Author's Rights

Published as an E-book

by

Austin-Sparks.Net

Email: info@austin-sparks.net

ISBN: 978-1-927218-94-5

In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks' wishes that what was freely received should be freely given and not sold for profit, and that his messages be reproduced word for word, we ask if you choose to share these messages with others, to please respect his wishes and offer them freely - free of any changes, free of any charge (except necessary distribution costs) and with this statement included.

Filled Unto All the Fulness of God

by T. Austin-Sparks

This book is based on a series of messages given at a conference in July 1934. The spoken form has been retained.

From unpublished manuscripts. Published on the web in March 2009.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Fulness of Christ

Chapter 2 - The Recognition of Our Heavenly Position in Resurrection

Chapter 3 - Governed by the Word of the Lord and the Holy Spirit

Chapter 4 - Eight Stages in the Progress to God's End

Chapter 5 - The Tremendous Necessity for Going On to God's End

Chapter 6 - "Whose House We Are"

Chapter 7 - The Father of the Family

Chapter 8 - The Father of the Son

Chapter 9 - The Father of Our Spirits

Chapter 10 - Family Life and Characteristics

Chapter 11 - What Spirituality Is

Chapter 12 - The Ground Upon Which the Fulness of Christ is Entered Into

Chapter 13 - The Cities of Refuge

Chapter 14 - Gaining Christ

Chapter 1 - The Fulness of Christ

The field of our meditation will mainly be in 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 full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ".

That verse might very well be placed at the beginning 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 had 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 was seeking, and what the foes were 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 to see 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 remains therefore, a rest for the people of God" (Heb. 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; to coming to finality and to rest.

"...unto a full-grown man..." 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 thirteenth 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 fills all in all.

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.

The first - Egypt and the deliverance - sees 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 you have refused to let him go; behold, I will slay your son, your 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 and 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.

In the second case, in the wilderness, it 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 and 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 baptized 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.

When we come to the third case, in the land, we 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. What Joshua was as a man takes altogether a secondary place to that invisible commander of the hosts. Joshua capitulated the entire government and control to that one who appeared only once, and then - so far as personal presence was concerned - disappeared, but remained in charge. The Captain of the Hosts of the Lord; He of Whom it is written: "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him" (Isa. 59:19 R.V. margin). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Lord of Hosts. The warrior spirit of Joshua is but a type of the Holy Spirit in energy concerning the attainment to the fulness of Christ, and that collectively.

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.

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

1. In Christ risen - on the far side of Jordan.

2. 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.

3. In spiritual increase - going on unto full growth to God's end.

4. In 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 the one before and the one 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 got 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 then 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 spontaneously - spiritual 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 unless we are living out of voluntary contact with 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 unless we know the energy of the risen life of the Lord Jesus.

Then the fourth thing follows - spiritual 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 a spiritual government? What is spiritual ascendancy? Some people have 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 and 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. 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 reaction - that is, if we do not react in the flesh - the 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..."

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 and 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 you, be strong...". Turn to the letter to the Ephesians chapter 3:16: "That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that you may be strengthened with power through His spirit in the inward man". Chapter 1:19-21: "...that you 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 6:10: "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 1:11: "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. 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 you 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 you were made full... in whom you 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 you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead".

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 you 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 you 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 you 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 you 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. Chapters 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 Joshua - the 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" (Rom. 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 the New Testaments.

Having paved the way for our 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 78:37, 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. It is stated there that their hearts were not wholly set upon the Lord; therefore, they did not enter into the land and come to the inheritance and so attain unto God's end.

A heart wholly set upon the Lord is one which has clearly discriminated between salvation for its own sake and for blessing and gain, and salvation with God's purpose in view. There is all the difference between those two. 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.

Let us remember that Paul said these things were written for examples for us upon whom the ends of the ages are come. We have to learn by them. It is possible for us to have an outward relationship with the Lord and an inward relationship with ourselves. And that explains everything. The result of this in the life of His people in the wilderness was contradiction; something outward which was ostensibly for the Lord, but inwardly it was for self. Inconsistency follows; that is, one day there would be a great glorying and rejoicing in the Lord, and in the background at the very same time, only waiting its chance, there was that which was altogether dishonouring to the Lord.

Such conditions were not peculiar to Israel in the wilderness. We all know something about that. If we were honest we should say that we have known outwardly, professedly, the carrying on in the things of salvation; have been able to talk about them... sometimes, when there is a suitable atmosphere, rejoicing in them, and being very glad. And yet, at the same time something in the background which only wants a change of atmosphere, a change of conditions outside, and a direct contradiction of that other thing is immediately manifest. Oh! the fluctuations of Israel in the wilderness! Oh! the fluctuations of the Christian life, when it is lived on the same principle as that upon which they were living. They were never long together in the same mood. One day they seemed as though they had at last come through to a place of victory; the next day they were back again in the old position. All this meant weakness, a failure to arrive at God's end; spiritual arrest, immaturity. Why is it? Their heart was not wholly set upon the Lord.

That does not mean that a heart wholly set upon the Lord will not know set-backs and failures, but when the heart is wholly set upon the Lord there are not those violent inconsistencies. There is a blessed consistency, that even if there is a failure the consistency is maintained, that there is a very deep penitence, a brokenness before the Lord with sorrow and Godly repentance.

This state of inconsistency is constantly involving the Lord's interests in the lives of others. Even those who are more spiritual and who want to go on with the Lord and who are seeking to be faithful to the Lord, become involved by this kind of thing. In Psalm 106 it says that it went ill with Moses for their sake. Their bad spiritual state involved a man who was really true to God. Writing the letter to the Hebrews the apostle speaks like this: "Lest there be any man that falls short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby the many be defiled". There are all kinds of difficulties brought about for truly devoted people because of those who are not going right on with the Lord.

If it is true that, so far as we are concerned immediately and the Lord's people through us and our ministry, the Lord is seeking to bring them to His own end, that is, the fulness of Christ, that is only possible as the heart is wholly set upon the Lord. Is it optional whether the heart is wholly set upon the Lord? Shall we say that we are enjoying salvation and all this "extra" we are not particularly interested in? Surely such an attitude is not possible in the light of the Word of God.

God's end is not just salvation - though one uses the word in that connection, one does not minimise salvation, for it has been purchased at unspeakable cost. Salvation is only the beginning of the way to God's end. Salvation is a growing, expanding thing, the end of which is the fulness of Christ. God's heart is set upon that. If we are going on unto that, our hearts must be wholly set upon that, upon the Lord Himself.

Chapter 2 - The Recognition of Our Heavenly Position in Resurrection

We have seen that the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians have the fulness of Christ and the inheritance of the saints clearly in view. In both letters a very definite and positive place is given to the fact that the reaching of the inheritance, and the coming to the fulness, is only upon the basis of that which corresponds to Jordan having been definitely recognised and accepted. That is, the Cross of the Lord Jesus on the side of the bringing to a judicial end of all that is of man himself, in the simple words that Christ's death was our death. Not only the removal of our sins, but the removal of ourselves as related to Adam in order that there might be another relationship brought about to the last Adam.

We have used the word "judicial", and that may confuse some, but it is very simply explained. There is all the difference between a judicial death and actual death. We are not, even when we have most thoroughly and utterly accepted our death union with the Lord Jesus by faith according to His own word and requirement, in a position to say that we, so far as the Adam life is concerned, are utterly dead and non-existent because there is still much of the old Adam associated with us. But that does not alter the fact that a judicial death has taken place. A judicial death is simply the fact that a sentence has been passed and in the eyes of the one who has passed the sentence, the death is taken for granted as though it had already happened. God has passed the sentence of death upon the whole race in Adam. That sentence was carried out in a Representative and that One Who represented the race voluntarily, the Lord Jesus, accepted the sentence voluntarily.

The sentence being carried out in the case of the Representative, means that all who were represented have died in the eyes of God. God says: "That is My position with regard to you; My Son voluntarily took your place as under the sentence of death." It could not be otherwise than voluntary, because He was not involved in our sin. He was not in any way by nature linked with our condition. He accepted our place as one who had sinned, yet in Whom there was no sin. God says: "In the moment in which I turned My face from Him on that Cross I closed forever the door to the Adam race. I abandoned the Adam race, so far as it ever had a chance of being accepted by Me or coming into My purpose." That was an eternal moment. If ever we should know what it is to have God forsake us for an instant of time, that instant would be like an eternity if we were fully conscious of it. If we knew that God had utterly and absolutely abandoned us, with all that it meant, that moment would be the moment of an eternity; that moment would be capable of changing our hair from the blackness of the raven to the whiteness of the snow. That is God's attitude to the Adam race, as far as His purpose is concerned. All that He has to say to the Adam race is: "You must be born again; there is no hope for you in your present birth."

That is the judicial death which has been carried out in relation to every one of us, and the point is that we have to recognise the fact in the warfare with the flesh as wholly corrupt, even at its best. We have to accept by faith the fact that the flesh can never come into the presence of God, and then that God has made a provision for our giving expression to that position spiritually. Romans and Colossians particularly speak of that. In Romans 6 it is: "We were buried with Him in baptism." In Colossians it is said that baptism was appointed by God as a means of openly declaring the fact that we forever have accepted God's attitude toward our Adam life. That makes possible everything else. The Jordan was Israel's national baptism into the death of Christ from the standpoint of the end of the life of nature. That is an essential and indispensable thing to coming to God's end, the fulness of Christ. There can be no hope or chance whatever for the fulness of Christ until there has been an acceptance of that position.

Even when that position has been taken, when we have made that declaration and been baptized as a testimony to that, the self-life has not gone; it will crop up, but something else has happened. We have definitely put that thing, in an act of faith, under the hand of God. We have said, in effect, "That whole realm and range of the self-life, of the life of nature, of the flesh, has been put under condemnation and judgment and death; now I count upon God to look after that." Then what happens? Whenever that thing comes up, you find it is smitten at once. You know quite well that if you are walking in the Spirit the uprising of any bit of Self meets with the impact of the Holy Spirit. And you have a wretched time until you have gone back to the Lord and said: "Lord, I have been allowing something to come up that You had judged." That is the way of progress and development. But you see the necessity for the judicial recognition, as giving God something to work upon.

In the wilderness there is not that work, but in the promised land there is. Achan was a survival of something and there is an instant reckoning with that by God. Everything is held up and a terrific crisis is precipitated by one thing. Before the Jordan the Lord witnessed against it, but this is a different situation. After Jordan you are in a new position: in the heavenlies. And here the thing cannot be tolerated for a moment. It is the position that makes the difference. There must be a judicial end to Self; that is, an acceptance quite definitely of the end of man's own life by nature, so that there may be a commencement, growth and continuation of God's life, with only God's life in the ascendant.

See how clear this is in the historical illustration. Joshua represents the energies of the Holy Spirit in relation to God's end; that is, the inheritance, the fulness of Christ. Do you remember where Joshua first came into view? It was at Rephidim, where the waters gushed from the rock - the type of the Holy Spirit becoming the basis of the life of the believer. In the wilderness you are getting patterns; in the land you are getting realities. The pattern is given in the wilderness. In the land there is a working out of the pattern. So that in the wilderness there is the type of the Holy Spirit being the indwelling life of the believer. That is God's thought made known. You do not get that as the living reality until you get over the Jordan; that is, in its full expression.

Joshua came in at that point; where the waters gushed from the rock. Joshua is one with the Holy Spirit, as the inner life and energy of the Lord's people. The two come together at Rephidim. But immediately that happens, Amalek comes out. And it is Joshua who is appointed to meet Amalek. Joshua - the energy of the Spirit - in connection with the water at Rephidim, called upon to meet the activities of the flesh. And through Joshua, Amalek - the activities and energies of the flesh - was overcome. It is the Spirit making war against the flesh and getting the mastery. That can never be, in its abiding reality and in its full expression, until that judicial thing has been accepted: that the flesh is under a ban. God's attitude towards Amalek was one of uncompromising antagonism. "Smite Amalek (that was God's attitude) and utterly destroy". The attitude of the Spirit towards the flesh is uncompromising. That has to be made very real when we come into the realm of spiritual, heavenly life. That is the normal course of experience when you come to the place where you have accepted the end of the self-life in the death of the Lord Jesus.

Having recognised the necessity for this judicial end to Self, the next thing that is essential as a basis upon which God will work to His end, is a resurrection life with the Lord. "We were buried... with Him through baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life"; "If you then be risen with Christ..." It is the completeness in every way of our separation and detachment from the world. You cannot fail to see that in the case of the Lord Jesus.

Relationships are entirely changed on resurrection ground. Mary would gladly have touched Him in the garden, would have embraced Him, but He said: "Touch me not..." In effect: "Things are changed; the holding of before is no longer. A different realm has been entered, a different relationship. Yes! still your Lord, still your Saviour, still your Friend, but a difference. I am not to be held as though I belonged to this earth; I am not to be taken hold of, as though this were My place." "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father". The first thing in resurrection is the recognition of our heavenly relationship, not our earthly relationship. All that is heavenly now makes first claim and what is earthly, even in a religious way, has to be put back. (There is a good deal of earthly religiousness, and religious earthliness. There is a good deal in religion, that is earthly and of this world: earth bound and of man). Resurrection union cuts clean and clear of everything that belongs to this world, even though it may be religious. What is only of God has a testimony in this world; it has no other relationship. Its business here is merely to testify in the world, but to have no other kind of tie.

Resurrection represents the completeness of our separation from the world. "If then you be raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above..." In other words, to all that is here: "Touch me not; My Father has first claim." That is a most elementary thing, but it is true. It means that heaven has first and primary claim upon everything, because now all relationships are heavenly, all interests are heavenly.

That is a position essential to God's end. We know quite well, in the practical outworking of this truth, that in the degree in which any believer has a voluntary relationship to this world, or is held by anything of this world, that believer is stunted in his spiritual development. The world is an obstruction to the fulness of Christ. It is impossible to go on if there is a bit of the world holding. Putting that round the other way; it is just wonderful, amazing, and blessedly joyous to notice how those who really do go on with the Lord spontaneously drop the world. That is the effect of spiritual growth. Habits, in which there seemed to be no harm whatever at one time, now have an element of controversy about them. Things, which in earlier stages  even of the Christian life, never provoked any concern, now, because there is growth, raise the question in the heart and the very going on with the Lord solves all the problems.

You never have to say to one whose heart is wholly set upon God: "You must give up this and give up that." Leave such a one with the Lord, and you will find those things go. It is a very blessed thing to see a heart set upon the Lord. You need have no worries in that direction. All the anxiety lies in the realm where the heart is not wholly for the Lord. The apostle's two letters to the Thessalonians are full of joy. He thanked the Lord on every remembrance of them. He could not speak too highly of them or in terms too glowing, simply because they turned from the world unto God, "to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven", and he had no anxiety about them. When you turn to the Corinthians... there is a good deal of trouble. It is the wilderness situation again - a divided heart.

A resurrection basis gives God a chance that is right out to the Lord from the world. All that that means we have to learn. We shall come to things we never expected if we are going on with the Lord. Things on which we were so clearly settled as things being of God, and never for one moment expected to have a question about, become challenged. Not that they were not of God, but they were only of God up to a point, and now there is something more beyond them. And unless we go on to the something more, the good becomes the enemy of the best. And so, because of comparative values, we have to leave what is good for the better; and then later the better for the best. It can only come about as we are really going on with the Lord. But that requires, first of all, that we have made a clean cut and have said: "I am out on resurrection ground. I am out with the Lord utterly."

Another thing that is basic to the Lord's purpose is the necessity for an apprehension of the inclusiveness of Christ as to the church which is His Body. In those parts of the revelation given to us in the Word of God, such as the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians where the fulness of Christ is brought into view most definitely, the thing that is right before us is the church which is His Body. The ultimate thing, the great end, is the fulness of Christ but, unto that, the church His Body is brought into view. Does Ephesians bring in the vast dimensions of divine fulness in Christ? "Filled unto all the fulness of Christ"; "The fulness of Him that fills all in all". What is connected with that? "The church, which is His Body". The church is essential for the expression of the ultimate fulness of Christ. That means that unto the fulness of Christ we must have an apprehension of the inclusiveness of Christ in His church. That is the collective nature of the instrument, the vessel, which is to express the fulness of Christ. Over against that is the impossibility of an individual, or any number of individuals as such, ever expressing the fulness of Christ. The necessity is for a life of corporate relationship unto the fulness of Christ.

We must recognise this right at the outset as a law of the book of Joshua. What is that book working toward? It is the fulness of Christ; the whole inheritance. Is the inheritance going to be given to one, two or three? No! Is it going to be given to unrelated, detached fragments? No! The inheritance is going to come to all in fellowship, in relationship, and it can only come on that basis. That is laid down as a law, and that is the explanation of what took place in the case of Achan. When Achan sinned and took of the devoted thing, the whole nation was brought under arrest, and the Lord's uncovering of the thing was after this manner: "Israel has sinned". It is a terrific enforcing of a law. It is not: One man has sinned; let him be judged and put away! All Israel must come and be exercised about this matter. All Israel is involved; and therefore all Israel must judge it. All Israel was involved in the arrest, and all Israel was involved in the necessity for judging the sin.

This is God's way of illustrating what we have in the New Testament: "The body is one". There must be an apprehension of the corporate, the collective life of the church, the Body of Christ, before we can go on to fulness. We demand this fellowship for fulness; it is essential. Limitation is always brought about by separation. The defeat of God's end is always accomplished by breaking up the Lord's people into fragments. Schism is a real device of the devil to frustrate God's end concerning His Son, the Lord Jesus. He has pursued that course from the beginning. It is very impressive and very significant that when the fulness of Christ is brought into view in these letters, there is such a tremendous emphasis laid upon the relationships of the members of the Body one to another.

The Lord Jesus stands to suffer loss in the expression of His fulness when the saints are out of fellowship with one another; and we can strike the greatest blows at the adversary by a solid, determined stand, when on no ground save apostasy, will we be divided in spirit from our brethren. To fight for fellowship, to stand for fellowship, to refuse a break in fellowship, is the way of defeating some of the forms of Satanic activity. It is quite easy to take the other line. It is the most difficult thing to refuse spiritual division, because all the power of hell is out to bring that about. It is only as we see how much is bound up with fellowship, with relationship and the fulness of Christ, that we shall be able to move on toward that fulness, for the Lord counts upon it for His ends.

This is no organised one-ness. This is not the unity that is outward. This is not anything that can be brought about by agreements externally. This is not the uniting of the churches. This is not consenting to a common agreement of credal expression; this is the uniting of the Spirit. This works two ways. It is necessary for us to go on in the Spirit in order that we may have the fullest measure of fellowship. We do not mean that fellowship is impossible between the mature and the less mature. We must be very careful that we do not allow any larger measure of light (as we may conceive it)  to interfere with our fellowship with those whom we think have not so much light. There ought to be fellowship between children and adults spiritually, but any kind of refusal of light, of the revealed will of God, is bound sooner or later to limit fellowship, so that unto full fellowship there must be a walking according to the light given. The other way round operates, of course, that as we walk in the light we have fellowship one with another. Going on in the light means an increase of fellowship, and that makes the measure of Christ to increase.

The Necessity for Spiritual Illumination

This comes up quite clearly both in Joshua and in Ephesians. "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom, and revelation in the knowledge of Him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know..." and then there is given a list of things to know. And you find that list moves out into the dimensions of the knowledge-surpassing love: "...that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God". Spiritual illumination leads on to being filled unto all the fulness.

Spiritual illumination, therefore, is a basic thing to God's end. We can never come to the fulness of Christ by the mere enquiry and investigation of our own brains into spiritual things. There must of necessity be the Holy Spirit giving revelation concerning Christ. The Testimony of Jesus has as its essential law: spiritual illumination and revelation - through the Word. The Testimony of Jesus can never be something static, something that you take up and say: "This is the Testimony of Jesus" and then put it into a formula. The Testimony of Jesus is something that has been revealed. The Testimony of Jesus is: "I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." Stephen died for that Testimony. "At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them that journeyed with me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice..." The inner meaning of that is not something apart from the Word, but something that comes by the Holy Ghost through the Word. That is more than the letter; it is life. It is something that makes you say: I have read the Scriptures on that for a long time, but I have really never seen that before.

The Holy Spirit's illumination concerning the church is a thing so difficult to explain to any who may not have experienced it. But to those who have seen it, it needs no explanation. It makes such a difference on all these matters. You will be able to preach Ephesians, Colossians, Romans; preach all about the church as the Body of Christ; you may read it all in books, and still there may be no real expression of it. Then one day it is as though the heavens opened and the thing broke upon your spirit, and you saw it; and all kinds of adjustments became necessary in life. You can say, "I saw that the church was no denominational or national thing; I believed in the oneness of all believers..." yes, you can say all that! And yet there is something more. That something can only come by revelation. You can have the other, and it will just take you so far. But get that something more, and it will take you a long way ahead. It brings you into the realm of the conflict and cost, but you are out in an altogether new realm. It is necessary to God's end.

It is one thing to say these things and point them out and emphasise them; you say: "How do you get it? We see what you mean, it is all quite clear, but we have not got it!" Well, if you really are of the undivided heart, if your heart is wholly set upon the Lord and you see as far as you can see  these things, and have very definite dealings with the Lord about it; it may not be in a day, it may be slowly, steadily, quietly you begin to move into a new realm of understanding. And you find that your point of view changes; your standard of values changes; your insight changes. It may take months, but at the end of the time you say: "I am changed! Something has happened to me. I can no longer accept what I used to accept!" It may be like that, or it may come in a flash. How it comes does not matter very much, the fact is the importance of this thing - spiritual illumination. The apostle prayed that these to whom he wrote might have it. Let us pray that we might have it, and that all the Lord's people might come into that.

Chapter 3 - Governed by the Word of the Lord and the Holy Spirit

With the book of Joshua open before us we will also remind ourselves of the Word in the letter to the Colossians, chapter 2 verse 19: "Holding fast the Head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increases with the increase of God." Then in chapter 3 verse 11: "Where there cannot be Greek or Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, but Christ is all, and in all". Really, these two portions make one whole and they can, without being unlawful, be brought together in that way - the Head increases with the increase of God in the Body where Christ is all and in all. The more literal translation of the last passage would be: "Where Christ is everything and in all".

With that we turn back to the book of Joshua at chapter 1 verses 1-2. If you glance through that chapter you will see that Moses and Joshua are found very much together there. There is a sense in which they overlap. Although Moses is dead, yet that which Moses represented is carried on and, in the sense of his ministry and purpose, he is still found very much in evidence. It is as though Joshua took Moses with him. It is of considerable significance that the first chapter of the book of Joshua finds Moses and Joshua very closely related. The significance is that with which we shall be occupied for a little while.

What is the significance of Moses? To just mention it to such as are at all familiar with the Word will be sufficient to immediately recall a very great deal of confirmatory proof and data. There is one expression which is a very common expression in connection with Moses, it is: "the word of the Lord by Moses". That occurs frequently in the book of Exodus. "As the Lord spoke unto Moses" is repeated again and again. So that we may rightly say that Moses represents the word of the Lord.

When you look into the word of the Lord as given by Moses you find that by far the greater amount is with a forward aspect. It is, in a sense, prophetic; it is pointing onwards. It is in the nature of promise. It has to do with a time which has not yet arrived. Moses was a prophet, whatever else he was. He said himself in a prophecy: "The Lord your God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of you, of your brethren, like unto me". So that the word of the Lord to Moses had a future in view, a history as yet unrealised.

Carry that into the first chapter of the book of Joshua, and you find that upon which this book rests, and the basis of all that follows. Then recognise what Joshua represents; he speaks of the energies of the Holy Spirit. Joshua is the energies of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Word of God, in relation to the history not yet realised, in relation to all the prospect and promise by Moses. Joshua's ministry is the fulfilment of the word of the Lord and the realisations of all the divine intention.

Then we have to look at the nature of the word of the Lord with its spiritual interpretation. And we find that the Lord's intention, the Lord's thought, the Lord's purpose was to bring His people from a place of barrenness and emptiness and weakness and oppression, into a place of fruitfulness, strength, dominion and of fulness.

The dominating promise through Moses was that of a fruitful land, flowing with milk and honey. It is one historic way of illustrating and typifying what we have in another form in the case of Solomon, with the wonderful expression of divinely given fulness. Solomon was the product of a special act of God in order to give amongst men in a high place, a conspicuous illustration of divine glory. And one who came with a great train, camels, spices, and riches, who was one of the great ones of the earth was left, with all her greatness, without ability to express herself. The greatness of this world went down into insignificance before the glory of Solomon. Then the Lord Jesus says a thing which, were it not He Who said it, would be a tremendously presumptuous thing to say, "...a greater than Solomon is here". Literally the word there is "more", a more than Solomon is here.

The land speaking of divine fulness, or Solomon speaking of divine glory, are only types of the Lord Jesus. And they lead us on to these passages in Colossians to the increase of God, where Christ is everything and in all. That is God's intention, revealed in the Word through Moses and to be made an actuality through Joshua. Or, putting it more generally, the word of the Lord all points to the fulness of Christ, and the activities and energies of the Holy Spirit are all directed to that end. From the very first energy of the Holy Spirit in the deliverance of a soul from sin and from the world, through all the subsequent activities of the Spirit in that life, and in the whole Body of Christ, the one thing is in view - the making good of the Word which points to that ultimate issue: the fulness of Christ.

We might stay for a moment to get a little adjustment in our minds as to service. If this is true, that all the Word of God is intended to lead to the fulness of Christ, and all the energies of the Holy Spirit are unto that end, then surely there is no service outside of that. All service is within the Word of God, and under the energy of the Holy Spirit. There is no service outside of the Word of God. There is no service which counts for anything apart from the energies of the Holy Spirit; therefore, whatever may be the phase or the aspect of service, ministry, or of life, it comes within that compass. If it is what is called evangelical (which is mainly thought to relate to the conversion of the unsaved), or whether it be any other form of service in relation to the Lord, it comes within that compass and is bound by that double divine law: the Word and the Spirit. It is, therefore, dominated by one object.

Salvation is not just to get a soul saved, but to start that soul on the way to the fulness of Christ. Every ministry in the Word and in the Spirit, is governed by that end. And to be just saved and stay there is to fail of the purpose of the Word and to fall short of the energy of the Holy Spirit. To go to any part of this world in what we call "the work of the Lord" must mean that we are governed by this thing: that in that place there shall be nothing less than the fulness of Christ; as far as it is possible, that Christ shall be everything and in all there. That is final, utter, ultimate. There can be no division and no sharing with Christ. It must be Christ as everything and in all.

When we recognise that that is the aim and object of the Holy Spirit, we have life and ministry defined. It applies to all. If you are the Lord's, your life should be governed by the Word of the Lord and by the Holy Spirit. If it is not, there is something wrong with your relationship to the Lord. Whatever your work is - it may be in the home as a parent, it may be in household duties, it may be in business - if you are there in relation to the Lord, so far as you personally are concerned, your life has got to represent Christ; and that is the ministry. If we carried that into every sphere of life, things would be very different. That must challenge every motive, that must govern every consideration, that must settle every quarrel, every conflict, everything that arises which causes us disturbance, annoyance, and throws us into the vortex of some battle. The thing has to be tested on this point only - Christ as everything and Christ in all.

We have to continually ask the question: "Is Christ everything in this matter, or am I wanting my own way? Am I allowing my own feelings, desires and likes to dominate or is Christ everything? Is Christ in all here, so far as it is within my power, in the energy of the Holy Spirit, for it to be so?" That has to be reduced to the minutia of daily life. We have to get away when we are upset, annoyed, provoked, irritated, and fight that battle out and say: "Lord, You have to be everything in this matter: it does not matter how my interests are affected." And from those details of everyday life and experience out to the wider ranges, and up to the place where we may be the Lord's responsible servant, the Word and the Spirit have to govern; and the Word and the Spirit have one object: Christ - everything and in all.

Recognising that, we see that this further thing is necessary, that we are a truly spiritual people. It is very often difficult to define what is meant by spirituality, or a spiritual people. It is one of those things better experienced than explained. But for the moment it can be put quite simply and quite safely and soundly in this way, that a spiritual people is a people who are governed by the Word and the Holy Spirit to this end: that in everything within and without, Christ is all and in all. That is true spirituality. The difference between Israel in the wilderness and Israel in the land, is the difference between Israel carnally and Israel in conquest and victory, because the flesh had been cut off in Jordan and set aside in Gilgal, and now it is a people after the Spirit. There arises upon that ground the very fact of conflict.

The same applies to Ephesians 6:10 and 12. The apostle there says: "Our wrestling is... against the principalities, against the powers". So often our mentality is round the other way, and we think in terms of principalities and powers wrestling with us. When the people of God were constituted a spiritual people, they were automatically constituted an aggressive people; they took the initiative in the matter of battle and conflict. It comes about spontaneously. If we come within the compass of the government of the word of God, and the energies of the Holy Spirit (which have the fulness of Christ in view) then a state of conflict is precipitated spontaneously and automatically.

The enemy is definitely and positively set against the fulness of Christ in the saints. The enemy is set with all his resources against the object in view, which is Christ - everything and in all. We come on to that ground, that is our object and we are energised by the Holy Spirit unto that end, and quite spontaneously the battle arises. It is not necessary to make battle. We are in a realm of spiritual conflict and we find that we are compelled to fight; it is not optional at all. We are flung into it, and have got to take it up. When that is our object, the enemy is against us with every kind of resource that he has.

We shall find positive, open antagonism coming out in naked, bare resistance, and we shall find that the enemy resorts to every kind of trickery and subterfuge. We shall find Achan to be just one of his wiles. He knows quite well that while we maintain our spiritual position he is helpless; he must, therefore, get us out of our spiritual position. And Achan speaks of Israel being brought out of their spiritual position by a touch with the earth, by a link with the world and a contamination with what is polluted. The enemy is always trying to bring in the polluting element and always seeking to find a place where he can make a contact with that which must, in the nature of things, bring us under arrest and into divine disfavour, so that the Lord has to say: "I cannot go on with you while there is that." The enemy is trying always to get in between us and the Lord in this matter. It does not matter who it is; be he the most greatly used servant of God; be he in the most prominent spiritual position; be he an elect vessel, chosen of God before the foundation of the world; be he brought out into divine vocation by a Sovereign act, as never was before; that servant is just as liable to become set aside. Paul recognised that: "Lest after having heralded others I myself should be put on one side". It is not a matter of election; it is a matter of vocation. And Joshua and all that Joshua represents, is on his face before God, involved in the disaster of Ai because of Achan. If the enemy can in any way bring about a link with that which is not according to God's mind, it does not matter who it is, that one comes under arrest; the enemy has scored and until his ground is removed, the Lord cannot go on.

So the enemy is always seeking to get in between us and the Lord, by introducing something which provides for him a right ground of accusation: "The accuser of the brethren, who accused them before God day and night". This is not bringing back on to the ground of judgement in the matter of salvation, but is bringing on to the ground where the arrest of the divine purpose is involved.

The Gibeonites will be but another form of Satanic wiles. The enemy can succeed along that line also. Here you have a wily working, designing to associate with the Lord's purpose those who really at heart are not of God. The Gibeonites worked wilily in order to get an acceptance amongst the Lord's people, and Joshua and the elders were caught in that trap. The result was that they made a vow and formed a covenant with the Gibeonites, which they could not go back upon. And as a result they had men working amongst them who were not in heart or in spirit with them. That is a trick of the devil, to get in elements which feign to be in sympathy, but which are really not of the people of God in any spiritual sense. These people were thorns in their sides, and the later history of Israel for four hundred years under the Judges is the calamity in part resultant from that thing.

The confederacy of the kings will be another form of Satanic activity. There will be confederacy against what is truly spiritual. It is remarkable how confederacies come about when there is a common interest. They could not possibly exist but for a common interest. Herod and Pontius Pilate are sworn enemies until they have got a common ground in Jesus of Nazareth, and they are then made friends. The devil will bring about confederacies between those who are altogether unrelated and out of sympathy with one another, to make a common cause against something which is a menace to him. So you find strange things happening when you are going right out with God; things which would never happen otherwise.

There are many wiles of the enemy, but when you have covered all the ground you come back to one thing: the enemy is against Christ being all and in all. The very fact that that is so creates a state of war. And you are in it, you cannot help yourself, and you will meet it every step of the way.

It explains everything. It explains why it is that the way of a wholehearted abandonment to the Lord's end and to the Lord's purpose is such a difficult way and is so much more difficult than any other way; why it is that when you come right out for God into a spiritual, heavenly place with a heavenly object, you meet what you never meet in any other realm. There is nothing whatever which can serve the enemy's purpose, or which provides him with the slightest measure of ground for his purpose, which he does not snap up at once and use against you when you are there. He will pass over all kinds of things if you are not right out for God, but once you get clear and are set upon God's full end in God's way, by God's means, there is nothing that the enemy does not take hold of if he finds it available, to use against you. That, of course, is very significant.

There is another side to this. If the kings do form a confederacy, the Lord does not prevent and He does not break up their confederacy, but He hands over the lot. The Lord is sovereign, and if they bunch themselves together the Lord takes them as a bunch. And so the kings are brought, and are all in a bunch placed under the feet of the leaders of Israel. The Lord is sovereign, whatever the enemy may do. And even though there may be the tragedy of Achan, the Lord is sovereign. This will not weaken our spiritual position, or make us feel that because the Lord can sovereignly overrule things we can dabble in the things of the world. We must remember that even the valley of Achor became a door of hope. The place of sin and judgement and destruction can become the way to life, under the sovereign hand of God. But we might perhaps be saved a good deal of the devastation if we kept off the ground which God has devoted. If we will go on with Him, He will turn what seems to harm us into everlasting joy.

May we see what the Lord is after, what His Word points to, and what the Spirit is seeking to realise; and come under the two-fold government of the Word and the Spirit, unto the increase of God where Christ is everything and in all.

Chapter 4 - Eight Stages in the Progress to God's End

Reading: John 3:9-18; 4:10,13-15,23-24; Numbers 21-26.

The thing which we must bring into our view as we come to this word, is the movement of the Lord's people toward the Lord's goal. The goal of God for His own is the gaining of Christ. To put it in the words of the apostle Paul, words which in their completeness have a very apt and fitting application to this whole matter in these chapters of the book of Numbers, "Forgetting those things which are behind... I press toward the mark of the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus"; "I count not myself to have attained... this one thing I do"; "I count all things as refuse that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own...". The picture is of a man just stripping off and leaving behind everything that would in any way impede, arrest, check, hold back or discourage in this way in which his heart is set; with his eye upon a goal, and that goal is expressed in the words: "That I may gain Christ...". That is the very fulness of Christ, the goal of God for His people.

That is what is in our view as we come to Numbers 21 to 26 and note a progressive movement in relation to God's end. In chapter 21 we have what the apostle Paul called a tempting or a trying of God. He puts it this way in 1 Cor. 10:9: "Neither let us tempt the Lord, as some of them tempted, and perished by the serpents". This twenty-first chapter of the book of Numbers brings in the fiery serpents: "And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died". Paul says that that was because they tried or tempted the Lord. In what way did they tempt the Lord? The words are these: "And the people spoke against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?" (verse 5). God's thought was anything but that. God never brought them out of Egypt to die in the wilderness. God's redemption is unto life and not unto death; unto salvation and not unto condemnation. And so they interpreted the very redemptive activities of God as representing exactly the opposite of God's thought and God's intention. They attributed to God, in His very mercy, evil rather than good. They turned salvation round in the form of a charge against God, to their own detriment.

That is a very serious thing. That is what the apostle, writing to the Hebrews, calls: "Treading under foot the Son of God and counting the blood of the covenant an unholy thing". That is a most solemn thing to do, "There is no bread, and there is no water; and our soul loathes this light bread" (verse 5). Speaking so of God's manna, despising the manna. And seeing that God's thoughts are always spiritual thoughts, and in God's mind in giving the manna there is always the foreshadowing of something else - the Lord Jesus, as the Bread of Life - it is in spirit the despising of the gift of the Lord Jesus as the very life of God for His people, and saying: "Vile bread" (RV margin).

You say: Would ever anyone do that? Yes! If you look further you will see that it was the mixed multitudes who were guilty of this, and that phrase: "mixed multitude" gives you the key to the whole situation. It means people who were not really out for the Lord, who had mixed motives and interests and whose hearts were divided and very largely all the time back in Egypt. They had never come right out for the Lord's sake. And if there is a state like that, we shall always be making comparisons and saying the people of the world have a better time than we do; those who are not professing Christians have a much better time than those who are. That entirely depends upon whether your heart is wholly out for the Lord or whether it is a divided heart. Those who are wholly out for the Lord find Him wholly true and know what His joy and His satisfaction are. If the heart is divided there will be a very imperfect apprehension of what the Lord can be.

So the mixed multitude tempted the Lord in this way and the Lord, of course, can never bring people like that to His goal. Something must happen in such people before they can come to God's end: the fulness of Christ. There is only one thing that can happen to people like that; that is that they should die. God sent fiery serpents among them who bit the people and many people of Israel died. Then a cry of penitence went up, truly a confession of sin, and an entreaty to Moses to pray for them; and the Lord commanded that he make a serpent of brass and set it upon a pole, so that all who had been bitten of the serpents, looking upon it, should be delivered from this judgement and from this death.

That is explained for us in John, chapter 3. The Lord Jesus says that He is speaking heavenly things and He gives the heavenly interpretation to the serpent lifted up in the wilderness. He says: "No man has ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man, which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up". The heavenly Lord will explain in a heavenly way the meaning of the serpent. One has come from heaven, to take the place of the sin-stricken, serpent-bitten people, and to be made a curse for them. And there is nothing which more clearly symbolises the curse than the serpent. Just as the thorns are a symbol of the curse, and they were put upon His Head, so Christ has been made a curse for us. And faith's gaze upon a substitute bearing the consequences of our sin, and being made a curse for us, is the way of our deliverance and our salvation. That is the way, and the only way, by which it is possible for us to come to God's end, the fulness of Christ - that we have recognised that we lie under a curse and that it is true that the bite of the serpent has left the poison of sin and death in our very natures. From birth it is there, and yet God has called us unto His eternal glory.

How shall sin-indwelt, Satan-infected humanity come to God's eternal glory? Only as it dies; and it dies in its Substitute, in its Representative: the Lord Jesus. The first necessity to gain Christ is that we recognise our death in the Lord Jesus, His death as ours; judged, cursed, yet delivered through His death. That is all the simplest Gospel truth, but we take nothing for granted, and there are always those who are not clear upon the simplest things of the Gospel. We would make provision for any who might not have seen that that is the first step; the basic thing, the initial thing. If we are coming to God's end of Christ's fulness, we have to recognise the utterness of our condition by nature: cursed, ruined, lost. The Lord Jesus has taken that place to deliver us from judgment. God's thought was never our destruction and God's will was never our judgment; God's thought always was our salvation, our glory. It is unbelief that has involved us in the other.

That is just where we begin in Numbers 21. Life out of death; salvation out of condemnation; deliverance from judgment through the death of a Substitute - and what a Substitute! He that came out from heaven!

When that has taken place, the next thing becomes possible as the next thing in the course of progress toward God's end. That comes in in the same chapter in verses 16-18. Having been delivered from death, through faith in the work of the Lord Jesus in His cross, we come to the place of the well of water springing up within. John 3 passes to John 4: "...the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up...". Numbers 21:17 is: "Spring up, O well...". The Holy Spirit, as resultant from the death of the Lord Jesus, becomes the inward life of the people of God. Nothing is possible until that takes place. Everything is possible when that does take place. The Holy Spirit dwelling within is the guarantee to faith of God's end being reached. All you have to do is to repose your faith in God, and allow the Holy Spirit to have His way in your life, you will reach God's full end once you are on this side of death and of the cross. The Holy Spirit takes up the work within the believer immediately that work of the Lord Jesus in His cross has been accepted.

That, again, is very simple, but it is foundational, and to all of us it is a great comfort. You may be very much ahead of me spiritually, but I confess to you that my own heart leaps at that thought that this matter is in the hands of the Holy Spirit and will be carried through to perfection as long as I move in the obedience of faith, in harmony with the Holy Spirit. The reaching of God's end is just that; the answer of faith to the inward working of the Holy Spirit; the cooperation of faith with Him.

From the springing well we pass to Numbers 23. When we have been brought from death unto life, and have become the recipients of the indwelling Holy Spirit (Who is the Springing Well) then the next thing is that the Lord's chosen people are brought out into the light. Or, to put that another way, then it is manifest who are the Lord's people. Who are the Lord's people? What is the elect? They are those who have come from death into life, and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit; and that you find as you come to chapter 23.

This chapter is the beginning of the work of Balaam. Balaam was hired by Balak to curse Israel. We know the story; how he went out for gain to curse Israel. The angel of the Lord withstood him on the way; the ass saw the angel, and showed that he had more intelligence than his master. It is an indication of how utterly blind spiritually people can be when they have got fleshly ends in view; that even a beast can be more noble in instincts than a man who is out for personal gain at the expense of God's people. But that is a little aside.

Balaam came with his intention to curse, and the Lord arrested him and put the bridle upon the jaws of Balaam, put him on the rein, and told him that he could go, but he was to say only the things which God put in his mouth. He became, willingly or unwillingly, the prisoner of the Lord. The first time that Balaam opens his mouth he brings out something very blessed as a fresh movement in this spiritual history of God's people. Do you notice what he says in verses 7-9? The Lord has brought right out into clear distinction that this people is His elect; He has made it manifest that this is His peculiar people. "A people that dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations", (verse 9). Super-national, outside of the world, God's elect! How constituted? Because they are brought from death unto life and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Balaam had not originally thought of saying a thing like that. But that is the first thing that he has to say, and, being the first thing, it carries its own significance, that he puts a hedge around this people, in effect, and says: They are God's people in a peculiar and particular way, and who can touch them? It is a great thought, to be of that people. God, for that people, turns every curse into a blessing. God sovereignly rules so that every design against them is turned for their good. They are a particularly separated, preserved, watched-over people: "The Lord knows them that are His."

That is, again, on the way toward God's end and we have to recognise that. To come to the fulness of Christ we have to recognise that we are God's people - utterly separated unto Him, His own peculiar treasure, and that we are not in any way reckoned among the nations and are not to reckon ourselves as being in any relationship whatever with the world.

Another thing that comes out is even more magnificent than that. It is in chapter 23 verse 21. What does that say? That is just a declaration of what poor, weak, sinful, imperfect, unreliable men and women (so far as they themselves are concerned) are. It is a declaration of what they are as seen by God's eye when they are in Christ. Supposing the Lord came to you and said: I have not beheld iniquity in you; I see no perverseness in you. You would say: Well, Lord, you see very differently from what I see in myself. We know the perverseness and the iniquity of our own hearts, and for the Lord to say: "I have seen none of it, and I see none of it", makes us wonder whether we are right or wrong in this matter. The Lord would sit down at our side and tell us what it means to be in Christ, and would say: "I no longer look upon My saved ones as what they are in themselves, but as what they are in My Son. I look upon Him: He provides Me with all that is lacking in them; He covers all that is in them that I cannot look upon." "He has not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither has He seen perverseness in Israel". It was all there, but to be in Christ brings us into a place where God has found all that He needs of satisfaction for us in His Son. That is, again, on the way.

We shall never come to God's fulness until we have come to an appreciation of what Christ is for us before God. If we are forever, even as the Lord's children, going to be circling round ourselves and be occupied with our own imperfections and taken up with an introspective analysis of our own faulty beings, instead of keeping our eyes upon Jesus and thanking God for what He is for us; we shall never make progress. There are so many whom we know who are not moving a bit spiritually, and when you come to talk to them they have nothing to talk about but their own miserable selves. It is one continuous string of miserable "I's", and they are not rejoicing in the Lord. We have to learn how not to condone or make light of failure, but, on the other hand, when grieved over failure and confessing it to the Lord, we hold on to the position that if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and that the Lord Jesus is accounted to us for righteousness - we rejoice in that. That is an important factor in spiritual progress, in getting to God's end; rejoicing, not in what we are not in ourselves, but what we are in Christ as in the eye of God.

Having got that far, we come to chapter 25. The atmosphere changes here, and this is a terrible chapter. Whom the devil could not curse, he tricked. To frustrate the realisation of God's purpose for His people, sinners are put in the way and these sinners are in the nature of links and associations with unholy things. Spiritual advance is always arrested by an association, a contact, a link with an unholy thing. The apostle, writing to the Corinthians who had been arrested in their spiritual growth, said: "Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers... for what fellowship has light with darkness; and what concord has Christ with Belial?" It was those unholy links that arrested the Corinthians and their spiritual growth. And these daughters of Moab represent unholy things with which Israel became associated; and all with a view to arresting their progress.

We must always be very watchful and very careful about a link with an unholy thing, for that is one of the things that the enemy is constantly trying to bring about. It is the spiritual people whom he is out to ensnare in this way, and it is a remarkable thing that very often the people who are spiritual are tripped up in this way. When you come into this kind of a relationship with the Lord, you come also into relationship with other spiritual things and they are out to trip up, to ensnare, to get a contact with something unholy in order to cut right in and break spiritual progress. So the daughters of Moab were the subterfuge used by the enemy when an open curse had been rendered impossible. If the enemy cannot work openly to bring us immediately under judgement, he works secretly to get some kind of relationship with unholy things.

Let us remember that this is in the path to God's end. These are the things that we meet on the way, and it is the true children of God who meet these things. The way of the Lord's highest purpose is the way most beset by perils and it is the way in which most watchfulness is necessary. When you get to an Ephesian position (chapter 6) of conflict in the heavenlies, the final word is: "praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto..."

Out of this comes something very fine. In this twenty-fifth chapter of the book of Numbers, verses 11-13, there is that which speaks of a very special blessing for those who will have nothing to do with unholy things. The Lord secures unto them very special promises and very special blessings; for those who, like Phinehas, will have no compromise with unholy things. Phinehas, as you notice, saw this relationship with a Midianitish woman taking place, in the very act, and he took a spear and thrust both man and woman through and slew them and so he prevented God from breaking out because that thing was coming into the presence of the house of God. God's wrath was stayed, and Phinehas turned aside judgement. It was an uncompromising attitude toward something which was unholy, and to all such the Lord gives very special promises of blessing. There are great blessings for those who will remain absolutely clean and clear for God. God is with them in a very special way.

In Chapter 26 you have the people numbered. When you get to the end of that chapter you notice: "These are they that were numbered by Moses and Eleazar the priest... But among these there was not a man of them that were numbered by Moses and Aaron the priest; who numbered the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. For the Lord had said of them, They shall surely die in the wilderness...". This is a fresh numbering with a view to the inheritance (if you go right through chapter 26 you will see it is the inheritance that is in view). As the last verses point out, it is the numbering of a fresh people. It is not the original Israel, who came out of Egypt. It is the new generation coming into their possessions and into the inheritance. It is that company who have come by the way which we have indicated: from death into life, indwelt by the Spirit - God's own peculiar people, separated from the world, overcoming the snares of entrapping and involving in evil relationships. That is the people now marked out and numbered and named for the inheritance.

Yet our last word shows that there is a relationship between the former and the latter. Do you notice what the last verse of chapter 26 says? Caleb and Joshua were the link between the first race and the second race, the first generation and the second generation. The spiritual application demands some explanation.

How does the fact that one generation died in the wilderness and did not go into the inheritance, and another generation arose and did go in, apply to us? There is a sense in which the first generation went in with the second generation. It was the kind of generation which existed at first that died. Let us put it this way: If we are in Christ there is both an old man and a new man in us, an old creation and a new creation. This old creation has been brought out of Egypt, not any part of us is in Egypt, in the world, but we have accepted God's attitude toward the old creation, that it is ruled out. And yet, in a sense we are going to take this old creation through. This body of ours is a body of the old creation, and it has got to go through. But that which is evil in it has got to be left behind, to perish. What is the link? It is that represented by Caleb and Joshua. What do they speak of in this connection? They speak of the principle of faith. Caleb came to Joshua when they were in the land, and said: The Lord - away back there forty-five years ago - promised me this land; all the people have died, and I have survived; give me what the Lord promised me. What is that but faith? Faith, forty-five years old, holding on, when everything is going into death all around. All is perishing, and yet faith says: I do not give up what God has promised, and I stand on God's promises.

So Caleb and Joshua were a link between an old generation and a new. It is the principle of faith that carries right through to God's end. What is not of God goes, but all that can be for God is carried through by faith. What do you say about even your mortal body? Well, faith says: This mortal shall put on immortality, and this corruptible shall put on incorruption; this body shall be changed and made like unto His glorious Body. I am going to take a body through to glory; I am not going to be a disembodied spirit, floating about in space. Faith carries through all the creation which can be purified by the Blood of the Lord Jesus to the inheritance.

We are only saying that in order to indicate what we mean by Caleb and Joshua being a link between the first and the second generations, because there is that which is of us which is still with us, and which is being changed and carried through, a part of the old creation, but the evil principle of the old - the body of the flesh - is left behind, is cut off. None of that will go through.

We find there these eight stages mentioned in these five chapters, the points in the progress toward God's end:

- We begin with our death in Christ, Who was made a curse for us.

- We come to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

- Then, as such, we are declared God's peculiar people, separated unto Himself

- Then we apprehend what we are as His people, as in His eye - not in our own eyes, but in His eyes - how He looks upon us.

- Then we are aware that there is every kind of trick and plot of the enemy to get us down from that spiritual position and involve us in something unholy in order to arrest our spiritual progress; and all the time we are having to separate ourselves from unholy things as we go along, and refuse to have fellowship with them.

- As we go on in that way, God is securing unto us His exceeding great and precious promises. These are for the wholly consecrated.

- Then the inheritance comes into view for such, and we are named as His inheritors, heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, heirs of the promises.

- Finally, we come through to the fulness of Christ.

It is always interesting to notice that, great man as he was, Joshua is not mentioned in chapter 11 of the letter to the Hebrews. With all the heroes of faith in the Old Testament, Joshua is left out. Perhaps you say that is unfair on Joshua; there were men mentioned of much smaller stature than Joshua in comparison - Samson is a poor thing, and he is mentioned. Perhaps in comparison Barak is very insignificant. Others who certainly did not reach the standard of Joshua are mentioned there, and Joshua is not included. And you say: Evidently the Holy Spirit forgot something very important! Why was Joshua not mentioned? Simply because Joshua is a type of the energies of the Holy Spirit, and the energies of the Holy Spirit are behind all the other people mentioned so that Joshua is in every one of them. Joshua, in principle, is behind Abraham, Isaac and the whole list. When you speak of the Holy Spirit you do not put Him amongst the heroes of the faith; He is responsible for all the faith. If Joshua is a type of the Holy Spirit in energy toward the inheritance, he will not be mentioned particularly, because He covers the whole.

May we not fall short of God's end, God's goal. May we press right on and right through by this way to all that God has intended for us, and rejoice that He has given us His Spirit to see us through. May we enjoy more the reality of: "It is God who works in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure".

Chapter 5 - The Tremendous Necessity for Going On to God's End

The governing word for our meditation is in the 19th verse of the third chapter of the letter to the Ephesians: "...filled unto all the fulness of God".

The book of Joshua is the historic book which illustrates that. The letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians are the letters which spiritually correspond to the book of Joshua.

The book of Joshua is divided into three main sections. The first twelve chapters are occupied with the conquest of the land and all that has to do with the conquest - from the commissioning of Joshua and the sending of the spies to Jericho; the crossing of Jordan and the memorial stones; then the actual preparation for conquest; the siege and capture of Jericho; the failure at Ai; the sin of Achan and the judgement of Achan; the renewed assault on Ai; the reading of the law at Mount Ebal; the strategy of the Gibeonites; war with the five kings and the completion of the campaign.

Then with chapter 13 there commences the apportioning of the land, the appointing of the inheritance. That goes on to the end of chapter 22. First the portion of Reuben, Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh; then the provision for Levi and the portion of Caleb. That was followed by Judah's inheritance then that of Ephraim, of Manasseh, of Benjamin, then Simeon, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali and Dan. Then the cities of refuge are established and the cities of the Levites. Then there comes in that section which has to do with the relation between the two and a half tribes on the other side of Jordan, and the nine and a half in the land. The final short section, in chapters 23 and 24, has to do with the departure of Joshua. There is his farewell, the renewing of the covenant, and his death and burial; also that of Eleazar, the priest.

The one word which predominates throughout the book is the word "inheritance", which occurs forty-four times.

To understand all that spiritually, and to derive the real benefit from it, we have to come mainly to these two New Testament letters: Ephesians and Colossians. It will prove helpful, in the light of the book which we have just outlined and more so in the light of any more detailed and microscopic study of the book of Joshua, to read in these two letters.

The question which is before us is: What does all this mean spiritually? The answer is clearly given in these following fragments out of these letters.

Ephesians 1:3-4: "Blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ; even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love. The fragment "every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ" surely opens the whole book of Joshua from the standpoint of the divine thought. It is the inheritance.

Ephesians 1:10-13: "Unto a dispensation, of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth; in Him... in whom also we were made a heritage... to the end that we should be unto the praise of His glory... in whom, having also believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise...". Joshua represents, in type, the energies of the Holy Spirit in relation to all the Word of God which came through Moses; and Joshua's function, as representing the Holy Spirit in energy, is to bring into the good of all the promises. There you have "the Holy Spirit of promise".

Verse 14: "Which is an earnest of our inheritance...". The sealing of the Holy Spirit of promise, as an earnest of the inheritance. The Word of the Lord to Joshua was that He had given him all the territory and all his enemies. Everything was already given in Joshua; in Joshua the people possessed everything. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of promise, possesses everything, and when we have the Holy Spirit we have the earnest of the inheritance: "Unto the redemption of God's own possession, unto the praise of His glory."

Verses 18-21: "Having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what 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 right hand in the heavenlies, far above all rule...". It is quite impossible to keep the first and second chapters of Joshua out of that portion. The power of His resurrection, by which we are brought, through conquest, into the inheritance.

Chapter 2:1: "And you did He quicken, when you were dead through your trespasses and sins". That brings us into Joshua 3, on resurrection ground. Verse 6 is the completion of that: "And raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenlies, in Christ Jesus".

Verse 10: "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them" (ASV). How truly characteristic of the Joshua line of things that last verse is!

Verse 22: "In whom you also are built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit". There is the object which God has in view, that they should be a habitation of God in the Spirit.

Chapter 3:10-11: "To the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenlies might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." There again the Word fits so suitably into the Joshua record. "Now unto the principalities and the powers... through the church the manifold wisdom of God" made known.

Verse 16: "That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that you may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man". Again we remind ourselves of the constantly reiterated exhortation to Joshua: "Be strong"; "Only be strong and very courageous"; "Have not I commanded you, Be strong". It is in-strengthening in view of the inheritance. There are the energies of the Holy Spirit in Joshua, and he is to be strong in those energies to enter in.

Verses 17-19: "That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth". "May be strong..." what for? "To apprehend... the breadth and length and height and depth". If that had worked out in its historic aspect in the case of the people under Joshua, what a different book would have followed instead of the book of Judges, as we have it now. When you come into the section of the book of Joshua dealing with the apportioning of the land, you find the measurements are given and the line followed such-and-such a course for each tribe, and that was the bound of their habitation. And they were to occupy that to the full, exploit that to the full, make that good without reservation. This prayer in the third chapter of Ephesians is just in connection with that: being strong, rooted and grounded in love (for unless there is the deepest and fullest fellowship in this whole matter there will be limitation) to apprehend the breadth, the length, the height, the depth.

Verses 20-21: "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever". "Above all that we ask or think...". It is never because of inability on the Lord's part that there is failure. He is able to super-abundantly do. In that last verse we get the fulness of God's thought, to which man has never yet attained, but which remains undiminished.

Chapter 4:1: "I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith you were called". All that has preceded is the calling; now there is a beseeching to walk worthily of the calling. What is it to walk worthily? Verse 2: "With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering...". (Take up the book of Joshua mentally as we go along). "...forbearing one another in love. Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace".

Verses 4-6: "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also you were called...". Verses 17-19: "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness". That can very well be fitted into the book of Joshua, when we see how the Lord called so strongly for an utter separation from the life and walk of the nations, in the midst of whom they were moving.

Verse 20: "But you did not so learn Christ." That is a great phrase! What is the object? It is Christ. Everything is a matter of our apprehension of Christ.

Verse 30: "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed unto the day of redemption". How do you grieve the Spirit? Verse 31: "...bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing... with all malice". They are the things which are contrary to Christ. Chapter 5:3: "But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be named among you, as becomes saints". Once more a touch with the nations round about.

Verse 6: "Let no man deceive you with empty words...". We can fit the Gibeonites in there very well.

Verse 18: "...be filled with the Spirit". That is the only possible way of reaching the fulness of the inheritance.

Chapter 6:10-12: "Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies". Those are all Joshua features. If we do nothing more than get that clear understanding and apprehension, we have something of profit and of value.

We turn now to the letter to the Colossians.

Chapter 1:9: "For this cause we also, since the day we heard, do not cease to pray and make request for you, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding". That is one of the "all spiritual blessings" in the heavenlies, part of the inheritance.

Verses 10-12: "To walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to the might of his glory, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness; giving thanks unto the Father, who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light". "The inheritance of the saints in light" does not refer to the saints who have gone to glory. The saints in the light are those who are now here. If we are the saints in the light, then the inheritance is for us now. We are made "meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light". Why should that clause "the light" apply only to saints in glory? "We are not of the night, nor of the darkness"; "you are all sons of light, and sons of the day." The inheritance comes in here very distinctly.

Verses 13-14: "Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love; in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins".

Verse 19: "For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell".

Verses 21-23: "And you, being in time past alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil works, yet now has he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and without blemish and unreproveable before Him; if so be that you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard...".

Verses 28-29: "Whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ; whereunto I labour also, striving according to His working, which works in me mightily".

"Whereunto (to which end) I labour also...". The end: "perfect in Christ". All admonition is unto that end.

Chapter 2:2-3: "That their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden". Verse 6: "As therefore you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him".

Verses 8-12: "Take heed lest there shall be any one that makes spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ; for in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him you are made full, who is the head of all principality and power: in whom you 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 you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead". Also much in keeping with the position in Joshua.

Verse 15: "Having put off from Himself the principalities and the powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it". Verse 20: "If you died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to ordinances...?"

Chapter 3:1-4: "If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For you died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, our life, shall be manifested, then shall you also with Him be manifested in glory". Verses 11-13: "Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all. Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any man have a complaint against any; even as the Lord forgave you, so also should you." Verse 16: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom...". All that, in both the letters, is the meaning of the book of Joshua.

It is very necessary for us to recognise the tremendous necessity for going on to God's end. We cannot be too strong in our emphasis upon this. And if we contemplate the perils of not doing so, we shall assuredly come to see how important it is that we should be fully stretched out toward the Lord's end. There is very little doubt but that failure to go on to God's end is, and has always been, the root out of which there have sprung most of the failures of God's people. It is a root failure which has many branches, and many shoots of failure. The tragic (the pathetic, we might say), the appalling conditions which have come to prevail and obtain amongst the people of God from time to time, can usually be traced to this root: failure at some point to go on. People stop at quite a lot of things.

A great many people stop at conversion. We dare not use the word "salvation", because it is a comprehensive word, and salvation goes on to the end; but we refer to that first phase of salvation: conversion. Multitudes stop there. Stopping there produces quite a large number of unhappy, unfortunate, and unsatisfactory conditions, not the least of which is that with many, after having been converted for a long stretch of years, there is very little more of the fulness of Christ than they knew at the beginning; and they are very little more capable and responsible people in relation to the purposes of God than they were when they were converted. They are still dependent upon everything outside of themselves; dependent upon what is given them for their food, dependent upon what is told them or advised them for their guidance, dependent upon things and persons for their support, dependent upon outside resources for their spiritual energy.

The root of the matter is not in themselves and so the Lord has a very, very large family of children who have grown old, so far as time is concerned, and never developed so far as spiritual faculties are concerned. That is a terrible tragedy. People stop at conversion, and so, whereas the Lord ought to have in all His people those who are able to take responsibility in His Name and teach the children spiritually and lead them on, multitudes, even after years, still have to be treated as children and led on from the outside.

I saw three little swallows sitting on the gutter of the roof outside the window this morning, closely huddled together, having never yet learned to fly and get their own food; and the mother bird was coming and going all the time, just dropping things into those large, wide-open mouths. That was a very beautiful sight, and a proper thing, but if I had seen three full-grown swallows sitting in that position, and another one feeding them, I should have said: There is something wrong here. And yet that is the condition spiritually of not a few of those who have known the Lord for many years. Paul said: "Warning and admonishing... to present every man perfect" (complete, full-grown). Many, then, stop at conversion and many evils follow.

Many stop with tradition. They have either been brought up in a tradition, or they have accepted a tradition, or have been introduced into a tradition in the early days of their Christian life. And the traditions, which have become the encompassment (the scaffolding, shall we say), have remained, and they have remained a part of the tradition. And that tradition - which may have been good in measure - intended to lead on to something else instead of being a scaffolding in which a structure should go on which should outgrow the scaffolding, has become a prison. Multitudes of the Lord's people are in an imprisonment to tradition; something which has become set and static. This bondage to tradition is a terrible tyranny. They see nothing beyond that set thing which is merely the outward mould, and any appeal to many such Christians, made along the lines of a fuller knowledge of the Lord and a fuller presentation of the Lord, is met with: "Well, I have not been brought up to think like that. I have not been taught to accept that. All my training, all that in which I have been nurtured, all that in which I have lived my Christian life had no place for that." Tradition, whether it be church, or ecclesiastical system, creed, or any of the things which are traditional, become a prison house for many. So many stop there, and it seems impossible to move them out of that rut.

Further, many stop with truth. This is just as dangerous, and perhaps pernicious, in its results as any other. That may apply in two ways. It may apply in the direction of a set conviction. There may be no question about it being the truth, but that thing becomes a set conviction. People can become so set in their convictions that they are not prepared to accept any further light. There they stop with their convictions instead of being open to add to their faith, knowledge. This is a barrier which is very difficult to pass. We often meet such people who have settled the thing finally, and, while there is no desire whatever to oppose their settled position as to truth, the very fact that they have settled there is, in their case, a hindrance to something more that the Lord would give. They seem to think - though it is in truth - that to move on is of necessity to move away from their position. That does not necessarily follow.

There is another way in which we may stop with truth, and that is with the fascination of truth. Here is a dangerous thing. It is the fascination of discovering new ideas, new thoughts, something original in the Word of God. It is, shall we say, the freshness, the originality, the interest as something in itself with which many stop. They have found a new interpretation, they have got a new thought, a new idea, and they go on just concentrating upon that line of things. That works out too often in a strained, straw-splitting, hair-splitting fancifulness in the Word of God that sometimes becomes almost nauseating. It is reading into the Word something; it is taking out of the Word something that is not in it; and for even a masculine mind it seems to be just like children playing  with toys, toying with the Word of God. There are multitudes who are doing that. They have got truth, and they are staying with it and playing with it and turning it over and exploring it, to find something fresh, something original; always looking into the Word of God to get a new idea; something that has not been seen before. There is a fascination about getting new ideas, and the Word is used like that. It is a perilous thing; the greed of the mind - we might almost say the lust of the mind - to get freshness about the Word of God, for freshness itself.

There is all the difference between that kind of thing, and the Holy Spirit breaking through and giving the insight that challenges, that perhaps startles; that touches as with a touch of life, but creates a crisis. We may have the most fascinating presentation of Biblical truth without any challenge, without any practical value. The Lord deliver us from that. It is a realm that is barren, that is unfruitful. There are those who can give you the last interpretation, the unique thing about any portion of Scripture. But what about spiritual progress? What about the spiritual growth? What about the increase of Christ? What about the conquest, the fighting power? What about the enlarged manifestation of the Lord? That is quite another thing. So you meet people who have a wonderful comprehension and a detailed and perhaps unique grasp of truth, with terrible contradictions in their moral life, in their business relationships, in questions of integrity, in the realm of love, forbearance, longsuffering, kindness and gentleness. These two things do not go together.

The letters to the Ephesians and Colossians make it perfectly clear that the increase of Christ is spiritual. It is not the increase of knowledge as such, but many stop there, and oh, what results follow! Whereas at the beginning when the Lord was giving light, things were living and there was an increase of the Lord and something of the Lord being manifested, there has come about this mental laying hold of that truth and playing with it, breaking it up, making something more of it mentally, and in the end you have something which, though large, is very dead.

We must be very careful about this lust of the mind for uniqueness and originality and freshness of idea, because secretly that only means that there is a desire for power. There is power in being able to pass over something that has never been seen before. There is a subtle, lurking danger when people are able to say: "I have never seen that before." That puts the one who has passed on that which has never been seen before, in a position of influence and very often that one wants a fresh idea, and still another, and will pursue ideas because of the influence it gives.

We are not out to criticise or condemn; we are showing the necessity for spiritual growth, for the increase of Christ, for going on. If we stop with any of these other things then terrible contradictions will arise.

There is another thing with which many stop, and that is with experience. Not a few of the Lord's people are simply living, after many years, with an experience that they had years ago. They are making everything of some experience that lies back there in earlier years. There is a sense in which an experience should be carried on right through; but the point is, is that experience in its power up to date? Or is it something which happened, and there it finished so far as its virtue, its value, was concerned? It is useless for us to try and live upon an experience, the real energy and vitality of which ceased long ago. Is there a present value in that experience? Is it a memory, or is it something living now? Paul had an experience on the Damascus road, the power of which remained right to the end, and was his stimulus in the day of trial and carried him through.

But there are many who have had experiences which have become something in themselves, and they are simply living upon a past. As to their present history, there is no real vitality about them. There is no going on now because they had an experience and that is the sum total. Let us be careful that we do not live upon the past. It is like a commercial institution, trying to live upon a reputation. Sooner or later it is found that a reputation will not carry through all the complications of the present day, and old established firms find that they have to come up to date, or else, no matter how good their reputation was and is, they will be superseded, and all experience has got to be brought up to date. It is not what Christ became to you so long ago, and what you experienced then. It is: What is Christ to you at this very moment? Is He more now than He was then? If not, the experience is only a limiting thing.

All these things are full of danger if we stop at any one of them, and we could mention others. It is all one strong emphasis upon the necessity for our going on to God's end, which is the fulness of Christ.

Let us say a word about what progress is. Of course, in a word, it is Christ. The apostle, in representing the race, says: "Looking off unto Jesus". In other words: "That I may gain Christ". Gaining Christ is progress. We have read: "You have not so learned Christ." It is learning Christ that is progress.

To bring that nearer home: What is gaining Christ? Let us take an illustration from the Old Testament. In the book of Joshua, Israel failed to take full possession of the inheritance. One tribe after another failed to possess their possessions. The result is the book of Judges, covering four hundred years of tragedy, because they did not dispossess and possess. They did not cast out the enemy; they allowed the enemy to remain and live side by side with them. That, in the course of time by reason of relationships and intermixture, brought them down under the power of the enemy concerning whom the Lord commissioned them to exercise absolute dominion, exterminating dominion. When we come to the book of Judges and see the result, we have a whole series of illustrations of what it means to fail to gain Christ. The very first enemy being dealt with in the book of Judges is Cushan-rishathaim, who is the king of Aram. "Aram" means "exalted"; "Cushan" means "black man"; "rishathaim" means "double iniquity". Exalted, black man, double iniquity! Is not that embodiment of all that the Scriptures have to say about the sin of pride? What is pride? It is a double-iniquity! It is the blackest thing in God's sight, an abomination with the Lord. The Israelites did not exterminate that foe, and that foe got the upper hand. What was it? Pride!

Turn to the Ephesian and Colossian letters again, and you will see that the gaining of Christ is in all lowliness and meekness. That is the first thing in those letters to do with the inheritance: "Walk worthily of the calling wherewith you were called, with all lowliness and meekness." Becoming possessed of the inheritance is not some romantic thing in the atmosphere, some abstract thing; it is gaining the humility and the lowliness of Jesus Christ. What is the value of that? "He humbled Himself... God highly exalted Him...". This is a very real thing. "In all lowliness and meekness". That is one of the riches of Christ; one of the superlative values of Christ; one of the most powerful factors in Christ. Othniel, the judge raised up to deal with this particular adversary, is marked peculiarly by the spirit of faith in utter reliance upon God.

You see how at the back of all this history there are spiritual principles. The man who is the embodiment of pride, the double-iniquity, exalted, is dominating the people of God. They have fallen to pride. How shall they be delivered? By the man who is marked by the spirit of dependence upon God. What is humility but utter dependence upon God? How did Christ conquer? By His dependence upon the Father: "I can do nothing of myself." That is how we gain Christ. Being increased with the increase of Christ is simply becoming more humble, more lowly, more dependent upon God. In other words, more selfless. It is very practical. There is nothing which will rob of the inheritance more quickly than pride. Spiritual pride is a ruinous thing as to coming to the inheritance, to God's end. You may take it that if you meet spiritual pride, you have not met any of the fulness of Christ. It always assumes to have a good deal of fulness; that is its nature. Those who are truly humble, and meek, and lowly in heart, are those who are very conscious, and are marked by the consciousness, of how little they know and have of the Lord. They may be the people who really do know the Lord. You may say about them: I wish I knew the Lord as they know Him; and yet they themselves know nothing of the Lord. They think they have everything to learn. That is a mighty thing. That is advance; that is progress; that is gaining Christ.

The biggest battles that rage in our experience are the battles with pride. It is because so many have been used of God that they have fallen there; through popularity; through being used; through having opportunity. They have ceased to grow; they have stopped; and come under arrest.

What is true in the case of this first adversary is true of all the others; they represent spiritual things. But we have simply indicated this thing. What is progress, the inheritance? It is the increase of Christ. What is Christ? First of all: "Learn of Me for I am meek and lowly in heart...". That is spiritual elevation; that is what it means to be in victory. We shall never know what power over the devil is, until we know what it is to be meek and lowly in heart. We shall never know what the riches of Christ are until that is a feature of us.

This comes home. We are getting away from the historical, away from the abstract. Come back to Ephesians, and see that the increase, the inheritance, is there. It is all spiritual: "in all lowliness and meekness...". You find that the bounds of the inheritance are: "...the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge...".

We find ourselves confronted with the real spiritual value of this whole matter. Every bit of the gain of Christ will be fraught with conflict; but that makes it all the more precious, and that causes it to become all the more settled and established.

Chapter 6 - "Whose House We Are"

"But Christ as a son, over his house; whose house we are, if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end." Heb. 3:6.

"Whose house we are..." that clause may act as a title to this meditation. The thought is of the church as a family. Perhaps we might link another passage or two with this one. Ephesians 2:21: "In whom each several building, fitly framed together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord". And Ephesians 3:15: "From whom every family in heaven and on earth is named".

Before we proceed we might note the significance of those two passages. In the former the phrase is: "each several building", or, every building. In the latter the phrase is: "every family". Both of these passages apply to the same thing. They both apply to the church. In the former the church is regarded as being collective, corporate, an aggregate, one object with many parts. "Each several building", yet one church; one holy temple in the Lord; many making one. The same principle governs the second passage. Literally it is: "The family in every part". "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom the family (in every part) in heaven and on earth is named". The church as a family is made up of many parts, but it is one thing.

To return to the main idea (that is, of the church as a family) this truth and this reality in a very special way comes in with the New Testament age. It is a peculiar feature of Christianity. What are the great words of the New Testament? What are the great words of Christianity? They are such words as "Father", "Child", "Sons", "Household", "Brethren". And then we know that the great theme of love, which is so fully developed in the New Testament, is connected with the idea of the Christian family. This is God's own thought, God's own conception of His own, that all of His own comprise a family.

We know how the spirit of this was breathed in the early days of the church amongst the first believers. We read those early chapters of the book of the Acts, and we find a predominating family spirit; their breaking of bread from house to house; their spiritual homes being the domestic circle of believers; their letting go everything of a private and personal character to have a family life of all things in common. The family features were very clearly discernable in those first days.

How far we have travelled from that conception! The church, as it is known today, is a long way from that. There is an estrangement from the very idea in the main. What we have now as representing the church is congregations, preaching places, special forms for church life and church practice, and particular apparels, and a multitude of other things, all of which are utterly foreign to the idea of a family. When we gather our families together for the family circle we do not have special forms and put on special dress or go to a special place to meet. We have gone a long way from God's pure thought about His own people; so much so that many who come to these preaching places and constitute these congregations and speak about "the church", know little or nothing about one another and have very little in common - very little fellowship. They come and they go, and as for sharing one another's needs and entering into one another's lives with a view to being mutually helpful, that is quite foreign to many, and all too limited at best. And yet these great governing words and ideas remain, "Father", "Children", "Sons", "Brethren", "Household", "Family". No wonder a great deal has been lost to the Lord's people!

With all that the Lord needs and desires to do in the recovery of His first thought, His original idea for His people, not the least is the recovery of the spiritual family. Any fresh movement of God which relates to His original thought will most certainly reintroduce the spiritual family, and all that that means. That may mean the breakdown of a lot; it may mean that a good deal of misconception will have to be set aside; it may be that a whole traditional system will have to be discarded.

There is a tremendous value connected with the spiritual family life and with the training in the family. There is no training better than the training in the family. You cannot find an adequate substitute in the institution. Really, the Lord's responsible and useful men and women are not trained in the institution; they are trained in the family. It is because of the lack of that family background of training that so often those who go out into the Lord's work break down in the matter of relationships. The tragedy of so much of the work of God is the tragedy of broken relationships between workers who are put together in an organised way, and they have never gone through the discipline of family life to know how to live triumphantly with difficult people. There is an immense value in the training of the spiritual family and that necessitates very close relationships. We have heard Christian people (church-going people) say that they do not want to come into too close an association with their fellow-Christians and church members; they would rather not know too much. That is defeat, and that means the loss of a very great deal for the Lord. The Lord's way is to bring His people together in the closest relationship and not to eliminate the most difficult ones. He has a very peculiar family, made up of all sorts, and some of the sorts are very funny sorts; and that all provides the basis of a wonderful training.

The sooner we square ourselves up to that fact the better. It will bring an end to our eternal longing to get away from some people, to be in another world. It will bring an end to a good deal of our defeat; defeat which comes simply because we have not faced right up to this thing and said: I have got to learn how to live in victory with that person. It is the family life and the great values thereof. That is very different from once a week meeting certain other people who are religiously disposed, perhaps passing the time of day with them, and seeing them no more for another seven days. That is not the New Testament way.

The Lord put His people together in spiritual families, to have the closest relationships. You will notice that all these letters in the New Testament are letters with the family idea in view. Those even which are to individuals, such as the letters to Timothy, are all connected with the family. Paul said to Timothy that he wrote that Timothy might know how to behave himself in the church, the house of God. The letters are not treaties upon some doctrine, or doctrines; they are correspondence with spiritual families, that those families, by enlightenment and encouragement, by exhortation and warning and sometimes rebuke, might come into the place where they triumphantly live out the testimony of the Lord Jesus in their relationships. How much the relationships of believers are dealt with in these letters! We might almost say that that forms a larger part of the letters. The church is not an organisation. You can never bring about a family by organisation.

The church as a family is concerned primarily with certain things. As a family it is concerned with the birth of new family members. Not the advertising to get them, not the organisation to obtain them, not any kind of means to attract them; but to take an interest in their birth. The church ought to be in such a condition that the birth of any new family member sends a thrill right through; they should be interested in that matter, feel the tremendous value of that matter, and be set upon that matter. The birth of a new member into the family is a real event. As a family the church is concerned, in the first place, with such a matter.

Then, after that, it is concerned with the nurturing of the spiritual children. There is an underlying challenge about these things, as well as a statement of fact and of truth. No doubt we are ready to accept the challenge of the first thing and we do feel one in heart with that and are really there, where the birth of a new member into the family is a matter of real interest and concern. There may be room for improvement in that matter. Perhaps we are not really as given up to the birth and the salvation of souls as we should be. If that brings a challenge to us let us definitely receive the challenge.

There is also this same element at the back of the second thing: concern for the nurturing of the spiritual children. It is so easy to mark the features of immaturity in Christians, and to make a lot of those and to register the fact that they are still children, and to register that in not an all-too-sympathetic way. Let us get the family atmosphere in a matter like that; set ourselves in a family. If you regard yourself as an elder brother or sister, what is your attitude towards the infant? Are you always going to be blaming the infant for not being older than it is; saying to a three or four year old: Why, in all the world, are you not six years old? To the little one: Why are you not bigger than you are? You see how absurd such a suggestion is. There is room for this greater concern for the nurturing of spiritual children, as over against the blaming for the absence of what we have no right at present to expect.

A true family has in it a care for the spiritual children, and that comes to our hearts with a measure of rebuke. What attitude are we going to take towards those who are not as fully developed as we are ourselves when it is not to be expected of them? It is quite another thing when, by reason of the time, they ought to be able to teach and they still need someone to teach them. A true family is marked by this concern for the nurturing of the spiritual children, and our attitude and our concern in that matter will determine very largely how far we have got the spirit of the true spiritual home.

The church as a family is concerned with the service of the sons. These are features, as you will recognise, which we are only extracting from the New Testament itself and putting them in very simple form. We can go through the Acts of the Apostles and show all that which was the expression of a concern for the nurturing of the spiritual infants. Then we could pass on to see that the service of those who have got past spiritual infancy and are not entrusted with spiritual responsibility, was a mutual concern of all and all were exhorted to have that concern; that wherever responsibility lay in the house of God, that responsibility was to be the concern of all in the house. Wherever the Lord had placed someone in a position of responsibility and stewardship in service, to hold the position for Him, everyone in the church was to make that stewardship, that service, that responsibility, their business.

Then again, the church as a family is concerned for the realisation of the Father's vision concerning His children. The family does take account of what the Father has in view for His family and seeks the realisation of that. That stands over against each one seeking their own, having their own ambitions, their own interests, their own line of things and independently following their own way and pursuing their own course. The family is made a concrete whole because it is working to the Father's vision. And that is no small matter. You will see how these letters bring into view God's eternal purpose, and how we are called according to that purpose, and that that purpose can only be reached by the whole. It is a purpose which concerns the family, and all our mutual lives (our lives in relationship to each other) are to be occupied with that eternal purpose, that calling of God in Christ and we find our fulness by way of the mutuality of our concern for the eternal purpose.

It is very necessary for us to see one purpose applying to the whole family and that every member of the family is related to that purpose; that no member or portion of the membership of the family can reach that purpose in fulness alone; it requires the whole family. Hence we have to work to help one another to realise all God's intention as a family; working mutually in our relationship to encourage one another, to strengthen one another, to build one another up, to help one another in relation to the one great purpose. That is family life, occupied with one object - God's purpose; and all are engaged in that.

Then finally, the church as a family is concerned with the safeguarding of the sanctities of family life; mutual loyalties within the Lord's family. The Lord's family suffers a very great deal by reason of a lack of common, everyday loyalty. It is so easy to criticise members of the family to other members, to show up the weaknesses, to bring into view (if they are not already in view) the faults. What do you think of that going on within a family? See within the compass of a family of six or seven members, some over here just pointing out all the flaws, and all the imperfections, and all the wrongs of other members of the family. What would you say? That is no family; that is a divided house. The family spirit is not there; that is not mutual love one for the other and forbearance one for the other. Extend that to the larger family, and the rule holds good. If you had genuine love for a brother or a sister in your family, what would be your attitude towards anybody who criticised that one, who spoke evil about that one, who made that one look small? You would at least be resentful; you would seek to let it be known that you were not prepared to have the sanctities of your relationships violated or injured in that way. Now the apostle says: "Having the same care one for another".

Is it necessary to apologise for being so simple? What we are saying is of an introductory nature. There is a good deal more that could be said in this connection. All that we have in mind is to point out the fact that the church is a family from God's standpoint.

Some of you have responsibility in a special way in the household of God. Is it too much to suggest to you that henceforth, perhaps as never before, you regard the whole of the church life in the light of the family; that it is your business to co-operate with God to develop family life of a spiritual character - not to hold services, have meetings, go to preaching places and draw congregations, but to constitute a spiritual family.

We are all within the family and whether we have specific responsibility in the house of God or not, the Lord wants to develop in us general responsibility in His house; taking responsibility for the babes. Let us ask the Lord for this grace and really make it our responsibility, as though the Lord said to us concerning some spiritual child "Take this child and nurse it for Me". Taking responsibility for spiritual babes is not going to be easy work.

The Lord also wants to develop in us this concern for all responsible ministry, so that we make it our business. It is so different from coming together and sitting down in a seat, and saying: So-and-so is going to be the speaker, and we shall like to hear what he has to say. That is perhaps as far as we get. If we like it, well, we like it! If we do not like it, that is as far as our responsibility goes! Is it? Do we not take definite responsibility before the Lord for every ministry, and everyone who ministers? That is our business.

Ruling out all those natural elements of preferences, this is a ministry and that ministry draws me in and I am under an obligation before the Lord to stand with that ministry, in so far as that ministry is for the building up of the Lord's people and the increase of the Lord's family. We should see marvellous growth and wonderful things if every member of the family took definite spiritual responsibility for ministries that were being carried on. There would be tremendous development if that were so. To put it the other way, there is a great deal of loss and a great deal of weakness and a great deal of defeat and failure, because of a lack of co-operation by the majority with those who are in the ministry.

If we made the ministry our mutual concern, there would be increase. Those of you who are in ministry from time to time know quite well what we are talking about. Those of you who are not in ministry; if you did know what it is to be in ministry, would know what we mean. Some of us have scanned a sea of faces to find one co-operating, and when we have found one who God was working in and we could see a spirit of co-operation and of fellowship and of concern, that has been our salvation through a hard time. That one has drawn us through and we have gone on, because there was that one there. It is a tremendous thing that the whole thing might have been in defeat, with nothing gained, but for that point of contact. Supposing all were in it like that every time; what gain there would be! The building up comes about by the family taking concern for the ministry.

What is true in those directions is true in all the other directions. Let us ask the Lord for the grace of these simple things, which count for so much. The Lord's people are a family, and it is as such that the real value is to be found. There is not a very great deal of value in the organised institution of the church with its forms - the spiritual value is very limited - but when there is this heart fellowship as one family, there is building up and making increase.

Chapter 7 - The Father of the Family

That which will occupy us in our present meditation, in connection with the family, is the title:

The Father

Perhaps it is not necessary to point out that such a title represents a new revelation of God. Although family ideas and names were prevalent in the Old Testament (Israel was called by God His "son", His "firstborn" and the conception of the Lord's people being a household and a family, is quite a common one in the Old Testament) yet strangely enough, and significantly enough, with all that the Old Testament says about the Lord's people being a family, it has practically nothing which speaks of God as Father. The Lord's people in the Old Testament never speak of Him as their Father, neither do they address Him as their Father. There is no revelation to speak of, in a direct way, of God as Father in the Old Testament. You may here and there find something which implies that, or suggests that, but not much. Titles of God are numerous but "Father" is very rare indeed.

"Father" is a dispensational title, and that is why it is not developed in the Old Testament. It belongs to a dispensation, and therefore it had to be reserved in its full unveiling for that particular dispensation. It is a very significant and helpful thing to recognise that dispensations have been marked by divine titles all along. Dispensations are periods of time in which specific and peculiar things, under the sovereignty and government of God, are taking place. At these given periods of time the Lord is found occupied with some specific thing, and that thing means that He is known in that time by a special title.

For the greater part, the Old Testament represents three great sections of divine activity governed by three divine titles. Within these you will find much smaller things, belonging to just fragments of time which bring out some further titles of the Lord; but taking the whole, there are three great titles which govern the three great periods of divine activity in the Old Testament. Those three titles of God are: El Shaddai, Jehovah, and Jehovah Sabaoth. If you look into the history of the Old Testament where those titles are introduced, and the periods governed by those titles, you will see that certain quite clearly-defined activities of God are taking place.

You will find that "El Shaddai" was the title of God which came in with the patriarchs. God had put His hand upon certain men who were to be the fathers of His people. These men were just units in a great world estranged from God and ignorant of God. When God put His hand upon these units - one man here and another there in a world out of touch with Him and out of cognisance with Him - He had to do something special within those men to constitute them the fathers and the foundations of His people. And to the patriarchs God made Himself known as "El Shaddai", that is, the Lord All-sufficient. It is a combination of ideas which means the Lord in all-sufficient fulness, holding His fulness at the disposal of others. It is the Almighty Pourer-forth of His fulness, the All-sufficient One, Whose all-sufficiency is for those in a certain relationship to Himself; and as such, in the meaning of that title, He constituted the fathers of His people and built up in them a personal dependence upon Him. His whole work with the patriarchs was to bring them to a place where they depended wholly upon Him and found Him All-sufficient. That was necessary as a foundation for His people; dependence upon the Lord in His sufficiency, as their succourer. And so He appeared unto them, and revealed Himself unto them as El Shaddai. That governs a period in which that specific thing is being done.

There is a second period governed by the title "Jehovah". "Jehovah" is the Lord Almighty, Self-existent, Absolute. There is a clause in chapter 1 of the book of the Revelation which is the exact definition of the title: "Which was and is and is to come", or is the Ever-coming One, Almighty, Everlasting, Self-sufficient. The period governed by that title is the period in which God is dealing, not with individuals, but with a people; constituting a people for Himself. And they were constituted upon the basis of the absolute supremacy of God in power and ability. Israel knew Him by that Name. As a nation and as a company, they existed upon this very foundation: the Lord Absolute in power and ability, Self-sufficient, Infinitely-capable. To recognise that is to be introduced to a tremendous amount as to Israel's responsibility and Israel's sin and Israel's possibility and Israel's failure. "Jehovah" peculiarly related to the formation of a people.

The third title is "Jehovah Sabaoth", the Lord of Hosts. That title came in with the monarchy and had to do especially with the wider range of the government of this world. The first title dealt with individuals; the second with a nation; the third with the nations. That is, when the people had been constituted and had come into contact with the nations and had suffered at the hands of the nations and were beset and threatened by the nations, and all the nations of the world were having their eyes upon them, covetous and evil eyes; when it was a matter of this people dwelling in the midst of the nations and needing (because of the nations and their hostility) protection and safeguarding, then the Lord made Himself known as Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts. It is the title which comes in as the Lord Who is able to command His legions for the deliverance and protection of His people when they walk in the midst of the hostility of the nations.

We have said that the title "Father" is a dispensational title. By that we mean a title which governs a special time and a special part of this world's history, in which some particular thing is being done under the government of God. What is the thing which is being done in this dispensation? It is the formation of a family in a sense in which that has never been true before. That has never before been realised as the purpose, the intention, the thought or the desire of God from eternity. Israel, in all its family ideas and phraseology, was only at best a type of this thing, and not the reality. Therefore, there could be no coming out into the full depth of the meaning of "Father"; it could only be hinted at and typified. But when we come to the time when God definitely moves to secure the family in its true, spiritual character, then you get Him revealed in a great fulness as "Father". We shall be impressed with this as we go on.

Take up the Gospel by John and remind yourselves that in that little Gospel the name "Father" occurs no fewer than 111 times. That is impressive, but when you proceed to note that the Lord Jesus is saying to the official heads and representatives of the Jewish nation, that they knew not the Father, that is a much more impressive thing. Said He: "You do these things because you know not the Father". After all these centuries, with the accumulated revelation of the oracles of their position and of their history at their command, they knew not the Father. This is not something said to the heathen world or to the pagan world; this is said to the Jewish nation in its representative heads. Then the Lord Jesus proceeds to make it perfectly clear by divine affirmations and by a life of revelations that what He had come for was to make known the Father.

The Gospel by John can, from one standpoint, be said to be the many-sided revelation of the Father. All we are able to do is to touch some of the points at which that is true. It is impressive to note that everything that the Lord Jesus says as to Himself is linked in some way with the Father. We shall see, if we go through that Gospel thoughtfully and quietly, that the title "Father" is particularly connected with the incarnation and all the purposes of the incarnation. The incarnation was for the purpose of securing this spiritual family, a family of those born from above and born of God, but it was also intended to be the means of bringing the fulness of the Father into view. Let us repeat that. The incarnation was intended to secure the spiritual family, but it was also intended to be the means of bringing the Father in fulness into view.

Taking this Gospel by John you will find that the Lord Jesus speaks of Himself in various ways and in various titles. He is introduced, first of all, as the Christ; that is, in the sense of the Messiah. If you take that title "the Christ", you will have to go back over the ground of two thousand years and right through two thousand years you will mark a movement towards the Christ, in longing, in hope, in prayer, in promise, in expectation. For two thousand years there is, as it were, something upon the horizon and all hearts are lifted toward that horizon and living for that day. And the attitude is: When the Christ is come, then all our longings will be met and all our hopes will be fulfilled and all our needs will be satisfied. That day will answer all our questions. Everything is bound up with: "When Messiah comes..." and every old man in Israel for those two thousand years hoped that he would not totter into the grave before Messiah came; in the same way as today the blessed hope of the coming of the Lord grips the heart and the aged wonder and hope that they will not go by the way of the grave. Everything is bound up with the coming of the Lord; and so it was for two thousand years before Messiah came. He came; the Christ! What was the one thing that He brought? The Father! "He that has seen Me has seen the Father"; "I am come in My Father's name"; "I have manifested Your name...". One great, inclusive, dominating purpose of the incarnation of the Son of God, the Christ, was to bring in the dispensation of the Father. All Israel's hopes, expectations, longings and needs, were to be met by the coming of the Christ. How was that fulfilled? Purely and only on the ground that He brought to light the knowledge of the Father.

The Christ came! He went! Did Israel have all their hopes realised, their expectations answered, their needs met? No! Why? Because they refused what He brought in His own Person: the revelation of the Father. That is the great argument of John's Gospel. Read it through again with that in view. What the Lord Jesus is saying there with such intensity, is that they are missing the way, because they will not believe that He has come from the Father, because the reality of the Father  coming in by Him, has been rejected. But wherever an Israelite believed and accepted the Christ as the Son of the Father, that Israelite found the two thousand years' hopes, expectations and longings met. And that is so today.

You see how clearly John's Gospel is bound up with Israel; taking up everything from the Old Testament and gathering it all up in the Person of the Lord Jesus. And the supreme factor about that Person is that He is the revelation and expression of the Father; that to receive Him, He said, was to receive the Father. To reject Him was to reject the Father. All hopes are realised in the family, all needs are met in the family. It comes under the Fatherhood in its deepest and most inward meaning.

We dare not stay with the fragments of it, but let us look at Nicodemus. "Are You a master (a teacher) in Israel...?" Evidently Nicodemus was a hungry one; one with conscious need, one looking for the Messiah. How is all the need in the heart of Nicodemus to be met? "You must be born again (from above)". It introduces the great fact of the Father - begotten of God.

The first revelation of the Lord Jesus in the Gospel by John then, is as the Christ. "Is not this the Christ", was the testimony and the interrogation of the woman of Sychar, who only a little while before had said to that very One: "When Messiah comes". She had found all her historic longings and expectations answered in Him. A new dispensation comes in by the incarnation. It is the dispensation of the Father in which all the needs of former dispensations are met.

Take some of these other designations which the Lord takes to Himself. "I am the bread of life". Look at the connection of that, in chapter 6 verses 35-38 "I am the bread of life; he that comes to Me shall not hunger, and he that believes on Me shall never thirst. But I said unto you, that you have seen Me, and yet believe not. All that which the Father gives Me shall come unto Me; and him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out. For I am come down from heaven...". The Father is related to that title and it says: This is the Father's interest in His family - making provision for the life of the family and giving Bread. The Lord Jesus is an expression of the Father's concern for the life of His family. The incarnation is intended to be a revelation of the Father, and here the revelation is that of the Father's concern for the very life of His spiritual family.

It is very simple, but it is striking and is a proof of what we are seeking to say, that with the Lord Jesus, in a new dispensation, there comes in this particular thing that God is doing. In Israel He gave the manna, which was only a type - for they perished in the wilderness, they died although they had eaten the manna - but here is the Father in relation to the Anti-type, the true family, giving the Bread so that they will never die and never perish. The Father is not concerned just with maintaining a company of people on this earth for a period of time, but to preserve a spiritual family eternally by imparting to them life incorruptible. That incorruptible life is the Lord Jesus.

The Father has such a concern for His family, that that family shall be provided by Him with that which shall maintain them in life for evermore, and He gives the Lord Jesus for that. The Lord Jesus has to come, has to be here, and has to come Himself in order to reveal that that is the attitude of the Father and to show that that is what God is like, that is what is in the heart of the Father; that is Fatherhood. To talk about the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man and leave the incarnation and the Cross of the Lord Jesus out is to talk nonsense. The Bible knows nothing about that. The revelation of the Father demands the incarnation and the Cross for the constituting of a family, upon a basis of life which can never suffer corruption and death.

"I am the light of the world". Read chapter 8 verses 12, 16, and chapter 16 verse 32. The Lord Jesus associated the Father with Himself in every detail and every connection. "I am the light of the world"; "I and the Father that sent Me". What does the connecting of those two things say to us? It says this, that the Father, with the Lord Jesus in the specific capacity of the Light of the world and the Light of Life, is concerned to have a spiritually enlightened family; a family enlightened as to Himself and all that has to do with Himself. It says, by way of contrast, that the world is in darkness and that His family, while in the midst of darkness in this world, is illuminated and in Light. Just as Israel in type in Egypt had light in their dwellings when there was darkness over all the land, so in the Anti-type, God's family. It is a family which has light when the whole world is in darkness and God is concerned that His family should be an illumined and an enlightened family. The incarnation is the means by which that which is in the Father' s heart and mind should be made known. The very association of the Father with the Son in that connection shows what the Father's thought is: an illumined family. "You are all the sons of light".

A new dispensation has come in, characterised by "the Father", and God is doing a specific thing in this dispensation under that title. He is constituting a family upon His own life, which He has given in Christ as Bread. He is constituting a family by His own Light as represented in the Lord Jesus.

Then: "I am the good shepherd" (chapter 10:14-15). It is striking how all the time the Father is associated with these designations. "I am the good shepherd... I know Mine own... even as the Father knows Me...". That says quite clearly and simply that the Father has a personal knowledge of His own and a personal care for His own, He is in close, intelligent association and that is revealed by the incarnation. The Lord Jesus as the Good Shepherd, is a revelation of what God's relationship to His own family is: that of personal, intelligent knowledge of each one.

It can be taken for granted that a father knows his own and is in intelligent touch with all his own. The Lord has a very big family - the human mind, of course, is altogether put out of court in this matter, for as you get down on to that level you will simply say: "Well, amongst hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, who are God's own children, what presumption for me to think that I can make a personal appeal to Him and that He will move heaven and earth on my behalf!" I remember some years ago going to the top of a very high tower, which overlooked an exhibition ground that was thronged with people, and as I looked down from that very high tower, hundreds of feet up, they seemed like black ants crawling about the earth. And it came home to me with tremendous force: Why, there are a few thousand people down there and God looks down on millions and millions, and then you tell me that God has a personal, intelligent interest in and association with every one of those... and not only those, but all who have been and all who will be yet! That is Fatherhood! That is Fatherhood in its dimensions and that is what Christ has come to reveal: "The Lord knows them that are His", and has not only a knowledge of their existence, but a personal interest in every individual. Christ brought that knowledge to light, that God does not deal in masses, but God deals with individuals. This Father does not overlook one of the smallest of His children.

That is a simple thing to say, but if it came home to our hearts it might help us a little more from time to time. Do you think the Lord has forgotten you? We have all thought that sometimes. Like one of old we have said: "Has the Lord forgotten to be gracious?" We need to get a deeper, closer appreciation of the fact that God is our Father. What a lot of help there can be in that, if we can truly say, with the real sense of it: "Father".

The enemy is out to destroy that word, to destroy the value and meaning of that for us. He does not mind us having the title: "God the All-terrible! King, who ordainest great winds Thy chariot, and lightnings Thy sword," but "Father" he objects to. Any kind of conception of God rather than that! And that is why the devil moved these Jewish leaders against the Lord Jesus, "Because he made God his Father". Oh, for the triumph of Calvary in our hearts in this matter, the real triumph over the enemy to get established in us the reality of the Father!

"I am the resurrection and the life" (chapter 11 verses 25-26,41). "I am the resurrection and the life... Father, I thank You that You hear Me". It is not straining things to bridge the gap of those intervening verses. If you will go back to chapter 5 you will see that that is perfectly right: "For as the Father raises the dead and quickens them, even so the Son also quickens whom He will" (verse 21). The two things are one. The Father and the Son are One in resurrection power and activity. The Son is a revelation of the fact that the Father raises up, so that death cannot break up His family. The Father has His family, and once He has it, death cannot rob Him of any member of it. He is Lord of death, Master of death, Conqueror of death, and the very essence of this Fatherhood is that He can preserve His family from death. That opens up a good deal more New Testament truth, but we simply note the fact here.

God is acting in this dispensation to get a family, and God's present dispensational activity is not going to be defeated by death, and He is not going to be cheated of it by death. He will get a family, and will cheat death of that family. It is not God, Infinite and Mighty, as such, it is the Father; and it is a deathless family that He is after. This family is never divided by death, this family is never broken into by death, this family knows no such thing as bereavement by death, this family will never lose a child by death. Of course, as the family, when we enter into the appreciation of that, that is our comfort: that in this family we do not lose anyone. Death may touch things here, but the spiritual family is no more separated in the spiritual reality and in the eternal oneness of the Father's house, than they would be if they were still here. It is the natural, human side of us that suffers the loss and knows all that pain. But what is the comfort of the believer? We sorrow not as those who have no hope. What is our hope? Because we have a Father Who has got a family that can never be broken up by death and never lose a member by death. Our hope is that the whole family will be together with not one missing. The hope is that we have not lost any. Ours it is to be together forever. "The whole family in heaven and on earth...". That is a part of the meaning of Fatherhood, and that is what the Father is doing in this dispensation; getting that kind of family.

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman" (chapter 15). The two go together all the time. This says another thing. It is a figurative way of presenting the great spiritual truths of the family. This says simply that the Father is concerned over the service of His family. Chapter 15 is concerned with the service of believers: fruit-bearing. That is the life of service. Do not let us stereotype it; do not put service into a water-tight compartment and think of service as being ministers or missionaries in that official designation. It may take various forms and be through different channels, but service is the expression of the life of the Father, it is answering to the Father's desires.

"My Father is the husbandman". In order to get fruit He takes a certain course. There is fruit, but He sees that by adopting a certain method He can get more fruit, and He is concerned with that particular branch that it should be developed to its fullest possible fruitfulness. So He adopts a certain method: "Whom the Lord loves He chastens" is the word in the Hebrew letter which expresses this. "No chastening for the present seems joyous but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness". The Father prunes and chastens, in order to develop fruitfulness to its fullest measure. "I am the vine and my Father is the husbandman", and as such He is concerned with one thing, and that is the fullest measure of fruit.

Do we relate pruning and chastening to God, or to the Father? It makes a good deal of difference. The mentality of "God" is sometimes severe. We can never have a severe mentality in the right atmosphere of "the Father". All these things have to be brought into that realm; the Lord's dealings with us now are the dealings of the Father and are along the family line. That is what is happening in this dispensation.

This Gospel by John is one magnificent unveiling of what is in the thought, the heart, the will, the concern of the Father for a family.

The revelation above all revelations of God in the history of the world, is the revelation in which we are now living; the revelation of the Father, brought to us by the Son, Jesus Christ. In future when we say "Our Father" may it have a fuller meaning for us.

Chapter 8 - The Father of the Son

"Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love" Col. 1:13.

"Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved"  Eph. 1:5,6.

"The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand." John 3:35.

"Who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead; even Jesus Christ our Lord" Rom. 1:4.

"But Christ as a son, over his house; whose house we are, if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end." Heb. 3:6.

As we proceed to meditate on the Son of the Father, it is not our present purpose to deal with the whole subject of the Person of the Lord Jesus. For one thing, it is far too big a matter to attempt in a brief space and for another, it leads out into all manner of points which are controversial and debated, but mainly because we have one thing specifically in view at this time and what we have to see in relation to that one thing. We are concerned with the church as a family, and what we have to see will be strictly in relation to that purpose. So we leave the realm of controversy and perplexity about the Person of the Lord Jesus, and just for our present purpose, seek the grace of simplicity to get to the heart, rather than the head, in these matters. We could make our position with regard to the Person of the Lord Jesus perfectly clear and very emphatic, as being utter in the direction of His deity, of His sinlessness in all its aspects, and so on, but the present object in view does not call us into that realm.

It is clear beyond any question that in spite of such great passages of Scripture as Isaiah 9:6: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given..." which seem to be final on the matter, the Jews did not look for their Messiah to be manifested in the terms of Sonship. The Messiah for them was expected along the natural line of David's posterity; David's seed historically. It was in that realm that they were looking and waiting for their Messiah. And it is perfectly clear that they could not reconcile the idea which the Lord Jesus brought in of Sonship with the Messiah. They always looked in the merely natural and historical realm for the evidence of the Messiah.

When He again and again declared Himself to be the Son of God it conveyed nothing to them as to the Messiah. The term "the Christ" to them only meant "the anointed one", anointed in a special way - true, but you find no trace of response on the part of the Jews to the suggestion that the Messiah was the Son of God. If they had expected that, or if they had had that relationship in their minds, you would naturally expect to find somewhere some indication in the days of the Lord Jesus that at least they were open to the idea. However, you find that they were entirely closed to the idea, and it cannot be placed purely to the account of prejudice that even if the Messiah was the Son of God they would not have this One. No! it went further than that. Messiah was an historic figure, coming for purposes in Israel alone, and you notice that whenever that name Messiah was mentioned it was connected with some merely earthly and limited interests, the interests of Israel on the earth.

When Peter made his great declaration at Caesarea Philippi, he put the two things together: "You are the Christos, the Son of the Living God", and immediately Christ made it clear that that was revelation from the Father, that the Christos was the Son of the Living God, and that followed the enquiry of the disciples by the Lord Jesus as to who men said that He was. The enquiry had this point: Is there anybody who has yet seen that the Christ is the Son of God? Have you ever yet heard anybody say, Here is the Messiah, the Son of God? There were those who were perhaps prepared to admit the possibility of His being the Messiah, but that is not the question.

When the man born blind (John 9) traversed that tortuous path with the growing light of the inwardly opened eyes and eventually got through to the supreme thing, beyond the "prophet", beyond the "great man" right through to the "Son of God", he represented a specific act: a supernatural act of divine illumination corresponding to Peter's revelation at Caesarea Philippi, "...flesh and blood has not revealed it unto thee, but my Father...".

That secret concerning the Son, the deeper and fuller meaning of the Messiah as the Son of God, shows clearly as a fact in itself, that God was Father - something more than Jewish restoration and rehabilitation. If Christ, the Anointed, was to be the limited Jewish Messiah and only that, then everything was for the Jews. But the deeper reality and meaning of the Messiah as the Son of God carried with it something far beyond Jewish interests. It indicated that God had a far greater thing in view than that. It meant that God had come, not only as Messiah, but as Son in relation - not to a people of one tongue and nation - but to a family out of every nation and every tongue. That is a deeper thing altogether.

This deeper reality indicates the deeper consciousness of purpose in Christ, which made it possible for Him to reject Israel. Here is the Christ, the Messiah, and Messiah having come, He can reject Israel. Surely Messiah, according to Israel's ideas, has come for Israel and His whole purpose is bounded by Israel! If He does not save Israel then why has He come? Not to save Israel, as Israel seems to clearly indicate that as Messiah He is an utter failure! Surely it could never be that the Messiah has broken down! And yet Messiah, Who in Israel's mind was simply limited to Israel for Israel's salvation and could not fall, rejects Israel in such strong terms and in such an utter way as His cursing of the fig tree so that it withered up and died; that is Judaism. Messiah does that to Israel! Then Messiah must have come for something more than that! The something more is found in Who Messiah is:

The Son of God.

That Name, that title, "Son", is such an immense thing. It goes far beyond the bounds and limitations of Israel, it speaks of something more; and so it indicates the deeper consciousness of purpose in Christ. Christ had the consciousness of a purpose in His heart which was far deeper than Israel and His very knowledge of His Sonship carried Him much beyond the confines of Israel.

Then again, just as Christ related "Father" to everything, and made it clear that all that He was and did was intended to reveal the Father, so God the Father has related everything to the Son, and has nothing whatever to say to or give to man apart from the Son. It is impressive to recognise that the Son has nothing, does nothing, says nothing apart from the Father. The Son's entire horizon is "Father". He has nothing beyond that horizon of "Father", and everything within that horizon is "Father". What He is in all His aspects, in all His activities, in all His utternesses... "Father" is brought in, declared, revealed and expressed. From beginning to end He has nothing, knows nothing, does nothing without the Father. He refers everything to the Father. You never saw loyalty like that! You never saw abandonment like that! It is as though, whenever He was called upon to do something or say something, He turned and said, "Father, shall I do it? Is it Your will?" Whenever He was drawn out He would, in effect, say: "I must ask my Father; I can do nothing until I have been to the Father about it!"

In the same way, the Father relates everything to the Son. Go to the Father, and the Father says: "Go to My Son." Ask the Father, and the Father says: "Go to My Son; My Son has all that you want from Me. I have bound everything up with Him, I can do nothing without Him, I will do nothing apart from Him." The Father has made it perfectly clear that the Son is His full and final means of meeting man. "The Father loved the Son, and has given all things into His hand." And that "all" is final.

Our first thought, then, having seen all that, is that of the manifestation of the mutual love relationship between Father and Son, and Son and Father. That is foundational to everything. It sounds simple, but there is a great deal more in it than may appear. The mutual love relationship between Father and Son, and Son and Father, is the basis of everything, and nothing whatever can ever come to us of God except on the basis of that mutual love relationship. It is a marvellous unveiling. Think of a member of a family who absolutely and positively refuses to move a hand, to utter a word, to be drawn into anything, without consulting the other member and working in complete and perfect co-operation and harmony and fellowship with that other member, and you see what the relationship is between the Father and the Son, the Son and the Father.

It was that at which the adversary aimed all his blows, to get in between that. That was basic to everything in this universe in relation to the purpose of God, and the one thing that the enemy was trying to do was to get in between these two; to interfere with that, to get independent action and personal concern; anything just to break into that, "If you are the Son...".

Oh the infinite triumph, the boundless triumph, that is represented in the last sentence that the Lord Jesus uttered in this world before He died. When you remember all that He had gone through just then, being made sin, and the Father then having to turn away His face, and you hear the last word, the last sentence, beginning with: "Father... into Your hands I commit My spirit", there is a triumph in that. He went right back, and stood at the end where He had always stood. Tested, as no being in the universe had ever been tested, as to His relationship, as to His loyalty, as to His faithfulness; tested by a necessary rejection from heaven and then saying: "Father". There is grandeur and majesty there.

What is behind everything else in this universe is the mutual love between the Father and the Son, and the Son and the Father, and what that means of strength; or the strength of that in action in every detail and expressed all along the way, under all kinds of temptations and trials, stresses and strains, circumstances and conditions. Through everything that love triumphed in its utter loyalty. That is the first and basic thing.

Then there is the gift of everything to the Son by the Father, the utter committing to the Son: "...and has given (or committed) all things into His hand". That speaks of an infinite trust. The Father has a Name, and what a Name! What is bound up with that Name! What is included in that Name! All that the Name of God means in righteousness, truth, integrity, holiness, unassailable equity; every interest that the Father ever had in this universe; every intention; yes, all that God stands for - not just as a Being in relation to the universe, in purposes and intentions and desires and thoughts - everything He has entrusted to the Son.

Do you wonder that the devil tried to capture the Son? Do you wonder that he made the Son the Object of his fiercest assaults, his most sinister malice, his venom, and all the depth of his cunning? All things were committed to the Son. Oh! the infinite trust of the Father! And the Son knew it, and it was on the ground of that trust that the Son went through. It was that which lay behind the way in which He answered the enemy. If you could explain the life of the Lord Jesus, and why He took the course that He took on every occasion when there were two courses to take, why it was that He chose the one that He took when there was another way open to Him, you would find the explanation is this: The Father is trusting Me! See what strength that gives; there is nothing personal about that. He was saying, in effect: "I am carrying the honour of the Father; I am carrying the interests of the Father. What I do just at this moment involves the Father and raises the whole question as to whether He has rightly reposed confidence in Me."

Look on, and see that the family is to take its character from the Son. If we could get something of that in the hour of testing and trial, of suffering and sorrow, and say: "The Father is trusting just now; the Father's interests are at stake!"

In connection with that there is the larger universal design. What is that? It is to make the Son give the full and the final character to the universe. The love of the Father for the Son, the committing of all things by the Father to the Son is with the intention of the Son giving the full and the final character to the universe. If we are just getting the simplest glimpse of what Sonship means, as represented by the Lord Jesus, such devotion to the Father as we have seen, such honour of the Father; then we are going to see the moral nature of the universe in the ages to come. That sort of thing is going to be stamped through this universe. What have we in the universe today? God dishonoured, God disregarded, God flouted, God either openly rebelled against or openly ignored. What is the result? Such a universe as we have got is the result. And God has no intention of a universe such as is now, continuing forever. He never intended it, and He will never consent to it. The whole moral fabric of this universe has got to be changed, and when God realises His thought for this universe it will be stamped through and through with what we are seeing in the Son; where the Father is honoured in this way and loved in this way and brought in in everything. And there will be no room whatever for another contrary element. The contrary elements were met by the Son.

The forces of the adversary were set to break into that loyalty, to come between the Son and the Father by disobedience, self-interest, and so on. All that was overcome by the Son, in virtue of His utter love for and devotion to the Father; and the devil was worsted by that. That victory of love for the Father is going to fill the universe. There will be no room for the devil then. It is a moral thing. Get that thing through the universe; get that reproduced in a vast family to survive time; and you see what kind of a universe you are going to have. Christ, the Son, is the universe in moral state. Oh! this marvel of sonship according to God's thought. The universe marked, stamped and taking its character from the Son!

This, by reason of eventualities not before planned but foreseen, the eventualities of the fall, rebellion, sin... necessitated the working out of the whole redemptive plan in a Representative, a Substitute. So that God's intention for the universe and for its realisation, demands a whole redemptive activity because of sin; and the Son became that. Within the compass of that we find the most wonderful of all the revelations of the meaning of sonship. I can understand why the gates of the City are of pearl. What is the pearl? The beauty of the pearl is simply the product of bleeding, suffering the exquisite suffering of the oyster when some grit works its way in and cuts through the sensitive flesh and lets out the life blood, which chemical process forms into the glory of the pearl. In that way the most precious revelation of sonship comes through the suffering necessitated by the representative and substitutionary work because of sin.

Has the Scripture, which clearly declares that the Lord Jesus was declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead, ever made you ask questions? Have you ever had difficulty in reconciling the two things; that He was Son before He died, that He was Son by birth, and yet the Word clearly says that He was declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection? The Psalmist, who is three times quoted in this particular utterance in the New Testament intended (as the New Testament references make perfectly clear) to refer to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus when he put these words into the mouth of the Father: "You are My Son, this day have I begotten You". That, in the New Testament, is clearly related to the resurrection. How do you reconcile these things? There is a Sonship peculiar to resurrection. It does not cancel the Sonship of birth, nor the eternal Sonship, but it indicates that the family really and only comes in by redemption.

You see what this Son now is doing: He is now taking the place as the Representative of a family who were not born as sons of God by nature. We can only be sons of God, or children of God, on the ground of redemption; and redemption means that the Cross is finished and the resurrection is accomplished. It takes the resurrection to seal the redemption. The resurrection is the seal on the redemptive work, so now, as the Representative - not what He is in Himself as the Eternal Son, but what He is representatively for us - He is Son by the resurrection. This is a specific kind of Sonship relative to redemption and sealed in resurrection; because it is there that the family is introduced: on redemption ground.

To see that will forever get rid of these fictitious ideas about God being the Father of us all; all being God's children. No! The Cross is essential! The representative and substitutionary work of the Lord Jesus is indispensable, and those statements about being declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection cannot be explained, interpreted or understood except on the ground that He is acting representatively now, and not as in His own unique Person.

This has been typified in Israel. God's Word to Pharoah was: "Let My son go...". "You have refused to let him go; behold, I will slay your son, your firstborn". How did Israel become in type God's son, God's firstborn? Through the blood of the Passover, the Red Sea; through the Cross, in effect. God looked upon Israel in the light of that shed blood, in the light of that slain lamb, in the light of that baptism in the cloud and in the Sea; and the Lord said concerning Israel on the night of the Passover: "This shall be to you the beginning of months" in other words: This is your birthday. His son, His firstborn, on the ground of redemption. So Israel typified this truth.

Following that we see that the dearness of the firstborn exhibits the dearness of the family. If the Father loved the Son, if He is the Son of His love, the Beloved, then the dearness of the Firstborn sets forth the dearness of the whole family. John 3:16 is the matchless declaration of that: "God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes...". God loves the family with the love that He has for His Son. He loves us even as He loves Christ.

The classic illustration of that is in the twenty-second chapter of Genesis. God said to Abraham: "Take now your son, your only son, whom you love... and offer him". That is some reflection of the heart of God in relation to His own Son: "Your son, your only son, whom you love..." a foreshadowing of John 3:16. Do you recognise the issue? Why that? What was in view? Was it some isolated piece of history, some fragment of a man's life-trial, discipline, something bound up with an individual, a unit? No! It was because Abraham was the father of Israel, and that the family was to come through Isaac on to the ground of redemption, and so death and resurrection were necessary. They must be typified there. And the very type draws in the agony of a father's heart over his son. The family is in view.

God does not call for all that anguish and suffering which is a part of such love, for a worthless object or for something that is of less concern to Him. God does not give His well-beloved Son for something which He prizes less. The object of His giving must be as equally dear to Him as the gift. So the gospel concerning His Son is this marvellous gospel, that the love of the Father for the Son is the love wherewith He loved us: "He loved me and gave Himself for me", said the apostle. "He loved the church, and gave Himself for it." "The church of God, which He purchased with own blood". The same love for the family as for the Christ, the Son, is the exhibition of the Father's love for the family; firstly, in securing it by redemption.

God's dealings with Israel on the basis of a Father and a son, are an illustration of sonship according to God's mind. We have all been amazed with that forbearance of God with Israel, that longsuffering. Through all their waywardness and unfaithfulness, through all that history in the wilderness and afterwards for many centuries; and then in the days of the prophets you hear the cry of God, like the sob through the voice of the prophet: "How shall I give you up, Ephraim?"; "When Israel was a child, then I loved him...". This prophetic expression of God feeling His heartstrings torn to hurt Israel, after all, with all the judgements He has pronounced, and all the hard things that seem to come in, there seems to come in: "O that I did not have to do this; O that I could be spared this!" That is God's attitude.

Read the prophecy of Hosea and others, and see what that represents of God's love towards a wanton people, a people who, of all peoples, might have been said to have exhausted to the last drop any love which could be expected or even justified. Yet He loves and still loves, and will yet recover Israel. We look on Israel today, and in whose human heart is there love for Israel? Knowing what we do of the Jews today, it takes divine love. There are the individuals amongst them whom you may love and feel drawn to, but speaking generally there is no love in the human heart for them. Yet God's love goes on! Why? What is the explanation? That God has chosen Israel as a means to exhibit the love of a Father for a son. "My son", "My firstborn"! God has Himself chosen those terms to express His relationship to Israel. So Israel brings out the meaning of sonship. Israel seems to drag out from God the very content of the Father's love for a son. That is the illustration.

Bring that into the spiritual reality. God forbid that it should be necessary in any of us to drag that exhibition out from God; but we should respond more to Him, be more faithful and more devoted, if we caught a glimpse of the love and the infinite forbearance of God. What is it that amazes us more than anything else? It is God's longsuffering with us. So much so, that again and again we have had to go back to Him and say: Lord, I am worthless; my only hope is in that longsuffering. That is our only hope. Ah! but what a hope! Israel was an instrument in history for bringing out an exhibition and a showing of a Father's love for a son. The Lord Jesus did not drag out that exhibition in the way that Israel did, but we must remember that the Lord Jesus took the place of Israel representatively and substitutionally, along with all who were not of Israel, and had that all laid upon Him. Do you mean that God loved Him even when He was made sin and made a curse? Yes! He did not love the sin - He never loved Israel's sin - but He loved Him. And while He may hate our sin, He loves on and on and on. I am not sure but that one of the deepest pangs of the eternally lost state will not be a discovery of what the love of God meant and was missed; to wake up one day and discover that you have been loved with a supernatural love and you have violated that, persistently sinned against that, and now all that that might have meant to you is beyond your grasp or reach. That will make misery, to carry that into the infinite, into the eternal.

This working out of everything in the Son is seen also in the making perfect through sufferings. The Lord Jesus is said to be the Captain or File-leader of our salvation, and as such, it behoved Him to be made perfect through suffering. He was perfected. As He was Eternal Son, so He was eternally perfected. But here is the other statement corresponding to the fact that He is declared Son by resurrection. Now He is said to have been made perfect through suffering representatively. It is all wrought out in Him. It is all done in Him. God has wrought out our perfection in Christ, the Son, as He has wrought out our redemption. As He has exhibited His love in sonship, so He has perfected us forever in Christ. His Son becomes the instrument in which all that eternal intention is made good - redemption, revelation, perfection.

What is sonship? It is being brought into the good of what is true about the Lord Jesus. What is true about the Lord Jesus? He was made perfect through suffering. Sonship is being brought into the good of that in a living, vital, organic way. To recognise that we have been perfected forever in the Son as a part of our sonship is one of the glories of sonship. God will never have any imperfect sons. If you ever get down before the Lord and say that you are a very imperfect child of God, the Lord will understand what you mean, but He will not agree with you. The Lord never has any imperfect sons. All His sons are absolutely perfect; His family is a perfect family - it is flawless. God is not looking at what we are in ourselves; He is looking at what Christ is as our Representative: "He has perfected forever them that are sanctified". That is in the past tense. He is making us what we are in Christ, conforming us to the image of His Son.

If the Lord takes the responsibility of calling us home, away from the world where He is working conformity in us, and cuts short the time of our conforming to the image of Christ, it is all finished in Christ, nothing is left undone. The Lord has taken that responsibility. The responsibility that is ours while here is simply this: to go on in the light which we have. We are responsible for being obedient to the light that we have. If we are disobedient to any light that we have, we stand to lose. If God takes the responsibility of cutting us short before we get any more light, that is His responsibility and He has all the rest to make good already in His Son, and He can do that at once. If the Lord should appear today He would find none of us fully and finally conformed to the image of His Son, but in the moment when we shall see Him we shall be like Him and the whole thing will be finished then. The Lord can take responsibilities like that when He has got the thing done. That is the value of sonship: "Has sent forth the spirit of His Son into our hearts..."

What applies in all these ways applies to the glorifying. He has glorified and exalted His Son, but the Son is there already glorified as us, and we are glorified in the Son. Sonship is that. See what He has made His Son! All that comes out of the suffering necessary because of sin. That is the pearl. That is the way into the City. It is the glory of our inheritance in Christ, our place in the Body, the City, the church; whatever title by which it may be known. Here is sonship: the gospel concerning His Son Jesus Christ, our Lord.

The Lord give us a new, inner delight in His Son, and cause to grow in us the reality of sonship.

Chapter 9 - The Father of Our Spirits

John 1:12: "But as many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God..."

We will return to the above passage in a moment.

Heb. 12:9: "...the Father of our spirits..."

1 Cor. 6:17: "...joined unto the Lord... one spirit".

John 4:23-24: "...in spirit and in truth... God is Spirit".

Rom. 8:16: "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit, that we are children of God."

Then in completion of the sentence in John 1, verse 13: "...which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God".

We are beginning to consider the family of God, and this consideration will be in various connections and aspects of the family. Firstly, we consider the entrance into the family. That is seen to be by birth, and by birth only. That is the only way recognised by the Word of God. There are other ways known among us of becoming members of a family other than by birth. For instance, there is the adopting of children altogether outside of the family relationship, and by adoption making them members of the family. But no such thing is known in the Word of God. Adoption is often mentioned, but it means quite another thing. The only way of entering the family of the Lord recognised by the Word of God is by birth. We do not purpose dwelling upon the fact, but what we are concerned with is the nature of that inward birth; the nature of that which takes place which is called "birth from above", by which we come into the family of God.

There are several things which have to be borne in mind. In the first place, all men (not only saved but the unsaved) are composed of spirit, soul and body. In the second place, no man by nature has living union with God. In the third place, such living union with God is the result of a spiritual miracle called "new birth", being born anew.

The Canaanites - some of them at least - knew a considerable amount about Jehovah. It was discovered by the spies that Rahab had a good deal of information about Jehovah. She knew all about His wonders in Egypt and His deliverance of His people from Egypt; she had a measure of apprehension of the meaning of that and of the ultimate issue and the destiny of the people of Jehovah. But with all that she had no living union with Jehovah. In the same way the natural man, the unregenerate man, may have a good deal of knowledge about the Lord and may possess some considerable measure of apprehension of things about the Lord, but there is all the difference between such knowledge of the Lord and a living union with Him. That living union is only possible by reason of this miracle of being born anew.

Now, there are some other relative facts, one of which is that only like can have fellowship and communion in the truest way. Only those who are alike in nature and constitution can have fullest fellowship. We have heard of men who have spoken about communion with nature, communion with the trees, communion with the fields, communion with the birds, and finding a good deal of solace and comfort and help from that communion. But such leaves a good deal to be both desired and provided to answer really to the nature of man. In the truest and deepest things of a man's life he needs a man. He needs not a bird nor a dog, nor a tree nor a mountain; he needs someone made like himself, who shares his own nature. He may find a companionship of a kind in other realms, but he will never be a full man merely by that companionship. He will only come to the fulness of his manhood as he has fellowship with man. Only like can have fellowship and communion in the fullest and deepest and truest way.

The second thing which comes out of that is that God is a Spirit, and union and communion with God can never be had on any other basis than that of spirit. We can never have union and communion with God in our bodies. The same is true of our souls. For that union man must be pre-eminently and predominantly spiritual.

That brings us to the real nature of the new birth. The real nature of union with God is found in the way of new birth. "Spiritual" does not mean merely spiritual mindedness, in the way in which that is often spoken of or apprehended; that is, a gravitation towards the opposite of the material. Anything that is not merely material or materialistic is thought by many people to be spiritual. But the New Testament idea of spiritual mindedness is something other than that. It is what the man is in his essential being; he is spiritual.

We know what we are in our bodies. We know certain things about these bodies, that they have organs. We know we have a heart; we know we have lungs; we know that we have other appurtenances; and we know that we have functions.

In exactly the same way we have the appurtenances of the soul; our soul is made up of our faculty for reasoning and all the intellectual functions; the functions of our emotions: feelings, choice, decision, determination, willing. That is all very familiar and we say therefore the body is So-and-so; and its very constitution is of this character, with organs and functions. And the soul is So-and-so; but how are you going to demonstrate the soul, and prove that it exists? You can only demonstrate it by these functions. The old Greek philosophers would say: Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). The proof of my being is that I function in a certain way.

In exactly the same way the spirit is comprised of functions. Those functions are represented by the Scriptures as being distinct from the functions of the body, and the functions of the soul. They are something other, though very closely related.

It takes spirit, soul and body to make one whole man; and a whole man is not a spirit, a whole man is not a soul, a whole man is not a body. The three together make the whole man. That is what the apostle means when he says: "I pray God, your whole spirit, soul and body..." He does not mean your whole spirit, your whole soul or your whole body. But he says: "I pray God, your whole..." and your "whole" is spirit, soul and body.

While the three make one man, yet each has its own set of functions and faculties; and deeper and more inner than body or soul is your spirit. It is what the man is in the deepest reality of his being, and not simply that he has interests in things which are not merely material. This is seen in the Lord Jesus. He had all three. He was a Perfect Man. We know He had a body, although there have been those who have tried to prove that even the body of Christ was a myth. He had a soul and a spirit and both are referred to. The Word says that He was sorrowful in soul: "Now is My soul sorrowful." Then it is said that the Father did not leave His soul in Hades. Then elsewhere we are told that in His youth He "waxed strong in spirit"; "rejoiced in spirit"; "was troubled in spirit"; and finally He committed His spirit to God.

It is there, in that innermost reality of man's being, that the work of God in new birth has its first and primary place. We know quite well that no one born again is ever so physically. And the Lord Jesus pointed out to Nicodemus, when he allowed such a mentality to come into the matter, that he was in dark ignorance with all his understanding and with all his knowledge. "Are you a teacher in Israel and know not these things?" Nicodemus had raised the question of new physical birth, and the Lord Jesus brushes the whole thing aside and says in effect: That is not what I am talking about. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh" and I am not talking about that; but "that which is born of the spirit is spirit", and that is what I am talking about. The thing may be of the same character as something else, and yet it may be very different as to its state. For instance, you may take two vessels, two vases. So far as those vases are concerned they are exactly similar. The material of which they are made, the shape, the size are just alike; no difference. And yet one of them may be clean and pure, and the other may be filthy and polluted. The illustration is not perfect, but it goes on the way to explaining what we mean.

God is a Spirit, and man has a spirit, and it is in that realm that you find what can come into absolute union. The spirit of the unregenerate man is corrupt, filthy, polluted and is degenerate, but it is there. And it is the miracle of God which takes that spirit out of its state of death spiritually. It may be very active, but active in death, pollution, corruption, filthiness and alienation from God. God takes that, gives it new life from above, quickens it with life which it does not possess and never has possessed; He renews it, lifts it, and by reason of depositing in it the Holy Spirit, joins it with Himself so that "he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit". That is new birth. That is the way into the family, and there is no other way.

The Father is concerned with the whole man. He does not leave the soul and the body out of account. Redemption embraces all - the entire man. The spirit is the sphere in which redemption has its first expression; the soul receives through the spirit, and is the fruit of what is done in the spirit; and then eventually the body will come into the good of that. Already in Christ the whole humanity is redeemed. The Father is concerned with the whole, even now, but His centre, His base, and His vehicle is the spirit. He begins there and because that is so, He is called: "the Father of our spirits". All His interests and all his activities are in the direction of bringing about ascendancy there.

In the natural man it is not so. Either the body or the soul are in the ascendant. It may be the lusts and passions of the body that are dominating the life. Physical interests may be predominant. Or it may be the emotional or intellectual and the volitional mastering the life. But because God is a Spirit, and therefore must be primarily concerned with man's spirit and what is spiritual, in that sense the man must he brought to the place where it takes ascendancy and pre-eminence over all the rest of the man. Because that is so, the Father has to discipline in order to get the spirit into ascendancy and dominion, and it entirely depends upon the temperament and nature of the child with whom He is dealing as to what His methods are. If the soul-life of His child is the sphere of predominance and strength, then that soul life will be broken and weakened in order to bring the spirit into the right place. If the physical interests are pre-eminent, then it may be the Lord will have to touch the physical body. His object is not to weaken the whole man, but to bring the man's spirit into its right place, so that the whole man becomes spiritual in this sense: that the whole man is under the government of God, the Spirit, and He can only govern through spirit.

We can never know God by our reason, and we shall never know God by making up our minds to know Him with a great resolution and determination that we will know God. We can only know God through and in our spirit. Spiritual knowledge, then, demands that the spirit is in living, full function in fellowship with God; and it is so often the soul side that keeps the spirit down and suppressed, so that it does not function in fulness and liberty.

It is possible for a man to be marked by an analytical mind, so that he wants to argue out everything, reason out everything and subject everything to the microscope of his own brain, his own reason, and just see the whole thing right through in that way - not accept it until he can understand it like that. And so he becomes very analytical, very investigating in his mind over the thing, and until he can have the very best answer to all his questions from every side, he is not going to accept it. That man will make very slow progress.

The same will apply to one who thinks that by getting a mighty wave of religious emotion he is going to enter into the things of God. That is one of the great snares of the devil today. Religious emotion is no criterion; it is no ground of true spirituality.

Our knowledge of the Lord, the very remotest bit of it and the very first ray of it, depends upon our spirit being awakened and illumined by the Holy Spirit. Progress in the things of God is simply the growth of our inner man and not the acknowledgement of our intellectual capacity to grasp truth. We may have an increasing capacity, by reason of association and familiarity with truth, for grasping ideas and grasping truth and teaching. And that capacity may expand and expand until there is very little that is available to be grasped, and yet with such there may be the very smallest measure of real spirituality. We were once told by somebody that they had been to all the conventions for the last forty years and they knew all the teaching of all these different conventions, and they did not feel that there was anything fresh to be had; and from our own personal association with that person we knew that they had the very smallest spiritual capacity and the most limited measure of personal knowledge of the Lord. Spiritual knowledge is quite other than the grasp of truth and teaching.

The child of God is one whose spirit has been renewed and who has at the centre of their being a union and a communion with God which is not the possession of any man by nature, and which cannot come in any other realm but in the renewed spirit. Take Abram and Lot as an illustration of this. Abram heard God speaking to him and walked with God in an inner fellowship. Lot went the same way historically, but Lot walked with Abram, not with God. His was a second-hand walk with God, so to speak, and that is an illustration of the spirit and the soul. One has the first hand union with God; the other has a hearsay knowledge of God. The true family is of the first order. It may not be fully developed and it may be in its infant stage; but the true family is composed of those who have inner spirit union with God as the result of a supernatural act: new birth.

The "Father of our spirits" begins there, and continues there, and seeks the ascendancy of the spirit all the time over every other part of the being - if necessary breaking and emptying in order to bring everything in subjection to the spirit of the child of God, as in turn it is governed by the Holy Spirit. That is one way of looking at it.

The other way of looking at it is that the Lord is wanting us all the time to be strong in spirit and not primarily strong in natural mind, in soul, in will, in reason or argument, in analyses or in emotion; but something deeper. "Strengthened with might by His spirit into the inward man" a thing which, when emotion is dead or tumultuous and cannot be relied upon and when reason gets into a realm of absolute bewilderment, when the power of action and determination is paralysed, and all that outer part of soul sensibility can give us no help, but is rather against us; then to know an inward grip and an inward strength which keeps the poise, keeps the balance, keeps from getting under and letting go. That is not something done by God independently of ourselves, that is something done through and in the vessel of our spirits.

There are two ways of putting that, but they are only two halves of one thing. We can say: God's peace was in us. The other way to us is: We were kept in peace. And when we say "we", what do we mean? We certainly do not mean at such times that this outer part of us - our emotions, our reason - was all perfectly in harmony. No, we could not understand, we were full of fears and perplexity, and yet in the midst of it all we were kept in peace. The "we" means someone. It is not just some abstract thing, but that puts us in some place, in some vessel: our spirits. At that time we knew that we were like two different beings; there was one being all disturbed, fearful, agitated, perplexed; and yet there was another being more inward, deeper, that was not that at all. We knew that we were in the storm, but somehow the storm had not got right into the centre of us. There was a place where the storm never came.

All this is to explain the nature of new birth and what a child of God is. It is very important for us to understand that. We know the facts of new birth, but the nature is important to know because it will help us to understand the Lord's dealings with us.

The real triumph of the Lord Jesus is to be reproduced in our spirits. The Lord is constantly calling upon us in the midst of trial, of suffering, of sorrow, of pain, of anguish, not to go down under it, but to be strong in spirit. And, hard as it may seem, nevertheless the fact remains that in the midst of sorrow, and suffering, and trial, and difficulty, the measure of our real spiritual growth is discovered. The degree of our spiritual growth is measured by the degree in which we go down. The degree in which suffering, distress, anguish, pain and sorrow finds us in our spirits taking the ascendant, is the measure of our real spiritual growth. And so the Lord does not lessen the tests as we go on in the spiritual life; they grow and they increase. Every fresh and more intense trial is a challenge to our growth and development. He is the Father of our spirits, Who is seeking to have His children spiritually grow up.

None of us are content to have our children incapable of standing adversity and whenever some little difficulty comes along, making such a tremendous fuss of it, and training them to regard these things as real catastrophes. We are anxious when such things happen to make the child regard them as lightly as possible and get the child to be prepared for bigger things than that. We would all like our children to be real fire-eaters in the sense that they will get to face anything. We would not make too much of the trials, in order to get them to face bigger things. And the Father of our spirits is seeking to develop a capacity in our spirits for standing up to things and He does not shield us from things.

That is enough as a basis of this matter of what new birth is and what a child of God is. And you will find that all that has to do with the Lord's dealings with His children in the New Testament, is in that direction: that they shall be increasingly spiritual, which means they are growing in their union with Him and what He is and He is becoming increasingly what they are - strength, wisdom, knowledge, and all the things which are spiritual. Sometimes, by sheer bewilderment of the natural wisdom, God leads to spiritual knowledge through revelation. Thus He does not stop at allowing us to get into tight corners where natural reason is utterly at an end. Such a position makes possible and makes necessary, another kind of knowledge which is not natural at all but spiritual, and in such times is the crisis of a spiritual discovery. It has ever been so with the Lord's people.

The same holds good in other kinds of suffering. We discover that when we could not naturally endure the suffering or the sorrow, there is some other discovery to make of divine succour and grace and strength which is spiritual. We could not stand the strain any longer, we should snap; and then we make a discovery and that discovery is something spiritual and more than comes from nature, from ourselves, or from anyone else; it comes from God. That is growth. It is something of God, and that is an increase of God.

Chapter 10 - Family Life and Characteristics

The first thing to take into account is the desire and the design of the Father for His family. Surely everything begins there with the family, and when we ask ourselves what the desire and the design of our Father is for His spiritual family, there is but one answer. And that answer is given to us in a statement which itself includes a family title: "Foreordained to be conformed to the image of His son". Conformity to the image of the Firstborn is the desire and the design of the Father for the whole family.

The family is to take its character from the Firstborn. There is to be a family likeness, and, so far as this family is concerned, the family likeness is to be according to the firstborn. That is, that what is true of Christ has to become true of the whole family. The characteristics and traits of the Lord Jesus have to be reproduced in every subsequent child and member of the family. That being the desire and the design of the Father made known to all His children, if they are to be obedient children, children of God in very truth, then they will lay to heart His desire and realise that their main business is the satisfaction of the Father's heart in the development of those features of the firstborn. The New Testament is occupied with that; indeed all the Scriptures are occupied with that. The Old Testament is concerned in a typical way with the reproducing of the features of Christ. The New Testament is most clearly one great collective, accumulative appeal and urge for the realisation of Christ-likeness.

It seems that when the Lord Jesus chose His twelve disciples there was, at the back of the choice and back of the purpose of having a company of men always with Him - the intention of showing and expressing what the character of the firstborn is so far as relationship to other members of the family is concerned. To put that in another way: if we study the characteristics of the Lord Jesus in relation to His own when He was here on the earth, we have a good example of what family characteristics are in the thought of the Father. For instance, take the imperfections, the shortcomings, the weaknesses of the twelve and see what the attitude of the Lord Jesus was toward them. The Holy Spirit takes no pains to cover up those faults and those flaws. There is no attempt made whatever to present those men as an ideal group. Their picture is painted true to life and all the difficult lines are there - the bad and the good - and nothing unpleasant is hidden from view. None of the lines are taken out of their faces. They are all clearly seen. The Lord Jesus was not dealing with an easy company, but a company which might often have provoked despair. But one thing was characteristic of Him in relation to a difficult handful, and that was His faith for them.

What faith the Lord Jesus had for those men! It was not that He had faith in them, neither was it that He had faith for them because of what He saw in them; but He had infinite faith in the Father for them. His attitude was: "Well, nothing is impossible with God. Here are these men; they are difficult and they could easily be My despair; they never seem to understand what I say! They always seem to get the wrong interpretation, they always seem to miss the point. When I say a thing they get it from an altogether wrong angle; they are utterly materialistic in their outlook, in their expectation and in their desires. They never see far beyond this world and their own personal interests. They seem totally incapable of getting a spiritual conception. And yet the Father can do wonders with a handful of men like that; nothing is impossible."

How often His words to them indicated their slowness and their dullness in the realm of His spiritual mind. "O foolish men, how long shall I be with you?" "Do you not yet understand?" and right at the end: "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things?" And yet He never gave them up, never abandoned them as hopeless, but exhibited infinite faith for them.

That represents something about the Firstborn which must of necessity become a family characteristic. We shall never get very far as a family unless that is reproduced in us, unless we have infinite and implicit faith in the Father concerning one another. Some of us are exceedingly difficult to get on with, exceedingly difficult to understand and perhaps exceedingly difficult to love in the natural way. There is a challenge in that. The easiest thing in the world would be to draw unto ourselves and away from such. The most difficult thing perhaps will be to go on in perfect confidence and faith that a big change will take place and that there will be tremendous differences made if only we wait long enough. The Lord Jesus had that faith in the Father for these men and that has got to become a characteristic of the family. Yes! faith for the most hopeless. How little patience we have!

Nature comes in here so often, and nature takes the measurement at once according to nature and fixes the value and says: "Well, they will never be anything much more than that". And so they are consigned to the category of those of a certain measurement and a certain capacity, and nothing more is expected or hoped for; and they are despised more or less. We just go on and leave them to get on as best as they can. They know that they have been weighed up and that we do not have very much room for them. Do you think that that is going to be a way of development, increase and helpful expansion? Never! What we have done has been to put the measure of what they are by nature, upon what they are by grace, and fix them in that measure. We have, in other words, not allowed for the possibilities of grace in the most impossible person.

We must seek the Lord for that grace which believes that the most impossible one can be made very possible through grace. A parenthetical word may be helpful here. We are not speaking about office, and appointment, and responsibility for work, and that sort of thing. If we have got to put trust in people so far as official responsibility is concerned, we shall have to use wisdom in their measurement and how far they can be trusted. But we are not speaking about that side of things. We are speaking about the ordinary relationships, the fellowship of the family and the increase and development of Christ in one another by mutual relationships. For it is in these relationships that the increase of Christ is to be brought about. There are possibilities for the development of the spiritual life along the line of fellowship which do not exist in the realm of isolation. The existence of isolated members means limitation in the extreme. Relationship and fellowship, is God's way of increase. And so we have got to note the law by which that increase comes about, and this is one of them: faith for one another, even though we may not have faith in another.

It is a very important thing, and what those disciples owed to that faith for them on the part of the Lord Jesus, perhaps we shall never know. They, with ourselves, will at some time in eternity simply have to say to the Lord Jesus: "I am here and what I am, and if ever I have been used at all by the Lord for His glory and satisfaction is because You did not take me at my own measure". We owe a great deal to the Lord's faith for us, and that is why He does not give us up. We must have the same spirit in our relationships with one another.

Running alongside of that we see His devotion to those disciples. There is one matchless declaration in which that devotion is summed up: "Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end." He gave Himself to them. He spent Himself for them. He did not walk in reservations: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." It is a family feature, the Firstborn is doing this for the rest of the family, and that which is true of the Firstborn is to be developed in the family.

That covers a good deal of ground which we are not staying to deal with in detail. We simply say it in a broad, inclusive and comprehensive way, and illustrate it by those simple points, that what is true of the Firstborn is the Father's design and desire to make true of all the family. The family shall take its character from the Firstborn and be conformed to His image.

Recognising that, there are some things which are basic fundamentally to that, without which that is all impossible and by which alone we can do this.

The first and primary thing is the absolute necessity for knowing one another after the Spirit. "The love of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him"; "Henceforth know we no man after the flesh." That means that as far as we can see, we have not made what we are by nature the final basis of our relationships, of our expectations, of our judgements, of our appraisals, of our valuations. It does not mean that we are oblivious of one another's human nature. It does not mean that what we are in the flesh never strikes us; that we are to be totally insensible to the defects of one another's nature. No! we shall always be sensitive. It is probably true that the more spiritual we are, the more sensitive we become to what we are by nature and to what others are by nature. Perhaps we shall suffer all the more because of the defects and imperfections, the strengths and the weaknesses of one another naturally.

Men of the world have but a very, very minute degree of the difficulty that Christians have of getting on with one another. They seem to be able to ignore and ride over one another's difficult parts and make-up. It seems that Christians are much more alive to that sort of thing than others, and are touched by it more keenly. Of course, we can explain that along two lines. If we become spiritually sensitive the flesh is sensed very much more quickly; what is not spiritual registers itself upon spiritual sensitiveness. There is also the fact that we have an adversary to reckon with who is always seeking to make a lot of the imperfections and brings them up and hits us with them. He is at work in this matter of seeking to upset the relationships of the Lord's people. He never tires of that. Not knowing one another after the flesh does not mean that all that realm will cease to exist for us, but it does mean that we shall look beyond that realm and we shall steadily seek grace and the help of the Holy Spirit to cultivate and develop a determination to look through what we are by nature to what there is of the Lord Jesus and of the Holy Spirit in one another, and keep our eyes upon that.

The Lord holds us responsible for doing a thing like that. We know that if we begin to talk about and dwell upon the imperfections of the Lord's children and criticise, the Lord smites us inwardly and says: "That is My child". He does not mean that is not true of them by nature, but He says: "There is something else there that is very precious to Me; be careful you do not damage that". That is knowing after the Spirit.

We do not see how it is possible for us to have faith for one another and to be truly devoted to one another in the sense in which the Lord was devoted to His disciples unless we look past nature in one another to that which is of the Lord. It is there that we fasten all our hope and expectation, and it is there that we have to find our fellowship. Our relationship is now not in the flesh, it is in the Spirit, and we must seek continually to fight against a relationship which is purely in the natural and maintain a relationship in the spiritual, inwardly. It is basic.

Love, forbearance, patience... all these things demand that there should be something more than nature upon which we are working. With all the forbearance that we can exercise, and all the love that we can show, there is no hope for anyone if there is not something more than this there. And it is upon that "something more" that our eyes have to be fixed, and it is there that we have to place the main value. "Your mother and your brethren are without asking for you"! "These are my mother and my brethren, that hear the word of God and do it." There is another kind of relationship from that of the flesh. True relationship is that beyond; with those who are seeking to walk with the Lord. And that is where our only hope is.

There is, of course, the other side and we must not forget this. There is a responsibility resting upon us for walking in the Spirit. It is all very well, of course, to say we must look always for the something extra, the something other in one another. But we must not make too great a demand upon other people for doing that. We must not lay too much store by a thing like that and say: "Well, they have got to know me after the spirit and not after the flesh". And thus put a big tax upon them to do it. That is rather making light of our imperfections and saying: "Oh well, I am made like that, and you will just have to take me as I am made; I am by nature an impulsive Peter you know, and the Lord loved impulsive Peter; and you will have to love me, though I am impulsive." Yes, but Peter was a changed man when the Holy Ghost got hold of him, and to talk about our human weaknesses and our natural imperfections and make light of them is rather in the direction of saying that we do not know very much about the mastery of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

We may be naturally quick tempered. Well, there have been many good men who were naturally quick tempered, and the Lord loved them, and they were children of God. It is easy to talk like that, but grace does count for something, and the Holy Spirit does represent something, and we must not make too much demand upon one another. There is a responsibility for walking in the Spirit and as we walk in the Spirit we shall find fellowship far more possible and far more profitable. If you walk in the Spirit and I walk not in the Spirit, or very much more in nature than you do, you may exercise a very great deal of this high spiritual character in bearing with me and forbearing; but fellowship will not be as profitable as it might be, and our glorifying of the Lord might not be as great as it might be if I were also walking as positively in the Spirit as you. A very great deal does depend upon our walking in the Spirit so that we can know one another after the Spirit. Oh! that we could provide one another with a large measure of what is the Spirit, so that there may be a knowing which is profitable. On the one hand allowance for one another, and on the other hand seeking positively to help one another over our respective imperfections.

That is family life. In the family which is a family indeed, all the members know one another and their attitude would be: "Well, that is So-and-so; we know him, we know her, and we therefore make allowances because we know them". But do we try, as we are able, to help them to be other than they are? That is bringing it down to an ordinary, natural level of things. But lift that into the spiritual, and it has this parallel: we must know one another and in our hearts make allowances because we know that is just So-and-so; but then, not because we know them just leave them to it, but seek in love to help in that direction. That must be quite mutual: helping to develop in one another the grace of the Lord Jesus. There is such a thing, after all, as praying for one another is there not? And it counts for much to pray for one another, even when we cannot do it in a more direct way with one another.

We are of noble birth. We are a royal family. Every member of this family, every child of God, everyone related to such a Prince as the Lord Jesus, should seek to exhibit that spiritual dignity that upholds the honour of the family and never allows anyone to have a reason to think or say that to be a Christian is to be something less than the best, the noblest, the finest. The world has often had reason to think very lightly and very little of many Christians, that they are less than the best. You and I, remembering our royal degree, should seek spiritual dignity to maintain the honour of the Name which we bear, that before others Christ's Name might be a great Name and a glorious Name as it rests upon us.

That, of course, calls for much and should lead us continually to seek the Lord diligently and earnestly that we might be marked by strength before men - holy strength, divine strength - and every other quality which is an expression of such a One as the Lord Jesus is. The Lord make us worthy to bear His Name in the family.

Chapter 11 - What Spirituality Is

There is one thing among the pre-eminent things - if it is not the pre-eminent thing - and a thing which includes so much, for which we should be constantly seeking the Lord. This one thing should be the object concerning which we are drawn out in prayer all the time. That thing is spirituality; in the true divine sense. There is very little doubt but that everything depends upon the measure of our spirituality. Everything is bound up with a spiritual state. We cannot estimate how important this is. True, pure spirituality of the divine kind, makes everything possible. There is a spirituality which is not of the divine kind, and there are many counterfeits of spirituality. So we stress the true, and the pure, and divine spirituality. It is concerning this that we shall be occupied for a little while.

There are two things in the main in the letter to the Ephesians which constitute and represent spirituality according to God. The one is the Holy Spirit; the other is what is meant by the word "heavenlies". If we took the references to the Holy Spirit alone in the letter to the Ephesians we should get the key to the fulness of Christ. We shall pass hurriedly over those references, and we shall see, in the summing up of them, that we have the basis of everything else. Let us run quickly over the letter.

Four Facts Concerning the Holy Spirit

In the first place we have the facts concerning the Holy Spirit as to the life of the believer, and in two passages we are told of the initial act of the Holy Spirit when faith in the Lord Jesus has been exercised. That act is

1. The Sealing of the Spirit

Ephesians 1:13: "In whom you also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom, having also believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise".

There is a fact: you were sealed when you believed, and the seal was the gift of the Holy Spirit Himself. That is not only something done and finished; it secures everything else, as implied by the last clause: "the Holy Spirit of promise". That points on to the inheritance. Ephesians 4:30: "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed unto the day of redemption".

The first fact, then, is the sealing of the Spirit, by which we are made God's spiritual people.

2. Introduction into the Presence of God

Ephesians 2:18: "For through Him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father".

That clearly says that we are introduced into the presence of the Father by the Spirit. "They that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth"; "God is a Spirit". The Lord put those words over against the formal, traditional worship in Mount Gerizim and in Jerusalem, and implied that in neither of those places was there really a genuine coming into the presence of God. It was historic worship, and as for coming into the presence of God, that was quite another thing. Now the question is of coming right into fellowship with God, and that is in spirit and in truth, representing a spiritual state. The spiritual state is essential for the presence of God, and that is represented by the Holy Spirit Himself being in possession, to bring us into living fellowship with the Father.

3. The Indwelling of the Spirit

The third fact is in the same chapter, Ephesians 2:22: "In whom you also are built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit".

The church is the dwelling place of God in the Spirit; God the Holy Spirit dwelling in the church, the Body of Christ; thus making this a spiritual building, a spiritual habitation, a spiritual Body, a spiritual church; defining quite clearly what the church is - a spiritual thing by reason of the Holy Spirit indwelling.

4. Revelation by the Holy Spirit

Ephesians 3:5: "Which in other generations was not made known unto the sons of men, as it has now been revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit".

Revelation by the Spirit is a constituent of the Body of Christ, the Lord's people. They are made a spiritual people because they have spiritual revelation. Something which has been reserved for revelation unto and by the Body of Christ, hidden - there, but unrevealed. But now the Body, the vessel, has been brought into being, unto which that secret was reserved, and the Holy Spirit is the Revealer of the secret. It is because of the nature and fact of that revelation that the church is a spiritual Body. The passage in chapter 1 verse 17 corresponds with that:

"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him".

The Revised Version uses a small "s" for "spirit" there, by which the revisers intend to imply that it is not the Holy Spirit that is being spoken of, but it is quite open to question as to whether such wisdom and revelation can be had apart from the Holy Spirit.

These are the four facts concerning the Holy Spirit in this letter, which make for spirituality.

Four Features of the Holy Spirit

There are also four features of the Holy Spirit in this Ephesian letter.

1. Strengthened Inwardly by the Spirit

Ephesians 3:16: "That He would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that you may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man".

The strength of the Lord's people is none other than the strength of the Holy Spirit in the inward man. Right at the very centre of the being, deeper than thought or reason, deeper than emotion or feeling, deeper than all that which comprises the more outward man which, under given circumstances, may prove weak and incapable of standing up to the situation. In the variations of our soul life, the changes of our moods, our ideas, our attitudes, our feelings, our minds; deeper down there is that strength which does not let us go. That is the true nature of spirituality. It is not the tremendously forceful conviction of our intellects or the mighty power of our wills. When these cannot stand up to conditions of intense spiritual antagonism, opposition or perplexity, there is that more inward thing, right in the inward man, which is of God - the Holy Spirit: "Strengthened with might by His Spirit into the inward man".

Test that out and the result is that when the mind is bewildered by the perplexity of a situation, and the arguments are all in the direction that a mistake has been made, a wrong course has been taken, everything is false - when all the feelings are churned up, disturbed, anxious, fearful, or when there are no feelings at all, they are simply petrified by the position - when circumstances are all arguing in the opposite direction of that which we, in the purest moments of our fellowship with God determined upon. The world around us - and very closely around us, even within the sphere of our own natural life, our own soul life - is an inexplicable mystery. Then spirituality is proved by that inward strength which abides. That standing when you cannot go forward; that holding when you can do nothing; that remaining when all the forces are seeking to sweep you off your feet. That represents a measure of spirituality. That is the true nature of the child of God. The opposite is to be carried away by argument, reasoning, appearance, circumstance, and all such things. That proves a lack of true spirituality.

In a sentence, true spirituality is not to live on the outside; it is to live with God right down deep in the inner part of your own being, where He, the Spirit, is.

2. The Unity of the Spirit

The second feature is in Ephesians 4:3: "Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace".

It is something which exists; something which is a part of the very fact that the Holy Spirit has been received by more than one person. If it is true that we have been baptized by one Spirit into one Body, and the very fact that more than one member has received the Holy Spirit - or the very fact that there is such a thing as the Body of Christ - carries with it implicitly the fact of a unity. It is not something to be brought about; it is something which exists and which has to be recognised as existing.

How true that was in the case of Israel, as revealed in the book of Joshua. They were brought up against the existence of this fact in a very sharp way. When Achan sinned, an individual member of the whole mighty host, every other single member of that host was affected and arrested, and the Lord's word was: "Israel has sinned"; not: Achan has sinned. In that way they came to see at least one method of keeping the unity, that is, not doing what Achan did. Our business, as this word clearly shows, and as we have heard many times, is not to try and make the unity of the Spirit - that is already there - but to give diligence to keep it. And to obey that injunction is very often a matter of very deep and mighty exercise before God. It represents some battles sometimes to keep the unity of the Spirit. A feature of spirituality, therefore, is diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit. Putting that round the other way, it is no mark of real spiritual life and growth to easily be divided in spirit from other believers. If it is easy to allow a strain upon fellowship to work out to rupture, to schism, to division, to separation, then the spiritual life is very low indeed.

3. Sensitiveness

The third feature of the Spirit, and therefore of spirituality, is found in Ephesians 4:30: "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed unto the day of redemption."

We all know more or less in our hearts what this means. We know, to some extent, what it means when the Holy Spirit in us is grieved. The measure in which we know that is the measure of our spirituality. We are compelled from time to time to wonder within ourselves as to the real measure of spirituality in some who seem to be able to do so much, say so much, that is altogether contrary to the Lord, and never seem to have a real pulling up from within. Spirituality means that whenever you or I speak detrimentally or disparagingly about another member of Christ, we have a bad time and have to go and ask the Lord to put that right. Spirituality means that, altogether apart from our firsthand knowledge of a situation, if we allow ourselves to go contrary to God in that, we shall know it. There is no need for us to acquaint ourselves with all the facts of every situation mentally in order to know the right and the wrong about that.

There is a realm in which it is our business to prove all things and to acquaint ourselves with facts, but if we were to give ourselves over as a matter of business to doing that in every connection, we should never do anything else. If God is in a thing and I begin to speak detrimentally of that and take an antagonistic attitude, I am pulled up from inside, apart from any intellectual knowledge of that thing. The Holy Spirit is jealous for the children of God, individually and collectively, and spirituality means you dare not put your hand upon things that are precious to the Lord. If you do, you know it. At the time you may not know why, but later on perhaps you do know. If only we were governed by the Holy Spirit we should know where we can be uncompromising with the jealousy of God, and not do wrong, and where, on the other hand, we must bear with certain things which are not positively evil, but perhaps features of immaturity and unenlightenment. But where there is a pure, true, attitude towards the Lord, there is a sensitiveness that is a feature of true spirituality; a sensitiveness to the Holy Spirit who has all the intelligence that can be had about everyone and everything. To be making progress spiritually is to become increasingly sensitive to the Holy Spirit and to know when the Spirit is grieved.

4. Being Filled with the Spirit

Ephesians 5:18: "And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit."

The following things represent an aspect of what it means to be filled with the Spirit:

Verse 19: "Speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord".

Verse 20: "Giving thanks always for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father".

Verse 21: "Subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ".

A good many people seem to think that to be filled with the Spirit is to get on top of everybody else. Here it says that to be filled with the Spirit is to subject yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.

These are the four features of the Spirit, which constitute spirituality. There are two other references to the Spirit in this letter, which comprise:

The Conditions of the Spirit and of Spirituality

1. The Word of God

Ephesians 6:17: "And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."

It is important for us to remember that the Holy Spirit does not move apart from the Word of God. In the corresponding Old Testament portion, the book of Joshua, we see that Joshua, as representing the energies of the Holy Spirit, took up what came by Moses, that is, the Word of the Lord. And everything that Joshua did was: "As the Lord spoke unto Moses". So that the Holy Spirit takes up the Word to make it live, and to bring us into the value of it. Unto that it is necessary that the Word of God dwell in us richly.

It is not enough, of course, to have the letter, but the letter being there provides the Holy Spirit with what is essential to Him for effectiveness. The Word of God should be in us in the hands of the Holy Spirit. We have to deplore the pathetic ignorance of the Word of God among so many Christians today. It is not always the immediate benefit from reading the Word that matters. Very often a word read, with no immediate and instant profit or conscious good in the course of the day or hours, or perhaps days afterwards, suddenly comes back in some connection, and is alive. The Holy Spirit has taken hold of something that was there. Having the Word has got to be regarded as a bit of duty or business, and the Lord will make use of that as He wills as we go on. It is important that the Word of God should be there; otherwise the Holy Spirit Himself is unable to lead us on unto the fulness of Christ.

2. Prayer

Ephesians 6:18: "With all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints".

Spirituality demands a background of prayer. The context of this passage is a very true one, that is, that it is set in a realm of conflict. Ephesians 4 is the conflict of the believer, and prayer is set in the realm of conflict. We know that the prayer life is the thing against which the battle rages, and for which we have to put up a real fight. If the enemy can in any way destroy or weaken our prayer life, he is sapping and mining for a future day. We may not immediately feel the detriment, but let a week or a fortnight pass in which prayer has been weakened, and a situation will arise which we are unable to meet, and which finds us weakened. Prayer is a condition of spirituality.

That covers the letter from that standpoint, as to what spirituality is. Now we can go through the letter again with the other word which represents spirituality.

The Heavenlies

We keep strictly to the original word. "Heavenly places" is what is in our context and in the Revised Version those two words are in italics, which helps us to see what was originally there. So we use the word "heavenlies".

Ephesians 1:3: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ..."

"Has blessed us" is the text. That is the position in which we are found right at the beginning of the book of Joshua, that is, God "has given". All the land is given. The position here is we are in the land when we are in Christ, and being in Christ, all that is in Christ is ours.

We may not yet have appropriated, appreciated, understood or enjoyed the value of it, but it is secured to us in Him. The inheritance is secured in Christ. Every spiritual blessing has been secured unto us in Him. "Has blessed us". We must remember that from God's standpoint the land of Canaan did not belong to the seven nations who occupied it. When Israel went in, their attitude virtually, from God's standpoint, was: "Get out of my land!" The enemy was saying: "This is my country, and you are an invader." No! It was just the opposite: they were the usurpers. That land had been secured by God; it was His. It was covenanted. Long before Israel was a nation it was God's. Those people occupied it only under sufferance for the time being, and Israel's attitude was: You are in my country.

That is exactly the position in the letter to the Ephesians. The forces now occupying the heavenlies, the principalities and powers, the world-rulers of this darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness are not in their native land; they have usurped the place that the Lord's people ought to have. It is ours already. The spiritual value of that is secured unto us in Christ. Ephesians 1:20-21: "Which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenlies, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come".

All that needs to be pointed out in connection with this is that the Lord Jesus, as Head of the church, is there. The Head being there, the whole Body is implied. As Head He occupies the pre-eminent place in the heavenlies. That of course means that the whole Body is to take its character from the Head, and to have all its relationships with the Head. There cannot be a separation between the Head and the rest of the Body. The relationship remains intact, and the Head is in heaven.

That leads to the second and corresponding passage. Ephesians 2:6: "And raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenlies, in Christ Jesus". Because the Head is there, the whole Body is represented as being there also. They are a heavenly people. Spirituality is this: that we recognise that we are in Christ a heavenly people and that we have no other connection with this earth and with this world, than of testifying in it. Ephesians 3:10: "To the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenlies might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God".

If you notice what precedes that, and what follows that, you will see that the eternal secrets of God are now being disclosed to heavenly orders by the instrumentality of the church. You go backwards, and you find God possessed of eternal thoughts, eternal intentions, eternal ways, and yet not disclosing them so that even celestial beings and spiritual bodies of both orders are in ignorance: "Which things angels desire to look into". He has covered them even from the angels, angels of various ranks, corresponding to the principalities and powers, the world rulers of this darkness, spiritual hosts. From both of these orders these divine secrets are hidden through ages. And then God brings the church, the Body of Christ, into being, and in the way in which He deals with that church in its formation, in its training, in its experience, in its government, His order, His appointments, His methods, His unveilings, He is educating these other realms. "That now (this is not in the ages to come) unto the principalities and powers... through the church the manifold wisdom of God." Spirituality means to have grasped something of that.

We are very materialistic in our Christianity; materialistic in this sense, that we are so dominated by what the world thinks and sees and knows, and we are so obsessed with the apparent and the manifest results of work or life. We are materialistic in the counting of heads, in statistics, in results seen, in something that can be appraised by the senses that can be shown to the world. The whole Christian system of work is a matter of what can be reported and what can be announced, what can be put on the advertisement pages of the religious press and what can be offered as a basis of appeal. It originates from man's obsession that what counts is, after all, what is seen as the result.

Ephesians carries us right away from this world, and says: There is something else going on which cannot be seen. Daniel prayed for twenty-one days, and saw nothing happening the whole time. Daniel might have been tempted to say: What is the good of prayer? Certainly Daniel could not have gone out after a fortnight, or even after twenty days, and published a book on the results of prayer as seen in this world. But on the twenty-first day he discovered that the whole twenty-one days had been marked by a terrific upheaval in the universe. Principalities and powers had got to work, heavenly orders and Satanic orders were in conflict because he prayed. He may have had an echo of that conflict in his own spirit and found that he was in a battle registering something in heaven, and he had to fight through; but as to seeing anything or being intelligent with any kind of natural intelligence, that realm was perfectly barren; and yet the mightiest things were happening. We know from his book that the whole range of the ages was being touched, right on to the end, to the coming of the Lord, in the day when the Kingdom is given to the saints of the Most High. That was being fought out.

Spirituality is to get to the back of things seen, and to be in the great heavenly things that God is working out, and recognise that when we can see nothing, something is happening. The real sphere of the church's work is not here on this earth. It is in the realm which governs this earth, at the back of what is taking place here. Our impact must be registered upon the forces which govern this world. Spirituality is tested not by how many you can count as the result of your labours here, but by the registration of the Throne of the Lord upon spiritual forces, and by the educative value of God's dealings with His own people.

That may be strange, it may even be mystical to some. Do not worry if you cannot enter into that, but here it is; and it is an important thing, and a real feature of spirituality. Ask the Lord to explain that to you, when you are asking Him to teach you what spirituality is.

Ephesians 4:10: "He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things". Our only comment upon that for the moment is that fulness comes from the heavens. The heavens are always a type of universality. You may even get away from the sea, but you cannot get away from the heavens. The heavens will bound you wherever you go, and the heavens being a type of universality and of fulness, say to us through this passage that, inasmuch as He ascended on high that He might fill all things, the heavenly people are destined to be the expression of the fulness of Christ.

"Filled unto all the fulness of God"; "The church which is His body, the fulness of Him that fills all in all". That is a very familiar thought, but it comes here in the course of our consideration of what is spirituality. It is recognising that fulness depends upon our being related to heaven, and inasmuch as we are bound by this world, we are limited spiritually.

Ephesians 6:10-12: "Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies".

Spirituality is a matter of possessing our possessions in Christ, and, in order to do that, we have to dispossess the enemy of that territory. We must not get an objective mentality about that. We must remember that this territory which, in other words, is Christ in His excellency, His spiritual and moral glories and in all that He is for us from God, should be occupied by Him in those things as now occupied by the enemy. Look into our own hearts. That ground which should be occupied by the life of Christ is occupied by the enemy in hatred, and malice, and evil thinking, and evil speaking, and so on. The enemy has got to be dispossessed, and his goods cast out, and that ground occupied by the Lord Jesus. That is gaining Christ. That represents a conflict and a conquest, and that means that the enemy is going to challenge us on that ground and it is not going to be easy. It is not ground to be a walk-over to get rid of the Satanic provocation to evil thinking and evil speaking and such like things. It is not simply that those things are there by nature: they are stimulated by the enemy, so that even when we would show love there is something working which is in addition to ourselves - a strength which is not the strength merely of our evil nature, but the strength of the enemy working upon some ground in us. That means we have to get away and have a real battle, and say: I will fight through, until I can show love and forbearance in that particular direction. That gets you away from the cloudy idea of the heavenlies, and shows that heavenliness is something within, and it is a matter of conquest by a challenge to every step of the territory, until we are conformed to the image of Christ, and Christ is fully formed in us.

Chapter 12 - The Ground Upon Which the Fulness of Christ is Entered Into

In our meditation we shall come to the book of Joshua, and see there illustrated and set forth in typical form - the elements which are in the letter to the Ephesians.

Joshua and Spirituality

While there are two minor sections in the book of Joshua, such as the preparation at the beginning and the farewell at the end, we may say that the book of Joshua is in two main sections. They are (1) the conquest of the land, and (2) the inheritance in the land. Both these sections are governed by one feature. They are governed and characterised by what we may call the Levitical feature; that is, the Levites are seen to have a place of very great pre-eminence and importance in both sections.

In the first section they are not mentioned so often as in the second section, but their place is undoubtedly one of great importance and significance. Whereas in the earlier parts of the Old Testament distinction is more often than not clearly drawn between the priests and the Levites, in the book of Joshua the two seem merged; there seems to be a linking in together. And in the early chapters where the Levites are mentioned, it is put in this way, "The priests the Levites", as though they were one. That gives the Levites a very important place. The priests, of course, in the earlier books are before the Levites. Priestly service in its full development, as represented by the sons of Aaron, is the supreme thing spiritually and elevates to a very high position. The Levites in that order came afterwards. In the book of Joshua that difference is not marked at all; the Levites and the priests seem to be one and are spoken of as one: "The priests the Levites". We shall be seeing what the main significance of that is; it really lies at the root of our whole meditation. If the Levites are not mentioned as frequently in the first part of the book as in the second, it is not the number of references that gives them their importance, it is the position which they hold.

The Levites carried the Ark through the Jordan and into the land and are given that tremendously important position of being in charge of that which represents the whole Testimony of the Lord. In relation to that Ark, to that Testimony, all other things are ordered. Everything that follows in life, in service, in conquest, is bound up with that Ark which is entrusted to the shoulders of the Levites. There could be very little more important place and function than that; to recognise the responsibility for the Testimony of the Lord in relation to which every other thing is found.

This first reference is in chapter 3 verses 3-4: "And they commanded the people, saying, When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then you shall remove from your place, and go after it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that you may know the way by which you must go; for you have not passed this way heretofore".

Let us get the immediate import of that before passing on to the greater meaning in the rest of the book.

The Levites bearing the Ark of the Testimony are in an advance position, a very distinct position. It is as though they were clearly outlined and placed so that they are not mixed up, confused, involved, but there they are, with the Testimony, in a very distinct and definite way so that all can see and that space of two thousand cubits is to be maintained. The object of it is: "...that you may know the way". This is distinctiveness, clearness as to the testimony, so that there is no close approximation of man as man to it. That is, there is no personal association with the testimony in a natural sense. You are at once discerning the spiritual and heavenly feature which is introduced immediately there is this movement forward into the final fulness of inheritance. The progress is marked from the outset by this distinctiveness, the nature of which is that man naturally is not in touch with this thing (not merely in the evil flesh, but natural man naturally). This is something which in its true nature is other than man, and has got to be kept in that clearly defined place; for immediately that space is lessened there will be confusion as to the way.

The best way of understanding that is to bring it to experience, and it is not difficult to see that when the pure, true testimony of the Lord finds even Christian men and women in too close a proximity to it, too closely associated with it, its distinctiveness is lost and before long there is a measure of confusion and the missing of the way. It does not mean here that unregenerate man takes hold of it, or that there is anything violently carnal or fleshly; but man has a way of just allowing his natural interests, his natural ambitions, his natural enthusiasms for the things of God to come and impinge upon those spiritual things. He lets his mind and his reason come to bear upon the things of God; not necessarily an evil mind, but just his natural mind taking hold of the things of God. His will (not necessarily, again, an evil will) begins to prevail; he wants the work of God to go this way, he wants the interests of the Lord to take this course, he wants the things of the Lord to develop in such and such a manner.

And so man - saved man, consecrated man, man given to God yet still having his own reason, and his own will, and his own ideas, and his own feelings about things - brings those things to bear upon the Lord's Testimony. And whenever that happens, that Testimony loses its clear definition and before long there is a measure of confusion and missing the way, and we find that things have taken a wrong course. They have been influenced out of the way by that flesh, that natural life. That has happened again and again all the way through the story of the things of the Lord. So the Lord says quite definitely at the outset of the heavenly life: Stand back there. That is, "Do not bring your things to bear upon My things; My things are spiritual and heavenly, and the natural man has no touch with these things, and if you bring yourself in any kind of way - even with the very best motives - to bear upon this, before long there will be a going out of the straight and a loss of distinctiveness and there will be confusion".

It is a very good law of straightforward progress toward the fulness of Christ. We know it in experience, but let us ever bear it in mind in practice.

So the Levites here represent the distinctiveness of the Testimony as being a heavenly, a spiritual thing, with which there was to be no association of man naturally, even though consecrated man. The next reference to the Levites in the first section is in chapter 8 verse 33, but it is just the same thought in another connection and we will not stay with it.

The second section of the book brings a great many references to the Levites. You will find two in chapter 14, verses 3 and 4; then in chapter 18 verse 7; then there are nine references in chapter 21, verses 1, 3, 4, 8, 20, 27, 34, 40 and 41. These references to the Levites in the latter chapters of the book are divided into two things. Really they are one, but they have two aspects.

On the one hand they refer to the fact that the Levites had no inheritance; that is, that the Levites were not to be given, as the other tribes, a portion of the land. The territory of the country was not to be divided so that the Levites inherited in the same way as the others. You will have the land of Zebulun, the land of Judah, the land of Simeon, the land of Benjamin; but you will never have the land of Levi. The Lord made it very clear, by many declarations, that the Levites were not to inherit in the same way as the others.

Then, on the other hand, these references have to do with the Levitical cities; that there were to be cities and the suburbs thereof appointed for the Levites. These cities were scattered throughout all the tribes, and were forty-eight in number.

These two things are full of very important and very precious instruction. We must go back to remind ourselves of the real meaning of the Levites. Who and what are the Levites? In that order, which is but an order in type, the thought of God was never that the Levites should be a distinct class. We know from the book of Exodus and the book of Numbers that the Levites took the place of the firstborn in all the families of Israel. All the families of Israel originally were represented by their firstborn, gathered up in the firstborn (let us note the completeness of that, the closeness of the relationship, constituting something corporate - not a congregation but a body) and the firstborn was given to God, meaning that the whole family was God's family as included in and represented by the firstborn.

All Israel became God's firstborn son as represented in the firstborn of every family. That is how the Lord spoke of Israel in sending His demand to Pharaoh: "Thus said Jehovah... Let My son go". "Israel is My son; My firstborn"; "I will slay your son, your firstborn". Those sons were to appear before God, and as they appeared before God, God saw in them every other member of the family, so that all Israel was there in the firstborn in the eye of God. When the firstborn became so numerous, the families so many, the Lord instituted a course which led to the appointing of the sons of Levi to substitute the firstborn in all Israel. So that the sons of Levi became, in effect before the Lord, the firstborn of all Israel. Therefore in the sons of Levi and the tribe of Levi, all that is meant by the sonship of Israel is expressed and represented. Sonship is embodied in the tribe of Levi.

In the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 23, we are told that we have come to the church of the firstborn ones, whose names are registered, or enrolled, in heaven. So that the Levites clearly represent the whole church as a heavenly thing. Sonship is a heavenly thing. You have only to read further to have that brought home. The Lord Jesus as the Son is always connected with heaven; He came from heaven, and is in heaven even while He is here. There is an unbroken position in, and fellowship with heaven in Sonship. Wherever that Son may be, heaven is there, and that is heaven. So that the Levites make all Israel a heavenly people, a spiritual people; that is the central truth about the Levites.

When you bring that through into relationship with these two things which we have noted about the Levites, then you are beginning to understand why they have no inheritance and why there are these cities.

Why is there no inheritance? Simply because they are not separated from Israel to have a territory apart. They are Israel. To put the tribe of Levi in its own territory would make it something separate from Israel, and would violate the very principle that they are in existence to maintain. Levites are not a class. In our time ministers who have certain voices, and certain collars, are not the Levites. All the saints are the Levites; the Levites are not a class apart. The Lord forbids, with constant emphasis, anything that would make the Levites something by themselves, and says: "What they are, all My people are: spiritual and heavenly."

Why were there Levitical cities with their suburbs? We will explain that in a moment, but first of all we would say that all the inheritance of all the tribes is Christ. The whole land represents Christ. Inheriting the land is only inheriting (or, as Paul would put it, gaining) Christ. What do the Levites say about the whole inheritance, as not being separated from it and given something of their own which divides them as a tribe? They say this - and a very important thing - that even Christ has got to be apprehended spiritually; that even Christ has to be known in a heavenly way. There is a knowing of Christ after the flesh. There can be an historical knowledge of Christ. There can be a coming to rejoice in the inheritance in a fleshly way. And that was Israel's peril all the time in the land, that they should take the land, and take their portion, and have it on the level of their own natural life for their own natural satisfaction and enjoyment, and fail to hold it for God. That is exactly the thing which issued in the tragedy of the Book of Judges. The four hundred years of shame, of tragedy, for the greater part, was because the people regarded the inheritance in a personal, selfish way, and their attitude toward it was this: Well, we have got so much of it, we have possessed this much; there are still enemies, still difficulties, still battles; but we can be satisfied with this; the other is too costly, and too difficult; we have enough to get on with. And so they did not clear the whole territory. It was a personal interest which governed them. The result was that they left those enemies, and God's Name was brought into dishonour. If they had taken the attitude: How much does the Lord require? not just: What will we be contented with? then the book of Judges as it is written, would never have been written. Speaking in New Testament days, they appropriated Christ naturally; they held Christ after their own mind. The Levites were there with the express purpose of saying in the first place: Now the inheritance must be apprehended spiritually and in a heavenly way, and you must not come down on to the things of Christ in the natural.

Do not regard all this as so much technique. We revolt against saying things for the sake of teaching only. Whether you recognise it or not, we are saying the things which lie right at the heart of the Lord's interests. The importance of our recognising these things cannot be estimated, if we have any responsibility at all in the things of the Lord; and we have! We can only come to God's end, reach God's goal, forward God's eternal thought, as ours is a spiritual and heavenly life, and as in a spiritual and heavenly way we apprehend Christ. It is one thing for us to take this book and go through it with Bible readings, in which we are able to trace Christ and give ordered, arranged, organised Bible readings about Christ in the Scriptures; and see Christ in Genesis, and Christ in Exodus, and Christ in Leviticus, and Christ in Numbers; it is quite another thing to get to the back of all that and have a spiritual revelation of Christ. It may be interesting truth, it may even be fascinating, but there are certain questions that remain at the end of all that, which challenge an answer. How much of all that has brought about an increase of Christ in us? How much more of the fulness of Christ as a spiritual reality in our lives is resultant from that?

Bible readings on Christ may be interesting and engrossing; but they may fall short of real spiritual enlargement of Christ in us - that is only possible as the Holy Spirit comes in a quickening way and brings us into a new spiritual position as the result of it all. Meetings, conferences, conventions, all these things may be good and yet they may just be so much more knowledge about and not of the Lord. They may be something that brings us information and what seems like inspiration, but they may just fail to reach that point: "That He would grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge." That is a spiritual thing.

This is not intended to be a criticism or a judgement, but a discrimination. If our meditation does not result in some spiritual enlargement, it has failed. All that arises out of the fact that the Levites are there, not as a part, but to make all know that the very occupation of the inheritance must be a spiritual thing and not a natural thing, even on the part of the people of God.

Turning now to the forty-eight Levitical cities given to the Levites. What do they speak of? They speak of what we have just said, which can be put in another way. They are not, in the same sense, an inheritance. They are the portion for the Levites; they are given to the Levites scattered throughout the land. They are to give a distinctiveness to the fact that Levites are there, to keep the Levitical element in a clearly defined place. But they speak pre-eminently of spiritual and heavenly influences predominating among all the people. The fact that the Levites have cities throughout all the land is intended to say: "Now, remember that you are a heavenly people; never forget that you are a spiritual people. Never settle down on this earth as though you belonged to it. Never drag down your heavenly possessions for merely personal and fleshly ends. Never make the church a thing which is linked with this world. Always remember that you belong to heaven, and that your essential nature is spiritual, as God's people." Paul would speak about that in this way: "Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for a Saviour". The Levites were there to keep that in constant remembrance, "Here we have no continuing city... we seek one to come." This is not, after all, our home; our home is heaven and all our interests are heavenly, all our relationships are heavenly, all our life is a spiritual life. That has to be recognised by the individual believer, but its full value relates to the church. The church is not an organisation on this earth, produced by man; the church is a heavenly, spiritual Body.

Cities are always, in the Word of God, representative of influence. They are centres of influence. These forty-eight cities, scattered through the land, are intended to be heavenly influences amongst the saints; those places which influence the saints in a heavenly way, giving heavenly and spiritual character to the people of God. What the cities of the Levites were to be to Israel, the assemblies of Christ here on this earth have to be. They have all the time to be centres of heavenly and spiritual influence amongst the Lord's people. It is a testimony that is maintained by the Levitical cities; a heavenly Testimony a spiritual testimony. The number 48 may have some significance. It is twelve times four, and that may speak of universality and predominance. Twelve is the number of government; four is the number of creation. The government of all things is to be spiritual and heavenly.

In the book of Numbers the Levites are referred to a great deal, but always in connection with their service, their ordered service. In the book of Joshua they are referred to quite a lot, but not in relation to their service. The ordered service of the Levites does not come up in the book of Joshua, but what is associated with the Levites in the book of Joshua is their presence; not their specific work, but the fact of their presence, and that carries with it its own meaning: the presence of that which is always testifying to the heavenly and spiritual nature of God's people. We cannot but feel that that goes to the heart of all the trouble in the churches in Asia. The letter to the Ephesians was a circular letter for the seven churches in Asia. The same is true in connection with Colossians. There you have God's thought for the church. Seven is the number of spiritual perfection. The seven churches in Asia are representative of the whole church. Completeness is in the seven churches, and God's thought for the complete church is presented in the letter to the Ephesians. The thought is that it is spiritual and heavenly. When you read the Revelation: "John to the seven churches..." the explanation of all the trouble that is found there is that they lost what the Ephesian letter contains; that is, the heavenly and spiritual position and character. They came down to earth. The Lord's quarrel with them, in one way and another, is on one point: the loss of heavenliness and spirituality. In one place it is indicated by certain things, in another place it is indicated by other things; but whatever the features of it are, the thing in question is the same: You have come from your original position, you have lost My thought.

The church is not an earthly thing; it is a heavenly thing. The church is not a thing made and carried on by man; the church is a heavenly thing carried on by the Holy Ghost. It is the presence of what is heavenly that makes the Lord's people His church. The presence of the Levites in Joshua represented always that the people were heavenly and spiritual people; that is, they gave the character to the family. And so all the time this is a spiritual, a heavenly family.

Speaking of the idea of the city, you know quite well that when you get to 'John' in the Revelation, you only have the full development of what you have in the Gospel by John. It is very interesting to note the outstanding features of all John's writings. They are what is spiritual and what is heavenly. Now in the Gospel you have the Son in heaven, the heavenly Son, coming down; and yet, after having come down, still remaining heavenly in the earth. Then you pass on towards the end, and in chapter 17 you have the church in the nucleus spoken of in exactly the same terms as the Son is spoken of: "I am not of this world"; "They are not of this world." The church in its nucleus is heavenly and spiritual, just as is the Head, Christ.

Now you carry through from the Gospel to the Apocalypse, and you have that brought to fulness and completeness in the city in heaven coming down; it is heavenly; showing what the church is. And then you find that in that figure of the city coming down out of heaven you have these other features - universality and spiritual dominion. The church is going to govern the universe spiritually, by reason of its spiritual nature. And so you find that with the city you have "twelve" very frequently mentioned. It is government, but it is spiritual government.

Let us seek to see the tremendous importance and value of spirituality, of spiritual apprehension, of knowing Christ in a spiritual way (not in a mental way merely, or in any other way: traditional or historical, or credal, or ecclesiastical). That is the only way to God's end - fulness.

That applies to the individual believer, but it also applies to the church, the Body, destined to be the fulness of Him that fills all. But it will never reach that along historical lines and never reach that along merely traditional lines and never along ecclesiastical lines. It will only reach that along spiritual lines. It is the spirituality and heavenliness which is the mark of distinctiveness.

We must be careful that all distinctiveness is spiritual, not because we have a quarrel with people on points (it is easy to come out from other people and set up something separate and talk about distinctiveness; that has been done ad libitum). The question is: How much more of what is really livingly spiritual and heavenly is represented by that, than by that which is left behind? It is not a matter merely of creed, or doctrine, splitting hairs in interpretation, scenting something that may not seem to be authentic. It is the measure of spirituality and heavenliness in a living, effective way, registering something that is the justification for distinctiveness. Distinctiveness is not something that we do; it is something that we are. The Lord save us from anything mechanical in the way of separation, and show that it must be a spiritual testimony. That is the only kind of justified separation.

Chapter 13 - The Cities of Refuge

Reading: Joshua 20:1-6; Deut. 19; Ex. 21; Numbers 35; Hebr. 6:18; Psalm 91:1-2.

The Levitical cities, scattered throughout the land, represent the heavenly and spiritual influences set up and maintained amongst the Lord's people to keep them always reminded that they are not of this world; they are a heavenly people and a spiritual people.

The cities of refuge speak to us of a spiritual reality in connection with the Lord's people when they have come into the land; that is (referring to the corresponding portion in the New Testament, the letter to the Ephesians) when they have come to recognise and by faith accept their place in the heavenlies in Christ. The important thing to recognise is that these cities of refuge are in the land, and they are something subsequent to conquest. It is true, as we shall see, that they have right at their heart a Gospel message in the more elementary sense, but the full message reaches on to people who have come into the inheritance, into the land, into the heavenlies, and that they are there by way of instruction and by way of governing things in the life of the Lord's own people. These cities speak of government, places of authority, of power, of influence (that is the meaning of 'city'). Everything comes under the shadow of the city. The city prevails over all the land round about. It always ought to be so in a properly ordered land.

These cities, speaking of government, authority, control and influence, speak of a certain spiritual factor which has ever to be predominant amongst the Lord's people, even in their fullest spiritual attainment. What is that spiritual factor? The Levitical cities speak of spirituality and heavenliness predominating amongst the Lord's people.

The cities of refuge speak of grace always in the ascendant amongst the Lord's people; grace governing, controlling, reaching out with open doors, always ready to give a hearing; never to prejudge, ruling out everything in the nature of prejudice; with a highway always clear. If you read the Lord's instructions, you will find they include this particular injunction: that the highways to the cities of refuge were always to be kept clear of obstruction so that the one who was fleeing to the city of refuge might have no difficulty in getting there. The people were to see to it that the highways were kept open and that no one would have his progress impeded as he was fleeing to the city, so that these cities speak of an open, clear way to take into account any situation and give it the fullest sympathetic understanding and consideration.

There is this other factor, that the cities of refuge were also included in the Levitical cities, so that they were Levitical cities. The two things are brought together. This is heavenly grace governing. These cities, being in the hands of the Levites, speak to us of the ministration of grace being in the hands of spiritually minded, heavenly minded people; the necessity for spiritual and heavenly mindedness ministering grace wherever grace is needed.

That is the general background and atmosphere in which we move when we consider the cities of refuge. There is very much more included in that, but we first of all have to get the spiritual implications of this divine provision and appointment.

They were six in all: three in the land of the inheritance and, strangely yet wonderfully, three on the other side of Jordan where the two-and-a-half tribes had settled down, declining to come into the land. This also speaks of grace to them that are within and to them that are without. Those people had not come into all the Lord's thought and intention for them. They had chosen something less full and yet God in grace reaches out to them. Whatever company you belong to, if you get any divine goodness at all it is of grace, in grace, not merit or works. People who come into the greater fulness do not come into it on their own merit; it is the grace of God which governs. Those who do not go on all the way will lose the inheritance, but they are under grace.

You will notice that when the Lord spoke to Moses in the first place, as recorded in the book of Deuteronomy about these cities of refuge, He said that three were to be appointed. In the first instance three only were mentioned. A little later He said that three were to be added to the first three. The original thought of God is not that there should be a full recognition of those two-and-a-half tribes yonder as being wholly in God's will. God does not, in the first instance, mention the six as though He had already fully and finally accepted that more outside position on the same ground as He has accepted the inside. And so He only mentions the three; but, having settled that, He says later that there are to be three added. He reaches out in grace. There is a deeper thought there. He reaches out in grace, but it is an additional thing, something extra of grace. It shows God going, as we should say, the second mile in grace. He would that three had been enough, but, inasmuch as they have not come in, He will reach out to them in grace. But it is an extra gesture. The Lord save us from being in the realm of His necessitated extra gesture of grace, and find us in the place where we are in the common grace, which is quite enough.

Let us seek to get more deeply into the meaning of these cities, and we must get to the deepest point of all, just as far as we have light. We must get to the back of the illustration, to the great spiritual reality and take the elements and the factors which go to make up this whole situation.

The first and pre-eminent factor in this whole matter is life. It is a question of life. God has given life. God's will is life. God alone is the Author of life, and life is God's own peculiar property. Life is always reserved to God. It is sacred to God - God alone gives it, and God alone should take it. He claims the absolute Sovereignty in the matter of life.

The next thing is there is an enemy to life; one who is against God, and who is therefore against that which is pre-eminently God's right, God's prerogative, God's gift. A murderer, a slayer, a destroyer. That one is active. He lies in wait. He rises up and smites. You notice these are the things said about the one who does not slay inadvertently, unwittingly, but lies in wait and then rises up and smites. There is one doing that all the time. He has done that on a very large scale in God's family. There is therefore the necessity on the part of God of dealing with him, and the murderer (not the unwitting slayer) is taken into view here, and there is no hope for him; there is no chance for him, he must be slain. Why? Because loss has been suffered, and that loss has to be made good because there has been a diminishing of God's thought and intention, and that has to be recovered and made good. God's plans have been upset and God is a God of equity and will have everything equal. Nobody is going to prosper at the expense of another; that is the law of God running through everything.

The grim side of this is satisfaction by the destroying of the destroyer. Take the case of the family: the avenger, who really has got the murderer (not the unwitting slayer) the man who thought of it, and waited his opportunity, was lying in wait, and then rose up and smote; the avenger, the one upon whom rests the responsibility for restoring the balance, gets the murderer, and he is absolutely justified in slaying the murderer and it is not blood-guiltiness. Now the grim feature of that is this, that absolute satisfaction is found along that line. A relative has been slain! What satisfaction can you get? Your satisfaction is got by slaying the slayer. You say: Grim satisfaction! But trace the principle at the back of that. Life has been appropriated; therefore the balance must be restored by forfeiting life. The principle is the balance of life before God. That murderer is represented as having possessed himself of a life that is not his own. Inasmuch as he cannot give back that life, his life must be forfeited for it. Robbery is murder; murder is robbery according to the law. He that is guilty of one is guilty of the other. Hatred is murder. There is a fulness, a balance, about divine law. The grim satisfaction is in having slain the slayer because of the principle which lies behind, that life must be equalised.

Take the other side before we follow that through further; the unwitting slayer, the man who has slain in error, without malice, without forethought, without intention, and without hating, by accident. The Lord gives an illustration. He says: "As when a man goes into the forest with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetches a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slips from the helve, and lights upon his neighbour, that he die". It was inadvertent. Yes, but the man is dead, life has gone; how is that going to be made good? One lives, the other is dead, and a family has been robbed of a father, a son, a brother. Is there no way of restoring the balance, even in the case of an accident? The effect is just the same as though it were intentional. That is just the point. Away to the city of refuge must that man go. It is no use saying: I did not mean it, I did not intend it, there was no malice in my heart. He must get to the city of refuge. He must get to the altar and get hold of those horns. His case must be investigated. The avenger of blood is not taking any put-up case; he is in hot pursuit, as though it were murder. And he is right, he is acting still on the principle that life must be maintained in balance.

The avenger of blood reaches the city after the man-slayer. The man-slayer is there; he has taken hold of the horns of the altar; and the avenger reaches him too late to overtake him on the way and has to stand back; and his question is: "What about the recompense? Have I to be cheated of the balance?" The slayer's case is investigated, and found to be a right case; the congregation, with spiritual discernment, determine the man is not guilty of murder because it was not intentional but unwillingly done. Is the avenger to turn round and walk away, a disappointed man, a man of loss, as though God's very law had cheated him? No! This is an established thing and the attitude of the avenger has to be: "That man did not mean it; it is quite clear, the case is a sound one; he had no malice, no hatred, no bitterness, no thought of evil. There was no murder in his heart, it was an accident. I recognise that. I accept that verdict." What happens? We ought to know what happens! If we forgive one another, even as God for Christ's sake forgave us, there is no loss in that. Grace makes good everything.

Bring this down to the simplest everyday application. "Beloved avenge not yourselves, but give place unto the wrath of God, for it is written: Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, says the Lord". You feel that an injury has been done to you; in the presence of God, in the presence of the Cross the deepest truth has been uncovered, not with real malice or hatred, not with intention, but overtaken, accidentally "overtaken in a fault", a loss caused, something unexpected, unprepared for. It simply happened, it came out; and you suffered. In the presence of that Cross you see the love and the grace of God. You see in that altar a testimony which speaks of One Who in infinite grace forgave to the uttermost; and you enter into the spirit of that Cross, and seek the grace of God in relation to that injury and that injurer, and you forgive. You, for Christ's sake, overlook and do not store up in your heart bitterness and revenge. Let it go for the Lord's sake. Do you tell me that you have lost? We know quite well that every such attitude brings an abundant reward in the heart, a satisfaction; you feel, you know, that you have gained more than you lost, that you are not impoverished. Grace has come out and you have entered into the grace of God, and that is your reward for every bit that you have suffered at the hands of others. Even as God for Christ's sake forgave us, forgive...

There is gain in that. Because to attain unto the grace of God in that way, by a triumph, by a victory, by a deliberate facing of the situation in the presence of the Cross, and saying: "Well, if I am revengeful I put myself outside of the realm of grace, and then supposing the Lord deals with me as I deal with others! I will have a difficult time... I must deal with others as the Lord has dealt with me." There is a ministration of life to us, the grace of life. We thus make an increase of Christ. It is a way of attaining to greater fulness in Christ. It is victory. There is no loss in that. Leave everything else with the Lord: "Vengeance is Mine" said the Lord. You say: "Are these people - who perhaps acted intentionally, deliberately, and if they had been a little more careful it would not have happened - to be let off?" You must take a higher place and you find that that is gain. Put it this way, and say: "If when you are buffeted for wrong you suffer it, what do you more than others? But if when you do good and are buffeted for it and take it patiently, this is grace with God." Grace is always favour, blessing, enrichment.

Coming back again to the cities of refuge, do you notice the introductory words concerning their appointment? "When you are come into the land, and the Lord has subdued all your enemies, then appoint these cities; make provision for people who are faulty, who make mistakes. You are in such a wealthy position, you can surely afford to do that. It is an entering into the appreciation of your inheritance in Christ. The Lord has subdued all your enemies, Calvary is universal victory. Can't you afford to show grace to people who are blundering around you, people who are perhaps hurting you and injuring you? You are in such spiritual elevation that surely you can do things like that!"

If really we have come to any kind of spiritual appreciation of the greatness of the thing the Lord has done for us in the Cross - brought us into His own fulness and subdued all our enemies - we cannot be a mean people, we cannot be small and petty, we must be generous because of the greatness of our position in Christ. It simply works out in this way: the larger our apprehension of what the Lord has done for us in His Cross, the more generous we ought to be to others - the more longsuffering and forbearing, the less ready to quickly return evil for evil, more ready to bear and to suffer wrong. It must be a very limited apprehension of Calvary when we very swiftly snap at one another for things that we feel are wrong. There has to be a very great deal of overlooking, a great deal of generosity, grace has got to triumph by reason of the exalted spiritual place: the elevation of our position in the heavenlies. These cities must rule, grace must predominate in the heavenlies.

There is provision made for mistakes, even when you get to the heavenlies in Christ. It does not look like sinless perfection. It does not look as though all the faults and the mistakes and the blunders and the injuries have ended, even when you come into the heavenlies. It looks as though grace will still be necessary to bear with things that go wrong. There must be some wrong, then, even when we get spiritually to that position. The Lord says that there is grace for that.

There is another thing we want to see. The New Testament is very much concerned with the inadvertent and unwitting slayer, recognising that it is slaying after all, though it be unwittingly. It speaks like this: "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, you which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meekness". And then it speaks about the weak brother and our causing the weak brother to stumble. The latter chapters of the first letter to the Corinthians - the eleventh chapter and round about there - have to do with the weak brother and our causing the weak brother to stumble; not because the thing which we do is in itself wrong, but because it may have a detrimental effect upon another if we do it and our doing of it has got to be in the light of how it may affect the weak brother. We are not going to argue for the right or the wrong of very moderate drinking, for instance. I may have quite settled views about it, but I do remember a man who was rescued from the life and the tragedy of an evil life of a drunkard, whose children were almost naked, whose wife had a life of martyrdom, whose home was stripped of every comfort. And that man was wonderfully saved, so much so that within a few weeks his whole personal appearance changed, his children changed, his wife changed, his home began to see things becoming comfortable. It was a marvellous transformation. Sometime after he was invited to supper with an officer of the church, who had just a glass of beer for supper and he was offered the glass of beer and took it; and all the work was undone. He went back to the old life and tragedy came in again. The argument as to whether that church officer ought to have a glass of beer or not is not the point for the moment. The point is that that man ought to have taken his weak brother into consideration and that night, at any rate, have left that out. He became a man-slayer, not intentionally, not by any forethought. He had a loose axe-head, and he ought to have taken care of it.

There is a responsibility, apart from any deliberateness, to see that your axe-head is not loose. You may find yourself involved in a very difficult situation of responsibility before God, in a kind of in-between position; whether, on the one hand, there was any murder in heart, or, on the other hand, whether it was a pure accident. You should have had a look at your axe-head. The New Testament takes such a position into account.

That applies to how we may speak. Our axe-head may be in the way of our loose tongue injuring our brother. It may be in other ways. It may be our loose temper. Oh! for more of the government of grace in our hearts... forgiveness, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven; forbearance, watchful care and mutual love. It all comes within the compass of the meaning of the cities of refuge.

Going back to what we call the grim side, I can see One Who took the place of those who had become infected with rebellion and heart-murder. (It is not always the act, as the law makes clear, but it is the very fact that it is in the heart, apart from the act or the execution, which makes a murderer.) When the truth is known, we are at enmity with God. The most religious person, subjected to a severe enough test, will be found to be at heart at enmity with God; even those who naturally, apart from any kind of religious up-bringing or training or profession, would repudiate any suggestion that they are against God. If they were subjected to certain tests and trials, where God was putting them through fires, it would be discovered that inwardly there is a hidden fire of revolt against God. At the heart of every man and woman there is murder. It takes the Cross of Calvary to bring all that out. We who have had the Cross applied deeply in our lives know quite well something of our own hearts which we would never have believed before. We would never have believed the possibilities of this evil nature of ours. I see One Who took our place and was slain for us so that we should not be destroyed as the murderer.

It is an awful and terrible thing even to hint at, to suggest that the Lord Jesus took the place of the murderer, but I see no other explanation of the serpent lifted up than that. The serpent is the final word, the serpent is the symbol of what is of the devil; and you will notice that the serpent is always related to life and death. He took the place, therefore, of the spirit of murder, voluntarily, and:

"Jehovah lifted up His rod,

Oh Christ, it fell on Thee."

We understand why the Father had to turn His face away at that moment, because the Lord Jesus was there, not in the devil's place (do not misunderstand me), but in the place of the fruit of the devil's work in the race - that which is of the devil in the Adam race - He took the place of that. The Father had to smite that, destroy that, in order that you and I might escape. The altar speaks of that.

For the one who now is faulty, imperfect and makes mistakes, there is an altar and a city of refuge, and he comes and lays hold or the horn (the strength) of the altar and that declares that the whole thing has been done in a Substitute. It has all been carried out on this Altar in the case of One Who represented you, and you are delivered!

Mark you, if we reject what has been done in the Substitute, and still allow the element of the devil to remain as not under the Blood of the Lord Jesus, not having come within the compass of the substitutionary work, we are held responsible. God's sword will light on us, because, as the apostle puts it: "We have counted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing".

We need to go a long way into Hebrews to understand the cities of refuge. There we are represented as those who have fled to take refuge, to lay hold of the hope set before us. What is that? It is the escape in the day of judgement, when the great corporate murderer, the spirit of murder, as expressed in Christ's rejectors, has the sword of God brought against it. We shall escape because we have fled to the refuge. What refuge? Christ, our Substitute! "He that dwells in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty"; "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge".

The man who fled had to stay in that city until the death of the High Priest. He had to become a citizen of the city of refuge for the duration of that High Priest's tenure of office. Blessed be God, we have moved out of the Aaronic economy into the economy of Melchizedek. Aaron's priests died; our Priest lives for ever. We abide under Christ, for He will never die. We are citizens of a heavenly city. We have come under His High Priesthood, and we abide there until He dies, and that will never be, "Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come" "Our citizenship is in heaven". It is of grace, grace abounding.

The man of all men who ever lived who appreciated the city of refuge more than any others, was Paul. Paul seems to be very much occupied with the blessed reality of the city of refuge. What did Paul say about himself? That he was a man-slayer; he slew Stephen, he slew the saints, but he said; "I did it in ignorance". What was the result? Wonderful grace to the man-slayer. Paul was never tired of dwelling upon the blessings of the city of refuge, that he, a man-slayer, yet unwittingly, had entered into the grace of the Lord Jesus which was declared in his ears when he was acting as a slayer: "...and Saul was consenting unto his death", and that man Stephen was saying; "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge". That was an echo of Calvary; "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do". Why? They were doing it in ignorance.

The city of refuge was opened for Saul of Tarsus in the very moment that he was acting as a man-slayer. You say it was deliberate! Yes, but in ignorance. Peter said to the Jews at Pentecost: "I know, brethren, that you did it in ignorance." The cities of refuge were open for the Jews, and three thousand entered in that day. "I did it in ignorance", said the apostle, and entered into such an appreciation of the grace of God that you are not surprised that Paul is always talking about grace; and you are all the more impressed when you see that the cities of refuge are in the land, in the heavenlies, by the place that grace occupies in the letter to the Ephesians. Go through the Ephesian letter again, and mark all the references to grace, and you will be wonderfully impressed. "According to the riches of His grace" is where you begin in the first chapter. "The exceeding riches of His grace" you will find in the second chapter. "By grace are you saved..." "the dispensation of the grace of God..." "According to the gift of that grace..." "Unto each one was given grace". So that grace is not just for conversion, grace carries you into the heavenlies; grace must be predominant in the heavenlies. The cities are in the land.

Let the accumulative effect of this rest upon our hearts; that we are what we are by the grace of God, and that the call is that grace must be predominant amongst the saints in their relationships with one another. We must take that to heart. It is so easy to allow law to govern among the saints in our relationships. It is so easy to become legal, hard, judging, criticising, but grace is to predominate in the heavenlies.

We have not touched on all the elements in this matter. The heart of it all is grace triumphant in all relationships, contacts and activities; and if we inadvertently, unintentionally do hurt someone else or injure someone else and touch their life so that that life is cut - and we do that sometimes - we must go back to the Cross, go back to the altar and lay hold and not allow ourselves to come under Satanic domination, but see there is grace. We must go back to the place of the testimony in confession, repentance and in faith.

Chapter 14 - Gaining Christ

Reading: Joshua 14:13-14; 15:13-15; Phil. 3:8-15.

The letter to the Philippians represents a man in the land, eagerly applying himself to the inheritance to make good all that has been appointed for him. He sees that there is yet very much land to be possessed, although he may have entered into quite a lot. There is still territory beyond his immediate occupation, territory which is full of promise, but which has to be taken by force. This man sees that to fall short of the whole is to be at length one who has missed the supreme object for which he was originally apprehended. He has gone a long way, he has occupied much ground, but even now he is speaking about apprehending that for which he had been apprehended, showing clearly that his mind about the whole matter is that a great deal of possession cannot be regarded as fulfilling the original purpose of his being apprehended. He must go right on to the whole, if that for which he set out at the beginning is to have a full realisation. His word about it is "perfect"; the word which in its fuller meaning implies completeness, absoluteness, finality, nothing lacking, no gaps - the thing in its fulness possessed.

Such is the ground here in the land. This man Paul is the counterpart in the New Testament of Caleb in the Old. Caleb, who wholly followed the Lord; Caleb, who would never be content with anything less than all; Caleb, who would go beyond the average and not stop short at the point where there is much gained, but would go on to perfection, completeness. There is a wonderful correspondence between Caleb and Paul in the spiritual principles of their lives.

Caleb, with Joshua of course, had known resurrection life. While a whole generation died (and there was a very high death rate around for forty years, 600,000 perishing in that time) raging, rampant death all around; seeing numerous burials in the wilderness every week; yet it never touched Caleb, never laid a finger on him. He never came for a moment under its power. He knew resurrection life. But that was not enough for Caleb. Knowing resurrection life was for him, after all, more or less on the negative or passive side of things. You might regard it as a positive thing, but for him it was more on the passive side. What Caleb wanted to know was not just resurrection life, but resurrection power. Resurrection life kept him in life and kept him above while others were going down into death. Resurrection power for Caleb meant not just being maintained in life, but conquest; the positive side, of bringing down every foe and subduing everything that had to be subdued.

Paul knew resurrection life. There is no question about that. He had known resurrection life in a wonderful way through these many years, but when he reaches his letter to the Philippians it is "Paul the aged..." and he is still speaking about resurrection, but in another way: "that I may know Him and the power...". The power of His resurrection means for Paul this extra bit of gaining. Paul saw the superlatives of resurrection power, and spoke of them in his Ephesian letter: "He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us" and that power working in us is "according to the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ when he raised Him from the dead, and set Him at his own right hand, far above all". Gaining Christ in fulness... a place far above all: "He that overcomes shall sit with Me in My throne, even as I overcame and am sat down with My Father in His throne". That was the prize, and unto that Paul reached forth, and for that the power of His resurrection was necessary.

We all have resurrection life if we are joined to Christ as Resurrection, but there is something more than that; there is resurrection power, which carries us eventually (if it has its full outworking) to the Throne, and not all will come to the Throne. It is: "to him that overcomes".

Caleb, like Paul, and Paul, like Caleb, stood against the more general course of things amongst the Lord's people. The majority were content with going so far as to the inheritance, possessing so much, and there staying and settling down. An unfinished course, a curtailed spiritual advance, an accepting of something less than what God had appointed and intended. The majority took that course, but Caleb was never content and he stood against the majority just as he had always stood against a majority that did not represent God's full mind.

With the original company of the spies he and Joshua were in a very small minority, but they stood with every ounce of their being against the overwhelming majority. So now in the land, Caleb does not go with the multitude of the Lord's people. He is not content with the spiritual attainment which seems to satisfy so many. He again stands against the more general course, the major voice, and the thing which, in modern accents, says: "Do not be extreme! Do not aim at impossibilities, do not set up impossible ideals... recognise that it is no use trying to get New Testament standards at this time of day. Accommodate yourself to the times; you will only find that you are broken by the sheer force of the overwhelming majority if you take this singular line." Well, Caleb took the singular line - if it is to be called a singular line - and undoubtedly Paul took it.

Paul took a line even ahead of the other apostles. We do not disparage or dishonour Peter, and yet Peter, with his very prominent place in the Apostolate could not quite understand Paul. Some things that Paul wrote were very hard for Peter to understand. This man Paul seemed to leap and bound ahead of the other apostles, so that he could even, when necessity arose, withstand Peter to his face, telling him, in effect, that he was failing the Lord.

Here is a man who does not take his cue from the recognised leaders and authorities, but who takes his cue from Christ in glory; who does not allow the more general thing to become the standard of his own life, but he looks to the Lord to get his standard. It was costly, but Paul went on. He went on when few could go with him. "All they in Asia have turned away from me." Oh! then I understand the letters to the churches in Asia! Did they turn away from this man, who represents the overcomer? Then the Lord must write very severely to them about overcoming, and show them that they are not doing it, they have fallen away from the overcomer position. That position was occupied by the apostle, who wrote these letters to the churches in Asia: Ephesians and Colossians. In this Philippian letter: "I have no man like-minded with me".

Spiritual leadership always involves loneliness. That is the cost of it. The overcomers will always be, so far as the larger Christian world is concerned, a lonely company, having to go on, with few able to follow.

Caleb could not accept the popular voice, his heart was too set upon the Lord. He wholly followed the Lord, not the popular and general standard of Christian life. We may say that Caleb was the very embodiment of all that God meant the whole people to be. When you see Caleb you see what God wished all Israel to be, but all Israel did not come to the standard of Caleb. But the Lord gets in a Caleb the satisfaction of His heart. The Lord realises His full thought in a Caleb, in the same way He does in a Paul.

These are types and representatives of a company; an overcomer company, in whom all God's thought for all His people is realised. They may not all go on, but God has those who answer to His heart's fullest desire. He will have a Caleb, He will have a Paul, and He will have overcomers. Such are, for Him, the very embodiment of His full thought for His people.

With all this in view, read again the passages about Caleb. It is worth repeating them, having seen what Caleb does represent:

Joshua 24:13: "And Joshua blessed him; and he gave Hebron unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance." We know that Hebron means "fellowship", "a league". We know that it was the place where the great king was first crowned, on his way to the final position of universal sovereignty. From Hebron David went to Jerusalem; and it is the overcomers that bring the King into His universal dominion.

Joshua 14:14: "Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb... unto this day..."  "Unto this day" means right up to the end, "...because he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel."

Joshua 15:13-14: "And unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh he gave a portion among the children of Judah, according to the commandment of the Lord to Joshua, even Kiriath-arba... And Caleb drove out thence the three sons of Anak." He undertook to deal with the gigantic obstacles in the way of full possession, and he did it.

Joshua 15:15: "And he went up thence..." This is the overcomer.

We are left with one issue. It is this: that the fulness of Christ to which we are called, which is realised in sharing His Throne eventually, is only by utterness in the realm of conflict and conquest. It is gaining Christ. Whatever may be the forces in the way to be dealt with, within and without, they represent the course of an increase of the moral and spiritual excellencies of the Lord Jesus.

We must remember that Christ's universal sovereignty is in virtue of His spiritual and moral excellencies. It is not just official, it is not just by appointment. It is in virtue of something; the great "wherefore" of Philippians 2: "Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name". The great words of Hebrews 2: "...we see Jesus... crowned with glory and honour." Why? "Because of the suffering of death". It is in virtue of something. It is in virtue of the spiritual and the moral excellencies, transcendencies. It is because of what He is, not officially, but in nature, in character, having conquered sin, having conquered the world in all its spiritual and moral meaning, having conquered the evil in the universe. He represents something over which sin and evil, iniquity, wickedness, badness has no power; it is altogether above that. Now He occupies forever that pre-eminence on the basis of what He is spiritually and morally, as a result of a battle and a conquest. He is calling us, has called us, to share His Throne. It must be upon the same basis, that in virtue of His conquest, His victory, and by reason of the energy of the Holy Spirit, we also overcome.

To gain Christ, to gain that place with Christ, is not possible by mere appointment, office, being put there; it is only possible by spiritual and moral conquest in the energy of the Holy Ghost. Thank God we are not left to do it in our own strength, but there is the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven to be the energy in us of spiritual ascendancy, spiritual conquest, and it is the changing of our being into the very moral and spiritual likeness of the Lord Jesus which is behind every bit of conflict which comes into our life.

That is the inclusive objective. Within that there are all the details, the things which have got to be overcome, within and without. We and we only, know what those things are. You know in your own make-up what has got to be overcome, and I know what is true in my case. We differ, the conflict is many-sided, the gains are to be in various directions.

The book of Judges sees the uprising or the ascendancy of certain specific forces, and how the judges which were raised up from time to time to deal with those forces were peculiarly suitable to meet the situation.

Cushan-rishathaim, king of Aram, speaks of the double-dyed iniquity of pride. "Aram" means "exaltation"; "Cushan" means "blackness" of pride; "rishathaim" means "double iniquity". And Othniel, raised up by God to meet that foe on the basis of an utter dependence upon God, was the only way to destroy pride. Those two things cannot exist together. You can never have pride and utter dependence upon God in pre-eminence together. If pride is up, then dependence upon God has gone down. Dependence upon God is only saying that pride has been destroyed.

The next menace to Israel was Moab, and Moab was a kinsman of Israel after the flesh, a child of Lot, but not related by the spirit. And so Moab represents mere profession, not spiritual relationship. And then you have Ehud raised up to deal with Moab, and Ehud means "confessor". There is all the difference between being a professor and a confessor. The one is simply occupying a false position, professing to be something, but if you are one of the confessors of the faith you are a living testimony, a witness.

Jabin, king of Hazor is the next, and he symbolises "natural understanding", intellect over against spiritual knowledge. And to deal with Jabin both Deborah and Barak were raised up. Deborah means "the word", and Barak means "living". So that you have the power of the Word dealing with natural understanding. If you have the Word in the power of the Holy Ghost then your natural understanding is put out.

That is enough, without going further through the judges and the battles of the judges, to indicate that what is in view is that there are certain things which arise to destroy the Lord's people in their make-up. It may be this natural understanding business, this intellectual activity in the things of God, which is merely intellectual. It may be pride. It may be any one or two or three or more of a large number of things which are out to destroy the real spiritual knowledge of Christ, and real spiritual position in and gain of Christ. Those things have got to be destroyed, or else they will destroy the Lord's people.

You see Gideon, and the lesson that comes in so wonderfully with Gideon, who deals with the Midianites, and Midian means "strife". When you trace the thing through you find that Midian always represents the encroachment of the world upon the things of the Lord. It was the Midianites who carried Joseph to Egypt; that which is of the Lord is taken into the world by the Midianite. Midian worked through Balaam to try and bring Israel into the bondage of the world. And when the world gets into the church, and the church gets into the world, there is always strife. All the trouble in the church is because something worldly has got in. Well, Gideon is raised up. And what is that which overcomes the world? "This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith". Is not Gideon the very embodiment and personification of faith? "The people that are with you are too many... lest Israel vaunt themselves, saying, My own hand has saved me". Bring them down until, against this mighty host of Midian, the three hundred men are set. There is faith! "The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon". You have no difficulty in adding that last clause when you remember the dream of the Midianite. When in that night they heard the shout of the enemy, as Gideon led his three hundred men, the very association of ideas was enough to upset their morale. It was a question of faith in the Lord which brought the Midianitish domination to an end through Gideon. This is the faith which overcomes the world.

That is gaining Christ. It is all by conquest. We are drawn into the vortex of a great conflict, and there is something in us, or about us, or with which we are compelled to have to do, which is an obstruction to the increase of Christ in us, or in His people, and the battle rages. That thing has to be destroyed, and then there is an increase of Christ.

What a fight Paul put up for this fulness of Christ for the saints. The intense application of himself: "striving" he said. He was fighting all sorts of things that were against their completeness in Christ. His was a lifelong battle with elements that were out to rob the Lord's people of that fulness. And it applies in both ways, that we are drawn into conflict over something as to ourselves, which is an obstruction to growth in the Lord; and we have to get into the battle for our own spiritual increase, whatever it is, and apply ourselves, like Caleb, and say we are not going to be content with our present measure of spiritual attainment. If we stop now it will be as though we had failed of God's purpose altogether, and we are not going to be content until we have reached the full measure of what the Lord means for us, as far as that can be reached in this life.

Then it applies in the direction of our responsibility for other children of God. We have to set ourselves in our position of responsibility, against every limiting thing for the Lord's people who are committed to our charge. And that is just where so much of our suffering and our trial arises as those who have the care of souls; that they do not understand and they may not appreciate it, but we are battling for their spiritual fulness. When we set ourselves against some worldly thing, they are not against it, but spiritual fulness. They do not understand, they do not appreciate, and very often they do not take sides with us and wholeheartedly co-operate; but we have to fight through. Later on they will come to see it perhaps, and enter into the good of our conflict for them. "What conflict I have for you", said Paul, "and for them of Laodicea."

We close with a little quotation from a book which many of us know, "Gold Cord" by Amy Carmichael. You will see the connection as you read this quotation:

"But neither Afghanistan, nor any other of the big and the unexplored of the high places of the field will look wonderful when the traveller reaches them; nor will he feel in the least valorous. Again and again he will find that he has need to pray for the simple graces of good cheer, courage, patience, persistence; the will to ignore the clamours of the flesh; the will to refuse the softness that would sink to the easy. God give us climbing souls; and to climb may be nothing more romantic than a steady trampling on the lust of comfort, a going on when everything in us wants to stop."

That is simple, but it touches the thing. That is only another way of saying that we get to the heights, not by a leap and a bound, not with a spirit of the romantic. We are there we know, and it is a wonderful thing to be there; there is a great power of command when you are there. But the getting there has been such a conflict, has meant so much of cost, that there is not much glamour after all about conquering this territory.

Is that not true? I can read into that the hidden secret of Miss Amy Carmichael's life. Probably as a young woman she visualised India, and the romance of saving India's children, seeing India's children gathered in and saved: a wonderful vision - a good deal of stimulus about such a vision - and she saw the peak right ahead and imagined herself on the peak, and oh! the romance of being on that peak! But to get to that peak of seeing hundreds of India's children saved... Oh! the cost! The agony! The suffering! And when at length a Dohnavur Fellowship exists, extensive, far-reaching, something which the visitor and the stranger coming to says: "What a wonderful piece of work!" she sees no romance, no glamour. It is the result of much suffering, such cost, simply to say: "Well, thank God that we are here; but there is nothing very much to shout about."

That is how it will be. We are not going to leap to the Throne in any romantic way. Enthusiasm will soon die out on this road. It will be the steady keeping going by the grace of God. "Climbing souls... a steady trampling on the lust of comfort, a going on when everything in us wants to stop." Again and again you and I will find that we want to stop, we are inclined to stop. The Spirit of the Lord in us will say: Go on! And we shall have to get up and go on! The Lord make us Calebs and Pauls... in other words: overcomers!