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Horizoned by Christ

by T. Austin-Sparks

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazines, 1961-62

Contents

Chapter 1 - Horizoned by Christ

Chapter 2 - The Resurrection, Ascension and Exaltation of Christ

Chapter 3 - Pentecost

Chapter 4 - The Beginning of a New Humanity

Chapter 5

Chapter 1 - Horizoned by Christ

"...this is he which is ordained of God to be the Judge of the quick and dead" (Acts 10:42).

("...he is the one who has been designated by God as Judge of the living and the dead" N.E.B.)

"...he hath appointed a day, in which he will judge the world... in the man whom he hath ordained..." (Acts 17:31, mg.)

The word 'ordained' or 'designated' in the above Scriptures is, in the original language, the word from which the English word 'horizon' is derived. These are not the only occasions on which the root meaning is employed.

These statements, therefore, are that God has designated His Son - Jesus Christ - as the ultimate Horizon and Criterion of all judgment. That means that Christ is to be the sphere and scope, the realm and the range within whom and according to whom all things will be determined.

To know and consider this statement of Divine fact is to be introduced to the immense and unique significance of Christ in relation to "all things". It is the key to the great amount of Scriptural revelation which shows that Christ is appointed by the Father, not only officially, but characteristically, the Criterion of all Divine judgment or determination.

This introduces a quite serious element into life, especially the life of the Christian. Sooner or later, every true Christian, i.e. every born-anew child of God, will find that the Spirit of God is pressing this criterion against his or her life. We all know that in our spiritual beginnings, as in childhood, everything is fresh, happy, and irresponsible. Most of us know that it does not continue indefinitely like that, but that as we go on the Christian life assumes a more serious aspect, when problems, difficulties, and complications arise. Many think that, when this happens, things have gone wrong, but, while it is natural to look back with some longing, it would be unnatural to try to force ourselves back to childhood. What happens is that we come to realise that there are bigger meanings in life than we were aware of, and now we are being confronted with them.

When we go to the seaside for a holiday - if we ever do - we see three classes of people. There are those who never leave the dry land, but keep to the shore. Then there are those who just paddle in the shallows, ankle deep. Finally, there are those who strip and go out into the deeps, beyond their foothold.

Number one class have an easy and uneventful time. They keep to safety and convenience. Number two class have comparative enjoyment, and if they get an occasional splashing and things begin to look a bit difficult, they make for the land and escape from the inconvenience. Number three class find themselves contending with forces which make demands upon strength, courage, and endurance, but theirs is the real satisfaction and greatness.

The Christian life is very much like this. There are these three classes of Christians, but the Spirit of God constrains to committal to the greater fulnesses of Christ, and often precipitates us beyond our depth. The Apostle Paul cried, "O the depth of the riches...", and spoke of "...the unsearchable riches of Christ...". The Holy Spirit knows these depths and ever seeks to press Christians to know them, but the process is one which is fraught with almost frightening experiences.

The one thing for which we are ever seeking is that which will be an inclusive explanation or interpretation of the whole difficult history. The question is: Is there such an explanation? The purpose of our present consideration is to answer that question.

At our starting point there are two things on which we are, or must be, agreed.

(a) That things in this world and life are not as they ought to be; things violate our sense of right. There is contradiction, unrest, doubt, discontent, and a duality of forces in constant conflict.

(b) For our explanation and enlightenment we are bound to the Bible. We refuse human philosophy because it never has given, and never can give, a satisfactory answer. We repudiate the wisdom of men as a means of solving the problems of life. The Bible alone gives the answer, and provides the required light. So we come to the Bible for our answer, and we find that it focuses everything upon three points:-

(1) The eternal intention of God. That is, that Christ is the horizon of all things; the ultimate range and limit; the scope, sphere, and character of all things.

(2) The historic rift in Heaven and earth which is answerable for all the discord in the creation, and explains every other rift.

(3) What really happened when that rift and rupture occurred. (This last is really the key to our whole consideration.)

(1) God's Eternal Intention

The Bible teaches that, in the Divine intention, all things were summed up in God's Son.

"...whom he appointed heir of all things" (Hebrews 1:2).

According to the context, this appointment must have been made before all things were created, because it is also said that "...all things have been created through him, and unto him..." (Col. 1:16). The end revealed and declared is "...to sum up (gather together, reunite) all things in Christ" (Eph. 1:10). Primarily, all things were in God and vested in His Son as "Heir".

The rift and rupture by a revolt resulted in a fall out of God. However, it was not a fall into nothingness, but into Satan - the Adversary as the erstwhile and - for the time being - "Prince of this world".

It was a fall

from love into enmity;

from light into darkness;

from purpose into frustration and 'vanity';

from life into death;

from content into discontent;

from harmony into discord.

We leave many details given in Scripture as to the causes of, and reason for, this revolt and disruption, and just note that we find ourselves with this explanation of a creation shot through and through with the sense of there being a fundamental disorder, and that, therefore, the whole creation groaneth and travaileth... (Rom. 8:22).

The inclusive explanation is that everything, including man, is out of its true and right Sphere, Orbit, or Horizon. This can be tested and proved any day. Immediately a life is brought into Christ, this sense of unrest and unreality gives place to a consciousness of right adjustment, peace, and of all being 'reconciled'. It is all a matter of Christ being in His divinely-appointed place.

So we come to see and consider

Jesus Christ - God's Eternal Horizon

The characteristic definition of the Christian life - in the New Testament - is "In Christ".

To obtain the impression of its very great importance, every Christian ought to make it his - or her - business to do two things.

(a) To note the number of times this phrase - in various forms - e.g. "In Christ", "In Christ Jesus", etc., is mentioned.

(b) To note the numerous and various matters related to it.

This study will result in a rich education in what Christianity really is.

We are going to consider it now, in broad outline, in three main aspects:

(A) "In Christ" is a distinguishing definition.

(B) "In Christ" is a descriptive definition.

(C) "In Christ" is a determining definition.

(A) "In Christ" - A Distinguishing Definition

"...all we who were baptized into Christ..." (Romans 6:3, R.V.)

"...if any man is in Christ..." (2 Cor. 5:17).

The very term "In Christ" implies division of the human race.

(1) It is the pointer to the place and purpose of Christ in God's appointment. That is, to be the sphere of man in creation and redemption. The creation is said to have been in Him. It moved out of Him. The new creation - the redeemed from the old - is said to be in Christ. Redemption is therefore a return into Christ.

(2) If men are not in Christ (and this is only possible through 'new birth' - "born of the Spirit") then they are in someone else or something else. Here follows all the teaching concerning man's falling away and alienation from God.

"...the whole world lieth in the evil one" (1 John 5:19); "Ye are of your father the devil..." (John 8:44), and other such Scriptures reveal where people are if not in Christ. The Word of God declares them to be "in the flesh", "in darkness", "in death".

Redemption is recovery and restoration to and into God in Christ.

The Cross of Christ is the great divide (Romans 6, etc.) It reveals and declares what man is by nature. It shows what we leave by union with Christ's death. It discloses what we come into by union with His resurrection.

The Cross is the only opening into God's realm. By it, Christ brings man back to God.

(B) "In Christ" - A Descriptive Definition

It not only indicates the sphere, it also defines and describes the character. Christ summed up in Himself all that God ever meant by sovereignly choosing the Hebrew race. To understand God's dealings with Israel is to come to a rich understanding of Christ.

(a) The beginning in Abraham.

In Genesis 14:13, Abraham is called "the Hebrew". The word 'Hebrew' means 'the man from beyond' (i.e. beyond the river). He is spoken of as a 'stranger', a 'sojourner'. In the world of his sojourn, which was to be his as an inheritance - by Divine covenant - he was, for his earthly life, a stranger. For that time he had no 'abiding place', no fixed residence, and 'no continuing city'. He was not only a visitor, he was essentially different, of a different order and type.

Here we are introduced to all that Christ is spiritually and humanly. He was, and is, different and apart. In Him God works in contradiction to and repudiation of all that which has come into the human race contrary to His thought and intention.

In a fuller and altogether different way Jesus was the Man from beyond. How often He spoke of Himself as having come from above! How different He was from all others here! What a stranger He was on this earth! How homeless in more than the material sense! He was of another 'order' in the deepest reality of His being. The reality was known by demons; sensed acutely by His enemies; and felt by the common people.

Jesus - "the Son of Man" - was, and is, the norm of what will eventually be in the redeemed humanity.

(b) From Abraham in person look at Abraham in the nation. The great inclusive idea of Israel was their intended vocation as the servant-nation. All their discipline was related to this purpose. The personal history of the Patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David - was all directed toward servanthood in the highest, deepest, and fullest sense. It was a servant-sonship, and a sonship-servanthood which - in principle - lay behind God's dealings with them.

And what was true of the founders was true of the nation - 'not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and give their life' was their calling.

The loss of this conception of their existence as God's chosen, cost them their place in God. They fell out of God, and have ceased to be His 'servant' nation. Surrender and submission, not superiority and pride, are the laws of God's service.

Read and consider Christ and His life in the light of Israel's calling and vocation. It is very illuminating.

(a) Look at His birth.

His mother (Luke 1:26-38).

Think of the social embarrassment.

Think of the religious predicament.

Think of the personal dilemma.

Then reflect upon the grand renunciation!

Jesus was born of this grand triumph of the servant spirit - "Be it unto me according to thy word."

(b) The thirty years.

This is the period of life in which preparation and training for life's vocation takes place. School days and home training, followed by college. It is the period in which life's ambition governs everything.

In the case of Jesus, so far as the records go (and it is the unconcealed disappointment of Christendom that we know so little of this period), it was a naturally negative time. He came from it with no academic honours or distinctions; no status or 'references'. Rather did He come out with many handicaps. Not as a master and governor according to men's standards, but as a Servant, disciplined in a hard school for thirty years. He emerged as the suffering Servant of Jehovah.

Thus He inherited and took over the forfeited and lost vocation of Israel, but in a fuller and deeper way than Israel could ever have fulfilled it. The truest thing about Him was His surrender and submission.

(c) See, next, the Horizon of servanthood in His baptism - "...thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness". There is a very great range in those two words "all righteousness".

(1) John the Baptist - or Baptizer.

It is evident from the crowds that flocked to John that there existed a state of concern, weariness, frustration, and a sense of sin. His message was that of 'remission'; his cry, of 'repent'.

But, great as was the man and his mission, John himself was labouring under a sense of limitation and tentativeness. "I" - "but he"; "water" - but "the Holy Spirit". The comparisons and contrasts show how insufficient John felt his ministry to be.

Moreover, in pointing to "the Lamb of God", John seems clearly to have included himself among those who needed to have their sins 'taken away'. He needed the Sin-Bearer. Further; John himself exemplified and embodied the servant-spirit in a way second only to Jesus. His whole life was one of discipline unto his great service, and his supreme declaration expressed that: "he must increase, but I must decrease".

(2) Jesus baptized.

It is said of those being baptized by John that they were "baptized... confessing their sins". Other Scriptures tell us that Jesus was without sin. Yet the whole Gospel of Christianity rests upon His being "numbered with the transgressors" (Isa. 53:12); upon the fact that "Him who knew no sin he [God] made to be sin on our behalf" (2 Cor 5:21). So Jesus took a place - not His own, but in our stead - among sinners, confessing the sin of the whole world, He bore it unto death. The range is "the world"; thus Christ, in death and resurrection, is the Horizon for the world's salvation.

(3) The opened Heaven and the Divine satisfaction. Everything in the whole Bible shows that Heaven is closed to man by nature. It was closed when man fell out of God by disobedience. That man ceased to be under the pronouncement, "It is very good". Banished, he lies under the curse which is on the race and on the earth.

But

'A final Adam to the fight

And to the rescue came.'

Here is the Man in whom God is well pleased. To Him Heaven is open, and upon Him the attestation of acceptance rests. If His baptism - death and resurrection in figure - was representative and inclusive, so is His acceptance and His open Heaven.

But note, it is in Him that the good pleasure and open Heaven are found. Not elsewhere nor otherwise. He is the Horizon of an open way with God and Heaven.

Having touched upon the Incarnation, the thirty years, the baptism of Jesus, as God's appointed Horizon of all things, we proceed to the same relatedness of

The Temptation

That was not an incident, however wonderful, in the life of our Lord. It, like all the other special events, reached far back to the beginning and far on to the end. Indeed it ranged the whole horizon of human history and destiny. The first phase of the Temptation contained that primal issue of gratifying natural desire on the argument of 'necessity' at the suggestion of the Devil, or being prepared to risk all on obedience. It was a false idea of life which resulted in death, whereas abiding in God is the only true life. (More on this later.)

As to the second phase of the Temptation, the only possible way to adequately measure its force and rightly appraise its meaning is to read Mark 14:53-15:15, especially in the New English Translation. The alternatives for Jesus are evident and obvious: -

Acceptance (by the world) or rejection.

An easy and cheap way or a costly and hard one.

Reputation and popularity or being despised and discredited.

Having all in this life or having all eternally.

His own salvation or the salvation of the world.

The local or the universal.

Policy or principle.

Compromise or singlemindedness.

All this was, and ever is, deeply testing. It is ever the battleground of the natural and the spiritual man; the soul in conflict with the spirit.

The heart of the temptation is faith relating to the long view. The history of the last nearly two thousand years has shown one thing; that when Jesus refused the quick and easy way and chose the long-view way, He became a spiritual power universally for ever; whereas, if He had accepted what Satan offered, one of two things could have resulted. He could have been killed by Romans, just as many zealots were killed in His day, and that would have been the end. Perhaps that was the hidden snare in the Devil's offer, and would have pleased him - the Devil - well. Or He might have become one of the dictators energized and inspired by the Devil, which have 'had their day and ceased to be', ending in ignominy.

He chose aright, and eternity will add to the vindication of time, but it was very costly.

In the third temptation the cosmic secret is uncovered. Foiled in the other two, the enemy seems to have become desperate and came right out into the open. "Worship me". Yes, that takes everything a long way back. To be 'equal with the Most High', 'worshipped as God', was ever his ambition. For this he is willing to give very much. Yes, he can give much! So often those who compromise, who let go God's fullest and best are peculiarly and uncannily prospered in their life. The exchange of the higher for the lower; the highest for the less high; the spiritual for the natural; the cross for a crown, is not always accompanied by immediately palpable disaster and a sense of loss. The Devil can give much, but Jesus saw through to the essential and supreme values. He reserved all His worship for God only. It was not so long after all. A little over three years; three painful years and an infinitely painful climax, and then - "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth", "Wherefore also God highly exalted him". And the best is yet to be.

We return to our beginning. Not only by eternal choice, but by universal triumph, Jesus is God's Horizon, within whom and according to whom all things will be judged and determined. It is "...in the man whom he [God] has horizoned (literal Greek) that God will judge the world." (Acts 17:31.)

Before we leave the subject of the Temptation, it is necessary to recognise what was the heart of the whole conflict. In the earthly life of our Lord, there were three main features which govern the whole purpose of the Father in Him.

(a) His life in God.

There was immensely more in this than just seeking to live day by day with God in view; respecting and honouring God, and giving God His place. It reached right back to, and through, the great rift with all its involvements. It reached right on to the order and constitution of "a new heaven and a new earth". This is an essential and elemental factor in His being God's Horizon for all things.

It was necessary therefore that, from birth, through boyhood and manhood, there should be those features which postulated obedience. But in full manhood, at the age of thirty, He had to make His position publicly absolute in baptism. He may have been circumcised when eight days old, but that did not carry with it what He evidently recognised His baptism to mean. This was - in figure - a death, burial, and resurrection, and represented what His Cross would mean - absolute committal and subordination to the will of God.

For Him, life was in God, abiding in God. Only so was it possible for Him to reverse - 'in man, for man' - the Fall out of God.

To be "in Christ" is to be in God.

This is the main theme of John in his Gospel and in his Letters. It is what Paul had seen and what led him to write so much regarding the significance of Christ from eternity to eternity, and of the final destiny of redeemed man and creation.

Satan abode not in God. Christ abode in the Father. Hence He is the Mender of the universal rift and rupture.

(b) The life-long and many-sided effort of Satan to get between the Son and the Father.

We can never understand the persistent hostility to Jesus, both directly by Satan and indirectly by those influenced by him; the trials, temptations, sufferings, treacheries, disloyalties, and misrepresentations, until we recognise that one object which was the aim of them all. The object was to get Him to move out of God, to act in pride, self-interest, independence, resentment, or in any other way that would take Him out of God. To do, in the case of 'the last Adam', what he succeeded in doing with the first, would be a greater triumph of Satan than the former, for it involved much more. Satan's triumph is always in getting anyone, either in details or as a whole, out of their life and abode in God.

So the basic committal was put to the test continually right up to Gethsemane, and it was unrelenting.

(c) His full victory in the utter cost of the Cross.

His last words - "Father, into thy hands..." - contain the most sublime, the most tremendous, the most Satan-devastating triumph that this universe has ever seen. They explain the cry a little before: "It is finished". What an "it"! The first words at His committal were "My Son". The last word in His fulfilment was: "Father". It almost sounds like a call and an answer: "Son" - "Father"! The Father entrusted to the Son a great trust. The Son fulfilled that trust. He abode in the Father, although all hell strove to get Him out.

That looks on to the next main event in His life relating to His being God's eternal Horizon.

The Transfiguration

The earthly sojourn of our Lord is marked by a series of mountain peaks, some literal, some spiritual. His incarnation is the first; His baptism the second; His temptation the third; His transfiguration the fourth. Here we stop for the present while we look at the Mount of Transfiguration.

The sequence is in the right order. From each peak or eminence, the next comes into view with valleys between. From the temptation and full victory there, it is right that we should espy this peak and let it be a link in the chain between the conflict in the wilderness and the travail on the Cross. The transfiguration must look back to the temptation and on to Calvary.

The transfiguration was evidently regarded by Jesus as a climax and a new point of advance. The climax pivoted upon who Jesus was. Everything past and future, hung upon that.

"Who do men say that the Son of man is?"

"...who say ye that I am?"

Jesus felt that the time had come to introduce and press that all-important question and issue. The farthest point, both spiritually and geographically, had been reached. It is as though He said: 'You have seen and heard enough to resolve the question of identity; to get beyond all merely human deductions, conjectures, surmises, or acceptances. You must settle in your own hearts this vital and fundamental question. All that is yet to be will, for you, hinge, not upon the fact, but upon your certainty as to this matter.' From general speculation He brought them to personal apprehension. It is not good enough that men should be saying even the best things as to who He was (and the disciples only told Him the good things). Those who are to go on with Him must face the question more deeply and utterly.

Peter gave Him what He was requiring, and He immediately declared that to be the foundation of His future building activity, namely, His essential Sonship as God's Horizon. That, however men may interpret Peter's confession, is what it came to be. God never builds His eternal structures upon fallible man, however much His grace may have done in him, and it is necessary to invent the fallacy of infallibility to make either Peter or any 'successor' the foundation.

This surely is evident in the events which immediately followed the confession. The announcement by Jesus of His passion. "From that time began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed..." (Matthew 16:21).

This threw them all into confusion, consternation. They - including Peter - were completely disconcerted by this statement, and Peter comes out worst of all.

This painful and almost devastating background became the setting for the Transfiguration.

Chapter 2 - The Resurrection, Ascension and Exaltation of Christ

We have now reached so far on in our consideration as to make wise and profitable a brief review before we take the next specific steps.

We began these meditations by noting that the Bible focuses everything upon a primal rift and rupture in Heaven and then on earth, or, before the present created order and after.

The cause of that universal rupture is shown to be insubordination to the will of God; independent action, issuing from a desire for superiority, ascendency, and power. This is the evil brood of pride: arrogance and conceit.

While there may be no specific statement to this effect or conclusion, there is much in Scripture to lead us to conclude that it was the 'appointment' of God's Son as "heir of all things" that were to be created that inspired this jealous revolt, and resulted in the long-term bitter enmity of Satan against that Son, and, since He could not be seduced, ultimately led to His murder.

We have defined all this as the fall out from God. Whereas, originally, there was but one realm, the realm of God, through the rupture there became two realms, and these in perpetual hostility to each other.

God, the Father, had horizoned everything by His Son, and, henceforth, everything of God was to have the Son as its sphere. So, the Son would be the measure, range, scope, nature, and constitution of all that is of God.

When we have recognized the eternal fact we have the key to the Bible, to history, and to experience.

There follows the twofold work of God "concerning his Son".

(a) The judgment, discipline, and undoing of the infected and disordered creation, particularly man.

(b) The reconstruction, reconstituting, and conforming of men of faith to the image of God's Son.

This is foreshadowed in God's sovereign choice of, and dealings with, Israel - the seed of Abraham. Israel was elected as the channel through which God would eventually bring His Son into this world, and - through redemption - ultimately 'reunite all things in Christ'. Mark you it is only in Christ that this will be effected, and the Bible shows that the ultimate "all things" will be exclusively those who have re-entered Christ by faith, not force. Thus "when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son", and He as transfigured and glorified was to be, and now is, the full embodiment of all that is to be universal when the last vestige of revolt and revolters has been banished.

Having followed this horizoning of Christ up to His Transfiguration, we take up the matter at that point.

The Transfiguration followed closely upon the plain and unequivocal statement by Jesus regarding His death at Jerusalem, and the shattering effect of that statement on the disciples. The Cross and the Transfiguration go together hand in hand. Both in the announcement made to them, and in the conversation of Moses and Elijah on the mount, this is seen to be the case. They are mutually interpretive. The Cross is the way to the glory. The glory will justify the Cross.

In, and by, the Transfiguration the ultimate destiny of redeemed man is horizoned by "the Son of man" as such.

At the time it was but the act without any teaching or explanation. The disciples were still men in the flesh, as the Lord's so-recent rebuke to Peter shows, the mystery of ultimate destiny and glory would be one of those things referred to by the Lord when He said, "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now". Not only would it be impossible for the natural man to understand the deep things of God, to speak of them to such would be to put them under too big a responsibility. These things need more than natural wisdom to 'discern', and to 'bear'.

Paul makes this very plain at the beginning of his first Corinthian letter. Only when there are "spiritual men" to 'judge spiritual things' can the Lord speak freely and fully. So, it was but the act of Transfiguration and not the meaning. But the act left an abiding and unforgettable impression, as seen in Peter's letter so long after.

When the Spirit had come, and there were men born of the Spirit - a "new creation in Christ" (2 Cor. 5:17), then the meaning of the Transfiguration could be disclosed. The Spirit then 'takes the things of Christ and shows them', so that in 1 Corinthians 15 we have this meaning given. There it is revealed that Christ risen and glorified is the Horizon of redeemed men - in body as well as in spirit - in transfiguration. In his second letter to Corinth, chapter 3 verse 18, Paul follows this up with an application to believers. "Like unto his glorious body" is the key to the Transfiguration, so far as we are concerned.

We are not forgetting the so-vital aspect of the Transfiguration to Jesus Himself. That it marked a climax in His life and ministry here, we have seen. For Himself and His personal relationship with His Father everything was "well-pleasing" - "In whom I am well pleased". The Father's satisfaction with His Son personally was perfect, and the glory was His personal right and due then and there. But, if He had gone through to glory then He would not have been the Horizon of the redeemed, for redemption was not yet accomplished. It has been pointed out that the words "Who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising shame" can be rightly translated "Who instead of the joy set before him [as His own right] endured..." Jesus had not to go to the Cross to get His own glory, but to get ours, and to become our Horizon in glory.

There is this touch of finality in the Transfiguration. Nothing had been made perfect - complete - up till then. That is the meaning of the appearance of Moses and Elijah with Him in the mount. They respectively represent the Law and the Prophets, a term which is used to embrace the whole of the Old Testament. They made nothing perfect, and their own perfecting awaited the coming, the Cross, and the resurrection of Christ - "apart from us they should not be made perfect" (Hebrews 11:40).

Perhaps it would be giving too much play to imagination to try to define the ecstasy of Moses and Elijah on that mount. They must have felt - 'This is what we have waited for for so long. This is the crown of all our hopes, labours, sufferings, and the vindication of our faith.'

Glory was certainly at hand for our Lord as His personal right, but what of the "many sons"? The servant-spirit must again triumph, and so, He goes down from the mountain to the Cross. Not for Himself but for the sake of others were the Cross and the shame, but through that the way is opened to the still greater glory.

The Horizon of the Resurrection

This is a vast and comprehensive matter, with limitless prospects. These, in detail, it is not our intention to consider; we keep to the one all-comprehending reality - the Son of God as God's universal Horizon.

The Resurrection brings that into view in a supreme way. There are three aspects of this.

(1) The changed condition and position of Christ by resurrection.

(2) The essential meaning and nature of the Church.

(3) The representation of man as he will be in the full meaning of the resurrection in the body.

(1) The changed condition and position of Christ.

Resurrection is not resuscitation. There is an essential difference from what He was before. This difference is too manifest in His appearances to need arguing.

He has a body, real and touchable, yet with capacities and abilities beyond anything known in our material world. Walls and doors; miles and time have no significance to this body. His knowledge is not by surmise, guess, or information, but, like true spiritual knowledge, it is intuitive. To try to describe it would only be to become more mystified. The theophanies of the Old Testament help in the matter of reality, but we are left to prove that reality by a knowing in spirit how truly He is alive now. He is the same, but different, and the difference is the great blessing of all believers in every part of the world.

The life given by Him is a deathless and indestructible life. It is a supernaturally intelligent life, i.e. a life which gives an intelligence which the profoundest scholarship cannot attain unto. It is a life which supports through superhuman adversities and sufferings.

(2) The essential meaning and nature of the Church.

Speaking of the Church, let us at once make it clear that we refer to the Church which was born on the Day of Pentecost and is the Church of the New Testament. To describe this is to make distinctions clear.

The Church takes its character from Christ risen. It is referred to as that which is 'risen together with Christ'. It is as truly a miracle as was His resurrection. It is a supernatural entity.

If Christ in resurrection can only be known spiritually, i.e., in a spiritual way by the Holy Spirit's revelation, that is also true of the true Church. It is inscrutable, it is a "mystery". Although it may have embodiment in human life it is not a temporal thing. If we had lived in the first days of the Church we should not have been able to identify it by special buildings, dress, ritual, liturgy, or such externals. While certain language and ways of life may have characterized it, the thing that marked it out most clearly was its life. This was a living entity. There was a life in it which was a spiritual power, a spiritual beauty, a spiritual joy, a spiritual influence. This was a self-propagating and reproductive life.

The one impression registered upon people who came into contact with it was this livingness, and triumphant livingness. If asked to explain it, the answer would invariably and exultingly be 'Jesus lives, and He lives within us and in the midst of us.'

If Christ was raised by the power of God, so the Church survived the most terrible ordeals of persecution and manifold suffering, went on its way overcoming immense difficulties, by reason of that same power. It was the embodiment of "the power of his resurrection".

Again, if in resurrection Christ was released from merely local and geographical limitations, the very life and progress of the Church had to be universal. Local testimonies and representations there would be, but only of the universality of Christ. The local is never the horizon in the New Testament. Christ risen, ascended, and reigning was the Horizon, and the Holy Spirit saw to it that when He was really in charge, the vision and passion was to the fullest compass of Christ. In the thought of God, nothing was to be smaller than Christ.

These are but a few statements of facts. A very big volume would be required in which to do justice to the true nature of the Church.

(3) The representation of man in his ultimate resurrection body.

The Apostle Paul states precisely that the body of the believer in whom Christ dwells will be changed, and the new body will be "like unto his glorious body" or "body of glory". The Resurrection links with the Transfiguration. "This corruptible must put on incorruption" (1 Cor. 15:53).

Christ in resurrection is the norm of what will be true of all born-anew children of God when redemption is consummated. This is the issue of all the travail in the groaning creation, the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:22,23).

All this resolves itself into certain very obvious things.

If the Resurrection of Christ is the supreme demonstration of Divine power, as the Word says it is, namely, "the exceeding greatness of his power" (Eph. 1:19), then the very great power of sin, Satan, and the world against the Church is transcended by the risen Christ who dwells within. If the death of Christ is the expression of the great people are gathered together, the kings of the power of sin and evil, His resurrection is in power "exceeding".

On one side of human history, death is the most powerful force in creation. The unceasing and unrelenting battle in man and in nature is with death.

The testimony of Jesus raised from the dead is that this most powerful force has been destroyed in Him personally. The Church is the elect Body in which that testimony is meant to be deposited and demonstrated; "Glory in the church by Christ Jesus" (Eph. 3:21). The Resurrection was - and is - the release of that mighty life which, until then, had been in Him alone, and its transmission to, and residence in, the Church which is His Body, a life shared with Him organically and corporately. The vocation of the Church is to be, in itself, a testimony to the power of that life, and a vehicle through which the life is passed on to others. Thus, Christ as "the Living one", in the power of resurrection, is the Horizon of all things in the energies and activities of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Life.

The next peak is very near, indeed it is joined to this one by a very narrow neck. It is the peak of

The Ascension and Exaltation.

There are some twenty-five references to this in the New Testament. This is the climax of the cycle from emptying to filling, from humbling to glorifying. It is also a climax in His mission and work.

Keeping in view the inclusive truth of Christ as the Horizon of all things we can see some of the major "all things" in this particular connection. Out of these all else will issue.

Inclusively, the Horizon is enthroned, and is therefore all-governing. We have mentioned that the characteristic definition of Christianity - "In Christ" - is finally a governing definition. That means that it governs everything.

Here then we see

(1) Victory Enthroned

Psalm 24 is the psalm of the ascended triumphant Lord; it celebrates His re-entry into glory. Verse 7 describes this King of Glory as "the Lord mighty in battle". Therefore, His enthronement is the enthronement of victory in battle. Here, then, the Horizon is seen in all its dimensions.

There is the far-back view reaching to the revolt in Heaven and then on earth, and all the following entail of rebellion. There is the far-round view, earthly and cosmic - 'the heathen rage, the earth take counsel' (Ps. 2:1,2; Acts 4:25,26); 'principalities, and powers; world-rulers of this darkness; hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenlies' (Eph. 6:12). There is the far-on look, unto the day when "he shall come whose right it is, and it shall be given unto him" (Ezek. 21:27), when He is present as "King of kings and Lord of lords". That universal triumph is with Him as "by the right hand of God exalted" (Acts 2:33).

(2) Redemption Enthroned

Here is the counterpart of the Transfiguration. The symbol covering this is 'the Lamb in the midst of the Throne'.

Christ enthroned means:-

(a) Redemption from the authority of darkness - 'He led His captivity captive' (Ps. 118:18; Eph. 4:8).

(b) Redemption from all iniquity. This (as, the root-meaning of the word 'iniquity' means) is redemption from complicity with, and involvement in, Satan's rebellion.

(c) Redemption 'unto God' (Rev. 5:9).

It is the return into God as the true environment and life.

(3) It is Man's Perfection Enthroned

He was made "perfect through sufferings" (Heb. 2:10), and presented to God "without blemish" (Heb. 9:14). He was the Priest and the Sacrifice, sinless and perfect, spotless and complete. As Priest in Heaven - "...a priest upon his throne" (Zech. 6:13) - He makes intercession prevailingly because of His own perfection.

He is where He is representatively of all 'whom He sanctifies'. He is the Firstfruits of our perfection.

(4) Man Glorified Enthroned

We are to be "glorified with him" if "we suffer with him" (Rom. 8:17). He, the Son, is "bringing many sons unto glory" (Heb. 2:10). His glorification is the guarantee of ours.

Thus, Christ exalted and enthroned is not just an objective truth, but the Horizon within which the Holy Spirit is at work to bring us to "reign together with him" (2 Timothy 2:12).

Chapter 3 - Pentecost

The next peak on this skyline which is the Divine Horizon is Pentecost. What a link in the mountain-chain setting for the significance of Christ "Pentecost" is! It is necessary to hold strongly in mind the fact that Pentecost stands very closely related to the whole Horizon, and is not something in itself. We must see that

Pentecost is the Absolute Corollary of the Resurrection and Exaltation of Christ

Facts though these may have been, and wonderful truths, yet, apart from Pentecost, they would be objective and in Heaven. Pentecost means that all the meaning of those realities is brought down here to be experienced in individual believers and the Church. What Christ risen and glorified meant became the dynamic of the Church by Pentecost. The advent of the Holy Spirit made all that concerning Him the immediate Horizon of the Church.

1. It was the Dynamic of Christ's Release

It is not difficult to see how the horizon of the Church expanded with and from Pentecost. Dynamic is the right word. Dynamite might even be better, for it was by sheer force that the limitations collapsed. All the narrower horizons of nationality, racialism, geography, and religious exclusiveness began to fall, or had their continuance doomed by Pentecost.

Christ is greater than all these, and the Holy Spirit will not countenance or tolerate anything that makes Him smaller than He is. Give the Holy Spirit a chance and see what He will do with limitations placed upon Christ. Resist Him, and He will move on and leave you to your littleness.

If we resort to expedients to make the Church missionary, or to stimulate missionary interest or zeal, we begin at the wrong end. Time and energy will be unnecessarily wasted. Let Christ, crucified, risen, and exalted come in the power of the Holy Spirit and the result will be that everything will expand to the dimensions of Christ.

Before Pentecost it was the local - Jerusalem.

After Pentecost it was universal - "the uttermost parts".

It is a reversing of Pentecost when the course changes from the universal to the local unless it is to bring the local into the universal.

2. It was the Dynamic of Christ's Holiness

Symbols of the Holy Spirit are fire, wind, water. All these speak of cleansing. Fire was especially characteristic of Pentecost. So much has been made of the zeal, power, and wonder of Pentecost that it has been overlooked that fiery judgment of sin was very present. The Holy Spirit through Peter brought home to men's consciences guilt and responsibility for the death of Christ.

The death of Christ was in no sense a merely local matter. It related to universal sin. It was "the sin of the world" that "the Lamb of God" bore away. In Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, the world was represented, just as Jew and Gentile were officially represented at Calvary. Responsibility for Christ was laid at the doors of the whole world on that day. Jesus had said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict the world of sin and judgment because of its attitude toward Himself. So, all men were, and are, charged with sin and judgment until they 'repent' and thus confess. This is exactly what happened under the power of the Spirit at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit brought Christ as universal holiness, the bearer of, and cleanser from, sin to be the only horizon of salvation. The prophet Malachi had prophesied that "the Messenger of the Covenant" would "sit as a refiner... and purify the sons of Levi" (3:1-3). There is no salvation without the sense of sin.

In the 'Revelation' the sins of the churches are judged by Him "whose eyes are as a flame of fire", and this is related to "the seven spirits of God", i.e., the Holy Spirit in spiritual fulness and perfection.

The least spiritual church of Paul's letters was Corinth; it was the most carnal, and the emphasis is on holiness, and judgment upon its absence.

Holiness is separation unto God. It is that which is suitable for fellowship with God. Christ in His holiness is the Horizon of union with God, and this is effected by the Holy Spirit.

3. Pentecost is the Dynamic of Fulness

"They were all filled". But remember, this was a testimony to Christ, for the Holy Spirit ever and always works in relation to Christ. It is Christ - God's Son - who is to "fill all things". To be filled with - or by - the Spirit is to be filled with Christ. Do not make the Holy Spirit or 'Pentecost' the beginning and the end. Do not make the Holy Spirit a fenced-round and separate Object. His work is to fill all things with Christ.

To this end the ascended Lord by the Holy Spirit, gave gifts among men. "He gave some apostles" whose chief function was related to the expansiveness and universal dimensions of Christ. He gave "...some, pastors and teachers", whose function related to the intensiveness of Christ; His increase in believers.

The universal features of Pentecost are not difficult to see; indeed, they are difficult to miss. Read the account again with this thought in mind and the whole event will be seen to be dominated by it. Pentecost makes Christ the Horizon of salvation, sanctification, expansion, and consummation.

For the present, all that is left to point out is

The Horizon of His Coming Again

This is not a treatise on the 'Second Coming', but just an emphasis upon this inclusive meaning.

The 'Coming Again' of the Lord Jesus is the consummation of the cycle of His whole mission. There is a very real sense in which Christ's return horizons everything related to Him.

That is surely shown in the fact (which may surprise some people) that the 'coming again' of Christ is referred to in the Scriptures more times than any other matter. In type, figure, symbol, analogue, parable, song, metaphor, prophecy, narrative, doctrine, exhortation, warning, and appeal, this matter takes pre-eminence.

From the first intimation in Eden of the final bruising of Satan, to the full and ultimate accomplishment in the 'Revelation', His coming a second time is implicit in all the Scriptures. This, of course, is true of His first coming and His Cross, but they are gathered into the 'coming again' to find their justification and vindication there. Every fundamental doctrine is bound up with the 'coming again': redemption, sanctification, conduct and walk, suffering, glory. In the 'coming again', redemption will be completed and the Cross vindicated.

At His coming all the doctrine concerning the Church will find its completion and realization. The Elect Body will be exalted to function in joint-rulership with Christ over the world. The present world-rule of Satan will be overthrown and replaced by this Church chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world for this "eternal purpose". The earth will be delivered from the bondage of corruption; the bodies of believers will be released from the law of corruption.

This 'Blessed Hope' is the Horizon of the suffering and the storm-beaten Church. It has been so from the beginning.

The Horizon of believers is not what is happening, or is going to happen on the earth, but His coming, which is as certain as the dawn!

'Surely He cometh, and the earth rejoices,

Glad in His coming who hath sworn, I come.

Yea thro' life, death, thro' sorrow and thro' sinning,

He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed:

Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,

Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.'

(F. W. H. M.)

Chapter 4 - The Beginning of a New Humanity

Referring back to our original definition and reminding ourselves that the word 'horizon' is the English form of the Greek word horizo, and that it is applied to Christ twice in the book of the 'Acts' (10:42, 17:31), its definite meaning being: 'to mark out or off': horizon is the full range of vision, whether physical or mental. Everything is within its range and sphere. This is what the Bible teaches as to God's Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. When all these present things are dissolved (2 Peter 3:7,10,11 - a possibility so much more understandable in the atomic age than when it was written by Peter) and 'the new heavens and the new earth' take their place, then Christ will actually be the Horizon of all things. But He is that now in the mind of God, and in all His activities through the Holy Spirit.

In the earlier chapters we have been noting this feature of Christ in the universality of His person, spiritual history and work. It is now our purpose to say more about this in a particular connection. It is by no means a new truth that we are to consider, but, although well known, yet it is one, the implications of which have all too insufficiently been grasped. It is that the entrance of Jesus Christ into this creation meant

The Beginning of a New Humanity

In this meaning He is the Horizon of the race that is eventually to inhabit God's new Heaven and earth, and it is this that lies behind every Divine activity in this age, from new birth to spiritual perfection.

Into this are gathered the greatest magnitudes and mysteries: the greatness and the mystery of Christ's person; the profound meaning of the Holy Spirit's work in new birth, spiritual discipline, and sovereign ways, the evident supreme value of character above all else.

There are four major matters which everyone who takes life seriously must understand. And, sooner or later, this taking life seriously will be forced upon a vast number of people.

These four matters are:

1. The meaning of human history: past, present, and future.

2. The meaning of Christ and Christianity.

3. The meaning of the (true) Church of God.

4. The meaning of spiritual experience.

The Bible is the book which embodies God's revelation concerning these four things. The Bible centres in a person - God's Son, and it is one solid revelation of the fact that He is the explanation and interpretation of those four magnitudes.

This will become clear as to all four if we look into the first only.

The Meaning of Human History

We are living in one of the most significant phases of this world's history. It is nothing less than the final stages of a long-drawn-out working of the terrible permissive will of God, necessitated by man's deliberate and knowing wrong use of his greatest trust - free will. God hung everything for His own pleasure and satisfaction, and man's supreme blessedness, not upon compulsion, which for ever rules out love, but upon free will, voluntary choice. He made it quite clear that man's eternal good lay in the direction of his using that trust in humble, selfless obedience, in a spirit of dependence upon God. This is love! He, at the same time, let it be known that only dire consequences would follow in the train of a wrong use of that sacred trust.

When man chose to act in mistrust of God and independence of Him, God might have destroyed him there and then, and have started again. But could He? Could He morally do that in an act? To have done that would have meant two obvious things. It would have been to violate at once the principle of free-will and say that man could not do as he chose. Thus despotic compulsion would have set aside the possibility of love. Then, who was to say that - given the same liberty - the next man would not repeat the course of the first? Man is a moral creation or he differs not a whit from a beast, a plant, or a machine. That is, he has a sense of right and wrong, and is thereby a responsible creature.

What then did God decide? It was, in some senses, a very grievous decision that He had to make, but it had two sides. On the one side He decided that history must bear its own testimony to the folly and evil of man's self-chosen way; that the nature and implications of that choice should work themselves out in history. But that line of independent action carried with it - and this had been the warning beforehand - something for which the Bible has three names - 'vanity', 'curse', 'death'.

In the Bible 'vanity' means much more than our modern usage means. It is not the superficial thing implied when we speak of a person's vanity; i.e., self-flattering conceit. It means, as does also the word 'curse', that nothing will reach finality. All will, in the end, be in vain. Indeed, everything will turn against man and ultimately meet him with a closed door. Our more modern word (and it is significant how much it is both being used, and is increasing in human experience) is the word 'frustration'. It is something that dogs the steps of human effort and takes the certainty out of every movement.

But we must go back a bit to get into line with the two-fold course which we are noting.

Man was made with immense possibilities and potentialities. When he was told to "have dominion", and when it is said, "thou madest him to [in order to] have dominion", no one but God knew the immensity of the kingdom in which he was intended to reign. Certainly man could never have imagined it. But, for all that to be for man's blessedness and ultimate glory, the law was humble, obedient, trustful dependence upon God and an unbroken fellowship with Him.

The violation of that law did not mean the cancellation of those potentialities, but the uniting with them of the element which brought - like a spectre - progressive and ultimate doom. Enmity had entered the very constitution of things, and every effort for peace would only result in more and greater wars. Dissatisfaction had entered the soul of man and, no matter how much he exploited his abilities, to reach satisfaction would only lead to greater discontent. Labour, toil, travail had come into the realm of work and no matter how exhaustive and abandoned in his search for rest man might be, unrest, restlessness, would grow upon him until he was worn out. Lawlessness had entered the creation, and however much he would work, organize, institute, use force or persuasion, all his restraints would be broken through and anarchy, rebellion, violence, delinquency would run side by side with what man calls 'progress' and would make nonsense of his 'education'. Lust had supplanted love, and hand in hand with what is called 'civilization' moral degeneration, passion, and cruelty would blight all refinements. Every amenity, discovery, and invention which promised full alleviation would but be followed by a new problem and complication.

And so, on it goes, until man's greatest of all 'achievements' - so far - the splitting of the atom, the production of the atom-bomb, has become his greatest-ever menace, constituting an imminent threat to his whole civilization, even to the human race, and putting into human hearts 'a fainting for fear'.

Fear lies behind every effort for security, appeasement, and 'safety by strength'. Never in this world's history, and in such a short period, has there been so much 'progress' and 'advance' (?) accompanied by so much wearing-out frustration and abortive effort. It is startling and bewildering. But of course man is blind to the real meaning of it all. It is a part of the 'curse' that, when his eyes were opened in one direction - his self-hood, they were made blind in another, the all-important other, to the doom of that self-hood out of relation to God.

This is what we mean when we say that we are living in the most significant phase of human history. With a speed which is the characteristic of everything in our age man is moving as never before to close the gap and bring in the 'superman' who will finally (?) abnegate God and proclaim the deity of man. Man already believes that he cannot realize himself and at the same time believe in - to say nothing of depend upon - God. As man becomes more God becomes less (to him).

The Bible has long ago told us all about this and what the issue will be, both as to man, the earth, and God's Son.

We spoke of another aspect of the course of history. God marked off a period, a dispensation, in history, and took a nation from the nations to demonstrate to the world this history. In that dispensation, faithfulness to God and dependence upon Him was rewarded in the most literal and practical ways by prosperity and ascendency.

A people whose only strength and resource was in God was made the head of the nations, and endued with supernatural powers. Marks of the greatness intended for man, and his 'dominion' are clearly manifested in Israel's faithful days. So God made them His object lesson. When they departed from Him, over a long period He allowed reverse after reverse, shame upon shame, and frustration to fall upon their way, and thus sought to teach the world this historic lesson. When, at length, they carried their rebellion to its consummation in the rejection and crucifixion of His Son, their doom was reached and for two thousand years they have been the most frustrated people on this earth. This story has been written in vivid and ghastly pages in recent years.

But a new age has been brought in. It is the age in which these historic principles are at work in a spiritual way. The true believer in God through Jesus Christ has peace within; has purpose over against the world's frustration; has assurance and security in an eternal sense; has hope where despair deepens in men's hearts; has life where 'death' is the frustrating power over all the world's efforts. This is but a hint at the so much more which could occupy all our space. But what is God doing in a hidden way in this dispensation?

He - as the Bible says - is 'taking out of the nations a people for His Name'. He is working in that people the power of a different humanity. He has introduced and instated the Pattern, the Archetype, the "last Adam", and is working according to Him. Those who have received this new life and are the subjects of the inward operation of the Spirit of the New Creation are to form together the "one new man", the "fullgrown man... of the stature of the fulness of Christ" of which the New Testament speaks (Eph. 2:15; 4:13). Christ is the Horizon of this new humanity.

We have just so lightly touched upon the meaning of history, but our object over all is to show that Christ Himself is the meaning of history on both of its sides. So He has been "ordained" (horizoned) to be from eternity to eternity.

But we have to come much closer to the meaning of this.

The Horizon of Spiritual Experience

Not only, does the New Testament reveal that in this dispensation God is taking out of the nations a people for His Name, but it is a solid mass of revelation that every additional member of that people becomes an object of deep - ever deepening - activity of God in terms of discipline, testing, emptying, breaking, and re-making on another pattern. A twofold process is being carried through to a point of finality. The old humanity with its mental, moral, and sometimes physical powers is being exhausted and proved impotent in the realm of spiritual things. A new kind of ability, not natural but extra-natural, or supernatural, is deeply - usually unconsciously - being instated. The subjects of this process, while very conscious of the former aspect, are often - we might say usually - only aware of the other supernatural side as they know that their very survival at all is a miracle, for naturally they had seen nothing but disaster facing them, and, like Paul, they felt that they had 'the sentence of death within themselves'.

There is a great difference between the work of Divine power in us, even "the exceeding greatness of his power", and our feeling it or being conscious of it. Yet, just as our 'translation into the kingdom of the Son of His love' was a supernatural thing, the expression of power more than all that is human, so is the keeping, maintaining, and ascendency of those in that kingdom. What is true of the Divine power, is also true of understanding. That God's ways defeat and defy natural understanding is better known by those in His school than by all others. Spiritual understanding is not firstly intellectual, it is heart-assurance. We can be utterly bewildered in reason, but deeply assured in heart.

This is the very point to which we have now come in our consideration. The life, history, and experiences of a child and servant of God are an enigma to the world and to the natural man. And even to the unperfected child of God the word 'Why?' may often be his cry. That 'Why?' can be set over against so many perplexities and bewildering experiences. Is there a key, an answer, an explanation? Yes, there is, but it is no easier for the natural man in us to accept it when it is offered. Whether we like it or not, whether we accept it or reject it, the Bible comes down - so to speak - with both feet and there is overwhelming proof that God is far, far more concerned with a certain kind of manhood than with anything else. If this were not the case, then God would be involved in terrible contradictions. He would also be involved in terrible defeat. Work for God in this present world is fraught with many contradictions, defeats, and enigmas. But when God makes spiritual character and the measure of Christ His all-governing object, there is no defeat while man remains in faith and submission.

Here, for the moment, we break off, but let us - if necessary - adjust to this truth overwhelmingly revealed in the Bible, that God is supremely set upon a kind of Man, and that Man is "the image of his Son".

Chapter 5

Reading: Ps. 89:19-20; Acts 13:22; Heb. 1:9; 1 Sam. 13:14.

The Bible abounds with men. It abounds with many other things; with doctrine, with principles; but more than anything else it abounds with men. That is God's method, His chosen method, His primary method of making Himself known. These men who were in relationship with God, with whom God was associated, bring distinctive features into view. Not in any one man is the whole man acceptable and every feature to be praised, but in every man there are one or more features that stand out and distinguish him from all others, and abide as the conspicuous features of that man's life. Those outstanding distinctive features represent God's thought, the features which God Himself has taken pains to develop, for which God laid His hand upon such men, that throughout history they should be the expression of certain particular traits.

Thus we speak of Abraham's faith, of the meekness of Moses. Every man is representative of some feature wrought into him, developed in him, and when you think of the man the feature is always uppermost in your mind. Our attention is drawn, not to the man as a whole, but to that which marks him in particular. So by one apostle we are called to recollect the faith of Abraham, while another will bid us remember the patience of Job. These features are God's thoughts, and when all the features of all the men are gathered up and combined, they represent Christ. It is as though God had scattered one Man over the generations, and in a multitude of men under His hand had shown some aspect, some feature, some facet of that one Man, and that one Man is able to say, "Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life and these are they which bear witness of me..." (John 5:39). There is a Man spread over the Bible, and all who have come under God's hand, have been apprehended for the purpose of showing something of His thought, which in its fulness is expressed in His Son, the Lord Jesus. Recognizing that, we are better able to appreciate the words we have just read, which in the first instance related to David, but are clearly seen to reach beyond to a greater than David. Read again Ps. 89: and you cannot fail to see that two things merge into one another: "I have laid help upon one that is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of the people". You have to look for a greater than David for the complete expression of that. In the words "I have laid help upon one that is mighty..." we have one of the great foundations of our redemption. A greater than David is here. David in those principal features of his life under God's hand was an expression of God's thought concerning Christ. You cannot carry the statement, "I have found... a man after my heart..." through the whole of David's life, and say that when David was guilty of this and that particular thing which marred his life this was after God's heart. We have to see exactly what it was, in and about David, which made it possible for God to say that he was a man after His own heart. It was just that which indicated Christ, pointed to Christ. It is only that which is Christ which is after God's heart.

The Divine Purpose from Eternity

"The Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart..." (1 Sam. 13:14). Remembering our previous meditations, we shall find a large setting for a statement like that. It speaks of the creation of man, of the Lord seeking to have a man-race, a corporate man in whom His own thoughts and features are reproduced in a moral way. The Lord has ever sought Him that man. It was the seeking of such a man that led to the creation. It was the seeking of such a man that led to the Incarnation. It is that seeking of a man which has led to the Church, the "one new man". God is all the time in quest of a man to fill His universe , not one man as a unity, but a collective man gathered up into His Son. Paul speaks of this man as "...the church, which is his body, the fulness of him..." (Eph. 1:22,23). That is the fulness, the measure of the stature of a man in Christ. It is the Church which is there spoken of, not any one individual. God has ever been in quest of a man to fill His universe.

The Likeness is Moral and Spiritual

God thinks thoughts, desires desires, and wills a will, and those thoughts, and desires, and that will are the very essence of His moral being, and when He has thus reproduced Himself in this sense, He has a being constituted according to His own moral nature; the man becomes an embodiment and personification of the very moral nature of God; not of the Deity of God, but of His moral nature. You know what it is in life to say that anything or anyone is after your own heart. You mean they are just exactly what you think they are and what you want them to be for your own complete satisfaction. The man after God's heart is like that to Him.

Devoted to the Will of God

There is a third thing which defines that to some degree, which puts its finger upon the root of the matter. What is the man after God's heart? What is it that God has sought in man? The verse in Acts tells us: "...who shall do all my will" (Acts 13:22). If you look at the margin you will see that 'will' is plural: "all my wills" - everything that God desires, everything that God wills, the will of God in all its forms, in all its ways, in all its quests and objectives. The man who will do all His wills is the man after God's heart, whom God has sought. The words are spoken, in the first place, of David. There are several ways in which David as a man after God's heart is brought out into clear relief.

Firstly, David is set in striking contrast with Saul. When God had deposed and set aside Saul, He raised up David. Those two stand opposite to one another and can never occupy the throne together. If David is to come, then Saul must go. If Saul is there, David cannot come. That is seen very clearly in the history, but let us note that in this we are confronted with basic principles, not merely with what is historic and to do with persons of bygone days. Before God there are two moral states, two spiritual conditions, two hearts, and these two hearts can never be in the throne together, can never occupy the princely position at the same time. If one is to be prince, or in the place of ascendency, of honour, of God's appointment, the other heart has to be completely put away. It is remarkable that even after David was anointed king there was a considerable lapse of time before he came to the throne, during which Saul continued to occupy that position. David had to keep back until that régime had run its course, until it was completely exhausted, finished, and then put aside.

It would be a long, though profitable, study, to go over Saul's life as shown by his outward behaviour. Saul was governed by his own judgments in the things of God. That is one thing. When God commanded Saul to slay Amalek - man, woman, beast, and child; to destroy Amalek root and branch, it was a big test of Saul's faith in God's judgment, God's wisdom, God's knowing of what He was doing, God's honour. If God commands us to do something which on the face of it would seem to deny something in God's own nature of kindness, and goodness, and mercy, and we begin to allow our own judgment to take hold upon God's command and to give another complexion to the matter, to take obedience out of our hearts, we have set our judgment against God's command. In effect we have said: 'The Lord surely does not know what He is doing! Surely the Lord is not alive to the way His reputation will suffer if this is done, the way people will speak of His very morality!' It is a dangerous thing to bring our own moral judgment to bear upon an explicit command of the Lord. Saul's responsibility was not to question why, but to obey. We recall Samuel's word to Saul: "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams" (1 Sam. 15:22). The man after God's heart does all His wills, and does not say: 'Lord, this will bring You into reproach! This will bring You into dishonour! This will raise serious difficulties for You!' On the contrary, he replies at once: 'Lord, You have said this; I leave the responsibility for the consequences with You, and obey.' The Lord Jesus always acted so. He was misunderstood for it, but He did it.

Saul was influenced in his conduct by his own feelings, his own likes and dislikes, and preferences. He blamed the people, it is true, but it was he himself who was at fault after all. It was his judgment working through his sentiments. In effect he said: 'It is a great pity to destroy that! Here is something that looks so good, that according to all standards of sound judgment is good, and the Lord says destroy! What a pity! Why not give it to God in sacrifice?' Now we know that it is true of the natural man that there are these two aspects, a good side and a bad. Are we not, on our part, often found saying, in effect: 'Let us hand the good to God!' We are quite prepared for the very sinful side to go, but let us give the good that is in us to the Lord! All our righteousnesses are in His sight as filthy rags. God's new creation is not a patchwork of the old, it is an entirely new thing, and the old has to go. Saul defaulted upon that very thing. He reasoned that the best should be given to God, when God had said: "Utterly destroy."

The man after God's own heart does not make blunders like that. His interrogation of himself is: What has the Lord said? No place is given to any other enquiry - What do I feel about it? How does it seem to me? He does not say: 'It is a great pity from my standpoint'. No! The Lord has said it, and that is enough. God has sought Him a man who will do all His wills.

So we could pursue the contrast between Saul and David along many lines. We are led to one issue every time. It all points in one direction. Will this man surrender his own judgments, his own feelings, his own standards, his entire being to the will of God, or will he have reservations because of the way in which he views things and questions God?

An Utter Rejection of the Flesh

There is another way in which David stands out as the man after God's own heart, and it is this with which we are especially concerned, and with which we will conclude this part of our meditation. It is that which is to be noted in the first public action of David in the valley of Elah. We refer, of course, to his contest with Goliath. This first public action of David was a representative and inclusive one, just as the conquest of Jericho was with Israel. Jericho, as we know, was representative and inclusive of the conquest of the whole land. There were seven nations to be deposed. They marched round Jericho seven times. Jericho, in spiritual and moral principle, was the embodiment of the whole land. God intended that what was true of Jericho should be true of every other conquest, that the basis should be one of sheer faith; victory through faith, possession through faith.

David's contest with Goliath was like that. It gathered up in a full way everything that David's life was to express. It was the comprehensive disclosure or unveiling of the heart of David. He was a man after God's own heart. God's ground of approval in His choice of men is shown to us in His words to Samuel with reference to another of Jesse's sons: "Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature... the Lord looketh on the heart" (1 Sam. 16:7). In the case of David, the heart that God had seen is disclosed in the contest with Goliath, and it was that heart which made David the man after God's own heart all the rest of his life. What is Goliath? Who is he? He is a gigantic figure behind whom all the Philistines hide. He is a comprehensive one, an inclusive one; in effect, the whole Philistine force; for when they saw their champion was dead they fled. The nation is bound up with, and represented by, the man.

What are the Philistines typically? They represent that which is very near to what is of God, always in close proximity, always seeking to impinge upon the things of God; to get a grip, to look into, to pry, to discover the secret things of God. You will recall their attitude toward the Ark when it came into their hands. They were ever seeking to pry into the secrets of God, but always in a natural way. They are called "uncircumcised". That is what David said about Goliath: "this uncircumcised Philistine". We know from Paul's interpretation that typically that means the uncrucified natural life, the natural life which is always seeking to get a grip on the things of God apart from the work of the Cross; which does not recognize the Cross; which sets the Cross aside, and thinks that it can proceed without the Cross into the things of God; which ignores the fact that there is no way into the things of the Spirit of God except through the Cross as an experienced thing, as a power breaking down the natural life and opening a way for the Spirit. There is no possibility whatever of our knowing the secrets of God except by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit "was not" (we use the word in the particular meaning of John 7:39) until Calvary was accomplished. That must be personal in application, not merely historic. The uncircumcised Philistines simply speak of a natural life which comes alongside the things of God, and is always interfering with them, touching them, looking into them, wanting to get hold of them; a menace to that which is spiritual. Goliath embodies all that. All the Philistines are gathered up into him. David meets him, and the issue, in spiritual interpretation, is this, that David's heart is going to have nothing of that. He sets himself that all things shall be of God, and nothing of man. There shall be no place for nature here in the things of God, but this natural strength must be destroyed. The Philistines become David's life-long enemies, and he theirs.

Do you see the man after God's heart? Who is he? What is he? He is a man who, though the odds against him be tremendous, sets himself with all his being against that which interferes with the things of God in an 'uncircumcised' way. That which contradicts the Cross of the Lord Jesus, that which seeks to force its way into the realm of God other than by the gate-way of the Cross is represented by the Philistine. Who is this uncircumcised Philistine? David's heart was roused with a mighty indignation against all that was represented by this man.

That constitutes a very big issue indeed. It has not to do merely with a sinful world. There is that in the world which is opposed to God, positively set against God, a sinful state that is recognized and acknowledged by most people. That is all against God, but that is not what we have here. This is something else that is to be found even amongst the Lord's people, and which regards nothing as too sacred to be exploited. It will get into an assembly of saints in Corinth and call forth a tremendous letter of the Apostle about natural wisdom, the wisdom of this world expressing itself as the mentality even of believers, and thus making the Gospel of none effect. This spirit that is not subject to the Cross creeps in and associates itself with the things of God, and takes a purchase upon them. It is not so much that which is blatantly, obviously, and conspicuously sinful, as the natural life which is accounted so fine according to human standards. The Lord's people have always had to meet that in one form or another. Ezra had to meet it. Men came and proffered their help to build the House of God: and how the Church has succumbed to that sort of thing! If anybody offers their help for the work of the Lord, the attitude at once taken is: Oh, well, it is help, which is what we want; let us have all the help we can get! There is no discrimination. Nehemiah had to meet it. There is some help that we are better without. The Church is far better without Philistine association. That is the sort of thing that has assailed the Church all the way through. John, the last surviving Apostle, in his old age writes: "...but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the pre-eminence... receiveth us not..." (3 John 9). You see the significance of that. John was the man of the testimony of Jesus: "I John... was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus". The great word of John's writings is 'life': (John 1:4); "...this life is in his Son" (1 John 5:11). Diotrephes could not bear with that. If Christ is coming in, Diotrephes, who loveth to have the pre-eminence, must go out; if he that loveth to have the pre-eminence is coming in, then Christ is kept out.

The man after God's own heart is the man who will have no compromise with the natural mind; not only with what is called sin in its more positive forms, but with all that natural life which tries to get hold of the work of God and the interests of God, to handle and to govern them. This has been the thing that has crippled and paralysed the Church through the centuries; men insinuating themselves into the place of God in His Church.

You see what David stands for. He will take the head off that giant. There has to be no compromise with this thing; it must go down in the name of the Lord.

The Price of Loyalty

Now notice this, that for his devotion David had to suffer. This man, who alone saw the significance of that with which he had to do, this man who alone had the thoughts of God in his heart, the conceptions of God, the feelings of God, the insight of God; this man who alone with Samuel amongst all the people of Israel in that dark day of spiritual weakness and declension was on the side of God, seeing things in a true way, has to suffer for it. As he came upon the scene, and, with his perception and insight into what was at stake betraying itself in his indignation, his wrath, his zeal for the Lord, began to challenge this thing, his own brethren turned upon him. How? In the cruellest way for any such man, the way most calculated to take the heart out of any true servant of God. They imputed wrong motives. They said in effect: You are trying to make a way for yourself; trying to get recognition for yourself; trying to be conspicuous! You are prompted by personal interests, personal ambitions! That is a cruel blow. Every man who has come out against that which has usurped God's place in any way, and stood alone for God against the forces that prevail, has come under that lash. To Nehemiah it was said: 'You are trying to make a name for yourself, to get prophets to set you on high and proclaim through the country that there is a great man called Nehemiah in Jerusalem!' Similar things were said of Paul. Misrepresentation is a part of the price. David's heart was as free from any such thing as any heart could be. He was set upon the Lord, the Lord's glory, the Lord's satisfaction, but even so, men will say: 'It is all for himself, his own name, his own reputation, his own position.' That is more calculated to take the heart out of a man than a good deal of open opposition. If only they would come out and fight fairly and squarely in the open! But David did not succumb; the giant did! May the Lord give us a heart like David's, for that is a heart like His own.

We see in David a reflection of the Lord Jesus, who was eaten up by zeal for the Lord's House, who paid the price for His zeal, and who was, in a sense above all others, the Man after God's own heart.

It has not been our intention to make this a study of the life of David, but just to show how the Horizon of Christ reaches backward as well as forward in all God's thoughts.