"Christ God's power and God's wisdom", 1 Corinthians 1:24. Now these are two distinct lines of truth; the one, which is the power of God, for the conscience; the other, which is the wisdom of God, for the spiritual mind. Christ comprises both. The apostle says, "That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect", etc. Now to the wisdom the babes in Christ should be gently led on; but the power, what the grace of God is in dealing with a ruined sinner, ought to be within the comprehension of the true hearted, however young in the school. Nevertheless it will be found, in daily converse with souls, that even this, elementary though it be, is very feebly apprehended; nay, that the divine idea in renewing a soul is seldom or never laid hold of; and if this be not laid hold of there can be no correct or adequate conception of what new birth is. I believe it is at the very foundation that the real cause of weakness in souls is to be found. And one of the evidences of how the will is in this weakness -- for it is nothing but the flesh -- is the obduracy and slowness of souls to lay hold of God's idea in sending His Son to bless them. If you ask believers in general what they consider is elementary, you will find that it is something which is to contribute to man as man is. Now the grace of God begins entirely outside, reveals His Son in me. I am daily more convinced that the reason why souls call God's idea -- and, blessed be His name, His accomplished purpose, that He has given us eternal life in His Son -- 'high truth', is because they do not want to cease conferring with flesh and blood.
Surely our Lord's wondrous words in John 4 as to the "gift of God" were elementary; or, at least, He considered that they were not above the reach of the poor, ignorant, and abandoned woman of Samaria; yet
if such truth were insisted on in the present day, there is no doubt that all who desire to gratify their reputable tastes and foster their ambition, would designate it 'high truth'. It was the definiteness of God's idea for man that our blessed Lord then enunciated: "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life". This I believe is what is not sufficiently insisted on in this day, though most elementary; and, to the true-hearted soul, it will always be with the voice of the Son of God.
Souls like forgiveness to be preached, and they like to enjoy it; and though forgiven, to lie on their beds just as palsied as ever (see Mark 2:8 - 12), only more comfortably as to conscience, which is quieted by being delivered from the fear of judgment; but they have no idea of what is God's thought for them by the gift of eternal life in His Son, for if they had they would take up their beds and walk. I fear what people call 'high truth' is too often, even as it was with the scribes and Pharisees in our Lord's day, something which they do not wish to understand.
Serving the Lord in order to be happier in Him tends to legality. The work done is the source of the happiness and not Christ Himself. In John 14 I learn what Christ is to me, and there is no service enjoined beyond obedience, which is the proof of love. If I love, I obey. Mary Magdalene is an example to me of one whose heart was so true to Christ that apostles or angels could not divert her from Him; but as soon as she has seen Him, her heart is satisfied. His calling her by name is everything, a personal, individual link. What can surpass it? She is so controlled by Him of whom her heart is full, that she obeys Him even at the loss of His
bodily presence, because a truly loving one could do nothing less. I believe that deep, personal joy in Christ is a very quiet, unexpressed thing. Where there is great fervour in expression there is not likely to be so much depth, though there may be real conviction. Demonstration expresses first discovery rather than a home sense of personal enjoyment. How much demonstration and rapture do we exhibit to our most beloved friends when we are at home with one another? When we meet them after an absence, there may be rapture, but this is an evidence that there has been absence. Alas! we are often absent from our Lord; and the renewed sense of His presence may doubtless produce rapture in its contrast with what has gone before; but it is the lower thing, and the restful enjoyment of His personal nearness is the greater thing. Let us therefore not make everything of rapture, but rise from it to the deeper occupation of abiding communion with Him. It is from this communion that the service ought to flow; for communion with any one is in fact a common mind with such a one; and if I have it with God, I know my Master's mind. It is not the hardest working servant who is the most confidential in the household, and it is the confidential servant who is the highest. I am willing to keep the door, if no other work be allotted to me; but I should like so to keep it that my Master should trust me with His mind.
The saint is never to think himself proof against the evil in the world. No doubt by faith he is kept from the evil; but then he must not shut his eyes to the special form it takes in his day, if he would be free from it. The reverse is the fact. Any evil working in the world finds its way into the hearts of saints in a refined, specious way. Now sensationalism is one of the means by which Satan is blinding the minds of the people of the world in this day. Be it the novel, the concert, or the stage, a sort of mental intoxication is sought and produced. And may not this in a specious form enter
into spiritual things? Was there none of it in the revival meetings? Is there not a leaven of it now? And should not souls see that their rapture and delight is not that in which the flesh takes part, but on the contrary, that which ignores the existence of the flesh, because they are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit?
God, out of the spontaneous feelings of His own heart, has come in and taken out from among this world certain persons who were devil-possessed, led captive, full of evil passions. God has come in, taken them up, revealed Himself to them, and made them the body of which His Son, seated at His own right hand, is the Head in heaven. The Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, is now on the throne of the Father, of the Highest; and God has down here on earth an answer to what He is up there. He is making good His name on earth, in spite of all that Satan can do. What grace! God is in heaven, His Son Jesus is set down at His right hand, the Holy Spirit is here; and here, in you and in me, He makes good that which is the answer to the position of His own Son as Head of the body. This is grace passing understanding; grace which for height passes measure, for it reaches to the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; grace which for depth comes down under all our ruin, and which reached to us when we were rolled round and round by Satan, like withered leaves in autumn. And here in us He makes good this answer. To us He says, 'You are the proof that my Son is sitting up here as Head'. And this is the position in which we are to "stand"; as it says in Ephesians 6:14, "Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth", etc.
Here is our position; and in stating it, grace assumes that the hearts are all right with God. Oh! when one sees how God takes this for granted, how the heart
must desire to live as constrained by the love of Christ! How ready we are to be taken up with a hundred objects, with any save that One with which the Holy Spirit thrills in us! Our houses are unpurged, ourselves unjudged; but still He sees us as the living members of His own Son, the living Head; and the soul is supposed to have a character suited to the sons of such a Father, to vessels sealed by the Spirit. Oh! how it shames us to see what the church of God was; how single-eyed, esteeming beyond every object that which was dear to God; seeking to be Christ-bearers in the world! God sees how decrepit we are, but He looks at us now as connected with the Son at His right hand. How far have we a single eye? No eye is single but that which sees God continually. How little one finds in souls the knowledge of the true God, and of His Son Jesus Christ, even among those who make a profession of knowing it, having received the truth as to the mercy and grace of God; but the imagination may play with truth which is not in the heart.
One cannot help feeling that there ought to be a chivalry about us now beyond anything ever known in the church of God of later times. Luther did not get beyond justification. Like the woman in Luke 7, there was great true-hearted devotedness, but all to distinguish Christ on earth.
He never got farther; even Melancthon would have reformed the national church. We now profess to know Christ as the One with whom we are quickened (quickened is always used, I believe, for the whole work of life, including the body); and hence we ought to declare, "The world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world". We should distinguish Christ by renouncing it for His burial, like the woman in John 12 who devoted the most precious thing she had to His
burial; or in other words by being dead to it altogether, because He has died out of it. This truth necessarily imposes on us a much more chivalrous and self-renouncing path than that of Luther or Melancthon. We have not merely to contend with indulgences or gross corruptions, but we have to brave the coldness and distance of 'our own', the saints who refuse what we seek to enforce -- that the one living by Christ now is also crucified as to himself with Christ. If one term of the proposition be true, the other is true also. Weaken or limit the scope of the one, and you must weaken and limit the scope of the other. How many say that they have Christ as their life who, instead of seeking to be as crucified ones here, argue and contend for acknowledgment in the flesh here in position and self-gratification, satisfied so long as there be no degradation of man naturally, which is their standard. Now this is a great and growing evil. The truth as to grace is increasing, and is pressed with such clearness that there is general acceptance of it; but the great testimony which should flow from an acceptance in power is nowhere to be seen. "Whose god is the belly" could be said with too much truth of the mass of the professing people of God. That is to say, their own tastes rule more than God's mind. The saints have to be warned and preserved against being legal, as we see in Romans and Galatians; but there is another and a worse form of evil, and that is, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness -- practically denying that in the flesh we were crucified with Christ, while professing that we live by Him; and this we know will be the final form of evil in and among the people of God on earth.
There are two distinct lines of truth which require to be presented with special distinctness. That first is, What is God's thought in saving us? This thought He has consummated in His Son, and we require to have the scope of it before our souls. Every priest in Israel did not comprehend the temple and its furniture; but
the temple and its furniture presented the mind of God about Israel, and each, at least, saw what he was called to attain to. Now in the present day the truth is lowered to the measure of man's need; hence if the need be met, which grace does, the convert makes no advance; he rests in the satisfaction of his need, instead of being directed to the scope of God's thought, which only begins at his need. Where would souls be put if they were simply and definitely instructed in Christ Jesus and Him crucified, connected by faith with the living One, who was here crucified, and whose death terminated man in the flesh?
The second line of truth so needed is, the place and walk incumbent on us who have received Christ here on earth -- the nature and character of that place. For it is not in the glory that we shall set forth the power of the risen Christ; it is here where He died, and where we are dead, that we ought to display the properties and virtues of Christ risen from among the dead.
Intelligence in truth depends on the spiritual state of the soul. It is quite impossible, before you have apprehended your union with Christ, that you should comprehend what the effects of that union are. Now we are hid with Him. When He shall appear, all shall be put in order, all shall suit His presence. Now all is confusion. The world has cast out Christ; but He has gone up to the right hand of God, and is gathering His saints until He appears, shows Himself to them, and puts all straight. The moment Christ shows Himself, He must have the upper hand of all evil. It was a matter of promise to the saints of old. Would it be your delight if He fulfilled it? If we are settling ourselves down here, we shall not desire that day; we shall not look for His appearing. We have to go through this world, an immense system of which Satan is the head; but our
hearts ought to have communion with God, conscious of Christ's separation from it all, and of our association with Christ Himself. Now we have the same as He, all but the glory. You cannot separate the Head from the members. There is nothing which Christ takes up but what is ours; suffering is thereby ours also. You cannot separate Christ and all He has from the saints. He is in them and with them, and when He shall appear, they shall be like Him. Ever since the Holy Spirit came down from heaven, this is our place. One thing that characterises Scripture is that the highest motives are supplied for the meanest things. Servants are exhorted not to purloin (see Titus 2:10 - 14). Brethren are not to go to law because they shall judge the world. In the most minute and commonplace actions the coming is brought in as a motive; nothing less is contemplated but that the very thing which moves all actions in the saints should be that they have, and are to have, Christ's presence.
The Lord Jesus having come and reconciled us with Himself, all His object was to set us in the same place with Himself, and nothing short of this. You cannot put Him in a place in which you do not necessarily, and in virtue of it, put me. And what is the consequence? I have this hope -- the realisation of this union. Associated, identified, mixed up with Christ. You cannot separate the two. The world and Christ are now at issue. Christ retires as it were; He does not assert His rights. But by and by the world will have to succumb, and it shall be manifested then that the church had its place in Him before and beyond the creation of the scene in which it was to be gathered. Our hope is that which flows necessarily from connection with Himself, the being with Him for ever, connected with Himself everlastingly. He will come again to receive us unto Himself. And what more? Nothing? "That where I am, there ye may be also". For ever with the Lord -- that is all! And that is full blessedness.
The thought or the practice of co-operating in work for Christ, while there is not communion with the truth which He has communicated, implies that I can separate His work from His mind.
Communion may exist with very partial knowledge. Communion with another is common mind with him, while the scope and extent of it is according to knowledge. My child and I may have communion to a certain point. I know all he knows; he only knows a part of what I know; but so far as he does know and is engaged with it he has communion with me and I with him. So it is as to co-operation in Christ's work. To say that it can exist without communion in truth implies that two can engage in Christ's work without common ideas of Christ; but it is not a question of the extent or fulness of the idea. If my idea of Him be of the same order, I am after all, however feeble, in communion with the most advanced and apprehensive, for the greater includes the lesser if it be of its own order. I do not rise up to its fulness, but I am not occupied with anything not of it, or apart from it. If I am occupied with any thing apart from it, then communion is at an end. I am occupied in my mind with that which is not of His mind, and this must necessarily damage my service for Him. The question narrows itself to this: 'Can I preach the gospel in conjunction with another who sees quite differently from me respecting the church of God?' We agree as to the way, and the necessity of salvation; can we work together while we differ about the church and its order and place on earth? I should say No; for though there is an agreement in one point between us, we are in fact working for different ends, so that the agreement loses its value. We preach the gospel together and souls are saved, but as to the question, 'What is Christ's mind for the
saved ones as walking here for Him on earth?' we are entirely at variance. One as an evangelist remembers that he belongs to Christ's body on earth (see Ephesians 4); the other does not; and if this be a matter of indifference to us, we make our service the link between us, and not the mind of Christ. If Christ's mind be really my aim, I could not happily co-operate with one who would lead His people into a form bearing the name of 'the church', but which I know to be contrary to His mind. Is it then Christ's mind that I seek for co-operation in work, help from one who supports and advocates that which is not His mind? Surely if I am walking with Christ, His mind must be what I seek, and nothing lower. Any one who has the same end in view, any one who is following His mind, however darkly and distantly, I can happily co-operate with; but if His mind be my aim, and nothing lower, however good, it is evident that I could not co-operate with one avowedly and practically committed to act contrary to His mind. There could be no communion between us. The supposed communion was that we desired together to win souls by presenting the grace of God. If both were really and simply confined to this, and were committed to nothing else; if neither had light or thought as to what Christ would have us do on earth; and if each were quite willing and ready to be taught what His mind was, then there could be co-operation. But when there is co-operation in work without communion in truth, the work is made the object of communion, and not the mind of Christ. And thus Christ's servants are reduced to the level of mere philanthropists, who cooperate with one another merely to promote a certain good for man.
For instance, teetotalism is philanthropic co-operation after this order. All that is required in the co-operation is zeal and purpose in promoting a certain good. The simple and entire object is to promote sobriety, and it is no matter what are the sentiments of the co-operator,
provided he earnestly and devotedly gives himself to the advocacy and promotion of teetotalism, which is the limit and end of the agreement and co-operation. Now this is the principle on which it is supposed in this day that one may co-operate with another in preaching the gospel, however wide and avowed may be their difference as to what is Christ's mind for His people on earth; and this principle implies that a certain good for man is the end and limit of the co-operation, and not the mind of Christ. But surely the mind of Christ ought to be the end and object of every servant of Christ. Where it is so, there can be co-operation with any one who seeks the same end, however distant such an one may be from a full knowledge of His mind. But this is a very different thing from essaying to agree with another about preaching the gospel, who at the same time avowedly supports and advocates what is contrary to Christ's mind. The question then entirely resolves itself into this: Is it man's gain or is it Christ's mind that is my end and object? If the latter, I can co-operate with any, however ignorant, who also makes His mind the end and object, but clearly not with one who ignores what His mind is, or who is supporting that which is contrary to His mind. I am debarred from communion and co-operation with such an one, not by his ignorance but by his wilfulness. An Apollos is ignorant, but he is not wilful. It is a very different thing to co-operate with an ignorant servant, than with one who is determined and committed to maintain his own system; with such an one I cannot co-operate for the purpose of effecting any good for man, if the end before me be the mind and service of my Lord and Master.
If we are the church militant, whose soldiers are we? Is it with us conflict or pleasure? How far is the word laid on our hearts as the spring of the soul? How far are we counting that all connected with Satan is shortly to be bruised? But nothing shall be bruised that is connected with Christ the Son of God. Now warfare must be exercised. He has broken your bonds that you may be free to go on in His service; it will not endure for ever, there will be a blessed contrast; but now we are servants, learning to endure. What, then, is the provision made for service? "Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth". It is only lately in this country that we have begun to understand the worth of the girdle; the heavy weights of railways have taught us something of its worth and use. In foreign countries it is much counted on for gathering up the strength, and increasing it, and letting people know what they can do. It is just so with truth to a christian, it comes searchingly home about the loins; it surrounds us, while it tells of His grace. The word lets us know what is true according to God and what is not. Now if you have the word close round about you, you will find it uncommonly searching. The eye of Christ was on the word when Satan tested Him in the wilderness. 'This', said He, 'is not consistent with truth. I am not bound there'. See the specious attempt of the adversary to mis-state truth, and to bring out thereby some single feeling for self; but he could not find in Christ's heart one single feeling for Himself and not for God, whether the question was as to what He was as Man, or as to circumstances around Him. Whatever it was, the deliverance to the Lord's mind was, "It is written". It was not that what Satan said was not Scripture, but it was not truly applied to Him as a Servant doing His Father's will. But the Lord
was "girt about with truth"; He bowed to God's thoughts, and Satan passed quietly out. Where truth was, He was bound by it. It was not so with Peter; his loins were not girded, he was not a Nazarite; a single desire did not fill his soul. Hence there was weakness in his course. The great question is, What are God's thoughts about me? This searches all the secret walk and failure of our lives, for walking up to this is our power of testimony, and going on in His truth we shall find the strength of the Nazarite, and the separation of the Nazarite, so that none will be able to bind us as Samson was bound when he defiled the head of his consecration. If in any way we have been seeking self; we have lost the character of Nazarite soldiers; we have not the loins girt about with truth. The great thing for this day is to get the heart before God; to find ourselves out individually as to the God of truth. He looks at us now as connected with the Son at His right hand. He is the model He has given us; and when He looks into our hearts with power, it is to show them Christ, in whom is all His delight, as the One with whose image He would have us stamped.
When the light of God breaks in on us, the first impression is that of wonder and delight; and this impression is so new and exhilarating that the tendency often is to be engaged with it rather than with the use of it. Nothing is more palpable and painful than the fact that in all ages light broke in on many who were either satisfied with the dawn of it or with using it very partially; and thus they did not reach to the end of light. The end of light is only reached by using it, and if I am satisfied with the fact of the entrance of it, or of having used it in some measure, I have failed to discover the end of it. It is thus we can account for all the imperfect movements in the church of God since its decline.
Every reformation, every separation, was suggested and executed by light at the first, and the effect seemed so satisfactory that souls were buoyed up with the idea that they had reached the end of light. The end of light is to separate from all evil, and to place us "in the light, as he is in the light". We then "have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin". The end of light is never reached until this point, for this is the point to which light leads, and all its exertion is thitherward.
When light first dawns on a soul, it is felt to be to it as real a spiritual power as the light of the sun is real and powerful to the natural eye. The soul first awakes to it, and then begins to use it, and it is in the use of it that it finds out the end and value of it. If I am in a deep dark dungeon, long enveloped in darkness, and a light strikes in on me, and discloses a way of escape from it, I am immeasurably entranced with the light. But when I begin to use it, one stage of the journey is not enough; I must follow it, and follow it until I reach where it is supreme, where there is no darkness at all. It is not enough that I know that it has begun to work, or that it has helped me to take one step. No, I must follow it onward until I am "in the light, as he is in the light"; for after all, that is my only true place, and the place in which I am now recognised by God, for I am now "light in the Lord", Ephesians 5:8. The danger is that I become satisfied with this new favour because it has reached me and has acted to a certain point; and this is the reason why so many who have received light never advance to maturity. Like an oak planted in a flower-pot, such will never grow to their true proportions, for they satisfy themselves with the fact that light has reached them, and not with its value and use. Light is too often regarded as of individual existence, as if it were a lamp within me, rather than as reaching me from Him who is the Light. Christ is the Light, and the action of it is to lead me to Himself,
to place me in the light as He is in the light. This is the end to which it reaches, and towards which all its activity tends, for "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all"; and if I do not reach to it, there is not singleness of eye (Luke 11:34 - 36). There is some part dark, there is a seeking something besides Christ. The whole body is not luminous, as when a candle in its blaze gives light; and the end of light is lost to the soul. The light has dawned, and that is deemed sufficient, and just as much of it is accepted as suits us and enables us to go on with our fellows on earth, and not what suits God and us as His heavenly people. But to suit God is what we are called to now; and to reach this we must be in the light as He is in the light, and in no mere measure of it. And not only so, but it is there only that we can truly suit our christian fellows, for there only can we "have fellowship" with them; and our separation is of no low earthly character, but of a divine one.
One of the great snares of this day is the delusion that the flesh can be brought into the sanctuary; and it is sad and fearful how this occurs in various ways, and never without serious loss, and seasons of darkness or exposure to the christian. All the trouble in the assembly at Corinth was caused by the allowance of the flesh. They were carnal and walked as men. It is therefore of the utmost importance that we clearly understand that the habitation of God is only through the Spirit, and that the Spirit never coalesces with the flesh. On the contrary, It lusts against the flesh. It is in relentless opposition to it. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned". This truth cuts at the root of every human feeling and desire, and is the one most opposed by man's mind. For the Spirit lusts against
the flesh, "that ye should not do those things which ye desire". The first great thing for the saint to understand is that, in order to please God and be free from the power of the flesh, he must be in the Spirit. It is not doing or engaging in right things or services or meetings which will preserve him from the flesh; the only way is by keeping in that which is the opponent of the flesh, even the Spirit. To walk about in the practical abnegation of my natural mind and feelings in religious things, is a terrible ordeal to man. The bitterest condemnation to the old man, and the one which he in every way seeks to evade, is that he must in no wise come into the sanctuary.
In Psalm 73 I am taught the difference between a regenerate soul which looks out on the world from its own point of view, and one which is in the sanctuary with God. If I am the former, I regard and measure everything in relation to myself; if the latter, God is before me, and He is my standard. I see things as they are before Him. The Spirit keeps me there, and Christ is manifested to me. I am happy and blessed, not by seeing what I am, but by seeing and knowing Him. When the flesh intrudes and is allowed any place, it is ever with the result that I am ruled by it, for the Spirit has ceased to rule. If I suffer it to intrude in any way, be it in singing or praying or preaching, I shall find before long that what I have been occupied with has fostered the flesh instead of subduing it. And this it is which accounts for the little strength which saints have for ordinary life after seasons which have been considered the most animated and refreshing. Now the fact of possessing spiritual gifts does not preserve one from the intrusion of the flesh, as we see by the epistle to the Corinthians. The heart of man is deceitful above all things. The flesh would have led Paul to be exalted above measure because of his vision in the third heaven, where he in his flesh was not even acknowledged. It would have led him to boast of having been where he
as a man was so completely ignored and passed over as one non-existent, that whether he was in the body or out of the body he could not tell. There is a solemnity and weight about one who is in the Spirit, outside the flesh, which cannot be mistaken. There is a faith in Christ and a rest in God entirely different from the satisfaction which thrills the natural mind by the force of language or the pathos of music. Like the sacred perfume of the sanctuary (Exodus 30:37 - 38), it is unique and not to be imitated; there is a liberty in the glory which the Spirit alone possesses. That we are not in the flesh but in the Spirit is the main principle of our present position and power. If I am in the Spirit, Christ is my object, and everything that I do is according to His mind, and therefore with edification to the saints and growth to myself. If not, the door is open to the flesh, and there is no victory over it. When the flesh is allowed any entrance, there is a dark part in the body (Luke 11:35 - 36), and this dark part affects the whole body like a waster on a candle; the light is obstructed, and the body is not luminous. Moreover, if the flesh be even apparently sanctioned before God, there is an unquestionable warrant for giving it a place among men; whereas if it be thoroughly and entirely refused any place before God, there can be no warrant for its position or acknowledgment before men. If allowed in a christian it must be exposed; there will either be open failure or darkness of soul, for "he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption".
The foundation is Christ. It is not in the separate stones that the value of the temple consists, it is the temple as a whole; and the foundation on which the whole temple stands is the righteousness of God, in which He raised Christ from the dead and quickened us together with Him. It is not merely that we have
something outside, but we have that which is in us, the power of life. And this is most important as to walk. Sealed with the Spirit, I am one with Christ. There is a great amount of slovenly walk before God in the thought of quietness. True there should be quietness; but it must be the quietness of life. God has set us in a certain position, and then claims everything from us according to that position. It is not to be my mind working on God's truth, but God's truth working on my mind. We have an unction from the Holy One. There is a marvellous difference between grasping after truth, and finding truth itself holding us. One who has intercourse with a living Christ has the power of life, and there is no other way of quitting ourselves like men than by living out this life.
The mind of man can be used in two ways to defeat or counteract the mind of Christ, in one by restricting that which is enjoined, and in the other by advocating and pursuing more than is enjoined. Be the turn to the right hand or to the left, the right path has been deviated from. Now this is just the way ministry has suffered and been obstructed. On one side it was regarded as outside men in a secular position. The minister is a man among men, but in respect to his office placed on an eminence, with an enforced immunity from the engagements of those to whom he ministers, and consequently with permission for their continuance in them. The minister, in virtue of his position, and not because of his moral standing, is invested with a sacredness and separation from men ordinarily. His sacred office, not his personal sanctity, acquired for him this elevation and distinction. They who estimate everything as God estimates it will soon see that there is no elevation in the house of God without spiritual power or gift; but no sooner has light broken in than
we are exposed to a danger on the other side. Many men now, and sometimes women, having merely ability and readiness to convey their impressions, assume and undertake to declare the gospel and the word of God. Now while I should heartily say, "Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets!" yet I feel that we must not lose sight of the solemn and holy business and calling of a minister of Christ. If a man is assured that the Lord has entrusted to him a commission to preach or to teach, then he is bound to fulfil this ministry. And if this be the case, he will not only be assured himself, but the spiritual -- they whose judgment is of any weight -- will be able to recognise the gift of the Lord to him, and this the more distinctly according as the mind and life of Christ are seen in him at the same time. It is not only that he has an inward conviction of divine light, but his whole being should bear marks of the gift conferred on him. Can such a gift be conferred without any moral insignia? Can I have received a commission from Christ, and have none of the sacredness, or the separation morally from human engrossments which the natural mind accords to a legalised minister? Is it not right to expect and demand that the minister who asserts that he has been appointed and qualified by Christ should exhibit testimonials of his appointment morally superior to any traditional imitation? Should he not make full proof of his ministry? Is the casket to bear no evidence of the value of the jewel? Is the vessel not to be descriptive of the gift deposited in it and which is assumed to be expounded by it? It is a serious question. Is not the minister personally the exponent of the value of the truth which he presents? Ought not the evangelist to be able to say, "I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds"? "In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses",
etc. (2 Corinthians 6:4 - 10). Is it too much to expect that a minister should be in himself a testimony of the truth which he propounds? How is it to affect others, if it has no effect on the teacher? Hence it is said, "Be not many teachers ... knowing that we shall receive greater judgment".
There is a great difference between a minister now and a prophet of old. The latter often did not know the meaning of that which he spoke. Now we are on the ground that "I believed, therefore have I spoken". But if I believe a truth and attempt to teach it, and at the same time make no true effort to conform myself to it, do I not in my own person avow the impracticability of the truth which I minister? If I believe it, and have yielded to it, as far as I have, I can insist on the truth and its divine efficacy. And as a minister, one's power really goes no further. Souls may be awakened through any instrument in God's sovereign grace, but souls are not nurtured and matured by careless indifferent ministers. The minister of Christ must take Christ's place. "When he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them". The minister should say, like Gideon, "As I do, so shall ye do", Judges 7:17. The evangelist points to the door -- to Christ, for He is the door; but it must be from the inside, from where he has got himself And the one who enters through his instrumentality cannot help having his eye on the servant who has pointed out the door to him; and at his first introduction he necessarily bears in his eye the one who has got in and the sort of being he is. If worldly, he necessarily concludes, As he got in worldly, so may I. And thus, in every truth, the one who ministers gives me my first idea of what would be the effect of the truth ministered; so that, if he be worldly, I assume that I could hold that truth in a worldly condition, as well as the one who ministered it to me. Thus the ministry is blamed.
The Lord give grace that the many now entering
His service may understand that, while they feel there can be no higher or better service, nor any work equal to the Lord's work, they may be so true to it that they may seek to be the living exponents of the truth they minister, and may thus in moral power minister to their fellows, assuring them of the efficacy and blessedness of that which they advocate.
Consistency is being true to a given standard. Now the constant taunt is that there is more consistency when a lower position is assumed than when a higher one is insisted on. The pretensions are of course in keeping with the position. It is said, for instance, and with some show of justice, that they who make the law the rule of life are more consistent than they who believe and assume that Christ is their life and model in everything. Consistent to what? is the question. To the law or to Christ? But that is not the comparison intended. The force of the reproach is this, that they who do not profess such high ground are on the whole better men, and less erratic, than they who do. Now we shall clear the ground immensely if we consider the position of each with regard to the standard by which his consistency can be judged. The law addresses a man in the flesh; Christ is only known and maintained by His own Spirit. I do not disown and ignore man by the law; I cultivate and restrain him, and according as this is successful, I add to man's self-respect and self-distinction. On the contrary, as Christ is received and followed, man as he is in the flesh is ignored; and the Spirit, which controls and uses his body and mind as belonging to Christ, is alone acknowledged.
Now there is a great difference between these two standards; and not only so, but the effect or demand which each has on me is vastly different. In the one case I am required to exalt men to the only true,
proper, and divine elevation for a man; in the other I am required to be a dead man and accept another and a higher life, and in the power of it to impersonate Him who is the fountain and source of it to me. Surely the difference is immeasurable. And hence, if I analyse the history of a disciple of each of these standards, cannot fail to see that the one who is required to exalt himself to his highest moral point makes a much better appearance, and walks apparently with more consistency than the one who is called to set aside self at every point -- which is the ground he has professed to take -- and to walk outside that which is of the flesh, in the spirit of Christ, as a heavenly man. No doubt the latter vastly surpasses the former when he is consistent with his standard, but this can only be in proportion as he is held by the power which transfers him from his own self into Christ. If his hold on, or faith in, that power relaxes, he is worse off than one who only seeks to conform himself to the moral perfection of the law, because he has nothing to fall back upon, or to act on as to himself, his calling being to live outside himself in Christ; whereas the other is called to live properly in himself. It is plain that if I make myself my study with any true purpose, I cultivate myself to exhibit a certain commendable appearance. The law was to set up the first Adam in its best estate. But if through grace I seek to live outside the first Adam, and to live Christ, I am infinitely worse off in appearance, when I fall back to myself, than one who had never abandoned the old man at all. I am practically the sow that was washed wallowing in the mire. I am like one who had been exalted to high estate now suddenly reduced to a level where every one is better off and more skilled than he is. In short, the one tries to excel in walking; the other knows that he is required to fly, and studies flying only. Hence, if he falls, he must appear more powerless than the one who walks, and whose skill in walking is commendable. No one can
be so helpless or pitiable as the one who is destined to fly when he forfeits his power of doing so. Surely such a one must appear among walkers more incompetent and inconsistent than the feeblest walker.
Another thing has to be taken into account. The man who cultivates himself obtains commendation from men in a measure that the one who cultivates Christ will never receive or elicit. The one cultivates what exalts man, and therefore what suits man; the other, that which ignores man and which rises above him. Hence we need to be careful lest the good in man which we sometimes commend be really of Christ or not. We must not forget that that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God; and doubtless many a one, falling, or failing to fly, but still accepting no lower position, is more acceptable in the eye of God than one very fair in his conduct and walk among men, who seeks only to raise himself to the standard of the law, which is the first Adam's highest elevation. The inconsistency complained of arises in fact not from the high position to which we are called, but from our not walking according to it. There is no fault in the high position, but it is easier to nature to walk in the lower position. But then this lower position, however commended by man, loses all its value before God when I find He has called me to the higher one, and not to the lower at all. If this be admitted, the comparison cannot be maintained. I may censure a saint for not walking up to his high position, but I cannot commend one who excuses himself for taking a position to which God has not called him, because he can walk among men more evenly therein than in that to which God has called him. In fine, such an argument amounts to this -- that it is better for those who are called to fly not to attempt it, but to walk, because if they attempt to fulfil their calling they might fall; so that it is better in the apprehension of such reasoners to ignore and deny our calling.
The above thoughts have been suggested by a communication from a correspondent on 'high profession with low walk', concluding with the following remarks: 'Doubtless it is most displeasing to God to see a high profession with a low walk'; but we must remember that God has laid down our true position and in reality we cannot alter it. Every christian is really in the high position, whether he owns it or not. It is in vain for any to say, Oh, I fear I cannot maintain a corresponding walk, and therefore I will take a lower position. The word is plain and positive: "God ... hath quickened us" young or old, instructed or ignorant, "together with Christ, and hath ... made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus", Ephesians 2:4 - 6. This is our true position, and surely no one can think of taking a lower position, without doing despite to the Spirit of grace, in order that his walk may be more consistent. If really a christian, his position must remain the same. Just as an adopted son to whom, by unalterable bonds, I make over an estate, may refuse to consider himself a son, and may associate with the bond-servants, or even run again into distance and exile; still he is my son, and the estate is his. The more shame on him if he does not appreciate it.
'Such is grace, the boundless grace of our God! and we cannot have any lower standing. Young christian, older pilgrim! we are all in that high and holy place in Christ Jesus. Shall it be said of us who accredit this truth, that our walk is less steady than the walk of any who do not accredit or appreciate it? Surely not. We cannot lower our standing if we would; nor would we if we could. We cannot preach a lower gospel. Let us then, one and all, seek to walk more and more in the power of the Holy Spirit, and adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. Amen'.
The thought of God in every revelation of His mind is that which pre-eminently gives us a clue to its value, and it is also an unchanging source of strength and blessing to us. Often times His revelations are studied and observed more with reference to the good which may result to us from them than in order to acquire an idea of His own purpose in giving them.
The thought of our Lord in calling His beloved ones around Him in "the same night in which He was betrayed" unfolds to us above all others the true idea of the Lord's supper. It was the same night in which He was betrayed, when everything here was coming to an end. Then it was, we read, that He "took bread: And when he had given thanks ..". He owned to God the grace and favour of giving the bread, for He Himself was the bread of God which came down from heaven; and He can give thanks for it, a thanks which finds an echo in our hearts. But this is not all. The bread for which He gives thanks, and for which thanksgiving fills our souls, He breaks. He gives Himself in death. The blessed One dies here for those under death. His death + opens a way for His beloved ones out of the charnel-house which all here is. He desires -- and this is His purpose -- that we, His own, should be kept in remembrance of Him in the way, and at the moment, in which He, by giving ++ His body, has opened a way for us into His life. It is not here, that is, in this remembrance of Him, that He would teach us the value of His death -- the appropriation of it, as in John 6; but here He would so connect us with Himself at this moment, that we might feel and know that as He has no longer a link with this scene, neither have we -- that we, while remaining in the scene, may not resume links with it, but on the contrary, that our chief expression
+In original edition reads "broken body";
++in original edition reads "breaking".
and joy of heart may be in remembering Him at the moment when He gave + His body for us, and thus opened a way for us out of death into His own life. The thought of His heart is to connect us, who are still in the scene which is under judgment, with Himself, in that moment on this earth when He by His death delivered us from it.
"After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped (or 'after supper'), saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me". The new testament in which we now stand is through His blood, and while we are here, and while He is absent, we drink this cup in remembrance of Him. It is not that we come to it to derive a benefit from His blood-shedding, but we come to remember Him who by His blood-shedding has placed us in the new covenant. It is because we are in this new covenant that we meet this desire of His heart, that we should remember Him at that moment, and in that act, by which He placed us in a new covenant, and thus necessarily apart from all that under which we lay. It is here on earth, where we are surrounded with all not in covenant with God, that we drink this cup, and remember Him who by His blood-shedding has placed us in covenant, even while we are still in a scene in itself at a distance from God. The one simple desire of the heart of Christ is that we should remember Him while we are in this scene, at the moment, and in the manner by which He delivered us from it and its judgment. Hence it is where He freed us from it all that He necessarily attaches us to Himself; not that I should be occupied with the deliverance, but with the Deliverer; and as I am occupied with Him, I am in heart and spirit rejoicing to be in Him outside of it all. No one can be truly in this remembrance but as he is apart and outside of all that from which the death of Christ separates him. It is
+In original edition reads "brake".
not His resurrection that He brings before me, it is His own death; to remember Him in His death, in the scene where it took place, and where I still am, and where He is not. It is here and in this state that I remember Him. If it were resurrection, it would be rising out of it; it would be passing from the death to the fruits of it. But it is in His death, in the scene and circumstances which required it, that He calls me to remember Him; and as I do, I know and feel and place myself outside of all here; I dissociate myself from everything here which required His death, and my heart is occupied in remembering Him at the moment when He gave His body+ and shed His blood, in order to free me from all that is around me. It is the stones erected in the midst of Jordan; see Joshua 5:9. It speaks to the heart -- O, how deeply and touchingly! -- of the only one thing on earth which interests me if I be true to Christ, of that one singular event which separates me from all here, but which connects me with Him, when He broke all natural links with the earth, in order to open out for me "a new and living way ... through the veil, that is to say, his flesh". It is impossible for any one truly to remember Him in His death, and to minister to self, that for which He died. If I discern the Lord's body, if I am eating worthily, I am remembering Him in His death ++; and necessarily I am not occupied with that which has been judged in His death. I discern His body, I judge myself. If I see Him dying for me, I cannot maintain myself. The two cannot exist together, the death and the thing judged in death. If I see Him in His death, I must judge, ignore myself. I have not remembered Him in His death, I have not discerned the Lord's body, if I have myself before me as my object. In the presence of Christ's given +++ body, I must judge that self of mine for which it was given ++++, I must allow it no
+In original edition "to be broken" is added;
++reads "broken body and shed blood";
+++reads "broken" for "given";
++++reads "broken" for "given".
place whatever, but be occupied with Him apart from and outside of it.
In 1 Corinthians 10 the saints in company are the expression on earth, during the absence of Christ, of His death, "The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" We together have communion with His body, and in concert, as by the one loaf, we make this expression. "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?" It is that we are thus together in communion with it. Each has already partaken of its value, and by one cup we express our unity. We have unity through the Spirit, and hence our acts are declarative of our unity.
The Lord says to His disciples, "I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you", John 15:15.
The evidence or mark, then, of being His friend, and not merely a servant, is that I know what my Lord does, and that I have received a knowledge of His mind. He is a servant who does not know his lord's mind; he is a friend who knows the mind of Christ. If the Lord communicates His mind to me, He regards me as His friend. If He does not communicate His mind to me, I am, however devoted, no higher than a servant. To be a friend to anyone, I must necessarily take an interest in his concerns. It is in the assurance that I have this interest that I can be regarded as a friend, or can care to be one. But if the one who accepts me as his friend is greatly superior to me, it is evident that I must grow into ability and appreciation of his order of things before he can either treat me as a friend, or I myself be equal to the duties of one. The higher the duties
imposed on a friend, the more unselfish he must be, and the more at liberty to give himself to these duties. For the duties are not a tax, but the pleasing activities of friendship. No one can, then, be called by Christ 'My friend' unless he has first been befriended by Christ; unless he has been so entirely relieved and comforted in his own heart that he now finds it his duty and happiness to devote himself to the One who has afforded to his soul boundless rest and peace. If I know the rest and blessedness which He unfolds to the soul believing on Him and walking in His ways, I cannot but live Him. I elect to live what I enjoy. I must first enjoy Christ as my life before I shall in any degree bear witness of Him. Very often earnest souls begin the other way; they try to bear witness of Him in order that they may enjoy Him; but while the effort is to enjoy Him, there must be a seeking one's own things. One's own spiritual enjoyment is before the mind and thoughts, and this circumscribes one to the limits of oneself, instead of imparting the ability to enter into the extent and fulness of Christ's heart and purposes. The things of Christ may occupy me, and yet the thought uppermost in my mind may be my own enjoyment in Christ; and though with this state there may be a good deal of interesting devotedness and zeal, yet the object is not Christ. Contrast this state with that of one who, enjoying Christ, knowing Him as the only resource for the heart, occupies himself with every interest and concern of Christ here. All his gain and all he enjoys is in Christ, who is absent. Hence he links himself with every interest of His in this scene through which he is passing. The joy of his heart is to be a witness in it of Him who is the rest of his own heart, outside and apart from it. If the absent Christ is the rest and strength and comfort of my heart above and beyond everything in this world, surely the only suited and natural place for me -- my heart claims it of me as His love requires it -- is that I should be here
for Him, His interests my interest, If I live with Him outside of this scene, it is necessary and incumbent on me to live for Him while passing through it. John 14 unfolds to me how Christ absent is the strength and comfort of my heart. Faith and love each reach a consummation satisfying to the heart in that wondrous chapter. Here is opened out to me my present blessedness in Him. When I know Him thus -- every element of comfort and strength being supplied, my soul by the Spirit being the abode of the Father -- I have nothing to seek. I know "the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge"; I am "filled even to all the fulness of God". If I have nothing to seek for myself, and if Christ is the resource and strength of my heart, surely nothing can interest me here but His things. Then I truly take my place in John 15; this chapter is then my external history, as chapter 14 is my internal. I am here for Christ, for my heart rests in Him; and as walking here for Him according to His commandments, He calls me not servant but friend. It is a special favour connected with testimony. The one great distinct mark of Christ's confidence in a soul is the communication to it of His mind. It is one only known to the witness. In John 14 He is my friend; He satisfies my heart in the fulness of His love and power. But as here for Him He calls me His friend, He communicates His mind to me; I am made to know what my Lord does, which a servant does not know.
Many a one knows something of rest and comfort in Christ, to whom He does not communicate His mind. A father loves all his children; each shares his bounty, but he does not confide his mind and affairs to each. He does so only as he thinks there is interest and capacity in any of them to enter into and help in them. Christ's love for the weakest lamb is often more tenderly expressed than for those more grown; yet He does not communicate His mind, or treat as His friend, any who are not occupied with His interests here, and that
according to His commandments. It is very simple. He loves and cherishes all His people; but He does not treat as a friend, by communicating His mind, anyone who is not truly and according to His mind in the place of testimony for Him here. It is one thing to be cheered and comforted by Him, and quite another to be told by Him what He is doing. To be cheered by Him is wonderful and necessary; but what can be a greater favour than to be informed of His mind in a scene where everything is against Him? God says of Abraham, "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?" A friend will serve me to the utmost; but the one who makes me his friend confides in me, entrusts himself to me; so that the knowledge of his love for me increases as I grow into his purpose and ways. To the true witness He so makes known His mind that His way is clearly declared. However great the confusion and the labyrinth here, He gives the clue, the thread by which His witness can fully extricate himself, according to His mind, from every difficulty, and know surely that it is His mind. But no one obtains the thread but the one who is truly for Him here. And hence so many have a certain rest in Christ, and a knowledge of His love, who neither know His mind nor have power to impart it.
The Lord in His mercy lead us into that devoted testimony where He may call us friends, and furnish us with this priceless thread, the knowledge of His own mind.
We must consider what is involved in the word 'witness of Christ' before we can definitely answer the question, Can a witness of Christ be worldly? We must also get a clear idea of what worldliness is. It is plain enough that a witness should set forth clearly the One of whom he testifies, or his testimony is a failure. Certainly he
cannot have any other aim; he can accept no lower standard. The Holy Spirit is the witness of Christ, and in His testimony there is no failure. And our Lord, after saying, "He shall testify of me", adds, "And ye also shall bear witness". The Holy Spirit is here to testify of the absent Christ, and every one led by the Holy Spirit is, as far as he is led by Him, a witness of Christ. Surely it is plain that such a witness cannot be worldly; and if I be asked what 'worldly' means, I reply, All that is not of the Father. To be in any measure a witness of Christ, I must faithfully represent Him in everything. Wherein I fail, I so far fail in being a witness, The strength and leading of the Holy Spirit is to make me a true witness, and as I walk in the Spirit I am one. My standard is Christ. I represent Him as I walk in the Spirit, who is on earth to testify of Him. I am His witness in the power of His life. I am for God, above the influences of an evil world, and I speak and act as He directs me.
The first great question to settle is, What is my testimony? I answer, Christ. And then it is evident that as I, in the power of the Spirit, represent Christ, I bear witness of Him. He is the standard, therefore I do not ask, May I do so-and-so? may I hold this or that position? but, Does the Holy Spirit use such a position for testimony to Christ? Some positions He can and does use for this; for instance, that of a parent, a husband, or a master. Nothing can be plainer than that I am a witness of Christ only as I set Him forth, and that to fail in representing Him is to fail in being His witness. It is no question of how much of the world I may hold and still be saved, or how much of it I may retain and be a preacher; but the question is, What constitutes me a witness? and the answer to it is, as the word imports, that I represent Him. If I want to see Christ on earth, I ought to see Him in His witness. But if one were to try to form an idea of Christ now from those who assume to be His witnesses, one must
be driven to imagine that Christ loved the world and relished the honour and glory of it! Alas! what a testimony we give of Him! To be what He would be were He here, not only as He was, but as He is -- this, and nothing short of this, is what I am called to as His witness, and what it is the Holy Spirit's office to maintain me in; and so far as I miss this, I lose the idea of a witness. A man may preach the gospel very earnestly, but though he bear witness to the grace of God, he is not himself a witness unless he presents Christ in himself, in that moral power in which Christ would be were He here. A man living in, and honoured by, the world may preach the gospel for souls, and that feelingly; but he is not a witness unless it can be proved that Christ would live in the world and be honoured by it! I am not now referring to a man's business or support; he must have some means of subsistence, and often God gives more, but as a gift to be used for Him and not for self. But what I press is, that in the most zealous preaching, though there be testimony to the grace and value of the gospel, there is no testimony to Christ unless it be accompanied with power in the Spirit, which places outside of flesh; and if outside of flesh, it must be outside of earthly position, for in earthly position I am in the flesh and not in the Spirit; and if I can retain earthly position, and still testify of Christ, then Christ is reigning on the earth and is not rejected from it; and hence the Holy Spirit is not His witness, for He is not the absent, rejected One! If He be, He can have nothing to say to high position in an earthly way. How could He? So that if I seek or maintain high position, I am not His witness. I may be a true saint or a zealous preacher, but in all honesty let me admit that I am not a witness. I am not walking in the Spirit; I am but a babe -- that is to say, carnal, not spiritual (1 Corinthians 3:1). I like and value the things which suit and aggrandise men. It is vain for me to plead for my course by referring to Daniel or to others
who lived before Christ's death, as is often done. It is that great fact, the death of Christ, which makes all the difference, for it was as rejected from the earth that He took the place of separation from it. His witnesses now are not to be merely witnesses of any given truth. Daniel was a faithful witness of the truth in his day. Christ had not come. Christ had not been rejected, and the witness necessarily takes his type according to the nature of the testimony committed to him. Surely testimony to Christ absent, testified of here by the Holy Spirit, is very different from the testimony committed to Daniel.
In a word, I maintain for Christ in everything and avoid all that which would minister consequence or recognition to the flesh, and hence I am outside and against the world, and not in any degree of it.
Faith is resting on the known mind of God which He has communicated, assured that whatever be the difficulties in the way of its fulfilment, or however great the opposition, it will ultimately be established. Faith in its very nature has to do with that which is not seen; it must rise above the visible and count on things that are not, as though they were. If everything here were of God, and all in full uninterrupted righteousness, there would be no need to rise from the visible in order to rest only on the invisible. But the contrary is the fact. Everything has been diverted from its divine place, and the more this anarchy has prevailed, the more faith has become the true and only principle of action for the man of God. Yet God has not deserted the earth. He rules and keeps it in check, and this is His providence; but this is evidently a different thing from faith. Faith knows His mind at any given time, as He is pleased to reveal it, and rests on it, assured that it will be accomplished in spite of all the opposition
and misrule which surround us. Faith rests on the mind and will of God, and not on the way in which He in His wisdom stems and controls the elements of disorder on earth. Faith rises to His will as a link in the chain of His purposes, a chain in which is neither bend nor break, and where every thought of His heart is maintained and in harmony. It soars into the undisturbed region of His blessed, unalterable will, and bides its time here, assured that it has the key of the position, and that in due time all will open out, and be as it has been intimated.
The moment man fell, and another rule besides God's, and irrespective of God's, obtained a place, God must either altogether suppress man, now acting for himself and supported by Satan; or, while suffering this evil rule, to a certain extent, to exist, He, as the only source of power, must check and control it as His wisdom and ultimate purposes require. God never gives up His supreme power; but it is plain to any thoughtful person that if man has, under the counsel of Satan, adopted another rule and line of action besides God's, God must either remove His disobedient creature from off the earth, or He must check and control his adverse intentions and ways. The latter is what God has done; and every intervention of His power here on earth is His providence. Such interventions are to check and limit the rule of self-will which has sprung up against Him; and faith of course recognises them as of God, for the purpose intended by Him; but faith itself rests in God in quite another region, and on quite another ground beside that of intervention put forth to check the progress of evil and self-will. The simple issue raised is this: Am I to live by faith, resting in God's word, above all the evil and opposition here, or am I to be dependent on His providences only for a knowledge of His will and of my walk through the world according to it? Nothing can be plainer than that faith, as I have attempted to represent it, is a far higher and
more restful path, as also the only true and safe one; for it views God's mind in a region where nothing checks or interferes with it; it sees Him as He is in Himself, and there rests on Him; whereas in providence I only follow Him in His way of limiting and controlling the misrule and disorder here, in order ultimately to bring about His own purposes. Again, faith is always intelligent and assured; but often the providences of God are mysterious and unaccountable.
Abram, the father of the faithful, is called to walk by faith, to go out, not knowing whither he went, and into the land of Canaan he came. By providence there is a famine in the land, and he goes down into Egypt. Occupied with the providence, he slips from faith. The famine was permitted of God; why, we know not, or need not enquire; but it was a providence, and Abram in following it turned aside from the path of faith in which he had hitherto walked; and I need not add that his doing so was attended with sad and painful consequences. God's word to Abram had been to dwell in Canaan, and while he walked in faith he adhered to this word; but when "the famine was grievous in the land" he declined from faith and regarded the famine as an indication to him to go where there was plenty; and here was his mistake and failure, because in doing so he surrendered faith, which has to do with nothing but God's word. It is not that I am to despise or disregard the providence, but I am not to surrender faith and adopt the providence instead. If I am walking in faith, and persistent in the path of faith, the providences will eventually suit and confirm me, not by carrying me outside faith -- which, if I make them my guide they must do -- but by proving that the God whom I rest in, and whose word I follow, is the same God who checks and controls the evil here by His providential hand. "A ram caught in the thicket by his horns" (Genesis 22:13) is a providence for Abram, when faith had previously risen above all providences. The man of faith can
turn providences to account, whether they be apparently for him or against. At Ziklag all the providences are against David; but he "encouraged himself in the Lord his God", 1 Samuel 30:6. If he had rested only in providences at that crisis, he must have succumbed, and that too at a juncture and a moment when he was within a step of the kingdom, for Saul was then being slain on the mountains of Gilboa.
In Matthew 14 the providences were against Peter when leaving the ship to join Christ on the water. Was he to hearken to the "Come" of Christ, or to be swayed by the winds and waves? They were providences and tested his faith; and in so far as he had faith, he found they were not really adverse to him, but that they contributed to fix his eyes more absolutely on Christ; but when the providences engaged him, he had no power to overcome them, he began to sink!
Paul in Acts 27, resisted every influence which could move or reach a man in order to shake his faith in God. Providence, too, was at first against him, for "the south wind blew softly", thus confirming the master of the ship in his rejection of Paul's counsel (verses 10 - 13); but this in no wise altered Paul's conviction, And why? Because he had acquired it from faith in God. Afterwards providences justify his faith. "Not long after", we read in verse 14, "there arose ... a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon". Providences will confirm and justify faith; but lead to faith they never will. Faith can use them and unravel them, and see oftentimes their object and use; but faith is wholly above and independent of them, though free to use and accept them as they fall in with that which it enjoins. When I am walking with God -- for that is faith -- enduring, "as seeing him who is invisible", I move on, though all circumstances be against me; and as I rise above them, I reach the providence which suits me, I am in the line of God's government, above all others. When Moses leaves Egypt (Exodus 2:15; Hebrews 11:27)
he appears to be flying in the face of providence; but at the well of Midian he finds, in answer to his own grace and service, a door of relief and mercy which he can accept provided for himself. How different it would have been if he had waited to leave Egypt until he had a guarantee of Reuel's reception in the land of Midian! Where then would have been his faith in the Invisible? God provides suitably to His own will and heart for the one walking with and for Him through a world of evil and misrule; but He Himself is the Guide for such an one, and not His providence. Hence all the providences for Moses in Midian must be put aside, and have no claim on him when God calls him to re-enter the path of faith and service.
The breaks in the path of faith are never counted to us in God's sight. Our journey is one of faith, and wherever we stop, or however long may be the interval, there exactly, even as if we had slept on the road, we recommence our journey. This principle may be confirmed throughout Scripture, in the history of God's people, whether individually or nationally. Abram, after his sojourn in Egypt, returns to "the place where his tent had been at the beginning ... unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first". With regard to Israel as a people, we find the same principle adhered to; but I need not multiply examples. I repeat, what I have to do is to act in faith in God, relying on His word, and in spite of all providences; and then, while pursuing the path of faith, I use the providences as they are suitable, not as guides to faith, but as means to carry out the works of faith; and faith, as I have said, is intelligent and explicable, and will know what are providences, and as such usable, and what are not. David, in facing Goliath, chooses five smooth stones from the brook and puts them in his shepherd's bag. These were the means which providence had placed in his hand; those which naturally came within the range of his calling; and this is a providence
-- what God in a natural way gives me a right to. Saul's armour might have appeared to be a providence, but to the man of faith it was not so, and he rejects it. We must make a distinction between what man does and what God does. All that is termed providence is not so, while much which by the unthoughtful is called chance is by the enlightened seen to be providence; but the tendency is to substitute it for faith; and the man who gets outside faith in walk has necessarily, if he keeps up any link with God, to turn to providences. If I am waiting on providence, I am like a ship without helm or compass on the surface of the ocean, driven about at the sport of wind and tide, thinking myself very fortunate if I get into a safe port; whereas if walk by faith I am superior to the wind and tide, though I use either or both when they come in the direction in which I steer. As to that I have no uncertainty; there are no doubts in the voyage of faith. God's providences, like the trade winds to the vessel, may come in to support and aid me, but they never generate or beget faith.
In a word, if I walk simply with God, I do whatever He, by His Spirit and word, tells me to do; not guided by what I see, or even by what I am given, but turning to account everything which I am given by His providence in that path in which I "look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen", even that of faith.
When the conscience is in exercise, there is great need that it should not be checked or quieted by partial action, or by imperfect intelligence. The conscience of a saint is awakened by the Spirit of God to seek relief from the presence of evil around. This is a true, healthy purpose, and most blessed and effective when
carried out according to the word of God. The danger and consequent loss is when compromise is entered into, when the conscience is quieted by one step, rather than by a definite and clear escape from the place of grievance. And thus, alas! the flesh is spared and the Spirit of God grieved, and there is really no progress. This often occurs in our christian history; the conscience has been aroused, but to meet it fully as in the light of God's presence would cost our nature too much. Of course we do not reason in this plain way with ourselves; but do we not often, perhaps years afterwards, discover that it was really sparing ourselves which led to our resisting the demands and strivings of our conscience? For now, being in the place of blessing which our conscience had long before indicated, we see how we had deceived ourselves, and thus had hindered our own blessing; and all because we feared the personal trial to which we should have been exposed in reaching it.
It is well to be warned of this device or weakness, from which all suffer many times and in many ways -- one which I may call an effort to appease the conscience without putting the flesh to much sacrifice -- because if we see how we have been deceived in this subtle way, we are the more careful to attend to our conscience, and how God is speaking to it, than how we may quiet it at the smallest cost to ourselves. In short, as a rule, when the conscience is arrested or exercised, the first thought is, not what will at all costs satisfy it according to God, but on the contrary, how I can answer its demand without involving myself in loss and pain. If in ordinary cases we are exposed to a temptation of this kind, and too often yield to it, how much more when the most eventful step in our life as a christian is the one on which the conscience is exercised. Can any step be more important, or involve consequences of greater magnitude, than the ground I take for Christ here in separating from the organised systems around?
Some dupe their consciences with the assertion that the evil in one place is as bad as in another; and hence they say they are not called to separate from any order or form in which they may find themselves. Others again endeavour to see themselves individually un-implicated in the things they disapprove of, because they do not sanction them, though they do not separate from them. Others labour honestly for reform, while they remain where they admit reform is needed. Others separate, and take the ground of meeting with christians in the name of Christ, and thus quiet their consciences, but make no real progress, because they do not reach, or seek to reach, the responsibility laid upon them because of this ground. Separation from what is evil is really never reached by departing from the place of evil, but by reaching the place appointed of God, where the flesh can have no place. Lot pleads for Zoar, no doubt a step in the right direction, but not the place appointed of God, and therefore not the place of strength and blessing. It is of all importance that I should reach God's ground, and not content myself with separating from the place of evil in which I find myself. It is written, "Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding", Proverbs 9:6. The former is the first right step, but it is not all. If I only do the former, I am only seeking what suits my conscience, and not that which suits God, and therefore I am still in something of man. This is the snare which so many fall into in this day. When a person takes even a right step with the object of getting ease and quietude to himself, to his own conscience it may be, there is reason to fear for him; but if he is seeking to reach God's mind, and if the step be taken as leading thereto, there is every reason to be thankful and hopeful on account of him. Every day almost we hear of people who have taken a right step, but who never think of doing more. Lot ought to have left Sodom, but he ought not to have contented himself with Zoar. Jacob ought to have left
Laban's house, but he ought not to have contented himself with Shalem. A right step is not enough. God's mind and appointment is the only measure, and Jacob has to be taught to go to Bethel, the house of God; and many a modern Jacob has to learn the same lesson. Paul instructs Timothy not only to depart from evil, but also to follow on in the divine path. It relieves the conscience to retire from the evil; but it requires the light and power of God's Spirit to lead us into what suits God and what is His way for us. The two tribes and a half can plead skilfully for remaining on this side Jordan; but if they had not planted themselves outside the promised land, they never would have needed to erect an altar; or something to look to. There is no shore more dangerous to really zealous souls than this. Every effort at separation from evil has in most cases ended in some one step, and hence all the sects of dissenters which have arisen. There never was a dissenter yet who had not taken some one right step, and this very step proved a snare to them; for, knowing that they had made a good move, their conscience was quieted, and they were glad not to be called to make any greater sacrifice. The snare lies in this: one is occupied with the thing done, which quiets, because it is a step in the right direction, and thus one is diverted from seeing or enquiring what God calls His saints to. One's own ease is consulted and not God; therefore the measure which affords a lull to the conscience is accepted, instead of that which God enjoins. How many nowadays avow separation from the world and from christendom, without seeing or really caring to apprehend the fundamental principle on which the church has been set up. It is not merely separation from the "great house", but it is also to "pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart". It is not only loosening and purging myself from everything unfit for God's house, but it is in heart and spirit adopting and maintaining
the principles which ever belong to His church, until He comes. His body is here, His members in unity through the one Spirit, and He in the midst where two or three are gathered to His name; and until the church be removed, any step short of this truth, if it be considered satisfactory, is a snare, because it deludes the heart, and diverts it from reaching the circle of Christ's heart on earth, and the circle in which, and for which, the Holy Spirit is here. It is a serious question; and it is sad indeed to see many, in the lawless spirit of the age, breaking loose from all church government which is conducted on false principles, but, like well-manned vessels at sea, without chart or compass, going hither and thither as they are drifted. They have left the unreliable, but have not been taught of God the true or the reliable. It is not enough that I have done something right, but what I have to do is the whole will of God. Nothing less can please Him or bless my soul.
In fine, if I make my own ease of mind or judgment the measure of my action, instead of the revealed will of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit, the consequence will be that it will be more difficult for me to be led on than for those who have not moved at all. For at the bottom the hindrance to me is the desire to spare myself the sacrifice; and according as I spare myself I deprive myself, in a hundred-fold proportion, of the blessing contingent on faithfulness; and hence they who rest satisfied with their right step never advance in truth or knowledge beyond a certain point.
But of this more another time if the Lord will.
Every believer in Christ feels and owns that it is his duty to serve. It is inseparable from the true faith of a christian. Nay, the extent and nature of his service in any line are always in keeping with the sense of the nature of his own blessing in Christ. In the service,
whatever be the line of it, there is always an indication of the nature of the blessing known in that line, and according as the blessing is known there is devotedness. This, I feel assured, is the real cause of the varied ways of serving which we meet in one and the same line. I am not now objecting to these varieties, but I desire to suggest a few considerations, in order that some of the varieties may be subjected to the test of the word of God, with the view of helping the true-hearted to see and accept the line which fully pleases the Lord.
The one simple path for any one who would minister to Christ is to follow Him. "If any man serve [Gk. diakone] me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour", John 12:26. Why do I serve and whom do I serve, ought to be my first question. I serve the Lord Jesus Christ, whose I am. But in order to serve Him, I must follow Him. All attempts to serve Him will be in vain, if I have not followed Him; and in this passage, following Him involves death -- death to nature, and this is the great mark of a true servant. If I am serving Him truly in any line, I have followed Him into His death, away from and outside of myself; and then my action is that of true ministry according to His mind. Where He is, I am.
If the way by which we arrive at true service were more clearly seen and observed, there would be neither a hasty engaging in it nor an indifferent way of discharging it. What a test would it be to every servant to put to himself the question, Am I following Him? It is not enough for me to do this or that, because others may approve, or because it is necessary or commendable in my own mind. I must, in order to begin according to His mind, first follow Him. It is not merely that I must be converted, but I must take the same course as that which He has taken. I repeat, what a test would this be! how rebuking to those who
choose a way and path or line of service of their own selection; but how cheering and consolatory to any one whose heart desires simply to follow Him, and thinks of nothing else, but who, in following, finds a line of service which he may reckon on as being the true one. For it is not a line of service that he is seeking, but to follow Christ, dying out of everything here, carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifest in his body; and it is in this path that service according to the mind of Christ is known and fulfilled by him. Nothing can be a surer mark of a true servant of Christ than that he follows his Lord and Master, dead to everything here, even as He died out of it. Is it not fit? Does it not speak to the heart and conscience that the servant of a lord and master who has died out of everything here should not only in duty but in affection follow in the same course? Nothing could be more appropriate or seemly; and assuredly it is because of weakness and unfaithfulness as to this that there is so little service now according to His mind. Let any one patiently think it over, and will he not come to the conclusion that the servant -- the fruit of Christ's death -- cannot live in that for which Christ died? The Lord has died for me, and has risen out of the penalty of death resting on me, to quicken me in His own life; and shall I now, if I would serve Him here, continue in that life of mine for which He died? or shall I die with Him unto myself, in order that I may live with Him and for Him? Dear reader, let it not be difficult to you to bow to this! The question is, What is service and to whom is it rendered? Is it not to Christ? Surely then, if He died for me, and that because of the life that I am in as a child of Adam, is it not plain and consistent that I must no longer live in that for which He died? How else could I serve the One who has died for me, but by living in His own life? Could I presume to think that I could serve Him at all, save as I followed Him -- as I had entered into the
power of His resurrection, which is death to myself? I believe that if every one zealous of serving Christ could but understand this first principle, this first requirement in a true servant of Christ, great and blessed service to Him would flow from it. No matter what may be the line of my service, it is only in proportion to my following Him that I am efficiently in it, according to His mind, ministering to Him. Self-renunciation, not merely self-denial, is the mark of a true servant. Everything connected with man as man is laid aside as dead by him. Position, a recognised status, must necessarily be refused and disallowed. But not only this, service itself bears the stamp of the servant, as I have already remarked with reference to the various modes of serving. Each indicates, where there is real heart work, how Christ has been received. In proportion as the service of Christ to myself is known and apprehended, so must be my ministration of Christ in any line. "I believed, and therefore have I spoken" is the joy and the strength of the true servant, and his service necessarily bears the force and depth of it. Thus it is, I believe, that we can and may account for the many varieties in serving in one and the same line. Different apprehensions of Christ, as, for instance, that of a Paul or a John, would give different modes in the same line of service. But in this day it is not merely the divine varieties which we meet with, but we see believers zealous in proclaiming the gospel, and delighting in good works, who do not think it incumbent on them to die to everything here -- position, etc., and who, according to the truth I have noticed above, have not really entered on the path of a true servant, and do not carry the mark of Christ's ministers. What are we to think and say of them? This: that many are very true to their light, but their services as a rule are directed to man, and to his benefit as a man. Now if these earnest souls were really following Christ, they would not serve less zealously, but they could not have man
as he is so much an object before their minds. If I, as the fruit of Christ's death, am really ministering to Him in a world of death, it can be in no wise to maintain anything here, but on the contrary, while seeking to alleviate the misery here in every possible way, I should very distinctly pronounce that there is no remedy for it but in the life of Christ out of death; and this certainly cannot be pressed with any power or weight while it is not acted on in oneself. The real reason of this failure in souls is not want of reality, but simply ignorance of their true standing, because they have only received Christ as conferring benefits on man, and therefore they can only follow the instinct in their hearts -- true in itself -- to serve Christ in keeping with their own apprehensions of Him. The instinct to serve is right, but from want of a true and full apprehension of how they are placed in relation to all here by being in Christ, and, as the fruit of His death, above and apart from all that is of man, they engage themselves with man as of the first Adam, and as if his history were not morally at an end in the cross of Christ. If I know that man's history is ended there in God's sight, I can only minister Christ, and the grace of Christ as the One risen out from among the dead. Some may say, Then you give no place for good and useful works for man's benefit. Quite the contrary; I minister the only thing that can really meet man's case, but then it is not to maintain his status as man. What I press is that every service should begin with this: that if Christ "died for all, then were all dead". The true servant thinks of the deepest necessity first, and like a skilful physician, when the patient is suffering from a complication of maladies, he seeks to arrest the deadly one first, nay, his utmost attention is directed to it. But, to be this skilful physician, this true servant -- one who does not suffer personally from the malady he would relieve -- he must be one who has learned the power of Christ's resurrection. When a physician seeks to
stay or check a mortal disease, while doing so, he thinks comparatively little of others. And just so a true servant, having found life in Christ, ministers of Christ in a dying world, not as of it himself, but as out of it, to those in it, that through grace they may receive Him who has risen out of it. He will also well and truly care for the sufferers in this scene of death -- all patients in one vast infirmary.
This question of our Lord's, addressed to His disciples after His resurrection, expresses, as applied to ourselves, the true test of our moral position now. He had declared, "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture", John 10:9. Pasture was as distinctly provided by Him as salvation, for it was promised to any one using Him as the door. To be without pasture was simply to have overlooked or not used the door; and hence our answer to the question, "Have ye any meat?" determines our true moral state. It is not salvation merely that we have received; but we are set here as saved ones to grow in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the mind and ways of Him by whom we live. Hence there are little children, young men, and fathers (1 John 2), showing the grades, not of salvation, but of maturity in the divine life. We are new creatures in Christ, and we are to grow in grace and by the true knowledge of God. There is unmistakable evidence that one has departed from the place of the Holy Spirit, if there is no advance in the knowledge of Christ and His word. Let people excuse themselves as they may, there can be no doubt on this point. The Comforter was to teach all things and bring all things to their remembrance which Christ had said to them (John 14:26); and further, in testimony (chapter 16: 13) we read, "He will guide you into all truth ... whatsoever he
shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come". Turn to any part of New Testament Scripture, and you will find one truth plainly declared, even that the whole service of the Spirit of God to saints now is to instruct them in the things of God, "that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God". And to this end are bestowed all the ministerial gifts, "for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ". It is plain from Scripture that pasture is the great and distinct portion of the saints now, and that if they are not enjoying the good of it, there must be somewhere a grieving of the Spirit and a departure from the line in which Christ could meet us and minister to our souls. He now nurtures and cherishes His church, and surely this is more than the salvation of the soul.
Now even where it is not denied that pasture is provided, there is often great ignorance or dullness of apprehension as to what is really pasture. The Lord tells Peter to feed His lambs. Paul tells the elders of Ephesus to feed the flock of God. Surely this was not to preach salvation to them, but something more than salvation. Well then, what is pasture, and how shall we be able truly to say that we are enjoying it? Pasture is the knowledge of the Son of God by which we grow up to Him in all things. The effect of pasture is growth; and where there is growth, without doubt there is pasture. We are new creatures in Him, and all effective ministry must advance us in our only true state and condition. The great delay to souls is the slowness of heart and dullness of faith to see ourselves on resurrection ground in the risen One, the last Adam; and then from this point growing on and advancing in Christ, who is our life, and source and spring of everything. Oh if the saints of God would but wake up to this one simple fact, that their beginning, and not only their end, is in the life of Christ, they would understand and seek to "grow up to him in all things,
who is the head", Ephesians 4:15. But now ministry in the word, for the most part, is but urging on souls how they are accepted in Christ, and how happy they ought to be. Even this, indeed, is in advance of the general order and scope of evangelical teaching, which is simply presenting Christ on the cross, suffering for our sins. If Jeremiah could weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of his people, surely we ought to lay to heart the imperfect, superficial way souls have believed in Christ. Take up what religious book you may, even the best, and you will find that for the most part it treats of the way in which rest for the soul may be found, instead of starting the soul from peace, and leading it into those higher delights which a knowledge of Christ imparts. I believe no one can walk in the path of righteousness until he is in untroubled rest before God, and I am assured that the uncertainty in the walk of many is in consequence of imperfect peace in the presence of God. I invite my readers to this inquiry: Do religious teachings or religious books in general aim at leading souls on in Christ, or only leading them up to Christ for safety and rest from Him? Now it is as "complete in him" that I start in my new condition (see Colossians 2). If you do not start me in my new condition, how can you advance me in it? I am not speaking of attainment here. I am merely insisting on the state of soul preparatory to growth. It is plain that I must know that I possess eternal life, and that I am by the Spirit united to Christ, before I can grow. The Lord says to His disciples, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now". But when the Holy Spirit was come, He would guide them into all the truth. If not spiritual, we are like the Corinthians, but babes, carnal (1 Corinthians 3); or like the Galatians we need that "Christ be formed" in us, we are not prepared for growth (Galatians 4:19); or like the Hebrews, we have need of milk and not meat; we are "babes", unskilful in the word of righteousness (Hebrews 5:12 - 14).
Now the little child of 1 John 2:13 - 20 is prepared for growth. He is in Christ, knows the Father, has an unction from the Holy One, and knows all things, or as Peter writes, "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby", 1 Peter 2:2. Growth is the natural result of nourishment, where there is life and health; but if there be not life and health, there is no appropriation of the nourishment, the pasture. The purpose and use of pasture is to produce growth. If there be no pasture, there can be no growth. But if there be a desire for growth, there will always be a seeking for truth to grow thereby. The Lord never fails to provide pasture for His sheep. He is the door. By Him they enter in, and in Him they find pasture. If we turn aside as Peter, when he went fishing and induced his companions to follow him (John 21), we shall be toiling all the night and taking nothing. Hence the present sad state of saints, look where we may. They are without pasture; there is no unfolding of the counsel of Christ, and consequently no growth, no deepening knowledge of the Son of God.
How or where a believer is united to Christ is a subject of the greatest importance and interest. For though, in the marvellous grace of God, the portion of the believer does not depend on the extent of his faith or his estimate of Christ, and though God has secured a portion for him according to the consummation of His own will in Christ, yet the believer only enjoys according to the extent of his faith, and his strength and ability to walk and to please God is necessarily according to his acquisition. Hence it is of all importance that we should by faith accurately enter into the portion which God has given us in His Son. Every ignorance connected with
it has a corresponding weakness, as indeed every apprehension seen by faith, and made good by the power of the Holy Spirit, is followed by a corresponding strength. This of itself is surely sufficient to induce every saint earnestly to search the Scriptures, in order that he may obtain the divine idea about every blessing which is conferred on us; and our apprehension of every blessing must depend on the certainty, vigour, and vividness of our assured union with Christ. Hence the point for us now to ascertain and apprehend is, how and where we have been united to Christ.
There are three distinct periods in each one of which it is variously alleged we are united to Christ. First it is said that we are united to Him in His life on earth; secondly, in His death; thirdly, in His resurrection. First, then, let me ask, could I be united to Christ as He was down here on earth? He was the Holy One of God, holy in His nature, as well as in His walk. Could we, then, be united to Him -- we who are more unholy within than even in our walk? How could union take place unless we had dropped our evil nature, and had His nature imparted to us? Could this have been during His life here below? If it could -- if there could be union with Christ during His incarnation -- then it must be before the sacrifice for sin had been made. If He has, as some have said, bridged over the chasm between man and God by His incarnation, where then is the judgment on the sinner? and what the need of a sacrifice and atonement? or where would it find a place? Is the sinner to receive of Christ's holy and immaculate nature, without judgment being enacted for the sinner? Could God introduce the sinner into an entirely new nature, without executing the judgment under which the sinner lay? Where is the righteousness of God if this could be so -- if He can set up a sinner in the highest condition, without any sacrifice, and only because His blessed Son came into the world in the likeness of sinful flesh? It could not be. No one believing
in the atonement will for a moment assume or entertain the idea that we could be united to Christ in His incarnation.
But, secondly, it is said that we are united to Christ in His death. Now the Lord states in John 12 that unless the corn of wheat dies, it abides alone; thereby setting forth that He must undergo death, or He would abide alone; and if any could have been united to Him before His death, it would not be added, "but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit". This the Lord said as descriptive of things relating to Himself; unless He died, He should abide alone. He was here on earth entirely unique, manifested in the flesh, capable of feeling and suffering anything which man, the creature, could suffer. He was here in the weakness of humanity, but in no sense chargeable or liable to the judgment resting on man either by birth or, as yet, vicariously; and hence He intimates, when His hour was come, that there remained but one way for Him to relieve man of the judgment resting on him, and that was by dying. If this could be accomplished only through His death, it could not have been through His incarnation, though His incarnation is the means thereto; that is to say, if He were not in the flesh, He could not have died, but then He must die, or He would abide alone; there could be no union with Him before His death. But here comes the question, are we united to Him in His death? Now union with Him in death would be subjecting us to all the severity of the judgment. It would be assuming that we could endure the wrath of God which fell on Him; and if this judgment had fallen on us who deserved it, how could we have escaped? If we were ever under the judgment of God we could not have escaped from it -- that is, if the judgment had been carried out, which surely it was in the cross of Christ. And if we had to undergo it in company with Him, where is the substitution, in virtue of which we should escape judgment? If I am united to Christ in His death, I
am sharing in all the sinner's judgment inflicted by God on Christ, and as a sinner I could never escape; and if I did escape, it would be establishing the assumption that God could forgive after the judgment for sin had fallen on the sinner, after he had died under judgment. Again, if it could be so, it would be to say that I could be dragged out of the fire of judgment, because the Son of God bore me company in it. This would not be union, but partnership, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego (Daniel 3:25). I should be a child of the first Adam, rescued from deserved destruction, and, like those three Israelites, in no wise changed as to nature or life, and only a rescued one, the first Adam state remaining just as it was. Certainly there is no union here. Union with any one is where I am a sharer of what that one is; partnership is where I only partake of benefits flowing from association. In union with Christ, I partake of what He is -- "He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit". If He be only a leader, like Moses or Gideon, I am not united to Him, I am only rescued by Him; and if so -- if I am merely delivered by Him -- He is only a more distinguished leader and victor than David or Gideon, and this effects no change in me from the nature and state of the first Adam; there is no oneness of spirit with the Son of God. Nay, more, if I am still in the nature and state of the first Adam, where is the righteousness of God against sin? and what has Christ died for? Is it only to conquer Satan, in order that his hold on man might be removed? This is true, but if it be all, where is the judgment of God on the first Adam, the judgment of sin which is death? The fact is, with such a notion, the death of Christ would be limited to a conflict with Satan in the power of death, and the salvation effected for man would be merely a deliverance from the power of Satan, the nature and the order of being remaining just as it was. So that if it be asserted that we are united to Christ in His death, it must either be that we bear the judgment
of sin which Christ bore, and are released by God after the judgment -- which is the doctrine of purgatory -- or that we are only delivered by Christ from Satan's power, and then there is no judgment of sin, but merely deliverance by the power of the mighty One. And, moreover, this deliverance is not union; because we remain the same as to nature and order as we were before we were delivered: all of which is untenable and impossible.
It remains then that the believer can be only united to Christ in His resurrection and there alone. The judgment on man is death -- judicial death. If judicial death alone can satisfy the righteousness of God ("the wages of sin is death": Romans 6:23), then the first man must end in judgment. If judicial death is the judgment, and if righteousness is only satisfied in the exacting of this judgment, how could that man sentenced to a judicial death continue as an existence? If it were an ordinary death, the creature could be revived by sovereign power; but it being a judicial death, the life could not be revived, for if it were, the judgment would be foiled and righteousness unsatisfied. It is plain that judicial death can never righteously be terminated, nor forfeited life revived. If it could, where would be the judgment? for the judgment is the forfeiture of life. Remove the forfeiture and you remit the judgment; it is a simple question of righteousness. What then does God's righteous judgment involve? It involves the end of the old man in judgment, and if man died this death himself, he would be eternally lost. But God's Son comes into the world in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemns sin in the flesh, bears the judgment on man, but rises out of it. He is "put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit", 1 Peter 3:18. He does not revive that which was under judgment; but, having borne the judgment, He rises out of it in His own life -- the one solitary stem, from henceforth, by whom and from whom alone life can be had. "As in Adam all die,
even so in Christ shall all be made alive". "And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins", 1 Corinthians 15. He "was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification, Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ". Hence the Lord on His resurrection stood in the midst of His disciples and proclaimed peace to them, for "he is our peace". But more than this; He breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit". As risen, He is the last Adam, the life-giving Spirit; and the Holy Spirit is given to us to make known in our souls that "the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord". The eternal life that was with the Father is now mine in Christ. The Holy Spirit unites me to Him (Romans 8:9) who is risen above all my shame and judgment, and on ground entirely new and well-pleasing to God. So that I can say, "I am crucified with Christ": that is, I morally drop my old man in His cross, "nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me". I am united with Christ, as He says, "Because I live, ye shall live also". There could be no greater union than communication by the Spirit of the same life. "In that day [the Holy Spirit's day] ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you", John 14:20. And thus, through His life, by the Spirit, we have fellowship with the Father and the Son; our joy is full.
It is thus evident that the believer is united to Christ in resurrection, where He has risen out of everything which checked or barred the love of God. We are now, through faith in Him, outside of the old man, so that we are free from that wherein we were held, and we are through grace "to be to another, who has been raised up from among the dead", Romans 7:4. "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled
us to himself by Jesus Christ", 2 Corinthians 5:17. So that now we are of Him, and through Him, and by Him, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
True service is to Christ, who is both Lord and Master. Though we may be the servants of the church, the church is not our master. We shall and ought to serve the church, but we must take our orders from the Lord, and for His sake and in subjection to Him serve whomsoever, wheresoever, and howsoever He may appoint. True service flows naturally from life, and is the work of love. There is no effort in it, no perplexity about it. It is whatsoever the hand findeth to do for the Lord, done readily without question. But it can only be performed in communion. If the soul is not in communion with the Lord, there can be no true service. The Lord as sovereign may and does use whom He will, taking up often the unclean vessel and instrument, and displaying His power or His grace through such. But this is not service, at least not such as the heart of any saint desires for himself. That cannot be called true service which does not proceed from affectionate and intelligent apprehension of the Master's will. An instrument is not a servant, at least not in a happy sense, though, alas! from our low condition, we are more often thus used than in distinct communion with the Lord concerning the matter in hand.
There is, however, one thing which all can do, that is, be "meet for the master's use" (2 Timothy 2:21); and this is the secret of usefulness. Usefulness is not activity; it is not the merely being used, but it is fitness, cleanness, preparedness, and separation of heart, singleness of eye, the affections set on things above -- all, in fact, that proceeds from the judgment and denial of self, and the dwelling of Christ in the heart by faith.
A true servant is always ready. "Here am I" -- "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" express his condition. He does not choose his work, but obeys his Master. If he has nothing given him to do he is quiet and patient; when he gets his Master's order, he does it joyfully without demur.
Nine-tenths or more of our difficulties about service are from lack of intelligence as to our Master's will. We wait and wait for some great commission, and often leave undone the thing present. We shrink from the work which the Lord Himself may be putting before us, and desire to be used in other service in which He does not require us. The consequence of this unsettled and insubject state is complete uncertainty as to what our proper work may really be. The large majority of saints would confess that they do not know certainly what the Lord would have them to do. They would like to serve Him, and they try to do so again and again, putting their hands to this and that thing without effect. There has not been the sitting at the feet of Jesus to learn His mind before the attempt at active service.
Again, how common is the complaint of Martha: "Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?" How that little word "alone" betrayed the character of her service. If I am for His own sake serving my Lord in faith and love, I shall never complain of serving alone. Indeed, all true service is in one sense alone. It is founded on individual responsibility and faith. We serve our own, and not another man's master. Fellowship in service, when we get it, is indeed a happy thing; but the faithful servant who has his Lord's mind, and is serving Him, will never murmur at being alone, or desire the mere aid of another not called to, nor having heart for, the same work. To meet a fellow-servant walking in the same line of service, and so to serve together, is very blessed, but it is rare. A "true yoke fellow" is not often met with, nor, as we learn more of the Lord's ways and our
responsibility, shall we look for it. The harvest is great and the labourers are few; and if each were doing his own work, he would not be looking for help from other servants doing theirs. There is much misapprehension on the subject of fellowship in service. Saints give it a low place and often a wrong one. They think, for instance, that they may serve without question in fellowship with those with whom they have no communion at the table of the Lord. They do not see that our fellowship in Christ is the first thing to be owned, and that this is properly displayed at the Lord's table. If I am not agreed with one as to this, how can I consent to sink this vital ground of communion to take up with him the lower ground of service? And yet again, it is not merely because we have taken our places at the Lord's table that we can serve together. In order to do this there must be that brotherly confidence in the purpose of heart, the walk and the ways of another, which it is needless to say, though painful to admit, does not necessarily accompany a right church position. This was true in Paul's day; it is true now to the true servant of God. So it is a legal heart that murmurs at a lonely path of service. Still, a true servant may mourn the inactivity of others; but that was not Martha's thought. She could not exactly rebuke Mary's better choice; but she was sinking under the weight of a service undertaken in her own strength, apart from faith, and unsought for by her Lord; and it was her own relief she sought, and not that Mary should share with her any blessing in the path. And this part of the Martha character stamps the service of most of those professing christianity in the present day. Association, human energy, direction, and organisation, are all considered essential and excellent in religious effort. Mission work, evangelisation, as well as philanthropic works, are in the hands of societies and committees where all individuality is swamped by the mass. It is easy to serve with and as the multitude. It is easy to be one of a
committee or of a society, or to serve in a line of things made ready to the hand. It is only when a christian is led towards a true and scriptural church position that he begins to learn, or is in the way to learn, what service really is; and this, I believe, accounts to a great extent for the accusation brought so commonly against some of ceasing to be useful when they leave the associations they had been connected with. As I said before, it is easy work in a society where all is done by rule, or in any of the thousand ways in which the religious world carries on its works. But when we leave these human arrangements, and are cast upon our individual responsibility before God how to serve Him, unsupported by the arm of flesh, it finds us out where we really are; and the man whose energy under a human system has been marked often finds himself for a time brought very much to a stand when he takes his proper place as a member of the body of Christ, and waits for the manifestation of the Spirit as to his path of service. But if faith be in exercise, though his path of sight and sense be shut up to him, another way will be opened speedily and his abstinence from active service will not be for long.
If there be true dependence upon God, and purpose of heart to be anything or do anything He may appoint, there will be no lack of work to do, nor lack of joy in the doing it. For most certainly the blessing to our own souls in serving Christ is not in proportion to the outward show our work may present, or the apparent fruits of our labours, but just in extent as we are conscious of the guidance of His eye, and are in communion with the desires and purposes of His heart and mind. On the other hand, in those who have not learned individuality in service, there is much disappointment and consequent discontent. For one christian who knows his path of service, and is satisfied to walk in it humbly and quietly with his Lord, there are fifty in a restless, uncertain mood, desiring activity, but ignorant
of what to be at. If the true servant strikes into a service which the Lord evidently calls him to and owns, the fifty others are ready to imitate his line of things. And all this uncertainty causes the discontent and murmurings, so often heard amongst saints, of lack of fellowship, want of care for souls, no evangelistic effort, etc., those who murmur loudest generally being those who have the lowest sense of individual responsibility, and the least power from God for a distinct path.
Still we must all confess to sad shortcoming, coldness, deadness, slothfulness. But the remedy is not in murmurings and disputings, but in self-judgment and purpose of heart to learn, and from henceforth to do our work for God. All are not preachers. But all have a place in the body of Christ; and membership implies activity and life, responsibility to the Head, and care for the members. All have a God and Saviour whose doctrine they are called to adorn in all things. All of us are living in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, amongst whom we are to shine, "holding forth the word of life".
If we are meet for the Master's use, and prepared for every good work, we shall soon find that there is no time for complaint, but that the time rather fails us to do the many, many things the Lord will put before us day by day, and hour by hour. We may not have to preach to great congregations, nor even to small ones; but there is plenty to do besides preaching, and many a little work, unseen and unknown by any but the Master Himself, will get its reward in that day when every man shall have praise of God.
But the conclusion of the whole matter is, that we must be near to God in heart and conscience before we can serve Him acceptably. Let us, then, seek for this first of all, so that our service may be as the calm and settled stream flowing from full hearts, whose highest interests are the interests of the Lord whom we love. Next, as once was said by another, 'Let each find out
from God what his work is, and then do it'; or, as Paul put it to Archippus, "Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it", Colossians 4:17.
Since the first decline of the church, there is nothing that the saint should more fear than anything bordering on lukewarmness, because that is the condition of the church characteristically when it shall be spued out of Christ's mouth (Revelation 3:16), when it shall for ever cease to be for Him here on earth; and the moment we see anything in ourselves tending to this lukewarmness, we should earnestly attend to His word, "be zealous ... and repent". To do this would be not only to refuse and denounce all neutrality, but to be valiant for the truth. Repentance does not only denounce the wrong, but it scrupulously and earnestly attests and maintains the right.
Now the snare in lukewarmness is this, that there is nothing exactly to offend the conscience; there is no denial of, or opposition to, the truth, but on the contrary an apparent reception of it, going along with it, but in such a partial, imperfect way that a great deal is permitted which would have been refused if one had been walking earnestly in the truth. There is an admission of truth, and there is an acceptance in general of the place in which the truth sets one, but there is no testimony to its power and control. The lukewarm one accepts the truth and the position which the truth prescribes, but in such a loose way that the sound is uncertain, and the distinctness and peculiarity which would necessarily flow from an honest, earnest maintenance of the truth is lost and frustrated. "If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?" Hence, there is more damage
done to the truth than if it had never been accepted at all. If it had not been accepted, there it would have remained, and it might be said, if it were, it would produce such and such effects. But when it has been accepted, and there is no true effect because of the looseness or lukewarmness with which it is held, then the truth is compromised, and its value and efficacy practically denied. Just as, if one should accept a physician's prescriptions and yet never use them, no effect would of course be produced on the patient; and the skill of the physician would be more compromised than if his prescriptions had not been accepted. The Lord says, "I would thou wert cold or hot" -- either not accepting at all, or accepting earnestly and vigorously; for then the truth is not compromised. What could please Satan more than to see saints holding truths which produced no effect? It would be a greater exultation to him in one sense than open infidelity, for it would tell more on believers, for thereby would be proved the powerlessness of the truth of God on the conscience. The great aim of Satan is that the word should bring forth no fruit to perfection. It is bad enough when he can draw away and delude souls from yielding to the power of it, blinding their eyes lest the light should shine for them; but how much worse when he can succeed in making saints indifferent about the truth, making them lukewarm, causing them to treat the truth as if it were not of vital, eternal value. What could more effectually undermine the truth than that one as assenting to it, and accepting the position which it prescribed, should be as unaffected and uncontrolled by it as if he had never heard it; nay, that he should slip into things under its cover which he could not do with impunity if he were not concealed under the garb of high profession? The apostle Paul warns Timothy of those who shall have the form of godliness, but deny the power thereof; and in every time it has been the lukewarm who have brought the
deepest shame and reproach on the people of God. Lukewarm is from cold to hot, but not hot enough. It is one who asserts and accepts, but in a lifeless and indifferent way; holds on as if there were no power or vitality in that which he holds; he has reached, but for no purpose, and has not turned it to account; in a word, it is the slothful man who will not roast that which he took in hunting. Ham was lukewarm; Genesis 9:22. He saw in the person of his father the failure and apostasy in which he was involved, and felt no shame, took no steps to check or abate it; he was not zealous for the truth and position of government on the earth in which they were set. He did not deny either, but he was not governed by any due sense of the gravity and responsibility of either, and he was accursed. Lot was lukewarm; Genesis 13. He was in the land, but he was not zealous to maintain the claims of God on him in that position. Had he returned to Mesopotamia, he would have been a backslider; but he did not; he retained the position but forewent the claims that belonged to it. The children of Israel were lukewarm when they made a league with the inhabitants of Canaan from which all their sorrows in the land sprung, as had been predicted; Judges 2:2. For four hundred and ninety years they were lukewarm in neglecting to keep the sabbatical year, for which they were carried into captivity; 2 Chronicles 36:21. Saul was lukewarm when he saved Agag king of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15), and thus forfeited the kingdom. The great and distinctive mark of the weakness of even the good kings of Israel was that they were lukewarm; the high places were not taken down; 1 Kings 3:2; 1 Kings 15:14, etc. It was not so much what they had done as what they had left undone. That man was lukewarm who said to our Lord, when called to follow Him, "Let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house", Luke 9:61. He was lukewarm who said, "I go, sir: and went not", Matthew 21:30. All are lukewarm who,
having put their hand to the plough, look back; Luke 9:62. Peter was lukewarm when he separated from the gentiles in the fear of man, and "walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel", Galatians 2:11 - 14. Barnabas was lukewarm when he took with him Mark; Acts 15:37. All in Asia were lukewarm when they turned away from Paul; 2 Timothy 1:15. They had not turned away from christianity, but they took the place which the mass of saints take now, owning Christ as Saviour, but overlooking Paul and the church on earth in heavenly standing, power, and hope.
Now when the church characteristically sinks into this indifference about truth -- this open and avowed declaration of admission and acceptance of truth, without insisting on its claims and efficacy -- it can necessarily no longer be in any way fit as a vessel for God on earth, and its removal from the place of testimony must immediately ensue; therefore it is in its Laodicean, its lukewarm, state that it is spued out of Christ's mouth as that which is nauseous and useless. If Jeremiah could mourn in his day that there was none valiant for the truth, how much more should we, when so much truth has been given us! When the church was first set up on earth as Christ's and of Him, it was the pillar and base of the truth; and then no lukewarmness or indifference about anything of Christ obtained in the church. If there had, in any degree, then indeed all sense of its own proper dignity as the pillar and base of the truth, as of and for Christ here, would have been lost. And this has, alas! been lost. We can no longer assume this dignity. But surely no saint would like to show himself, because of his lukewarmness, unworthy and unfit for the dignity. Moreover, it is by the Spirit of truth that the church is united to Christ the Head, and the members one to another; and if He be disregarded, where is the power to uphold us, or to guide us into all truth? Surely, however fair the appearance may be, however we may say, "I am rich, and increased
with goods", we are hurrying on to an irretrievable catastrophe.
If any divine quality more than another ought to characterise a member of Christ, it is to be valiant for the truth; for he understands in himself the heart of Christ as expressed by the apostle, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth". May we live so in His love, that it may be the joy of our hearts to walk here according to His mind in unswerving faithfulness to Him.
The value of light is to display what exists; more than that it cannot declare, but if I am in the light I shall see what exists. Hence, when the light shines, the question of interest is, What does it declare?
The light of the gospel displays all that has been accomplished by Christ. It takes its rise from the glory of God, from the consummation of Christ's work -- not from the beginning of His work, but from the climax of it. The light from thence, sent of God into the soul, illuminates Christ's whole course, and comprises His whole work, from His first descent from the glory to His ascension in glory. The light now is the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ; now, for the first time, light can come to us from the glory. The light declares the relation in which God is to the believer. It declares His relation to me rather than my title to this relation. It declares God; but as it is received it assures my heart in the disclosures it makes of His grace, both the way of it, and my title to it. If I have not this light, it is evident that I cannot understand His relation to me or my relation to Him. The light is from God, and unfolds Him. The Father's heart and purpose of love to the prodigal are disclosed. This is the object and purpose of the light, and doubtless it fixes and assures the heart in every step of the blessing;
but its object is to declare the Father. It shines into the heart of the prodigal, but it does not spring there. It springs from God (see 2 Corinthians 4:6), and it is of all importance to remember this. It springs from God to declare Himself in His grace to the sinner, showing the sinner how he is elevated to the highest position, but occupying his heart with the source of the light, rather than with the effects of it on himself. If he be occupied with the effects on himself, the main object of the light is lost sight of, and the soul sustains damage and loss. Now I am necessarily occupied with its effects on me if I regard the light as merely a gift, like a lamp, confined to myself, rather than to declare Him from whom it springs. The mistake, and the consequent loss to souls at the present hour, is not that they do not believe in Christ, but that they do not enjoy the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. Nor is it duly proclaimed.
I suppose no student of Scripture would deny that our blessed Lord was offered to Israel, to bring in the sure mercies of David, after His ascension to glory; that He was rejected in the person of Stephen, and that, instead of His returning to earth in glory, His servant and witness Stephen was killed here, and taken to be with Him in glory. Up to this point the gospel did not go beyond the fact that Christ had risen, and would return to earth in glory. He had not been as yet finally rejected, nor as yet had He taken His place in heaven consequent on His rejection. He could not offer Himself to Israel, and at the same time be seated definitely in heaven. But on His final rejection by Israel, He takes Stephen to be with Him in glory; and after this Saul is called out, and the light displays to him Christ in glory. His first acquaintance with Christ is in the glory. He sees Him there, not offering Himself to Israel, but identifying Himself with the church. From henceforth it is the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. The action of it in the soul is,
as Paul expresses it, "to reveal his Son in me". God now sends a light from His own glory into the soul, declaring that His Son has perfected everything according to His mind, and that from the very brightness of His presence He can disclose to a poor prodigal the depths of His heart. The light tells, not what He will do or what He is doing, but that which is done -- the finish, the consummation. From the climax, it issues at the command of the same mighty One who had said, "Let there be light: and there was light". It shoots from the centre of glory into the soul, disclosing the wondrous fact, through the Spirit, of the establishment of righteousness; that the righteousness is the warrant for its issue; that God's own Son has met in judgment all that God required; that on the cross He had endured the wrath of God, and had converted the ministry of condemnation of Mount Sinai into the ministry of righteousness from the glory that remaineth. In the one, the glory was fatal to him who approached near the mount; but in the other, because Christ has borne the judgment, and is now raised from the dead by the glory of the Father and ascended to His right hand, God can by His own mighty creative power cause light to shine into the soul, and disclose to it that glory is not only the place of our Saviour, but that in Him there is the beginning, the birthplace of our new standing before God. There the blessed God is in the zenith of His grace toward man. He never was so till now; and from thence it is that He sends the light into the soul. Glory either exacts from me, or it imparts to me. It exacts, if I have no link with it; for then I must think of myself in relation to it, and this is legality; but if I have a link with it, it imparts to me, and I am of it, and separate from all that is not of it.
The smallest ray that ever penetrated the dark heart of man since the conversion of Saul of Tarsus has sprung by the command of the Almighty from His own presence, where righteousness in all its strength
is presented and maintained by Jesus Christ His Son, who cleanses us from all sin, and who is charged with tidings of the deep purposes of God's love to us. And the soul, in any little measure understanding this light, follows it to its source, and finds itself with Christ in glory. The beginning of its acquaintance with Him is there, and from this point it learns deeply and fully all His work and sufferings, and how He opened the way for us into such a scene of light and perfection. If I look at His work from the consummation of it, I must see, in its truest and fullest light, the whole course which led up to the consummation; therefore it necessarily follows that the glory must not only comprise the cross, but that thence alone can I view and estimate the cross in its full magnitude. The light of this gospel, the gospel of the glory of Christ, speaks to a soul of Christ where He has finished everything; and where Christ is thus received, the soul finds that its first acquaintance with Him is in the glory. It is where all is finished that there is sure rest for it, and abiding strength, because it looks up, and sees by faith whence its acquaintance with Him comes, and that it is established in what God is in Himself, in relation to a man in Christ, and not merely in the effects of His grace on him, great as they are. What can establish and cheer my heart so much as the assurance of God's mind and relation toward me? I draw near to Him in proportion as I know His mind and feelings towards me; and no message from His presence could effect so deep an assurance and joy in the heart as the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God; for from henceforth the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ is my portion and privilege. And this imparts such a tone and character touching everything, that not only do our light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, but we are so transferred by association with
Christ in the glory that all present things are superseded and supplanted in the heart. Everything is judged in relation to that glory which displaces and consumes all that is not of it, and allows only that which has been formed in it, and is consequently for it. If souls have not the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, they cannot adorn the gospel of Christ; but if they have, all that is of man is proportionately eclipsed, and Christ is testified of and expressed, while our portion in God is the unfailing joy of the heart.
Amongst the many things which the church of God lost was the distinct personality of the agents for good or for evil in this world -- even the Holy Spirit and Satan. So long had the minds of men vaguely apprehended the sources of good and evil, that when an action which bespoke the personal presence of either took place, men -- even christian men -- were not prepared justly to appreciate it, nor to act suitably in reference to it. Therefore it is that we hear discussed the qualities of the vessel by which God wrought the work, as though that work were a mere providential act of God; or lower still, as if it were a mere accident, the result of the presence of certain qualities in the vessel, in conjunction with the peculiarity of a certain time, or the meeting of kindred minds in other men.
Now God does work in providence, and in those very scenes too in which He Himself is about to act, for everything is in His hand; but this ought not to have hindered men from seeing that He was there working in the midst of the scenes and circumstances which He had previously ordered. And so of the instruments He is about to use, He forms them for Himself, and for the use He is about to make of them, separating
them from their mother's womb and calling them in due time.
What right minded christian would judge that the Reformation was only the result of the state of Europe at that time -- the revival of literature, the discovery of the art of printing, the gross and exceeding wickedness of the professing church, and the condition of the nations -- and would not rather see that even as God set all the Roman Empire in commotion as to a taxing (Luke 2), in order that Jesus should be born in Bethlehem, so He ordered it that those circumstances should all tend to the furtherance and promotion of that which He was about to do by Luther, who was himself also previously prepared for such a work? But to faith it was God Himself who was working. Even as John, when on the sea of Galilee, recognised the One who stood on the shore, and at whose bidding there came a multitude of fishes -- "It is the Lord", John 21:7.
It is practically important to us thus to apprehend that in a certain action, however helped by the circumstances connected with it, God or Satan is there engaged in a direct work. For if it be God, the saint not only is to be connected with it, but, in the exercise of a spiritual mind, is to act and judge of everything in relation to it. This, in its way, is fellowship, which He graciously permits His people to have with Him in every work wrought by the Holy Spirit in this world. The saint, if spiritual, owns it, and it forms him and gives him a character for the time being. The instrument too is lost sight of, which is a most happy thing for the soul; and he is only in company with the Spirit of God, with others, like him, so taught to apprehend it. On the other hand, if Satan be detected in a certain work here, through instruments, and as taking advantage of the circumstances there found, the saints' only course is to flee or to resist it as Satan. "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you". But where the soul has not laid hold on the direct personality of God or
of Satan in any action, it is weak to resist Satan, because Satan is not detected; man is seen, and it may be saints -- alas, too often his instruments -- are seen, and our rule of action towards them is merely founded on their being ill-instructed and erring through ignorance. This is weakness, for Satan is there, and it is his way to keep hidden behind his instruments, for, if detected, he has lost his power over a saint.
At the present time all this is most important, both for the comfort and blessing of the soul, and for distinctness of action in every way in our path and service as saints. For in our day too there is a distinct work of the Spirit of God, in which we are to find our place; not because there are blessings there, or that it is a better place than others, though that be true; but because it is a distinct work of the Spirit of God, and we find our place, as well as our joy, in being there, in a spirit of obedience, as well as happy fellowship. The word had spoken of a cry being made which would arouse the sleeping virgins; this cry has been made, and we are in the results of it. This action of the Spirit of God, which occupies the sphere of the lifetime of any who may have lived during the last forty or fifty years, is that which primarily demands the attention of the people of God. The result of this cry is very extensive; it awakens not only the sleeping wise, but the foolish. Everything in the professing church assumes a distinctness. Seeds which had lain there unproductive of results for ages -- from the word of God down to the various doctrines of men -- now are springing up and bearing fruit. One only needs to look abroad to see this; there are activities abroad, which refer to what previously existed as a warrant for their being. And the saints of God in like manner refer to what previously existed as their warrant for their peculiar action -- peculiar now, as in contrast to what preceded, for "they all slumbered and slept". This is why the calling of the church is now at length better understood, and
the place of the Holy Spirit abiding here; this is why the hope of the church is being understood, and the person of Jesus more displayed to the souls of His people.
And what remains now? That we "go forth". There is the trimming of the lamps going on, and all that which it comprises, both as to personal ways and doctrine, the putting away of everything that would hinder the shining of our lights; and all that remains is now even as at the beginning, a going forth to meet Him.
This is the action of the Holy Spirit in our day. What a loss if the world in any of its various forms should still hold any of His saints in sleep as to it! Saints they may be, having part in the result of God's counsel, but as to their life now, not walking in God's counsel.
This is the larger sphere of action of the Spirit of God in these days, but there has been another, within that sphere, where we have not the Spirit of God only, but an active work of Satan to destroy the testimony God purposed to raise, and to rob the church again of those truths He has been re-teaching His saints during the last forty years. Where, may I ask, are we in reference to those two activities? Is what God has been teaching us about Christ so precious to us that we must let everything go but this? Are the truths we have learned during these last forty years so important to us, and to the church of God, that we dare not let them be imperilled, nor give them up? And have we seen God, by His Spirit, again active for the preservation and maintenance of these truths? and have we co-operated with Him in this action? There may be a settling in our souls of what is right and what is wrong; but it is not merely this that we shall have to seek, but having personally to do with God in that which He is doing, so that our souls have faith in Him as to our place in, and connection with, it. If we have this faith we walk with Him; we have a calmness which merely settling
the right and the wrong could never give. The soul, too, by this arrives at the settlement of questions by a safer rule, for it judges of them from the place it is in. We walk with God, and in His light we see light.
It is not merely a question of truth committed to us; there is but the sovereign and faithful grace of help given after complete ruin had come in. The arm made bare bespeaks, to the spiritually minded, a presence with us which, though it was always true, comes with a greater sweetness and preciousness now, because it tells us of a love and purpose which nothing could turn back.
May His saints know this love and presence, and walk in it; and may we love the way, and have our hearts in it, rough though it be. He trod it -- the blessed One -- and the Holy Spirit abides and leads in the way too. May we know and love and seek fellowship with Him!
There is nothing in the history of the church, or of souls, more grievous than the fact that truth can be so perverted that the name of it only is left, and often so much so that the name stands for the very contrary to that to which it was originally attached. It has often been said that Satan will spoil what he cannot hinder, and hence we ought to be more careful to assure our hearts from the word of God of the idea which belongs to and characterises the names of doctrines received by all christians. The true and scriptural names are retained, but when we come to examine what these names stand for, we find that they do not represent the ideas given to them in Scripture. They are really perversions of the truth. Man's ideas have been adopted as exponents of the truth, instead of the ideas set forth in the word of God.
We must in this day own that the prediction of our Lord has been verified, namely, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened". The leaven is the introduction of an element which has extended the original thing unnaturally. The human idea is this leaven, and it has so added to the original and divine teaching that the doctrine now called in christendom after the scriptural name bears little or no resemblance to the doctrine to which the same name is attached in Scripture. This is very serious; and it is not from outside that this evil occurs. "Of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them", Acts 20. If there were no perversion of the truth, there would be no disciples except disciples of Christ. No man would attain to any distinct leadership, "for one is your Master, even Christ".
It is very important to see that if the truth were not perverted there could be no leadership but in Christ, and that it is in the perversion of truth that disciples are drawn away. The effect of the simple maintenance of truth is to draw to Christ. John the baptist proclaimed the truth; and his disciples, in adopting it, forsook him to follow Christ. And in this day it is a well-known fact that, as godly earnest ministers have pressed truth, the simple and devoted among their followers have left them, in order that they might follow the truth more perfectly than the instruments through which they had first learned it; and doubtless, if every godly minister would discard everything not scripturally true, then the faithful would cease to be ranked under the leadership of men. One may ask, How is it that godly earnest men do not discard everything not scripturally true? I answer, Because they are guided by conscience and not by the word of God. By their consciences they are calmed into the assurance that they are doing the best for the general good; and this
they seek. Now it is the word of God alone which should guide me, and my conscience ought not to be satisfied unless I am assured that everything I teach and adhere to is scripturally true. To say that this or that is the definition given to any doctrine by the most devoted man is really no warrant to my conscience. Such comments may help me to understand the doctrine, but I am bound to understand it in the light of Scripture before I teach it. Scripture must be my guide, and not my conscience or the comments of my brethren. The teacher receives his gift neither by man nor from man; he is gifted of the Lord, and he must not only be conscientious, but he must be enlightened according to Christ's mind, before he can be the organ of that mind. If every minister of Christ nowadays set himself sedulously to ascertain from Scripture the true meaning of any doctrine, as there set forth, divesting his mind of the definition and interpretation into which it had swollen, he would soon find that he had escaped from a mass of confusion, and that an unerring light had now shone in on his soul and mind.
But it is not only from making the conscience umpire that earnest men suffer; there is another snare which is still more difficult to expose. Perversion of the truth is always to suit a practical state. It is the lower order of practice which, when there is conscience, leads to a lower order of truth, or a misplacement of the order, because it matches the state and quiets the conscience; and the lower order of practice is confirmed and perpetuated by the lower order of truth. Now when anyone attempts to form an idea of a truth from his own practical observance of it, or seeks to make it practicable, of course he shapes the truth to his practice, instead of demanding that his practice should conform to the truth. Man, as is natural, likes to leave out from a doctrine that which makes it impossible to man in nature, and to substitute something under the same name, and thus deceive the conscience with what is
possible for man without self-sacrifice. To follow truth now, I can only do so in the Spirit, outside nature; this is the starting point.
Now if I wish to accept a truth, and at the same time to save myself -- in a word, to escape the edge of it -- I necessarily alter it in such a way that I may feel I retain the doctrine without subjecting myself, my nature, to death by the acceptance of it. Peter savoured of the things of men, and not of the things of God, when he said to the Lord, 'Spare thyself'. The real difficulty to the simple acceptance of truth is the annihilating exaction it makes on nature. And whenever a truth is said to be held without this exaction, we may be assured that some modification or alteration of the truth has been adopted, in order to spare oneself. Strange and peculiar are these modifications and alterations. Faith is a unity, and can only lead in one way. Every truth, truly apprehended by faith, must lead directly in the same way. It may be seen differently in measure, but the same measure produces the same results. If Mark returns from Pamphylia (Acts 15:38), it is because the truth exacted too much from him. If Peter refuses to eat with the gentiles (Galatians 2:11 - 12), it is because he would spare himself; the truth of the gospel, for which Paul contended, exacted too much of him. Demas cannot bear the exaction of the truth; 2 Timothy 4:10. If Timothy knows and follows Paul's doctrine, he must also know and follow his "manner of life". If the doctrine be truly held, the manner of life will be an exemplification of it. If a man says -- as has been said -- that the church, the body of Christ, is in heaven, and speaks of Jesus as being here, with man as Man, he so entirely misplaces the truth, without denying it, that to hold this doctrine imposes on him no self-death here, and his conscience is lulled, and the truth lost. For if the body of Christ is in heaven, I am not responsible to walk here on earth as of it; and if Jesus, who is really in heaven, and known here by the
Holy Spirit, is put on a level with us in the flesh, christianity is reduced to a mere human thing, and the truth that now, through the Spirit, we are united with Him in heaven, and thence receive of Him, to fill our place in the body here on earth, is lost. Could there be a greater perversion of truth than that the church, the body of Christ, is in heaven? The truth is that it is from heaven, but on earth; yet many earnest conscientious souls accept this perversion as the truth; and the consequence is that they have lost the truth, and with it the effects which are produced by the truth. Each truth produces its own proper effects; hence, if you lose the truth, you must lose the effects of it.
Again, another will so accept and explain the unity of the Spirit, that all christians can be received as united, because professors of the same life, though they are connected with systems and orders of things most opposed to one another; so that the unity of the Spirit is practically reduced to the socialism of a club. Again, others, with more light, will contend that similar opinions, with soundness in faith, and holy walk -- that is, individual propriety -- necessarily places in the unity of the Spirit. Then the Spirit is only a common bond for separate and distinct units, and not the unity of the body of Christ, where each is affected by the other, and is necessarily a guardian of the other; for it is the Spirit, who baptises the whole into one, who must be considered, and not the individual, as to what he holds or does. He may neither hold what is wrong or do what is wrong, and yet his association may grieve the Spirit of God, the unity be denied, and the body suffer. The unity of the Spirit makes the body of Christ one, because the Holy Spirit is one. We are all baptised by one Spirit into one body, and where He is, there must be an abnegation of everything unsuited to Christ. The thing which by no possible means could injure one naturally becomes vitally dangerous when in the unity of the Spirit. As a man, I may not suffer
from the bad habits of my associates, unless they seduce me into like ones; not so in the church of God; a little leaven leavens the whole lump. I may not suffer as a man because I hear vain babbling in the society that I resort to, at least, I may not be morally degraded by it, or unfitted thereby to be a good member of society; and yet it is so in the church; and a man cannot be a "vessel unto honour" unless he purges himself from such things. To bid an ordinary farewell to a man who brings not the doctrine of Christ can in no wise injure or affect me naturally; and yet, as in the fellowship of the Spirit, if I do so, I am partaker of his evil deeds, and necessarily disqualified for church association; 2 John.
"The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned". If the natural mind receives it or knows it, it is not of the Spirit of God. The unity of the Spirit cannot be maintained truly but as there is a distinct dissociation from and exclusion of all that which is contrary to the Spirit Himself, and as in conjunction with all those who are walking in the Spirit. We are exposed to perversions so long as we are babes. To raise us to maturity is the aim of all ministry, as it is written (Ephesians 4:13, 14): "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness", for a method of deception -- as it may be more freely translated. The force of the passage is that, if I am not matured in Christ, I am exposed to human sleight, which, by cunning craftiness, grows into a method of deception. It is man's work and way of escaping the edge and power of the truth, and it ends in a systematised error.
To the earnest and true-hearted servant of Christ no question can be of deeper interest than, What is power, and how are means to be used?
It is not only in the first part of the question that the importance lies, for many are assured that power is of God; many can say, "Twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God" (Psalm 62:11), who cannot reply to the second, which is really the one which exercises the heart before Him, and in which we all so fail. Let us search and see how means may be used, consistently with the assured sense that power is of God only.
It is very instructive to mark how the servant of God in every age used means; and if before the death of Christ, while the first man was still recognised, we can trace and discover how the means were in abeyance to the power -- nay, that they were always, when the servant was walking with God, so disproportionate to the power that the source of the power was not clouded or obscured by the means, but the contrary -- how much more now!
Faith always has to do with God, to whom power belongs, and not with means; and hence I may pass over Abraham, for his life properly was one wholly of faith, and he passed through the deepest exercises known to the heart of man, reckoning on God only, apart from any means. And this is, as I may say, one's private history and walk with God. Jacob, on his return from Laban's house, has got out of faith, and is full of means. In the wrestling he is taught the power of God, and that if He be for him who can be against him? Every devoted saint knows that God's resources are outside and beyond the means he could use, and has found it so; but when the servant of God testifies of Him to His professing people, the means are used to
express the power. The servant is himself an instrument; and it will be seen that, while he has full confidence in the power, yet, in proportion as he is in spirit with God, he makes a very secondary account of the means. Moses is not eloquent. Aaron supplies the deficiency, because Moses considered it one, but it is the rod of Moses, used in faith, which is the means to manifest the power of God. With that rod he stretched out his hand over the waters of the Red Sea, and that simple movement, that very insignificant means, effected the mightiest of results. He was not thinking of the means, but of the power; and this is faith always. The power is most before the soul when the means are most insignificant. Moses failed, grievously failed, and forfeited the land, when in Numbers 20 he made much of the means. God had directed him to take the rod, and to speak unto the rock, "and it shall give forth his water"; instead of which he smote the rock twice, and said, "Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?" He spoke unadvisedly with his non-eloquent lips; he failed to sanctify the Lord in the eyes of the children of Israel. The more God is with His people, the smaller and simpler are the means used. Jericho fell down after it had been compassed seven days. The only means used were that the people "shouted with a great shout". Ai, on the contrary, is only reduced by an ambuscade. Means were used, but of no honour to the prowess of Israel, and, though ordered of God, not declarative of His intervention. He graciously delivers, even after failure, but He does so without conferring honour on them, or open favour from Himself.
We see in the book of Judges, when Bochim (chapter 2: 1) represented the state of Israel, that the means used for the people's deliverance from time to time were not honouring to man, though they were made to accomplish the desired end. Ehud's knife (chapter 3), Shamgar's ox goad, Jael's nail and hammer, Gideon's
pitcher, are means imparting no distinction to the users of them; yet they were effective, and rather obscured than exhibited the power by which deliverance was effected. The greater the failure, the less can God honour His people personally. How could He? But He delivers; and while He does so, He will make use of means in no wise honouring to us, and yet at the same time not openly indicative of His intervention. When there is Nazarite separation, as in Samson, there is personal strength; and the jawbone of an ass -- very insignificant means -- will accomplish great results. But when, as in Samuel, there is prayer, a simple and unequivocal turning of the heart to God only, then the Lord Himself acts for His people in marked intervention: "And as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel: but the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them", 1 Samuel 7:10.
Now I turn to the apostle Paul, the pattern of all them who shall believe on Him to life everlasting, as our example. If any one has meditated before God on the examples I have furnished from Scripture, he cannot fail to see that the more faith and holiness in walk there is, the less the visible means, and that the means never, even in appearance, assume the place of the power, except when God cannot connect His power with the state of failure in which His servant or His people are found. Paul glories in what Moses deplores, even that he has not personal power; "his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible". He glories in it, because he would not have the faith of the saint to stand in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God. He actually takes pleasure in infirmities, that the power of Christ might be fully manifest, as entirely apart from any co-operation which human effort could contribute to it. And hence he will judge of others, not by their speech but by their power. He reminds
the Corinthians that he personally sought and derived nothing from the flesh when first he preached to them; and if he in his preaching disallowed the flesh and its co-operation, how could they venture to glory in it? He says, "I determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ" -- a known living Person truly, but as to this scene, a crucified One; and he adds, "I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling" (1 Corinthians 2) -- the very opposite to any exhibition of human ability or sensationalism. For he continues, "My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power".
When he would restore the Galatians to the true ground of the Spirit, he not only insists, in chapter 1, on the nature and order of his conversion as being from God in His Son, but he reminds them that he did not minister among them in any carnal power, but on the contrary, "Ye know", he writes, "how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first". These statements are very conclusive, and establish that the more we are in the power of God's Spirit, the less shall we seek or use the co-operation derived from the flesh. Man in mind and body is the earthen vessel; the instrument for Christ's service, which, when simply given to Him, He uses. But my faith ought not to be in the exertion of either one or both, but in the Spirit of God. Nay, the more faith I have, the less value shall I place on any bodily or mental exertion. This would not prevent me from being always assiduous, while it would check excitement, and disallow anything that would promote it. Nay, it is well known that there cannot be general assiduity where there is even occasional overtaxing; for there cannot be any accelerated action without a correspondent reaction. Now where there is power, earnestness is always apart from anything sensational or excited. See the earnestness of a physician by a sick
bed; of a good father expostulating with a beloved but wilful son. The sense of power and the greatness of the stake at issue, when together, impart earnestness and gravity. The greatness of the stake at issue without the sense of power to meet it must, when there are right feelings, provoke undue declamation and impassioned expression to supply the sense of power, and this in proportion as the former exists without the latter. The means of expressing the power are reduced and uncalled for, according as the power is felt to be possessed. Hence, wherever there is an assured sense of being led by the Spirit to any place or work, as for instance Paul to Philippi, there would be a waiting on God and a discountenancing of any questionable publicity. One would go on quietly, assured of God, in the mind of the Lord, though unknown and unheard of. Alas nowadays no room is left for the option of God's Spirit; but the flesh is actually fostered and given place to, at the very time that the truth and grace presented condemns it, and invites the soul to safety in Christ from the judgment on it.
Let the saints, I repeat, be assured that as there is faith and holiness, so will there be a consciousness of God's power by and through very insignificant means; and it will be found that it has not been a long, excited sermon which has been blessed to souls, but some little word guided by God's Spirit which has carried to the heart the germ of life.
The more fully and distinctly truth is circulated and accepted, the more must it be the device of Satan to counterfeit it, and then beguile souls from the truth, which alone sanctifies unto God. If truth were not known and accepted, the counterfeit would be useless; but in proportion as the true and the real is valued, so does Satan seek to counteract it by an imitation. For
if souls are led away by the imitation under the idea that it is the truth, the conscience is lulled, and they are a prey to the serpent. They are not only unsanctified, but they are led astray under Satanic influence. We ought not to be ignorant of his devices. It is plain that as a truth prevails, and souls through the power of it are delivered from darkness and the power of Satan, the enemy must not only oppose the circulation of it -- which he does in the first instance -- but we find that he also institutes something bearing a resemblance to it, in order to deceive souls and lead them into his snare, while under the impression that they are adhering to the right. The children of Israel were forbidden to make any similitude of God; Deuteronomy 4:15 - 20. Man's similitude could not rise higher than man himself. Satan from the first beguiled man from the worship of the true God to the worshipping of demons, and the idols were only the representation of the ideas which were sanctioned by the demons.
We have to do with the simple fact that as truth was presented and effective, so was it an object to Satan, not only to oppose it, but when it had gained acceptance, to set up a counterfeit in order to create a diversion. The apostle in 2 Timothy distinctly warns us that as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so would there arise teachers in the last days who would resist the truth after the same fashion. By imitating the truth of God, they would withstand it. Hence it is the duty of the faithful to be prepared for the counterfeit of every truth which has obtained acceptance and influence, just in proportion as it has done so; and this with the conviction that Satan does not resort to this device until every other opposition to the truth has failed to check its progress, so that the very existence of the counterfeit is proof positive that the truth has been effective.
Satan's most daring act will be seen in his setting up Antichrist -- a counterfeit of Christ as Messiah and
King -- man in the temple of God, showing himself to be God. "Many", says our Lord, "shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many", and if it were possible, "the very elect". Well then, as assured that there will be, and is, an effort of Satan to rival by imitation the truth which through mercy has most effect in our day, let us, as prepared for it, consider how we may detect the counterfeit. The proper and simple way to be preserved from any counterfeit is by accuracy of knowledge of the true. If a banker has accurate knowledge of a true note, he is able to discover any discrepancy. The first great thing is to be assured of possessing the truth -- to "continue ... in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of". This is really the course for oneself; but one has often to point out and expose to others the counterfeit; and therefore it is well to bear in mind that the counterfeit always gives the prominence to man. Satan always uses man as his instrument for contravening the purposes of God. Man being made in the image of God, Satan finds him his best adapted engine for circumventing God, and diverting from His ways and mind. Man is thus made the rival of God, and Satan is the energy by which this terrible evil is carried out. Hence, wherever man is made prominent, the spiritual can at once pronounce that it is a counterfeit, in whatever specious way it may promise good results, and therefore to them it can have no value. Secondly, there is another mark, which is not so easy to describe or expose, one which is practically seen in the magicians of Egypt, in that they could not turn the dust into lice by their enchantments (Exodus 8:18), though they had been able to imitate Moses and Aaron up to this point. I believe it to be simply this, that even as this miracle, being the creation of life, marked the "finger of God" and precluded the imitation of the false prophets, so no genuine expression of life will ever be found to flow from a counterfeit. There may be
a great appearance and assumption of power and devotedness; but in the activities there will be found no moral power, nothing really of the life of Christ.
It cannot be denied that every truth which has obtained a place has been imitated. Popery is but a huge glaring imitation of the church of God; and every order of the world assuming to be christian is also an imitation, and hence a counterfeit, because it is not the real thing. The more even the idea of a right thing obtained, so has there ever sprung up the counterfeit of it. The subject is too wide to pursue it here; but let us notice one of the counterfeits existing at this very hour, respecting a truth lately revived among the saints.
The truth that "where two or three are gathered together unto my name, there am I in the midst of them", has now for years been a word of strength and blessing to many; and they have, by faith in God, walked in and acted on it, thereby learning and knowing the presence of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit in their midst. This could not be without the setting aside of man, and the bringing in of the power of the Spirit of God, which is the membership and unity of all saints, that is, the body of Christ. It could not be a mere retreat for oneself; it must, because in the Spirit, connect us with all that is of the Spirit, by whom we are all baptised into one body. It could not be a mere meeting for convenience, and its end the edification of the two or three who had met together. The real thing -- the fundamental principle of the church -- which the word sets forth, ensures and confers wonderful blessing; but the saints, knowing the real thing, are separated from the flesh in the power of the Spirit, by whom Christ's presence is known, and by whom they are baptised into one body. Now this simple truth, from which the greatest and most blessed results flow, is constantly imitated; and the proof that it is imitated is that none of the blessings which, as fruits, flow from
the real thing are ever known or manifested by the imitators. It will be found that it is their own conscience, or comfort, or something of their own, which is their object, and not the One in the midst; and thus the gathering together bears the one sure mark of a counterfeit, even that man is uppermost, and not Christ; while the other mark can also be observed, that though they have apparently taken a great and a true step in accepting and adopting the great fundamental principle of the church of God, yet there is no advance in moral power, in the realities of life, nor any increase in the knowledge of Christ's mind and His interests on earth. Nothing is more painfully manifest than the fact that many saints, who have avowedly sought to walk for God on earth, never advance in the knowledge of Christ or His ways. Scripture is read and dwelt on, but always with reference to one's own state, where there is conscience, and never, I may say, with reference to Christ's interests and thoughts; and hence there is no progress in the knowledge of Himself. A glance at the writings of the most earnest will authoritatively confirm this statement.
The easiest things, apparently, to imitate involve the most serious consequences if they be imitated. It was easy to imitate the holy anointing oil, but to do so entailed death on the offender; see Exodus 30:38. The seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, might use the same words as Paul, but with what fearfully different results! (Acts 19:14.) Hence the simplicity of any proposition of divine truth does not put it the more within the reach of man. Satan's object is to divert the soul from the great and divine consequences which flow from true and accurate obedience; and he effects this by inducing man to make the attempt in a natural way, without faith, without the intervention of the power of God. Now it is a fact that we hear of christians meeting for breaking of bread when it suits any given number to do so, without any reference to others in
the same place; so that it is not uncommon to find two or more of those meetings in a very small place, each in independence of the other, as if there were no common bond or baptism between them. What is this but imitation? In one sense, the imitators would be far better off if the truth which they imitate had never been presented and adopted, seeing that thereby an opportunity has been given to Satan to lead into this sad and disastrous imitation. I say it is sad and disastrous, because the leaders of the imitation withstand the truth, attracting and diverting souls by the counterfeit, and thus debarring them from seeking and finding the real and the true. And while they may be constant readers of the Scriptures, they are "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth". There is no truth of greater importance in this day than this fundamental principle of the church, and therefore there is none more imitated, and thus more used to perpetuate and accomplish the enemy's work. When this truth is known and adopted in the Spirit, there is a daily deepening in the counsels and interests of Christ. The church, as His body, is fully comprehended in that membership which is alone true, even the Spirit Himself. There is through the Spirit, which is the unity of the body, a distinct claim on and link to every saint on earth, and a daily increasing sense of responsibility and encouragement too; so that the more truly any fraction walks in the Spirit, the more ability is there to help all others, and the more they are helped; even as with the natural body, when any part of it recovers from a lengthened debility, there is a reinvigoration of the whole. But when it is only the imitation that is adopted, then, as I have already said, there is never a thought above man, either in the preaching of the gospel, or ministry to the saints. Man's good alone is insisted on and sought; there is no rising into communion with Christ, in His interests and the range of them, through the Holy Spirit on earth.
There are two courses of action apparently contrary one to the other, but which nevertheless spring from the same root, even the flesh. One is legalism, which I may describe as the effort to shape oneself to given laws or rules; the other is lawlessness, in which one's own will determines everything. In legalism the occupation is necessarily with oneself. Seeking to urge oneself into conformity to law, self is before the eye, and satisfaction is felt according as there is conformity to a given standard. Legalism must always give the flesh a place, for if there were no flesh, there would be no law. The Spirit acts according to God, and against His fruits there can be no law. If the flesh be dead, there is no need for law, for he that is dead is freed from sin. But it is not of doctrine I would speak here, but of practice. The moment legality is sanctioned, it must be with reference to that which needs to be made subject; hence law has a relation to the flesh, and the flesh to the law. And this is just the evil of legalism, even that it addresses the flesh, and gives it a standing. And this is not christian, because as christians we are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit; therefore the flesh has no standing, and in the Spirit we exhibit the fruits of the Spirit, against which there is no law.
Now lawlessness, though apparently opposite to legalism, springs from the same error, even from a misapprehension of how the flesh is regarded before God. Neither with the legal nor with the lawless is it treated as having been crucified with Christ; and because grace confers what the law exacts, the flesh assumes that it is not responsible, and acts according to its will, and this is lawlessness. The carnal mind becomes the arbiter and leader on every point. Self, like a primeval forest, is allowed to grow and to do as it lists. In neither case is the flesh treated as a thing to be mortified, set aside, because crucified in the cross.
Where there is most conscience, legality obtains; but where there is most intelligence in the natural mind, there lawlessness rules. Nevertheless the legal man, because of weakness, is often lawless, for if he be not up to and according to rule, he must be so, even against his inclination; hence legalism is no safeguard against lawlessness, because of the weakness of the flesh; and it becomes plain that there is no true deliverance from the flesh but as I walk in the Spirit.
The Galatians were legal; the Corinthians were lawless. The Galatians, no doubt, conscientiously felt that the flesh intruded and trespassed upon them, and in order to check and frustrate it, they resorted to restrictions and were in bondage to rules. Having begun in the Spirit, they were seeking to be made perfect in the flesh. They had ceased to walk in the Spirit, and they essayed to control the flesh by descending to carnal methods, and thus gave a place to the flesh, which was in itself a victory to it. Instead of disallowing it from the high eminence and control of the Spirit of God -- for if we walk in the Spirit, we shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh -- they fostered the very thing they wanted to check, because they thus gave it a recognised existence. The great truth is that, being alive in the Spirit, I disavow the right of the flesh to rule -- in a word, that I am crucified with Christ. For if I live after the flesh, I shall die; but if I, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, I shall live. The legal man makes himself, and not Christ, his study and object, and his satisfaction is according as he succeeds in bringing himself to the adopted standard.
Now the Corinthians were lawless. They were richly gifted. The Spirit had bestowed on them very imposing gifts, and they virtually said, 'The Spirit's gifts are everything -- the flesh may do as it likes'. But the moment the flesh is let do as it likes, then it is not dead, it is alive, and it is lawless; and they that are in
the flesh cannot please God; nay, it breaks out and betrays itself in many forms. If I am walking in the Spirit, I mortify the deeds of the flesh, for the flesh cannot maintain itself in the Spirit's province. I might be largely gifted by the Spirit like the Corinthians, but this is not walking in the Spirit. When in the Spirit I am first controlled myself, but this is not all. As I walk in the Spirit, I am interested and watchful that other saints walk also according to Christ; while in lawlessness the reverse is the case, I am wilful myself and I connive at the wilfulness of others.
Let us trace a little in 1 Corinthians how the apostle exposes lawlessness at Corinth. First, in chapter 1, he notices how they are in the flesh, because they are following their own will in choosing leaders. And in chapter 3 he plainly tells them that they are babes in Christ, being carnal, and walking as men. But having shown how wilful they were in their own walk and ways, he then in chapter 5 shows how utterly indifferent they were to the conduct and character of those who came to the Lord's table; nay, that they were so leavened that they went to law with one another before the ungodly; they were not under law to Christ, they did as they chose; it ran into their domestic relationships, so that it was necessary to tell them, "Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called". They went to idol temples and ate things offered to idols; they ate their own supper at the Lord's supper. Every one had a psalm, etc., in the assembly; 1 Corinthians 14:26. Lastly, they had among them some who said that there is no resurrection of the dead! Alas! to what a lawless state had they come! The doctrine and power of the Spirit was accepted without the great truth of the crucifixion of the flesh. The result is the worst practice, for the knowledge of the Spirit's gifts and power, unless I am walking in the Spirit, only leads to lawlessness; it leads to boasting in the flesh. If I am walking in the Spirit, the flesh is forced into death
before Him. The Corinthians were not legal, they did not check the flesh at all; they gloried in the gifts of the Spirit, and allowed the flesh to please itself.
These two forms of evil, which appeared so soon in the history of christianity, have produced strange combinations in christendom. You will find one lawless in choosing a leader, and then easily submitting to certain rules, as if he were quite a legalist. You will find another avowing legalism, and yet very wilful in personal habits and ways. One glories in what he can make of himself -- for instance, a teetotaller; the other is gratified by the acts of his will; thus in both cases there is plainly self-satisfaction. Legalism is in man in the flesh when there is conscience. Lawlessness obtains when there is a release from law if the flesh is allowed to act. Hence Paul urges, "Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh"; and Peter, "as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness". The true ground of liberty or freedom from evil is that I am dead to the law by the body of Christ. If the old man has been crucified, there is no room for legalism or lawlessness; and hence the danger of relaxing the claim of the law, for it is not that God has relaxed His claim, but that which the law addresses has been crucified, and therefore it is neither to be improved, nor left at will, but to be mortified.
Now in these last days we are warned that there is the form of godliness without the power thereof, and then it is that lawlessness is most marked. Men are lovers of their own selves, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. The mystery of godliness, if received by faith, necessarily sets aside man here. Hence the apostasy endeavoured to contravene the effect of true godliness by introducing penance and self-denial of an extreme kind. The mystery of godliness is great, and its effects distinct in the setting aside and repudiation of the flesh because of association with Christ. Instead of bowing to the mystery of godliness, the apostasy
from the faith was marked by severe impositions on the flesh, which, so far from setting aside the flesh, gave it a distinct place by avowing it as capable of correction. This has ever been the rule so long as God is admitted to have a claim, and I am in that nature which of itself resists His claim; there must either be law for that which is not subject, or there must be lawlessness. Indeed the former, legalism, paves the way for lawlessness. This we see in the case of the Colossians (though I cannot enlarge on it here), where there was a mixture of judaism and philosophy. It was the will of the flesh, and this is sin, and sin is lawlessness.
The great evil of Cain was in devising for himself a way to propitiate God. He was not at first lawless, but he was not subject to God's mind; and wherever in-subjection creeps in, no matter how heavy and exacting the restrictions, then there is a giving rein to one's mind; and the next step, as we see in Cain, is utter lawlessness -- no restraint whatever. This downward course is traced for us in Jude. We read, "They have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core". First adopting self-restrictions, then acting for self-advantage, and eventually in open rebellion. Thus the legal in the long-run become lawless; they find their restrictions accomplish nothing, and then they are thrown overboard, and lawlessness ensues. The one who imposes the severest restrictions, as king Saul (1 Samuel 14:24), is the selfsame one who lapses into open wilfulness.
The sum of the matter is this: that beginning in the Spirit does not preserve from legalism, as we see in the Galatians; and the knowledge of the Spirit's power and place in the assembly does not preserve one from lawlessness, as with the Corinthians. Nay, the knowledge of grace tends to lawlessness, because if under grace we are not under law; and if the flesh be not
mortified, because ended judicially in the cross, there will be legalism where there is conscience, which eventually lapses into lawlessness because the flesh is wicked and wilful.
The great evil among us is the Corinthian; owning and receiving the truth in the natural mind, seeing and admitting that the Spirit has the power and the right to rule, enjoying His gifts too; and yet with all this a manifest license to the flesh, a reigning as kings, and many other glaring expressions of self-will. It is from the more enlightened that the truth receives the greatest damage if there be not a practical power coincident with the possession of it. And there cannot be this practical exhibition of it unless by walking in the Spirit, where alone the flesh is mortified. No amount of restriction will be true testimony, and there can be great intelligence and acknowledgment of right principles without true rule -- the rule of the Spirit, who always manifests Himself by mortifying the flesh, and thus displaying His own fruits, against which there is no law.
The cross of Christ is owned and believed in by every christian, but peace and practice depend on the extent of the soul's apprehension of it. It is such an all important doctrine, that there can be no profession of christianity without the acknowledgment of it in some form, and possibly there is no truth which has been so continually and so strangely perverted, or one of which such a very partial and insufficient measure has been accepted.
It is with the hope of awakening souls to its importance, by pointing out how they suffer from these perversions and limitations, that I here attempt to consider the subject, for if what the cross has effected were clearly seen, all the limitations, as well as the perversions of it, would be exposed.
The cross has two aspects, one with regard to God, the other with reference to the believer. The former necessarily embraces the most, and from overlooking this aspect of it has arisen serious misapprehension of the truth. When the blessed Lord came into the world, John, His witness, looking on Him, said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world". This was plainly with reference to the altered position in which all things here would be placed by the cross of Christ. Sin had entered on this scene, but the Lamb of God would take away the sin from this order of things, from the world. We can hardly estimate the extent of the work here devolving on the Lamb of God, or the effect of it. It comprises the removal by sacrifice of that which was contrary to God and offensive to Him. It is not that God annihilates everything here and works elsewhere; but that He, through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, can reinstate everything now under judgment, in an entirely new order and degree, and that in righteousness because of the sacrifice. The cross enables Him to continue His creation in a new order.
If there had been no cross, there must be judgment on the creation as it stands; but now, peace having been made by the blood of His cross, God can by Him reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven. Surely we little apprehend the greatness of the work, or the effect of the cross, unless we see the extent of the judgment, and how everything was involved in it. If the soul grasps the extent and severity of the judgment, with what wonder and satisfaction must the eye rest on the cross, and see judgment so borne there, peace so made, that God can reconcile all things to Himself. If the fall of Adam has occasioned the universal judgment, if from that point one traces the widespread deluge of death and distance from God, with what rapture and praise can we behold the cross, and there see the tide of judgment
not only rolled back, but exhausted, all its demands met, and God now at liberty in righteousness to reconcile all things to Himself! Do souls really regard the cross in this singular and unparalleled scope? From the moment of Adam's sin until the cross, there was no rest for God on earth. He did not forsake His people, for His glory ever sought a place among them, but He had not a sabbath here; nor could He, until His Son, our Lord, could say, "I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do". How little do we regard the cross in this light! even as that one great moment when God, according to His own mind, is at liberty to deal with the world, so that He can reconcile all things to Himself. In the history of the universe there is nothing so great and admirable as the cross. It stands forth pre-eminently as the dawn of an eternal day to this world. If at Adam's fall the sun went down at noon-day, at the cross Jesus went down into the depths of blackness and darkness, combated all their strength and despoiled them, and inaugurated for us the endless day of heavenly glory.
But more than this, the cross of Christ has enabled God to reconcile us, who hitherto were alienated and enemies in our mind by wicked works, "yet now has it reconciled". It is through the cross of Christ that God is enabled to reach the prodigal; for there the distance between God and the sinner was repaired; the judgment resting on man was there borne by the Son of God. He took away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. God Himself rends the veil from the top to the bottom; there is no longer any obstruction to His dealing with man, once under judgment, because, the judgment being borne, grace can reign through righteousness. Who can estimate what the cross has effected for God? So great was the effect that our Lord declared when Judas went out, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him", John 13:31. God was glorified in the fulness and completeness of the answer
now rendered in the cross to all His claims. Thus the sin of the world has, through the cross, redounded to the glory of God. The Son of man is glorified in the cross, and God is glorified in Him. He has done the will of God and finished His work. If the ruin be great, the reparation, or the manner in which it has been repaired, is immeasurably greater; the free gift is beyond all comparison greater than the condemnation.
Now let us see what the cross effects for the believer. When Adam sinned, he fell under the judgment of death. Dying, he must die! Nothing can relieve of this judgment but substitution. The judgment must be borne; the righteousness of God requires it. Man, who is under it, cannot be relieved of it but by another bearing it. It cannot be cancelled or overlooked. Righteousness demands judgment, and if man falls under it he cannot or could not rise out of it; and if God recovered him out of it He would compromise the righteousness of His own sentence. Man cannot in righteousness be exonerated but by one not chargeable with his guilt bearing the judgment of it. This Christ did on the cross. He was "made ... sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him". He bore the judgment in His own body on the tree. Our old man was crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed. There was no way of rescuing us but by undergoing the judgment; and this is the cross. Christ would ever have abode alone if He had not died on the cross. The Son of man must be lifted up, otherwise eternal life could never have been given to us. There was only the one way by which we could be saved. Without the cross there could be no escape from judgment, no entrance into life. The blessed Son spent thirty-three years here, and after all He says, in reference to Himself, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone". He had not up to this brought any one to His own ground before God. There is judgment on
man, and there can be no righteousness until that is removed. The blessed Son of God goes down into the depths of judgment. The cross opens a way out of the dungeons of eternal torment into the rest of the Father's house. The cross has not only secured the way of escape for man, but on it has been crucified the old man, that the body of sin might be destroyed. I do not see the cross truly if I only see it as opening a way of escape for me, and yet allowing that in me to escape which has incurred the judgment. This is one of the general limitations in the effect of the cross. The ending of the old man may not be denied, but it is not insisted on as important to the understanding of the cross.
In Romans 7 it is the will of the flesh, the law of it working in the members, that one cries to be delivered from, and not, as is often supposed, the works and sins of the flesh. Both are removed in the cross. "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin". The cross opens the door of escape for me from the state in which I am, but it does not admit the continuance of that state. That state has been judged. What is judged cannot be continued. The moment that I see by faith my escape from judgment, because of the cross of Christ, that moment I am, because of that same cross, set on entirely new ground, even as fruit of Him who died; and I must leave my old man behind, crucified, so that "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me". If I do not accept this, I have limited the cross, and in fact have assumed that I can be freed by Christ's work on the cross from the judgment which rests on the old man, and yet be allowed to retain that which caused the offence -- in short, that I escape through substitution the penalty for my offence, but that the state in which the offence placed me may continue. In effect, a man may be saved through the intervention of another from the penalty under which he lies -- for forgery,
for instance -- and yet he may retain the position acquired by it! Righteousness requires that not only should the full penalty be paid, but that there should be a discontinuance of the state of offence; in fact the offending state must cease. The cross effects all this, and the one who truly understands it can say with the apostle, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world". Here the question of sin is not alluded to, but everything which was in any degree unsuited to God. The cross had cleared all away, and in this the apostle gloried. Some speak of the cross nowadays as if it were something to allow the offender to remain as he was, as if it were a continual sacrifice, continually answering for an offending state which is not set aside; and thus there is no real peace. Again, others see that the cross has removed their sins before God, and rejoice in it; but they do not see the extent of the action of the cross, either with reference to God or to themselves. Hence in practice, while they would place the cross in faith between themselves and their sins, and know that they must not return to them, and that they are freed for ever from them, yet they can sanction and enjoy many carnal things, and the world, just as if there was no cross at all. And, alas! some -- possibly believers -- wear the cross as an ornament to decorate that -- the old man -- for which the Son of God bore it. There is no more painful perversion than this. If Christ died for me, I am bound by every good and right feeling to lay aside that for which He died, and which needed His death. Without that death I could not be delivered from judgment; but how dreadful to retain the condition for which my Saviour was judged! Nay, I must now hate my own life; and I may well do so, since through faith I have the life of the Son of God.
May we increasingly know that the cross of Christ is the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
The Lord, knowing that nothing would so peculiarly affect His own on the earth as the fact of His going away, records for us fully in John 13 to 17 how He will provide for us during His absence from this scene and our journey through it. He knew every feeling and need which could be awakened by the blank; and reckoning on our faithfulness and affection He provides accordingly. Consequently, as there is faithfulness and affection for Him, as One known, so is there an understanding of the gracious and marvellous provision for His absence in these chapters; but as there is indifference and denial of His absence, so are they unappropriated and inapplicable. I do not propose to comment on these chapters, but simply to draw attention to the fact of Christ's absence, and some of the consequences of it. Nothing betrays more the meagre nature of our love to Christ than the little practical sense we have of His absence. The true evidence of how we have valued any one is the extent of blank we are conscious of in the absence of such an one. If we can go on as usual, it is very clear that the presence was not necessary to us; but according to our value of the presence is the greatness of the blank caused by absence. Now nothing can fill or repair the blank but that which has caused it. In simple language, the blank which is caused by the absence of any one can only be repaired by the presence of that same one. And hence, if I feel the Lord's absence and the blank here occasioned by it, nothing can repair that blank to me but His presence. And consequently, as His absence is felt, so is His presence sought. The latter proves the genuineness of the former. The disciples had known Him as present with Him, and they at once felt the blank and loss which His absence entailed. And to them every word that He said which indicated how the blank would be repaired was of all importance. Saints now have never
known Him down here personally, as the first disciples did; but according as they know Him, they have at every turn the painful sense that He is not here; and as this sense is deepened and sustained, so is there in them a retreating from things as they are here, because His absence is so felt. It is as we know the blessedness and the power of His presence now that we feel the blank and desolation caused by His absence. His absence is a fact, and He repairs the blank, assuring us that He will not leave us comfortless, but that He will come to us.
Now this coming to us does not mean the same thing as His coming for us, The coming for us is when He comes to receive us to Himself, that where He is, there we may be also. His coming to us is by the Holy Spirit to repair the blank of His absence. If I feel the absence of Christ from this scene, and if my heart be truly set on Him, nothing can make up or repair for me this grievous blank, but His coming to me, His manifesting Himself to me; and this must be by the Holy Spirit. Hence, if I feel the absence of Christ, my only resource is the Holy Spirit, who is on the earth, sent down to manifest to me the absent Christ. What relief to a true and faithful heart! How simple it is that nothing can repair absence but presence; and if we do not feel the absence of Christ, it is only too evident that we have never yet known Him as present with us. Where is there a heart for Christ, in a day like this, which does not feel that it is vain to hope to find Him even in things avowedly dedicated to Him? The fact is, souls are satisfied with relief of conscience, and there stop, instead of going on to the satisfying of the heart. Nothing but His presence, as we see in the case of Mary Magdalene in John 20, will satisfy the heart; no amount of gifts or communications will do for the heart. Nay, all these only intensify the desire of the true heart to have His presence. If gifts or communications would make up for the presence, then they are greater than the
presence. This cannot be; nay, their value consists in being expressions of that presence, which is the more desired as it is kept fresh by these expressions before the heart and mind. The moment my heart delights in the presence of Christ, it is unsatisfied elsewhere; and then His coming to me by the Holy Spirit is my relief and comfort here. And here it is that I first begin to find my true place for Him on the earth. If I do not feel His absence, I do not value the reparation of it. If Christ's absence is not felt, the Holy Spirit's presence is proportionally not regarded; and this is the real state of christendom. My true place for Him here begins with loving Him; for it is as I find Him satisfying my heart that I am led and empowered to occupy the place here which pleases Him, one in fellowship of the Spirit.
But as I am satisfied with Him, I am in heart dissociated from everything not of Him. Nothing ministers to my heart where He is not; and where this is so, I begin to realise that He is not only absent from the place in which I walk, but that He has been rejected from it, refused a place in it; so that I am not only isolated here because of the blank of His absence, but I am also repelled from association with things here because He has been refused His rightful place. His absence affects me in this place; but His rejection makes the place fearful, and separates me from every work and way of man, because of the guilt of His rejection and the consequent judgment of this world. If it were merely a question of His absence, things would remain unaltered to me, only with this feeling, that none of them could fill up the blank. Nay, the more lovely and attractive they were naturally, the more would they evoke desolation of heart, because inviting my admiration where the one object of my heart no longer was. The order of nature and scenery indeed remains unaltered, but the fact that none of these things ever could revive His presence -- nay, that as His presence
is enjoyed by the Spirit, they are all in abeyance -- closes the eye to them. The creation remains in all its native beauty, but it can never repair the blank of Christ's absence; and the spiritual one knows it to be so, and that it is with the eye closed to everything here, and the heart absorbed in Him, that one enters through the Spirit into the joy of His presence. The works of nature cannot repair the blank of His absence; the Holy Spirit alone can and does. My prospect is Christ's coming for me; in the interval I know His coming to me by the Holy Spirit.
I need not add more, but nothing is clearer than that, if the absence of Christ be not fully apprehended, there is really no power to walk here for Christ, because there is no acknowledgment of the Spirit, who only can fill the blank and lead us here according to His mind. Consequently there must be unhallowed mixture and diverse false efforts to make up for the absence of Him who is the sole fountain and supply of all our blessings.
Oh for a true heart for Him! Nothing but His presence by the Spirit could then satisfy our hearts here, and every other thing would only have its relative value.
The great evidence of the impotence and defectiveness of our nature is the inability to reach perfection in anything, and the attempt to gratify the desire for it only leads to the discovery of our inability, so that the desire, commendable in itself, grows when fostered into the worst of vices, either avarice or insatiable ambition. Nothing exposes more the imperfection of our nature than the simple fact that the more nature is ministered to, and the more that which is suited to it is superadded, the greater and deeper is its sense of the vanity of everything; as Solomon expresses it, "All is vanity and
vexation of spirit". This is the result of every fresh acquisition. There is, therefore, no reaching perfection in nature, and this fact gives colour to a very grievous mistake, into which saints in every age have fallen, namely, to be satisfied with imperfection in the things of God; not that they are regarded imperfect in themselves, but the idea is that, as we have not, we are not to reach the summit or perfection of any truth, though it be revealed, and though it be our calling.
The first and simple thing to admit is that every line of truth has its summit or perfection, and then any point below this must be imperfection. No one acquainted with Scripture can doubt this. Canaan was evidently the summit of the exodus from Egypt. The fatted calf in the father's house is without doubt the summit or perfection of the reception accorded to the prodigal; paradise to the thief; glory to Stephen; the heavenly places in Christ Jesus to the saint now. The second thing is to aim at this, the summit of each line of truth, and to refuse to be satisfied with any point below it. If I admit that every line of truth has its proper summit, then, though I may be far away from it practically, yet I am upheld in my endeavours to reach it by the Spirit of God, who always works from the summit, because He is there; and I am thus preserved from adopting the qualifications and limitations of the truth which my fellows have accepted. The purpose to be satisfied with nothing imperfect, and the attempt to be content with 'the best thing going', are two very different things, and have a very different effect. In the former I honour God who has called me to perfection; and though I have not reached the perfection practically, I will accept nothing that qualifies it, and I look to Him to lead me on, knowing that I am already apprehended in Christ Jesus. With the latter I refuse the leading of God's Spirit, and I hinder it by accepting that which limits the truth of God to a point below His mind.
The constant excuse for defects individually or ecclesiastically is, We cannot expect perfection here; but this is an argument for putting up with imperfection, without any attempt to emerge from it. I admit there is imperfection, but the Spirit of God does not remain inactive or content in imperfection. No doubt He deals with us in the midst of imperfection; but where would He lead us? Surely to perfection, to the summit of every truth. The proof of apostasy in every age was the quiet way the people of God condescended to a limitation of His truth, and resigned themselves to it, as if it were a virtue; and afterwards, when there was a recovery of some of that which had been neglected -- in other words, a reformation -- it was regarded as an era par excellence. I am not disapproving of the revival, I commend and rejoice in it; but if souls are by it deluded from seeking perfection, then I must say it is a dangerous snare to them. If it is right to recover truth at all, surely it is more so to recover it perfectly. The argument for recovering it in part applies still more to the recovery of it wholly. I do not deny that there is imperfection everywhere, but the extent of imperfection ought never to reconcile me to it. If I am on God's side, I refuse everything that is imperfect, though I be surrounded on all sides with imperfection; I do not resign myself to it, but through grace I turn aside from it, as it is manifested to me. It is not the question with me whether I shall ever reach perfection here; but I seek this and nothing less, and my purpose, God helping me, is neither to sanction nor to connive at any imperfection in doctrine or practice, but to expose and disallow it in word and deed; and the more faithful I am, the more will it be disclosed to me, and the more shall I be enabled to reach the mind of God. The history given in Psalm 106 is in principle the history of christendom. There Israel is reminded that no single line of blessing did God ever propose or mark out for them, that they did not limit or qualify. "They soon forgot his works;
they waited not for his counsel ... they despised the pleasant land, they believed not his word".
In dealing with the things of God, we have too much forgotten that they are God's and not ours. Man cannot obtain perfection in anything, and we must be content with imperfection as to human things. But God does obtain it in everything; and hence one of the worst moral symptoms in the present hour is the attempt of saints to go on with things which in the secret of their hearts they disapprove of and condemn; and all simply with this excuse, that they see nothing better -- as if seeing nothing better were any reason for remaining connected or involved with that which is not truth, though it be a part of it. Really one has not the truth until one has in faith reached the summit of it. The summit of it is its crown; and until the soul has been led by God's Spirit to see the point to which it reaches, one cannot speak of knowing it.
The mistake which many true men have made is in confining truth to the extent of the practical knowledge of it. To see by faith the summit of a truth, and to rest satisfied with this light or vision without seeking to reach it practically, would be saying, 'I have plenty of corn and cattle, but I am starving'. Surely the abundance of food is nothing unless used; but it is quite another thing to place me spiritually -- I am there naturally -- in the state of ravens who have neither barn nor storehouse, or like an emigrant in a wild country, acquiring provision according to his own labour. The Spirit gives me faith to see the abundance God secured for me, but then I must rise and partake of it; and as I appropriate it, I understand and walk in the blessedness of it. What is the cause of the darkness in souls on any point of truth? It is not that they know nothing of it, but that they have not as yet laid hold by faith of its summit, its proper finish. Saints as a rule know something of every truth, but rarely, if ever, do they reach the summit of any. Truth in grace
reaches down to man; but comes from God, and hence Christ Himself is the truth. I can touch the line of it, and even enter on it, without feeling the extent of its exaction on me; but as I proceed and see how it connects me with God, I am sensible that man in nature must retire, and this is the real check to the acceptance of truth's summit. Let us take any truth generally accepted among saints in the present day, and thereby test the correctness of these statements. Take the parable about the father and the prodigal in Luke 15. Will any one say that the feeding on the fatted calf in the father's house is aimed at by every one who knows that he is an accepted son, or that he is looking for it now as the proper and only completion of the truth he has tasted? If saints were feeding on those unequalled joys, the world and its things would be little thought of. Does every believer in Christ aim at possessing that "water that I shall give him", of which it is said, "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life"? The commencement of this line must be touched by every believer, but how many see the summit or completion of it? Does every one who believes that the child of God is born of the Spirit, see and maintain that such an one is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and that the church is the habitation of God through the Spirit? Does every believer in the death of Christ accept and insist on the crucifixion of the old man, and that if Christ be in us, the body is dead because of sin; that hence we are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit? Does every one assured of being quickened with Christ know, or expect to know, that he is now seated with Him in heavenly places? Does every one who believes in the power and blessing of God's Spirit assent, yield himself to the truth that the flesh profits nothing, and that no man understands the things of the Spirit of God, but the Spirit of God that is in him?
All these truths are for the most part accepted and received by believers; but where, I ask, is any one of them enjoyed or taught among us, speaking generally? Where is it insisted on that the life of Christ is our life? Forgiveness is preached through the sacrifice of Christ, and perfect assurance of pardon before God; but where is it pressed as the summit of this truth, that it is His life which we now, as forgiven ones, possess, and should walk in here; "the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me"? (Galatians 2:20). Where is it believed and enforced that man was ended judicially before God on the cross; and hence, every one believing in Christ must hate his own life, that for which his Saviour was judged? Is it not plain that if any of these truths were grasped to their summit -- their perfection, from whence the Spirit of God propounds them -- there would be a marked deliverance from the restlessness of spirit and worldliness of habit, which degrades the christian to the level of the man of the world? The fact is -- sad, bitterly sad as it is to feel it -- that the most, in many cases, that can be said of earnest men in this day is that which was said of the king of Judah; "he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, but not with a perfect heart"; or as is said of another, "not like David his father".
To one with any spiritual discernment, it must be evident that the number of the true and zealous, in comparison with that of professing christians, is small indeed. It is not want of charity to arrive at this conclusion; nay rather, the more love there is, the more one sees how much is lacking in oneself and in others, and it is as we seek to be true that we see how much that which is not true is tolerated on all sides. As soon as I am faithful to my light, I see that I have to turn
aside from many things which hitherto have been tolerated or excused. When Jacob goes up to Bethel (Genesis 35) the idols must be put away. According as I feel it incumbent on myself to wash my hands in innocency, so must I feel it good and necessary for my fellow christians; and as I proceed in the work of emancipation from the superstitions in which we have been involved, the more do I seek the release of my brethren still entangled; and the more faithful I am, the more will they be led to enquire and be encouraged to walk in the path of faith. The one that surmounts the fence which separates the flock from the better pasture, not only secures the good feeding for himself, but encourages and stimulates the whole flock to follow him. Now if we admit that the true and faithful are but a little flock in the midst of a multitude of professors, among whom they are greatly mixed up, with hardly any distinction, we cannot fail to acknowledge the declension of the church; and if we do, we cannot but seek to emerge from the unhallowed state of things which we deprecate and disallow. No spiritual one will deny that the church has fallen from the high and blessed estate in which it was set up, and those who mourn at this declension, and seek to walk apart from every corruption in the house of God, are this remnant. In a word, if there be any faithfulness in the time of apostasy, there must be a remnant; Revelation 2:24.
The character of this remnant we will now consider. The original body took its place in all the freshness and beauty of its appointment. It had no antecedent, it was newly inducted into high estate. The past clogged it not; the present only claimed it, nay, it ruled. All was brightness and hope. With the remnant it is far different. The past has entailed heavy encumbrances on them, and as they labour to be free of them, they feel their weight, and cannot rejoice in any measure of deliverance without being increasingly conscious of the sin and folly which entailed the encumbrances
with which they are now chargeable, though they had not personally incurred them. They are like the frugal heir of an encumbered estate who labours by self-abnegation to retrieve his condition; and yet no embarrassment can be surmounted but with the sad and painful sense that it could have been prevented, and hence a deeper sorrow for the present condition. Joseph suffered in Egypt for his people and for their gain; but every progress he made only presented their evil in a stronger and sadder light.
The remnant is only a handful escaping from the perplexities and degradation in which they with their fellows were involved; and as they rejoice in the mercy to themselves, so must they feel the state to which an original, once so fair and beautiful, has been reduced, and their separation from so many of their fellows still undelivered. The character of a remnant must necessarily be a sorrowing one, as connected with the scene where the failure has occurred, though there be increased joy and rest in God, as there is increased light and power to extricate oneself from everything dishonouring to Him. The character must be that of a widow as to what was, because the brightest thing here is gone; but this with a heart so true to the Lord that there is an uncompromising purpose to devote all one's energies to "strengthen the things that remain", Revelation 3:2.
The widow of Luke 21 teaches us the true character of the remnant. For herself personally there was no interest here, yet all her energies, all her living was devoted to the maintenance of the testimony of God on earth. In a word, she had no interest of her own; the interests of Christ commanded all her attention and all her energies.
She describes the Jewish remnant of that day, and characteristically, the remnant who purge themselves from the corruptions of the "great house" in the present day. If saints in every dispensation had continued true and faithful to the calling of God, there would have
been no remnant. If there had been no declension or apostasy, there would have been no need for any to stand forth and declare their purpose, through grace, to separate themselves from all the disorder around, cleaving to that which is of God, and energetically devoting themselves to the maintenance of it. The remnant never regain the original, but they refuse everything unworthy of it and of the calling of God. And hence at every time their character is one of great solemnity and great fervency. They are aware of the terrible blight that is upon everything dear to them, but they are increasingly devoted to God and confident in Him. As they see how everything here has failed in man's hand, their heart finds full resource in Him, even as the remnant of Psalm 74 exclaims, "The day is thine, the night also is thine; thou hast prepared the moon and the sun".
There are two classes of sufferings which I may just note in passing; one which the earnest one endures in reaching the path of faith on earth, as Jacob in Genesis 35; the other what the faithful one endures as Christ's witness in the path. The one, the suffering in reaching the path, Jacob sets before us; the other, the suffering in the path, Joseph, or the widow, presents to us. Joseph in Egypt is the first remnant faithful to God, whether as a slave or as a prince, in the prison or in the palace. His brethren had departed from God, and had cast him out; but he remained true, and God was honoured; and though he never regained the original standing, his faith was such that in dying he gave commandment that his bones should be carried back to the land. He never surrendered his calling, though he never recovered it fully. And this is the great work of the remnant, though I speak not of that here, but of the character that becomes them. The remnant occupy no light place; and as they realise it, there must be a sense of it about them. They bear upon them the mark of God (Ezekiel 9:4), and they
sigh and cry for the abominations committed in the holy places. The remnant are a grave company -- fasting with Ezra beside the river Ahava; Ezra 8:21. They are necessarily self-denying; they must not eat of the king's meat or drink of the king's wine (Daniel 1:8); and the furnace of fire or the lion's den may await them for their faithfulness. They are like Anna the prophetess (Luke 2:36, 37), a widow of fourscore and four years, who departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayer night and day. If any one has any true sense of the declension of the church as it was first set up on the earth, and if there be a heart for the Lord, must there not be a deepening sense of the wretchedness of everything connected with man, but through grace a deeper and fuller confidence and joy of heart in looking up and resting in God? And this will impart the true remnant character, namely, a complete widowhood as touching everything of earth and man, but a more devoted zeal for everything of God; desolate indeed here, but confiding and joying in God; of no expectation from man, but of great expectations from God; passing through this scene with the deep solemn step of sentinels who, amid the ruins of fallen greatness, watch with sleepless eye for their Lord, that they may open to Him immediately, and who meanwhile guard His name and honour through the long and dreary night.
The Lord lead His saints to wait on Him, that they may not miss the path in which He would have them walk for Him in this evil day.
Every believer desires, and according as he has conscience seeks to be godly. We see desire and effort after it on every side, but little practical result; and the failure in reaching what is desired must arise from the incorrect way in which the end is sought.
Godliness is called a mystery, because no one can understand it but one initiated into it, one introduced into it by revelation. A mystery needs a disclosure; it is not common nor open to every one. If you are made acquainted with it you know it, otherwise it is a mystery to you. Now the mystery of godliness is Jesus Christ, in His course as God manifest in the flesh. As you understand Him, as your soul apprehends Him as He was in it, so do you understand the mystery and so are you endued with the sense of what God is in His grace and nearness to us; and this sense is in itself godliness. Godliness is the pious sense awakened by the manifestation of God in a man. As I am initiated into what Jesus Christ is, so am I endowed with godliness -- true reverence of God. It is as He is known in Spirit, as God manifest in the flesh, having come down into my circumstances, and acting and maintaining God in all the weakness of them, that I am bowed into true reverence before God. I have the sense of how peculiarly near God has now been brought, and this in grace too; not merely to sympathise with me, but to maintain God in the very condition in which man failed; so that I am filled with reverence, even while consciously partaking of the grace, Nay, in a sense it is more than receiving of His grace, because it is an initiation into the greatness of the One who has come in the likeness of man to effect such great blessing for me. There is a Man doing everything suited to God; the Man of God among men -- among those who in every imagination of the heart are only evil continually. The more this Man is known, the more I have a sense of His existence, the more am I impressed with reverence for One so singular and unique. No other person could produce anything like it; the effect is marked by personal devotion to Him. I am endued with a reverence of God, a sanctity of soul which otherwise must be unknown to me. One cannot get the sense of reverence, but from being in the presence of One to be reverenced.
It cannot be produced apart from the Person whose particular claim on me produces it. A child has reverence or piety for his parent; but it is a sense unknown apart from the parent. It is the presence and known relation of the parent which produces it. My parent cannot produce in another's child what he can in me. In another way the presence of a sovereign produces reverence, but only in so far as he is known as such. If his relation as sovereign were unknown, he would not produce it.
Hence godliness is only produced in the soul in so far as Christ is known. It is the solving of the mystery, the introduction to Him personally, which produces this peculiar sense of reverence, and effects in me that manner and way to which He is entitled; for as I am in the sense of reverence, I yield myself piously to Him, and necessarily I drop the old man, which has been set aside in the judgment of the cross. Seeing Christ as God manifest in the flesh throws me at once into a certain shape. His presence demands it, not as exaction or claim, but it acts like a charm, because the new nature which I have answers to it. God's Man, the only Mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus, so rivets and fixes my heart that I distinctly retire from everything unapproved of in the presence of Him who so peculiarly affects and controls me. My nature has dishonoured God and sinned against Him; but now I am in the presence of God manifest in flesh, One who has fulfilled all His will, who has walked perfectly in every stage of this life in which I am; and I find that this blessed One who is before me, to whom I have been introduced, has done all the will of God; has been justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached far and wide to the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory. God has not only come into my very state, but He has been glorified in it, where I have sinned and failed so grievously. Hence as I am consciously before Him, as I know Him, I must abandon
-- nay, hate -- the life for which He suffered here. As my soul is filled with this blessed One, my whole being becomes piously expressive of His influence and claims, and there is about me a holy subjection, a yielding of self altogether to Him. Everything is done in keeping with this pious feeling, which is produced by His presence and the knowledge of who He is, which is the solution of the mystery. It is not that I am using any effort to shape myself, but the pious sense produced in my soul by the knowledge of who Christ is shapes me; for I covet correspondence to Him, and I have it, not only the form of godliness, but the power of it. A godly man is one truly influenced and controlled by the presence of Christ as known by the Spirit, and this of course produces a manner and character as to everything, which is the fruit of godliness, for "godliness is profitable unto all things".
Now, as I have said, every saint desires to be pious, and as it is the first desire of the new nature, so is there none which the enemy so imitates, or has so effectually corrupted in the church, and this in two ways, as I will endeavour to show; the one is the deliberate device of Satan, the other the lust of nature.
The first is foretold in 1 Timothy 4"the Spirit speaks expressly, that in latter times some shall apostatise from the faith, giving their mind to deceiving spirits and teachings of demons speaking lies in hypocrisy, cauterised as to their own conscience". Now the object of this terrible scheme of Satan is to substitute, as all hypocrisy does, a counterfeit for the real. He proposes, therefore, a standard of sanctity subversive of all God's order and will; but yet, because its exactions are preternatural, beyond nature, men are deceived by it; and before long, as we see in Thyatira (Revelation 2), the church was leavened with it; and though it was never regarded as attainable by the church corporately, yet its false pretensions were not discovered or unmasked. Its exactions were of such a nature that
only the clergy and a few monks and nuns could subscribe to it, or attempt to submit to it; hence it was really not the standard for the church, and the church surrendered the truth that it is a body where every member is necessary, and the less honourable receive the more abundant honour. Satan's device succeeded in substituting before the eyes of men the fictitious thing for the real, the religion of popery at first, in place of the mystery of godliness. Man was made the object instead of Christ. When Christ is the object before the soul, man is shaped by the power of His presence in true subjection to Him; but when man is the object, there is necessarily a maintenance of man's nature, whatever restraints may be imposed. Nay, the more a man can submit to such imposition, the more is his nature established in its own power, and of course in increased opposition to God, for the natural mind is enmity against God.
Now in the Reformation there was, through grace, a great deliverance. The ground-work of christianity was recovered; namely, justification by faith. Salvation, not by works, but by Christ outside of oneself, was avowed and insisted on, and the maintenance of this is christianity. But though this was recovered at the Reformation, it was not maintained that the old man was crucified in the cross, and hence they only refused the exactions of popery, but recognised the flesh as still before God.
Refusing the exaction was right; but the retention of that on which the exaction could be made, the old man, was the weakness of the Reformation; and hence there was that left in the system which gave opportunity for forms and rituals. If the flesh be recognised of God, it must be subject to impositions. But it is not recognised. They that are in the flesh cannot please God. And in Christ's presence the flesh, the old man, is set aside, and there is such a manifestation of His power that the very manner and way suited to Him is produced,
which is piety, or godliness -- the power of it, not only the form.
The Reformers failed because they did not see that as faith alone could save, and place man outside of himself in Christ, he must not return to that which through grace had been set aside. In not seeing this, the Reformers left the door open for the system and ritualism which have grown up since in the church; and hence the simple and only effectual way of dealing with either is, at the start, to refuse any place to the old man except crucifixion. If I am dead, there is no room for any kind of exaction or form, but the presence of Christ produces in me that which far exceeds all that any exaction could produce. Then it is, "I am crucified with Christ, and no longer live, I, but Christ lives in me".
As to the other attempt to set aside godliness, I now only allude to it. It is noticed in 1 Timothy 6. Supposing that gain is the end of godliness, that is, that everything of advantage or elevation to man is supposed to be godliness. To any thoughtful person this leaven is but too painfully visible, and could never have obtained an entrance if the end of the first man in the cross were truly accepted and insisted on. The result of both is presented to us in its fearful array in 2 Timothy 3:1 - 7, where christendom is shown to be worse than heathendom (Romans 1), though still retaining the form of godliness. Religious restraint and human elevation together produce a fearful state of things. The Lord keep us near Himself!
At every time, as there was favour from God, so was there a minister empowered of God to set forth and maintain His will; and whenever God vouchsafed mercy and succour to His people, it was through the intervention of His servants and the blessing of the people was indicated by the power and faithfulness of
the servant, so that at any time the moral state of the people was represented by that of the servant. All through Scripture there is favour and help for the people whilst the servant remains faithful; but when the servant fails, all are involved in the downfall. If the one to whom God entrusts His mind continues faithful, even though the people be rebellious and perverse, he is still enabled to rally and restore them, or at least to save a remnant.
It is a high but grave position to be called of God to minister His mind and counsel to His people; none more highly favoured, and none so opposed and thwarted by every device of Satan. It is plain that when God would help and succour His people by unfolding His will and way to any one, Satan's great effort would be to hinder such an one, and if possible to pervert him. The favour of God is shown to His people when He raises up a faithful servant; and His rebuking is shown when "Jehovah hath poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes; the prophets and your chiefs, the seers, hath he covered", Isaiah 29:10. And hence the enemy labours to counteract the effect which would flow from the faithfulness of God's ministers. While Noah was faithful he was signally used, but when he failed he opened the door for evil in his own family.
Moses is a faithful servant, and the people of God, in their rebellion and unbelief, obtain succour and help through him. The whole history of the book of Judges sets forth this truth, that the faithfulness of the servant ensures blessing to the people, markedly in keeping with the order of the faithfulness. The more truly any one was God's minister, observing and maintaining His mind and counsel, the more surely was there blessing to the saints through him; so that, as we can see in the case of Samuel, where there was simple and true dependence on God in prayer, there was the most marked blessing; but when he failed in
the matter of his sons, then the door was opened for the disclosure of the people's evil. The principle is the same all through; like priest like people. When the servants went down to eat and drink with the drunken, then the kingdom of heaven was likened unto ten virgins, who all slumbered and slept. We see this same principle still more strikingly and authoritatively established in the kings of Israel. As there was faithfulness in the king, the people were blessed; and as there was unfaithfulness in him, the people suffered. It is simple and necessary, that if the minister of God fails, there must be an opportunity for the exposure of the evil of the people. If the minister of God be the organ or instrument to instruct the people of God according to His will, surely any dereliction in the minister must seriously affect the people. When truth is qualified by word or deed, its effect on the hearers must be seriously weakened. And what more effectual way to accomplish this than by corrupting the channel called and gifted of God for imparting it? As Paul says, "From among your own selves shall rise up men speaking perverted things". And Peter is still stronger: "There were false prophets also among the people, as there shall be also among you false teachers". Satan's great aim has been to supplant the minister of God, and this in a twofold way: one, by seducing the true one from his fidelity, as it is written, "That evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming"; and secondly, by introducing false teachers, as angels of light (2 Corinthians 11:14); and as "that woman Jezebel ... to teach and to seduce my servants", Revelation 2.
Let us but see the responsibility of the minister of God, and we cannot fail to see that any remissness in him must entail, or give occasion for, greater evil in the people to whom he is called to minister, A minister of God is one appointed by God to impart His mind, by a gift specially conferred on him by the Holy Spirit. It is distinctly given and knowingly possessed, but
capable of being cultivated and increased by study of the word and prayer. It is not the line of the gift we are considering here, but the simple fact that one is endowed with Christ's gift by the Holy Spirit, and hence takes his place among God's people as His minister. To a true conscience, no appointment could be more solemn or responsible; but when we see the effect one's faithfulness, or the reverse, has on the people of God, one may well tremble, if not supported by the cheering assurance that our competence is of God. The gifts have been given for the perfecting of the saints; and hence if the gifted one, the one called to be God's minister, in anywise misrepresents God in teaching or preaching, he necessarily damages and hinders saints. They are straitened and checked by him, and he has not approved himself as the minister of God. His conduct and course should be of such a character that he could say that they were without excuse as far as he ministerially was concerned. Is it not plain that if God's minister does anything in word or deed to contravene the mind of God, of which he is the minister, he must therein hinder the saints? Does he not indicate in himself the real measure of the power of the truth of which he is the minister? If the minister can allow this or that of the world in his surroundings, it is vain for him to expect that the saints will accept the truth he ministers as able to effect more, or that really there is more in it; for it is remarkable how defective walk in a minister will lead to qualification of the truth in its very enunciation; and hence there is not a rightly dividing the word of truth.
Nothing has tended to lower the standard of christianity so much as the little practical effect that the truth has had on the ministers of it. Nothing does the awakened conscience more eagerly look for, or more intently examine, than the effect of the truth on the one who ministers it. It is remarkable how everything a minister of God does will be criticised, and how
conscience will be either convicted by his conduct or emboldened to do what it might otherwise fear to do. Who could read the credentials of a minister of God in 2 Corinthians 4 and not fear, while he accepted and assumed the duty of such a highly privileged, and at the same time self-denying calling? Or who, while humbly bowing to Christ's favour in putting him into the ministry, does not feel the obligation which rests on him, and the importance of the word to Timothy? "Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them"; (though working at a trade, as he did -- see 2 Thessalonians 3) "that thy profiting may appear to all for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee".
The gifts are given by Christ for the perfecting of the saints, and pasture is always provided by Him as there is appreciation of it. A Simeon, a Nathanael, or a Cornelius will not be neglected; no, nor the Ethiopian eunuch. The Lord will provide a servant suited for His saints who wait on Him. There is no lack of gifts, now as ever; but they are not in vigour or usefulness in their proper spheres, because they are not exercised in simple subjection to the Lord. The fact is, when grace is working in any few, the word of God is heard, and some one or another is gifted of the Lord with His mind, for He seeks for the ear of the saints; see Revelation 2, 3. The gift cannot be refused, nor can it be treated with indifference; it is given of Christ, and it should he cultivated. We see in many a gift, and an evident desire to exercise it; but they are not making full proof of their ministry. They are not good soldiers of Jesus Christ. The minister's place is accepted too lightly. It is not enough to possess a gift, or to have readiness to exercise it. The latter may be an evidence of its existence; but notwithstanding this there will he feebleness if there be not a deep sense of responsibility to the Lord in the using of it with the obligation that rests on the minister to forego everything selfish, to
deny himself altogether, in order that the gift may be unhindered by anything of his nature, and that it may shine forth in the grace of Christ. Where there is this charity and self-abnegation (see 1 Corinthians 13), there will be a marked consideration and care for others. The true minister not only in every way proves himself as of God by his devotedness to the work, but like a nurse, he considers for them to whom he ministers. He knows that he cannot wash another's feet but as his own have been washed. He is able to help and comfort others, as he has passed through like trials with God. The minister watches the souls he tends. He is a nurse, feeding with milk and not with meat, when there is not preparedness of heart for meat. In a word, it is not what he has to impart that is so before his mind, as the state and capacity of those to whom he ministers. The nurse does not over-feed, does not weary; he does not preach too long, or pray too long, he considers carefully and skilfully the state of his hearers. Jonah was zealous and devoted before he had the sympathies requisite for an efficient servant. To be fully God's minister, devotedness and fidelity to the trust are first required; but the gift is hindered and the saints are not edified, if there be not charity and real self-abnegation in every point.
May the Lord in His mercy awaken in the many whom He has given a desire to serve Him -- an evidence that He has called them thereto -- simple purpose of heart to abandon everything that stands in the way of effectually carrying out the ministry that they have received of the Lord, that they may fulfil it. While rejoicing in being put by him into the ministry, may they have a true sense of the obligation imposed on them in everything to approve themselves as ministers of God, and to fill up the measure of it, that they may challenge the saints for a recompense! And may the saints so value pasture that God may raise up many to feed them faithfully!
It is a trial to every earnest soul, the little effect an accepted truth has on him, the little fruit produced by it. And not only this, but every servant of God, really careful about souls, is often disappointed at the little progress of those who have received the word. The Lord in the parable of the sower presents to us the various things which hinder the full effects of the truth; and the one nearest to the right condition discloses and describes how a truth, though received, may become unfruitful. "And others are they who are sown among the thorns: these are they who have heard the word, and the cares of life, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things, entering in, choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful", Mark 4:18, 19. Here plainly the word has been heard; it was neither on the way-side, nor on a rock; but other influences were allowed to act, and they choked the word, and it became unfruitful. The simple question raised is this: is the word to exert control and influence over us, or are other things, which are connected with our nature, to have the mastery? If these latter are allowed to rule, the word is choked, there is no fruit; that is, there is no effect produced by the word. The point must be settled, whether the word is to rule me, or whether I am to be ruled by the circumstances which affect and interest me as a man.
The moment I receive a word from the Lord, I am bound to let it govern me, because it is His word; but if, instead of this, I am carried away by cares, riches or pleasure, it is evident the word has no hold on me, and there can be no fruit. How often does one, either in reading or hearing, accept the word of the Lord, and yet find afterwards that it has not produced any effect! And why? Because other things were allowed to rule, or monopolise the place of the word, and hence there could not be fruit. Fruit is the effect produced
by the distinct action and control of the word. The word has been accepted, but it has not been understood. It has not been received as the word of God, which effectually works in them that believe. There is too ready an acceptance of it, not that in one sense the acceptance can be too ready; but it is not received sufficiently with the sense that it is God's word to one's own soul. The mere receiving of the word as a statement of truth is never effectual, it must be mixed with faith; my soul must be under the conviction that it is addressed to me by the Lord Himself as His will and counsel, authoritatively declared to me, claiming to order and direct me, and to which I am required to yield unqualified submission. It is not informing me what I might do, but what God requires me to do, and which I am able to do the moment I accept the word as His. It is, alas! quite possible, without any intended opposition to the Lord, to accept truth as information, something to enlarge one's mind, and not something which didactically claims implicit obedience, because coming from God.
The word must lead, or the thorns will choke it; that is, it must hold the first place. To God's claim and direction all must bow. If other things are allowed to take the lead, then faith has waned; the sense of God's paramount claim has been supplanted, and there is no true effect from the word. The information may remain, but there is not the accuracy, even in the information, which practice alone ensures. Practice leads one in a wonderful way into accuracy of idea and power of expression about the truth. If the truth be understood in its bearing and claim, it holds the first place. The heart is honest and true, and the fruit is brought to perfection. But when other things are allowed to take the lead, like thorns in a cornfield, the corn is spoiled. So long as the corn keeps ahead of the thorns, there is, at least, some fruit -- grace -- brought to perfection. We are called to be "doers of the word,
and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straight-way forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed", James 1:22 - 25.
The point is that there must be action in keeping with the instruction conveyed by the word. If you abide in the word, there will be action, and therefore blessing; but if you go your way, after hearing, you have only seen your face in a glass; you have not altered anything in keeping with the word; the word has not exerted any influence over you. You go your way, and other things lead and govern you, and not the word of God. Alas! we have in ourselves, and around, evidence of this every day. For example, one accepts the coming of the Lord as revealed in Scripture, but the same man goes on as usual, toiling for the future, occupied with hopes and fears. Surely that truth, accepted though it be, does not govern him; it does not influence or control his conduct, it is distinctly unfruitful. If, on the other hand, the truth were received in faith, it would alter every natural taste and pursuit, and would support one in the power of itself as of God; but when it is not so the very blessedness of the truth itself is lost and unknown, because it is in the doing that the blessing is secured. It is not the extent in knowledge of the truth, but if the truth does not lead, something of nature comes in to set it aside; and in some way or other the truth is limited or qualified. If one is not transformed by the renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2), there will be no power to "prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God".
It is sad and fearful how small a thing, when allowed to take the lead in one's mind, will choke the accepted
truth, and it is chiefly the cares of this life which are the thorns; indeed they head the list, for it is that for which every one makes a ready and plausible excuse that we most need to be on our guard against. Abraham's father delays his entrance into Canaan, but it is the famine -- the cares of this life -- which, taking the lead in his mind, causes him to leave Canaan for Egypt. How easily might he plead his duty, and the needs of his family for this step The simple fact was that the cares -- the thorns -- ruled him, and choked for a season the word of the Lord in his soul. Lot might have pleaded the same excuse for his more aggravated course, when he chose the well-watered plain. His desire to do well for himself and his family choked the word, O how grievously! and it brought forth no fruit to perfection. After the same manner, Jacob settles at Shalem; Genesis 33. He does not deliberately intend to decline from the word of the Lord; but care for the present, care for his family, rules for the moment, and the power of the word is lost to him -- he misses the blessing of the "doer". Saints are ready enough to allow that riches and pleasures choke the word, but they too often forget that the cares which they so readily excuse are the worst and most prejudicial of thorns, and that occupation with them is one of the great evidences that we are not walking here with a single eye. In Luke 11:34 we see that the effect of a single eye is that the whole body is full of light; and in chapter 12 there is no fear of those who kill the body, no thought for what we shall eat or what we shall drink; neither is there a doubtful mind.
When I begin to think of myself as Mark did at Perga (Acts 13:13) then the word has lost its power, and I am disqualified and out of course, because another thing sways me, and not the word of the Lord; see Acts 15:38. Satan's object is to distract, and this he can do more effectually through things right in their place, such as care and provision for one's family, thanTHE QUIETNESS OF COMMUNION
OUR POSITION
OUR DUTY
OUR MOTIVE
CO-OPERATION IN WORK
THE SOLDIER OF CHRIST
THE END OF LIGHT
THE INTRUSION OF THE FLESH
THE POWER OF LIFE
IS EVERY ONE A PREACHER?
CONSISTENCY
THE LORD'S SUPPER
"YE ARE MY FRIENDS"
CAN A WITNESS OF CHRIST BE WORLDLY?
FAITH AND PROVIDENCE
THE SNARE OF A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
THE MARK OF A SERVANT OF CHRIST
"CHILDREN, HAVE YE ANY MEAT?"
UNION WITH CHRIST
SERVICE
LUKEWARMNESS
THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL
THE POWER FOR US, AND THE POWER AGAINST US
HOW TRUTH IS PERVERTED
WHAT IS POWER, AND HOW ARE MEANS TO BE USED?
THE IMITATION OF TRUTH
LEGALISM AND LAWLESSNESS
THE CROSS OF CHRIST
THE ABSENCE OF CHRIST
IS IT PERFECTION, OR 'THE BEST THING GOING'?
THE REMNANT CHARACTER
THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS
MINISTERS OF GOD
"SOWN AMONG THE THORNS"