Our Lord's precious designation, "the Word", brings out how the mind of God has been fully and intelligibly communicated in Him. "God having spoken in many parts and in many ways formerly to the fathers in the prophets, at the end of these days has spoken to us in the person of the Son", Hebrews 1:1, 2. All was truly there in the divine mind from eternity but the wonder and glory of the present time is that it has come into expression. The Greek, 'Logos' (Word) signifies this. J.N.D. has defined its meaning thus, 'Whatever is the expression of a thought formed in the mind, and otherwise unknown; hence used for the thing expressed, or the expression of it ... . It is the matter and form of thought and expression, as well as the utterance of it ... . Whatever expresses the mind is 'logos''. 'Nous' is the intelligent faculty; whatever expresses the thought formed in it is 'logos'. (See the note to 1 Corinthians 1:5 in the Darby translation; see the whole note). What should arrest attention is that God, and all that is in His mind relative to men, has come into expression so as to be intelligently apprehended. Nothing could be more wondrous.
The title, "the Word", conveys to us what Christ the Son is as the glorious Person in whom is expressed the mind and heart of God. It is thus a very distinctive and comprehensive appellation, as perhaps covering a wider and more profound apprehension of Him than any other title that attached to Him. It is not a name of relationship like 'Son', not an official title like 'the Christ', but it is a designation which indicates the greatness of what is
expressed in Him. The blessedness of God was in perfect expression in Him, and this is greater than anything else. It involves His full Deity in perhaps a more absolute way than any other of His titles. Who could be the full expression of God, and of God's mind, save One who was Himself an eternal divine Person? Hence John, writing by inspiration of the Spirit, selects this appellation to designate Him as existing from eternity. Some title must be used, and we may be sure that "the Word" was more suitable to be used in that connection than any other. But John writes, as Luke does also, from the standpoint that the Word had been known as having become flesh, and dwelling among men. Men had been privileged to be "eyewitnesses of and attendants on the Word", Luke 1:2.
If Luke and John had not thus known "the Word", neither of them would ever have written gospels. Christ has become known as "the Word" to these two blessed men of God -- doubtless to thousands of others, but these two witnesses will suffice to prove that He was known to men, and spoken of by men, as "the Word". Now John has told us, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that the Person thus known, and thus spoken of, was an eternal Person, and was God. He was in the beginning, and was with God and was God. But it was One known to John, and many others, as "the Word" who was in the beginning, and who was with God and was God. This is the whole point of what is stated. It is the assertion in unmistakable terms of the eternal pre-existence and Deity of Him who is now known to us as "the Word". To say that He was "the Word" in eternity only raises questions as to what was expressed in Him in eternity, and to whom was it expressed; questions impossible to answer, for Scripture is silent on the matter. But the certainty that the One now known as "the Word" was eternally God is of the greatest and most vital importance. It bows the soul
before Him in most profound reverence and intensifies the desire that the vast import of His title, "the Word", shall be known now in spiritual reality and power in our hearts. There is immense gain in this and I am sure that the enemy would, if possible, divert us from it by any and every means.
John 1:1 - 3; 1 John 1:1 - 4; 1 John 2:24,25
It is with the thought of having before us something of the precious ministry of the apostle John that I have suggested reading these portions of Scripture. I am sure we have all noticed how much John had before him the thought of "the beginning"; his whole ministry stands connected with certain beginnings. He commences his gospel by speaking of a beginning which is previous to time, previous to creation, and which goes back to the uncreated and eternally divine. Before anything was made God was; and "in the beginning" of John 1:1 takes us back to what was antecedent to all creative acts of God.
In speaking of the Lord as "the Word" John was using a well-known designation; he was not introducing it for the first time; it was a designation which Luke had applied to Christ probably at least thirty years before John wrote (see Luke 1:2). Every reader of Luke's gospel -- and by the time that John wrote his gospel this probably included saints in every assembly -- was familiar with the title "the Word". It is perhaps the most comprehensive title of the Lord that can be used apart from saying that He is God. For it conveys the wondrous thought that God is in expression so as to be known by intelligent creatures. There is thus a range and depth of meaning in this title which has a fulness beyond what is conveyed by any other. Indeed this is directly affirmed by the scripture which says, "Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name", Psalm 138:2. "Word", as used in that verse, does not answer exactly to the Greek word 'logos', but as it fixes the mind
more especially on what is expressed (see note on the same word as used in Psalm 119:11 in the Darby Translation); it does bring out the exceeding greatness of what expresses God. So that we can understand how great is the thought conveyed when Luke speaks of some as having been "eyewitnesses of and attendants on the Word", Luke 1:2. It was a glorious designation, and was used because it was so. The marvel of all marvels was that a divine Person should be here as Man, and should be known to men as the Word.
God has been expressed here in the fullest possible way in His nature and character, and in His thoughts of love towards men. Jesus as the Word was the intelligible expression of all that was in the mind and heart of God to make known of Himself to men. Creation shows God's skill and wisdom, His eternal power and divinity, but it does not express Him morally, any more than a beautiful watch expresses the character and nature of the watchmaker. But a divine Person has become Man in order to express God to men. John was full of this, as well he might be. He was writing of a Person known to him and many others as One in whom had been expressed all that in which God could be known by men. And it seemed good to John, and to the Holy Spirit, to use this known title of the Lord (attaching to Him as here on earth, according to Luke 1:2) when he referred to Him as in the past eternity. "The Word" was identified with His Person in the mind of John; it was of that known Person he was writing. He would have us to know the infinite divine greatness and majesty of the One concerning whom he was going to write. It had been reserved to him to bring out what that Person was as the Word much more fully than it had been brought out before. If we want to appreciate that wondrous title in its greatness and glory we must study John's gospel. We must see how Jesus expressed
God in His nature and in all His thoughts manward, and we need to read the whole gospel in the light of the opening verses.
The Word is, and was eternally, a divine Person. John 1:1 - 3 is intended to make us take our shoes off, and prostrate our souls in worship, as we see His eternal place in Deity. Seeing this we should read the whole gospel in the spirit of adoration, connecting every word and act of our Lord with His eternal Person. It is essential that we should do so. The names and titles by which we know Him in Manhood -- the Word, Jesus Christ, the Son, and many others -- do not cover all that is true of His eternal Person. But the intelligent affections of the saints, as taught by the Spirit, never disconnect His present names or titles from His eternal Person. Every Name which He bears attaches to One who is eternally divine, and now that they are known we can identify them with Him even when referring to Him before He actually bore them. It is the manner of Scripture to do so.
For example, John tells us that "every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ come in flesh is of God; and every spirit which does not confess Jesus Christ come in flesh is not of God; and this is that power of the anti-christ, of which ye have heard that it comes, and now it is already in the world", 1 John 4:2,3. The whole point of this lies in the fact that a divine Person has come in flesh. He did not actually bear the name "Jesus Christ" until He was here in manhood. But after He had "come in flesh" the name which He bore as incarnate was used by John to designate Him as having "come"; that is, as One who had pre-existed as a divine Person. This shows in a very distinct way that His eternal Person is identified with His present names and titles.
Paul uses the name "Christ Jesus" in exactly the same
way. He speaks of Christ Jesus as "subsisting in the form of God" before He took His place in the likeness of men (Philippians 2:5 - 7). This was a present known name of our Lord; it did not actually apply to Him as in Deity in the past eternity, though, of course, it was in divine purpose that He should take it up. But Paul used it when speaking of Him before incarnation; the One who is now known by that name is an eternal divine Person. It would be true to say, 'Jesus existed from eternity', but in so saying we should identify the name with the Person who bears it, though we well know that Jesus was His name as born into this world.
We have the Lord's own authority for identifying His eternal Person with a title which clearly only applies strictly to Him as Man. He said, "If then ye see the Son of man ascending up where he was before?" John 6:62. And He spoke of the Son of man coming down out of heaven (John 3:13). This is of the highest importance as instructing us in the precious truth that none of His present titles as Man are to be detached in our minds from what He was eternally before He became Man. The names and titles now attach to His Person, but His Person is eternal. Jesus spoke of Himself in John 8:40 as "a man who has spoken the truth to you" -- I believe the only time that He spoke of Himself as "a man" -- but He said in the same chapter, "Before Abraham was, I am". That man was the eternal God, but any intelligent child would understand that He was not a Man before Abraham's time.
This leads us to recognise, too, that His names and titles as Man do not cover the whole truth of His Person. He is Himself greater than them all. The first three verses of John's gospel assure us of this. He is "the Word", and as "the Word" He is the intelligible expression of God to us. This is a title which corresponds with Hebrews 1:1,2:
"God having spoken in many parts and in many ways formerly to the fathers in the prophets, at the end of these days has spoken to us in the person of the Son". It is soberly reverent to believe that whatever He has spoken to us He intends us to hear and understand. The speaking of God to us in the Son, who is also the Word, has to do with what He is pleased to express of Himself to men for their intelligent apprehension, and their infinite blessing and joy. When we perceive this we become concerned to understand what He has expressed and spoken to men.
"The Word" -- signifying what is intelligible -- does not cover all that attaches to the great and glorious Person who is known by that designation. Hebrews 1 tells us how God has spoken to men "in Son", but it also says of that glorious One, "by whom also he made the worlds". This is inscrutable, for the act of creation is beyond the compass of the creature mind, though understood by faith. The next sentence also refers to what is inscrutable: "Who being the effulgence of his glory, and the expression of his substance" (Clearly 'substance', 'essential being', not 'person'. Note in the Darby Translation). This is beyond us, for the Being of God is beyond our finite capacity, though we can own adoringly that the Son is the expression of it. But what He is as "the Word" does come within our apprehension. Indeed the great object of John in writing is to show that it has done so. "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us ... full of grace and truth; ... for of his fulness we all have received, and grace upon grace", John 1:14 - 16. The fulness of grace and truth in "the Word" is there to be received by men; the declaration of God by the only-begotten Son is not inscrutable; it makes God known to us most fully in grace and truth; the speaking of God in Son is not to be refused, but heard and understood. The Lord's precious title, "the Word", relates to
what is expressed in Him so as to be received and understood by us. There had been previous communications from God in prophets, but in the Son as Man here God Himself spoke to men in fulness of grace and truth.
The glory which belongs to Christ as "the Word" is infinitely great, and such as could only attach to a divine Person, but it is a glory which is apprehensible by the creature -- a fulness of grace and truth of which we all have received. But, while rejoicing in this, we remember with deep reverence that there is a greatness in Him which in inscrutable. John speaks of this inscrutable greatness when he tells us that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God". The expressions 'eternal Word', 'everlasting Word', have been used with pious intent to assert the eternal character of the Person, but they tend to obscure the difference between what He is as "the Word", expressing God to men in fulness of grace and truth, and what He was, and is, in the inscrutableness of eternal Deity. To distinguish between these two things takes nothing from the Lord. It is no derogation from His Person or glory. It gives full place to all that He is as "the Word", and enhances it by connecting it in our minds and hearts with His eternal Person. It is due to Him that both aspects of His glory should be before us, and intelligently distinguished. The Incarnation was necessary for the intelligible expression of God, and this is obscured if we think that Jesus was actually "the Word" in the past eternity. God would have our minds and hearts filled with what we know of Him as having come now into full expression. This important matter is that Jesus, God's beloved Son, should be to us "the Word".
It has been said that God suffices for Himself in everything but His love, but because of His love -- what He is
in His nature -- He must express Himself so that His intelligent creatures may know and love Him. So a divine Person came in Manhood, and John writes to tell us of Him, and of what He was before He became Man. He had distinct Personality, but was in the unity of the Godhead, was God, before there was any creation.
We read in Genesis 1:1,"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". It is of that beginning that John speaks when he tells us that "All things received being through him, and without him not one thing received being which has received being". The One who is the theme of John's gospel is the Creator-God of Genesis 1, the eternal supreme Being. His Personality, as distinct from the other Persons in the Godhead, was not declared in Genesis 1, but it is now made clearly known in John 1. We bear it in mind all the time as we read the gospel of John. It gives a profound sense of the greatness of the Person in whom, as Man on earth, God has been expressed.
The Lord refers to another wondrous "beginning" when He says, "But I did not say these things unto you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I go to him that has sent me", John 16:4,5. God would have us to attach great importance to the point of time which the Lord here referred to as "the beginning". It clearly refers to the commencement of His public ministry. Peter speaks of "all the time in which the Lord Jesus came in and went out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day in which he was taken up from us", Acts 1:21,22. The first two chapters of Matthew and of Luke give us an account of what preceded His baptism and public service, but Luke tells us that he composed his discourse "concerning all things which Jesus began both to do and to teach". The Lord's public ministry was his theme; he spoke of matters "as those who from the beginning
were eye-witnesses of and attendants on the Word have delivered them to us", Luke 1:2. This is important as giving us the point of time from which the Lord is regarded in Scripture as the Sent One. Indeed He Himself defined it when He read in the synagogue at Nazareth the precious words, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor; he has sent me to preach to captives deliverance", Luke 4:18.
"Anointed" and "sent" -- this is the order; and it is in keeping with the "sanctified and sent into the world" of John 10:36. So the Lord speaks of Himself as having been "sent forth" to announce the glad tidings (Luke 4:43).
His coming into the world in John is not exactly His birth, but what He was born for. He distinguishes the two things in John 18:37, "1 have been born for this, and for this I have come into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth". As coming into the world He comes after John the baptist, and He lightens every man. His full mission and ministry are in view. So that as long as He was in the world He was the light of the world, and the Object of faith. There is a moral force in it, only to be known as taking account of what His position was after the Spirit descended and abode upon Him. "For judgment am I come into this world" clearly refers to His coming publicly as Light; it would hardly apply to the thirty years before He was manifested to Israel. "Because ye are with me from the beginning" (John 15:27) makes evident that the great subject of witness begins with the descent of the Spirit upon Him. In the light of this we can see that His coming out from God and from the Father (John 16:27,28) was when He was manifested as coming after John. It refers to His coming as the manifested Light of men rather than to His birth into this world. "I came forth from God and am come from him; for neither am I
come of myself, but he has sent me" (John 8:42) indicates His moral origin, so that if God had been their Father they would have loved Him. It is, as J.N.D. said, 'a mission from the divine Person, not from a place at all'. As "in the world" He manifested the Father's name to the men given Him; He gave them the words which the Father gave Him, and they received them and knew truly that He came out from the Father; they believed that the Father had sent Him. "As thou hast sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world" (John 17:18) shows what a distinct mission is, in each case, in view; the statement does not refer only to the presence on earth of the Son of God or of His disciples, but to the fact that from a certain definite moment He was sent by the Father into the world, and, in like manner, from a definite point they were sent by Him. I believe the apprehension of this is essential to the spiritual understanding of how the Son of God is presented in the gospel of John.
In John's epistle he speaks of another "beginning". "That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes; that which we contemplated, and our hands handled, concerning the word of life; (and the life has been manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and report to you the eternal life, which was with the Father, and has been manifested to us:)", 1 John 1:1,2. This "beginning" clearly refers to what was manifested to the apostles in Jesus Christ the Son of the Father. Not exactly His Person, but what was manifested in Him -- "the word of life", "the life", "the eternal life". For the first time in the history of the world there was a true and full expression of "life", and it was expressed in One who could be heard, seen and handled. This is another wonderful result of God's Son being here; "life" has come into view, or, as we read here, has been manifested. John
had spoken in the gospel of the declaration of God by the only-begotten Son; but now he speaks of the manifestation of "life" in Him; that is, life in man relative to God, and God known as the Father. "Life" has been manifested in the same Person who has so blessedly declared God; it has come into the view of men and it has been reported to us. It came into expression in what the Son said and did as found in the condition of flesh in which He was heard and seen here.
Death and darkness were in the world but "in him was life", and it was there in the way of illumination for men -- "the light of life", as He said in John 8:12. It is wondrous to consider that "life" in the true and full sense has shone as light for men in Christ the Son. The darkness did not apprehend it, but it was shining for every man and it was manifested to those whose eyes were divinely opened to see it. "Life" in which sin was not and in which there was nothing for the ruler of the world, nothing that gave death any claim upon Him, nothing that the fallen man could take pleasure in, but everything that answered in full perfection to the will and pleasure of God. The "life" was in broad and full contrast with the death that was here. Men would not have known what "life" really was if God had not been pleased that it should be manifested in His Son. We are accustomed to a death scene, and we are naturally part of it, but "life" has been manifested here in Him who was "the Son of the Father". We have not personally seen it, but the apostles did, and they have reported it to us that we might have fellowship with them.
But there was also a specific character of life which had been spoken of in Scripture as "the blessing, life for evermore", Psalm 133:3. The Old Testament had spoken of it as being in God's mind for men, and the Jews clearly had it before them as something to be greatly desired; it was
to them the life of blessing which could be inherited by God's favour in the world to come. The Lord spoke much of "life eternal" in the gospel of John as the blessing into which men would enter by believing on Him. It is a blessing "which God, who cannot lie, promised before the ages of time", Titus 1:2. Now John reports "the eternal life" to us as being "with the Father", and as having been manifested to the apostles. The promised blessing for men has taken form in the Son of God, and it has been known in Him as being "with the Father". Eternal life is thus seen to stand in relation to God known as the Father; that is, God as fully made known in grace by the Son. And "the eternal life" has been manifested to men, and became their delight and the subject of their witness.
There was that in the Son of God of which men, chosen of Him for that high favour, could take knowledge as being "with the Father". The Father had with Him, in the Person of His beloved Son as Man upon earth, what He had before Him, and promised as blessing for man, before the ages of time. And it was manifested to the apostles, not to the world. It was not exactly the public life of the Lord such as natural men could take account of, but that which was "with the Father", and which to His chosen ones was in manifestation in His words and ways. All that He said and did was the expression to those who had ears to hear and eyes to see of an inward life which was "with the Father". Not here His relationship as Son with the Father -- though He was at the same time the Son of the Father -- but the blessed fact that "the eternal life" was "with the Father" in Him. This was a profound delight to John; he and other apostles perceived in Jesus a life which was "with the Father", but in which men could participate by believing on Him. It filled John with joy and he would have us to share that joy.
In being able to apprehend the eternal life as manifested in the Son of God the apostles had fellowship with the Father and the Son. The Father had with Him, in the Person of the Son, as Man, all that was covered by the words, "the eternal life". And the Son had the joy of being "with the Father" as setting forth in Himself this great blessing for men. Eternal life was one of the great thoughts of God in regard to men. But it has now been brought into actual being and into manifestation in the Person of the Son of God so as to be the subject of witness, and it has been reported to us. In apprehending it the apostles had fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, and they have reported what they saw and heard that we may have fellowship with them and have our joy full.
The Father's Son in Manhood manifested "the eternal life" to His loved disciples. The eternal life period began in Him, but it came in that men might participate in it by believing on Him. It was there in Him, as a living Source and Fountain of life for men. What a wondrous "beginning"! The eternal life period has begun, and John writes that we may know it and have the joy of it as those who have life in the Son of God. The Son of God as a glorified Man is "the true God and eternal life", 1 John 5:20.
In conclusion we may consider briefly that John refers in various places to another "beginning", (see 1 John 2:7, 24; 1 John 3:11; 2 John 6). These scriptures show that there has been a "beginning" on our side. That is, we, as christians and believers, have had a wonderful beginning. We have all begun, according to God, by hearing the divine testimony which has been brought to us by the apostles. No other beginning than this would be of any account in God's reckoning. This was the "beginning" of the knowledge of divine Persons on the part of men, consequent upon the
glorification of Jesus, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the reception of the apostles' testimony. The "beginning" of christianity was the coming to man of the blessed truth concerning the Son and the Father. It is clear from John's writing that the "little children" in the family of God began with the knowledge of the Son and the Father, and had the Unction from the Holy One. These are most wonderful divine realities. Now we are to let these things abide in us. They are what we began with, and we are not to be led astray from them. If that which we heard from the beginning abides in us, we shall abide in the Son and in the Father, and we shall find that this is life eternal. Life eternal is bound up with what we heard from the beginning, so that it is of the utmost importance for us to know what we did hear from the beginning. That is, what have we really heard from the apostles, or learned from their inspired writings? God would have us to regard this as what we heard from the beginning, and not what men have said since, even with the most pious intentions. If we are preserved through grace from that which leads astray we shall know the blessedness of life eternal. If our joy is not full it is because we have not allowed what we heard from the beginning to abide in us.
Paul presents eternal life as an end to be reached by moving on certain lines, but John's ministry gives us to know that this is the eternal life period, and that eternal life is bound up with the abiding in us of what we heard from the beginning. The "promise" becomes a present reality to those who, by the teaching of the Unction, abide in the Son and in the Father. Before eternal life is brought in publicly believers on the Son of God have it in Him; the Unction which we have received teaches us to abide in Him.
John 1:1 - 5
C.A.C. The writings of John have a very peculiar place and value particularly as having been written, as we might say, late in the day. I suppose every form of evil that has come into the assemblies was present and had manifested itself before John wrote any of his writings. I have no doubt that if John's writings got their place in our affections they would make us overcomers. We should come out in the full bloom of life, notwithstanding all that has happened and that exists. There is a certain completeness about things in John that we do not get anywhere else. For instance, we do not get in John any parable of the sower with varying results; we do not get any net let down and breaking, or any such parables as that of the talents in Matthew and the pounds in Luke where there are varying results. John has in view a complete result; he has in view the holy city coming down from God out of heaven, all its features divine and spiritual and coming up to full measurement. There is a complete result for the glory of God; that is the line of John.
We are not on the line of responsibility in John's gospel; we are on the line of divine sovereignty and of what God does. It is a question of the work of God, and John would help us to look at it in its essential character, in its perfection. The more we are occupied with what is of God and perfect, the stronger we shall be to overcome what is of the flesh and of the world.
The responsible side is in the background in John's gospel, and things are brought before us in which there is no defect. A Person is introduced in whom it is impossible
there should be any defect, and what that Person says, and what He does, and what He gives are all like Himself; all is divinely complete and perfect. Therefore it is of the greatest importance for us to start with a right thought of the greatness of the Person, and this is presented to us in the opening verses of the gospel.
The great thing before the mind of the Spirit in this book is that we should understand the mediatorial glory of the Son of God, and therefore the gospel opens with a statement that introduces Him in His mediatorial glory -- that is, "the Word". "The Word" is a mediatorial title. It is a most precious title of the Lord because it sets Him forth as the One who has expressed God to us. And those for whom this gospel is written are persons who have apprehended Him in that character.
Ques. Could we say He expressed God "in the beginning"?
C.A.C. No, but the Person whom we know as having expressed God to us was "in the beginning". This gives us the ineffable divine greatness of the One who has expressed God to us. If He had not been so great as He is He could not have expressed God to us. If He had not been Himself God He would not have been equal to expressing God to us. His mediatorial glory as "the Word" is dependent on His personal glory: it is dependent on the truth of His Person. As to His Person He was from eternity and He was God. He had no mediatorial place in eternity. I suppose we can all see that in the past eternity before there was any creation, He was not expressing God to creatures capable of hearing what He had to say. His mediatorial glory as "the Word" is connected with the way that God has made Himself known to men. God has spoken in Son -- that is mediatorial. God could not put Himself into communication with men apart from a Mediator. God is infinitely great, and man as a creature is small; it is
impossible that God could put Himself in communication with men, His creatures, without a Mediator. Scripture is full of that wonderful idea.
Ques. What is "the beginning"?
C.A.C. It is an expression which carries us as far back as our finite minds are able to travel. There are different beginnings in Scripture: John speaks in his epistle of "Him that is from the beginning" -- that clearly refers to the beginning of Christianity in the incarnation of the Son of God and its blessed results. Then John speaks of the devil sinning from the beginning; that is the beginning of sin. Then in Genesis 1 we read, "In the beginning God created" -- that is the beginning of creation. But in John 1 it says, "In the beginning was the Word" -- that carries us right back before these other beginnings; it carries us back to God's eternity; our minds are not able to compass that, but it is made known to us that from the most remote point which we can conceive in relation to the eternal God, the Word was. When we think of Deity in eternity we cannot explain it. Our attitude of mind and heart relative to it is reverence and adoration. It is only what has come into the mediatorial sphere that is accessible to us; it would help us greatly to see that. There are certain things which are inaccessible to us, and we must accept that, "No man has seen God at any time"; as such He is inaccessible. He dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, but everything that God has brought into the mediatorial sphere is accessible, that we may apprehend it and live in it. In the sphere of absolute Deity everything is inaccessible to men as creatures.
Ques. Is "that they may behold my glory" (John 17:24) in the mediatorial sphere?
C.A.C. It is a given glory which will come within the range of the apprehensions of the glorified saints. It is not within the range of our apprehensions now but it will be in
the glorified state when we shall be with Him and like Him. We shall then behold the glory that the Father has given Him, for He loved Him before the foundation of the world. Who can tell what it is? I do not think anyone can, but we are going to see it in our glorified state. It is a given glory and it is given to the Son of God as One loved before the foundation of the world but now known as having come into the mediatorial position.
Rem. Jacob said he saw God face to face (Genesis 32:30). C.A.C. Yes; he got a sense, as others did, that he had seen God. There were certain occasions in Old Testament times when God manifested Himself in angelic form or in the form of a man. It was "a man" that wrestled with Jacob; one could not think of God as such, wrestling with a man; the man would be consumed in a moment. A man wrestled with Jacob, but Jacob realised that God was there, though He was hidden, if we may so say, behind the form of "a man". It says in Exodus, "They saw the God of Israel", Exodus 24:10. God was pleased to manifest Himself in certain forms in Old Testament times, generally in angelic form. The law and all that was known of God in connection with the law and the appearance of the glory of God then was, we are told, "by the ministry of angels", Acts 7:53. It was angelic glory. All the appearances of God in the Old Testament were a foreshadowing of the incarnation; we must not think of them as being any full outshining of the invisible God. The words of this chapter make it clear that "No one has seen God at any time" (verse 18). Indeed, I do not know that even in the New Testament God is ever said to be "revealed". The Father is revealed by the Son (Matthew 11:27) but God is said to be "declared", and this is in keeping with Hebrews 1 where we are told that God has spoken in the Son. The Mediator has come out and declared the God that no man has seen nor can see
Ques. Why is there a change in verse 18, "No one has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him"?
C.A.C. That is to bring out the wonderful place the Mediator has in the affections of the Father, so He is competent to declare God. None of us knows God at all, morally or in His nature, save as His beloved Son has declared Him. There is no other knowledge of God but as He is declared mediatorially.
Ques. Is there anything more to make known? The Lord said in John 17, "I have made known to them thy name, and will make it known".
C.A.C. Those last words refer to what the Lord would make known in resurrection. He had made the Father's name known in His life before the cross but He had never then said, "My Father and your Father ... . my God and your God". There is no more to be made known. What we have to do is to seek to enter into what has come out.
Ques. What is the force of declaring?
C.A.C. All that God is morally and in His nature is made known. Creation never made that known; it did make certain invisible things known, which are apprehend ed by the mind through the things that are made (Romans 1). These things are God's eternal power and divinity; these are invisible things, but they are apprehended by the mind of man through the things that are made. Man cannot get farther than that through creation. I see God's eternal power and divinity in the star-spangled sky and all the beauty and order of nature, but that gives me no conception of what God is morally or of what He is in His nature. I cannot learn that from the things that are made, I have to learn it through the Mediator.
Ques. What is the thought of "in him was life"? C.A.C. In verse 4 we come to man's sphere. In the first three verses we are in the sphere of Deity, in which
man does not appear; verse 4 brings men into view. "In him was life, and the life was the light of men". So verse 4 is the mediatorial aspect of things; something becomes available as light for man.
Ques. Why do you say there is no revelation of God?
C.A.C. The Father has been revealed by the Son, for He could say, "He that has seen me has seen the Father;", John 14:9. God is known to us as the Father, not simply as the Creator or Elohim, or as the most High, or as Jehovah, but as the Father. But God is "declared"; He is told out; it is not a question of what we can see but of what we hear. Revelation properly is what we may see; the Father was seen in the Son. But the way we know God is through declaration; He has been declared. Everything depends on what can be heard; it is heard from the Son. This is peculiar to Christianity: it is obvious that we cannot carry the name 'Father' back into the Old Testament; no one knew Him as Father in the Old Testament; He was known by other titles. Of course there could not be any change in God, but it is a question of how God is pleased to be known by men. He was pleased to be known by the patriarchs as the Almighty and Most High, and to Israel as Jehovah; we cannot carry the name 'Father' back into the Old Testament; it does not belong to that period. No people of God could go beyond what was made known to them. The Psalms do not go beyond the name of Jehovah; there is no address to God as the Father in the Psalms and there is no trace in all the 150 Psalms of conscious sonship. If people now live in the Psalms they live below their privileges, though of course we can profit by all that they contain.
Rem. Paul said, "Whom therefore ye reverence, not knowing him, him I announce to you", Acts 17:23. C.A.C. Yes, Paul was a chosen vessel taken up so that God, who was unknown by the heathen, might be
announced to them by one who knew Him through the Mediator. Paul knew Him through the Mediator so he was qualified to announce Him to those to whom He was the unknown God.
The present period is distinctly contrasted in this chapter with what went before. "For the law was given by Moses: grace and truth subsists through Jesus Christ". The declaration of God has made a complete change in the whole position of things: they are not at all what they were before the incarnation. Scripture speaks of the incarnation as an entirely new beginning; it must be so if a divine Person has become Man. Such a stupendous intervention of God could not do otherwise than change everything. It changes everything for God and for man, and I do not think we have any right conception of the greatness of the incarnation; it is stupendous!
It would help us greatly to see more fully the import of this wonderful designation of our Lord, "the Word". That is how He is known to those who believe on Him; He is known as "the Word". There is no statement in Scripture that He was "the Word" in eternity, but the One whom we know now as "the Word", the One who has become "the Word" to us, was "in the beginning". That Person was from eternity, and in eternity He "was God".
Ques. What does that verse mean, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, he who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty", Revelation 1:8?
C.A.C. God is "the Alpha and the Omega ... the Lord God, he who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty". These are Old Testament titles. But the Alpha and the Omega is that God presents Himself as the great starting point of everything and the great end of everything. He is the A and Z, the first letter of the alphabet and the last. Everything begins with God and everything will end with Him. It is what belongs to God
as such; but then the Lord Jesus is God, so He has part in it all.
Ques. Does this explain the title, "Father of eternity", Isaiah 9:6?
C.A.C. Yes, I think so. That is the name of the Child born and the Son given, "His name is called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace". All that is proper to God belongs to Christ because He was God and He is God. He is co-equal personally with the other Persons in Deity. All the titles by which God is known in the Old Testament belong to Christ -- Almighty, Elohim, Jehovah. All these titles belong to Christ because He is God; that is the greatness of His Person.
Ques. Why is verse 2 brought in in addition to verse 1? C.A.C. It is brought in to make clear the distinct personality of "the Word" from eternity. It is not that He came into existence at some point far back -- there have been some who held that -- but "He was in the beginning with God" -- a distinct personality from eternity, co-equal and co-eternal with God. The common ideas current in christendom do not take account of that. The commonly held thought in christendom is that there was a point in eternity when He was begotten, when He derived His being from the Father. But the term "begotten" is only applied in Scripture to the Lord as begotten in time. Psalm 2, verse 7, says, "I will declare the decree: Jehovah hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; I this day have begotten thee". That scripture is quoted several times in the New Testament. It is as born in time that the Lord was "begotten", not before all worlds. From eternity He was God, but He became incarnate through the power of the Highest overshadowing the virgin so that she conceived in the womb and bore a Son. He was "begotten" on a particular day as born in time.
It is altogether wrong to apply the term "begotten"
to our Lord in eternity. In eternity He was God, and there could be no thought of origin or generation in connection with an eternal divine Person. But the thought of generation did have place in connection with Him as born in time; He was conceived in the womb of the virgin by the Holy Spirit, and as "that holy thing" born He was called the Son of God. He came into manhood in that way. The word "begotten" applies to Him as born into the world, and not as in eternal Deity.
Ques. Is the "word of life" in 1 John 1:1 different from "the Word" in this gospel?
C.A.C. "The word of life" is that He has become the expression of life to us. In the gospel there is the expression of God to us, and that becomes life in our souls. But then our Lord is not only the expression of God to us but He is the expression of life to us. If we want to know what life is, what eternal life is, we may find the expression of it in Him.
13th April, 1932
John 1:1 - 12
C.A.C. It is of the utmost importance that we should know the greatness of the One who has expressed God to us. None of the prophets could have been spoken of as "the Word"; they were channels of communication by which God made known certain things according to His pleasure, and none of them expressed God. In knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as "the Word" we regard Him as the One in whom God has been perfectly expressed. All that God is morally and in His nature has been expressed and express ed to men. If we think of that rightly we must be conscious that no one was competent to do it but One who was Himself God.
In the first three verses we see divine Persons in Their own sphere. We learn the eternal Deity of the Lord Jesus, and His distinct Personality in the Godhead, and we see Him as the universal Creator: everything received being through Him. These are great realities which are intended to be the subject of reverent contemplation and adoration. The Spirit of God would, in the first place, engage us with the greatness of the Person in whom God has been expressed; that gives infinite value to all that He said and to all He did and, we might add, to all that He gives; His greatness covers all with divine glory.
In verse 4 men come into view. "In him was life and the life was the light of men". As light He is the object for faith (verse 7). All the light of God has come into a scene of utter darkness and death, for verse 4 is evidently relative to death and darkness.
"All things received being through him". As Creator
He acted "in the form of God"; we are told He subsisted "in the form of God" (Philippians 2:6), and as in that form He was the universal Creator. But now in the same Person as Man God has introduced life, and has introduced it as light for men.
It is rather remarkable that the condition in which the Lord came is not mentioned until verse 14. I think the Spirit of God would, in the first place, call our attention to what was there morally, and to the greatness of the Person Himself before He dwelt upon the condition into which the Person came. It is most important for us to get a right thought about the greatness of the Person, otherwise the condition into which He came might belittle Him, for He became flesh; He was here in man's lowly guise and dwelt among men. We need to have a most exalted thought of the Person before we think of the condition into which He came, "The Word became flesh". But the Spirit dwells first on what was there morally in Him before He speaks precisely of the condition in which it was expressed. A divine Person came into a new condition, as becoming Man, but His Person remained unchanged and unchangeable.
The life would not have become the light of men if He had not become a Man, but it is striking that John does not begin by saying He became flesh. It is helpful to see how the Spirit enlarges upon the glory of the Person before He speaks of the condition into which that Person came. We see all through this gospel the essential glory of the Person brought into view; we get it in such a word as "Before Abraham was, I AM". There His essential Personality comes out, what He ever was, however lowly the condition into which He came. This gospel was written to give us great thoughts of the Lord viewed mediatorially, but in order to do that we must have great thoughts of Him personally. What He was personally gave character, fulness and blessedness to everything He became
mediatorially. I believe the present exercises which the Spirit of God is promoting among the saints are to that end. The Spirit is ever faithful to His mission; the Lord said of Him, "He shall glorify me". The Spirit could never detract from Him, or give Him any place that is less than His proper place.
Ques. Why are we so ignorant of all this?
C.A.C. I suppose on account of the presence of darkness. Every one of us began in absolute darkness, without a single ray of light in our souls as to God. But now, while the Son of God has become light to us, that does not mean that all the darkness has gone on our side. John says in his epistle "the darkness is passing" -- not passed but passing -- "and the true light already shines". It is very much like a dissolving view, one picture going and another coming. The light is coming in and the darkness going; every ray of the light which comes in means more of the darkness going out. All our imperfections as to knowledge and as to apprehension and as to adoration arise from the presence still in our souls of elements of darkness. The great value of this gospel is that it brings before us absolute light in the Person of the Son of God, and in contemplating Him we get outside every shade of darkness. He could say, "I am come into the world as light" (chapter 12:46), and "As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world" (chapter 9:5). There was in Him the absolute shining of divine light without a single obscuring element. The only place that the greatest servant can have is to bear witness concerning the light. According to the measure in which we have apprehended the light we can bear witness to it. Darkness is ignorance of God; God unknown by an intelligent creature is terrible darkness. Men's minds have become enshrouded in more than Egyptian darkness that shuts out from them the true knowledge of God. Now God has brought in light so that all darkness might be
dispelled from our hearts and that we might live in the light of what God is. The natural man is so completely dark that he cannot apprehend the light. "The light appears in darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not". The darkness spoken of here is so positive in its character that if the brightest light is brought in it makes no difference. There is nothing like that in nature; however dark a place is, if a light is brought in the darkness goes; but this moral darkness is so intense that not even the brightest light affects it one bit, so there must be a work of God in man if he is to appreciate the light.
Ques. Would you explain "In him was life"?
C.A.C. Life was there in that Person and it was in Him as light for men. It is helpful as giving the clue to the way John speaks of life; he first speaks of it objectively. It is life in a sense in which it can be light for men; it can shine on men.
The opening chapters of Genesis help us as to the great primary thoughts of God. We can see there that God's thought was to have a world characterised by the presence of light and instinct with life. In the first two chapters living and life are mentioned seven times, indicating that God, being Himself a living God, must have a living universe. "Living souls" are mentioned six times in the first two chapters of Genesis. And then when God created Adam and Eve He said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth". That introduced the family idea as being capable of vast expansion. God's primary thoughts are His greatest thoughts; He is not like man. Man begins with immature thoughts which gradually develop, but God begins with the greatest and most complete thoughts. Genesis 1 gives the thought of a scene where there is light, and which is full of the evidence of life. And then in relation to man the first thought God gives expression to is a family thought; He enjoins on
Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. They were to fill the earth with a human family. These thoughts come out very distinctly in John's gospel -- light, life and a family of children for God.
It has pleased God from eternity to think of men; and Scripture shows us that though God has mighty hosts of intelligent beings in heavenly regions, beings of exalted character, and who have never fallen, yet no creatures that God ever brought into being have the place with Him that men have. Wisdom's delights were with the sons of men. God has never given us a thought that His delights were with angels. Think of the greatness of God, and that He should bind up the delights of His heart with creatures like you and me! Does it not bow the soul in adoration? We are filled with reverential appreciation of the blessedness of God in His nature!
God would bring in life for men in the glorious Person spoken of in John 1:1 - 3, and it is in the knowledge of God made known in love that we have life. If we entered into the thought that God in love had found delight in us, and has eternally planned that we should find most wonderful blessing in the knowledge of Himself as love, that would be life in our souls. "The life was the light of men"; it gives one a living thought of light. J.N.D. expressed in one of his hymns: 'And who that glorious blaze of living light can tell?' (Hymn 79). It is the light of God Himself known as love; everything that He could express of Himself was expressed in His beloved Son and it was expressed in a living way. "In him was life", and it was expressed so as to become light for men. Life is light, as J.N.D.'s note to his Translation says, as equivalent, one equal to the other; you could turn it round and say the light was life.
C.A.C. Life consists in certain conditions that can be enjoyed; if you could take away from me all happy
conditions there would not be much left that could be spoken of as "life". I might still exist, but that is not life. Our human life consists in surroundings and associations and the system of affections in which we move; our life is in these things. Now life is brought in here in that way; it is brought in as being the expression to us of what God is in His nature and His character so that it may be life to us; not merely light but that we may live in it. "He that hath the Son hath life". The great controversy about eternal life in 1890 turned on that. Some wanted to think they had eternal life in themselves, and they were not pleased to have their attention called to the fact that eternal life was in a blessed divine Person, the Son of God. It was to be known and enjoyed there.
Ques. Does the thought of God and men come into view here before the thought of relationship?
C.A.C. Yes, and it leads to relationship, the family thought, as in verse 13. But, before the family thought is introduced we have the basis of it in the knowledge of God in love. If we do not know God in love, we shall not touch the family thought. Knowing God in love is the start, and the light of the love of God has come to us in His Son. As receiving Him by believing on His name we have right to take the place of children of God; thus the family thought is brought to pass.
What is brought to us in the Son of God is eternal in its character; it is unassailable by the power of evil or death. "In him was life" suggests that something is brought in which the power of death cannot touch. God has introduced a new Head and in that new Head is life. We do not connect the thought of life with ourselves or our experience, but with a living Person in whom it is.
Rem. "That we might live through him", 1 John 4:9. C.A.C. Yes, that is it exactly. The wonderful consideration of God comes out in the fact that the light
becomes the subject of witness -- verses 6, 7 and 8 refer to that. It brings out the consideration of God for men. Why should God give witness to the light? It is in pure consideration for men. He would not send the light into the world without heralding it; He would not let it break, as it were, unexpectedly on man. He would make it a subject of witness. So "There was a man sent from God, his name John. He came for witness, that he might witness concerning the light, that all might believe through him". Think of the consideration of it! God specially sending a man to bear witness of the light. The light was to be the object of faith and God in His consideration was pleased to call attention to it by witness being borne to it, even a human witness, specially sent for that purpose. Chapter 5 in this gospel brings out very fully the thought of the Son of God being the subject of witness. John, the Father, the works and the Scriptures are all brought in as witness. The thought of witness is very affecting because it shows how the blessed God would consider for us in our condition, and would actually take pains to draw our attention to the light in a definite systematic way. John came to be witness in a peculiar way; it was not given to any other prophet to bear witness to Christ here on earth; it was reserved for John to point Him out; he was allowed that wonderful place of honour. People who received John's testimony could say afterwards that all that John spoke of Him was true. What a blessed testimony! There was a unique character about John's testimony; it was different from anything that had gone before; it stood in immediate relation to Christ the Son of God as actually present on earth.
Rem. The thought of sending is very prominent in this gospel.
C.A.C. Yes, sent is a very characteristic word of this gospel; I think it occurs about forty times. It is a mediatorial word; wherever you find the word "sent" you may
conclude at once that it is in a mediatorial connection. The relations that subsist between the Sender and the sent One are not relations of absolute equality; they imply authority on the part of the Sender and subjection and obedience on the part of the sent One; so the word "sent" is mediatorial. You could not connect the word "sent" with the essential and eternal glory of the Son of God; it belongs to His mediatorial glory. The Lord's own words make it clear; He says in this gospel, "the bondman is not greater than his lord, nor the sent greater than he who has sent him", John 13:16. There is a similar relationship between the sender and the sent as there is between the lord and the bondman. There is subordination to the will of another in the idea of the word "sent". Now the Lord as in that place is in the mediatorial place; it is not the place of His proper personal and eternal glory, but the place of His mediatorship as the sent One. I take that to be of vital importance to apprehend. "Whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world"; such statements bring out the mediatorial glory of the Lord in a wonderful way. They bring out the place into which He has come, not to do His own will, but to declare God -- the place of service and obedience. Whenever you read the word "sent", think of the Lord's words in chapter 13 that the sent One is not greater than He who sent Him. As the sent One He could say, "My Father is greater than I", John 14:28. He would not say that in regard to His eternal personality; He was co-equal in glory and majesty with the other Persons in the Godhead. This lies at the root of a great deal that is in controversy at the present time. We need to be exercised to understand the difference between His Personal glory which never changes, and never can change; "who is over all, God blessed for ever" (Romans 9:5), and His mediatorial glory as the sent One; the subject One who came to do the will of the One who sent Him.
Rem. Before He was sent was there a movement on His part as a divine Person?
C.A.C. Yes; we find that in Philippians 2:5 - 7. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus; who, subsisting in the form of God, did not esteem it an object of rapine to be on an equality with God; but emptied himself, taking a bondman's form, taking his place in the likeness of men". That is what He did Himself; taking a bondman's form was His own act as a divine Person. But having taken that form He ever acted according to the truth of the place He had taken. He never acted from His own will, He was the obedient One. His coming down from heaven was His own act, but He came down to be here in the subject place, not to do His own will but the will of the One who sent Him. The two things are ever distinguished, though in John's gospel His personal glory and His mediatorial glory are interwoven and blended; so that we find them, as it were, side by side, yet they are perfectly distinguishable. When He says, "I am come down" (John 6:38), that is His own sovereign act; but what did He come down for? "Not that I should do my will but the will of him that has sent me" -- that is the servant position. You see how closely the two run together, but they are clearly distinguishable.
By His own act He emptied Himself and took a bondman's form. We think of Him now as the glorious and glorified Man. There was no more humiliation after He had completed the work which was given Him to do. He was raised triumphant by the glory of the Father, and after displaying the power of resurrection during forty days, He ascended and was, as Paul tells us, "received up in glory", 1 Timothy 3:16. There He is at God's right hand, glorified at the right hand of the greatness on high; His humiliation is for ever past. He will be the subject One eternally. It will be His eternal glory to be placed in
subjection. Our Lord having taken up mediatorial glory will never divest Himself of it. He will wear it through God's eternity. But every creature who knows Him in that subject place will worship Him as God over all, blessed for ever! His personal glory and His mediatorial glory will blend throughout eternal ages. What a Person to know and love and serve! May the Lord help us to see more of His glory!
20th April, 1932
John 1:1 - 51
I have no thought of attempting to unfold all that is contained in this chapter, but I should like to bring before you some of the great truths which are here presented to us. The first thing I wish to speak of is the condition of the world and the way in which it has been exposed. In the opening verses of this chapter the condition of the world is completely disclosed in a few simple words. Everything has been brought to light. We do not need to try experiments to find out what the world is. Nothing can be added to the exposure of John 1:1 - 11.
Men can never by wisdom or philosophy get to the bottom of things because they leave God out. We must bring God in to get the true light -- to get a right estimate of anything. And here we see that all the light of God has come into the world. The true light has come. The mind and nature of God have been most perfectly expressed in the Word made flesh, and in the light of this revelation the world has been exposed. "The light appears in darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not". "He was in the world, and the world had its being through him, and the world knew him not. He came to his own, and his own received him not". The light shone for every man, but it shone upon stone-blind eyes. There was every testimony to the conscience of man. For privileged Israel there was the witness of John; the appointed herald went before Jehovah, and everybody in Israel whose conscience was not hardened recognised him as sent of God. But all was in vain. There is no capacity in man to take in divine light.
People say they want more light, but the truth is that all the light has come and been refused. The world is a scene of moral darkness in which there is no response to God. If you accept this you will be assured that the grace of God is man's only hope.
It is certain that the Son of God would never have come into the world merely to expose the darkness that was in it. He has done that by the way; but the great thought of God was to declare Himself (verse 18) and to have a company capable of appreciating that declaration. The world does not appreciate God, it will not receive a ray of light from Him. But He means to have a company with capacity to appreciate Him. This is the great design of grace. How could we be supremely happy in God's presence if we did not know and appreciate Him?
"As many as received him, to them gave he the right to be children of God, to those that believe on his name; who have been born, not of blood, nor of flesh's will, nor of man's will, but of God". There is no capacity in the natural man to receive light from God. There must be a company born "of God" to receive light from Him. To Nicodemus it was said, "Except any one be born anew he cannot see the kingdom of God", John 3:3. It is "not of blood", that is by natural descent; nor is it of "flesh's will, nor of man's will" in any way. It is of God in the activity and sovereignty of His grace. There is nothing in man that would originate any movement towards God, but He has purposed to have a company for Himself, and He will accomplish His purpose in spite of all the opposition and darkness that is in man. Every converted person knows that unless the grace of God had wrought in him he would never have received Christ. Nay, we did our utmost to resist the grace which sought our blessing. But God wrought in us, our self-sufficiency broke down, and a great void was produced in our hearts -- a thirst for the
knowledge of God -- and thus we were prepared to receive the light.
"As many as received him, to them gave he the right to be children of God, to those that believe on his name". It is thus that the work of God in souls is brought to light. As Christ is preached, and the light of God shines forth, there is a response in hearts where God has wrought. Thus the light of grace, presented in the gospel, makes manifest those in whom there is a work of the Spirit of God. And those who receive the light -- who receive Christ by believing on His name -- have the right to take the place of children of God. That is, they are entitled to take the place of having a kindred nature with God. They appreciate His light and believe on the name of Him in whom it has all come.
Now I should like to say a few words about the privileges of the children as they are brought before us in the next few verses of the chapter. In looking at them we must remember that we are not in the marvellous position occupied by the apostles. We enter into these things through their writings. The apostles could say, "Our fellowship is indeed with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ"; and as to our part in it, John says, "That which we have seen and heard we report to you, that ye also may have fellowship with us", 1 John 1:3.
"The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us". The Son of the Father could not be at home in this world but there was a little company among whom He could tabernacle. His heart could have no links with the darkness of the world, but amongst those born "of God" He could make Himself known and speak of what was in His heart. He could say to the Father, "I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world. They were thine, and thou gavest them me, and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things that thou
hast given me are of thee; for the words which thou hast given me I have given them, and they have received them, and have known truly that I came out from thee, and have believed that thou sentest me", John 17:6 - 8. Is it not a priceless privilege to be of the company to whom the Son can thus make Himself and the Father known?
"We have contemplated his glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father". What a new world for their hearts! What a contrast to all the scene of oppression, self-seeking and religious corruption around! Many have enough light to make them dissatisfied with things here but do not appear to have tasted the immeasurable satisfaction of contemplating the glory of the Word become flesh. The world cannot satisfy. If you had all the opportunities of Solomon you would find in the end that the world was too little for your heart. But there is an Object in whom the heart may find its absorbing and abiding satisfaction. "We have contemplated his glory".
"Full of grace and truth". In the Word become flesh our hearts find the perfect revelation of all that the Father is in the activity of His matchless grace and of all that He is in the blessedness of His own being and nature. And all subsists through Jesus Christ. There is no more to come, or to be known; it is all out. "The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him".
"Of his fulness we all have received, and grace upon grace". We may have taken in very little of it, but it is "of his fulness" that we have received, and every taste of it awakens the desire for more. It is not only "grace" to begin with when the heart makes its first acquaintance with that glorious Person, but it is "grace upon grace" in deepening knowledge of Him.
Then as we pass on through the chapter we learn how the gracious purposes and the glory of God have an eternal basis in righteousness, and have been secured by redemption. "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (verse 29). Here was a Person capable of taking up the whole question of sin, and of bearing its judgment so as to glorify God fully. The purposes of God rest upon this secure foundation, and in virtue of an accomplished redemption not only can they all be carried out but the Holy Spirit can be given to bring the light and joy of those purposes into the hearts of the children of God. "He who sent me to baptise with water, he said to me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and abiding on him, he it is who baptises with the Holy Spirit". It is only in the power and unction of the Holy Spirit that we can enter into the wondrous thoughts and purposes of God. Baptism by water introduces us into a new position on earth, but the baptism of the Holy Spirit introduced the believer to a circle of things connected with heaven, and gives him capacity to enter into heavenly things. The Spirit carries our affections into the region of eternal life. He is "a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life", John 4:14. He brings us into the circle of heavenly things and is the present power by which we can appropriate and enjoy our privileges.
But if this be so, it is of immense importance that our hearts should be under the sway of the Spirit, and we are sure to be tested as to this. Christ is everything to hearts that are under the sway of the Spirit, and a lovely picture of this is presented to our view in the chapter before us.
"Again, on the morrow, there stood John and two of his disciples. And, looking at Jesus as he walked, he says, Behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard him speaking and followed Jesus. But Jesus, having turned, and seeing them following, says to them, What seek ye? And they said to him, Rabbi (which, being interpreted, signifies Teacher), where abidest thou? He says to them, Come and see. They went therefore, and saw where he abode; and they abode with him that day. It was about the tenth hour".
John's involuntary exclamation arrested the hearts of his two disciples and brought them under the divine attraction of a new Object. They followed Jesus. He had become their absorbing Object and His company their supreme desire.
A third was soon added to their number and the three together present a beautiful pattern of the christian company, John (for I do not doubt he was one of the three, though unnamed) representing the affection of the company, Andrew its testimony and service and Peter expressive of the fact that it is a structure of living stones, an imperishable edifice in which divine grace and glory will be displayed for ever. Such is the company which is now being gathered out of the world by the grace of God, a company which finds its centre and object in the Son of God. How completely this carries us outside the range of everything that is of man! Men have set up great church systems and sectarian parties, but here we see the character of what God is doing. All the activity of His grace tends to this result, that there should be a company on earth in the unity of the divine nature and under the sway of the Holy Spirit, a company here for Christ.
May the light of God's gracious purpose shine brightly in each of our hearts, and may we be true to the character of the company to which we belong! Thus may we
learn, in a deeper and fuller way, our privileges as being of the wondrous company of which Christ speaks as "my assembly".
After reading your letter this morning, I opened my Bible on these words. "There was a man sent from God, his name John. He came for witness, that he might witness concerning the light, that all might believe through him", John 1:6,7. This set me thinking of some of the marks of a true servant, as we see them in John -- marks, which I trust, may be more and more imprinted on our lives and service.
First, he comes from God. In order to do this, we must first be with God. Alas! this is the weak point with so many. The excitement of service has an attraction for the natural tastes which the holy calm of the sanctuary does not possess. In one way service makes something of us, but in the presence of God we find that we are nothing. Men are needed who are really with God. There is no real freshness or power if we are not with God. Our hearts lose their divine sensibilities, we drop down to the level of things around us, and service becomes more or less formal.
The most glorious and soul-stirring realities are soon held as mere doctrines, and of course are preached as they are held. Then very soon the servant begins to feel a complacent self-satisfaction as to his service, which is not disturbed even by the lack of any manifest blessing, and this is the mark, I think, of an awfully backslidden state.
On the other hand, if we are with God, we are in spiritual reality as to our own experience. We do not deceive ourselves as to the measure of our progress, gift or faith. We think soberly as we ought to think. Then it is with God that we learn His love, His unmeasured grace,
His glorious purposes His great thoughts concerning Christ and the assembly, the reality of the Spirit's power, and many other things which are accepted in theory by many but known as realities by few. Then having been with God in the secret of His presence, we can come from God in the power of what we have learnt within, to serve in a world like this. We do not then measure the enemy's power against our own weakness, but against God. We do not put on the armour which others have worn, or follow in the beaten track where other servants have trodden. We do not confer with flesh and blood as to the scope or character of our service. There is an originality about every servant who comes from God. God does not fashion two servants in the same mould -- that is man's work -- and just in proportion as we are formed in the sanctuary, each will have his own peculiar fitness for his own service, and such stamp will be upon it that faith will recognise that it comes from God.
The second mark of a true servant is that he is consciously nothing. John could speak of himself as only a "voice", and a greater than John was consciously "less than the least of all saints". The moment we think ourselves to be anything, we are out of the servant's true position and spirit. There is a beautiful contrast between John's account of himself, and the Lord's description of him (compare John 1:22 - 27, with Luke 7:20 - 28). The more worthy we are of the Lord's commendation, the less do we think of ourselves.
The third mark of a true servant is that he is a witness. He speaks of that which he has seen and known for himself. It was said to Paul that he was to be "a witness both of what thou hast seen, and of what I shall appear to thee in". We may minister things which we have never entered into ourselves, but we cannot be witnesses of them. Hence the deep importance of cultivating communion with God,
and increased intimacy with Christ. Instead of this weakening our gospel testimony, I believe it would make it fuller, richer and more simple. We would be in touch with the grace that can stoop to the lowest point to win a sinner's heart. Our preaching often lacks weight because we have so little realised the things of which we speak. Whether it be the terror of the Lord, the love of God, the value of Christ's work, or the blessings which faith enjoys, we must ourselves have entered into that which we press upon others or we became lecturers rather than witnesses.
Another mark of the true servant is self-forgetful devotedness to Christ. John was ready to decrease if so be that Christ might increase. He was willing to be displaced, to pass into the shade, to be forsaken even by his own disciples. The effect of his witnessing was the proof of its divine reality -- men left John and followed Jesus. This gave him real joy (John 3:29), for morally he had left himself and found his object in that blessed Lamb of God. The result of his testimony was to accomplish in others what had first been effected in himself, and this is the end of true service. We may, through grace, bring others to where we are ourselves, we cannot lift them above our own level. How deeply important it is, then, that we should be vigilant, prayerful, sober, and that we should habitually walk in the Spirit! Christ will then be the object and motive of our whole life and service, and it may be ours to say, in some feeble sense of the greatness and blessedness of it, "For me to live is Christ".
Then the reality of these different characteristics is sure to be tested. Satan will not miss an opportunity of sifting the servant of Christ, and on the other hand, God allows the sifting in order to humble us by the discovery that we are not so spiritual or so devoted as we thought we were; while, in result, the reality of what grace has wrought in us comes out more plainly than ever. The
servant must not always expect to be in one set of circumstances. The Baptist was, for a time, the most popular man of the day. Tens of thousands attended his ministry, and honoured him as a prophet of God. For a time he was unopposed by the religious leaders and even heard by the king with respect and attention. He was the lion of the hour -- the dictator of morals to every rank in the nation. How many servants have been lifted up with pride in circumstances similar to this in kind, if not in degree! A crowded audience, the approbation of the world, or of the brethren, the esteem rightly due, and cheerfully rendered to a servant honoured of God, and even success in spiritual labours, will act upon these wretched hearts of ours, and lift us up with a carnal elation, if we are not, through grace, in the continual exercise of self-judgment. If John's eye had not been steadily fixed on the glorious Person of whom he was the herald, he might soon have thought himself worthy of some higher station than that of the slave who stoops to loose his master's sandal, but with the divine glory of that One before him, he would not assume to be worthy to render Him even the meanest service. But John was to be tested, like most other servants, in a different way from that of which I have spoken. He must know the north wind of adversity, as well as the south wind of prosperity. He must be transferred from the great congregation of the wilderness, to the solitude and apparent uselessness of the prison, and that, too, at a time when it must have seemed more than ever necessary for all true servants to be spreading with divine energy the gospel of the coming kingdom.
Fancy him like a caged lion, immured in a lonely castle on the dismal shore of the Dead Sea, and hearing there the glorious things that were being spoken of "... in all Judea and in all the surrounding country", Luke 7:17, 18. Can you wonder that when such reports were
brought to his ears, his spirit chafed at the confinement which hindered him from having a share in all this? In the day of his prosperity he had said, in effect, that he was nothing, but now he was made to enter into it in an experimental way. The kingdom was being preached without him: marvellous things were being done in which he had personally no share: God's work was going on without John. Let every servant who knows his own heart describe the feelings that are natural to us in such an hour!
I believe every servant of Christ has to pass through this experience sooner or later. He may have it in a modified form all his life through, or he may pass through it in special seasons of deep exercise, or he may learn it on his death-bed, but he must learn that he is nothing but the servant of God's purposes (1 Corinthians 3:5 - 7), and that God can dispense with him at any moment and transfer the service to some different vessel of grace. I am aware that we all accept this in theory, but it is another thing to learn it in one's own experience with God. It was when learning this that John was "offended" in the One whose shoe latchet he had professed himself unworthy to bear or unloose. The question which his disciples carried to Jesus (Luke 7:19) was a scarcely veiled censure of the Master, for allowing the servant to be detained in circumstances which made nothing of him. It has often been remarked that a saint fails in the very thing by which he is most characterised, and this was the case with John.
It is often in the hour when the servant is brought low in his own eyes, and, it may be, in the eyes of others also, that the pride of his heart discovers itself; and it is well, if in such an hour he bows in submission and does not "kick against the goads" of the Lord's sovereignty. I trust that the marks of a true servant may ever characterise you, that you may be proof against the elevation of the day of success; and that in the day of
adversity you may not faint, but that you may taste the sweetness of that special beatitude for a tried servant -- "Blessed is whosoever shall not be offended in me".
John 1:6 - 14
C.A.C. It is important that we should think much of the Lord as coming into the world as light. John does not occupy us with what we have been or done but he regards us as being naturally in a condition of darkness. Whether we have been good or bad, as men might judge, we have all been in complete darkness as to God. "Ye were once darkness" (Ephesians 5:8), Paul says to the gentile Ephesians. This is a deep matter for it brings out the real state of man as away from God through the fall. Whether a man may be good or bad, judged by human standards, makes very little difference if he does not know God. We do need the forgiveness of sins, and to have our burdens lifted, but a deeper question is that we were darkness and we needed light.
Ques. Is it like, "God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ", 2 Corinthians 4:6?
C.A.C. Yes, that is light, giving the knowledge of God. What we see in John 1 is that light has come to men in the way of grace, and it shines for every man. That is the force of verse 9, "The true light was that which, coming into the world, lightens every man". It shone for every man; it was not restricted or limited to the Jew. The Lord says, "I am come into the world as light". Our knowledge of God depends on receiving light; we have no knowledge of Him in any other way. God has not only sent light, but in His grace and consideration for men He has provided witness to the light. John came for witness,
and God has given many witnesses to the light, every witness in Scripture is to Christ, and all the light of God is in Him.
Ques. Is there any difference between light and revelation?
C.A.C. Light is that there is illumination for men so that they may know the true character of God. It is a public shining, whereas revelation would seem to be rather what is communicated individually. See Matthew 11:25, 27; Matthew 16:17. God has shone out as made known in love, and there is no need now for any man to be in darkness.
Ques. Does that explain the difference between "God is light" and God "is in the light"?
C.A.C. "God is light" is a marvellous message heard from Him; "In Him is no darkness at all". And now He "is in the light"; that is, He is not hidden behind clouds and in thick darkness. He is made known in love through His beloved Son. That is the light in which christians walk. We walk in the light of God made known in love. There is no other light in which to walk, and it has come to us mediatorially in the Person of the Lord Jesus.
Ques. What is the meaning of "out of darkness light should shine", 2 Corinthians 4:6?
C.A.C. That is a reference to Genesis 1. The first speaking of God in creation was that there should be light, and there was light. When all was universal darkness God spoke; He commanded that light should be, and light was. Saul of Tarsus was in complete darkness without a ray of light as to God; but the same God, who commanded light to be at the beginning of creation, shone in Saul's heart for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It shone in Paul's heart that it might shine forth through the gospel to the nations. The great thing that men need is light as to God, but what men call light is often the grossest darkness. When God
commanded that out of darkness light should shine, it did shine without the darkness contributing anything to it. It is like that in the souls of men. There is darkness and then suddenly light as to God comes. Though the light is there all the time yet it needs an operation of God in the soul to enable men to perceive it. The state of the world was darkness and light came into it, but the darkness was so dense and impenetrable that it did not apprehend the light. That shows that no amount of light that God can give will meet the case. If God sends the greatest light possible, men do not apprehend it. The darkness cannot and will not apprehend it.
Rem. I suppose we have no idea of the tremendous darkness in which we once were.
C.A.C. I am sure we have a very feeble sense of the terrible character of the fall, and therefore we have a feeble sense of the intervention of God in reference to it. We see here, "He was in the world and the world had its being through him and the world knew him not". The world did not know its Creator. There is nothing in man to build on; he is lost and dead; there is not a pulsation in the natural man that answers to God. We have to face that; it is a solemn reality. Man is lost and dead in darkness. Even if God gives man religious privileges, as He did to the Jews, we read in verse 11 that "He came to his own, and his own received him not". That identifies the Lord Jesus with Jehovah. In Him Jehovah came to "his own", to a people He had been educating, teaching, dealing with in His discipline and government for two thousand years! He came to them and they would not receive Him. Jehovah came into the world, and the people He had nurtured and cared for would not receive Him. They were men with all the religious advantages that God could give them; and man is not a bit better today than he was then. So if we had not the next verse the thing would be altogether
hopeless, but the next verse brings in the thought of an operation of God whereby men are born of God and that is the only thing that will meet the case.
At the present time God is working in sovereign love so that there may be persons who will receive the light. If this mighty secret working of God did not take place all would be hopeless, notwithstanding light being given to men. But if the world does not know Him and His own will not receive Him, there are those who do receive Him because they are born of God. No one receives the light but those who are born of God.
In John everything is seen from the divine side. Those who receive Christ as the great Light as to God are entitled to take the place of being children of God. All those who know God as made known by His Son are His children. His family thought is realised. Such are born into the family of God by His own sovereign act so as to have a nature which is of God. Such a nature welcomes every ray of light as to God, and finds the effulgence of God in His Son. It is a question here not of doing but of receiving -- a question of taking in what is expressed in Christ. Men are born of God that they may take it in. The Lord constantly recognised that there was nothing to be trusted in man except what was wrought of God. He said, "No one can come to me except the Father who has sent me draw him".
Ques. Then how would you preach the gospel?
C.A.C. What John presents is not exactly the gospel as you would preach it to sinners. You would go rather to Luke for that, and to the Acts of the Apostles to see how they preached, while the doctrine of it is in Romans 1 - 5, John presents things from the side of divine sovereignty and the work of God in men.
Ques. Would it not be right in preaching the gospel to announce that man is lost?
C.A.C. The preaching of Christ exposes the whole state and need of man as nothing else does. I do not think we have a better idea of how to preach the gospel than the apostles had!
C.A.C. It is God's sovereign act, and it is thus in keeping with what is said here of those who receive Christ, that they are born of God. It is not that we are born of God by receiving Christ, but we are born of God in order that we may receive Christ; no one will receive Christ unless he is born of God. But to make that known is not quite the gospel. It might be right under certain circumstances to press on people that they must be born again, because we preach to people who profess to be christians, but to state that is not the gospel. The gospel is the preaching of Christ. The Acts of the Apostles is the finest college for any preacher to go to! We need to study the preaching in the Acts and see what the apostles preached. They preached Christ; they did not talk much about their hearers, but they announced the grace that was for them, and a solemn warning in case of rejecting it. The whole substance of their preaching was Christ, and we cannot improve on it. The gospel is the presentation of Christ as God's salvation, and if we had more power to preach Christ we should see more conversions. If I have received Christ as the light of God made known in love I am entitled to take the place of one of the children of God. I have an entirely new nature by actual birth into the family of God; we come into the family of God by being born of God. It is a generative act on God's part.
Ques. Does the gospel bring that to light?
C.A.C. Yes. When we preach Christ we find certain people deeply interested. A crowd may come to the preaching and go away like a door turning on its hinges, but among them there may be one soul intent on receiving
light from God in Christ. Now that one is born of God, and those born of God ever retain an intense interest in divine light; they want more of the light of God. That is what brings believers together week after week, and year after year. They come together to consider the Scriptures and to hear ministry. They want more of the light of God, and it is all to be found mediatorially in His beloved Son. The ability to perceive and receive it comes through a marvellous act on God's part -- such are born of God; "not of blood" -- it is not a question of natural descent. It is not because my father was a believer that I am one, and it is not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man in any shape or form. It is of God.
This Scripture looks at the thing in its completeness; the operation that brings us into the family of God is entirely of God, and the effect is that the light becomes precious; every ray of light seen in Christ is valued; we find certain persons who never lose their interest in Christ. It may be said that they are a poor lot, and it may be possible to point out many defects in them, but it is a wonderful thing to see persons in this world who never lose their interest in Christ and are always glad to get one more ray of light in Christ. This is not a question of what we do but of how we appreciate the light of God in Christ; that is far more to God than anything we can do. It is far more to God that I should appreciate His precious light in His beloved Son than that I should go as a missionary or do any other great thing. We come together on Lord's day morning because of the intensity of our appreciation of God's blessed Son, and because we love to respond to Him. God's great design is that Christ shall be the Centre and Sun of a universe of bliss. He is educating us for that. People may say we are lazy and do not do what we might. No doubt that is true, and we would not excuse slothfulness in service, but it is of very great importance to get a
right sense of relative values, and to see that our reception and appreciation of divine light in the Son of God is more to divine Persons than any service could be. If it were merely a question of work God could send twelve legions of angels who could do more in one minute than the church has done in two thousand years! But that is not what God is after; His great work is to bring light as to Himself into the hearts of men.
Ques. Are the operations of God limited? Or are they for all men?
C.A.C. Nothing is clearer in Scripture than that God's salvation in Christ is for all men, and His Spirit strives with men in the preachings and in other ways also. But neither the salvation that is in Christ, nor the Spirit's strivings with men will in themselves produce a result for God. We must face the fact that unless there is a work of God in man all the striving of the Spirit with men will be resisted. Stephen said, "Ye do always resist the Holy Spirit". And man, as such, will always neglect the great salvation. But when God comes in and breaks down a man, that is divine working in the man. In Acts 2 they were pricked in their hearts and say, "What must we do?" -- that was the result of a work by the Spirit in their consciences and hearts. The most wonderful preaching that ever was will effect nothing unless God works by His Spirit in men's hearts. We are not on the side of man's responsibility here, but a scripture like this gives us to see that if things were left to man's responsibility alone every child of Adam's race would be lost eternally.
To love darkness rather than light is worse than to be a murderer, thief or drunkard; it is far worse than any immoral conduct because it indicates hatred of God. It proves what Scripture says, that "the mind of the flesh is enmity against God". The light comes in love now, and to love darkness rather than light is terrible. "This is the
judgment, that light is come into the world, and men have loved darkness rather than light; for their works were evil", John 3:19. The light is the light of God in love, for those words immediately follow "God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal". That is light, and if men love darkness rather than light it is because their works are evil and they will be judged. At the great white throne men will be judged according to their works. God will have men to be brought to repentance and saved, and He gives light to that end, but men hate it. They do not love the light because they want to go on in sin; the secret is that their works are evil; that is they are not wrought in God. See John 3:20,21. Nothing in man is of any value in God's sight that is not the fruit of His own working. The gospel is a commandment, for it is God's command that we should repent and believe on His Son Jesus Christ (Acts 17:30; 1 John 3:23). The gospel is made known according to commandment of the eternal God (Romans 16:26). If men do not believe the gospel they rebel against the authority of God. Every one who comes under the sound of the gospel, and does not believe it, is not only despising the grace and love of God, but is setting himself in defiance of the authority of God. Men would rather believe any nonsense, such as evolution, than have light from God. God has done everything to make blessing possible to men. He gives men light as to the provision He has made for their blessing. Christ is God's salvation to the ends of the earth. He is light and salvation shining for every man, but such is the state of man's heart relative to God that he does not care to have God's blessing, though knowing that without it he must perish. Man hates the gospel more than he hates the law, because the law seems to give man the place of doing something, but the gospel is wholly of God. It is sad to
think that the more God is made known to a lost creature the more is demonstrated the terrible state of alienation from Him in which that creature is found.
In verse 14 we come to the marvellous statement that the Word became flesh. It is the first mention in this gospel of the condition into which Christ came. Previously He is spoken of as the light; that is, what was there morally in Him. But now we have the condition into which He came; He has become flesh. The One who was God according to verse 1 became flesh. It is not He was made it but He became it; it was His own act as a divine Person. Becoming flesh brings before us how tangible it was. He actually came into that condition in which man lives; man lives in the flesh but He became flesh. That is essential to His mediatorship. He became flesh and dwelt among us. John presses very much the thought of His coming in flesh; he makes it the test of the antichrist. "Every spirit which does not confess Jesus Christ come in flesh is not of God: and this is that power of the antichrist", 1 John 4:3. There were many in the early days of the church who believed that the Lord was only in appearance a man. The first attack of the enemy on the truth was to assert that the Lord was only in the appearance of a man just like the Old Testament appearances of God. John meets that by saying 'He became flesh'.
The verse now before us brings out the unique character of His flesh. He has come into man's condition in very deed and truth. He became flesh, but it was flesh altogether different from any other flesh. It must be so if the blessed God became flesh; and His flesh must be of its own order; no other kind of flesh or humanity could be like it.
27th April 1932
John 1:29 - 39; Matthew 25:1 - 10; Revelation 22:16, 17, 20
It would hardly be questioned, I suppose, that for a number of years there has been considerable interest amongst believers generally in truths connected with the second coming of the Lord. Nor could it be denied that those truths have been very widely accepted by the children of God. It is a very striking feature of God's ways with His saints that so much attention has been called to these truths during the present century. The significance of this has been often pointed out. There can be no doubt that the moment of the Lord's return draws nigh, and "it is high time to awake out of sleep". In view of this I desire to bring before you the scriptures I have read, and I trust they may come to our hearts in freshness and power as a present ministry from the Lord.
I want to press the importance of personal acquaintance with the One who is coming. There cannot be much desire for His coming on the part of those who are not personally acquainted with Him. And I think the great mark of personal acquaintance is that we seek His company. I cannot believe there is much true desire for His coming in any heart that does not seek His company now.
The passage I read from John 1 shows us how two disciples became personally acquainted with Christ. He was so presented to their hearts, and they were so attracted to Him that their one desire was to be in His company. Now, beloved brethren, I bring this before you because I am convinced that it is this alone which will make us "ready" in our affections for the return of the Bridegroom
and enable us to say "Come" in concert with "the Spirit and the bride". It is all very well to read books and hear addresses on the second coming of the Lord, and to search the Scriptures on the subject, but something more than this is needed to make us "ready" to meet Him.
I take for granted that I am addressing believers on the Lord Jesus Christ. You know that your sins are forgiven; you rejoice in the assurance that by the one offering of Christ you are "perfected for ever". As to any imputation of sin you are clear through your Saviour's blood. You are justified. We must begin with this. A purged conscience and the Spirit as a divine link with Christ in glory, are needed before Christ can really be the object of the heart. He is presented to us here, first as the Lamb of God, then as the Baptiser with the Holy Spirit, and thirdly as the attractive and satisfying object of the hearts of His own.
God could not come out in the way of blessing to man until He had been glorified about sin. But the Lamb of God went into the place of sin that He might put it away by the sacrifice of Himself, and the first consequence of His death was that the "veil of the temple was rent in two, from the top to the bottom". The way was open for God to come out in the fullest blessing, and in the glory of unmingled grace. God is a Saviour God. If there is one here who feels that death and judgment are his due, I can say to you that the Lamb of God has been under judgment and in death that He might remove every barrier that stood between your soul and the blessing of God. I can say to every repentant sinner -- to every believer in Jesus -- that not only is every barrier righteously removed, but the way in which they have been removed is the most wonderful and blessed testimony to the love of God. "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us", Romans 5:8 A.V.
And now the Lamb of God is seated in all the light and glory of the Father's throne. A shining track has been made from the depths of death and judgment to the heights of glory. We follow that shining track through the opened heavens to the right hand of God. We can go in. No device of hell can separate the redeemed from the Redeemer, or hinder Him from bringing the "many sons to glory". By His one offering we are perfected for ever; our consciences purged; we have peace with God. Every believer in Jesus is before God in the infinite efficacy of the blood of the Lamb, and is in God's sight "whiter than snow".
Then, further, the Son of God as risen and glorified is the Baptiser with the Holy Spirit. By His death we are cleared of everything that attached to us as children of Adam, and now by the gift of the Holy Spirit we have a link with Him in the place where He is. All that the grace of God has effected for us by the work of Christ was in view of our having a link with Him. It is inconceivable blessing. We are cleared that we might have a link with the One who has cleared us. Alas! it is to be feared that, with many, the Holy Spirit is grieved and hindered, and is not at liberty to make good this link with Christ in the hearts of believers. But where this is the case the believer reaps but little benefit from the Spirit. The normal action of the Spirit would be to form a link of affection between the believer and Christ. And this would naturally result in His becoming the object of our hearts, and His company the supreme desire of our souls.
The great gain of having the Spirit is that He makes the glory of Christ shine in the believer's heart, and this we see in figure in the two disciples who heard John speak. The glory of Christ shone into their hearts, and separated them from everything here. They were ready for His company, for He had thrown everything else into the shade, and made Himself supreme in their affections.
They had previously been disciples of the greatest servant of God upon earth at the moment, but when the Son of God came into the vision of their hearts they left John. The glory of Christ eclipsed everything for them, and captivated their hearts. "One thing" they desired and sought after -- His company. And this shows that they must have had a sense of His love. They might not have been able to explain it, but His love had established itself in their hearts. It is love that desires the company of its object. The Father was drawing them to Christ by giving them a sense of the blessedness of the love of Christ. And, beloved brethren, it is not otherwise today. Would that all our hearts had a sense of this. The Father is working by the Spirit to bring about the same result today. I trust many here know something experimentally of the reality of this; and if not, that we may be thoroughly awakened in heart, and exercised in conscience about our condition.
We are here as professed followers of Christ, and He challenges all our hearts at this moment with the searching question, "What seek ye?" Ah, He knows what we are after, but He challenges our hearts that we may be obliged, as it were, to declare ourselves. It is good sometimes to be obliged to give account of ourselves. Now are we prepared to be thus challenged? Are we so clear of the world, and so free from the tastes and motives of the flesh, that we can meet the challenge without confusion of face? Do our secret hours bear witness to the fact that we long after Himself? Or do they find us occupied with the ledger, the newspaper or with a thousand things that pertain to this life and to the world, so that -- though we may sometimes sigh in the weariness of our way, and the Spirit of God may occasionally turn our souls heavenward with desire to breathe the atmosphere of divine love in the company of Christ -- it cannot be said that we really "seek" His company at all?
The two whose course we are following were prepared for the challenge. Nay, it must have fallen on their ears as a most welcome sound, assuring and encouraging them. Such a challenge was just what their hearts desired. It gave them an opportunity to declare themselves, and to put themselves in touch with Him. Now, beloved, is it so with ourselves? Do our souls make us like "the chariots of my willing people" to run after Him? He will cause those that love Him to "inherit substance" and He will "fill their treasuries"; and He says, "They that seek me early shall find me". May it be so that, going after Him with purpose of heart, we may be able to answer His challenge in the spirit of earnest inquiry, "Rabbi, where abidest thou?"
The great blessedness of the Lord's gracious response, "Come and see", has often, I am sure, been food for our hearts. They are wonderful words if we consider all that is implied in them. It is the place "where he abode" that they were invited to "come and see". I suppose the youngest babe in Christ would instinctively understand that the Spirit of God intended to convey in these words something far deeper than the thought of a material dwelling-place. The glory that attracted the hearts of the two disciples to that Blessed One was a moral glory -- a glory of divine perfections and love which only anointed eyes could discern or appreciate -- and the place "where he abode" speaks to our hearts of a moral dwelling-place suited to Himself. In a word, the two disciples wanted to know Him in His own circle, and His love conferred upon them the freedom of that circle.
I should like to bring another scripture into your minds in connection with this subject: John 20:11 - 20. Here we find another captivated heart -- another follower -- another seeker. What were the best things of the earth to Mary's heart? Religion was keeping its high day in Jerusalem, but not for her. The excitement of the political
circle was engrossing thousands, but its burning questions had no place in her heart. No doubt the cares of this life were known by her as by any of us, but they reigned not in her spirit. She had but one grief, as the disciples in chapter 1 had but one Object. His presence created a new world for their hearts, and His absence desolated the old world for Mary's heart. It cannot be said that she was strong in faith or hope, but she stands conspicuous for LOVE to His blessed Person. "They have taken away my Lord". It may be she had little thought of where He dwelt, but it was the same affection which led the two disciples to ask, "Rabbi, where abidest thou?" that prompted her to say, "Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away". And the same voice that had said, "Come and see", opened up to her a new world of everlasting love, and brought her consciously into a new association with Himself outside all the desolation of this scene of death, as by the one word "Mary" He called her into the presence of His unchanged and living love.
He revealed Himself to Mary, as He in figure to the two disciples, in His own circle, and He made her the bearer of the wondrous message which was, we might say, the complete unfolding of all that was involved in the words, "Come and see". He was no longer to be touched and known in the old associations "after the flesh" but by the Spirit He might be touched in His new place as ascended to the Father. He takes a new place, but He will have His brethren in the most complete association with Himself in that new place. "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God". In this way He invites us to "come and see" His dwelling-place, and to share it with Him.
But let none of us think lightly of this wondrous privilege, for He could only secure it for us by His death.
As in the flesh we could never be in association with Christ, and if He had not died this holy privilege could never have been ours. Blessed be His name, He has removed in death, to the glory of God, all that we were as children of Adam. His death has ended our history before God as in the flesh, and divested us in the presence of infinite love of every trace of unsuitability to that love. How could we be free in His company if we did not know this? How could He claim us as His brethren on any other ground? Well may we adore Him for the triumphs of His love.
It is as we enter into this that our hearts are drawn to Him, and we find ourselves in spirit outside everything that is of the world and of the flesh. And until we know something of the reality of this we cannot be said to be in heart "ready" for His return.
The effect of Mary's message was to gather the disciples together outside everything that was of man. They were outside everything because of what Christ was to their hearts. Their hearts were illuminated by His love. With the doors shut to exclude the religious man after the flesh, they had the company of Christ and were glad. The world was only to them the scene of His rejection and death. And thus they were fitted to be sent by Him into the world of His interests. This was the beginning of christianity. Can you imagine what the church would
have been if she had maintained her first love? A company of hearts espoused to Christ, and satisfied with His company and love, and walking in strangership and rejection here in loyalty to Him. Surely if we got a true thought of it we should be ready to weep over the condition of the church today.
I now pass on to the second scripture which we read at the beginning (Matthew 25 ). This scripture is of great importance because it brings together in one view (1) the first love of the church, (2) the decline of that love, and (3) the awakening and revival thereof so as to make the wise virgins "ready" for the return of the bridegroom.
1. The virgins "took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom". I do not intend to occupy you at this time with the foolish virgins, who set forth the lament able condition of those who have the profession of christianity without the reality of its blessings. The wise virgins represent the company of true saints who have "oil in their vessels"; that is, they have received the Spirit. All such at the beginning went forth to meet the Bridegroom. Their hearts were engaged with Himself, and they left every earthly association to have the joy of His company. This is what marked them -- they sought His company. This is the great characteristic of first love.
2. "Now the bridegroom tarrying, they all grew heavy and slept". Here we see in picture the state of things which rapidly succeeded the pentecostal brightness. How soon the Lord had to say, "But I have against thee, that thou hast left thy first love", Revelation 2:4. He had lost His place in their hearts, and if that is the case the christian slumbers and sleeps. It may sound like a paradox, but I have no doubt there may be works, and labour, and endurance, and much fidelity in respect of many things, while the heart slumbers and sleeps. (See Revelation 2:2 - 5). What is the value of scripture knowledge, or of correct
views on prophecy and ecclesiastical principles, if our hearts are sound asleep? You may ask, What is it to grow heavy and sleep? Well, I think it is to lose the consciousness of our association with Christ, so that the believer settles down into things here. If our hearts lose the consciousness of our association with Christ we are sure to become earthly-minded. And this is what has happened to the church. "All seek their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ", says Paul to the Philippians; and again, "For many walk, of whom I have told you often, ... even weeping, ... who mind earthly things". It is this which has brought the church into the state of spiritual weakness and ruin in which it is found today. The virgins have grown heavy and slept.
3. "But in the middle of the night there was a cry, Behold, the bridegroom; go forth to meet him". Here we see the intervention of God to bring about the result that there should be a company "ready" to meet the Bridegroom. And I think none would deny that there has been a very remarkable intervention of God in the actual history of the church. Every one of us here has benefited by that intervention, some, it may be, to a very great degree. We have only to go back some four hundred years to find the almost universal sway of priestcraft and superstition in the church. No doubt God maintained His elect all through, but so far as any public light or testimony was concerned there was a long period of appalling and almost unbroken darkness. The Reformation was a loud cry which echoed far and wide amid the darkness, and it was followed by other movements which, though not attracting the same amount of public attention, produced probably a far deeper spiritual result amongst many who had been delivered as a consequence of the first movement from the thraldom of Rome. The present century has witnessed the recovery of much precious truth unknown to the church
since apostolic days; and within the last few years the Person of Christ, and the blessedness of the saints' association with Him in new creation, have been presented in a remarkable way to the hearts of believers. It is impossible to doubt that in this way the awakening cry, "Behold, the bridegroom", has gone forth in a very distinct manner. Nor has it been without effect. Many have left the religious associations and human systems in which they were found. There has been, to some extent at any rate, a going out and a trimming of lamps.
I believe it is of immense importance for us to recognise the true nature of the present testimony of the Holy Spirit. It is the presentation of Christ Himself to the hearts of His own -- "Behold the bridegroom". We have often heard that the point of departure is the point of recovery. The point of departure in the church was when CHRIST lost His supreme place in the hearts of His own; and there is no recovery until He regains it. Some have thought that the cry, "Behold the bridegroom", was figurative of the revival of prophetic truth. No doubt God has graciously given much light on prophecy during the present century, but it has been only the necessary accompaniment of truths "as to Christ, and as to the assembly". I do not believe the Spirit of God would occupy us with a series of prophetic facts; His mission is to present a Person. And I cannot help warning my younger brethren against much literature that is abroad on prophetic subjects. Books and pamphlets which occupy you with events and dates, and especially those which connect events occurring at the present time with prophecy, are to be shunned. The effect of them is to occupy souls very much with what is going on in the world, and I am sure the Spirit of God is not seeking to do this. He would present to our hearts the One who is in glory, and separate us even now to His company outside everything that is going on here.
"Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their torches". Here we see the effect of the midnight cry. The presentation of the Person who is coming immediately awakens exercise. It raises the question in the soul, 'Am I suitable to Him?' If there is no exercise of this kind, it is a sure indication that the soul is asleep. The exercise of every awakened heart leads to the discovery that the lamp needs trimming -- that there is that which needs to be judged and removed, so that we may be in conscious suitability to the One who is coming. When our hearts are illuminated by His love we are in conscious suitability to Him. It is not here a question of being perfected for ever by His one offering, of being cleansed by His blood, but of conscious suitability to Him by the Spirit. Many a believer who has no doubt as to the efficacy of His work is far from being in conscious suitability to Him, and where this is the case the lamp needs trimming. We do not reach this suitability without exercise, and may God enable each one of us to trim our lamps.
There are three steps by which the Spirit of God would lead us, if unhindered, into conscious suitability to Christ.
1. "I am crucified with Christ, and no longer live, I, but Christ lives in me; but in that I now live in flesh, I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me", Galatians 2:20. Paul was conscious of a love which had divested him at its own cost of everything that was unsuited to itself. All that he was as a child of Adam had gone in the death of Christ from before God's eye, and he was so in accord with this -- he had so reached it experimentally -- that he could say, "I am crucified with Christ". He recognised nothing as life to God but Christ living in him; and the One who had thus set him free in the presence of divine love from all that attached to him as a man in the flesh was now the object of his heart.
If you are saying, 'Oh that I could be in suitability to Christ! but I cannot improve my wretched self, and I cannot get rid of it', I should like you to consider the infinite love that is here brought before us. The Son of God has undertaken in love to remove all my unsuitability, and to accomplish this He has given Himself. He has gone into death that He might free me from myself, and have me for Himself. And by His death I am entitled to be with God and with His Son as one set free from all that was attached to me as a child of Adam. I think we could not help being drawn to the Lord if we realised this. As another has said, 'He has cleared the ground that He might occupy it'. It is a wonderful moment in the soul's history when it gets the consciousness of being loved by the Son of God. It is a most blessed thing to know Him in His greatness and glory, and to know that there is an eternal link of love between Him and me -- love, which has removed, for its own satisfaction and at its own cost, everything that I am morally as of the race of Adam, so that I might be free in the presence of that love. The Holy Spirit would illuminate our hearts with the light of this love. And with the light and warmth of this love pervading our hearts, the dim and worthless, though often cherished, idols of the earth, would retire into the shade to which they properly belong, and heaven would become supremely attractive because of the One who is there. We have not merely deliverance, but the personal love of a Deliverer.
2. "For both he that sanctifies and those sanctified are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren", Hebrews 2:11. Here we see a further un folding of what His love has effected. It is not only that all our unsuitability as belonging to Adam's race has been removed in His death, but we are now in association with the One who has removed it. We are of Him; we derive from Him; we are "all of one" with Him. This is not the
flesh sanctified; it is not Christ made "all of one" with our flesh, as modern theology so falsely teaches; it is not our flesh made "all of one" with Him; it is a new creation in which we are altogether apart from the flesh, associated in life and relationship with Christ risen, so that His Father is our Father, and His God our God. He is not ashamed to call us brethren, because in this new creation order there is no disparity between Himself and those whom He has sanctified. We are all "of one" with Him. The Holy Spirit would light up our hearts with the glory and love of this wondrous association with Christ.
3. "Unless I wash thee, thou hast not part with me", John 13:8. Such is the love of Christ that He cannot be satisfied without our company. It is to secure this that His priesthood is exercised to lift us above every pressure here, that we may join Him in the sanctuary. For this He washes our feet to free us from the influences of this present scene, so that we may have part with Him. To this end He is presented to our hearts by the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures, and in all true ministry, that our hearts may be drawn away from earth, where He is not, to the scene of His exaltation and glory. He wants our company. His love delights to share with us the joys of that blessed world where He has gone and make us familiar with the Father's presence -- in a word, to have us near Himself.
Now, beloved brethren, is the light of all this love shining brightly in our hearts? I know that these precious things are true for all believers, but they are not made good to us until we appropriate them. They are things which have to be experimentally reached through exercise of soul. Every bit of Canaan from Dan to Beersheba belonged to the children of Israel by divine gift, but they had to take possession, and they did not possess any more than what their feet trod upon. Many of us are familiar with these scriptures but I put it first to myself and then
to everyone here. Is the love of Christ the present illumination and joy of your heart? If not, the lamp needs trimming. It is the blessed work of the Holy Spirit to maintain the light of Christ's love in our hearts -- He would feed the flame of love in our souls -- but this will not be the case if we are wrapped up in the slumber of earthly-mindedness. Nor will it be realised apart from exercise on our part. It is of necessity that the lamp should be trimmed. I venture to say that with each one of us there are things which are a hindrance to the Spirit of God; but if our hearts are truly awakened it will be our joy to disallow and set aside everything that obstructs and grieves that Holy One. It may be with some of us there are links with the world that have never been broken. Many believers are like two men who got into a boat to row across a river one very dark night. They pulled away some time without reaching the opposite side, and eventually discovered they had forgotten to loosen the rope that fastened the boat to the bank of the river. Beloved brethren, have we no links that need to be severed, links with the world that hinder our spiritual progress, and grieve the Holy Spirit, and cause the light of divine love to burn dim in our hearts? "Wake up, thou that sleepest, and arise up from among the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee".
It may cost us something to trim our lamps, but who can measure the gain? A single eye will inevitably lead to a trimmed lamp. That is, the heart in which Christ is supreme is sure to be diligent in the judgment and renunciation of what is not Christ. Then the lamp will be trimmed, and the whole body be "full of light". This is first love. Christ is everything, and the soul is in conscious suitability to Him. The awakened virgins with trimmed lamps got back to the point of departure. Then they were "ready" for the return of the Bridegroom.
Enoch in his day was "ready". It is not at all surprising that God translated him. He had walked apart from earth's din and noise in moral suitability to God for three hundred years, and his translation was, if one might so say, the appropriate termination of such a course. Translation was not a great moral change for him. His circumstances were changed in a very wonderful way, I admit, but morally he had been "with God" for centuries. He was in moral suitability for translation. He was "ready". I do not think his departure created a gap in the political or social circles of the day. He had been outside all that for hundreds of years.
Elijah, too, had been apart from the idolatrous nation before he was translated. He was taking no part in the course of things around him. He was morally "ready" to go out of the world altogether. God grant that in this sense we may be "ready" for the return of the Bridegroom. I believe the special ministry of the Lord at the present time is to bring about this result, and all the activities of the Holy Spirit are to this end. God grant that we may know how to profit by it all. Christ becoming so really our treasure that our hearts may be with Him; and in result that our loins may be girded about, and our lights burning, and we ourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord.
I turn now, for a few moments, to Revelation 22:16, 17,20. There is something inexpressibly sweet and precious -- something which lays hold of the heart with singular power -- in this last presentation of the Lord Jesus to the hearts of His own. Such a comprehensive view of His blessed Person in varied characters -- such a combination of suggestive titles -- is rarely to be found in such brief compass.
First the sweet personal name by which He made Himself known to us in our deep need as sinners -- the
sacred and saving name -- "I Jesus". In thus presenting Himself to our hearts does He not recall the untold grace in which He stooped so low that He might bring divine love into contact with all our sin and woe? Bethlehem, Nazareth, the shores of Galilee, come afresh before our hearts as we think of that name, and the wondrous story of Calvary is woven into its precious syllables. "I Jesus". How it carries us back to the moment when our leprous souls first felt His cleansing touch -- when first His hand of tenderness and might was laid upon our restless and fevered spirits -- when first the healing virtue flowed forth from Him, responsive to faith's feeble touch -- when first the music of His voice filled our hearts with gladness as we heard Him say, "Thy sins are forgiven ... ; go in peace", and a great calm overspread our consciences, storm-tossed with doubt and fear.
But this book reveals Him in other scenes -- His eyes as a flame of fire; His voice as the sound of many waters; the glory-throne His rightful seat; the many crowns upon His brow; the Kingly name on vesture and on thigh; yet still to His own He speaks as "I Jesus". For them He still wears -- and delights to wear -- His name of saving love. What could appeal more sweetly to our hearts?
"I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify these things to you in the assemblies". Here we see Him as the Prophet making known the mind and ways of God, not indeed in the intimacy of affections, as when He declares the Father's name to His brethren, but in that administrative way in which He makes known the truth of God from time to time as it is needed in the assemblies of His saints. For this there is a medium of communication -- "I ... have sent mine angel". It cannot be doubted that the Lord still acts in a way similar to this. He sends a ministry by some chosen vessel or vessels suited to the condition of His saints and the present ways of God in the actual history
of the church. Who can doubt that there was such a special ministry in the days of Luther and J.N.D., not to mention others less distinctly known? Truth from God suited to His present ways was declared in the days of these men "in the assemblies". Of course no new revelation was communicated, but special prominence was given to the truth needed at the time. We may look for, and count upon, this to the end. May we ever have an ear to hear the present testimony of the Lord in the assemblies.
"I am the root and the offspring of David". Jehovah's choice and promises in sovereign grace made David great. All that David was in a divine sense he derived from Jehovah -- it was to Jehovah that he owed all the glory and power of his kingdom. Jehovah was the source of all those promises of kingly glory which, throughout the word of God, connect themselves with David and his seed. It is this that I understand to be conveyed in the expression, "I am the root ... of David". All that pertained to Jehovah is thus assumed in the most distinct way by Jesus. The Deity of the Messiah -- so plainly asserted by Hebrews 1 -- thus shines fully and clearly forth.
As the Root of David He bestowed the promises, but as David's Offspring He will inherit them all in manhood. He is coming soon to bring all the glory in -- to bind Messiah's honours upon His brow and reign before His ancients gloriously -- to present in His own Person, and to secure by His power, all that is promised in the prophecies of the Old Testament. In coming into manhood He inherited the titles and honours of the Messiah, and He will yet manifestly assume and display them. "The Lord God shall give him the throne of David his father; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for the ages, and of his kingdom there shall not be an end", Luke 1:32,33.
"I Jesus" carries our hearts back to the days of His humiliation, and fills them with thoughts of the love which
stooped so low to win and secure us for Himself. The "offspring of David" makes our hearts glow with anticipation of that coming day of glory which will soon shed its brightness from pole to pole, and from the river to the ends of the earth. But what have we in the interval between the day of His humiliation and the day of His supremacy? While the dark night of His rejection casts its shade on everything here, while the church mourns her absent Bridegroom, while men claim His inheritance as their own, and while declension and apostasy are written large upon that which bears His name, what is faith's resource and joy? It is Himself, who, hidden from the eyes of a sleeping world, shines upon our hearts in heavenly lustre and beauty as "the bright and morning star".
Then "do not let us sleep, as the rest do" for the waking and watchful eye alone is refreshed by the Star in the sky. If we miss the blessed opportunity, which is ours now, of knowing our Saviour and Lord in this character, we shall never have it again. In the days of glory He will be known in other characters, but as the Bright and Morning Star He can only be known during the night of His rejection. Many peculiar privileges belong to those who are called by infinite grace to know Him in the times of His rejection, and not the least of these privileges is the blessed intimacy of a personal knowledge of Himself as the bright and morning Star. The empty glory of the world, and the self-aggrandisement and self-complacency of an unfaithful church become grief and sorrow to a heart that thus knows the Lord. For such a heart the shadow of His rejection rests on everything here, while every ray that shines from that Star is bright with divine love that attracts to its own circle everyone who truly knows it. If I have lost the world and its things, what have I gained? I have a Person, and the love of that Person for my heart. And when I think who that Person is, and how He has brought
divine love to me, and how He draws my heart to Himself in an ineffable scene of divine affections, I begin to taste divine satisfaction.
Then I can say, "Come". The soul must be satisfied before it can say, "Come". I say, "Come", because I know the blessedness of the Person, and of all that He will bring.
I am so enjoying it all in my heart -- so living in it in the knowledge of Himself -- that I cannot help saying, "Come". It is the spontaneous expression of a satisfied heart that feels the immeasurable need and loss of the scene where He is not; the expression, too, of bridal affection which desires to see Him honoured and supreme in the place where He died.
The effect of really knowing Him as the Bright and Morning Star is that, in concert with the Spirit and the bride, we say, "Come". Our lamps are trimmed: we are "ready". We are in spiritual suitability to the One who is coming. May it be so with us.
John 1:35 - 39; John 20:17 - 20
Just one thought is upon my mind in connection with these scriptures -- the great importance of being divinely affected by the truth. If the truth does not form and move us it shows that we are only taking it up in the letter. There is not much advantage in this, for a man who has the letter of truth without its spirit is offensive to God. I admit that this is a solemn assertion, but it is nevertheless a true one. The Pharisee and the lawyer are more repugnant to God than the publican and the sinner. The Pharisee and the lawyer are men well up in the externals and shell of the truth, but entirely unaffected by its kernel and spirit. The divine effect of truth is to mould and to move men.
In John 1 the blessed Lord is presented as the Lamb of God to the two disciples. The Lamb of God is a sacrificial title; it presents One to our hearts who comes from God to go into death, to bring the blessed testimony of what God is into the very place of sin and death. I have a strong impression that when Satan introduced sin into the world his object was not so much to destroy man as to introduce a state of things which should render it impossible for God to be known save as a righteous Judge. Satan's object is to keep the knowledge of God out of the heart of man, and thus to perpetuate that state of sin which was brought about in the first place by man giving ear to his slanderous insinuations. But what an answer God has given to all this! The very thing that seemed to make it impossible for Him to be known by man has furnished Him with an opportunity to make Himself
known in all the blessedness of His nature. He has come out to reveal Himself in supreme and sovereign love in the very place of sin and death. Hence the "only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father" -- the One who declares God perfectly -- must needs be "the Lamb of God". There is necessity for Him to wear that sacrificial title, for He came to bring the testimony of divine love into DEATH.
In the very fact that the Son of God is invested with such a title is the pledge of the entire removal of sin, and thus of the total destruction of the works of the devil in the heart of man. Everyone who is in the light of this blessed fact, that the Son of God has assumed the title of Lamb of God, must be conscious that by His doing so a divine solution of the whole question of sin was absolutely ensured, and this in the way of divine love. The very fact that He was manifested here in that character rendered the whole thing absolutely secure because of the greatness of the One who was thus manifested.
Beloved brethren, how much have we been affected by the presentation to our hearts of the Lamb of God? We are in the light of the blessed revelation of Himself; divine love has been presented to us in its supremacy and sovereignty in the fact that He has gone into death. To what extent has the truth had its divine effect upon us?
The two disciples were greatly affected by the presentation to them of the Lamb of God. They left everything to follow Him. John the Baptist was a great servant of God, but his ministry was in connection with the present order of things where sin was. There was no solution of the question of sin, and therefore no full revelation of God presented in connection with John the Baptist. But the "Lamb of God" was One who could solve the whole question of sin, and remove that question out of the way altogether, so as to be able to lead men into an
entirely new order of things, where everything should be characterised by the knowledge of God according to the blessedness of the revelation in which He has come out in His only begotten Son.
I do not say that the two disciples entered intelligently into all this at the time, but it is surely this which the Spirit of God would have us to gather from the lovely picture which He presents to us here. They followed Him to know where He dwelt, and it was everything to them to abide with Him. In figure they had left the circle of things where sin was, and they were in a new circle, where the perfect revelation of God was found, and where they could be in association with the One who was "with the Father". This is the divine effect of truth. It moved these disciples entirely out of the circle where sin was into all the blessed light of God, and into the company of Him who dwelt in the bosom of the Father.
If the Lamb of God is really before our hearts we shall be drawn away from all the pride and glory of this world, for we shall recognise it as the place of sin. But at the same time we shall be in the presence of divine love that could go even unto death to remove sin, and to reveal itself to our hearts. The divine effect of this would be to move our hearts entirely out of the present order of things. We should follow the Lamb of God through death into His own circle, where there is no trace of sin, where there is nothing to dim the shining of 'love supreme and bright'. The Lamb of God has passed into a scene where divine affections are in cloudless repose; He dwells in these affections, and He has accomplished in death the removal of sin so that we might enter that scene in association with Him for ever. He says, "Come and see"; He would have us to know the place of His abode, and if we miss this we miss the very kernel of christianity -- the crowning privilege and blessing of divine love. The whole work of
grace in our souls, the Father's activity in sovereign love, the drawings of His grace and power, are all with a view to our introduction to this blessed association with His Son.
In John 20 everything that was involved in the title "Lamb of God" had been accomplished, and we find a company outside everything here -- a company affected and brought together by the truth. The Risen One had said, "Go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God". The whole question of sin was disposed of, and consequent upon this the truth should be fully declared. And if, on the one hand, God and Father were perfectly revealed, on the other hand there was a company secured to be in the blessed light of that revelation in association with the Son of God. The divine effect of this = and this is the truth -- must be to put souls outside everything that is of man, and of the present order of things. In the upper room, with the doors shut to exclude the religious man after the flesh, the disciples had the company of Christ. The truth had had its divine effect upon them, and had brought them into a position where He could manifest Himself to them.
This is the great test for our hearts. If the truth affects us in a divine way, it must put us outside what is of man. And the truth is presented to us in a Person; it is not a mere collection of doctrines; it is presented in a Person, and that Person is the Son of God. If we are moved and affected by it -- if we are attracted by its blessedness -- we shall most surely be delivered from the influence of what obtains down here, and we shall be led into conscious association with the Son of God. This is the great privilege of the assembly. To sever us thus in spirit and affection from the present order of things, and to lead us into conscious association with the Son of God, is the divine effect of the truth.
John 3:14 - 16; John 8:28; John 12:32, 33; John 19:38 - 42 Colossians 2:12; Deuteronomy 21:22,23
There is great spiritual gain in the consideration of our Lord Jesus Christ in every aspect in which Scripture presents Him to the view of faith; and the above scriptures call our attention to Him as being lifted up and being buried. The Spirit of God has linked the two thoughts together in Deuteronomy 21:22, 23. Being hanged on a tree refers to one as "lifted up", and the thought of burial is closely connected with this.
When the Son of man spoke of being lifted up He referred to the particular manner in which He was about to die. Death by crucifixion involved being held up to view as one worthy of death, and, indeed, seen publicly as having become a curse, "for he that is hanged is a curse of God". Two of the most profound statements in Scripture are found in Galatians 3:13 and 2 Corinthians 5:21: "Christ has redeemed us out of the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is every one hanged upon a tree" and "Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us". One is the great redeeming act of Christ in love to those under curse; He became a curse; the other is the wondrous act of God having in view His purpose that we should become His righteousness in Christ. The Son of man as lifted up was publicly seen to be in the place of sin and curse, but it is our peace and joy to know that He was not there on His own account at all, but in divine love on behalf of those who were under sin and death. His lifting up, as referred to in John 3:14, was on God's part as given in love, that eternal life might be brought in and become the portion of those who were under sin and death.
The "serpent" being lifted up shows that God had in mind the original source of evil. In the lifting up of the Son of man the principle of evil which originated in the serpent was judged. It was judged in man in such a way that its judgment has become favourable towards men as a righteous ground of blessing. The serpent does not benefit by the lifting up of the Son of man, but it has become the way of infinite good to those whom he deceived and brought into transgression.
The state in which man was before God was publicly set forth in the Son of man lifted up. But this testimony comes to men in the way of grace, for the One who has been lifted up in the place of sin was there as the great manifestation of divine love. This is brought into the view of all; it comes within sight for the whole creation under heaven. Attention is called, in the lifting up, to the publicity of it; it is a great universal testimony. The object of gospel preaching is to make men see that they are concerned in this great matter.
In John 8:28 it is "When ye shall have lifted up the Son of man, then ye shall know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself, but as the Father has taught me I speak these things". The lifting up in chapter 3 is on God's part in love; but in chapter 8 it is what men do, "When ye shall have lifted up the Son of man". Men fully exposed their own state when they put that blessed One to an open shame. He had done nothing but good. We are told that they "sought false witness against Jesus, so that they might put him to death". If they had wanted true witnesses they would have had no difficulty in finding them. They might have called Lazarus and Bartimaeus and Mary Magdalene and many cleansed lepers and once-blind men who could now see; they might have called many who had heard from His lips mighty words of healing and forgiveness. There was, indeed, the fullest testimony available that the blessed light of God revealed in
supreme grace was there, but in lifting Him up men rejected it all in a shameful way; they put Him to public dishonour. In this great and solemn act the whole state of the world, and of man's heart, has come out. But every one who took part in that act will be made to know that all He said was of the Father, and that the Father was with Him. It is most certainly true that those who put Jesus, or even His feeble representatives, in the place of shame and reproach, will be made to know what they have done.
In John 12:32 we pass over to another side of this matter, and we see God's great design in it, and that He brings it to pass notwithstanding what is true of man. "And I, if I be lifted up out of the earth, will draw all to me". He becomes, as lifted up out of the earth, a divine centre of attraction. His death has given Him a prominence, a place of advantage in relation to men universally, which He did not have before He was lifted up. As on the earth He said, "I have not been sent save to the lost sheep of Israel's house", Matthew 15:24, but as lifted up out of the earth He draws all to Him. The particular kind of death that He should die was designed by infinite wisdom, so that He should not die on the earth, but as lifted up out of it. It is important that, when speaking of the death of Christ, we should lay stress on the kind of death that He died. It was the death of crucifixion, so that He died as lifted up out of the earth. As in that position He was outside all limitations; He can draw all to Him. He has died in a way that was designed of God to set forth that it was the divine intent that He should come within the view of all. His death, in this sense, has given Him a wonderful elevation, so that all the ends of the earth can look unto Him and be saved, He can draw all to Him. The divine gathering centre to which all must come for blessing is not any place or person on earth, but One lifted up out of the earth. This is the blessed way which divine love has taken to draw men away from a world fully exposed as having nothing in
common with God. All the work of grace during the last two thousand years has been the drawing of men to Christ as the One lifted up. This is still the public position, and the testimony of God as announced to men.
In the light of this we can see how important the cross is as the universal testimony of God to men. Paul and John are in perfect harmony as to this. Paul came to the Corinthians announcing the testimony of God, and he said, "I did not judge it well to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified", 1 Corinthians 2:2. The great thing in preaching is "that the cross of the Christ may not be made vain"; that is, emptied of its true meaning. There is wonderful meaning in the lifting up of Christ on the cross, and its real force is to be brought home to men. "The word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but to us that are saved it is God's power". Christ crucified is "to Jews an offence, and to nations foolishness; but to those that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ God's power and God's wisdom", 1 Corinthians 1:23, 24. When this testimony comes to men "in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" it brings them clean out of the world. It is a testimony that can only be truly presented in spiritual power; hence Paul came to Corinth in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, not that he was afraid of the Corinthians, but he feared lest some element of human wisdom should come in to mar his service.
We gather, further, from Deuteronomy 21:23, that one who has been publicly exposed, as become a curse, is viewed as a defilement to the land. Hence it is written, "thou shalt in any wise bury him that day ... thou shalt not defile thy land". No doubt it was as having this scripture in mind that the Jews were anxious that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath, John 19:31. But there is divine instruction in the ordinance, and it gives the burial of the Lord an important place. As having been identified with sin and curse -- as bearing it vicariously -- the burial of the
Lord was necessary that the very condition in which He was made sin might pass completely out of sight. So long as He was exposed upon the cross what was in public evidence was One in the place of sin and curse. His death did not remove Him from that position publicly, but His burial did, and He never reappeared in the condition in which He was made sin. The condition which He had taken up as coming into holy manhood, in which He could bear sin and die, went out of sight when He was buried, and as raised from the dead He is in a new condition to which neither sin nor death could ever be attached. Viewing this matter in the light of Deuteronomy 21:23 we can understand why the burial of Christ is included in the glad tidings which Paul preached, 1 Corinthians 15:4. The condition in which Christ was made sin went out of God's sight in His burial, and this is of immense importance when we consider all its consequences in their bearing on those who love Him. Burial is viewed in Deuteronomy 21:23 as removing defilement from the land. When seven of Saul's descendants were hanged before Jehovah for his sin against the Gibeonites, it was when they had been buried we are told, "afterwards God was propitious to the land", 2 Samuel 21:14. The sentence having been executed, and the condition in which it was executed having been removed from God's sight in burial, the matter was righteously ended. The Christ on whom we have believed is One who has not only died, but who was also buried.
It is well to bear in mind that when the Spirit of God by Paul draws attention to Christ as descending, He does not stop short of burial. For His burial is clearly the full depth of His descent according to Ephesians 4:9, 10. "But that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same who has also ascended up above all the heavens, that he might fill all things". Paul is led to speak of this by thinking of Him as ascended on high according to Psalm 68:18. His having
ascended implied that He had descended, and the depth of His descent was "into the lower parts of the earth". This is in keeping with the Lord's own words, "For even as Jonas was in the belly of the great fish three days and three nights, thus shall the Son of man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights", Matthew 12:40. He descended from the place that was ever His in eternal Deity not only to the cross but to the grave. He descended in the strength of His love to the lower parts of the earth; we get the full measure of His descent as we take in the thought of His burial. Mary of Bethany seems to have been the only one of His disciples who had His burial definitely in view. She was in concert with His mind in this. In anointing His body for burial she showed that the full depth of His descent in love was before her heart. But in doing it "beforehand" she made manifest that she had no thought of His remaining in the tomb. Her pound of costly ointment was put upon Him in view of His burial, but it was done "beforehand" because her heart understood that He would not be available for anointing after His death. The greatness of His divine Person was before her: if such a Person descended to burial it was impossible that He should remain there; He must, as He Himself had said, ascend up where He was before, John 6:62. The descending and the ascending are equal, for it is the same Person who does both. In ascending up above all the heavens He went to "where he was before". But He went in a new condition, for He ascended as Man "that he might fill all things". No scripture could more clearly establish His Deity. No wonder that Mary's heart was filled as in the spirit of adoration she anointed the feet of Jesus! As regarded in the light of Ephesians 4:9, 10, we could not think of any creature anointing His head. Adoration at the feet of such a Person is the only right attitude.
In Mark's gospel the setting of the incident is different. The woman is not named, and we are told that she had "an
alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly; and having broken the alabaster flask, she poured it out upon his head", Mark 14:3. Our attention is called in this scripture to the vessel in which the ointment was, and to the fact that it was broken. As seen in Simon the leper's house the Lord would be viewed as known in the midst of Israel. He was the blessed Person in whom everything that was precious to God was found, and the woman, as divinely taught, understood that His path of service was to lead Him into death. It was what her affections had gathered up as a result of what she had seen and heard. He was God's Anointed to carry out all His will, the One in whom every promise would be fulfilled. He is viewed in Mark as the great Servant of divine pleasure, and, in keeping with a view of Him in the greatness that attached to Him officially by God's appointment, the woman poured out her ointment upon His head.
In John the vessel is not mentioned, but we are told that "Mary therefore, having taken a pound of ointment of pure nard of great price, anointed the feet of Jesus". I believe that in the setting of this gospel the Spirit of God would lead us to regard Mary herself as the vessel. She had stored up in affectionate appreciation, a wealthy knowledge of One who was so great personally that He had descended from Godhead's fullest glory that He might go down to the lower parts of the earth. He was descending to burial, and He took account of her as having kept her ointment for the day of His preparation for burial. One who could so descend must necessarily ascend up where He was before, and regarded thus in His personal greatness it is fitting that His feet should be anointed and not His head.
It is important to notice that the reference to the Lord descending into the lower parts of the earth is in the epistle to the Ephesians, for that epistle gives us the full height of things, and also the full depth. Indeed, we have the "depth and height" particularly mentioned in it, chapter 3:18. "The
lower parts of the earth" must be understood as indicating where the might of God's strength wrought in the Christ, as we read in Ephesians 1:19, 20. The apostle prays that we may know "the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe, according to the working of the might of his strength, in which he wrought in the Christ in raising him from among the dead". The mighty power of God acted in those "lower parts of the earth" into which Christ had descended in love, so that His burial really took Him to the point which would witness to the fullest expression of the might of God's strength. I do not know that we have anywhere else in Scripture such an accumulation of words descriptive of divine power, and they impress upon us the greatness of the power that operated in the raising of Christ from among the dead. They give a very solemn impression of the tremendous power that is necessary to effect resurrection. The Lord being found, in infinite grace, among the dead gave occasion for that power to be exercised. His burial brought Him to that low point where the surpassing greatness of God's power could be known, and known in a way that is "towards us who believe". As buried, the Lord is viewed as having come under the whole weight of what rested on us, and the surpassing greatness of God's power came in and raised Him from that point. Love descended to that point, but the might of God's strength came in to raise Him. The love in which He descended was towards us, and the power that raised Him is towards us also. The whole matter had in view God's wondrous purposes of love in regard to us.
The resurrection of Christ is a far greater expression of divine power than creation. In creation God spake and it was done. There is no suggestion of any extraordinary exertion of divine power in creation, but the words used in Ephesians 1:19 do suggest the exercise of extraordinary power on God's part. God would have us to ponder this. It
is necessary that He should give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him so that we may know this power, and understand that it is "towards us who believe". But the fact that Paul prayed for it for the saints is evidence that God is willing to give us this enlightenment.
A further result of the burial of Christ is its bearing on those who love Him. We are never to forget that He has been buried here, and that His burial was a matter that brought into activity the affections of His lovers. The world that lifted Him up was not allowed to make provision for His burial. Men did indeed appoint His grave with the wicked, but God would not allow that appointment to stand. In retaining the Lord's burial in the hands of lovers it seems as though God would say to every lover of Christ, This is a matter for you to be concerned about; how do your affections move in regard to it? We have seen how Mary's affections moved in relation to His burial, and in Joseph of Arimathaea we see one who took up publicly and wholeheartedly the position of identification with Christ in burial. This was his great privilege, but it is the privilege of all lovers of Christ, and therefore he may be regarded as representative of them all in this character. And there is special instruction in the experience of Joseph, for, though a disciple, he had not been publicly identified with the Lord before. What hindered him is the very thing that hinders us, and God would show us how he got free from his hindrance so that we might get free in the same way.
He had been "a disciple of Jesus, but secretly through fear of the Jews". There had been with him, as with us all, a shrinking from reproach and suffering, and a desire for the easy path. He had not known what it was to see the body of the flesh cut off, but I believe he had been circumcised in a spiritual sense between the time when he was a secret disciple and the time when he "demanded of Pilate that he might take the body of Jesus". In the meantime "the circumcision
of the Christ" (Colossians 2:11), had taken place. Christ after the flesh had been cut off, and if He had been cut off, how could any lover of His desire to retain status as in the flesh? In the solemn hour of the death of Christ Joseph was "circumcised with circumcision not done by hand, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of the Christ", Colossians 2:11, and he put off, in a spiritual sense, the whole body of the flesh, and with it his unbelieving fears, and his desire to retain a religious place here. He was prepared now for identification with Christ in burial. Demanding the body of Jesus was claiming a right to it. His love demanded the privilege of identification with Christ in connection with His burial. The tomb was Joseph's "new tomb which he had hewn in the rock" and when he put the body of Jesus in it, I think we may say that, in a spiritual sense, he put himself there, as represented in the Person of the One who had died for him. I cannot think that he was ever seen in the council again, nor that he was ever again identified with the religious doings of the priests and others who had consulted and accomplished the death of Christ. He was henceforth a buried man to all that. His going down to burial was a movement of love on his part, and it is a movement which we all have to make if we are to know the true meaning of being "buried with him in baptism".
It is evident that Joseph had had the thought of burial before him, for he had hewn out for himself a sepulchre in the rock. God had led his thoughts that way in view of the burial of Christ. His tomb was one of the things -- like the colt and the guest-chamber -- specially provided and reserved for the Lord. The sepulchre being in "the rock" suggested that the idea of burial was to have a permanent place in christianity. The Lord Himself was to be there only for three days and three nights, but the thought of burial was to be permanent, for it is an abiding truth in christianity that His lovers are buried with Him (Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12). The
Ethiopian eunuch was prepared for burial with Christ, when he said, "what hinders my being baptised?" It was the demand of a good conscience (1 Peter 3:21), in keeping with Joseph's demand to have the body of Jesus for burial. The Lord went finally out of this world by burial, and His grave is left "hewn in the rock" as a permanent spot for love to occupy, in a spiritual sense, as soon as there is a readiness to do so. Ruth said to Naomi, "where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried". How this tests us as to whether we are really prepared to go down out of the life of this world! Paul asks the Colossians, "Why as if alive in the world do ye subject yourselves to ordinances?" They were in danger of following the injunctions and teachings of men, and entertaining religious and philosophic thoughts which all belong to this world. We descend altogether out of that area when we go down in affection to burial with Christ.
It is helpful to see the steps by which believers are led to correspondence with Christ, as "complete (or filled full) in him". Those who are filled full in Christ certainly have no need to retain, as of value, anything connected with "the body of the flesh". So that, as a second step, they can afford to accept circumcision. Then, third, they come to the truth of burial with Christ in baptism. All this being on the way to a fourth step in apprehension that "ye have been also raised with him through faith of the working of God who raised him from among the dead", Colossians 2:9 - 12.
In the interval between the lifting up of Christ on the cross and His resurrection by the mighty power of God on the third day, it seems to me that Joseph of Arimathaea was acting spiritually in accord with the mind of God at the moment. The women, we are told in Mark's gospel, "bought aromatic spices that they might come and embalm him". Nothing could have been more unnecessary under the circumstances, or less in keeping with the great spiritual truth of the moment. The Scriptures might have assured
them that He would not see corruption, and He had spoken again and again of rising the third day. Persons are embalmed because it is expected that they will long remain in death! The great and important truth of the moment was that He was about to be seen as the Risen One. With regard to Nicodemus and his hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes, the Spirit of God is careful to tell us that it was "as it is the custom with the Jews to prepare for burial". Their doings, particularly as referred to in John's gospel, are not marked by spirituality. We are perhaps much more influenced than we think by customs current, or that have been current, in the religious world. But spirituality is needed for the apprehension of what is suitable to the Lord at any particular moment; affection and devotion are not sufficient. Human sentiment, even of the choicest kind, tends to obscure what is spiritual. One would desire that there might be much more devotion to the Lord with all of us who believe on Him, but also that there might be more ability to honour Him in a truly spiritual way.
Joseph brought no spices, but he "bought fine linen, and having taken him down, he swathed him in the fine linen, and laid him in a sepulchre which was cut out of rock". Mark 15:46. I have no doubt the "fine linen" represented his apprehension of the Lord Jesus as having been here in holy flesh for the accomplishment of the will of God. But the very condition in which He had been here, and in which He had accomplished all for the glory of God, was now to disappear from view in the tomb. Christ according to flesh not only died, but was buried. And when He reappeared to His own in resurrection it was in a new condition. How much we need to ponder those words of Paul: "So that we henceforth know no one according to flesh; but if even we have known Christ according to flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer". 2 Corinthians 5:16. This great truth lies at the root of Christianity. The Christ in whom we are is One who, according to flesh, has died and been buried. He has been
raised in a new condition which never had, and never can have, any link with the life of the world. "So if any one be in Christ, there is a new creation". Nothing is more important for Christians to understand.
In the wisdom of God the fine linen which Joseph bought held an important place, for it became the evidence of Christ's resurrection. When John saw the linen cloths lying in the tomb we are told that "he saw and believed", John 20:8. The very way in which the linen cloths were lying was the proof of resurrection. What he saw convinced him that the Lord would not return to the condition in which they had known Him, and in which He had been made sin and had died and been buried. The "fine linen" represented that condition -- a condition absolutely holy and perfect in every way, and divinely suitable to all that was accomplished in it, but "according" to flesh, and therefore a condition in which Christ would be known no longer. They must now look to see Him in a new condition, the First-fruits of the resurrection harvest. His burial was a necessary step on the way to this, and hence its importance in the unfolding of God's ways in Christ.
John 3:14 - 16
Some scriptures seem to shine with such a brilliancy of grace that they arrest the attention even of the indifferent reader, delight the soul of the anxious one, and are a joy for ever to the believer's heart. Such is the scripture we have read. These verses have been called "The Bible in miniature", as long as the day of grace continues, and the Spirit of God enables evangelists of Christ to preach the gospel, these will be words whereby men shall be saved.
I wish to speak briefly of three things which are here presented very distinctly, the purpose of God for man's blessing, the great necessity which came across the divine purpose and had to be met before that purpose could be carried out and the love which was behind all -- which formed the purpose and met the necessity.
God has formed a purpose to have men in infinite blessing before Him. It is His purpose and pleasure that whosoever believes on His Son should not perish, but have everlasting life. Everything under the sun is of a perishable order. Death is stamped upon everything in the world, and on man himself. But it is God's pleasure to make Himself known to men in the blessedness of His nature, and thus to bring them into the knowledge and joy of that which lies altogether outside the power of death. If our hearts find their object and their joy in things under the sun we shall prove in the end, like Solomon, that all is vanity. Those things will perish from us, or we shall perish from them; all will end in perdition and death. God is not in those things, and death must come in on all the things in which God is not. But by sending His Son into the world God has placed the
knowledge of Himself within the reach of men, and this in pure grace and blessing. He has given His only begotten Son; He has not come as a creditor to claim what was due to Him, but as a giving God. All that God is in the blessedness of His nature is set forth in His Son, and all is brought near to men as a gift. Philosophers of many ages have spent long and fruitless years in the endeavour by searching to find out God. Religious men have sought to remove the distance between themselves and God by prayers, penances, and innumerable ceremonies and sacraments. But the thought that God should present Himself in all His infinite perfections to men, and that all should be a gift, confounds the human mind, while it is an endless joy and wonder to faith.
As the Son of God becomes our object and joy we pass outside the range of death. Death cannot touch or mar the blessedness of that which is set forth in Him. The revelation of God that subsists in Him is perfect and eternal, and in entering into it we enter into that which in its very nature is imperishable and eternal. We have everlasting life. And this is the great blessing which God has purposed for man. In the accomplishment of this great result divine love finds its satisfaction and rest.
But between this blessed purpose of God and its accomplishment there was a great divine necessity occasioned by the sinful state of men. Men were fallen, and lost, and under death and judgment. All this had to be taken into account. God's purpose for man's blessing could only be carried out on the ground that God undertook the settlement of every question in connection with man's sinful state. Hence the "must ... be" of John 3:14, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up". He who "came down out of heaven" and ever was even here "in heaven" as the home and atmosphere to which His moral perfections properly belonged, must be "lifted up". God made the Son of man strong for Himself
(Psalm 80:17) -- strong to come into the place of sin and to discharge in death the penalties which were the consequence of sin and strong to bring to an end in holy judgment the very state of man to which sin attached.
The serpent of Moses had no poison in it, but it was made like the creatures who had, and so God has sent His own Son -- holy, undefiled, and without sin -- in the likeness of sinful flesh. That Holy One has been "lifted up" as a sacrifice for sin, and thus sin in the flesh has been condemned (Romans 8:3). He "must" be lifted up! The universe must know that God is glorious in holiness -- that He will maintain his own righteousness, and vindicate at His own cost every attribute of His Being, while He acts according to His blessed nature that He may accomplish the purpose of His love.
Thus God stands revealed. It is not only blessings that are presented, but all the blessedness of God Himself. "He is in the light". No clouds and thick darkness are round about Him now; His attributes are fully displayed, in all their perfection; His nature has disclosed itself. "God is love". To know Him, and Jesus Christ His sent One, is life eternal.
John 6:1 - 71
The Lord used the simplest figures to express the greatest and most profound thoughts of God in relation to men. "Bread" is universally known as human food, but when we think of it as given by the Father out of heaven to be life for the world it assumes a spiritual character of the deepest interest. The Father has brought into this scene of death something that is altogether new as being out of heaven, and He has brought it in that His creatures here on earth might live on it in a spiritual way.
It is quite certain that the fallen creature, if left to itself, would never desire this heavenly Bread. It is those whom the Father gives Him who come to Him; He says, "no one can come to me except the Father who has sent me draw him" (verse 44). It is not that the Father hinders anyone from coming, but the state of the fallen creature is such that he cannot come because of his own perversity. But the Father would not provide heavenly Bread without securing that there should be some who would feed upon it. He gives some to the Son and they come; He draws and He teaches; otherwise there would be none to value what is so precious in His sight.
Jesus says that the one who comes to Him will never hunger, and the one who believes on Him will never thirst (verse 35). Coming to Him implies that He is seen in His own distinctiveness as having no possible rival. No other ever came down from heaven; no other was ever the Object to whom the Father drew, and concerning whom the Father spoke; no other ever ascended up to the Father in his own personal right. We come to Him as appreciating the all-surpassing
glory which is found in Him alone. In our hearts we leave all others: we say with Peter, "Lord, to whom shall we go?" In this attitude of heart it is impossible to hunger; we are feeding upon One who infinitely surpasses every other kind of satisfaction. Believing on Him means that, as having come to Him, He is the abiding Object of our faith; we live, as Paul says, by the faith of Him. On that line we do not thirst.
If one eats of the Bread which comes down out of heaven he will not die (verse 50); he will live for ever. But with a view to this being opened to us the Lord said further, "But the bread withal which I shall give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world" (verse 51). His flesh must be given; that is, He must go into death. Those whom He would bring into life eternal were in death as to their state Godward. So He must needs give His flesh to furnish the food of life for us.
"He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up at the last day" (verse 54). He adds, "for my flesh is truly food and my blood is truly drink". We may gather from this something of the divine value of that holy flesh and blood which can now be fed upon to life eternal. It is not here the Lord's death as making atonement or propitiation to meet the holy claims of God so that we might be justified and accepted. This is the flesh and blood of the Son of man as the food of life eternal, that by which we enter into what is wholly new, and outside the whole range of sin and death. It is the result of a divine Person coming down out of heaven and entering into the condition of death so that we might feed upon Him as having come into that condition, and by so doing acquire a life which is far more blessed than any creature had before. All believers think thankfully and adoringly of what the death of Christ has removed, but we should also open our hearts to take in what it is for us as the food of life. The Son of man being found in
death is the most marvellous thing that has ever been in the universe of God.
In verse 51 the Lord speaks of giving His flesh, and in verse 53 He adds the thought of drinking His blood, and the two actions of eating His flesh and drinking His blood are spoken of three times in the following three verses. The One who came down out of heaven took part in blood and flesh. It was a sinless condition, for in it He was the Holy One of God, as Peter confessed Him in this chapter (verse 69). Indeed, the Fulness of Godhead dwelt in Him in that condition. So that there is an infinitude of meaning in His being able to say, "my flesh", "my blood". Yet it was that which He could give, so that His flesh can be eaten and His blood drunk by those given to Him by His Father. His flesh and His blood were most intimately together in the days of His flesh, and while they were together they could not be eaten or drunk by anyone. But the time came when they were separated, and the wonderful spiritual reality of the present time is that they are truly food and drink for us now, and we only have eternal life as we eat and drink them.
This connects spiritually with 1 John 4:9. "Herein as to us has been manifested the love of God, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him". The love of God would have us to live for His pleasure through the death of His Son, but for this His flesh must be eaten, His blood drunk. His flesh and His blood must be assimilated into our moral being if we are to have life in ourselves. If the Son of man gives His flesh to be eaten and His blood to be drunk it speaks of death in an entirely new way of which I believe there is no type in Scripture. It is a new starting point in the ways of God with men, intended to bring in life according to the full thought of God. It is death as the starting point of a blessedness which is wholly of God. This takes the form of food and drink for us so that we may be nourished and invigorated and caused to live in an
entirely new way. The flesh and blood of the Son of man show the length to which the love of God would go in order that we might have our part in the life in which Christ now lives as risen from among the dead, and ascended up where He was before. The eating and drinking emphasises the intensely personal nature of the appropriation -- the inwardness of it. It is Christ as in death that we feed upon, but as we feed upon Him He becomes ours in a most intimate and personal way; His death becomes ours as the God-provided way for us into participation in His life. We could only participate in His life through His death and we take this into our most inward being as before God.
On this ground we dwell in Him and He in us. But for this we must be characteristically eaters and drinkers; we must take this on as a characterising feature, and the dwelling in Him and He in us correspond. We have reached what it is to be in Christ, as Paul would say, and He is in us; we are all of one with Him. It is from Christ in that condition of death that the "much fruit" is brought forth of which He speaks in John 12:24. The reality of this is to be assimilated into our spiritual being. We derive all from His having been in that state of death, and this is maintained in us spiritually as we eat His flesh and drink His blood; we are to continue to do so.
But if we derive life from the Son of man having been in death it is obvious that this life is altogether new and different from any life we could have naturally. It is life according to the blessed thought of the love of God. It is the life which the Son of man has as risen from among the dead. Hence we read, "He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me and I in him" (verse 56). If we dwell in Him His place is our place; we are brought to live in the blessedness of what He is as having gone to the Father. His saints are in Him, and He is in them, the Holy Spirit giving the knowledge of this, as we read in John 14:20. Indeed, we may be assured that it is by
the Spirit that any are able to eat the flesh or drink the blood of the Son of man. For the Lord says, "It is the Spirit which quickens, the flesh profits nothing: the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life" (verse 63).
The flesh of the Son of man and His blood are now to become, by our eating and drinking, the source of our true life. They are divine love in manifestation, but now appropriated and assimilated as the way by which that love reaches its own end. We are thus brought truly to live through and in Him. This is our abiding place; we dwell in Him; but this is only maintained as a spiritual reality as we eat and drink. His flesh and His blood must be as much our regular sustenance spiritually as our ordinary food is naturally.
The crowd in John 6 did not see enough in the Lord to secure their faith; they wanted signs and, what was more selfish, bread to eat. But He Himself was the great sign; had they really thought of Him they would have wanted no other. I believe the craving for supernatural gifts, tongues, gifts of healing and the like, shows that the heart is not satisfied with Christ. If one is unduly occupied with the desire even for spiritual gifts or the consciousness of spiritual power in oneself which may take the form of wanting to have the consciousness of things -- in itself most desirable -- there is real danger that a subtle self may enter into this, and we may be diverted from what is infinitely precious in Christ, and occupied with what we regard as more tangible in ourselves.
John 6:44 - 46; Ephesians 4:20 - 24; 1 John 2:26, 27
C.A.C. What led me to suggest these scriptures was the thought that we are in a time when the ministry of the truth is, by the grace of the Lord very abundant, and one has been impressed by the conviction that the great need of the saints is not that there should be an increase of spiritual wealth conveyed to us in ministry of the word, but that we should be more characterised by divine teaching; that is, by hearing the living voice of divine Persons. I cannot conceive of anything of more supreme importance and value than that. I suppose nothing would give greater stability than to come under divine teaching, because it is not an impression, however right or true, that man could make on us but the direct communication to our souls of something from divine Persons.
I suggested these scriptures because the first speaks of the Father's teaching, the second of Christ's teaching and instruction, and the third of the anointing or unction, that is, the Spirit. It is assumed in these scriptures that we know what it is to be under direct divine teaching. It is referred to in the Old Testament as a singular mark of divine favour that "all thy children shall be taught of Jehovah".
Ques. What would be the difference between this and being taught by revelation as Peter was in Matthew 16? C.A.C. That was a blessed favour shown to Peter and it was of the same character as what we are speaking of; but there was a speciality about that as it was a distinct revelation made to Peter which was not made to anyone else. It does illustrate that the Father can speak directly to the soul. I believe that our true quality and position as in the testimony depends upon our having heard the voice of divine
Persons, so it is a matter that should appeal to and have the interest and attention of all our hearts.
In John 6 we see that the Father gives certain persons to the Son, and the Son does not cast out any who come to Him. He received them from the Father with a view to the Father's will being carried out in the fullest extent right through to resurrection; it says several times over, "I will raise him up at the last day". The last day is not a mere dispensational reference but the thought of finality is in it. The Son receives all those the Father gives Him, He does not lose a single particle of what the Father gives Him. He carries through the Father's pleasure and sets it up in resurrection in finality. That, so to speak, is a matter between the Father and the Son. Then something else is needed; that is, those who are given by the Father to the Son need to come under divine teaching; they need to be taught of God, so that on their side they come affectionately and intelligently to the Son. The Father draws and teaches with a view to that; it is a direct action of the Father on each individual soul. This chapter indicates that the Father is the prime mover; He is the sender of the Son; He gives certain ones to the Son, and then He draws and teaches; everything has its origin in the Father. If you think of saints from this point of view there is no uncertainty, no weakness or instability about their movements. The movements of the soul in coming to Christ have nothing weak or uncertain about them. There are many instances recorded in the gospels of persons coming to Christ, and it is interesting to see the definiteness with which they come. One might wonder how they arrived at such an appreciation of Christ, such confidence in Him. They saw there was that in Him that surpassed everything that was found in the religious world. One might wonder at the definiteness of their movements if one did not know it was the Father drawing and teaching. They were drawn by irresistible force, more powerful than the force that keeps
the sun, moon and stars moving round in their orbit. There is a stability about divine drawing, and we do well to familiarise our hearts with the certainty and blessed character of it. We can see that the Father had moved in the soul of the woman of Samaria before the Lord had anything to say to her at the well. The Father was actively moving, He was seeking worshippers. He had begun, and one can marvel at the definiteness of the position the woman took up. As soon as she discerned that the Lord was a Prophet she raised the question of worship, and then she fell back on Christ as the true resource of her soul. "I know that Messias is coming, who is called Christ; when he comes he will tell us all things". That illustrates what I mean. If we look at that woman naturally, we see a woman outside of moral propriety; if we look at her spiritually we see a wonderful and singular example of the Father's teaching and drawing.
C.A.C. There is nothing more remarkable than the precision and stability of the ground that Nicodemus takes up. He says, "Thou art come a teacher from God": we know it, he says, "for none can do these signs that thou doest unless God be with him". There is a man in an impregnable position; what put him there? The Father's teaching and drawing. He got an impression from the Father before the Son had anything to say to him directly.
It is most blessed for us fully to recognize that God has introduced One into the world who is absolutely of Himself; He describes Himself here as He who is of God. We are in a world which is at a great distance from God and where there is not a trace of anything which carries divine impressions outside the circle of divine working. Into such a world God has brought a Person absolutely of Himself, a blessed Person who can look without a veil upon the face of the Father. Such is the intimacy and nearness and glory of His Person and now the Father draws to Him. The Father is putting
forth the most powerful divine action upon souls; it is put forth upon each of us individually or we should never have come to Christ.
Ques. In chapter 5 we get the voice of the Son of God; but how does that come in?
C.A.C. The Father draws to the One who is great enough to quicken out of death, so those who hear the voice of the Son of God are made to live. But before we hear the voice of the Son of God we hear the Father's voice. The Lord said, "Every one that has heard from the Father himself, and has learned of him, comes to me". There is not only drawing but teaching, learning what the Father has to say about the Son.
Ques. Would it be a joy to the Father to give any of us to know more of Christ?
C.A.C. Yes. It seems to me it is what the Father does characteristically. He would speak to us of the profound delight He has in His beloved Son. If we hear it, if the Father tells us that, the inevitable result is that we come to the One in whom the Father has such profound delight. We can afford to part company with every other man because the Father has introduced to us One -- His beloved Son -- in whom He has found His delight. Now Peter in writing his second epistle illustrates what we are speaking about; he says, "This voice we heard". What voice? the Father's voice. They were with the Lord on the holy mount, and they heard the voice that came from the excellent glory. It is right that we should have a spiritual conception of ourselves; what an elevation it would give to our conception if we realised that the Father's voice "uttered to him by the excellent glory" has been heard directly by us to give us instruction and teaching about His beloved Son in whom He found His delight. It is not a question of ministry, of what we can hear or read, but of the Father's voice in our souls.
Everything is seen in this gospel as the fruit of divine
operations; there is nothing whatever for God in man as fallen and lost save what is the fruit of divine operations. The greatest men of God are put in the shade in John's gospel, and every former system set up by God is put in the background. One glorious Person is supreme and surpassing, and stands out before the soul. The Father's teaching is to give us such an impression of that Person that we discard all the influences of the religious world. The religious world is the point in John's gospel; it is all discarded as, the soul comes under the teaching of the gospel.
The truth of this is presented so that we may be exercised, and also that we may understand our spiritual history; this throws a flood of light on it. We may think of our spiritual history as being affected by influences which we come under, such as preaching, teaching, the company of the brethren; but there is something far greater in our history than all these influences put together; that is the fact that we have been drawn by the Father to the Son, and directly and personally taught to know what the Son is in the estimation of His heart. We have that by divine teaching directly from the Father. That is greater than subordinate influences, however precious they may be.
Ques. Does the Father's voice come to us in the form of light?
C.A.C. I do not think that it is quite light. I cannot find a better word for it than the scriptural word "taught of God". I do not think any man could explain how it came. Paul says to the Thessalonians, "Ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another". I cannot explain how, but what is taught of God is certainly a blessed reality above everything else.
Rem. The Lord takes a quotation from the Old Testament in regard to the world to come, "They shall be all taught of God".
C.A.C. Yes. In Isaiah 54 it refers to the world to come and what will be effected in the children of Zion. But the
Lord here brings it to the present time. We see the Father as the source of all the drawing and teaching, and then we come to the Son and do not hunger. The proof whether we have come to the Son is, Do we hunger? Have we got unsatisfied hearts? If we have, we have not come to the Son, because He says, "He that cometh to me shall never hunger". There is no unsatisfied craving and we shall have eternal life; there is to be all the preciousness of eternal life in the soul. See how great the Person is, He is great enough to do that. Some one might say, I do not know if I am satisfied like that. Well, you have an impression of that Person, that He is great enough to satisfy you; has the Father given you that impression? That is something. I can say the Father has given me the impression that Christ, His blessed Son, is great enough to satisfy me in time and through eternity. That is divine teaching as I understand it.
Now we must move on to the teaching of Christ in Ephesians 4. "Ye have not thus learnt the Christ, if ye have heard him and been instructed in him according as the truth is in Jesus", verses 20, 21. One would call attention to the directness of it, "if ye have heard him and been instructed in him". This is addressed to the gentiles; this does not refer to hearing Him in the days of His flesh, but to hearing Him from heaven. The question might be raised with us, Do we know what it is to have heard Christ speaking directly and personally to us as the risen and heavenly One, so that under His teaching we have been instructed in Him and have learned the truth as it is in Jesus? If these things are not known to us they should be subjects of intense desire and prayer. The Lord was the Teacher when on earth; it was one of His precious titles which perhaps we do not give Him as much as we ought. He was the Teacher and Instructor and He is still; it is a precious designation of our Lord that He is the Teacher. That is not Lordship or Headship, but something a little different from either. He takes the place of
Instructor, He instructs us in the truth. None of us is instructed in the truth so as to walk practically in it until he comes under the parental instruction of Christ. Listening to lectures about the old man and the new will never help us to put off the old man and to put on the new; we learn how to do that under the instruction of Christ.
Ques. Why does He speak of Himself as the Teacher after washing their feet in John 13?
C.A.C. I think the reason is that whatever the Lord teaches is perfectly exemplified in Himself; The service of feet washing had been exemplified in Himself. So here it is as the truth is in Jesus; how sweet a teaching that is! The Lord would teach us to see things as perfectly delineated in Himself. The truth of putting off the old man and putting on the new is perhaps the most important practical truth that the New Testament contains, and this is not learned by reading books, or even the Scriptures, but by coming under the personal instruction of Christ. I do not think any truth has power until we learn it in Jesus.
What about the old man, the character of the man who is so corrupt and abhorrent to God, and so distressing to us if we have any spiritual sensibilities at all? We learn the character of the old man in Jesus on the cross. He came under the condemnation of it all at the cross. I believe that in learning under divine instruction the lessons of the cross we get a deeper judgment of all connected with the old man than we could get in a thousand years of humiliating personal experiences.
C.A.C. It must have been a revelation to him to find that this excellent and blameless man was the vilest wretch that ever trod the earth. Saul indeed learned the character of the old man that corrupts itself according to deceitful lusts. He has been rejected of God and must be discarded by us. How the truth as it is in Jesus appeals to us! If we sit down
and contemplate Jesus and see where He has been in His love and power we see the condemnation of the old man who corrupts himself. He must be rejected of God and discarded; he has been, as far as we are concerned, in the cross of Jesus. We see the truth as it is in Jesus in its absoluteness; it is not a dissolving view in Him. Practically it may be in us, the old going and the new coming -- a sort of mixed condition -- but when you think of the truth as it is in Jesus you see it in its absoluteness. The instruction of Christ would be to give us an impression of the truth as it is in Jesus. In Jesus we see every feature of the new man, truthful righteousness and holiness; we see it nowhere but in Jesus. If I want to see what is according to God I shall see it there in Jesus. It is a precious reality to hear Him and be instructed in Him, "If ye have heard him and been instructed in him according as the truth is in Jesus". He teaches it to us; there may be a thousand complications in my own experience but no complications in Jesus.
Ques. Is it similar to Matthew 11, "Learn from me"?
C.A.C. In Matthew 11 the Lord says, "Come to me"; that is 'Come and stand where I am in absolute subjection to the Father's sovereignty'. If you stand where He is and learn from Him who is meek and lowly in heart, you will get disentangled from all unrestful conditions, and you will find the Lord's proposal holds as good today as when He first uttered the words. We want this personal instruction of Christ. We come to the meetings and hear the brethren talk and subscribe to what they say, but in many of us the practical result is not seen. The practical result is that we see there is nothing else for it but to discard the old man and put him off. We find that the coat we once wore and were so proud of is a disgrace, a mass of filthy rags. We want a new garment altogether, the new man, all the truth of the new man as seen in Jesus. We can look around and see all the universe, we can see the heavens declaring the glory of God
and the earth the power of God. But there is a creation far greater than the physical creation, and that is the new man; he is the creation of God, he corresponds morally with God. You are to put that on. How will you do it? Who will do it? Only the man or woman who has heard Christ and been instructed in Christ and has learned the truth as it is in Jesus. Doctrine will not help us, it is divine teaching that will help us. It means that our ears are alert to the voice of divine Persons. When Christ speaks, we should say like Samuel of old, "Speak, for thy servant heareth". May we cherish such an experience as that. I have read the Bible a good deal and many books in my 50 or 60 years, but I long exceedingly to know the personal instruction of Christ and to hear His voice, which is far better than the voice of any other teacher, however great and honoured he may be. John gives us the true measure of christianity, which thing is true in Him and in you. It is only under the personal influence of Christ that any of us will be prepared to discard the old suit of clothes and put on that new and finer attire that causes us to appear according to God, and to be renewed not only outwardly but inwardly -- being renewed in the spirit of your mind. In Romans we get the mind renewed; in Ephesians we get the spirit of our minds renewed, and we need that. Many things are perfectly right in themselves but they would not do for us if the spirit of our minds were renewed. The disciples said to the Lord, "Shall we call down fire from heaven?" Their thought was quite right that the village that had rejected Christ should be judged. Their mind was right but the spirit of their mind was wrong, not in accord with Christ. We are often standing for what we think is right when the spirit of our minds is far from being in accord with Christ. I may be very strong to judge what I believe to be wrong, but is the spirit of my mind in accord with Christ about it?
Ques. Why does it say the new man is created when it refers to what is in Christ Jesus?
C.A.C. It refers to the saints as in Christ Jesus. You cannot say that Christ personally is the new man, though every feature of the new man is there. Creation is so put to show the substantive, concrete character of it; it is not a mystical idea somewhere up in the air. We are so mystical that these great statements mean very little to us. It says it is a creation to show us it is a concrete, substantive, spiritual idea. It requires all the children of fallen Adam to set forth the features of the old man; they do not come out in one or in one million; it takes all to express him. It takes all the saints in Christ as under divine instruction to express what the new man is.
Now a word about the third Scripture. It is very important that the aged, beloved disciple John casts us upon the unction as security in presence of all the efforts of the many anti-christs. He does not cast us upon the Scriptures but upon the unction which is of vital importance. The unction is closely akin to the thought of anointing; it signifies that Christ not only teaches us personally as we have been saying, but He gives us a divine unction to abide in us and carry on this work of divine teaching. Even babes are addressed as having the unction, and if we are babes we are to recognise the character of the unction we have received which in itself is true and no lie. It ever teaches us to abide in Christ the Son.
Ques. Is there a thought that those who have the unction are thereby empowered to stand here for God? C.A.C. Yes, just as the king and priest were anointed of old and thus rendered competent to fill the position in which they were set. The proper designation of the king was 'Jehovah's anointed' which indicated his competence to stand in the position in which God had set him. As having the unction we are rendered independent of human teaching; we do not need any man's teaching. Think of the wonderful character of the Teacher! Remember it is a divine
Person, the Holy Spirit of God, and this unction abides in us; we ought to be conscious of it and conscious of the teaching of the unction. There is something in every saint that is absolutely true and no he because the Spirit is there and teaches us to abide in Christ.
I should be inclined to think that in moral order the teaching comes on the line we have pursued. First the Father's teaching to come to Christ the Son, then we come under the teaching of Christ, and finally we get the gain of the unction that Christ confers. We have to have our ears attentive to the voice of divine Persons. I think the Spirit has a teaching voice; the unction teaches us. We should be more exercised about these things. We are exercised about getting ministry, which is very good, but I should like to promote the greater exercise about hearing the voice of divine Persons. I believe it would have a very effective operation in us all and we should be more marked by spirituality. I think we should cultivate the habit of retirement so that we might hear the voice of the Father, the voice of the Christ and the voice of the Unction. These things though not easy to explain are very great spiritual realities.
Ques. Is Nathaniel under the fig tree something like this?
C.A.C. I thought so. The many instances of persons who came across the Lord's path with evidences of divine teaching illustrate this. I have been bold enough to say sometimes that the most interesting part of the gospels is the unwritten part. Do you not look forward to getting beside the widow of Luke 21 who put her two mites in the treasury? There is the unwritten part that remains to be learnt in other scenes. We find persons coming to the Lord with evident appreciation of Him and with something of a divine estimate of His worth. We get no explanation of how they arrived at it; how they did is the most interesting part -- they arrived at it under divine teaching. Every one who came to the Lord
with any appreciation of Him came as a subject of divine teaching. Divine teaching is available; it is not like something that another has but which you cannot have. Isaiah says, "All thy children shall be taught of Jehovah". That is in reference to divine teaching in connection with the new covenant; it is from the little ones to the greatest. There is something remarkably inclusive about it; whatever impression of Christ a brother or sister has, I can have, if I am interested and want it. I go further, I do not believe there is any appreciation of Christ that any of the apostles, even Paul or John, had that is not open to you or me. I do not say we shall have the public place in the testimony that they had, but as to the appreciation of Christ could that be excluded from the little ones? Never! We can all have it.
John 9:1 - 41
The knowledge of the Son of God must put a distinctive mark on everyone who has it. Indeed, to contemplate the possibility of having this knowledge brings before the awakened affections of the believer a prospect which throws into the shade, not only all the idols of the earth, but also the conceptions of blessing which are most commonly cherished and pursued by christians.
The question at once arises, How does the soul reach the knowledge of the Son of God? This inquiry has been anticipated, and a divine answer to it furnished, in the chapter before us. Here we see a wonderful picture of "the works of God" (verse 3) in man, preparing him for the reception of divine light, and leading him on in a path of growing light to that which is the crown and consummation of all blessing -- the knowledge of the Son of God.
The first thing that we find here in figure is the demonstration of man's state. I have no doubt the anointing of the man's eyes with clay was a figure of the effect of the Incarnation as demonstrating the true state of man. The effect of the Son of God coming into touch with man was to make man's condition all the more palpable. There might have been some question as to his blindness before; there could be none after. Man is entirely alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in him because of the hardness of his heart (Ephesians 4:18).
It is evident that this is a far deeper thing than any question of guilt, or even of incapacity to carry out the will of God. The natural man cannot discern or appreciate what God is, even when God presents Himself in a fulness of
grace that would meet divinely every need of his conscience and heart. It is terrible to think of man rebelling against God's authority, but it is more awful still to see that he will not have God in grace and fulness of blessing. When the Son of the Father came into this world and brought all that God was in divine grace near to man without extracting anything from man's heart but hatred, it was demonstrated for ever that man has no capacity to appreciate light -- that is, to appreciate God -- he is blind.
This being the case, it is clear that if man is to be brought to know God there must be a work of God in him and it seems to me that the nature of that work is set before us in the significant action of washing in the pool of Siloam. I have no doubt this is a figure of man coming under the application of death in his own spirit so as to be morally cleansed from everything that is of himself. All christians admit that they can only be cleansed before the eye of God by death. I mean, of course, the death of Christ. But if all that we are morally has had to be judged and set aside before God in the death of Christ, in order that we might have infinite blessing from God on the ground of what Christ is, it is certain that we shall only really enter into that blessing after death has come into our spirits upon all that we are as in the flesh. God will not bring man as in the flesh into blessing, but will entirely set him aside in judgment. God will not link the blessings of christianity with such a moral ruin as man after the flesh. Nor will He leave the subject of His grace under any misapprehension on this point. He will bring in death upon what we are as in the flesh and this not only at the cross, but in our own spirits.
God has to put every soul that He will bless through the pool of Siloam before He can bring him into the light. "Except any one be born of water and of Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God", John 3:5. Death must be applied to all that man is morally, if he is to have any access
into an order of things which is of God. Nicodemus ought to have known this though the explicit statement of it in terms seemed to startle him. The application of water (death) is the moral setting aside of all that previously existed in man. It is death brought into a man's spirit as to all that he is as a child of Adam. Job knew something of this, and so did David, Isaiah, Daniel and other Old Testament saints. Death is that state out of which nothing comes for God. If I have realised that there is nothing in me for God, and that nothing can come out of me for God, I have been down under the water of the pool. The water of death has flowed over my spirit. This has certainly been the case with everyone who can say, "I abhor myself" and "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, good does not dwell". Death has come in on, has been applied by God to, all that flesh is morally.
This is the divine preparation for an entirely new order of things. For the one who has realised that there is no good in himself is prepared to understand that all good must come from God -- it must be SENT. The Holy Spirit expressly calls our attention to the interpretation of Siloam as "Sent", a characteristic word of John's gospel -- the gospel which more definitely than any other takes the ground of man's utter blindness and incapacity Godward, but which unfolds in the fullest way what has been sent from God into the world in the person of His beloved Son.
I do not think any man would realise that there was no good in himself without also having a sense in his soul of God as the sovereign source of all good and blessing. The one "born of water" is also born "of Spirit", and we are told that "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit". There is thus the introduction of that which is entirely diverse from flesh, of that in which there is capability of having to say to God. A man born of the Spirit is capable of receiving light from God, and the knowledge of God becomes a great necessity to him. He has got, by the work of God in him, a new faculty of
perception; he now appreciates what comes from God -- what is sent. In a word, he has received sight.
Then spiritual formation begins. We are formed spiritually in the light of God, that is, by the revelation of God, and every element of that revelation shines in the blessed person of the Son of God. The one who is prepared by the work of God in him to appreciate what is sent from God is thus introduced into an entirely new world. He is taken into a world of divine realities, of divine revelation.
First, he is made acquainted with a divine Saviour. The first confession of the man in John 9 was, "A man called Jesus ... ." Jesus means Saviour. This is the first great acquisition of one who is brought into the light; he has a God-provided Saviour. I remember well the first thought I had of Jesus as a Saviour from God -- One sent to be my Saviour. I had had questions and difficulties of various kinds, but they all melted away in the presence of this fact, that Jesus was sent by God as Saviour. This presented Him as so supremely worthy of all the confidence of my poor heart, that to believe on Him seemed the most natural thing in the world. One lost sight of all one's difficulties and perplexities in the presence of such a Saviour. I believe that if preachers would set forth the greatness, glory, and grace of the Son of God as Saviour, instead of labouring so much to meet particular difficulties of souls, people would more quickly get clear of their difficulties, and, what is more, they would begin their christian life with a divine thought of that blessed Person. I have seen a good many souls get relief and a certain measure of blessing by having their particular difficulties met, but I never saw one really brought into peace with God by this process, or distinctly and personally linked with Christ. This can only be as we take in the thought of what He is. It is not this or that difficulty that I want meeting; I am altogether lost; I must have a divine Saviour. If there is no such Person, mine is a hopeless case. If there is such a
Person, the whole case is met, and every difficulty solved for those who believe on Him. If salvation comes in from God, that very fact ensures its completeness, and puts the believer in presence of infinite divine grace and love.
Then, in answer to further interrogation, our friend of John 9 gives evidence of having travelled another stage of his wonderful journey of light. He says, "He is a prophet". This is the second step in the knowledge of Christ; He becomes known to the believer as the Communicator of the mind of God. We must remember that in saying this the man said a great deal. There was certainly no other "prophet" in Israel at the time. The scribes and Pharisees had taken, in a way, the prophet's place, and pretended to make known the mind of God. Would this man look to them for divine light? No, to him Jesus is the "Prophet".
We are first taken outside man for salvation, and then for divine revelation. The saved one comes under the influence of Christ as the One by whom is communicated all the mind of God. In Luke 10 the Samaritan sets forth what He is as Saviour, and the following verses present Him in Martha's house as the Prophet. One who had known what it was to sit at His feet and hear His word would hardly care to return to the teaching of the scribes. Indeed, the mark of one who has known the blessedness of this is perfect liberty from the influence and teaching of men. He is prepared to be an Antipas against all, (Revelation 2:13), and to take a course entirely independent of the countenance of man.
If we stop with the knowledge of Jesus as "Saviour" we may go on with the religious world, but the recognition of Him as "Prophet" involves a clean break with every kind of religious authority here. It was at this point the line was definitely drawn between the once blind man and the Pharisees. It is as we grow in the knowledge of God that we are delivered from the religious opinions of men, and it is the Son who reveals Him.
But it is evident that we shall not enter much into what Jesus reveals as Prophet, if we have not known what it is to come under His Lordship. We must be commanded and controlled by Him. When the once blind man asks, "Do ye also wish to become his disciples?" he plainly confesses his own discipleship -- he acknowledges Jesus as Lord to him whatever He might be to them. The thought of His Lordship is that He commands the blessing of God for us, and He commands us for the blessing. The man of John 9 had proved the blessedness of the Lordship of Christ in his own experience. Christ had commanded the blessing for him, and had commanded him for the blessing. He was in the good of the Lordship of Christ, and it is this which makes a soul bold to confess Him.
The whole vast range of divine blessing, from forgiveness of sins right on to eternal life, is at the disposal of His hand; He is the Administrator and Dispenser of it all. It is a great thing to prove that He is Lord in blessing. Many have a legal thought of the Lordship of Christ as if it was merely authority exacting submission and obedience. They make Christ a greater Moses with a more exacting claim. But Christ, as Lord, exercises authority in the way of blessing. The reason why we are not filled to overflowing with divine blessing is that we have come so little really under the Lordship of Christ. If we were more simple in the sense of grace, and gave ourselves up to Him, if I may so say, we should find that He would bring us into infinite blessing. Mary was commanded by Him, and found "the good part"; Martha was devoted to His service, but not commanded by Himself. Hence, instead of being happy, she was only conscious of the deficiency of the service.
But another stage of the journey must be travelled before the soul is fully prepared for the question, "Thou, dost thou believe on the Son of God?" And this stage is reached when the man declares, "If this man were not of
God he would be able to do nothing" (that is, nothing of such a nature as the act which was in question.) In the apprehension of this man's soul Jesus was recognised as being altogether of a divine order. He stood quite alone; there was no other to compare with Him; He was "of God".
It is an immense thing when a soul comes to the apprehension of Christ in this way, because in doing so he gets the idea of an entirely new beginning of things. Many look at Christ as coming in on the line of promises and prophecy, taking up the Old Testament links. But in John's gospel this is not at all the way in which He is presented. It is an entirely new beginning in One who comes forth from God and from the Father, One who was altogether different from John the Baptist or any prophet, the thong of whose sandal the greatest of them was not worthy to unloose. Christ is here presented to us as coming from above, and out of heaven, as being One who had not His origin in the earth, neither was He of the earth. Such a One was necessarily "above all", (John 3:31).
The man whose history we are following clearly got a sense in his soul of an entirely new beginning of things. "Since time was, it has not been heard that any one opened the eyes of one born blind. If this man were not of God he would be able to do nothing". The very nature of that which was wrought by Him had carried the consciousness into this man's soul that everything was beginning anew, that for God there was an entirely new beginning, and for him this new order of things was all taking its character from the Person in whom it was inaugurated. It is in the apprehension of this that we come into the knowledge of Christ as Head. Of course it is as risen from the dead that He definitely takes that place, for we read that He is "the head of the body, the assembly; who is the beginning, firstborn from among the dead, that he might have the first place in all things", (Colossians 1:18). But here in John 9 we get it in picture and principle.
To this man Christ was "the beginning" and Christ had the pre-eminence; he estimated everything by its relation to Christ. The rudiments of the world, and the commandments, doctrines, and traditions of men were in full force against him. The Pharisees and the synagogue represented everything that was traditional and venerable in Israel, but what was all this to a man who realised that God was beginning everything after a new order, of which Christ was the Head and source? Such a one was not moved by the rejection and scorn of the religious leaders, though he might marvel at the blindness of their hearts. For him it was all clear as a sunbeam; for him things had begun entirely anew; he was in the conscious enjoyment of the results of this new departure in the ways of God, and everything now dated for him, not from tradition or even from prophets of old, but from the One who had given him sight. I think he presents a fine illustration of one "holding fast the Head". Consciously in blessings of an entirely new order, he was fully prepared to accept reproach and rejection at the hands of those who would maintain what was now an empty shell -- a system of things entirely given up by God. We may be sure that these religious leaders after the flesh altogether discredited themselves in the estimation of this man when they said, "we know that this man is sinful", and again "We know not whence he is". No act of wickedness could have so discredited them as having any title to set forth the mind of God. After that I do not suppose he felt it any disgrace to be cast out of the synagogue. I rather fancy he must have been better pleased to be out than in. No doubt it was a fearful revelation to him of the state of man, but he must have felt something of what the apostle expresses when he says, "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the wicked one" (1 John 5:19). He was perfectly conscious that the One who had opened his eyes was "of God", and in having this consciousness he
evidenced that he was "of God" himself. Such is the divine effect of the works of God. The subject of those works is constituted of the same order morally as the One who does them. He derives morally from the One who is "of God". Hence we read, "which thing is true in him and in you", John 2:8; and again, "As the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones", 1 Corinthians 15:48. As we increase "with the increase of God" (Colossians 2:19) we are formed in a wholly new state, in which everything is derived from Christ.
I think we cannot consider all this without seeing that the man to whom the question was propounded, "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" was ready for it. He was ready to be conducted into the full knowledge of the blessed Person in whom everything was beginning for God. He had been travelling the path of the just, and it had been shining more and more as he went along, and now he was about to reach the "perfect day". He was ready for the presentation to his heart of all that is expressed in the name "Son of God". "Who is he, Lord, that I may believe on him?" The answer to this question brings us to the very core and centre of christianity in its divine completeness of blessing.
I cannot think of attempting to set forth anything like a full or perfect answer to this question, but it seems to me that three great and absorbing features of infinite perfection are presented in the Son of God for the contemplation, satisfaction and adoration of our hearts.
In the first place, He is the object of the Father's delight and love. This is a statement which falls so often on our ears that we may have come to regard it as a spiritual commonplace. But who can measure the blessedness of that which it conveys? None but those who have been withdrawn from the whole crowd of seen things into the secret place of God's rest -- who have been taken apart in spirit from the moral deformity which thrusts itself upon our notice in every sphere and at every moment of mans activity -- can have
any idea what it is to be in presence of a perfection in which the heart of the Father finds changeless and eternal complacency. All believers, indeed, accept that there is a glory and beauty beyond compare in the Son of God, but how few are filled with absorbing desire to behold that beauty, and with the energy of a holy decision that will "seek after" this "one thing", (Psalm 27:4.) Indeed, it is lamentable how little our hearts are moved by the wondrous divine thoughts which are being continually presented in one way or another to our minds.
"This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight". I can conceive nothing more calculated to attract the heart than this. That the Father should place within the reach of our apprehension that in which He finds eternal complacency and satisfaction is an action of His love which calls forth, surely, the deepening wonder and adoration of our hearts. To contemplate the glory of such a Person -- a glory as of an only-begotten with a father -- is one of the choicest gifts that ineffable love could bestow upon its subjects. To trace out the moral perfections which necessarily attach to such a Person, to apprehend His divine greatness, to see the motive and the manner of His every action, to appreciate the fulness of grace and truth that subsisted livingly in Him and was expressed in all His words and ways, to learn the precious and divine affections that constituted the inner life of His spirit and out of which everything flowed in holy obedience and absolute devotedness to God -- in a word, to know Him -- is the present and inexhaustible joy and delightful occupation of everyone in whom "the works of God" are perfected: that is, of those who have eyes to appreciate what is so exceedingly fair to God. The perpetual wonder is that we are not more absorbed with such perfections, and in result abstracted and alienated from the vileness and imperfection of man after the flesh and his world. The second great thought which is prominent in connection
with the Son of God is that it is in Him the Father is revealed. We see in the Son of God the perfect revelation of God as the sovereign source of good and of infinite blessing for man. The One who dwelt in the intimacy of His love -- in the bosom of the Father -- alone was competent to reveal Him in all the activity of His nature of holy love. The knowledge of God must ever be the highest blessedness of His intelligent creatures. And how much it means to us in whom evil has had its place and way! All the proper links of man as having a spirit are with God, and his true blessedness is to be with God. But sin has so corrupted man that what is properly characteristic of him -- viz, his spirit -- is either brought, as in false religions, under the influence of demons, or it is quite thrown into the background, so that man is simply controlled by his own selfish lusts. Through infinite grace, by the renewing of the Holy Spirit and as formed in the divine nature, we are made competent to share the portion of the saints in light, to have the knowledge of God in a far more blessed way than would have been possible in a world of innocence. For moral questions of infinite depth have been raised in connection with which all the attributes of God have come into display, and in the solution of which His nature has disclosed itself, so that the full "glory of the blessed God" may now be known by those who were in the darkness and alienation of sin. And to whom do we turn for this wondrous revelation? To the Son of God, in whom it has all come out, the Light of men, the One in whose face now shines every ray of the divine glory.
God grant that the greatness of this revelation may more affect our hearts. May we, indeed, "turn aside and see this great sight"! May we know more of what it is to behold the glory of that unveiled face!
One more thought in connection with the Son of God, and then I must conclude. He is the One in whom everything is established for God. "For the Son of God, Jesus
Christ, he who has been preached by us among you ... . did not become yea and nay, but yea is in him. For whatever promises of God there are, in him is the yea, and in him the amen, for glory to God by us". (2 Corinthians 1:19, 20). We are sufficiently familiar, I think, with the man in whom is the nay to appreciate the contrast which is thus suggested to our hearts. We have learned in scripture and in our own experience something of the utter moral ruin and worthlessness of a man who is the constant negation of God's will and pleasure. But in the Son of God we find One of whom it can be said, "Yea is in him", and this not only as to His personal perfection, but as to the whole circle of divine pleasure and purpose. Everything has broken down in connection with man according to the flesh, but everything is established in the Son of God. The most pious and conscientious believer is the one who will have the deepest sense of his own imperfection. He will have a profound consciousness that his house is "not so before God"; and this is the necessary and divine preparation for entering into an intelligent appreciation of "an everlasting covenant, Ordered in every way and sure", according to the terms of which everything is established in another Person, who becomes "all my salvation and every desire". (2 Samuel 23:5.) Our hearts are thus disengaged from every kind of secret wish to connect the blessing of God with ourselves as in the flesh. We are set in the presence of One in whom all is established without a shade of imperfection. This is the line of ."the works of God". His great work is to establish us in Christ in the power of a holy anointing which is divinely effective to this end.
Christ thus becomes practically everything to our hearts, all our salvation and all our desire. We delight to forget the things which are behind -- things creditable to us as in the flesh, but in which everything carried the stamp of imperfection -- and to press on after Christ. "The excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" shines inTHE MINISTRY OF JOHN AS CONNECTED WITH "BEGINNINGS"
NOTES OF A READING
NOTES OF A READING
THE ACTIVITY AND PURPOSE OF GRACE
'Yet sure, if in Thy presence
My soul still constant were,
Mine eye would, more familiar', 'Its brighter glories bear,
And thus Thy deep perfections
Much better should I know,
And with adoring fervour
In this Thy nature grow'. (Hymn 51)A TRUE SERVANT
NOTES OF A READING
THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR
'From the triumph and the glory
Of Thy rest in love divine,
Comes to us the wondrous story,
How God's purpose made us Thine; How by dying Thou hast freed us
From the man of sin and shame,
That, unhindered, Thou mightst lead us
Now to know Thy Father's name'. (Hymn 61)THE DIVINE EFFECT OF THE TRUTH
CHRIST AS LIFTED UP AND BURIED
THE PURPOSE AND LOVE OF GOD
THE FOOD OF LIFE
SATISFACTION IN CHRIST
DIVINE TEACHING
THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SON OF GOD