominion” (Psa. 8:6). The Kingdom was the great idea in God’s mind in the creation of man, that all things should be under his feet. But that first man missed the Kingdom or lost the Kingdom, and it was not only a matter of government. Why he lost the Kingdom was because he became another kind of man, for this Kingdom belongs to a certain kind of man, and Adam, the first for whom it was intended, changed his nature by disobedience, by unbelief, and so he lost it. Another, the last Adam, comes in and recovers what Adam lost or missed — the Kingdom.

The Moral Perfection of the Kingdom

But He shows what kind of a man is the Kingdom man, and you have two things here in this presentation of the transfigured Son of man. One is moral perfection. Here He is presented in all the purity and perfection of moral victory, tested, proved in every way in which a man can be tested and proved, emerging triumphant after all. There is nothing more really to be done as far as He personally is concerned. If He descends the mountain and goes to the cross, that is not on His own account. That is to bring the other men into the Kingdom, but on His own account all is done. He has reached the point of moral perfection, and so perfection is written large in the very description of Him here: His garments and His face, the picture of moral and spiritual perfection.

The Glory of the Kingdom

The other thing is glory, and when you put those two things together, you know what the Kingdom is. It is spiritual and moral perfection in manhood issuing in glory. That is a word very difficult to understand. Of course, we usually do associate with the word “glory” the accompaniments of this transfiguration — bright, glistening, fierce light. That is quite true in this sense — if you find a person who is really by the grace of God overcoming, they are up against something that calls for much grace, maybe in themselves, some difficulty, some handicap, some discouragement, something that is so calculated to make them anything but triumphant Christians; or it may be in some other person with whom they have to live and work, it may be in the home, it may be in the business, it may be anywhere, and these people are an awful trial to them, but if you see these people triumphant through the grace of God over those trials, you do see something about them that is glorious. You can even see it in their countenance. How different they are from the people who are under their troubles. Their face tells whether they are over or under. There is something you recognize there of glory. It is a very faint illustration of this thing. Jesus has triumphed, reached the point of absolute victory on all matters, and the glory follows. I do believe that when we are glorified together with Him, there will be something very light about us — I do not mean frivolous. We shall be radiant — that is the word — radiant people. Heaven is going to be a glorious place in this sense — that everybody is going to be so radiant.

Here is Christ the Son of man radiant, and the basis of His radiance is His spiritual life. That is the Kingdom. It was for that that man was created. It was that which he lost. It is that which the last Adam has recovered in His own Person, and here in the transfiguration He gives these three representatives of the great theory of the Kingdom a real object lesson of what the Kingdom really is. “The Kingdom is not you sitting upon thrones and exercising your importance over other people, ordering them here and there and all that sort of thing. This is the Kingdom: the Kingdom is in terms of spiritual victory resulting in spiritual radiance.”

Now when He came in His Kingdom on the day of Pentecost, look how radiant they are. See how so many of those things which had bothered them and troubled them in themselves and with one another up to that point just disappeared. They were a quarrelsome crowd; they could not get on together even when they were with the Lord. They are always spoiling things by their wrong approaches and reactions and interests and ambitions. But see, now there is a mighty victory over all that. We could say it was never before possible for those twelve men to stand up together. They might have done it physically, but to really have stood up together is a mighty victory over temperamental differences and all that sort of thing of the natural man. It is a mighty victory to really be together: one voice, one heart, one mind, one objective. They are together. Lots of things have been transcended now by the coming of the Kingdom. The sovereign rule of the glorified Lord has descended upon them, and that which had been so contrary to the divine idea of the Kingdom has just gone out, and there is radiance there. They are just filled with joy. It is a wonderful picture really of transfigured men, and the church is supposed to be a transfigured church on that basis.

The Focal Point of History

This is the heart of the transfiguration. It is the Kingdom, what God meant, what man missed, what Christ has brought in in His own Person and into which He has called us, into His eternal Kingdom. It was a wonderful event. I think the greatest thing that had ever happened in the history of mankind was the transfiguration of our Lord, and yet the newspapers said nothing about it, the world knew absolutely nothing about it, completely ignorant of it for the time being. It is not found in any historical record at all apart from the New Testament, and the greatest thing in the history of mankind, the Kingdom, is always like that. The world cannot appreciate it, cannot understand it, cannot appraise it. The world really does not know anything about this. Its system of values is altogether different from spiritual values and moral perfections, and therefore it cannot appreciate even the joy and the radiance of Christians. The world looks on at a radiant Christian, and says, “I do not know what it is all about, what you are making all the fuss about.” It just cannot appreciate this joy and radiance but it is the greatest thing in history.

The Impact of the Kingdom

Well, this whole thing needs to be analysed much more thoroughly, but we are not going to be able to do that now. But note, these men, Peter, James and John, as beforehand representatives of that other idea of the Kingdom, and now the nucleus of this new idea of the Kingdom, these men felt the impact of that Kingdom that day. We even had to excuse Peter for, as we say, “putting his foot in it”. It was an awful blunder that Peter made, but there you are, you see. When you get an overwhelming experience, you make all sorts of blunders. You get carried away from yourself. And so he blurted this thing out. But the fact is that these men went down under the impact of this thing. This was the Kingdom coming in power, and when the Kingdom comes in power, we go down, we just have to go down. This is the test and the challenge of the Kingdom where we are concerned. We have all the teaching about the Kingdom, we have got a number of different systems of teaching about the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of heaven, and so on. But it is not our teaching, it is not our system, it is the effect that it has upon us, and really to truly hold the truth of the Kingdom means that we are people who have gone down with our faces to the ground before the revelation of Jesus Christ. This thing is too much for us, it is overwhelming, it is a tremendous thing. We just fall on our faces; we are like dead people. Is that how the presentation of divine truth comes to us? Do you ever sit in the presence of the presentation of the Lord Jesus, either in a meeting or with your Bible, and as it is going on, you are hearing, or you are reading, you bow your head and say, “It is too big for me, too wonderful, it is overwhelming”? I do not mean intellectually overwhelming, but spiritually. This is tremendous! It touches the heart like that, and unless that is true, there is something lacking in our apprehension of truth. Truth ought to bring us to our knees. The presentation of Jesus Christ ought to humble us and empty us, and we ought to go down on our faces — yes, if you like, in fear and trembling, anyhow so long as we go down, and that is what happened to them. It came in power, in representation, in the Person of the Son of man that day, and it registered something overwhelming upon them. You know that because it was many years after this event that Peter wrote about it. “This voice we ourselves heard borne out of heaven, when we were with him in the holy mount” (2 Pet. 1:18). Read further what he says about it. “You had better take heed”, he says, “as unto a light that shineth in a dark place.” Peter never forgot it. It came back to Peter with renewed force and it went through to the end of his life with him.

Now, we may not have a physical, objective sight of a transfigured Lord, but the Holy Spirit would make the glorified Lord glorious to us. You see, it is borne out all along. When John himself so many years afterwards saw this Son of man, he said, “I fell at his feet as one dead” (Rev. 1:17). When Saul of Tarsus saw the glorified Jesus of Nazareth, he was down on his face, a broken, crushed man, helpless, impotent in his own strength. We need to recover, do we not, this element of the wonder and glory and greatness of the Christ about whom we hear so much, that He should be redeemed from a commonplace, saved from familiarity; on the contrary, our hearts should be deeply moved.

The Lordship of Christ

I will say one other thing concerning Peter — well, we will excuse him. Probably we should do something very much like that in such an experience. “This he said,” says another writer, “not knowing what he said” (Luke 9:33). All right: but when he had said it, heaven took serious account of it, and while he was yet speaking, a cloud overshadowed them, a reaction of God from heaven, and a voice came out of the cloud saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him”. Now then, the whole question and issue of utter subjection to the Lord is brought in at that point. That is the Kingdom. You may talk foolishly, frivolously, impulsively, but look here — you had better subject all your talking to the absolute domination of your Lord. Don’t our tongues want to come under the Lordship of Christ? Therefore they are to be touched by the Kingdom and transfigured. Tongues have got to be delivered from that which is not the glory and purity of the Kingdom of the Son of  man, and in every other way. This little phrase — “Hear ye him” — don’t you go dictating to Him; don’t you make suggestions to Him: you listen to Him. That is the law of the Kingdom. Christ is the first and the last. Christ is the only One from whom we are to take our orders, our instructions. We have got to be there where we refer everything to Him, we defer everything to Him, where He is in the place of absolute Lordship.

The Need of Openness of Heart

Is it not an amazing thing? — I think it becomes the more amazing when we consider it — here is the Son of man transfigured and glorified in that brief moment as an object lesson and an example, but look at Him again and consider and contemplate all that that signifies — a man in the glory, a man glorified because perfected, all that that means. We cannot grasp it. And then listen — “And killed the Prince of life” (Acts 3:15) — a terrible thing to contemplate, killed that One. Here He is, look at Him, transformed, transfigured, and then kill Him. He was no other Son of man or Son of God that they crucified than the One on the mount; He was the same One. The point is just this, that we need really to have our eyes opened to the Lord Jesus to save us from making the most awful blunders where His honour and His glory are concerned. They did it because they were blind, and they were blind because they were prejudiced, and see what they did because they were prejudiced. It is not two Christs, the Christ of the Transfiguration Mount, and the Christ hanging on the cross. It is the same Christ, and they can do that as the result of prejudice. They can do that, a thing like that, because their hearts are not willing to have Him as Lord, as King. Oh, what we can do by reason of a closed heart and a closed mind. How necessary it is, then, for us to be in the place of obedience to the Lord and what it will lead us into. Do you get my point? Openness to the Lord will lead us right into that which Adam lost, the glorious Kingdom. Openness to the Lord is the first step back into the Kingdom. Closedness to the Lord, like Jewish prejudice, meant that Israel lost the Kingdom.

Oh, may the Lord give us an open heart, an unprejudiced mind, a pure spirit, transparent inside, and see what it will lead to. It will lead to the Kingdom, and the Kingdom is not just a system of things, although it will become that eventually. It is a nature; it is a spiritual power. It will lead us to glory. There is no glory along the line of a closed heart or a closed mind of prejudice, fear and suspicion. That is the way away from glory. The open heart, submission, subjection to Christ, is the way into the Kingdom.

A spoken message, 23rd January, 1955

Death and Resurrection

Transcribed from a message given by T. Austin-Sparks in 1965. The spoken form has been retained verbatim. Words which were not clearly discernible have been enclosed in [square] brackets.

Now, Lord, we have been reminded of that great occasion when Thy Word was given, and those that had understanding gave the sense and the people knew what it was that the Lord was saying. We do pray that it may be like that here, we’re a little company, the Word of the Lord is amongst us but there is a need that we should come into understanding and therefore there is the need of an Interpreter. Thou hast given the Holy Spirit to interpret the things of God and our prayer is that He will do that while here tonight, fulfilling the word and promise of the Lord Jesus: He shall guide you into all the Truth. Oh Spirit of the Lord and Spirit of the Word, guide us INTO the Truth tonight, may we not only hear words but be led INTO the Word to have our life in the Word. Lord, be very gracious to us as Thou knowest and understandest our need. For Thy Name’s sake we ask it. Amen.

I hope that no one here this evening will feel any offendedness when I say that my sense of leading at this time is to take you back to the foundation of our life in Christ. I expect most of you have had the experience of having many times gone over the same road, traveled in the same area, until it has become so familiar to you that you hardly notice it at all. And then one day you take with you over that old road, someone who has never been that way. And the whole thing takes on new life and new interest; you are impressed with the things that they see that you never saw, it wakes up, it is almost as though you had never been that way.  You are seeing it through other, and new eyes. It is often like that.  Now I think there is a very helpful way of coming to the word of God: trying to approach it as though we knew nothing about it, as though we’d never seen it before, forgetting all that we do know for the time being and taking it up and pursuing it with that mind that is looking at it in an altogether new way with new eyes as though it were for the first time.

Now, if we were strangers, complete strangers to Christianity and the Bible and were anxious to know what it really is so that we sat down with the New Testament and read it carefully, diligently, seekingly, honestly… what would it be that would impress us most? What would it be that would confront us supremely?  I wonder if you have ever approached the Word in that way? Now, what is it really that is THE message of this book? What is it that comes out most distinctly and definitely as we read it?

Now if you were such a person as I have imagined, coming for the first time in a spirit of inquiry to the New Testament and then reading, don’t you think that the thing that would confront you more than anything else would be this book is all about one Jesus. And the thing about Him is that He was crucified and then rose from the dead. That seems to be the uppermost and foremost thing in this whole book.

There are four narratives of His life. In quite a number of respects they differ, but they all finish here, on this. There is one thing that every writer seems to have as the end to all which he is moving and that he puts over everything else: the death of this One and His resurrection.

And then there follows a book of the history of early Christianity and when we look at it, it is all about the same thing: this Jesus Who was crucified but Who was raised from the dead.  And then we go on into nine letters or epistles written by the first apostles of this one Jesus, and we find that they are all based upon this one thing: Jesus Who died is risen, is alive. One phrase occurs repeatedly - as a matter of fact in its different forms, twenty five times – “this Jesus did God raise up from the dead”. Well, noting that, being impressed with that, we should draw our conclusion, as strangers to this whole story, our conclusion would be that this Christianity is built upon one thing and that one supreme thing is the resurrection of Jesus. That, of course, could only be if He had died. So the supreme thing about it is the resurrection of Jesus. This is what the New Testament is full of, what dominates it all, and stands out above everything else.

But we should not be able to stop there, having got that far, we should be impressed with another, a further feature. It is that although a comparatively few of the people mentioned and concerned in this book claim to have seen Jesus after His resurrection, they are ALL enjoying the reality of it!  By far the greater majority are living on the basis of that truth.  It’s something tremendously real to them, not because they have been told about it or that it had been preached to them, that it is the thing that they had been taught, because you know, you don’t really, livingly come into things by teaching. You know that!  You can be taught and taught and taught thoroughly, soundly and for a long time and yet not be in the real enjoyment and experience of it all. Teaching may be vital, it may be important, but these people that we meet in this New Testament are not just what they are, living as they are, because they have heard about Jesus being raised from the dead, but because Jesus raised from the dead is in His resurrection life THERE and then present with them!  It is not something of a few years ago, or many years ago. It is not something in history or in Christian doctrine and teaching, it is something right here NOW!  Jesus might just at this very moment in this very hour have risen from the dead and appeared to them. It is like that with them, it is A PRESENT REALITY IN EXPERIENCE.

That is what the stranger would be impressed with. It is like that!  This book is alive!  It’s alive, and everything in it is alive because Jesus is alive in the present experience of all those who have believed. And then, if you were still inquiring, you would ask the question: Now, those things are quite evident in this book, those things are quite evident, there is no mistaking them but HOW did it come about?  HOW is this thing? What is the explanation of a historic fact becoming an immediate, up to date experience with such an effect on people’s lives?  Because, you know, this matter of resurrection from the dead is a really startling thing!  Oh, we’ve got so familiar with the truth of the resurrection of Jesus. It can be something we know so well without any great wonder in it.  I venture to say if any one of your family really died and was buried and you have seen them dead and buried and a week or more afterward they came into your room and there was no mistaking about it that this appearance was YOUR one, really; no mere apparition, well, that one! You would… well, I don’t know what would happen to you! You would be perhaps startled, you would certainly say, "Well, this is the most wonderful thing that ever I’ve known! Nothing like this has ever happened before, indeed I had never believed, never thought that such a thing COULD happen!" You would be living in the wonder of it, the surprise of it, the amazement of it, it would become a tremendous POWER in your life to have an effect on you.  What you would be saying is this: well if that can happen, anything can happen!

That’s just how it was, you see? Just how it was.  They not only knew in their minds by information that Jesus was raised from the dead. That One Who was raised was there and then as real to them as Christ risen, as though they had been with that handful who had seen Him with their own eyes of flesh, after His resurrection; just as real as that.  But, I was saying, as an inquirer you would say, how do you explain this? What is the explanation? How is it that it comes about like this? And then you would have to go back to your New Testament and begin to read again to find out how. How? What is the explanation? And you would find as you made inquiry as to the how, that you would light upon a corresponding factor in the New Testament, you would come upon another person being mentioned, called the Holy Spirit. You would find that in that book containing the history of the first years of Christianity, in that book alone, one of all those that make up the New Testament, only one, this one called the Holy Spirit is referred to no fewer than seventy times! Now that’s enough to impress anybody! Seventy times referred to? And then go into these letters written by only one of these men, of these apostles of the New Testament, only one of them, his name is Paul. And he refers to this one called the Holy Spirit no fewer than one hundred and twenty times!  What is this here? We are in the presence of someone or something.

Well, this would lead us to our conclusion. Christianity is evidently this: Jesus, crucified and truly dead - may I say here in parenthesis, that the Lord God saw to it that He was really crucified. He was really dead. You see all the evidences that they killed him right enough, there’s no mistake about it. They killed Him, He was dead. It’s all there, all the four narratives make it perfectly clear and everything afterward refers to that, they make it perfectly clear that this was no mock thing, no sham thing, that Jesus really died, and He WAS dead and He WAS buried, there’s no doubt about it. The resurrection was not just resuscitation after a coma or something like that. He was dead. Now this Jesus who was really dead, and you can’t in all honesty put anything else in the place of that when you read this book, you’ve got to accept it that He was crucified and that He died and that He was really dead and buried.  Everybody knew that at any rate. He was raised from the dead, Jesus was raised from the dead and that He in resurrection was made real and true in the hearts of men and women and in their every day experience by this One called the Holy Spirit.

Forgive me friends for talking to you as to little children. Sounds like the Sunday School doesn’t it? But you know, this after all is the heart and essence of the Christian life, we know it as to its truths, but there is ever to the end need, NEED, and thank God possibility, of knowing this in a fuller and ever fuller way. This one apostle who spoke so much about it, and who knew so much about it, more than all of us put together, right at the end of his life when he is writing one of his last letters before his death still said “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection”. STILL more to know when you know ALL that such a man knows, there’s still more to know?  This is the foundation of the Christian life.  But our imaginary person [break in recorded message]

This teaching is at least as wonderful and we can truly say more wonderful than the teaching of all the other great religions, why not make then this so superior teaching of Jesus the foundation of Christianity? Why not make His character the foundation? He was such a good man, look at these life stories, what a good man He was, what a kind man, what a lot of good He did! Why not make His character the foundation of Christianity? Or why not make His heroic death the foundation? See Him laying down His life for His principles, for His truth, His teaching, for what He believed. For as He believed He was doing it for the good of other people, ready to die. Why not make that the foundation? You know quite well that people have tried to do that in each of these cases, make that the real essence of Christianity: the teaching, or the character or the heroic death of Jesus. Why not? Why make the resurrection the central and basic thing?  Now we’re getting nearer, you see, the answer to that question dear friends, includes ALL the other realities of Christianity.

Inclusively, inclusively, death is the end of everything, isn’t it?  Death is the end of everything. There are many things that men can do for men, just provided that the men are alive. If they are only alive, what a lot can be done for them!  Even if they are only half alive or quarter alive still we can do something, we say while there is life there’s hope. We can still do something while there is any bit of life remaining, we can do something. But when the life is gone, we can do nothing. All that you might try to do doesn’t profit at all. Death is the end of all that you can do. Death is the end of everything.  It’s the end and you just have to close the book and say it is finished. After that, what?  Nothing; unless God steps in! Nothing; unless there’s an intervention of God! Now men are entirely put out of court with all that they could do, they had to say: we can do no more, that’s the end, it is finished. Now it’s God’s matter. It’s God’s matter or it’s nothing at all, there’s no more. Only God can do anything now. You see, that is just the beginning of Christianity, it is that!  If God hadn’t stepped right in when Jesus was in the grave there would have been no Christianity, there would have been none of all this that the world has come into and is coming into because of Him, but God stepped in. It was God’s ALONE power and prerogative to raise the dead. Now it is utterly and absolutely and ALL of God and NOTHING of man, nothing outside of God. If Christianity begins there and is based on that then the Christian life is something which speaks of a mighty intervention of God and says: “I am today in this experience on the basis of something that only God Almighty could do. What I have, what I have is that which God alone, the Almighty, Eternal God could do. I am the fruit of that. My life rests on that. My Christianity is of that kind. It derives from an intervention of God Almighty when no one else could do anything at all”.

I wonder if the experience of every one of us is like that? You know the Lord takes pains to have it like that, that’s why so many, so many when the crisis of their salvation has arrived and they try to get through on all kinds of ground of their own works and their own activities and energies and all the rest of it, they never get through until they come to this place: only God can save me!

The Divinely Appointed Place of Christ

"The unsearchable riches of Christ" (Ephesians 3:8).

"O the depth of the riches...! how unsearchable...!" (Romans 11:33).

"Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not and which entered not into the heart of man, whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him. But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" (1 Corinthians 2:9,10).

"Canst thou by searching find out God?" (Job 11:7). (You will notice that there is a marginal rendering which puts it this way: "Canst thou find out the deep things of God?" - "The Spirit searcheth... the deep things of God.")

We ought also to read from John's Gospel chapter 16, where the Lord is saying to His disciples that when the Spirit was come He would take the things that are His, and show them (verses 13, 14).

Three Key Words

Let us look at two or three outstanding words in the passage that we have quoted of the first Corinthian letter. You notice the three words - "prepared", "searcheth", "deep things" (lit. "deeps").

"Things God prepared for them that love him" - things which God made ready for them that love Him. The question of course immediately arises: When did God prepare, or make ready, those things? The word is used in different connections, and they throw light upon this question. You remember that, when the Lord was here on earth, there was a request made of Him by a mother concerning her two sons, that, when He came into His Kingdom, they might sit one on His right hand and one on His left hand; and His answer was that that was for those for whom it was prepared (Matt 20:23). He could not grant that privilege - it was kept for those for whom it was prepared, made ready, by God. Again, the blessing of the Lord upon certain ones takes this form: "Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matt. 25:34). And the Apostle Paul writes of: "good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:10).

We shall presently touch more definitely upon when that took place, but it is quite clear, I think, from these passages, that there was a long anticipation of something, going right back to the foundation of the world - more literally the 'laying down' of the world, the mapping out of the world. It was then that things were prepared by God for them that love Him.

Then this word 'searcheth': "the Spirit searcheth all things". The word does not mean to find out, to discover. It means to range: 'the Spirit ranges the deep things of God.' The Spirit's movement is deep, far and wide, ranging and exploring the whole realm of the things of God.

And then 'deep things'. This very same word, in the singular, was the word which the Lord used to His disciples: "Put out into the deep " (Luke 5:4); and Paul used it of some of his own experiences when he said: "A night and day have I been in the deep" (2 Cor. 11:25). That will give anybody who knows anything about the sea some idea of the meaning of this word as it is employed here, in the plural, for "the deep things of God."

When we come into the realm of the things of the Spirit, and the ministry of the Holy Spirit, we are led into a very great realm, and we are going to ask this question - What are these deep things of the Spirit? We can only hope to think of some of them - perhaps only one - at this present time. What are these deep things, which have been revealed, though never explained? We must not confuse those two things. It is possible to reveal or uncover something, bring a thing into view, without explaining it, and we are not given the explanation to the deepest things of God. We are still left with very, very great questions about them, as we shall clearly see as we go on; nevertheless they have been uncovered, they have been brought to light as immense realities, and moreover brought to light for our good.

Christ God's Appointed Heir of All Things

One of the deep things of the Spirit which have been brought to light, and I think the first of them, is the place of Christ in the Divine scheme of things. Here is a very, very deep thing indeed, far beyond our fathoming, but nevertheless it is clearly before us in the Word, going right back again into past eternity. The writer to the Hebrews, speaking of the Son, says: "whom he appointed heir of all things" (Heb. 1:2). That is His place in the Divine scheme - "heir of all things". He was appointed - when? Well, before all things were created; because immediately it goes on to say: "through whom he made the ages". He was "appointed heir of all things".

You remember His parable in which He quite clearly intimated this - the parable of the wicked husbandmen who, having stoned the servants, espied the coming of the Son and said, "This is the heir come, let us kill him, and take his inheritance" (Matt. 21:38). This incidentally touches upon the deep things of Satan. It is an uncovering of Satan's deep work to rob Christ of His inheritance, and explains the Cross from the side of the enemy - the murder of the Heir with the securing of His inheritance in view. So Jesus, the Son of God, is revealed by the Spirit to be God's appointed Heir.

In the second Psalm, undoubtedly Messianic and prophetic, we read: "Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession" (Ps. 2:8). So His inheritance is the nations and the uttermost parts of the earth, Divinely appointed and ordained, and it cannot be set aside. And Heaven too - for He said on His resurrection: "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth" (Matt. 28:18). He is the Heir possessing all authority in every realm. And He is Heir to the Church - for Paul prays that, through the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of revelation, believers might be able to see "the glory of his inheritance in the saints" (Eph. 1:18) - that is, Christ's inheritance in the saints. Here are some of the all things - the nations, the uttermost parts of the earth, the heavens and the earth, and within the Church. That is a statement of fact. It is a deep thing revealed by the Spirit.

But the point arises here: 'God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit'. These things, then, must have a very real meaning for believers. This will take us away from a superficial Christianity. If we can really grasp the meaning of this first thing for ourselves, as believers, it is going to exercise upon us a very salutary effect.

The Believer's Calling

The calling of believers is said to be in accordance with His eternal purpose. What is that? The eternal purpose is Christ inheriting all things: so that our being called, our hearing the Call, is a first work of the Holy Spirit in relation to Christ coming into His inheritance, according to something laid down with the foundation of the world. That makes conversion something very much bigger than just being saved, does it not? It is not just a matter of becoming a Christian. There is this immense background to our being called. The Holy Spirit has, so to speak, 'got to work' in relation to the appointed Heir of all things: you and I are coming under the hand of the Holy Spirit as a part of that inheritance. Our very calling in grace is according to that purpose, and our calling therefore is something tremendous. It is not only our calling. The beginning of our Christian life is not something merely incidental. It is fundamental to the whole scheme of things in relation to the Lord Jesus.

The Believer's Consciousness

I think it is true to the experience of most, if not all, of those who respond to the Spirit's influence and call, that, following that response, there comes into being, there settles down within, a sense of belonging, of being owned, possessed. We feel: 'I know now where I belong - this is really where I belong. I felt that I did not belong to anything or anybody before, but now I know I belong, and to Whom I belong.' It is a sense of being taken into possession. It is a matter of ownership.

That is why there springs immediately from the lips of those who have responded to the Spirit the word 'Father'. Paul says to the Galatians that the Spirit of God has been put into our hearts, and thereby we cry 'Abba, Father': and what does 'Father' mean if it does not mean belonging? And again, 'Lord': the first ejaculation of Paul after his apprehending was 'Lord'. We love that word, but we did not always love the idea of being 'lorded'. It is foreign to human nature to be lorded over. There is a revolt in the whole human race against being lorded over by anything or anybody, but it is the Christian's delight to use that word 'Lord' - Dominus - and to be 'dominated' by Him. 'Master' - that word is music to the Christian, as applied to the Lord Jesus; but how the natural man hates the idea of 'master'!

This is the consciousness that comes in. We are not compelled or forced; it is spontaneous. The Spirit has brought us home, brought us into our rightful ownership. This is how it ought to be. For that was all arranged long, long before we had a being. We belong to Somebody, we are Somebody's, that is where we belong.

The Believer's Confidence

This leads surely to the believer's confidence. There is a tremendous value for us in the place of Christ in God's scheme of things. If really, in the 'before-times-eternal', we were made a heritage, included in the inheritance of the Son, and the Spirit calls, do you think there is going to be any difficulty in our acceptance? It is altogether out of keeping with this whole scheme of things to have any question at all as to whether we shall be accepted. If you had an inheritance, and that inheritance was brought within your reach, do you think there would be any argument as to whether it could be accepted? None at all. And so this very great, deep, blessed truth of Christ's inheritance in the saints gives us a ground of confidence as to our acceptance. There is no question about it, we belong to Him - why have any question as to whether we shall be accepted?

Of course, He has done everything to make our acceptance a blessed reality and to dispose of anything in the way. What a ground of assurance! This whole question of assurance amongst believers is so often challenged by the Devil and every demon that he has, with the object of shaking confidence, shaking assurance, bringing in doubt. Why? - there is no ground for it at all. It is not contingent upon our worthiness, or anything about us - except that we believe it. Long before this terribly complicated make-up of ours had any acceptance, the whole thing was planned. We were given to the Lord Jesus, and we belong to Him. What a ground of assurance, then! It stands rooted in eternity; it stands rooted in the Divine counsels. If you've heard the Spirit's call, that is not just something belonging to this moment or to this life. That is something which ranges all the ages and goes right back to the beginning. I say again: What a ground of assurance!

And He will keep surely that which belongs to Him. "I am persuaded that he is able to keep" (2 Tim. 1:12). Is the Lord Jesus able to keep what is put into His hands and what really belongs to Him from eternity past? Is He able to keep it? What a ground of assurance for keeping! We need have no worry about tomorrow, about the future. He is able to keep. Oh, those mighty words of the Apostle - "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" (Rom. 8:35) - followed by a catalogue of everything conceivable that might be thought to have the power of separating - only to be swallowed up by: 'I am persuaded, none of these things' - "we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." Why? Simply because we belong to Him.

The Church's Message

We have seen something of the believer's life, as to what lies behind the call, as to what accompanies the call, for assurance, for confidence for the future. What about the Church's message? You see, the Church's message is called a proclamation. The word most characteristic of the function of the messenger of Christ is that he is a herald. It is a herald's business to make a proclamation, an announcement, a declaration. What is the message? It is an announcement, it is a declaration, it is a proclamation - and, mark you, this means far more than may appear on the surface - that all things belong to the Lord Jesus.

Every unsaved man and woman belongs, by right, to the Lord Jesus. This world, in every spot, by right belongs to the Lord Jesus. Put your foot down just where you are and say, 'This place belongs to Christ by right!' The Holy Ghost takes account of that, stands on that. Oh, yes: although He has not got them, they belong to Him. But, you see, it raises tremendous issues. If you declare the fact that men and women belong to the Lord Jesus by every right of creation and redemption, as His inheritance: if you declare it, if you make it known, then if they refuse they are held as guilty of rebellion against the rightful owner. It precipitates a very positive, clear-cut issue. If there should be reading these lines an unsaved person - any person who does not recognise the absolute ownership of the Lord Jesus - and you are not, in the presence of this declaration, ceding Him His rights, you are positively guilty of rebellion against God's appointed Heir. It raises a tremendous issue. And it goes beyond that. If you belong to the Lord Jesus, by right of God's giving and appointing, and you do not give Him yourself, you are robbing Jesus Christ of His rights. It is a very positive issue. You are in the category of a robber of God, and that is very serious.

So this is the proclamation. There is the good side, the Gospel side, of this. It is a grand thing, on the grounds which we have set forth, to know that I really belong to the Lord Jesus. Recognising and acknowledging that, there is no question as to whether He will accept what belongs to Him; there is no question as to whether he will keep what belongs to Him; there is no question as to the destiny of what belongs to Him. All I have to do is to believe and to cede to Him His rights.

This is the work of the messenger; the herald, the proclaimer. The Holy Spirit is said to be committed to this. If we make the right proclamation or take the right position in relation to Christ's place in God's scheme of things, the Holy Spirit comes in on that. It may be that very often the Holy Spirit cannot come in and precipitate issues because we are not clear-cut enough as to what this whole thing is about. It is about nothing less than Christ's Heirship of all things. Bring that in, and the Holy Spirit will come with tremendous conviction. We make the issue so much less - usually what the individual is going to get as the benefit of coming to the Lord Jesus - instead of primarily the rights of the Lord Jesus Himself. If we proclaim Him as Lord, the Holy Spirit will set His seal to that. In the unsaved or in the saved, when we cede anything to Him as Lord, let Him take His place as Lord on any point, the Holy Spirit bears witness. That is always His ground.

So the Spirit is committed to calling according to purpose, to sealing those who respond, to conforming them to the image of God's Son, and to guiding them into all the truth related to God's purpose.

That is Christ's place. It is a deep thing of God, it is a big thing, it is an immense thing, but this has been revealed, amongst many other things, to us by the Spirit. May the Lord strengthen us by His Word.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, November-December 1956, Vol 34-6

The Face of Christ

The face of Jesus Christ embraces all that is signified by "the Man Christ Jesus" from eternity to eternity in relation to God's thought, God's will, God's design. It is all behind that face. That is what we mean when we say: Catch a glimpse of the face of Jesus Christ, and you have the wonder of all ages - the glory of God from eternity to eternity in the face of Jesus Christ: the Divine counsels; the creation, the redemption, and the glorification of humanity - of man - in "the Man Christ Jesus."

That is for those who see that Righteous One and hear the voice of His mouth. But for those who through disobedience and unbelief still allow that veil to remain which the god of this age hath cast over the hearts of the unbelieving, God "hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom He hath ordained..." (Acts 17:31). For the one, the Man represents the glory of God. For the other, the Man represents the judgment of God. It is to be in and through and by a Man. You see how God has summed up all things in Christ. It is all in the face of Jesus Christ.

I do not know what that conveys to you. Let me make it clear that this is not the fruit of simply sitting down and studying. I did not sit down and study this. It came to me like the passing of something before my heart, and I tell you I was stirred in heart at what I saw to be the meaning of the face of Jesus Christ.

I can understand now why Paul was revolutionized. He saw the face of Jesus Christ. He did not simply see a blazing light on the way to Damascus. He saw the significance of Jesus of Nazareth in the glory - the Man whom he had probably seen in Jerusalem... the Man whom he had hated - had loathed - as a blasphemer, as an apostate... the Man whom he thought had been rightly handled and given His due when He was crucified.

He saw that Man... and what that Man meant as installed in heaven at God's right hand; and there broke upon him something of the significance of Jesus Christ, as he saw the face of Jesus in that eternal, universal, and spiritual sense - that all-inclusive sense. Out from that beholding - for he never stopped beholding inwardly the face of Jesus - there grew and grew the explanation of history, the explanation of the race, the explanation of man, the explanation of human destiny, the explanation of the Cross... this unveiling of things which no man could ever know by reason or study. There came out into the heart of Paul the knowledge of what went on in Divine counsels in eternity of old. It was all seen in the face of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ interpreted everything - explained everything - revealed everything.

This it was that made Paul the man he was. It was this that gave him the power of endurance, the power of suffering, the power of going on. He had seen the face of Jesus Christ... and what a realm, what a wealth, what fulness was in that face!

He says, "We have this ministry" (2 Corinthians 4:1). What ministry? Why, this: God hath "shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Our ministry is simply to tell what we have seen in that face - the meaning of Jesus Christ - "the Man Christ Jesus" - the amazing wonder of a Man! Yes, not forgetting all that is extra to that - and ever was, and ever will be - of Godhead... but in the light of that, the amazing wonder of a Man!

I confess to you that while I glory in Christ as Son of God... and while I glory in Him as very God, and in God as God... the real wonder of it all only comes to me as I see that wealth of glory coming down into the face of a Man - as I see that expressed in a Man - all taken up in a Man. Yes, Man of my manhood, but different! Man torn with all my passions, and yet without sin in Himself! That is to say, a Man beset by all my temptations, and knowing what it is to have to battle with that pressure which comes upon us in order to overwhelm us.

In our case much of it arises from within; but, oh, we do know to some extent what it is to have that pressure come upon us from without and to have something evil impinging upon us. He knew the full force of that as you and I have never known it - the impingement of universal evil to try to make Him think other than He would think, act other than He would act, and choose other than He would choose... and that under all manner of circumstances which would facilitate the temptation and the tempter.

Yes, a Man has triumphed. A Man has taken up the fight. A Man has come through. A Man has realized in humanity God's end in Himself and taken that perfected humanity back into the glory... and is installed and related. And now by the blessed Eternal Spirit, through faith, we are joined to that Man - joined to Him one spirit - to be one Body, one glorified humanity eventually, of which we now have the earnest in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

It is marvelous! It is beyond our apprehension, our power of expression! Oh, that the Lord would open our hearts - yea, break them open and give us a new apprehension and grasp of the meaning of the face of Jesus Christ! Dwell upon that, and ask the Lord continually to shine in, shine in, shine in... to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The Son of Man! Do you notice where He took that title? He asked: "Who do men say that I am?" Elijah! One of the prophets of old! "But who say ye that I am." "The Christ of God!" Then He commanded them to tell no man but to keep that to themselves - to keep that covered. That was something which for the moment was to be suspended. At that point, for the first time, He took to Himself the title, "Son of Man" - "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected... and killed."

What is the import of this? Oh, He has leaped over the bounds of Messiahship. "The Christ of God!" That is all right for Israel, but He has gone beyond Israel now. Israel is refusing their Messiah. The title "Son of Man" passes far beyond the bounds of Israel and is the racial representation. Not Israel, but all men - He is the worldwide, universal Son of Man.

How? By the Cross. The Christ has leaped over all the limitations of nationality, even of Israel, and has bounded the range of humanity. He took the title "Son of Man" as Israel refused their Messiah and the Cross came into view. He saw that the Cross was leading to a baptism of passion, which would mean a baptism of fire into all the earth. Not to Israel now! Say nothing about that! This is not the time to preach Israel's Messiah! The time has now come into view when by the Cross all men are coming into God's eternal thought.

The Lord open our hearts to see the face of Jesus Christ.

The Fulness of Christ

The field of our meditation mainly will be the book of Joshua and the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians. The fragment which is the key to this meditation is in Ephesians 4:13:

"Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the  measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

This verse might very well be placed at the commencement of the book of Joshua, and it would give a very good interpretation to that book, and be a guide for the spiritual reading and study of the book. It would explain all that is happening after Israel has crossed the Jordan and entered the land. It would explain things from both sides; from the side of the Divine intention, and from the side of the adversary's withstanding. It would represent what the Lord is seeking, and what the foes are against.

"Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith..." Carry that first clause of the verse through the book of Joshua, and it is very illuminating.

"...and of the knowledge of the Son of God..." the same applies there. It will be necessary to take just a fragment from the letter to the Hebrews perhaps, to help us in that connection as to Joshua being appointed to bring into rest. But Joshua did not fully accomplish that purpose in bringing into rest "There remaineth therefore, a rest for the people of God" (Hebrew 4:9). That "rest remaining" is found in Christ. The book of Joshua is intended to point to the fulness of the knowledge of the Son of God in the saints; of coming to finality, to rest; "...unto a fullgrown man..." and that clearly stands in  contradistinction from the wilderness life of spiritual immaturity.

"... unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." It is only possible to understand the land in the light of the fulness of Christ. All the superlative promises connected with that land are transferred spiritually to the Lord Jesus. He is God's fulness for His people in every respect.

Truly this 13th verse of Ephesians 4 is a magnificent introduction to the book of Joshua. The last clause embodies all the other clauses: "...the fulness of Christ." That is the end in view.

The letters to the Ephesians and Colossians as a whole have to do with the fulness of Christ. In the Colossian letter it is the fulness of Christ as Head; in the Ephesian letter it is the fulness of Christ as Head over all things to the Church which is His Body, which is the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.

The Trinity in Action

Returning to the typical, or illustrative side of this spiritual truth as brought out in the life of Israel, we might begin by noticing the three sections of Israel's history. Firstly in Egypt and the deliverance; secondly, in the wilderness; thirdly, in the land. Each of these represents a specific relation of the Godhead.

1. The Father in Egypt.

The firstEgypt and the deliverancesees God the Father acting in Sovereign grace. The thought of the Father is very definitely introduced when the commission is given to Moses. Moses was told to say to Pharaoh: "Let my son go that he may serve me "; and "Thou hast refused to let him go; behold, I will slay thy son, thy firstborn." It is God the Father acting in Sovereign grace in relation to Israel in Egypt, and Israel's deliverance. It is God, Whose heart is set upon His family, His children, Who takes the initiative in relation to men and women in the bondage of the world of sin, and Satan. It is God who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. The paternal element is there in Sovereign grace to secure a family.

2. The Son in the Wilderness.

In the second casein the wildernessit is Christ as the pattern and basis of life. The pattern, perhaps consummately represented in the Tabernacle and all the ordinances of the Tabernacle, is Christ in Person, and Christ as a heavenly order, a spiritual system, to which the people of God are to be conformed, unto which likeness they are to be brought.   It is brought out very clearly in the New Testament. Christ is there spoken of as the basis of life. In the wilderness there were many types of Christ as the life of the heavenly people, the Manna, the Bread: "I am the bread of life"; "Your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness..."; "I am the living bread." The water from the rock, is referred to by the Apostle Paul: "I would not have you ignorant brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptised unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea... and did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them; and  the  rock  was  Christ." And  so on many other occasions we find Christ in the wilderness as the basis of life.

3. The Spirit in the Land.

When we come to the third casein the landwe come to the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit in energy concerning attaining unto the fulness of Christ. Joshua, as we well know, is a type of the energy of the Holy Ghost. Joshua came under the government of the Captain of Jehovah's hoststhe Holy Spirit in relation to Christ in the place of absolute authority.

These three sections of Israel's history bring into view the three relationships of the Godhead in their specific expression; the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. The Father and redemption; the Son and the redemptive object; the Holy Spirit and the redemptive energy.

Four Features of the Book of Joshua

The book of Joshua corresponds to Ephesians and Colossians in four things, in the main:

Firstly, in Christ risenon the far side of Jordan.

Secondly, in the heavenlies in Christ. A people who are regarded as entirely detached from this world and who are forbidden to have any kind of voluntary relationship therewith.

Thirdly, spiritual increasegoing on unto full growth, to God's end.

Fourthly, spiritual government.

Those are the four things which are the main lines of the book of Joshua, and they are the four things which characterise in an outstanding way the letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians.

The important thing to see is that these are successive steps, each of which makes the other necessary, both before and after.

If you are in Christ risen, then, as Paul says in Colossians 3:1, you must seek those things which are above, where Christ is. The risen life with Christ demands the heavenly position and the heavenly life in Christ.

To have a heavenly life with Christ now you must know resurrection life in Christ. It is impossible to know a life in heavenly fellowship with the Lord if you do not know Him in the power of His resurrection. It is a thing which is basic. It is a crisis at a certain point, but it is a thing which goes on all the time. Every day, in order to maintain and continuously enjoy our heavenly life and position in Christ we have to apply the power of His resurrection; that is, live upon His risen life. If we are daily and really living upon the risen life of the Lord Jesus, we shall know what heavenly fellowship is. These things demand each other, both ways.

Then, if we are risen with Christ, and in a heavenly fellowship, we shall move to the third thing spontaneouslyspiritual increase; growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ; moving on to maturity, to fulness.

Let us work back again. There can be no spiritual increase only as we are living out of voluntary contact with what is meant by the world spiritually and morally. We can never grow in Christ if we have any kind of root in, or link with the world spiritually or morally. If we have, it will keep us back from spiritual growth. We can never know spiritual increase only as we know the energy of the risen life of the Lord Jesus.

Then the fourth thing followsspiritual government, ascendancy, authority, power, dominion. That is something more than position. That is putting your position into an executive form. You may have a position in which you are not functioning. That wants explaining, but it is easily made very simple and very practical. What is spiritual government? What is spiritual ascendancy? Some people have, it seems, reduced this question of authority, government and power to apply merely to the realm of direct power over the enemy, and whenever authority or government is mentioned they have some idea of exorcism and dealing with demons, and so on. That may be quite a proper realm for the exercise of authority in Christ, but more often than not the experience of the average Christian is dealing with demons indirectly, and not directly. If someone just crosses a desire, a preference, a like of ours, and becomes thereby a means of irritation or annoyance, there is plenty of room for losing your position and breaking down in your ascendancy. There is, on the other hand, the very opportunity for proving that you are above and not beneath. In a thousand different ways in ordinary everyday life, the whole question of government is involved. Every provocation is a test of spiritual government. Why does the Lord not remove difficult and awkward people from the sphere of our lives, but leaves them there? We may have prayed many times for the Lord to take them out of our range, to deliver us from them; and the Lord ignores all such prayers. He is simply saying: This is unto the enlargement of Christ! How? Simply by our getting  on top  of the situation by faith's appropriation of Christ. That is the government  of Christ. That  is spiritual increase. That is spiritual ascendancy.

Countless are the ways in which we can go up or go down almost any day, and many times in a day; and whether we go up or down depends entirely upon the measure of Christ that is in us, to which we have attained. If there is a large measure of Christ, then we shall be able to meet evil with good, and so triumph. That is government. Indirectly we are simply dealing with the foe. The enemy counts upon that ground of fleshly reaction for his victories all the time. If he has no ground of fleshly reactionthat is, if we do not react in the fleshthe enemy is a defeated foe, and we are in the place of authority over him. Authority is not simply official; it is spiritual, it is moral, it is "Christ in you..."

Spiritual and Moral AscendancyGod's Desire For Us

That is what the Lord is after. He is after getting His people into a place of spiritual elevation, above with Himself. That should be the outworking of our risen union with Christ, our heavenly fellowship with Christ and of our spiritual increase in Christ. Working backward, it is so plain, so patent, that you can never know spiritual dominion, moral elevation, unless you have the increase of Christ, growing spiritually, and unless you know what heavenly union with Christ is, and unless you know the power of His resurrection.

Note some of the corresponding features of Joshua, Ephesians and Colossians. Here is a little basis of study in these three books. See how many times in the first chapter of the book of Joshua there is a call for spiritual strength, or to be strong. In that first chapter the Lord says again and again to Joshua: "Be strong, and of a good courage"; "Have not I commanded thee, be strong..." Turn to the letter to the Ephesians, chapter 3 verse 10: "That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man."

Chapter 1, verses 19-21: "...that ye may know... the exceeding greatness of his power to-us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and made him to sit at his own right hand... far above all..."

Or again, in Chapter 6, verse 10: "Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might."

We must recognise that all that is unto something. It comes in the first chapter of the book of Joshua, and in Ephesians what is in view is brought so clearly out. It is a spiritual conflict, for which nature makes no provision, and for which man finds nothing in himself.

Turn to the Colossian letter, Chapter 1, verse 11: "Strengthened with all power, according to the might of his glory..."

Look again at Joshua, chapter 3. There you have the crossing of the Jordan. The typical meaning of Jordan is identification with Christ in death, burial and resurrection. It is the Romans 6, position.

Turn to Ephesians, and in chapters 2 and 3, you will find the Jordan aspect of things referred to quite definitely: "And you did he quicken, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins... and raised us up together with him..."

Then in Colossians, chapter 2, verses 10-12: "And in him ye are made full... in whom ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead."

Three Features of the Land

In the book of Joshua you are at length in the land, and being in the land represents three things:

1. Resurrection life with Christ.

2. Heavenly union with Christ.

3. Fulness in Christ: the measure of Christ.

When you turn to these two New Testament letters, you see how much there is said about these three things.

In Ephesians it is: "And raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenlies, in Christ Jesus."

In Colossians it is: "If ye then were raised with Christ, seek the things which are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your affections on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God."

The fulness in Ephesians is: "That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye... may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the knowledge surpassing love..."

The fulness in Colossians is the matchless representation of Christ's fulness, and then we are told that we are made full in Him. So that over Jordan, in the land, all these things as spiritual realities obtain.

Further, in the book of Joshua there is the conquest. In Ephesians, in the heavenlies, "our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness..." That is a Joshua touch.

As you pass on in the book of Joshua you find that you come to the question of relationships. A very interesting and illuminating section of Joshua has to do with relationships in the inheritance. In the corresponding Scriptures in Ephesians there is so much about relationships in Christ. Chapers 4 and 5 have to do mainly with relationships in the Body of Christ. The same thing is in Colossians.

Then as to government. Joshua brings the government very clearly into view. One little touch alone will at once show that line of things in the book of Joshuathe bringing of the kings, and the command to put the feet upon the necks of the kings. That will carry us to the New Testament, and on our way through (so to speak) to Ephesians and Colossians we pass through Romans, and we see: "And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly." (16:20).

In Ephesians the word is: "Far above all rule and authority and principality and power." We are called into that heavenly union with Him in ascendancy over these spiritual forces.

So we see the corresponding features between these books of the Old and New Testaments. Having paved the way for a meditation we can go a little further in seeing the present spiritual value of all this. What we need to see, in the main, is God's purpose, and then God's means and methods of reaching His purpose.

God's Purpose

God's purpose is clearly revealed to be the bringing of the saints to the fulness of Christ. Paul would put that in various ways. He uses that word: "Till we all attain unto the fulness of Christ." In another place he will express it in this way: "That we may present every man perfect in Christ." To go through Paul's letters alone with the thought of spiritual completeness, perfection (in the right usage and meaning of that word "perfection"it means completeness, fulness), is to see how tremendous this matter is in the Divine thought. God's purpose is shown to be, by an overwhelming amount of Scripture, the bringing of the saints to the fulness of Christ. What follows is God's means and methods of reaching that end.

Some Things which are Basic to the Purpose

If God is going to get His end; that is, the saints brought to the fulness of Christ, then some things are necessary to Him for His end, as well as to us to get to God's end.

The first thing is a heart which is wholly set upon the Lord. Unless the Lord has that in us He has no hope, no chance; and unless our hearts are wholly set upon the Lord, all the Lord's purpose can never be our blessed experience.

Joshua and Caleb, as embodying the company that went into the land, clearly represent that principle. They wholly followed the Lord, and, doing so, they are set in contrast with the ten spies who accompanied them in the first investigation of the land. The others did not wholly follow the Lord, simply because their hearts were not wholly set upon the Lord; and the history of the generation which fell in the wilderness is simply the history of a heart not wholly set upon the Lord.

If you want proof of that from the Word, you may have it in such portions as we find in Psalm 7:37, or in Psalm 106:24:"They despised the pleasant land..." That shows quite clearly that their heart was not set upon the land, and wholly after the Lord.

If you want a more vivid, and perhaps more terrible analytical commentary upon their history you have it in 1 Corinthians 10:6-11. That is a statement that their hearts were not wholly set upon the Lord; therefore, they did not enter into the land, come to the inheritance, nor attain unto  God's end.

A heart wholly set upon the Lord is one which has clearly discriminated between salvation for its own sake, for blessing and gain; and salvation with God's purpose, in view. There is all the difference between those things. Salvation for its own sake, just to know that you are saved, for blessing and gain to the one who is saved, is one thing. But salvation with God's purpose in view is quite another thing. Of course, that generation of Israelites wanted to be saved. The idea of salvation in Egypt was a great idea, they would respond to it; but in their minds salvation meant something better for themselves. When at any point it seemed as though salvation was not working out as they had expected it would work out, for their own good, and they were being tested, then they regarded salvation as not being the blessing that they thought it was. This showed quite clearly that salvation for them was purely a matter of personal good, personal gain, personal blessing. It was salvation for its own sake. Joshua and Caleb, and the people who were of their spirit, went in with God's end in view. It was the Lord's delight which was in view. What was it they said? Was it not this: "If the Lord delight in us..." It is a question of the Lord's delight. They had their hearts adjusted to the delight of the Lord.

The wilderness is a very great demonstration of the larger purpose of salvation; that is, that the Lord has interests, and that His people can only know the full meaning of their salvation as the Lord has His object. The fact that they perished in the wilderness shows quite clearly that failure to apprehend the Lord's interests and the Lord's object means that we never come to the full enjoyment of our own salvation. To put that the other way; to enjoy salvation to the full it must be swung right away from ourselves and be regarded in the light of the Lord's glory, the Lord's interests, the Lord's object. The wilderness is a great demonstration of that. They never came to the full blessing of their salvation because they fell short of what the Lord was after in their salvation. The Lord said of them: "This people have I formed for myself." Over against that, this people sought to have all that the Lord meant for themselves, instead of for the Lord.

The wilderness represents the life outwardly in relation to the Lord, but inwardly in relation to self. On the outside they would claim to be the Lord's people. On the outside there would be all that which was the constituent of a people of God. But on the inside the whole relationship was with self.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1934 Vol. 12-6

"Gather My Saints Together"

"Gather my saints together unto me, those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice." (Psalm 50:5).

"Now we beseech you, brethren, touching the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him" (2 Thess. 2:1).

"Not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh" (Hebrews 10:25).

In all of the above passages there is this one common factor, that an end-time movement and feature is dominant. It must be remembered that the Psalms themselves represent what remains when a history of outward things as to the general instrumentality has ended in failure. The history of Israel in its first great phase closed with the book of "Kings" in a calamitous and shameful way. Weakness, paralysis, declension, reproach, characterized the instrument in general. But out of that history now so concluded the Psalms are carried forward, and they represent what has spiritually been gained and is permanent. This is pre-eminently a personal, inward, spiritual knowledge of the Lord gained through experience. That is why they always reach the heart and never fail to touch experience at every point. To them the saints have turned in times of deep experience. They are the ministry of experience to experience, the only ministry which is permanent. The end-time instrument will always be that which inwardly knows the Lord in a deep and living way through history fraught with much experience of the heights and depths. What David gave to the Chief Musician for the wind instruments and the stringed instruments touches the highest and deepest notes of a mortal's knowledge of God. Worship, Salvation, Sorrow, Appeal, Victory, Battle, Faith, Hope, Glory, Instruction, are all great themes interwoven with the mass of matters touched, but the point is that all came in real life; he passed through it all. It is this, and this alone, which can serve the Lord when what He first raised up has failed Him as a public instrument. So the Lord would take pains to secure this, and this may explain much of the suffering and sorrow through which He takes His chosen vessels.

It does not need pointing out that, in the other two passages with which we commenced, the end-time is in view; they definitely state it.

There is a further common feature, however, which is more particularly the subject before us. They all definitely refer to gathering together as something related to the end-time. The Day is drawing nigh, therefore there is to be a "so much the more" assembling together. The Lord is coming, and there is a gathering to Him.

A history of a religious system which sprang out of something which the Lord raised up in the first place has ended in weakness, chaos and shame. Therefore, there is to be a re-gathering to the Lord of His saints.

Before we deal with the nature of this end-time gathering, we must get clearly in view those that are concerned in it. The passage in the Psalm would embrace and include those referred to in the other two passages.

"My Saints... Those That Have Made a Covenant with Me by Sacrifice"

It need hardly be remarked that when all has been said and done through type, symbol and figure, the covenant means an entering into what the Lord Jesus has done by His shed Blood. It is an appreciation and apprehension of Him in His great work by the Cross. The Lord, by His Blood, has made a "New Covenant" by sacrifice, and we, His spiritual people, have entered into that covenant and set our hand to it. Christ as "the mediator of a new covenant" stands for both parties, for a covenant requires two parties. On one side He is God, "The Son of God": on the other side He is man, "Son of Man". In Christ we are made the humanity side of the covenant, and by taking our place by faith in Him we enter into the covenant. Just as, in Christ, God has come out to us in a great committal, so also - as in the case of Christ - we in Him go out to God in a like utter committal. The Blood seals the covenant, that is, makes us wholly the Lord's, and the Lord wholly ours.

If we see the meaning of "a covenant by sacrifice" then we shall see who it is that will be in this gathering together. It will certainly be only those to whom the Lord is everything, to whom He is all and in all; and those who are all for the Lord without a reservation, a personal interest, or anything that is less or other than Himself. Spiritual oneness is only possible on this basis.

The Lord's word to Abraham in the day of covenant was, "Now I know that thou fearest God". Malachi's end-time word was "Then they that feared the Lord..." The fear of the Lord is an utter abandonment to Him at any cost; His will being supreme, claiming and obtaining the measure of a whole burnt-offering.

The Nature of the Gathering Together

Having then in view the kind who are concerned, which forms a test as well as a testimony, we are able to look at the nature of the gathering together.

We are well aware that there is a widespread doubt as to whether we are to expect anything in the way of a corporate movement or testimony at the end. Indeed, it is strongly held by some that everything at the end is individual, and this conviction rests, for the most part, upon the phrase "If any man", in the message to Laodicea.

Let us hasten then to say that we here have nothing in mind in the nature of an organized movement, a sect, a society, a fraternity, or even a "fellowship" if, by that, any of the foregoing is meant.

Having said this, however, there are some things on the other side which need saying quite definitely.

The Church of the New Testament never was an organized movement. Neither was there any organized affiliation of the companies of believers in various places with one another. It was a purely spiritual thing, spontaneous in life and united only by the Holy Spirit and mutual love and spiritual solicitude. There were other factors which acted as spiritual links which we will mention presently. Further, and still more important, was the abiding fact that a "Body" had been brought into being. This is called "the body of Christ". You can divide a society and still it remains, but you cannot divide a body without destroying the entity.

Are we to understand from the exponents of the individualistic interpretation that all the teaching of the Lord, in nearly all the Scriptures concerning the House of God, and in nearly all the letters of Paul concerning the Body of Christ, is now set aside or is only an idea without any expression on the earth? Are we to blot out the mass of the New Testament and live our own individual Christian lives with no emphasis upon working fellowship with other believers? Surely not. This would be contrary to all the ways of God in history, and would certainly spell defeat, for if there is one thing against which the Adversary has set himself it is the fellowship of God's people.

Ultra-individualism is impossible if the truth of the "one body" still stands, and what is more, the Lord's people are becoming more and more conscious of their absolute need of fellowship, especially in prayer. The difficulty of 'getting through' alone is becoming greater as we approach the end.

What then is the nature of this gathering together?

It is a gathering to the Lord Himself. "Gather my saints together unto me"; "our gathering unto Him".

In times past there have been gatherings to men, great preachers, great teachers, great leaders; or to great institutions and movements, centres and teachings. At the end the Lord will be very much more than His vessels or instrumentalities.

God's end is Christ, and as we get nearer the end He must become almost immediately the object of appreciation.

Our oneness and fellowship is not in a teaching, a 'testimony', a community, a place, but in a Person, and in Him not merely doctrinally but livingly and experimentally.

Any movement truly of God must have this as its supreme and all-inclusive feature, that it is the Lord Jesus who is the object of heart adoration and worship.

The two great purposes of the 'gathering' are prayer and 'building up'; "supplication for all saints", and spiritual food. These two things have ever characterized Divine gatherings or convocations - representation before God, and feeding in His presence.

This, then, is the meaning of "call a solemn assembly" (Joel 1:14; 2:15). The need more than ever imperative as "the day" approaches is the gathering together unto Him.

May we see more of this as His Divinely inspired movement to meet the so great need!

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1952, Vol 30-6

God's Eternal Thought of Sonship

Ultimately it is sonship which represents and embodies all God's thought. So the one thing that is constantly reiterated about Solomon is sonship. ''Solomon thy son shall build My house and My courts; for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be his father'' (1 Chron. 28:6). ''Thy son... My son.'' David said, ''Of all my sons (for the Lord hath given me many sons) He hath chosen Solomon my son'' (1 Chron. 28:5) - the inclusiveness of sonship, and in a certain sense the exclusiveness also. It is this word ''son'' that rules where Solomon is concerned. And when we come over to Christ, to the greater Son of David, we find that everything heads up to, and takes its character and its meaning from, His Sonship.

We find that in this matter John and Paul are the great exponents. John presents Christ preeminently as the Son. He sums up all his Gospel in a statement that everything written therein was with one object, that the readers might "believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing they might have life in His Name (John 20:31). John, then, presents Christ as the Son. It is the Person that John has in view.

Paul also represents Christ as the Son, but he goes further. What I mean is this: Paul goes on to open up the content of sonship and to show that there is an aspect of it which is a related matter. By the Holy Spirit we are sons. Christ a first one, the Firstborn; and (leaving out the factor of deity) sonship as a relationship is something into which we are called; and that is Paul's great theme, the meaning of sonship: the content, the explanation, the relatedness, the inclusiveness of it.

I think it is quite patent that the things said by God to and concerning Solomon were not meant to be fulfilled in their entirety and fullness in him. The Lord was speaking with a further thought, with a mind beyond Solomon. He was really, in His own mind, speaking about the Lord Jesus. Solomon would be but a temporary, partial fulfillment of what God said about sonship, and about the kingdom and the house. God was thinking further on. ''I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son''; ''I will establish his kingdom'' - these words were spoken of Solomon, but it is not difficult to see that in the case of the Lord Jesus there is an infinite transcendence. There is something here in connection with Him which goes far beyond anything that was possible in the case of Solomon.

What I am stressing in the first place is this: John and Paul bring Christ into view as Son on the principle of eternity. You know how John seeks to press that home in his Gospel in a number of very impressive ways. He opens, ''In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God'', clearly intending to emphasize the eternity of this sonship; for he very soon comes into time - "And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us"; that is the time aspect, the Now, the other is timeless.

But Paul not only brings Christ in in His eternity; he begins to build the Church upon that eternity. In the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians which are in my mind just now, we have Christ in His eternity, and then: ''He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world'' (Eph. 1:4). From that eternal election and foreordination and predestination Paul builds the Church. He says, This is no thing of time or of earth; this is a thing that has its roots and its foundation away back in eternity, and it goes on unto the ages of the ages. Time is a mere fragment in this thing. Paul is building upon the eternity of Christ. What has that to say to us? Well, of course, it bears out our first and all-governing point, the transcendence of Christ over Solomon. This greater than Solomon that is here, this Son, how infinitely more He is than that son!

What is sonship? In accordance with God's full thought, not His partial thought in Solomon; that is only representation and type and figure and shadow; but in reality, it is something which takes its rise out of eternity and goes on when time shall be no more. That is sonship in God's thought.

We have said before that emancipation from all our difficulties and problems will be along the line of spiritual enlargement, and spiritual enlargement will be by way of a new and far greater apprehension of Christ; and here it is. Look at Him! What is the object of telling us all this about Christ? Do we just want information that Christ is God's Son and that He was one with the Father in eternity and will be forever and ever? I am quite reverent in asking that question and in saying that as a purely objective matter somewhere out in God' s universe it does not matter to me very much. But when you say that God has revealed this to men, then I want to know why. What is in the Divine mind in revealing it? And the answer is here: you and I are concerned in it, we were chosen in relation to it before the world was, in Him we are bound up with it. Oh, then, receiving eternal life, age-binding life, being linked with the eternal Son of God, what an immense thing it is! Sonship goes beyond anything that is merely temporary and transient. Our union with Christ brings us right into the roots of His eternity, not only in duration but in character, in nature; for eternal life is not merely endless duration, it is the glory of God in nature, in essence.

So Paul builds everything upon this fact of eternity and brings us in. What a wonderful revelation! As a mere presentation of truth it is fascinating, captivating, bewildering. But brought home by the Holy Spirit, how transforming it can be, how establishing, how emancipating! Oh, if only the Church lived in the good of that, how all these petty, temporary factors would go out! After all, what does this and that matter? It is only for time and for this world at most; but the thing that matters is what God is doing above and beyond this world altogether.

God's Higher Order of Man

"And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly" (1 Corinthians 15:45-49).

I think there are a lot of Christian people who have the idea that what God is seeking to do through the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus in atonement for sin - in the salvation and recovery of man from his lost state - is to get him back to the place where Adam was before the fall. Now do you have that idea? Is that your idea of redemption - that you just undo everything that went wrong in and through Adam and restore things to that unfallen state in which Adam was before he fell?

If that is so, you are entirely wrong. God is not seeking to do any such thing. He is not conforming to the first Adam at all, not even to an unfallen first Adam. He has gone immeasurably beyond an unfallen first Adam. He has left him behind altogether... and has One who is an entirely different order of being from the unfallen Adam. The first Adam was a living soul; the last Adam was a Life-giving spirit. The first man was of the earth, earthy; the last is of heaven, heavenly. Therefore, "as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly."

This heavenly Man, this last Adam, this Life-giving spirit is of an entirely different order from unfallen Adam - of a higher order altogether. God has something transcendently greater than unfallen first Adam. His last Adam, His second Man, is of a heavenly order - a spiritual order; and blessed be God, an order which cannot know death. So do not let us drop down on to the poor level of an unfallen first Adam. It might be a great deal better than our present natural condition, but it is not good enough for God; and it should not be good enough for us. Therefore, let us "bear the image of the heavenly."

That brings clearly into view what God's objective is. Having made the Lord Jesus the Head of His new creation - His new race - His objective is to conform the race to the likeness of its Head. Christ then becomes the one object in the eye of God concerning which and unto which He is doing all His works.

And the Lord is now working in the new creation - in you and me - to conform us to the image of His Son. We may take it that God has no other work on hand. God has only one work on hand, and that is His work. That is to be taken account of when we realize the Lord is trying to do something. The Lord is at work. We may not be able to see what He is doing at this time; but if we ask the one general, all governing question, "What is it that the Lord is seeking to do?" The answer is one... and comprehends everything - every method of God, every means of God, every interest of God. It is reduced to one single, comprehensive thing... He is seeking to reproduce His Son in us - to conform us to the image of His Son.

From eternity God has been governed by a desire to express Himself... and all creation is God's way of seeking to express Himself. Now, when we look at the Lord Jesus, we see God's realizing His desire; and then, when we look at His activity with us, we see God's seeking in this yet more fully extended way - beyond the individual Person of the Lord Jesus - to reproduce Himself in the Church, which is Christ's Body; that is, to make it Christ in expression. That is very simple and very elementary; but this heavenly order of which Christ is the Head is what God is seeking to bring about in a new race.

Then the next thing is this: the last Adam is a Life-giving spirit. Thank God for that! You see, Adam could only produce after his kind, and his kind was an earthly order - a soul order of man. He could not produce after the full, complete, and final thought of God. It was not in him to reproduce himself in an order above his own level. Even as unfallen, he could not do that.

The Lord Jesus is bound by the same law, but the difference is that as a Life-giving spirit, producing after His own kind, He has power to accomplish the Divine purpose by bringing in the heavenly - this spiritual - order. You have, then, a new race in view, set forth in its Head and, in union with Him - as one with Him - the Spirit with the Son, a Life-giving spirit, becoming the energy by which the end shall be reached. The Lord Jesus in us - the Holy Spirit in us - is the energy and power to produce, or reproduce, after His own kind. That makes a heavenly order possible.

The Great Prize

Reading: Philippians 3:1-16

The Philippian letter begins with Paul's statement, "For to me to live is Christ", and then goes on to express his ambition to know the Lord more and more, with his determination to pursue that knowledge as a coveted prize. If we desire to know what is meant by gaining Christ we have to turn to Romans 8:29, where we find that God's intention is that we should be conformed to the image of His Son. This being conformed is gaining Christ, this is the prize; it involves an attaining unto the fullness of Christ in moral perfection, which is to be the glory in which God's sons will be manifested. It is simply this, that to come to be morally and spiritually one with Christ in His place of exaltation is the goal and prize of the Christian life. We do well to keep in view this glorious end, "the manifestation of the sons of God".

When Paul spoke of gaining Christ and of reaching out for the prize, he was expressing his earnest longing to be conformed to the image of God's Son. This is something which is the issue of salvation, it is God's end in salvation, but it is clearly something which needs to be pursued. It is plain that we do not have to win salvation, and we certainly do not have to suffer the loss of all things to be saved. We are saved by faith, not by works, salvation is not a prize to be won, not something for which we must reach forward, but a present, free gift. Beyond this, however, Paul still aspired to heights as yet unreached, and he wrote that he counted all things as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord. If the power of the same Spirit is working in us, this will surely produce the same effect of making us realise how little is the worth of everything else compared with the great prize of Christ.

THE SUPREME ISSUE

It is interesting to compare Mark 10 with Philippians 3, as each passage tells of a young man and his momentous decision. The two men were very similar in many respects, they were both rich rulers, men of high standing socially, intellectually, morally and religiously among their own people. They were probably both Pharisees, and were both loved by the Lord. Of the one it had to be said "One thing thou lackest", while the other could affirm "One thing I do". The nameless young man turned away from Christ; he did so sorrowfully but nevertheless he did it, and the reason was that he was not prepared to part with his great possessions. Paul had great possessions also, but they lost all their attractiveness in the light of the vision which he had of Christ; to him it was the alternative of earthly prizes or the one great heavenly prize, and he gladly made his choice of the latter.

There is a sense in which we may say that he had a great advantage and a different vision of Christ, for he saw the Lord in the full power of resurrection. He not only saw Jesus of Nazareth as the young ruler did, but he was able to appreciate something of the exceeding greatness of God's power in raising from the dead this One who, despised and rejected of men, had on the cross been reduced to helplessness and apparent despair only to be lifted from death and the tomb and exalted to the right hand of the majesty on high. It was resurrection power which made Paul decide to pursue the prize.

THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION

That which makes everything possible in the spiritual life is the fact that the same resurrection power which raised Christ to His heavenly goal is the power that works in us (Ephesians 3:20). While it is true that our justification rests upon the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the whole scope of that resurrection goes far beyond the realm of personal salvation, for its power is the means whereby all the realisation of God's eternal thought may be accomplished. Probably one of the greatest needs of our time - which I believe to be the end time - is for a fuller experimental knowledge of resurrection life, for the final triumph of the Church with its ultimate breakthrough to the throne, with the consequent dispossession of the satanic kingdom, can only be achieved by this means. This life is something which has met all the evil power of the universe, and proved that it cannot be touched or corrupted, so that morally as well as physically it is the life which has triumphed over death.

Resurrection life is not some abstract idea or mystical sensation, but it is a very practical expression of victory over sin and Satan. If this life could be tainted or corrupted then Satan would have won the ultimate victory, but there is no fear of such a tragedy, for the life of Christ is that which has fully and finally conquered death; and inasmuch as His resurrection life has placed Him in an unassailable position, "far above all", it is destined to bring His Church through to share His victory and His throne. So, in his quest for the prize, Paul first mentions his need of knowing "the power of His resurrection".

I believe that this attitude of Paul's tests our own knowledge of Christ. I cannot understand how a Christian who really knows the indwelling of the resurrection life of Christ can hang on to things, having a controversy with the Lord about the letting go of this and that, when the alternative is full abandonment to Christ. What should settle all disputes and questions is the realisation of the royal nature of our high calling in Christ, and the determination to let nothing stand between us and the full outworking of His resurrection life.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF HIS SUFFERINGS

Paul's pursuit of the prize made him desire not only to know Christ in the power of His resurrection, but also to be ready to enter into suffering for and with Him. This puts suffering in its right place, and relates it to a leading on to glory. Very often suffering gets out of its place with us, and so causes us trouble by being the thing which pre-occupies us and blots out everything else. The Lord would have us see suffering in its right place, that is in relation to something which should make the suffering very much smaller in our estimation than it would otherwise be. "I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed", that glory being the glory of the children of God. It was this glory which Paul described as the great prize of gaining Christ.

If we ask what it means to gain Christ we have to consider Romans 8, where we find that God's intention is that we should be conformed to the image of His Son. This being conformed to Christ is really gaining Christ: this is the prize. It involves an attaining unto the fullness of Christ in moral perfection; for this moral and spiritual perfection is His glory. So for us the simple issue is that to come to be spiritually and morally where Christ is in His place of exaltation is the goal, the prize. We do well to keep in view this glorious end, "the manifestation of the sons of God", when we shall be revealed with Christ and made like to Him. For the present we groan, and if we can truly analyse our groanings we may discover that they represent our longing for deliverance from the old creation life, with its bondage to corruption, sin and death, so that we may know moral perfection in Christ. One day the groanings will cease, and that will be the moment of our arrival at perfect conformity to Christ.

This is what God foreordained, for we notice that God's work in a groaning creation is related to foreknowledge, and therefore to His fore-ordination. Such predestination was not connected with the simple matter of salvation, but rather with the issue of salvation. This makes all the difference. The issue of salvation is conformity to the image of God's Son, for whom He foreknew He also foreordained, not to be saved or lost but to be "conformed to the image of His Son". The work of the Spirit of His Son in us, constituting us as sons and enabling us to cry "Abba, Father", is the commencement of God's work in the groaning creation, the work of securing in secret those sons who will provide the key to its deliverance from the whole state of vanity or disappointment which obtains at present. The whole creation is to be delivered into the enjoyment of the liberty of the glory of God's children, for this is to be the issue of the power of resurrection working in us. We are linked in our very sonship with the whole creation's emancipation from the vanity imposed upon it. But note, the creation is not only to be delivered at the time of the manifestation, but is to take its character from Christ revealed in the sons of God. It can only find its true glory when the power of Christ's resurrection has had full expression in the glorification of God's sons as they receive their redeemed bodies, made like to His.

You may feel that this vast conception does not help you very much when you come up against personal difficulties, but it is for this very thing that Romans 8:28 links such practical experiences with the whole range of God's purpose in Christ. That calling and purpose govern every detail of our spiritual history. If, of course, we take things as purely personal incidents, then we cannot find any good in them, whereas if we appreciate their relation to God's determination to make us Christlike, then we have the clue as to their meaning. This is more than personal, inasmuch as the trial, difficulty, perplexity or provocation holds the secret of developing in us the life of the Lord Jesus, the resurrection life which carries with it the ultimate issue of God, which is the glorification of the whole universe. The New Testament is very practical, the vast things of the eternities are brought down into the most intimate details of our spiritual life, so making all things work together. These "all things" will be made to contribute to ultimate good provided they are considered in the light of divine purpose. God's meaning must not be missed. It may seem that we suffer contradiction; we ask for one thing and get just the opposite; but this is because God is not relieving us of responsibility, but using the contrary experiences to draw out and develop in us that moral strength which only the Holy Spirit can provide.

CONFORMITY TO HIS DEATH

It was the Holy Spirit who made Paul write things in this order, first the power of His resurrection, then the fellowship of His sufferings, and finally the being made conformable to His death, but in fact we can only know the power of His resurrection by sharing with Him in this experience of death which involves the setting aside of everything that is personal in order to make the things of Christ our only objective. Is it not true that the basic, foundation sin is pride? And what is pride, this root sin? Really it consists of personal interests, self will and self seeking. This was how sin entered God's universe at the beginning, for Satan fell when he said, "I will exalt my throne.... I will be like the Most High", and subsequently he persuaded Adam to grasp at the opportunity of being "like God" (Genesis 3:5), so causing self interest to enter the human race. Such pride is native to us all, and only a practical experience of conformity to Christ in His death can deliver us from it.

Satan's continual attempts to work on our self interest are so subtle that he will even seem to patronise Christ if he can do so in a way which will ensnare God's servants. It was in Philippi, the city to which this letter was directed, that one of his demons publicly proclaimed that Paul was a servant of the most high God who was showing men the way of salvation. What more could Paul have wished for? Here was free publicity! Well, the fact is that we may be sure that there is some subtle plan of the devil when he begins to patronise the Gospel and make its preachers popular. The apostle realised this, and having waited on God he rebuked the demon, with results which seemed calamitous for him and Silas, for it brought them into prison with all hell raging against them. Paul, however had been delivered from a satanic trap even though he was in prison, and although for the moment he was being conformed to Christ in a new experience of His death, this inevitably brought him a new experience of God's resurrection power. He lived to write back to these Philippians from a prison in another city, and was able to assure them once more that the things which had happened to him had turned out for the furtherance of the Gospel. When human ideas, preferences and desires are set aside, it may involve deprivation for the moment, but as self interest goes down into death Christ is given a new place in our lives and we get nearer and nearer to our great prize.

CHRIST MAGNIFIED

It seems clear that as the apostle moved towards the end of his life he was pressing ever more eagerly towards the prize of likeness to Christ. I believe that it is a point of real advance when we come to the place where we can live without the thrill of outward signs of success or obvious miracles, and can be perfectly happy with the Lord Himself. What I have in my heart is that you and I may come more and more to the place where the Lord Jesus Himself is everything to us. We do not seek even conformity to Him for its own sake or for our satisfaction, but only that He may find joy as we move closer to Him. This is the mark of spiritual growth and maturity, to desire only that Christ may be magnified, and to press on resolutely to this objective. "Christ is the path, and Christ the prize!"

He Ever Liveth to Make Intercession

Transcribed from a message given by T. Austin-Sparks in February 1955.

The spoken form has been retained verbatim.

Fragments of scripture in the gospel by Luke, chapter 2, at verse 34:

“And Simeon blessed them and said unto Mary his mother, Behold this child is set for the falling and rising of many in Israel and for a sign which is spoken against, yea and a sword shall pierce through thine own soul that thoughts out of many hearts shall be revealed.”

And in the 22nd chapter of the same gospel, at verse 31:

“Simon, Simon, behold satan asked to have you that he might sift you as wheat. But I made supplication for thee that thy faith fail not.”

The gospel by Matthew, chapter 26, verse 31:

“Then said Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended in me this night, for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.”

And the gospel by John, chapter 17, verse 9:

“I pray for them, for those who thou hast given me, for they are thine”

Verse 14:

“I have given them thy word and the world hateth them because they are not of the world even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them from the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil one.”

There are a number of other passages that I would like to lay alongside of those, but just one more, in the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 7, verse 25:

“Wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.”

I do want this word this morning to be an establishing word, a word by which we shall be strengthened in our life in the Lord and there are two sides to this word, one which may seem to be the dark side, the other the bright side.

These passages which we have read which, as I have said, are but a selection from a number of others of like kind, bring before us the tremendous ordeal of the Cross. What a lot was going on in the unseen during those hours from the arrest of the Lord to His death; I mean in the hearts of people, with all the movement and the activity and the excitement and everything else on the outside, there was a corresponding activity going on within lives. That prophecy of Simeon to Mary was verily being fulfilled. The hour when the sword pierced her heart, the thoughts out of many hearts were being revealed. The heart of Judas was revealed, the heart of Simon Peter in the judgment hall was being revealed. One by one they were passing into this terrible ordeal until they were all included, “All ye shall be offended because of Me this night”. “The sheep will be scattered abroad when the Shepherd is smitten.” And I have not read these other passages about Judas and about their all forsaking Him and fleeing or following afar off. It was all a revelation of the heart in the hour of the Cross.

It does seem, dear friends, that that was not only true on that occasion, but whenever the Lord is moving toward something new – some spiritual enlargement, something fuller of Himself, in resurrection life, in service – very often there’s an ordeal that has to be gone through in preparation. An ordeal of the Cross – that is, those concerned pass through a time when all sorts of unsuspected things in their own hearts are dragged out into the light; ugly things. Things they would never have believed to be there any more than Peter would have believed if he’d been told and as he was told what he would do and what he would say in that hour. Not one of them would have believed for a moment that they would have been offended or shaken and flee, or do whatever it was that they respectively did; they wouldn’t have believed it! Peter himself very, very strongly reacted to the suggestion that he would do anything of the kind.

And so it is from time to time on the move with God towards something more, experiences, something like this, take place – we have a bad time. It seems the worst time than ever we’ve had before when things come to light about ourselves and to ourselves that we would never either have suspected or believed had they been told us.

I don’t know about Judas, whether he really did know his motive, the thoughts of his heart, whether if he had been told that he would perpetrate such a crime as to deny and betray the Lord Jesus because, because he’d altogether failed to set a right and sufficient estimate upon Jesus. I think that was really behind it all, thirty pieces of silver seemed to be of greater value than the Lord; an altogether inadequate evaluation of the Lord. Surely there was something wrong with that heart. He might not have believed it if he’d been told.

Peter? Well he was told what he would do but he wouldn’t have it. He wouldn’t have it, because he never suspected the secret cowardice of his own heart. A man who can face storms upon the sea with a good deal of physical courage very often breaks down when it’s a matter of spiritual courage or moral courage, and he perhaps was mistaking his physical courage for moral courage and never suspected that cowardice in his own heart and never would have believed that a situation could arise where with all his might he would seek to preserve himself. Self-preservation... deep in his heart... he wouldn’t believe it. It was all being brought out into the light.

And then as for the rest, the other ten, they all forsook, fled... they would never have believed. The infinite perils of unbelief! The Lord had told them, told them again and again what was going to happen and what would eventuate from His suffering: death. No, no, deeply rooted was this unbelief; this could never happen, this would never happen! They neither believed in His death nor His resurrection. But they wouldn’t have said they didn’t believe in it. It was something there, unsuspected. Was it the strength of unsanctified ambition? A kingdom in this world and a place in it? Was that covering up so much more, that they could not believe in His death? Their kingdom went if that happened.

Well, it was a tremendous night, a terrific ordeal and really it’s a wonder that anybody survived. Only one man did not survive: Judas. Judas did not survive and the Lord Jesus said, “them have I kept, them that thou gavest Me, none of them, none of them is lost except the son of perdition”. Now, I’m not going into the story of Judas but let it be said here, lest anybody ever should, and sometimes Christians do get into a state where they do take hold of Judas and arrange themselves alongside of him as absolutely hopeless and having committed the unpardonable sin, there is no forgiveness. Remember that Judas’s was a lifelong, calculated, coldly calculated course. The word in Hebrews which so many people do take up in their dark time, about it is impossible to restore such a one again to repentance, has connected with it this: remember this, seeing that they willfully, they willfully! It is a matter of willfulness and it was willfulness with Judas. It was willfulness. Well you can decide whether you are a willful, deliberate, calculating betrayer of the Lord Jesus with no estimate upon His worth and value above thirty pieces of silver. If that’s your state, well, it is pretty hopeless isn’t it? But leave Judas aside, leave him aside.

Take these others. We are surprised, we are amazed, are we not, that any of them survived and came out! And the wonderful story is written about them afterwards. What a story! Why? Why did they survive? Why did they have such a glorious “afterward”? Why, with all this terrible self-disclosure, enough to shatter anyone and anyone’s hope about himself or herself, why? “I have prayed,” said the Lord Jesus, “I pray for them, I pray for them.” So He said in that matchless prayer of John 17: “I pray for them”. To Simon, “But I prayed for thee that thy faith fail not” and then for us all “seeing He ever liveth to make intercession”.

Well that’s the bright side, you see, there may be the day of the dark ordeal when the Lord is having to make us, in the first place, realize more than ever what a need of His salvation and His grace there is in our own lives. Oh, how much we need the grace of God, for everything depends upon how much we realize the need of the grace of God. To Him that’s a tremendously important thing, that you and I are just wrecked upon the grace of God. So that really, really out of the depth we say, “but for the grace of God where should I be?” You know, we don’t realize that all at once when we first come to the Lord, some do come out of the depths and are able to say at once “Oh the grace of God is unspeakably wonderful!” but there are a large number who do not have that deep consciousness to begin with. But we’ve got to have it sooner or later, that our whole position, our whole future, our whole hope rests upon the grace of God. That has to be not words, not doctrine, but something that is wrung out of a deep experience and consciousness. And to bring that about, these times of self-disclosure seem to be necessary, that we might learn more the meaning of His Grace. But oh, when we are going through... well, Peter, how shattering it all was for him, to realize what was there all the time, what had been there all along. How shattering. And no doubt that was true of the others who would never have believed or suspected... now it’s all so true, they are just like that after all, just like that. No one would have believed it about themselves.

Yes, a shattering thing is this self-discovery. How shall we get through? Well dear friends, the establishing word is that He who prayed for them, the eleven, and He who prayed for Simon Peter, the one, and got them through by prayer, ever liveth to make intercession for us and will get us through! Solid ground under our feet is the intercession of our Lord which is going on now! What is our hope? Where is our hope? What is our confidence? Just that. When we cannot pray ourselves, sometimes that’s for ourselves, and when we seem to be at the end of being able to pray for someone else, He ever liveth to make intercession. Thank God for the prayer life of the Lord Jesus! It does not relieve us of responsibility or exonerate us from carelessness in this matter, but friends, we have reached the end and can do no more – He ever lives TO... TO make intercession. He lives TO make intercession. Why does He live? Why is He alive? To make intercession until He has got us.

You read that prayer in John 17 and look at that. He says “All ye shall be offended because of Me this night for it is written I will smite the Shepherd and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered – I pray that they all may be one...” Yes, scattered hither and thither like a broken vessel, its pieces and fragments all over the place and then after His resurrection He collects the pieces from every place and brings them together and the prayer is answered, that they may be one. And Peter, standing up with them, the day of Pentecost, the prayer is answered – they are one. They are one.

Well, there’s virtue and efficacy in the prayer of the Lord Jesus. The Cross reveals much which disheartens and disconcerts and would bring us to despair but for His faithfulness in prayer for us. “He that keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps”, He ever liveth... Let us draw more upon what He is doing now for us, rely more upon it, and if you feel, any one of you feel you can do no more, that you’ve prayed yourself to a standstill about yourself or someone else or something, don’t give up, don’t pass away your confidence. Remember: He is going on, He ever liveth to make intercession.

The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Anointing

"And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And he opened the book, and found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor" (Luke 4:16-18).

"Jesus of Nazareth, how that God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him" (Acts 10:38).

"And ye have an anointing from the Holy One.... And as for you, the anointing which ye received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any one teach you, but as his anointing teacheth you concerning all things, and is true, and is no lie, and even as it taught you, ye abide in him" (1 John 2:20,27).

Matthew 13:1-13.

One of the great needs of our time is to recover the meaning of things with which we are familiar. We, as Christians, know many things, but we have lost much of the meaning of those things. We are going to think a little about the meaning of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of anointing.

You will notice that that word 'anointing' occurs in three of the passages which we read. The Lord Jesus said that His Father had anointed Him to preach. Then Luke, in the book of the Acts, said: 'Jesus of Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit', the result of which was that He 'went about doing good', and registering the impact of His anointing upon the devil. Then John, in his Letter, says: 'Ye have an anointing from the Holy One.'

Now in this very big matter we just want to put our finger upon this one thing: what it means to have the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of anointing. And may I say here, at once, that every Christian is supposed to have received the Holy Spirit. The Word of God says, most emphatically, that if we have not received the Holy Spirit we do not belong to Christ. That Scripture says: "If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his" (Romans 8:9). Well, I suppose everyone reading this would claim to belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. Would you say: 'I belong to Jesus Christ'? Do you know what that means? Do you know that the very name 'Christ' means 'Anointed'? So to belong to the Lord Jesus Christ means to be joined to the Anointed, and that just means that we are joined to His anointing.

That is very simple, and I expect old Christians think I am being too elementary. Well, wait a minute - I have not finished yet!

Would you say that what the anointing meant in the case of Jesus Christ it should also mean in our case? Is it possible to be joined to the One who is anointed and not take the anointing from Him? If you are a married woman, when you married you took the name of your husband. His name came down on your head, and you bear his name as long as you both live. Now the New Testament says that we Christians are married to the Lord Jesus. Do you know what happened when people came to the Lord Jesus in New Testament times? They were brought in front of the assembly of the Lord's people, and the apostles or elders of that assembly put their hands on the heads of these believers and called on them the name of the Lord Jesus. They declared that His name now rested upon them, and from that day they were called 'Christians'. They had the name of Christ upon them. Christ always meant to them 'the Anointed', and so they called the anointing upon these believers. That is meant to be true right from the beginning of our Christian life, but there is a difference between having the Holy Spirit and knowing what it means. My business is to tell you what it means and, as I have said, we are just going to put our finger upon one thing that it means.

There was nothing neutral about the Lord Jesus Christ. There was something positive about Him right from His birth. When the old man Simeon took the baby Jesus in his arms, he said: "This child is set for the falling and rising up of many in Israel" (Luke 2:34), and that meant that human destiny was bound up with that little life. That little life was going to decide the rising or falling, life or death, for many in Israel, so that right from His birth there was something very positive about Him. Why was that? Because He was born of the Holy Spirit. The angel said to Mary: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee" (Luke 1:35). Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit, therefore there was nothing neutral about Him. Things about Him were very positive because of the Holy Spirit.

Now naturally you may be twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or sixty years old, but spiritually you may be only a day old. Naturally you may be six feet tall, but spiritually you may be just a little baby. But if you have been born of the Holy Spirit human destiny is bound up with your life, even as an infant. There ought to be something very positive about you, even as a spiritual babe.

Or you may have grown up to be twelve years old spiritually. When Jesus was twelve years old everyone knew that there was something very positive about Him. He was taken up to Jerusalem, to the great temple where were all the very wise men, with their grey hair and beards, and this little boy of twelve years of age began to ask them some questions. These old men scratched their grey hairs and said: 'What are we to say to that? Where did this boy get all this? This is no ordinary boy! There is something different about him from other boys.' Then the old men thought they would have a turn, and they asked Jesus some of their very wise questions. He just answered them without any difficulty, and they looked at one another and said: 'What sort of a boy is this? He seems to know all the answers.' There was something quite positive about Him, and all the people knew it: 'He has a knowledge that we do not have.' Why was that? Because He was born of the Holy Spirit.

Then in manhood He "went about doing good... for God was with him". In every realm of life He registered something positive. Was it in the realm of the empty religious world? How His presence made all their religion seem so empty! In the simple realm of human life, day by day, people felt something when Jesus was there. In the official realm it was just the same. Men like Herod and Pilate did not know what to make of this man! There was something about Him that they could not understand and with which they could not cope. Then in the spiritual realm of the devil and his kingdom; Jesus did not have to say anything when He came where demons were in possession - the demons cried out. His presence disturbed them. Whether it was individuals, or whether it was groups of people, or whether it was the multitude, the presence of Jesus was positive in its effect, and that was because He was anointed of the Holy Spirit.

Do you see what I am saying? Do you see what is the meaning of having the anointing? If it is true that you and I have been anointed of the Holy Spirit, as we ought to be, our presence in this world ought to register something positive for God. It ought to be impossible for us to come into this world, and go out of it, without having registered something upon it. People in this world ought to feel something when we are near them. The devil himself ought to take notice that, because we are here under the Holy Spirit, Jesus is here. It is impossible for Jesus to be anywhere without something happening, and now Jesus is here by the Holy Spirit in believers. Therefore there ought to be nothing neutral about any Christian.

Now I expect you are wondering why we read that parable of the Sower. I will tell you why: for this very reason of which we are speaking.

"The sower went forth to sow..." Jesus said later that the sower is the Son of man, and the seed is the Word of God (Luke 8:11). I have often heard it said about this parable that three parts of the sowing resulted in nothing - the seed which fell by the wayside, the seed which fell on the rocky ground and the seed which fell amongst thorns all came to nothing. Are you sure that is right? The Bible says, from God: "My word... shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish..." (Isaiah 55:11). Here is the Son of God giving the Word of God. Will you say that three parts of the sowing of the Word of God by Jesus Christ is for nothing? We have to think again.

Here you have four classes of people, and they are brought right out into the full light and for all time (two thousand years at least). You see what kind of people they are. The truth about them is made manifest for all history to see. Is that negative? I think that is very positive!

"Some seeds fell by the wayside, and the birds came and devoured them." Is that all there is to say about it? No, there is a kind of person described there, the person who is careless and indifferent about Divine things. The things of God brought by the Word of God don't matter at all to him, and so he writes them off and says: 'Well, they don't matter.' So far as he is concerned, Jesus Christ has worked in vain. But stop! Listen to Jesus: "The word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day" (John 12:48). These people will stand before the great judgment bar of God without any excuse. They will never be able to say: 'I never knew... I never heard.' Oh no, there is nothing neutral about Jesus! If His word comes our way, we may be careless and indifferent, and not interested, but that word is coming back in eternity. "This child is set for the falling and rising up of many" ... "My word... shall not return unto me void."

Some seeds "fell upon the rocky places, where they had not much earth". Here is another class of people lifted up for history to see. These are those shallow people who have no sense of the value of the things of God. These people, when there is something being spoken from God, say: 'Oh well, I don't think I am going to the meeting today. I am going for a walk' - or, 'I am going to have a drive out in the car', or, 'I am going to do this... that... or something else.' They have no sense of the infinite value of Divine things which would make them say: 'I will not miss that. There may be something that will make all the difference to my life if I am there.' Do you know those people? Jesus has lifted them up for all history to see: people whose eternal destiny is bound up with their attitude toward Divine things.

"And others fell upon the thorns; and the thorns grew up, and choked them." Is that all? Does the story end there? No; here Jesus has again shown us another category of people. In explaining this parable He says: 'The thorns are the cares of this world' ... 'Success in my profession becomes the most important thing. The prosperity of my business comes first.' These are the people with whom the things of this life take pre-eminence, the people for whom the world (whatever that means) means more than the things of God. These are the people who mean business for anything except the things of God, and they do not mean business for God so much that they put Him first.

These are all very distinct types of people, but it does not matter to which class they belong, they are all responsible when once they have heard the Word of God.

I could go on to speak about the seed that fell on good ground - and even there there are differences in the people and in the result. Jesus said that some brought forth a hundredfold. These are the people who are utter for the Lord, one hundred percent for the things of God, and are going all the way with Him, no matter what it costs. There are some people like that. Some brought forth sixtyfold. These are the people who go on with the Lord, but they just stop short somewhere. They do not go on in fullness. And some brought forth thirtyfold. Yes, they love the Lord, but they have some reservations. 'Don't let us be fanatical. Let us be quite balanced.' You know these people! 'Yes, we are the Lord's, but let us be careful!' They bring forth just thirtyfold.

Now why have we said all this? Just to show that, in one way or another, anything that comes from Jesus is positive. The Holy Spirit is positive, and not negative, and if the Holy Spirit is really Lord in our lives, our lives will count for something. There will be an influence from our lives which will be eternal. Thank God for the Holy Spirit! Let us be sure to ask the Lord that the anointing shall have a free way in our lives. The effect of the Holy Spirit may be to condemn some people, and it may be to redeem others, but He cannot be neutral, and if the anointing is upon you and upon me, the devil will take account of it. May the Lord help us to see that that may not be a bad thing! Do you want the devil to say: 'Oh, that man, that woman, does not matter. You need not bother about him, or her!' I had a friend once who, whenever we were parting and going our different ways, took hold of my hand and said: 'Goodbye, old man. The Lord make you a nuisance to the devil!' Well, that is how it will be if the Holy Spirit is really upon us, for that is how it was with the Lord Jesus.

Do you see the meaning of the anointing of the Holy Spirit? May the Lord make this very real to us!

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1967, Vol 45-1

"I Will Follow Thee, Lord; But..."

"Another said, I will follow thee, Lord; but first..." (Luke 9:61).

There was a lot of "following" going on just at that time. A glance at the concordance will show how often the word "follow" occurs. In the movement, this man made his spontaneous announcement to the Lord. His proviso or reservation was the point which drew forth the famous statement of which such wide use has been made. "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." What the Lord meant by unfitness was having a But. How many of us have been caught, or nearly caught, in the trammels of a But! It is sometimes an "If" or an "If only." It would be easy to follow or serve the Lord if only... 'Lord, if only you would remove this difficulty, this painful factor; if only you would change my place or put me somewhere else; if only you would do this for me, or give me that; then - well, I would do so much more for you.'

This lack of enthusiasm on the part of Christ over people making gestures has more in it than the single instance indicates. In the light of all that we now know, we can see several things.

Firstly, we cannot follow the Lord on our own initiative, anyway. Unless there is the dynamic imparted by His personal call, we shall never get very far with it. There were several instances - notably Peter's - of unsolicited declarations as to following Him, and He was most discouraging in every case, and on one occasion at least would not allow it. But, if the Lord calls us, it is refusing Divine power if we do not obey. Let us not think that we can do as we like about this, and when we like. It is His like, or it is nothing.

Then, for us to bargain with the Lord on the matter by having a But, an If, or any kind of a proviso, is to prove ourselves unfit because we have failed to see that this matter is so utter, so desperate, so eternally immense and vital as to allow of no second considerations. It is all a matter of love, not doing the Lord a favour, or ourselves a good turn.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1949, Vol 27-1

"Looking Unto Jesus"

"Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Make level the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left" (Proverbs 4:25-27).

"Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith" (Hebrews 12:1,2).

There is a goal; there is a prize. We have been called with high purpose - a purpose so great that the Spirit of God has considered it worthwhile to fill the Bible with the truth of it and with the continuous urge in relation to it. For the Bible from beginning to end has to do with a course in relation to a goal, an end, a prize: it is just brimful of Divine speaking concerning Divine purpose, a very great purpose. We find this, of course, in a very strong way in this letter to the Hebrews, with its insistent call - "Let us go on". Moreover it gives us the great ground of confidence that the end can be reached, the goal attained, the prize received, the purpose accomplished, in that Christ has got there, Jesus has already gone this way and is there, and He has gone the whole way, the same way as you and as all those who are called according to His purpose are called to go. He has taken our level, accepted all that we have to know or may know on the course, and has gone through to the end. The fact is stated that He is there, and His being there is a tremendous triumph, for it is the assurance that we can be there also.

"Looking unto Jesus". More correctly that would be stated "looking off unto Jesus". We are coming to that again in a moment, but there is a ground of confidence. We can have assurance about this matter of attaining. One illustration of this is given in this letter to the Hebrews. It is as though the writer saw a ship out on the sea, being grievously battered and thrown about by the storm, in the grip of the wind and the current, and then, if it were possible, one brave representative taking the anchor on a long chain and dropping it within the quiet, peaceful harbour, leaving it there for the ship to pull on, in the sure knowledge that it will come in because it has a vital link with something already there. That is the picture the Apostle presents of this matter. We have this confidence, this hope, "as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and stedfast and entering into that which is within the veil" (Heb. 6:19).

There is confidence to be had, but there is also - and this is kept continually in view throughout both Old and New Testaments - there is also the possibility of failing, of falling short, of missing the mark. Illustrations are given of this. The possibility is always there - not of losing our salvation, that is not the point - but of failing to attain to the full purpose of God in our salvation.

THE PERILS OF WRONG WAYS OF LOOKING

This possibility of failure and missing the mark, of coming short, is related to our looking. It seems to me that it is all summed up in that way - looking. This matter of looking, therefore, is very important. It depends entirely upon where our eyes are and where they are kept. In the Word of God there are many directions in which people are warned against looking, because of the hazards to the whole progress and course of things toward the goal; the hazards of a wrong look, of a false direction, of the eyes getting off the mark.

The Backward Look

There is the one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back, and is therefore not fit for the kingdom (Luke 9:62). That is the backward look. It is the look which Israel took in the wilderness. "They turned again and tempted God, and provoked the Holy One of Israel" (Psa. 78:41). They looked back and spoiled their furrow, they spoiled their whole course. They failed to enter in simply because they looked in the wrong direction, that is, they looked back.

You know that that was one of the troubles in New Testament times. The letter to the Galatians was written because of that peril. They were beginning to look back. There was a voice from behind; the voice of the Judaizers was calling them from behind: 'Come back' - not to the world, not to ungodliness, not to forsake Christ; but to come back to a religious life which was less than that fullness of Christ to which they had been called; to a religious life which was not a spiritual life. They were in danger of looking back. They had indeed already half looked back and had come to a standstill. They had been going on, but now they had stopped going on, and the question was - would they continue to go on or would they go back? That letter was written to induce a going on. This letter to the Hebrews was written for the same purpose. The peril of a backward look is always there, in some way or another.

Looking Around

And then we are told of some people who looked around when they were commanded not to look around. "Look not around thee" (Isaiah 41:10, margin). I think that is what Peter did. When he was beginning to walk on the water he took his eyes off the Lord and looked around and he went down (Matthew 14:28-31). His eyes changed their direction and he began to look around. "WHEN HE SAW the wind" (verse 30). That is what Israel did when the spies went out and came back with their wrong report. They looked around - walled cities, giants, all kinds of difficulties. They looked around, they got their eyes off the Lord. Only two of them kept their eyes in the right direction and they went through eventually to the end. "Look not around". That is, do not allow circumstances so to lay hold of your vision and to fasten upon your outlook that they control your movement. "Let thine eyes look right on" - not around.

The Too-Near Look

Then there were some people to whom Paul spoke: he told them that their look was much too near. He said, 'You only see what is immediately before your eyes, your vision is merely of things near you, these are the things that influence you'. Too short a range of vision leads to your life becoming smaller than the Lord would have it; you become far too easily satisfied and contented in the realm of the things of the Lord; you have a small, narrow horizon - you are not looking right on. Things near - that may apply in different ways. The things that are near are always the things that are most likely to upset us, to limit us, to disconcert us. We do become so occupied with the thing that is nearest. When we are right up against a situation and something is right up against us, we are in such danger of thinking that is all, that is everything, that we forget we have negotiated many such an obstacle before which we thought was going to be the end of everything for us. We learn our lesson so slowly. Here is another thing right at hand, right before our eyes; another mountain, another hedge, another real difficulty; and again we think - 'This is going to spoil everything, this is going to be the end of everything'. All we see is the thing near at hand.

But to look right on means surely to say this - 'Yes, this is a difficulty, but there is another side to it, it is not going to be the end'. It is one of the things that is included in 'laying aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset'. What is "the sin which doth so easily beset"? It is this, that the big difficulty of today blots out tomorrow, seems to get right in the way of any future at all. That is the easily besetting sin. Do not have too near a view, do not have too small an horizon. "Let thine eyes look right on". There is something very much more than the difficulty of the day, the very present thing, the near thing. The Lord will teach us as we go on that we can reckon on very much more than the things which are up against us now. We shall go on and leave them behind. Do not let us take them as the limit. Whatever they are, they are not the end.

The Selfish Look

Again the Apostle said, speaking to some believers, "...not looking each of you to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others" (Phil. 2:4). What did he mean by that? Here, surely, is the selfish look. I think perhaps he meant this, amongst other things: 'Do not be always affected in your lives by how things touch you, whether you stand to gain or lose by this or that; do not all the time be looking at everything in the light of how it affects you'. "Not looking each of you to his own things". That is the wrong kind of looking, the wrong direction. It will limit us, and make us small and self-centred.

The Inward Look

And how much the Apostle had to write about another kind of looking, the inward look. A very great deal of his writing was with the object of getting people to stop looking inside. I think there is nothing more calculated to arrest progress than looking inside. What are we looking for inside, at any rate? Well, of course, we are looking to find something that will satisfy the Lord and give us encouragement, make us feel good, and we never find it. There is nothing more discouraging than this looking inside. It is the wrong kind of looking.

THE SALVATION OF LOOKING UNTO JESUS

It is clear, then, that much is dependent upon our looking, and the Apostle was right when, after writing this long letter so fully bringing into view the great object - partnership with Christ - and urging to go on, he summed it all up in this fragment: "Looking off unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith". Looking away from the things behind, looking away from those around, looking off from the self-matters altogether, looking beyond the things that are so near, obsessing us now; looking off from ourselves unto Jesus. This is a theme touched upon in our recent book, Pioneers of the Heavenly Way. "He looked for the city" (Heb. 11:10); 'They looked for a country' (Heb. 11:14). How much was bound up with the look! How they had to battle with this matter of where the eyes wanted to rest, a too early satisfaction of the eyes, a wrong satisfaction of the eyes, a substitute for what God was after. But the Lord was constantly drawing their eyes away from lesser things, causing them to look and look, and that look led them on. As we said in the book (page 36), they thought from time to time that now they had found it - but they found that it was not so. The eyes of their heart were not satisfied and they had to move on a bit further. The look kept them on the move. It was a look which was heavenly and not earthly.

Now the passage from Proverbs that we have placed at the head of this article says this - "Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Make level the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established (ordered aright)". There is a great deal packed into that, but it just means this: Get God's purpose clearly and fully in view - nothing less, nothing other - and adjust the whole of your life to it; adjust your life to the ultimate.

KEEP GOD'S END IN VIEW

One of our words recently to a friend in baptism was the word 'eternal'. I pondered it during the day before passing it on. It took hold of me in this very connection. "Our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Cor. 4:17,18). The eternal is kept in view, and life is adjusted in every way to God's end. How busy the enemy is to circumvent the onward movement and the final attainment, by getting us entangled and compromised in this earth, somehow to slip in something that will be a check, an arrest, a hold-up. Oh, the spiritual tragedies all around by some foolish relationship, some entanglement, some consideration of convenience, some pandering to the satisfaction of the flesh, something somehow slipped in by the enemy; and there it is - you just cannot go right on to God's end. Something is holding you back, some relationship is keeping you tied up, something has come in.

Now this word is - adjust everything to the end, have all your affairs in life brought into line with God's end. When you are considering a relationship, have God's end in view. When you are considering the next step in your life, have God's end in view. When you are deciding where you are going to live and do your work, have God's end in view. When you are deciding what your business is going to be, have God's end in view. Everything brought into line - that is the meaning of this "Make level the path of thy feet" or "Weigh carefully the path of thy feet". We have to say to ourselves, 'Now then, this is an opportunity, a prospect, that seems to hold a lot of good; but first of all, what is this going to mean for the Lord, how does this relate to the full end of God?' Nothing less than that must weigh with us. "Let thine eyes look right on" - not just at this thing, not even at what it seems to promise, but right on. How does it relate to the end? In all things, look beyond; see what is the relation to the full end of God; and adjust accordingly. Get the vision, and adjust life as far as possible in relation to it. "Weigh carefully the paths of thy feet and order them aright. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left". "Let thine eyes look right on".

Some of you may find yourselves in spheres and conditions where perhaps you will have many a temptation to accept something less, where it seems impossible to have all that you would like to have, where it seems that God's full purpose cannot be realized: therefore you will settle down to something less and other. You may meet all kinds of things to divert you from the course of the on-high calling. The word to you is: "Let thine eyes look right on". Remember your Lord, offered the kingdoms of this world and the glory thereof: He refused them and looked right on. Yes, He was offered an easy way out, a way out of the Cross; but no, He let His eyes look right on, He set His face as a flint. His eyes looked right on, and here it is recorded, as we read in the next part of the verse from Hebrews: "Looking off unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God". He set His eyes on God's end. May we have grace to do the same.

From "The Work of the Ministry" - Volume 3.

The Lordship of Christ

From "The Work of the Ministry" - Volume 3

The Key to Fullness

Reading: Acts 2:23-25, 34-36, 41; 3:13-15; 4:8-12; 5:30-32; 9:4-6; 10:36.

As we read these passages, we cannot fail to see that one note runs through them all - one triumphant note ringing in unmistakable clearness. I think it is gathered up in the most concise and direct form in the last passage: "He is Lord of all". The Lordship of Jesus Christ - that is the note. That was the great declaration at the beginning, and that was the explanation of everything. There is no doubt but that, in those first days, there was a great fullness of life; everything was marked by fullness. We could say concerning that time that 'the river of God was full of water' (Ps. 65:9). Everything was full: the gathering in was full, the going on was full, the testimony was full. Everywhere you looked, you saw the fullness of the Lord in individuals and in companies, and the secret and explanation was just this - the Lordship of Christ.

Absence of Fullness Today

The one thing that we are having to deplore today is the absence of that fullness. We do not see those who are being brought to the Lord led into fullness. They get so far, but they very soon come to a standstill. Their spiritual life does not increase and grow with the fullness of Christ. Those who are the Lord's - I am speaking generally - do not bear the marks of having gone on into the greater fullnesses of Christ. Multitudes are still at the beginning. The one thing and the only thing that they say about their relationship to the Lord is that at a certain time in a certain place they came to the Lord, they found the Lord, they were saved - and that may be twenty, thirty, forty years ago. They may have a testimony to having been kept by the power of God during that time: that is, that they are still with the Lord, they are not back on the other side of their conversion; but they are not characterized by real spiritual fullness, having grown and made increase.

A very great many of the Lord's people are deeply concerned and burdened about this spiritual state today; and, in an attempt to meet it, through the last fifty years in particular, a great many movements have sprung up, so that over the Christian world, at regular and frequent intervals, conventions and conferences are held for what is called 'the deepening of the spiritual life'. This is to meet the situation which is recognized as being so far-reaching and widespread - a poor spiritual state amongst Christians; a weak and defective condition of the spiritual life - and this thing grows and grows, but is not meeting the situation at all. The demand for it increases rather than lessens, proving that the need is not really vitally touched and overcome.

The Remedy

Well, what is the remedy? Why was it that at the beginning they had such virile converts, marked from the outset by such a large measure of Christ? Why was it that then things happened on such a large and effective scale within the compass of a few days? Why was it that the churches grew and the Lord added unto them those who were being saved? Why could it be that in one day three thousand, and soon after as many again, were added? Why, in the course of one man's lifetime, could the greater part of the then known world be evangelized and churches be established everywhere, and that upon a large measure of spiritual light and life? Why?

If you think about it, I am quite sure that you will be convinced that the answer is to be found in the testimony - the declaration born out of something which had happened - and that testimony was to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. They proclaimed Him as Lord. "He is Lord of all." The Lordship of Jesus Christ is the secret of fullness, and we never really move into the fullness of Christ until He is Lord.

Now, perhaps you are saying that that is very simple. Who, after all, does not believe in the Lordship of Jesus Christ? Well, it is very much deeper than that. The Lordship of Jesus Christ is not only an objective fact. I suppose almost any Christian, any really born-again child of God, would be willing to subscribe to the objective fact and say, "Jesus Christ is Lord"! But why, then, this state of things? Either what I am saying is entirely untrue, and the Lordship of Christ does not lead to His fullness, or else it means something more than objective truth; and I think the latter is the case. The real trouble is that in so many of His own He is not Lord. He may be Saviour, but He is not Lord. The Lordship of Christ means in us a very deep and very drastic work. It means the overthrowing of every other lordship.

But the other lordships may not be in the form of outward things. The other lordships may be in our own wills. Just that strongmindedness of ours may be the thing which occupies the throne in the place of Christ. The Lord Jesus is kept out of His place as Lord in us because of the very strength of our own natures, our desires, our affections, our likes and our dislikes, and all that realm of our human feelings. There may be that in our make-up which is thwarting and frustrating His Lordship and in so doing is just keeping us out of His fullness.

It may be the enthronement of that reasoning power of ours - we will not call it 'intellect', that would be too presumptuous - but the working of our minds, reasoning and arguing and thinking that our judgment about things is right, is certain, is conclusive. Our convictions, at which we have arrived after weighing up the pros and cons, are the things by which we are to be governed and, perhaps, others are to be governed. The strength of our minds, our reason - if you like, our intellect - may just be in the way of His Lordship, and you will find all those things in the Apostles before Pentecost. You will find them arguing against the Lord on affectional grounds, on rational grounds, on preferential grounds; mind, heart and will all obstructing His absolute Lordship, occupying the throne. Not until that was entirely and completely broken and smashed in the day of the Cross was a way made for His Lordship. Yes, the other lords may be inside our own constitution, our own make-up, our own disposition. Whatever they may be, wherever they may be, the truth is this, that the way to the fullness of Christ is by His absolute Lordship in our lives.

Now, the whole Bible bears it out. Wherever you look, you will find this is the underlying truth. You look at Israel's history. While in the wilderness for the forty years, the one thing that was the issue being fought out was the Lordship of God: they were fighting with that matter of absolute submission and subjection to Him in their own hearts, their own minds, their own wills. For forty years that battle went on; and it was not until the Jordan made the great divide between that kind of thing and the coming of the Captain of the Lord's host into His place - the representative of the people gathering them all up into his own person, taking the shoes from off his feet, bowing with his face to the ground and handing up the lordship to the Lord, the Captain of the Lord's host - it was not until then that they moved on into the great fullness which God had intended for them. The inheritance was altogether frustrated while the battle of lordship went on. The inheritance was entered upon so soon as that lordship was established. In the later chapter of Israel's history under the judges, it is quite clear. What is it? - limitation, defeat, bondage, captivity; everything frustrated and thwarted and spoiled. When David comes into his place as king, then Israel is delivered, moving later into the fullness of the glory under David and Solomon. Lordship is the key to fullness.

In the New Testament, it is just the same. Here you have it in the case of the Apostles, the twelve. You can see their defeat and their weakness and their failure and their poverty - until Christ becomes Lord, absolute Lord; the Holy Ghost making Him Lord in them as He was Lord in Heaven - and then they come into fullness! Pentecost - "Jesus Christ is Lord" - and then fullness!

Take Peter. You remember, Peter had to have a special battle over this. I think he had more than one battle; perhaps we all have more than one battle. Fullness is a progressive thing. We do not enter upon it all at once, and every fresh measure of that fullness is preceded by some fresh conflict as to the Lordship of Christ, and Peter had several. But you remember Caesarea and you remember the house of Cornelius. What preceded it? Peter in Joppa on the housetop, and the vision, a sheet let down from Heaven in which were all manner of four-footed creatures, reptiles, unclean beasts, and the voice saying, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat." 'Not so, Lord; nothing unclean has ever passed my lips.' And the thing was done thrice, the Lord was insistent; and Peter was wondering what the vision meant, when the messengers of Cornelius arrived from Caesarea. Peter was invited to go to the house of a Gentile with the word of the Lord, to the house of the unclean. And what was his note there? Well, his note was: "He is Lord of all". What happened? Peter entered into something bigger than he had ever had before; that is, he found a bigger Christ than he had known before. In recounting what happened, he says: 'Who was I to withstand God?' 'Who was I? The Lord took this thing in hand and showed Himself far bigger than myself and my tradition - He simply lifted me right out of my old bondages and limitations and landed me out of my depths altogether!' The house of Cornelius came into fullness. It was all upon that one inward triumph, the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Take Paul. Paul is a wonderful case of spiritual growth, of swift movement on into spiritual fullness. How quickly Paul moved on with the Lord! What a wealth we have in him! Why? Because he was such an exceptional man? Not necessarily. Spiritual growth may have nothing whatever to do with what we are naturally. Nothing at all. Oh, we meet so many of those who have the natural intelligence and the advantages of training, all the academic advantages, but who in spiritual things cannot see, cannot grasp. At the same time so often there are those who have had no such advantages, who are altogether without that natural basis which might be expected to be necessary for understanding, and yet somehow these leap into things, and on they go. No, it may have nothing whatever to do with what we are naturally. Why was it that Paul made such swift progress and grew so rapidly? You notice, at the end of the ninth chapter of Acts, how, after he had been received at Damascus, had recovered his sight and had been baptized, it says that he was with the disciples certain days, and he at once in the synagogue began his witness and his ministry, and mightily refuted the Jews, openly testifying that Jesus was the Son of God. He grew. Well, where is the secret? "Who art thou, LORD?" "What wilt thou have me to do, LORD?" That is it. From the beginning with him Jesus was Lord.

Now, let me say it again. It has been said many times. In the book of the Acts, they did not first of all preach Jesus as Saviour. They preached Him as Lord. You see, that carried with it of necessity the Saviourhood. Acknowledge Jesus to be Lord, in those days, and see what it involved. If that One who so recently has been crucified and buried is really today the living Lord, then that crucifixion and burial was no ordinary thing. That could not have been just a man being killed, martyred, for his beliefs. He could not be classed amongst those who have died for their fanatical views or for trying to set up a movement against the powers that be. If this is the LORD, then it is something more than that. He must be the Christ, He must be the Saviour, He must be the Son of God. All THAT is involved if He is Lord now; and if they accepted and acknowledged Him as Lord, well, that included His Saviourhood, but the Saviourhood was something subsidiary to the Lordship.

After all, the Saviourhood of Christ is but a recovering thing in relation to His Lordship. The Lordship was the eternal intention of God concerning Him. The Saviourhood is in order to get back to the Lordship, to lead on to the recovery of the Lordship. He can never be actually Lord until He has saved the inheritance of which He is the eternally designated Lord; but when He is Lord, it means that He is Saviour, He HAS redeemed. The Lordship is more than the Saviourhood. And so, when you come on to God's SUPREME ground - "hath made him a Prince and a Saviour" - then the way is open for God to take you right on, beyond conversion, beyond the infant stage of just being born again, on to 'growing up into Him in all things', on to the fullness of Christ. So they put the full testimony there, where all the rest was included, and thus there was a wide open way for all God's intention. Wherever you look in the Scriptures, you find that it is Lordship which is the secret of fullness.

God's Dealing with the Individual

Now, this is something which God, by every means, seeks to make good in every one of us. All the dealings of the Lord with us are not just to get us saved, but to make the Lordship of Christ real in us. Yes, all His dealings with us are to that end, and His dealings with us are personal dealings. Everything is going to be very personal in this matter. You and I, no matter who we may be, if we really come into the Lord's hands, are going to be dealt with in such a way as to bring us to the place where Christ is Lord in our lives. It is going to be personal: for, after all, while the end is corporate and collective, it must of necessity be an individual thing between us and the Lord, so that we know, within our own hearts and experiences, that God is working at a very real thing in this matter of making His Son Lord. It is going to be as personal with us as it was with Paul. It may not be in exactly the same way, but it will be just as personal. "When we were all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking unto me in the Hebrew language" - I, me, and my own language, and by name - "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" (Acts 26:14). It is going to be as personal as that with us; we are not going to pass in the crowd. You say, 'Oh, Paul was an exceptional man, an exceptional case, outstanding; it can never be like that with me!' Well, it is going to be. We may not go on a Damascus road and see a light from Heaven at noontide brighter than the sun. But it is going to be as personal.

I was once staying with a sea captain, and as we talked about ships, and work amongst men on the ships, and so on, he told me an incident in the life of a Captain of one of the Union Castle liners. When he was Chief Officer, he was always seeking an opportunity for leading men to Christ, and he asked the Captain one day if he could have a service for the crew in the evening. Although he received permission, he said nothing during the day. He said nothing to anybody; he was letting it go. Late in the afternoon someone, one of the crew, said, 'Oh, you are having a service tonight, I hear, and quite a few of the men are coming!' 'Oh', said the Chief Officer, 'I have not said anything about it: where did you get that from?' 'I think it originated with the cook!' was the reply. So the Chief Officer went along to the cook and said, 'Who told you I was having a service tonight?' 'Oh', said the cook, 'it was only a joke!'

The Chief Officer felt that the Lord had tied him up to it and that he had to have a service. Amongst the men who came was one who was brought under deep conviction of sin. He had been greatly concerned about this man, and had been praying very much for him. But he did not come through to the Lord. They arrived in port, and he and another fellow went off 'on the spree', and they took the voyage back without them. This fellow spent all his money, got into no end of trouble and then quarrelled with the other man, and they parted and he was left stranded and in a deplorable state. He went to the British Consul to ask for help. The Consul got into touch with a shipping agent, to get him a job on a ship, so as to get him back to his own country, and he was told to report at a certain yard on a certain day to go aboard and take a job. When he got there, because of past history he was given a very menial job down in the stoke-hole, looking after the fires.

Some days later they were in mid-ocean. There was terrible heat outside and inside, and he staggered up on deck to get a breath of air. Dazed and half senseless, he perched on the ship's rail, lost his balance and went over. For a time he was not missed. Presently he was enquired after and could not be found. A search of the ship was made, and the roll-call was held. Three-quarters of an hour passed, and they reported to the Captain that he must be overboard. The Captain ordered the ship to turn round on its course (and it takes three-quarters of a mile to turn a ship like that round), and back they went for three-quarters of an hour. No one ever expected to find him, but at sea every effort has to be made to recover a man, not just leave him. Three-quarters of an hour back on that course: everybody looking out in every direction, listening.

Suddenly a man said, 'I thought I heard something!' All looked - there was a black spot in the sea! A boat was lowered, the man picked up, brought aboard. Asked what had happened, he explained, and said: 'I saw the ship going, going, going! I kept myself afloat, and struck out to follow the ship's course so far as I could, though I knew it was a hopeless thing. She went on and on, almost out of sight. And then I saw her turn round, gradually come nearer, and as you got near I decided on one last shout for help - and that was the shout you heard!'

Well, you are not surprised, are you, that that man came to the Lord? That was the outcome of this true story. His last shout, as he explained, was not just a shout to the ship. It was a shout from his heart, higher than the ship - it was the last cry of a man to God. But he is a representative case. Poor fellow, he is not a Paul by any means, is he? - ship's stoker who has been touched by the Spirit of God, who has kicked against the pricks, who has fought and gone off, but who has been so marvellously singled out - saved by what might be regarded as a millionth chance naturally. Yes, the Lord had His eye on him.

Yes, the Lord's dealings with us will be as personal as that. They may not take the same form, but the matter is going to be as personal as that with every one of us. The Lord is going to hedge us up to this. If we are really going through into all the Lord's purpose, we are going to be faced with this matter of His absolute Lordship, and our destiny is going to be determined entirely on the basis of His Lordship. We may be saved, but that is not the end of the destiny which God has fixed for us. Salvation is the first step in God's purpose. We can be saved, and still lose the great purpose of God in salvation - the fullness of Christ. That is the destiny toward which salvation is the first great step. But the fullness of Christ demands the Lordship of Christ. If you want to go right on, to go right through, not to miss anything - as Israel, that first generation, missed the Lord's purpose - if you do not wish to miss what He is after, do not be content with just being saved. For, after all, to have Christ as Saviour means that the benefits are ours; but to have Him as Lord means that everything is for Him. Which is the higher - what we get or what He gets? Surely our hearts respond to this! While we are deeply, we are profoundly grateful for all the blessings of redemption, of salvation, nevertheless it is unto Him and not unto ourselves that we want the satisfaction to come, and He is only really satisfied with the glory that issues from His own acknowledged Lordship.

The Meaning of Christ

God has something to say right into our hearts by bringing His Son here into this world from infancy onward and having that life here in a world like this for thirty-three years. He is working out something, is doing something, and He is doing that in the spiritual realm; and He wants to repeat that in the Church and in the members of the Church, the Body of Christ.

One thing is particularly and jealously guarded by God in the case of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus. It is this, that whatever Christ was it was spiritual; there was nothing from cradle to grave which made Him anything naturally or temporally. It could have been otherwise, and men were looking for it to be otherwise, and were offended that it was not so. ''...born King of the Jews'' (Matt. 2:2), a king born in a stable and cradled in a manger - shut out, excluded, not given room! And from cradle to grave it was like that: nothing, nothing that could be taken hold of naturally and temporally to credit Him with particular value and importance, but everything to the contrary; and God jealously guarded that, would not allow it to be otherwise, kept Him at that level.

Why? For this reason and because of this principle which abides. That whatever Christ is in value, it is spiritual. It is the spiritual value of Christ that God has safeguarded, not allowing men and the world to take Him up and say, Here is some great One; look at this and that and the other thing about Him! No, you can say nothing like that about Jesus of Nazareth, nothing at all. He is to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness, but to us who believe, Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God (1 Cor. 1:23), but a hidden wisdom, not of this world nor of the rulers of this world. Do you realize that it is the spiritual value of Christ that God has so jealously safeguarded by the conditions of the incarnation and of His life while here on this earth; and that is what we want to seek to work out, to recognize?

Christ has become so much other in Christianity, and thereby He has lost His impact, He has been stripped of His dynamic, embellished with an embellishment that God never countenanced. The only embellishment of Christ, if we dare use that word, the only true glorifying, the only true exalting of Christ is that of the spirit, of the heart, and therefore it is only possible for the redeemed, who know that they are redeemed, to glorify Christ truly.

The Lord repudiates all the garlands laid upon Him which are temporal in this dispensation; He will not have them. What He wants is a spirit that appreciates and values, a heart that goes out in grateful worship. You notice how, through His life, that was always the thing upon which He put His seal. Any recognition of His spiritual value, and a humble brokenness at His feet - ah, there He found what His heart wanted... A heart appreciation of Christ is the only true one.

So we have to see the spiritual value of Christ during those thirty-three years, and to come to two things about Him which are of abiding meaning, not only in Him personally, but as John says, ''which thing is true in Him and in you'' (1 John 2:8).

One, that He was constituted by the Spirit for life. He was begotten of the Holy Ghost, He was born of the Spirit; the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, was there at birth. You will see what I am after in a moment. We mention the fact that at thirty years of age the Spirit came upon Him. What is the difference? If He was filled with the Spirit from His birth, if He was born of the Spirit, why should the Spirit come upon Him thirty years later? You have to explain that. To begin with, the answer is this - He was constituted by the Spirit for life - to live His life by the Spirit, ''which thing is true in Him and in you.'' We cannot live the life of children of God, much less as (mature) sons of God, unless we are constituted to do so by the Holy Spirit. It was for life; and here you are going to have thirty-three years with a mighty climax of what it means to live by the Spirit, and everything in that life for those years is the working out of the Spirit dwelling within.

Constituted to live, just to live, that is the point. For thirty years you know very little about Him, and what you do know is that He was not doing specifically and immediately the ultimate thing for which He came. You know that for thirty years He was more or less a private person living a private life, doing the work which many other men did - an ordinary trade, probably looking after a widowed mother and helping to look after and support a large family, and learning privation and how to make ends meet, so that later He knew the cost of two sparrows in the market and the fact that if you could buy two farthings' worth you would get an extra bird thrown in. How did He know that? He had probably lived it through. But through all that, He was living His life by the Spirit, and God was causing a man to live on the basis of the new creation by constituting him by the indwelling Spirit. Perhaps my way of saying it may be open to correction, but you see what I am after.

And, dear friends, in this new creation in Christ Jesus, we are called to live here not romantic lives at all, not lives of great public attraction and interest, but ordinary lives; to do our job, learn our lessons, experience adversities, carry responsibilities, do the thousand and one things which belong to the ordinary person's life, but to live on a higher level than the ordinary person. And that cannot be done unless we are constituted to do it by the Holy Spirit. But it can be if we are.

And one aspect or one side of the Holy Spirit's purpose in coming is to enable men and women to live the life of men and women in this world, on this earth, but on another level. Do believe that. So many people think that immediately they become Christians and are interested in the Lord's work, they have to come out of the ordinary realm of daily life and become something special, that the Holy Spirit being within them, of course they must give up their day job and go and find some other kind of work for the Lord. Don't you believe it! I do not believe that the Lord does that sort of thing with anybody until He has made them live a life on a higher level in spheres where everybody has to live. If you cannot do that, give up hope of being sent by the Lord into some other kind of sphere or work. If you try it by direct means or back doors, you will find that the Lord is never got over in that way. We have to be brought back here to live on the new creation level in this old creation world by being so constituted of the Holy Spirit.

Is there any impact in that? I am sure there is challenge in it. So face your situation and understand why the Lord holds you in it and does not let you out. You have got to live there by the Holy Spirit before the Lord will make a change. So for thirty years He lived an ordinary life in an extraordinary way. He was constituted from birth by the Holy Spirit to live in the realm of the new creation while still moving in the realm of the old. We are constituted from new birth for that very purpose. That is one thing.

Then we come to this matter of the anointing at thirty years of age. What is this? Ah, this is a new phase. He was anointed of the Holy Ghost for specific work, for that supreme thing for which He had come and been chosen of God, anointed of God for the remaining three and a half years and all that that meant. I want to get inside of that. You see, the Lord Jesus had a spirit in Him, His own human spirit, and in His case His human spirit was sinless; and yet it was necessary that the Spirit of God should utterly dominate that human spirit and hold entire government over it. When it came to working out the great purpose of God, not only living a life but now working out something very much more serious and grim than that, the great purpose of God - it was necessary that the spirit of God should utterly dominate Him for this reason - to hold everything unto God, that everything should be out from God, not even out from His own spirit. This whole work of God had to be held very strongly into God so that it was wholly and utterly of God.

You get back into the Old Testament, you have it in type and representation. You know how, again and again, the Spirit of the Lord came upon this one and that one, men represented as being already consecrated to the Lord. In all the typical sense, they were sanctified people. Bezaleel and Aholiab were consecrated men, separated unto the Lord. In the type, they were sanctified men, but the Spirit of God came upon them. You see, even consecrated men are not to be left to themselves, not to have ability in themselves and act out from themselves. Taking Bezaleel and Aholiab as examples, the Spirit of God came upon them. Why? Because there is a Divine pattern to be meticulously followed and carried out, and it is not going to be left even to people who are most devoted to the Lord to do the Lord's work out from themselves.

Only the Spirit of God knows what and how and when, and that is very important to God. Not what we, in most earnest devotion, think should be done for the Lord. He does not accept that. Not how we, with all the best motive in the world and the heart most real in its desire for the Lord's glory, think it should be done; and not when or where we, though given to the Lord, think or feel it should be. Not a bit of it!

Paul was a very consecrated man, out and out for God. There is no doubt about him, about his true zeal for God (I am speaking of his post-conversion zeal). He is a man who knows the Lord, whose spirit has been quickened, and whose spirit is indwelt by the Holy Spirit; and yet he will essay to go into Bithynia and to preach the word in Asia, but the Spirit of Jesus will suffer him not (Acts 16:7). He will be forbidden of the Holy Ghost to go in the way on which he set out. You see the point.

Now I am not saying that Jesus and Paul are identical, but I am saying that the Lord Jesus is a representation here on this earth of a man living in this world on the new creation basis and principle. I am not leaving out His Deity. I am talking in the realm of God bringing here an example, a perfect example or representation of a new creation man, and the principles of the life of such. To live that new creation life he must be constituted by the Holy Spirit. To fulfil the work of God he must be anointed, because everything has to be held to God - held for God, come out from God - and only so can there be the effect and the impact; and it is an impact when the Holy Ghost gets hold of us and moves us in His direction.

Because the Lord Jesus lived on that basis and principle of a life lived in and by the Spirit and a work carried out under the government of the Spirit, His earthly life here was a constant registration, both amongst men and in the spiritual realm. If there is one thing patent about His life here on earth, it is this: wherever He went something started up, nothing just lay dormant. People and demons were stirred; His presence meant that. The presence of the Lord Jesus in the house of Zacchaeus will cause Zacchaeus to confess his miserable, contemptible sin and wrongdoing. That results from the Lord's presence. And the very demons cried out, ''What have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art - the Holy One of God'' (Mark 1:24). What is the matter with them? He is there under the Anointing, in the power of the Spirit; something is going to happen, it must happen.

Here is the meaning of Christ's life on the earth: it was to show what a life in the new creation is like, and what its effect is, how it is first constituted and then governed by the Spirit. And, by all the teaching of the New Testament, this is intended to be true of us, true of the church and of believers.

O God, make it more true! That must be our prayer. This is where we must have our response, our reaction.

It is not enough merely to accept the tale of the life of Jesus, the story of His birth and of His going about doing good: but what is the effect of this in the realm of things spiritual? What is the abiding value, as far as you and I are concerned, and the Lord's people? It must touch a realm beyond this earthly one and stir to the depths the realm of evil spiritual intelligence. His life was a mighty challenge in every realm because the Spirit of God was upon Him.

He did not move on the ground of His personal devotion to the Father. He moved by intimation and direction of the Spirit of God. You can see why the Church has lost its impact. It is because it has concluded that once you have consecrated your life to the Lord you can do anything you like, arrange for the Lord, plan, scheme, do all sorts of things for the Lord. The Church has been doing that for a long time: it is doing it now. Their argument is that it is for the Lord. How far is it getting? What is the comparative value of it? I leave you to answer that. It was not like that at the beginning, in the case of the Lord Jesus, in the first days of the Church when the Spirit by the Anointing really did govern. In a very short time far, far more was achieved than was done in a very, very long time afterwards.

No, we are consecrated to the Lord, but we have to have the Lord's direction for every movement and not conclude that because we are out for the Lord we must just do all we can. Let us get it from the Lord, and only so will it be effective. It is not easy, perhaps, or it does not seem easy, but it is something to which the Lord calls us and it is the way back to effectiveness.

At any rate, let us put it like this: there is going to be nothing unless it is under the Anointing, and the Anointing means full charge of all life and all activity. Here is the place for repentance, repentance that there has been so much of ourselves and so little of the Lord. Here is the place for submission, that He shall be Lord in the power and reality of the Anointing. The Lord grant it.

The Meaning of the Anointing

What is the meaning of the anointing of the Holy Spirit? It is nothing less and nothing other than the Holy Spirit taking His place as absolute Lord. The anointing carries with it the absolute Lordship of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit as Lord. That means that all other lordships have been deposed and set aside: the lordship of our own lives, the lordship of our own minds, our own wills, our own desires, the lordship of others. The lordship of every interest and every influence is regarded as having given place to the undivided and unreserved Lordship of the Holy Spirit, and the anointing can never be known, enjoyed, unless that has taken place.

That is why the Lord Jesus went down into Jordan's waters, into death and burial, in type, taking the place of man in representation, from that moment not to be under the government of His own life in any respect as He worked out the will of God, but to be wholly and utterly subject to the Spirit of God in every detail. Jordan's grave set forth the setting aside of every independent lordship - every other lordship, every other influence - and if you will read the spiritual life of Christ in the Gospels, you will see that it was to that position that He was every moment adhering. Many and powerful were the influences that were brought to bear upon Him to affect Him and govern His movements. Sometimes it was the full force of Satan's open assault, to the effect that it was necessary that He should do certain things for His cause, or for His very continuation in life physically. Sometimes it was Satan clothing himself with the arguments and persuasions of beloved associates in their seeking to hold Him back from certain courses or to influence Him to prolong His life by sparing Himself certain sufferings. In various ways influences were brought to bear upon Him from all directions, and many of the counsels were seemingly so wise and good.

For example, with regard to His going up to the feast, it was urged, in effect: It is the thing that everybody is doing; if you do not go up you will prejudice your cause. If you really want to further this cause, you must fall into line with the accepted thing religiously, and you only stand to lose if you do not do that; you will curtail your influence, you will narrow your sphere of usefulness. And what an appeal that is if you have something very much at heart, some cause for God at heart, the success of which is of the greatest importance.

Such then were the influences that were beating upon Him. But whether it were Satan coming in all the directness of his cunning, his wit, his insinuation, or whether it be through beloved and most intimate disciples and associates, whatever the kind of argument, you cannot cause that Man to deflect a hair's-breadth from His principle. ''I am under the anointing; I am committed to the absolute sovereignty of the Holy Spirit, and I cannot move, whatever it costs. Cost it My life, cost it My influence, cost it My reputation, cost it everything that I hold dear, I cannot move unless I know from the Holy Spirit that that is God's mind and not another mind - God's will and not another will - that this thing comes from God.''

Thus He put back everything until He knew in His spirit what the Spirit of God witnessed. He lived up to this law, this principle, of the absolute authority, government, lordship of the anointing, and it was for that that the anointing had come. That is the meaning of the anointing. Do you ask for the anointing of the Holy Spirit? Why do you ask for the anointing of the Holy Spirit? Is the anointing something that you crave? To what end? That you may be used, may have power, may have influence, may be able to do a lot of wonderful things? Beloved, the first and pre-eminent thing the anointing means is that we can do nothing but what the anointing teaches and leads to do. The anointing takes everything out of our hands. The anointing takes charge of the reputation. The anointing takes charge of the very purpose of God. The anointing takes complete control of everything and all is from that moment in the hands of the Holy Spirit, and we must remember that if we are going to learn Christ, that learning Christ is by the Holy Spirit's dealing with us; and that means that we have to go exactly the same way as Christ went in principle and in law.

The Measure of Christ

"Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Col.1:27). Read the whole verse carefully, fragment by fragment, to get the full import of its wonderful truth: "God was pleased to make known - what is the riches of the glory - of this mystery... which is, Christ in you." The riches of the glory, Christ in you!

"Know ye not as to your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you?" (2 Cor. 13:5). That interrogation of the Apostle is not without point, "Know ye not as to your own selves" - know ye not that Christ is in you? Do you not know this wonderful thing?

"My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you" (Gal. 4:19). "Till Christ be formed in you"; this is a step on.

"Whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son" (Rom. 8:29). Marvellous words! No man would dare to say this; they are here by revelation of the Holy Spirit.

"Unto each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ... till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God... unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:7, 13; ARV). "The measure... of the fulness of Christ."

We want immediately to focus everything in and upon the Lord Jesus Christ for it is He who is in view. What we have before us is not teaching or truth; that is, to be possessed of more knowledge of truth; it is not service; but it is the Lord Himself.

The object of the Father from first to last is that the Son, the Lord Jesus, shall fill all things, and all things shall be filled with Christ. The value of everything in the eyes of God is according to the measure of the manifestation of Christ in it. It is from that standpoint God determines the importance of everything.

If we become focussed there, it will make a great difference, much will have to go because it is not manifesting the Lord Jesus. We must understand that the Father has set the Lord Jesus before His eyes, and the Father's eyes are full of only one object, that is the Beloved, His Son; and in the eyes of God the value of everything is determined by the measure in which His Son is manifested and glorified; that is His end and that is His object.

The All-Inclusiveness of Christ

Spiritual service, vision, vocation, glorification, have no existence apart from Christ; they are not things as things, and cannot be had except in the Person of the Lord Jesus.

To many salvation is as a thing. It is detached and regarded as something by itself; to be given by itself, for the good of those who receive it. Sanctification is wrapped up in the same way. So often we think of salvation and sanctification in relation to the persons in view, and so some thing for them, but it is Christ Himself who is salvation, He is sanctification, and He is within as these.

It is the same with service and vocation; these are often seen only in regard to the persons themselves. "Saved to serve" is only part of the truth and is a dangerous slogan, for the motive, so often, is the service itself and not the Lord. You may be so driven with the service that He is left out. We have detached the thing from the Person, and we find we are gripped and wrapped in the claims of "service"; it becomes the drive of service, and in the end it breaks us. And again, when service becomes hard and difficult we say we will give it up, we will resign, thus showing we have separated service from the Person, and have been occupied, day in and day out, with it, the work, and not with the Lord Himself.

And so with glorification; yes, this stirs us, we love to sing hymns about our glorification; but God means it to begin now and it must begin now. What is glorification? It is the full manifestation of Jesus Christ in us. God regards salvation, sanctification, vocation, service, glorification, as related to His Son, and of no value apart from Him; He is salvation, He is sanctification, etc.

Salvation and sanctification are often held up to people as things to be received for their good; the object being for them to benefit from something received; often it is salvation for salvation's sake. God has not saved a single soul for salvation's sake. God is not after salvation as an end in itself, but for the sake of the Saviour, for the glory of His Son. It is not salvation that is in view, but the Saviour. If people are rejoicing in salvation merely as something received for their own benefit, the full end will be hidden by the first step. Is not this the cause of arrest and hold up?

The worker has to be brought, by the way of seeing no deep fulness of result from his work, to the place where he cries out, "I can do nothing." So he comes to see the true nature of salvation, and that to save another soul is utterly beyond him, and is the work of God. So he comes to see God's object in salvation, which is the glory of His Son. Salvation is not something, it is the mighty incoming of a Person; "He that hath the Son hath life"; (1 John 5:12). "To as many as received Him" (John 1:12).

This is also true in the matter of sanctification and service. Any service that is not fulfilled on the ground of the indwelling Christ as the Worker cannot effect the purpose of God, for only the Lord Jesus by His Spirit can do the work of God. Yes, you are called to be a servant in a service you can never fulfil! Service is the bringing of the Lord Jesus into view, and any service that does not do that is not the service of the Holy Spirit, but man's service which does not fulfil God's ends; it will be tested by the fire, and proved valueless.

Christianity is not a doctrine, not truth as truth, but the knowledge of a Person; it is knowing the Lord Jesus. You cannot be educated into being a Christian. Christianity is the knowledge within of a Person, knowing Him as dwelling within us.

The Universality Of Christ

God has singled out a Person, and gathered into that Person all the Divine perfections; everything is inseparably bound up with His Son; He has put all the fulness of eternity and of the universe into that Person, and bound up all the fulness in Him; not a fragment can be had apart from Him; that which is to characterize the new creation is in Him. The predestined end of God is a full presentation of the fulness of Christ - "The church, His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:23).

Every corner of the universe will speak audibly of Jesus Christ; so that we shall not be able to go into a place, or touch a life, without finding an expression of the Lord Jesus.

"Christ in you, the hope of glory" - this is heaven. You walk in the presence of the Lord Jesus. Think of the whole universe like that; a universal expression of His Son in fulness. That is the end God has in view, that Christ shall fill all things; that, looking into everything, it shall be found to be full of Christ. All is made for Him, and in the new creation all will speak of His presence and show forth some characteristic of Him. Oh! the joy, even now, when you touch a life and find immediately that life is full of the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Jesus is the fulness of that life; what a benediction it is!

God has singled out a Person and set Him forth to be seen of all - the Man Christ Jesus.

The Universality Of The Church

You cannot go outside of A and Z in the realm of literature; you box the compass of language with A and Z; likewise Christ Jesus is First and Last of God's new creation, and all that is in between; you cannot get outside of that. We must never think of anything as outside of Christ; He Is Salvation; He Is Sanctification; He Is Redemption, Justification, Peace; Wisdom, Love, Heaven. "Know ye not as to your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you," this Christ - in you! Do you see the possibilities and the tremendous reach of this?

God will transform His universe, not from without, but from within. How? By putting Jesus Christ within the believer by His Holy Spirit; and thence there will be a two-fold activity - being conformed to Him by His Spirit, and He being formed in the believer; thus He is going to make His new creation.

"Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1: 27). "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life" (1 John 5:11, 12).

"If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His" (Rom. 8:9).

"The Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subject all things unto Himself" (Phil. 3:20b, 21; ARV).

"Put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created Him: where there cannot be Greek and Jew... but Christ is all, and in all" (Col. 3:10, 11; ARV).

"The church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:22b, 23).

Growing Up Into Him

The Christian life is not by effort, and not by struggle; not merely by trying to put into practice certain maxims, or by trying to attain to a certain measure; but from beginning to end, and all together, it is a matter of knowing the Lord Jesus within. Of course this implies response to Him, and a continual yieldedness to His working by His Spirit within, and so co-operating with Him in His purpose of conformity to His image.

We have all grown since we were born. How did we grow? Not by sitting down and considering that we ought to increase our stature; not by determining to grow so much to-day, and a little more to-morrow; not by painful efforts to increase our dimensions, and so on; but we "just growed!" - like Topsy. But while we "just growed", we had to respond to the laws of growth. So in the spiritual realm, we have to recognize the laws of growth, and where these are not responded to, or are violated, there can be no growth, but arrest, weakness and loss.

Why is spiritual growth so slow in some and so gloriously quick in others? Because some kick and question, or argue with God; go round and round the point asking, Does it mean this? Must I do this? Is it necessary? Can I, may I do this? and so on. Yet these very people are loudest in saying they want only the will of God; but their very affirmation often shows a struggle is going on, and their growth is fraught with a good deal of friction.

Others in a beautiful sincerity and purity of spirit are immediately letting go to the Lord, so He is able to lead them on, without waste of time in controversy with the will of God; and there is no weakness through there not being an utter abandonment and whole-hearted obedience and surrender to that will. There is a passion for the Lord Himself, and for Him to have His full way at whatever cost.

It all depends on our appreciation of the Lord Jesus. When we get a true value of Him, and see all that He is for us to the Father, and as by faith we appropriate Him, we quietly grow - "Beholding... the Lord, are changed (transformed from within) into the same image, from glory to glory" (2 Cor. 3:18).

The hindrance to growth is the regarding things as apart from the Person, the Lord Jesus. We would never walk round the Scripture, as we sometimes do, debating whether we would or would not, if we had a full appreciation of Him, if our passion was for Him to get the fullest glory possible; we should instantly yield, that Christ might get more glory.

Is not the difficulty often in our regarding aspects of the Christian life as something in themselves?

An adequate appreciation of the Lord Jesus gets rid of all the strain of spiritual growth. Christ is most glorified where Christ is most in the heart. Growth is bound up with the Beloved One; and growth is the outcome of being occupied with Him, giving the Lord Jesus His place in everything; He the first, and He all, and in all. Conclusively it is a matter of the measure of Christ, we must see that everything is bound up with the Lord Jesus Himself.

Everything is a matter of knowing the Lord in our hearts, then the Lord has a clear way in us, and through us.

Get focussed on Him, and see that He Himself is everything.

The Gospel of God is that we are saved to be conformed to the image of His Son; to come to the fulness of the "measure of Christ," "unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13).

The Momentousness of Jesus Christ

From "A Witness and A Testimony" magazines 1969, Volumes 47-4 & 47-5

Reading: Philippians 3:1-16.

"I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee" (Job 42:5).

This verse sums up the whole book of Job, for it is the deep explanation underlying Job's life. This book takes a patriarchal character and shows us, in a wonderful way, God's dealings with that man in relation to Christ. Christ takes a very large place in the book of Job; indeed, He is the object in view in all that is happening here.

This verse, then, sums up the whole book of Job and shows us a tremendous transaction which is taking place in the life of this man. Concerning his past life Job said: "I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear", so that his relationship to God had only been by the hearing of the ear. Then came these tremendous experiences that he went through. He went down into the depth of sorrow, and this resulted in an altogether different relationship to God: "But now mine eye seeth thee." From hearing he went to seeing, and that is no small thing. It marks a revolution in a life.

Where do we begin with Job? First there are three marks which we must consider:

(a) Fullness

At the beginning of his life we find Job in a state of fullness. He was a wealthy man. He had a large estate, with every kind of comfort, and a prosperous, happy family. He was highly esteemed, a man who was taken account of and who held a position of influence. His life was marked by fullness.

(b) Goodness

Job was a good man. God Himself challenged Satan as to Job, saying: "Hast thou considered my servant Job? for there is none like him in the earth, perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and turneth away from evil." So we see that Job was a good man; but the statement is made with certain reservations, and is not absolute. However, as amongst men, Job was a good man; that is, he was not wicked and God had a high estimate of him.

(c) Complacency

We see clearly that Job was quite satisfied with himself. He knew no trouble in his relationship to God, neither did his spiritual state cause him anxiety.

That is where we begin with Job, but what comes out later?

As to goodness, we have to look more intently and we find that it was an outward and legal goodness, not inward and spiritual. His knowledge of God was more an objective knowledge. There was no question for him as to the reality of the existence of God, but to him God was something outward, someone up in His heaven while he was on this earth. He had just HEARD about God, and he adjusted his life according to the light he had, but it was all outward. Job's righteousness was based upon his works. He argued with his friends about that. When they said to him that his sin was the cause of his suffering, he gave a whole catalogue of all his good works. So his righteousness was rather of works than of faith.

Thus we see in Job fullness, outward goodness and self-satisfaction.

The Transition

Now let us turn to the beginning of Job's transition:

"Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job? for there is none like him in the earth."

But Satan challenges God, and says:

"Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath, on every side?" In effect, Satan is saying that Job does it because it is for his own benefit. It is easy to be good when you are protected from suffering! "But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face."

God accepts Satan's challenge and gives him permission to touch Job, except that he may not touch his life. And Satan goes, and does his work. All Job's outward wealth falls under Satan's power: his home, his children, his herds, everything is destroyed. Then Job is touched in his body, and finally his wife and his friends turn against him. And at last he suffers from the stroke of Satan. (We will touch that later.)

Gathering all these difficulties and needs of Job together, we have the spectacle of a man whose life had been very full on this earth. He had had friends, earthly means, a home, a family, a standing amongst men, influence, and a sphere of usefulness. He was not a bad man. But now he is broken and utterly emptied, until he reaches the very bottom of himself. He is emptied of all he possessed, he is broken in spirit, broken in soul, broken in body, and brought down to the very bottom - and at the bottom he meets God on a basis of pure grace. He has learned the lesson of his own nothingness. It often takes a tremendous amount to bring people to that place of recognising their nothingness! Job's knowledge of God had not been an inward knowledge, a knowing Him in his own heart, but something from the outside, and therefore, as there was no true knowledge of God, there was a corresponding ignorance of his own heart. This is always so! So Job did not, at the beginning, know his own heart.

"I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

This is the transition stage! But what was it all unto? On the one hand, fullness and goodness, a great measure of self-righteousness, and on the other hand, brokenness, emptiness, everything gone - and all that by God's permission!

We must remember that Satan was God's instrument and he was not doing this independently of God. After the first blow, when Job's possessions and family were destroyed, Satan went back to God and challenged Him a second time. Again God asked him: "Hast thou considered my servant Job? for there is none like him in the earth... and he still holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him." GOD did it through Satan, but why did He do all this? We can never say when some trouble comes into our life: 'This is absolutely from the devil!' It may be from the devil, but there is the Lord's meaning behind it. What was all this unto?

We have the all-inclusive answer in this verse: "...but now mine eye seeth thee." What does that mean? It is Christ who comes into view again and again. Job is in quest of God in a new way. He knew Him - "I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear" - but now he cries: "O that I knew where I might find him!" Job is crying out to find God, for God is not in him. He is crying for a personal inward knowledge of God, and why does he seek after a personal, inward and spiritual union with God? Because this is the only thing which can save him now. One of his friends says to him: "Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace," but Job says: 'It is easy to say: "Acquaint now thyself with God!", but that is just my difficulty. I cannot find Him, so how can I get to know Him? Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to His seat!' That personal, inward knowledge of God has been the quest of men throughout the ages, and Christ is the answer to that cry.

"Oh, that I knew where I might find him!" "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father"; "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world"; "If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." God is found in Christ, and in Christ the Holy Spirit becomes an inward reality. But first all our own righteousness and fullness and self-satisfaction have to go and Christ has to be our righteousness our fullness and our satisfaction.

Victory Over Death

Then we see another thing in Job's life, and that is the matter of victory over death. Job came face to face with death. This had not caused him any difficulty before, because the sin question had not been dealt with, but now he had questions about himself. He was shaken and his soul was torn through fear of death. He was not sure about himself and his relationship to God, and he asks: "If a man die shall he live again?" There must be an explanation, or is life only a dream? Is there no answer, no vindication? He had lost all, yet he had believed in God. Is that all now? Is God a myth and life a tragedy? If a man die, is that all, or shall he live again?

Let us turn to the Gospel of John to find the answer to this acute question: "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live."

Job wanted the resurrection and the life, and Christ is the answer to his need. Christ governs everything. Job came to see that there is life beyond, a life triumphant over death, and now he is at rest. In the forty-second chapter we find Job as a man who has come through the storms. His heart is at rest and his problems are solved: "Now mine eye seeth thee."

The Great Daysman

Then there is another point. Job's friends were accusing him of sin; Satan, through those friends, was acting as the accuser. In himself Job was not sure and he longed for assurance. On the other hand, it looked as if God had a controversy with him, as if something had gone wrong. His friends could not help him, and Job cried for a daysman to stand between the opposing sides, for such a man who could come in between to see that both sides had fair play and that all got their rights: a man who had no personal interests, neither on one side nor on the other.

We know our New Testament well enough to see that Jesus Christ has become that great Daysman. He is the great mediator. In 1 Timothy 2:5 we read: "For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself and man, Christ Jesus." Christ answers Job's need and is the One who will see that there is fair play on both sides.

The Great Redeemer

Just one thing more for now. Job needed a redeemer. He needed to be redeemed from SIN, redeemed from SATAN, redeemed from the POWER OF DEATH, and redeemed from the corruption of his own FLESH. He cried for this redemption; then, towards the end of God's dealings with him, there came a flash into his heart - only a flash - but in that flash he saw some One and he cried: "I know that my Redeemer liveth!" And then darkness returned.

"He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Hebrews 7:25). That is what we need - redemption to the uttermost! Here Job saw his Redeemer for a moment and knew that HE lives. And because He lives - "He ever liveth" - He can save to the uttermost.

What we want to emphasise is that the great transition of Job was A TRANSITION FROM HIMSELF TO CHRIST. God thought it worthwhile to lead him through the depths, to empty him and to break him completely in order to bring him to an inward knowledge of Christ. God finds it far more important that we should know Him in a deep personal way than to do a great many good works.

Perhaps God has led us that way of taking certain things away from us - our reputation, or the estimation of our friends. Perhaps those who are near to us have lost their confidence in us. We may have known a certain sphere of fullness, many a door has been open to us and we had many friends - and then God has laid His hand upon that and it has all gone. Perhaps we are increasingly conscious of our own nothingness, and we are coming to the place where we do not think we are as good as we thought we were. Our heart, perhaps, is not quite sure about our spiritual state, and it may be that our relationship to God is not quite what it should be. Perhaps friends say to us that we are going wrong and are mistaken. But that through which we are now going may be the way into something much larger, and we may get to know the Lord in a much deeper way. In Philippians 3 Paul speaks of himself and of the law. He possessed much by birth, through education and teaching, and was much esteemed by others. But then Christ came into his life, and all these things had to go in order that he might win Christ; yet the knowledge of Christ was far more to him than what he had possessed before.

We are speaking of the momentousness, the tremendous significance of Christ, but it is only through experience that we enter into these things - not through hearing about them, nor by studying the Bible, nor by going to church. Those are not the ways which will bring us there. Only by being emptied and broken do we come into the fullness of Christ. But the end justifies all: the great place which Christ has in us. It is worth everything to know Christ in fullness! A good man is broken and loses everything in order to find more of Christ. The floodtide of God is Christ. May we be filled unto all His fullness!

The Momentousness of Jesus Christ

"God... has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by (in) the (a) man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead" (Acts 17:31).

"For neither doth the Father judge any man, but he hath given all judgment unto the Son... and he gave him authority to execute judgment because he is the (a) Son of man" (John 5:22,27).

Here we have a comprehensive and emphatic statement concerning the place that the Lord Jesus occupies by the appointment of God His Father. That place is shown to be inclusive and exclusive. That means that:

1. God has summed up all things in Christ. Ultimately there will be nothing outside of Christ, and all that eventually is found to be outside of Christ will be removed from God's domain.

2. Nothing of God can be had outside of Christ.

In the Bible we have two revelations: one of man outside of Christ and the other of man in Christ. The emphasis is upon the word MAN. The Scripture above says that the final judgment of the world is in a MAN; a God-ordained, God-horizoned man. And it is not BY, but IN that Man. What is in that Man in the matter of righteousness will be the criterion of judgment.

Man Outside of Christ

We know, not only by the statements of the Bible, but in our own hearts that man is marred and spoilt by sin. It is an ugly word, hated by all, refused acknowledgment by many, excused by many more, but, apart from those in Christ, not confessed or allowed recognition. In this connection it is very significant that, in a time of moral landslide and increasing depravity, there is a great revival of humanism - the theory of man's inherent goodness and moral greatness: the total dismissal of the fact of sin AS SIN. It is called by any other name, even good in the making. It is not difficult to see through this artifice of the devil. It is to construct a humanity which, IN ITSELF, is its own saviour, and to wholly dispose of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. This is almost the last word in human blindness. It is blindness to history. It is blindness to the moral DEvolution of recent times. It does not allow that the last decades have uncovered a depth of iniquity, wickedness, and "man's inhumanity to man", beyond description, and that in the areas which have had more education, scientific research, discovery, and "culture" (?) than anywhere else on the earth. Such is the master-deception of the devil! "The god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving", says the Word of God. We must ever remember that Satan's rebellion against God was on the decision of God to make MAN. He knew that the intention of God was to give dominion over the world to man, and THAT dominion he - Satan - both coveted and usurped by the deception of man. This is all very clearly implied in the titles given to Satan in the Bible as "The prince of this world", "the god of this age", "the world-ruler of this darkness", etc. Hence the double issue of man's deception, seduction, and ruin: man's separation from God: and the defeat of God's intention. Man, out of Christ, is such a man, even at what he - man - thinks to be the highest levels of intelligence, "culture" and "progress". The Bible says much about the sinister nature of "the wisdom of this world", and even foretells that apostasy will go hand-in-hand with the increase of knowledge. The subtlety of sin is that to try and eliminate its malevolence it has to be called by other names. The Bible does not hide the fact of man's sinful nature, not even to omit mention of the sins of the greatest of its men of God: Abraham, Moses, David, etc.

It is now possible to discern the momentousness of Christ. For this we have to go a long way back, even to a cosmic event before man's creation, when, the Bible tells us explicitly, God appointed His Son "Heir of all things". That was the point of cosmic controversy then, and has been ever since. The focal point of the conflict of the ages is the predestined place of Christ as Son of Man, the humanity according to God's intention, of which Jesus the Christ is the "Firstborn", Progenitor, "Pioneer" and "Head". Countless are the ways and means pursued to prevent, frustrate, and defeat Christ from coming into His own in a humanity conformed to His image. In other words, (a) to discredit and displace Christ; and (b) to prevent there coming into being a people truly, by new birth, coming "into Christ". THE great revelation of the New Testament is what is represented by that phrase "In Christ". The "fall" was not only a fall in level, from one higher level to a lower; it was a fall OUT OF GOD! The momentousness of Jesus Christ is in His reversal of that, and in Himself restoring man 'into God', his right place.

This is the meaning of that darkest and deepest eternal moment at the end of the Cross when Jesus went out from God - "Forsaken"; out into the direst distress; OUT, that in 'lostness' He might find us just where we are in God's knowledge and bring us back into God. "Christ died once, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18). His body broken was the reality of which the veil of the tabernacle and temple was the type. Its rending, as between heaven and earth, man and God, opened a fast-closed way back into the realm of God. Surely that was a momentous moment: a momentous act!

Every aspect of Christ's person and work, and every aspect of the Gospel has to do with this. Moreover, every activity of the evil powers upon the Christian is with the object of cutting in between him - or her - and the Lord by weakening or damaging the one tie of that union, namely faith.

Hence Christ's imperative "Abide in me". Satan "abode not in God" and see the consequences! Hence the momentousness of being in, and abiding in Christ, which is in God.

We return to where we began. God binds Himself up with His Son for man. All judgment is, and will be, on the basis of what Christ is and whether man is in Him or not. The whole Christian life, if it is true and under the government of the Holy Spirit, is a lifelong education as to the significance of Christ; the knowledge of Christ, and, seeing that it is not merely theoretical, doctrinal, theological knowledge, but very practical, wrought on the anvil and by the fires of deep experiences, it is knowledge which is a part of our being, our constitution. It is knowledge which represents something that has taken place in us. We ARE that knowledge.

When we first come back to God through Christ we have only a more-or-less understanding of the depth, the cost, the momentousness of what we have come into. But as we go on, the dealings of God with us bring us to an ever-deepening realisation and appreciation of what Christ is and has done. On the one side, the depth of our worthlessness becomes more terrible to our awareness. This is not for our desolation as the end, but to make us "KNOW" how great is the meaning of Christ from God TO us, and to God FOR us. The ultimate vision of the redeemed multitude is that of a WORSHIPPING people attributing everything to the Lamb.

The Nature Of Divine Life

"I came that they might have life" (John 10:10).

When we come to the Gospel by John, we see that this is the Gospel of spiritual education. The others are largely a matter of history – the history of the earthly life, work, and teaching of the Lord Jesus, but the Gospel by John is the spiritual life and interpretation of Christ in Person.

Do you notice how the Gospel begins? It begins with these words: "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4). The main part of the Gospel ends with these words: "Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name" (John 20:30-31). (Notice that chapter 21 is something added afterward – it is quite clear that John intended to finish with what is chapter 20, and he really finished with these words.)

The Gospel begins with: "In Him was life." It ends with: "That you may have life." The main Gospel comprises 20 chapters, and halfway through 20 is ten. In chapter 10, verse 10, we have "I came that they might have life."

The beginning: "In Him was life;" the middle: "I came that they might have life;" the end: "Believing, you may have life." In that one word "life" we have the full answer to our question: "Why did Jesus Christ come into this world?"

Note one or two things: All the teaching and works of the Lord Jesus related to this thing that He called life. All His teaching and all His works were in relation to life.

The second thing to notice is this: Jesus demonstrated that to possess this life is a miracle, and He showed that it is impossible to have it without a miracle. To come to be possessed by this life is something supernatural.

The third thing we have to notice is: It is revealed by the Word of God that the possessing of this life is the basis of all God's works. He can do nothing in us until we have this life. He has to stand back and say: "I can do nothing until I have My life in you." His life in us is the basis of all His work.

So now we are going to look at this Gospel by John to instruct us in this matter of life.

Jesus’ Teaching Of The Disciples

Notice again what it says in chapter 20: "Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of His disciples." Note – "in the presence of His disciples." John said, in effect: "All these signs that Jesus did, He did in the presence of His disciples." That was because it was His disciples whom He was teaching. They were the ones who had to learn the meaning of these things because they had to carry on His work.

So we can take it that Jesus never performed a miracle unless His disciples were there. If there was some great work to be done, He looked round to see if the disciples were there. He was not just doing these things for the benefit of the multitude, though they may have had some benefit, as in the case of the feeding of the 5,000, but these things were for the education of the disciples.

Jesus was most careful that they came to understand the meaning of what He was doing. We are going to see how important that is.

I do hope that when I use that word "disciple" you are not thinking back 2,000 years! I think the majority of the people reading this, if not all, are disciples – those who are learning Christ. Just as the chief business of the disciples in those days was to learn Christ, so it is our chief business today. The most important thing for Christians is to learn Christ.

We turn once more to those two verses at the end of chapter 20, and I want you to underline three words. In "Many other signs did Jesus" underline the word "signs." In "These are written that you may believe" underline the word "believe." And in "that believing you may have life in His name" underline the word "life." Signs – believe – life. The whole of this Gospel is summed up in those three words, and we are going to look at them now.

The Purpose of "Signs" In Jesus’ Ministry

Firstly: signs. The whole of the teaching of the Gospel by John is gathered around seven signs, and they were seven especially selected signs. John says: "Many other signs did Jesus do," and that if they were all written "even the world itself would not contain the books" (John 21:25). There must have been many more signs, but John has selected seven and has gathered the whole of this matter of learning Christ into them.

There are four words used for "miracles" in the New Testament. In some places they are called "wonders," and that conveys the idea of something quite unusual, or extraordinary, a wonderful thing. In other places they are called "powers," which conveys the idea of spiritual, supernatural energy. In other places they are called "paradoxes," which, as you know, is a contradiction. They were called "paradoxes" because they were something which contradicted the natural order of things. But the fourth word for "miracles" is this one which John always chose and is his favourite word for them.

He always called them "signs," which meant that these works indicated something more than themselves. The work was not just something in itself: there was a meaning behind it. It signified something. There was the actual work, but it had a spiritual meaning and was a sign of something more. That is John's word for "miracle."

We leave that for the moment – we are going to take it up again.

The True Nature Of "Believing"

The second word: believe. This is the key word to the whole of the Gospel by John and occurs 98 times in it. Everything in this Gospel gathers around that word: "That you may believe." But what does the word "believe" mean?

It means two things, which are in the word itself. It means an acknowledgement of the truth, that is, the reaction which says, "That is true," or "He is true," "I believe He is true." But it means more than that. The word in the Greek means: "Believing that it is true, you commit yourself to the one who says it."

John puts that in another way in one place: "As many as received Him" (John 1:12). That is only another way of saying "They committed themselves to Him." Believing is not only a mental thing. It is the committing of the life to the one whom you believe.

I once heard Dr. Billy Graham put it in a very simple way. I was sitting on the platform just behind him, and, as you know, he is quite a big man physically. He could put his weight on to the platform where he stood. He said: "Now, when I come on to this platform I do not stand on the steps and say: `I wonder if the platform will hold me or whether, if I get on to it, it will collapse and let me down.’ I have such confidence in this platform that I walk right on to it and commit myself to it. I have no question about the platform. I put my full weight on to it." He went on to say: "That is what the New Testament means by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ." "That believing" ... that is, committing yourself to the Lord Jesus.

The Blessing Of Divine Life

Now our third word: life. This brings us to the main object of our consideration. The signs were the instruments used by the Lord Jesus; the believing was the reaction of men to the signs, and the life was the result of their reaction. They committed themselves and they received life.

Let us look at this life. What is it? What is its nature and what does it mean? I do not think it is necessary to remind you that this is a kind of life that no one has who does not possess the Lord Jesus. The very word that is used for life here is different from other words for life. This is not animal or human life, but divine life, the life that is in God alone.

It is a life that is different from every other kind of life because it has a different nature in it. Every kind of life has its own nature, and divine life has divine nature in it. Peter speaks about being made "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4), and with this life the very nature of God is implanted in us. It is a different nature from our own nature. We are going to see how that is.

But, remember – "In Him was life" (John 1:4). Is He different in nature from other men? Everyone can see that He is different from other men in His very nature, and the difference is made by this life that is in Him. This life brings with it a new and different consciousness.

Look at the Lord Jesus! What was His real consciousness? This was a thing about which He was always speaking, and it was so very evident in His case. He said, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). "I do always the things that are pleasing to Him [the Father]" (John 8:29). "The works that I do in my Father's name" (John 10:25). Oh, this word "Father" in John's Gospel!

The consciousness of Jesus Christ every day was of His union with His Father, the oneness that existed between them: "As you, Father, are in me, and I in you" (John 17:21). The consciousness of the Lord Jesus was of the very closest union with God as His Father, and that was because the very life of God was in Him. His life was a God-conscious life; but God-consciousness in the sense of perfect oneness.

That is what it means to have this life. Man never had that. Jesus came to bring it in His own person – not to talk about union with God, but to live out a life of union with God and to bring His disciples into the same union. "I came that they might have life" – in other words, "I am come that they may have the same consciousness of God as Father that I have and that they may have the same divine nature in them as I have." (Not deity, but nature.)

Divine Life Must Grow

This life means another thing. Life must always grow. You know that very well! Whatever kind of life it is, if it is really life it must grow. You know that in your garden, and it is true in human beings. The law of life is constant development.

This was true of the Lord Jesus. It is said of Him that He was made "perfect through sufferings" (Hebrews 2:10) and that word "perfect" means "complete." He was made complete, full-grown, through sufferings. "Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered" (Hebrews 5:8). Jesus was growing by the power of this life in Him, and if we possess this life we should grow.

Paul says, "That we may be no longer children ... but ... may grow up in all things" (Ephesians 4:14-15). "Till we all attain ... unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13). So, to possess this life really means that we ought to be growing, and if we are not, there is something wrong with us.

Divine Life Is "Different"

Now notice these things: a different nature – a different consciousness – a different relationship – and a constant growth.

You see how these things are illustrated in this Gospel. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. Let us think of Nicodemus as being a perfectly honest man. A great many things have been said about him which are not to his credit, but I believe that he was a very sincere man. He came and he called Jesus "Teacher." "We know that you are a teacher come from God" (John 3:2).

What did he come to Jesus about? Evidently he had come to talk about the Kingdom of God, because the Lord Jesus read his thoughts. He knew that Nicodemus was interested in the Kingdom of God, but He said to him, in other words: "You will never get into the Kingdom of God unless you have God's life. You and I cannot even talk about the Kingdom of God because we have not the same life. How do you get this life? You must be born again, and if you have never been born you are not alive."

So it is quite clear that Nicodemus had not the nature of the Kingdom of God, because he had not the life. For any of us to get into the Kingdom of God we have to receive the life of God, which is His very nature.

Then we said it is a different consciousness. How beautifully this is illustrated by the woman of Samaria! Poor woman, she wanted to know the secret of life. She had missed it, had tried to find it but had never done so. Hers was only a poor existence! Jesus began to speak to her about life and said, in effect: "The water that I give you will be living water in you, springing up into eternal life. When you have the life that I can give you, or that is in Me, then you will find the secret of life."

What about this matter of a new consciousness? A whole section of John's Gospel is taken up with this. On one side stands Jesus alone; on the other are the Jewish leaders. They are in two different worlds and do not understand one another – at least, the Jewish leaders do not understand Jesus. How different they are!

Jesus puts His finger upon the very point of the difference. He speaks of God as His Father. He says to them: "You just do not know the Father" "You are of your father the devil" (John 8:44). "I came from above; God is My Father." He had the consciousness of God as His Father, and they had no such consciousness. The reason was that they had not this life in them.

Then what about this matter of constant development? There is a very beautiful illustration of this in John's Gospel, in chapter 12, where Jesus says, "Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abides by itself alone"... By itself alone ... "But if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24). The new life that comes in resurrection means that that seed is multiplied a hundred-fold. There is no end to the development of it once resurrection life comes into it. There is constant development by the power of this new life, and that is a law of life.

Dear friends, all these things are meant to be true of you and of me, for this is what it means to have this new life. I trust that what we have been able to say makes very real this wonderful thing that Jesus Christ came into the world to give to us.

In his first letter, John said, "He that has the Son has the life" (1 John 5:12). If we have the Lord Jesus, then we have this life, and what this life is in all these respects is supposed to be true of us. That is the miracle of eternal life. May it be true of every one of us! We have the Son and we have the life; we know that we have the life and that, as we said, we are having it more abundantly, meaning that the life has to grow forever.

T. Austin-Sparks (1965)

The New Age of the Holy Spirit

The book which goes by the title ''The Acts'' is the book which introduces a new age; it marks the passing of certain days, age-days, and the arrival of a new day, a new age-day. But it not only marks that change; it sets forth the character of the new day. Among the many very important things which the Lord 's people need to recognize anew is this, the real Divine nature of the new day which came in with that recorded in this book.

The established and accepted title of the book is limiting, and to some extent misleading. You must remember that the writer of the book never gave it that title. Luke, who wrote it, did not call it, ''The Acts'', nor ''The Acts of the Apostles'', nor ''The Acts of the Holy Spirit''. He did not give it a title. If it had a title at all, it is in his introduction, and that purely by inference. ''The former treatise I made... concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach'', and the inference is that this is a further treatise of all that Jesus began to do and teach.

I say the established title, ''The Acts'', is limiting, and to some extent misleading, for this reason: it puts all the emphasis upon activity, and in so doing obscures the nature of the activity, the real character of what had been brought in, the very essence of things; that is, it very largely obscures the fact that this new dispensation is absolutely spiritual in every sense.

We know how ''the baptism of the Spirit,'' ''the filling of the Spirit'', all that is meant by the use of the word ''Pentecost'', has been taken up by men and interpreted in terms of manifestations, things that can be outwardly noted, activities, works, done in a certain kind of heat and enthusiasm and strength and assertiveness. You know what the general mentality is when mention is made of being filled with the Spirit. At once our minds leap to certain forms of manifestation. But that is not the basic thing. The basic fact is that something has changed altogether, and there is a new character given to the new age; and that is, that for this age everything is essentially and absolutely spiritual.

I think Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, not with this object in view but under the same Spirit's direction and inspiration, has given a full summary of what this changeover really is. It occurs in a phrase in 1 Corinthians 15:46: ''Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; then that which is spiritual.'' First that which is natural; afterward that which is spiritual. That is only saying, in other words, that the days which have gone were natural days, the days in which Divine things were manifested naturally, on natural grounds. They could all be grasped by natural apprehension, men could see, men could feel. All that realm of God's activity was possible of observation naturally; but now that has passed.

''And it shall come to pass afterward...''; ''afterward that which is spiritual.'' That represents a Divine order and an established economy in the arrangement of this world's history. First that which is natural in everything; afterward that which is spiritual, and this book (we will use its accepted title, ''The Acts'') is the afterward that is spiritual. And one of the most wonderful things is that this book comprehends the Old Testament and changes it right over into the spiritual realm.

You go back to the opening chapters of Ezekiel and you find all the Divine intentions and thoughts are being projected; the counsels and purposes of God are in view - the wheels and the living ones and the spirit in the wheels: Divine counsels, the purposes of God in motion, and they are all under the government of this One Who is upon the Throne. All these Divine movements in relation to Divine intentions concerning a people for God are all under the government of that One upon the Throne; and they go straightforward, they turn not as they go; they are not deviating, they are not hindered; they go and they go straightforward because there is One Who is in the place of absolute sovereignty, and nothing, however it may seem otherwise, can really divert His purposes. So, in this book of ''The Acts'', whatever happens which seems to be a diversion or a subverting or a hindrance or a contradiction, and however much it seems to be out of the straight way, it is found in the end to be compelled by a governing hand ready to reach God's end and fulfill it, and not hinder it. He is going straight forward. It is because of the Man in the glory.

Yes, He is God's Son, very God, but it is the MAN (''I see the Son of man....''). As the Man He is the full embodiment of the perfection of God's thoughts concerning man that is ultimately to be, man that is eventually to occupy God's realm, and as Son of man He is installed, enthroned, established as the perfect model of how things are to be; and God is taking the straight course in the power of the Spirit to that end, to have things according to the Man in the glory.

Pentecost in its outworking, or the presence of the Holy Spirit here, will mean that those in whom the Spirit operates and has His way will never be able to rest short of God's full thought for themselves or for others; that what is there should be found here - that what is true of Christ, the Man in the glory, should be more fully expressed here in this new man, the Church, the Body. What is the place of glory where God will dwell? It is no place on this earth as geographically located or materially constructed. It is a spiritual sanctuary, a habitation of God through the Spirit. It is something which has been spiritually constructed, constituted, and perfected, and His dwelling and His habitation will be there; and it will be the place of His glory unto all ages for ever and ever.

What is it? In other words it is the realization in a people of that conformity to the image of His Son. God, by His Spirit, is working to make us a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, for His own habitation. ''And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God (Rev. 21:2-3, 10-11). This is none other than the corporate man in Christ perfected and glorified. That is a vision of Christ and what Christ means in the thought and intention of God. It is a revelation of that for which the Holy Spirit has come, and an explanation of what the Holy Spirit is doing to get rid of all in us which cannot be glorified! Having brought life and incorruption to light by the gospel, he is working unto that day when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, this mortal shall put on immortality, and death shall be swallowed up in victory; when the Church is a glorious Church, where God Himself is found without restraint and in which He is worshipped in His universe.

The Man in the glory, being at God' s right hand exalted, established, settled, is the assured realization of God's end. He cannot be there without His members. He cannot go on there alone. All the meaning of the presence there of Christ, the Son of man, would be stripped from Him if His Church never came there, made like unto Him; there would be no meaning in it at all. He is, after all, but the First-born among many brethren; He is bringing many sons to glory. The Spirit of sonship has come, not to try and do something, not with a hope that it may be; He has come in all the sovereignty of that One there, and it is going to be.

Settle your faith in this. However many questions you may have as to yourself, however often you may despair in yourself and be on the point of giving everything up, who that knows his own heart does not know the frequent temptation to do this? Yet there is no need for despair. There is another view; there is something else going on. The Spirit has come, He is within. He sees One at the right hand of God, and in spite of our despair about ourselves, in spite of the discouragement and impossibility that we find in ourselves, the Spirit of God is holding us to the Man in the glory and going on with this work; and it is not until we abandon faith in the omnipotence of the Spirit of God that hope departs and despair settles down. While we will believe that the Spirit of Christ has come in all that omnipotence of the exalted Son of man and is in us to do the work, hope springs eternal; there need be no despair. He is working in sovereignty.

I do believe that this book of ''The Acts'' says so loudly and clearly this one thing: out from heaven the Spirit of Almighty God has come in sovereignty to see things through. Let Herod do what he likes; let the kings and the nations have their confederacies; let all conditions work adversely; let Satan and all his forces operate; the Church goes on and these very things are drawn right into the train of Christ' s triumph and made to serve the Divine ends. The things which befall work out for the furtherance of the Gospel, and the very things which look like disasters and calamities prove at long last to be complementary things under the sovereignty of the risen Lord. The spirit of God is in charge.

The Otherness of Christ

Dear friends, what is the Lord doing with us? That is what we want to know. What is He doing with you and me, and with those who are really in His hands? Is He not doing with us that which He has done with all who have come completely under His hands; that is, leading in a way and realm where human understanding and ability are completely confounded and exhausted, where it is totally impossible to cope mentally with His ways, or to explain Him? We cannot see, we cannot understand; neither is it in us to do, to achieve. We are learning that all our resources are of no avail and that everything depends upon the Lord Himself - His wisdom, His strength, His grace.

Well now, if it is your experience so far and at this time, understand that it is quite right, it is not all a mistake. True, it is very painful, it is testing. It is testing up to that point where your feet have to touch the very brink before you prove God. You have to come to an utter end of one way and to a beginning that is a beginning even to the point of lifting your feet to take a step to prove God, for God to come in. You say that is very utter. Yes, but it is this utterness of the difference between the Lord and ourselves that we have to learn, and that is going to set us over against the colossus of false doctrine, of the iniquitous lie which is being built upon this earth up to heaven, the lie of humanism.

That is the greatest lie that has been brought into this universe, that it is in man to be his own savior, that it is in man to rise to perfection, it is in man to be God; it is all in man, the roots are in himself. I say that is Satan's colossus of iniquitous untruth, and God is working out the contradiction of that in a company, in His Church. It is being wrought, worked out, in the unseen; and while it is so difficult to accept it in the day of suffering, weakness, and darkness and inability to understand, if we knew the truth the probability is that it is just this: God is doing with Satan in and through the Church what He did with Satan in and through Job, answering his challenge and his lie. Here is a broken, shattered, helpless little vessel of saints, bewildered, stripped, thrown back upon their God, unable to do or to understand, clinging to Him and seeking to prove Him, and through that the greatest iniquity in this universe is being assailed by God and answered.

The lie! There never was a time when that lie has reached greater proportion than it has today. But in you and in me, poor broken ones, God has His answer, and it does mean something to the Lord that we have been emptied out to the last drop, thrown back upon Him where He is our wisdom, He is our strength, He is our life, He is our very breath. That means something to Him.

Karl Barth has coined for us a phrase which has gained a great deal of strength and place, and it is a very useful one - ''the altogether other-ness of Christ.'' Oh, that goes much further than we realize, certainly much further than most people are prepared to believe. Even yet in evangelical Christianity there is a clinging to the idea that we transfer everything to Christ and to Christianity when we are born again. We transfer all our faculties and our powers over to the interests of Christ and then, instead of using them for ourselves and for the world, we use them for Christ. That is the meaning of consecration, of surrender, as the terms are used so largely today in evangelical Christianity - the consecration of ourselves, our gifts, our faculties, our everything, to the Lord and to His service. But that falls short of something. It is not the transference and the consecration of everything that we are to the Lord to be used straightway as it is over on His side - for His interests instead of in the world. Christ is other yet, Christ is still different yet from consecrated natural life; oh, so other! Something has to happen, our entire mentality has to be changed, transformed. The mind has to be renewed; we have to have an altogether different kind of outlook, even about the things of God. It is a constitutional matter, not merely a directional one.

This is the meaning of the Lord's dealings with us; namely, to get a new mentality, a new conception; another, not our old one transferred, but another; and the distance is not the distance of time or geography necessarily, it is the distance of difference; and we make faster or slower progress spiritually according to how we learn this lesson. What is the secret of spiritual progress? It is the letting go of our own will and mind to the fact, to the truth, that after all, though Christians at our best, wanting to be a hundred per cent for the Lord, it is not in us either to be or do. Our will can never do it, our reason can never accomplish it, our impulses and desires can never get us there. We have to come to a brokenness and yieldedness where nature is laid low in the dust and all our treasure is with the stones of the brook and the Almighty becomes our treasure (Job 22:24-25); the Lord alone our wisdom, our strength and vision, our desire. Until you and I have learned the lesson of that utter brokenness and yieldedness and letting go to the Lord, spiritual progress is delayed.

May the Lord show us the great distance that lies between ourselves as Christians and Christ, and give us a heart that yields to the Spirit's work in teaching that lesson and making it good and bringing us more and more to the measure of His Son.

The Power That Worketh in Us

Reading: Eph. 1:7-14; 3:14-21.

There is a phrase at the end of the third chapter of the letter to the Ephesians which I feel we are led to consider: "...the power that worketh in us". If you look back to verse 16 you find these words: "...that ye may be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inward man". There is a very great deal hanging upon that clause, "the power that worketh in us". It is something which is called upon to carry a very great responsibility; but, blessed be God, it is well able to carry it.

The connection, as we see from these passages to which we have referred, carries us into things eternal. Mark the phrase in verse 11: "According to the eternal purpose". Mention is made of Divine purpose more than once in this letter. Again, mark the words in verse 19: "...that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God". There you have some intimation of what that eternal purpose is. Then, as within that great compass, there is a great deal of need, a many-sided need. That need in its various aspects is touched upon in the two prayers of the Apostle; the need for the spirit of wisdom and revelation that we may know - and what things they are to be known! What immense things to be known! - and then in relation to that knowledge, that vast, wonderful, spiritual knowledge, which is the content of the eternal purpose, and in relation to all the fulness of God, one central need, namely, to be strengthened with might, not only to know, but to do. So we are led to what form the first words of chapter 4: "I... beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called". What a context! If we spent all the rest of our days, even though they were many, we should never fathom these wonderful intimations, all that hangs upon this little phrase "the power that worketh in us". As we have said, it is well able to carry that burden.

Before going any further, I want to make this observation, that this power transcends all His other power. This is what is termed "the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe". It is the power that worketh in us. That "us" relates to a particular people, and there is a particular power related to that particular people, and that particular power is the exceeding greatness of His power, that which exceeds in greatness all His other workings of power. I think that must lie behind the superlative terms employed. It is a comparative term. "The exceeding greatness of his power" means that there are other expressions of His power, but this one is its exceeding greatness; and it is to us-ward who believe, it is the power which worketh in us.

Now that is a great statement, and it leaves us with much to think about, if it be true; and it is true: "...the power that worketh in us", which is, as we have seen, power through His Spirit in the inward man; and that is the power and the means by which God reaches His end in us. God has a great end in us, even that we should be conformed to the image of His Son: "foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son..." This is the means by which that end is reached in us. God is doing something in us by the exceeding greatness of His power, deeper than our senses, deeper than our recognition, than our perception. There is something there which God has done, and is doing, which is settled beyond the interference of all the fluctuations and variations of our more superficial life. We live so much in that superficial realm, in what we call our soul realm, where we register all the influences and sensations which come from without, where we react to all such influences and impacts, and where we have a world of our own feelings, our own consciousness; this terrible world which is so rarely quiet and calm for any length of time together. It is the realm where all the fret is, all the anxiety, the worry, the care, the forebodings, and everything that can make us believe that it is the most real and positive and solid and true world in God's universe.

When we are in a mood, that mood is the most real thing to us, and if any tell us it is only a mood, and not to be taken seriously, we have little patience with such people. To us it is the most real thing. We are passing through something that is in the realm of this natural, this human life, and while we are passing through, it is terribly real. Yes, it may have a physical basis, it may rise from some disorder; it may be anything in this natural life, and this natural life is a terribly real thing to us, and very often we are dangerously near believing that it is the most real and ultimate thing, and that with it we stand or fall. Now what I want to say is that that is not the deepest thing in the child of God. There may be physical disorder and mental derangement, and there may be all the most positive sensations of which this complex nature of ours can be conscious, but there is a deeper thing than that which is not touched, not moved. Right down in the depths of our being, if we are children of God, there is something which survives all that. You know that it has survived a thousand such moods and experiences. You have again and again thought that it was the end; that now you were going to be swamped and submerged, now the finish had come, through despair, melancholy, misery, or for some other reason, and you have survived that kind of thing again and again; you have come through, you have come out, you have come up. There is something there in a child of God which is deeper than that, more abiding, inviolable, a foundation of God unshaken. Any power that can survive what we sometimes have to go through in the realm of our own souls is a very great power indeed; and, believe me, this power that worketh in the Church is going to survive all the accumulated sensations of all the members of the Body of Christ.

Now bring all your misery together, bring all your despair together, all your sensations, all the helplessness of the outlook, and, if you are a child of God, there is a power that worketh within which is more than sufficient to meet and counter and triumph over all that. That is the means by which God reaches His end in us, and if His end in us is conformity to the image of His Son, then the power that worketh in us is more than enough to meet and overcome all that which is contrary to His Son in us. Do you believe that? Not always! If we really believed that in a thoroughgoing way we should never be found occupied with ourselves, we should never be depressed because of our imperfection, there would be no room for any question as to our standing. Oh, if we did but believe this, what triumphant people we should be; for is it not true that the greater proportion of our trouble, of our despair, of our unhappiness is due to the consciousness of our own imperfection, all that we are that we would not be and should not be, and all that we are not that we feel we ought to be. His eternal purpose and His exceeding great power are linked together. Do not forget that. We are the object, of both, and His exceeding great power is at work within us to effect the purpose.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1939, Vol 17-2

The Pre-eminent Mark of a Life Governed by the Spirit

The mark of a life governed by the Holy Spirit is that such a life is continually and ever more and more occupied with Christ, that Christ is becoming greater and greater, more wonderful as time goes on. The effect of the Holy Spirit's work in us is to bring us to the shore of a mighty ocean which reaches far, far beyond our range, and concerning which we feel: oh, the depths, the fullnesses, of the riches of Christ! If we live as long as ever man lived, we shall still be only on the fringe of this vast fullness that Christ is. That at once becomes a challenge to us before we go any further. These are not just words. This is not just rhetoric; this is truth. Let us ask our hearts at once: Is this true in our case? Is this the kind of life that we know? Are we coming to despair on this matter? That is to say, that we are glimpsing so much as signified by Christ that we know we are beaten, that we are out of this, and will never range all this. It is beyond us, far beyond us, and yet we are drawn on and ever on. Is that true in your experience? That is the mark of a life governed by the Holy Spirit. Christ becomes greater and greater as we go on. If that is true, well, that is the way of life.

From "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Sept-Oct 1968, Vol 46-5

Proximity to Christ

Reading: Genesis 43:1-34; Genesis 44:1-12.

In connection with the above chapters will you turn to the Letter to the Ephesians 2:11-13, and 17-18; Matthew 26:39a.

There is a word on one's heart in connection with proximity to Christ. It is very clear in the Lord's Word that there are differences in the matter of proximity to Christ; that distances from Christ are very different, are greater and lesser. You have but just to take that thought and carry it for a moment into the New Testament on the literal side to see the bearing upon the spiritual side. There is this passage here in Matthew 26:30, and you begin at the most advanced point where the Lord is alone "and He went a little farther." His "little farther," of course, was going all the way with the will of God. That bit just spoke of the utterness, the completeness of His separation unto His Father's will. He went the bit farther than any one else, He is seen there alone. From that point you get differences of distance from Him. If you go back (reading backward) you find in the previous verse He has taken Peter and James and John a little farther than the others. They have gone a little farther than the others, they are nearer to Him than the rest of the company which came into the garden with Him, but they are not immediately with Him.

You would have thought, perhaps, and I suppose if it had been us it would have been like this, "Now let us get down and have some prayer together. There's a great battle on, there's some great thing to be met, we cannot meet it alone, let us pray together." But there was something which made it necessary for Him to forego that fellowship, and so instead of doing the thing which doubtless His own heart was craving for, that is, entering into this thing in fellowship with His brethren, or bringing them into fellowship with it, He went a little farther, and they could not just go that extra bit, but He left them there. And then, reading back one verse further, you find the eight are left at a greater distance, a distance between the eight and the three and a distance between the three and the One: and then if you go over into the Book of the Acts and read in chapter one, you find one hundred and twenty. These surely were all followers before the Cross, they haven't become disciples since Calvary. They were of the larger company, but they are not in the garden. They are somewhere else; they are not in the same proximity to Him as the eight and then the three.

And then if you go further into 1 Corinthians 15:6, you will find there were about five hundred. Paul says "He appeared unto about five hundred at once." Where are the three hundred and eighty when the one hundred and twenty  are gathered together? Three hundred and eighty are missing, missing in that upper room in prayer during the davs of waiting for the Promise of the Father. The five hundred is split and only one hundred and twenty are there, three hundred and eighty are somewhere else; and so you go on, and you find in this literal way there is the Lord and then a very small company nearest; then a little larger company not so near as those; then a larger company; and then a much larger company, and who shall tell what the company was of those who were on the outermost rim of things. But you seeproximity! And I think that is suggestive of spiritual fellowship with the Lord of those who will go a little further; those who will go all the way, those who will go further than most, than some; and beloved, it is my belief that the Lord gathers us here at this season because He wants a company who will go all the way with Him, who will come into the Master's own intimate and immediate fellowship.

We know, do we not, of many who will go just so far with the Lord and then they draw the line; some will go a little further but then they stop short, and it seems that very few, very few indeed, go right into the absolute oneness with Him in His Heart, His Mind, His Will: and He is seeking for those who will be of His own Spirit, who will go a little further than the rest, than perhaps the most advanced of all the others, a little further still, to take them into the innermost secret and suffering of His own Heart.   And it would seem that these differences of approximation to Him would reveal spiritual state. I do not want to make much of that on the literal side, but on the spiritual side, undoubtedly it is true, a spiritual  state is disclosed by just how far you go with the Lord. To begin with, you have the matter of apprehension and appreciation; the grasping, the apprehending of the innermost desire and longing and secret of the Lord and an appreciation of Him, of His will, His Mind, His purpose. It does seem that some of these have a fuller apprehension and appreciation than others, and they went further, therefore. He was constantly suffering, was He not, from that lack of apprehension and appreciation? Again and again He gave expression to some feeling, some inner knowledge that they were not grasping it, that they were not getting hold of it, that they were not understanding. "I have many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them yet." All the time they were just failing to apprehend the inner thing, they were grasping the outer and missing the inner, they were not appreciating His feelings"Lord wilt Thou that we call down fire from Heaven?" but, "you know not what spirit you are of!" You see a lack of appreciation of His heart, His feelings, His thoughts, His mind there.

If we are not going on with Him, if we are not going to find a response in our hearts, may it not be that it is because we have not a due apprehension or appreciation of the heart, the mind, the purpose of the Lord. And then the question of devotion and sacrifice would come in, naturally, just whether they were prepared to pay the price of going on. The measure of devotion, the measure of sacrifice, what it was going to cost and then a hesitating because of the cost; and to go all the way with the Lord would necessitate paying the whole price, whatever that price might be, of suffering, suffering!

Now that brings me back to these chapters which doubtless you are wondering about as to what connection they have, these chapters in the Book of Genesisthis matchless story of Joseph and His brethren. Linked with the words we have read in the Ephesian Letter is a deep spiritual affinity between these portions of the Word. We have recently seen that Joseph himself stands to represent the Lord Jesus as the great Overcomer, the One Who by Divine right and revelation was to be the object of universal worship, where the sheaves of earth bow down and make obeisance to Him where the sun, moon and stars of Heaven also bow down and proclaim Him Lord. And that One, that One passing through rejection, sold for thirty pieces of silver, led in chains by His own consentin the case of the Lord Jesusand then passing into the dungeon, humiliation, and into the place of darkness where it would seem that all the promises and all the visions were totally eclipsed and impossible, at length exalted to the Throne. The great Overcomer! Wherefore, because "obedient unto death," "wherefore, God hath highly exalted Him." "Who for the suffering of death" is now in the presence of the glory of Heaven. Now that is Joseph here, or Joseph is here as a type of that.

The next outstanding figure in this story is Benjamin, and Benjamin represents the believer as the Overcomer. You will be helped by a study of Benjamin. He is marked out, he is distinguished. "There goes little Benjamin." Benjamin is the Overcomer amongst the Lord's people, just as Joseph was distinguished amongst his brethren at the beginning as the son of the father's love, so now Benjamin is called the son of the father's old age, and upon him everything hangs, upon him, for the brethren, apart from Joseph now; so Benjamin is the overcomer amongst the brethren. The brethren were at a distance; all the others are in no proximity to Joseph, the one on the throne. You see the distance? Everything speaks of distance. There is no fellowship. Oh, Joseph yearns, he longs for what is in this fellowship, but he can't have it yet. Benjamin is not there, and so the brothers are at a distance, separated, and he says, "It is impossible for you to see my face, to come into fellowship with me unless you bring Benjamin," and we hear the argument with their father about bringing Benjamin, and they determined they would not go if Benjamin could not go with them because they would not see his face; and then when they took Benjamin the distance was not altogether overcome. Yet Joseph had seen him at a distance, and then he ordered his steward to set on bread for himself apart, for his brethren by themselves, not feeding together yet: the Egyptians are present.

You know the meaning of Egypt surely by now, the realm of natural resources, the strength of the flesh. How is the final distance broken down? How do they all come into the closest fellowship as of one man? He put his cup into Benjamin's sack, and off they went with his silver cup in Benjamin's sack, and then sent his steward for them and brought them back. You know how it happened! That ruse, that trick, so to speak, was the way in which everything was broken down. By that way fellowship was brought in. What was it that did it? It was his cup in Benjamin's sack, his silver cup out of which he himself drank. Have you got it? To the overcomersone cup, a silver cup. The Master said to these, "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?" They said "we can"! He said, "you shall"! And that is absolute fellowship, it is fellowship in the cup, oneness in the cup, the silver cup. That means going all the way in closest proximitythe cost! Have you got it? We need hardly say any more.

That is the story. That which looked like, in the mind of the world, a trick, was that profound wisdom with a love motive in it, that they shall become ONE by that cup. The Spirit writes deeply beyond the wisdom of men, what men would call anything but wisdom and love. The Spirit writes the story of Calvary as the ground upon which perfect fellowship is brought about between the Lord and His brethren. But, oh! there is this other word. Benjamin, the least, the smallest, was brought into that relationship on behalf of all the brethren, the more important ones, according to the flesh, but who are spiritually discounted. The Lord depends upon a little one coming into relationship with Him in the cup. It is the overcomer of the Revelation. You have the brethren in the Churches, but they are spiritually at a distance, and in the Churches you have a little "overcomer" company who come into fellowship with the Lord in His passion and travail. That is the message of the first three chapters of the Revelation. Coming into fellowship with the Lord in His Cross as representative to save the Lord's testimony. You follow on in the Revelation and you find the small company are there first and the larger company afterwards, but they are there in behalf of the rest; the others would never get there if they did not get there first, but they have got through in the cup of His sufferings and the others will come into fellowship with that cup, "for they will come up out of the great tribulation and wash their robes and make them white in the Blood of the Lamb."

Now I am not concerned with times in this matter at all, but I am concerned with the spiritual facts and spiritual laws. All the way through from Genesis to Revelation is that law that He must have one or a little company, a remnant, an overcomer body, coming into full fellowship with Him by the altar, by the Cross, on behalf of all the rest. We have often pointed out that in the remnant of Israel only two tribes were called "all Israel." It is the remnant who came back and put the altar in its place and built the House, and yet they were called "all Israel."   You see it is relative.

Now, beloved, it is that small company which can go all the way which the Lord is after, that little flock that comes into closest fellowship with Him in His suffering, in His passion, in His purpose. There are only a few who can come there. He took with Him Peter, James, and John, and then He Himself went a little further; and so you get the ranges; and it speaks of just how far you will go, according to the price you will paythe fellowship of His sufferings. But too often in the Laodicean age there is that which is sickening to the heart of God about the spirituality of the majority. They are neither hot nor cold. There are those to whom He speaks right in the Laodicean conditions, "He that overcometh will I give to sit with Me in My Throne even as I have overcome and sit with My Father in His Throne." Here is the Throne you see"If we suffer with Him we shall reign with Him." Now that is the call of the Lord to us in these days, and I believe that will be what the Lord is pressing home in every one of these gatherings during this season.

Are you going further? Are you going all the way? The end of the way is the Throne; to get there means to go by the way of the Cross, by the way of the cup. The cup was found in Benjamin's sack, a little one, a little one, a small company. By Benjamin the others were brought into fellowship with the exalted lordcomplete fellowship. There are no more separate tables and the Egyptians are gone out, and there is perfect fellowship in the Spirit.

May the Lord get us to be such a company.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, May-Jun 1930 Vol. 8-3

The Purpose of God

It is of immense help, in contemplating the manifold activities and energies of God, to be able to gather everything into one inclusive, comprehensive, and concrete issue. The Bible, from Genesis to the Revelation, covers a wide range and includes a vast amount of matter, but it has one all-governing and conclusive objective. The purpose of God is one, and only one. It is always referred to in the singular; ''Called according to His purpose'' (Rom. 8:28). ''According to the purpose...." (Eph. 1:11). ''According to the eternal purpose'' (Eph. 3:11). ''According to His purpose and grace" (2 Tim. 1:9). It is not a variety or number of things; it is just one.

And what is the one, single, comprehensive purpose? The answer is Christ! ''His Son, Jesus Christ." And when we ask further, What about His Son? The answer is, to have Him fill all things and to have all things in Him. That this is so is made clear in the definite statements of Scripture; ''In Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible... all things have been created through Him, and unto Him.'' ''For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fullness dwell" (Col. 1:16,19). ''Whom He appointed heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds (ages)'' (Heb. 1:2).

So, then, in the counsels of God, all things must head up in Christ. God's occupation is with bringing Christ in, and bringing into Christ. If we would be "God's fellow-workers", this must be our single-eyed aim and business. This defines precisely the purpose of the Church.

The presence of the Church in this world is, firstly, to be a corporate expression of Christ here. The very designation ''The Body of Christ'' means Christ corporately present. The Church is not an institution, organization, society, or religious fraternity. It is, - in God's intention, the embodiment of His Son in a continuation of His life and work on this earth. In the next place, after the being of the Church, is its work. This is just one thing, and by the one result alone its work stands or falls. This work is to make for an increase of Christ in this world, and this is to be accomplished along two lines; namely, by evangelism and building up.

Evangelism is the bringing of Christ initially into lives. Every new instance of Christ coming into a life is an additional measure of Christ in the creation, making a new creation. It is of the utmost importance that there should be no stopping short at mere mental agreement, or emotional expression, or just an outward act of acceptance, but that Christ by His Spirit should really have taken up residence within. But our object is not to deal with evangelism, but to point out its object, which is to bring in Christ and to bring into Christ.

The other purpose of the Church is building up. In the most familiar versions of the New Testament the word in this connection is ''edification''. But "building up'' is much better. The Church is to ''build itself up''. We are to "build one another up". Spiritual gifts and ministries are all meant for ''building up''. What is this ''building up"? It is the increase of Christ. The New Testament repeatedly refers to ''babes in Christ'' and ''full-grown men'' in Christ; and there is a constant urge to ''go on to full growth''. Thus, by extensification and intensification, by increase outwardly and inwardly, it is Christ gaining an ever-increasing place. We repeat, by numerous ways and means God is governed by this one all-dominating objective - His Son.

But there is a point which needs very much to be emphasized and kept in view. These two things, evangelism and building up, are not two separate things; they must be kept together. If they are separated, or if either is given a greater place than the other an unbalanced condition will arise, and this will defeat God's full end. If evangelism is given a place greater than building up, or to the exclusion of the other, the result will be a great number of spiritual babes who remain such, no matter how long they live. There will then exist a preponderating number of Christians who are like those referred to by the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews - ''When by reason of the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again that someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles... and are become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food" (Heb. 5:12). By this and what immediately follows, the Apostle makes it quite clear that God can never be satisfied with just having so many, however many, "converts'', born-anew babes, but His end demands that these shall come to the spiritual position where they can take all that He has to give of spiritual strong meat, and have spiritual senses exercised, being ''experienced in the word'' and of spiritual intelligence. All this means what Paul called ''the measure of Christ'', and the end in view - ''unto the measure... of the fullness of Christ.''

If, on the other hand, building up is given a place out of all proportion to evangelism, we shall have another malformation. There will arise an ultra-spirituality that is divorced from what is practical. Truth will, sooner or later, take the place of Life. The mental will rule out the truly spiritual. The worst outcome will be that those involved will be found to have got into a false position which will not stand up to the tests of real life, the expression of Christ, among the people and conditions of this world. For the real proof of spiritual life is in its ability to express Christ in love, forbearance, patience, meekness, and self-forgetfulness, in an unsympathetic, ununderstanding, and unappreciative world. This does not mean that there should be a limiting of either evangelism or building up, but it does mean that there must be a close relationship between the two.

This is very strikingly manifested in the fact that the Apostles of the New Testament combined these two ministries in such fullness. They evangelized mightily; but what an immense building up ministry they fulfilled also! They brought Christ in almost everywhere they went, but they brought Him in in ever-increasing fullness wherever they had been. The point is the combination of the two. In the matter of ministry gifts to the Church, the Evangelist and the Pastor and Teacher are complementary ministries.

All this is surely very patent. But where are we now? We do not hesitate to say that the relationship between these two things has not by any means been preserved in equal proportions. The fact is that there is a preponderance of Christians who are, after many years, spiritual babes, sadly immature; without understanding in spiritual things; without capacity (and without appetite) for ''strong meat''. The result is that the impact and effect of Christ in this world is not at all commensurate with either the time that Christianity has been here, or the number of Christians on the earth. A few strong, healthy, and ''experienced'' people of God will count for a very great deal more than a vast number of Christians whose maturity is unduly delayed. There is therefore much to be done by way of removing this ill-balanced state and bringing the Lord's children to the state and position which should be theirs ''by reason of the time''.

This means that there is a real need and demand for a ministry of ''the fullness of Christ'' to the Christians of our time. The world's need is preeminently Christ in greater fullness, and this can only be in and by the Church, His chosen vehicle. But, we repeat, all such ministry must not stop with itself. It must result in stronger, richer, fuller evangelism. That is to say, the Christians must come through it to the position of having more of Christ to show and impart. This then is what is our sense of calling - "for the perfecting of the saints unto (that they may do) the work of ministering"; the word "perfecting" meaning making complete or full.

To sum up, God's end is the bringing in of His Son to fullness. This is the object and nature of the Church's being and work. The method is twofold: evangelism and building up. These two must be kept in close relationship as complementary, and the balance must be preserved in equality. This balance has not been preserved, and there are very many Christians whose spiritual maturity and capacity is very unduly delayed. There is therefore an altogether inadequate registration, impact, and effectiveness as to Christ, considering how long Christianity has been here and how many Christians there are. The need then is for a ministry by which Christians can be helped to the position that is God's desire and intention for them. Such a ministry must not end in people becoming interested in and taken up with teaching as something in itself, but rather in a richer and fuller representation of Christ to and among the peoples of this world. It is a misapprehension of truth if it results in less concern for the increase of Christ by the salvation of sinners and the mutual spiritual helpfulness of the saved. Truth should never turn us in on ourselves, but should make us conscious of being under a great debt to others.

Then we must realize that there are certain things which are basic to full spiritual development. One of these is the essential organic oneness of all who are ''in Christ''. No individual, or number of individuals, as such, can attain unto the full stature of Christ; that is only possible for "the whole Body". Any kind of division amongst Christians is a violation of Christ (''Is Christ divided?'' - 1 Cor. 1:13), and that must be contrary to the Holy Spirit, by whose work alone can we attain unto full growth. Therefore believers must abandon schismatic and divisive ground and occupy only the ground of Christ. In the beginning the Church was constituted by the acceptance of the absolute Lordship and Headship of Christ, and not just His Saviourhood. "We preach Christ Jesus as Lord.'' The Saviourhood was largely for men's good, but the Lordship was mainly for His place. This issue was the occasion of all the trouble.

This then is the ministry to which we feel the Lord has called us. Through deep and drastic ways He has formed it. We have not assumed it, and we can only give what He has given. We have sought much and always to be saved from mere theory, and we feel that in this the Lord has been faithful; but it has been costly.

And now, brethren, how can we gather up what we feel as our burden? Perhaps in no better way than in the Apostle's words:  ''Teaching every man, and admonishing every man, that we may present every man perfect (full grown) in Christ."

First published as an editorial in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1943, Vol. 21-2

The Rainbow

"I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh." Genesis 9:13-15.

"As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Jehovah. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake." Ezekiel 1:28.

"And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper stone and a sardius: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, like an emerald to look upon... And I saw another strong angel coming down out of heaven, arrayed with a cloud; and the rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire." Revelation 4:3; 10:1.

"I do set my bow in the heavens, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth." There is nothing profound about that - it is simple and beautiful, yet so full of meaning.

What is a rainbow? We gaze upon it, are entranced by it, held by it. It is sun rays shining through rain, or it is rain arresting sun rays and breaking them up, and showing us the inside of the sun rays, what the rays of the sun are made of - their composition, the rain acting as a prism to break up the white light into its component parts. That is all, but you have one of the richest symbols in the rainbow and we just want to understand the meaning of God's sign in the heavens by which He governs. He is ruling by this sign in the heavens.

In the above we see that in every case the rainbow is connected with judgment. In Genesis the flood; then afterward the renewed earth, the altar and the sacrifice of Noah upon it. "And the Lord smelled a sweet savour" and the Lord said, "I will no more judge the earth by water." "I will set my bow in the heavens and it shall be for a token of a covenant." Something has happened with which all future judgments will take place. They will be governed by a certain thing that has happened.

When you come to Ezekiel you know that in the first chapters of the book you are going to have judgments. Nations are going to be brought into view for judgments. First of all there is a revelation of a throne and of One as of the appearance of a Man above the throne, and then the rainbow, and then in relation to Him and that rainbow these judgments are going to take place - judgment of hostile nations, and then of God's own people in relation to him and His rainbow throne.

Now the rainbow is the symbol of incarnation and redemption - two phases of one thing, God manifested in the flesh, God in Christ the Son of Man. Note the words in Ezekiel, "and the likeness of a man above it." Incarnation and redemption as the outworking and purpose of incarnation. What that was intended to meet was the force and unbearable blaze of the infinite holiness of God. God is an infinitely holy God - the perfection of holiness, righteous to the uttermost, with Whom there is no shadow or suggestion of unholiness, and God cannot tolerate unrighteousness, unholiness, sin. We have to reckon with a God like that. He made man for His own glory, and intended this earth to be full of holiness. He determined that everything that was to abide before Him should be holy, without stain or suggestion of sin. There is that fierce blaze of divine holiness to meet and we are sinners; we are all "an unclean thing" and if our "righteousnesses are as filthy rags," what about our unrighteousness? Apart from redemption we should have to meet the full blaze of that holiness in our unholiness, and who could stand? Righteousness is a question of relationship to the Lord Jesus again.

"Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." The prince of this world has been condemned, and if you have not taken sides with the Lord Jesus you have taken sides with him - either with the devil or Christ. If with Christ, no judgment: if not you are with that judged one - eternally judged and condemned. Here it is the question of relationship to the Lord Jesus again. Sin has been dealt with and put away because of oneness with Him Who put it away, and you are already in the presence of the Father in the Person of Christ. The basis of divine government from the heavens depends upon our relationship to Christ on the ground of what Christ was - the Son of God Who "loved me and gave Himself for me" and to do so became the Son of Man.

The rainbow is a symbol of God manifest in the flesh - taking the form of man and "he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." The rainbow shows forth the beauty of the Lord - "let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." There is wondrous beauty in the light of the rainbow, perfections we have not seen or heard or detected. Let us, therefore, come boldly before the Throne of Grace.

The heavens do rule now by grace. It is grace that governs the Throne. The power of God in this age is grace. I hope the day never comes when I stand before that Throne and know any other power than grace. The covenant in grace is the covenant in His blood, and we need never know the awfulness of divine power but may know the beauty of divine power - the love of God. The covenant is a covenant in relation to the Lord Jesus as our Redeemer, and that is the covenant in which there is to be no judgment. The sin question has passed forever because of our relation to the Lord Jesus. The basis of divine government is that sacrifice on the altar. God has smelled a sweet savour: judgment has passed, His holiness, His righteousness, His standard is satisfied. Judgment has passed - it has been meted out upon the Substitute and the covenant sealed in that precious blood.

Could you bear to have all the evil thoughts, words, deeds, suddenly brought back in full remembrance? It is one of the mercies of God that we can forget. If we could not we could never sleep at night. The day is coming when every evil word, thought and sin committed will be brought up in the light of His Holiness but there is not going to be the remembrance of the sins of those in relation to the Sin Bearer. "I will remember them no more," and if God does not remember them, we need not. "Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea." It is hell to have them remembered and heaven to have them blotted out. Rejoice in the rainbow - it governs the Throne and controls heaven's dealings with us!

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1932, Vol 10-2

The Relevance of Christ

The words "Christ shall be magnified in my body" (Philippians 1:20) not only provide the key to the epistle to the Philippians but also the secret of Paul's radiant and fruitful life. All through the four chapters he took pleasure in expressing his joyful appreciation of the relevance of Christ, and his passionate desire that this might become evident to the Philippians and to all believers, including us. To Paul it did not even matter whether he lived or died, so long as Christ was magnified in that body of his.

We shall consider how the chapters stress four aspects of his experience and enjoyment of Christ, realising that each one of them was written so that his readers might have a share in this rich life.

Christ My Life

The first statement is that Christ was Paul's life - "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (1:21). He neither had nor desired anything beyond this, that his very being and existence in the world should provide room for Christ. It amounted to this, that wherever one could find Paul, there the Lord Jesus could also be found, since his one reason for being anywhere was that Christ should use his mortal body for the expression of His Own divine presence. Wherever Paul was, there Christ could be found, with consequent blessing to others, as we would expect.

If Paul's experience is anything to go by we are forced to conclude that there were some extraordinary places in which the Lord Jesus chose to be. Take the Philippian prison! It seems that Christ wanted to be present in that prison, although to us this might seem most inappropriate. There it was, however for the Lord Jesus has no objection at all to going to prison if thereby eternal interests can be served, so naturally enough Paul must be prepared to go there too. He was, and we know what blessing resulted from that experience. From this chapter we know also that Paul welcomed the hardship of yet another prison - this time in Rome - since by his presence there Christ was able to enlarge His kingdom in the hearts of men. Places of apparent limitation and restriction became places of enlargement and liberation, just because Paul kept true to his commitment that Christ was his life.

The man who talks as Paul did must be prepared to find himself in some strange and unexpected locations, but if he really means what he says the outcome will always be glory for God and the magnifying of Christ, not only in his thought processes but in his actual bodily experiences. This happened as the apostle went from place to place. Christ was there because he was there, so whether it was the inner dungeon at Philippi, lying stoned and left for dead outside the city of Lystra, or fighting with beasts at Ephesus, it was all the same, since clearly Christ was choosing such means for the expression of His presence and powers and this was what Paul wanted.

It seems an audacious claim on the part of the apostle and one which we ourselves would hardly dare to make, for much as we know that Christ is our very life and we are completely dependent on Him, we might feel it presumptuous to suggest that we are taking Him into the many and varied situations of our daily life. Nevertheless if we can say, "For to me to live is Christ" this surely means that so long as fellowship with the Lord is kept clear and uninterrupted, there is no place so dark or difficult, no situation so hard or problematic, but what an opportunity is being provided in our very bodies for the magnifying of Christ.

Of course we realise that Paul had only reached such a position by a complete abandonment of himself to Christ; he had no other interests and no other ambitions, for everything in his life was subjected to the one divine purpose. If we have some alternative to Christ, some side-line of our own interests, some indulgence, some rival to His lordship, then this experience is not for us. In such cases death would clearly involve loss - loss of those personal interests and ambitions. To die is only gain if Christ is all.

Christ My Disposition

The second thing that Christ was to Paul was his "mind" (2:5-9). We are exhorted to have the mind of Christ. This, of course, does not refer to intellect; it is wholly concerned with the attitude of heart. We are told in these verses not how much technical or academic understanding the Lord had but what was His disposition, and we are shown that this disposition was one of perfect meekness. All that was His by right He was willing to let go, humbling Himself to the extreme limit for the glory of God and the help of others. This was His attitude of mind, and the same thing is expected of us, though in any case we have few, if any, rights to let go of.

The apostle was referring to a background situation at Philippi in which two prominent workers were stubbornly holding on to their own positions, each refusing to give way, standing on her own dignity and waiting for the other to apologise. The root sin of all sins is pride. It is the one thing which the Word of God discloses to be an abomination to the Lord, whereas to Him one of the most beautiful things is "the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price" (1 Peter 3:4).

Without boasting, Paul could truly claim to have imbibed this spirit from his Lord. In the following chapter he tells of his former self glory, and claims that he had more right to boast than most other men, but since Christ was not only his life but also his disposition of mind he had been able gladly to humble himself. He was the man who could say to the Corinthians, "The more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved" and yet still go on gladly spending himself for them (2 Corinthians 12:15). Although in this chapter he had to record how fellow workers had let him down (Philippians 2:20-21), he gave no sign of bitterness but only of praiseful devotion to God's people and readiness to sacrifice himself for them. He it was who urged prayer "for all saints" (Ephesians 6:18), whether they approved of him or not. No doubt in his case, as in ours, it did not come naturally to accept that self-emptying which was so truly a part of Christ's nature, but as he committed himself for this purpose he was led through experiences - often painful ones - of learning to let go of all that was personal for the one end of the glory of God; and so he found that his own selfish disposition was being displaced by that beautiful meekness of Christ.

Christ My Objective

Thirdly, Christ had become Paul's objective. "...that I may gain Christ..." (3:8-9). From the day on the Damascus road when he had a vision of Christ in glory, his whole soul had been captivated. He was then taken in hand by the Holy Spirit and given an ever increasing understanding of Christ's glory which only deepened his single purpose of heart to be "found in Him". He knew now that for this purpose he had been arrested, he had been taken in charge, but far from resenting this experience he now gloried in having been captured and captivated by his wonderful Lord. He went into solitude in Arabia for two years and there the revelation grew, as did also his determination to be wholly committed to Christ. The unfolding of divine truth to him showed that Christ has no desire to remain alone and isolated in His exaltation, but plans to bring redeemed men into fellowship with Himself so that they may be conformed to His image and be partakers of His glory.

This realisation so gripped Paul that it left him with one single objective in life and that was to be "found in Him", to enter into the full purpose which lay behind that arresting vision of the glorified Lord. No wonder he was glad to leave the things which were behind; no wonder that he was always stressing that he had not yet arrived; he had seen, as it were, Christ beckoning him on to share in the eternal glory and found that nothing else mattered beside this marvellous prospect. Christ was his objective.

Christ My Strength

Christ was also Paul's strength (4:13). It is so good that the letter ends on this note, for it reminds us that Christ is the power to make all the rest possible. If we had to provide the resources for triumphant and self-sacrificial living we might well despair, but we do not; what we have to do is to learn to draw on Christ's resources, for they are more than sufficient for every need which can possibly arise.

Just as in Romans 8:28 Paul could rightly rejoice at God's sovereign ability to use "all things" and make them work together for good, so here in Philippians 4:13 he could affirm that "all things" were made possible in his life because of Christ's inward strength. A glance at the context shows that this did not refer so much to the outward activities of Christian service as to a capacity to endure every happening with quiet content in the will of God. Paul was born to be a gentleman but he had to learn to live as a slave, and this he did by the inward strength of Christ, and did it without the grumbling complaints which so often mar our testimony. He found it quite possible to be abased, put down, walked over, without showing any hurt or resentment. He could do this because Christ was his strength. What is more, he was able to abound, to know prosperity and success, without falling into the peril of losing his walk with God. High positions are more precarious than low ones, popularity more dangerous than persecution. The man who is being used and blessed of God is in special danger, for the moment that any servant of God allows himself to be made much of, is the time when Christ is no longer glorified but rather obscured. Only Christ's inward strength can keep us to our original committal of utter dedication to Himself. Only He can keep up to date, through adversity and prosperity, that first purpose that "as always, so now also, Christ shall be magnified" in these bodies of ours.

The Riches of His Grace

(A message given at the Eastern States, U.S.A. Convocation in 1966)

"In whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace" (Eph. 1:7).

In his Letters the Apostle Paul uses the word 'riches' some thirteen times. Each occasion has a context which is deeply valuable. From these we take this one: "The riches of His grace", and we are going to let David and Solomon be our example of this superlative grace. I would just like that you look at one or two fragments in the first book of the Chronicles, chapter 28, verses 1-6:

"And David assembled all the princes of Israel, the princes of the tribes, and the captains of the companies that served the king by course, and the captains of thousands, and the captains of hundreds, and the rulers over all the substance and possessions of the king, and of his sons, with the officers and the mighty men, even all the mighty men of valour, unto Jerusalem. Then David the king stood up upon his feet, and said, Hear me, my brethren, and my people: as for me, it was in mine heart to build an house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God; and I had made ready for the building. But God said unto me, Thou shalt not build an house for my name, because thou art a man of war, and hast shed blood. Howbeit the Lord, the God of Israel, chose me out of all the house of my father to be king over Israel for ever: for he hath chosen Judah to be prince; and in the house of Judah, the house of my father: and among the sons of my father he took pleasure in me to make me king over all Israel: and of all my sons, (for the Lord hath given me many sons) he hath chosen Solomon my son to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel. And he said unto me, Solomon thy son, he shall build my house and my courts: for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be his father."

"Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord" (2 Chronicles 3:1).

"And Solomon the son of David was strengthened in his kingdom, and the Lord his God was with him, and magnified him exceedingly" (2 Chronicles 1:1).

We have said that the summit of Old Testament fullness was reached in Solomon, and we shall find that Solomon will lead us to Christ, and then Solomon will be eclipsed, as out of view, when the Greater than Solomon is here. Solomon's wealth and wisdom and glory and heritage are proverbial and fabulous, renowned, and far famed. He does represent the summit of kingship and glory in the Old Testament. Jesus Himself acknowledged the greatness of Solomon on two occasions, you remember. He pointed to the flowers in the field and said: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Solomon in all his glory was proverbial, even in those days; Jesus Himself acknowledged it. On another occasion He said: "The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon," acknowledging the great place that Solomon had in the world of wisdom. But then Jesus added after that, "Solomon in all his glory", and 'Solomon in all his wisdom', that "a greater than Solomon is here". Solomon fades when Jesus arrives. The unsearchable riches of Christ! We have, then, to consider how in various respects Jesus is greater than Solomon.

One thing that we have been saying, and that is in our hearts in this time together, is our great need for a new apprehension of the Lord Jesus to adjust everything for us. But there are two preliminary considerations before we can proceed with this matter. Why did God magnify Solomon? For it says that "the Lord magnified Solomon above all that have been before him". The Lord endowed Solomon with this fabulous, proverbial greatness of wealth, dominion and wisdom. Why did He do it? God from eternity has only one person in view, and that person was not Solomon, nor any other one but His Son, and if the Lord so magnified Solomon, it was to bring His Son, the still greater, into view. Through the greatest thing He could do here on this earth to lead on to the much greater of the heavenly. God had His Son in view, the other One, the Greater than Solomon, and that is why He did it. I wish Solomon had known that! It would have saved him a great deal of historic tragedy. If we really saw that, and this One, this only One, were ever filling our vision, all these tragedies, mistakes and blunders that we make - or that Solomon did later - would be obviated.

Oh, the wonderful things that God said seemingly about Solomon could never possibly have been fulfilled in Solomon himself. They were quite beyond him! God was reaching beyond this man in the things that He seemingly said about him, and to him, and you have to pick up your New Testament in order to discover to Whom they really applied. Well, we may come on that as we go on, but the point is that we must not see Solomon as just the end in himself. We must look through him to Another and see that God in His sovereignty magnified and glorified this Solomon only with another One in view, and in the long run we shall see the Greater than Solomon, the Greater than the greatest that God has ever done on this earth.

Another thing we must remember in this preliminary consideration is that Solomon was not really himself. I mean this: Solomon was his father, David. Solomon was the fullness of his father, David, and you can never see Solomon without seeing David. That is, it was not so much the person as the significance of the person that is present in contemplating Solomon. When you turn to the New Testament, Solomon is only referred to, at most a half a dozen times, almost in a casual way, but David is referred to in a very positive way over thirty times. That is a statement you must dwell upon, of course, to verify. When you open your New Testament at the first book, the Gospel by Matthew, you find that you have read but a few words and you are on David. He comes there, in that place of priority, right at the beginning of the New Testament. You go through the New Testament and, as I have said, you will find yourself with David more than thirty times. Right on the last page, in the twenty-second chapter of the book of the Revelation, David creeps up again. This man is something very wonderful, very full, and he has a very large place. There is one clause in Isaiah 55, and repeated in the New Testament, which defines this as "the sure mercies of David". Oh, to be able to plumb the depth of that! This morning we shall see a little of it - "the sure mercies of David".

All that pertained to Solomon was "the sure mercies of David", and that brings us to the first of the greatnesses, the first of the "unsearchable riches of Christ", the first in Ephesians, and everywhere and always: The riches of His grace. Have you seen the riches of His grace as conveyed to us by Solomon? Having seen the great eminence of glory, of wealth, of wisdom to which God brought this man Solomon, we have to look to see where it all began. Where did all that begin?

There is a very dark background indeed to Solomon's birth and life. We have said that he was the fullness of his father, David. Solomon was the son of David's old age. He was not the only son - we read: "God hath given me many sons". We know some of them, and one in particular - Absalom. But Solomon was the son of David's old age, and it was an old age full of shadows: the shadows of tragedies, of sorrows, and of great mistakes. Solomon was related to the darkest clouds in David's life.

We know the story of David's great sin with Bathsheba and her husband, Uriah. David, relaxing wrongly at the time when kings go out to battle, went up to the housetop (there are relaxations which are very dangerous!) and from the housetop he espied that beautiful woman, Bathsheba, and coveted her. His passions rose and he said: 'I must have her.' Passion is a very, very fertile thing in evil, and so he schemed to get her. You know the rest of the story - how he planned, plotted, to get her husband, Uriah, in the forefront of the battle, and then told the other fighters to retire and leave him alone to the enemy, which they did. Uriah was left and slain according to David's precalculated plan, and they came back to David and told him: 'It has succeeded. Uriah is dead.' Then David sent to fetch Bathsheba, and he took her. The child born of that iniquitous union was smitten by God. He languished for days and then he died. Nathan, the prophet, went to David with a message from God and wrapped it up in a parable about something that happened in the city, and he painted it in such lurid pictures that David rose in anger, in wrath, and said: 'The man who has done such a thing shall die.' Nathan pointed at him and said: "Thou art the man!" Nathan brought home the accusation in a smashing, crushing blow, and then added: "Thou shalt not die." We will see the point of that in a moment.

The depth and greatness of David's sin is seen in those terrible confessions, heart-brokenness and sorrows. We have to look at the Psalms, for they are touched here and there with this. In Psalm 32: "I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord." Psalm 38 verse 18: "For I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin." And then a whole Psalm - Psalm 51 - one of the most terrible bits of literature in existence. Look at the heading of this Psalm: "A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him after he had gone in to Bathsheba." ... "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned and done that which is evil in thy sight." So the whole Psalm, which we will not read, but one more fragment: "Deliver me, O God, from bloodguiltiness." Here we are; broken-hearted, penitent, standing at God's tribunal, pleading for mercy, full of self-condemnation, a conscience stained with iniquity, and God's face turned away, a desolation of heart. He cries: "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, have mercy upon me."

David had sinned the sin which put him beyond the pale of the virtue of all the Levitical sacrifices. If you read the sacrifices and the conditions, you will find that they do not cover this sin, they have no provision for this. Even the cities of refuge which provided for the man-slayer would not take in David, because the man-slayer who found refuge there was the man who had caused someone to die inadvertently, without premeditation, by accident. So there was no provision for him, a man who had premeditated, planned, schemed, and brought about a death; the city of refuge had no place for him. No sacrifice is provided for him, therefore. In this Psalm 51, David says: "Sacrifice and offering and burnt offering thou desirest not" - 'It is no good. I have not any.' He was out of the pale of all their sacrifices and their virtue by premeditation. Oh, how far this man had gone! No wonder his conscience made him cry out like this! Uriah's death - murder - lies at David's door, and the little innocent babe's death lies at his door. What are you going to do with a man like that? What are you going to do with a sin like that? It is outside the pale of all God's Mosaic prescribing. What answer have we got to this? How can this man escape? How can glory be the end of that? There is only one answer, and there is an answer: Grace! Grace goes beyond all Old Testament limits.

David is the greatest Old Testament example of pardon through Grace. Remember that! That is why he is brought into view so much. That is the meaning of "the sure mercies of David". Why of David? Unsearchable riches of His grace! The son gathers into himself all that meaning of Divine grace, what grace can do in relation to a situation like that. How glorious! Glory can follow grace. "The glory of HIS grace" is a phrase in Ephesians. My, how deep!

You ask: Can there be anything greater, a greater demonstration of grace than that toward David represented in a temporal way in Solomon? (Underline that word 'temporal'.) Can there be anything greater than that? Is there greater grace than that represented by Solomon? Oh, yes: "A greater than Solomon is here!" As Son of Man, God's Son came into the inky darkness and blackness of the sin of the whole race, not of one man. He bore the judgment of that sin upon the whole race and brought God's infinite grace to the world - to the world!

Look again at that cross on Calvary's hill! Take another look, and listen. Listen to that bitter, heartbroken cry: "Eli, Eli, lama sabach-thani?" ... "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The word embracing all time and eternity: "forsaken... forsaken", David may have tasted something of that. Dear friends, when you look at that cross and hear that cry, you touch the deepest, deepest depth of human tragedy, that is, that the race, but for the grace of God, is God-forsaken eternally. If you have ever tasted a deep, deep sorrow within the compass of human capacity, you know that that hour of darkness is like an eternity. It is not momentary; it is like an eternity. It seems that an end of things for ever has been touched. In that moment when Jesus cried "forsaken, forsaken", He touched the eternity of man's destiny outside of God. That cry with that word "forsaken" is the measure of human depravity. We have yet to feel the tremendous impact of the Cross in this sense - that if Jesus had not gone there for us, we would be eternally forsaken of God. The face of God is turned away. The blackness and darkness of eternal doom rests upon the race - but for the Cross of Jesus Christ and what He has done there as forsaken.

Have you ever tasted the slightest drop of death? Oh, yes, it is possible, even in our Christian, spiritual life. I confess that there have been times when I wondered if the Lord had gone out of my universe, if He was really still alive and if He had not forgotten me. I cried: 'Has the Lord forgotten to be gracious?' It was as though the Lord had gone. I could not find Him. I would pray, but I could not touch Him. A little experience like that is not God forsaking us, thank God! It never is, for He said: "I will never forsake you", but a little consciousness of the remoteness of the Lord from us is the worst experience of tragedy in our life. Oh, it is the most awful thing to have to go for a little while without the realization of the Lord, to be groping for the Lord and not finding Him, like Job, a righteous man: "I go on the right hand, he is not there; on the left, he is not there; I go forward, he is not there. Oh, that I knew where I might find him!" Have you had any experience at all like that? I do not want you to have it if you have not. Do not covet it. But some of you might just know a day, or a few days or more, of: 'Oh, where is the Lord? Where is the Lord?' It may be that the Lord lets us know something about that to bring us into that fellowship of His suffering and to make us understand how great a thing He has done for us, for He does not believe in theories and doctrines. The Lord is very practical. Experience is His school, and He will teach us in that heavy school of experience.

Yes, a greater than Solomon or David is here. He came, and He touched the deepest depth of human depravity which is found in that word "forsaken". Anybody who does not believe in the depravity of human nature, and a total depravity, has not yet seen the Cross of the Lord Jesus, and seen us there, forsaken of God, on the one side. Yes, grace reaches the deepest point of human tragedy, and that is man's forsakenness, but for Christ. Grace! What a word this is! If Solomon, in all his glory, was brought out of that terrible iniquity, judgment, outside of the pale of Levitical provision; if all his glory comes out of that, what can you say about it? What word is there to explain it? Only this one: Grace! We will go around that word for all time and all eternity.

Dr. J. H. Jowett, who was one of the greatest preachers of the last century, said this: "There is a word I have wrestled with so much. There is no word with which I have wrestled more than this one: Grace! It is like expressing a great American forest in a word. No phrase can express the meaning of grace. Grace is more than mercy, it is more than tender mercy, it is more than a multitude of tender mercies. Grace is more than love, it is more than innocent love. Grace is holy love, but it is holy love instantaneously going out in eager quest toward the unholy and the unlovely. It is the ministry of a great sacrifice, to redeem the unholy and unlovely into the beauty of God. The grace of God is holy love on the move to thee and to me and the like of me and thee. It is God's unmerited, undeserved going out toward the children of man that He might bring them into the glory and brightness of His own likeness." Well, that is an attempt to define this word.

Was not Paul right in speaking of the unsearchable riches of His grace? And Paul knew what he was talking about. There was a background to this man's life. 'I am not worthy,' said he, 'to be called an apostle. I persecuted the church.' He was on his knees before the Lord, and the Lord was showing him His grace and His mercy. He said: 'But, Lord, when Your servant Stephen was martyred, I was there, giving my consent. What ground have I for apostleship? What ground have I to be anything at all? My hands are stained with bloodguiltiness, all premeditated, designed and enacted with terrific force. How dare I look up into Thy face and be a disciple, a child of God, to say nothing about being an apostle!' "But unto me, who am less than the least of all the saints, was this grace given to preach among the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ."

If you cannot comprehend me, may the Lord register the impression upon us!

Prayer: How easily, with facile speech, we repeat: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ!" Oh, Lord, challenge us with that word, lift us with that word, save us with that word. Can we dare to say, glorify us with that word? Oh, if all the words are forgotten, and our human efforts to convey it fail entirely, leave the impression! The grace of God is indeed the greatest thing in this universe for humans such as we are. We commit it to Thee; oh, give us to glory in Thy grace, for Thy Name's sake. Amen.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, May-June 1967, Vol 45-3

Stripping Down to Christ Alone

We realize, with intense sorrow of heart, that all is not well with that which ostensibly represents the Lord here... and that there is a state of things widely prevailing which does not truly accord with the revealed desire of God.

We live in a time of more than usual dearth spiritually - the state of things may well remind us of Ezekiel's valley of dry bones. We have not merely to cope with evils which have characterized bygone ages, but also with the matured corruption of a time wherein the varied evils of the Gentile world have become connected with, and covered by, the cloak of Christian profession; and when we turn to the state of those whose knowledge of truth and high profession might naturally encourage the expectation of more healthy and vigorous Christian action, we find, alas! in many - yea, in the majority of cases - that the knowledge is but cold and uninfluential theory... and the profession but superficial.

Christianity has become so largely a matter of doctrine and creed; the test of Christian life is very much a matter of subscribing thereto. Christian experience has become largely limited to a matter of being saved, without the great eternal and universal relative factors and issues. Christian service is resolved far too much into a matter of enthusiasm in a great enterprise, apart from an adequate apprehension of what the Lord is really after... and the indispensable energy and equipment of the Holy Ghost. The Christian "Church" is very largely reduced to earthly institutions, societies, denominations, buildings, activities, and orders; and the spiritual revelation and apprehension of the "one Body" and "one Spirit" is, for the most part by far, lacking. Christian teaching has very largely become - at best - a matter of giving addresses and preaching sermons with a presentation of "the letter of the Word" - a giving forth of truth as truth, but lacking in "revelation in the knowledge of Him"... that true inwardness of meaning which reaches the heart and meets the deepest spiritual need of the hungry.

The result of all this is that the impact, upon the world... and particularly upon "the world rulers of this darkness," of that which stands for God is almost nil, or a minus quantity.

Missionary leaders who are in a position to speak with authority are almost of one mind and voice in saying that the only hope of an adequate movement amongst the heathen lies in the direction of a new spiritual movement amongst God's people in the home countries.

As we get nearer the close of this age, the contact with... and impact of... the forces of Satan are going to be such that only those who know the full testimony of Jesus and stand experimentally in it will be able to go through without being paralyzed. The aspect of things is fast changing. The past twenty years has seen a movement into a realm where the old methods and means no longer prove effectual. We shall soon find a tremendous pressing down of the powers of darkness upon this earth, using the world-powers to such a degree and in such ways as to eclipse anything which has hitherto been. This is in full accord with the Word of God.

There will be one, and only one, hope for God's people: their knowledge of Him in Christ... and the power of His resurrection as a present spiritual reality. Not their activities, enthusiasms, organizations, enterprises, creeds, "churches," orthodoxy, etc., but HIMSELF. That time, which is now coming upon us - though imperceptible to so many who are preoccupied with plans and programs - will make manifest the principle of the "one Body," for each of the Lord's children will feel keenly the need of the fellowship of another, no matter of what connection, so long as that other knows Him.

The bringing in of the ministry of the prophets of old had its occasion in the breakdown of the Lord's true order. Theirs it was to keep before His people what that order was... and to call back to it... against a day of fire. We are in such a time, and what the Lord needs is that instrument by which He can keep His mind about things in view... and call back to it - an instrument which will pay the price of being refused a hearing, of ostracism, of false imputations, slander, and cruel calumny. This needs faith, boldness, and preparedness to leave all vindication with the Lord.

Beloved fellow members of Christ, will you have it urged upon you to seek the Lord for "a Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him" - a pure spiritual unveiling of the Lord Jesus as God's representation of His thought concerning all these things; and as He gives you light, will you seek grace to stand for Him in the day of His need... with all boldness, and whatever the price? All other questions will answer themselves as you do this.

The Supreme Importance of Knowing Christ

From "The Work of the Ministry" - Volume 3

Reading: John 17:3; Philippians 3:8,10; John 15:15; 14:21.

"That they should know thee... and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ..." "That I may know him..." "I... will manifest myself unto him..."

The knowledge of Christ is THE basis of the whole of the life of the child of God, and underlies every phase and aspect of that life. That is, it underlies our very relationship with God; it underlies all our growth in grace; it underlies every fragment of our service. There is nothing which comes within the compass of the life of the Christian which does not depend upon the knowledge of Christ. But that knowledge is a thing which will never be exhausted here, however long we live, and however rapidly we grow. We shall never overtake the finality of that knowledge. That is why an apostle, at the end of his life, still more than at any other time in all his history, gave expression to the deepest desire and longing of his heart as being to 'know Christ' (Phil. 3:10). We may say that for every increase in spiritual life, spiritual strength, spiritual effectiveness, spiritual usefulness to the Lord, some further measure of the knowledge of Christ is essential. We increase by this knowledge; we progress by this knowledge; we are more for the Lord in accordance with the living knowledge of the Lord Jesus which is coming to us.

This knowledge is essentially a spiritual thing. It is a knowledge which is altogether closed to any capacity or ability or faculty, save that of the spirit. The measure in which we represent the Divine thought and fulfil the Divine purpose, will be the measure in which we are learning Christ after the Spirit.

That may represent one of two things for different people. It may represent limitation for those who have learned Christ other than after the Spirit; who, therefore, have to unlearn a good deal more than others, before they can learn. On the other hand, it may mean everything to those whose knowledge of the Lord is by way of an absolutely new beginning.

This kind of knowledge marks a difference between Paul and the other apostles. They had had a considerable knowledge of Christ which was historical, which was earthly. Paul came from the beginning into his practical knowledge of Christ on a heavenly level. Right at the very commencement of his Christian life, his was a spiritual knowledge of Christ. Every fragment from that point onward was a spiritual knowledge of Christ, and he jealously saw to it that it remained so. He positively refused to go to Jerusalem to get his knowledge of Christ from those who were apostles before him. He maintained stolidly his position that Christ, having revealed himself to him, COULD and WOULD reveal Himself in the same way. Of course, the other apostles came into that spiritual knowledge later, but Paul had no other in experience.

There is all the difference between a very large knowledge ABOUT Christ, and the smallest measure of the knowledge of Christ. One may be immense in its range; the other may be very small in its measure. And yet the small thing may count for infinitely more than the immensity of the other.

The knowledge of Christ in a spiritual way is basic to everything in our lives as the Lord's children. As we go on, and the Holy Spirit begins to unveil Christ in our hearts, then we know how true this is. We know that it is that which gives reality to the spiritual life, makes it a very real thing. It is that which establishes us, so that, while the adversities might turn us away from a creed, a doctrine, an accepted position, a profession of relationship, nothing can turn us away from a spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge is a part of our being, and we can never separate ourselves from that. That is reality! And that reality is capable of carrying us through anything and everything. Nothing less than that could have accounted for Paul's going through to the end, when he saw his life's work going to pieces about him. The very assemblies for which he had so to speak poured out his lifeblood, forsook him at last, when all they in Asia turned away from him. There is nothing to account for his remaining, not only loyal to the Lord, but triumphant to the last, save the fact that he knew the Lord in a spiritual way. Reality is found there. And every other virtue and value lies in the same direction. It is what Christ is, being progressively disclosed to our hearts.

The day will come when most of us will be tested on this very thing, and under given tests the one thing that will become clear will be that a very great deal of our knowledge of the Lord was not knowledge after the Spirit, but knowledge which we had obtained by reason perhaps of having been born and brought up in Christian families, instructed from infancy; knowledge which we had obtained by reading good books, devotional literature; knowledge perhaps by all the 'providences', as we call them. They carried us through to a right place - the providences of birth and upbringing and association. And yet, unless they go further than that, the time will come when it will be proved that they lack the essential element in our relationship to the Lord. And from time to time the Lord does allow His winds of adversity to blow, He does take His winnowing fan and throw everything up into the air, and cause the wind to pass through, just to find how much there is of solid grain that will fall and remain uninfluenced by the wind, and just how much of the chaff will be carried away.

These things are constantly happening in the spiritual experience of the Lord's children. Such things will intensify as we go on, and the Lord will see to it that we do not remain under any illusions that we have a 'spiritual life', when it is not really a spiritual life, but is one largely in our minds. Thus He tests, He tries, He proves, to make manifest to us how much of what we possess is the genuine, the real, knowledge of the Lord in our hearts, and how much is a knowledge which is not that kind of knowledge. Nothing whatever can be a substitute for that.

"This is Life Eternal..."

Having made these general observations, let us get closer to the matter so far as the Word is concerned, and notice the importance which the Word gives to this knowledge of the Lord. The Lord Jesus put it in the front rank by saying: "This is life eternal, that they might know thee... and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ."

Eternal life is not, in the Scriptural meaning, merely an extension of life beyond time. There is nothing known amongst men which corresponds to eternal life. To say that it is but an extension of life is something which the human mind can understand as being timeless, but that is not the Scriptural meaning, and there is nothing in human language to define the Scriptural meaning of eternal life. It is not only extension; it is a quality - it is the nature of the life. It is something which does not belong to man; it is God's life, Divine life. And the Lord Jesus says that the knowledge of the Father and of Jesus Christ is THAT. It is that which is called "eternal life". It is the possession and activity of something which is of God Himself, something which conveys God to us, something which is the gift of God to us, something which is the energy of Divine qualities, which are timeless, and could not be subject to anything of corruption.

The knowledge of Christ is that. We can see how different such a knowledge is from a merely mental, or historical, or professional knowledge. You know, if you have any experience of this, that, when the Holy Spirit imparts some little further fragment of spiritual apprehension of Christ, you have become conscious of a new Divine energy at work in you, which lifts you on to another level, takes you off the merely human and earth level. You know that by that knowledge you have come on to higher ground spiritually. You have been taken out of the trivialities of earth and given a sense of vastness, greatness, eternity, wonder, glory. Every fresh apprehension of Christ spiritually has an effect upon us. It is not just a stimulus, but it has the power of a Divine energy to lift us away from one order of things into another, and we can only say we have touched God, and come into another realm.

The knowledge of the Father and the Son is "life eternal". There is nothing whatever that can stand alongside of that life, nothing that can compare with it, nothing that is a substitute for it. It is the one superlative, pre-eminent necessity for all our knowledge of and fellowship with God from the very first step to the last. When, from the moment of our being born anew, we have been carried through this life, through into the glory, and stand complete - then we shall have to attribute everything to the fact that there was a moment when life eternal was imparted to us, entered into us, and became the basis and means by which God caused all the Divine activities to proceed. God Himself can do nothing in us and through us except on that basis. There is nothing which takes the place of life eternal. And so the knowledge of 'Jesus Christ whom God did send', occupies this position of supreme importance. It is life eternal!

It is important for us to recognize that life eternal is not just some abstract element in the universe, which creates in us, or causes in us, some sense of, shall we say, energy. Life eternal is related to spiritual energy, and life is intended to mean to us a growing knowledge of the Lord Jesus. The two work together. Life means increase in knowledge, and increase in knowledge means the increase in life. "THIS IS life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ."

The Central Element in Knowledge: Friendship

The central element in this is suggested to us in the fragment in John 15:15:

"No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you."

Here is a knowledge from the Father through the Son which is based upon this element which is called 'friendship'. "I have called you friends". Surely that means that we have to come into a relationship with the Lord Jesus of a very deep, inward character - of a very confidential nature, shall we say. There is something about that relationship which speaks of understanding born of the very closest communion. Someone may say to you about a friend of yours, that they said a certain thing or that they did a certain thing, and your rejoinder would be: 'No! I am quite sure that so-and-so never said that or did that. I know them too well. I know that they would not say or do a thing like that.' There you have touched the inner meaning of friendship. It is a knowledge which understands quite well what would be expected and not expected, what could come from that direction and what could not come from that direction. But that is a knowledge which is a deep, inside knowledge. You can never get that by observation; you can never come to that position by simply listening, studying; you have to know, and when you know by communion, by living in touch with that one, you know instinctively what to expect and what not to expect.

The Lord Jesus says that He takes the disciples into that relationship with Himself, and on that basis He opens His heart; that all things that He had heard from the Father He made known unto them, because of the relationship. "I have called you friends..."

What is the point of saying such things? You and I are not going to get the real knowledge of Christ by listening to addresses, by attending meetings. The value lies in the fact that we go away with what is said, into the presence of the Lord, having a background relationship with Him. Things may be true, and of the greatest value as things for our spiritual help, but we have to work those things out in the secret with the Lord. Otherwise we shall be 'meeting-mongers'; we shall simply be attending meetings and getting an accumulation of knowledge. The real value will lie in the time which we spend with the Lord on these things: it will be personal communion with the Lord in the secret place; it will be what is going on deep down in our hearts, between ourselves and the Lord. This knowledge is on the ground of what the Lord Jesus calls 'friendship'.

The Excelling Value, the Estimate and the Cost

Notice where Paul puts this matter, as he writes to the Philippians: "Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" (the word "excellency" there is the 'super-eminence' of the knowledge of Christ Jesus): "for whom I suffered the loss of all things".

The estimate of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord was far above all other things. If you look back you will see that the things he counted loss were not small things, as man values things. They represented all his inheritance, which was no mean thing; all his attainments; all his position; all his prospects; all his ambitions. He tells us elsewhere that he had gained eminence above many of his own age. It means that Saul of Tarsus had been a very promising young man, who had gained a position far ahead of most other young men. He was distinguished as quite brilliant in his realm. And now he says: 'I count it all loss for the super-eminence...' Was he eminent? Well, there is a SUPER-eminence about the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord. Was eminence his life ambition? He has come to see the SUPER-eminence of the knowledge of Christ. That is his valuation of this knowledge.

There is another way of looking at it, if you want to change your angle. No doubt, although the knowledge was such a tremendous thing with the Apostle, there were times when he realized that it was costing. The cost was great, when all those amongst whom he had had recognition, place, reputation, had not only dropped off from him, or he had left them, but now they were all against him, and regarded him perhaps as a fool, and certainly as deluded. And that was not the only phase of the cost. The cost was all round; and not a small part of the cost was the fact that his own brethren in Christ did not wholly trust him, and very few understood him. For him, whatever there was to let go, and whatever there was of price to be paid, everything was regarded as refuse in comparison with the knowledge of Christ.

Here again we may not be able to enter altogether into the position of the Apostle, but these things are pointed out with a view to our seeing that there is something here in the knowledge of Christ, if Paul was not mistaken, which must go far, far beyond just being saved. If a man who has been saved all these years, and who has done all this amount of Christian work, and has been God's instrument to spread and establish the Gospel over such an immense area, can at the end still see in the knowledge of Christ something which draws out his whole being, so that what has been and what is is as nothing, compared with what he sees there is to attain unto in the knowledge of Christ, where are we?

That brings us to the point. I cannot tell you what that knowledge is, because I do not know it, but I can say that I see enough to make me perfectly certain that Paul was right, and to know that the one thing that we are here for is to learn Christ, and in learning Christ we have everything. It is not the kind of work we are going to do for the Lord. It is not the number of Christian activities, or the tremendous measure of energy which we put into Christian activity. That is not the measure of the value. The measure of the value is just how much we are getting out of our growing knowledge of the Lord.

Ministry, (speaking now of service) is not telling out truths. A good many people have thought that ministry is preaching sermons, giving addresses, or talking Christian doctrine. That is not ministry. If that were ministry this world ought to have been turned inside-out and upside-down a thousand times over. If that were ministry, then every weekend ought to see this world revolutionized with the amount of preaching that is going on. Ministry is not talking even the most orthodox doctrine. Service is not giving out by word of mouth things which may be perfectly true about Christ. Ministry is bringing Christ and imparting Christ. It is ministering Christ. It is communicating Christ. There is all the difference between giving addresses and preaching sermons, and communicating Christ. The measure of the success of our ministry is the measure in which other people come to realize that they have had Christ ministered to them, and that they are the richer spiritually. That is not just mental gratification, intellectual satisfaction, but something deep down in the innermost being, which is Christ. The Apostle would put it this way: "As ye received Christ, so walk in him..." Not: 'As ye heard about Christ'; but: "As ye received Christ..."

A ministry like that is usually costly, and when we speak about ministry let no one think that that belongs to a certain class. We are all to minister. The business of every child of God is to communicate Christ to others; and, in so far as you can, by a simple word, communicate Christ, you are a minister of Christ. The effect of our being here on this earth as the Lord's should be that others should say: 'I received something of the Lord through that one; I came into possession of something more of Christ through such-and-such.'

The Threefold Accompaniment

Finally, note the threefold accompaniment of this knowledge: "That I may know him..."

(1) The Power of His Resurrection

You and I can only know Christ on that ground. All our knowledge of Christ will be upon the basis of the power of His resurrection. That means that the power of His resurrection will become a necessity, in our experience, and, as it becomes a necessity and then a reality, we shall know the Lord on that basis. Situations will arise for our spiritual increase, in which the power of His resurrection will alone suffice. Then faith will have to reach out for the power of His resurrection, and, faith being honoured, we shall come to know Him and the power of His resurrection through an experience in which that power alone could meet our need. The knowledge of Christ is a practical thing, not a theoretical thing. The knowledge of Christ in the Word is a matter of very life, and to fail to know Him at times means death. Thus it becomes a matter of the power of His resurrection.

(2) The Fellowship of His Sufferings

The place of Christ's sufferings in the life of His people, as a means by which He is known. That could occupy us for a long time, but it is simply stated as a related matter of great importance. The Lord makes Himself known to us by fellowship with Himself in His sufferings. What the sufferings of Christ are we do not stay now to mention, but we may take it that the sufferings of Christ as shared by us now are always, in their essence, spiritual. That is, the background may be that of circumstances, adversity, difficulty; it may be physical; it may be in many forms; but behind the foreground expression there is a spiritual element, a spiritual factor. The sufferings, of course, always represent a spiritual background. Sometimes in our case they become purely spiritual sufferings, sometimes they work themselves out in other ways, but ultimately it is a spiritual thing; that is, some spiritual factor is bound up with it. The sufferings of Christ (to put it the other way) are not now only circumstantial or physical sufferings. We may suffer in body and in circumstances through our own fault, and never can we claim that those are the sufferings of Christ. But when we come into an issue which relates to the purpose of God in Christ, the interests of the Lord, then very often the foreground is a physical one or a circumstantial one, but the background is a spiritual one, with an issue of more than temporal significance.

(3) Conformity to His Death

We are familiar with the meaning of the death of Christ. Not that aspect of it in which we are not called to share; not that atoning aspect, that vicarious aspect which is His death in a unique sense. But that other aspect of the death into which we are baptized, the death where all that is of self, the "I", the flesh, is ruled out. Conformity to that death, where man by nature is set aside, and we have been crucified with Christ - that is a way of knowing the Lord.

May the Lord use these thoughts to bring clearly into view the supreme importance and value of knowing Christ in resurrection life.

Titles of the Risen Lord

Square brackets [ ] indicate interpolations, queries or corrections made by the transcriber that were not in the original spoken message.

We are today occupied with the Resurrection side of the Cross, and this afternoon I’m going to ask you to consider with me some of the titles of the Risen Lord: the Resurrection titles of the Lord Jesus.  In the Book of the Revelation, chapter one, at verse four: “John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you, and peace, from Him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before His Throne; and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the Firstborn of the dead, and the Ruler of the kings of the earth”.  There you have three titles of the Lord in Resurrection.  That they relate to Him in Resurrection is quite clear from the context where He Himself says to John: “I am the Living One; I became dead, I am alive for evermore” [Revelation 1:18].  Three titles: the faithful Witness, the Firstborn of the dead, the Ruler of the kings of the earth.

Now it is important to note two things as we advance to this.  Firstly, this is the Book of the Revelation, or the Unveiling of Jesus Christ, so the first sentence declares.  Secondly, it is the Revelation of Him as exercising authority and judgment: firstly, in the Church; secondly, in the nations, and thirdly, in the kingdom of satan.  Those three things comprehend the whole of this book.  This authority, which He is here revealed as exercising, is itself based upon three things:

first, what He has proved Himself to be in Person, in Incarnation;

secondly, what He has become in Triumph over death; and thirdly, what He is in Exaltation and Divine Vindication.

At a glance, you will see that those three things are but an exposition of the three titles:

[1] what He has proved Himself to be in Person, in Incarnation: the faithful Witness, taking Him right up to the Cross and into all the experience of the Cross;

[2]  what He has become in Triumph over death: the Firstborn of the dead; and

[3]  what He is in Exaltation by Divine Vindication: the Ruler of the kings of the earth.

All His authority and judgment is based upon those three things, or upon what He has proved Himself to be in Person.

We take these, as far as time will allow, one by one.

The Faithful Witness

“The faithful Witness” – the testimony in incarnation: that is, in His Person while here on the earth.

Now a witness is the embodiment of the truth – if he is a true witness.  If he has the right to be called a witness, he himself should be the very embodiment of the truth.  Jesus was THAT!  Jesus as the faithful Witness was a, we may say THE, faithful Representation of God’s Mind concerning man.  What God intended man to be, what the whole race of men had failed to be, Jesus became THAT: a faithful Representation of God’s Mind in the creation of man.  That is how we must look at Him while here on the earth: not just following His steps, noting His words and His actions, being interested or even fascinated with His teaching and with His mighty works.  But looking deeper, deeper into His heart, into His mind, His whole mentality, His whole Spirit, looking deeper to see what kind of a Man this is.  What comes out from the very nature of this Man, all the reactions that He makes to all the play of conditions and trials and sufferings and disappointments.  All that He meets in this world, and all that He meets in men, all that He meets in His life circumstances, and how He behaves, and what Spirit He shows.  What comes out from the inward Man?  What kind of a Man this is?

I think we can sum up the Life of the Lord Jesus here in three ways:

Perfect Love

Perfect Love – perfect Love: perfect Love to God His Father.  That is not only seen in things that He says about it, and as to it, but it is seen in His relationship to the Father all the way through – a perfect Love.  And, mark you, if He had been other than He was, He might have had some questions about the Father: why His lot should have been what it was – why this and why that – from infancy to the Cross, why He was called upon to do this, to endure this, why He was so tried with the very men whom He said the Father had given Him.  He said: “Those whom Thou hast given Me.”  You know, He might have looked at those men, if you had been other than Christ, and said: “Look what You’ve given Me.  Look what You’ve given Me, what I’ve got to put up with.  These are what You’ve given Me.”  You see what I mean.  But at no point, at no time, under no circumstance: suffering, adversity, trial, provocation, disappointment, do you find a cloud coming over His love for the Father.

And what shall we say about His love for them.  It needs to be a perfect Love, doesn’t it?  But here’s the declaration: “having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end” [John 13:1] – “to the end”: that’s the love that never faileth, that never gives up, that never disappears.  It might have broken down many times.  Here is perfect Love.

And what about the world?  What about the world?  I mean the world of sinful, weak, evil, persecuting, mankind – the world.  I’m not speaking about the world system, which He positively hated and repudiated, but the world of man – that world that God so loved, that He gave Himself for that world, and in its worst representatives – its WORST representatives, who were exercising their power for His utter destruction, to SLAUGHTER Him.  No, not too strong a word: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter” [Acts 8:32] – to SLAUGHTER the Son of God.  He says: “Father, forgive them” – perfect Love.  Here’s a Man that God intended men to be.  And here’s the Man to the likeness of whom God will work to have all men in His Kingdom.  Perfect Love – “the faithful Witness.”

Perfect Faith

Perfect Faith – perfect Faith.

It’s quite clear that His Life from its very beginning, right on through to the end, was placed deliberately by God upon a basis of faith.  In all material and temporal matters, His was a life of faith.  But far, far more deeply and testingly than in the temporal, in the spiritual realm His was a life of faith.  You’ve only to sit down and think for a little while about how far your faith would carry you under the conditions of His life.  You will discover, I am quite sure, that you won’t go very far with Him.  Your faith won’t stand up to very much of what came upon Him.  If we understood all that was going on in this necessity for faith: one Who had, through past eternity, never had to live by faith at all – never had to live by faith.  He had all that heaven can give: its riches, its honour, its glory, its servants to wait upon Him to fulfil His behest to the Word – never had to live by faith.  It was all sight!  It was all possession!  And, now, emptied of all THAT!

You know, it’s one thing if you’ve never had anything else.  It’s not so difficult, if you’ve never had anything else, to go without.  But if you’ve had it all and suddenly found yourself in a position where you just cannot, cannot do what you did before, you haven’t got it to do with.  You may not in any case do it – you’re morally bound not to do it.  You have accepted a life and a course and a ministry which FORBIDS you to draw upon those other resources and COMPELS you to live wholly out from Another, out from God in all things.  It’s a big changeover, and this is faith – this is faith!  His faith was a perfect Faith.  And that is how God meant man to be.  It is just at that point that the first man broke down.  He did not implicitly trust God.

Perfect Love, and Perfect Faith, and Perfect Obedience.

Perfect Obedience

Perfect Obedience.

We need not dwell upon it.  We know how at all times and in all things,  having committed Himself to the Will of His Father, He fought right through on that: “Not My will” – “Thy will, Thy will, Thy will” [Luke 22:42] to the end and through all – and what an “all” it was.  And Paul is right when he said: “He became obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the Cross” [Philippians 2:8].  Perfect in these three things, and that is how He was the faithful Witness to God’s thought concerning man.  He was a perfect Representation of God’s Mind.  In that way, He was a “faithful Witness.”

Faithful Witness to the Truth

Then He was a “faithful Witness” to the truth.

It’s a word that was very often on His mouth – on His lips: the truth – truth – truth.   “Faithful and True Witness” He is called in another place in this book of the Revelation [3:14]:  “faithful Witness” to the Truth.

There was faithfulness about His Witness, His Witness as to the truth of man.  He covered up nothing.  He made no pretence that man is better than he is.  He was faithful in His Witness as to what man is.  We might be afraid to do that.  Or we might think it not politic.  We certainly would know that it would be unpopular to speak the truth about man.  But Jesus was faithful in this – in the uncovering and the exposure of the truth about man.

He was faithful to the truth about God.  He was faithful in His Witness to the truth about sin – sin.  And He was faithful in His witness to the truth about satan.  He does not hedge this matter.  He does not hesitate to uncover the devil; He exposes him, drags him right out into the light, tells you exactly what he is: ‘he’s a liar from the beginning - he’s a murderer.’  A “faithful Witness” to the truth.

Why?  Because He was the Truth.  His nature was the Truth.  And there we must stay to use more of our time.  It is a tremendously important thing, in relation to the power of Resurrection, to authority, to Government, to what is here revealed as to Christ in Resurrection.  It is a basic, a fundamental thing that there shall be the Truth – the true Witness.

You see, His authority, His judgment, His government, His everything – His right – His right to call the churches into question, His right to judge the nations, His right to deal with the kingdom of satan – is based upon this thing – this one thing, and that He IS the Truth.  He is TRUE.  He is TRUE.  There can be no comeback from Church or world or satan which would find some point in Him that was a flaw, that was not true.  That would upset His whole authority, His right to judge.  It is all resting upon the fact that He is True.

Dear friends, you will at once pass in mind from Him to ourselves, to the Church, see weakness, failure to register, the lack of authority, the absence of authority; and all this terrible state of weakness, and that the world can point at the Church, point a finger.  And that the Church has not the influence and power with the world; and that satan can stand and hold the ground and almost laugh at the Church is very largely due to the fact that the truth is not here.  It’s not true.  It is just not true.  Many of the things that you say may be true in themselves; they’re not true in you.  Many of the things that you profess, while in themselves they may be correct, they are not true of you.  There’s a gap between what you profess, and say, and claim, and yourself.  It’s just not real in your own case.  Therefore your whole position is given away.  You see what I’m getting at.

This is a very important matter for witness, for influence, for effectiveness, for standing before God and standing before man, before the world, and standing before satan.  What a large place God has given to this matter of truth!  He is Himself the God of Truth.  He is shown in His Word to be very jealous over the truth.  He is said to desire truth in the inward parts.  He holds all lies, we are told, in abomination.  He has consigned all liars to the lake of fire, so the Word says [Revelation 21:8].  He excludes from the city, the New Jerusalem, EVERYTHING that maketh a lie.  It has no place within [Revelation 21:27].  Jesus Himself is called “the Truth”.  He called Himself “the Truth”.  And here He is “the Faithful and true Witness.”

While, on the other side satan, at the other extreme, in the other realm altogether, is called “the liar”, and “the father of lies” [John 8:44].  The whole structure of creation collapsed when the lie, the falsehood entered in.  There was that time that all that beautiful structure just went to pieces.  It was all because of a lie, a lie came in.  And if there is a lie in anything, that’s what’s going to happen to it.  Sooner or later it is going to mean the collapse, the disintegration of any structure, if there’s a lie in it.

The result of that lie entering at the beginning was that man himself became a lie.  Man became a falsehood.  It was not just that there was untruth in him: he himself BECAME a falsehood.  He is a deceived creature.  There’s a lie in his very nature.  He is not the true thing that God made him and intended him to be.  He is a misrepresentation of God’s thought about man.  There is a lie not only in his nature and constitution, but there is a lie in his life and in his work.  He hopes and he believes.  He works and he strives.  And it is all in vain.  It is all in vain.

The wise man said that he had explored every realm of knowledge and learning.  He had sought out every secret law.  He had made it his business to go into every realm to discover its secrets and to make himself acquainted and familiar with all things – with all things.  And he said when I’ve done it (and, you know, he did get quite a lot; the Queen of the South came to see his wisdom.  And the wisdom of the […] of Solomon is proverbial, if it is not fabulous), he’d gone a long way in this matter, and when he had done it all, made it his life business, he said: “All is vanity.  All is vanity.  All is vanity” [Ecclesiastes 12:8].  There’s a lie in it all.  There’s a falsehood in the whole thing.  Disappointment awaits the best that man can do.  Disappointment is his destiny.  That’s the end.

Man thinks that he’s free, but he is a prisoner.  He thinks that he knows, but he’s a fool.  That’s not too strong a word.  In the light of things today you have to say: “Oh, what fools men are.  The wisest and the cleverest and the strongest of them, what fools they are.  They’ve missed the Way.”  He thinks he knows.  He’s a fool.  He thinks he can do, and he does a great many things.  But where does it end?  In the hydrogen bomb.  Terror, fear in all the earth, apprehension, holding of the breath, men at their wits’ end.  ‘What to do?  What to do?’  That’s what he can do.  The end of his wonderful, wonderful work, all that he can do, only leads to more problems – still more problems.  He builds on sand, not on rock.  His whole world is run by lies, [hypocrisy], make-believe, pretence, falsehood.

One of the rarest commodities in this world is downright honesty, in politics, in industry, in commerce, in business, in society – downright honesty.  Man can only succeed in this world if he misrepresents or deceives or pretends (I speak quite generally), if he mixes things a bit, he exaggerates a bit.  What about all our advertisements?  What a marvellous, marvellous world this would be if a modicum of what is said in our advertisements were really true.  My, we should have reached utopia.  We should all have immortal bodies.  We – well!  The golden age would come if only half a dozen advertisements were true.  It’s true – that’s a fact, you know.  Just read them and, of course, you read them and you’re captured and go off and buy this, that: food or medicine or something.  And then you try it out, and afterwards, well, it hadn’t done the thing it was advertised to do.  But man can only run his world like that.  He can only get on, he can only make money, he can only get any success by these appearances and exaggerations.

There’s a lie, you see, somewhere in the whole creation, and the lie has gone into religion.  The charge that our Lord laid against the scribes and the Pharisees was in a horrible word – a horrible word: “HYPOCRITES!” – play-actors, pretenders, those who are making believe.  “HYPOCRITES!” – false, false.  Yes, the outside of the platter washed, but underneath... the sepulchre painted white, but inside: rotting bones.  The Lord saw through!  It’s a horrible story, isn’t it? – this story of man’s deceived and lying nature.

Over against that, you see, Jesus says: “I am the Truth; I came to bear witness of the Truth” [John 18:37].  Those were among His last words at the Cross, for His statement to Pilate that He had come to bear witness of the Truth and Pilate was so unfamiliar with that commodity that he said ‘Well, “WHAT IS TRUTH?”  I – I’m not familiar with that.  I – I don’t know anything about that.  What is it?  What is that thing you call truth?”  This world doesn’t know what that is.

The Truth, the true Witness.  You see, it’s a great spiritual fundamental law.  This is why I said that it is so important to note these things at the beginning, that this is an unveiling of Jesus in Authority and in Government and in just Judgment, because it rests upon this.  No-one has a right to exercise authority or judgment at all. No-one has a right to be in a place of government unless this can be said of them: “They are true.  They are true – absolutely true, through and through.  There’s no lie in them.  There’s no falsehood in them.  There is no question about them.  There are no two things in them that contradict each other.”

Dear friends, that is why the Lord Jesus came to the church's BEGINNING.  He started there, you see.  “Judgment begins at the house of God,” and He began this whole exercise of His Authority with the churches, the seven churches symbolic, of course, of the whole Church, and He stands before and He is really saying, “Look here, you are weak, you have failed, your testimony has broken down.  The world is not feeling the impact of your presence.  Powers of evil are making inroads into your life as churches, and it is because – this is the implication – it is because there’s something false there – something false there.”  You notice how again and again, in His messages to the churches, He raises this question of falsehood and truth – whether things are true.  Oh, it is important for it to be like this about us – that we are real, that we are real, that we are genuine, that what we say is true, what we pretend or profess is true of us.  It must be like that for spiritual power in this world.  If only the Church could recover itself from the weakness resultant from a false position – something that is not really true.  “As the truth is in Jesus.”  If our representation of God’s Mind were more exactly according to THAT MIND, what power there would be – what power there would be.  But as I said, as the creation at the beginning collapsed and went to pieces because a lie entered in, it’s an abiding – an abiding fact that wherever there is anything that is questionable, doubtful, not true, not real, there will be sooner or later spiritual collapse.  We have to be built upon the foundation of the Truth – the Truth.

Now this so much explains, does it not, the very title of the Holy Spirit that Jesus gave Him: “When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come” [John 16:13].  “The Spirit of Truth” – the Holy Spirit is THAT!  He is exact!  He is particular!  He sees through everything.  And if you and I walk in the Spirit, we shall be very true.  We shall be very real.  There would be nothing that is doubtful and false about us.  We shall be checked up on everything: upon maybe an exaggeration – maybe an exaggeration, it may be a pretence, a make-believe, anything that is not true, that is false, the Holy Spirit will check us up on that – not because He delights to bring us into judgment, but simply because it is so very important for the building of that which is going to stand, abide, and go through, and go right through to the end, and come out triumphant at the end.  It is so important that right from the foundation the thing should be true.

The Lord will take us down, take us down, take us down, all to pieces, and bring us right down to the bottom in order to begin with what is true if there’s a superstructure that is unsafe because it is mixed or because it is not true.  And we ought to be thankful to the Lord that He does that.  I am sure we would say: “Lord, let there be no falsehood in my position, no untruth in what I profess.  There should be nothing that is not absolutely real in what people think about me.”  It’s very important.  You see, the Lord Jesus stands as He does, and as He may, to judge, and to be the Measure because He is the true Witness – the true Witness.  That is, He is the embodiment of the Truth.

Now that is a sombre word.  It’s a searching word.  It is not perhaps a very inspiring and uplifting word.  But, you see, after all, this is a title of the Risen Lord – a title of the Risen Lord.  Why did God raise Him from the dead?  Why could He be raised from the dead?  God won’t raise a lie!  God will never even resuscitate a falsehood!  He was raised because He was the true Witness.  He had in His Own Person borne a true testimony to His Father, and to the thoughts of His Father.  It’s a matter of life whether there’s truth, you see.  Life can never go alongside of anything that’s not true.  Life demands the Truth.

We leave that then and go to this second of the titles:–

“The Firstborn of the Dead”

“The Firstborn of the dead”.   “The Firstborn of the dead”: what He has become in triumph over death.

This phrase “firstborn” is used, as you probably know, quite a number of times in the New Testament.  In Romans 8:29 we have it: “that He may be the Firstborn among many brethren.”  The idea is here again and again in the New Testament.  In that great resurrection chapter of 1 Corinthians 15, it’s there again: “Christ is Risen, the First – the Firstborn, from among the dead” [vs.20].  There’s a very interesting reference to this, which impressed me very much because I admit that I had not noticed it or it hadn’t struck me very forcibly before, in Acts chapter 26.  It is the great significance attached to it (Acts 26 and vs.23).  Here is Paul making his defence before Festus, and the others, and this is what he says: “How that the Christ must suffer, and how that He first by the Resurrection of the dead should proclaim light both to the people and to the Gentiles”.  He “FIRST by the Resurrection of the dead”: the FIRST Witness, the FIRST Preacher, the FIRST One to proclaim – it begins with Resurrection, He is the FIRST of a long line of preachers.  Well, I am not going to dwell upon that and make much of it, but I’m saying that this phrase, “the Firstborn,” again and again occurs in the New Testament.

Well, what does it imply?  Well, firstly, of course, quite obviously it implies that there is to be a succession.  And here we are back in Isaiah 53: “He shall see His seed” – “He shall see His seed.” [vs.10]  He is the Firstborn.  We’re back again in John 12:24, the corn of wheat and the abundant result of it falling into the ground and dying: “The Firstborn among many brethren”,  “the Firstborn from the dead”.  Then, it means that all these, of which He is the First, the many brethren, the seed, the progeny of His Resurrection, will share the same Deathless Triumphant Life.  We’re a family who have a life which has proved itself already in the FIRST of the family more than a match for death.  Great hope, great assurance, great comfort, wonderful truth: that if we are of this company of the family of the many brethren, He has passed on the same Life to us as He has, which has so marvellously and gloriously proved that death is not equal to it: “O death – O death, where is thy sting?  O grave, where is thy victory?”  That comes, as you know, in the resurrection chapter: “Now is Christ raised” [1 Corinthians 15:20].  We brethren, the many brethren, sharing the same death-conquered Life.  We have it – we have it, if we are of this company.  But it means a people of a distinctive character, not only possessing a certain Life, but people of a distinctive character.

The Old Testament illustration of this, as you know, is the Levites.  You remember the story of the Levites and their inception, when the people broke down and worshipped the golden calf at the foot of the mountain.  Moses came down and saw what had happened.  He took the tent of meeting right outside the camp and then, standing at the door, he cried: “Who is on the Lord’s side? let him come unto me.  And all the sons of Levi went to him” [Exodus 32:26].  And the Levites, as you so well know, were taken as representative and in the place of all the firstborn of Israel, and became the “church of the firstborn One” [Hebrews 12:22-23].  Why? Because they separated themselves from that iniquity.  They separated themselves from that sin, from all idolatry, from all disobedience, from all corruption.  They separated themselves and went outside the realm where that evil thing was at work.  It’s a great type and illustration.  But the many brethren, of whom our Lord is the Firstborn, constitute this church of the Firstborn – so different in character. And so the context is vividly appropriate to what we have had here about the firstborn.  You see, “Unto Him That loveth us, and loosed us, or washed us, from our sin in His own blood” [Revelation 1:5].  It’s a different character that is here in the firstborn ones.  They take their character from Him.  And, then, being the Firstborn again, He is in every sense the Prototype of the family.  Paul’s given us the great secret out of the heart of God from eternity past when he has said, “to be conformed to the image of His Son” – “conformed to the image of His Son” [Romans 8:29].  In Resurrection, He is the Prototype of all the sons-to-be!

We hurry to the third title:–

“The Ruler of the Kings of the Earth”

“The Ruler of the kings of the Earth.”  What He is in Exaltation and Vindication, or “Ruler of the kings of the Earth.”  Fuller, stronger title still is given us in the 17th [19th] chapter of this Revelation: “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” [vs.16].

Now at present this is not official and temporal, in a sense not literal: it is spiritual.  It is a longterm thing.  I say this because I know the problem that arises when you say: “Jesus is on the Throne.  He is Ruler of the kings of the earth, King of kings, and Lord of lords” – then – then – then: “Why this?  Why that?  Why are these men doing what they are doing, these rulers of the earth taking the course that they are taking, these kings of the nations?  Why if Jesus is on the Throne?”  Let us remind ourselves that this is first of all spiritual, and it’s a longterm thing.  On His Throne, as Ruler of the kings of the earth, He will over a long term prove the utter, utter fallacy and falsehood of all their standards.

We, dear friends, here in this hall this afternoon, even younger ones, have lived through a period in which we have seen the lifting up of certain heads of rulers of this world.  I could mention their names; I’m not going to: this one, that one, within our lifetime, who have lifted up their heads to take the government of this world – to take the government of this world.  Their whole idea has been world dominion.  One was going to bring all the nations under his government to be the dictator not of his own nation only, but of all the nations, and he set himself to do it.  And another one was going to be the final Cæsar: to gather everything under his control.  And yet another,  we’ve seen them rise.  We’ve seen them go so far and seem to be – seem to be in the way of doing it.  But what has happened?  The ignominious end of these men!  The oldest of us go back to others who did the same thing.  What an awful end these men have come to: shame and dishonour!  Yes, there’s Someone on the Throne Who says: ‘The world dominion belongs to Me – belongs to Me.’  The Father has made Him Ruler of the kings of the earth, and no-one can take that place.  It may be a longterm and painful outworking, but there it is.

And it happened like that right through history, you see.  It happened with Babylon.  It happened with Rome.  It has happened with other empires.  And it is right up-to-date, this – right up-to-date.  God has given the Empire to His Son.  He may let men go so far.  But He only will let them go so far as He did Pharaoh, in order to show His Superior Might and Strength over all that man can do and can be.  That’s – that’s history, and that is still history in the making.  He is the Ruler of the kings of the earth.  But I said it’s spiritual – in this way, that His Government is on spiritual things – I mean character, such a thing as truth.

You know, in the end, truth does prevail.  In the end it does prevail.  It’s the only thing that stands!  Men may set up a whole regime and system of lies – lies.  And, oh, it’s a terrible thing today to see how great world powers are based upon lies.  Indeed, they don’t seem to know what the truth is.  They are laying themselves out to get their way by lies.  That is so.  But wait and see.  Truth will prevail and the lying thing will go to pieces.  He is Ruler of the kings of the earth.

So it is now, the Day is coming.  And this book of the Revelation shows us the Day that is coming, when it will not be the longterm business and not be just the outworking of spiritual things.  He will come.  And very swiftly He will arraign the kings of this earth and all the forces of this world.  He will have the kingdoms before Him and He will pronounce the judgment and the verdict for eternity upon them.  THAT DAY is coming when it shall be seen by all.  We read this morning: “every eye shall see Him – all shall mourn because of Him – and they which pierced Him” [Revelation 1:7].  That’s a startling statement!  They’re dead 2000 years.  Their dust could not be found in the earth.  Their eyes shall see Him, they who pierced Him.  They shall see Him – THEY!

Oh, yes, you can’t get away from this One – can’t get away from Him.  Time, or any other thing, does not get rid of Him.  In the end, you have to face Him.  He is Ruler of the kings of the earth, because God has Exalted Him and God has Vindicated Him.  It’s like that.  These are great things all bound up with His Resurrection: titles of the Risen Lord.  They are titles of great comfort to the Church, of great instruction to us believers.  They are titles of great terror to the ungodly.

The Lord give us new joy in contemplating the greatness of our Risen Lord!

The Unveiling of Christ in the Heart

Paul was continually growing in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, but it was a comprehensive knowledge or revelation which took him immediately away into Arabia for an extended period, that he might be occupied with its implications, and when he came back it is quite clear he had grasped the significance of that revelation, he had seen what Jesus meant in God's thought.

One of the things that had happened was that, with that revelation, he had gone back over the whole of the history of the people with whom he was joined by birth, right back over Jewish history, right back over his own relationship with Judaism; and he had seen very clearly that the Lord Jesus was the center of all that in the thought of God, that He took up all the spiritual values into His own Person, and that Judaism as a religious system - traditional, historical - no longer obtained in the thought of God, but what did exist in the place of it was Jesus Christ in heaven. All that Judaism meant which was of spiritual value was centered in a living Person and no longer to be had in a system, in a tradition, in an outward order of things - all of which was lifeless, ineffective, incapable of bringing about heart satisfaction and the realization of heart longing, deliverance from sin, and the quietening forever of conscience. What Paul had now come to see was that all that to which Judaism pointed, but which it was incapable of realizing or fulfilling, was to be had... and that he had it... in the living risen Person - in Jesus Christ.

That is only one thing which Paul saw, but that had a tremendous effect upon him. It did what nothing else in all this universe could have done. It absolutely delivered Saul of Tarsus, the rabid, vehement Jew, from his Judaism. It emancipated him from the whole of that system as an earthly system, although it had been given of God for a purpose. Nothing could have delivered Saul of Tarsus from that but a revelation of Jesus Christ.

It is always futile and dangerous to advise people to leave one thing until they have a revelation of the fuller, and only such a revelation will accomplish the true emancipation. It may not be applicable to many of us, but the principle is what I want you to recognize. You may not need to be emancipated from anything like Judaism or legalism, but the principle is this, that for all increase, progress, enlargement, growth, maturity, it is essential that there should be in the heart a continuous unveiling of Jesus Christ: and you and I will never get to the end of that unveiling. It is possible for some of us to say with truth that this year we have seen more of the meaning of the Lord Jesus than in all the previous years of our lives. Can you say that?

It is the most blessed and most wonderful thing to be able to recognize that there is a growing revelation of Jesus Christ within. You see more and more of what He means from God's standpoint; and as that is so, there comes this increase of the Lord Jesus, the fruit of the Spirit - love. An increase of the revelation of Jesus Christ in the heart is an increase of the love of the Lord Jesus, the fruit of the Spirit. You are conscious that your heart is coming more and more under the constraint of His love and that unloveliness is becoming subordinate to His love. There is more joy in the Lord Jesus today than ever, because you are seeing more of what He is. It is practical. That is Spiritual growth: "It pleased God... to reveal his Son in me...."

It is so important that there should be this continual, living unveiling of Christ in the heart if we are to reach God's full end.

Paul came to that revelation right at the beginning. It was initial, but also a directive revelation continuously. It was the basis of the direction of his life. "When," he said, "it pleased God... to reveal His Son in me... immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me...." Why did he not do that? If he had accepted a system of teaching, he would have gone to discuss it with other people who were interested and who were in that system of teaching, to see if he had grasped it aright. He would have compared notes and said: "Now, look here, I have accepted this teaching. You are interested in it, and I want to know whether I have been right in my understanding of this teaching. Is this what it means?"

That would be conferring with flesh and blood. He would have sought out the authorities at headquarters on the matter. But no: "I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me...." Here is a movement which is not a wrong kind of independence but is the true movement of a personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus. It is directive throughout his life. He speaks of going up by revelation of Jesus Christ - a revelation of Jesus Christ was given to direct his movements. Mark you, it was not a revelation which took the form of a dictation: Paul, you go here, you go there, you go somewhere else. It was a revelation of a Person.

All the movements of the Spirit of God are in some way bound up with the Person of the Lord Jesus. They are an expression of Christ in some way. He is continuing His doing and His speaking; He is going on with His work to the end of the dispensation. He has not abandoned the field - not left the scene of activities and withdrawn... and given it to us to go on. He is going on.

He is the chief Worker, the One who has all in His hands. But what He has in His hands is not a multitude of things that He is doing; it is an expression of Himself in some way. The Lord Jesus is putting Himself into things and bringing things into relation with Himself. You look to God's end and you find that Jesus Christ is to be expressed in a spiritual way universally. What He is will at some future time fill this universe, and you need to know what the Lord Jesus is in order to have your life directed. You need to be governed by what He is; you need a revelation of Him.

We can take an illustration from the Tabernacle in the wilderness. That Tabernacle is a comprehensive expression in type of the Person of Jesus Christ; and if we look at it at any point, whether of its constitution or of its operation, we see something of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we look at a pin of the Tabernacle, we shall see something of Him expressed. So that the Tabernacle becomes a great spiritual system, and Christ is that. Christ is not only a Person; Christ is - in effect, in outworking - a great heavenly, spiritual system. When we come into Christ, we come into a heavenly order. That is not some manual of instructions, but a living Person.

If the Holy Spirit gets a real hold upon you and me, so that we are moving by the Holy Spirit, all our movements, on the one hand, will in some way be an expression of Christ, and, on the other hand, a bringing of things into relation to Christ, so that Christ becomes raised up in them. The question is not: Shall I go here? Shall go there? Shall I do this, or shall I do that? The question is: Is Christ going to express Himself in some way? Is He going there? Is He going to manifest Himself there? Then I go with Him to be His instrument - His vessel. It is a matter of the Person, not of a lot of things to be done.

Now that is a very difficult thing to explain, but Paul does make it clear that his life was governed by revelation of Jesus Christ. He recognized in the spirit that Christ was on the move in a certain direction - for a certain purpose. That was revealed to him, and so he moved by the Spirit because it was a case of the goings of Christ.

That is how life is to be governed. Our prayer must not be: Lord, shall I do this, and shall I do the other? Shall I go here, or shall I go there? Our prayer is: Lord, art Thou going there? Art Thou going to do this or that? Dost Thou want me for Thy purpose here and there?

It is all related to a living Person. Otherwise you build up a great system of activities which we say are for Christ, instead of its being the direct, pure work of Christ. There is real value and meaning in that. It is a governing factor. What was initial in the life of the Apostle was continuous; that is, his whole life from beginning to end was governed and actuated by a revelation of Jesus Christ.

It all amounted to this - that Christ had become everything for him. It was not a new religion, and it was not a new lifework. It was not a new mission on the earth. If you have not got these already, you will... if you go on with the Lord long enough... come to the place where you do not want any more life missions or lifework or any more commissions. You will come to the place of such utter weakness and dependence and helplessness and self-emptiness that your whole attitude will be: Oh, Lord, do save me from ever attempting anything unless Thou art going to do it. Lord, if Thou art not going to do that, then in mercy keep me from putting my hand to it.

Paul was not out in some new enterprise: Paul was bound up with the Person of Jesus Christ... and he says, "...that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith - the faith which is in the Son of God...." Christ and His Life actuates the Apostle. It is Christ's mission, Christ's purpose - not his. It is what the Lord is doing... and not what he is doing for the Lord.

That is what it means: Christ becoming everything. So that for this we have no life apart from Christ - no strength, no wisdom, no knowledge; we have nothing, not even ability to live apart from Christ, to say nothing of ability to do... all natural energies and resources reduced by the sovereign act of the Lord, so that it shall be no longer I - but Christ - to live and to do.

The Unveiling of Jesus Christ

At the beginning of the book of the Revelation, we find, on the one hand, a situation of spiritual loss and failure, weakness, and many other conditions and features which even the Lord Himself, in all His grace, has to deplore. Through His servant John He sends a series of letters to seven representative churches, aimed at securing the renewing of the life of His people, and the restoring of those primary and primal values of their beginnings. Then, it was a situation of many difficulties - sufferings and trials and adversities from various quarters and of various kinds. The Christians at that time were both actually in a time of much adversity and were moving yet more deeply into suffering. To one of these churches the Lord said that they were about to suffer, they were about to be cast into prison; they were going to have tribulation for a specified time (2:10). It was a time when Christians both actually needed real help and stimulus, and needed to be prepared for further battles, further conflicts and further sufferings. These were the two main aspects of the general situation.

In the light of those facts, we stand back and ask: How did the Lord, and how does the Lord, meet that need? Indeed, we might say: How does the Lord ever meet a great need? What is that which alone will supply the need, and be the key to the problem, the answer to the demand, and the assured ground, both of recovery and renewal, and of fortification for the suffering? And the answer has ever been, and always is: A new revelation - an unveiling - of the greatness of Jesus Christ. That is the very platform, we might say, upon which and from which the Lord moves into these situations, and into all the situations that follow in this book. He prefaces everything with this fresh revelation or unveiling of His own personal greatness.

That has ever been the way. Abraham was called upon to take tremendous decisions, to make immense sacrifices. In his native country and city, with its marvellous and rich civilisation, he had a very full life indeed; and, without assurance that his movement would be justified, he was called upon to move under sealed orders. 'Get thee out... unto a land which I will show thee.' 'I will show... when you get there!' It was a tremendous move, very costly, and very testing. But if you have wondered how it was that Abraham went through, met all the tests, and at last survived, you have, I think, the answer in these words: "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia" (Acts 7:2). If ever that happens, you have got something to move on; you have got a background; you have something that will again and again come to your rescue in a time of difficulty.

Moses was called upon to undertake a tremendous responsibility. We know the whole story now. Moses was not altogether ignorant of what he had to face, in Egypt and afterward; and we may wonder sometimes how he kept to the course and got through. But we know that he met God 'face to face'; it could be said equally that 'the God of glory appeared' to him. Reference is made several times in the Bible to that encounter with God in the bush. And we are told that "he endured, as seeing him who is invisible" (Heb. 11:27). That was the secret of his sustenance.

Joshua was called as a young man to face very great responsibilities and undertakings, in the ridding and clearing of that country of those ten kingdoms, getting that people in - such a people - he knew them! - to possess the land, and all that was bound up with it. And no wonder the Lord had to repeat one word to Joshua continually, to get him on the move. 'Be of good courage'; 'be strong and of good courage'; 'only be of good courage... only be strong' (Joshua 1:6,7,9). How did the Lord give to Joshua the basis? He 'lifted up his eyes' and saw the 'Captain of the host of the Lord' (Joshua 5:13,14). From that time it was all right; he could go on and go through.

Isaiah was a young man in a very, very difficult day, one of those very cloudy days in Israel's history. He was taking up his great prophetic ministry in the face of great difficulties and threatening problems. How did he get through? 'I saw the Lord, high and lifted up', he said (Is. 6:1). That is the answer.

Think of Paul - did ever a man have to face greater difficulties, oppositions and antagonisms and sufferings and perils, more than that man? How did he get through? He saw the Lord, or the Lord appeared to him. He saw the greatness of Jesus Christ.

Stephen triumphed as he saw 'the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God' (Acts 7:56). So we could go on.

Some thirty years later, the Lord's people had come to a point where there was going to be a devastating blow struck at their corporate life. It was just on the point of that final siege of Jerusalem, when everything was going to be shattered and scattered; a great earth-shaking was about to take place; all that the Lord Jesus Himself had foreshadowed, '...not one stone left upon another...', and all those other terrible things, were all about to take place within a very little time. How were the believers going to get through?

The Lord took up a man - we do not know now exactly who it was; some say one and some say another - but He took up a man to write what we call 'The Letter to the Hebrews', and he begins with an almost matchless unveiling of the greatness of Jesus Christ! The Lord was saying through that letter: If only you can get that as your foundation, you will go through it all. You will not go back as you are being tempted to do, as perhaps you are contemplating doing. If only you see how great your Lord is, you will go on. So He laid the foundation for survival of faith - for that is the issue; you know how it all comes up in the eleventh chapter - the survival of faith, on the ground of an apprehension of the greatness of Christ.

And then we come to this book of the Revelation, and again we are in the presence of these things: on the one side, spiritual declension, failure, breakdown, loss; on the other side, suffering, growing suffering, terrible afflictions for the Church. How will the one be remedied and recovery take place? What is the key to a renewing of spiritual life when it has reached a low ebb? How shall they go on through the tribulation and the tribulations, and come out in victory in the City of God? The Lord's only answer, His one answer, which has always been successful, and is the only one which will be successful in any situation of need, is a new unveiling of the greatness of the Lord Jesus.

But oh, these are but words! When we have said these things - and we would all agree that they are true - we are still so helpless, because it is the thing that matters - not talking about it! If only, by the Holy Spirit - and there is no other way, no other means - we could catch a new glimpse of His greatness, how many problems that would solve, questions that would answer, needs that would meet! How overwhelming it would be! - and when I say 'overwhelming', I mean, how much would be overwhelmed! A mighty tidal wave, making all these rocks, upon which we threaten to founder, as nothing; they are sunk beneath it, disappear from view.

Now that is not just language. Look - who is writing this? It is the apostle John. The apostle John? Yes, that man who walked with Jesus of Nazareth, listened to Him, watched Him at work, and, at supper, and at other times, sat next to Him, and put his head upon His shoulder - the most familiar picture of a man alongside of a man, in close, devoted, affectionate association. John always called himself 'the disciple whom Jesus loved': it showed that there was a sacred, holy familiarity between John and Jesus, marked by very human terms and language.

Yet that same man said: 'When I saw Him I fell, as one dead.' It is the same Jesus, and the same man; but - 'I fell to the ground as one dead.' And if that One had not, in His great mercy, come and laid His hand upon him, saying, 'Fear not, John: I am the first and the last; I am the Living One', John would have been there as a dead man. It was the same Jesus - but look at the transition from the 'Jesus of history' to the Christ of glory! That is the difference. From the John of the Gospels to the John of the Revelation it is a marvellous and mighty movement! He never felt like that when he walked with Jesus, devoted as he was. With his fullest consciousness of who Jesus was, he was at most perhaps sometimes awestruck and awe-inspired. It was not until he saw Him glorified that he went down, helplessly prostrate, like a dead man. It was a great transition from the Jesus of history to the Christ of glory.

Now, I take nothing whatever from the values and blessings of the Gospels, when I say that I am sometimes afraid that we may dwell too much upon the Jesus of history, and fail to remember that the men who wrote those four Gospels wrote them long after Jesus was glorified. You notice, they did not, at some point toward the end of His life, when they perhaps began to sense that He would not be with them much longer, get away and decide to write the story of that life - of His birth, and His manhood, and His teaching, and His miracles - as a mere human, earthly story. When they wrote, they had all the mighty facts and realities of His resurrection, ascension and heavenly glory, which they were seeking to crowd into that story of His life here, as those who would say: 'That One was This One! That was not just Jesus of Nazareth - that was the mighty Son of God from Heaven!' They were crowding every incident with the fullest apprehension that they had of the glorified Christ - Christ, who was now there at the right hand of God! They were not just writing a human story.

That is the only way in which to preach the Gospel from the Gospels. Do you notice, when after His ascension and His glorification they preached or they wrote, how little, how remotely little, they ever said about the three-and-a-half years? - just a fragment here and there. They said very little about His teaching and His miracles and His walk about Palestine. They were all occupied with this One who had been 'crowned with glory and honour' - that was their message. Yes, there was that other One - Jesus of Nazareth, 'who went about doing good, and healing all who were oppressed with the devil' - a sort of passing reference to that earthly phase, a summary... 'But God raised Him'! God honoured Him, this One! It will not get us very far just to be occupied with the incidents of His earthly life, however precious they are. If we are going on and going through, we need an apprehension of that fulness of glory that is His now - the greatness of Christ.

It is, indeed, just because men have robbed or stripped Him of His essential greatness, that we find, down the centuries, the deplorable conditions that have obtained. Our 'liberal' theologians have stripped Him of His Deity; with what result? Oh, devastating results in the impact of Christ upon this earth! They have made Him a lesser Christ than He is. The philosophers have just made Him one in their gallery of great and wise men. It was against that tendency even with the Christians in Corinth that Paul raged in his first letter - taking something from the Lord Jesus, and just putting Him amongst other great men. The gnostics of Colossae - what were they doing? They had a theory of angelic ranks and orders, from the highest order of angelic beings down to the lowest subordinate; and they put Jesus, perhaps at the top, but as nothing more than an 'angelic being', robbing Him of His essential Person. He is Very God!

The 'comparative religionists', all along and in our own day, are saying, Well, there are great founders of religions - there is Buddha, and Confucius, and Mohammed, and Jesus... and so on. You see the subtlety? - a comparative, not an absolutely Supreme and unique! And then there are the humanists of our time, inflating and glorifying man and humanity to such a point that, after all, humanity will be deified one day, will reach God-head - and Jesus is only, after all, the Super-Man! So it goes on, and it is all these things, this Satanic work, to reduce the size of Christ, to make Him less than He is, that has done so much mischief. If we lose, or fail to have, the essential greatness of Christ in our consciousness, ours is going to be a lesser spiritual life than it could be, and we shall break down under the stress and the strain of adversity. The only thing for every need is the recovery of His greatness.

Now here He is presented in the Revelation, and He is not presented in the language of Deity, although it runs very close. At some points, you cannot distinguish between the humanity and the deity. You do not know whether John is speaking of God or of Christ at certain points. The fact is, he is speaking of the One who is both. But the title, as we have already seen, by which He is presented in this matchless, incomparable unveiling, is 'Son of man'. Let us now consider the personal greatness of the Son of Man, who is, at the same time, Son of God, Very God.

We have referred to the Letter to the Hebrews, and we call it in now for our help in this matter. We read from it, and we begin with this "effulgence of his glory", and then we read: "Whom he appointed heir of all things" - appointed heir of all things! - "through whom... he made the ages..." and so on. "But one hath somewhere testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou ... didst set him over the works of thy hands: thou didst put all things in subjection under his feet... We see not yet all things subjected to him. But we behold him who hath been made for a little while lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that by the grace of God he might taste death for every man."

Here is the Son of Man in His own personal greatness. See who He is: 'the effulgence...', 'the express image...' See His appointment: 'heir of all things'. See His instrumentality and agency: 'through whom the ages were made'. The Son of Man - how great this One is! You would not think that, when you see Him walking about Palestine - not all that! You do not recognise Him. But that same One is now here before John, with these devastating effects; that same One, now revealed, unveiled, as to what He is essentially in His Person; who He is; what position He holds. He is here as the Heir of all things come for His inheritance. And the rest of the book sees Him working it out - the securing of that inheritance of which He is the Heir, and, in the end, of a 'new heaven and a new earth'. What a glorious inheritance comes into view in the last chapters of this book! This is the Son of Man; this is His greatness! But we are completely defeated at any attempt at a true, not exaggerated, unveiling of Jesus Christ. There is His personal greatness.

But as Son of Man, we have, in that very title, His representative greatness. To borrow again from the Letter to the Hebrews, where first He is appointed Heir of all things, then He is the 'Captain of their salvation', 'bringing many sons to glory'. The word 'captain' there would be better translated the 'Pioneer' of their salvation - the One who goes before to lead them into that into which He Himself has entered. Of course, that is the substance of this Letter to the Hebrews. He has gone before; He has entered into the heavens; He has "passed through the heavens"; He has gone the whole way, and reached the end, as the Pioneer of the many sons being brought to glory, whom He calls His 'brethren'. His representative greatness, as there at the end, in fulness, in glory - for there He represents all those whom He is going to bring and is bringing - how great it is! We read in the Revelation of a 'great multitude which no man can number out of every tribe and kindred and tongue... thousands... ten thousands of thousands...' Language is taxed to breaking point to describe the fruit of the sufferings of the Lamb! And He is the Representative in glory of them all. How great is His Person and His representation!

And then, His official greatness. That is seen through this book of the Revelation, and again in the Letter to the Hebrews. His official greatness, as High Priest - what a great High Priest He is, as according to that book; what a tremendous thing He does! Think of it: through century after century, sacrifices of lambs, and goats, and bulls and other things - blood enough to fill an ocean - all through the centuries, day after day, and never reaching an end in effectiveness where sin was concerned: but He, One Offering - only one! - went far beyond the millions of sacrifices on Jewish altars. How great was His sacrifice, and His priesthood, as He offered Himself without spot to God, once for all.

And here, in this book, as the other side of His official greatness, we have His description as 'King of kings, and Lord of lords'! What a thing to say, in a day when that tyrant at Rome was dominating the world, assuming lordship over all lordships, and seeking to subject to himself every power, not only in earth, but in heaven, since he claimed deity. In that day, the unveiling of Jesus Christ is 'King of kings' - yes, and Nero amongst them! - 'and Lord of lords'.

To sum up: I believe we would have very much better converts if they were presented with a very much greater Christ. To anyone who does not know in their own life and experience salvation in Jesus Christ, what it really means to be born again - to be really a 'child of God', and to know it - to be able to join in heartily with this apostle John when he said, 'Beloved, now are we the children of God... Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God, and such we are!' - to any such I would say this. While Jesus would be your Saviour, the Forgiver of your sins, and many other things to you, He is far, far greater than anything you can imagine. Salvation takes its greatness from the measure of the Saviour. If you want a great salvation, see what a great Saviour He is. And remember that because of what He is, you need have no fears in putting your trust in Him; you need not fear that you may not be able to 'keep it up'! No, you won't, but He will; He will be able to keep you up - He is great enough! We need an unveiling of the greatness of Jesus Christ, to get a better kind of Christian.

For the recovery from our spiritual losses and declensions and failures, and deliverance from all these things which are so abhorrent to us and to Him, there is only one way, and that is, really to see His greatness. If we do that, we cannot live on a 'little' level. I recently went to the Planetarium in London. The thing that was with me, while listening to the lecture, and afterward, was, how ever can anyone be 'little' when they are dealing with these things all the time! I suppose it is possible even for a Fellow of the Astronomical Society to be a 'little' man in character (I am not implying this about this man, but it is possible!) But it is not possible to have a revelation of the greatness of Jesus Christ and remain a little person! Oh, for our enlargement, our ennoblement, our deliverance from our pettinesses, and all this which is so despicable! What is the answer? A new grasp of His greatness - that is all!

And then, if we are suffering; if we are knowing adversity and trial; if the clouds seem to be gathering, and increasing, how will we get through? Only by getting away, and asking, seeking, pursuing in prayer a new heart revelation, a new unveiling, of Jesus Christ, and that will surely do it.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, January-February 1960, Vol 38-1

The Wonderful Balance in the Life of the Lord

How poised He was, how balanced! Take the matter of mind, heart and will, and you find in His case those three were perfectly balanced. We are very different naturally.

I suppose people as a whole can be divided up into three classes. Firstly, those who are more in the realm of their head than anywhere else. They are all head in one way or another. If they are not intellectual, they are of another kind of mentality - introspective, analyzing, going round things in the mind; all thinking, all puzzling, all reasoning, all working in that realm: that is the chief characteristic. You can see it almost in their faces. It is this trying to get through with the head that more or less characterizes people of a certain class.

Then you have another class, all heart, all feeling, all emotion. They simply live in their feelings, perhaps different forms, but still feelings. They are governed by their feelings, and just how things affect them in the realm of their emotional life. They are either up or they are down, you can never be sure, but you do know that whether they are up or down, it is their feelings that are ruling. If only they would think a little more and not move so much on impulse, they would be more balanced.

The third class - people governed by will, people of a drive, forceful, assertive. The will is unreasoning sometimes. They do not stop to think. They get a drive on but do not think of the damage they are doing to themselves or other people. Their will overrides feeling, very good sometimes to do that, but to be all will, all of that kind of strength, determination, grip, and force, oh, it is overbearing and does a lot of harm.

People are more or less divided into those classes naturally, but you cannot find anything like that with the Lord Jesus on earth. You can find will coming in at times very strong, and sometimes heart, and sometimes mind. Yes, mind could come in, and who could stand up against Him in that realm? Some of His answers silenced, paralyzed, those who were cleverest. Look at some of the answers He gives, some of the ways He deals with a problem. They think they have Him this time, there is no way out. A simple statement - and the whole thing collapses; they have not got Him at all!

But the point is this: while these things are there, they are balanced; there is never strength of will to the hurt of sensibility; there is never strength of emotion to the damage of rightful severity. He does not allow His heart to run away with His sense of judgment. He is perfectly balanced; and that is one of our needs. But that is why the Holy Spirit has come, and this is one of the things that has to take place in a Holy Spirit-ruled life. It has to become a balanced life, to be saved from being lopsided.

Anything over-weighted makes going very uneven. Draw a figure of a circle and divide it into three segments: ''mind'', ''heart'', ''will''. Then put a bump on ''will'' a little bigger than heart or mind and make your circle into a wheel, and see how evenly you go along, the unevenness of an unbalanced life. It makes going difficult, hard, and uncomfortable.

Take the even poise of our Lord's walk here on earth. Now what we need is that the Spirit of Christ should come in and bring about an adjustment to Him, reconstitute us so that we go along more evenly, not one day on the heights, the next day in the depths, variable, changeable, because our soul-life is so unbalanced. We have a long way to go in this, but conformity to His image moans that, amongst many other things, the bringing of a poise into life and saving us from these terrible effects of straining, of living in one realm of our souls more than another. We do need that. We sometimes sing, "And let our ordered lives confess the beauty of Thy peace.'' I tell you, I covet that, that ordered life inwardly.

This is why the Word of God so often emphasizes that everything in the Church must be according to Christ. He personally is the new Man; the Church, His Body, is the ''one new man''. Now here in the Church the Holy Spirit wants to constitute corporately according to Christ, and if the old man comes into the Church with his state of unbalance, and some people or individuals in the Church move along one line and others along another line of natural life, mind, heart, or will, any particular old creation line, they destroy the Church; that is, they nullify its very conception.

In the Church all is to speak of Christ, and therefore in the Church what Christ is has steadily to grow and take ascendancy over all else; and that is why there must be in the Church utter subjection to Christ's Headship. Just as we live from our heads, and our character and nature and actions and speech are all controlled by the head, so the nature of the Church is taken from the nature of Christ; and what the Lord is seeking to get is a Church which does express what Christ is, this balance. Yes, His strength, but also His love; His truth and light, yes; but equally His life. Oh, we can have such a preponderance of light and truth, all head and little heart.

I have known, on the other hand, companies where all is heart, the people falling on one another's necks with effusive terms of so-called love, and yet they are not growing, not coming to a place of responsibility. It sounds and looks like love, but underneath there is something lacking. They need instruction; they need edifying.

When the Body is fitly framed and compacted, balanced, brought into proper articulation and harmony, taking its nature and its character from Christ, and therefore governed by what He is as the new creation Man, then you are getting what God is after; and you can have that in a local company and in local companies which thereby become not places that stand for some extraordinary truth, something different from all other teachings, and all the time trying to get hold of something that is extraordinary and remote from common recognition. No, you simply get there an embodiment and an expression of Christ; and that is all that God wants, and all we ought to want. People meeting us as companies as well as individuals will be meeting something that touches them. They will say, If only there were more of this, the world would be a different place; and yet this is something so outside the realm of human possibility that only God could do this - this is God! It requires Almighty God, and yet here it is; it touches us - we see that this is what is needed!

Oh, the tragedy in this connection in these days! You hear it on the wireless almost any day; you find the literature of our day just crowded with it, the recognition of the fact that if only things were on the line of Christ, if only Christ's teaching were put into practice, if only Christ and what He was really were here and expressed, how different the world would be! There is plenty of recognition and acknowledgment of that; but on the other side, men at once begin to say, Well, let us get busy on this; we will do this and that to bring it about. They do not recognize that this is a miracle from heaven and that it has to come in by a birth, a reconstituting, a new creation fiat. That is where the gap is, and the tragedy; and men fall between the two.

But we know better: there He is, and there His Spirit is to do it. It seems to take a long time. A little bit of conformity to His image seems to occupy almost a lifetime. But nevertheless He is doing something; it does make a difference to have Christ; there are many changes because Christ has come in, we do know that. There are going to be greater changes yet. After all, whatever we may say about the poverty of things in the Church, the world would be a poor place if the people of God were taken out of it; and it will be, when they have gone. There is something here that is not of the world, and the world needs it.

The Lord help us to see Christ and get continually to Him for this conformity to His image - this taking of the Spirit of Christ, this inward reconstituting after the Son of Man, a new creation in Christ Jesus.

"Ye Are My Friends"

Among the various titles by which Christians were called in the New Testament surely the most wonderful is that given by the Lord Jesus - "Ye are my friends":

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends if ye do the things which I command you. No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends: for all things that I heard from my Father I nave made Known unto you. Ye did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide" (John 15:13-16).

It is indeed a very wonderful and beautiful thing that the Son of God called such as the disciples were, and such as we are, His friends. I do not think there is a greater or more beautiful word in all our language than that word 'friend'. It is the most intimate title in all human relationships. Every other relationship that we can think of may exist without this. Perhaps we think that the marriage relationship is the most intimate, but it is possible for that relationship to exist without friendship. Happy indeed is the man whose wife is his friend, and happy is the wife whose husband is her friend. It is a very close relationship between children and parents and parents and children, but it is a great thing when the father can call his son his friend, and when he can say, not 'my son', but 'my friend'. And, again, it is a great thing when a child can say, not only 'my father', but 'my friend': 'my father is my friend' - 'my mother is my friend'. It is something extra in relationship. We may admire a person and have a lot of association with them: we may think that we know them and could say: 'Well, I know so-and-so very well', but, even so, there may not be friendship. Friendship is always just that bit extra.

When Jesus said: "Ye are my friends", He was going beyond 'Ye are My disciples' and 'Ye are My followers'. He could have called them by many other names, but when He said: "Ye are my friends" He went beyond anything else. And I think that the Lord Jesus found the most complete satisfaction of His heart in this word. To say "Ye are my friends" was as far as anybody could possibly go. Really, there is nothing beyond it. You reach the end of all relationships when you really come to friendship. How rich and how precious, then, is this title!

In the picture of the new Jerusalem which we have at the end of the Bible it says: "The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all manner of precious stones" (Revelation 21:19). The foundation of that city was that which was most precious, and I think the most precious foundation of life is friendship. The new Jerusalem itself will be built upon the foundation of the friendship between the Lord Jesus and His own.

Well, that is just a little about friendship. But what is the nature of friendship? We have it here in John 15: "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth, but I have called you friends: for all things that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you." Friendship is that position which makes it possible to open the heart fully, to keep nothing back; and to have such confidence that you can trust the other person with all that is in your heart. Jesus said: 'All that the Father has shown Me I have shown you. I have kept nothing back from you. I have put perfect confidence in you. I have had no suspicions of you and have not been afraid to say just what was in My heart.'

You know, that is very wonderful. Go back again in this Gospel by John and in chapter two you will find: "Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, during the feast, many believed on his name, beholding his signs which he did. But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men, and because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man, for he himself knew what was in man" (John 2:23-25).

Jesus knew all men, and because of that He did not commit Himself to them... "Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus" (John 3:1), and what follows shows that Jesus knew Nicodemus and He did not commit Himself to him. Nicodemus was not in the position of a friend, at least, not at this time. How much he was before the end we do not know. He did act like a friend in the burial of Jesus, for something had happened to him by that time. But at this time he was amongst those men to whom Jesus did not commit Himself. He simply said, in effect: 'Before I can commit Myself to you, you must be born again.'

That is the beginning of this friendship. Yes, Jesus has told us that the real nature of friendship is that He can just commit Himself to His friends. He said many things to other people, but He did not put Himself into their hands. And that is all the difference. You may have a lot of fellowship, say a lot of things, and they may be quite true things, but that is not putting yourself into the hands of those people. There is all the difference between conversation and fellowship and committal. Friendship means that you have committed yourselves to one another - you have really put yourself into the hands of the other person. That is what Jesus said friendship means: "All things that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you." 'I have had no reserves where you are concerned.'

I am sure you are feeling that this is a very wonderful thing and are wondering more and more at it as we go on. Just think that the Son of God should do that - that He should be willing to commit Himself to some people!

And these were not empty words. He went on to show that He would prove His friendship. What is the proof of friendship? Well, of course, it is firstly, as we have said, committing yourself to the other.

But then Jesus said this: "Greater love hath no man than this. That a man lay down his life for his friends." That is the proof of friendship. How much are you prepared to sacrifice, to suffer and to put up with? "A man lay down his life for his friends." Now, of course, you are thinking of one thing - of dying in some way for your friends. But there are a thousand ways of laying down your life for your friends. It is a matter of laying down our lives all the time - not just some big act of dying for our friends, but every day laying down our lives, letting something of ourselves go, letting some personal interest go and just saying: 'That does not matter - it is for my friend. That is not so important - it is for my friend.' Friendship makes everything else unimportant. If there is real friendship we do not stay to say: 'Well, now, must I do that? Am I really obliged to do that? Can I not get out of it in some way? Really, is there any harm in my doing this?'

You know, that is the attitude of a lot of Christians. 'Why may I not do this? Is there any harm in it? A lot of other people do it so why should I not do it? I even know Christians who do it. Must I really not do this?' Supposing Jesus had taken that attitude! No, friendship puts all that kind of thing away and never talks about 'Must I?' 'Is there no other way?' This is a laying down of the life for a friend.

So I say that there are many ways of laying down our life. What is laying down our life? It is just holding that nothing is too valuable or important to be kept from our friend. It does not matter what it costs, or how painful it is - friendship makes it possible.

We have the great illustration in the Bible. There is only one man in all the Bible who was called God's friend: "Abraham... the friend of God" (James 2:23). What a wonderful thing to be said of any man - "Abraham, my friend", said God (Isaiah 41:8). It is God speaking about a man, and He is saying "My friend"! How could God call Abraham His friend? What made Abraham a friend of God? "Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest... and offer him" (Genesis 22:2). What did Abraham say? 'You have asked too much. Isaac is too precious. He is everything to me. Oh, no, I cannot offer him!'? No, Abraham did not talk like that. I think it is most wonderful when it says: "And Abraham rose early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and he clave the wood for the burnt offering" (Genesis 22:3). I venture to suggest to you that if you were faced with that you would not get up early that morning! You would be staying in bed just as long as you could and putting it off as long as possible. But it says: "Abraham rose early in the morning." What was he about to do? He was about to enter right into the heart of God in giving his only begotten son, and enter right into fellowship with the passion of God's heart. "God so loved... that He gave His only begotten Son." It was because of that that Abraham was God's friend. He had entered right into the heart of God and counted nothing too precious for the friendship of God.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends", and in offering Isaac Abraham indeed laid down his life. "Abraham, my friend." That is the nature of friendship. And Jesus proved His friendship. This is the proof - that He has laid down His life.

Then we go on to ask another question: What is the basis of this friendship? Jesus knew what was going to happen in the near future, for it was getting very near to the day when they would all forsake Him, and yet, knowing all that, He said: "Ye are my friends." There must be some basis which is more than just this present time. Jesus was looking beyond the Cross, and He was seeing that the day would come when these men would stand strongly on the ground of the Cross. We now have the full story. Oh, yes, not so long after this they were letting everything in this world go for Him. The Cross had truly entered into their hearts. The spirit of the Cross had truly taken possession of them and they were standing firmly upon that ground. And Jesus knew that that was how it would be. He knew what was going to happen in the next few days, but He was always speaking to them about afterward, that human failure was not the last thing and was not going to be the end of everything. To that poor, failing Peter He said this: "And do thou, when once thou hast turned again, stablish thy brethren" (Luke 22:32). 'You are going to have a terrible fall, but that is not going to be the end. You will turn again and you will have a great ministry afterward.'

Jesus was always looking beyond the Cross, and He saw that these men would stand upon the ground of the Cross. The Cross means that you do not hold anything for yourself, but only for your friend, and that was true of these men.

But Jesus also saw something else. He knew that before long they would receive the Holy Spirit and that they would be governed by Him. And when the Holy Spirit really takes possession you can be trusted. These men could not be trusted without the Holy Spirit, but when He came in, then you could depend upon them. They would not be governed by personal interests, nor would they have any fleshly considerations, but they would live by the Spirit and not by the flesh. And Jesus said: 'On that ground ye are My friends, and that day is as though it is now. Ye are My friends because I know that you men are going to stand on the ground of the Cross and are going to be led by the Holy Spirit.'

You see, that is the basis of friendship. If we live on our own natural ground then the Lord will never be able to depend upon us, but if the Cross has done its deep work in our hearts, and if we are really governed by the Holy Spirit, the Lord has all the ground that He requires to commit Himself to us, all that is necessary for Him to say: "Ye are my friends."

I think there was one thing that the Lord Jesus knew about eleven of these men. Yes, they were men of many weaknesses and many failures. They often said the wrong thing and often did the wrong thing, but Jesus knew that He had their hearts. In spite of everything He had captured their hearts. They had a heart for Him. They may have made mistakes, and He knew all about that, but He knew that they had given Him their hearts. They had a heart for the Lord, and that is the basis of His friendship. He is saying: 'Have I really got all your heart? I know all about your weaknesses and your failures, but, really, is your whole heart over on my side?'

Judas never gave his heart to the Lord. He had a heart for himself and for worldly gain. Jesus could never say to him: 'You are My friend', but He called him "the son of perdition" (John 17:12). But with these eleven He was quite sure where their hearts were. He even saw what would happen when He was on trial and crucified, but He told them what to do and where to meet Him after that. He knew that they would come through because they had a heart for Him. You have only to look at these people when Jesus had been crucified and was in the grave. How sad they were! It is as though they had lost everything in life, and they had lost everything, simply because they had given their whole hearts to the Lord Jesus. That is the basis of His friendship.

It is in these things, then, that the Lord is able to trust us and commit Himself to us. This is the relationship that the Lord Jesus wants more than anything else. The breakdown in friendship is so often because of some natural interest arising, some question of how it is going to affect us rather than how it is going to affect Him.

This is something very challenging to our hearts, and it is a lesson that all of us have to learn. I have to learn it, and am trying to do so. You have to learn it - that the greatest thing in all life is how our behaviour affects the Lord Jesus; how our appearance before the world affects the Lord Jesus; how differences between us affect the Lord Jesus. Yes, everything, how it affects the Lord Jesus. You know, that is the very essence of friendship. True friendship is always governed by this: 'I would do nothing to hurt my friend. That is the last thing that ever I want to do!', and Jesus wants to put our lives upon that basis. He will never do anything to hurt us, but how much we hurt Him! We must bring everything to the judgment bar of friendship.

The greatest characteristic of friendship is loyalty. I do not think there is a greater or grander virtue than loyalty. You may not always understand your best friend; he or she may sometimes do things that you cannot understand, things about which you do not feel very happy at the moment, but if it is friendship you are loyal to your friend, whether you understand him or not. You will not betray your friend or talk about him to his detriment, nor do anything that would injure him. You will always be loyal. Faithfulness is the heart of friendship and that is the attitude of the Lord Jesus.

But the Lord wants to put His disciples on the same basis. He wants this spirit and nature of friendship to exist between His own. He wants them to have the same spirit as is in Himself and to be friends of one another. We may say: 'Yes, he or she is my fellow-Christian.' As Christians we may speak of one another as our brothers and sisters, but I have said there is something more than that, more than fellow-Christians, more than brothers and sisters. I suppose I must not put it in the Christian realm and say more than fathers and mothers, but the meaning is the same. There is just that something extra - 'He is more than my brother, he is my friend.' 'She is more than my sister, she is my friend.' Oh, that the Lord might be able to get that kind of relationship!

May He write this word deeply in our hearts and send us back to the places where we are going with a heart wholly for Him! Nothing held back, but a complete committal to Him, that He has us altogether, and by His grace we will never do anything that will hurt Him. We will always ask the question about everything: 'How will this affect my Lord?' You see, friendship has two sides. It is not one-sided. It is not friendship when I do all the friendliness and you do not do any. No, it has two sides. We must be to Him what He is to us, and we must be to one another what He is to us.

Now this is going to be a very difficult thing, but remember the Cross and the Holy Spirit. They are the two great powers which make this possible. The Cross is not only the crucifixion of Christ many years ago: it is a mighty power in life every day. The Holy Spirit is not somebody who came at Pentecost many years ago. He is here today and can be in us, and if He really has the control of our lives the one thing which will concern us most is 'How does my life affect the Lord Jesus?'

Take that message away with you, and seek to live by it in all the days before us.

From "A Witness and A Testimony" Mar-Apr, 1969