Author's Rights

Published as an E-book

by

Austin-Sparks.Net

Email: info@austin-sparks.net

ISBN: 978-1-927326-86-2

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.

The Heavenly Calling, Conduct and Conflict of the Church

by T. Austin-Sparks

Edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Calling

Chapter 2 - The Significance of Christ Himself

Chapter 3 - The History of the Church Illustrated in the Old Testament

Chapter 4 - The Significance of the Holy Spirit

Chapter 5 - The Nature of Spiritual Knowledge

Chapter 6 - The Strategic Value of the Power of Love

Chapter 7 - The Present Significance of the Life of the Church in Relation to the Heavenlies

Chapter 8 - The Greatness of the Calling

Chapter 9 - The Heavenly Conflict

Chapter 10 - An Adequate Motive for the Conflict

Chapter 11 - Life on the Superlative

Chapter 1 - The Calling

We turn to the letter to the Ephesians, not for an exposition of the letter in any detailed sense, but for the message of the Lord, and at the outset I specially want to underline a phrase which occurs some five times in this letter.

"...Has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ" (Eph. 1:3).

"...He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at his right hand in the heavenlies..." (Eph. 1:20).

"...Raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6).

"...That now unto the principalities and powers in the heavenlies might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God" (Eph. 3:10).

"Our wrestling is... against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies" (Eph. 6:12).

So the message is that concerning the heavenly calling, conduct and conflict of the church.

The calling covers the first three chapters, and is that to which the apostle refers in Ephesians 4:1: "I therefore beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called". The calling is that of which he has been writing up to that point.

The conduct goes on with Ephesians 4 as far as Ephesians 6:9.

Then the conflict comes in at Ephesians 6:10.

These three things represent a revelation - a calling is a revelation; an exhortation in relation to the revelation, and then finally a challenge by the powers of evil to the revelation, the calling, and the conduct of the church.

This letter to the Ephesians, so-called, (which we must always remember was an encyclical letter, that is, it was sent to a considerable number of churches in Asia) is a grand summary of all the Divine thoughts from eternity to eternity. It reveals the greatest things that have ever been disclosed by God to man. They are the things which are gathered into the small compass of this letter.

Here we have, for instance, the unveiling of God's comprehensive eternal intentions, getting behind His acts, going further back than history into the very spring and fountain-head of all the doings of God. There we have the intentions of God from the very beginning. Then we have briefly, but very forcefully shown, the place of His Son in those eternal intentions. Further, we are made by this letter to understand the meaning of the cross, that is, the death, the resurrection, the ascension and the exaltation of Christ in relation to those intentions of God. Finally we have set forth the place, the nature, the vocation and the destiny of the church as the Body of Christ. These are not small things, but immense things crowded, as we have said, into a small compass of words, but everybody who has read this letter knows quite well that the outstanding characteristic of what is called "Ephesians" is the superlative element. The apostle in this letter more than anywhere else, is found to be moving in the superlative realm. We know some of his great superlatives: "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" (Eph. 3:20-21). That is superlative language, but only a specimen of what is in this letter.

Now, the one thing which governs all that in this letter, is that everything has to be apprehended in the light of God's eternal purpose. That is, nothing is merely personal, nothing is merely for the moment, and nothing is just a thing in itself. Everything is related, and is related to the eternal purpose and what the apostle takes pains to emphasise is that everything has got to be apprehended in that way. The saints have got to take hold of everything in the light of the eternal purpose; every detail has got to be set in that light, seen in that light, and acted upon in that light, and there are many details. That all-governing purpose of God embraces all the details of our lives as God's people, and there is nothing in His mind which can be or may be regarded by us as lying outside of a relationship to His purpose, as lying outside that realm where it can affect that purpose or be affected by that purpose. We shall see that later when we come to speak of the conduct of the church which, as you know, has to deal with many things in the ordinary life of believers.

What is that all-governing purpose in the light of which everything in our lives has got to be apprehended? Well, briefly, and this has to be very much enlarged as we go forward, briefly, it is this - a reigning and governing one new Man in Christ. Christ and His members are here set forth as the one new Man, the collective Christ, and what is true of Him is true of His members, and the purpose purposed concerning the Christ is here seen to be concerning Him as Head over all things to the church which is His Body, and the Body, the members therefore, are called, chosen in Him unto the very purpose which God has eternally determined concerning Him, the Son. The purpose is one in the Head and the members, in the Son and in the sons. And the purpose is reigning, governmental administration in God's universe in heaven and in earth. That is the calling in brief, that is the eternal purpose. That is no small thing to contemplate. You and I would never dare to contemplate a thing like that, if God had not revealed it to be His eternal intention - not just His thought, but His intention - and, mark you, not just the fruit of His grace, but the intention of His will - grace comes in afterwards. It is going to be. You and I may or may not be in it according to our response to God, but it will be. He will have a corporate Christ; He will have a Head and members in oneness who will govern this universe in heaven and on earth. Grace finds us in that, but before grace, is the counsel of His will. Everything is settled finally in the will of God. Well, that purpose sees that eventually - a Body, of which Christ is Head, in governmental authority in God's universe. This is the calling.

But then, you see, when you have recognised what the calling is, you have to come nearer and see that this is a present, as well as future, expression; that this has to come to realisation in a way and in a measure now, and it is not something only for a coming age, or the ages of the ages. We are in the operation of God's eternal counsels now. We are in the realm of the fulfilling of His will now, and we are now in the line of the spiritual accomplishment of that purpose.

These various matters mentioned in this letter to the Ephesians are dealt with more fully in themselves in other parts of the New Testament. There they relate to phases and stages of the Christian life and spiritual history. In the book of the Acts we have a large revelation of the Holy Spirit and His activities as in a general way, mainly in relation to the church as His instrument. In the letter to the Romans and the letter to the Galatians, we have a special emphasis upon the cross; that is, the cross related to certain special things in spiritual life. In the letter to the Corinthians we have resurrection brought out in a very full way, and so in Colossians we have ascension, the meaning of Christ's ascension, underlined and stressed. In Philippians we have the exaltation of Christ - "God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name". So, in the other parts of the New Testament, you have things mentioned specifically in relation to certain spiritual stages and phases of experience.

But in the letter to the Ephesians, you have all of these brought together in relation to the eternal purpose, the purpose of God concerning Christ and His Body, and all with one object in view - that is, administration. I use that as one of several alternatives. In one translation, the word is "stewardship". In another, it is "dispensation". It is the same word in the Greek, and simply means or refers to the administration of a household, the dispensation or arrangement, the scheme of things which obtains as governing everything for the time being. We speak of a regime. One person comes in to take over control and administration in an establishment and under their regime certain things obtain. You may, under their regime, do certain things and you may not do certain things. It is the present form of government. Another person comes along and takes their place and, under the new regime, an entirely new order is set up. That is the meaning of the word "stewardship" here. It is that form of government which obtains for the time being, and in this letter you have to place in the time being the ages of the ages. That will be the time being. Unto the ages of the ages there will be an administration and that administration will be in the hands of Christ and His members as one Body.

It is administration, then, which is in view here and which lies behind this phrase - "in the heavenlies". Let me go back a step and repeat. It is in the light of that that everything here has got to be apprehended. That is, we have got to see the cross in the light of administration, every aspect of the cross: the death of Christ, in the light of administration; the resurrection of Christ in the light of administration; the ascension of Christ, the exaltation of Christ, all in the light of administration, and the point is this - not only that they are related to that, but you and I have got to lay hold of them in relation to that. That is, we have got to come into the good of these things in the light of the purpose of them, which is administration. If you like to change the word "administration" for the larger definition and say that everything, the death, the resurrection, the ascension and the exaltation of Christ, have to be made good in our experience in order that we may reign - that is what it means - having a life in ascendancy with Christ in a spiritual way.

Now, the keyword of this letter is the word "together" - a most interesting word, I think, in the Greek language. Here, in this letter alone, we are seen to be -

Gathered together (Eph. 1:10, A.V.).

Quickened together (Eph. 2:5, A.V.).

Raised together (Eph. 2:6, A.V.).

Seated together (Eph. 2:6, A.V.).

Framed together (Eph. 2:21).

Built together (Eph. 2:22).

It is this 'together-ness' which is the key, and the 'together-ness' is twofold.

It is 'together-ness' in Christ, and it is 'together-ness' with one another as His Body. It is an identity of experience with Christ on the part of the church. What is true of Christ is true of His members in every phase of His experience, and nothing is apart or a thing in itself.

Then the unique feature of this letter is this phrase - "in the heavenlies", showing exactly where and what all this is, this 'together-ness' and this purpose and all that is the common life of the members with the Head. We shall come back to that again later. Of course, this does not mean in heaven in the full and final sense in which we use the phrase "in heaven". Here it is referring to a sphere or realm where Christ is -  heavenly in nature, heavenly in privilege, heavenly in function. But even this is seen in this letter to be divided into two parts. He is seen to be far above all rule and authority, all principality and power, seated in the heavens, and we are seen to be there in Him. But later we find another 'heavenlies' in which principalities and powers, and world rulers of this darkness and hosts of wicked spirits are found. They are not the same, identical realm, but they are both called 'heavens'. If we were to recognise the difference we would understand the nature of our vocation and conflict perhaps a little better. That remains for our further consideration of the conflict aspect of things.

May I just say here in passing that the great effort of the adversary is to get us down into his heavenlies and out of our heavenlies. Our heavenlies is "seated in Christ far above all rule and authority". His heavenlies is a lower realm than that, and his effort is always to try and get us down into his own realm, to bring us into his realm of things. It is always the downward pull or enticement - in some way to dislodge the church from its spiritual position, and if that means anything, it means this, that you and I have got to recognise and maintain our position as superior to those evil principalities and powers. Acknowledge for a moment that his position is equal to ours and his power is equal to ours and we are done; hence he will demonstrate in such a way as to make us, if he can, accept his "superior" power.

You will notice that men of faith, in both Old and New Testaments, when there has been a great demonstration of an undoubtedly mighty enemy, have very quietly, in the secret place, maintained their place of absolute tranquillity, and that has been the secret of their victory. Hezekiah, when there is a demonstration going on round about on the part of the hosts beleaguering, says, "Answer not a word, keep quiet, don't argue, don't debate, don't answer back, keep quiet", and into the sanctuary Hezekiah goes and spreads the matter before the Lord. Well, it is victory, deliverance. The demonstration was not taken on. Whenever the enemy has been able to create panic by his demonstration, the panic itself has been his victory. It has been a 'walkover' after that. "Stand still", says the Lord to Israel on the shores of the Red Sea, "stand still and see...". And perhaps that is what the apostle meant when, in the matter of the conflict, he says three times - "Stand... stand... stand". It is a mighty thing to stand before the terrific onrush, seething demonstration, churning up, disturbing, when everything shouts of the power and fury of the enemy. That is the time in which to stand. That will be borne out and our ascendancy will be mainly based upon our ability just to stand. "See that ye be not shaken", for to be shaken is to be lost. Well, all that came out of dividing between the heavenlies, seeing the upper heavenlies of our position, and the lower heavenlies in which our conflict takes place.

"In the heavenlies". What does that term really mean? What is it intended to mean to believers in the heavenlies? I think so few of the Lord's people have grasped the significance and value of that phrase. It is so abstract, so unreal, so remote. 'In the heavenlies' - very few people have any real interest in that - it must be outside of practical life! We are going to see, before we are through, that it is not outside of practical life by any means. Some of us know that already. But, in a word, what does this phrase mean to believers? It means this, that what is now true of Christ as Head and Representative, is to be of full avail and account to His members. He is seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high. He has sat down on the throne in the heavenlies, which means that He possesses complete administration and authority. It has been given to Him in heaven and in earth. He, as Head, has been filled with all God's fulness for administration, which means that all the resources of God are at His disposal for His administrative work. That is what it means: "Has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ". God has filled Him as Head with all resource for His heavenly administration.

Now all that is true of Him as Head. And we cannot entertain the thought, the idea, of a head without a body. Headship just involves the body; it means, it implies, the body. There is no sense in talking about a head without conceiving of a body. No, as Head and as Representative (for He is there in a representative capacity), all that is true of Him thus is available to His members and is to their account. That is what it means to be 'in the heavenlies'. What does it matter whether we are here on the earth in the flesh or there, if all that is true of Him is as much for our account here as it would be if we were there? It does not matter. We are in the heavenlies in that sense, that all that is true of Him is available to us, but remember - not for our use, not to be made a personal thing at all, not to be applied to peculiar and particular circumstances as such, but in the light of the purpose. And we shall only find resources which are ours in Christ being made effectual as we come into line with the purpose. And what is the purpose again? It is the expression of His supreme Headship in the church, through the church, or is the manifestation of His Lordship in this universe by the church. It is the glory of God in the church by Christ Jesus. As we come into line with the purpose, that we are called of God in union with Christ to govern, then we find our resources.

If you and I are going to seek the riches of Christ for some little personal Christian life and some little bit of personal Christian work, something that is quite a private affair, something that is ours and of interest to us, something down here on this earth that we want to get going, preserve, develop - we are not going to find the Lord comes in in fulness along that line at all. That is why there are so many struggling, but ever-defeated Christians, and that is why there is such a poor sort of church here; ineffective. It is trying to live on far too low a level with far too small a vision. If you and I and the Lord's people were to come to see the tremendous significance of the calling - administration in Christ in this universe, spiritual authority in Christ over the evil powers which rule this universe, and now that, back of flesh and blood, back of things seen, there is the throne which we share in a practical way spiritually, then we would discover what our riches are, what our 'every spiritual blessing' is.

Some of us never really discovered the greater fulnesses of Christ until we came to see that we are not Christians just to live a good life more or less, we are not here just to do this or that or something else for the Lord of what we call 'Christian service', but when the Lord revealed to us that we had a heavenly vocation back of all things and that our real significance was not in the realm of things seen, but it was back there behind things seen, it was then that we came to see our riches, our wealth, the greater fulnesses of Christ, our resources, and this is what the church needs today. Speaking in general terms, the church is fighting a losing battle. It is in weakness and defeat. There is very little reigning on the part of the church now.

Hence the Lord would speak to us at this time and show us that it is a higher spiritual level that is wanted. It is another realm of things that is needed. It is that which is meant by 'the heavenlies in Christ', which is, let me repeat, the availability, the accessibility, the effectiveness, of all that is true concerning Him now for the church in a spiritual way against all the spiritual enemies of Christ and the church. That is our calling. It is the upward calling, the heavenly calling.

Oh that the Lord would give us the ear within to hear in these days that call anew, and that, as the result, there may be a registration upon those forces of evil of the impact of that throne through the church, and on our part a new knowledge that we are not intended to be a crushed, trampled-down church hardly able to hold its own, wriggling and writhing under the heel of the adversary. On the contrary we are called to the place where that initial thing concerning the Head has to be made good in the church. "He shall bruise thy head" and "God shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly". That is what we are called to. We never forget that dear old apostle had a way of putting that. Whenever we come to that, his words come back to us where he represents the Lord Jesus as saying to His Bride, "Come, My spouse, and put your heel where I have put Mine". Well, that is a graphic way of putting it, but that is what it means, that we have to occupy the place that Christ occupies so far as the powers of evil are concerned, for the administration of this universe.

The Lord strengthen us unto that!

Chapter 2 - The Significance of Christ Himself

It is always good that we should have some precise idea of what the end in view really is. We are working toward an end, but it will be as well if we see at once what that end is, and the end is this precisely - the need and the provision for the Lord's people to be in a position of spiritual power and effectiveness in that realm where things count most, that is, in the realm of principalities and powers and the world rulers of this darkness and spiritual hosts of wickedness.

In many cases there will be a full understanding and appreciation of what I mean when I say that such a position is becoming increasingly indispensable. The Lord's people everywhere, I mean the spiritual people of God everywhere, are feeling a lack of spiritual power, of spiritual ability to cope with the situation. What they have and what they have known is not proving equal to the new situation, and for the part of many, there is a sense that the forces of evil are more evil and more terrible now than they were. That, of course, is not actually the case, but the consciousness of it seems to be growing upon many, and that we have moved in the course of the years into a new realm where what at one time was efficient and effectual would no longer meet the situation. Something more is needed. While the Lord is the same, the Spirit of the Lord is the same, as the Lord moves on according to the dispensation and its peculiar order and purpose, the instrument of the Lord has also to move on, and the movement is not only an onward movement, but an upward movement, and the instrument for the dispensation being the church, the church has got to move not only onward, but upward, and that explains the new situation.

There is a very illuminating little fragment in the prophecies of Ezekiel concerning the house, the temple. It says that as the temple grew upward, it enlarged. The sentence is this: "It enlarged upward". Speaking naturally, that would make it top-heavy, but the spiritual significance of that is easily perceived, that spiritual enlargement comes by going up, and the more earthbound you are, the closer to this world, the smaller is your spiritual measure - that has always proved true - but the more heavenly you are, the larger, the greater, the fuller, is your spiritual measure. Of course, that is wholly in keeping with what we were saying in our previous meditation about every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ - enlarging upward.

But now the point is this: the need is for a new position unto a new power, a new position on the part of all the children of God individually and as the church collectively, to be expressed as far as possible personally and also in the Divine unit, which is the spiritual family. The spiritual family from God's standpoint is God's unit. When I speak about the spiritual family, I mean the twos and threes or the companies here and there, who really function in a position to which they have been brought so that what the Lord is really seeking to face us with at this time is the need and the provision for a new position unto new power, which power is not only dunamis, that is, force, but exousia - authority. The two must go together. But we must recognize that this power comes from the throne and the throne is not just some thing; it is a spiritual and moral position in Christ. It is the authority of a spiritual position. That is the source of the power.

So then, it is not only that we are to be on the earth as Christians believing certain things, holding to certain doctrines and being familiar with the many aspects of truth. I am sure that you feel how poverty-stricken even the fullest measure of that is, so far as real spiritual power is concerned. You and I have met many people who have gone from one thing to another. They have gone in for sanctification and sanctification teaching. They know all about that. They have gone into Second Advent teaching and they have got all that, and then they have gone in for something else and they have gone the round of special emphases, and they are as miserable as sin. There is no real victory in life or in countenance. They can discuss all these things with you ad lib, but there is no power, no impact in their life. They have got it all in their heads, but as for counting in real effectiveness, there is very little of it, and the Lord deliver us from simply getting the teaching, whatever it may be, even the teaching of the heavenly position of the church or even the teaching of the heavenly authority of the church. What we want is not the teaching; it is it, the thing; it is the reality.

Then, we are not here on the earth as a church holding certain doctrines and beliefs and following out a certain course of things which is the order of the New Testament. It is just as possible to be bankrupt in spiritual power while you hold the most exact apprehension of New Testament church order as it is in any other matter. You may have the last word on New Testament order for the church and be spiritually null and void. Now, that does not mean that the doctrines go for nothing, nor that church order goes for nothing, but it does mean that these things, without the essential position and power, do go for nothing; they do go for nothing without the effectual outworking.

The need is not that we should discard any truth or make light of anything that is in the Word of God, but that we should be in a position where the enemy cannot do as he likes with us to keep us under and make us helpless, but where we, in Christ, are above. Now we see what the Lord is after, and I believe that that is the thing which is bound up with these meditations - a new position for us all, a new spiritual position of power, and that in one particular realm.

Well now, that enables us to come into very close touch with this letter to the Ephesians in which we were dwelling in our previous meditation, the first part of which, as we have seen, has to do with the heavenly calling of the church, which part is bound up with the division marked by the first three chapters of the letter. The second part, Ephesians 4-6:9, deals with the heavenly conduct of the church. And the third part, from Ephesians 6:10 on, treats the heavenly conflict of the church.

We were occupied with the little phrase (peculiar, as we have noted, to this letter), "in the heavenlies", and we were seeking to get into that phrase. We said that it is intended to convey to believers the fact that what is now true of Christ as Head and as Representative, is to be of full avail and account to His members. That raises several questions.

The first question which arises is as to whether Christ's present enthronement is a matter for our future good only, or for present value. That is a question which brings us immediately to the point. Is Christ's present enthronement something only for our future good - that is, because He reigns now, we shall reign afterwards? Because He is in heaven now, we shall be there later on? Because of that enthronement, speaking of His having overcome and being victorious, we shall eventually overcome and be victorious? Is that all? Or has it some present value, not only for our keeping now - to be kept by the power of God - that is included; but more - does the present enthronement of the Lord Jesus have a bearing upon our position as now overcoming the forces which have been overcome in Him? Is there to be now in us and by us an expression of the meaning of His throne in that spiritual realm, the realm in which He stripped off principalities and powers, made a show of them openly, triumphed over them in His cross - are we to know anything about that now? Well, that carries with it some other questions, the asking and answering of which will be an analytical way of getting at the inclusive answer.

Can we divide between Christ's death, resurrection, ascension and exaltation as to their present values for us? Can we take the value of any one of these separately and have all that is meant by the whole? No, of course not! Can we take the values of the death of the Lord Jesus apart from His resurrection? Can we take the values of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus apart from His ascension? Can we take the values of the death, resurrection and ascension apart from His exaltation? Is it not rather true that the last phase of that cycle includes all the others for present purposes for the church, and that each of the others only leads to the next and by successive stages heads up to the final - His exaltation? Is not the last the very object of the others? Did He not die and was He not raised and received up into glory in order to be enthroned? We cannot divide between these things. We cannot just live upon the level of the values of Christ's death and have all that God intended. We must go right through with Him to the throne to have the full provision of God. That leads us to another still wider question, or to enlarge our circle, and then move inward again.

Do the Scriptures authorize the believer, [and show] that believers are intended to know and experience a present union with Christ in ascendancy over spiritual foes? Well, we have got to answer that. Do the Scriptures warrant such a position? I am not going to start at Genesis and go through to Revelation to answer the question, but I think we can give the answer in some comprehensive way fairly briefly, and the first answer, in the first and all-inclusive way, is found in the significance of Christ Himself. What does Christ signify? What does He mean? Where does He come in; what is His position, His capacity? Well, we will answer that.

Man's Fivefold Need of Christ

First of all, what is the need for Christ? To see the need for Christ, we have to see man's position and man's condition which brought Christ in, for we verily believe that Christ came into this world as He did because of a position and condition in which man was found. What is man's position and condition which brought Christ in? Well simply, it is fivefold.

Firstly, man has become separated from God. That is his position. Secondly, man has become alienated from God; that is man's condition. Separated - yes. You can be separated in a certain sense without being alienated. You can be distanced without being hostile, but man is both distanced, separated, and alienated. The New Testament clause is "alienated from the life of God". Alienated - that means some positive element which has come in to make a difference in nature; not only a distance from, but a difference in condition. Alienated from God.

Further, man is represented as in a spiritual sense being dead to God. It is not necessary for us to draw our Scriptures to bear that out. We all know quite well what the Word of God teaches on that matter, and that the very nature of new birth, regeneration, new creation, is life from the dead. Well, it is man as dead to God. That means, of course, that he is outside of the realm where, while he is in that position and condition, God can do anything with him. He has got to get into another realm which is life and not death. At present God can do nothing with the distanced and alienated man.

In the fourth place, man is represented as being bound and helpless in another power as outside of himself; evil powers have taken charge, are in possession. "The whole world lies in the wicked one". Man bound and helpless by reason of a power greater than himself. And lastly, man is found to be in a position which the Scriptures describe as "vanity". That is, he is rendered totally incapable of reaching the destiny for which he was created. "Vanity" is what we mean when we say, after countless efforts to reach a certain position or achieve a certain end, "It is no good, it is all in vain, it cannot be done!" It is given up as a hopeless position, and the Word of God declares that the creation itself was subjected to vanity.

It is as to that five-fold position that Christ is brought in and He answers each point in His person and in His work.

1. Christ - and Man in His Separation from God

He answers the first - man separated from God. How does He answer that? He answers that in His person. The very incarnation of the Lord Jesus is the answer to that. It is wonderful to recognise the tremendous value of the person of the Lord Jesus in all this. The Lord Jesus did not come in to stand between as a kind of reconciler in an objective way, saying, "This brother and this brother have become separated from each other. Now I would just like to bring them together again", and then it is like that in an outward way. That is not the reconciliation of the New Testament. That is not the gospel of reconciliation. The Lord Jesus has not come to do that sort of thing in an objective way. His very person is that - God and man made one in a single entity; Son of God, Son of Man, in one person; man and God united. When you make it one person, it is exceedingly difficult to divide. That is the Old Testament figure all the way through. Wherever you find Christ represented in symbol or type, you put these two things into one - God and man. Take your ark of the covenant - you have got your wood and your gold brought together and that is one person. Or in any of the other numerous symbolisms of Christ in person that you have in the Old Testament, it is the bringing together of God and man in one person. Misapprehension of that can lead to all sorts of false doctrines, but we must not, in our fear of false doctrines, sacrifice something. We are in Ephesians and what I have in mind all the time is that phrase - "in Christ Jesus", "in Christ", "together in Christ", and the incarnation of God in Christ is the most intimate oneness of God and man as in a single person.

What is the meaning of this that you and I love so much in John 17 - "That they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in us... And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one".

Now, if I had said that without the Book, it would be false doctrine and heresy at once, but there it is. What is the meaning of that? Blessed be God, the truth is that when I by faith come into the Lord Jesus, God no longer sees me as what I am in myself, but He sees Christ as me. That is the great truth - Christ as me. Righteousness which is by faith in Jesus Christ means that what Christ is, is God's view of me and I am in Christ. The incarnation has bridged the gap between God and man by bringing in one Man who is God and man, and then faith (you can call it mystic if you like, it does not matter, it is real from God's side), faith says that that oneness which is between God and man is my oneness with God and God's oneness with me in Christ. Christ in His very significance, at the very first point of His coming in, the incarnation, answers the first need related to man's position - separated from God. Let us make more of the Lord Jesus than we have done! It will save us from a thousand troubles. That is only the first thing, but it goes a long way.

2. Christ - and Man in His Alienation from God

He answers the second point - man's alienation from God - that is his condition, and He answers that by His death. In the death of the Lord Jesus, man's condition is met - that is man's nature, the positive thing - and sin: the alienating element, the hostile antagonistic element in man - sin. Whenever you touch the death of Christ, remember you are dealing with the sin question. "He bore our sins in His body on the tree". "Christ died for our sins". It was a death which was a death to sin. That is Romans 6. "In that he died, He died unto sin once for all", and in the death of the Lord Jesus the element antagonistic to the Divine nature has been met and destroyed in Him, by Him.

You and I will never know victory over sin, only as we know Christ in exaltation. Don't forget that. It will require an apprehension by faith of the full victory of the Lord Jesus over sin to bring us to holiness. I can put that in another way and in other words. We shall need to know His Lordship as established within our lives in order that we may know victory over sin. There are a great many people who are enjoying salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus, but in a limited sense. Salvation from guilt and condemnation, salvation from judgment, punishment, and hell, salvation which entitles them to heaven, salvation which, of course, works out in many ways in particular details. But there are multitudes of the Lord's people who have apprehended Christ as Saviour and are enjoying the fact of His being Saviour, but who are not knowing a life of victory and a life of spiritual and moral ascendancy, and the lack in such lives is the lack of the sovereign Lordship of Jesus Christ; not that He is not their Saviour, but somehow they have not come into a vital relationship with His absolute Lordship, which is the embodiment of His victory. Well, His death has met the power of sin, the alienating factor, but that death must point on to something more.

3. Christ - and Man as Dead to God

He answers man's third position or condition as dead to God and He answers that by His resurrection. "He died unto sin once for all; but... He lives unto God." Man is dead to God by nature; the resurrection of the Lord Jesus meets that position. We said that, as being dead to God, man is outside of the realm where God can do anything with him. He has got to be brought into the realm where God can do something with him, and the realm where God commences His work is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and in the sphere of His resurrection God takes up His purpose in us. There is no hope of our realising God's eternal purpose until we are really on resurrection ground, and that is why it is so important that resurrection Life should be functioning in us because it is by the law of the Spirit of Life, that God proceeds towards His end. And whenever God is going to carry His people further on towards His end, it will have to be by reason of a new accession of Life.

Now, do recognise this. If you and I are going up higher, if we are going to come to this new position, this final, ultimate, position of ascension and exaltation Life with the Lord, it will need to be by a new, mighty accession of Divine Life. We know it because the very sense of the need of the new position today is brought about by this awful sense of the intensity of spiritual death upon us and around us. It seems like an invasion of the powers of death into the very atmosphere in a new way and what we are conscious of is the need for the power of His resurrection.

Now, this is not just that aspect or phase of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus which brings us onto the ground of redemption. This is something more in Ephesians, but it is on the same basis. When you come to Ephesians with the end in view, that supreme end - administration in God's universe with Christ - then you have these familiar and tremendous words: "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... far above all rule and authority...".

Now, note what that really says. It says, in the first place, that there is a belief which is more than the belief unto salvation. When you are in Ephesians, you are dealing with things a long way ahead of salvation in its fundamental and initial sense. You come right on to the ultimate things of God's eternal thought and intention. You have come to this heavenly position and heavenly function and vocation of the church, of the saints. Now, in order to come into that in an effective way, another belief is necessary, another exercise of faith, and this exercise of faith has to do with the exceeding greatness of His power 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. Can you separate between these things - the resurrection and the exaltation? Not if you are coming to God's full end, only if you are going to stop somewhere on a lower, lesser level. It says that to us-ward who believe is that working of the strength of His might, that exceeding greatness of His power; it is a new exercise of faith in relation to the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus to get us to the throne. It is further on and it is further up. But it not only says that for you and for me there has got to be this exercise of faith in relation to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, but it does say so patently that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus is intended to work out to the exaltation of the church to the place where He is. Then, if that is really what it says, we have got good, solid ground under our feet, ground for believing that God does not want us grovelling down here on the earth, but ground for believing that God wants us to know now something of that power of the resurrection to get us up above, and I believe that this is one of the 'all spiritual blessings' which we shall discover as being ours in Christ when we set ourselves to take the position where He is.

Perhaps you do not grasp the meaning of that. I do not believe we know what our blessings are until we get into the realm where they operate. Israel did not know the blessings of the land until they got into the land. You never really know blessings by hearing reports about them. If you did, you would be in a good position today after all, you have heard of what is ours in Christ, what God has called unto. If you leapt into it on the first hearing, there would be no more need for conferences. But we do not come into it that way. That is the trouble. People hear things and never come into the position where those things are a reality. If the 'all spiritual blessings' are in the heavenlies in Christ, you know nothing about them until you get into the heavenlies. You must get where they are, where their value operates.

Now then, we shall prove the power of His resurrection and the exceeding greatness of His resurrection when we take the position for which that power is intended. And when the church, the saints, and individual believers begin to see the heavenly calling and the heavenly vocation, the heavenly functioning, and by faith begin to operate in relation to it, they will discover that the Lord is with them in resurrection power there. At least, that is my experience - that you never get there either by striving or by the Lord giving you some help to get there. I have never yet found that I got into the heavenlies by the Lord coming down with resurrection Life. Have you? I have always found it just the other way, that I, in faith, have got to take a heavenly position, and then resurrection Life works. Your faith has got to apprehend your position before God comes in to substantiate. If it were the other way, then it would be a false position entirely. We should be there simply by the Lord having done something altogether apart from ourselves and we should be of no more value to the Lord at all. It is very important to see that there is a position to which God wills that we should come, and in order to come there, there has got to be an exercise of a specific faith in resurrection ascension power.

4. Christ - and Man as Hopeless and Bound

But then there is the other. Man, in the fourth place, is found to be hopeless and bound by powers outside of himself and greater than himself - the powers of evil. In what way does the Lord Jesus answer that position? He answers it by His ascension. The ascension of the Lord Jesus is essentially His emancipation, His liberation, release and victory over the world-rulers. "When He ascended up on high He led captivity captive". As He went out, He made a way out. "Translated out of the authority of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love". That is said to be our blessed position: transferred from one Kingdom to another. Well, John 17 again - "They are not of the world even as I am not of the world. I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world" (geographical, physical), "but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil one" (v.15,16). Later we shall find that the Lord Jesus has turned us from the power of Satan unto God, that in Christ we are outside of the domain of satanic authority. The essential thing for believers is to recognise that there is a heavenly position, heavenly life, heavenly resource and heavenly everything if ever they are to know the fulness of liberty and capability in doing the Lord's work, in living in the Lord's life.

Let us look at that in the other way, the reverse position. Immediately you and I get down into that realm where Satan functions and operates and has his rights, we lose our power and we lose our liberty. We immediately come into spiritual limitation and defeat. We can only know complete release as we maintain our position in the heavenlies. This is the history of the church. The church has always lost its power, its effectiveness, when it has become an earthly thing in any way. The Lord's people always come into limitation when they get down into that realm where the enemy has everything to play with. The more you and I and the Lord's people know our ascension union with the Lord Jesus as outside of this world and outside of the authority of darkness, the more we shall know our liberty and our ability to go on in the work and purpose of God.

Now, it seems to me very clear that this is the explanation of Pentecost, as we call it. The great days at the beginning of the dispensation which emerged from that day, took their rise in that day, all that took place then and all that immediately followed, was because the Lord Jesus was in heaven, because He had gone outside, and that now, by the Holy Spirit, He had a heavenly people. And you see that in all their conduct, their behaviour immediately after: they are exemplifying a heavenly life. The earthly things have dropped away. You cannot bring those things about by telling people to do them, that they ought to do this and ought not to do that. If you have got five hundred or a thousand pounds, a few houses or worldly possessions, and I say, "Go and sell all and bring the proceeds and we will divide it among the Lord's people", I do not know what might be the result of doing that. I should be optimistic if I expected to get apostolic New Testament conditions immediately and spontaneously without any Holy Spirit in it. But when you get a heavenly life by the Holy Spirit, heavenly things happen; that is, earthly things assume an altogether smaller importance than before and they are much more easily let go. And so you find that there, for one thing, they that had goods and property and so on, and sold them, brought the proceeds, and they were distributed for the saints, for the church. Get the position and the other thing is quite simple. It just happens.

Now, I say that, I illustrate it because it operates in so many other ways. "They continued in fellowship". What a struggle it is to get fellowship! What a lot of trouble there is about this fellowship matter. We are always labouring along the line of fellowship. But get a heavenly position and you have got fellowship. Get off earthly ground in union with Him in heaven and you know fellowship - it comes in spontaneously. As we have often said, teams of wild horses would never have dragged Saul of Tarsus out of Judaism and separated him from Judaism, but the heavenly vision did it with very little trouble. It was an accomplished fact out of heaven. So they preached, but they preached with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. It is that which is heavenly and it is all bound up with the spiritual value of the ascension, that we lose our grave-clothes; not only are we raised, but our grave-clothes, bonds and limitations go when we are outside.

Oh, for an emancipated church, a people living not a false life, not a life of mere imagination, abstractions, unrealities, but really knowing a heavenly life by reason of the heavenly Spirit of the heavenly Lord reigning within. There will be liberty and we shall see that Christ in heaven answers to our hopeless, bound condition by nature.

5. Christ - and Man in Vanity

Finally, man in vanity cannot reach his end, cannot attain unto that great destiny that was in the thought of God before times eternal, and how does the Lord Jesus answer this? By His exaltation. What do you see in the exaltation of the Lord Jesus? What do you see in the Lord Jesus in the throne? We see Him as our God, our Lord, our Saviour, but do we see Him as ourselves? We have become accustomed to the term - a Man in the Glory - a perfectly legitimate and permissible term. Do you see yourself there in the glory? Do you not see that the Lord Jesus is there as inclusive Representative of that one new Man, that new creation, to come to glory, to reign, to reach God's end - for what is the destiny of man in God's thought? It is that. When you see the Lord Jesus in the throne, you see what God intended for you and me, and what He still intends for us. Christ has reached the end of our course.

Now, Ephesians says that His being there is our being there. "Has... made us sit together in the heavenlies in Christ". You see the 'together-ness' of Ephesians is this: that what He is as there, is ourselves as there. While yet there is another point from which we view ourselves as pilgrims and strangers, that is only another aspect, not a contradictory one. This letter makes the thing something that is already concluded:

Has chosen us in Him.

Has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Him.

Has quickened us together with Him.

Has raised us together in Him.

Has seated us together in Him.

His being there, in the eye of God, is our being there. If you and I can apprehend that strongly by faith, we will stop worrying as to whether we will ever get to glory. It is that very worry as to whether we are going to get there that is taking the 'kick' out of us. Let us get both feet settled on an Ephesian position - what Christ in heaven means for our faith, that, as surely as He is there, we are there already in the thought of God, for God does not dwell in yesterday, today and tomorrow. God is in the eternal Now, and a thousand years hence is now with God, and when God says, "Has", that is now.

You see, you cannot move on into the real vocation and the real conflict of the church until you have got the calling settled, until you are there quite surely. You are going to be told about your conduct, but, as we shall see, your conduct will be an awfully difficult, onerous thing unless you have got the vision of your calling. If it were any other way round it would upset everything for us. How wonderful the Holy Spirit is! He comes along and He says, "Now, look here, this is what God's thought is for you and God's intention is for you, and what God has not only meant and intended, but provided for you, what God has secured for you, in His Son. This marvelous, unspeakably wonderful thing! This, that you with His Son shall be His administrative instrument in His universe in heaven and on earth through all the ages of the ages! This is what God has called you to. Now then husbands, love your wives!"

You have got to apprehend everything in the light of the calling, the objective. And in the light of that you say, "My word, if that great thing is going to be weakened or jeopardised by my conduct, whether it be in my domestic circle, my business, or in this world, then God help me, it shall not be! Anything in my home life that is going to cast a shadow over that thing shall not be." We will deal with it in the light of that. We will not deal with it as a merely earthly, domestic, family affair. No, we will remove it. Yes, our conduct will be touched upon in all directions.

How am I going to enter into this warfare? How am I going to walk worthily of the Lord? How am I going to prevail in this conflict? Only as I am settled on the foundation of my calling in Christ: what Christ is and what Christ has done, what my position is in Christ now. If it still sounds remote, do take this to the Lord! It is so bound up with the new position of spiritual power.

You see the significance of the Lord Jesus, how He answers in His person and His work the whole situation which represents man's need in order that man may come to that for which God has chosen him in Christ before the foundation of the world. But we have got to apprehend this. It has got to be an apprehending of Christ in His person, and surely that lies behind the Lord's Table. Whenever we come to the Lord's Table and we eat together of that one loaf, we are testifying to this first glorious fact bound up with the very incarnation, the Body of Christ. "A body didst Thou prepare for Me". As, in the Spirit, I take by faith that very person of Christ, I find my union in Him with God, God and man united in that incarnate person. I take the loaf in declaration that I have been made one with God in Christ; not now as some separate entity, but as part of one Body, and that the Body of Christ, in which Body God and man have been joined.

I want to keep these things in their right realm, to see the glory of the thing that we do. It is not 'the Communion Service'. It is the spiritual meaning of union with Christ. This is what we must see - the need for apprehending Christ at every point: His person, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, His exaltation, in order that we may know the fulness of God's thought about ourselves - reigning union with the Lord Jesus now spiritually, and in the ages of the ages literally.

The Lord write it in our hearts!

Chapter 3 - The History of the Church Illustrated in the Old Testament

Reading: Ephesians 1

In our previous meditation we were answering the comprehensive question which is connected with the thing that Ephesians brings mainly into view. The question is: do the Scriptures authorise the belief that the Lord's people are intended to know and to experience a present union with Christ in ascendancy over their spiritual foes? Our first answer to that question was found in the significance of Christ Himself. Why Christ? Why the incarnation? Why the death, resurrection, ascension and exaltation? Every one of these things, or every phase of Christ, is related to the Lord's people with a view of their now knowing in their own experience what is true in Him as seated at God's right hand in the heavenlies. We shall proceed to answer that question. We cannot depart from Christ, we shall keep with Him all the time, but we can see Him from different standpoints.

But I pause in order to emphasise this one thing. The ultimate value of the Lord's people to Himself is as to how much they count in the spiritual realm - not how much they believe as to truth, doctrine, and not as to how much they do in the matter of things for Him here. While these two things may be important and have their place, the real value of the church, which is all believers, is their value in the unseen realm: the measure in which His Lordship, enthronement, sovereign Headship, absolute victory as represented by His exaltation are made to apply in that unseen realm of spiritual powers of antagonism to Him. We must put the emphasis in the right place.

We come to ultimate things in the letter to the Ephesians. In every way the letter to the Ephesians brings us to ultimate things, we really come to final matters there; not the beginnings of our salvation, not only the aspects of our Christian life here, but the full and consummate issue of the church's life, experience, and vocation. We come to final matters in this letter where everything is headed up in relation to that original and full purpose of God, conceived and projected in eternal counsels before the foundation of the world. As we have pointed out before, here we have not the details themselves, the phases, but the consummate thing. God has conceived of a Body, a church, a company which is finally to come to a place in union with His Son, as members to a Head, of spiritual administration in the heavens and the earth. That is the end of the thought of God. There are many things which lead to it, but after all, they are only the things which lead to this end. All the doctrines of grace, wonderful and blessed, are all unto this end, as this letter makes so clear. It gathers them up. Redemption, forgiveness, the Blood, all such things are here, but they are all focused upon the end which God had in view, and that is this church, this Body in this position where the administration of heaven through heaven and through earth is bound up therewith.

Now, when we come to ultimate things like that, the thing that matters is how much effectiveness or value there is in our relationship to the spiritual realm. I do not think that this is an assumption of the prophetic office in the predictive sense, but I think there are evidences of it already - as the church gets nearer the end of the dispensation, the church will find itself less and less able to do earthly work for the Lord, to do many things that it has done through the ages on the earth, and it will find itself more and more called upon to justify its existence in the spiritual realm, rather than in the temporal.

I mean this, and this is a serious issue for the church at the end - if we cannot break through and establish ascendancy in the realm of adverse principalities and powers, and spiritual hosts, we are finished. Some of you will not be able to appreciate that statement. If you cannot enter into it, do not worry. I am quite sure that some do know what is meant by that, and we are conscious that this is a situation which is growing, and would to God that all believers recognised this.

Of course, it must not be taken in a wrong way. It must not mean that we are going to give up seeking to do that essential work for the Lord. We must not abandon the seeking of unsaved people and their salvation or anything else that it is our work to do, because our work is higher up. No, let us not abandon it. But, even so, we shall discover that that sort of thing requires something more than the ordinary equipment of the Christian life, that our resources have got to be in another realm and we have got to be able to deal with things back of seen situations, and if we cannot do that, it is a poor lookout for us here among men. That is becoming more and more patent.

Unless I am mistaking the signs of the times, it is true that we are really up against a mighty intensification of spiritual antagonism to the interests of the Lord. That is quite understandable. If we are nearing the end of the dispensation - I put in an 'if' for the sake of argument, we can leave 'if' out and make a positive statement - but for the sake of argument, if we are nearing the end of the dispensation, what is the supreme characteristic of the end of the dispensation? It is the dethronement of Satan's hierarchy, and the enthronement of the church with the Christ in its place. Well, there is bound to be an intensification of resistance to that. That is quite logical, and so, from every standpoint, we have to recognise the nature of things at this time, and it will become a very apt and timely message of the Lord to us if He comes and reveals to us the heart of this message in Ephesians as to the heavenly calling, conduct and conflict of the church.

Well, all that gathers round the fact that the real and ultimate and supreme value of the child of God and the church of God is to be found in its effectiveness in the realm of things unseen. And if you have not got the secret in that realm, you will be at a loss, you will be all over the place, the enemy will be making an awful mess of you and of your affairs, and he will be just playing with you all the time and holding you up. Hence the importance of getting to this position set forth in this letter.

Now then, as to the Scripture's warrant for our believing that the Lord intends us to know and experience a present union with Christ in ascendancy over the spiritual forces. We can go on to see how important in this connection is an apprehension of Christ along every line of His own experience.

We know it is not a profound matter, but simply recognisable, that the Lord Jesus was not exalted until He had fully perfected His earthly experience. That earthly experience of the Lord Jesus was for us, not for Himself. There was no need, apart from us, for God to become incarnate and be born in baby form at Bethlehem, to grow up through childhood on the earth into manhood. There was no need for Him, on His own behalf, to live His life here and to die that death, to be raised from the dead, to be received up again into glory and be enthroned. That was a cycle of experience which was for us and as one of us, but what a One! No one else could have taken that position, could have so occupied the capacity, but it was as one of us. It may be difficult for us in our minds to see how Christ in incarnation was as one of us, but if we knew clearly and fully the meaning of union with God, what Divine union is, then we should understand the incarnation; God joining Himself with man and man with Himself. He never, of course, let go His Deity, His Godhead, but He took a form which brings man and God together in spiritual oneness and spiritual fellowship. It is a conception beyond our power of rightly and wholly apprehending and is full of perils in the realm of doctrine. Nevertheless, the heart of the thing is the most wonderful thing of which we can conceive, that He became incarnate for us and, in a sense, as us. That is, when you see the Lord Jesus Christ and recognise that this is God and man in one, you see how God has moved to bring about oneness between Himself and man.

It is a part of the experience of the Lord Jesus which is for us. The incarnation is for us, whether we understand it or not. It is for us and it is so closely related to us that it is intended to be as us. "We are members of His body". The following sentence is supposed to be a later addition: but it is, I think, quite good: "We are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones" (Eph. 5:30). Oneness!

Every other phase of His experience is for us and as us. His death is for us and as us, and even before you reach His death, His life here. There is no meaning in the life of the Lord Jesus through those thirty-three years, apart from this: that He was doing it as us. God was having in Him a Man who, under every stress and strain, was satisfying Him. He was going to take a Man to glory who had been perfected through sufferings, and that was not necessary for God Himself, that was for us. I thank God that there is One in the glory who is a Man who has satisfied God in human form, through every human trial and temptation, and I am able to say, by the permission of God, that that Man not only represents me, but in God's thought He is as me in the presence of God. That is, God looks upon me in Him and looks upon Him for me. God has a triumphant earthly life in perfection in that Man.

His death is not only for me, for you, for our sins. It is our death as us, and in His resurrection and His ascension and His exaltation, He has perfected the cycle of human experience for us and as us, and then, when that is done, He is given to be Head to us, for us, as us. Look again at that great clause - "He... gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that fills all in all" (Eph. 1:22,23). Now, "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him should not perish, but have eternal life". That is one giving of Christ, but here is another. "Gave Him to be head over all things to the church", and giving Him to be Head over all things to the church simply signifies that everything is gathered up in Him as for the church, as to the church. That is, all that is in Him is to the church, and His full and perfected cycle from birth to glory is unto the church - from incarnation to glorification - is to the church. Our birth, and from it to our glorification, is because He has perfected the cycle already for us; given to be Head to us. It is as though God completed the whole thing in Him and then said, "That is yours; I give it to you. All that is for you, the church". How we need, then, to apprehend Christ in relation to the full thought of God, the significance of Christ in relation to God's full purpose.

Now, not only do we see this revealed in the full way in Him as He comes out from the glory and returns to the glory, but it is just that thing which has been foreshadowed ever since it became necessary. I wonder if you have really grasped, in a way which means something to you, the fact that the 'one new man' idea of Ephesians is not something which has come in at a late date in the history of this world, is not something subsequent, but it is prior to all other things. I think some people have got the idea that - in the first place there were Gentiles and then there were Jews and so we have Jews and Gentiles and then, as something after that we have got the church - something later. Not at all! Before ever there were such things as either Gentiles or Jews, there was the church. It stands before all other things. That is God's first thought, God's primary thought. Gentiles and Jews - well, they may have a great history in the grace of God and in the sovereignty of God, but after all, they belong to the earth and they belong to respective times. The church does not belong to the earth and it does not belong to time. The church is from eternity to eternity in the thought of God. It is not something subsequent, and therefore all other things in the history of this world are constituted upon eternal principles, eternal thoughts and they are governed by eternal laws, so that when you come back to the Old Testament you find all history is governed by Christ, and Christ in this eternal sense where the church is in view.

Let me make that clear. The Old Testament is divided into two main sections historically. There is that section which runs from Adam, or if you like, Abel, to Moses, and then from Moses to Christ. That is hardly strictly Old Testament, but you see what I mean, it leads us right up to Christ. If you look at it, you will find that that first section - Abel or Adam to Moses - is entirely governed by these very things of which we have been speaking. What? Firstly, the primary thought of God - man in a place of spiritual dominion. Then the related things - death, because of and unto sin; resurrection, as making alive unto God for God's purposes; ascension, an essentially heavenly and not earthly people or man; exaltation. You can see that is your first section from Adam or Abel to Moses.

You see those very laws wrought out in the history of the patriarchs one by one. You take up Adam. Why was he made? "Thou madest him to have dominion". Abel - what is his testimony? Death because of sin and as God's way of getting rid of sin. Noah - resurrection; Enoch - ascension, and Joseph - enthronement. I leave big gaps, of course, but you see the principles. I simply indicate that that first long section (and it is a long section of many centuries, practically two thousand years) is governed by these very principles of Christ, the very same principles as we find in the New Testament and in the letter to the Ephesians focused in the church; the Body of Christ, the administrative instrument of God through the ages of the ages.

Israel in Egypt

Then as to the second section - Moses to Christ. The thing is so patent that it would be taking you back into the kindergarten even to point it out. Take the three phases of Israel's life without dealing with the details. Egypt; what is the climax of the Egypt phase of Israel's life? What is it that stands over that phase pre-eminently? You have to ask, perhaps, before that: what does that phase represent? Well, it represents an elect people held in the bondage of this world under its tyrant, and doomed to judgment because of being in that position. What is the climax? It is death as in the lamb as God's way of deliverance from the authority of darkness, the power of Satan, the bondage of the world, the judgment resting upon the race. It is death that marks the climax of the Egypt phase, death to the world with all that that means, its state and its overlord, its bondage and its destiny.

The death of the Lord Jesus is a mighty cancelling of a whole system unto a mighty deliverance, and that is represented there. But that is what you have got in Ephesians, brought now to its final and consummate application to the church. Israel does not lead to the church; the church is only having its history illustrated in Israel. All earthly institutions are representations of heavenly things, as Ephesians will tell us very clearly presently about domestic and other relationships - husbands, wives, parents, children, and so on. We shall be shown in this letter that these earthly institutions are reflections of heavenly things and have got to be held in the light of the heavenlies. "As Christ loved the church". That is the realm in which we are moving. Well now, there you have Christ in His death set forth for Israel's deliverance from bondage and doom, as bound up with this world.

Israel in the Wilderness

You move then to the second phase of Israel's history. It is the wilderness. What does the wilderness phase of Israel's life represent? You cannot understand the climax of it until you see that, and it is simply kindergarten to speak of such things. The wilderness aspect of Israel's life represents the life of the people of God now, redeemed and delivered from the world and all that the world means, but not yet delivered from themselves, or, if you like to put it in the singular, not yet delivered from the self-life. Unfortunately, that is true to spiritual history in the New Testament as in the Old and in our own experience. What is the climax of the second phase - the wilderness life? Ah yes, it is death again, but death carried forward into another relationship, into this relationship - a resurrection ascension position. Now you notice that in Ephesians those two things are not separated. You do not deal with resurrection and ascension as two different things when you come to Ephesians.

"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".

There is no break. Not - when He raised Him from the dead and so many days after the ascension took place. No - raised Him and set Him at His own right hand. It is a resurrection ascension. In a sense, after the Red Sea there is resurrection as from the dead, but when you come to an Ephesian position, resurrection goes on to something more. It is a new exercise of a new faith: "to us-ward who believe... the working of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ". But that is not belief or faith unto salvation. This is something more unto a heavenly position, the resurrection ascension which effects a heavenly position. That heavenly position was anything but true in Israel's case in the wilderness, although from God's standpoint they were always conceived of as a heavenly people. Everything in the wilderness life from God's standpoint is emphasising, stressing, hammering that home. The High Priest's robe all of blue says that this is a priestly people of a heavenly order. The manna sent down from heaven says that, from God's standpoint, this people is a people sustained out of heaven, a heavenly people living on heavenly resources. But in themselves they were anything but that; their hearts were going back to Egypt very often. We know that sorry history. But that resurrection had to be carried further so that it was not just resurrection on to a natural level - that you can be in Christ positionally through faith and be living your own natural life and satisfy God. That is not God's thought. The urge is ever further and evermore upward. So the climax of the wilderness life must come in a new meaning of the Cross on its death side.

So we come to Romans for believers. Romans 6 is not for the unsaved now, but for the saved, for Christians the Cross of the Lord Jesus in its death application, but leading through to Romans 8 instantly, with just a parenthesis of Romans 7 between. Resurrection ascension - that is Jordan. The climax is death to the self-life and the earthly life. The second section of the letter to the Ephesians will tell us what that is.

This is all not merely some abstract position, some nebulous, doctrinal thing. What does this mean? Let us get to grips with practical matters. All this wonderful heavenly life, this wonderful heavenly conflict, this wonderful heavenly calling - what does it mean?

"I therefore beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love".

"Husbands, love your wives, wives be in subjection to your own husbands... Children, obey your parents. Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath... Servants, obey your masters. Masters, be fair to your servants".

Oh, that is coming down out of the heavenlies! That is an anticlimax! Will you make a note of everything from the beginning of Ephesians 4-6:9 which comes within the compass of that governing clause - "walk worthily of the calling"? Put it down, tabulate it one by one. Walk worthily - what does that mean? In meekness, lowliness, forbearing, longsuffering. If you are a husband, put it down. If you are a wife, put it down. If you are a member of a family, put it down. Is there a husband who has not been in that spirit toward his wife; "Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her". Put it down. Look at it for yourself. Is there a wife who is not in this connection called upon in the same language to love her husband, but to be in subjection to her husband, it says that and it says that is walking worthily of the calling wherewith we were called. That is God's Word. Go through fragment by fragment and get that section before you.

This is walking worthily. This is what the first three chapters mean and imply, and I may take it as settled beyond any dispute that I can know nothing about the last section - victory over the enemy in the heavenlies - until I have got on to that basis. This is a very practical matter. You will find that not many things are left out, but even then I believe that what is there is not all that God means by walking worthily. There may be many other things that the Holy Spirit would touch in us which are not mentioned specifically there, but there is enough there to find us out.

"Be ye angry and sin not". We all go down before that. We all have to confess we do not know how to be really angry and not sin. What do you mean by being angry and not sinning? The Lord Jesus was angry. He took knotted cords and was really angry, but how was He angry without sinning? There never came a personal element into His anger. That finds us out. We are usually angry because something touches us. We do not know how to be angry apart from ourselves. That is a wilderness side. That is where resurrection ascension comes in. You say, it is too high, it is too far on. Well, beloved, "Now unto Him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us". The Lord has made full provision for all He requires, and we find it here.

We are speaking about the climax of the wilderness phase in a new meaning of the death and a new and fuller meaning of the resurrection, which is the resurrection ascension.

Israel in the Land

Then you pass to the last phase of Israel's history - in the land. This is the exaltation aspect of things. They are found to have power over the spiritual hosts as typified by the enemies in the land. This is Ephesians in its full significance - power in the heavenly realm over the heavenly hosts. It is ascension union with Christ.

The warfare is very different here from the warfare in Egypt and from the warfare in the wilderness. I am not going to stay to point it out now. But now this warfare is not as in themselves and not as in the world, but it is in the heavenlies, and as I started by saying, it is there that the final appraisement of our significance to the Lord is to be estimated and focused.

We cannot know what the Lord means us to know until we are out of the realm of the governance of the self-life, the carnal life, the personal interest life. We shall be like Israel in the wilderness, that is, generally in defeat, in a very weak position in the main, and certainly with no straight through course to God's end, if in any way we have not apprehended Christ, firstly for Egypt, and secondly for the wilderness, and thirdly for the heavenlies. We cannot divide between these things and say, 'Well, we have Christ for deliverance from Egypt, but we will still live in the flesh, we will not have Christ for deliverance from self'. Neither should we say that we will have Christ for deliverance from Egypt and from self, but not Christ for warfare in the heavenlies. No, we will miss God's end if we take anything less than His full thought for us.

That is enough for you to work upon.

Chapter 4 - The Significance of the Holy Spirit

In our previous meditations, we have been very largely engaged with the calling of the church. The calling, the conduct and the conflict cannot be kept in watertight compartments. The calling leads to and demands conduct; and therein we find the conflict.

The calling - in a word: it is present and future union with the exalted Lord in His position of power and authority over the kingdom of Satan. To that position the church is called now; to occupy that position in fulness is the Divine destiny for the church.

Well now, with such a tremendous thing before us before which we might all go down and cry, "Who is sufficient for these things?" we must hasten to discover the Lord's provision, and so this letter, which brings our heavenly position, vocation, and warfare so much into view, also contains throughout from first to last, the Lord's provision for that position, vocation, and conflict, and the Lord's provision is nothing other nor less than Himself in the person of the Holy Spirit. And therefore the letter has quite an amount to say about the Holy Spirit. In a previous meditation, we were seeking to see the significance of the Lord Jesus Himself in relation to God's eternal intentions concerning the church. Now we pass to see the significance of the Holy Spirit in that same relationship. The difference is just this: Christ came to secure the ground upon which those Divine intentions could be realised. That really sums up what we said about the incarnation, the life, the death, the resurrection, the ascension and the exaltation of Christ. It all amounted to the securing of the ground upon which God could realise that which He had purposed from eternity. And Christ in heaven is God's ground upon which He proceeds to accomplish all His purposes in us. The Holy Spirit has come, not to secure the ground, but to be the energy of the realisation of what has now been made possible in Christ. Everything now in the Lord Jesus is possible, through His person and work. The Holy Spirit, so to speak, encamps upon that complete, Divine possibility and becomes the energy for its realisation. There are different ways, of course, of putting that same thing, but I think that will convey what is meant.

There are certain things which we have to recognise about the Holy Spirit - simple things, but they are basic.

The Holy Spirit the Executive Member of the Godhead

The first is this, that the Holy Spirit is the executive member or agency of the Godhead. From the first reference to the Holy Spirit right the way through the Word of God, we find that He is the member of the Godhead who is putting things into operation. He is executing the purposes of God. It is by the Spirit of God that the things of God are done. We know that, of course, and there is nothing very profound about it, but it is necessary for us to recognise that that is the first thing for our apprehension as to the Holy Spirit, that His coming is for execution, for carrying out, for transaction, for realisation. He is the activity and energy of God in the realm of Divine intention.

The Relationship of the Holy Spirit to this Dispensation

The second thing that we must recognise is that of His special relation to this dispensation, the special relationship of the Holy Spirit to this dispensation in which we now live, and it seems to me that this is mainly related to one great fact, that fact being the glorification of the Lord Jesus. That is stated very definitely, as you know, by John in his gospel. The Lord Jesus had been saying certain things about those who believe, that out of them should flow rivers of living water. John makes the comment - "This spoke He of the Spirit... for the Spirit was not yet (given), because Jesus was not yet glorified" (John 7:39). So that the Holy Spirit is bound up with Jesus having been glorified, and it was quite impossible for the advent of the Spirit to take place until Jesus was glorified, but there is no delay. When Jesus is glorified, that is the signal for the advent of the Spirit in this dispensation, and when we speak of the glorification of the Lord Jesus, we are only using another word for His exaltation, "Being at the right hand of God exalted... He has poured forth this" (Acts 2:33). The two things go together.

Now, the exaltation of the Lord Jesus, or the glorification of the Lord Jesus, is the commencement of His administration. The administration of the Lord Jesus commenced with His enthronement. The "all authority in heaven and on earth" given to Him by the Father began to be put into operation when He was enthroned at the right hand of the Majesty on high. It was concerning this that He Himself spoke in the words full of illumination recorded by John, "He that comes from above is above all: he that is of the earth is of the earth, and of the earth he speaks: He that comes from heaven is above all. What He has seen and heard, of that He bears witness... He that has received His witness has set His seal to this, that God is true. For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God: for He gives not the Spirit by measure. The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand" (John 3:31-35).

In that full statement, you have two things. First, the absolute superiority of the heavenly Lord. He that is from above is above all - His superiority to all, to everyone and everything, and His absolute authority - "the Father has given all things into His hand". That represents His administration. The Lord Jesus, of course, is looking on. The little clause about not giving the Spirit by measure refers to Him. The Spirit is not given to Him by measure. The Spirit is given to the Lord Jesus in fulness, without limit, and you put these two things together: all things in His hand in the position of absolute administrator and the Holy Spirit given to Him in that capacity without measure; now you move on to the dispensation of the Spirit. And that is the nature of the dispensation - Jesus in heaven, the heavenly One, with all things given into His hands in the position of universal administrator, and the Holy Spirit without measure given to Him to execute His administrative office. The relationship of the Holy Spirit to this dispensation is the administration of the exaltation of the Lord Jesus.

The Specific Object of the Holy Spirit in this Dispensation

But then that has a particular connection, and that is the third thing that we have got to recognise. And all these things make up one thing, and that is: the specific object of the Holy Spirit in this dispensation is God's eternal purpose concerning the church and the administration of the Lord Jesus relates to the church. The church is the sphere of His administration because it is to the church that He is given as Head over all. That is administration - inclusive Head of the church, and it is through the church that that administration is to be expressed out into this universe. The church is the elect instrument by which that universal administrative position of the Lord Jesus is to be made good in God's universe, and that in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So we find that the immediate advent of the Holy Spirit gave an unmistakable expression to that. In the first place, it was in the church the sovereign Lordship of Jesus became marvellously manifested, and then through the church that Lordship was seen in operation in all directions. You say, "Why did it not go on? Was it not intended to go on?" The answer to that question, I believe, is this - the church did not continue in its heavenly position. You have got to be in the heavenly position in order to know the heavenly values.

Well, that brings us back to Ephesians, which carries toward the end of the dispensation, and the Lord's object in this dispensation being to have His church in a position where He can express His mighty, universal, administrative office in the power of the Holy Spirit who would seek again to find those among the saints who, while perhaps the whole Body in the first instance, will not so respond, will respond to the heavenly calling anew and leave the earthlies, leave the lower, and come back and possess their appointed place in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. It need not be by a great many signs and wonders all around, but it can be and should be by a mighty impact of the throne of the Lord Jesus upon the powers of darkness, which I think is even more important for this ultimate thing.

Now do you see the specific connection of the Holy Spirit with this dispensation? It has to do with the church in relation to God's eternal intentions, and to bring the church to the position where it can really wage triumphant warfare against principalities and powers, the world rulers of this darkness and the hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenlies.

The one characteristic term for the Holy Spirit in relation to the church in this dispensation, that is, in relation to the saints, is 'anointing'. That word or term carries its own significance and just means this - God committing Himself to His purpose. Wherever you look in the Word of God, be it Old Testament or New Testament, and see the word 'anointing', that is, anointing which is from God, which is of God, you will find that it represents God coming in in relation to Divine purpose, committing Himself to that, and it is by reason of that anointing that God's end is made possible and is realised. Apart from it, nothing can ever be according to God. In this dispensation, the church is the anointed vessel of the Divine purpose and intention, and the anointing by the Spirit simply means God has committed Himself to the church in relation to His intentions. Well now, that is enough for the moment on the significance of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit in the Letter to the Ephesians

We come nearer to this letter to the Ephesians to see the Holy Spirit here especially. You remember, of course, that the Ephesian church commenced with the Holy Spirit. In Acts 19, Paul came that way and met certain disciples of John and immediately put the question to them, "Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed?" They said, "We have not so much as heard that the Holy Spirit is". Well, the issue of Paul's dealing with them was that they received the Spirit and they were not a Christian church until then, but then they were. They commenced with the Spirit as a church, but here in Ephesians - the same place and the same church - in that which is before us in this letter to them you have something very much more than being constituted a local church by the Holy Spirit. You have the ultimate issue of the church, universal and local. That is what is in this letter. It is life in union with Him who is in the throne. But it is the same Spirit; the Spirit who constitutes in the first instance, the Spirit who is the basis of the church's existence, is the Spirit of the realisation of the church's purpose, and so in Ephesians, that is what is brought before us.

Perhaps the most helpful and profitable way to see things here is that of connecting the Holy Spirit with each phase of the letter as we have seen its divisions; that is to say, the Holy Spirit in connection with the heavenly calling, and then the heavenly conduct and then the heavenly conflict, remembering, of course, that all of them are one in object - that is, the throne oneness with the exalted Lord.

The Holy Spirit and the Heavenly Calling of the Church

So then, look at the Holy Spirit here in that first section - the Holy Spirit and the heavenly calling of the church. It will be impossible to stay for an exposition of each passage in this letter which refers to the Holy Spirit. Only the briefest word will be possible, but we trust it will be indicative and point on to something more.

In Ephesians 1 we have not, in the first place, the Spirit mentioned, but something implied: "...has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ" (Eph. 1:3).

"Every spiritual blessing" - implying a position and a state. It implies that we are spiritual, and if we look back at Romans and see where that matter is dealt with more fully, we know that Romans 6 sees the natural man, the carnal man, put out by the Cross of the Lord Jesus and Romans 8, which is its immediate sequel, sees us no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit, or, in other words: spiritual and not carnal. Ephesians takes us up at that very point. It assumes a great deal of spiritual history. It assumes, in the first place, that we are out of Egypt, and it assumes, in the second place, that we are out of the wilderness; we are out of the world and we are out of the flesh, and it takes us up in the land, in the heavenlies, and it says that we are now not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. We are spiritual and therefore all our blessings are spiritual blessings, and this is made good to us by the Holy Spirit who will lead us to know what our heavenly resources are and what our blessings are, and that corresponds, of course, to the type in the Old Testament of Joshua as the energy of the Holy Spirit leading into the land to exploit it, so that all that is there as the inheritance is to be taken up, possessed and turned to account.

It is not until Joshua, a type of the Spirit's energies, leads them on in the position where they are in the heavenlies that they discover what their spiritual blessings are. The Holy Spirit, then, is our greater Joshua, but it is assumed that when Joshua really does come to take up His work, He is doing it in a people who are over in the land. The Holy Spirit can never really get on with the work for which He has come, until we are in a certain position. If we are down here on the wilderness line, the flesh, the carnal life, the self line all the time, the Holy Spirit's operations with us are of a different character altogether. They are connected with getting us out of that position, but that is not the positive side, that is purely negative. But when once we apprehend our heavenly position in Christ, the Holy Spirit has a clear course for the positive side of things, to see the real calling wherewith we are called. So that this first fragment where the word 'spiritual' is used, not the great, inclusive noun - the Holy Spirit - but the adjective, then we recognise that it supposes, implies, that we are in a certain position and in a certain state called 'spiritual' as over against what is carnal. We are in the heavenlies in spiritual life.

The Holy Spirit of Promise

Well now, we come to the definite references to the Spirit and a little later in the first chapter we have this: "...sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance" (Eph. 1:13-14).

Well, the book of Joshua helps us a good deal in that. What is the Holy Spirit in relation to the church as set forth in those words? Why this to begin with?

When you and I really receive the Spirit on the ground of our union with the Lord Jesus, the very receiving on our part, or the giving of the Spirit to us on God's part, means that we are brought as under a seal in relation to God's inheritance. The Spirit Himself is the bond between us and the inheritance. Sealed! You know why you use a seal; you fix something with a seal, you settle something with a seal. To sever things there, you have got to break that seal, destroy its oneness, and the Holy Spirit is here said to be the seal which links us and links the church with the inheritance, and that seal of the Spirit God puts on us is an earnest.

The Holy Spirit is an earnest of the inheritance. You know the meaning of that word. An earnest means a token of the whole. You pay a deposit and, if you are a man of good faith, by paying that deposit you mean that all the rest will follow in due course, and the earnest is just that - all the rest will follow in due course, says God: "I give you the Spirit. In giving you the Spirit, I mean all the rest to follow". The church receives the Spirit as God's earnest of the inheritance. Have you got the Spirit? Then if God is - may I put it this way - of "good faith", you have got everything in God's intention. When He gives you all that is intended, you will never have any more than you have now in the earnest. You will only enjoy it under conditions where it is possible to enjoy it as we cannot enjoy it now, but we have got it.

There is a very great need for believers to really get settled on settled matters. There is far too much of that which is unsettled about our position, our faith, and it is that unsettlement which always robs of fighting power. Presently, the Holy Spirit will lead us into the battle, but be sure that you and I will never be any use in that battle, and the Holy Spirit will never really lead us into that kind of battle until we are settled about settled things. There is nothing more destructive of real spiritual effectiveness than to lack assurance, and you will find that it is against such assurance that all the wiles of the devil are directed. Let us get to a sure place at the outset in discerning the significance of the Holy Spirit - an earnest, a seal from God, of the inheritance. Listen to the very title of the Holy Spirit here - "The Holy Spirit of promise". "The land of promise," Canaan was called. How did they get the land of promise so that the promise was transformed from a promise into a possession? By Joshua, the energy of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of promise! How shall we come to possess all the promises? By the energy of the Spirit. He is come for that purpose.

The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation

We come to Ephesians 1:15-23 in this same chapter, and we have to link with Ephesians 3:5.

"For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and the love which ye show toward all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; 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 ye 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 heavenly places, 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: and He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that fills all in all... the mystery of Christ, 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."

Here then, in a word, the Holy Spirit is brought into view as the Spirit of knowledge by revelation for the church - knowledge by revelation. We know quite well that of these things mentioned here at the end of Ephesians 1 we can know nothing without a special ministration of the Holy Spirit. They remain mysteries, even in this dispensation, apart from the revealing work of the Holy Spirit. That, of course, ought to be a settled matter with us, but then the apostle is saying, in effect, that the Holy Spirit has come for that very purpose, that the church should know by revelation what its eternal vocation and destiny is, what its calling is, what God's thoughts were from eternity about it, and that the church should come into that knowledge by revelation of the Holy Spirit.

All that I shall stay to say here for the moment is a word of emphasis upon the absoluteness of the need for revelation by the Holy Spirit to know all that is here set forth in words about God's thoughts. It is not knowledge of the kind to know what is said in the Bible. We might have committed this to memory and be able to give it out in the actual words spontaneously at any moment, but that does not mean that we know God's thought by any means, and this knowledge of God's thoughts cannot be comprehended in fulness at any one time. The marvel of God's thoughts is this - that they are ever fuller and fuller, and their fulness is a mighty ocean in which we can explore continually, but we have got to be introduced into that realm with Divine capacity for knowing and understanding, and the Holy Spirit is the capacity of God in us and in the church for knowing God's thoughts.

It is possible for us to know what is in the Bible, in the New Testament, as set down, and then to go and act, as we think, accordingly, and be doing just the opposite of what God meant! That has been done many times. Something has been taken from the Bible and acted upon, and in the long run has turned out to be just perfectly contrary to what God meant. That is our apprehension of what is in the Book.

In the history of Christendom countless movements and systems of teaching, institutions and organizations, very few of which harmonize but are, in the main, conflicting and at variance, are all constructed upon the Word of God. Roman Catholics will quote the Word of God for their position. It may not be their entire position, but very largely; and what is true in their case is true about almost everything else in Christendom. The Word of God is behind their position, and how many of all those thousands of things are in harmony? They are all at variance, conflicting, at war. Multitudes of them would not be seen dead in the same street as the other, they abhor them so much. That is a grievous thing to say, even among Christians who ought to know better. But their position is supported by Scripture.

Is the Holy Spirit of two minds or a thousand conflicting minds? Does the one Spirit work out in that way to make those who take the Word of God as their foundation to be at variance with one another? We cannot accept that, and difficult as the problem may be, there is a solution, but there is only one solution. Before I come to that, let me again say that you and I need something more than that which is written, and we may go all astray on a natural apprehension of what is written. We may be in the most extreme deception with our minds putting our construction upon the Word of God. We may be wholly deceived as to our position. But it is all written here! It is not enough, we do not come to the knowledge of God by studying the Scriptures. I am not saying that the Spirit of God does not from time to time act sovereignly when there is a genuine honest heart seeking to know God and reading the Word. That is something in itself in the sovereignty of God.

We come to know the Scriptures first of all by the knowledge of God; we do not come to the knowledge of God by knowing the Scriptures. How do we know God? You test what I have said. I call your history to answer. For years some of us worked in the Bible, we made it our real business to know what was in it. We went through book by book and we analysed the books of the Bible and with the analysis we knew the content of every book in the Bible and, as the result of working with the Bible, we preached and we lectured, we gave it out - but we knew nothing about it! There were flaws, weaknesses, defeats, failures all the time; very little spiritual effectiveness in it all although it was interesting to people, of course. But what upheaval was it creating, what was it doing? Then God did something in us, the result of which was a knowledge of Himself by mighty personal dealings. We came in an altogether new way to know the living God. Then the Bible became a revelation and made differences. It led to issues, it raised crises.

From that day, it has not been a book, it has been a revelation and a constant fountain of revelation. It is alive now; it is a living book. Don't be discouraged if you have not got such an experience, but we have got to have a Holy Spirit knowledge of God before we have got God's mind in the Book. It is a Spirit of wisdom and revelation by which we know, not what is written here, but what God means by what is written here, and then, when we get God's meaning, that becomes the focal centre of oneness.

The only hope of oneness on the Scriptures and what the Scriptures teach is the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of revelation. How many of you know it in just a little way? Of course, you are going to know it more and more. If you have the least suggestion of this, you know what I mean. The Spirit of the Lord has made just something in the Word very precious to you because of a living relationship with the Lord Himself. What the Lord wants to do is to make that in your life growingly. It may be you are able to put your finger on one bit in the Word of God and you say, 'That is my life, that lives for me! That is God to me, that is the Lord to me - that bit of Scripture!' That is what I mean, and the Lord would increase that for you so that by the Spirit you know.

"That... He may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your heart being enlightened that ye may know". The 'heart' there is the alternative word for the 'spirit', that inner man, that new creation in Christ. It is there that the Spirit of God does His real work, not in our souls, not in our minds, but in our spiritual organ of spiritual understanding, and spiritual understanding is the only true understanding of the things of God. Therefore we must be spiritual, we must be in the Spirit, we must have the Spirit to know.

Chapter 5 - The Nature of Spiritual Knowledge

In our previous meditation we were occupied with what is mentioned in Ephesians 1:15-23 - the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of knowledge by revelation, and I feel that the Lord wants us to just linger there for a little while before passing on.

"That... He would grant (give) unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know..." then follows what there is to be known. Here, we will first consider the nature of spiritual knowledge.

Shall we, in the first place, take account of this fact, that the apostle is here found in prayer for believers and those believers who we know from Acts 19 had received the Holy Spirit years before. He is not praying that the Lord would give them the Holy Spirit. That is an accomplished fact so far as they are concerned. But here, perhaps after years of Christian life and Christian experience and Christian testimony, he is praying and he says, "I cease not to give thanks, making mention of you...". He is drawn out, as we say, in prayer. This is a matter which is giving him considerable exercise in prayer for these believers that the Lord would give them, not another Holy Spirit, but in and by the Holy Spirit - wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of their heart being enlightened that they might know this great revelation concerning God's full thought as wrapped up in the church. That surely is a very challenging thing, that the apostle finds it necessary to give himself like this to this earnest and unceasing prayer that such - as we might term "advanced believers", Christians of years of standing, might come into a position where they are able to know.

That challenges us! And it says clearly that we may be Christians, we may be believers, we may have received the Spirit, we may have been going on in the Christian life for years, and yet we may not have come to the place where we have, in a spiritual way, apprehended God's real full thought concerning the church. It is a revelation which is of supreme importance if God's full end is to be reached. That is our first consideration, and we know that that is borne out in the history of multitudes of the Lord's people. They live, they have a knowledge of the Lord, they have the Spirit, they walk with the Lord, they serve the Lord, and multitudes and multitudes pass out, never having come to this for which the apostle is praying. Now, I am not going to attempt to unravel that, to solve the problem that seems to be bound up with it, but that fact stares us in the eyes wherever we look today, and we have to say, without being critical, that it is comparatively few who have really seen, as the apostle prays that they might see, this fuller intention of God concerning His church. If we understand the nature of spiritual knowledge, we shall very soon agree that that is so. We are not saying that all these people have never read Ephesians 1, but we are saying that there are multitudes who have never seen Ephesians 1 in the way in which the apostle prays they might see. Let us face that.

The second preliminary word is this. You and I have got to be very honest over this matter of spiritual knowledge, and we must not be afraid to be honest before God. We have got to have courage enough to be honest. You wonder what I mean and what I am going to say. It is this. We have, at this late day in Christendom's history and development, come into a great deal of tradition, a great deal of developed Bible truth, teaching, and doctrine. It may be, or it may not be, a good inheritance. There may be values about it, but there are infinite perils and very serious disadvantages. We know that as we look at the effect and power and fruitfulness of a direct transition from a heathen state to a true Holy Spirit Christian condition. You see at once in such cases a living apprehension and a starting on the road which is full of vigour and life and a surprisingly quick apprehension and growth and development, whereas in the realm of Christendom with all its long history, the convert has so much to overcome of Christianity and tradition before he can come really to a living place. And when I say you and I have got to have the courage to be honest, I mean this: that you and I have got to be prepared to come to the place where we write off as of no account every bit of Christian knowledge that is not living.

Living Knowledge

Now I ask you: what is the real value of what you know? That is the point, and that brings us, you see, right on to this ground: the nature of spiritual knowledge - and when I say 'spiritual', I mean Holy Spirit knowledge. The very first thing about Holy Spirit knowledge is that it is living knowledge, and when we say a thing is living knowledge, we mean that it is working knowledge. It is knowledge which counts for something, which really represents something in life, in living value to ourselves. It means something to us in a living way, and it is a great day when we come to emancipation from any kind of position which requires that we assent to certain things which are not living things.

Do you follow what I mean? It is a great thing to get outside of a system which is established and settled - to get right outside of it! Inside, certain things are believed, agreed to, accepted, established, and in there you are a part of that, and the thing is very largely objective, an order, and to stand clean outside of it all and be able to be in this position: 'Well, I may not know very much, but what I know I know, and I know in an inward way, and the nature of that knowledge is that that knowledge is my very life' - I say again, beloved, that you and I have got to have courage to take that position.

Where do you stand in this? Have you come to the place where you are prepared to quit? It does not matter what all the other Christians around you think. No matter what may happen, you are going to take the position where you say, 'I come to the point where now nothing is held by me that is not living'. That wants a lot of courage. If they say you are going back, it is very much better to go back if you are going back to Life. What are you going back on? What are you going back from? A false position! Rather than keep up with what is accepted in order to save yourself from being misunderstood, will you hold on to something that you know is not true as to yourself, it is not living, it does not work? Will you do that?

Now, I must safeguard that. You must be quite sure that that has not worked in your life, for all of us have our positions and our best knowledge tested at times. There are some things which today I know and they are my very life, but tomorrow or next week I may pass into a time of such trial and testing that I do not know where I am at all, even on those matters. These things have not broken down; I am undergoing a test, and I have to say to myself, "This phase through which I am passing - I have proved the truth of that in the past. I will prove that truth again!" Hold your ground, be careful. I am not saying that every moment, under all circumstances you have a hundred per cent assurance about your position, but that you have a history with God which has assured you on this and that matter, that that is a true thing, that has proved itself a true thing, and it will prove itself again though today you are having a bad time and that thing does not seem to be as living. I just put a little hedge round what I have said, lest anybody undergoing trial should forsake the right ground; but I am speaking now of the general position.

Spiritual knowledge is living knowledge and it is for want of that that so many never really grow by the truth. They have not got it by revelation, they have got it in some other way. So, running all risks, I do urge upon you that we have got to be very honest and courageous over our positions, for, sooner or later, we are going to be found out in our position. We are going to be found out as to whether our position is a real genuine and working position as to what we claim to know. Some of us have had many confidences given us in this matter.

I tell you the sort of thing I mean. On one occasion, a young man very strongly took me to task on a certain matter of doctrine which meant a spiritual position, and he stood me out long and strongly on his position. We happened to be in a week's conference in the same town. I was ministering, he was there, and he had challenged my position with his. Before the end of the week, that young man met me after a meeting and in a very roundabout way, not coming straight in at the front door but making two or three circuits round before putting his question, he said, 'Do you think so and so?' His question was a surrender of his whole position, but he was not letting me know that. I said to him, 'My brother, let us be perfectly frank. You have asked me a roundabout question. Is this your way of telling me that your position is not quite as sound as you would have had me believe the other day? Now, tell me frankly, are you perfectly settled in your own heart and in your own experience that your position does stand the test?' He had asked me a question about if we slip, if we trip up, or if we sin. He had stood me out strong and hard on the whole question of eradication of sin, that we cannot sin, the root of sin is taken out, and he came and asked me, 'If we do slip up...', and when we really got down to it, beloved, it came out. An original sin had got him and he was seeking to know what his position was. He had got a doctrinal position in his head and another position in his life. I am not now dealing with the matter of sanctification in any sense, but I want to get to this point.

What is the nature of our knowledge? Spiritual Holy Spirit knowledge works. It is living and we can put our feet on it with absolute assurance because we know. That is the kind of knowledge that Paul is seeking for the saints, not conviction in the head, not dogmatic attitudes about doctrine, but this heart knowledge where the heart is at rest - "the eyes of your heart being enlightened" - where you and I know that we are in no false position. Let us get away from what is public, from all others who have anything to do with us at all. Yes, and thank God for the day when we, as those who minister and have responsibility, are able to come to this position where we are no longer paid to preach, no longer part of a preaching system, but where we can say, 'We will give what the Lord works in us, and no more - what has come to us by direct dealings with God, but more, God's dealings with us; no more than what, by revelation of the Holy Spirit is living knowledge'. It is a matter of our own heart assurance. We can say in our own hearts, "We know, God has done it!"

You see, this kind of knowledge is all of a piece with the heavenly vocation. Presently in this letter (you cannot divide the letter up and take one section and isolate it), you are going to meet principalities and powers, and world-rulers of this darkness, and hosts of evil spirits. They know you through and through. Those demons with whom the sons of Sceva tried to deal, very quickly let it be known that they knew what they were dealing with. "Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?" (Acts 19:15). They know us and they know every flaw in our armour. Presently, the apostle will say that in this conflict, in this warfare, the very first thing that you must have is your loins girt about with truth. Strength for this thing is the truth, and they know whether your loins are girt with truth or with doctrine or tradition. They know. And you and I will not stand in that battle unless what we possess of knowledge is Holy Spirit knowledge, truth in its essential sense, something wrought into us by the Holy Spirit. Then, if that is true, it is not worth anything to go into the battle on an assumption.

May I ask that question again? How did you get what you have got? What is the nature of your knowledge in Divine things? Can you answer this question, and say, "What I have, I have by revelation of the Holy Spirit in my own heart"? Have the courage to put aside all else, and, if it is only a little bit, start there. The Lord will honour your honesty, and you must recognise that all that is extra to that is worthless, that is, in the spiritual fight where the church really does count.

Loving Knowledge

This is a wonderful way of defining this knowledge - "the eyes of your heart being enlightened". It is, then, not only living knowledge, may I say it is loving knowledge. Do you know what mother-love is? Mother-love is very often one of the most astounding things. There may be a child and all the world may regard that child as about the most unlovely little thing that ever you could find, but woe betide all the world if it says so to the mother! Mother is not going to abandon that child because of what all the world says about it. Somehow or other, mother has other eyes and they are not the eyes of her head at all, they are the eyes of her heart. That is, there is some relationship between her heart and that child which does not exist between all the world beside; and that child and that mother, despite what all the world says and thinks, will give her life for that child any moment you like without a question or a hesitation, not as an act of heroism, but of love. You cannot understand it. Well, you are not the mother - that is all.

The eyes of your heart being enlightened. Take mother-love, true love, whether it is mother love or anyone else's, love is like that and heart knowledge is like that. No one else may see, appreciate, value, understand, but in the matter which the Lord has revealed to your heart, that to you is some treasure which has your very life bound up with it. That is Holy Spirit knowledge and you cannot go away from that. You cannot go away from that any more than you can go away from yourself.

You have to ask yourself a question - we have, under great stress and trial, been forced to ask ourselves the question from time to time - but what alternative do we have? Not, is there something else that we can put in its place, but is there anything at all for which to live if that goes? It is not unwillingness to change a position; it is certainly not pig-headedness. It is simply that this thing has become ourselves and, well, there is nothing for it! If it proves false, then the Lord take us out! It is far too big a thing to be able to pass over or let go like that. It is not something objective in the mental realm at all. It is something which is a part of us and we are a part of it - Holy Spirit knowledge. Have you got that kind of knowledge?

Is that the kind of knowledge you have got as to God's purpose for the church? You see, there is a wonderful link here, and that is why I keep repeating that you cannot carve this letter up and keep its parts separate.

"The eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints...". There is a link between that and what comes out in Ephesians 5. "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for it... that He might present the church to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing... so ought husbands to love their wives".

"The eyes of your heart being enlightened that you may know..." - what? The apostle will tell us in a minute. It leads us to a further statement about the Holy Spirit.

"That ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man... that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend... the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ".

"The eyes of your heart being enlightened that you may know...". It is all of a piece. What is this heart opening of the Holy Spirit to know? It is the tremendous, the unspeakably great value of the church to Christ. See it and the church ceases to be an institution, an organisation, a system of things. See the unspeakable value of the church to Christ, the riches of His inheritance in her; the eyes of your heart being opened to see it, that you may be strong to apprehend that love, the breadth and length and height and depth, the knowledge-surpassing love, the love of Christ for the church. We all have to confess that we do not know it like that, but we understand now why the apostle is down on his knees so continually. If that kind of knowledge is necessary in order that God might reach His end in the church, then we must pray, and we must pray for the eyes of our hearts to be enlightened. We are not playing at churches. We are dealing with the most sacred thing that the Word of God reveals to us - the relationship between Christ and His church, His wife. That is the nature of spiritual knowledge.

That love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit will lead us to do in our measure what it led Christ to do for the church - He gave Himself for her. It will lead us, as it led the apostle Paul, in the way of the Master's love for the church, "I fill up that which remains of the sufferings of Christ for His body's sake, which is the church" (Col. 1:24). Have you got that kind of love for the church? You will not have that kind of love unless the eyes of your heart have been enlightened as to what the church is to Him and what place the church takes in those eternal thoughts of God. It is something to pray about. That is Holy Spirit knowledge.

Will you pray to the Lord to give you that knowledge, the knowledge which will result in your heart, my heart, being ever more and more captivated by His love for His church?

The Holy Spirit and the Heavenly Conflict of the Church

Now you are ready to pass with the Holy Spirit into the next part of the letter. We shall not go far, but I just indicate this to you. We pass into the next part, which is the Holy Spirit and the heavenly conduct of the church, and the apostle begins that part by saying, "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness" - what is that? That you know nothing, that you are nothing, you have everything to learn - "and meekness" - what is that? We will put up with a lot without kicking back - "with longsuffering" - and you will carry that to all lengths, putting up with things from others - "giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit...".

We have come on the Holy Spirit again. "The unity of the Spirit". What will inspire me to do that? What will inspire that 'all diligence' in me? What will produce in me an earnest endeavour and application of myself to keep the unity of the Spirit? It will be that I have had the eyes of my heart enlightened as to the value of the church to my Lord. No one who has seen even a little of what the church is to Christ can lightly allow division, or be at variance with fellow-members, or can easily and carelessly criticise the members of Christ's Body, His church. He cherishes His church. The love of Christ in our hearts will make us do that - giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit.

I am simply indicating to you the connection. Holy Spirit knowledge is working knowledge, and it is working in this way. You tell me you believe in the oneness of the Body of Christ, the heavenly unity. You have accepted the truth of the Body. If that has come to you by revelation, there will be no schismatic element in your life, there will be an earnest application of your heart to see that fellowship in unbroken relationships are preserved as far as possible, as far as in you lies. You will lay yourself out for an expression of that love, not with the lovely only, but with others. The urge of the Holy Spirit will be always in that direction, and that is a test as well as a statement of fact. This knowledge is working knowledge, and the way in which it works is to draw together, not to scatter, or to put apart, or to take anything like a careless attitude as to the relationships of the Lord's people.

I think I have said enough now. It is certainly enough to go on with before the Lord. Many more things can be said and are true of Holy Spirit knowledge, but let us see that these are the two things which matter: that it is that kind of knowledge which secures the kind of conduct that is found between the Ephesians 4:1 and 6:9, and then it is that kind of knowledge which the enemy recognises between Ephesians 6:10 and the end. He knows; he has to say, 'These people know. They are in no false position. There is no question about them. We shall not do much with them. God has done too much in them'. The Lord bring us to that position!

Chapter 6 - The Strategic Value of the Power of Love

We are being constrained in these meditations to contemplate the heavenly calling, conduct, and conflict of the people of God as revealed to us in the letter to the Ephesians. In our last two meditations, we were especially taken up with the place of the Holy Spirit in each of these connections in the letter - the Holy Spirit and the calling, the Holy Spirit and the conduct, the Holy Spirit and the conflict. I think it is quite clear that we shall not be able to deal with every passage in the letter which refers to the Holy Spirit, but rather with the inclusive message that is here as the Holy Spirit is seen to be so closely related to everything, and we shall continue for a little while where we left off in our previous meditation.

It might, however, be helpful to you for your own quiet meditation, if I indicated the passages in each connection. In the first - the Holy Spirit and the calling - we have a basic spiritual state for spiritual blessings: Ephesians 1:5. Then in relation to the purpose, the calling, or the inheritance, He is set forth as the seal, the Spirit of promise, the earnest of the inheritance: Ephesians 1:13-14. In verses 15-23, we have Him spoken of as the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. In Ephesians 2:18, we are seen to have access in one Spirit unto God; that is, the Spirit here is set forth as the way into the presence of God, meaning that it is only in the Spirit we can come into God's presence, "We both have our access". Then in Ephesians 2:21-22, there is reference to the church as being built for a habitation of the Spirit, which means that the Christ exalted is now the Christ within the church, and that carries with it a great deal more than we shall stay to dwell upon. Amongst other things, it means this: that the execution of the purpose of God, which is committed to the Holy Spirit, is not something which is carried on from a distance, but something which is carried on in an inward way. The Lord Jesus is not doing something as from heaven now; He is doing something within (by His Spirit) the churches, the habitation of God by and through the Spirit.

Now the final passage in that section with which we are going to stay now, because it spreads itself out so much, is in Ephesians 3:16-19: "That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, 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, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God."

That is a tremendous paragraph and, as you will recognise, it is a summarising passage; that is, it reaches right back over all that has preceded it in the letter and takes up all that and gathers it into itself, but it does not stop there, for Paul did not write his letter in chapters nor in verses. He proceeded straight on and this summarising passage immediately reached on into all that follows in this next section as we have marked it out - the conduct, the heavenly conduct, of the church, and then on to the third and final phase: the heavenly conflict of the Lord's people. Every part of the letter is gathered into this fragment at the end of Ephesians 3. It is very important to recognise that.

We shall see it more clearly as we go on, but I want to take hold of that immediately because it is an essentially inclusive thing that the apostle is saying here, and when we say "the apostle", we mean the Holy Spirit; we mean that the Holy Spirit means a very great deal more than perhaps either Paul the apostle or ourselves have ever yet seen. As we come under the Holy Spirit's tuition and illumination, we are able to see the truth by these things which the Holy Spirit has caused to be set down, and our approach to anything which the Holy Spirit has given should always be on this wise: there is something more there known to the Holy Spirit than we have recognised, and there is enough there yet to be revealed as unrecognised, to carry us right on to the very last step in the way of God's purpose, for what the Holy Spirit says embraces the whole purpose of God and we have got to see how what He says really does affect us as we are the called according to His purpose. Now that is the realm in which we shall move for a while.

The Strategic Value and Power of Love

Look back. Read again all those wonderful things about the heavenly calling, taking the first three chapters fragment by fragment. You can almost take them word for word, for the words are ponderous, they are tremendous words. See the vision they unfold, the great purpose of God from eternity, the calling of the church as out from those eternal counsels, pointing out and on to a day when that church will be a glorious church presented without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, to be in union with His Son as its Head, the very instrument by which God will administer this universe in heaven and in earth. All that is there; that is the calling.

Then look again, and you will be shown that over against that purpose, that calling, that intention of God, over against that unspeakably great thought of God concerning the church, there is a whole mighty system of evil set with almost inexhaustible resource to frustrate that, to defeat that, to render that impossible of realisation; a great warring hierarchy, principalities and powers, world-rulers of this darkness, hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenlies, with fiery darts and countless wiles. And their object is the purpose of God concerning the church, Christ and His members. Those are the two great things on either side - the purpose, and the antagonists of the purpose.

The Lord comes right in and He says, "You are called into that, and those are your foes and I want to let you know how you are going to win and how the purpose is going to be realised in you and by you, how you are going to come to that glorious end, for it is not going to be done apart from you; it is going to be done in you". And seeing that the purpose has created a warfare, and a terrible warfare at that, you want to know how to go to war and how you can go to war with the assurance of winning; and the first thing that I will say to you about this warfare is that the great strategy is love. The most strategic thing in the realisation of this eternal purpose and in the warfare with the powers of evil, is love. It is a matter of strength, is it not? "That you may be strengthened with might by His Spirit in(to) the inward man". We pray that prayer, we take hold of those words, and all the time we are thinking of strength, we are thinking of power, we are thinking of might, and you notice that the context of those very words - power, might, strengthened - is love, unto love.

The object of that strengthening, therefore the object of the Holy Spirit in this connection, is to the end that being rooted and grounded in love, you may be strong. Strong to apprehend what? Divine thoughts? Truths? Great ideas about God? No, strong to apprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God. It is all connected with love, and what the Holy Spirit is saying here, if you have eyes to see, is quite clearly this: it will be as the church is rooted and grounded in love that it will be able to meet the enemy victoriously.

I do not want to come down on to a very low ground, but after all, do we not see some reflection of this in the world in which we are now living? What are all the warring nations after? What are they saying is the main factor in their strategy for victory? It is the unity of the nation, the nation must be one, a solid whole. It must be as one man. What is the strategy of a nation against another nation? To disintegrate the other nation from the inside, to sow seeds of suspicion and doubt in the peoples on the other side, to get them internally broken up by questions about themselves and about one another, about their leaders and their policies, and every effort is being made by propaganda to get internal disintegration as the great strategy for victory. We do not want to dwell there very long, but you see what I mean.

Is not this the very work that the devil does to rob the church of its fighting power? Is not this the very business of evil spirits in order to defeat the church and to frustrate the purpose of God? Is it not true that the smoke of suspicion, doubt, fear, prejudice, and all such things has achieved the enemy's end for bringing the church into weakness, internal disintegration, scatteredness, and paralysis more than anything else? And what is true, speaking of the whole, the general thing, is true always within the smallest circle of Christian fellowships. The enemy will pursue that course because it has always been so fruitful. It brings him far more gratification than any other course.

Just to step back again into that wretched realm which we have just touched, it would be very much more gratifying if any one nation at war could so disintegrate the enemy from inside as to destroy it altogether, than it would to make direct assault upon it and spend its life-blood in a great venture like that. If you can, without striking a blow, win by internal propaganda, you have kept your forces intact. You have got all your reserves for other work you want to do. You see how Satan reproduces himself even in this world on its ordinary human level where he governs.

Get behind and see him doing this in a spiritual way against the church. Well, if Satan can strike a mighty blow of victory and success by dividing the Lord's people through suspicion, why should he come out in the more obvious and perilous and costly ways of open assault? He has got it all without striking a blow really, and that is the pathos and the tragedy, the thing that you and I, if we recognised it, would revolt against it in our hearts more than anything else. Satan has simply crippled us by interfering with our fellowship. He has put us right out of the fight by getting in between us, making us look at one another with suspicion, with doubt, putting a question to our minds about someone. And more often than not, it is a lie, it is the propaganda of lies. It is not true. He can get enough truth mixed in with it to give it a way and make it acceptable, at least to get it entertained, but oh, how the Lord's people need spiritual discernment and watchfulness not to take everything at its face value, even though it may look like being the truth. We should say, 'Wait a minute, let us make sure that that is the whole truth and nothing but the truth'. There is a tremendous strategic value in love among the saints and we may take it that when the Holy Spirit says a thing like this, He has got big issues in view, and He has got the biggest thing - the very purpose of God in us - in His hands.

Now, He comes as the Spirit of might, of strength, but remember that that is interpreted in the church in terms of love. Our strength is the strength of our mutual love. Always remember that. Power by the Holy Spirit in the church has got to be interpreted in terms of love. You want to remember there is a difference between Lordship and Headship. It is only another aspect of the same thing. Christ is given to the church as Head over all things, and later we shall be told that the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the Head of the church. If you go back to Corinthians, you are not being told about the Headship of Christ in definite language and terms, although it is implied there in one place at any rate, but it is not the subject. It is the Lordship of Christ. Why? Because the state of things in Corinth was such as to need Him to be Lord, but when you come to Ephesians, you come off Corinthian ground up into the heavenlies, and He is Head.

The husband is not the lord of the wife, he is the head of the wife. It is true in a certain sense that the Lord Jesus is Lord of the church, but He is not called that. He is called 'Head'. Headship is what? The pre-eminence of love. Lordship is domination. You have got to come under when it is lordship. That is not the relationship between wives and husbands. It is the pre-eminence of love, as Ephesians 5 makes quite clear, "Even as Christ loved the church". He is Head. There is no despotism about Christ where the church is concerned. You see, there is a difference. If you go the 'Corinthian' way, you will have to know Him as Lord, you will have to come under, be broken. If you go the 'Ephesian' way (I do not know that I like those terms), the heavenly way, you do not have to break under the Lordship of Christ, you bow under His Headship. It is love pre-eminent, you see, and that is power. It must be like that if we are going to overcome the enemy.

You and I can never face this foe if we have got to be broken under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, but we can face him if we have bowed under His Headship in the pre-eminence of His love. "Strengthened with might by His Spirit into the inward man... rooted and grounded in love to be strong to apprehend with all saints the love, the knowledge-surpassing love, to be filled unto all the fulness of God".

How can we gather that up in a word? This is the message, beloved. We are thinking of a new position with new power, a position of spiritual ascendancy where the enemy is proved to be defeated, where we really are above in Christ. It becomes a very practical matter! "Forbearing one another in love". "Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake, has forgiven you". "Walk in love", says the apostle in this section - conduct - walk in love. "Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit". That is the strategy against the enemy. That is the position necessary for heavenly warfare. Some great spiritual battles are lost and the enemy has much over which to gloat when, by some little phantom, some mixed lie, he has got in between two believers and interfered with fellowship, or when he has succeeded in getting a suspicion, a doubt, a question, into people's minds about something which the Lord is using.

The enemy knows the value of oneness, the unity of the Spirit, the love of the Spirit. He knows the value, and you may take it that that is his focal point with us all. Let us take this to heart and do let us be always watchful about this matter. When we come into the warfare, we shall be told that we are not only to pray at all seasons, but watch thereunto with all perseverance. The enemy stops at nothing. Let me say again, so often it is a phantom.

I recount one little incident by way of illustrating this. It always remains in my mind because it was a life lesson to me, and has always been a very great help to me ever since. Away back in the beginning when the Lord was dealing with me, when the Lord had brought me through that great crisis in my life which was the biggest thing, and was the beginning of this ministry, and we were being taught what authority in Christ over the powers of evil is, my first lesson was a very simple one, but a very precise one.

One Lord's Day morning, brother Paterson came into my room just before the meeting, and as he came in, it was as though there was a mighty wall of ice between us. He came in like an iceberg, I thought, and froze me out. But there was something sinister about it and evil. Once I registered that, I looked at him, and said, "What is the matter with you?"

"Nothing!"

I looked him straight in the eyes and I said, "Are you really telling me there is nothing?"

"No, nothing that I am conscious of."

I said I was not satisfied and asked, "Has someone been saying things to you about me?"

"No."

"Well, what is it? Are you conscious of something?"

And he said, "Oh yes, now you speak of it, I feel there is something..."

"And you are sure that there is absolutely nothing, you have not got a question, you have not got a doubt, you have not got something that wants clearing up?"

"No, nothing."

"Well," I said, "We will get down before the Lord and destroy this thing." We knelt together and, in the Name of the Lord, we stood against that working of evil. It went at once. But it was what followed that explained it. It was the Lord's Day, and the enemy saw that there was something bound up with that day that he wanted to prevent, and so he came in with his phantom, but there was nothing more real to me - it could have paralysed me if we had not dealt with it. It was dealt with on the spot, cleared up, removed, and the day explained what the enemy was after. It was made perfectly clear that Satan had some real interest in that day because the Lord had a real interest.

Very often Satan will come a long with these evil spirits and put up something. If you take it on, it will be devastating work between you and another. If it is real, then deal with it before the Lord. If it is unreal, destroy it. Be careful how you take things on in the matter of interruptions of fellowship. You may take it the enemy has an interest in that. There is a mighty strategy in the love of the Spirit. The Lord teach us the meaning!

Chapter 7 - The Present Significance of the Life of the Church in Relation to the Heavenlies

"To the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might he made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord". (Eph. 3:10-11).

We are going to turn for a while to Ephesians 3 - "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". I would say, right at the outset, I do not know exactly what it means that principalities and powers or authorities in the heavenlies are getting education at this time by means of the church. I can only draw certain conclusions of a more or less general character, and then you do not know whether you are right; that is, you might draw this conclusion that in some way there was and is a wonderful fulness of Divine resource which could never be drawn out in display even to heavenly intelligences until that specific object brought in the church - that is, that the church has become a peculiar instrument for drawing out from God Himself things which had no occasion of coming out apart from the church. We might think of that, for instance, in the matter of grace. The heavenly intelligences had never had an opportunity of knowing God as a God of grace - they had known Him in many ways, but grace had no meaning - until there was an object that needed grace and all that grace means, so they are learning something new about God in the display of grace, because the church is peculiarly needy of grace.

However, that is not what I feel to be the message now, but rather the significance of such a statement as a part of this whole letter. This is a very significant statement, and when it is viewed in the light of the whole letter, or as a part of the whole letter, you can see something of the range of significance that is bound up with this statement. It is an amazing thing! Perhaps we could grasp it more easily if it had left out the word 'now', for instance, and we were left with the idea that in the coming ages God was going to display in the universe through the church things which are new displays of His many-sided, His variegated wisdom; but the word 'now' being there brings us to an immediate issue. "Now unto principalities and powers..." and the 'now', as you see by the immediate context, is this dispensation: "...to make all men see what is the stewardship of the mystery which from all ages has been hid in God who created all things; to the intent that now...". The 'now' is set over against the 'all ages', the other ages. So that in this dispensation, God is doing something in the heavenlies through the church which is a revelation of Himself.

Let me pause there to make a parenthesis. You have got to read again from Ephesians 4:1-6:9 to see the meaning of the church. When you have specific applications of the word made, such as husbands, wives; wives, husbands; parents, children; children, parents; servants, masters - you are not dealing with something other than the church. And all the other details in that section about people and their relationships and their affairs and their behaviour (and there are a great many details there all addressed to saints in particular connections and directions) are still dealing with the church. You have not come off the ground of the church when you come to deal with a husband and a wife in particular, or a child or a family and parents in particular. You are still on the ground of what this letter is intended to make clear. You are on the ground of the church, so that this letter and this particular fragment directly shows that everything in the life of the church and its individual members is taken up into the unseen and has a meaning and a value there.

All spiritual history in the members of Christ's Body and in the Body as a whole, is heavenly history. That is, it is making history in heaven, it is constituting history in heaven, it has a significance in the unseen. I use 'heaven' now not in the absolute and final sense, but in the sense in which this letter uses it - "the heavenlies", "in the heavenlies". Nothing in the life of the believer, nothing in the life of the church must be regarded as something in itself, as something here on the earth, as something which really does not matter so much as those other spiritual things. It can never be detached from the ultimate, final, supreme issue of the eternal purpose and the overthrow of the whole kingdom of Satan. That immense purpose of God from eternity concerning the church and that tremendous downfall of the whole hierarchy of Satan is focussed upon the details of spiritual life in believers, and those details of spiritual life in the believer may have a definite and an immediate effect upon the biggest spiritual issues in the heavenlies. Is not that the whole teaching of this letter to start with, and if we take this letter as the New Testament counterpart of the book of Joshua in the Old Testament, does not the type in Joshua bear this out right up to the hilt?

You will remember that in the book of Joshua the people, being regarded typically as in the land or in the heavenlies now, find their whole life brought under arrest by the act of one man on the earth. The whole nation is affected, its progress is checked, and the enemy is able to withstand effectually. And when it comes to examination, the Lord focuses it all down, mark you, the whole of the host of the Lord and the Captain of the host of the Lord and all the purpose of the Lord, focussed down to the act of a single individual in secret - and that is not there for nothing. It is not just history as on the earth. It is tremendously significant.

That is what Eph.3:10 means - "to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the heavenlies might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God".

Its significance is that everything in the life of the church has an effect somewhere in the unseen, and that it is no use our regarding spiritual things as one thing, and thinking that we are going to get through in spiritual matters if the details of life down here are wrong in the secret life, in the things behind the scenes. We cannot live a church life and a private life - that is what this letter teaches. There is no such division; it is all one. We cannot live a heavenly life and an earthly life. We must get our mentality perfectly purged of all these unformed ideas, that when we come to pray for instance, when we come to meetings for prayer and when we come to spiritual exercises, then we are in one realm, but at other times we are in the world and on another level of life and they are other things altogether, and so we change our position from time to time. There is nothing like that here at all. There is only one realm for the believer, and so the master as a master has got to be a master as in the heavenlies. The master cannot be an elder of the church on the Lord's Day and a hard driver on any other day and a servant; in all these relationships there are not two realms for these things. There is only one realm and all these things are really touching the ultimate.

It does matter in the final issue of victory over the enemy how we behave in secret, in private, and as we are able, let us dismiss once and for all from our mentality the idea that there is anything at all in our lives, if we are members of Christ, which is private. I am not talking about things between one another, but there is a little passage which says, "There is nothing hid which shall not be made manifest" (Matt. 10:26). That is a terrible saying. Does that mean that God is going to drag out into the public everything that we hide, or would hide? I do not think it means that at all. I do not think God is like that. But I do think it is just as serious as that, and it means this: that something may be going on that is not right, something may be out of order in the background of our life. And then the day arrives when there is a big spiritual issue on that, when of all times it is necessary for us to be in a position to be able to deal with that thing effectively in the presence of God, to bring the authority of Christ upon that and we cannot do it, and the devil simply laughs at us and we are put to shame and confusion in that critical hour. We search for the reason. We think the Lord has failed us, the Lord has not been faithful, we have been let down in a serious moment or hour of our lives, and we have suffered reverse, and shame, and loss. The Lord has to say, "The trouble is not there at all; it is this!" You do not see that the thing can be related at all. That hidden thing is made manifest. It has found us out in the hour of deepest need. It is a thing hidden, now made manifest. The thing itself was not displayed as what it was, but it was manifested in its effect in the heavens. That is the somewhat severe aspect of things. I am only trying to emphasise the meaning in this, that after all, when we come into a heavenly position, there is nothing which has no effect there, everything counts there.

So you take this letter and you take it as a whole, and you will find that the value of everything is to be found in the realm where the full purpose of God is being disputed. Your first step - Jordan - for the heavenlies is your first step, that is, that place and point to which you come where you accept your identification with Christ in His risen ascension life through death. That is not just a baptismal service, that is not just embracing some extra bit of New Testament teaching. That is not just being conformed to some form of doctrine or teaching. That step represents something of tremendous significance in the heavenlies, and if it does not have that effect, there is not much in it. Therefore we find that if someone has really got spiritual life and is really moving in Life in the matter of baptism, Satan has a great interest in that. He is marking that. He recognises that that is not going through a form, that is not just doctrine, that is not a mere ordinance; that means something, and if he cannot prevent it before, he will make an awful rally sooner or later to spoil it. It means something in heaven. A true living testimony has its effect there.

That is our first step, and in every successive step with the Lord it has got to be a heavenly step, and being that, it means so much to the Lord and so much to the enemy that it sets up conflict. And in a heavenly way, on a heavenly road, you will find that the Lord's people can never take one further step in relation to the eternal purpose, without a fresh rising up of the enemy in power and hatred to try and prevent, to quench, to spoil. He is closely interested in every true spiritual step of the church.

This represents the great difference between Christianity as an earthly system and the church which is a heavenly body. On the one side and on the one line, you simply become a Christian in the accepted sense of the term according to tradition, and now you are a Christian, and now you get baptized because Christians are baptized, and then you go to church, you go to meetings, and you read a portion of the Bible every day, and you do quite a lot of things that Christians do, and you therefore swell the ranks of the multitudes of Christians who are doing these things and going this way and bearing this name. Well, that is one thing. But there is another thing. There is the other thing which from the very first inclination is a tremendously challenged thing and Satan knows very well the difference between a traditional Christian and a heavenly member of the Body of Christ, whether actually or potentially so. He knows what you are going to count for. If he sees you are simply moving on the traditional line, well, he will probably give you a push in that direction and help you on, because there is nothing more useful to him than to have dead 'Christians', Christians who were never really alive to count against him. But if he sees you mean business, if he sees God's hand on you, and knows as he is able to discern that you are bound up with the eternal purpose and you are in the way of the Spirit of God, then your course is going to be one which is fraught with conflict and withstanding. It is going to be a lively history in every sense.

It is not that we are anything in ourselves at all, but after all, beloved, what is said at the commencement of the letter to the Ephesians is said about us. This is said about you and about me - "Foreordained unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself", and when I look to see what that means, I see that it means, "heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ" (Rom. 8:17), that we may reign with Him, and reigning is a tremendous thing because there is a whole power reigning in this universe now which is opposed to God, and that reign has got to be supplanted by what is according to God, and we have to do it. It is to be done through us. Foreordained unto that! That is a tremendous thing. Whatever we may be or may not be in ourselves, there is a significance about Christ's members which is unspeakably great. Tremendous issues are bound up with the church. Get on to that line and Satan knows all about you and then there is nothing in your life whatever but what has an effect or a value in the unseen.

I do feel that we should recognise this, because it will help us. It will be a warning to us; it will make us watchful. It ought to have the effect of checking up on all matters that we might otherwise regard as quite private matters, something in another realm of our life than church life. There is no such thing. We know it - that many a time we have tried to fight through on some really pressing spiritual issue and we have been worsted in the fight, not getting through, and we have had to ask the Lord why. Perhaps we have had to wait two or three days, or some time, and then the Lord has just said, "This is why!" - something which to us was altogether irrelevant, seemed to be of another order altogether, but it was that, and when that has been cleared up in our lives, the other thing has yielded. It will check us up.

But it will help us to recognise that when the enemy takes an interest in us and in our affairs, there is some value, there is some meaning, there is something on hand. We may not see what it is; that something may never become a crystallized thing here as on the earth. We may never here on this earth and in this world see the crystallization of the value or interest which caused such conflict, but somewhere something was happening which was of account to the Lord, for it says, "...now" (not unto men and women, not unto nations, and not unto the church itself), but now "unto principalities and powers in the heavenlies" the manifold wisdom of God is being made known by the church. I do not understand that, I do not know what that means, only in a very general way, because that is not our present realm. Our imagination, if we used it in that connection, would not help us very much. It would not help us very much to say, "Well, if we get up into heaven... we shall find a whole angelic order saying about God's dealings with us here on the earth: 'That is very wonderful!'" It does not help us very much when we are in trouble, to know that angels are getting the benefit. But this is God's Word that something is accruing to God by the spiritual life of believers here on the earth.

Our history counts for something in heaven and the fact that the enemy is such an interested and active spectator of the whole thing is the proof that what we are going through is not for nothing. It means something. Let us put everything in the realm where the Lord puts things and see that there is no detail in the life of the church which is without significance in the heavenlies, but all means something there. The Lord would have us keep everything in the light of the big conflict that is going on, and to see to it that nothing whatever in any aspect of our lives is overlooked as a factor in the battle.

Chapter 8 - The Greatness of the Calling

By way of coming to some few, inclusive, comprehensive implications in this letter of the Lord's message through it for the age, I want to look closely at some of the statements, some of the phrases, which represent the very essence of this message. We shall not read the complete sentences, but just take the fragments and put the fragments together which do represent the essential message. You will see that the method that we are employing is intended to indicate, to point to something, and I want you to get hold of that indicative factor.

"He chose us... that we should be..." (Eph. 1:4).

That is enough for our purpose. The other parts of the whole statement are, of course, essential, but this will serve our purpose for a moment.

"Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself... to the praise of the glory of His grace" (Eph. 1:5).

He chose us that we should be ... He foreordained us unto something. He chose us for something; He foreordained us to something, and the issue: that we should be to the praise of the glory of His grace.

"We were made a heritage... to the end that we should be to the praise of His glory" (Eph. 1:11,12).

Something has been done by God in eternity past which is the object of God in the present age and in the ages of the ages as the result. The great eternal past in the counsels of God and the great eternal future in the realisations of those counsels, both the past eternity with the counsels, and the future eternity with their realisation, is focused upon this present age, and these remarkable words - that... that... that... - it is light upon us, they relate to us, they bring us in. He chose us that... He foreordained us that... He made us a heritage to the end that....

"Ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest..." (Eph. 1:13,14) - something done with something else in view, still keeping to the same realm: Divine acts with an end in view.

"That ye may know what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints" (Eph. 1:18). God has something before Him - the hope of His calling, the riches of His inheritance in the saints.

"That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:7). God's prospect - that the exceeding riches of His grace may be shown in the ages to come. It is something settled in His intention.

"Fellow-heirs, fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 3:6). Heirs! That has something in view: an inheritance. Fellow-heirs; fellow-members. That has co-operation in view. Fellow-partakers, partners, of the promise in Christ Jesus. The apostle in Hebrews 3:1 puts it this way, "Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling...". Well, that is just what is here.

"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" (Eph. 3:10,11).

"...To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God" (Eph. 3:19).

Take all those 'thats' and see what is gathered to them and around them, and take account of the immense thing that God has before Him concerning the church which is Christ's Body, which is the object of His supreme concern in this dispensation in which we live.

There is one word which will help you tremendously if you look at it in its constant repetition. It is that word 'according', in accordance with.

According as He chose us in Him (1:4).

According to the good pleasure of His will (1:5).

According to the riches of His grace (1:7).

According to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His will (1:11).

According to the working of His mighty power (3:20), all in accordance with something that God has intended and projected and is energizing.

The Need for an Adequate Apprehension of the Greatness of the Calling

All this is focussed upon us now. This lies behind that grace of God which finds us in His presence now. This is why God has brought us into His grace and salvation. This is that which is actuating God in all His dealings with us. It is a tremendous thing that we have been brought into.

What I feel so much in my heart so strongly at this time is that the great need of the Lord's people is of an adequate sense of vocation, of calling. Our Christian lives are not nearly serious enough in the sense of purpose, either as to our own calling in Christ or as to our relationship to others that they might know, that they might enter in.

That is just what lies behind this letter in the case of the apostle himself. On the one hand, the letter is a great, heart-bursting, heart-throbbing agony that the people should know. "I cease not to make mention of you in my prayers, 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 eyes of your heart being enlightened, that ye may know...".

Then he goes on later to show that it must not stop there, but that those who have come to know shall fulfil a ministry of making others know. In various ways, he makes it quite clear to them that their knowing is to be turned to account that others should know; "for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministry". And then the praying to which he refers at the end of the letter is for all saints and for this ministry that others may know, and it all means that the Lord's people should have a mighty sense of the greatness of their calling. If you go to some school or college where great careers and exalted positions are being prepared for, where high office and solemn responsibility is in view, where the influencing, perhaps of nations, is the prospect of some of those under tuition, then you find a serious atmosphere pervading, you find that things are taken quite seriously there and everything is held very firmly and solemnly in the light of the great vocation which lies ahead of those pupils.

The Power of God Bound up with the Calling

There is nothing on earth to compare with this. You and I are in the spiritual seminary of the Holy Spirit for responsibilities throughout the ages of the ages which no mortal has ever been able to contemplate. That is not mere language. Why, any approach to this letter from any angle will prove that to be so. Why, if God is infinitely mighty, should it call forth the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward, if there is not some immense thing in view? And that is what it says.

"The exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His own right hand... far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come; and He put all things in subjection under His feet".

The power of God which has gone that far, which has ranged that universe, is to us-ward who believe. What for? Why is that necessary? It is not just to save us from our sins and get us to heaven; not just to make respectable Christians of us. Oh no, it is this vocation of which the apostle speaks: "Walk worthily of the vocation wherewith ye are called". You are called with a vocation in view, and all that exceeding greatness of God's power is bound up with the vocation of the church now and in coming ages.

You can look again and again at this letter and see those tremendous things that are brought in from God's side, such as - "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...".

Is Paul only exhausting his vocabulary for effect? Surely not! Exceeding abundantly above! Why all that? To us-ward because of the calling wherewith we are called. Yes, it is a greater sense of heavenly vocation which we need. Until we have it, our lives will be poor things, weak things, defeated things, and we shall not be answering to God's thought. What does your life represent in the light of that? How much real spiritual dignity is there about your spiritual life - the Divine dignity of those who are called with a great calling? How much downright reality, as of those who have a tremendous thing on hand and in view? How much earnest outpouring of heart unto God for His people that they might not miss it, that they might know it? How much of this real intercession which is found in this letter? Are we playing at things? After all, in the light of this, are we playing at Christianity? Are we wasting our lives? For how much do we count in that realm of God's great purpose?

I feel what the Lord desires to do now is not to give us a great deal more light, but to seek to bring home to us the significance and implication of what He has given, and if He can bring us more abreast in our lives of what we know in our heads.

Let me repeat that if this letter represents one thing more than another, it does represent the need of the church for having an adequate apprehension of the greatness and significance of its existence from heaven's standpoint, from God's standpoint, from eternity's standpoint, and when I say 'the church', of course, that is of personal application to every one of us. I do hope you do not adopt an attitude that what is in Ephesians is something extra to the ordinary Christian life and is therefore optional; that it is a sort of extra teaching, it is 'the higher life'. That phrase is very often employed and used as meaning, well, something that you can go in for if you like, but you need not unless you are inclined - advanced teaching - 'They are people who believe in advanced teaching!' I have heard it from various quarters lately that we here are regarded as the 'university' and only special people go to the university. I do not know the best way to answer that, but I do feel this - Ephesians cannot be set aside without setting aside God's own full thought in our being born again.

It is not that being born again is one thing and Ephesians is another. No, this is the object of being born again. God in grace has saved us with a great purpose, and if only the Lord's people had this in their hearts - "What a great salvation ours is because of the greatness of the purpose!" - we would be greater Christians. And where there is no vision, the people go to pieces, and that is just the explanation. For the eyes of our hearts to be enlightened that we may see, that we may know!

The Full Meaning of the Death, Resurrection-Ascension and Exaltation of Christ

Now, what I have just said can be borne out by looking at the letter a little more closely, because this letter does not really take up extra things so much as it leads out what is already in first things. The foundation, the basis, of what is in this letter is basic union with Christ, and where does that union commence? Where is union with Christ secured?

Well, you begin and you find that it is in the death of Christ, and so right early in this letter, you find that the truth more fully touched upon for special purposes in the letter to the Romans - that is, identification with Christ in death, burial and resurrection - that truth is here brought in as foundational to all the eternal purpose of God. We were dead through our trespasses and sins. The Lord Jesus voluntarily entered into that position where we were and died a death you and I could not die - a death to sin. We were dead in sin; He died a death to sin. You and I can never do that. His was such a mighty death that the very death that held us in bondage was destroyed. But He came into it as us - that is implied here at the beginning, and we are given clearly to understand that there is a fuller meaning in the cross than that our sins were dealt with. That is true; because of His cross we have forgiveness, pardon, remission, deliverance from sin. But, blessedly true as all that is, what this letter brings in is the full meaning of everything, and so it brings into view the fact that the death of the Lord Jesus has a far fuller meaning than forgiveness of sins and remission of sins and deliverance from sin. His death was a death to a whole realm in which death was lord, and His death was the making of a way out, a way right out, of that entire realm of death, Satan's power, sin's tyranny and death's dominion.

So you come into Ephesians 4 and you have this: "When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive". This means that a whole realm which was in God's purpose had gone into captivity and had to be delivered, released, and led out, set free, and turned to account for God. The release from that captivity was accomplished by the mighty death of the Lord Jesus, oh! a mighty death in which death itself was destroyed. The letter to the Hebrews puts it in this way - "deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Heb. 2:15). His death destroyed the bondage of death and delivered. His death was a way out, as is made clear on the Mount of Transfiguration. Moses and Elias appeared unto Him and talked with Him of the exodus which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem. And what an accomplishment! It takes you right back to the book which goes by that name and you see what judgment - God bringing home the impact of His mighty power upon sin, upon the power of evil in Egypt, until that thing was smashed beyond repair, and led the people out with the doom of their enemies - He accomplished an exodus in His infinite power, and that was the death of the Lord Jesus, the Lamb slain, the Blood shed. Ephesians will make us understand that what is typified by Israel being brought through the exodus made by God, has its counterpart in the church; captivity led captive, that which was in captivity to one mighty hierarchy of evil now brought into the captivity of our glorious victor Lord by His death which was His exodus - the full meaning of the death of the Lord Jesus.

And the full meaning of His resurrection - "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 (do not stop there) and set Him at His own right hand... far above all...".

That is the meaning of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. It is a resurrection-ascension; it does not stop with a coming back on to the earth, but it cleaves its way through all powers until it reaches the place of absolute supreme ascendancy over all rule and authority and every name in this age and in that which is to come. That is the meaning of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus today. Now that is to us-ward who believe; it is for the church.

The full meaning of the exaltation of the Lord Jesus is brought out also in this letter. It is the letter of fulness on every point, and the exaltation, the enthronement of the Lord Jesus is here shown to be - not as in the letter to the Hebrews, for there it is personal very largely, although of course the church is, as it were, in the background, but there it is very largely personal. We see Jesus crowned with glory and honour, the personal view of the exalted Lord, we behold Him. But in Ephesians you have got the fuller thing. His exaltation is the exaltation of the church - "...made us to sit with Him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus". The exaltation of the Lord Jesus is our exaltation, the church's exaltation. What is true of Him is not true for Himself alone, but for His church. He and they are one Body.

So you go on, and you find here it is all a matter of the full thought of God in Christ in every detail, all with a view to the full purpose of God being realised; the authority, the government, the administration having been usurped, having been ceded to Satan and his hosts and now being exercised in this universe as we see it so clearly - principalities and powers, world rulers of this darkness, hosts of wicked spirits, all being the explanation of present world conditions - to be wrested from them, and they to be cast out of the heavenlies. The church with Christ as sovereign Head is to take that place and take that administration, and we will be in a position to make a different world of it then. The administration will be a different one; it will be the administration of God's Son, all that He is in moral perfection and glory, but that through the church. What a calling!

Practical Issues

It is the practical value of such a contemplation that is our concern. In the first place, this must really engage us in a very serious exercise before the Lord that we should see it. I do not know how much all this that has been said means to you. I know quite well that I am not giving you just an accumulation of things from the Scriptures. I know the little apprehension I have of it has cost me everything and has become a tremendous burden and concern in life, and while that is in so much smaller proportion to what was true in the case of the great apostle, we are able to say that we know a little of what he felt and meant when he wrote this letter.

And what I feel so intensely concerned about is not just what do you think about it, but how do you feel about it? All this has been available to you from the day that you first knew the Lord. You had the letter to the Ephesians in your hand, at your disposal, from that very first moment that you came to know the Lord. This is not some new revelation that has come in today. It has been there nearly two thousand years. What does it mean to you? Is the letter to the Ephesians only one of the books of the Bible?

Let me remind you solemnly that it was on the basis of the ministry of the apostle Paul through the letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians that the risen Lord came to the seven churches in Asia to judge them. Ephesians and Colossians, so-called, were encyclical letters. It is believed by some that a space was left blank, "To the saints at..." and then that was to be filled in by each one and sent on. They were for the churches in Asia, and about thirty years after those letters went to those churches, the risen Lord appeared to John in Patmos and said, "Write to the seven churches and write this..." and it was a calling of the churches to account for what He had revealed through these two letters of the apostle Paul, judging them on the ground of that. That is a solemn thought, and if we are right in regarding those seven churches in Asia as representative of the whole dispensation, or if we are right in saying that those messages to the seven churches are up to date now and have an application, then we may take it that the Lord is going to deal with us ultimately upon the basis of Ephesians and Colossians as His ultimate revelation of His eternal purpose.

It should call us to very solemn exercise before the Lord that we have had such a revelation in our hands all these years. It should really move us to seek that what is God's revealed thought here is not missed by us and that we are right in line with it and that we are tremendously moved by it; that we also pray unceasingly for the saints in the light of this calling, this vocation, this great thing which God has in view for the church. Well, that is one practical issue of such a consideration.

Another is this. I said that we are in the Holy Spirit's seminary with this great calling and vocation in view. I mean by that that you and I, under the hand of the Holy Spirit, are in training, and that is the explanation of all that the Lord is doing with us. It is the explanation of a lot of things.

It would have been a very simple matter for the Lord when He went down into death and when God raised Him from the dead, it would have been a very simple matter for Him to have annihilated the whole kingdom of Satan at one stroke. His power is equal to that. It does not take the Lord two thousand years to get rid of the kingdom of Satan. We are told that there will come a moment when He will destroy with the brightness of His countenance that evil power in a moment. God could have done it in the moment when He raised His Son from the dead, and all the principalities and powers and world-rulers of this darkness and spiritual hosts of wickedness would have gone forever from God's universe. Why has He left them two thousand years? Why are they there today? Why do we suffer so much at their hands? Why does the Lord allow them to assail us, trouble us and afflict us? It is to educate us as to how to take ascendancy and come to the throne. That is all.

This thing is a church matter. Our wrestling is with them. We are in the school of the throne, and when you are training a king to reign, it is a very serious and a very solemn training. We are in that school for the throne. So all our afflictions, all our trials, all our adversities, all the sufferings of the church, are meant by God to teach the church (and that is the individual believer) how to take spiritual ascendancy.

It works out in this way so often: the enemy assails and you have a terrific time of pressure and you begin to pray and cry to the Lord, 'Lord, deliver me! Drive the devil away! Get rid of this trial for me!', and the Lord does not take any notice, apparently. You don't get through that way, but if you have the eyes of your understanding enlightened, you will come to another position, and you will recognise that the Lord, by not answering you in that way, is calling upon you to take pre-eminence in His Name over the enemy. Not for Him to drive the enemy off, but for you to stand and withstand and, having done all, not to stand, but the literal there is 'to remain victor on the field'. You are being called to do something in this matter, not that you in yourself can do it or are a match for the enemy; that paragraph begins with, "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might - stand, withstand, having done all, remain victor on the field." The church has got to come to that place. You and I have got to come to that place.

We are being trained for our great eternal destiny. All trials are unto that end. The pressure which He allows, which the enemy means to press us down, the Lord, when we take a right position, uses to press us upward. The issue of every fresh pressure should be higher up.

The Lord open our heart's eyes!

Chapter 9 - The Heavenly Conflict

Reading: Ephesians 6:10-20.

Our feeling is that the Lord will occupy us in a still more definite and a fuller way with the third phase of things brought before us in the letter to the Ephesians, that is, the heavenly conflict of the people of God, the church, which is Christ's Body.

The letter, as we have been seeing, has three phases, all of which run into one another and are so related that we cannot take any one without the others. They are: the heavenly calling, the heavenly conduct, and the heavenly conflict. So we have to keep our eye closely upon the relatedness of them all in order to see the real meaning of each.

We will read that portion which specially refers to the heavenly conflict, which begins at Ephesians 6:10.

"Finally" (or from henceforth) - just note the significance of the word. It is not that 'the last thing I am going to say is this', it is a taking up of everything into this - 'All that I have said brings us to this - Now then, because of that, from henceforth... It is necessary from henceforth that you be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. From henceforth put on the whole armour of God...' - "Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye 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. Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; withal taking up the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: with all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints, and on my behalf, that utterance may be given unto me in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak."

The Heavenly Calling

In order to understand the meaning of the heavenly conflict, it is essential that we understand the nature of the heavenly calling and so, briefly we will look again at the calling and seek to get a summarized conception of that calling.

In our previous meditation, we went over a considerable number of fragments which had one feature, that which is indicated as being the purpose and intention of God in what He has done where we are concerned. What then, is the calling, the heavenly calling of the church? There is no one portion of Scripture which gives it all to us. We have to bring the fragments together, and as we do so they are almost like rungs of a ladder upon which to climb higher and higher until you see all that is in heaven in the thought of God, but here are some of those fragments:

"Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ... in whom we were made a heritage" (Eph. 1:5,11).

Well, that is something to begin with, something to put your feet upon. And here is another one -

"The unsearchable riches of Christ... the stewardship (dispensation in ASV) of the mystery which for ages has been hid in God who created all things; 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... unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all ages (generations in ASV) for ever and ever" (Eph. 3:8-11,21).

Something else to lift you up to see the heavenly calling. Here is another fragment which we take from the Colossian letter.

"For in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him and unto Him; and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence" (Col. 1:16-18).

That is something further upon which to stand to see the calling, and to what we are called: all things in Him in every realm, and He is the Head, the all-inclusive Head, of the church which is His Body. The Body is called unto that - all things in Christ. Or again, going back to familiar words in the letter to the Romans:

"If children, then heirs; heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him... The earnest expectation of the creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God" (Rom. 8:17,19).

"For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren; and whom He foreordained, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified" (Rom. 8:29-30).

Well, that is tremendous language! That is the calling, the heavenly calling. To sum it up, the calling is this: our ultimate conformity to the image of God's Son and the manifestation of that conformity issuing in our identification with Him in the administration of all things in heaven and in earth. The Lord Jesus has eventually to have all things summed up in Himself. In all things He is to have the pre-eminence, and there is no meaning at all in the statement that He is, in that very connection, Head of the church which is His Body unless as Head, functioning according to the very purpose of a head, He works out all things through His Body. So He is destined, determined from eternity, to be God's administrative Head in heaven and on earth, and we were chosen in Him - foreordained unto adoption as sons, foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, to be glorified with Him and to administer in heaven and in earth by Him. That is the calling.

God's interests have ever been as much bound up with that calling as have ours. He has an inheritance in the saints as well as we having an inheritance in Christ. This is what may be called God's masterpiece - a church in union with Christ as Head - and God is going to display in this universe His masterpiece. When I call it that, I am only giving another name to 'the mystery'. God has cherished through all eternity a secret, cherished it as a secret through all past ages and generations, but now by His Spirit, has disclosed it through His holy apostles and prophets, and the secret is out. It is God's masterpiece revealed. He has been working on it and He is working on it, and the whole creation waits for its consummation - the manifestation of the sons of God. This is the calling, the heavenly calling, of the church. This is a tremendous thing. When we have seen it really in a spiritual way, even in a small measure, then we are able to understand the heavenly conflict, but not before. We do not know what the conflict is all about, we do not know the nature of it until we know the calling to final conformity to the image of God's Son and identification with Him in the administration of all things in heaven and on earth.

Satan's Unlawful Aspiration

Well then, was this the position to which Satan aspired with his angels? Have we anything in the Word of God that would lead us to think that that explains things? I am not going to go through the whole Bible on the subject of Satan, but I just want to indicate one or two things. Let us look at some little, but tremendous, fragments.

"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth" (John 8:44. A.V.).

It is a case of the enemy not being in a certain position which he once had. "He... abode not in the truth".

"I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven" (Luke 10:18).

I do not believe, as some modern interpreters have said, that that had anything to do with what had just transpired when the apostles returned and said that even the demons were subject unto them. I believe that when the Lord said, "I beheld Satan fall as lightning from heaven", He is referring to this - "he abode not in the truth". At least a suggestion of that is made in Isaiah 14. While it is taken up historically in connection with Babylon, the principle of Babylon is the principle of Satan: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O day-star, son of the morning! ...thou saidst... I will exalt my throne above the stars of God... I will make myself like the Most High" (Isa. 14:12-14).

"Not a novice, lest being puffed up" (or overtaken with pride) "he fall into the condemnation" (or judgment) "of the devil" (1 Tim. 3:6).

You see the connection. "Thou saidst, I will exalt my throne. I will be equal with the Most High" - "Thou art fallen..." into what? The apostle Jude will tell us, and Peter will tell us. We will let Peter show us first of all.

"For if God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment..." (2 Pet. 2:4).

"And angels that kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation, He has kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day" (Jude 6).

Now, there we have in a few fragments, to which of course a great many more could be added, a history which was the consequence of something. It was the consequence of an unlawful aspiration to a position which was reserved for someone else. What was the position? Administrative authority as second in the universe to God. Here, of course, it is speculation - I do not think it is unlawful speculation or speculation without some Scriptural warrant, but certainly without actual statement in the matter, it seems to me that those counsels of the Godhead of which we read in Ephesians, the Godhead in counsel about this whole matter of the Son and the church as being God's elect vessel for His universal administration, those counsels got out in heaven. I am not suggesting that they got out unlawfully. It may have been they were made known to angels, of which angels Satan was very high in order at least; he was 'the covering cherub'. And iniquity or unrighteousness was found in his heart, it says.

What is unrighteousness? When you track down all the meaning of righteousness and unrighteousness, you come to this: it is not letting God have His rights, usurping God's rights. Unrighteousness was found in him, and there was evidently a conspiracy in heaven against God's Christ and the church, to have the place God's counsels had appointed for Christ and His members, to have that place, to administer. From the time of that revolt, through all the forms and phases of its expression in history, you can clearly see that the whole direction of things in opposition to God is to have world dominion without God, to put God out of His world, to take the inheritance and reign in it without God. That is what is going on today. It is heading up fast and manifestly in our own time. It lay behind Babylon, it lay behind Egypt, and it lies behind all dictatorships which are out for world dominion without recognition and acknowledgment of God. That is here on the earth, but it is a much bigger thing in the heavens.

The Explanation of the Conflict

Now, if what we have been saying is true, we see the purpose of the church in, first of all, Christ - by Him, through Him, unto Him - all things, and He is Head. Then, we were chosen in Him and foreordained to be conformed to His image, and now by the church unto the principalities and powers (not those principalities and powers, but a higher order) the manifold wisdom of God being shown and in the ages to come. Then unto God glory in the church by Christ Jesus unto all ages for ever and ever. Now, if it is true that Satan aspired to that, that his ambition led him, with a host of accomplices, a mighty host of angels which kept not their right habitation, did not keep within their province but moved out of it, sought to enter into a province which was not theirs but ours and Christ's, then today we understand the conflict. We can surely see that the explanation of all this spiritual warfare is the inheritance. It is the throne, it is the dominion of the church, and immediately you come into touch with the heavenly, you come into touch with a great system of antagonism and you are in the battle.

Now in a few minutes, let us bring this down to one or two quite definite and specific features or factors. This conflict focuses itself upon certain things.

The Conflict in Relation to Spiritual Knowledge

One specific feature of this heavenly warfare is that of its concentration upon spiritual knowledge - to prevent it. If you will look at this letter to the Ephesians again, you will see that one of the big issues in relation to the calling and the purpose is spiritual knowledge.

"For this cause", for this reason, because of this calling, "I cease not to... make mention of you in my prayers; 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 ye may know what is the hope of His calling...".

The conflict gathers round spiritual knowledge, because spiritual knowledge is essential to spiritual maturity and spiritual maturity is the same as coming to the realisation of the purpose. Spiritual knowledge, knowledge by revelation of the Holy Spirit, is a thing which is contested by all the powers of evil. We are not going to come to the inheritance 'willy-nilly'. The church is not coming to the inheritance, to maturity, or to its appointed place, automatically. We are not going to get there because God has appointed that we shall get there. Oh, do lay this to heart! We are going to get there, the church is going to get there, as it has spiritual revelation, and not without. You say it is a poor lookout for the church. Well, all right, but this is a fact, and this presents to us and constitutes for us our business before God as to ourselves, that upon which we have got to focus prayer unceasingly.

You see, we are in the section on conflict in the sixth chapter - "praying always at all seasons in the Spirit ... for all the saints". What are you going to pray for all saints? It is all very well to say 'Pray for all saints'. Do you mean we will always be asking the Lord, 'Bless So-and-so, bless these people, bless those people'? That is not what the apostle means. Of course, pray like that for all saints and have them in your heart, but that is not what is here in Ephesians 6 or in Ephesians at all, not just asking the Lord to bless all Christians in general and in particular as we may mention them.

No, this prayer, which is warfare - it is warfare prayer that is here, it is a part of the conflict - this prayer is gathered right into everything else. A real battle is on. We are girded for the battle; we are prepared for the battle: we are standing into the battle of the heavenlies, and, as a part of the very battle - prayer. What is this battle prayer, this warring prayer? It is for all saints that they might know. It corresponds to what Paul himself has been saying to them - "I cease not to pray for you". In the companion letter, (which is only a part of this letter to the Ephesians) the letter to the Colossians, he says, "I would have you know what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh" (Col. 2:1).

What great conflict! Where was Paul having conflict for them? Why, he was in prison when he wrote that, so he could not be doing anything else for them but praying. He could not be running about doing all sorts of things for Christians, but he said, "What great conflict I have". It was warring prayer, and unto what end? That they might know, the eyes of their hearts being enlightened. And you and I are not going to get one ray of spiritual light cheaply. The enemy is going to contest it up to the hilt, and the church is not going to get true Holy Spirit revelation only as some come into the battle to fight it through in prayer. That is what our prayer gatherings are for pre-eminently. We do not come together just to ask the Lord's blessing on a lot of people. That may be good, but it is not the supreme object. Our getting together ought to be unto battle, and a battle with spiritual forces which are trying to withhold light and revelation from the Lord's people, from the church, and by withholding it, keeping the church in immaturity, from coming to its place of dominion. Does that reach you? Are you ready to lay yourselves out in that battle?

You see today that there is no want of Bible teaching; there never was a time when there was so much Bible teaching and conferences. There never was a time when there were so many books on Bible study available, but there is an appalling lack of the impact of the absolute power of Christ exalted upon the powers of darkness. And alongside of the immense resource in Biblical literature and conferences, there is a growing consciousness of spiritual weakness. As we have said in one of our books, these great conventions very often are, if only seen to be so, a tragic declaration. We cannot look upon big conferences and say with anything of gloating in our heart, 'This is a great success. This represents good work. This means something fine going on'. What sort of doctor do you think he would be who, if he had queues of people down the street waiting to get into his surgery, would say, 'You see what a successful man I am, this all speaks of my medical skill'. That is a purely personal and distorted conception. If he were a true man he would say, 'This is a demonstration of far more sickness than we medicals want to see. We have not got our profession in view, our influence. No, we want to see all this wiped out. The day when there are no sick people to come is the day we are looking for'.

Thousands attend conferences continually. What are they for? Listen to what is being given and you will hear the meaning of this. Christians of twenty, thirty, forty years' standing are having to be dealt with upon the question of surrender to Christ. That is appalling. Surely there is a spiritual malady here, and that is growing, with all that there is available. What is the matter? The church is not able to stand up to the powers of evil, to go through as it should, "Clear as the sun, fair as the moon, terrible as an army with banners" - an enemy has done this thing! He has succeeded in keeping - not Bible teaching, but real spiritual revelation from the church, and you know quite well that once you get a real inward revelation of the Lord, you come into a very powerful position. The enemy is at once cast down and has no power. The focal point, therefore, of this great warfare is spiritual knowledge.

I want you to recognise this tremendous factor in the warfare. All the purpose is bound up with the revelation of the purpose, and all the warfare is concentrated against that revelation coming through. It is a call to us to battle. How our hearts are so often grieved when prayer simply takes a circuit round the globe on all sorts of trivialities, all sorts of things which, while they may be quite good in their way, are not really touching the forces of evil. How we long for occasions when someone, really touched with the vital issue, takes up the battle in prayer, the battle for the church's enlightenment, knowledge in a spiritual way concerning its heavenly calling, its heavenly vocation, its great destiny in the thought of God.

Will you ask the Lord to bring you into that battle? Of course, you have got to have a position yourself in some degree before you can take it up for others. Ask the Lord about this; fight through on this; stand and withstand against the forces of evil which are seeking to keep you out of revelation. Lay hold of your exalted Lord for your birthright, the knowledge of your inheritance, your calling, and then give yourselves to seek that all the saints may know what is the hope of their calling, what is the riches of His inheritance in the saints, what is the exceeding greatness of His power.

Chapter 10 - An Adequate Motive for the Conflict

We continue in our meditation in the letter to the Ephesians. In our previous meditation we went on to be more definitely occupied with the third phase of this letter, which is from Ephesians 6:10-20, that is, the heavenly conflict of the people of God. The first phase is the heavenly calling; the second, the heavenly conduct; now, the heavenly conflict.

Let us seek at the outset to really know what this letter is about. In the first place, it is the bringing out in fulness of all that which has been revealed elsewhere in fragments in particular connections. That is, in other parts of the New Testament we have parts of the revelation of God's heart and mind related to particular situations and needs. They are the different parts of the great doctrines of grace and they are emphasised in different letters and books for special and immediate purposes, but when you come to the letter to the Ephesians, you find that everything is being gathered up in a comprehensive way with one all-inclusive object in view. And that object is to show - not that God wants people saved, that He has shown elsewhere; not that He wants people sanctified, that He has shown elsewhere; not that God wants this and that and a whole lot of things to be true in people's lives. That has all been said elsewhere, but this letter is to show why God wants all that, what it is all for and unto. Why would God have people saved and sanctified and everything else? So we find that this letter brings us to a particular aspect on life, I mean: position, attitude, way of viewing things, and it draws a very great distinction. And until you and I have recognised that distinction, we are not ready for all that lies behind God's works of grace, revelation, and mercy on our behalf.

The distinction is this. Is it our interest in view, or is it God's? You can divide Christians into two classes on that difference. You can find a great multitude of Christian people who have embraced God's salvation and are rejoicing in it as something for themselves. Very good, I am not saying that that is wrong, but for them the Christian life in all its aspects, phases, and features, is self-ward. What they have got they are rejoicing in because it is theirs: 'I am saved, I am on the happy way to salvation, I can read my title clear to mansions in the sky. I am going to glory. I have got the Lord'. It is all that, and what they have not got, but do vaguely discern yet to be had, is sought after still, to enlarge their own borders. They want power, they want more blessing: the larger blessing, the second blessing, and the nine hundredth blessing! They want it all for themselves. It is all like that. They are after things to enlarge their own salvation and their own experience, and if there is a blessing to be had they are after it because they want it. You see what I mean. That may not be wrong in a sense, it may be very good, but that is an aspect of Christian life, something in itself, and I think the majority of Christians are there. I think that explains the feverish, restless quest of so many for something more. They want it.

Well now, there is another aspect and the other aspect is God's interest in it all, the position which says, 'But why has the Lord saved me? Why does the Lord want me sanctified? Why does the Lord from His own side desire me to take this course and go this way, to be this and to do that? What does this mean to the Lord? What does the Lord mean by this?' - and there are not too many people in that category. It is another class, but I want us just to get a very clear understanding of the meaning of this, the value of this.

When you come to the letter to the Ephesians, you are not coming to another Christian life, or something different and other than the Christian life that you have in Romans or elsewhere, but what you are coming to is a predominant word or idea, and that word is 'purpose', and it is emphasised and reiterated: "According to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord". As we pointed out in a previous meditation, that word 'according' in this letter is a tremendously significant word. According to... according to.... Again and again we have that phrase, and you look to see what all this is according to, and you find that it is according to something that God had in mind, according to something that God purposes and intends, and according to a provision which God has made in order to reach a certain end. It is all gathered round this 'according to the eternal purpose', and so you find that everything is here. Yes, salvation is here, redemption is here, forgiveness of sins is here. "In whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins". That is in Ephesians. But there is another aspect. Not that we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins for ourselves, for our own blessing or blessedness, but according to the eternal purpose, with that in view. And so this letter brings in God's side of things which is pre-eminent, God's interest in our salvation, the riches of His inheritance in the saints, in whom we have been made a heritage - something for God, something for Christ, and until you and I have seen this great difference of aspect, we are not able to go on very far. After all, life will be marked by severe limitations, for this letter to the Ephesians, so-called, sets forth fulness. That is its great factor. "That ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God". "The fulness of Him that fills all in all". "Till we all attain unto... the fulness of Christ". Fulness is in view here, but fulness is inseparably bound up with this aspect - that it is what God has in view and not just what we have in blessing.

Now, that is easily illustrated from the life of Israel in the Old Testament. Israel is found in Egypt, four hundred years in bondage, in slavery, in oppression, in adversity, under the heel of a master. It was a type of the unsaved, unregenerate child of God in the bondage of the world, Satan, and sin. Now Israel groaned by reason of their taskmasters and their burdens, groaned for salvation, groaned for deliverance, groaned to be set free from this terrible state of life. Well, God at length intervened. But when God intervened, His intervention is made perfectly clear to be according to a thought in His mind for Himself. To Pharaoh, the challenge and demand is, "Let My son go, that he may serve Me" (Ex. 4:23). That is the aspect in God's mind. It is a pleasure for Himself, for His own pleasure, for His own glory, for His own satisfaction, and with that in view, with that as the Divine motive, God intervened with tremendous power and brought them out by an outstretched hand and a bared arm.

But Israel drew their salvation to themselves and their whole aspect was of this thing being for them. Of course, that is understandable in a certain sense and to a certain extent. If we had been in the awful state that they had been in for so long and then got out, we would rejoice very much in the salvation which was something in itself, which was our blessing. That is all right, but there is a snare about that.

They are out now, they are over the Red Sea; Egypt lies behind and the enemy has been broken. But do you notice the kind of history that begins from that time? The whole of the history of the following thirty-eight years is one of a self-ward aspect in the matter of the things of God, and they judge everything according to how it will be to their blessing and their good, with the result that the slightest adversity finds them all over the place. It is not long after they are out that they meet a difficulty - the waters of Marah, the bitter waters which could not be drunk and they murmured.... So it begins and so it goes on for thirty-eight years. The slightest little hitch in things, the smallest difficulty, anything that did not go right, that did not please them, did not gratify them, or was not for their present and immediate pleasure, found them murmuring against God, murmuring against God's servant, and that explains the long-drawn-out period of spiritual weakness and spiritual ineffectiveness. Yes, when God removed the difficulty and overcame the adversity for them, whatever it was, they were up in the air again, rejoicing in salvation. What a wonderful salvation they had got! What a wonderful Lord He was! But it only lasted twenty-four hours, that is, until the next difficulty arose, and then the salvation was not nearly so wonderful, the Lord was not nearly so wonderful. It depends on what realm you live in and what your aspect is. That is where they were, and the whole cause and explanation was this self-ward aspect in the matter of the things of God.

They never got through on that. There is no possessing on that ground or along that line. We can never possess the land while that is our attitude. That is the point here. The people who went in to possess the land had to be of another kind altogether, a subsequent generation, and the motive and attitude of their whole heart had to be the Lord's good pleasure. They had to take the attitude - 'The Lord brought us out of Egypt for His own ends and purposes, for His own glory, for His own pleasure and satisfaction, and we are going into the land for God, not for ourselves, for God's satisfaction'. You notice that that generation that perished in the wilderness, when it came to the borders of the land was turned back and died, because its attitude as it looked at the land was the attitude from which it had looked at everything all through those years: the attitude from which it looked at the waters of Marah, at the lack of food in the wilderness, the absence of water - the self-ward attitude in Divine things bringing defeat every time. And at last the whole thing was gathered up, all the thirty-eight years, you may say, crowded into the final attitude. They looked at the land, they saw the cities walled up, they saw the giants, they saw all the difficulties, and they saw how all this threatened their own convenience, their own pleasure, their own good; what a menace this was to them. There were only two men who took a different point of view and they said, 'If the Lord delight in us, He will bring us in'; they had an idea of the Lord's pleasure about it all. It was that succeeding generation which had another aspect that went in to possess.

That brings us to Ephesians; it is God's purpose in our coming out of Egypt; it is God's purpose in our salvation; it is God's purpose in our sanctification; it is God's purpose in our discipline and training; it is what God has in view. And until we are really gripped at the centre of our being with this Divine thought of the eternal purpose lying behind everything, we will never go through into the land. The letter to the Ephesians, as we have so often said, is the counterpart of the book of Joshua. That is, it spreads the land of Divine purpose and promise before us: the fulness of Christ to be inherited. But you and I will never come into God's purpose until we have got God's aspect.

Well, that becomes perfectly patent when there are enemies about, and this is the next thing that I want to point out. It is an interesting and significant thing that although God has secured the land, every foot of it, it is in His possession, and although God has settled for ever from eternity that the church is to possess it, and with Him the church is as good as in possession of it all, and although it is God's good pleasure and will and determination that the whole shall be possessed, He allows seven mighty nations to bar the way; Ephesians 6 - in the heavenlies, principalities and powers, world-rulers of this darkness, hosts of wicked spirits. Why? Well, that is just the Divine logic, reason, and wisdom. You see that those enemies put there for Israel, kept their motive pure. You may take it that immediately Israel should have reverted to the old wilderness aspect of our blessing and convenience, that would have been an end of possession. It proved to be, as a matter of fact, in their history just that. But while they see that this is God's way, God's will, God's interest, and they are not out first of all for their own pleasure and satisfaction, but they are out for the glory of God, then, enemies or no enemies, it is the same. They are going right on.

You see, the motive power of meeting the enemy is the motive power of the glory of God, the satisfaction of God. We will never face the enemy if we have got personal interests. If there is any self-interest in Divine things, we will not stand up to the enemy when he comes out in full force against us. There are enemies and the Lord has left them in the land to keep our motive pure. Do you grasp that? Do you see the meaning of that?

Here we are, then, in Ephesians. It follows on that great section about the conduct of the church, the people of God. Many things are touched upon in almost every realm of their lives; things which are pointed out as needing to be watched against, adjusted, kept right, all sorts of things. And these things come right home to the personal life of the believer and touch home very pointedly on personal interests. You and I are not going to deal with those things, we are not going to take account of all those matters which touch us home so directly unless we have got a higher motive than our own good, are we? It would be ridiculous. We should only be fighting ourselves and defeating our own ends by the very things that we are doing. No, we have something other in view; we have got the calling in view; we have got this great intention of God in view; we have got God's standpoint in view, what He is after, what He has got bound up with us, and our hearts are now toward the Lord. Therefore we will do two things: we will see that all the ground that the enemy might have for success is taken away, and we will face the enemy himself.

Ephesians 4:1-6:9 represents the ground of the enemy, and though it is to our own personal hurt, we will take the ground away from him, and then, having taken his ground away, we will assail him and bring glory to God. But for all that, you want something more than a personal interest in salvation. You must be gripped by the great concern and interest of the Lord in everything. You must see that the end of all this, from the Lord's standpoint, is that He shall have a people presently who will be to Him an instrument by which He, through His Son, can administer His great created universe. That is the calling.

Now there is this third thing. We have spoken about the ground of Satan which has to be taken away. We pointed out in our previous meditation that when God, in the counsels of the Godhead in eternity past, as this letter shows, decided, planned, arranged and purposed that in the eternal ages to come He would administer all things in heaven and in earth by means of His Son and the members of His Son's Body, the saints of this dispensation, Satan, who was a great principality in the angelic realm, a great personage in heaven, got to know somehow about that intention of God, and he had counsels with a great company of angels, and he influenced them in the direction of usurping that place appointed for God's Son, of taking away from the Son of God and the church that which had been appointed for them of administrative position in God's universe. That led to the revolt in heaven and that casting down from heaven of Lucifer, and that casting out from heaven of those angels of whom the apostle speaks - the angels who kept not their first estate now held in everlasting chains unto judgment.

But do you see the motive? What was the motive of Satan and his followers? It was a self-ward motive in Divine things, it was drawing Divine things toward himself for his glory, for his satisfaction, for his pleasure; a self-ward aspect in Divine things, heavenly things. What is the result? Well, Satan and his hosts have had a good deal of power through the ages, but it has not altered God's intention and will not make one whit of difference to the ultimate issue. Satan is doomed, not only to have lost heaven, but everything else as well. God will have His church where He intended it to be. God will have for His Son that which He intended Him to have. It is going to be realised.

But neither the Son nor the church can come to God's end by any self-ward aspect in Divine things, and so the Son Himself must let go all to have all, let go His own rights - and that is the meaning of Philippians 2. Though He existed in God form, He reckoned it not something to be grasped at, to be held on to, saying in effect, 'These are My rights; I am not going to let them go', but He emptied Himself and came down, down to the death, yea, the death of the cross, and got everything that way. So that every personal interest in Divine things has got to be let go unto the place where it is all the Lord's interests. What was true of the Son has got to be true of all the sons in this matter. The Son's attitude was not for Himself but for the Father: "Not My will, but Thine". "I delight to do Thy will". It is the pleasure and glory and satisfaction of the Father that is the one all-consuming passion of the Son, and for that He let go everything, and that has got to be reproduced in the church. It is the true Spirit of sonship, and He fought that battle in the wilderness: "This is My beloved Son". Satan knew what that meant, "And of the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever". "Satan knew all about that. This is the Son! "If Thou be the Son..." it is the battle of Sonship and the inheritance - the kingdoms of this world in the final issue and more than that; the battle of Sonship and the inheritance fought out then - a tremendous battle!

On what ground is the victory won? It is self-emptying all the time. "Not My need, not My satisfaction, not even My Life. I may be starving, but it is not My life, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God shall man live." It is the God-ward aspect. "Not My work, not how I wish to be accredited among men by casting Myself down from the pinnacle and making a reputation for Myself and gaining an immediate following. No, it is not My work and it is not My kingdom, My throne. The whole question for the moment is My Father's pleasure, My Father's glory, My Father's satisfaction, and if for the time being I must go the way of privation, the way of rejection, and the way of having no kingdom at all, and the Father wants Me to take that way, it is the Father who is going to be obeyed". And that is the church's way; not the church's vindication now, or the church's glory, the church's acceptance; not a kingdom of this world. Satan has secured far too much in Christendom along that line and spoilt everything. There must not be found in us the slightest trace of that thing that was in Satan when he aspired to a position for his own glory. It must be wholly and utterly God's satisfaction and pleasure, and that is the way to the kingdom; that is the way to the fulness, that is the way to the heavenlies, that is the way into the land.

That is the principle of the life which is the full life. All this letting go of all that is personal is not real loss. All this emptying, after all, may seem painful to the flesh, this humbling of ourselves, this depriving of our natural life of things - it may have a painful aspect for us naturally, but this is the way of spiritual fulness. You are after fulness. What do you want it for? Let me put that another way: you are after fulness, how do you think you are going to get it? You are not going to get fulness by reaching out for personal blessing. You find that that opens the door to a lot or things that are not blessings at all in the long run. They prove to be false blessings, but real Divine heavenly fulness comes along the line of letting personal interests and blessing go in the interest of the Lord, for the glory and satisfaction of the Lord, that He may have His inheritance in us, that we may be to Him a heritage.

I know that is not the usual way of looking at things, and it may not be the most interesting way. Of course it is not to the flesh, but that is the true way of fulness - there is no doubt about it. Are you wanting spiritual fulness, really wanting to come into all that is meant by the heavenly life of fulness? Well, first of all, what for? Why? Are you wanting to have the enjoyment of it all yourself, wanting to feel the blessedness of it, to know in yourself the power of it, to come to the position of advantage which it will mean to be there? Well, it is just that that is going to stop you getting it.

I am not speaking without my book. In the course of the years, I have had to do with a great many people who have laid themselves out for months of praying and fasting and giving themselves to all degrees in order to obtain something they call a 'blessing'. I need not mention what the blessings were that they were after, but they were after it, after it. And some of them have got something and when they have got it, they are not so sure about it, not so sure whether it is a blessing or not. It is an 'it'. It causes them a lot of trouble. Some of them have not got it at all. But I have seen those people come to the place where God has started a process of taking them down, taking the whole of their spiritual life apart, piece by piece, bringing them right down to their very foundations, so that at the bottom of things they wondered where they were, whether all their spiritual experience has been genuine or not, brought them right down to rock bottom, and then has started to deal with them in a constructive way on another principle entirely; not now the Christian life in any one point for themselves, not salvation for themselves. And the upshot of it all for such people has been this: 'Lord, I do not want anything unless it is for Your glory; I had rather be without anything than that it should not be according to Your own mind', and they have come to that through a good deal of suffering. Ah, but then we have seen a new life, we have seen a depth, we have detected a new note, and others have found a new usefulness, a new value. There is something there now which is not personal. It was all personal once, and it was making people want things, but now it is not that, it is the Lord.

You may not be able to discern all the difference that that means, but it is a tremendous thing when we come through that transition from what, although it may have been quite honest, sincere, and transparently innocent, was nevertheless just the mark of spiritual childhood, the pleasures of the Christian life as personal things - that transition through into the place where we do not want even the Christian life unless God is going to get all that He wants, where now the aspect is different. It is the Lord and His purpose, and you see what that means.

I dare not start upon another fragment of this now, but I just indicate that what the letter to the Ephesians is seeking to bring us to is the place of spiritual competence. This last section brings us to the place where now we are in the battle - for what? Our salvation? No, a thousand times, no! Our preservation? No, not at all. There was a battle for salvation in Egypt, and there was a battle for preservation in the wilderness, but they are not this battle in the heavenlies. It is the battle for the full purpose.

Now, that section begins with, "From henceforth, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might" - competent Christians who are not now in the battle of their salvation, that is settled; and they are not in the defensive battle of the wilderness for their preservation, but they are in the battle in the land and that is neither unto salvation nor to preservation. It is unto glory, it is unto fulness, it is unto purpose, and that requires competent Christians.

The battle in Egypt did not find them able to do anything in it at all, and no one who has not already come to an assurance of salvation can fight. That is why God had to fight Pharaoh for Israel. In the wilderness the battle was defensive. They would never have been able to meet the seven nations of the land in their wilderness condition. That means this: that no one who is still struggling with his own flesh can deal with the devil effectively. In the wilderness, it was the 'I' life all the time, and therefore the fight there is always on the defensive. They are right down on that level of fighting the battle in the weakness of the flesh just to preserve them in some kind of position in Christ. That will not do. When you come to the land those things are left behind. You have settled the whole conflict of your salvation. That is a finished thing, thank God! There is no question about that - that battle is all over. Moreover, you are past the place and the position where you are all the time having to struggle with yourself, fighting your own nature. You know now blessedly something of the meaning of the cross for deliverance from that. Do you? Have you got past the self aspect of things? Well, when you come to the land, because all that is behind, that kind of struggle and conflict, you are free, and you are in a position of spiritual competence to fight the Lord's battles, not your own, and that is spiritual competence, that is spiritual maturity, and that is what the Lord needs.

But again, you and I will never be able to fight the heavenly battles, the battles of the great purpose of God in fulness until we have got right away from all personal interests in the Christian life, whatever they may be, at every point, and have got over on to the place where, if the enemy hits hard - and he will - and we have some bad days under his pressure, and we shall - and the battle may be long-drawn-out and sometimes very wearing, nevertheless, we are not weakened by any personal conditions. We have a great objective which is governing us.

You notice, in modern wars and conflicts of nations how necessary it is in order to keep men at it, that the greatness of the call should ever be kept before them and it is known quite well by the leaders that, immediately men begin to say, 'What are we getting out of this?' the day is up, the war is lost. If men are allowed to look at themselves and ask such questions, then you may take it the fight is finished. So it is necessary in order to keep men going in the battle, to keep the great cause in view, something that is not personal: 'You are fighting for a great cause!' Of course, it is all so foolish down here, and so often proves to be so mixed up, that when it is all over, we wonder where the great cause is. But it is true up in the heavenlies. There is a great cause, and until you and I have seen, with the eyes of our heart open, the hope of His calling, the riches of His inheritance in the saints, the eternal purpose, until then we will not keep going in the battle. We need to see to go on. May the Lord show it to us and keep it fully in view.

Chapter 11 - Life on the Superlative

Reading: Exodus 17.

"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" (Eph. 3:20-21).

Gathering up the message of the Lord which has now been spread over some ten meditations, I feel that now we should be occupied for a little while with what we may call 'Life on the Superlative', and the passage just read is full of superlatives. "Exceeding abundantly above! Exceeding abundantly above all...".

The Lord has been trying to show us that His thought for His people now is a Life as in the heavenlies. This letter to the Ephesians, the fringe of which alone we have only touched, has that phrase running right through it from the commencement: "Has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ". "In the heavenlies", and that means the superlative Life, Life on the highest level, and that is the Lord's will for us all now.

We are all hoping to know something about heaven later on, the Lord wants us to know something about it now. But while there may be the element of joy, the element of blessedness, much in that realm that immediately comes to mind when we think of heavenly Life, I do not think that that is the sum of such a Life for us now, but this letter makes it perfectly clear that the heavenly Life is a very businesslike Life in every direction, it is a Life full of serious business.

I do not know what your idea of heaven is, but, for my part, I do not like the idea of a heaven where you do nothing. Heaven to me is worthwhile work, not an everlasting doing nothing. That does not appeal to me at all! We were made for something and we were made for tremendous business, and we are very limited here, very handicapped as on this earth, and even the best and greatest that we might do here on the earth is very poor and transient, but it was not for this that we were made. The Word of God says that this present creation, which includes us, has been deliberately subjected to vanity. It means that it has been rendered incapable of realising the object of its existence, it may not do that now. A ban rests upon it. It is under a curse and it may not get through to its end, and it will only be delivered from that bondage of corruption, that limitation, that vanity, when God's original purpose and intention is realised; as the apostle says, it is waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.

Well then, our real business is in another realm, and if we knew it, heaven for us really means doing the work which is outside of time, corruption, and death, outside of what is here. It is being fruitful, effectual, and accomplishing things which have little, if anything, to do with this passing creation, and that for me means heavenly Life, and that is Life in the superlative.

While we spend a certain amount of time here, and have to be occupied in the nature of things here, that is a mere fraction, a mere atom of our real Life and of our real work. There is something which far transcends that, which is true of us now in our Life and in our fruitfulness, but it is in the unseen. But to be able to discern and to apprehend and to know in a living way in our hearts that that is so, it is as living to us and as real to us now as anything here about us seen and handled - that gives Life meaning, and very great meaning. I wonder how many of you can say that the things unseen are more real to you than the things seen? The things eternal are really the greater things in your Life, the greater realities?

Well, it is concerning that that this letter to the Ephesians is brought to us as God's message, to make us aware of the fact that this Life here on this earth, this span and all that belongs to it, is a mere nothing compared with God's thoughts about us, which are shown us at the opening of this letter, "He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world." God had us in His mind before this world had an existence. "He foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will" - something again which happened before the world was. Not only did He choose us, but He settled in eternity past what we were to be in eternity to come. In time, He has called us according to that purpose which embraces the eternities, and that has been shown to be the range and significance of the life of the child of God. Then the rest of the letter shows us the vocation unto which we are called. Now, as parts of that church, that Body of Christ, now fulfilled in strange, mystic, difficult to understand, but if the Word of God means anything at all, tremendously important things - "that now unto the principalities and powers in the heavenlies might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God" - a part of our vocation now. I cannot explain that. But here is Life on a scale which is so much greater in its significance than this little thing here. But that is only a bit. In the ages to come the exceeding riches of His grace are to be shown forth, and much more.

Well now, Life in the heavenlies means that we take on eternal significance as to our very being and as to our very vocation and that we are now, as we have put it before, under tuition and training for a great purpose which is to go through the ages of the ages. If these things were realities with us, if they were not just great ideas, thoughts, concepts, words and truths in the sense of things stated, if this was a reality, if the Lord were to come to you personally tonight, alone in your room when you are by yourself, and said to you, 'My child, I have an immense piece of work for you, no less a piece of work than to be My agent of administering all My authority and moral glory in heaven and on earth throughout all the ages of the ages to come' - how would you feel? If the Lord said that to you personally and individually alone and you knew it was the Lord saying that to you, how would you feel? And on the authority of the Word of God, I can say to you that He has said that to you, not as apart from others, not as an isolated one, but as a part of a Body called from eternity for that very purpose. It is that to which the apostle refers here - "I therefore... beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called". The calling wherewith ye are called; and if it really became a personally apprehended and appreciated thing, it would be Life on the superlative. And there are two ways as set forth in this letter in which it would be Life on the superlative.

In Ephesians 4:1-6:9 the heavenly conduct of the people of God, where many details of Life here on this earth are mentioned, Life in the home and domestic relationships in the family Life, in the business, in the social circle, in contact with the world, and Life in relation to ourselves personally in secret behaviour - in what we are within ourselves, in our habits and our conduct and our demeanour and our mentality and all that belongs to us - all that is there in that section, is to be touched by this great consciousness. And if it is in all these details touched by this great, great calling, then every detail of Life will be adjusted to that calling and lifted up on to a very high level. It will not permit our living right down there in the mud and the mire and the murk of a selfish, fleshly, worldly life, with quarrelsomeness in our family relationships, unfairness in our business relationships, unholiness in our social relationships, and unworthiness of Christ in our own personal secret lives. All that goes out. You begin to see how even such a thing as being angry has got to be put up on to another level than a merely personal level of being offended. "Be ye angry and sin not" is one of the things there. Yes, be angry, it is not wrong to be angry, but do not be angry because your own personal interests have been interfered with. Be angry on principle, and then as you see the sun going down, you will be able to say, 'It is all over', but you cannot do that if you have got personal pride that has been angry. If it has hurt you personally, it is very difficult not to let the sun go down upon it. It means - have control over your anger because it is righteous anger on principle, because the Lord's interests are involved and not your own. I only pick that out; I am not going over all the minutiae of this section.

What I am saying is this: really get the sense, the consciousness, of the greatness of that for which we are here to be prepared, and you see it rules out all that is unworthy in every department of life. It subjects everything of self-glory, of course, and it raises the question about every matter - is this going to bring me into defeat and put the enemy in a place of vantage? Well, that is not what I am called to; I am called rather to put the enemy at a disadvantage, to be myself, in Christ, in the spiritual place of vantage. You should test everything in the light of the calling.

Then Life on that superlative level means not only that everything in our conduct, our walk here, is adjusted accordingly. It means that, but it means that we are brought into a position where what the enemy is doing is checked, is brought under the authority of Christ, for that is the last section - the heavenly warfare of the saints, our wrestling with principalities and powers. There is a realm in which the church has to be effective in countering the enemy's work, in arresting the enemy's activities, in standing for the saints and their deliverance from the work of the enemy, in taking from the enemy the ground that he has got and turning it to account for the Lord. This is a great business, a great calling and vocation; this Life in the superlative brings us into a very high position. We are called to that now.

Israel an Illustration of Heavenly Things

Now, in order to get very close to that and to try and reduce it to something quite simple for those who may not be familiar with ideas that may seem to them too heavenly, I will use Israel again. Israel ever stands as a great illustration to us of these heavenly things.

In order to come to the Life on the superlative level which is God's thought, God's will for His people now, there are two or three things which are essential, and they are a matter of our apprehension of Christ. Let me put that in another way. Christ has to be apprehended in different ways in relation to different levels of spiritual Life. Everything is in Christ, and it is only a matter of knowing Christ, apprehending Christ in different degrees of His fulness in order to bring us to God's ultimate position which is still Christ.

In Israel's history, we see a threefold apprehension of Christ represented, by which they came eventually into the land which is the type of the heavenlies, of heavenly fulness in Christ.

1. Israel in Egypt

An Apprehension of Christ in the Power of His Death

In the first place, there was their apprehension of Christ in relation to their position and condition in Egypt. There in Egypt they were in a perfectly hopeless position and condition. It would have been futile and disastrous for them to have attempted to fight their own way out of Egypt, to fight for any victory at all over Egypt - utterly in vain. They were there without strength, without resource; helpless prisoners. The apprehension of Christ for such a position is of a peculiar kind; that is, it has its own specific meaning, and you will notice that the one thing which is kept in view always in relation to an Egypt deliverance is death. You know that the final issue of the Egypt situation was the question of death. Death was to spread itself over the land on that night, but death was in the hands of God. God had hold of death that night. Death was under His government. Death was going to work in two directions, but it was going to have one effect. Death was going to work judgment and destruction against those who were against God and His purpose, but death was going to work deliverance for those who were standing by faith with God, and God used death to destroy death for those who believed. He destroyed that death which was the result of sin, which was because of sin and which was judgment. He destroyed judgment and death, and therefore He destroyed the cause - sin, and the bondage of sin - by death itself. It was a death for the destruction of death. Death is the great word in Egypt.

Now, bring the Lord Jesus in there and see that deliverance from sin and death, bondage to this world and its principles and from that hopeless and helpless state of the sinner, is all on the ground of the death of the Lord Jesus. He died, but His death was a tremendous thing. It was such a powerful, potent thing, that it broke the power and grip of death over everyone who believed in Him. It is the apprehension of Christ in death which is the first step on the road toward God's fulness. You see, something has got to be done for us that destroys the power that holds us in bondage. It is perfectly useless and in vain for any sinner held in the bondage of sin to try and fight, as futile as it would have been for Israel to try and fight their way out of Egypt, so it is for any sinner to try and fight his or her way out of nature's state in sin. You cannot fight while you are like that. You have got to apprehend Christ's victory by His death for you. We come into Life by apprehending the death of Christ.

2. Israel in the Wilderness

An Apprehension of Christ in the Power of His Resurrection

But then, when that has happened and they are out of Egypt and now the Lord's people in very truth, they are not free of all their troubles, limitations, and defeats. They are still very much limited in spiritual Life. As we have seen, it is a very up and down kind of Christian life; it is not going on serenely and triumphantly every day, but there are constant setbacks, and this means that they must have a fresh apprehension of Christ. Christ must be apprehended for something more than deliverance from what is represented by Egypt and the wilderness, and what is that? It is bondage to the life of nature, not only to sin as sin and Satan as Satan and the world as the world, but myself - what I am in myself.

The New Testament says, 'in the flesh', 'the natural life'. You see how they were swayed by the life of nature in the wilderness. Nature was dictating the terms of the time. It was ever and always a matter of what they liked and what they did not like, what they wanted and what they did not want, what they would have, what they preferred, and so the life of nature was governing and dictating all the time and keeping them down on that low level where there is no final assurance, certainty, real grip or onward going. A fresh apprehension of Christ is needed in that realm, and how do they need to apprehend Christ now? Well, they need to apprehend Him, not as in the power of His death, but in the power of His resurrection; for the death, you see, was victory for us over the power of darkness; resurrection is the power of the Spirit over the power of nature, and what comes up in the wilderness is quite clearly this - life in the flesh or Life in the Spirit? Which is it to be? Life in the Spirit is the result of an apprehension of Christ in resurrection, Christ risen; power over nature by the Holy Spirit. There will be battles in that realm; "For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh" (Gal. 5:17). But it need not go on eternally to our defeat. If we walk in the Spirit, we shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh or the desires of the flesh. His resurrection always means from His side that we are introduced into the Life of the Spirit.

You take it in the type. You see the Holy Spirit in Israel's case, in the cloud, the pillar, took things up with the Red Sea. It was at the Red Sea that the pillar of cloud and fire came into evidence. Well, that is taking charge as a Life in the Spirit.

Or take the illustration in the life of the Lord Jesus Himself. It is when He comes up out of the Jordan on resurrection ground that the heavens are open and the Spirit comes upon Him and then He is led of the Spirit into the wilderness and returns in the power of the Spirit. The Spirit has come to take charge at the resurrection, there on Jordan's side. Well, that is all typical of our spiritual experience. An apprehension of Christ risen means Life in the Spirit and not in the flesh; that we should know Him in the power of His resurrection means victory in the realm of the natural life. But that is not all. God has a still higher level, a still fuller thought, for even though we may walk in the Spirit as overcoming the life of nature, there is another positive aspect of things for the child of God.

3. Israel in the Land

An Apprehension of Christ in the Power or His Ascension and Exaltation

We move on to a further apprehension of Christ, and that is set forth in type in Israel's passing through the Jordan on to the other side, in the land; and that is the apprehension of Christ ascended and exalted. What is the result of that? It is not just that we are saved men and women out of Egypt, delivered from sin, rejoicing in personal salvation. It is not only that we have found the secret of victory over self, that we know something about living in the Spirit and not in the flesh. That is all very good, but now it means that we have come into the secret of authority over the powers of darkness. That is God's point for us. It is now the energy of the Holy Spirit in the realm of administering the authority of Christ over Satan. That is the meaning of Joshua surrendering to the Captain of the Lord's host, the Captain of the Lord's host taking charge. Who is he? Well, he represents the coming in of the throne to bring the people of God into oneness with that throne, that they may administer as from that throne in the realm where principalities and powers hold sway, and that was intended to be the order of their life in the land. The Lord made that perfectly clear at the outset in the first attack at Jericho.

Now, as we know, Jericho was an inclusive representation of all that lay before. There were seven nations in the land, and the Lord made it a seven day business and a seven times round business, and seven times in one day. It is seven; it is the whole thing in completeness, and on what basis? Not on the fight with Amalek basis, and now certainly not on the basis of the Egypt conflict of the Lord with the power of sin. Now it is the Lord's people having come into a position, and into a mighty position, so that what they do is to compass the city round in faith and the thing has to go down. It has to go down because of a faith position and a faith co-operation with God because they are in a position to do it. It is the impact of the throne of the exalted Lord upon a situation when the people of God go round it in faith, because they themselves are not struggling now in Egypt for deliverance, nor in the wilderness for personal victory, but now they have apprehended Christ as sovereign Lord, as exalted in the throne, and that is Life on the superlative and that is for now. That is Ephesians 6. That is for now for the people of God, and what the Lord wants for us.

The Principle of Warfare in the Land

We have read Exodus 17, the latter part of which speaks of that conflict with Amalek or the coming out of Amalek, and this is a very interesting and a very significant incident. Remember it is a battle in the wilderness, and it is a battle which relates to wilderness conditions or the wilderness situation in the first instance. But it is the extra factor about that which is so tremendously helpful. This battle with Amalek was a foreshadowing of what God meant, what God intended in the land, and it says to me (this is the helpful thing about it) that God means that we should deal even with the life of nature on the same basis as we deal with the principalities and powers, because they are one.

When you recognise that Amalek is a type of the evil powers working through the flesh (because it is down in the wilderness), the evil powers working through the flesh, working through the life of nature, then you see by the rest of the story that God intends us to overcome in the realm of the natural life, the fleshly life, on the same basis as we deal with the powers of evil; that is, directly. And until you have got that secret, you do not know what victory is.

The enemy plays havoc with you through your natural life, and you are all the time saying, 'It is I. It is myself; it is my nature, it is my disposition, it is how I am made.' And how many people we have heard excusing themselves on the ground of what they are! How many people we have heard excusing injudicious and lawless conduct by saying, 'You know, I am an impulsive Peter...' - hiding behind Peter, putting Peter up as the screen! 'Peter was a great apostle, Peter was much loved of the Lord. The Lord sent a special message to Peter after His resurrection. But you know, Peter was a very impulsive man, and I am like Peter...' - forgetting that that is Peter before the Holy Spirit got hold of him. You cannot hide behind Peter nor behind any other apostle like that. If we are going to come down on to that level and begin to defend our weaknesses and imperfections on the ground of nature, the enemy is just going to play on that ground beautifully. There is such a thing as recognising that this may be true about you, but the enemy is not going to have hold of that! There is an extra factor. 'While that may be true of me, the enemy likes to use it. I am going to take it out of his hands!' That is the story of Amalek. Look at the points in it and you see how true that is. It was a foreshadowing of what the warfare in the land was going to be, and it is carried out on exactly the same principle.

Moses goes up into the mount, having in his hand the rod of God. Moses represents the exalted Christ with the rod of all authority in heaven and in earth in His hand. He is up there and He has all authority in His hands, but do you recognise that those hands need to be supported? So Aaron and Hur go up, and they sit on either side and support the hands of Moses. You say, 'Oh, does the ascended, exalted Lord need support?' Yes, He does. Who are Aaron and Hur? They are representative of Israel; they are the people in representation. What are they doing? They believe, to begin with; they believe that if those hands are supported, Israel will prevail. They are affording co-operating faith with the exalted Lord. It is co-operating faith. The Lord Jesus is on the throne, He is exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on high, but that means nothing for you and me unless there is co-operating faith, and it is in that sense that we uphold His hands. He looks to us to do it, to come alongside and exercise faith in Him as the One who has the authority, and through faith to bring that authority down upon the situation. It is the church working together with the exalted Lord.

Well, that points on to the land. Joshua, of course, is down there with the people. He is a type of the energy of the Holy Spirit warring through the church, and all this is of a piece: Christ exalted with all authority; the Holy Spirit down here in the church to make good all that Christ is up there, but in between the church co-operating in faith, so that the Spirit and the throne are made one in effect through the church's co-operating faith. You see the principle of warfare in the land, and you have got to get there for victory over the enemy in the realm of nature as well as in the heavenlies, showing that the Lord's thought about victory over the enemy is one thought, and it means you have got to have a full Christ and be apprehended in His fulness for a full Life - death, resurrection, ascension and exaltation - and when faith has apprehended Him in fulness, then you know what Life on the superlative is; that is, in effectiveness, in value, in meaning, in significance - Life in the heavenlies.

Now ask the Lord to make clear to you what is not clear and to bring you right into the good of it all.